Western culture
American culture - European culture - West - Western canon
Western culture is a very complex combination of two traditions the Judeo-Christian and the Greco-Roman. The overarching argument of all of my work is that paganism was never in fact defeated by Christianity but instead went underground to resurface at three key moments the Renaissance, Romanticism, and twentieth-century popular culture, whose sex and violence I interpret as pagan phenomena. --Camille Paglia ... [America Online chat 1995]
Ancient Greece marks the beginning of Western culture; the dominant cultural form in the modern world which has come to play an influential role on more cultures worldwide than any other culture. For many centuries it was an essentially European culture, but it has now mostly become an American culture. Shown above is a 1872 snapshot of the Partenon located in Athens, Greece. It has been restored since.
Profile
Western Culture refers to the culture that has developed in the Western world. This culture is arguably the dominant cultural form in the modern world; it can also be said that elements of this culture have come to play a more influential role on more diverse cultures world-wide than any other culture has done. It is, however, an ill-defined and disputed term. There is a traditional foundation of Western culture. It existed until the French revolution that brought in other currents or unleashed new ideas. The French revolution is the boundary point between the two basic definitions of Western culture.
For many centuries it was an essentially European culture, but it has now grown beyond the boundaries of Europe. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_culture [Nov 2004]
Hegemony
It can be said that elements of western culture have had a very influential role on other cultures worldwide. Some people of many cultures, both Westerners and non-Westerners will equate "modernization" with "westernization", but many non-westerners object to the implication that all societies should adopt western traits. Some members of more radical thought communities in the non-Western world have suggested that this potential link is a reason why much of "modernity" should be rejected as intrinsically Western and thus incompatible with their vision of their societies. What is generally uncontested, is that much of the technology and social patterns which make up what is typically defined as "modernization" (e.g. steam engines, internal combustion engines, the scientific method, and others) were developed in the Western world. Whether these technological and social forms are instrinsically part of Western culture, is more difficult to answer. Many would argue that the question cannot be answered by a response from positivistic science and instead is a "value" question which must be answered from a value system (e.g. philosophy, religion, political doctrine). Nonetheless, much of anthropology today has shown the close links between the physical environment and daily activities and the formation of a culture (the findings of cultural ecology, among others). Therefore, the impact of "modernization" and "modern" technology may not merely be "scientific" (that is, physical) but may possibly be closely linked with a certain culture, that of the West, such that without such technology, Western culture today would have been dramatically different from how it is known in actual historical and contemporary times. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_culture#Hegemony [Oct 2005]
Camille Paglia on Western culture
Western culture is a very complex combination of two traditions the Judeo-Christian and the Greco-Roman. The overarching argument of all of my work is that paganism was never in fact defeated by Christianity but instead went underground to resurface at three key moments the Renaissance, Romanticism, and twentieth-century popular culture, whose sex and violence I interpret as pagan phenomena.
I am saying that the tension and conflict between those two traditions account for the enormity and grandeur and staggering variety of Western art. Hence I want to encourage and intensify that conflict, since I think it crucial to Western achievement. --Camille Paglia ... [America Online chat 1995]
"Western Civ" as a curriculum
"Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho! Western Civ has got to go!" The chant of Stanford University students c. 1990's demonstrating against the canon of classic texts required in the basic humanities course because it was dominated by "dead white males" and was "Eurocentric". --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_culture#.22Western_Civ.22_as_a_curriculum [Oct 2005]
See also: civilization - hegemony
Western music
Western music is a broad category of music that includes all musical genres that use 12-note chromatic scale, including Western classical music, rock and roll, and many other forms of popular music. The word Western may be misleading; although much of this music came from Europe and North America, important contributions have come from places like Russia and Japan.Western music developed out of the creatively fertile framework of Western philosophy that had its birthplace in ancient Greece. Pythagoras experiemented with intervals of sound based on small integers, which we recognize today as the 12-tone chromatic scale. From these logical roots developed the chants of early Christian tradition, first monophonic, and later polyphonic and including instruments. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_music [Oct 2004]
Mimesis : The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (1946)- Erich Auerbach
Mimesis : The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (1946)- Erich Auerbach [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
see also: reality - representation - literature - western
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