[Jason Jewell]

If you look at works like Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations,” you see that Russian and/or Orthodox civilization is usually not considered Western. I think this has something to do with the East/West split in the Christian church (including the divergence in views on rationalism and mysticism) as well as the Latin/Greek division in scholarship for so many centuries. I’m grossly generalizing here, but I think those things are at the root of the split in some form.

[Jason Jewell]

There will be some variations of living standards depending on time and place, but for the average person the sixth-century standard of living was probably not much different from the fifth-century standard of living, for example. In some cases living standards may actually have improved because of lower taxation.

Of course, marks of civilization are more than just living standards of the common people. It’s definitely true that many of the refinements of civilization among the middle and upper classes were less in the 6th-8th centuries than they were under the Roman Empire. In that sense, civilization did take some steps backwards in those years before reviving.

I hope this answers your question.

[Jason Jewell]

Try this: http://the24hourtala.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/ancivfs.gif

Remember that these ancient dates fluctuate according to current interpretations of archeological data, and depending on which scholar you’re reading.

[Jason Jewell]

Bonnie, in addition to the info in Lecture 38, I should point out that the more notorious Inquisitions (such as the one in Spain) are driven by State interests more so than by the Church.

Moreover, the cumulative total number of people killed by Inquisitions throughout all the centuries of the Middle Ages and early modern periods is less than the number of Roman Catholic priests killed by Spanish Leftists in the summer of 1936. Why should the former be considered a “major impact” on Western civilization if the latter is not?

[Jason Jewell]

John, I think the only people who would seriously dispute this characterization are those who define Western civilization as an exclusively modern phenomenon or those who define it as an exclusively secular phenomenon. Often but not always these are the same people. These folks generally say that Western civilization begins in the Renaissance and develops through the Enlightenment. Theirs has always been a minority view.

My short answer to these people is that 1) Western civilization is not exclusively modern because the moderns in most cases are still self-consciously engaging and interacting with the pre-modern thinkers, institutions, etc., and 2) attempts to view the West as purely secular don’t have nearly as much power to explain numerous features of Western society. The “secularization” thesis that gained so much traction among scholars in the 20th century is now being abandoned.

I hope this helps.

[Jason Jewell]

Russia is not normally considered part of Western Civilization, and I’m not as familiar with the bibliography in this area. However, I’ll do some digging and see what I can come up with.

[Jason Jewell]

Bonnie, you’re very welcome, and I’m glad you found the lecture series worthwhile!

[Jason Jewell]

Thanks for your kind words about the lecture series!

Competition in agriculture would have been very limited throughout this period. Generally the only imported foods were spices, luxury goods only the nobility could have afforded in small quantities.

In terms of property rights, there is slow but gradual movement toward the abolition of serfdom in Western Europe. This picks up as the use of money becomes more common late in the period and landlords see the value of making a transition from in-kind services to money rents.

[Jason Jewell]

Try this one: http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.html

[Jason Jewell]

J.R.R. Tolkien felt compelled to offer a reply to the “heliocentrism disproves Christianity” line of thinking in his “Ainulindale,” the first section of the posthumously published Silmarillion.

I don’t have the book in front of me right now, but there’s a passage that comes shortly after Iluvatar (the story’s creation deity) creates the material universe in which the narrator scolds those who think that Arda’s (Earth’s) comparatively small size in the cosmos implies that it is unimportant or not central to divinely ordained events.

I point this out because it shows that this atheistic argument has been circulating for a long time.

[Jason Jewell]

Jack, I expect much of the argument will hinge on the theological position taken on the relationship between the Old and New Testament, as you hinted above. “Dispensationalists” are more likely to agree that laws for Old Testament Israel don’t apply today. For those who appeal to the Old Testament, you can point out that for the majority of the commands in the Law of Moses (e.g. payment of the tithe), there is no penalty prescribed for disobedience. This at least leaves open the possibility that ancient Israel was to employ non-coercive means in enforcing many of these “laws.” That won’t get you to full libertarianism, but it’s a start.

[Jason Jewell]

As the Wikipedia article indicates, Bloch’s definition of feudalism is broader than Ganshof’s and includes many social relationships, such as among family members, in addition to formal ties of vassalage among members of the nobility. According to Brian Tierney, Ganshof’s definition is still the more generally accepted one among professional historians.

I don’t have access to Susan Reynolds’s writing here; her Wikipedia page says she thinks “direct ownership of land was more prevalent in the early Middle Ages than has been thought, and the decline of central authority has been exaggerated.” I think you’d have to be a specialist to evaluate this claim because it involves interpreting nuances in manuscript documents from the period.

I hope this helps!

[Jason Jewell]

David, among many agnostics/atheists the expression of the view that heliocentrism disproves Christianity is almost a commonplace. Now, obviously, the more intellectually cautious in this camp avoid this kind of language, but survey texts regularly insert some statement to the effect that Copernicus and/or Galileo disproved that mankind occupies a unique or special place in the universe.

Gary North traces some of this history and the reasoning employed in Appendix A of his book “The Dominion Covenant,” which is available free online at http://garynorth.com

[Jason Jewell]

David, I think I have a summary of Reynolds’s and Bloch’s views in one of the books at my office. I had intended to look for it yesterday, and it slipped my mind. I’ll try to track it down Monday.

[Jason Jewell]

Fortunately, the Liberty Fund has a transcript of the debates online: http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1322&Itemid=264

I’ll try to get this permanently posted to the Lecture 11 resource page.

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