Harvard Prof: Sign of Decline of Western Civilization

[warblersrule]

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When Kenneth Clark defined civilisation in his acclaimed 1969 television series of that name, he left viewers in no doubt that he meant the civilisation of the West – and primarily the art and architecture of Western Europe from the Middle Ages until the 19th century.

A rather conveniently selected time frame. It neatly sidesteps the embarrassing fact that people in other parts of the world were signing peace treaties, building functional plumbing, writing medical treatises, performing advanced math, passing laws to protect women’s rights, and notating music while people in Europe were still shivering in huts.</p>

<p>As for the author, he’s another in a long line of people trying to make a buck by peddling a book designed to stir up fears about the impending and terrible decline of western civilization. It’s nothing that hasn’t been covered in painstaking detail by other, better scholars like Victor Davis Hanson.</p>