大家好，欢迎来到读书不成林。这是一期英文采访，是我和普林斯顿大学出版社一起合作的政治哲学思想录系列第二期。和我对谈的是思想史学者 Georgios Varouxakis 教授，他目前是伦敦大学玛丽女王学院政治思想史教授，同时也是政治思想史研究中心的联合主任。他长期从事政治思想史和概念史的研究，之前出版过多部有关 John Stuart Mill 密尔的著作。
这次我们围绕他 2025 年出版的新书《The West: The History of an Idea》。西方一部观念史展开了一次深入对谈。这部书的核心问题是我们今天习以为常的西方到底是什么意思？Varouxakis在书中指出，西方并不是一个自古以来就存在的文明共同体，而是一个在19世纪早期特定政治语境中逐渐形成的概念。
换句话说，西方是被发明出来的一种用来划分世界、组织联盟、界定敌友的政治语言。在访谈中，我们从19世纪欧洲如何在俄罗斯崛起的压力下开始发明“西方”这个概念谈起，讨论了为什么像德国这种在文化上如此处在西方核心的国家，反而在相当长的一段时间里并不被视为西方的一部分。语言到底是在描述现实，还是在创造现实？西方这个概念是否本身就塑造了我们今天划分世界的方式？
Georgios Varouxakis 的研究同时挑战和反驳了大众层面和学术层面对于西方理所当然的主流理解。在大众层面，今天我们说西方的时候，通常把它想象成是美国人宣称自己要捍卫的那个东西。在学术象牙塔的层面，西方这个概念通常是和萨义德的东方主义紧密绑定。我在采访中问他，为何认为这两种就大众层面和学术层面对于西方的理解，在思想史上来说就是不准确的？
我也问他，如果有人批评你说你这样子做是在给所谓的西方敌对势力递刀子，你会如何回应？在一些非西方语境中，经常会有人被攻击说他是和西方境外势力站在一起。如果这个所谓的西方本身就是自相矛盾的，这种攻击又有什么意义？我们也讨论了从俄罗斯到明治维新之后的日本，到土耳其到希腊之类很难被归为西方，但是又确实在他们各自的现代化路径中试图西化过的国家。
对于这些西方边缘的国家来说，西方又意味着什么？普林斯顿大学出版社的编辑和 B
站会给本期访谈加上中文字幕，上传到不离不离。这个大概可能要等一个月左右的时间，因为我们在对话中确实说了很多术语和专有名词，需要麻烦在编辑加字幕的时候核实。上传视频版本之后，我也会更新本期播客节目的简介。在这里，我给大家预告一下，从下周开始我要给自己放暑假了，因为我会忙着举办阿伦特《人的境况》和《心智生活》两个新译本的新书活动。
下个星期我会来北京参加理想国读者节。未来三个月不要来推我更新播客。等到暑假结束之后，我会和普林斯顿大学出版社以及哈佛大学出版社继续推出更多的新书作者访谈，敬请期待。接下来，让我们进入这段对话。大家好，欢迎来到读书不成零。I'm extremely honored today to have
Georgios Varouxakis here to talk to me about his new book, The West: History of an Idea. Georgios is professor in history of political thought at
Queen Mary University of London, and he also is the co-director of the center.For the study of the history of political thought, he has written
multiple books on John Stuart Mill. It's worth mentioning that he teaches in London, but he is Greek. So.You know, in any dominant narrative of the
West, at least from where I am in the United States, it is often traced back to ancient Greece. So I look forward to discussing how you challenge it
and you disagree with it, but.You have also challenged so many things about the West in your book. I'll, I guess I'll just start by briefly saying
that.There is a popular conception of the West and an academic conception of the West that you, both of which you challenge in your book. In China and
in America, when we talk about the West, most people think that they know what they're talking about. I am a political theorist trained in the
American Academy. You know, Western civ.Hey, hey, ho, ho! Western sips gotta go has been a chant on campus since the '60s, and now recently with the
election of Donald Trump, there's also a revival of the West in a lot of the university.On a lot of the university campuses, they are academics and
politicians and state legislators actively trying to revive whatever the West is in in the civic centers of American universities.And also for these
people that that are trying to do that, they see China as quintessentially non Western. Like I have friends who have podcasts on the Western side, and
when they're asked what is non West, they say China. China seems to be the only non Western uh place in this narrative, and you and you challenge.All
of that in your book, and I look forward to really getting into it. And, um, and also, of course, there there is the academic conception of the West
that comes out of the theory of Edward Said. Um, so like I've said in my intro, your book.By tracing really the history of the West as a concept, as
an idea, you you debunk almost all of the above popular and academic narratives. So I guess I'll just start by asking you the question: How did you
form the idea of the book? I mean, it's it's so amazing and it covers so much.Thank you. Well, one thing brings another, no doubt, and serendipity had
a lot to do with it. But as I had studied August Kant and the British Kantists, the followers of Kant, the positivists, as part of my study of the
context of nineteenth-century political thought, and not least his relationship with John Stuart Mill, that as you said, I had worked a lot on.Um, I
noticed a very strong emphasis on the West definitions of the West books, articles. The Western Republic was always the on top of every book, a
encyclical or letter that Kant sent as of the as of eighteen forty eight, until he died, and then his followers would follow on the same track. So
when I read some books and articles and literature.On the history of the idea of the West as a self-description by academics, and they were saying,
correctly, the West is a completely misunderstood topic because people anachronistically call the West everything we consider as part of the West or
its history, but the people in the past.Who now are seen as the West called themselves different names much of that time, that's correct. So then
these people go on to say the West actually was invented in the very end of the 19th century, in order to justify imperialism, British imperialism and
high imperialism more generally. That's where I thought, oh oh, wait a minute, that's not surely that's not true, especially because they name a
particular thinker, Benjamin Kidd.As a social Darwinist in the 1890s and early 20th century, with a number of books on Western civilization and so on,
and I thought, wait a minute, but kid kid was obsessed with Kant. He had read everything Kant had written, as had everybody else, of course. So I
realized the most crucial missing link in in that story was, no doubt, Kant.Once I started researching that and writing the book, I realized the there
was, of course, there is no parthenogenesis. Kant was not alone. There were other people in France, who, as of the early decades of the nineteenth
century, especially after the Napoleonic Wars, started using l'Occident, the West, and occidental, occidentaux.Western much much more than before, and
it was deliberate. I I noticed that they were worried about Russia and its importance in Europe, and so.One of my first arguments in the book is that
the West was not invented against Asia, or in contradistinction to Islam or anything else, as people would assume, but rather it was needed against in
order to differentiate Western and Central Europe from Russia. So, since you mentioned Edward Said, my story and his theory are.At cross purposes, I I
I don't deal with him much, because my argument is. No matter whether he was right or wrong, or to what extent he was right, that the Europeans or
Westerners, as he calls them, created an idea of themselves and an identity by othering, by exoticizing, the East, whatever they meant by the
East.He's, in general, right about that. Although many people have challenged some details of his scholarship, that's not my job. I'm not a literary
historian in any way.He's right about that, but my where I come in is to say yes, but they were very happy to continue exoticizing othering the East
and calling themselves for centuries Christendom or Europe as of the end of the eighteenth, seventeenth century, beginning of the eighteenth. Why do
they start needing another term, the West, in the nineteenth century?And there, the answer is because they needed some people in France and Germany
started feeling the need to differentiate themselves from others who were also European and also Christian, the Russians.Wow, yeah, that's great. I
think one of the most interesting, in terms of scholarly contributions that you correct in the beginning part of your book, is that the concept of the
West emerges in the early nineteenth century and not in the nineteenth century, late nineteenth century, as many scholars have claimed. But also,For
the popular reader, what what is most, you know, the greatest insight is maybe how important Russia has been in the in the entire narrative of the
West. It is really maybe like what Edward Said says: the West is a othering concept. It is meant to distinguish yourself from whatever is not you, and
whatever is not you is bad. But we usuallyYou know, a learned reader is going to think the thing that's being othered is Asia or Islam, and and and
you put Russia at the center of the table, and really, and also what when I was reading your book, I was intrigued by how Russia, in a way, has
internalized that othering.A Chinese reader is going to be very keen to learn. I mean, I think most of the Chinese readers that I know, they know
about the the uh pro the Slavophile debate and the Western Westernizer debate um in Russia in the 19th century. And the the a huge insight that I
received from your book was how even that debate has internalized sort of how theWhatever is non-Russian, the non-Russian Europeans call themselves
the West, and then the pro-Westerners in Russia just took that understanding to be whatever they want to imitate, and an interesting.An interesting
shift that has come up with the idea of the West that you bring up is, before the West really came up, the distinction in Europe was between the
southerners and the northerners. For the longest period of time, the southerners were.The civilized people, the Greeks, the Italians were civilized,
and then the Germans were uncivilized. We kind of see, you know, Mozart had to go down to the south to prove himself as a musical genius. But really,
when the concept of the West was invented, or it started to appear more in writings, the distinction became.The West civilized versus the East
non-civilized. Yeah, yeah, yeah, very much so. And it's fascinating, Madame de Stal, as I show in the book, in her ten years of exile.In the second
decade of the 19th century, begins to talk of Russia, and she says it's seen as a northern country, but it's not a northern country, it's it's
eastern. And she starts using this, but in her case, it was not in order to diminish it. She was admiring the Slavs and the East.She was following
Herder, the German thinker philosopher, who had a positive view of the Slavs, and who believed in the in a kind of.diversity and equality of cultures
and the value of all cultures and diversity as a as a terribly important thing, so in her case it was not yet axiological or normative, but in the
eighteen twenties some people started.Using Russia as seeing Russia as Eastern and proposing a Western Federation to defend Western Europe and Central
Europe from Russia, because they were very worried about Russia. The thing is, and I'm I'm grateful that you mentioned this.That was the first
surprise. The second surprise is that this went on until until today, more or less. So, in the long durée of my that I study, Russia is always seen as
outside the West, with the only exception being a few years during the Second World War, when it has to join the Western democracies because Hitler
invades it.And it becomes extremely important to victory. It loses, of course, millions of people. So the prestige of the Soviet Union is was so
enormous that between the, you know, nineteen forty two that it that is it's an ally, and nineteen forty seven that the Cold War begins.People were
talking of Russia saving Western civilization and as part of Western civilization routinely, especially from forty-five to forty-seven, forty-seven
with the Cold War, it again becomes the enemy and the other. So there is only that little exception, but.the the thing I'd like to stress is I
wouldn't call this Russophobia as many people do, it was literally fear of Russia, anxiety of Russia. So obviously there might be some people for whom
it was more, but the general feeling I have through my sources is a genuine fear.That this is an enormous monolithic country. It has one government,
it it has one army, and we are divided, and we will fall prey. They will conquer each of us little by little. That was an anxiety, and a very small
number of people had in the eighteenth century, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but in the nineteenth century, after the Napoleonic Wars, it becomes
very.Very generalized because, let's remind our listeners briefly what happened in the early eighteenth century. Peter the Great makes Russia an
enormously powerful modernized country, and he imposes it as Western. He forces his people to shave and behave as if they're Western. He builds a
capital in the Baltic Sea in in Europe, the Saint Petersburg, at enormous cost to the people who built it, who died in their thousands.So he had
money. He brought great architects from Europe. Then he and his successors, like Catherine the Great, bring.Diderot, you know, Diderot went to Russia
and spent time with Catherine the Great. Catherine the Great was a friend of Voltaire. We, all these things. So Russia imposes itself not only as a
political European power, but culturally as part of Europe. In the elite level, the Russian elite spoke French, probably better than Russian.They
become a major part of European culture as of the 18th century, but suddenly, with the Congress of Vienna in 1815, after the end of the Napoleonic
Wars, Russia is not just part of Europe; it becomes the the center of Europe. Alexander I, the Russian Emperor Czar, dominates the Congress of Vienna,
and then he creates the Holy Alliance. So.More and more people in France and Germany start worrying. Wait a minute, wait a minute. They are not just
part of Europe now; they dominate Europe. That's why they start needing a new identity, and they start talking of themselves as the West. And this
becomes completely explicit with Kant and his followers later in the eighteen forties, who say explicitly Europe is confusing because it includes
Russia. That's why we need to call it Occident.A century later, in 1918, when the first volume ofOswald Spengler's famous book, *The Decline of the
West, Untergang des Abendlandes*, comes out. There is a long quotation, sorry, a long footnote in the introduction where he says the word Europe has
to be struck out of history, and out of politics and history. It's this word Europe that has confused people and made them think that Russia is part
of us. Russia is not part of us. That's why we are Occident, we are the West, we are not.Europe. So it's a long story, as you said. And the other,
most of the time, or the most significant other, that creates this concept and gives it a reason for being, is Russia.Otherwise, the Europeans, of
course, saw Asia or the Orient or other cultures as different, but they didn't feel the need to call themselves the West and create a new identity.
They already had Christendom or Europe as their overarching identity.Yeah, I have two questions to follow up. The first one is, you mentioned a period
before the Congress of Vienna, the Enlightenment that we broadly call it. I have, I have a close friend of mine is writing a book on how the idea of
China is transformed by European thinkers, and what I learned from him was that you see, you see a period ofPraising China without understanding it,
you know the Jesuits went to China to preach Christianity, and then they brought back travel books, notes about China, and then really in the time of
Voltaire, Diderot.You see these Enlightenment philosophers praising enlightened despotism of the of the Chinese mandarins. Voltaire, you know, has
written plays to praise the Chinese mandarins. Obviously, that's a falsification of what real China is. But but China remained positive during the
Enlightenment, and then it became super negative. Comes aMontesquieu and and then especially comes Hegel. Ah, China becomes synonymous with despotism.
And also in Tocqueville.Um, you know, so you really see China going from enlightenment to despotism in the period of a century. And I wonder, this
comes before your book. It's the period a a little bit before your book started. So I want to ask you just out of genuine curiosity, like during the
eighteenth century, during the Enlightenment, was Russia depicted kind of like how China was depicted as the model against whatever?That they want to
criticize in France, um, especially the Enlightenment philosophers, and also, I guess, the second part of my question is more scholarly, um.Auguste
Comte is a central figure in your in your book, and he is a he's a French philosopher. I guess the question is, seems to me that there he introduces a
new valence into your story of the West, because you know before that it was like fear of Russia.Russia is a threat, and we don't want Russia to
threaten us. And then August Komp comes and he brings in a anti-imperialist, normative, universalistic concept of the West in his book. And and that,
I mean, those two stories seem to me t here is a shift there in terms of where the where the idea of the West becomes after August Komp. So, yeah,
those are my two questions.Very good questions. Um, very important questions. So let me start with the first. Yes, absolutely. China was.Praised,
China was idealized. Voltaire was notoriously praising China in normative terms, and he was using China and beginning his histories of universal
histories with China in order to expose and criticize the parochialism of Christian narratives of universal history, like Bossuet's.Because he wanted
to hit the the Christians and create a more you know a more secular history, and he always reminded people the the most ancient civilization is China.
In the process, probably he didn't know enough, but he he he he he needed to praise China clearly, like like other narratives, as you say. Russia in
the eighteenth century, no, Russia had a positive image in the eighteenth century most of the time, and there are very few exceptions.Like Rousseau,
as I said in the Social Contract, 1762, he says nobody notices it because there is so much to notice in that book that people don't notice this. But
he says explicitly that we will all be devoured by the Russians, we will be conquered by them, and they will be conquered by the Tartars, their
neighbors. And before Rousseau.Oliver Goldsmith, an Irish novelist, extremely interesting novelist and philosophical thinker in many ways, in a in a
novel called Citizen of the World, where he pretends to be a Chinese visitor.To Europe, a device, of course, that had been used by Montesquieu with
the Persian letters. So he pretends to be a Chinese man writing letters about Europe, and in the process, of course, he finds a way to criticize
European societies and their hypocrisies and their problems. And in that novel, he explicitly says the greatest danger of the peoples of Western
Europe.Is Russia and they they make alliances with Russia. They use Russia against each other and they don't understand. The greatest danger is Russia
and Russia wants to conquer them. That has always been its plan. So it's as early as that, eighteen six, sorry, seventeen sixty sixty one, that he
says this. But he was in a minority. Most people saw Russia positively then.Wow, and that changes after, as I said, changes in the nineteenth century
when Russia becomes too dangerous in the eyes of many people, and then it becomes very unpopular after it's well Alexander the First becomes.People
get worried about Alexander I because he was very charming. He was very popular. He had many friends in Germany. He had he was flirting with
Protestant spiritualism and various aristocratic ladies and so on. When he dies and Nicholas I succeeds him, then Russia becomes unpopular for another
reason, which is its.Very powerful, but also very despotic now. So European liberals and radicals worry about Russia because of its despotism. And
then the suppression of the Polish rebellion resurrection in the beginning of the eighteen thirties leads to another wave of.Unpopularity for Russia
because of how it abolished the autonomy of Poland, the part of Poland that belonged to Russia, and crucially, the Polish refugees who go to Paris,
London, and German states keep up this, you know, this lobbying against Russia because it had, of course, destroyed their country or what was left of
it in terms of its.Autonomy. Now, these people were not just migrants or refugees; they were Polish aristocrats. Polish, the Polish aristocracy were
extremely well-connected people all over Europe, so their voice was important. I have many examples of them talking to Palmerston, Count Adam
Czartoryski, for example, was a major. He, he, in the past, he was the foreign secretary, the foreign minister of of the czar, of czar Alexander, when
he was younger.So these people were not any refugees. They were very well-connected European refugees from Poland. So that made also for increased
unpopularity for Russia. Now I'll go to your second question, which is absolutely crucial. You're absolutely right. Kant didn't have a positive view
of Russia, but it was in the sense he thought Russia was backward. It was not yet ready to join the West.As he defined it, but he didn't have any
Russophobia. He didn't have any desire to exclude the Russians in any permanent way. His plan was universalistic, as he very correctly say, and it was
meant to include everybody eventually. He just thought Western Europe, what he called the West, Western Europe and its offshoots, its settler colonies
in the in both Americas, not just North but also South America, Latin America, plus Australia, New Zealand.These peoples had grown together since the
time of Charlemagne, as he saw it in the eighth, ninth century. They had formed so many historical and cultural links, and they were so advanced
technologically, politically, and so on, that now they were ready to accept his proposal for a completely new organization of society.If and when they
accepted it, and they reorganized themselves in the way he proposed, to which we'll go in a minute. And please remind me if I forget, because as you
say, it's very important and it's a major surprise.Then it would be in a position to admit everybody else little by little. So he had he had various
plans as to who would join first, who would join next. But in the end, the Western Republic he envisaged, which would have its capital in Paris, would
move to Constantinople, what is now Istanbul, the city between Europe and Asia.And that would symbolically unite the whole world, and it would be the
capital of the, of the human republic, the republic of humanity. So, first surprise, yes, as you say correctly, instead of the West as an idea being
invented to justify imperialism, his West was meant to abolish imperialism immediately. He thought.Imperialism, conquest, military force were
atavistic, anachronistic things. In the positive future he was envisaging, they should be abolished, and we should all be in much more interested in
industry. So advancing humanity's well-being through industry, he was after all a Saint Simonian. He was the secretary of Saint Simon for seven
years.Although he wouldn't call himself Saint Simonian because they clashed, but in terms of his desire for industrial growth, industrial development,
and exploitation of the of nature by humans as opposed to humans exploiting each other, he was in the same mold as the the the utopian socialists and
and Saint Simon. So, meanwhile, and this is crucial, Kant's the other for the West.The danger for the West, according to Kant, was itself, its the
selfishness, the individualism of people, their.Their complete neglect of the past and their ancestors, their complete neglect of past and future
continuity. So he called all that la maladie occidentale, the Western disease. So he thought.Because of the revolutionary philosophy of the
Enlightenment and then the French Revolution, all these things were good in his opinion. They had to happen because the ancien regime had to go. The
feudal ancien regime had run its course and had to go. But now in the nineteenth century, the Europeans had not developed a new dispensation, a new
social organization. They were still talking about rights, liberty, individualism.Without thinking of responsibilities, duties, and society more
generally, and he thought this is catastrophic. You cannot go on like this. It has done its work. Now we need a very a new organization. So he coined
the term altruism. For example, vivre pour autrui, living for others. He he thought the greatest danger is selfishness and individualism.So he was
trying to create a new moral self-understanding for the most advanced part of the world that he called the West, and to.And in that effort, he created
the religion of humanity. He thought, he didn't believe in God. He thought we don't need God, the theological God, the God with the beard of the Old
Testament. People will not believe in that God, as they develop science and can explain the world in different ways. But we don't need to believe in a
in a supernatural God, a God outside nature. We can replace that God with.Humanity as the object of adoration. So he wanted to to to he wanted to
promote the idea that you should live for others, you should do good for humanity, you should respect your ancestors and the benefactors of humanity
in the past, and do your best for the future of humanity and your consolation for death instead of eternal life in paradise, as it was for.The
Abrahamic religions and so on, in his in his mind was how I will be remembered. If I'm remembered as a benefactor of humanity, as somebody who did
good to humanity, that is a consolation for my for my death. So he tried to expand this feeling of.Working for humanity and it's good. And he created
a completely new calendar where the benefactors of humanity would be honored. Some would get a whole month, some would get a week, some would get a
day. And interestingly, these people who would be the equivalent of saints.In other religions, these people were not just Europeans or white or
Western. He included Confucius, he included Buddha, he included also Mohammed, he included people from all over the world. So already in his religion,
there was an attempt at universality.I don't want to take this too far. It was, of course, Eurocentric. Of course, he thought, in unilinear terms,
that progress has to go one way. There is one progress. Europe is the most advanced. The rest will inevitably want to join it. Let's help them to join
it. That is Eurocentric. That is 19th century way of thinking.Like you mentioned, Hegel, Karl Marx thought the same way. Of course, one way, one way
to progress. That is Eurocentric. Obviously, it's a nineteenth-century thing. But in terms of his genuine desire to abolish empires and to include
everybody, he was universalistic indeed, and very rare for the nineteenth century, for the European nineteenth century.Yeah, I guess, you know,
unfortunately, the narratives that you put out in this book they're so contradictory that it'll maybe it'll make it a little harder to spread than
Edward Said's Orientalism, which was a very simple unified narrative, because you show so convincingly that there's duality hidden in the very
beginning of the West, and and really, you know.Since I'm grounded in a civilization that is non-Western, and you, if you look at really the history
of any non-Western civilizations, and you you count Greece, modern Greece, as part of that, but but whether you're looking at 19th century Russian
debates between the Westernizers and the Slavophiles, or you look at the the Japanese Meiji Restoration, my friend, I was told that.The um advisors to
the Meiji Emperor read Francis Bacon and wanted to you know Baconize, bring Francis Bacon to the Japanese Empire. Or you look at like early twentieth
century.Chinese May Fourth Movement people, they brought in Mister Democracy, Miss Liberty, and Mister Science into into ancient China. So they, you
know, they all had a concept of the West that um that that the West was seen as not only representing progress and science, but also it was
individualistic. and and that that idea of the West was then.Almost everywhere attacked by nationalists as, you know, selfish and non-altruistic. But
but you show from the beginning, Comte was also criticizing that part of of modern modernity. He was also coming up with a cure against individualism
by coining terms like altruism. So so that duality was already embedded in the in the idea of the West.from from the beginning and and then people
just take you know kind of half of that and try to import it into a non Western civilization and and and and another thing that I want to add is that
even in comp you showYes, it was Eurocentric, but he wanted to move the capital to Constantinople if if all works out well. And I remember when I I
when I produced an episode introducing your book A Mandarin, one of my publishers from the past texted me, and he was, you know, he was like.He was
interested in the history of Turkey, and he was like, you know, Turkey seems to me. And I told him that Greece and Russia are both sort of countries
on the peripheries of the West. That you know, he wanted me to ask you if I have a have the chance.Turkey seems to be another one of those countries
where, which, we you know sometimes you think of it as the West and then sometimes it's not. And obviously, the history of Turkish modernization.is
akin to Japan, to China, to Russia, the ones that that that I have brought up. Kemal Atatürk wanted to westernize Turkey, and it it was never fully
westernized. You you see all these periphery countries or non Western countries have all had a similar trajectory of history that is modernization is
sometimes.equated to Westernization and and that process is never complete, yeah and and I'm sure and I told him you know you as Greek also, Greece
the history of Greece is also part of that story even though I don't really you know being in America and seeing so many Americans tries to include
ancient Greece as theAs the beginning of the narrative, as you as you start the book with from Plato to NATO, I think you are also quite well aware of
how ancient Greece is appropriated into the narrative of the West today.marvelous. Well, tell your friend that not only am I Greek, but when I was an
undergraduate in Athens, I learned Turkish for four years, because I was I was planning to do a PhD in Ottoman history. So, I didn't do that. I
did.PhD on John Stuart Mill in France, but I kept an interest in Turkish history, of course. So one of the, you're right, Kemal Atatürk and his
reforms, were of course an attempt at quick, forced Westernisation. They were inspired by Cont, one of the leading young Turks.Was Ahmet Riza, who was
who lived in Paris. If you go to any volume of the Revue Occidentale, the Western Review, the the magazine of the Contes in the 19th century, almost
every issue he had an article. He was a major leading member of the.Positivist circles of Paris. When the Young Turk Revolution happened in 1908, he
went to Turkey and became the president of the National Assembly.So he was a major politician in Turkey. When, when the Turks under Kemal Ataturk
defeated the Greeks after the First World War and kicked them out of Asia Minor, Greece sent its former Prime Minister Venizelos to negotiate with the
Turks. Turkey sent Ahmet Riza. It shows you how senior he was. Another major intellectual of theTurkish modernizing nationalist movement, which was
called Türkçülük, was Ziya Gökalp, who is quoted in the epigraph of my introductory chapter. He wrote endlessly on the need to join Western
civilization, and he tried to explain we can keep our religion as Islam.Our culture will be national culture, Turkish civilization is a supranational
thing, and you can change civilization. We can live the Eastern civilization of the Ottomans, and join Western civilization as a Turkish nation. So
that was a modernizing progress.Project similar to the earlier one by Fukuzawa Yukichi in Japan that you are alluding to, no doubt, and you know
Chinese thinkers like Liang Qichao initially before the First World War and so on, absolutely, all that is very true. So.My book shows that the West
has meant many different things. That, and the if you ask, if if if somebody asks, so what? If we are not historians obsessed.With the past and its
details, why should we care about this? The answer is because, as you mentioned, particular people, particular political groups, particular
politicians, use these terms and.Pretend that they mean one thing, and they say, in the name of this, you have to follow me. In the name of this, we
have to save Western civilization. We have to save America, save Europe. My book shows that these are very complex legacies, traditions where you can
find resources for exactly the opposite argument, of course. So, in the current concatenation, you have American.The American government of Vice
President Vance and so on, saying that they defend Western civilization, which is endangered by the European Union and the Europeans, and of course
the Europeans saying, "You are the greatest danger to Western civilization because you are trying to equate it with whiteness and Christianity." And
Europe, Western civilization and Western societies have evolved, and what you are talking about is a is a past.Long, long ago, phase in the history of
the West, and now the West is a much more complex, much more open-minded, much more diverse, much more tolerant place, and therefore there is a a a
battle for the redefinition of the term. So my book comes to offer resources for that battle.And and it says, don't abandon the meaning of the term to
your rivals, because if you abandon the the definition of the terms to them, you have already lost the debate. I make that argument very clear in the
conclusion, and I have many American commentators who have this debate among themselves. Yeah, I I'll just add one thing to to your narrative. You
know, in China, in the Chinese, uh.Debate. If you say anything that's against, say, a nationalist narrative, sometimes you'll get accused of being
sponsored by Western forces. I get accused sometimes. I mean, I'm sure every Chinese intellectuals have been accused of being sponsored by Western
forces. If youIf you tout an opinion that is non pro nationalist, so I mean you you really show just throughout history, starting in the nineteenth
century, how you know ideas and terms can be captured for political purposes. So I guess the simplest answer to why shall we care is that.Because we
live in a political world, and words are politicized. Yes, yes, and thank you for saying that. Because in the conclusion.Although I insist throughout
the book, the term is important and will go on being used exactly because it's very attractive, and different sides will want to use it for their own
purposes. So it's not going to disappear. It's not going to go away.So therefore, it's better to define it through a historical genealogy, as I do,
and show what it has meant. And that, by definition, means that it can be redefined in the future, either by resuscitating old layers of meaning or
creating new layers as historical evolution develops. History and politics are messy affairs. They are not logic. They are not mathematics. They are
not straightforward.They they are full of surprises. But you are reminding me one of my arguments in the conclusion is I am against the use of terms
like Western values, because if people in the West say to Chinese people or to Indian people or to African people or to whoever, um.Democracy or
liberal democracy or constitutionalism or tolerance, freedom of speech or toleration of sexual orientation or toleration of different religions, or
equality or socialism or social democracy, whatever we.Each of us may think is a good thing, right? Justice, political justice, meritocracy. If you
say these are Western values, the implication immediately is.The ancestors of the Westerners who say that one they were right, they won in the battle
of history, and the rest of the world has to imitate them, because they are better. That's a historically problematic because these things are very
complex and everybody borrows from everybody. And which ideas won where is an accident of history, not a result of somebody's superiority in genes or
in intelligence.I hope I'm clear about that, but besides that, it's also politically and strategically a known goal. It's a mistake because if I'm a
liberal, and I want people in outside the West to adopt Western liberal constitutional institutions or values.If I tell them they are Western, it's as
if I'm telling them they are foreign, and you have to import them. That, of course, immediately helps the governments in various countries to say,
"You see, these are foreign ideas. These are imposed on us by neo-imperialists."That's why I say in the book, don't call them liberal, sorry, don't
call them Western values. Call them by universal names. Call them liberal egalitarian.Utilitarian, whatever you like, call them by those names as
opposed to Western. Nobody has ownership of these ideas. That's why I also try to defend ancient Greek classics in the conclusion of my books, because
there is now a tendency in the in Wester in America and Britain among classicists.To try to atone for the collusion of classicists in the 19th century
with various imperialist projects, and in the process, they they spend so much time.Apologizing for the classics, that they forget that the classics
are extremely valuable texts. Whatever happened to them through the uses and abuses by various people, the classics belong to the world. They don't
belong to the West. They don't belong to the East. They don't belong to the Greeks. They don't belong to the Europeans. The classics belong to the
world. We all have the right and theThe need to read them, reinterpret them, and make the most out of them, and of course that includes Chinese
classics, Indian classics, Greek classics, Roman classics, whatever they are. So this identification with.Past traditions and the ownership labels can
be both problematic historically, but also politically very, very counterproductive. So I'm against them. I think ideas and institutions should be
discussed whether they are better or not in terms of their value, not in terms of who is the owner, which.Well, I I shouldn't repeat myself. I'm sure
it's clear what I'm saying. Yeah, I think it's particularly convincing for a Greek to say Plato doesn't belong to us. It belongs to the world. But
it's true. I mean, and if you look atThe greatest students of Plato or the classics, they don't tend to come from modern Greece. There are some, but
they studied in West European or American universities and they became great. They didn't just become great in Greece. Let's hope one day Greece will
produce great classics.Homegrown, but what the the it's not a owners it's not an ownership. Obviously we are very lucky because we speak the same
language. It it has evolved, but it is the same language. We use the same alphabet, so we have an access that is privileged, and therefore we have an
obligation to study them more because it's easier for us. But that's all. It's not ownership. They don't belong to Greece or to Europe.I remember when
I first met a Greek, I recited him the first line of um the Odyssey, and I asked him if he understood it, and he just looked at me, um completely
confused. Because you knew, of course, Erasmian pronunciation. Modern Greek is simplified; it's a bit different, yeah.I had a similar experience with
a major politician in a train many years ago, but let's not go there. We're in public. I'll tell you some other time when we are not recorded.Um, but
I do think it's important for us to bring America into the conversation. We've been, we've spent a lot of time in Europe, but really America, you
know.Because it's the greatest power in the world, it has a it has monopolized what the West is. And your book also shows the history of when did
America comes into the picture. And I I guess one thing that will be a surprise to readers is how heavily Germany played the the role that Germany
plays in the American narrative of the West. I mean, for one thing, um.Just in my own case, you know, the teachers of my teachers are Germans. They
they all they're all Germans that were squeezed out of Germany in the 20th century, and they came to America and they populated American universities.
And you also show in your book, in the early 20th century before Wilson, there's no PhD programs in America. You have to go to Heidelberg to get a PhD
if you wanna.Don't forget Gottingen, please. Gottingen, Gottingen, and Heidelberg. You have to go to Germany, basically, if you if you want to be an
intellectual in America, and and and now, you know, today, I mean, I guess I do. We we have to.Because America defines the narrative about about the
West so much, both both the critics of the West and also the defenders of the West are Americans. They have taken on the the mantle of of you know
whatever is the West since.I guess after uh the Second World War and and your book also traces that history, but also by tracing that history, you
show how.The takeover happens, and and it's it's it's a it's a it's something that I'm sure the uh the you know the Kissinger's and from Kissinger to
today's J D Vences don't want to really admit that America for the longest time, though Europeans didn't want to consider them as part of the West,
and and there's a huge debate in Europe about how not to include America in the in the West.Yeah, yeah, you're a very, very, very astute and clever
and intelligent and subtle reader of my book. I'm very lucky, but for the.Audience who haven't read the book yet, as you have, it's a it's a
fascinating story exactly. First of all, the Americans in there, in the in the beginning of their existence, don't want to have anything to do with
the Europeans, because they see themselves as a new dispensation, as a republic that should have nothing to do with the.Aristocratic, semi-feudal,
imperialistic European kingdoms, they are of course the first post-colonial nation. They rebelled against the British Empire, so initially it would be
anathema to them to be in an alliance or in a civilizational unit with the the other Europe with the Europeans as the West. They shared Christianity.
They.show themselves as part of Christendom, but other than that, they show themselves as better Christians, as better in every respect. A republic
that is pure, whereas Europe is full of baggage and bad history. And as you say, it's only it's through.Educated Americans, finishing Harvard College
and going to Göttingen, Berlin, Heidelberg, Halle, and German universities in general to get a PhD, that they start using this language of the West.A
little bit, and then German migrants like Francis Lieber, who became the founder of American social science, political science, who was obsessed with
promoting the idea that America and Europe were part of the same civilization and needed to find a name for it, and so on. And then more and more
people, of course. So by the end of the 19th century, Americans start calling themselves the West, whereas before it was partly it was a minority
use.The other reason, of course, is that they had that it meant completely something different in in America. It meant their shifting frontier, their
westward expansion.And then, as you say, the the thing is that once America comes to loom very large, with the the two world wars and dominates the
West, more and more Europeans resent that and fear that the extreme West is taking over and this and is going to dilute the civilization of Europe,
which they saw as.Being composed of smaller countries, diversity, different countries, different cultures, different languages, they feared the
enormousness of the United States and they feared its, of its materialism, its concern for money and so on, things that are partly stereotypes, of
course. Sometimes they are extreme, partly related to some realities that on the ground. So yeah, it's a very, very, very checkered story, full of
surprises. Yes.But as you correctly say, there was a West before America joined it, and among the Western countries of today, the last one to see that
itself as part of the West was the United States. That, of course, is a surprise that people before reading my book wouldn't necessarily assume.So
when people ask me, everybody now asks me, of course in in the press, is the West over? And I reply, not necessarily. A phase of the West that started
with end of the Second World War and the creation of NATO and the Cold War, which was a new phase of the West where there was a hegemon, a dominant
superpower, and smaller countries that were depending on it and almost satellites of it. That phase of the West is probably over.Even if America
behaves differently under a new administration in the future, I think the Europeans have got a message that they have to not rely on America for their
defense as much as they did, because a new administration may come and change things, and because America has different interests to an extent and so
on. But it doesn't necessarily mean the end of the West. It means the end of that phase that started in the 1940s.Yeah, this is really one of the
tensions that I see in um in the kind of the civic center movement and also the, you know the I guess the conservative turn of the university campuses
that started after Trump. It is on the one hand, they support pulling America out of Europe. They think NATO is a drain on you know they they are
against universalization. On the other hand, academically they are against the.呃，the I guess the critical theory, neo Marxist critic like self
criticism of the West. They want to restore a positive idea of Western civ. I've been to a lot of those conferences in America in the past couple of
years, and I, and it seems to me that, um, it's like a bastard son of the West trying to, on the one hand, pull itself away from really.呃，culturally
wants to claim to be part of and and the lone defender of um in in in the contemporary period. I guess you are, um maybe you have a different
perspective of this um being in in England and but but really you know Brexit also happened around that same period. Um, yeah, I'm sure when you're
doing the press tour of your books and kind of talking to these various uh peoples with.Various persons with different purposes, whether they want to
defend the West or they want to criticize the West, they are all coming at it.From a politicized, which means it's a, um, almost I I want to say
intellectually erroneous perspective. Very yeah. Well, let me. This is how I would put it.Thankfully, although I finished the very final corrections
and final touches of the book in November two thousand tw, October two thousand twenty-four in Vienna, before the re-election of Donald Trump, and
certainly long before he was inaugurated for the second time and started his current rhetoric and policies, although I finished it before Trump too, I
wouldn't change a word in the book.Or in the conclusion, or in the preface, I would keep it exactly as it is. I subscribe to everything I said. That
means it was written carefully and from the perspective of a historian with the distance necessary to.To argue what I was arguing, as opposed to a
quick piece for political consumption or ideological, giving vent to your feelings right now. So that's the first thing. I'm glad I can say with with
full honesty. Second thing, with full honesty, the people you are talking about, I agree with them to the extent that some of theCriticism of the West
in American universities. Some of the critical, critical commentary became so extreme, became so forgot, forgot.Why it was able to do all that? So
they, as I call it in the book, they were in danger of throwing the baby along with the bathwater. It's one thing to say the West has.Made many
mistakes. Western governments are not living up to their principles. This particular government is doing the wrong thing. This episode in our history
is very shameful, of which there are many. It's one thing and another thing to say the West itself has to be rejected. It's criminal. It's it's
associated with slavery. Which civilization had no slavery in its history ever? Which civilization has never used violence in its history? You see
what I'm saying?It had gone too far. It was completely unhinged. The criticism of the West and Western civilization in American universities, the
so-called woke agenda, had come to some, with fully understandable.criticisms with fully understandable injustices, racial and other injustices. I
would add class injustices that have been forgotten in the name of racial injustices in recent years and decades. All these things, of course, they
have to be raised. That's exactly what the West is supposed to allow and encourage. And that's why I'm in favor of that dialogue and debate. But there
was a certainExaggeration, and it was becoming hegemonic in universities. Am I making myself clear? So I'm I'm not saying therefore I agree with the
American vice president and his rhetoric. I'm saying, he and his president could.Be elected because they could use some extreme examples of what the
other side was saying and doing, because the other side was making fundamental mistakes in the way it was taking the discussion, and they could
present themselves as the real patriots, whereas their opponents were just undermining everything that was American about America. Am I clear, or am I
too careful?No, I I think I agree. It's nuanced arguments are always in the German word "ja" and "nein." It's it's never it's never one sided.
Exactly. So the reason why I'mPleased with the way the book was formulated, is that although I finished it with that, that as my main target.An
attempt to mitigate the excesses of the left, if you wish, or whatever we want to call it, now the book can be used exactly to the opposite purpose of
criticizing the excesses of those who came to react to those excesses, which is the current Trump administration and the vice president in particular,
and the speechwriters like Stephen Miller and, of course, Steve Bannon, who was there before and is back now, in some capacity.So, the book can also
be used against them now and say, no, the Western Western civilization doesn't mean what you are saying. So, I am.Obviously, going to be unpopular
with everybody in a way, but I'm glad with what my book does because it is a proper history, a proper genealogy of the, of the history of the concept,
and it can give resources to any serious, nuanced thinker who wants to reflect carefully about the West and its tradition as well as its potential
future, as opposed to using quick arguments to win an election.Yeah, I always think of the job of the intellectual historian as the person that
loosens the ground because you see ideas that the ideas become ossified and they are used unreflectively and people.In the end, they use them without
really understanding what it means. And once that really happens, in the worst possible situation, language itself even becomes just totally
inaccurate. And and you know, in the worst case, in the worst possible case, you make grammatical mistakes without no, you don't even know how to
write correct grammar. And and at the highest level, intellectual historians.are kind of like earthworms that loosens the ground and and show show us
you know where those words.Originally started and and because they do that, they're they have to be unpopular. Um, in both sense of the words, they're
unpopular because we can't really live everyday life. Um, hesitating, not knowing, you know, thinking of if if I use the word West now, having read
your book.I would, I would feel, I you you, I wouldn't be comfortable sort of just throwing that word out, having known that it has such a complicated
history and it really means nothing. And and if I do that with every word, I can't live. I'll lose the ability to speak like a regular human being.
It's also unpopular in the second sense that, uh, you know.But anybody that wants to politicize and capture that word for their own ideologies won't
won't be able to do that. And and the intellectual historian is is unpopular.Unless, unless they employ me to do it for them, in which case I will try
to do it very convincingly. I'm joking, so very, very correct. And you remind me of some comments the French.Uh, thinker Ernest Renan made on the
nation and how history, good history, undermines the myths and the cohesion of the nation and its narratives because, of course, the narratives are
full of myths necessarily in order to create a glue, whereas good history reminds you.the the story is always much more complex. I am not against
narratives and some myths, but you can have myths conducive to better things as opposed to myths conducive to bad things. So we can improve the
quality of our even of our simplistic myths through good history. That would be my my hope.Yeah, your your book destroys myths. The West, your your
book shows that the West is a series of myths. And and even you know, you're not just talking about small weight thinkers. You you kind of see how,
for example, when I, having gone through the whole book and reaching the Spangler chapter on the decline of the West and seeing him in that footnote
that you mentioned, just kind of saying let's abandon Europe altogether and the West is should now be.the main conceptualization that we use when
thinking about civilizations, you really see the ossification of ideas in your book. Um, and I, yeah, it was.I guess, I guess the only thing that um
you, I I like that you brought up Ernest Renan because nation is another I is another concept that that just requires the myth. It requires the
ossification. I mean, once you dismantle it, um, you become disenchanted, in Max Weber's word, and disenchantment is not, yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's
why I said.Because as I'm also a citizen, I'm also a person living in in the world. I'm not just a detached historian who lives in another planet. I
understand the need for myths as well. I understand the need the need for social cohesion and some glue. So that's why I said.There are two levels at
which you can do this for historians and for very sophisticated political theorists and readers and intellectuals. They can follow me all the way and
read the book and and have a very subtle understanding of the complexities. But I am very happy also to simplify the narrative in articles and
interviews to say.According to this story, this is what it could mean today. So I'm trying to say, I I don't necessarily wish to completely destroy
any narratives. I want to improve the narratives. I want to improve theThe problem is that you are too clever. So I am dealing with somebody who has
read the book very carefully, and we are going through the whole story. Whereas in other interviews or in articles, I could have a more simplified
story. That's what I'm trying to say.Okay, I want to throw a criticism that has been thrown toward me toward you because I think you deserve it as
well. I'm beginning to be flattered already. Yes.You know, other Chinese, like well-minded Chinese intellectuals who have gone through all the toils
of the 20th century, have said to me.Why do you have to destroy the ideal of America as the beacon of liberty? It's not like what good does it do? I
mean, you can say that for someone who lives in England as well. Like we are under threat by barbaric forces, and you can agree with me that the
whatever the backward, the bar, the barbarism is bad. You don't want, you know, we want to live in a open minded society that.That has certain values,
and unfortunately, those those values are now called Western values, or American values, or liberal values. And and um, you are you are providing
ammunition to the evil forces that you know that we have to admit the um that are threatening the integrity of our society right now. And if you're
reallyAn intellectual, and you want to take certain responsibility. You realize that there's political responsibility in addition to intellectual
honesty. Yeah, I, you know, I, I have.You know that that criticism has been hurled toward me with really good intentions, and and I struggled to
answer this. So I want to put it toward you as well. Thank you. Well, it's a wonderful criticism. I try I try very hard not to do that. That's why I
was saying I.I I do want to defend some narratives, so my answer would be I'm not trying to demolish the idea of America or the idea of the West. I'm
trying to improve it. I'm trying to improve itis to always be critical of your culture and ambitious for it. That's why the definition, although I
avoid in the whole book to take sides and I try to give other people's definitions and I keep saying my job is to study them historically.I couldn't
avoid in the conclusion, and I've been criticized mildly, and I accept that criticism. In the end, I I adopt the the definition of Raymond Aron, who
somewhere says, the.The true Westerner par excellence, the true Westerner, um, is will find it. So, let's let's not stick there. So that's what I'm
trying to do. I'm I'm not trying to demolish it. I'm trying to enrich it. I'm trying to make it.Better, and that's why one of the heroes of the book
is Richard Wright, the African American novelist, who kept saying, "I am Western. I like the West. I like freedom of speech. I like separation of
church and state. I like the the the the freedom of science to to to to develop, to to search for truth. I like the freedom of art."And his complaint
was very often Western governments do not live up to the principles and the ideals declared as Western. So he he was, my interpretation of his thought
is that he complained in the nineteen fifties the West is not Western enough.So that I hope that helps to the to reply reply to that criticism of of
people towards both you and me. It is part of being a defender of the real West to criticize it constantly, in order to improve it, but not to
criticize it in a suicidal way, in a way in a self-flagellating way, in the way that almost would destroy it.呃，before coming up with some better
alternatives, so I I try to improve it would be my answer. Do do I make sense or am I making it worse?Yeah, and and I also like how I've squeezed out
of you that um you are also a fan of Raymond Aron. Oh yes, I think that cannot be hidden in the in the tone in which I write about him. Oh, you you
are there? Sorry, I I thought I thought I pressed the wrong button again, but hopefully not.No, I'm I'm still here. Yeah, I um I think you, I think of
you you listed, you examined, you know, not just defenders or simple critics of the West, but also very sophisticated thinkers that have, um we it's
it's, I mean Arendt, Aron and Strauss, those people that have written around the same time, they are they're not just simple.Politicizers of the West,
I think they are also sophisticated thinkers that that try to start from.the sort of the twentieth century post war perspective and think about what
it means. We can say that, I mean, I think being in America and really being taught by several Straussians, I can say that you know some of their
students have maybe bastardized their thought more than the the original. But nevertheless, I mean, I think.This book, this book has done a lot of
debunking and demis demystification. Um, but but it's also a kind of a crystallization of, um, you know, there are brilliance in the history of in the
in the ideas of how Western, how the idea of the West was conceptualized.Thank you. I found the quotation and it's very brief, so we can go to it. I
say, of course, we should substitute "person" for "man," but other than that.The definition, he says, the true Westerner is the man who accepts
nothing unreservedly, in our civilization, except the liberty it allows him to criticize it, and the chance it offers him to improve it. So, if that's
the definition, then I'm defending that West. But by definition, it's an open West. It's a West that is open to self-criticism and, and improvement,
and that is worth defending. So.The real friends of the West, or Liberty, or America, would see that as an attempt to improve it, not as an attempt
to, uh, talk it down or destroy it.Yeah, I hope we can persuade your critics. Yeah, I think we are ended.I mean, we we end this conversation with
having discovered more common ground than I already thought that I have a lot of common ground with you having read the book, but but even just during
this conversation, I've I heard many names that are music to my ears. I've always been a fan of Ernst Renan and Raymond Aron, and it's unfortunate
that for understandable political reasons, Aron's book about intellectuals.Probably won't be translated into Mandarin, but but his name should be said
more often. And um, and even in the American Academy, I mean, I don't really see that many readers of Raymond Aron anymore. It's unfortunate. It is
unfortunate, and of course, in France, he was very lonely. He was a man with immense courage when all the intellectuals were of one political side.by
by the end of his life, they they they they honored him, and when by the time he died, he was very much recognized. But he had immense courage, and he
had the another thing that I admire very much.He would never dare pronounce publicly on something unless he had studied the subject enough to know
what he was talking about. So he became a kind of specialist in nuclear weapons and in all sorts of things and theories of war and so on. In a way
that very few people who are called intellectuals and pronounce on too many things do. So definitely.You're right. I try to be neutral in my tone with
my thinkers, but with some, it's very obvious that there is immense admiration, and he's definitely one of them. Yeah.Yeah. Um. I'll. Yeah. I. I
remember. I'll end on. Uh. One anecdote that I heard about Iran from my from one of the Americanists at Boston College who taught me. He was a student
of, Bertrand de Juvénal, and. Um.And I think Aron died. You know, Aron passed away the day after he showed up at court to defend Bertrand de Jouvenel
because he was accused of working with the Nazis, which was not true. And so, so Aron died defending his friend. And I thought that was a very
honorable way. Yeah, it's it's a it's a it's a passing befitting of his stature.Yes, and if if one reads what he says about Simon Veil, both in
l'opium des intellectuels that you mentioned in in the afterword that he wrote to the second edition, and in his memoirs.It's it's an incredible thing
because it shows a sensitivity and she was not uncritical of him. She was his wife's best friend and she didn't approve of him when she her friend
just met him. But the admiration for that remarkable person shows a lot about his generosity, of course, and open mindedness.Wow, thank you, Georgios.
I feel like we this could go on for hours and we'll just go off topic from your book. I was thinking that, yeah. Yeah, we should do it again. We
should do it again sometime. Yeah, even without writing another amazing book like this, you should, you should, we should talk more often.Lovely, yes,
absolutely. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And thank you, Princeton University Press, for organizing this.