In 2018, the Ramsay Center approached various universities with a proposal to lavishly fund a new specialist BA degree in Western Civilization, the underlying philosophy of which was enunciated in Robert Hutchins' 1952 essay The Great Conversation [abridged text below, but see here for the full text, and here for the University of Wollongong's degree]. For many, such a proposal is way past its use-by date in university humanities departments [here, but see also here]. They objected that its narrow focus is at odds with diversity and inclusion, that it implies some civilizations are superior to others, and, according to some, that it is European supremacism writ large—So, should universities be teaching western civilization? ![]()
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Joe M
17/6/2019 07:55:39 pm
The Ramsey Center proposes to fund a BA in Western Civilization, the underlying philosophy of which was enunciated in Robert Hutchins' 1952 essay The Great Conversation. Catharine Colborne thinks that the concept of Western Civilization is past its use-by date, a view she enunciates in a 2017 article on a website called (funnily enough) The Conversation. So let's get them talking to one another. Colborne basically has two complaints.
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Barry Hodges
4/7/2019 06:07:42 pm
The issue here is that there are two overt claims in the call for a BA in WC, both exemplified in Hutchens’ piece – that the essence of WC is the ongoing conversation and that this, in itself, is a valuable (the most valuable?) contribution to civilisation – and two matching implicit claims – that this tradition of the ongoing conversation is only manifested in WC and that, as a result, WC is superior to all other civilisations. (This is being as kind as possible to the proponents of such a BA; it is more often going to be the case that the superiority of WC is simply assumed as part of the nature of the universe. We must inevitably think of John Howard’s (fatuous) attacks on the ‘black armband’ view of Australian history.)
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Joe M
5/7/2019 05:49:57 pm
I must say, I can't understand all the angst about the proposed BA in Western Civilization. I find the prospect of spending my retirement working my way through the books (as I intend to do) quite pleasant indeed. And if it pleasant to read them, I reckon it would be pleasant to teach them, for teachers and students alike.
Barry Hodges
5/7/2019 12:01:20 pm
Outline of a proposed course in Civilisation
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Joe M
8/7/2019 12:56:52 pm
I wonder, Barry, if we have not all been led on a wild goose chase by the word "civilization"? After all, the proposed course devoted to reading a certain list of books on all manner of topics—Imaginative Literature, Mathematics and the Natural Sciences, History and the Social Sciences, Philosophy and Theology—and so, while they all come from the West, they are not generally about the West. Hutchin's essay is actually in defense of a program called the Great Books of the Western World, so I reckon a more fitting title for the course would be a BA in Western Thought. (Interestingly, the now-defunct Philosophy and Religion major at UoN was dubbed a course in the "Big Thinkers" and "Big Ideas".)
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