By Angelo M. Codevilla · Monday, November 17, 2014 Angelo M. Codevilla’s “What Makes the West the West?” appears in Telos 168 (Fall 2014). Read the full version online at the Telos Online website, or purchase a print copy of the issue in our store.
 The intellectual-moral propositions that make the West the West are particular and exclusive to our civilization. They are indefensible, incomprehensible nonsense except in terms of Jerusalem and Athens. The ideas that distinguish the West’s forma mentis follow from the Biblical teaching that God created the universe by and through logos. This beckons our reason. The charter of human equality and freedom, unique to the West, is the Biblical teaching that man is created in the image and likeness of God. The West’s distinctiveness follows as well from Parmenides of Elea’s distinction between opinions and the truth of “the things that are.” This empowered human reason to access the logos of the universe. Consequently, reason distinguished between positive law—what is right by human will—and what is right by nature—natural law.
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By Mary Frances McKenna · Thursday, October 30, 2014 In this article, I focus on the impact on modern Western thinking, ideas, and engagement with the world of the loss of the assumption of a creator, or an intelligent ordering agent, in conjunction with the emphasis on detail in preference to the whole in modern thought. I begin by discussing some of the critical dynamics contributed by Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome to the concept of Europe in an attempt to identify the source of the energy and vitality arising from this synthesis. I particularly look at the synthesis of Jerusalem and Athens, specifically how each influenced the other and where the potential for synergy arose. This Western synthesis no longer operates in Europe and the West.
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By Luca G. Castellin · Thursday, October 23, 2014 At the beginning of the 1950s, Reinhold Niebuhr used the Christian concept of “irony” to explain the difficult condition of the United States in the international system. In The Irony of American History the protestant theologian analyzed the ambiguity of American foreign policy during the first years of the Cold War. According to Niebuhr, the United States was involved in an ironic confutation of its sense of virtue, strength, security, and wisdom. This confutation was due not only to its lack of (Christian) realism but also to its false claim to dominate history. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, when America became the most powerful nation of the international system, the irony of its history did not disappear. Even in a totally different situation for structure and distribution of power, compared to the one of sixty years ago, the ambiguous situation of the United States can be spelled out through irony again. This article discusses the lasting validity of the concept of “irony” used to explain the American present and, perhaps, its future.
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By Telos Press · Wednesday, October 8, 2014 At the recent Telos Conference in L’Aquila, Italy, Associate Editor Adrian Pabst discussed his new article “Commonwealth and Covenant: The West in a Neo-Medieval Era of International Affairs,” which appears in Telos 168 (Fall 2014), a special issue on the theme of “The West: Its Past and Its Prospects.” Telos 168 is now available for purchase in our online store.
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By Telos Press · Wednesday, October 1, 2014 In this short video, filmed at the recent Telos Conference in L’Aquila, Editor Russell A. Berman talks about the central themes and concerns of Telos 168 (Fall 2014): The West: Its Past and Its Prospects. We have posted Russell’s full introduction here, and you can order your copy of the issue in our online store.
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By Russell A. Berman · Monday, September 15, 2014 Telos 168 (Fall 2014) is now available for purchase in our store.
This special issue of Telos investigates the concept of the West. Far more than a geographical term, in intellectual, philosophical, and cultural history, it has been common to speak of a Western tradition in order to name lineages of thought from antiquity to the modern world. In cultural and political debates, Western values are invoked that are linked historically to a deep tradition specifically dedicated to desiderata such as freedom and individual dignity: at stake is the general possibility of any long-term tradition, the durability of culture over time, but also this very specific, distinctively Western tradition as the carrier of particular values. Politically this usage explains the reference to Western democracies (as opposed to the “peoples’ democracies” of the Soviet era) with the suggestion that democratic political forms and norms have emerged from the “Western tradition” and have generated the institutions of both liberal democracy, i.e., democratic procedures that assert popular sovereignty, while simultaneously protecting individual rights, and market economies shaped by the rule of law and the protection of private property.
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