PHILIPPE NEMO

What Is the West?

What Is the West?

Introduction

We all know that the West exists, but it is not easy to define, let alone identify their origins. Philippe Nemo has done brilliantly in a small book that outlines the fundamental features of our Western identity, from its origins in Athens, Rome and Jerusalem. Philippe Nemo, professor at the ESCP-EAP, is the author, of the book “What Is the West?” in which he argues that “west” is the only cultural entity, of the both Western Europe and North America.

Discussion

The term "West" is present implicitly in all the major geopolitical issues of today. However, it is singularly unclear. Philippe Nemo tries to define it here schematically, based on history. The author sees in Western culture, not the product of chance and necessity, but a mental construct, structured in five crucial moments: the invention of the City, and science by the Greeks, that of private law and humanism in Rome, the ethical and eschatological prophecy of the Bible, the "Papal Revolution" of eleventh-thirteenth centuries, and finally the so-called great revolutions of modern democratic (Patterson 2008, pp. 21). These five "jumps" evolutionary mutation caused an unprecedented report of the human species as a whole with its environment. Hence, the fact that, Western civilization, though resulting from an original story, this truly universal features that must not fade in multiculturalism or cultural mix that some now offer.

The difficulty in addressing the concept of the West is that it is one of several civilizations that exist today, but it is one in which born historically some ideas that are the common heritage of all mankind. Contributions such as human rights, democracy and market economy have emerged largely in the western part, but they are becoming the common denominator of all human societies, without this implying the disappearance of distinct cultural identities. What then is the specificity of the West? Nemo believes there to be found in the legacy of an ancient history, which has emerged a way of seeing the world is not easy to digest for those behind a different cultural tradition.

The synthesis of the legacy that makes Nemo Greek, Roman and biblical, is masterful, as summarized in few words a historical background that we should all be assimilated into the school, but few have actually received. In the Greek polis arose the concept of the rule of law based on the legal equality of citizens ...