Western Exceptionalism and Universality Revisited

November/December 2007 Historically Speaking 9 Recentering the West: A Forum JOHNM. HEADLEY, EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF HISTORYAT the University ofNorth Carolina, ChapelHill, haswritten extensivelyaboutthehistory of earlymodern Europe,particularly itstwo main reformmovements: the Renaissance andthe Reformation. Forthepastdecade he hasturnedhisattention to howearly modernEuropean ideas andinstitutionshave shapedmodern andcontemporary world history. Here he drawsfrom his most recent book, The Europeanization of die World: On the Origins of Human Rights and Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2008), andarguesforthe uniquenessof the West, especially with regard to thepropensity of itsinhabitantsto understandhumanity in universalterms. Hefocuses on 16th-century European cartography andnaturallaw theory as reflections of what, in his view, isthe West'sexceptionalstance towardthe restof the world. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Constantin Fasoli, andJohn M. Hobson react to Headleys essay, andtheforum concludes with Headley's response to his critics. Western Exceptionalism and Universality Revisited John M. Headley Among the big losers in the historiography of the last several decades are the dignity of Western civilization, the centrality of political history, and the earlier assessment of the nature and virtues of the Renaissance. Although much has been accomplished to extend the variety, ambiguity , and inclusiveness of history, the most obvious casualties are: the notion of Western exceptionalism and universality, contemned; the importance of political history, marginalized, even extinguished; and the Renaissance, reduced, if not abolished. If we wish to propose the recentering of the West in the present discussion, the related issues of the deliberate neglect of political history and the undermining of the Renaissance as a concept are intimately involved and constitute an integral part of our argument . It has become fashionable to heap condemnation and blame upon the career of Western civilization , rejecting or denying its claims to uniqueness, exceptionalism, and universality, despite the historical record to the contrary. This record is seen most immediatelyin die early definition and distinguishing of die secular from the priesdy or ecclesiastical, evident in Augustine and in Pope Gelasius I's pronouncement of 494, which served to distinguish die authority of the moral and religious from the powers of the political; second, more practically and less theoretically, in the competitive rather than unitary structure of the European experience, dictated by the distinctive topography of the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia and the variety of migrating peoples invading the Roman Empire; and finally in the twin universalisms of the Stoic-Christian amalgam at the beginning of the Christian Common Era. Only Islam could contest this last, the uniqueness of Western universalism; whatever its better record of toleration through dhimmi, the recognition of protected peoples of the book, Islam in its proselytizing approached the world not as did Christianity, as a single parish, but as something fractured from the outset between the House of Islam and the House of War. Thus inclusion in the umma, the whole Islamic community, involved not only the overcoming of a most essential, almost ontologica !, rift in the diaspora of humankind but also die admitting of a high degree of necessary violence, intrinsic to the life and experience of its founder. On the basis of impact and influence rather than origins, Western exceptionalism and universality are normally argued as being limited to an essentially unquestioned achievement in science and technology by which the modern world continues to be influenced. Here the social philosopher Ernest Gellner claims for the West a "culture-transcending " capacity.1 But the same can be claimed, although indeed less obviously, for two political—legal and constitutional—developments of the West: the idea of a common humanity, generating programs of human rights; and the admission of political dissent , which contrasts with practices everywhere else that pursue prompt exclusion through prison, exile, or extermination. Over the past several decades the very neglect of political history has served to obscure the uniqueness of the Western political accomplishment in these two respects. Although die second of these developments will not be considered here, both are properly political and have been operative since the late 18th century. Nevertheless, their historicalimportance and vitality have been displaced by new fashions, interests, and "Vniversi orbis descriptio ad usum navigantivm" in Claudius Ptolemy, Geographie, 1597-98. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. orthodoxies—some of them quite sound and justifiable for history and the social sciences...