Civilisation and Politics

Kenneth Clark

Kenneth Clark in 1969 in Civilisation observed: “It could be argued that western civilisation was basically the creation of the Church,” and this theme is taken up in detail in Tom Holland’s 2019 book Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind. Clark makes the point that when things are truly important — as science has been us in the last century — that internationalism is accepted without hesitation, and that was most definitely the case with the Church.

But there are barriers to internationalism as we are only too aware. Politics — especially recent aggrieved and parochial (or ‘patriotic’) politics that has gained popularity and momentum in so many countries — gets in the way of internationalism, and this of course poses grave problems both in terms of dealing with the current pandemic but also the long term issue of the climate. 

That politicians are happy to abandon internationalism is perhaps to be expected. That they seem unable to address important issues is reluctantly but widely accepted; but that they may not even want to deal with the big issues comes as more of a surprise. Yet Tolstoy in his novel Resurrection already described the situation with great clarity: regarding Minister of State Count Ivan Mikhailovich he wrote:

в том, что у него не было  никаких  общих принципов или правил, ни лично нравственных, ни государственных,  и  что  он поэтому со всеми мог быть согласен, когда это нужно было, и, когда это нужно было, мог быть со всеми не согласен. Поступая так, он старался только о том, чтобы был выдержан тон и не было явного противоречия самому себе, к тому же, нравственны  или  безнравственны  его  поступки  сами  по  себе,  и  о  тем, произойдет ли от них величайшее благо или  величайший  вред  для  Российской империи или для всего мира, он был совершенно равнодушен.

“having no general principles or rules of morality, either public or private, made it possible for him to agree or disagree with anybody as best suited the moment. In thus ordering his life and his work, his one endeavour was always to behave with good form and avoid being too obviously inconsistent. Whether his actions were in themselves moral or immoral, whether great good or great harm would result from them for the Russian Empire or the world as a whole, was a matter of supreme indifference to him.” (pp.328 – 329)

This is a singularly depressing observation, given as we are to seeing ourselves still very much in terms of being at the end of a long progression of societal and political development — I am reminded of those old illustrations of a series of apes standing ever more upright which now feature primarily in parody cartoons. We have, after all, progressed through various reformations and the Enlightenment. Holland sees all this as a mere extension of the fundamental pivot in thinking that the Christian church brought to the west.

“Already, by the time that Anselm died in 1109, Latin Christendom had been set upon a course so distinctive that what today we term ‘the West’ is less its heir than its continuation. Certainly, to dream of a world transformed by a reformation, or an enlightenment, or a revolution is nothing exclusively modern.”