How did ‘the West’ come to be used as a collective self-designation signaling political and cultural commonality? When did ‘Westerners’ begin to refer to themselves in this way? Was the idea handed down from the ancient Greeks, or coined by nineteenth-century imperialists?
Neither, Georgios Varouxakis will explain. Join him for a panel discussion with eminent intellectual historians on the occasion of the publication of his new book The West. The History of an Idea (Princeton, 2025)
This panel discussion will be the occasion to foreground the role that French philosopher Auguste Comte played in the emergence of the concept of ‘the West’ from the 1840s onwards when he decisively promoted it in the context of an anti-imperialist political project.
The panel will bring together international specialists in Intellectual History to discuss Georgios Varouxakis contention that the use of the term ‘the West’ served to avoid the confusing or unwanted consequences of the use of ‘Europe.’ The two overlapped, but were not identical, with the West used to differentiate from certain “others” within Europe as well as to include the Americas.
