Which civilisation had the biggest impact on history?

[Tee Kay]

If you can talk about an "Islamic civilisation" then surely "Christian civilisation" is just as valid.

 

[Traitorfish]

"Islamic civilisation" doesn't seem any better.

 

[Tahuti]

Islamic civilisation makes more sense since Islam in official capacity for some time correlated perfectly with the Arab polities. Christianity on the other hand originated in Rome, yet was first adopted by Armenia.

 

[Plotinus]

I think one can meaningfully talk about cultures which were significantly impacted by Christianity, on the understanding that the borders of such a set will be fuzzy. One can even more meaningfully talk about cultures which remained predominantly Christian from early medieval times to modern times and which incorporated Christian ideas and values into their society quite deeply, again on the understanding that the borders will be fuzzy.

Any cultural or historical entity larger than a single individual is ultimately going to be a fictitious abstraction; but we have to use such abstractions to be able to talk about history at all. As long as we recognise this I don't think there's a problem using such language.

Christianity didn't originate in Rome, though; if you want to identify a city as its starting point then either Jerusalem or Antioch would make more sense.

 

[Tahuti]

Christianity didn't originate in Rome, though; if you want to identify a city as its starting point then either Jerusalem or Antioch would make more sense.

I meant the Roman Empire in general, to which Jerusalem and Antioch were both part of.

 

[Domen]

Christianity in general originated within the Roman Empire.

And Catholicism was in fact born as Roman state religion.

Orthodoxy as well, but it was Eastern Roman state religion.

 

[Kyriakos]

^That is like saying that catholicism is unorthodox christianity, cause it does not have orthodox in its title

The orthodox church also is named catholike (which means universal). Plotinus will surely be able to tell us how the names were stabilised after the schizm, but there is no logic in arguing that the 'catholic church' was the continuation of the united christian church, while the orthodox split, etc. The papacy was just one of the patriarchates, with value due to martyrdom of early christians in Rome.

 

[Traitorfish]

I think one can meaningfully talk about cultures which were significantly impacted by Christianity, on the understanding that the borders of such a set will be fuzzy. One can even more meaningfully talk about cultures which remained predominantly Christian from early medieval times to modern times and which incorporated Christian ideas and values into their society quite deeply, again on the understanding that the borders will be fuzzy.

Any cultural or historical entity larger than a single individual is ultimately going to be a fictitious abstraction; but we have to use such abstractions to be able to talk about history at all. As long as we recognise this I don't think there's a problem using such language.

My problem isn't so much with identifying particular cultures as Christian or Christianised, but the attempt to infer from this a single "Christian civilisation", as if official or majority religion overrode every other cultural characteristic. As if we could fold Armenia, Norway and Ethiopia into a single "civilisation" because the majority of their inhabitants have traditionally professed Christianity despite the enormous cultural distance between these co-civilisationals and the relative cultural proximity to non-Christian neighbours. Nobody pretends that Japan and Thailand are part of a single "Buddhist civilisation", because that would be patently ridiculous, so why insist upon something similar for Christianity or Islam?

The only grounds for doing so is that people have chosen to regard Christianity or Islam as the defining characteristics of their cultures, but that introduces a degree of subjectivism which I don't imagine Jehoshua would be all that happy with.

 

[Flying Pig]

Bear in mind that for most of history the world's Islamic states were offshoots of a single entity, so they're naturally more culturally unified than the Christian ones. Christian states are states which adopted Christianity, while Islamic ones were a religion which became states, if that makes sense.

 

[Traitorfish]

Even if that were true, and I'm not really convinced that it is once you stray outside of the Middle East, states aren't the same thing as cultures. There's no more reason to suppose that the Islamic cultures of North Africa, Iran or Central Asia are of Arabian derivation than there is to suppose that the Christian culture of, e.g. Scandinavia is of Latin derivation, and there's certainly reason to believe it of the Islamic cultures of West Africa, India or South-East Asia.

 

[Domen]

Christian states are states which adopted Christianity, while Islamic ones were a religion which became states

In case of early post-Roman barbarian rulers in the 5th and 6th centuries often also religion made states. For example Clovis.

As if we could fold Armenia, Norway and Ethiopia into a single "civilisation" because the majority of their inhabitants have traditionally professed Christianity

As for Armenia and Ethiopia - they were among the very first realms that adopted Christianity as state religion, but both these cultural realms existed long before adopting Christianity. Maybe this is why Christianity did not become the most specific and defining cultural characteristic of these two realms.

But Christianity played a huge role in Armenian history.

Christianity is what made members of Armenian Diaspora easier to assimilate into local societies than in case of Jewish Diaspora.

 

[Tahuti]

Christianity is what made members of Armenian Diaspora easier to assimilate into local societies than in case of Jewish Diaspora.

Actually, in the early 20th century USA, discrimination against Armenian Americans was more pervasive than against Jewish Americans, since Armenian Americans were actually barred from owning land, similar to Chinese Americans.

 

[Domen]

But I was talking rather about Armenian Diaspora in Europe, and about Medieval and Early Modern times.

 

[Tee Kay]

My problem isn't so much with identifying particular cultures as Christian or Christianised, but the attempt to infer from this a single "Christian civilisation", as if official or majority religion overrode every other cultural characteristic.

That was the self-identification of many if not most people before the age of nation-states.

 

[Plotinus]

My problem isn't so much with identifying particular cultures as Christian or Christianised, but the attempt to infer from this a single "Christian civilisation", as if official or majority religion overrode every other cultural characteristic. As if we could fold Armenia, Norway and Ethiopia into a single "civilisation" because the majority of their inhabitants have traditionally professed Christianity despite the enormous cultural distance between these co-civilisationals and the relative cultural proximity to non-Christian neighbours. Nobody pretends that Japan and Thailand are part of a single "Buddhist civilisation", because that would be patently ridiculous, so why insist upon something similar for Christianity or Islam?

The only grounds for doing so is that people have chosen to regard Christianity or Islam as the defining characteristics of their cultures, but that introduces a degree of subjectivism which I don't imagine Jehoshua would be all that happy with.

I don't see that the use of "Christian civilisation" assumes any of this. It could, but it needn't. It seems to me to presuppose only that the Christianity of these various places provides some commonality between them - not necessarily that this commonality overrides everything else. It's like the phrase "the English-speaking world"; that means something even without supposing that New Zealand, India, and Singapore are more alike than not thanks to their common language. Similarly, one can meaningfully say that the shared Christianity of Armenia, Norway, and Ethiopia gives them something in common without having to say that this makes them a monolithic bloc or that the differences between them are less important.

I'm really playing devil's advocate here as I probably wouldn't use the term myself.

 

[Traitorfish]

That was the self-identification of many if not most people before the age of nation-states.

Right, but, as I said, that introduces a degree of subjectivism into the issue which I'm not seeing in Jehoshua's posts. Aside from anything else, he clearly thinks that Christian civilisation is an ongoing thing, despite few people in that "civilisation" identifying themselves as Christian before all else.

I don't see that the use of "Christian civilisation" assumes any of this. It could, but it needn't. It seems to me to presuppose only that the Christianity of these various places provides some commonality between them - not necessarily that this commonality overrides everything else. It's like the phrase "the English-speaking world"; that means something even without supposing that New Zealand, India, and Singapore are more alike than not thanks to their common language. Similarly, one can meaningfully say that the shared Christianity of Armenia, Norway, and Ethiopia gives them something in common without having to say that this makes them a monolithic bloc or that the differences between them are less important.

I dunno, In my experience, "civilisation" tends to imply something monolithic, not simply a shared characteristic or layer of identity, but a discrete branch of humanity, culturally and socially distinct from others. When people talk about "Western civilisation", it's generally as opposed to "Eastern civilisation", etc., rather than as opposed to "Catholic civilisation" or "French civilisation". Certainly, "English-speaking civilisation" carries different, more exclusive connotations than "English-speaking world".

 

[ParkCungHee]

My problem isn't so much with identifying particular cultures as Christian or Christianised, but the attempt to infer from this a single "Christian civilisation", as if official or majority religion overrode every other cultural characteristic. As if we could fold Armenia, Norway and Ethiopia into a single "civilisation" because the majority of their inhabitants have traditionally professed Christianity despite the enormous cultural distance between these co-civilisationals and the relative cultural proximity to non-Christian neighbours. Nobody pretends that Japan and Thailand are part of a single "Buddhist civilisation", because that would be patently ridiculous, so why insist upon something similar for Christianity or Islam?

These very objections though seem to be based on the idea that we can ignore these problems. If we can overlook the massive cultural, religious, ethnic and regional differences that make up "Ethiopia" we've already done the hard part of blurring out the details. At least "Christian Civilization" has the advantage that it's an idea the people we're talking about (at least some of the time in this thread) would be familiar with,m and might identify his interests, hopes, and aspirations with.

 

[Traitorfish]

That's true enough, although in fairness I think you might be drawing too much out of an off-hand example. My point is that I'm sceptical that we can talk about "Christian civilisation", not that we should instead talk about "Ethiopian civilisation". Ideally, we'd talk about people, who tend to defy easy categories.

As you say, I think we can talk about Christendom or dar al-Islam as something that people identify with, but that's really very different from saying that it's an actual Thing, something which produces an historical impact in itself.

 

[Kyriakos]

We should just return to the Greek---Barbarian dichotomy

 

[Domen]

Ok but first Greeks need to re-civilize and de-barbarize their country.