Em Defesa do Ocidente

Uma magistral resenha escrita por Ricardo Duchesne do livro de Ian Morris Why the West Rules — For Now: The Patterns of History and What they Reveal About the Future. Duchesne simplesmente destrói os argumentos multiculturais de Morris e mostra a originalidade, valor e glória do ocidente e suas conquistas. Leitura essencial.
Every epoch in European history has seen major innovations and original giants. The medieval invention of eye glasses and mechanical clocks were part and parcel of what Norman Cantor has called ‘a starting point for new directions and dimensions in all facets of civilized life’.(19) May I offer a rough, and rather incomplete, catalogue of these immense achievements: i) the investiture controversy and the emergence of a distinctive legal system of canon law which led to the rise of whole new systems of law – urban law, merchant law, royal law, natural law, divine law – that served to create a civil society composed of kingdoms, baronies, bishoprics, urban communes, guilds, and universities, each empowered to enact its own ordinances as well as to adjudicate internal disputes (20); ii) the institutionalization of a university curriculum ‘overwhelmingly oriented toward analytical subjects: logic, science, mathematics, and natural philosophy,’ which gave birth to a unique synthesis of reason and revelation, and made Catholicism the most scholarly religion of the world (21); iii) an ‘epochal shift from qualitative to quantitative perception’ which led to a new conception of time as a succession of quanta, and a new polyphonic music where sounds could be seen as a phenomena moving through time, written on a paper using a codified and standardized system of notation for all sounds and rests.