Table Of ContentChristopher GoGwilt, Holt Meyer and Sergey Sistiaga (Eds.)
Westernness
SpatioTemporality /
RaumZeitlichkeit
Practices – Concepts – Media /
Praktiken – Konzepte – Medien
Edited by / Herausgegeben von
Sebastian Dorsch, Bärbel Frischmann, Holt Meyer,
Susanne Rau, Sabine Schmolinsky,
Katharina Waldner
Editorial Board
Jean-Marc Besse (Centre national de la recherche scientifique de Paris),
Petr Bilek (Univerzita Karlova v Praze), Fraya Frehse (Universidade de
São Paulo), Harry Maier (Vancouver School of Theology), Elisabeth Millán
(De-Paul University, Chicago), Simona Slanicka (Universität Bern),
Jutta Vinzent (†) (University of Birmingham), Guillermo Zermeño (Colegio de México)
Volume/Band 12
Westernness
Critical Reflections on the Spatio-temporal
Construction of the West
Edited by
Christopher GoGwilt, Holt Meyer and Sergey Sistiaga
ISBN 978-3-11-072841-5
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-072842-2
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-072843-9
ISSN 2365-3221
Library of Congress Control Number 2022937139
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available from the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Cover image: Diego Rivera, Hombre en una Encrucijada / Man at the Crossroads (1934),
4.85 x 11.45 m, Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City.
Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck
www.degruyter.com
Acknowledgements
We’d like to thank all those who participated in the 2019 conference “What is
Western about the West?”at Erfurt University, as well as those involved in all
the various seminars and workshops (at Fordham and at Erfurt) leading up to
it.We are grateful for the support of the programs at Fordham (in Comparative
Literature, Philosophy,Theology, English, and Orthodox Christian Studies) and
at Erfurt (Slavic Literatures, History, Philosophy, Religious Studies).
Many thanks also to all those institutionswho supportedthe conference fi-
nanciallyandthusmadethisvolumepossible:theThüringerAufbaubank,which
forthreeyearswasthemainfinancialsupporteroftheresearchproject“Whatis
Western about the West?” as a whole; the Ernst Abbe Fund; and the Research
Support Department of the Universityof Erfurt administration.
Many thanks to Bettina Neuhoff, Jessica Bartz and the rest of their team at
DeGruyterpublishinghouse,whoshowedgreatpatienceinsolvingalargenum-
ber technical and textual issues.
Table of Contents
Christopher GoGwilt, Holt Meyer
Introduction 1
Before Westernness
Christoph Mauntel
Competing with the East
Geographic Ideas and Cultural Self-assessments of the West in
Medieval Latin-Christian Thinking 11
The Westernness of Philosophy
Markus Vinzent
‘What is foreign becomes close and what is close becomes foreign’. Ethics
and Geography in the Works of Meister Eckhart 45
Heiner F. Klemme
Self-Conceptions of Reason in Kant
Why reason matters to us 57
Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer
On the Universal Notion of a Person
How a man without qualities can shed light on globalized Western
culture 67
The Westernness of Orientalism
Ottfried Fraisse
Ignác Goldziher’s Perspective from the Margins of Europe: Historicizing Islam
Between East and West 89
Lena Salaymeh
The “good Orientalists” 105
VIII TableofContents
The Westernness of Europe
Johannes Gleixner and Vratislav Doubek
In the Center But Not in the Middle: T. G. Masaryk and Czech Geopolitical
Discussions in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries 139
The Westernness of(T he) Americans
Christopher GoGwilt
Televising the West: The Television Set of The Americans 163
Holt Meyer
Russian Orthodoxyas Constitutive of Westernness in The Americans 179
Yulia Penner
Western Reflections: The Mirrored Real and the Imaginary in The
Americans 203
After Westernness
Christopher GoGwilt
Reinventing the West: The Invention of the West 25 Years Later 223
Christopher GoGwilt
A Brief Genealogy of the West 231
About the Authors 259
Christopher GoGwilt, Holt Meyer
Introduction
Abstract:Introducingthevolumeofessaysthroughareadingofthebook’scover
image, from Diego Rivera’s Man at the Crossroads (1934), this Introduction ex-
plores how the title “Westernness” constitutes a categorical problem provoking
morequestionsthananswers,designatingtheattributefor aconstantlyshifting
set of cultural, political, and social conditions.Offering a brief overview of the
essays, it notes that they represent a range of historical perspectives and a
rangeofdifferentdisciplinaryapproaches,illustratingthevarietyofconflicting,
still unsettled, layered, and contested ways of grasping what is Western about
the West.
Thisbookposes an ambitious question:whatis Westernabout the West? All of
the essaysin the volume return, in differentways,tothis question,but the vol-
umeasawholedoesnotpretendtoprovideananswer.Toanswerthisquestion
adequatelyonewouldneedtoexplainindetailallthosecharacteristicsofwhat
hasbeencalledtheWest(thisitselfwouldrequireanexhaustiveinventory)and
then find their common denominator.This would be an enormously ambitious
undertakingsincetheWesthasmeant,andcontinuestomean,somanydifferent
thingsatdifferenttimesandindifferentplacesandfordifferentpeople.Notonly
wouldthis require a grasp of the vast heterogeneityof differentcultural,politi-
cal, literary, and social things that have, at this time or that, been considered
Western (forms of religion, culture, democracy, fast food, television, printing,
and so on). It would also require an account of the coexistence of some pro-
foundlycontradictoryfeaturesthatlieattheheartofwhathasbeenandcontin-
uestobeconsideredWestern(topickjustafewprominentantinomies:secular-
ism and the Judaeo-Christian tradition; Christianity and Islam; enlightenment
and totalitarianism; democratic traditions and the attack on democratic tradi-
tions).What our volume’s title calls “Westernness” might be taken as a provi-
sional gesture toward that common denominator one would hope to attribute
toall those different waysof graspingthe West.Christoph Mauntel’s essay pro-
vides a fitting introduction in outlining just such a survey, althoughwhat is so
illuminatingabouthisgenealogyofWesternnessispreciselythecontrastheem-
phasizes between medieval orientations and later articulations of the West
(which is why we place his essay in the opening section and entitle it Before
Westerness). This post-medieval Westernness, moreover, can never be fixed
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110728422-001
2 ChristopherGoGwilt,HoltMeyer
(andperhapsinpartbecauseithasalwaysalreadybeenhauntedbythepriority
of the medieval east that once mattered far more than all the other cardinal
points of the compass). As with all purely geographical markers, the West can
only ever serve as a relative denominator of relative positionalities. Mauntel’s
essayproductivelyorientstheentirevolumeinrelationtotherelativelyfixedre-
ligiousmarkeroftheEastformedievalChristendom.IfweaddtothatChristian
genealogy the range of other post-Christian and non-Christian cultural forma-
tions,worldhistorycomestoseemlikeaconstantlyshiftingkaleidoscopeofmul-
tiple,overlapping,andcontendingwaysofdenominatingWesternness.Mauntel
brieflymentions the Chinese self-conception oftheMiddle Kingdom –towhich
we would also add the multiple and overlapping “wests” that have accrued in
that Chinese context: Xinjiang; India; then “EuroAmerica”. But world history
addsmanymoresuchexamples,geographically,historically,politically,andlin-
guistically,andeachmightlookverydifferentdependingonwhatstarting-point
one happens to choose. “Westernness,” in this sense, emerges like a trompe
l’oeil,amirageproducedbythecomplexlayeringofmanydifferentcultural,po-
litical, historical, and linguistic relations.The “Westernness” of our title might
appear to provide a provisional answer to the question that follows “What is
WesternabouttheWest?”Itwouldbemoreaccurate,however,toreaditasacat-
egoricalproblemprovokingthequestionoverandoveragainanew.Westernness,
after all, can only ever be the attribute of a constantly shifting set of cultural,
political, and social conditions.
ManattheCrossroads(1934),theDiegoRiveramuralusedascoverimagefor
thevolume,ischoseninparttoevokethisconstantlyshiftingsetofperspectives
on what constitutes Westernness. Commissioned by the Rockefellers for the
groundfloor wall of Rockefeller Center in New Yorkcity, it was demolished be-
fore completion. A reconstructedversion of the muralwas later installed in the
Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico.¹ It projects apalimpsest of idealized images of
overlapping and conflicting notions of what is most Western about the West
(technology, capitalism, communism, North/South American, US/Soviet). The
original mural was first created in the spring of 1933 as Hitler consolidated
powerinGermany.ItwascoveredoverinMayofthatsameyearamidstaconflict
withintheRockefellerfamily(Johnvs.hiswifeAbbyandhissonNelson),acon-
flictprecipitatedbycontroversyoverthefigureofLenin,oneofthecentralpro-
filesofmenattheconceptual“crossroads”ofthemural’stitle.Thecommission
had called for a three-paneled mural.The side panels were to be entitled “The
Frontier of Ethical Evolution” and “The Frontier of Material Development,”
OnthischainofeventsseeTimpano2012andPaquette2010.
