“What is civilization?”
When confronted with what appears to be civilizational disintegration, many writers and scholars have attempted to answer this question. For instance, Kenneth Clark’s “Civilisation” mini-series, which aired in 1969, celebrated the outstanding achievements of Western art, philosophy, and literature since the Middle Ages. William James Durant and his wife, Ariel, completed a famous 11-volume work, The Story of Civilization. This series, written over four decades (1935-1975), was an extensive and detailed history of Western civilization and aimed at a popular audience. Jacques Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life (2001) was a thoughtful exploration of Western civilization from the Renaissance to the present. In our age of modern decadence, the idea of civilization and the possibility of transmitting it to the next generation has been on many minds. What, indeed, is this treasure that we call “civilization?” And for that matter, how can this treasure be conserved and passed down to the next generation?
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