Week 1: Western Worldview

This module is one of five included as part of a new, online open-access program, a taught doctorate (EdD) in remote digital pedagogy. To understand indigenous teaching methods more fully, one must understand the fundamental differences between Indigenous and Western worldviews. The candidate needs to be able to view indigenous teaching through an indigenous lens. They need to be able to “take off their Western glasses and put on their indigenous ones.”

Relationship to the Environment

Creation stories have a paramount influence on the evolution of a society’s worldview. The creation story from the Bible informs the Western worldview. (Genesis 1:1-2:3) In this story, God creates all things. He creates the things that populate the heavens, the sun, moon and stars. God makes the world, the things that move on the earth, swim in the seas and fly in the air. Lastly, he creates human beings.

“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth’.…And God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.'” Gen. 1:26,28 RSV.

This story creates a hierarchy placing humanity on the top, God’s crowning achievement. It puts human beings over and above their environment in charge to do with what they will. Some groups are only interested in exploitation, some interested in conservation and some trying to do both. Regardless, they all see themselves as supra-environmental.

Individualism 

The classical philosopher Aristotle provides the Greek idea of the individual with the most crucial goal being one’s happiness. He thought an individual flourishing was a good thing, and the only way for an individual to flourish was to be part of a city. The city-state provided the individual with the way to reach his highest potential for happiness.

Aristotle lived in ancient Greece from 384 to 322 BCE. He was Plato’s most famous student, but unlike Plato, who philosophized on ideas, Aristotle taught theoretical philosophy that concerns contemplation and natural philosophy, which involves a change in cosmology, geology, biology etc. He also embraced practical philosophy or thought that aims at good action. A brief overview of Aristotle’s philosophy and its concern with the individual is essential for this lesson. Western thought is Greek thought, and Aristotelianism leads to individualism.

Viewing Assignment 1

For a brief overview of Aristotle’s philosophy view the video

Reading Assignment 1

4. Practical Philosophy  https://iep.utm.edu/aristotl/#H4

Western society wholeheartedly embraced Christianity from the fourth century. The Edict of Milan in 313 CE ended Roman persecutions of Christianity. It would become the dominant religion of Rome during Emperor Constantine’s reign (306-337 CE).

Christianity originally was a sect of Judaism which is a Semitic religion. However, Christianity grew to be one of the world’s great religions entirely Western but still permeated with the Semitic writers of the Bible (the only gentile writer was Luke, the author of the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts.)

Europe entered an era commonly called the Middle Ages, which ran from approximately 500 CE to 1500 CE. The Dark Ages is a period of time that consists of the first half of the Middle Ages. During this time, the Church rose to great power and influence. It promoted a theology that rejected reason as the source of knowledge and replaced it with revelation. The intellectual pursuits of classical Greek and Roman philosophers subsequently were forgotten during this period.

Western society began to move out of the Dark Ages with the advent of Scholasticism. Two significant developments were the growth of universities and the reintroduction of the teachings of Aristotle into Western Europe.  The thirteenth century witnessed a particularly accelerated growth with centers for medicine at Montpelier or Salerno and law at Ravena, Pavia and Bologna.

Paris and Oxford became centers for theology. First, theologians spent several years studying philosophy and humanities in the Arts Faculty. Then they entered the Faculty of Theology, becoming first bachelors then masters and doctors. Thomas Aquinas[i] became one of the most influential teachers of this period.

The crusades and renewed contact with Muslims of Spain and Sicily brought more significant knowledge of Aristotle’s philosophy, which only reinforced individualism. And individualism shines through with a reading of Thomas’s writings. For example, he posits there are two laws, Eternal Law and Natural Law. The Eternal Law is God’s Law or perfect plan for the entire universe, while God endows the Natural Law within the individual. The Natural Law is the individual’s way of interacting with the Eternal Law. At first, there was a backlash against Thomas’s acceptance of Aristotle, but it eventually became accepted. So, the individualism of the Church permeated the other great power of medievalism, the State, where it would become more fully embraced some five centuries after Aquinas.

Viewing Assignment 2

For an introduction to Natural Law view the video

“The Age of Enlightenment was a European intellectual movement of the late 17th and 18th centuries emphasizing reason and individualism rather than tradition.” Individualism is a prominent theme of the Enlightenment. It concentrates on the individual’s worth, individual rights such as the right to freedom, self-actualization and the value of independence and self-reliance.

Viewing Assignment 3

An overview of the Enlightenment. Keep individualism in view. Other themes in this video will come up in the next lesson as well.

For example, Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), a French aristocrat, realized that both political and social democracy were logical extensions of liberalism and most fully realized in the United States of America. He travelled there in 1831 to observe the new society unfold and remained approximately eighteen months. His study produced two volumes entitled Democracy in America (1835 and 1840), in which he attempts to reconcile individual freedom with the bounds of utilitarianism.

Viewing Assignment 4

A summary of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America

Liberalism and democracy were making progress. Of course, there were some in Western society that was against this new trend. One of the most powerful of the intellectual counter-attacks against these new principles of the Enlightenment was Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). Burke (1729-1797) was a British parliamentarian who believed in the aristocracy, upper-class rule, and parliamentary supremacy to produce a civil society. He thought that the radical policies coming out of the French Revolution would only lead to anarchy.

Viewing Assignment 5

Edmund Burke – Reflections on the Revolution in France| Political Philosophy 

Individual rights had become thoroughly entrenched throughout modernity. Civil liberties have increasingly become protected by the constitutions of Western countries. However, there is always the tension between the supremacy of personal rights and the community’s welfare. The struggle to find the right balance between individualism and collectivism is ongoing and individual counties in the west arrive at different conclusions.

Viewing Assignment 6

Individualism vs. Collectivism – ideological foundations