Thinking Historically through the Western Civilization Survey Course

This presentation proceeds from the premise that the purpose of a Western Civilization course is not so much to convey a specific set of information, nor even to encourage appreciation of ‘where we came from’ since we live in the West and in a broader world impacted by the West, but rather to provide our students with an extended experience in thinking historically. By leading our students in a concerted effort to nudge aside as best and imperfectly as we are able our own assumptions and values – the frameworks through which we interpret the world – in order to try to gain an empathetic understanding of a past era of human existence on its own terms we empower students to gain an appreciation of the diversity of the human experience over time. As we collectively deal with these other, seemingly alien, frameworks, we gain a recognition that our own frameworks through which we view, interpret, and judge the world are also historically contingent, that they won’t and don’t need to stay static, that others have dealt with the same issues we deal with today from radically different perspectives and have come to conclusions that are no less thoughtful or intelligent (and certainly no less eloquent) than the dominant thoughts of today. This inculcates habits of mind of intellectual humility and the recognition that if we are dissatisfied with things we can work to change them that are portable along whichever paths the students’ futures as thinkers and as citizens may take them down. I use through lines of thematic continuity as the scaffolding for the course’s structure, focusing on ideals of leadership, ideals of education, the relation between the spiritual and the secular, and narratives of progress and decline.