ABSTRACT
A’Western’ sense of history has been defined as a mode of consciousness that assumes social change to be inevitable, continuous and linear (Lévi-Strauss 1966). The idea that societies ‘evolve’ is therefore deeply rooted in European thought as a rationalisation of a period of recent social change which, perhaps inevitably, has been considered the most disruptive in world history. While European philosophy may therefore be accused of exaggerating its own sense of loss, it is a unique feature of Western intellectual life that it has come to terms with its own experience by conducting one of the longest and most detailed historical investigations into its own genesis ever attempted. In order to avoid endless historical regression and to put some kind of order into what could be seen as an endless series of disasters, Western historians have chosen to select three major periods of social change for special attention: the beginning of classical antiquity, the fall of the western Roman Empire and the transition from feudalism to capitalism. All three ‘events’ are unified at a higher level since they all claim to answer a single question: what was so distinctive about Europe that encouraged the development of modern capitalism there and nowhere else and what were the origins of this distinctive developmental sequence?
