ABSTRACT
In a lecture I delivered a few weeks ago at Princeton University, I pointed out that what some call ‘Western civilization’ is not purely Western but the culmination of a number of civilizations that flourished at different historical moments. Like tributaries feeding a river, these civilizations – Egyptian, Chinese, Sumerian, Phoenician, Greek, Roman and Arab – merged together to form the mighty river of human civilization. At the same time, I conceded that the present stretch of the river, in which the civilizing process has attained its highest level ever, owes many of its features to its geographical location, which is the West. Thus it is a product of human endeavour through the ages in some respects while in others it is purely Western, although its greatest achievements in the areas of artistic, literary and intellectual creativity owe more to the collective human experience than they do to its purely Western dimension.
