ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to imply that the choice facing today's Westerners is between a Jacobin break with the ancient Western civilization inspired by Greece, Rome, and Christianity and a return to the ideas and practices of the past. A revitalization or recovery of the older Western traditions would have to involve a rearticulation of old insights and values in new circumstances as well as a willingness to abandon some deep-seated beliefs. A continuation of the Western traditions must of necessity be a reconstitution and development of earlier achievements. There are good grounds for having reservations about the old Western traditions; even their strongest admirers recognize that they have significant flaws and see the need for revisions and supplements. At least some of the problems raised by the French Jacobins were real problems, only the Jacobins addressed them in a radical, uncompromising way, thinking that their own abstract ideas were the only proper model for society.
