Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies - Hardcover

Buruma, Ian; Margalit, Avishai

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1594200084 ISBN 13: 9781594200083

Publisher: Penguin Press, 2004

Synopsis

Provides a thought-provoking analysis of the stereotypes and misunderstandings about the Western world that ignite anti-Western political movements, tracing the roots and evolution of such phenomena and examining why they have found a ready host in the Islamic world. 35,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Ian Buruma is currently Luce Professor at Bard College. His previous books include God's Dust, Behind the Mask, The Missionary & The Libertine, Playing the Game, The Wages of Guilt, Anglomania, and Bad Elements. He writes frequently for The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and the Financial Times.

Avishai Margalit is Schulman Professor of Philosophy at the Center for Rationality at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His previous books include Idolatry, The Decent Society, Views and Reviews, and The Ethics of Memory.

Reviews

Four characterizations of the West contribute to the anti-Western stance Buruma and Margalit call Occidentalism and are used to justify attacking individual Westerners as less-than-human beings. The West prefers the sinful city to the virtuous countryside; the West destroys heroism and replaces it with trading; the West thinks only of matter and not of spirit; the West worships evil. Buruma and Margalit argue that the first two of those conceptions, typical of secular Occidentalism, are themselves Western, products of European romanticism that early-twentieth-century Japan and Germany exploited to their own ruin. The third idea informs Russia's long struggle with the West but stems from German romanticism, in particular, with its sense of the wounded national soul. The fourth, peculiar to religious Occidentalism, animates radical Islamism but derives from the good-evil polarities of Persian Manichaeism that the young Augustine embraced. Buruma and Margalit conclude that these ideas' lives are "a tale of cross-contamination" that cannot be ended by answering anti-Western intolerance with more intolerance. A timely tract, brilliantly though broadly argued. Ray Olson
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Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1594200084
• ISBN 13: 9781594200083
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 165