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THE CHURCH IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
Abstract
Reviewed by Kevin MacDonald Sir Larry Siedentop is an Oxford University historian specializing in intellectual history. A basic premise of Inventing the Individual is that ideas matter, in particular, that beginning in the ancient world, the ideologies associated with Christianity had a profound effect on the West. As a culturally oriented evolutionary psychologist, I found it a fascinating account of the origins of Western individualism. To be sure, as discussed below, I stress ethnic factors as also playing a major role, but there is certainly room within evolutionary psychology for an idealist influences on history. Such a view rests on a powerful intellectual foundation. 1 That foundation is based on psychological research indicating two very different types of psychological processing: implicit and explicit processing. These modes of processing may be contrasted on a number of dimensions. 2 Implicit processing is automatic, effortless, relatively fast, and involves parallel processing of large amounts of information; it characterizes the modules described by evolutionary psychologists. Explicit processing is the opposite: conscious, controllable, effortful, relatively slow, and involves serial processing of relatively small amounts of information. Explicit processing is involved in the operation of the 1 For an intellectually similar treatment of a historical phenomenon, see Kevin MacDonald, " The Antislavery Movement as an Expression of the Eighteenth-Century
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This paper argues that Western cultures have a unique cultural profile compared to other traditional civilizations:
1. The Catholic Church and Christianity.
2. A tendency toward monogamy.
3. A tendency toward simple family structure based on the nuclear family.
4. A greater tendency for marriage to be companionate and based on mutual
affection of the partners.
5. A de-emphasis on extended kinship relationships and its correlative, a relative
lack of ethnocentrism.
6. A tendency toward individualism and all of its implications: individual rights
against the state, representative government, moral universalism, and scienc
38 A contemporary Jewish writer stated that the Franciscans and Dominicans [which, as noted above, were the intellectual leaders of the church and dominated universities
- C H Lawrence
C. H. Lawrence, The Friars: Impact of the Early Mendicant Movement on Western Culture (London: Longman, 1994).
obvious: to eliminate the Jewish presence in Christendom-both
by inducing the Jews to convert and by destroying all remnants of
Judaism even after no Jews remained...." 38 A contemporary Jewish writer stated that the Franciscans and Dominicans [which, as
noted above, were the intellectual leaders of the church and dominated universities] "are everywhere oppressing Israel.... [T]hey
are more wretched than all mankind" 39.... 40