CIVILIZATION WITHOUT ROMANCE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/eph.v17i2.101Keywords:
humanism, absolute truth, religion, politicsAbstract
Civilization, rather than being an alternative to the state of nature, is instead its efficient form. The instruments and institutions of civilization—economic and political structure, law, culture, religion, war, etc.—are manifestations of humankind’s genetic predispositions toward cooperation and reason. The fabric of civilization comprises behaviors and institutions that coalesce around core beliefs that need not be objectively true. The principal cost of civilization is defined by the social obligations that individuals are compelled to incur, and the opportunities for private benefit that they are compelled to forego, all for the sake of maintaining an optimal degree of civil unity and trust. Disputes about these costs give rise to culture wars, civil wars, and clashes between civilizations.
References
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Jones, Eric. 2006. Cultures Merging: A Historical and Economic Critique of Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kennedy, Randall. 2008. Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal. New York: Pantheon Books.
Lawrence, T.E. [1926] 1966. Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph. New York: Doubleday.
Locke, John. [1690] 1988. Two Treatises of Government. New York: Cambridge University Press.
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Nisbett, Richard, and Dov Cohen. 1996. Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.
Novick, Peter. 1999. The Holocaust in American Life. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Olson, Mancur. 1982. The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities. New Haven: Yale University Press.
–––. 1965. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press.
Oslington, Paul, ed. 2003. Economics and Religion. 2 vols. Cheltenham, U.K.: Elgar Reference Collection.
Pagels, Elaine. 2003. Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas. New York: Random House.
Pinker, Steven. 2002. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Viking.
Pipes, Richard. 1999. Property and Freedom. New York: Vintage Books.
Prothero, Stephen. 2003. American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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–––. 1997. The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation. New York: Viking.
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Spengler, Oswald. 1926. The Decline of the West. 2 vols. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Stark, Rodney. 2005. The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success. New York: Random House.
–––. 2001. One True God: Historical Consequences of Monotheism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
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Weber, Max. [1930] 1992. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London: Routledge.
–––. [1922] 1963. The Sociology of Religion. Boston: Beacon Press.
Wilder, Esther, and William Walters. 1998. Ethnic and Religious Components of the Jewish Income Advantage, 1969 and 1989. Sociological Inquiry 68:3 (June), pp. 426-36.
Williamson, Oliver. 1993. Calculativeness, Trust, and Economic Organization. Journal of Law and Economics 36:1 (Pt. 2) (April), pp. 453-86.
Wilson, David Sloan. 2002. Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wilson, Edward O. 1978. On Human Nature. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Yeager, Leland. 2001. Ethics as Social Science: The Moral Philosophy of Social Cooperation. Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar.
Atran, Scott. 2002. In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press.
Axelrod, Robert. 1984. The Evolution of Cooperation. New York: Basic Books.
Bhagwati, Jagdish. 1982. Directly Unproductive, Profit-Seeking (DUP) Activities. Journal of Political Economy 90 (August): 988-1002.
Balkin, J.M. 1998. Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Barro, Robert, and Rachael McCleary. 2003. Religion and Economic Growth. Harvard University Working Paper (April 8). Available at http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/barro/papers/Religion_and_Economic_Growth.pdf
Becker, Gary. 1971. The Economics of Discrimination, 2d. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Berger, Peter, and Thomas Luckmann. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Doubleday.
bin Laden, Osama. 2002. Statement to America (November 24). Available at http://home.alphalink.com.au/~radnat/austindependence/osama.html
Bloom, Harold. 1992. The American Religion: The Emergence of a Post-Christian Nation. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Brennan, Geoffrey, and James Buchanan. 1980. The Power to Tax: Analytical Foundations of a Fiscal Constitution. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Burleigh, Michael. 2007. Sacred Causes: The Clash of Religion and Politics, from the Great War to the War on Terror. New York: HarperCollins.
–––. 2005. Earthly Powers: The Clash of Religion and Politics in Europe from the French Revolution to the Great War. New York: HarperCollins.
Campbell, Joseph. 1991. The Power of Myth. New York: Anchor Books.
Chambers, Whittaker. [1952] 2002. Witness, 50th Anniversary ed. Washington: Regnery Publishing.
Darwin, Charles. [1859] 1985. The Origin of Species. New York: Penguin.
Dawkins, Richard. 2006. The God Delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
–––. 1999. The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene, rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
–––. 1995. River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life. New York: BasicBooks.
–––. [1976] 1989. The Selfish Gene, new ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
Day, Vox. 2008. The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens. Dallas: Benbella Books.
de Gaulle, Charles. [1932] 1960. The Edge of the Sword. London: Farber and Farber.
Dennett, Daniel. 2006. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. New York: Viking.
–––. 2003. Freedom Evolves. New York: Viking.
D’Souza, Dinesh. 2007. The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11. New York: Doubleday.
Easterly, William. 2006. The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. New York: Penguin.
Ekelund, Robert, Robert Hebert, Robert Tollison, Gary Anderson, and Audrey Davidson. 1996. Sacred Trust: The Medieval Church as an Economic Firm. New York: Oxford University Press.
Finkelstein, Norman. 2000. The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering. New York: Verso.
Frank, Robert. 1988. Passion within Reason: The Strategic Role of the Emotions. New York: W.W. Norton.
Frankfurt, Harry. 2005. On Bullshit. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Freeman, Charles. 2003. The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Fukuyama, Francis. 1995. Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. New York: Free Press.
Ginitis, Herbert, Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd, and Ernst Fuhr. 2005. Moral Sentiments and Material Interests. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Goldberg, Jonah. 2007. Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. New York: Doubleday.
Gomes, Peter. 2007. The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What’s So Good About the Good News? New York: HaprerOne.
Gordon, Robert, ed. 2002. The Legacy of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Harrison, Lawrence, and Samuel Huntington, eds. 2000. Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress. New York: Basic Books.
Hauser, Marc. 2006. Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong. New York: HarperCollins.
Hayek, F.A. 1988. The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press..
Hedges, Chris. 2006. American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. New York: Free Press.
Hobbes, Thomas. [1651] 1998. Leviathan. New York: Oxford University Press.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr. 1941. The Holmes-Pollock Letters: The Correspondence of Mr. Justice Holmes and Sir Frederick Pollock, 1874–1932. Vol. 2. Edited by M. Howe. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Hosking, Geoffrey, and George Sch_pflin. 1997. Myths and Nationhood. New York: Routledge.
Huntington, Samuel. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Touchstone.
Iannaccone, Lawrence. 1998. Introduction to the Economics of Religion. Journal of Economic Literature 36:3 (September), pp. 1465-1494.
Inglehart, Ronald. 2000. Culture and Democracy. In Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress, edited by L. Harrison and S. Huntington, pp. 81-97. New York: Basic Books.
Jones, Eric. 2006. Cultures Merging: A Historical and Economic Critique of Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kennedy, Randall. 2008. Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal. New York: Pantheon Books.
Lawrence, T.E. [1926] 1966. Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph. New York: Doubleday.
Locke, John. [1690] 1988. Two Treatises of Government. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Machiavelli, Niccolo. [1531] 1996. Discourses on Livy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
McCloskey, Deirdre. 2006. The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics For an Age of Commerce. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mearsheimer, John, and Stephen Walt. 2007. The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Montanye, James A. 2006a. Entrepreneurship. The Independent Review 10:4 (Spring), pp. 547-69. Available at http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?issueID=45&articleID=574.
–––. 2006b. The Apotheosis of American Democracy. The Independent Review 11:1 (Summer), pp. 5-17. Available at http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?issueID=46&articleID=582.
Niebuhr, Helmut Richard. 1989. Faith on Earth: An Inquiry into the Structure of Human Faith. Edited by Richard R. Niebuhr. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Nisbett, Richard, and Dov Cohen. 1996. Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.
Novick, Peter. 1999. The Holocaust in American Life. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Olson, Mancur. 1982. The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities. New Haven: Yale University Press.
–––. 1965. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press.
Oslington, Paul, ed. 2003. Economics and Religion. 2 vols. Cheltenham, U.K.: Elgar Reference Collection.
Pagels, Elaine. 2003. Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas. New York: Random House.
Pinker, Steven. 2002. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Viking.
Pipes, Richard. 1999. Property and Freedom. New York: Vintage Books.
Prothero, Stephen. 2003. American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Putnam, Robert. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Quigley, Carroll. 1979. The Evolution of Civilizations: An Introduction to Historical Analysis, 2d. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
Ridley, Matt. 2003. Nature Via Nurture: Genes, Experiences, and What Makes Us Human. New York: HarperCollins.
–––. 1997. The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation. New York: Viking.
Rorty, Richard. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Rothschild, Michael. 1990. Bionomics: The Inevitability of Capitalism. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Rubin, Paul. 2002. Darwinian Politics: The Evolutionary Origin of Freedom. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Sagan, Carl. 2006. The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God. Edited by A. Druyan. New York: Penguin.
Schoeck, Helmut. 1966. Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World.
Schumpeter, Joseph. 1942. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper and Brothers.
Seligman, Adam. 1997. The Problem of Trust. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Shermer, Michael. 2000. How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science. New York: W.H. Freeman.
Spencer, Herbert. [1850] 1995. Social Statics: The Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified, and the First of Them Developed. New York: Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.
Spengler, Oswald. 1926. The Decline of the West. 2 vols. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Stark, Rodney. 2005. The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success. New York: Random House.
–––. 2001. One True God: Historical Consequences of Monotheism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Stark, Rodney, and Roger Finke. 2000. Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion. Oakland: University of California Press.
Trivers, Robert. 1985. Social Evolution. Menlo Park, Calif.: Benjamin/Cumminigs.
Vidich, Arthur, and Joseph Bensman. [1958] 2000. Small Town in Mass Society: Class, Power, and Religion in a Rural Community, rev. ed. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press.
Weber, Max. [1930] 1992. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London: Routledge.
–––. [1922] 1963. The Sociology of Religion. Boston: Beacon Press.
Wilder, Esther, and William Walters. 1998. Ethnic and Religious Components of the Jewish Income Advantage, 1969 and 1989. Sociological Inquiry 68:3 (June), pp. 426-36.
Williamson, Oliver. 1993. Calculativeness, Trust, and Economic Organization. Journal of Law and Economics 36:1 (Pt. 2) (April), pp. 453-86.
Wilson, David Sloan. 2002. Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wilson, Edward O. 1978. On Human Nature. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Yeager, Leland. 2001. Ethics as Social Science: The Moral Philosophy of Social Cooperation. Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar.
Published
2013-10-09
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Montanye, J. A. (2013). CIVILIZATION WITHOUT ROMANCE. Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism, 17(2), 101-128. https://doi.org/10.1558/eph.v17i2.101
