A New Western Renaissance?

What would the West have been without the Renaissance? What would we Europeans have been without the artistic and intellectual movement that during the 15th and 16th centuries renewed and revitalized our culture, among other things by portraying this culture as a direct heir to Greco-Roman antiquity?

The Renaissance was not only the starting point for a renewed interest in our European antiquity. It was also the era when some of our European state-states took shape and when Europeans began their conquest of the world. Europe found its place in history and became a dominant player on the world political stage.

Could we, at the beginning of the third millennium after Christ, be on the way to a new Renaissance? It was five hundred years since it first happened, so perhaps it is time again.

Many would say that it would be much needed. The West has been tormented for several decades by its bad conscience over catastrophic colonialism. We have engaged in an intellectualized and institutionalized self-hatred. Oikophobia is a well-known concept: the fear of the self, and above all the fear of being ourselves and emphasizing the value of our culture and our identity. In the long run, this is pure self-destructive behavior. We’re on a mission to destroy ourselves.

Ask any psychologist. On an individual level, we humans always need to cultivate some form of positive self-concept. Sigmund Freud believed that we need to live with a healthy narcissism. It is our healthy and functional narcissism that makes us act in our own interest and that makes us set boundaries with others and treat ourselves to a good life.

This principle must also apply on a collective level. Societies and cultures must also cultivate a positive self-concept. A culture must in some sense want to exist, want to survive, want to flourish and want to develop to have any chance of surviving and developing at all. Here, the contribution of the political left to the development of the West has been almost catastrophic. We belittle on ourselves. We are careless with our traditions. We accept uncontrolled mass immigration that weakens the position of Western identity in our societies. We teach our children to view our own culture as a problem and not as an asset. Sometimes they should even be ashamed of being white and Western. They should be ashamed of everything the West has done throughout history. And they should diminish the value of themselves, their culture and their own identity.

A parallel between the 16th century and our own time is the importance of a new means of communication. Gutenberg invented the printing press in the mid-15th century and it was a novelty that revolutionized the intellectual landscape. The monasteries and the church were challenged by other actors who could now quickly print books with exciting new content. This contributed to the spread of the challenging ideas of the Renaissance and the Reformation.

Today, the Internet is renewing the information landscape and helping new players challenge established monopolies of knowledge. Previously, it was the large media and book publishers that controlled the flow of information. Today, anyone can post a video on YouTube, write on their own blog or simply interact with other Internet users on social media. This has clearly contributed to revitalizing political debate. It has also contributed to democratizing it.

People who previously could only complain about established politicians at the kitchen table can now publicly express their opinions on the Internet. Of course, this means a crisis in both quality and fact-checking. Not everything is positive. But it is difficult to deny that the new communications landscape has meant that public discourse has become more varied and more substantive. Old monopolies are being challenged. Freethinkers and dissidents can address their audience directly without the old universities or media companies being able to do anything about it.

Then, of course, we have the content of all this newness conveyed through new channels. The new right that is now emerging throughout the Western world has had a penchant for the Internet. It is no coincidence that a person like Jordan Peterson has left the traditional university and instead uses the Internet as his new university. The new and exciting does not happen at the university but on the Internet. And what is often called personal development or self-help today is a kind of practical philosophy. How should we live? How should we be happy? What should we strive for? What is Good and Right?

It is obvious that many self-help prophets refer to classic ancient Western ideals such as body awareness, moderation, sobriety, courage, self-confidence, learning and wisdom. Stoicism is today the subject of growing interest among young right-wingers. The reason is certainly that we live in a time of abundance and pleasure. Everywhere there is an excess of stimuli in the form of sugar, salt, carbohydrates, alcohol, computer games, social media, music, films, pornography and just general convenience. In this situation, to refer to the stoicism of Seneca and other classical writers or perhaps just to Aristotle and Cicero’s celebration of virtues and responsibility is to make Antiquity relevant again.

Another aspect is the new interest that many Westerners apparently have in Christianity. Jesus is coming back. During the Renaissance the interest in our origins and the interest in classical Greek also created a new interest in a more direct relationship with the fundamental texts of Christianity in the New Testament. That we had both a Protestant Reformation and a Catholic Counter-Reformation should be understood as a result of the renewal of Christian thought that took place thanks to the intellectuals of the time returning to the original texts of Christianity.

Another interesting parallel is that of the break with scholasticism. During the Middle Ages, intellectual thought was closely linked to the monasteries and the church. Science was the handmaid of faith and intellectual thought was limited both by Christian moralism and by the strict formalism of scholasticism. With the Renaissance, intellectual thinking freed itself from Scholasticism and this was the starting point for both the new natural sciences and freer and more rational thinking in the humanities and social sciences. Isn’t it obvious that the more daring intellectual thinking we get to see on the internet appears to be the result of a liberation that is currently taking place from the strict scholasticism of our time?

Even today, the humanities and social science thinking that exists in the established institutions is dominated by moral principles (as defined by the political left) and sterile formalism. The great intellectuals of our time are probably no longer in universities but on the Internet. And Jordan Peterson’s angriest critics in universities will be about as famous in two hundred years as the academics who criticized Voltaire in the 18th century are today.

We see the emergence of a new Western sense of self. There is a growing awareness of the necessity of masculine values, of strength and self-confidence. There is also a growing interest in our own culture and our own history. And once again, it is Antiquity, perhaps the greatest golden age of our culture, that is at the center of our efforts to reinvent ourselves.

There is hope for the West. We have done it before. We have been confident and proud. We have done great things. A second great Western Renaissance would be exactly what we need most.