Customer Reviews

Beyond the Global Culture War (Global Horizons)

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I read this book a half a year ago, and while I was not used to the ideas in the book at first, it quickly revealed itself as a very well-written and thought-out book. You can't start reading this book with preconceptions because Webb thinks differently from all the major thinkers now. It seems like a thing of the past to write meta-histories of abstract facets of the human experience, but Webb does this skillfully and convincingly.
In his book, Webb describes four self-understandings in the course of history that cut across cultures: atomism, perfectionism, demoticism, and virtuocracy. Atomism is the self-understanding taken up by the Sophists of ancient Greece, the Legalists of ancient China, and yes, modern Liberalism in the broad sense. Perfectionism maps onto mystics across cultures and through history. Demoticism maps onto the peasants and community-centered citizens. Hobbits would be demots. Virtuocracy maps onto the clergy and other spiritual elites. For most of history, Virtuocratic, Demotic, and Perfectionist self-understandings have reigned. Since the late 1800s, however, Atomism has gradually become the most popular and powerful self-understanding. How has Atomism achieved this primary status? How has the world changed because of this? What are viable alternatives to an atomist "End of history?" Read Webb's book to find out.

One cannot pigeon-hole Webb into any political category. He is neither a liberal nor a conservative. For liberals (in the broad sense) out there, read this book to see what an intelligent response to liberalism looks like, instead of dismissing all anti-liberals or anti-modernists as backward and stupid. For conservatives, read this book to find out how conservatism has been hijacked by the atomist agenda, and how conservatism is really a shadow of what it's meant to be.

This is one of the most powerful and persuasive critiques of liberal modernity to have appeared in recent years. Webb is an unusually intelligent and perceptive thinker and this fine book should be widely read with considerable interest even by those who, like this reviewer, are not so down on the modern, capitalist, and liberal-democratic world.