The Judgment of the Nations

Works of Christopher Dawson

by Christopher Henry Dawson, Michael J. Keating (Introduction)

Christopher Dawson wrote The Judgment of the Nations in 1942, in the midst of the horrors of World War II. He took four years in the writing of it, years, he claimed, "more disastrous than any that Europe had known since the fourteenth century." By his own admission it had cost him greater labor and thought than any other book he had written. It is, perhaps, his most characteristic work.

Dawson argues in compressed form for what he laid out more systematically in other books: his view that the West was at an hour of crisis and was fighting for its life as a civilization. He did not view the disasters of the two World Wars as the cause of that disintegration; they were rather symptoms of a much deeper malaise, that of the loss of the spiritual vision that had created and sustained Western culture through the centuries. He lays out his understanding of what might be necessary for the West to reengage its spiritual and cultural roots and find a new way forward. For Dawson, such a restoration could not be coercive, but needed rather to be based upon a new perception of the inherent cultural creativity of Christianity.

The Judgment of the Nations was widely praised upon publication. The Guardian called it "an appraisement of the contemporary situation by an historical thinker of the first importance," and the Irish Independent "a monument, alike of historical and of philosophical erudition." It was Dawson's hope in this work to describe the nature of the spiritual struggle Europe was facing, to map out its true lines, and to point the way through an impending and perhaps probable disaster to a renewal of European life, a renewal whose success or failure would have a decisive impact on the entire world.


Originally published: New York: Sheed and Ward, 1942. With new introduction.

Genres: History, Cultural, Politics, Nonfiction, Religion, Catholic

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1942

About the author

Christopher Henry Dawson (12 October 1889, Hay Castle – 25 May 1970, Budleigh Salterton) was a British independent scholar, who wrote many books on cultural history and Christendom. Christopher H. Dawson has been called "the greatest English-speaking Catholic historian of the twentieth century".

Reviews

[Jarrett Vandiver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dawson is becoming one of my favorite historians. This book tells the story of Europe from the Christian perspective and explains how the loss of Christian culture—the only true unifying force that energized European development—led to the world wars, which Dawson was living through when he wrote this in England in 1942.

When a group loses touch with its culture (I.e. its religion), which happened in the Enlightenment, it will begin to doubt its existence and cave in on itself. As Dawson himself experienced in the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, the cultural (religious) disintegration of European life caused many states to base their laws not on universal ideas of divine justice but on the particular state’s will to power, the evolutionary struggle for existence.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Christopher Dawson dealt in the large themes of history. He saw the direction of a culture as being set by its spirituality. The roots of all cultures are religious. Written during the Second World War, this book discusses the future of Europe in the light of its history. There are still many lessons here that can inform the current troubles between the United Kingdom and the European Union.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good. Will maybe review later.

[David Withun · Rating 5 out of 5]

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[Aaron Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

But this conflict which divided the modern world was not really one between the religious and the anti-religious forces in our civilization, but a conflict between two rival religions: traditional Christianity on the one hand, and, on the other, a secular religion of human progress which aroused no less enthusiastic faith and boundless hope and love of humanity than any religious revival. All the "progressive" movements—the Enlightenment, Liberalism, Democracy, Humanitarianism, Socialism—aligned themselves on the side of the new religion, while the "reactionaries," the defenders of the old order—royalists, traditionalists, conservatives—rallied to the defense of traditional Christianity and to the Church as an institution.



…institutional Christianity has long ceased to dominate society and culture, whereas the sublimated Christianity of the Liberals and the humanitarians in spite of its vague and unorganized character was the working religion of Western democracy and exercised a real influence over the social consciousness.



Thus the racialist ideology, like the Communist ideology, is a result of the break-down of European unity and of the attempt to find a substitute for it in some primary social element which is permanent and indestructible. But if, as we believe, Europe was essentially a spiritual unity, based on religion and expressed in culture, it cannot be replaced by a biological or economic unit, for these belong to a different plane of social reality. They are social elements, not social organisms in the full sense.

[Roberto Lacerda · Rating 5 out of 5]

A leitura histórica de Dawson a partir das raízes religiosas, que fazem da Europa uma comunidade espiritual, seus apontamentos para o processo de destruição dessa unidade no Espírito e suas consequências, fazem dessa obra um clássico.

Mas o galês não se acovarda e fala sobre as possíveis soluções para a restauração dessa comunidade, baseada em povos que conhecem a própria individualidade enquanto nações independentes, mas são formados com base em tradições comuns.

O fracasso da Liga das Nações e ascenção de Estados Totalitários, a burocratização, a ditadura dos especialistas e os deveres dos cristãos frente ao avanço de projetos de aniquilação da civilização, são também abordados e analisados, à luz dos fatos históricos.

[Erik]

Recommended by James Schall in Another Sort of Learning, Intro to Part 2, as one of Seven Books by Christopher Dawson.