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The West: The History of an Idea
A comprehensive intellectual history of the idea of the West
How did “the West” come to be used as a collective self-designation signaling political and cultural commonality? When did “Westerners” begin to refer to themselves in this way? Was the idea handed down from the ancient Greeks, or coined by nineteenth-century imperialists? Neither, writes Georgios Varouxakis in The West, his ambitious and fascinating genealogy of the idea. “The West” was not used by Plato, Cicero, Locke, Mill, or other canonized figures of what we today call the Western tradition. It was not first wielded by empire-builders. It was, Varouxakis shows, decisively promoted in the 1840s by the French philosopher Auguste Comte (whose political project, incidentally, was passionately anti-imperialist). The need for the use of the term“the West” emerged to avoid the confusing or unwanted consequences of the use of “Europe.” The two overlapped, but were not identical, with the West used to exclude certain “others” within Europe as well as to include the Americas.
After examining the origins, Varouxakis traces the many and often surprising changes in the ways in which the West has been understood, and the different intentions and repercussions related to a series of these contested definitions. While other theories of the West consider only particular aspects of the concept and its history (if only in order to take aim at its reputation), Varouxakis’s analysis offers a comprehensive, multilayered account that reaches to the present day, exploring the multiplicity of current and prospective meanings. He concludes with an examination of how, since 2022, definitions and membership in the West are being reworked to include Ukraine, as the evolution and redefinition continue.
How did “the West” come to be used as a collective self-designation signaling political and cultural commonality? When did “Westerners” begin to refer to themselves in this way? Was the idea handed down from the ancient Greeks, or coined by nineteenth-century imperialists? Neither, writes Georgios Varouxakis in The West, his ambitious and fascinating genealogy of the idea. “The West” was not used by Plato, Cicero, Locke, Mill, or other canonized figures of what we today call the Western tradition. It was not first wielded by empire-builders. It was, Varouxakis shows, decisively promoted in the 1840s by the French philosopher Auguste Comte (whose political project, incidentally, was passionately anti-imperialist). The need for the use of the term“the West” emerged to avoid the confusing or unwanted consequences of the use of “Europe.” The two overlapped, but were not identical, with the West used to exclude certain “others” within Europe as well as to include the Americas.
After examining the origins, Varouxakis traces the many and often surprising changes in the ways in which the West has been understood, and the different intentions and repercussions related to a series of these contested definitions. While other theories of the West consider only particular aspects of the concept and its history (if only in order to take aim at its reputation), Varouxakis’s analysis offers a comprehensive, multilayered account that reaches to the present day, exploring the multiplicity of current and prospective meanings. He concludes with an examination of how, since 2022, definitions and membership in the West are being reworked to include Ukraine, as the evolution and redefinition continue.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
512 pages, Hardcover
Published July 8, 2025
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363 people want to read
About the author
Georgios Varouxakis
14 books7 followersI grew up and went to school in Crete, Greece. I studied History and Archaeology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Then I completed an “MA in Legal and Political Theory” at University College London (UCL) and a PhD in History at UCL. After eight years at Aston University, Birmingham, I joined Queen Mary in 2006. My work to date has concentrated on the nineteenth and twentieth-century history of political thought and intellectual history with a particular emphasis on international political thought, political thought on nationalism, patriotism and cosmopolitanism, empire, and the intellectual history of ideas of “Europe” and “the West”, as well as of attitudes towards the EEC/EU.
My fourth book monograph is The West: The History an Idea (Princeton University Press, 2025. My earlier books include Liberty Abroad: J.S. Mill on International Relations (Cambridge University Press – “Ideas in Context” series, 2013), Victorian Political Thought on France and the French (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), Mill on Nationality (Routledge, 2002), and Contemporary France: An Introduction to French Politics and Society. (Arnold, 2003, co-authored with David Howarth).
I am Co-Director of the "Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought" and Co-Director of the intercollegiate "MA in the History of Political Thought and Intellectual History" (jointly offered by Queen Mary and UCL). I have been a Research Fellow at UCL, a Visiting Research Fellow at Princeton University, a Senior Research Fellow at the Lichtenberg-Kolleg, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, and a Visiting Fellow at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, Vienna.
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August 31, 2025
Often times we find ourselves using concepts whose definitions we believe are controversial and unclear not just because they are abstract but because (to paraphrase Nietzsche) only that which has no history is really definable.
In the absence of an uncontroversial definition of The West, this is a well-written book that attempts to give the history of the concept.
Recommended.
In the absence of an uncontroversial definition of The West, this is a well-written book that attempts to give the history of the concept.
Recommended.
Displaying 1 of 1 review