What do you think?
Rate this book
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.
512 pages, Hardcover
Published July 8, 2025
About the author
Georgios Varouxakis
15 books11 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
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.
January 10, 2026
The use of ‘The West’ in current discourse, especially political discourse in the US, drew me to this work. There’s a tendency to always read back current debates, positions, and parties into the past. This book shows how the concept of West as its deployed today really rests in 19th century discourse, and would’ve been alien to the ancients or even to people a few centuries ago.
(I even think current usage is fuzzy and often arbitrary. Is Russia, for instance, part of the West? Many a Christian nationalist seems to argue for its inclusion. What about Marxism? Western idea? These same people will often argue No and see Marx and Marxism as anti-Western. Even getting away from them, how would one draw a line, especially in a world where the line is drawn usually to oversimplify and serve some partisan goal?)
(I even think current usage is fuzzy and often arbitrary. Is Russia, for instance, part of the West? Many a Christian nationalist seems to argue for its inclusion. What about Marxism? Western idea? These same people will often argue No and see Marx and Marxism as anti-Western. Even getting away from them, how would one draw a line, especially in a world where the line is drawn usually to oversimplify and serve some partisan goal?)
June 21, 2026
This book explores how intellectuals have understood the idea of the 'West'. It is not a sociological account of overlapping values of 'Western' countries (like the cultural maps that Ronald Ingelhart produced, although the 'West' was not one of his organising concepts). Nor is it centrally a political history, although inevitably historical events - including the major wars in Europe and the Cold War - prompted much of the intellectual discussion described in the book.
In the literature on the history of the idea of the West, the main contribution claimed by author Georgios Varouxakis is to push back the sociopolitical concept of the West from the late to the early 19th century, and particularly the ideas of the French thinker Auguste Comte.
The use of 'the West' has persistently been to sidestep some other organisational category or to extend the concept beyond its agreed source in Western Europe.
While all countries seen as 'Western' are historically majority Christian, 'Christendom' is too broad a category. In particular Russia, the West's main enemy over the last century, must be excluded despite its cultural ties to Orthodox Christianity. The nearly thousand year old split between Catholic and Orthodox Christianity is in the background of European divisions between West and East, as are the older still Western and Eastern Roman empires. But Orthodox Greece has generally been claimed by the West, for the intellectual contribution of the ancient Greeks and for strategic reasons in the 20th century.
'Europe' like Christendom was too broad - also plausibly including Russia. Varouxakis notes too that before the idea of the West took hold it was more common to use 'North' and 'South' to describe divisions within Europe.
But Europe was - and this is Comte's contribution - also too narrow. It left out the majority European countries outside Europe, especially the United States but also Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
The US was a complicated case because often it defined itself as different to Europe, had an isolationist element in its political culture, and because the 'West' there had a different meaning in its own western frontier. But in the 20th century its contribution to two European wars, its containment of communist Russia during the Cold War, and its cultural and economic influence made it the key 'Western' country.
When I ordered this book I was expecting something more sociological and historical, but I like intellectual history. Varouxakis speaks multiple languages and so there are good surveys of French and German, as well as English-language, thinkers.
In the literature on the history of the idea of the West, the main contribution claimed by author Georgios Varouxakis is to push back the sociopolitical concept of the West from the late to the early 19th century, and particularly the ideas of the French thinker Auguste Comte.
The use of 'the West' has persistently been to sidestep some other organisational category or to extend the concept beyond its agreed source in Western Europe.
While all countries seen as 'Western' are historically majority Christian, 'Christendom' is too broad a category. In particular Russia, the West's main enemy over the last century, must be excluded despite its cultural ties to Orthodox Christianity. The nearly thousand year old split between Catholic and Orthodox Christianity is in the background of European divisions between West and East, as are the older still Western and Eastern Roman empires. But Orthodox Greece has generally been claimed by the West, for the intellectual contribution of the ancient Greeks and for strategic reasons in the 20th century.
'Europe' like Christendom was too broad - also plausibly including Russia. Varouxakis notes too that before the idea of the West took hold it was more common to use 'North' and 'South' to describe divisions within Europe.
But Europe was - and this is Comte's contribution - also too narrow. It left out the majority European countries outside Europe, especially the United States but also Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
The US was a complicated case because often it defined itself as different to Europe, had an isolationist element in its political culture, and because the 'West' there had a different meaning in its own western frontier. But in the 20th century its contribution to two European wars, its containment of communist Russia during the Cold War, and its cultural and economic influence made it the key 'Western' country.
When I ordered this book I was expecting something more sociological and historical, but I like intellectual history. Varouxakis speaks multiple languages and so there are good surveys of French and German, as well as English-language, thinkers.
February 24, 2026
A must read for everyone who wants to understand the history of the West and Europe.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews