The Key Concept Behind Western Achievements

The following exclusive excerpt comes from Rodney Stark’s indispensable book How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity.

Compare Shakespeare’s tragedies with those of the ancient Greeks. Not that Oedipus was without faults, but he did noth­ing to deserve his sad end—he simply fell victim to his destiny. In contrast, Othello, Brutus, and the Macbeths were not the captives of blind fate. As Cassius pointed out to Brutus, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

And in the end, each of these Shake­spearian characters got what he or she deserved.

One of the most important ideas facilitating the rise of the West is the belief in free will. Whereas most (if not all) ancient societies believed in fate, Westerners came to believe that humans are relatively free to follow the dictates of their conscience and that, to a substantial degree, they make their own fate. This belief had remarkable behavioral conse­quences. Most important, perhaps, it created a tendency for people not to be resigned to things as they are but rather to attempt to make the situ­ation better.

Moreover, belief in free will led directly to valuing the right of the individual to freely choose, with the result that medieval Europe rejected slavery—the only culture ever to have done so without external compulsion. (Of course, eventually the West had to do it again in the New World.) The value placed on individual freedom, combined with the legacy of Greek efforts at democracy, led to new democratic experiments in the medieval Italian city-states.

Meanwhile, the rise of large monas­tic estates having extensive commercial activities led to the invention of capitalism and to the reformulation of theological doctrines in ways favorable to commerce. Subsequently, capitalism gained a firm footing in the newly democratic Italian city-states, transforming them into major centers of banking, trade, and even manufacturing.

Free Will

Unlike the Greeks and Romans, whose gods lacked virtues and did not concern themselves with human misbehavior (other than failures to pro­pitiate them in the appropriate manner), the Judeo-Christian God is a judge who rewards virtue and punishes sin. This conception of God is incompatible with fatalism; the admonition to “Go and sin no more” is absurd if we are captives of our fate. Judaism and, later, Christianity were founded on the doctrine that humans have been given the capacity and hence the responsibility to determine their own actions. As Deuteronomy (30:19–20) puts it: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him.”

Saint Augustine (354–430) wrote again and again that we “possess a will” and that “from this it follows that whoever desires to live righteously and honorably, can accomplish this.” The notion of free will, Augustine added, is entirely compatible with the doctrine that God knows ahead of time what choices we will make. Writing in refutation of Greek and Roman philosophers, he asserted “both that God knows all things before they come to pass, and that we do by our free will whatsoever we know and feel to be done by us only because we will it. But that all things come from fate we do not say; nay we affirm that nothing comes to pass by fate.”

In other words, God knows what we will freely decide to do but does not interfere; it remains up to us to choose virtue or sin.

Augustine’s views were echoed across generations of Christian thought. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), for example, taught that “a man can direct and govern his own actions” and that “the rational creature participates in the divine providence not only in being governed but also in governing.”

The idea of free will was not exclusive to the Judeo-Christian heritage. The Roman philosopher Cicero (106–43 BC) expressed views somewhat similar to Augustine’s. But for Jews and Christians, free will was not an obscure philosophical matter. Rather, it was the fundamental principle of their faith, without which the Ten Commandments were nonsense. Thus both Moses and Jesus taught that each individual must atone for moral lapses precisely because these are wrong choices.

Being central to Jewish and Christian thought, the doctrine of free will called into question the legitimacy of social structures and customs that limited the individual’s ability to choose freely—especially slavery and tyranny.

About the Author

Rodney Stark is the award-winning author of many books, including The Victory of Reason, The Rise of Christianity, God’s Battalions, and The Triumph of Faith. He serves as Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University.