Los Altos Institute Archive

This is our four-hour course on how to do your own research. You should download our course slides and reference pages here:

The class discusses the utility of the idea of Western Civilization.

In this episode, we return to the theme of the West in war propaganda, focusing on the ideas of JRR Tolkien and Edward Gibbon in modern war propaganda.

Post-colonial theory is largely a theory of and about the idea of Western Civilization. In this episode, we discuss the plurality of opinions and thinkers in this academic movement and outline some common positions.

We discuss the influence of Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West and its influence on the political movements of his day and those of the present, and how the idea of Aryanism interacts with ideas of "the West."

In this episode we talk about how nineteenth century ideas of whiteness reshaped the idea of Western Civilization.

The Enlightenment was a global event that had peculiar and specific effects on the West.

We discuss the importance of Henry the Navigator and the highly contingent character of Europe's rise to global hegemony during the Age of Discovery.

We discuss the Crusades from an ecological and intellectual rather than military perspective and tease out emerging features of the West in the Middle Ages.

We discuss the emergence of "Western Civilization" as a religious idea developed near Paris in the High Middle Ages.