The West - the History of an Idea, with Georgios Varouxakis

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, Georgios Varouxakis will explain. Join him for a panel discussion with eminent intellectual historians on the occasion of the publication of his new book The West. The History of an Idea (Princeton, 2025)

This panel discussion will be the occasion to foreground the role that French philosopher Auguste Comte played in the emergence of the concept of ‘the West’ from the 1840s onwards when he decisively promoted it in the context of an anti-imperialist political project.

The role of several other French thinkers who play important roles in The West: The History of an Idea will be discussed, including the Abbé de Pradt, Saint-Simon and several Saint-Simonians, Henri Massis, André Siegfried, Simone Weil, Alexandre Kojève, Raymond Aron, Cornelius Castoriadis and Michel Houellebecq.

The panel will bring together international specialists in Intellectual History to discuss Georgios Varouxakis's contention that the use of the term ‘the West’ served to avoid the confusing or unwanted consequences of the use of ‘Europe.’ The two overlapped, but were not identical, with the West used to differentiate from certain “others” within Europe as well as to include the Americas.

The panel will be composed of:

Michel Bourdeau

• Directeur de recherche émérite, CNRS
• Secrétaire de la Maison d’Auguste Comte, Paris

Silvia Sebastiani

• Directrice d'études de l'EHESS
• Chaire: Histoire et anthropologie des Lumières
• Centre de recherches historiques

David Todd

• Professeur des universités - Centre d’Histoire de Sciences Po
• Directeur des études doctorales en histoire

Georgios Varouxakis

• Professor of the History of Political Thought
• Co-director, Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought
• Queen Mary University of London

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Host or Publisher University of London Institute in Paris