What Is Western Civilization?

Podcast audio:

The recent student protests in support of Hamas reveal a troubling trend: a growing cultural willingness to excuse violence and barbarism. In response, many intellectuals have rallied to defend Western civilization. But when pressed to define it, they invoke “Judeo-Christian values.” Is religion really the source of Western culture, thought, and freedom?

In his talk, “What is Western Civilization?”, delivered at the 2025 Objectivist Conference, Yaron Brook answers with a resounding no. His full case for the West is now available online.

Brook argues that “there was no Western civilization when Christianity dominated.” The centuries ruled by the Church were marked by stagnation and repression. The true seeds of the West were planted during the Renaissance, when thinkers, artists, and scientists, inspired by the rediscovery of Greek philosophy, embraced a worldly outlook. That reawakening flowered in the Enlightenment, with its veneration of reason, rejection of religious dogma, and an American Revolution founded on individual rights and the sovereignty of the human mind. Yet Brook notes that Enlightenment thinkers never fully severed themselves from Christian altruism, leaving the West philosophically vulnerable.

But with the right ideas, our culture can push back. The task before us, Brook urges, is to strengthen those ideas by embracing reason as an absolute, something only Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism accomplishes. In doing so, we can secure the future of Western civilization.

Among the topics covered:

• Why our culture struggles to defend Western civilization;
• Why Christianity is not the foundation of the West;
• How the Renaissance reawakened a rational, worldly orientation;
• How the Enlightenment consolidated the Western respect for reason and individualism;
• How the Enlightenment fell short, and what we can do about it;
• Miscellaneous questions:
  • Aristotle’s role in the West’s development;
  • Whether there is hope that popular intellectuals will engage with Objectivism;
  • What Western civilization will look like in the future.

This talk was recorded live on July 1st in Boston, MA, as part of the 2025 Objectivist Summer Conference, and is available on the Ayn Rand Institute Podcast stream. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Watch archived podcasts here.