In his famous 1950 Hillel House lectures, “Jerusalem and Athens,” Leo Strauss laid a vision of what he saw as a fundamental (but complimentary) tension between Jerusalem and Athens or between Scripture and philosophy. While Christian theologians might disagree with Strauss’s approach, and scholars and laymen alike might argue for a more inclusive vision of the sources of Western civilization, Strauss is at least right no note that Western civilization as we know it would be inconceivable without Greek philosophy and the Bible.
Indeed, in the contemporary attempt to cancel, modify, and, in some cases, abolish Western civilization, the classics, the Bible, and Christianity, in general, have come under assault. Thus even the critics of the West realize that “classical civilization” is one of the major pillars of the West, and in order to destroy or at least remodel the West, our classical understandings of Greece and Rome have to go.
In her new work from Princeton University Press, “Plato Goes to China: The Classics and Chinese Nationalism,” University of Chicago classics professor Shadi Bartsch explores the reality that the Chinese people have, for some time, realized the importance that classical Greek political thought has in the West and have further developed an alternating love/hate relationship with Greek thought.
Bartsch’s books derive from a series of lectures she gave at Oberlin College in 2018 and, as she admits, have stirred some controversy in China. Bartsch’s work is especially fitting for our time, seeing as how in the United States, while
