"Occident" is a term for the West, traditionally comprising anything that belongs to the Western world. It is the antonym of the term Orient, referring to the Eastern world. In English, it has largely fallen into disuse. The term "occidental" is often used to describe objects from the Occident but can be considered an outdated term by some. The term originated with geographical divisions mirroring the cultural divide between the Greek East and the Latin West, and the political divide between the Western and Eastern Roman Empires.
The term "Occident" derives from the Latin word occidens meaning "west" (lit. setting < occidofall/set). The use of the word for "setting" to refer to the west (where the sun sets) has analogs from many languages: compare the terms "Arevmutk" in Armenian: արեւմուտք (Armenian Arevmutk means "West" or "Sunset"), "Ponant" (< French ponant "setting"), “Dhisi” Greek: Δύση ( < Greek “Dhii” Greek: Δύει meaning “setting”), "Zapad" Russian: Запад (< Russian zakatRussian: закат "sunset"). In Arabic, the Maghreb "maḡrib" Arabic: مَغْرِب (< Arabic ḡarbغَرْب "to go down, to set") literally means "the sunset", "the west". Historically, the Maghreb was the southern part of the Western Roman Empire. In IsiZulu, the term "Ntshonalanga" for 'west' means 'where the sun sets' and analogously the term 'Mpumalanga' means 'where the sun rises'.
Another word for Occident in German is Abendland (rarely: "Okzident"), now mainly poetic, which literally translates as "evening land". The antonym "Morgenland" is also mainly poetic, and refers to Asia.
The opposite term "Orient" derives from the Latin word oriens, meaning "east" (lit. "rising" < orior " rise").
The adjectival term "Occidental" has been used to mean cultures, peoples, countries, European rugs, and goods from the Occident. "Occidental" means generally "western". It is a traditional designation (especially when capitalized) for anything belonging to the Occident or "West" (for Europe), and especially of its Western culture. It indicated the western direction in historical astronomy, often abbreviated "Occ".[1]
In more local uses, "occidental" is also used for western parts of countries, especially in Romance languages. Examples include the "oriental" and "occidental" provinces of Mindoro and Negros in the Philippines, and the French département of Pyrénées-Orientales.
In Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies (2004), Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit said that nationalist and nativist resistance to the West replicates Eastern-world responses against the socioeconomic forces of modernization, which originated in Western culture, among utopian radicals and conservative nationalists who viewed capitalism, liberalism, and secularism as forces destructive of their societies and cultures.[2] While the early responses to the West were a genuine encounter between alien cultures, many of the later manifestations of Occidentalism betray the influence of Western ideas upon Eastern intellectuals, such as the supremacy of the nation-state, the Romantic rejection of rationality, and the spiritual impoverishment of the citizenry of liberal democracies.
Buruma and Margalit trace that resistance to German Romanticism and to the debates, between the Westernizers and the Slavophiles in 19th century Russia, and show that like arguments appear in the ideologies of Zionism, Maoism, Islamism, and Imperial Japanese nationalism. Nonetheless, Alastair Bonnett rejects the analyses of Buruma and Margalit as Eurocentric, and said that the field of Occidentalism emerged from the interconnection of Eastern and Western intellectual traditions.[3][4][5]
↑ Shlapentokh, Dmitry (July 2, 2005). "Changing perceptions". Asia Times. Archived from the original on January 5, 2019. Retrieved 2013-01-29.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
Ankerl, Guy (2000). Coexisting contemporary civilizations: Arabo-Muslim, Bharati, Chinese, and West. INU societal research. Vol.1. Global communication without universal civilization. Geneva: INU Press. ISBN2-88155-004-5.
Hanafi, Hassan, Muqaddimah fi 'ilm al-istighrab (Introduction to Occidentalism), Cairo, Madbuli, 1991.
König, Daniel G., Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West. Tracing the Emergence of Medieval Europe, Oxford, OUP, 2015.
In art history, literature and cultural studies, orientalism is the imitation or depiction of aspects of the Eastern world by writers, designers, and artists from the Western world. Orientalist painting, particularly of the Middle East, was one of the many specialties of 19th-century academic art, and Western literature was influenced by a similar interest in Oriental themes.
The term Moor is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim populations of the Maghreb, al-Andalus, Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages. Moors are not a single, distinct or self-defined people. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica observed that the term had "no real ethnological value." Europeans of the Middle Ages and the early modern period variously applied the name to Arabs, Berbers, and Muslim Europeans.
A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means precisely or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words begin, start, commence, and initiate are all synonyms of one another: they are synonymous. The standard test for synonymy is substitution: one form can be replaced by another in a sentence without changing its meaning.
Farang is a Persian word that originally referred to the Franks and later came to refer to Western or Latin Europeans in general. The word is borrowed from Old French franc or Latin francus, which are also the source of Modern English France, French.
The Eastern Catholic Churches or Oriental Catholic Churches, also called the Eastern-Rite Catholic Churches, Eastern Rite Catholicism, or simply the Eastern Churches, are 23 Eastern Christian autonomous particular churches of the Catholic Church, in full communion with the Pope in Rome. Although they are distinct theologically, liturgically, and historically from the Latin Church, they are all in full communion with it and with each other. Eastern Catholics are a minority within the Catholic Church; of the 1.3 billion Catholics in communion with the Pope, approximately 18 million are members of the eastern churches. The largest numbers of Eastern Catholics may be found in Eastern Europe, Eastern Africa, the Middle East, and India. As of 2022, the Syro-Malabar Church is the largest Eastern Catholic Church, followed by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
The Orient is a term referring to the East in relation to Europe, traditionally comprising anything belonging to the Eastern world. It is the antonym of the term Occident, which refers to the Western world.
Westernization, also Europeanisation or occidentalization, is a process whereby societies come under or adopt what is considered to be Western culture, in areas such as industry, technology, science, education, politics, economics, lifestyle, law, norms, mores, customs, traditions, values, mentality, perceptions, diet, clothing, language, writing system, religion, and philosophy. During colonialism it often involved the spread of Christianity.
Septentrional, meaning "of the north", is a Latinate adjective sometimes used in English. It is a form of the Latin noun septentriones, which refers to the seven stars of the Plough, occasionally called the Septentrion.
Phosphorus is the god of the planet Venus in its appearance as the Morning Star. Another Greek name for the Morning Star is "Eosphorus", which means "dawn-bringer". The term "eosphorus" is sometimes met in English. As an adjective, the word "phosphorus" is applied in the sense of "light-bringing" and "torch-bearing" as an epithet of several gods and goddesses, especially of Hecate but also of Artemis/Diana and Hephaestus. Seasonally, Venus is the "light bringer" in the northern hemisphere, appearing most brightly in December, signalling the "rebirth" of longer days as winter wanes.
Ian Buruma is a Dutch writer and editor who lives and works in the United States. In 2017, he became editor of The New York Review of Books, but left the position in September 2018.
Occidentalism refers to a discipline that discusses the Western world. In this context the West becomes the object, while the East is the subject. The West in the context of Occidentalism does not refer to the West in a geographical sense, but to culture or custom, especially covering the fields of thought, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, history, religion, colonialism, war, apartheid, and geography. It is not as popular as Orientalism in the general public and in academic settings.
Orientalism is a 1978 book by Edward W. Said, in which the author establishes the term "Orientalism" as a critical concept to describe the West's commonly contemptuous depiction and portrayal of The East, i.e. the Orient. Societies and peoples of the Orient are those who inhabit the places of Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. Said argues that Orientalism, in the sense of the Western scholarship about the Eastern World, is inextricably tied to the imperialist societies who produced it, which makes much Orientalist work inherently political and servile to power.
Oriental studies is the academic field that studies Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology. In recent years, the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Middle Eastern studies and Asian studies. Traditional Oriental studies in Europe is today generally focused on the discipline of Islamic studies; the study of China, especially traditional China, is often called Sinology. The study of East Asia in general, especially in the United States, is often called East Asian studies.
Avishai Margalit is an Israeli professor emeritus in philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. From 2006 to 2011, he served as the George F. Kennan Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Ivan Vasilyevich Kireyevsky was a Russian literary critic and philosopher who, together with Aleksey Khomyakov, is credited as a co-founder of the Slavophile movement.
Gharbzadegi is a pejorative Persian term translated among other ways as 'Westernized', 'West-struck-ness', 'Westoxification'. The term implies both that Iran is "intoxicated" (zadegi) with the West, but also a victim of the West's "toxins" or disease. The "intoxication or infatuation ... impairs rational judgment" so that Iran is prevented from perceiving the danger of the object of its infatuation -- the toxins of the West -- "moral laxity, social injustice, secularism, devaluation of religion, and obsession with money, all of which are fueled by capitalism" and result in "cultural alienation." The term is used to refer to the loss of Iranian cultural identity through the adoption and imitation of Western models and Western criteria in education, the arts, and culture; through the transformation of Iran into a passive market for Western goods and a pawn in Western geopolitics.
A Christian is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the world. The words Christ and Christian derive from the Koine Greek title Christós, a translation of the Biblical Hebrew term mashiach (מָשִׁיחַ). While there are diverse interpretations of Christianity which sometimes conflict, they are united in believing that Jesus has a unique significance. The term Christian used as an adjective is descriptive of anything associated with Christianity or Christian churches, or in a proverbial sense "all that is noble, and good, and Christ-like." It does not mean "of Christ" or "related or pertaining to Christ".
The Eastern world, also known as the East or historically the Orient, is an umbrella term for various cultures or social structures, nations and philosophical systems, which vary depending on the context. It most often includes Asia, the Mediterranean region and the Arab world, specifically in historical (pre-modern) contexts, and in modern times in the context of Orientalism. The Eastern world is often seen as a counterpart to the Western world.
The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to various nations and states in the regions of Australasia, Western Europe, and Northern America; with some debate as to whether those in Eastern Europe and Latin America also constitute the West. The Western world likewise is called the Occident in contrast to the Eastern world known as the Orient. The West is considered an evolving concept; made up of cultural, political, and economic synergy among diverse groups of people, and not a rigid region with fixed borders and members. Definitions of "Western world" vary according to context and perspectives.
The Mashriq, also known as the Arab Mashriq, sometimes spelled Mashreq or Mashrek, is a term used by Arabs to refer to the eastern part of the Arab world, as opposed to the Maghreb (western) region, and located in Western Asia and eastern North Africa. It is the Arabic equivalent for the term Middle East. Poetically the "Place of Sunrise", the name is derived from the verb sharaqa, from the sh-r-q root (ش-ر-ق), referring to the east, where the sun rises.
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