Habermas, Globalization and Postmodernity

Abstract

In his monumental work The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon sketches out the reasons for the success of Imperial Rome in the first and second centuries CE, so that he can then show better the way in which the Empire declined in power (Gibbon, 1776–1788:2005). One of the key ways in which the Roman Empire accrued power, according to Gibbon, was the spread of Romanitas: the essence of Roman cultural norms and values, its civilization. In every corner of the Mediterranean world, people adopted Roman fashions, Roman games, Roman literature, Roman food and Roman political systems — whether they were conquered by Rome’s soldiers or justliving in parts of the world in Rome’s sphere of influence. Rome, of course, stole much of its cultural heritage from the places conquered by the Republic and the Empire. The Hellenistic world, in particular, was a strong influence on the Romans, and preserved a sense of Greekness throughout the centuries of Roman hegemony, to the point where the only part of the Roman Empire surviving was the Greek-speaking Empire of Byzantium in the East (which survived until its destruction by the Ottoman Empire in 1453). But Byzantium proves the power of Romanitas: even hundreds of years after the fall of the Empire in the West of the Mediterranean, the Emperors of Byzantium maintained Roman political structures and dreamed of reconquering the West (Gregory, 2005).