I certainly wouldn't imply that it is! I think the read that you and some others are getting out of my post is that "the Western tradition is bad", which wasn'

I certainly wouldn't imply that it is! I think the read that you and some others are getting out of my post is that "the Western tradition is bad", which wasn't the intention - I repeatedly praised the works, after all! And to be fair there's lots of outspoken, stupid voices in the so-called culture wars that do say things like that, so I see why you might've made the assumption. The point I was trying to make is that - contra to many prevailing modernist attitudes at the time - is that the Western tradition alone won't lead us to utopia, shield us from atrocities, make us enlightened and peaceful, bring us to The Blissful End of History. This is not to say that the Western tradition is bad; it's to say that it's still a work-in-progress, a thing to be interrogated and questioned, something we can look outside of; not a calcified list of hundreds-of-years-old Great Works which, upon reading, will automatically confer greatness.