The recent debate provoked by Edward Said’ Oriental is a strategic place to begin a reassessment of the relationship of the history of the West to that of the rest of the world. Said stresses the putative role of oriental as a discipling in the extension of European hegemony over the Middle East, and more generally the ways oriental as a discourse of power was predicated upon the domination of the West over the non-West. On deeper level, however, his approach implicitly question the validity of civilizational studies, in particular the view that a civilization’ Great Books provide the key to its special character. If oriental is a discourse of the Other, as Said asserts, then it might be argued that western civilization is a discourse on ourselves, It is here (despite evident differences) that Said’s critique joins that of Hodgson, for whom essential is a central trait in civilizational studies.