The question whether western civilization as a whole constitutes a structured and coherent unit poses insoluble problems for any pure historiography. It is, however, a real problem for history, and in our day and age when this civilization is constantly in contact with the civilization of other continents, this question becomes daily more important. In what does the essential structure of the European universe reside? What, in relation to oriental civilization, are its specific characteristics? By producing an insurmountable disproportion between this problem, produced by history, and empirical historiography, this question leads necessarily to a philosophy of history.