I argue that an icon in the immediate aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the “circle of candles” represents an alternative to Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilization” thesis. But I also put forward a public policy that initially may seem to contradict this alternative: group or cultural rights, beyond, and even sometimes conflicting with, individual rights. Such rights at first blush appear to ensconce the same sort of walled-in, homogeneous and exclusionary cultural entities that Huntington’s (...) thesis implies I begin by stating Huntington’s thesis and the opposition to it that Amartya Sen has voiced in a recent book. I then provide a way of understanding the circle of candles that reinforces but also goes beyond the multi-identity type of multiculturalism that Sen places in opposition to Huntington’s warring monocultures. This understanding of the circle of candles, I will argue, shows how group or cultural rights, properly construed, can be incorporated into the type of hybrid society–what I call a “multivoiced body”– that constitutes a compelling alternative to the exclusionist responses to 9/11. My argument is reinforced by consideration of the current Zapatistas movement and their demands for group rights. (shrink)

The article examines the `clash of civilizations' theory of history as developed recently by Samuel Huntington and Victor Lee Burke. It argues that this theory attempts to combine an historical sociology that sees states and war as the motors of human history with a notion of civilization as something solid and fixed. It contends that civilizations are fluid and amorphous entities that cannot be treated as states, and that `the ways of peace' such as cultural exchanges and trade (...) are just as important as war and conflict in any attempt to understand the history of humanity. (shrink)

In recent years, the notion of a ‘clash of civilizations’, first put forward by Samuel Huntington (1996), has been widely used to explain the contemporary dynamics of geo-political conflict. It has been argued that the fundamental source of conflict is no longer primarily ideological, or even economic, but cultural. Despite many trenchant and largely debilitating academic critiques of Huntington's argument, the popular appeal of the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis remains undiminished. In many parts of the world, the (...) binary it describes is often taken to be self-evident, especially after the tragic events of September 11. This paper uses the ideas of ‘social imaginary’ (Taylor, 2004) and ‘political myth’ (Blumenberg, 1984) to understand the popular appeal of the idea of civilizational conflict, and suggests that this appeal is unlikely to be punctured by theoretical arguments alone, but by an equally plausible political narrative located in an alternative social imaginary, acquired through cosmopolitan learning. (shrink)

In the early 1990s, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and with the easing of East- West tensions, Samuel Huntington presented his theory of a “clash of civilizations.” He announced that conflicts between ideologies had come to an end and were to be replaced by a new kind of confrontation, this time between cultures and religions. This essay attempts to show how misled Huntington’s thesis can be by referring to forms of humanism from Africa as well as (...) to some ideas developed in Arabian-Islamic philosophy. In the early 1930s, African intellectuals such as Léopold Sédar Senghor or Aimé Césaire already tried to oppose their own conception of humanism to Western individualistic humanism. The distinction can be found in the concept of Ubuntu, or “African humanism,” which incorporates notions of respect for the other, collective responsibility and solidarity. The Arab-Islamic world has also had similar concerns from an early stage. Its heritage from classical Greek philosophy, which placed human being at the centre of its thinking and ethical acting, came indeed under the significant influence of Islamic values, such as equality, fraternity and the community. Thus the essay offers an alternative to Huntington’s post-modern model of “clash of civilizations” beyond the frontiers set by Western humanism and that is more relevant to our current globalising world – a new trans- and intercultural humanism that favours the ways human beings can relate to each other as persons regardless of race, culture and religion. Human dignity and respect for the “other,” including the environment, are therefore central to this new humanism. (shrink)

This article questions the popular assumption that the concept of civilization that entered public discourse in a grand way with Samuel P. Huntington’s sensational article on a ‘clash of civilizations’ refers to any meaningful historical formations that can be identified across time and space in plural manifestations, apparently withstanding collapse, disintegration and a final withering away. Contrasting Huntington’s rather stable universe with A. J. Toynbee’s and Eric Voegelin’s radically different perspectives on an open-ended dynamics of civilizational processes makes (...) it possible to recognize that the sequence of institutional cycles and the succession of universes of symbolic meaning that accompany them may be limited. Civilizations are not natural phenomena but human constructs and have therefore limited timelines. Toynbee and Voegelin were facing an end of the history of traditional civilizations and all their pseudo-morphed variations. They envisioned something new would emerge out of the wasteland of meaning without clearly knowing what it would be. The political economy of globalization has certainly accelerated the terminal conditions of traditional civilizations that Toynbee and Voegelin had anticipated long before this modern endgame began. The signs of decay and death are overwhelming while the quests for a new universe of meaning are still in their infancy. (shrink)

Samuel Phillips Huntington was an influential American political scientist. He was also a consultant to various America government agencies. He upholds the idea of conservative realism in politics. His research covers several areas of political science, such as civil-military relations, modernization and political development, comparative politics, and international relations. Regarding the role of military, he argues for autonomous military professionalism. In discussing about modernization of developing countries, he emphasizes the priority of political order over democracy. In the case of (...) America, as well as other democratizing countries, he worries that the excess of political participation would diminish the authority and effectiveness of state governance, enhancing political instability, and, at worst, leading to the reverse of democratization. After the end of the Cold War, Huntington characterizes the international order as multicivilizational, in which the clash of civilizations will direct the development of global politics. In such a multicultural situation, Huntington urges Americans to affirm their unique national identity by revitalizing Anglo-Protestant culture and its religiosity which has defined America since its founding. (shrink)

This article presents an overview of Oswald Spengler's theory of civilization based upon his `first' and `second' philosophies of history. The `late' Spengler left behind his more aesthetic and historicist understanding of civilization, turning to philosophical anthropology. Spengler lost confidence that a new great culture would someday emerge. While Samuel Huntington in The Clash of Civilizations argues that civilizational pluralism is growing and anticipates a non-Western civilization eventually succeeding a West in decline, dialog with Spengler suggests otherwise.

A wide variety of sources, including the Huntington literature and popular mass media, show that Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” idea actually has very little value in understanding the current global political context. The central assumption of Huntington’s view, that cultural kinship ties influence loyalties and agreements on a global scale, has little to do with the daily lives of American citizens and little to do with the decisions made by the current presidential administration. The mass media evidence from the (...) United States shows that the most important “kinship” ties are not religious or cultural, but economic. The argument involves a deeper analysis of the current trend towards religious programs on American television, a timeline of events relating to the Halliburton – Cheney relationship, and views expressed by members of the United States military in Stars and Stripes. (shrink)

Samuel Huntington's influential clash of civilizations hypothesis (Huntington, 1993; Huntington, 1996) has been widely debated, but empirical tests of his ideas about core states remain limited at the micro-level. In this paper, we bring new evidence to bear, focusing on the : Greater Asia and the Pacific. Using the AsiaBarometer, we examine the extent to which publics in the region identify with the core states of the supposedly most contentious civilizations in the region and the factors that influence (...) those perceptions. We give attention to the role of globalization and nationalism and whether both may be subsumed by religiosity as Huntington suggests. Our descriptive evidence affirms some of the tensions between the US, China, and Islamic-predominant Asia identified by Huntington as areas of potential conflict. At the same time, we find no evidence to suggest that attitudes toward core states are zero-sum; Asian publics often see rival powers as mutually good influences. Using multivariate analysis, we find that religiosity, as the clash paradigm surmises, boosts Iranian influence and undermines American influence in several predominantly Islamic states. We also find, contrary to Huntington, that overall exposure to foreign cultures leads to a more positive assessment of American influence among Chinese and Pakistanis, as well as American perceptions of China. When foreign exposure influences perceptions of Iran, the effect is modestly, but consistently, negative. Taken together, the findings raise questions about two key assumptions of the Huntington framework and suggest that alternative approaches in recent civilizations literature show greater empirical promise. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the effects of religious denomination and patterns of church-going on the construction of political values for high-school students. I argue that religion plays a role in the formation of political attitudes among teenagers and it influences their political participation. I examine whether this relationship is constructed along denominational lines. From a theoretical perspective, previous research heralded the compatibility between Western Christianity and the democratic form of government. Samuel Huntington, in his famous Clash of (...) Civilization, argued that there is a natural symbiosis between Western Christianity and democratic forms of government, going insofar as to separate the world into religious civilizations. While, this approach essentializes religion as a fixed and immutable entity, Huntington also neglects the importance of dynamic historical, political and social contexts that can, and, in fact, do affect the functioning of religion in different countries, and hence their ability and willingness to accommodate democracy. Much research followed the Clash of Civilizations, either qualifying the central argument, by showing evidence of support for procedural democracy in most of the World, but without its liberal component or even arriving at the opposite conclusion that irrespective of religion, every country is “democratizable”. While I do not attempt to disconfirm fundamental huntingtonian thinking, I do raise the questions of how context can and does influence the intimate relationship between religion and politics. The analysis is conducted on survey data collected by the Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD) at Babes-Bolyai University with subjects of 14-15 years old, and the results show that, while Greek Orthodox students do not seem to differ in their political values form their Catholic and Protestant counterparts, they are more prone to participate politically. Nevertheless, their active participatory behavior is only more pronounced in what voting is concerned, an opposite effect being recorder for any other acts of political participation. (shrink)

In The Clash of Civilizations Samuel Huntington placed the Persian Wars at the beginning of the long line of clashes between civilizations. To the modern reader the emphasis Huntington puts on the role played by religion in defining Athenian civilization and its conflict with the “barbarians” appears to be consistent with Herodotus’ position on these wars. However, this position overlooks the fact that the ancient polytheistic beliefs and cults implied a particular attitude to religion, unlike that of monotheistic (...) religions. In the ancient Mediterranean world the temples and sacred places were to be universally respected and any violation of this rule was regarded as sacrilege that justified persecution of the wrongdoers, whose ethnicity was of no, or only of secondary, importance. The purpose of this article is to survey the main passages in Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon that treat the wars between the Greeks and Persians and between Greek city-states, and to demonstrate that the line dividing defenders of divine cults from offenders of the gods was not drawn between Greeks and barbarians, but between defenders and offenders. (shrink)

“Civilization” is back at the forefront of global policy debates. The leaders of rising powers such as China, India, Turkey, and Russia have stressed their civilizational identity in framing their domestic and foreign policy platforms. An emphasis on civilizational identity is also evident in U.S. president Donald Trump's domestic and foreign policy. Some analysts argue that the twenty-first century might belong to the civilization state, just as the past few centuries were dominated by the nation-state. But is the rise of (...) civilization state inevitable? Will it further undermine the liberal international order and fuel a clash of civilizations, as predicted by the late Samuel Huntington? Or might ideas from East Asian and other non-Western civilizations contribute to greater pluralism in our thinking about world order and the study of international relations? (shrink)

ExcerptThe Ukraine war since February 2022 has exposed stark cleavages in international politics. The end of history long ago ended, and with it the conviction that Western civilization and its distinctive form of modernity would become universal.1 The clash of civilizations, in the model outlined by Samuel Huntington, has also been shown to be misdirected, although not entirely misguided.2 There is a struggle between civilizations, but the line is drawn not between the great religious blocs but along rather (...) different lines. It is the Atlantic West that has emerged as the leading contender, provoking a range of reactions from Eurasia and the Global South. The front line now runs within the Global North, between the Atlantic powers and an ill-defined Eurasian bloc, both of which are firmly part of European culture and civilization. The conflict can be viewed as a type of civil war, generated not by civilizational conflict per se but by geopolitics. The political West that took shape in Cold War I represented a distinctive combination of power and authority. Power was expressed above all by the military potential vested in the United States and formalized in a multilateral format with the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949. Authority was generated by the principles underlying the political West, whose founding document is the Atlantic Charter of August 1941, which enunciated Wilsonian themes of democracy and security. (shrink)

The notion of 'the West' is commonly used in politics, the media, and in the academic world. To date, our idea of 'the West' has been largely assumed and effective, but has not been examined in detail from a theoretical perspective. Uses of 'the West' combines a range of original and topical approaches to evaluate what 'the West' really does, and how the idea is being used in everyday political practice. This book examines a range of uses of 'the West', (...) and traces how 'the West' works in a broad array of conceptual and empirical contexts, ranging from the return of geopolitics - via a critical review of the debates surrounding Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilization thesis - to the question of the future of 'the West'. Analysis extends further to the repercussions of the war on terror on Western democracy and the processes of delineating the Western from the non-Western, as well as observations of the institutional transformations of Western order. (shrink)

This article retrieves the theme of “otherization” as it appears in the watershed postcolonial text Orientalism, by Edward Said, and applies it to another historically influential text on otherization, The Clash of Civilizations, by Samuel Huntington. A close comparative reading of Said’s and Huntington’s arguments reveals deep logical and moral flaws in both the postcolonial and civilizational-clash paradigms that each, respectively, represents. Pope Francis’s “mysticism of encounter” provides an alternative that overcomes these flaws. Francis’s framing of how (...) to understand and approach difference, the article concludes, is superior precisely because of its theological content: In grounding the discourse about the other in God, Francis demonstrates how it is possible to cogently define the other as other without creating oppressive power hierarchies—an insight that provides greater promise for establishing solidarity among diverse peoples. (shrink)

In section I, I identify several mini-theses embedded in Amartya Sen’s theory of human rights – such theses as (1) that human rights are moral, not legal, rights, (2) that nevertheless they are not rights that are awaiting transformation into legal rights, (3) that an expansive doctrine of human rights can incorporate a broad swath of rights (civil, political, economic, social and cultural) without merely mimicking the catalogues in post-Second World War declarations and covenants, and (4) that not all (...) the obligations generated by human rights are (in Kant’s language) ‘perfect’ obligations. In section II, I argue that, both because ‘freedom’ has many interpretations and because not all human freedoms, even when they are life-enhancing, are to be protected as human rights, the distinctive features of Sen’s version of a freedom-emphasizing doctrine would be clearer if the preferred interpretation of ‘freedom’ and the particular human freedoms to be protected were more explicitly identified. While Sen’s doctrine of human rights is a freedom-emphasizing doctrine, its distinctive features – vis-à-vis competing freedom-focused accounts – would be more clearly etched if it were made clearer what the sense is in which it stresses protection of important human freedoms, especially since he concedes that not all freedoms, even when they are life-enhancing for human beings, should be protected as human rights. (shrink)

1. Introduction In the post 9/11 political world, many commentators have pointed to the need for locating and exploring cultural continuities between Islam and the West by way of defusing Samuel Huntington's thesis of a “clash of civilizations,” which seemed to have been given such explosive corroboration by the events of 9/11. It seems to me that one of the most promising ways of doing this is to investigate whether—and to what extent—the Qu'ran can be interpreted as a (...) negative theological Scripture. Negative theology emphasizes that we can only say what God is not—but not what He is. Our only…. (shrink)

The ultimate focus of the current essay is on methods of “creative abduction” that have some guarantees as reliable guides to the truth, and those that do not. Emphasizing work by Richard Englehart using data from the World Values Survey, Gerhard Schurz has analyzed literature surrounding Samuel Huntington’s well-known claims that civilization is divided into eight contending traditions, some of which resist “modernization” – democracy, civil rights, equality of rights of women and minorities, secularism. Schurz suggests an evolutionary model (...) of modernization and identifies opposing social forces. In a later essay, citing Englehart’s work as an example, Schurz identifies factor analysis as an example of “creative abduction”. The theories of Englehart and his collaborators are reviewed again in the current essay. Published simulations and standard statistical desiderata for causal inference show the methods Englehart used, factor analysis in particular, are not guides to truth for the kind of data Schurz recognizes as common in political science. Recent work in statistics, philosophy and computer science that makes advances towards such methods is briefly reviewed. (shrink)

The author examines the discipline of moral rights and in particular the need to embed them in a consequential system. He argues that the widely held opinion that independence from consequential evaluation is the right way of guaranteeing individual freedom is based on an inadequate appraisal of the role of moral rights in the social context. In this perspective he examines two specific cases: (1) elementary political and civil rights, and (2) the reproductive rights of women in the context of (...) poor countries with the problem of fast population growth. He argues that a coherent goal-rights system which accommodates rights among others goals, can overcome the non-consequential arguments and justify the force of moral rights fully within a consequentiality perspective. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Religion, the Globalization of War, and Restorative JusticeNathan TierneyAs the pace of globalization increases, the world's religions find themselves in a perilous dilemma that they have yet to resolve in either practical or conceptual terms. On the one hand, the globalization of markets exerts a powerful pressure toward consumerist and materialist values, which undermine and undercut religious perspectives and sensibilities. On the other hand, the globalization of war heightens (...) the intensity of these religious perspectives and sensibilities, and distorts them in the direction of violence and religious extremism. This dilemma plays itself out in different ways in the developed and developing world, but, as the term "globalization" indicates, it is a problem for all of us. Governments, in developing countries especially, often find themselves forced to choose between one horn of the dilemma or the other, with often disastrous results as they take one or the other side in a "West versus the rest" scenario. In the long run, the only viable solution is one that addresses both horns of the dilemma at the same time, and this is possible only if, in turn, religions themselves become truly global. This will require a large-scale and focused cooperative effort in which the religions of the world actively and jointly engage with both problems, working with governments, NGOs, religious communities, and interfaith groups to harmonize religious life with economics and to promote a culture of peace and justice.Because "globalization" is a familiar term in relation to markets, I'll begin by clarifying what I mean by the globalization of war. There are two main aspects to this phenomenon. First, the term refers to a specific transformation in the nature, purposes, and conditions of warfare brought about by the forces of globalization. By globalization I mean the growing trend of the world's cultural, economic, and political forces to bypass national borders and operate on a world scale. This process creates new possibilities for both integration and conflict. When that conflict passes beyond the possibility of diplomatic negotiation, we have the conditions for globalized war. Globalized war is not necessarily world war. It can be relatively local in its sphere of combat; for example, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was a collective response to a worldwide threat of terrorism. What makes it a globalized war, as distinct from international war, is the global nature of the forces that produced it and [End Page 79] are affected by it. Globalized war in this sense has come only lately onto the scene, but its scale and impact is likely to grow in the coming century.The second aspect of the globalization of war is the tendency of conflict to mutate beyond the interests and concerns of nation-states and be taken up by broader civilizational units, even if they were not originally a response to global pressures. The most likely trajectory for this mutation has been well described by Samuel P. Huntington in his influential article "The Clash of Civilizations" (1993) and his book-length treatment of the same subject (1997). Huntington argues that the fault lines of conflict will not be primarily ideological or economic but cultural, where "cultural" is to be understood at its broadest level—the level of civilizations. He divides the world into seven or eight competing civilizations: Western, Sinic, Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Orthodox, Latin American, and possibly African. Societies sharing cultural affinities will cooperate with one another, and the attempt by the West to universalize its dominant version of consumer capitalism and liberal democracy will be resisted in an increasingly determined way—eventually to the point of outright war: "the next world war, if there is one, will be a war between civilizations."1In Huntington's analysis, then, the globalization of war refers to a coming clash of civilizations. He believes that religion will play a central role in this clash as the focal point of civilizations: "Civilizations are differentiated from each other by history, language, culture tradition and, most important, religion."2 While Western civilization has experienced several decades of decline and decay, in both its cultural unity and its sense of identity, other civilizations have grown both in economic terms and... (shrink)

No new global order without a new global ethic!Since the ending of the Cold War, the world has not gone in the direction of peace, harmony, stability, and cohesion. If during the Cold War period the world was divided into two large camps, it has today fragmented into many regions in strife, conflict, and war. Instead of a centripetal force that works toward a global unity accompanying the process of globalization, we are witnessing a centrifugal force that tears different countries (...) and regions apart and turns formerly ideological conflicts into what Samuel Huntington calls a “clash of civilizations.” As a consequence, the world has been gripped by a paradoxical trend. The process of globalization should bring about... (shrink)

In the article the socio-political and socio-economic processes of the modern post-industrial society and the possible prospects of its future are analyzed. Existing at this moment concepts of the historical process, in particular, formational, civilizational, theories of modernization, do not provide an adequate analysis of the processes taking place in society. Thus, according to the theory of local civilizations, the basis of civilization are unique cultures that are resistant and incapable of self-transformation. However, the modern world is an expansion of (...) multiculturalism. After the collapse of the socialist system the formational theory is discredited in public opinion. However, some of the provisions of this theory remain relevant. The theory of modernization is not universal and it is used in some cases of social researches. At the same time, the author does not share the point of view expressed by Samuel Huntington about the nature of the conflicts taking place in the world as a clash of civilizations. The article suggests that the essential processes taking place at the end of the 20th - the beginning of the 21st century in the world, linked to two factors. The first factor is change in the political map of the world, redrawing of borders, change in the political balance of power. The second factor is more significant. It is the aging of formational changes which nature remains open. But their focus will be directly determined by common culture, state of public consciousness and spiritual development of society. (shrink)

ZUSAMMENFASSUNGAusgehend von der Diskussion um Samuel P. Huntingtons Analyse vom »Kampf der Kulturen « argumentiert der Verfasser, dass in der Situation des religiös-weltanschaulichen Pluralismus ein »dialogischer Imperativ« zum Dialog der Kulturen besteht. Da Kulturen historisch wie systematisch in einem Kultus begründet sind, muss ein solcher Dialog die Religionen einschließen und aus einer religiösen Perspektive theologisch begründet werden. Um die Alternative zwischen einem abstrakten Universalismus der aufklärerischen Vernunft und einem relativistischen Kulturalismus zu überwinden, muss radikale Perspektivität mit der Wahrheitsfrage im (...) Konzept einer dialogischen Vernunft verbunden werden. Im Horizont der reformatorischen Einsicht in die Konstitution der Wahrheitsbeziehung des Glaubens erweist sich dabei das Verständnis Gottes und seiner Beziehung zur Welt als Gespräch als konstruktiver Leitfaden.SUMMARYAgainst the background of Samuel P. Huntington's analysis of the “clash of civilizations” the author argues that the situation of religious and ideological pluralism confronts us with a “dialogical imperative” for the dialogue of cultures. Since culture is historically and systematically based in a cult such a dialogue must include the religions and should be justified theologically from a religious perspective. In order to transcend the alternative of an abstract universalism of Enlightenment reason and a relativistic culturalism, radical perspectivism should be combined with the question of truth in the conception of a dialogical reason. In the context of the view of the constitution of the certainty of faith in Reformation theology the understanding of God and his relationship to the world as conversation is proposed as a constructive guideline. (shrink)

Samuel P. Huntington asserts that the world is now entering an age of “the clash of civilizations.” Specifically, the clash is between democratic Western civilization and undemocratic civilizations in the rest of the world, Confucian and Islamic civilizations in particular. Huntington also suggests that in order for democracy to take roots in a Confucian society, undemocratic elements in Confucianism must be superseded by democratic elements. The purpose of this essay is to examine the future relationship between democracy (...) and Confucianism in the part of the world where they are most likely to clash, namely, China. (shrink)

Two theme–setting quotations introduce this essay—that of Yeats's falcon, deaf to the falconer's call, adrift in space above the blood–dimmed tide, counterpoised to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's call to abandon old nationalistic prejudices and build the earth. With primary references to the thought of Teilhard, along with, among others, to Ewert Cousins, Andrew M. Greeley, Karl Jaspers, Marshall McLuhan, Ilya Prigogine, Karl Rahner, Leonard Swidler, David Tracy, and Alfred North Whitehead, I argue that the most crucial intellectual paradigm shift of (...) the twenty–first century will challenge humanity to take the turn from uncritical attachment to rigid absolutism or atomistic fragmentation toward a sense of open–ended, off–centered centeredness and fluid connections—from a static to a dynamic model of reality. Central to my argument is the Teilhardian reinterpretation of the Christian metaphors of creation, fall, incarnation, salvation, and the eschaton in the evolutionary terms of the emergence of cosmic consciousness from the chrysalis of the world of the past—from chaos to order, from biosphere via noosphere to theosphere. Facilitated by the exponential growth of populations, collaborative research, science, technology, and global communication (most dramatically manifested by the Internet), this emergent understanding of what it means to be human can, first, foster the awareness that in humanity evolution has become conscious of itself, and then, gradually, precipitate the formation of “the global village” (the mystical body of Christ), as respectful dialogue replaces diatribe and the dualistic pugilism of Samuel Huntington's “Clash of Civilizations” is gradually transformed into a nonadversarial mentality that values shared humanity and a common purpose. Thus, eons hence, empowered by love–energy, the transmutation of the human into the ultra–human can take the ultimate quantum leap into a yet higher dimension where spirit/energy is no longer in need of flesh/mass, and Earth can be safely left behind. (shrink)

In one of the most noteworthy and criticized articles from the prominent periodical Foreign Affairs, Samuel Huntington defends the position that the most important geo-strategic problem of the future is the ‘clash of civilizations’. This replaces the older cold war paradigm and the one-sided conceptual model based on relations between states with the paradigm of cultural conflicts. According to Huntington, what ultimately counts for people is not political ideology or economic interests: “Faith and family, blood and belief, are (...) what people identify with and what they will fight and die for.”Despite many nuances, Huntington primarily emphasizes a global cultural conflict between the ‘West and the Rest’ of the world. In broad terms, he speaks of a ‘Confucian-Islamic connection’ that threatens and weakens Western values and power. He has in mind the connection between Islamic and Confucian countries that are quickly becoming industrialized, that are acquiring military as well as economic power, but that are also either unwilling or unable to adapt to Western culture. We could look upon China’s rejection of the universal declaration of human rights for being ‘myopically Western’ as a classic example. (shrink)

The concept of civilisation is a controversial one because it is unavoidably normative in its implications. Its historical associations with the effort of Western imperialism to impose substantive conditions of life have made it difficult for contemporary liberalism to find a definition of “civilization” that can be reconciled with progressive discourse that seeks to avoid exclusions of various kinds. But because we lack a way of identifying what is peculiar to the relationship of civilisation that avoids the problem of domination, (...) it has tended to be conflated with other ideas. Taking Samuel Huntington's idea of a “Clash of Civilisations” as a starting point, this article argues that we suffer from a widespread confusion of civilisation with “culture,” and that we also confuse it with other ideas including modernity and technological development. Drawing on Thomas Hobbes, the essay proposes an alternative definition of civilisation as the existence of limits on how we may treat others. (shrink)

J. Andrew Kirk’s book examines – and eventually agrees with – Samuel Huntington’s controversial claim that a dangerous ‘Clash of Civilisations’ today poisons the Western-and-Islamic relationship. Kirk then suggests ways for improving these relations, highlighting Islam’s need to reform itself through a re-embrace of its more eirenic, prophetic Meccan phase. While there is much that is admirable here, the review below suggests Kirk’s interpretation of the ‘prophetic’ relationship to government is too one-sidedly Anabaptist.

In order to redefine barbarism, a hermeneutical framework is needed. The contemporary socio-cultural context and the transformations that have occurred during the last decades represent the premises for a new barbarism. In redefining barbarism, its relationship with civilization and culture should be first considered. Cultural mutations, together with the historical and political phenomena involved in contemporary civilizations’ reorganization as set forth in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Samuel P. Huntington), offer the theoretical background (...) for the discourse wherein barbarism could revive and take an appearance other than the common one. The necessity of reinterpreting barbarism is backed up by other variables such as its structural inconsistency and weakness, which most definitely diminish its impact on individuals. Following the 20th century philosophical tendency of harshly critical thinking, all these point to the current weak character of barbarism. Thus so-called “weak barbarism” is reinterpreted evolutionally for a better reception among contemporary cultural philosophy, axiological and ethical studies. (shrink)

Besides dialogue with the Jews, Christians were most involved in the dialogue with Muslims. This dialogue was accentuated and became visible especially in modern and contemporary times, with the increase in violence, which had often religious justifications on the part of those involved. The dialogue between Christians and Muslims took a new direction after the attacks of September 11, 2001, in New York and after those that followed in Europe and all over the world. It was discussed in those days (...) and immediately after about the validation of the well know theory of clashes of civilizations, formulated by Samuel Huntington, in his book written in 1996. Starting from these events, within the dialogue between representatives of Christianity and of Islam, there were many other intensive moments that had to be resolved through a profound theological analysis and with understanding and respect from the followers of the two monotheistic religions. (shrink)

In explaining the reasons for sustained existence of tolerance in Indian philosophical mind and continuation of tolerant practices in socio-political life, Amartya Sen argues that tolerance is inherently a social enterprise, which may appear as contingent, but for all intents and purposes is persistent. Basing his thesis that is opposed to Cartesian dualism, which makes a distinction between mind and body, Sen submits that Indian system of universalizing perception finds a subtle form of connection between mind and body. He (...) expands the ancient core worldview, Vasundhara kutumbakam as a secular tolerant civil code,1which makes a connection between the transcendental and the pragmatic planes of consciousness, and reconstructs a thesis about tolerance around human consciousness, which is collectivized and anchored in an acknowledged public space in society that is joined together psychologically as well as philosophically. Tolerance as consciousness can be regarded a necessary condition for playing the role of intentionality as stipulated by classical philosophy. Aware of this ancient wisdom that accepts relativism as an impasse over some evaluative matter, Sen avoids the pitfalls of cultural relativism in tolerance by offering an argument that is based on the metaphysics of Advaita Vedanta and other religious and secular literature, and epitomizes an internationalizing virtue in tolerant traditions. I would examine some interconnected issues, such as the ethical “perimeter” of Sen’s philosophical observation of totalized value system and Indian tolerant attitudes in real life, etc., raising the broader question about the location of cultural identity in relation to supranational state organization. My chief argument is that Sen has been able to observe a connection between the Advaita Vedantic moral philosophy that informs that viewed from the Brahmanic perspective of absolute knowledge in unity, the apparent subject of duality is not the ultimate subject. My conclusion is that valuing of tolerance, individual liberty as well as civil rights is a particular contribution of Western thinking and philosophy; the Western advocates of these rights often provide ammunition to the non-Western critics of tolerance and human rights. (shrink)

Preface Introduction Christopher J. Berry: Adam Smith: Outline of Life, Times, and Legacy Part One: Adam Smith: Heritage and Contemporaries 1: Nicholas Phillipson: Adam Smith: A Biographer's Reflections 2: Leonidas Montes: Newtonianism and Adam Smith 3: Dennis C. Rasmussen: Adam Smith and Rousseau: Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment 4: Christopher J. Berry: Adam Smith and Early Modern Thought Part Two: Adam Smith on Language, Art and Culture 5: Catherine Labio: Adam Smith's Aesthetics 6: James Chandler: Adam Smith as Critic 7: Michael C. (...) Amrozowicz: Adam Smith: History and Poetics 8: C. Jan Swearingen: Adam Smith on Language and Rhetoric: The Ethics of Style, Character, and Propriety Part Three: Adam Smith and Moral Philosophy 9: Christel Fricke: Adam Smith: The Sympathetic Process and the Origin and Function of Conscience 10: Duncan Kelly: Adam Smith and the Limits of Sympathy 11: Ryan Patrick Hanley: Adam Smith and Virtue 12: Eugene Heath: Adam Smith and Self-Interest Part Four: Adam Smith and Economics 13: Tony Aspromourgos: Adam Smith on Labour and Capital 14: Nerio Naldi: Adam Smith on Value and Prices 15: Hugh Rockoff: Adam Smith on Money, Banking, and the Price Level 16: Maria Pia Paganelli: Commercial Relations: from Adam Smith to Field Experiments Part Five: Adam Smith on History and Politics 17: Spiros Tegos: Adam Smith: Theorist of Corruption 18: David M. Levy & Sandra J. Peart: Adam Smith and the State: Language and Reform 19: Fabrizio Simon: Adam Smith and the Law 20: Edwin van de Haar: Adam Smith on Empire and International Relations Part Six: Adam Smith on Social Relations 21: Richard Boyd: Adam Smith, Civility, and Civil Society 22: Gavin Kennedy: Adam Smith on Religion 23: Samuel Fleischacker: Adam Smith and Equality 24: Maureen Harkin: Adam Smith and Women Part Seven; Adam Smith: Legacy and Influence 25: Spencer J. Pack: Adam Smith and Marx 26: Craig Smith: Adam Smith and the New Right 27: Tom Campbell: Adam Smith: Methods, Morals and Markets 28: Amartya Sen: The Contemporary Relevance of Adam Smith. (shrink)

In The Idea of Justice (2009), Amartya Sen advocates democracy defined as ‘public reasoning’ and ‘government by discussion’. Sen’s discursive approach facilitates the exercise of political freedom and development of one’s public capacities, and enables victims of injustice to give public voice and discussion to specific injustice. It also responds to the contested nature of ‘universal human rights’ and the need to clarify and defend them via public reasoning. However, Sen’s approach leaves intact the hegemony of a liberal form (...) of democracy that prioritizes political and civil rights over social and economic rights and thus precludes alternative democratic forms, most notably a form of cooperative democracy that politicizes social and economic activities in the pursuit of local and global justice. Sen’s ‘government by discus- sion’ must combine with cooperative democracy and a global ethos emphasizing cooperation (and action) over privatization in order to address our most serious global injustices, including exploitation, inequality and poverty in the Global South, accelerating destruction of the environment and biodiversity, and global warming and climate change. (shrink)

In this anthology, distinguished scholars--Thomas Nagel, T.M. Scanlon, John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Samuela Scheffler, Conrad D. Johnson, Bernard Williams, Peter Railton, Amartya Sen, Philippa Foot, and Derek Parfit-- debate arguments for and against the moral doctrine of consequentialism to present a complete view of this important topic in moral philosophy.

My topic concerns the interrelation between religion, politics and ethics in a time of terror, or at least a historical moment when the general problem of terrorism has come to occupy center stage. The frequent view that 9/11 represents a wholly new situation, a break with the past makes it difficult, perhaps impossible to understand it. I believe that it is because 9/11 does not break with but continues tendencies already underway that it occurred and we can understand it. My (...) paper, which insists on continuity as opposed to rupture, consists of six parts. The first part evokes two well known approaches to 9/11: the clash of cultures, or civilizations, due to Samuel Huntington, and religious incompatibility defended, i.A. by Bernard Lewis. In the second and third parts argue that both approaches incorrectly presuppose the autonomy of culture and religion. In the fourth part I contend that in the modern world religion and politics are subordinated to economic factors. In the fifth and last part I suggest how ethics can be recovered from a constructivist perspective. (shrink)

Global cultures, local ethics -- Modernity and the West's self-understanding : the discursive paradigm -- Pluriversal justice : Amartya Sen and the capabilities approach.

El terrorismo contemporáneo no es un fenómeno ancestral, irracional y oriental. Tampoco es una reacción fanática de las religiones que reivindican una sociedad atrasada frente a las sociedades desarrolladas del primer mundo. El terrorismo actual es un fenómeno plenamente moderno: uno de los peores engendros de la sociedad moderna, dotado de una planificación racional de objetivos. Una interpretación capciosa de la religión islámica dota al terrorismo de una proyección universal entre la numerosa audiencia de descontentos con el poderío de esa (...) potencia difusa que conocemos como el Occidente desarrollado. Al Qaeda no duda en presentar su guerra con Occidente como una «guerra sin cuartel» hasta eliminar a los cristianos infieles y someter al mundo al Islam. Mientras tanto, en similar sentido conflictual, la campaña teórica de Samuel Huntington por todo el planeta, responde con un paradigma postguerra fría capaz de inflamar el conflicto internacional en un sentido no menos beligerante con anti-Occidente que el empleado por los imanes radicales. Como ha señalado Amartya Sen, al priorizar de esta forma la identidad religiosa, la respuesta de Occidente al terrorismo internacional como «terrorismo islámico» es muy torpe pues se magnifica la importancia de las autoridades religiosas en detrimento de los cauces gubernativos en la resolución de los problemas. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to examine the topic of older people in the world from the perspective of the Social Teaching of the Church. As explained in Christifideles Laici , the Catholic Church believes that the laity is summoned to pave the way for the arrival of God’s Kingdom, and people who are at an advanced age should still respond to God’s calling through their own unique way of contribution. In Familiaris Consortio it is emphasized that the Church (...) should help older people manifest their roles both in families and religious groups. Although it is mentioned in these two apostolic exhortations that older people are blessed with wisdom, it is not explained as they actually acquire such a blessing. In order to address this issue and elaborate on the meaning of older people’s wisdom, Grün’s theory on the nature of older people’s wisdom and where such a blessing comes from is made reference to in this study. Moreover, it is emphasized in the apostolic exhortation of Familiaris Consortio that older people are often marginalized in today’s industrialized and urbanized society and neglected in their families, while also enduring psychological and/or physical pain. Addressing this issue, the value of older people’s work and their unshirkable missions and duties are explained in the present study by examining the nature and value of man’s work as mentioned in Laborem Exercens . Sen’s “capability approach” is also utilized in the present study as a way to examine older people’s values and the deprivation of their capability, allowing an in-depth analysis of this topic. The findings of this study reveal that Grün’s theory of older people’s wisdom being shaped by their life-experiences is significantly complementary to the messages on older people in Christifideles Laici and Familiaris Consortio . While Sen’s capability approach does not offer a complete set of values or cultural system that solves this problem, the approach of “civilization of love” proposed in the Social Teaching of the Church is very useful in helping one contemplate on the problems faced by older people around the world. (shrink)

And in this book the distinguished scholar Amartya Sen offers a powerful critique of the theory of social justice that, in its grip on social and political ...

In a society that becomes more and more multicultural, is it still possible to guarantee harmonious coexistence, based on shared values? Or do we have to resign ourselves to the idea of an inevitable clash, or at least an inevitable incommunicability, between "us" and "them"? This question refers to this other: is there objectively an essential commonality among all human beings? And is human reason capable of grasping truly universal truths and values, therefore universally shared? In this text, the (...) affirmative response goes hand in hand with the thesis that the objective truth must be sought collaboratively, as the title says: with a dia -logue in which each subject does not renounce the logos, that is, his inexhaustible competence to know the truth. (shrink)

It is necessary to distinguish between civilization as a sociocultural complex on the one hand, and civilization as a process, on the other. This is illustrated by invoking the work of Norbert Elias. For Elias, the civilizing process consisted in the way in which what were, historically, constraints on human behaviour became internalized, and is a process that takes different forms in different cultures. On the other hand, at the centre of civilization as sociocultural complex was the question concerning the (...) attributes of a human being, crystallizing as clear-cut criteria for adjudging the degree to which the people occupying a particular territory were or were not civilized. The conception of civilization as a complex has become contemporary via Huntington's ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis, and is indicative of the way in which the very word ‘civilization’ now carries with it a considerable ideological baggage. This article argues that the ideological use of civilization and the wider discourse of the war against terror involves the fusion, or conflation, of civilization as process and civilization as complex. (shrink)

This book develops some of the most important themes of Sen's works over the last decade. He argues in a rich and subtle approach that we should be concerned with people's capabilities rather than their resources or welfare.