Civilizations and World
religions
3rd Lecture. Classical and
Contemporary Theories on
Civilizations
Stages of development toward a
civilization
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We call „civilization” a highly developed, complex and stratified
society, which presupposes a longer period of history of
evolution. The four main stages of this development are:
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1. Hunter-gatherer bands, which are generally egalitarian.
2. Horticultural/pastoral societies in which there are generally two inherited
social classes; chief and commoner.
3. Highly stratified structures, or chiefdoms, with several inherited social
classes: king, noble, freemen, serf and slave.
4. Civilizations, with complex social hierarchies and organized, institutional
governments.
Sources: 1. DeVore, Irven, and Lee, Richard (1999) "Man the
Hunter" (Aldine). 2. Beck, Roger B.; Linda Black, Larry S.
Krieger, Phillip C. Naylor, Dahia Ibo Shabaka, (1999). World
History: Patterns of Interaction. Evanston, IL: McDougal Littell.
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Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) was a historian, philosopher, who
presented his classical, overall modell about the development of
civilizations, though in a highly constructive, speculative way, in
his two volumes main work: „The Decline of the West”,
(„Untergang des Abendlandes”), 1918, 1922.
According to his interpretation civilizations are just like living
organisms, which are born, which grow up, get old and finally
die.
He listed eight major civilizations: Babylonian, Egyptian,
Chinese, Indian, Mexican (Mayan/Aztec), Classical
(Greek/Roman), Arabian, Western or "European-American". In
a metaphoric manner he spoke about the „spring”, „summer”
and „winter” phases of a civilization.
Classical theories 1b. Oswald Spengler
„The Decline of the West” 2.
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„Cultures are organisms, and world-history is their collective
biography”, (Spengler, 1996: 104). „In the destinies of the
several Cultures that follow upon one another, grow up with one
another, touch, overshadow, and suppress one another, is
compressed the whole content of human history.”, (loc. cit.).
„Culture is the prime-phenomenon of all past and future worldhistory”, (op. cit. 105). „Every Culture passes through the agephases of the individual man Each has its childhood, youth,
manhood and old age”, (op. cit. 107).
„Looked at in this way, the ‘Decline of the West’ comprises
nothing less than the problem of Civilisation. We have before us
one of the fundamental questions of all higher history. What is
Civilization, understood as the organiclogical sequel, fulfilment
and finale of a culture?”, (op. cit. 31).
Classical theories 1c. Oswald Spengler
„The Decline of the West” 3.
„For every Culture has its own Civilization. In this work, for the
first time the two words, hitherto used to express an indefinite,
more or less ethical, distinction, are used in a periodic sense, to
express a strict and necessary organic succession. The
Civilization is the inevitable destiny of the Culture, and in this
rinciple we obtain the viewpoint from which the deepest and
gravest problems of historical morphology become capable of
solution. Civilizations are the most external and artificial states of
which a species of developed humanity is capable. They are a
conclusion, the thing-become succeeding the thingbecoming,
death following life, rigidity following expansion, intellectual age
and the stone-built, petrifying world-city following mother-earth
and the spiritual childhood of Doric and Gothic They are an
end, irrevocable, yet by inward necessity reached again and
again.”, (loc. cit.).
Classical theories 2a. Arnold J. Toynbee.
The challange-answer theory 1.
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Arnold J. Toynbee (1889-1975) was a Brittish historian, on whom Spengler’s
ideas had a great influence, but who rejected Spengler’s biologist view on
civilizations, and his conception about the unavoidable destiny of them.
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„In 1934-1954, Toynbee's ten-volume A Study of History came out in three separate
installments. He followed Oswald Spengler in taking a comparative topical
approach to independent civilizations. Toynbee's said they displayed striking
parallels in their origin, growth, and decay. Toynbee rejected Spengler's biological
model of civilizations as organisms with a typical life span of 1,000 years.
Of the 21 civilizations Toynbee identified, sixteen were dead by 1940 and four of
the remaining five were under severe pressure from the one named Western
Christendom - or simply The West. He explained breakdowns of civilizations as a
failure of creative power in the creative minority, which henceforth becomes a
merely 'dominant' minority; that is followed by an answering withdrawal of
allegiance and mimesis on the part of the majority; finally there is a consequent
loss of social unity in the society as a whole.
Toynbee explained decline as due to their moral failure. Many readers, especially
in America, rejoiced in his implication (in vols. 1-6) that only a return to some
form of Christianity could halt the breakdown of western civilization which began
with the Reformation. Volumes 7-10, published in 1954 abandoned the religious
message and his popular audience slipped away, while scholars gleefully picked
apart his mistakes.”, (Source: Wikipedia).
Classical theories 2b. Arnold J. Toynbee.
The challange-answer theory 2.
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„Toynbee's ideas and approach to history may be said to fall into
the discipline of Comparative history. While they may be
compared to those used by Oswald Spengler in The Decline of the
West, he rejected Spengler's deterministic view that civilizations
rise and fall according to a natural and inevitable cycle. For
Toynbee, a civilization might or might not continue to thrive,
depending on the challenges it faced and its responses to them.
Toynbee presented history as the rise and fall of civilizations,
rather than the history of nation-states or of ethnic groups. He
identified his civilizations according to cultural or religious rather
than national criteria. Thus, the ‘Western Civilization’,
comprising all the nations that have existed in Western Europe
since the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, was treated as
a whole, and distinguished from both the ‘Orthodox’ civilization
of Russia and the Balkans, and from the Greco-Roman
civilization that preceded it.”, (loc.cit.).
Classical theories 2c. Arnold J. Toynbee.
The challange-answer theory 3.
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„With the civilizations as units identified, he presented the history of each in
terms of challenge-and-response. Civilizations arose in response to some set
of challenges of extreme difficulty, when ‘creative minorities’ devised
solutions that reoriented their entire society.
Challenges and responses were physical, as when the Sumerians exploited the
intractable swamps of southern Iraq by organizing the Neolithic inhabitants
into a society capable of carrying out large-scale irrigation projects; or social,
as when the Catholic Church resolved the chaos of post-Roman Europe by
enrolling the new Germanic kingdoms in a single religious community.
When a civilization responds to challenges, it grows. Civilizations declined
when their leaders stopped responding creatively, and the civilizations then
sank owing to nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority.
Toynbee argued that ‘Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.’ For
Toynbee, civilizations were not intangible or unalterable machines but a
network of social relationships within the border and therefore subject to
both wise and unwise decisions they made.”, (loc.cit.).
Classical theories 3a. Norbert Elias,
„The Civilizing Process” 1.
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Norbert Elias (1897-1990) was a German-born sociologist and
historian, who had to flee in 1933 because of his Jewish origin, and
later became a British citizen. His main work is „The Civilizing
Process”, 1939, („Über den Prozeß der Zivilization”), in two volumes.
Norbert Elias described „the process of civilization” as a slow and very
long change and development of the structures of personality, which
he traced back to the changes of social structures.
It is important to mention that he formulated his model of
development first of all concerning the history of Western Europe
between cca. 800 and 1900.
Factors of social changes, according to him, are on the one hand the
continual technical, technological development and the differentiation
and stratification of societies, and on the other hand the permanent
competition and elimination contest among men and groups.
Classical theories 3b. Norbert Elias,
„The Civilizing Process” 2.
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„The first volume, The History of Manners, traces the historical
developments of the European habitus, or ‘second nature,’ the
particular individual psychic structures molded by social attitudes. Elias
traced how post-medieval European standards regarding violence,
sexual behaviour, bodily functions, table manners and forms of speech
were gradually transformed by increasing thresholds of shame and
repugnance, working outward from a nucleus in court etiquette. The
internalized ‘self-restraint’ imposed by increasingly complex networks
of social connections developed the ‘psychological’ self-perceptions
that Freud recognized as the ‘super-ego.’ ”
„The second volume, State Formation and Civilization, looks into the
causes of these processes and finds them in the increasingly centralized
Early Modern state and the increasingly differentiated and
interconnected web of society. ”, (Source: Wikipedia).
Modern Theories 1. Fukuyama and the
End of History
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Francis Fukuyama (1952-) is an American political scientist,
political economist and historian. He is best known for his book
„The End of History and the Last Man”, 1992.
„I argued that liberal democracy may constitute the ‘end point of
mankind's ideological evolution’ and the ‘final form of human
government,’ and as such constituted the ‘end of history.’ That
is, while earlier forms of government were characterized by grave
defects and irrationalities that led to their eventual collapse,
liberal democracy was arguably free from such fundamental
internal contradictions.”
Our future will not be characterized by inspiring and magnifique
fights for ideas anymore, but by earth-bound technological and
economic questions. Our future will be peaceful, but somehow
boring.
Modern Theories 2a. Huntington and the
Clash of Civilizations 1.
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Samuel P. Huntington (1927-2008) was a political scientist,
historian, the Phd-supervisor of Fukuyama on Yale University.
He wrote a polemic book with the title „The Clash of
Civilizations” in 1993 as an answer to the work of his former
student, Francis Fukuyama.
„Huntington began his thinking by surveying the diverse theories
about the nature of global politics in the post-Cold War period.
Some theorists and writers argued that human rights, liberal
democracy and capitalist free market economy had become the
only remaining ideological alternative for nations in the postCold War world. Specifically, Francis Fukuyama argued that the
world had reached the 'end of history' in a Hegelian sense.”,
(Source: Wikipedia).
Modern Theories 2b. Huntington and the
Clash of Civilizations 2.
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„Huntington believed that while the age of ideology
had ended, the world had only reverted to a normal
state of affairs characterized by cultural conflict. In his
thesis, he argued that the primary axis of conflict in the
future will be along cultural and religious lines.
As an extension, he posits that the concept of different
civilizations, as the highest rank of cultural identity, will
become increasingly useful in analyzing the potential
for conflict.”, (loc.cit.).
Modern Theories 2c. Huntington and the
Clash of Civilizations 3.
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„Russia, Japan, and India are what Huntington terms 'swing civilizations' and
may favor either side. Russia, for example, clashes with the many Muslim
ethnic groups on its southern border (such as Chechnya) but—according to
Huntington—cooperates with Iran to avoid further Muslim-Orthodox
violence in Southern Russia, and to help continue the flow of oil. Huntington
argues that a "Sino-Islamic connection" is emerging in which China will
cooperate more closely with Iran, Pakistan, and other states to augment its
international position.”
„Huntington also argues that civilizational conflicts are ‘particularly prevalent
between Muslims and non-Muslims’, identifying the ‘bloody borders’ between
Islamic and non-Islamic civilizations. This conflict dates back as far as the
initial thrust of Islam into Europe, its eventual expulsion in the Iberian
reconquest, the attacks of the Ottoman Turks on Eastern Europe and Vienna,
and the European imperial division of the Islamic nations in the 1800s and
1900s.”, (loc.cit) .
Modern Theories 2d. Huntington and the
Clash of Civilizations 4.
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Huntington also believes that some of the factors
contributing to this conflict are that both Christianity
(which has influenced Western civilization) and Islam
are:
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Missionary religions, seeking conversion of others
Universal, "all-or-nothing" religions, in the sense that it is
believed by both sides that only their faith is the correct one
Teleological religions, that is, that their values and beliefs
represent the goals of existence and purpose in human
existence.
Irreligious people who violate the base principles of those
religions are perceived to be furthering their own pointless
aims, which leads to violent interactions.
Modern Theories 2e. Huntington and the
Clash of Civilizations 5.
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According to Huntington the deepest and most
dangerous conflicts in the Post-Socialist world will not
be between different social classes or between the
riches and poors, but between different cultural entities.
The actual questions of daily politics could be traced
back to cultural differences. The importance of
Western Civilization will decrease in the future, and that
of the non-Western Civilizations will increase. The
global politics will be multicultural and mulilateral.
Modern Theories 3a. Niall Ferguson: the
„Six Killer Apps” of the West 1.
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Niall Ferguson (1964) is a British historian. According to his theory, six
essential factors made Western cultures and societies. He called these six
factors „the killer apps of the West”.
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1. Competition. Europe was politically fragmented into multiple monarchies and
republics, which were in turn internally divided into competing corporate entities,
among them the ancestors of modern business corporations.
2.The Scientific Revolution. All the major 17th-century breakthroughs in mathematics,
astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology happened in Western Europe.
3.The Rule of Law and Representative Government. An optimal system of social and
political order emerged in the English-speaking world, based on private-property
rights and the representation of property owners in elected legislatures.
4.Modern Medicine. Nearly all the major 19th- and 20th-century breakthroughs in
health care were made by Western Europeans and North Americans.
5.The Consumer Society. The Industrial Revolution took place where there was both
a supply of productivity-enhancing technologies and a demand for more, better,
and cheaper goods, beginning with cotton garments.
6.The Work Ethic. Westerners were the first people in the world to combine more
extensive and intensive labor with higher savings rates, permitting sustained
capital accumulation.
Modern Theories 3b. Niall Ferguson: the
„Six Killer Apps” of the West 2.
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But Ferguson also shared his doubts with the public that the West could
easily lose these advantages if it became „lazy”, and did not concentrate
permanently on maintaining and even enhancing these achievements.
„For hundreds of years, these killer apps were essentially monopolized by
Europeans and their cousins who settled in North America and Australasia.
They are the best explanation for what economic historians call "the great
divergence": the astonishing gap that arose between Western standards of
living and those in the rest of the world. In 1500 the average Chinese was
richer than the average North American. By the late 1970s the American was
more than 20 times richer than the Chinese.”
„I am not one of those people filled with angst at the thought of a world in
which the average American is no longer vastly richer than the average
Chinese. I welcome the escape of hundreds of millions of Asians from
poverty, not to mention the improvements we are seeing in South America
and parts of Africa. But there is a second, more insidious cause of the "great
reconvergence," which I do deplore—and that is the tendency of Western
societies to delete their own killer apps.”
Modern Theories 4a. Jared Diamond,
„Guns, Germs and Steel” 1.
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Jared Mason Diamond (1937) is an American
anthropologist, physiologist, biologist, geographer who
is best known, for his books: The Third Chimpanzee
(1991/2004), Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997), and Collapse:
How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005).
He derived the major differences in economic and
technological development between societies from
geographic, environmental and agricultural peculiarities
of the homeland of the peoples.
Modern Theories 4b. Jared Diamond,
„Guns, Germs and Steel” 2.
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„The prologue opens with an account of Diamond's
conversation with Yali, a New Guinean politician. The
conversation turned to the obvious differences in power and
technology between Yali's people and the Europeans who
dominated the land for 200 years, differences that neither of
them considered due to any genetic superiority of Europeans.
Yali asked, using the local term "cargo" for inventions and
manufactured goods, "Why is it that you white people developed
so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black
people had little cargo of our own?" (p. 14).”
„Diamond realized the same question seemed to apply
elsewhere: "People of Eurasian origin... dominate the world in
wealth and power." Other peoples, after having thrown off
colonial domination, still lag in wealth and power. Still others, he
says, "have been decimated, subjugated, and in some cases even
exterminated by European colonialists." (p. 15) ”
Modern Theories 4c. Jared Diamond,
„Guns, Germs and Steel” 3.
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„The peoples of other continents (Sub-Saharan Africans, Native
Americans, Aboriginal Australians and New Guineans, and the
original inhabitants of tropical Southeast Asia) have been largely
conquered, displaced and in some extreme cases – referring to
Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians and South Africa's
indigenous Khoisan peoples – largely exterminated by farmbased societies such as Eurasians and Bantu.
He believes this is due to the societies' military and political
advantages, stemming from the early rise of agriculture after the
last Ice Age. He proposes explanations to account for such
disproportionate distributions of power and achievements.”,
(Source: Wikipedia)