Website review: Project Syndicate

cabq cabq discovered this in Politics •1 reviews since May 8, 2008
icon tagssamuel-huntington-refutations •project-syndicate.org/commentary/sorman2/Engl...

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cabq
Milano

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cabq discovered 4 months ago
Cultural clashes
    To be Western or Westernized, above all, is a mindset which does not coincide with any continent, nor with any specific nation or religion. Huntington's mistake, it seems, was to contain the West inside national borders: there is no map of the West.
The article is a great example of how some critique can be much worse than the concepts legitimately (and probably rightfully) criticized. Samuel Huntington can and must be addressed for his simplifications, but he warned everyone in his book that he doubts he could divide the world into REAL different civilizations. His own theories remain theories, and he's the first to criticize who draws outright conclusions from those same simplifications he proposes. He was one of the first to try, in the post-Cold War era, to reincarnate geopolitics into some sort of cultural empires with no precise boundary but defined and different ideals. Much may be biased, not precise or simply disputable, but these simplifications need to be made if one wants and try to make sense of the world - which is in any case inert and not rational (an attribute that includes the properties of chaos and complexity) until a mind comes and applies (Kantian?) categories to it. This is the first precept to any humanistic observational study. The critique shows to be particularly flawed when Sorman says:
    I believe that the West is a mindset defined by three fundamental traits that cannot easily be found in the so-called Eastern civilizations: a passion for innovation, a capacity for self-criticism, and gender equality.
Innovation. He almost directly follows from Weber. That's partly ok, although criticizable: many of our innovations have proved to be no innovations at all, when not direct imports from other 'non-western civilizations'. Self-criticism. Schismatics and heretics were not just Christians. Sects were and are everywhere. Self-criticism abunds (and abunded in the past centuries) in the Islamic world, the civilization among all that retains a very maximalist doctrine at its core. The Chinese were one of the most advanced 'civilizations' in 500 AD, and the Mandate of Heaven legitimized both power and peasants' revolts. Self-criticism still has theoretical meaning when intended in a minor, relative sense. Gender equality. I will abstain from any comment. Still, one core conclusion remains interesting and original:
    Does this Westernization make the Egyptian or the Saudi less authentic Arabs? Such a debate does take place within all Eastern societies, which leads us to the real clash of civilizations: all societies today are fragmented between Westernizers and non-Westernizers. This clash within civilizations on what modernization means is more significant than Huntington's alleged conflict between geographical entities.

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