WHAT PRICE PEACE? ON THE DIALECTICAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CIVILIZATION AND WAR

It is generally understood that that there is a direct correlation between civilized society and a propensity for cooperation and peace over confrontation and violent conflict, both in domestic affairs and in international relations. Under the influence of democratic and liberal theories of perpetual peace, this leads to the assumption…

Towards A New Science of Civilization. A Synthetic Study of the Philosophical Views of al-Farabi, Ibn Khaldun, Arnold Toynbee, and Samuel Huntington

This article presents a synthetic study of the philosophical views of al-Farabi and Ibn Khaldun from classical Islam and Arnold Toynbee and Samuel Huntington from the modern West on the subject of civilizational science. On the basis of the Aristotelian idea of a true science, this article argues that al-Farabi…

The Thin Ice of Civilization

It is widely accepted that as time passes, the more we progress as both a species and as individual human beings; the more we progress, the more civilized we become individually and collectively; the more civilized we become, the further we are removed from the vestiges of savagery and barbarism.…

Social Relations Network in Building Civilization An Analysis of Its Significance (Rangkaian Perhubungan Sosial Untuk Membina Ketamadnan Satu Analisis Kepentingannya)

This paper introduces the concept of social relations network as an important element in the process of building a civilisation. In general terms, any human society embarking on a civilizing process needs, among other things, four integral ingredients namely people, ideas, objects and social relations network. The realm of persons…

Phenomenon of civilization: Pitirim A. Sorokin’s Integralist approach and its limitations

During his remarkable academic career Pitirim A. Sorokin published about forty books and some five-hundred articles and essays addressing the subject of civilizations in some of his most important works. Due to the rapid globalization and related profound and multifaceted transformation of the world, interest to the macro-level sociocultural entities…

Modernity and civilization in Johann Arnason’s social theory of Japan

Johann Arnason’s exploration of the historical constellation of East Asia has helped reproblematize the conceptual framework of modernity and civilization. This article outlines Arnason’s innovations in civilizational analysis and social theory in the field of comparative studies of Japan. It sets out the terms on which a nuanced elaboration of…

Eurocentrism and civilization

In his study of the word civilization, the French linguist Émile Benveniste (1971: 289) states, ‘the whole history of modern thought and the principal intellectual achievements in the western world are connected with the creation and handling of a few dozen essential words which are all the common possession of…

Civilizational theory in Russia – past, present, and future

Russia may be justifiably proud of an illustrious, albeit uneasy, history of achievements in civilizational theory and thought. The names of Nikolai Danilevsky, Konstantin Leontiev, Pitirim Sorokin, Nikolai Berdyaev, Lev Mechnikov, Nikolai Kondratiev, Lev Gumilev, Boris Yerasov, Nikita Moiseev, Yuri Yakovets, and many others are well known to civilizational scholars…

CIVILIZATION: THE ESSENCE OF AN EVALUATIVE DESCRIPTIVE CONCEPT

The power of ideas and language is not to be underestimated-ideas do matter, both "good" and "bad" ideas. John Maynard Keynes was right when he proclaimed that the "ideas of economists and political philosophers. both when they are right and when they are wrong. are more powerful than is commonly…