It is difficult to deny the existence of ‘civilizations’: throughout human history, there have always been communities, ‘areas’ and ‘universes of references’ that can be identified with societies that have, on either an essential or a temporary basis, certain things in common, such as values, principles, cultural elements, intellectual attitudes, technologies, and so on. It is just as difficult to list them in either diachronic or synchronic order. Doing so would require us to have pre-established categories, and we still know very little about certain civilizations or societies, either because they have vanished or because they were very localized. We now speak of eighteen, sixteen, eight or four ‘great civilizations’, but those figures mean very little. We sometimes identify civilizations with the cultures they embody, with organized religions, philosophies or spiritualities, with a language or with a geographical space. The criteria are, to say the least, vague, and the legitimacy of some classifications can be highly debatable. Categorizations can easily be revised in the light of the political or geostrategic needs of the moment. Turkey is an interesting example. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the country was regarded as ‘European’, but some now regard it is completely ‘Asiatic’ and predominantly ‘Islamic’ (and therefore not very ‘European’). There is little objectivity where civilizations are concerned! We can, however, identify certain distinctive features and dominant trends, and therefore circumscribe civilizational zones. We can, for example, refer to Buddhism, with its various traditions and the internal distinctions between the area of China and the very different civilization of Japan. We can also refer to Islam, to the distinctions that have to be made within a broader Islamic civilization, and to its specifically Persian, African, Arabic (and even Western) specificities. Then there are overriding common features, just as there are distinctions at the cultural and linguistic levels, and particular national features. Western civilization is influenced by the same dynamics. There are, for instance, differences between the United States and Europe (not to mention Australia and New Zealand): they have a number of basic common, founding principles, but they also represent sub-sets that are integrated into a greater whole. We find the same plural reality in South America and Asia.
One primary truth emerges, and it completely contradicts those perceptions that tend to confine civilizations within monolithic categories. There is no such thing as a ‘pure’ or closed civilization, that has received no inputs from outside its sphere of existence and influence. Traders, intellectuals, travellers and scholars have always imported and exported ideas, customs and technologies that promote the crossfertilization of civilizations. Civilizations have multiple roots and constituent elements, and are subject to countless influences that constantly transform one another, intertwine and interact. Just as there is no such thing as an exclusive or pure identity, there is no such thing as a uniform or homogeneous civilization. Essentialist approaches in fact defend an ideological, and often dogmatic, position on issues of nationhood, culture and civilization. There is nothing scientific about their relationship with memory and other people, and they conceal considerations as to the purity of the self and its references. ‘Dangerous civilizations’ echo Amin Malouf’s ‘murderous identities’[1] . . . and the damage they can do is indeed frightening.
Then there is the historical dimension that intrinsically affects all civilizations. Like identities, civilizations are always in motion. They change and evolve, undergo transformations, make progress and regress, go through crises, face up to tensions and even come under attack and face various challenges. These historical changes go hand in hand with redefinitions and changes affecting their geographical zones, their spheres of influence and their relations with their cultural neighbours. Frontiers shift and become rigid or porous, and these very dynamics renew civilizations. The phenomenon has been observable for centuries in China, India and Japan, around the Mediterranean and in Europe, as well as in North and South America and even Australia. All ‘civilizations’ have undergone historical and geographical transformations, and whether we do or do not support Ibn Khaldûn’s idea of ‘cycles of dynasties and civilizations’, we have to agree that we can always detect periods of greatness and periods of decadence that succeed one other. Sometimes the process speeds up and sometimes it comes to a halt, but it is always at work.
Another major phenomenon is observable within civilizational zones, and it can have a major impact on relations between different universes of references. Even when they are considered to be universal, the same values and principles can give rise to very different concrete applications and historical models. The principles of which democracy, for example, is based (the rule of law, equal citizenship, universal suffrage, accountability and the separation of powers) may well be common to most European (and Western) societies, but no one model of democracy is identical to all the others. The same universal principles do not give rise to the same historical models. The latter depend upon the national memories, collective psychologies and cultures that give historical creations particular forms. What is true of individual ‘civilizations’ becomes even more pronounced when we adopt a comparative approach to civilizations in the plural. If we are to debate and discuss shared and different values, we require a different type of constructive and critical comparison when we come to look at historical formations. One can certainly take the view that one model is more successful at this or that level (social management, political organization, and so on), but ultimately our evaluation of a civilization or society only make sense when we compare its practical achievements with the principles it claims to recognize. In absolute terms or in terms of applied ethics, comparing models is often pointless and can be influenced by nationalistic and chauvinistic feelings, or by power relations that dare not speak their name.
This last point is important. Just as there is no such thing as a couple without power relations, there can be no such thing as a civilization without potential relations of domination. We may well wish to enter into a dialogue, understand one another and build something together, but the fact remains that the whole apparatus that defines civilizations, identities and the universal integrates them, wittingly or not (and never innocently), into a system of categorizations that determines hierarchies, whether we like it or not, and whether or not we pretend that this does not happen. The terminology that is used to express principles and the temporality that is used to evaluate history’s stages, the hierarchy of values and the celebration of certain ‘models’ (which are confused with the principles that underlie them), are all elements that have to do the quest for power that influences debates, self-representations and representations of others. As we have said, the same intuition determined the stances taken by the Frankfurt School, Herbert Marcuse and then the economist Serge Latouche and his critique of the Western mega-machine and of certain the myths that surround progress.
[1] Amin Maalouf, In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong, trans. Barbara Bray, London: Penguin, 2003.
