The article reviews the social theory of Harry Redner with particular reference to his view of the relationship between high literacy (book culture) and civilization. The question is posed whether, alongside book culture, an axial-type metaphysical culture is also key to the definition of civilization.

The paper advances a new comprehensive complex approach to the investigation of the civilizational aspects in the development of regional associations of countries. The research starts with the overview of historical dimensions of the civilizational approach and the contribution of the founding scholars to its development. It continues with the analysis of the scientific and methodological input of the followers and the critics of this approach. The authors suggest their theoretical approach to the identification of the modern local civilizations according (...) to six parameters: natural, biological, technical, economic, social, and governing. The civilizational affiliation of countries and the civilizational structure of major 17 regional associations of countries are identified. The results demonstrate that some regional groups have been more homogeneous in terms of civilizational composition, others – less homogeneous, which does not interfere with their dynamic development. However, the logic of the historical dynamics of human development indicates the inevitability of changing the current situation through prolonged civilizational conflicts resulting in significant changes in the global social dynamics and the civilizational structure of the world and of regional associations of countries. The identification of the civilization structure of countries and regional associations contributes to the rational decision-making in the areas of international economic relations and to the formation of the integration/disintegration policies on the national and regional levels. It is predicted that from 2030 global social dynamics will undergo a fundamental breakthrough that will radically change the civilizational structure of the world and regional unions of countries. Methods. The research is based on the application of the systemic and historical approach, combined with the methods of analysis, synthesis, analogy, abstraction, generalization and method of individual expert assessment. Novelty of the research. The authors have identified the civilizational structure of countries using statistically available criteria for the six groups of factors, which allows to determine the homogeneity level of the major regional groups of countries. Practical significance. Identification of civilization structure of countries and regional associations creates the opportunity for adjusting national and subregional integration and disintegration policies. The aim of the study is to determine the civilizational structure of the regional associations of countries. To achieve this goal the following tasks are set and solved: –to analyze and optimize the existing approaches to the identification of local civilizations; –to identify the current state of the countries’ belonging to this or that civilization, their civilizational structure; –to reveal the civilizational structure of the major regional blocs. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe main question addressed in this paper is whether conflict is constitutive of the nature of value commitment, and hence necessarily implied by value pluralism. If this is the case, no resolution of value disagreements, whether on the global level or within modern multicultural societies, is possible via practical reasons, and the only solutions to inner or outer conflicts will be “political”, in the sense of a Realpolitik. Positive and negative answers to the main question are shown to express two (...) intellectual and moral attitudes opposing each other as Gorgias and Socrates, or Rhetoric and Philosophy did in the Ancient World. In post-Nietzschean Modernity, however, most philosophers seem to take sides with Gorgias, against Socrates, as is shown on the basis of Ronald Dworkin’s solitary campaign against the many faces of value scepticism. Drawing on phenomenological axiology, this paper takes sides with Socrates by reconciling value pluralism and universalism. (shrink)

The attempts to interpret Russian and Southeast European history in light of a Byzantine background tend to focus on traditions of political culture, and to claim that patterns characteristic of the late Roman Empire have had a formative impact on later developments. But the effects attributed to political culture presuppose a civilizational framework, and arguments on that level must come to grips with evidence of historical discontinuity, during the Byzantine millennium as well as in later centuries and on the periphery (...) of the Byzantium cultural world. The path to a historically grounded civilizational analysis is, however, obstructed by persisting images of Byzantium as a stagnant culture, immobilized by a complete fusion of secular and sacred authority. The article discusses and criticizes some of the most influential versions of this view. (shrink)

The great revolutions of modern times have been analysed from various angles, but their civilizational aspects and contexts have on the whole been neglected. More specifically, the major 20th-century revolutions can be seen as particularly important cases of intercivilizational encounters. They represent different responses to the ascendant and challenging civilization of the West. The Western civilizational trajectory (or set of trajectories), based on a shift from fideism to empiricism and on multiple social dynamics fuelled by this cultural reorientation (such as (...) those of the capittalist economy and the one-nation-state), is selectively appropriated by non-Western societies which at the same time reject the less adaptable parts of the West in the name of traditional or invented alternatives. Russia, China, Turkey and Iran are analysed as variations of this recurrent pattern. At one end of the spectrum, the Russian revolution aspired to transcend Western models on the basis of a more radical interpretation of their own principles; at the other, the Iranian revolution, made up of several episodes with intervals in between, has been characterized by an exceptionally tenacious - and in some ways inventive - defence of a pre-existing civilizational identity. (shrink)

El presente trabajo se propone analizar la posición de Daniel Dennett con respecto a la realidad y naturaleza del yo. El autor considera que la concepción del yo humano propia del sentido común, en tanto que un elemento único, simple, idéntico y continuo, es fundamentalmente una ficción. A partir de este diagnóstico, Dennett se propone ofrecer una explicación de este fenómeno ilusorio desde una doble perspectiva: la heterofenomenología y la memética. La primera y segunda parte de este trabajo estarán destinadas (...) a desarrollar respectivamente estos dos enfoques. En la tercera parte serán analizadas las afirmaciones hechas por el autor dentro de los mencionados marcos teóricos, con el objetivo de mostrar que ambos desarrollos no se complementan entre sí, sino que, por el contrario, presentan ciertas contradicciones a la hora de reconstruir la postura dennettiana global con respecto al yo humano. (shrink)

Autopoietic societies have produced three major images of civilization: the Greco-Roman, the Eurocentric Western, and the Settler Society type. The most important incarnation of the latter to date has been America. This article explores the deep-going differences between American and European ideas of civilization. It examines how the American kind of autopoietic civilization expresses itself in preternaturally distinctive conceptualizations of nature and freedom, life and death, order and chaos, city and ecumene. The article discusses the political and social implications of (...) this. (shrink)

The levels that compose biological hierarchies each have their own energetic, spatial and temporal structure. Indeed, it is the discontinuity in energy relationships between levels, as well as the similarity of sub-systems that support them, that permits levels to be defined. In this paper, the temporal structure of living hierarchies, in particular that pertaining to Human society, is examined. Consideration is given to the period defining the lifespan of entities at each level and to a periodic event considered fundamental to (...) the maintenance of that level. The ratio between the duration of these two periods is found to be approximately 2.5 × 104. A similar relationship is found when lower, non-living levels of molecules and atoms are considered. This suggests that there is a constant factor of amplification between analogous periodic events at successive levels of the Human hierarchy. (shrink)

The dynamics of ancient civilisations according to credited historians can be explained by means of a simple linear time-invariant feedback model whose loop only consists of a first-order process and a pure time delay. It is shown that, despite its simplicity, this model can give rise to a variety of responses, either oscillatory or aperiodic, such as those envisaged by A. Toynbee. Since modern civilisations are characterised by fast parameter variations, their description calls instead for a time-variant model. Simulations with (...) the linear parameter-varying model obtained from the aforementioned LTI model by letting its parameter vary are carried out to show the influence of different scenarios on the system response. Even if this model is elementary, it is believed that it may serve as a stimulating “tool for thought” in the ever-popular debate on the growth and decline of civilisations. (shrink)

Is restructuring an underhanded way to make the rich richer and the poor poorer? Or is it necessary, although bitter, medicine for an ailing economy? In The Ethics of the New Economy: Restructuring and Beyond, professionals from the fields of philosophy, ethics, management, as well as those representing the groups affected by restructuring, tackle thorny ethical issues. Referring to concrete case studies, these timely essays discuss a variety of topics, including justified and unjustified restructuring; employers’ obligations during the restructuring process; (...) equity issues; the rise of part-time employment; the effects of restructuring on communities; the internal risks faced by restructuring corporations; deprofessionalization in health care; the consequences of restructuring in the developing world; philanthropy and cause-related marketing; corporate “judo” and restructuring; and responsible and irresponsible restructuring. (shrink)

Multiculturalism is, among other things, an attitude toward values - hence, an ethic of a kind. The question it poses, however, is what kind of ethics are possible when it is assumed that the one world culture that stood behind classical social ethics no longer pertains. The issue binds most strictly when it is further assumed that social ethics entail political commitments to change the worlds. Hence, the practical consideration of whether or not plural worlds of incommensurable values allow for (...) ethical strategies sufficient to change for the better - where ‘better’ is itself open to doubt. (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)

Evidence evinced primarily from the visual arts suggests that the term `postmodernism' is unlikely to survive as a general description of contemporary culture beyond the year 2000. The concepts of both post-industrialism and postmodernism are examined as presented by six major writers. None makes a convincing case for the establishment of an historical disjunction that separates modernism from postmodernism either during the 1960s or at any other time. There is a need to recognize that the modernism of the late 19th (...) and early 20th century is no longer modern. It would be better described as the formalesque. This will make it possible to recognize the `postmodern' as the true modernism of the 20th century, the prime sources of which lie in Dada, surrealism and the Neue Sachlichkeit. (shrink)

This paper aims to explore Danilevsky’s theory of cultural-historical types. The authors used hermeneutic, cultural-historical, and integrative approaches. Denying the understanding of the history of humankind as the linear reality for the formation of the socio-cultural system of universalism, Danilevsky relies on the multivariate historical development and elaborates a methodology of civilizational discreteness that takes into account the originality and integrity of each particular cultural-historical type. The thinker emphasizes that the core of any cultural-historical type is a certain ethnos with (...) its specific set of attitudes and values. Although this approach can not explain global integration tendencies, it allows to take into account the multidimensional vectors of human cultural space and the unique experience of different civilizations. Danilevsky introduced into the scientific discourse the idea of the integrity and self-sufficiency of each cultural-historical type. This idea was developed by a German historian, representative of the philosophy of life O. Spengler in his book “The Decline of the West”, in which the theory of local civilizations was enriched with morphological studies of history, and a British historian, philosopher of history, sociologist A. Toynbee, who laid out his universalist philosophy of history in the twelve-volume work “The Study of History”. (shrink)