The Clash of Epochs: Traditional, Modern, Postmodern, and Evolutionity

Abstract

Several authors have written about the clash of civilizations and have described it as the main form of conflict in today’s world. My thesis is that the clash of epochs is far more fundamental. It is the hitherto insufficiently noted ground on which different forms of conflict can take place. The clash of epochs, in the form of a conflict among traditional society, modernity, and postmodernity, has led the West to be internally torn apart and increasingly incapable of withstanding new emerging challenges. I argue that to reverse this trend, the Western world has to reconstruct itself again as a civilization. It needs to rediscover the value of its classical moral and intellectual traditions. This should be not merely a return to the past but a creative return that will initiate evolutionity—a new evolutionary epoch, which would replace modernity and postmodernity.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

Notes

1 Samuel P. Huntington, “Clash of Civilizations,” Foreign Affairs, 73, no. 3 (1993): 22.

2 Leszek Kolakowski, “Modernity and Endless Trial,” Encounter, lxvi (1986): 8–12.

3 Based on rationalism of the Enlightenment and on rejection of religion, Marxism is a modern ideology. Marx did not want to stop processes of modernity, but rather to speed up these processes and to establish modern socialist or communist societies that would be more prosperous, creative, and just than the liberal ones.

4 Robbie Shilliam, “Modernity and Modernization,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies, Online Publication Date: Nov. 2017. http://oxfordre.com/internationalstudies/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.001.0001/acrefore-9780190846626-e-56.

5 Modern subjectivity is expressed in individualism, namely, in thought and action aimed at one’s own particularity, that is, motivated by self-interest.

6 John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, ed. C. B. Macpherson (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980), VII.89, 47, 48.

7 Modernity has been inspired by ideas of the Enlightenment and therefore it has been widely associated with progress and rationality. See Peter Wagner, Modernity: Understanding the Present (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012).

8 See Jonathan Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers, Vol. 1 (London: Routledge, 1979), 4.

9 Edmund Husserl, “The Vienna Lecture,” in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, transl. David Carr (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 280–82.

10 Universalistic morality is based on the idea that all human beings, regardless of their ethnic, national, or religious affiliation, belong to a universal moral human community. It refers to the concept of natural moral law that was foreshadowed in Plato and Aristotle and later developed by the Stoics and Christian thinkers. This idea is also present in some non-Western religious and philosophical systems, particularly in Buddhism. Universalistic morality rejects a double morality—one toward those who belong to our community and another toward outsiders—and affirms common morality and the same rights for all humans.

11 The Classical Tradition is the moral tradition, which has developed in the political thought of the West. It includes thinkers for whom politics is connected with ethics and who stress the importance of virtues in the public life. It was formed by Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and other great thinkers of antiquity and it has been continued by St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and other Christian philosophers.

12 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan: With Selected Variant from the Latin Edition of 1868, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994), 18.

13 Andrew Gamble, An Introduction to Modern Social and Political Thought (London: Macmillan, 1981), 4.

14 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: The Free Press, 1992).

15 This quotation comes from Fukuyama’s article “The End of History?”, published in Summer 1989 in National Interest. He had later developed the themes touched upon in his article into a full-length book.

16 Fukuyama follows Hegel and Kojève in claiming that wisdom is attained at the end of history. Thus, philosophy, both as the quest for wisdom and as an academic discipline related to this quest, comes to an end.

17 Some postmodern writers were active already in the 1970s and 1980s, but the decisive intellectual change can be associated with the collapse of communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

18 See W. J. Korab-Karpowicz, “Heidegger’s Hidden Path: From Philosophy to Politics,” The Review of Metaphysics, 61 (2007): 295–315.

19 “Dasein [the entity which in its being has always being as an issue] is in each case mine.” Therefore, the forgetfulness of being is related to our own existence. See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 62.

20 David Ray Griffin, “Introduction” in: Postmodern Politics for a Planet in Crisis, eds. David Ray Griffin and Richard Falk (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993), xii.

21 See Ernest Geller, Postmodern Reason and Religion (London: Routledge, 1992); Friedrich Kratochwil, “Globalization: What It Is and What It Is Not. Some Critical Reflections on the Discursive Formations Dealing with Transformative Change,” in Transformative Change and Global Order, eds. D. A. Fuchs, F. F. Kratochwil (Munster: LIT, 2002), 25–44; Roland Robertson, “Mapping the Global Condition: Globalization as the Central Concept,” Theory, Culture and Society 7 (1990), 15–30. We can find the denial of objectivity in some feminist writers, for example.

22 Feminist epistemology in which the question of objectivity is raised developed mainly in the 1980s and 1990s. Significant works include Sandra Harding and Merrill Hintikka, eds., Discovering Reality (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1983); Genevieve Lloyd, The Man of Reason (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984); Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985); Susan Bordo, The Flight of Objectivity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987); Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986) and Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women’s Lives (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1991); Helen Longino, Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); Naomi Scheman, Engenderings: Constructions of Knowledge, Authority, and Privilege (New York: Routledge, 1993); Lorraine Code, What Can She Know? (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991) and Rhetorical Spaces (New York: Routledge, 1995); Evelyn Fox Keller and Helen Longino, eds., Feminism and Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

23 See Richard Devetak, “Postmodernism,” in Theories of International Relations, ed. Scott Burchill (New York: Palgrave, 2005), 161–87. Also IR critical theory (neo-Marxism) is focused on power and domination in the world and tries to liberate humans from the oppressive structures of world politics, particularly from the nation-state. The leading critical theorists are Robert Cox and Andrew Linklater. See Robert W. Cox and Timothy J. Sinclair, Approaches to World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) and Andrew Linklater, Beyond Realism and Marxism: Critical Theory in International Relations (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990).

24 This refers to cultural diversity and other forms of diversity, for example, sexual diversity, as it is explained below.

25 See Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2nd ed. (Duckworth: London, 1985); Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Duckworth: London, 1988); Charles Taylor, Hegel and Modern Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of a Modern Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991).

26 John Locke, Second Treatise, V.34, 21.

27 Richard Vetterli, Richard and Gary Bryner, In Search of the Republic: Public Virtue and the Roots of American Government (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1987), 211–18; Carl J. Richard, The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome and American Enlightenment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994).

28 Richard, The Founders and the Classics, op. cit., 7.

29 See Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic 1776–1887 (New York: Norton, 1969).

30 Subsequently, I shall refer to classical political thinking as “the Classical Tradition.” See footnote 11.

31 J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Movement. Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Political Traditions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 526.

32 John Locke, Second Treatise, V.49, 29.

33 The phrase “the simultaneity of what is not simultaneous” was initially used by Bloch to dispute the linear conception of time and history prevalent in the Marxism. See Ernst Bloch, Erbschaft dieser Zeit (Berlin: Suhrkamp 1985).

34 Mass migration is considered a new security threat that confronts Europe. See J. Peter Burgess and Serge Gutwitrth, eds., A Threat Against Europe: Security, Migration and Integration (Brussels: Brussels University Press, 2011); Anke Hassel and Bettina Wagner, “The EU’s ‘migration crisis’: challenge, threat or opportunity?” in Social Policy in the European Union: State of Play 2016, Seventeenth Annual Report, eds. Bart Vanhercke, David Natali and Denis Bouget (Brussels: ETUI, 2017).

35 The European Union has evolved from a modern political entity, which was initially the European Coal and Steal Community, then ECC and then EU, to today’s postmodern entity. The former entities were associations of independent nation-states and would limit their activities to cooperation mainly in economic and security issues. Today’s EU for whom the model is a “deep” union, challenges the sovereignty of member states, first formally by Lisbon Treaty, and then practically, by trying to interfere in their internal affairs. It imposes on member states its fiscal and economic policies, as well as policies of sexual diversity and multiculturalism.

36 The decline of rationality can be especially noticed in today’s diplomatic practice. Instead of finding solutions to conflicts by compromise or accommodation, sides accuse themselves and publicly insult each other. Hence, unsolved armed conflicts continue forever and the world becomes endangered by a global confrontation.

37 Politicized and violent religiosity of Islamic fundamentalism is not traditional religiosity, but rather a postmodern phenomenon. It is opposed to the modern West, the Western ideas, and models. See W. J. Korab-Karpowicz, “Turkey under Challenge: Conflicting Ideas and Forces,” Turkish Policy Quarterly, 7, no. 1 (2008): 93, 94.

38 Since there is an erosion of both rationality and morality in postmodernity, it is in a sense a return to barbarity.

39 President Donald Trump has currently a conflict with Congress over funding for the Mexican border wall to stop illegal immigrants. His administration enacted a partial government shutdown at midnight on December 22, 2018, after his proposed budget was not approved. Samuel Osborne and Sarah Harvard, “Government Shutdown: What Does It Mean and How Can Donald Trump End the Conflict?” Independent, January 4, 2019. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/government-shutdown-when-end-2019-trump-wall-tax-explained-why-congress-house-a8711451.html

40 Robert Wilkins, “Political Culture and the Presidency: Memory and the Shift from Mostmodern to Postmodern,” in Postmodern Politics for a Planet in Crisis, op. cit., 160.

41 Richard Falk, “A Postmodern Presidency for a Postmodern World,” in Postmodern Politics for a Planet in Crisis, op. cit., 193.

42 Hwa Yol Jung, “Postmodernity, “Eurocentrism, and the Future of Political Philosophy,” in Border Crossing. Toward a Comparative Political Philosophy, ed. F. Dallmayr (Oxford: Lexington Books, 1999), 281.

43 Robert Robertson, “The Future of Traditional Culture and Religion,” in Traditional Religion and Culture in a New Era, ed. R. Bachika (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2002), 146.

44 A possible alternative to multiculturalism is nativeculturalism—the principle of domination in society of the native national culture, with tolerance for other cultures. “Nativeculturalism” is of particular importance for older countries, those that have for centuries developed on the basis of one dominant culture. See W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz, Tractatus Politico-Philosophicus: New Directions for the Future Development of Humankind (New York: Routledge 2017), 8.7842.

45 Joseph E. B. Lumbard, ed., Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Betrayal of Tradition (New Delhi: Pentagon Press, 2005). In “Introduction” Lumbard distinguishes ideologically Islam and the West; note 1, p. xxi.

46 One can recognize a feeling of resentment about the nation-state as a foreign import even in writings of Ahmed Davutolu, Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs and one of the key activists of the AKP party. See Ahmet Davutolu, “Rewriting Contemporary Muslim Politics: A Twenty-Century’s Polarization,” Border Crossing: Toward a Comparative Political Theory, ed. Fred Dallmayr (Lanhman: Lexington Books, 1999), 89–118.

47 Fuad S. Naeen, “A Traditional Islamic Response to the Rise of Modernism,” in Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Betrayal of Tradition, p. 111.

48 Hwa Yol Jung, “Postmodernity, Eurocentrism, and the Future of Political Philosophy,” 281.

49 It is rather unlikely that postmodern ideas in China will go beyond narrow academic circles. See Xiaofeng Liu, “Leo Strauss and the Rebirth of Classics in China,” Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy, 42, no. 2 (2016): 171–89.

50 Niall Ferguson, “What ‘Chimerica’ Hath Wrought,” National Interest, January 1, 2009. http://www.the-american-interest.com/2009/01/01/what-chimerica-hath-wrought/.

51 Niall Ferguson, “America’s Global Retreat,” The Wall Street Journal, February 21, 2014. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303945704579391492993958448.

52 Zbigniew Brzezinski, Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power (New York: Basic Books, 2012), 76.

53 Ibid., 21.

54 Ibid., 39.

55 Oliver Haynes, “Racism, Revolution and Resistance: France’s current political turmoil,” Exeposé, January 7, 2019. https://exepose.com/2019/01/07/racism-revolution-and-resistance-frances-current-political-turmoil/.

56 Christopher Dawson, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (New York: Doubleday, 1958), 17.

57 Richard Falk and David Ray Griffin, “Introduction: From Modern to Postmodern Politics,” in Postmodern Politics for a Planet in Crisis, op. cit., 4.

58 Brzezinski, Strategic Vision, op. cit., 46.

59 See Robert L. Carneiro, ed., The Evolution of Society: Selections from Herbert Spencer’s Principles of Sociology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1967); Julian Huxley, Evolutionary Humanism (New York: Prometheus, 1992); Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (New York: Herper, 2008); W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz, “Evolutionity: A New Age of Humanity: On the Concept of Human Evolution by Hoene Wronski,” Ruch Filozoficzny, 74, no. 3 (2018): 141–56.

60 Books that introduce us to the new physics appear regularly. See Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science (New York: Prometheus Books, 1999); Fritjof Capra, The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture (New York: Bantham Books, 1983); Margaret J. Whaetley, Leadership and the New Science: Learning about Organization from an Orderly Universe (San Francisco: Berrett-Kochler, 1994); Roger Penrose, The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe (New York: Vintage Books, 2004); Lawrence M. Krauss, The Universe from Nothing (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012); Frank Wilczek, A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature's Deep Design (London: Penguin, 2016). On significance on new science for the social sciences, see Alexander Wendt, Quantum Mind and Social Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

61 A good expression of this state of humanity is Heidegger’s philosophy, based on his key concept of being’s forgetfulness. See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978) and W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz, The Presocratics in the Thought of Martin Heidegger (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2016), 219–37.