analele universităţii „ovidius” constanţa - AUOCSI

Alexey A. Gromyko / Analele Universităţii „OVIDIUS” / Vol. 6/ 2009
Exploring the development of civilization inevitably poses a question of
hierarchy of the criteria or rather importance of any criterion during the
evolution of civilization. Moreover, hierarchy is imminent if studying selfreflection
of civilizations or how people of any civilization identify it from
within. But the main difference of the "horizontal" classification from the
“vertical” classification is that this hierarchy is neither fixed nor pre-set once and
for all. Civilizations live for centuries and the priority of criteria, which they are
based upon changes frequently. Among them, there are some, which can be
attributed to any civilization (like territorial or cultural), while others are specific
for a few (religious, ethnic, racial). But even the most common principles of
different civilizations may be unique: every civilization has its inimitable
geography, its unique “higher culture”.
For some civilizations, religious criterion may be more important than
national or territorial at a particular historical period (which, however, may last
as long as we are able to observe it). But it is not necessarily inevitable that this
criterion will define its fate forever. For example, nowadays it is more
reasonable to speak about the Chinese and Indian civilizations, not about the
Confucian, Hindu or Buddhist ones. For more than a thousand years, the
European civilization was Christian in its full sense; but religious criterion was
swept away in the 18th – 19th centuries as the religious was ousted by secular.
Today, the European civilization is the most appropriate name where
“European” is not a geographic or geopolitical criterion (since it comprises not
only Europe) but a historical and socio-cultural one. For others, in some period,
a geopolitical criterion is of main priority (like for the Latin American
civilization). A racial criterion is crucial for the African civilizational identity. For
the Chinese civilization, super ethnos has become dominant since the 20th
century.
The Islamic civilization is one of the biggest and most commonly
discussed. But a growing interest since the past decade in its nature has been
followed, consciously or unconsciously, by large-scale distortions and
emasculations of its essence, history and current status. This happened as a
result of complete politization of civilizational discourse. Academic voices have
drowned in political hubbub. After bipolar world collapsed, part of the world
political establishment either was unable or refused to seek for other way of
consolidating its electorate but to exploit the image of the other, an external
source of threat. For other politicians, it was expedient to withdraw the question
mark at the end of Samuel Huntington’s "Clash of Civilizations" study.
A Foreign Policy Review, prepared by the Russian Ministry of Foreign
Affairs in 2007, says on the matter: “It cannot be excluded that making an
enemy of Islam may bear a purpose of consolidation, which the West [now]
lacks to reassume subjectivity at the international stage”. In Russia, we have a
proverb: Haste makes waste (Pospeshish lyudei nasmeshish). But at the
beginning of the 21st century, haste of politicians, especially those with great
ISSN -1841-138X 24 © 2009 Ovidius University Press