scholarly journals The Philosophy of Davos

Philosophy ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 77 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-308
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
World Order ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
Global Integration ◽  
Clash Of Civilizations ◽  
Far Right ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
Western Imperialism

Though written several years earlier, Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order has had quite a vogue since September 11th. Philosophers of history, however, will recognize its themes as a re-hash, albeit a timely re-hash, of the eighteenth century dispute between the universalism and optimism of the enlightenment and the cultural relativism and pessimism of Herder.Instead of Voltaire and Diderot in the eighteenth century, in 2002 we have what Huntington calls Davos people, after the annual World Economic Forum meeting in that place. Those who go to Davos include many of the top businessmen, bankers, government officials and opinion formers in the world. They and their kind control most international institutions, most of the world's finances and many governments. They believe in individualism, market economies and political democracy.There is nothing wrong with these beliefs or with holding them. Problems arise when, in enlightenment fashion, Davos people think of these beliefs not just as universal in content but as universally believed in. For though Davos people control much of the world and form political elites in many countries inside and outside the West, outside the West they and their ideas find favour with probably less than one per cent of the world's population. As Huntington puts it this provokes a typically Herderian reaction: ‘The non-Wests see as Western what the West sees as universal. What Westerners herald as benign global integration, such as the proliferation of worldwide media, non-Westerners denounce as nefarious Western imperialism. To the extent that non-Westerners see the world as one, they see it as a threat.’And not only non-Westerners. Much of the success of so-called far right and nationalist movements in Western Europe is undoubtedly due to a Herderian reaction within the West to globalization and federalism, and much of the anger implicit in that reaction is stoked by the complacency of the Davos people.There is indeed nothing wrong with Davos beliefs in themselves, at least nothing that would convict those who hold them of any nefarious or sinister motives. Nor is there anything wrong with the more general enlightenment belief in a universal human nature and a universal standard of morality. The difficulty is to hold this and cognate beliefs, while recognizing that they may not be universally shared, and understanding and even respecting the sensibilities of those who might not share them. In the minds of those who disagree, failure on this point will transform what is supposed to be a liberating faith in universal human rights into an instrument of oppression. But how can one respect what one believes is wrong and even harmful, while not acceding to the very relativism one's commitment to universal truth would strenuously contest—and for the best of philosophical reasons?We are no nearer to solving this problem on a philosophical level than were our predecessors two hundred years ago. But if Huntington and other observers of the world scene are right, its solution is more urgent now than it has ever been.

Searching for new Sources of growth. Are the Developing Countries Catching up with the Developed ones?

2015 ◽  
pp. 30-53
Author(s):  
V. Popov
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Gdp Per Capita ◽  
The West ◽  
Catching Up ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Economic Divergence ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
Relative Standing

This paper examines the trajectory of growth in the Global South. Before the 1500s all countries were roughly at the same level of development, but from the 1500s Western countries started to grow faster than the rest of the world and PPP GDP per capita by 1950 in the US, the richest Western nation, was nearly 5 times higher than the world average and 2 times higher than in Western Europe. Since 1950 this ratio stabilized - not only Western Europe and Japan improved their relative standing in per capita income versus the US, but also East Asia, South Asia and some developing countries in other regions started to bridge the gap with the West. After nearly half of the millennium of growing economic divergence, the world seems to have entered the era of convergence. The factors behind these trends are analyzed; implications for the future and possible scenarios are considered.

Across the Western Sea (1783-1845)

1962 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Kraus
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Oscar Wilde ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Native Land ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

In ancient Greece the priests of Apollo asserted that freedom of movement was one of the essentials of human freedom. Many hundreds of years later, toward the end of the eighteenth century, people in the Atlantic world again talked of emigration as one of man's natural rights. It was in northern and western Europe that easier mobility was first achieved within the various states. The next step was to use that mobility to leap local boundaries to reach the lands across the western sea. From the “unsettlement of Europe” (Lewis Mumford's phrase) came the settlement of America.Americans and those who wished to become Americans felt at home in the geographical realm conceived by Oscar Wilde. “A map of the world that does not include Utopia,” he said, “is not even worth glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. Progress is the realization of Utopias.” It was the belief that Utopias were being realized in America that caused millions to leave Europe for homes overseas.IA Scottish observer, Alexander Irvine, inquiring into the causes and effects of emigration from his native land (1802), remarked that there were “few emigrations from despotic countries,” as “their inhabitants bore their chains in tranquility”; “despotism has made them afraid to think.” Nevertheless, though proud of the freedom his countrymen enjoyed, Irvine was critical of their irrational expectations in setting forth to America. There were few individuals or none in the Highlands, he said, “who have not some expectation of being some time great or affluent.

A New World Economic order formation

2021 ◽  
pp. 932-950
Author(s):  
Vladislav Vyacheslavovich Emelyanov
Keyword(s):  
Oil And Gas ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
New Order ◽  
The West ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
The Usa ◽  
World Economic Order ◽  
The Impact

Every few decades, the world order changes due to various geopolitical, economic and other circumstances. For example, as a result of globalization, the world order has undergone significant changes in the last forty years. Globalization has led to the destruction of the postwar world order, as well as to world leadership by the United States and the West. However, in recent decades, as a result of globalization, the U.S. and the West began to cede their leadership to developing countries, so there is now a change in the economic structure of relations in the world system. Today the center of economic growth is in the East, namely in Asia. There are no new superpowers in the world at the moment, but the unipolar world will cease to exist due to the weakening of the U. S. leadership, which will lead to a change in the world order. A new leader, which may replace the U. S., will not have as wide range of advantages as the USA has. Most likely, the essence of the new order will be to unite the largest countries and alliances into blocks, for example, the USA together with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the EU, etc. The article outlines forecasts of GDP growth rates as well as the global energy outlook; analyzes the LNG market as well as the impact of the pandemic on the global oil and gas market; and lists the characteristics of U. S. geopolitics.

scholarly journals Membangun Dialog Peradaban

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-66
Author(s):  
Zaprulkhan Zaprulkhan
Keyword(s):  
National Interest ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
Clash Of Civilizations ◽  
The West ◽  
End Of History ◽  
Francis Fukuyama ◽  
Ibn Rushd ◽  
The World ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
Clash Of Civilisations

Abstract: In 1989 Francis Fukuyama with his article The End of History? In the journal The National Interest revolves a speculative thesis that after the West conquered its ideological rival, hereditary monarchy, fascism and communism, the constellation of the world of international politics reached a remarkable consensus to liberal democracy. A few years later, Samuel P. Huntington came up with a more provocative thesis that ideological-based war would be a civilization-based war in his article, The Clash of Civilizations? In the journal Foreign Affairs. It reveals that in the future the world will be shaped by interactions among the seven or eight major civilizations of Western civilization: Confucius, Japan, Islam, Hinduism, Orthodox Slavs, Latin America and possibly Africa. Huntington directed the West to pay particular attention to Islam, for Islam is the only civilization with great potential to shake Western civilization. Departing from the above hypotheses, this paper will specifically discuss the bias of Fukuyama and Huntington's thesis on Islam, and how its solution to build a dialogue of civilization by taking the paradigm of dialogue from Ibn Rushd and Raghib As-Sirjani. Abstrak: Pada tahun 1989 Francis Fukuyama dengan artikelnya The End of History? Dalam jurnal The National Interest revolusioner tesis spekulatif bahwa setelah Barat telah menaklukkan lawan-lawan ideologisnya, monarki herediter, fasisme dan komunisme, konstelasi politik internasional mencapai konsensus yang luar biasa untuk demokrasi liberal. Beberapa tahun kemudian, Samuel P. Huntington muncul dengan tesis yang lebih provokatif bahwa perang berbasis ideologis akan menjadi perang berbasis peradaban dalam artikelnya, The Clash of Civilisations? Dalam jurnal Luar Negeri. Ini mengungkapkan bahwa di masa depan akan dibentuk oleh interaksi antara tujuh atau delapan peradaban utama peradaban Barat: Konfusius, Jepang, Islam, Hindu, Slavia Ortodoks, Amerika Latin dan mungkin Afrika. Perhatian Huntington pada Islam adalah potensi terpenting untuk mengguncang peradaban Barat. Berangkat dari hipotesis di atas, makalah ini akan secara khusus membahas bias tesis Fukuyama dan Huntington tentang Islam, dan bagaimana mereka akan mengambil paradigma dialog dari Ibn Rushd dan Raghib As-Sirjani.

Liberalism since the Cold War: an enemy to itself?

1999 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 145-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEOFFREY HAWTHORN
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Markets ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Regional Development Banks

Many expected that after the Cold War, there would be peace, order, increasing prosperity in expanding markets and the extension and eventual consolidation of civil and political rights. There would be a new world order, and it would in these ways be liberal. In international politics, the United States would be supreme. It would through security treaties command the peace in western Europe and east Asia; through its economic power command it in eastern Europe and Russia; through clients and its own domination command it in the Middle East; through tacit understanding command it in Latin America; and, in so far as any state could, command it in Africa also. It could choose whether to cooperate in the United Nations, and if it did not wish to do so, be confident that it would not be disablingly opposed by illiberal states. In the international markets, it would be able to maintain holdings of its bonds. In the international financial institutions, it would continue to be decisive in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank; it would be an important influence in the regional development banks; and it would be powerful in what it was to insist in 1994 should be called the World (rather than Multinational) Trade Organisation. Other transactions in the markets, it is true, would be beyond the control of any state. But they would not be likely to conflict with the interests of the United States (and western Europe) in finance, investment and trade, and would discipline other governments.

Invisible Occidentalism: Eighteenth-Century Indo-Persian Constructions of the West

1992 ◽  
Vol 25 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 3-16
Author(s):  
Juan R. I. Cole
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Italo Calvino ◽  
The West ◽  
Marco Polo ◽  
The World ◽  
The Fantastic

Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his. In the lives of emperors there is a moment which follows pride in the boundless extension of the territories we have conquered, and the melancholy and relief of knowing we shall soon give up any thought of knowing and understanding them.—Italo Calvino, Invisible CitiesMarco Polo's encounter with Kublai Khan, which Italo Calvino made the framework for his exploration of the fantastic in urban life, stands as a useful parable for the nature of the interaction of West and East in the period between 1200 and 1700, when myriads of Europeans produced journals and accounts of their journeys into the rest of the world.

Sovereignty in a Minor Key

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-61
Author(s):  
Thomas Blom Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The World ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Theories Of Sovereignty ◽  
A Minor ◽  
State Form

Abstract Theories of sovereignty in the twentieth century are generally based on a teleological “out-of-Europe” narrative where the modern, centralized nation-state form gradually spread across the world to be the foundation of the international order. In this article, the author reflects on how the conceptualization of sovereignty may change if one begins a global account of modern sovereignty not from the heart of Western Europe but from the complex arrangements of “distributed sovereignty” that emerged in the Indian Ocean and other colonized territories from the eighteenth century onward. These arrangements were organized as multiple layers of dependency and provisional domination, captured well by Eric Beverley's term minor sovereignty. Thinking through sovereignty in a minor key allows us to see sovereignty less as a foundation of states and societies and more as a performative category, emerging in a dialectic between promises of order, prosperity, and law, and the realities of violent domination and occupation.

Culture

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony O’Hear
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
World City ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
Low Culture ◽  
Secular Religion ◽  
Explanatory Concept ◽  
Universal Scale

Culture comprises those aspects of human activity which are socially rather than genetically transmitted. Each social group is characterized by its own culture, which informs the thought and activity of its members in myriad ways, perceptible and imperceptible. The notion of culture, as an explanatory concept, gained prominence at the end of the eighteenth century, as a reaction against the Enlightenment’s belief in the unity of mankind and universal progress. According to J.G. Herder, each culture is different and has its own systems of meaning and value, and cannot be ranked on any universal scale. Followers of Herder, such as Nietzsche and Spengler, stressed the organic nature of culture and praised cultural particularity against what Spengler called civilization, the world city in which cultural distinctions are eroded. It is difficult, however, to see how Herder and his followers avoid an ultimately self-defeating cultural relativism; the task of those who understand the significance of human culture is to make sense of it without sealing cultures off from one another and making interplay between them impossible. Over and above the anthropological sense of culture, there is also the sense of culture as that through which a people’s highest spiritual and artistic aspirations are articulated. Culture in this sense has been seen by Matthew Arnold and others as a substitute for religion, or as a kind of secular religion. While culture in this sense can certainly inveigh against materialism, it is less clear that it can do this effectively without a basis in religion. Nor is it clear that a rigid distinction between high and low culture is desirable. It is, in fact, only the artistic modernists of the twentieth century who have articulated such a distinction in their work, to the detriment of the high and the low culture of our time.

The Unity of the West and Free Trade: A Report From Washington

Worldview ◽  
1970 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 14-16
Author(s):  
Lionel Gelber
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Common Market ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Common ◽  
De Gaulle

When the United States fostered the recovery and underwrote the security of Western Europe she had more than sentiment to impel her. That salient zone is a pivotal sector of the world balance, and while she may station fewer of her own troops upon its soil, she can entertain no total disengagement from it. But there is another West European item, the future of the Common Market, which calls for a fresh American scrutiny. The West will be better off if Western Europe acquires more of an ability to stand on its own feet. Gaullism, however, revealed a less modest goal, one that was not confined to France and did not vanish with the departure of General de Gaulle. On the contrary, it may have gained new leverage from his downfall.

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