Dialogues On Civilisation: A Comparative Study Of Ibn Khaldun And Spengler's View On Civilisation (original) (raw)
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IIUM JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND CIVILISATIONAL STUDIES, 2023
This research article examines the comparative perspectives of Ibn Khaldun and Oswald Spengler regarding the progression of history and the advancement of civilisations. This article aims to argue that Ibn Khaldun and Oswald Spengler shared a similar perspective on the progression and decline of nations and civilisations. At the same time, they had different perspectives as they lived in distinct historical periods. The study posits that their perspectives on history, society and civilisation are characterised by a reduced level of subjectivity and a greater emphasis on rationality. The analysis reveals that despite their shared cyclical historical patterns, there exist notable disparities on the mechanisms behind the growth of civilisations and the conceptualisation of civilisation’s lifespan. The interpretations and definitions of history and civilisation put forward by Ibn Khaldun and Oswald Spengler have had a profound impact on the field of human sciences, fostering notable advancements. To attain a high level of accuracy, this study uses qualitative research techniques as a means to accomplish its aims. Ibn Khaldun and Oswald Spengler possessed a comprehensive perspective of culture and history and the processes through which history unfolds. When discussing history, individuals tend to adopt a particular perspective and contemplate on the various facets
The Sociology of civilisations: Ibn Khaldun and a multi-civilisational world order
Due to advancements in telecommunications and transportation over the past century, the world is shrinking and physical boundaries are being eroded. The advent of globalization has facilitated the flow of ideas, values, goods, and people from one part of the world to another. This hyperbolic human activity has altered the structure of inter-civilizational relations and has spawned a spirited debate on how to create a multi-civilizational world order. This paper is critical of contemporary approaches on the subject that envisage the primacy of one civilization on the one hand and a clash among civilizations on the other. By examining Ibn Khaldun’s theory of ʿUmrān and the discipline of Fiqh, it argues that these concepts remain relevant for our understanding of the human condition today. While the theory of ʿUmrān analyzes political and economic relations at the macro-level, Fiqh tries to arrange societal relations at the microlevel. This paper also studies the Ottoman legacy since the Ottoman state was founded on Fiqh and the Millet system. It proved to be successful in preserving pluralistic communities based on principles of autonomy and mutual coexistence. Even though Ibn Khaldun was one of the pioneers in the field of civilizational studies, his seminal work is largely neglected in scholarly circles today, both Muslim and non-Muslim alike. The present inquiry seeks to address this shortcoming.
IBN HALDUN, 2019
In this paper I will attempt to provide a comparison of the ontological, methodological and epistemological approaches and articulations of “civilization” according to Ibn Khaldun, John Stuart Mill and Bruce Mazlish respectively. How does civilization emerge according to these thinkers, and do they develop any systematic understandings of the processes which lead to development and decline? There are rich inter-dependencies between concepts in Ibn Khaldun’s Muqadimah and that is the primary focus of my study with respect to how the various concepts lead to the birth of other phenomena and sub-concepts. The much shorter treatises of the latter two European thinkers however lack this conceptual richness and inter-dependency and instead adopt a more critical and reflective linear historical approach with respect to the ontological development of “civilization” as a term and concept. It can thus be discerned that “civilization” is a contentious term and highly controversial especially when dealing with the issue of translation and the attempt to discern equivalent concepts in different languages. In order for a group to be “civilized”, the respective authors have different thresholds of requirements or conditions with Ibn Khaldun’s being the most primitive and tightly defined. The latter two authors however, though having a seemingly higher social and cultural requirement of sophistication for the birthing of “civilization” as a phenomena - still regard the maturation phase of civilization with the same moral ambiguity as Ibn Khaldun. It is thus seemingly a process rather than deemed an ideal “achievement” that realises all human potentialities and virtues.
Modernity, Civilization and the Return to History [abstract + other scholars' comments]
A truly innovative and original work, comprehensive, balanced, and relevant to any investigation into and understanding of modernity. The author does a remarkable job of drawing from Western and Islamicate philosophy in a comprehensive and rigorous manner that exposes the reader to an intense, descriptive analysis of the problems encountered in interpreting history. His methodology is cohesive, and the evidence adds to the high quality of his argument...[O]ne of the most scholastic and ambitious undertakings I have ever encountered, extremely well-written...I stand in admiration of this work. The students of history, philosophy, theology, and religious studies would have a deep interest in this book. Geran F. Dodson University of North Georgia This fascinating book adopts a radically interdisciplinary approach in order to sort out modernity by questioning that which we call philosophy...delighted by the wealth of insights and connections unraveled by the author...genius. Mohammad Azadpur Professor of Philosophy San Francisco State University Anthony Shaker has written an extrordinary rich book exploring modernity, tradition and civilization. Drawing on the learned tradition of Islamdom as well as the work of Qunavi, but also many others, Shaker identifies the pitfalls of thinking about tradition and modernity in isomorphic terms. There is more to Islam than merely text. He draws our attention to personhood, history and the project of civility and shows a hopeful path forward. This is compulsory reading for anyone who agonizes about the world we are living in and seeks inspiration from the past that can be usefully used in the present. Ebrahim Moosa Professor of Islamic Studies Keough School of Global Affairs University of Notre Dame Digging deep into the roots of our modern ideas of civilization..., Shaker says ‘what we call modernity cannot be fathomed without making [the] historical connection’ between our times and ‘the spirit of scientific investigation associated with a self-conscious Islamicate civilization...’ This is not a book for casual reading. [But] despite some of the material being beyond my own scholarship, it is not at all difficult to see that the approach of the book is unique, that the level of inquiry and argument is clear, concise, and well-supported by source material. It’s certainly clear enough for me that I was able to follow the argument...I recommend it highly...This truly is a monumental work, and so far as I know there is no comparable work. I really do think this is a work of genius. Paul Richard Harris, Editor Axis of Logic Abstract The modern concept and study of civilization have their roots, not in western Europe, but in the long tradition of scientific and philosophic inquiry that began in a self-conscious Islamicate civilization. They emerged—as Heidegger would say—within a “region of being” proper to systematic science. Western European thought has introduced new elements that have completely altered how collective and personal identities are conceived and experienced. In this age of “globalization,” expressions of identity (individual, social and cultural) survive precariously outside their former boundaries, and humanity faces numerous challenges—environmental degradation, policy inertia, interstate bellicosity, cultural rivalries. Yet, the world has been globalized for at least a millennium, a fact partially obscured by the threadbare but widespread belief that modernity is a product of something called the West. One is thus justified in asking, as many people do today, if humanity has not lost its initiative. This is not a historical, a sociological or an empirical question, but fundamentally a philosophical one. The modern concepts of identity and personhood have come under heavy scrutiny because there can be no human initiative without the human agency that flows from them. Given their present inscrutability, and at the same time profound importance to us, Dr. Shaker brings to bear a wealth of original sources from both German thought and Ḥikmah (Islamicate philosophy), the latter based on material previously unavailable to scholars. He shows why posing the age-old question of identity anew in the light of these two traditions, whose special place in history is assured, can help clear the confusion surrounding modernity and civilization—i.e., the way we, the acting subject, live and deliberate on the present and the past. Proximity to Scholasticism, and therefore Islamicate philosophy, lends German thought up to Heidegger a unique ability to dialogue with Ḥikmah, as scholars since Max Horten and Henry Corbin (the first French translator of Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit) have been discovering. Two fecund elements common to Heidegger, Qūnawī and Mullā Ṣadrā are of special importance: logos (utterance and speech) as the structural embodiment of the primary meaning of a thing, and the unity-in-difference that Ṣadrā finally formulated as the substantial movement of existentiation. Heidegger, who occupies a good portion of this study, questioned modern ontology at a time of social collapse and deep spiritual crisis not unlike ours. Yet, that period also saw the greatest breakthroughs in modern physics and social science. With the waning of the old naïvetés of biologism, psychologism and social evolutionism, our very conception of time and space as measurable determinations was overturned. Dr. Shaker thus concludes with a few chapters on the theme of identity renewal in Western literature and Muslim “reformism.” The roots of the latter point to a civilizational point of convergence between the Eurocentric worldview, which provides the secular aesthetics roots of modernism, and an intellectual current originating in Ibn Taymiyyah’s epistemological reductionism. Both expressed the longing for pristine origin in a historical “golden age,” an obvious deformation of the commanding, creative oneness of being that has guided thought for millennia.
The study of the forms of society, culture, polity, religion and economy that ordinarily envelop human beings throughout their lives is an integral part of historically informed social analysis. This tradition of analysis stems back to the ancient scholars of war -Thucydides -and geoculture -Herodotus, gaining new impetus with the study of industrial capitalist societies (Marx and Weber), the rise and overthrow of noble or decadent values (Nietzsche) and, more recently, the formation of nation-states and nationalism. The comparative and historical analysis of the different ways in which Heidegger's 'being-in-the-world' can be understood has been a central tenet of social analysis oriented towards conceptualizing the deeply historical, social nature of being (ontos). To be human is, as Aristotle first observed, to give expression to our essentially gregarious nature as mediated and realized through various forms of social intercourse, deliberation and institutionalization. This gregariousness takes on various colourations according to time, space, symbolism, corporeality, affect structures and long-term social learning processes. The complex ways in which the latter perform their work to produce the interesting human being 1 may be denoted as a civilizational complex. In this chapter, I will expound upon different aspects and conceptions of this complex, discussing the necessity to conceive of late modern individuals (and social forms) within the parameters of a civilization-analytic framework. The comparative dimension of this discussion will serve to also highlight the heuristic value of conceiving of social life in all its multifarious forms, particularly when the person is now constantly subjected to media-saturated images of 'globalization' that misleadingly suggest the overcoming of diverse civilizational lineages, that is, cultural traditions.
Pre-published version of opening chapter, 2017
Contemporary civilisational analysis has emerged in the post-Cold War period as a forming but already controversial field of scholarship. Debating civilisations seeks to evaluate the main currents of the field and its principal competitors. The author draws a unique comparison of many key scholars of civilisations, comparing civilisational analysis with competing perspectives and presenting a fresh theoretical approach. Debating civilisations will appeal to academics and postgraduate and final-year undergraduate students in the fields of history, comparative and historical sociology and social theory.
2019
This article discusses the historical emergence and transformation of the modern concept of civilisation in the eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe. It demonstrates how the concept gradually emerged out of the earlymodern notion of civility in the second half of the eighteenth century. This emergence, it argues, needs to be understood in the context of the Enlightenment belief in progress. Some eighteenth century writers who promoted or believed in the progressive history of humanity saw ‘civilisation’ as a useful concept. Unlike ‘civility’ that merely refers to a static condition and lacks processual connotation, ‘civilisation’ articulates the dynamic process of human history. It enabled writers to show in a more effective way the gradual transformation of human society from barbarism to a more developed stage.