Skip to main content

Web Content Display Web Content Display

Research

Web Content Display Web Content Display

The Values of the East and the Values of the West. The Meeting of Civilizations

The Values of the East and the Values of the West. The Meeting of Civilizations

The Values of the East and the Values of the West. The Meeting of Civilizations [Wartości wschodu i wartości zachodu. Spotkania cywilizacji], eds. Janusz Danecki, Andrzej Flis, Wydawnictwo Universitas, Kraków 2005.

This collection of essays is devoted to the cultures of Black Africa, Near and Far East and the relations between them. The authors analyse the philosophical, religious and political conceptions of life typical for particular cultural circles and their reciprocal influences. They try to answer the question of what the West learned from the East in the 20th century, to elucidate the basis of Muslim fundamentalism and Chinese Confucianism and at the same time elaborate on the Japanese polysemy or the idea of rebellion in the culture and literature of Iran. The reader faces the most up to date and global issues whose resolution is a civilisational necessity.

The world of the XXI century is a place where the old geographic barriers vanish and the contacts between the representatives of various civilisations become an everyday routine. In such a world, the knowledge of other civilisations loses its exclusive nature and turns into a pragmatic value – a condition of an adequate understanding of one's interlocutors, their behavioural patterns, ideals and motivations.

That is not all, however, as this knowledge is indispensable in the understanding of international relations. We are currently living in the age of the "multipolar world" – a world which values more and more the bodies of the global peace: China, Japan, India, Iran and the Muslim communities. These societies are rooted in a completely different cultural traditions which are, in some respects, the exact opposite of the Euro-American civilisational standards.

The world is "shrinking" and this results in broadening tolerance and understanding on the one hand but on the other pushes numerous groups to withdrawal, a defensive stance or even aggression. Many parts of the world have witnessed the growth of hostility towards America and Europe as well as the processes of globalisation in general which is reflected in direct attacks on Western values. This ideological current paradoxically labelled as Occidentalism (in answer to the term "Orientalism" coined by Edward Said) is present everywhere from Japan to the Near East with Muslim terrorism being its most ominous manifestation. Both these contradictory tendencies – the centripetal shrinking of the world to the size of the global village and the centrifugal resulting in closing on the foreign cultural values – define the dynamics of the 21st century.