GLOBALIZATION AND WESTERNIZATION: HORIZONS OF “IDENTIFICATION” AND “DISCRIMINATION”

Abstract

The scientific relevance of distinguishing between “globalization” and “westernization” is due to the political requirement for the implementation of the “world economic order” in the liberal version of the “economic paradigm” (J. Agamben) of the social. Methodologically, one should distinguish between scientific/disciplinary analysis and philosophical interpretation of globalization; “Distinction” (“drawing boundaries”) is the exclusive prerogative of philosophy (M. Heidegger) and presupposes the presence of the concept of globalization (“radical metaphysical concept”) as “the unity of reality and meaning” the condition for the possibility of a «radical concept» is the ordering of perspectives/points of view in the horizon of a certain paradigm of the social; the dominance of the “economic paradigm” in Western European social science determines the formulation of the question regarding the subject of research, the way of its thematization and the area in which the distinction between “globalization” and “Westernization” is important: Westernization is a necessary aspect of globalization as a world order, along with “excluded localities” defined as a result of interpretation as “bipolar”; the distinction between “material” and “cosmological” values (in the terminology of D. Lala) presupposes the homogenization of the world order and the interpretation of “features” in terms of culture; the “remnant” not reduced to culture is interpreted as “absolutely different” and “locked up” in locality as a “prison” (Z. Bauman); sustainability is provided as a “balancing equilibrium” of the Westernized (“universal”) and “other” (“locality”) levels of the world order; the redistribution of power between the main actors/competitors of a single world order does not have a significant impact and is not relevant for distinguishing between “globalization” and “westernization” in terms of philosophical interpretation; “Civilizational paradigm” (S. Huntington) and “planetarism” (existential-historical thinking of M. Heidegger) are marginal for the approach to the study of globalization prevailing in the “positive sciences”, but they are of fundamental importance for its philosophical interpretation.