The West and the Rest

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Since the eighteenth century the issue of the relation between the Western and non-Western world has become increasingly prominent. In this connection Edward Said’s book Orientalism is taken as starting point, because of the penetrating picture given of the relationship between the Western and Oriental world. However, Said focuses on the manifestations of Orientalism without considering particular fundamental features of the relation between the Western and non-Western world in general. This relation is philosophically epitomized in Hegel’s philosophy of history, which actually exhibits the Western position as regards its relation to the non-Western world in the nineteenth century until well into the twentieth century. Hegel conceives the historical process as unilinearly moving from East to West, exhibiting a progressive consciousness of freedom, coming to a climax in Western civilization. That is, the world was seen as including either primitive peoples or peoples that once had been civilized, but had fallen into decay. This viewpoint accorded well with European colonial policy in the sense that it provided its ideology of having a ‘civilizing mission’ towards the non-Western world. In the previous century, this Eurocentric vision on world history implied by Hegel’s philosophy of history was rejected on principal by Spengler and Toynbee. Both consider Western civilization just one among various other civilizations, instead of allegedly being the final stage of world history. Hegel’s philosophy of history got a remarkable revival, however, with Fukuyama’s book The End of History and The Last Man (1992). Fukuyama adopts Hegel’s philosophy of history without reserve, claiming that the final stage of the historical process in Hegel’s philosophy of history – that is, the accomplishment of Western civilization – should be considered the end of history. In his book The Clash of Civilizations (1997), however, Huntington develops a position that contrasts sharply with that of Fukuyama. In his view, the current process of modernization in the non-Western world demonstrates that it does not proceed in accordance with the Western model of development. Huntington’s position is not based on theoretical considerations, but is rather inspired by current global developments.