Book Review: Henrik Schmiegelow (ed.), Preventing the Clash of Civilizations: A Peace Strategy for the Twenty-first Century (by) Roman Herzog (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999, 136 pp., no price given hbk.)
| Published date | 01 December 2000 |
| Date | 01 December 2000 |
| Author | Arvind Sharma |
| DOI | 10.1177/03058298000290030811 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Book Reviews
917
Henrik Schmiegelow (ed.), Preventing the Clash of Civilizations: A Peace
Strategy fo r the Twenty-first Ce ntury (by) Roman He rzog (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1999 , 136 pp., no price give n hbk.).
Ever since the appearance of Samuel Hu ntington’s seminal thesis on the clash of
civilisatio ns in an arti cle in Foreign Affairs in 1993, and subsequently as a book in
1996, some o f the best minds in the world, not excludin g Huntington himself, have
been con cerned with devising means of avertin g this cla sh for the excel lent reason
that even if the thesis does not reflect a historical reality, the wide dissemination of
this thesi s has itself created an ideational realit y which might precip itate itself as a
self-fulfilling prophecy histori cally if left unchal lenged.
The basic t heme of the book is that the commonalities among the civilisations, if
duly forti fied, can avert such a clash, whethe r these commonal ities bind the
civilisatio ns internally (through the possession of a common e thical code) or
externally (through globalisation, spread of democracy, etc.). Thi s is broadly the
position taken b y Roman Herzog, the Presid ent of th e Federal Republic of
Germany, whose pronounc ements on this theme constitut e the core o f the volume
under review.
The four commentators—Amitai Et zioni, Hans Küng, Bassa m T ibi, a nd
Masakazu Yamazaki—n uance the general picture with their own emphases.
Etzioni makes a case for moral suasion in its own right wi th an almo st Confucian
air; Küng emp hasises the shared values amon g religions and thus appea ls to the
concrete core of the ‘glob al eth ic’ as a bulwark against globa l centri fugalism;
Yamazaki wo uld rely on the auth entic acceptance of plu ralism itself (rather that its
universal core if any) to en sure the same outcome. It i s Tibi, however, who
provides a stro ng cross-c ultural lo gic to overco me the cl ash as ag ainst a
universalist ic argument.
The ot her approaches a rguably reflect v arious forms o f universalism, o vertly or
covertly, in the sense that they draw thei r forms from the Kantian uni versalisability
of thei r position stated a bstractly, concretel y or pluralisticall y. In a departure from
such a position, Tibi urges a shift from universali sm to an effort to create a cross-
cultural und erpinning in the following terms: ‘Mutual awareness of differen ce does
not nec essarily lead to strife. It also can lead to mutual understand ing with a clea r
will to live in peace with one another. Cultural dialogue in the pursuit for value
commonalit y, that is intern ational morality, is more promising t han the imposit ion
of a universalism of one civilizat ion onto others’ (p . 120). Or even the i mposition
of any kind, one might add.
This co nclusion coincid es with the bent of my own inclinations after a decade-
long im mersion in issu es of moral universals and human rights. Thus the c lash of
civilisatio ns is perhaps b est averted b y the whole-he arted acceptance o f thei r very
diversity a nd by eschewing th e kind of homo genisation which canno t be separated
from hegemonisation, when the universal is not left to stand as a no un but is let
loose on the glo be as a verb.
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