{"id":168626,"date":"2022-10-03T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-03T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/?p=168626"},"modified":"2022-10-03T07:00:02","modified_gmt":"2022-10-03T07:00:02","slug":"why-the-civilization-concept-is-flawed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/?p=168626","title":{"rendered":"Why the Civilization Concept is Flawed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Spahic Omer<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word \u0153civilization\u009d is the mantra of modernity \u201c and post-modernity. It is the measure of all things and the fundamental criterion of humanitys worth. However, civilization entails more nuances than one can perceive at first glance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The concept of civilization is relatively new. It is a socio-cultural construct associated with the emergence of the modernity penchant, whose justification for existence revolved around scientific discoveries, technological innovations and material progress. The modern man developed a set of benchmarks whereby he wished to frame not only his current accomplishments and all his future undertakings but also the achievements of his predecessors both in not-too-distant and in ancient times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The modern man became so proud and big-headed insofar as his feats were concerned and so bigoted, plus judgmental, insofar as the feats of his ancestors were involved. Everything seemed well and suitable as long as things fitted the modern civilizational patterns; however, no sooner had some subject matters contravened those customary patterns than the true nature of the modern man and his frame of mind started to surface. Civilizationally doctrinaire, he hastened ex post facto to devalue and spurn whatever proved unconventional, and he failed to encompass his relative knowledge paradigms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is why many civilizational legacies from the past are yet to be properly \u0153discovered\u009d and appreciated. Locked in his imperceptible and everlastingly imprisoning civilizational cocoon, the modern man is yet to understand the true meaning of history and its ancient socio-cultural traditions as gifts to humankind. Notwithstanding the refinement of several aspects of the legacies of many oldest nations and the splendour of their ways of life altogether, those have been relegated to the artificially concocted historical eras with equally artificial labels, such as prehistory, ancient history, antiquity, medieval or middle ages, dark ages, etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The nations of those epochs have not been regarded as civilized nor cultured \u201c wholly or partly – simply because they lived outside the parameters of modern living standards. Their civilizational crime was that they were different; they were not \u0153us\u009d. As a result, the modern man continued to live impaired. His subjective thinking and life models guided him only as far as they could. Hence, how many times has he had to rewrite the history books, and how many times will he have to do the same thing all over again? This disposition of man on the whole prompted Georg Friedrich Hegel (d. 1831), a German philosopher, to declare that the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From \u0153civilis\u009d, \u0153civis\u009d and \u0153civitas\u009d to \u0153civil law\u009d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word \u0153civilization\u009d was not used until the 18th<\/sup> century. Before that, there were Latin words \u0153civilis\u009d, \u0153civis\u009d and \u0153civitas\u009d, which mean \u0153civil\u009d, \u0153citizen\u009d and \u0153city\u009d respectively. These were the root words for similar derivative words in many European languages. One of them was the English word \u0153civil\u009d, which pertained to society and public life. Another one was also the English word \u0153civility\u009d, which implied a civic order befitting a citizen, meaning \u0153courtesy\u009d, \u0153politeness\u009d, \u0153affability\u009d and \u0153good manners\u009d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was also in Old French the word \u0153civil\u009d, which meant \u0153civil\u009d, albeit relating to civil law. The last example was an effect of a much larger and much more consequential development in the West. It was a sign of the evolution of the Latinized words in question (Larry E. Sullivan, The SAGE Glossary of the social and Behavioural Sciences; www.etymonline.com<\/em>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shedding more light on the matter, in the 6th<\/sup> century, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (d. 565) oversaw the codification of the Roman civil law known as the Codex Justinianus (Code of Justinian) or Corpus Juris Civilis. This law, also called \u0153written reason\u009d, was deemed superior to the barbarized compilations that had come into use under the Germanic invaders. Indeed, the law was superior to any other form of law in that it carried the combined authority of the pope and the emperor. In addition – and this was crucial for resisting the forms of law beyond the jurisdictions both of the pope and the Byzantine emperor \u201c this Justinian Code of civil law carried the authority of a superior culture and intelligence (John Henry Merryman & Rogelio Perez-Perdomo, The Civil Law Tradition<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within a short time, \u0153Bologna and the other universities of northern Italy became the legal centre of the Western world. Men came from all over Europe to study the law as taught in the Italian universities.\u009d Upon returning to their European countries, the graduates of the Italian universities quickly established universities where the same Roman civil law was studied and taught. In this way, Roman civil law became the basis of law in Europe, and it is still the foundation of civil law in many modern states. Thus, there emerged \u0153a common (Western) body of law and of writing about law, a common legal language, and a common method of teaching and scholarship\u009d (John Henry Merryman & Rogelio Perez-Perdomo, The Civil Law Tradition<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This led to the creation of some new terms: \u0153to civilize\u009d, which meant to undergo the process of adopting and applying the juridical wisdom of civil law; and \u0153civilization\u009d, which connoted the completion of the said process and a new condition that resulted therefrom. Thus, it is said that in 1704, the word \u0153civilization\u009d was coined in the English language for the first time. The word nevertheless signified a law which made a criminal process a civil case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to George C. Caffentzis, Britain’s earliest \u0153civilization process\u009d resulted from a conflict between the two branches of law: the common and civil law. The former was the law of England and the latter of the Scottish Lowlands, which was the home of the Scottish Enlightenment, a period in the 18th<\/sup> and early 19th<\/sup> century characterized by the succession of intellectual and scientific achievements that helped the world usher in the First Industrial Revolution as a significant period of the modern era. The target of the political and intellectual leadership (bourgeoisie) of the Scottish Lowlands was to \u0153civilize\u009d England by replacing its common law with its civil law as a principle of social organization and also to \u0153civilize\u009d the Scottish Highlanders \u201c who posed a unique threat for the British Empire and \u0153whose military prowess England had learned to fear after they invaded England in 1715 and 1745, and their two aborted attempts of 1708 and 1719\u009d \u201c by imposing the same civil law upon them. The Highlanders then \u0153still lived under the law of the Celtic clan and constituted a threat to the commerce and government of the Scottish Lowlands and to the development of capitalism in Britain\u009d (George C. Caffentzis, On the Scottish Origin of \u0153Civilization\u009d<\/em>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Especially about the Scottish Highlanders – who were as much an existential threat as a threat to the enlightenment and progress culture – the objective was broader. They were to be \u0153civilized\u009d as well but in the sense of bringing them under the uniform civil law, whereby their behaviour could be rendered predictable and so easily regulated and brought under control. Next, under the pretext of economic development and overall wellbeing, and within the framework of civil law, the cultivation of self-interest, commerce, the division of labour, the financing of an extensive educational system, the construction of roads, a combined policy of enclosures, transportation, and factory work \u201c all of these were intended to tame the Highlands further and to undermine, once and for all, the Scots clannish communalism and martial spirit by driving them out of the Highlands into the capitalistic world. Through these processes, pre-capitalist Scotland ceased to exist, and a new \u0153civilized\u009d (ruled by civil law, restrained and controlled) society took its place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The remarkable impact of this \u0153civilization process\u009d was described as follows: \u0153There was perhaps never any change of national manners so quick so great and so general, as that which has operated in the Highlands by the last conquest and the subsequent laws. We came hither too late to see what we expected – a people of peculiar appearance and a system of antiquated life. The clans retain little now of their original character: their ferocity of temper is softened, their military ardour is extinguished, their dignity of independence is depressed, their contempt of government subdued, and their reverence for their chiefs abated. Of what they had before the late conquest of their country, there remains only their language and their (rural) poverty\u009d (George C. Caffentzis, On the Scottish Origin of \u0153Civilization\u009d<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Civilization as social progress and cultural refinement <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was around the same time that the aggregate developments connected with the post-Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Age of reason, the Scientific Revolution and the First Industrial Revolution needed a new expression – or a concept – that would capture the newest phenomena in a most comprehensive manner. Since \u0153everything is law\u009d \u201c as goes the maxim of the School of Law at the Liverpool John Moores University \u201c to the point that \u0153man is born free and everywhere he is in chains (due to laws and social contracts)\u009d \u201c as said by Jean Jacques Rousseau (d. 1778) in his seminal book \u0153The Social Contract\u009d – it seemed appropriate that the legal significations of the terms \u0153civilize\u009d and \u0153civilization\u009d could be expanded to encompass the intellectual transformations and rapid changes the Western man was undergoing. After all, the spans and concerns of the latter were in the same vein as those of the former. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Besides, the objectives of law served at once as agents and guardians of a culture of scientific and technological advancement and of its twin confidant: progress. So much so that law, by regulating behaviour in both public and private society, is often said to be the backbone of economic wellbeing and the soul of the state. The law sets standards for acceptable behaviour; it keeps everyone and everything safe; it protects and maintains peace; it gives peace of mind and, in turn, stimulates productivity and invention. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short, everything was relatable to law, one way or another. The relationships were mutual. By the same token, for christening, the novel ethos of the West, the existing terminology about the law: \u0153civilize\u009d and \u0153civilization\u009d, proved helpful, but also meaningfully and complementarily so. As if law and progress were meant for each other, albeit needing some time to find each other and get unified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some new shades of meaning were added, including the advanced stages of Western inclusive social and cultural development as well as organization, leading to the birth of a new concept: \u0153civilization\u009d. The concept was so comprehensive that it comprised the meanings embedded in its root words: \u0153city\u009d, \u0153citizen\u009d, \u0153civility\u009d, \u0153civil\u009d, and \u0153civil law\u009d, and was so commanding that its conceptualization quickly dwarfed its etymological precursors, yet rendered some of them obsolete, like the words \u0153civilize\u009d and \u0153civilization\u009d in the sense of imposing and applying civil law. For the new concept of civilization, the law was a template, the city was a receptacle, citizens the focus, and civility the quintessence. Civilization was a way of life. Yet, it was life itself. \u0153Civilization\u009d blended the French concern for manners (civility) with the Scottish commitment to Civil Law (George C. Caffentzis, On the Scottish Origin of \u0153Civilization\u009d<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first person to employ the new catchphrase and concept of civilization in its novel capacity as a civilized condition within the framework of material progress was Victor de Riqueti Marquis de Mirabeau (d. 1789), a French economist. For example, in his book \u0153Philosophie Rurale\u009d (1763), he articulated such words as \u0153civilife\u009d (civilize) and \u0153civilifation\u009d (civilization). The contexts now were different concerning the growth, comfort, convenience and the overall dynamics of the latest standards of living in Western Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first person to use the concept of civilization in the English language within the concepts new mantle was Adam Ferguson (d. 1816), a Scottish philosopher and historian of the Scottish Enlightenment. He did so in his book, “An Essay on the History of Civil Society, ” published in 1767. He said, for example: \u0153Not only the individual advances from infancy to manhood, but the species itself from rudeness to civilization\u009d; \u0153We are ourselves the supposed standards of politeness and civilization, and where our features do not appear, we apprehend, that there is nothing which deserves to be known\u009d; \u0153And if our rule in measuring degrees of politeness and civilization is to be taken from hence, or from the advancement of commercial arts, we shall be found to have greatly excelled any of the celebrated nations of antiquity.\u009d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adam Ferguson spoke about the new meaning of civilization as a total lifestyle, its evolution with its yardsticks, and the manners of life that were thought necessary to civilization. He contrasted the greatness of his people and during his own time with the uncivilizedness of others: those in history and those who were his contemporaries but lived elsewhere and under backward conditions. Adam Ferguson had in mind the highly advanced way of life in Scotland – and by extension in the rest of Western Europe – which was perceived as the measure of all ways of life. It also signified the only absolute worth and influence on account of which other smaller worths and influences were what they were, and all other non-existent worths and influences were also what they were. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consistent with his theory, Adam Ferguson depicted Arabs and Muslims as wild, violent and rude, that is, in a stage preceding civilization. As such, in their rude and unpolished state, they \u0153fly to the desert for freedom, and in roving bands alarm the frontiers of the empire, and strike a terror in the province to which their moving encampments advance.\u009d The prospect of conquest, and everything such entailed, was the main reason for spreading their dominion. Whenever Muslims possessed property and settlement, \u0153they set the example of a lively invention, and superior ingenuity, in the practice of arts, and the study of science.\u009d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, despite this admission of Muslim (Arab) proclivity for artistic and scientific lively invention and superior ingenuity, Muslims were not qualified to be civilized, nor were their accomplishments regarded as part of civilization. The reason for that is not far to seek. Muslims exploits were patterned following a different worldview, different sets of values and different existential objectives. The two civilizational paradigms did not sing from the same song sheet. The moulds of history and tradition had been broken. Muslims could not become members of the newly conceived elitist guild, and their biggest \u0153misdeed\u009d was that they were different and that what and how they were doing was unfitting. Their fate was sealed because they could not undo their dispositions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, it was not a coincidence that Adam Ferguson was a leading figure in the Scottish Enlightenment and that the completion of the evolution of the concept of civilization found fertile ground in the Scottish schools of thought. Adam Fergusons above-mentioned book was regarded as ground-breaking and his magnum opus, for which he is remembered the most. Similarly, he is honoured as a forerunner of modern sociology. The book is \u0153an intellectual history that traces humanitys progression from barbarism to social and political refinement (i.e., civilization).\u009d It is likewise worth emphasizing that in his philosophy Adam Ferguson \u0153emphasized society as the wellspring of human morals and actions and, indeed, of the human condition itself\u009d (Britannica<\/em>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For that reason, man is perceived as the master of his civilizational destiny. Some communities rise to the task, while others do not. As might be expected, the civilization concept, in part, was a by-product of the nascent biological and social evolutionary thought. The two were entwined. Therefore, it was not by chance that Charles Darwin (d. 1882), an English naturalist, geologist and biologist, was initially educated in Scotland at the University of Edinburgh and is considered the crowning point of the Scottish and Midlands Enlightenment. His grandfather, Erasmus Darwin (d. 1802), an English natural philosopher and physician, was a key thinker of the Midlands Enlightenment. Some of his ideas are seen as precursory to the theory of evolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the scholars that paved the way for Adam Fergusons \u0153civilization invention\u009d was David Hume (d. 1776), also a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher and historian, who in his \u0153A Treatise of Human Nature\u009d (1739-40) employed such expressions as \u0153man in his civilized state\u009d, \u0153large and civilized societies\u009d and \u0153numerous and civilized societies cannot subsist without government\u009d. In his \u0153An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding,\u009d David Hume also spoke of \u0153a civilized people\u009d as opposed to \u0153ignorant and barbarous nations\u009d. Whereas his \u0153Political Essays\u009d is replete with references to \u0153civilized age\u009d, \u0153civilized monarchy\u009d, \u0153civilized government\u009d, \u0153civilized nation\u009d, \u0153civilized arts of life\u009d, \u0153civilized world\u009d, and \u0153uncivilized condition\u009d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

David Hume did not use the word \u0153civilization\u009d, but his expressions signified that a transition from the preliminary meanings of the terms \u0153civil\u009d, \u0153civility\u009d, and \u0153civilize\u009d to the individualized and institutionalized condition of \u0153civilization\u009d was approaching its completion. Civilization was becoming more of an end, a destination, than a process. \u0153Civilizing\u009d was becoming \u0153civilization\u009d. ***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Assoc. Prof. Dr. Spahic Omer is an academic in Department of History and Civilisation, AbdulHamid AbuSulayman Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences. The views expressed here are those of the author\/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of IIUMToday<\/em>.)
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By Spahic Omer The word \u0153civilization\u009d is the mantra of modernity \u201c and post-modernity. It is the measure of all things and the fundamental criterion… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,8,21],"tags":[],"nelio_content":{"isAutoShareEnabled":true,"autoShareEndMode":"never","automationSources":{"useCustomSentences":false,"customSentences":[]},"followers":[11247,156,5],"suggestedReferences":[],"efiUrl":"","efiAlt":"","highlights":[],"permalinkQueryArgs":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168626"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=168626"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":168652,"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168626\/revisions\/168652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=168626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=168626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=168626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}