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263CIVILIZATION’S THEORY IN GEOPOLITICAL CONCEPTIONS
Eduard Danielyan
The idea of the origin and development of civilization belongs to the historic categories within the scope of philosophic theories and interpretations. The entity of the spiritual-cultural, economic and political elements and the chronological sequence are characteristic for civilization. Therefore, each philosophic idea or definition concerning it, bearing the imprint of its time, has modern sounding, conditioned by cognitive and informational comprehension. In this way, the research of the theory of civilization went in two directions - scientific-cultural and, with the geopolitical purposes – in the direction of political sciences.
Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), analyzing the problem of the civilization’s concept, stated: “Every Culture has its own Civilization... The Civilization is the inevitable destiny of the Culture... Civilizations are the most external and artificial states of which a species of developed humanity is capable... The transition from Culture to Civilization was accomplished for the Classical world in the 4th, for the Western in the 19th Century” [1, p. 24-27].
Arnold Toynbee (1889—1975) accepted “the genesis of a civilization as an act of creation involving a process of change in Time” and that “the cultural elements are the essence of a civilization.” [2, II, p. 1 ; IV, p. 57]. Putting “upward movement of religion” at the basis of his philosophical concept of the development of civilization A. Toynbee wrote: “If religion is a chariot, it looks as if the wheels on which it mounts towards Heaven may be the periodic downfalls of civilizations on Earth. It looks as if the movement of civilization may be cyclic and recurrent, while the movement of religion may be on a single continuous upward line. The continuous upward movement of religion may be served and promoted by the cyclic of birth-death-birth.” [3, p. 6, 26] and civilizations “are particular beats of a general rhythmical pulsation which runs all through the Universe” [2, I, p. 205].
According to Marc Bloch (1886-1944), “a generation represents only a rela-
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tively short phase. Longer phases are called civilizations”. Taking into consideration the historical process of rising and falling civilizations, based on ethnographic, religious, technological and other peculiarities, he wrote: “The antitheses of civilizations appeared clearly as soon as the contrasting features of exotic lands were noted. Will any one deny that there is a Chinese civilization today, or that it differs greatly from the European? But, even in the same region, the major emphases of the social complex may be more or less abruptly modified. When such a transformation has taken place, we say that one civilization succeeds another. Sometimes there is an external shock, ordinarily accompanied by the introduction of new human elements, such as between the Roman Empire and the societies of the high Middle Ages. Sometimes, on the other hand, there is simply internal change. Everyone will agree that the civilization of the Renaissance is no longer ours, despite the fact that we have derived such a liberal inheritance from it” [4, p. 187-189].
More complete formulation of civilization has been defined by Will Durant: “Civilization is social order promoting cultural creation. Four elements constitute it: economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and arts. It begins where chaos and insecurity end. For when fear is overcome, curiosity and constructiveness are free, and man passes by natural impulse towards understanding and embellishment” [5, p. 1].
According to the 18th century Enlightenment historians’ concept, history had become progress towards the goal of perfection of man’s estate on earth [6, p. 146]. As Edward Gibbon noted: “Every age of the world has increased, and still increases, the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge, and perhaps the virtue, of the human race” [7, Ch. xxxviii]. After the First World War a tendency of a cyclic theory of history, which came from Hegel’s three civilizations to twenty-one civilizations of Toynbee [2, I, p. 1], appeared.
A. Toynbee wrote: “In A.D. 1947 the fortunes and future of the peoples of Western Europe are still a matter of concern to the world as a whole, because this little patch of territory on the extreme edge of the vast Eurasian Continent has been the seed-bed of the Western Civilization that now overshadows the Earth. The decline of Western Europe - if she really were to fall into a lasting decay - might still be as serious for the prospects of civilization as was the decline of Greece in the last century B.C.” [3, p. 5-6].
The philosophical approach to the concept of civilization led the thinkers to its social interpretation and the cognitive perception of human nature in the context of the world civilization.
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Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997), generalizing his historical outlook on freedom, noted: “The Enlightenment philosophies assumed that human values could be derived from facts about human nature. They believed that all men wanted the same things and that these things were not in conflict” [8, p. 201]. According to Marc Bloch’s observation, “There must be a permanent foundation in human nature and in human society, or the very names of man or society become meaningless” [4, p. 42].
Sigmund Freud considered human as more biological than social entity and tried to approach the social environment as something historically given and not in constant process of creation and transformation by man himself. He wrote: “Civilization is a process in the service of Eros whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families then races, peoples and nations into one great unity, the unity of mankind” [9, p. 69].
Expansionist policies and wars aimed at the conquests and redistribution of natural, economic and human resources systematically brought to the world’s geopolitical repartition accompanied by the destructions and enormous human losses. The rise, expansion and fall of empires and states fighting against each other for a predominance was accompanied by ups and downs of civilizations.
In different times devastating wars and violence between and within the states and societies, which were considered to be civilized, make theoretically obscure the demarcation line between barbarism and civilization. Voltaire (1694-1778) said: ”I want to know what were the steps, by which man passed from barbarism to civilization,” and concluding he wrote: “If you have nothing to tell us except that one barbarian succeeded another on the banks of the Oxus and Jaxartes, what is that to us?” [2, I, p. 114-115].
After the First World War in western philosophy came the period of “pessimism” which was followed by the ideology of “liberal democracy”. Francis Fukuyama noted: “Our own experience has taught us, seemingly, that the future is more likely than not to contain new unimagined evils, from fanatical dictatorships and bloody genocides to the banalization of life through modern consumerism, and that unprecedented disasters await us from nuclear winter to global warming” [10, p. 3-4 ; cf. 11, p. 11].
In contrast to creative and constructive elements of civilization, destructive forces have blackened the history of mankind, reversing the idea of the world civili-zational progress and having destructive consequences for the world civilization [12]. The western thinkers, who considered the First World War as “a critical event in the undermining of Europe’s self-confidence”, had been pondering on turning
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into “deep historical pessimists” [10, p. 5].
From the second half of the 19th century till 1923 the Turks (the Sultan and Young Turk governments and then the Kemalists) criminally committed the Armenian Genocide in the most part of the Armenian Fatherland - Western Armenia and Armenian Cilicia, and other regions annexed by the Ottoman Empire, killing 2 million and deporting 800,000 Armenians. The catastrophic culmination of the Armenian Genocide was in 1915 [13, էջ 130-132; 14, 4-5 ; 16, с.11]. In the volume “The Mainstream of Civilization since 1500” the authors noted that in the First World War “Germany suffered approximately 2 million military dead, Russia 1,7 million, France 1,3 million, Austria-Hungary 1,1 million, Britain and its empire 750, 000 and 250, 000 respectively, Italy about 500, 000, Turkey somewhat less, and the United States 114, 000... and at least 1,5 million Armenians whom the Turks had massacred in 1915.” [15, p. 788]. The Armenian Genocide is the crime against humanity and civilization, for which Turkey bears responsibility [16].
Complex culturological investigation of more than five thousand-year-old Armenian history gives ground to define the Armenian Highland as the cradle of the Armenians and the world civilization. In civilizational developments decisive role belonged to the spiritual and cultural, natural and economic resources of Armenia and the strategic position between East and West [17, p. 8; 18, p. 202-227]. The significance of Armenian in the world civilization has been highly valued by Calmet (16721757) (L’Armenie a ete nommee le <<Berceau de la Civilisation ») [19, p. 162; 20] and David Marshall Lang in his book “Armenia Cradle of Civilization”: “The ancient land of Armenia is situated in the high mountains... Although Mesopotamia with its ancient civilizations of Sumeria and Babylon is usually considered together with Egypt as the main source of civilized life in the modern sense, Armenia too has a claim to rank as one of the cradles of human culture. To begin with, Noah's Ark is stated in the Book of Genesis to have landed on the summit of Mount Ararat, in the very centre of Armenia. From the Ark, Noah's descendants and all species of living beasts, and birds are supposed to have issued forth to people the globe. Whether or not we attribute any importance to the Book of Genesis as a historical source, none can deny the symbolic importance of its account of Noah's Ark, which is cherished by both believers and unbelievers all over the world. Again, Armenia has a claim on our attention as one of the principal homes of ancient metallurgy, beginning at least five thousand years ago. Later on, Armenia became the first extensive kingdom to adopt Christianity as a state religion pioneering a style of Church architecture which anticipates our own Western Gothic” [21, p. 9]. This idea bears the testimony to the recognition of the role and place
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of Armenia's contribution to the history of civilization.
According to the Sumer epic “Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta” (Aratta was called “the country of sacred rites (or laws) ” [22] and the Book of Genesis, the Armenian ethno-spiritual roots were hallowed in the Ararat mountains (Aratta= the Armenian Highland [23, p. 59-81]. The spirituality of the mountains of Ararat is reflected also in other works of world art (Joseph Turner, Hovannes Ayvazovski, James Tisso, Salvador Dali) and literature. As Lord Byron wrote with a poetical inspiration: “Whatever may have been their (Armenians-E.D.) destiny - and it has been bitter -whatever it may be in future, their country must ever be one of the most interesting on the globe. If the Scriptures are rightly understood, it was in Armenia that Paradise was placed. . . It was in Armenia that the flood first abated, and the dove alighted” [24, p. 8].
The Armenian civilization is rooted in the very cradle of the world civilization, so it is a unique case in the human history when the world and ethnic roots of civilization have had the same basis [25, p. 30-56]. During millennia Armenian civilization underwent rises, as well as suffered heavy losses.
Armenia originally being at the centre of the witness of the Light-worship later appeared to be the outpost of the Christian world in the East. Armenia contributed greatly to the world treasury of culture. In the course of time Armenia suffered heavy losses caused by the eastern and western disastrous conquerors, and, particularly, the invasions of the eastern nomads.
The Seljuk Turks were nomadic tribes from Central Asia. Arnold Toynbee wrote: “Their eponym, ‘Osman... had led into Anatolia (Asia Minor - E.D.) a nameless band of Turkish refugees: an insignificant fragment of the human wreckage... ” [2, II, p. 151]. Later, the Ottoman Sultanate emerged on such a savage basis. It was an alien heterogeneous body plunged with its deadly tentacles into the conquered lands which had long civilized history. Wherever stepped the Turkish nomad the land turned into a desert. Victor Hugo noted: “Les Turcs ont passe la: tout est ruine et deuil” [26, p. 476] (“The Turks passed here; everything is ruined and mournful”).
A monastic scribe in Crete wrote about the capture of Constantinople in 1453 by the Turks: “There never has been and never will be a more dreadful happening” [27, p. 1-2]. William Gladstone (1809 - 1898) also stated that “... wherever appeared the Ottomans they left a wide bloody track everywhere; and wherever penetrated their dominion civilization perished, vanished from sight” [28, с. 6].
In the last decade of the 19th century during the Armenians’ massacres perpetrated in the Ottoman Empire, when, alongside with the enormous human losses
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suffered by Armenians, the civilizational values created by the Armenian nation were destroyed, William Gladstone in his speech delivered in 1895 said: "To serve Armenia is to serve civilization."
Even in hard times Armenian creativeness exhibited itself in the Motherland as well as abroad [29]. Lord Bryce noted: “The educated Armenians, notwithstanding all they have suffered, are abreast of the modern world of civilization. Among them are many men of science and learning, as well as artists and poets. They are scattered in many lands. I have visited large Armenian colonies as far west as California, and there are others as far east as Rangoon. Many of the exiles would return to their ancient home if they could but be guaranteed that security and peace which they have never had, and can never have, under the rule of the Turk. May we not confidently hope that the Allied Powers will find means for giving it to them at the end of this war, for extending to them that security, which they have long desired and are capable of using well?” [30, Preface].
A. Toynbee, who highly valued the significance of the original Armenian civilization, noted in 1915: “The Armenians are perhaps the oldest established of the civilized races in Western Asia, and they are certainly the most vigorous at the present day. Their home is the tangle of high mountains between the Caspian, the Mediterranean, and the Black Seas. Here the Armenian peasant has lived from time immemorial the hard working life he was leading till the eve of this ultimate catastrophe. Here a strong, civilized Armenian kingdom was the first state in the world to adopt Christianity as its national religion. Here the Church and people have maintained their tradition with extraordinary vitality against wave upon wave of alien conquest from every quarter... The Armenian is not only an industrious peasant, he has a talent for handicraft and intellectual pursuits. The most harassed village in the mountains would never despair of its village school, and these schools were avenues to a wider world... The Armenian has lost the undivided possession of his proper country... the original Armenia, east of the upper Euphrates and north of the Tigris. the intermittent sufferings of the Armenian race have culminated in an organized, cold-blooded attempt on the part of its Turkish rulers to exterminate it once and for all by methods of inconceivable barbarity and wickedness” [31, p. 17-19; 2, III, p. 18].
At the Peace Conference (1919) “the Allies have declared. to President Wilson that one of their aims is "the turning out of Europe of the Ottoman Empire, as decidedly foreign to Western civilization" [30, ch.III]
At the threshold of the 21st century the American journalist Robert D. Kaplan
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witnessed the destruction of the Armenian civilization in Western Armenia, where he traveled, reaching Trabzon. He wrote that except for an occasional ruin “every trace of Armenian civilization has been erased... ” [32, p.318].
Highly valuing the Church in the context of civilization, Bertrand Russell wrote: “The Church represented at once continuity with the past and what was most civilized in the present” [33, p. xvii].
The destruction of the Armenian and world masterpieces of architecture - the churches among great many monuments of high historic value - is a crime committed by the Turks against civilization. That is the continuation of the Armenian Genocide - the crime against humanity [34]. In Eastern Armenia, in native Armenian territories of Nakhijevan, Artsakh and Utik it had been done by Turks-“Azerbaijanis” since the Soviet times. They continued the Genocide of the Armenian culture in post-Soviet time too and at the beginning of the 21st century destroyed last groups of the Armenian cross-stones (khachkars) [35]. That monstrous crime was not a clash of civilizations or cultures, but the continuation of the Genocide against culture as a result of the misanthropic anti-Armenian Pan-Turkic policy. Concerning Artsakh Baroness Caroline Cox and Prof. John Eibner noted in 1993 that the destruction of the Armenian monuments by the “Azerbaijanis” was accompanied by the ethnic “cleansing” [36]. Owing to the Artsakh liberation heroic victory, natural life of the Armenian civilization is in the process of restoration in the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (Mountainous part of Artsakh and the liberated lands). This historic reality comes to prove that the native land and the national culture-creating civilizational values need to be protected with arms.
An important ideological guarantee of the independence and recreation of the national statehood - obtained through the national-liberation struggle - is the Ar-menological historical resource, the protection of which is the barest necessity in the system of the information security.
Amid the current geopolitical developments <the problems of the information and its constituent part - the spiritual security and the protection of spiritual values became the most important task of the national security» [37, էջ 3]. In this context the disclosure and classification of the information-generated threats endangering the security of the national-civilizational processes are rather conditioned by deep comprehension and realization of the national interest. Moreover, “modern globalization contains the elements of expansionism in the ideological and spiritual-cultural spheres” and that, in its turn “reflects the national interests of the affecting (carrying out the information attack-E.D.) country and thus may damage the na-
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tional civilizational and informational-spiritual security of the passively conformable ones” [38, էջ 8]: Thus, the protection of the rooted in millennia historical heritage -the pillar of the Armenian national system of values - by the information means is one of the pledges of the national security’s guarantees [39, էջ 6-12].
Touching on the civilizational processes S. Huntington wrote: “The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics... Conflict between civilizations will be the latest phase in the evolution of the conflict in the modern world” [40, p.1].
Out of the historic context an oversimplified vision of civilization’s future may bring to its interpretation only as a political system. Because, for example, if we take the period of the Cold war, that “was an ideological and geopolitical struggle between two opposing systems,” [41, p.73] i.e. communist and capitalist systems, and not a fight between the “communist” and “capitalist” civilizations.
Cultures, as main constituents, bridge civilizations through their inner potential of creativeness. According to Isaiah Berlin, “Enlightenment rationalism supposed that conflicts between values were a heritage of mis-education or injustice and could be swept away by rational reforms, by indoctrinating individuals into believing that their individual interests could be fully realized by working exclusively for the common good” [8, p. 202].
Owing to diversities in cultural values it is possible to speak about competitiveness and mutual influence among cultures and civilizations. On the one hand, nation presents itself to the world by culture, on the other, the continuity of culture conditioned to the national tradition’s preservation.
In contemporary approaches of political science the problem of tradition has become the subject of discussion within the ideology of liberal democracy. According to Fr.Fukuyama, “A remarkable consensus concerning the legitimacy of liberal democracy as a system of government had emerged throughout the world over the past few years, as it conquered rival ideologies like hereditary monarchy, fascism, and most recently communism. Liberal democracy may constitute the “end point of mankind’s ideological evolution” and the “final form of human government” and as such constituted the “end of history.” That is, while earlier forms of government were characterized by grave defects and irrationalities that led to their eventual collapse, liberal democracy was arguably free from such fundamental internal contradictions. But these problems were once of incomplete implementation of the twin principles of liberty and equality, rather than the flaws in the principles themselves” [10, p. xi].
Fr.Fukuyama interpolated the views of Kant (“The History of the world is
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none other than the progress of the consciousness of Freedom”) [42, p. 11-26] and Hegel (“The Eastern nations knew that one was free; the Greek and Roman world only that some are free; while we know that all men absolutely are free”) [43, p. 19] in his conception. At the same time Fukuyama noted: “Hegel has frequently been accused of worshipping the state and its authority, and therefore of being an enemy of liberalism and democracy” [10, p. 60].
Against all social and institutional demerits the idea of “liberal democracy” is treated as a panaceawith subsequent “levelling” of political and cultural structures in different countries and subjection of their economies to the centralized transnational system. Fr.Fukuyama wrote that history “as a single, coherent, evolutionary process” came to its end, because whether “it makes sense for us once again to speak of a coherent and directional History of mankind that will eventually lead the greater part of humanity to liberal democracy? The answer I arrive at is yes, for two separate reasons. One has to do with economics, and the other has to do with what is termed the “struggle for recognition” [10, p. xii].
Historically, democracy was a result of the society‘s natural development and it was specific to a statehood originated from the patriarchal times as people’s participation - assembly parallel to government system derived from the council of elders. It assembled for consulting and taking part in making decisions on important questions for the country. From ancient times this institution was known among Armenians - the natives of the Armenian Highland - as Ashkharhazhoghov (the Assembly of the world (i.e. the Armenian world - the Motherland). Its traditional place of assembling became the field of Dzirav spreading from the slopes of sacred Mt. Npat, at the upper reaches of the Aratsani River (the Eastern Euphrates).
In classical meaning the idea of democracy has been known in Europe since the times of ancient Greece (the 5 th -4th cc. BC), as a form of government in some Greek polis-states, which theoretically found its reflection in the works of ancient Greek philosophers [33, p. 114, 189-190].
The methods of modern democracy create opportunities for peaceful political and social developments. But, as noted Fr.Fukuyama, “That was not to say that «Today’s stable democracies, like the US, France, or Switzerland, were not without injustice or serious social problems” [10, p. xi]: In regard to such transformations Spengler’s thesis may be applied: “Democracy is the completed equating of money with political power” [1, ch. XX ; cf. 44, p.59]: At the same time, in regard to his time Spengler, presenting his ideas about the final phase of the formation of civilization, wrote: “Money, also, is beginning to lose its authority, as the last conflict is at
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hand in which Civilization receives its conclusive form - the conflict between money and blood... Money is overthrown and abolished by blood” [1, ch.21].
Accepting technology as a corner-stone of the future liberal-democratic order of the world, Fr.Fukuyama wrote: “Technology makes possible the limitless accumulation of wealth, and thus the satisfaction of an ever-expanding set of human desires. This process guarantees an increasing homogenization of all human societies, regardless of their historical origin or cultural inheritances”. Then it sounds like a “doctrine” of a new “liberal world”: “All countries undergoing economic modernization must increasingly resemble one another: they must unify nationally on the basis of a centralized state, urbanize, replace traditional forms of social organization like tribe, sect, and family with economically rational ones based on function and efficiency, and provide for the universal education of their citizens” [10, p. xv].
Discussing Fr. Fukuyama’s ideas on democracy Vladimir Moss wrote.: ”The contradiction consists in the fact that while democracy prides itself on its spirit of peace and brotherhood between individuals and nations, the path to democracy, both within and between nations, actually involves an unparalleled destruction of personal and national life...” and not much “has been said about nationalism how it protects nations and cultures and people from destruction (as, for example, it protected the Orthodox nations of Eastern Europe from destruction under the Turkish yoke)” [45, ch. 10].
Fr. Fukuyama correlating the Plato’s interpretation (soul = a reasoning part + a desiring part (eros) + thymos, “spiritedness” (or the desire for recognition)] of thy-mos (‘soul, spirit, as the principle of life, feeling and thought”) [46, p. 810] with the Hegel’s thesis about “struggle for recognition” (which “is as old as the tradition of Western political philosophy”), wrote that the combined teaching of liberal democracy “ultimately arises out of the thymos, the part of soul that demands recognition... As standards of living increase, as populations become more cosmopolitan and better educated, and as society as a whole achieves a greater equality of condition, people begin to demand not simply more wealth but recognition of their status” [10, p. xvi- xviii].
Thus the “thymotic pride” is presented as the driving force of individuals to democratic government. If “desire of recognition” is understood as the motor of history, in this case many phenomena, such as culture, religion, work, nationalism, and war are going to be reinterpreted: “A religious believer, for example, seeks recognition for his particular gods or sacred practices, while a nationalist demands recognition of his particular linguistic, cultural, or ethnic group. Both of these forms of rec-
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ognition are less rational than the universal recognition of the liberal state, because they are based on arbitrary distinctions between sacred and profane, or between human social groups. For this reason, religion, nationalism, and a people’s complex or ethical habits and customs (more broadly “culture”) have traditionally been interpreted as obstacles to the establishment of successful democratic political institutions and free-market economies” [10, p. xix].
In this regard, national-cultural peculiarities are considered to be obstacles or the elements subject to clash in the structural developments of the societies within the bounds of democratic values. This way of thinking along with the theory of the clash of civilizations demonstrates its obligatory character, which leads astray of the idea of the genuine democracy. At the background of such a methodological approach to the selective prosperity’s idea the following statement of Philo of Alexandria (or the Jew) (BC 20-50 AD) may be traced: “I believe that each nation would abandon its peculiar ways, and, throwing overboard their ancestral customs, turn to honouring our laws alone. For, when, the brightness of their shining is accompanied by national prosperity, it will darken the light of the others as the risen sun darkens the stars” [47, II.vii.44]
Thus, some modern philosophical theories reflect different approaches to the world civilizational developments. Democracy, sometimes being <exported» from the countries of <stable democracies», has become a stumbling-block in intergovernmental relations. There is a trend to monitor, ideologically denationalize and even threaten by it. The idea of democracy, being pressed into service of the expansionist political systems’ propagation, is distorted in the network of the informationgenerated threats and used during the information wars.
Meanwhile, pessimistic teachings appeared, which ranged from “antiphilosophy” to the manifestation: “philosophy is dead” [48], as well as metahistory, which is <destilling»history from its main constituents by <de-mystification» of histories and historians [49, p. xii]. Meanwhile, there is no need to relegate any constituent part of history, because the ways of Weltanschauung’s formation, rising on the basis of creative values, being considered in the light of David the Invincible’s definition (‘Philosophia (Arm. imastasirutyun) has a goal to embellish human souls” ) [50, p. 118], the History presents itself in the wholeness (including transcendental perceptions) within the system of the philosophical knowledge concerning the world cognition [51, p. 47-48].
The following statement: “Anti-philosophy does not believe in anything but in itself. No God, no country, no parents” [52, p.1] sounds as the negation of traditional
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values. Contrary to such a statement: “Nihilism is the rationalist's answer to idealism. It is the viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is meaningless... While sociologically nihilism is culture without values, fundamentally it is life without a soul” [47].
The following statement can serve as an answer to the followers of “antiphilosophy” and foretellers of “the death of philosophy”: “Yes, a wave of barbarism and a spate of bad philosophy; but never the utter end of philosophy until human beings have lost their ingenuity, curiosity, troubles, contradictions, and hopes” [53]
S.Huntington’s theory of the clash of civilizations is based on the idea of a civilization “as a cultural entity. Arabs, Chinese and Westerners, however, are not part of any broader cultural entity. They constitute civilizations. A civilization is thus the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity... ” [40, p. 2.]. In such an interpretation civilization is defined from the point of view of cultural identity “both by common objective elements, such as language, history, religion, customs, institutions, and by the subjective self-identification of people. Civilization identity will be increasingly important in the future, and the world will be shaped in large measure by the interactions among seven or eight major civilizations... The most important conflicts of the future will occur along the cultural fault lines separating these civilizations from one another” [40, p. 3].
The perception of natural developments of cultural-civilizational phenomena without clashes is based methodologically on the research of the ways of the dialogue between civilizations. Touching on the problem of local peculiarities of cultures and civilizations in regard to the thesis about interaction between different civilizations, “the controlled development of civilization as prerequisite for selfpreservation of mankind” was considered as a transitional phenomenon [54, p. 73]: V. Yakunin, considering the historic truth as the corner stone of intercivilizational dialogue, wrote. <Human communities are constantly upcoming identities, lying in permanent dynamics. The philosophy of their evolutions is determined by historical conditions, under which they have been shaped. In different periods this process acquires different facets, and it is not always straight and what is more, predictable... It would seem wise to approach setting goals and selecting means to reach them in the process of successive approximation, by keeping to historical truth and without upsetting the unity of the universal and special in the course of discussions about the role and place of intercivilizational dialogue in bringing together peoples and races» [55, p. 141]:
According to the dialogical principle, “A recurring theme in the global evolu-
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tion of cultures is that all history has been a struggle between two competing paradigms or models of what it means to be human; a struggle between the egocentric view of man and the emerging dialogical human being” [56].
Thus, the ecumenical system of cooperation among respectively sovereign nations elaborated through a "dialogue of cultures" is considered to be “not only important; it is urgent. ... The subject of a dialogue of cultures is culture in the broadest scope of the term. What is true in any part of culture as a whole must also be demonstrably true in any of its divisions” [57].
Wide scientific-cultural contacts are characteristic to the societies with high civilizational system of values. Deep-rooted cultures do not come into collision with (or absorb) each other in such processes, but enriching mutually, contribute to the treasury of the world culture. The original and translated literary heritage of the Armenian “Golden Age literature” (the 5th century) is a classic example of such a phenomenon. Due to the efforts of the Armenian translators the Armenian reader can read in the mother tongue the philosophical works of Aristotle, Ars Grammatics of Dionysius Thrax, Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius of Caesarea and others. Owing to the Armenian translations The Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus, The Apology of Aristides the Athenian, Chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea, and others, the Greek originals of which were lost are preserved.
The importance of the dialogue between civilizations was put on agenda by the General Assembly of the United Nations in November 1998 by a unanimous resolution, which proclaimed 2001 as the "United Nations Year of Dialogue among Civilizations" [58].
An importance is given to the concept of the historic mission in relation to nation-civilization from the standpoint of the theory of civilizational coexistence of nations. Therefore, it was considered urgent in the Armenian civilizational context to perceive this mission by revelation of historical essence of the Armenian people and to offer <<the formula of coexistence of civilizations» [59, էջ 26-27].
Cultures owing to their variety may compete and undergo mutual enrichment and bridge civilizations through their creative potential. Meanwhile, the clashes belong to the sphere of expansionist politics.
Thus, philosophical comprehension of the civilizational phenomena in the context of the cognition and assessment of the cultural developments has got a fundamental significance in perception and preservation of the national and common to all mankind values in the wholeness of the world civilization.
February, 2009.
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