Civilization and its Sources

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2354232
AutoresArpad Szakolczai (0000-0003-4472-5639, University College Cork, autor correspondente)
Ano2001
Volume16
Fascículo3
Páginas369-386
Data de publicação2001-09-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoInternational Sociology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0268-5809 • E-ISSN: 1461-7242
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/026858001016003008
OpenAlexW2067903865
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas6
Referências citadas31

This article provides a conceptual and historical analysis of the term 'civilization'. It argues that in substantive terms, the core meaning of civilization is the limiting of violence in inter-human relations, while in terms of historical methodology, the rise of 'civilization' is to be connected to periods of dissolution of order. Such periods are conceptualized using the work of Victor Turner on liminality, and of René Girard on the sacrificial mechanism. On the basis of these findings, the article proceeds to thematize the 'civilizing process', using the concepts of brotherhood, institutionalization, asceticism, charisma and parrhesia (the frank practice of truth-telling, based on Foucault's unpublished lectures). It argues that a core idea of the European civilizing process, the revelation of the persecuting crowd, can be found not simply in the works but the lives and deaths of its two major founding figures, Socrates and Jesus. In its concluding pages, the article argues that 'globalization' thus has two main driving forces: the 'spirit' of capitalism, that Weber traced back to the 'Protestant ethic', but also the Gospel story in which, in a Girardian reading of Elias, the European 'civilizing process' can be rooted

Aesthetics · Civilization · Epistemology · Political science · Secularization · Sociology · Law · Philosophy · Political Theology and Sovereignty · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics · Religious studies · Violence, Religion, and Philosophy