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Thesis Eleven
DOI: 10.1177/0725513609353703 2010; 100; 46 Thesis Eleven
Gerard Delanty Thesis Eleven: Civilizational Analysis and Critical Theory
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THESIS ELEVEN:
CIVILIZATIONAL ANALYSIS
AND CRITICAL THEORY
Gerard Delanty
In this contribution to the 100th issue of Thesis Eleven I would like to
address the tradition of critical theory with which the journal has been closely
associated. A distinctive feature of Thesis Eleven has been a concern with the
critical analysis of the present as well as a concern with the critical appraisal
of history. This has been refl ected in a particular kind of historical sociology,
which has been developed by one of the journal’s prominent editors, Johann
Arnason, under the title of civilizational analysis. The early work of Arnason
was fi rmly rooted in the tradition of critical theory and more generally western
Marxism, though the author has been heavily infl uenced by Weber, Castoriadis,
and Merleau-Ponty. His later work, some of it published in Thesis Eleven, has
been concerned with what he terms civilizational analysis and the cultural
dimension of state formation in comparative perspective.1
The origins of civilizational theory lie less in the critical theory tradition
than in Weberian comparative historical analysis, as in the seminal works of
Benjamin Nelson and S. N. Eisenstadt. But the infl uence of Marxist histori-
cal analysis is also apparent in his grasp of the intersection of culture and
power. With remarkable scholarship, Arnason has explored the civilizational
background to the emergence and transformation of modernity in cases as
different as Russia and Japan and he has offered a persuasive assessment
of the rise of the West that questions the presuppositions of post-colonial
accounts as well as the received scholarship on the West. What is less clear,
and my topic in this contribution, is the relation of civilizational analysis, with
its characteristic concern with the hermeneutical dimension of power, to criti-
cal theory with its emphasis on the critique of power. If civilizational analysis
is to offer a foundation for a critical theory of modernity, both the norma-
tive implications of the theory need to be clarifi ed as well as a more explicit
account of globalization in the formation of modernity. Until now this remains
Thesis Eleven, Number 100, February 2010: 46–52Copyright © The Author(s), 2010.Reprints and permissions http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.navDOI: 10.1177/0725513609353703
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Delanty: Civilizational Analysis and Critical Theory 47
undeveloped and Arnason has avoided normative conclusions. Indeed, he
insists on terming his approach civilizational analysis as opposed to civiliza-
tional theory to avoid any normative misunderstanding. In this short piece
I wish to make a case for a critical cosmopolitan social theory of modernity
which encompasses both the aims of civilizational analysis and the normative
concerns of critical theory.
CRITICAL THEORY AND MODERNITY
From its Hegelian and Marxist origins, critical theory has been character-
ized by the normative critique of society. It differs from other theory traditions
in that it aims to identify the sources and mechanisms of domination in order
that social actors can improve their circumstances. As a theory of modern
society, the distinctive feature of critical theory has been the identifi cation
of possibilities for self-transformation within the horizons of a given societal
context. In this respect its epistemological approach is one of immanent tran-
scendence in that social reality is presumed to contain within it the means
for its own transformation.2 Thus self-transformation is a key dimension of
the modern condition, as refl ected in political consciousness and collective
identity, cultural self-problematization, and the advancement of the normative
horizons of society. The condition of modernity is one in which social struggles
determine the course of history by the transference of their content into the
political and legal fabric of society.
The starting point for a critical theory of society is the objective reality of
crisis and its perception by social actors who act on the basis of the experience
of injustice or the desire to fi nd an alternative to the status quo. A particular
way of experiencing the present leads to an interpretation that constitutes
the political subject as an agent of history. The social struggles involved, in-
cluding the epistemic struggle to defi ne the problem situation, have given to
critical theory a strong normative direction that has on the whole led it away
from micro-analysis in favour of macro-analysis. While current fashion dictates
micro-analysis, with Foucaultdian theory as the predominant infl uence, criti-
cal theory remains an important source of macro-theorizing. Viewed through
the lens of critical theory, modernity is in the terms of Arnason (1991) ‘a fi eld
of tensions’, in that it is not the product of a single force but the interrelation
of several forces. Thus we can view modernity as set in motion by the inter-
action of state formation, industrialism and capitalist market societies, and civil
society. But to speak of modernity is to invoke a cultural logic by which soci-
eties or collective actors undergo a transformation in their self-understanding.
Modernity is the experience of a world in crisis but a world which the politi-
cal subject can act upon. Thus, in the most general sense, modernity is the
perception that the world can be shaped by conscious human agency.
The social theory of theorists as diverse as Castoridadis, Lefort, Mouffe,
Heller, Habermas, and Touraine has provided the most rigorous defence of a
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48 Thesis Eleven (Number 100 2010)
conception of modernity that preserves space for the self-constitution of the
political subject. The political subject is not reducible to the projects of elites or
a meta-narrative of increasing progress or the emancipation of humanity from
domination. It is indeed the case that critical theory, and more generally the
western Marxist tradition, has been much troubled by the apparent obsoles-
cence of a specifi c political agency. Both the social structural conditions and
cultural and political assumptions of the older theories have been rendered
problematic today by numerous developments, not least of which are the
emergence of new kinds of politics. The enduring relevance of critical theory
rather consists of its way of conceiving of the political subject as shaped in
social struggles arising out of particular ways of experiencing and interpreting
the present. The political subject is today being constituted around diverse
streams and is indeterminate since it is the outcome of numerous struggles
by all those seeking to reclaim the political space: migrants, outsiders of all
kinds, industrial workers, low-waged workers, the victims of crimes, even the
middle class.
A challenge for critical theory is that the political subject is no longer
easily conceptualized within the contours of a western defi nition of society.
As is well known, in recent years the very term society has come under fi erce
scrutiny. Global communications, which can be taken to be the principle
mechanism of globalization, have particular implications for how we theorize
the political subject. One of the main weaknesses of the critical theory tradi-
tion has been its failure to addresses alternative histories of the world and
the context of globalization. This has led to accusations of Eurocentrism – an
ill-defi ned term to be sure – and postcolonial critiques of the West. As an
alternative to the polarized positions that have become popular today, which
see either a clash of civilization or colonialism as the only way to theorize
modernity, civilizational analysis offers a more numanced and differentiated
account of civilizational encounters. It is also an alternative to the Agambenian
speculative approach, which projects a unilinear and undifferentiated histori-
cal western narrative onto all facets of the political condition of modernity.
CIVILIZATIONAL ANALYSIS
A key notion in civilizational analysis, as originally elaborated by S. N.
Eisenstadt (1986, 2001, 2003) and taken up by Arnason, is the notion of a radical
refl exivity and creativity built into the civilizations of ‘axial age’ – that is, those
that are associated with the major world religions – and which have provided
the basis for divergent historical paths. Civilizations refer to the cultural modes
of interpretation that fi rst arrive with the onset of writing and which interact
with particular processes of state formation to produce distinct complexes
that are more than national patterns but are also never contained within
geopolitical units. Civilizational analysis draws attention to these modes of
world-interpretation, which of course are variable but have the function of
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Delanty: Civilizational Analysis and Critical Theory 49
providing orders of legitimation for political and cultural projects. Civiliza-
tions differ in their patterns of state formation and in their cultural modes of
interpretation, but have in common, according to Eisenstadt, a differentiation
of the world into a transcendent order and a mundane order whereby cultural
and political elites attempt to realize the former in the latter. The result is that
civilizations are perpetually self-transforming since there is no fi nal consensus
and there are always different interpretations. Confl ict is endemic to civiliza-
tions and with the development of modernity this takes ever more refl exive
and creative forms.
There is a further and crucial element to this. Civilizations develop not
in isolation from each other but in interaction with others. This interactive
dimension – fi rst stated by Benjamin Nelson – has been particularly stressed
by Arnason, who has provided the basis for a reappraisal of the Rise of the
West that avoids, on the one side, what might be termed an internalist account,
which attributes to entirely internal characteristics of western ascendancy, and
on the other the externalist account, which attributes everything to Europe’s
appropriation of the non-West. This corrective, as he terms it, is a welcome
one but remains undeveloped, and yet surely has much to offer in providing
civilizational analysis with what it needs, namely a normative theoretical crit-
ique of current political reality.
Civilizational analysis aims to identify common trends while avoiding (1)
the discredited evolutionary theory of western civilization as a universal norma-
tive standard, (2) the idea of distinct civilizations that develop in isolation from
each other and (3) notions of civilizations as engaged in a perpetual clash
(against the latter, the main counter-thesis is that civilizations are internally
plural and the site of divergent orders of world interpretation and it may
indeed be the case that these are more extensive than differences between
civilizations). This is not the place to consider further the debate around
civilizational analysis.
I would like to take up one of the main outcomes of civilizational
analysis for critical theory, namely the notion of multiple modernity. As out-
lined by Eisenstadt, civilizations contain within their cultural modes of world-
interpretation the basic animus of modernity, a heightened kind of refl exivity
that becomes the basis of visions of human autonomy. To varying degrees,
modernity becomes embroiled in the major civilizations. While Eisenstadt
has argued that modernity becomes a new civilization in which there are
multiple forms, Arnason has argued for a less strongly formulated position on
modernity as a new kind of civilization. In Eisenstadt’s formulation, modernity
should be seen as a second axial age.
At this point the discussion becomes somewhat confused and civiliza-
tional analysis has not made much advance in formulating a theory of moder-
nity. The argument appears to be that modernity has been infl uenced by its
civilizational contexts and the diversity of civilizations has produced a diver-
sity of forms of modernity. But to invoke the notion of modernity is to posit
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50 Thesis Eleven (Number 100 2010)
a commonality in that the variety of its forms refl ects a common dynamic.
Without this commonality, modernity would be simply a numerical condi-
tion and of little explanatory value. If this dynamic is the transformative logic
of radical refl exivity and the assertion of human autonomy, then modernity
conceived in post-universalistic terms is not specifi c to the West, with which
it is often related. Indeed, within Europe itself there may be different models
of modernity and different civilizational patterns.3
It is a further and more complicated question whether modernity is
taking a form that undermines its civilizational background, leading to multiple
modernities in which the civilizational content has lost its capacity to deter-
mine a civilizational complex. This is where a perspective on globalization
becomes particularly relevant, since globalization can be seen as the short
term to describe the intensity in inter-civilizational interactions. What we term
globalization today is nothing more than a greatly accelerated scale and in-
tensity of global interconnectivity that commenced with the emergence of the
major civilizations. It may be the case, and it is Eisenstadt’s thesis, that this is
leading to a new kind of civilization, which in his view is disproportionally
infl uenced by western civilization and is global in that it is not rooted in any
one civilization.
Arnason has more cautiously suggested that civilizational contexts still
remain relevant, but only in so far as they interact with modernity. Thus a
more plausible interpretation might be that the current situation is character-
ized by combinations of civilizational contexts and a modernity that has not
broken free of specifi c civilizations in the direction of a post-civilizational
global modernity. However, there is still some confusion here, for if modernity
is conceptualized as emanating from within the dynamics of civilizations, it
is hard to see how it is also a separate entity constituting a civilization of its
own and of which it crystallizes into different civilizational forms.
As a possible way forward, I would like to make the proposal that the
notion of multiple modernity or varieties of modernity – as one of the most
signifi cant contributions from civilizational analysis for social and political
theory – be theorized as a condition of translation whereby civilizations,
and their local forms, interact with transcivilizational modes of interpretation,
producing outcomes that are highly variable. The culture of modernity may
be comparable to the axial age civilizational breakthroughs as a second age
axiality – in which case we are still living in this era of change – but the sig-
nifi cance of the current situation is surely one of an enhanced interaction of
civilizations and their local embodiments.
CONCLUSION: COSMOPOLITAN ORIENTATIONS
The interactive dimension of civilizational encounters, which Arnason
has highlighted, would appear to offer a basis for a critical theory of moder-
nity. It is through interaction in a global context that modernity takes shape.
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Delanty: Civilizational Analysis and Critical Theory 51
An interactionist account of the rise of modernity stresses the dynamics and
modes of interaction whereby different parts of the world become linked
through the expansion and diffusion of systems of exchange, networks of
communication, cultural translations, and various forms of cosmopolitan third
culture. The normative implication arising out of a conception of modernity
as a condition of global interaction points in the direction of cosmopolitanism
as a dialogic condition (Delanty and He, 2008).
While Arnason does not see any link between civilizational analysis and
cosmopolitanism, in my view this is the unavoidable conclusion of a post-
universalistic theory of civilizational encounters. Cosmopolitanism, understood
as a condition in which cultures undergo transformation in light of the encoun-
ter with the Other, can be most vividly illustrated with respect to civilizational
encounters. This can take different forms, ranging from major reorientations
in self-understanding in light of global principles to re-evaluations of cultural
heritage and identity as a result of inter-cultural communication. Cosmopoli-
tanism concerns the broadening of horizons when one culture meets another
or when one point of view is forced to re-evaluate its claims in light of the
perspective of an other.
Notes1. See Arnason (2003, 2006a, 2006b) for the most comprehensive statements and
summaries of his civilizational analysis.
2. On imminent transcendence see Strydom and Delanty (forthcoming, 2010).
3. I have pursued this argument in an article published in Thesis Eleven on a post-
western conception of Europe around a notion of an inter-civilizational constel-
lation (Delanty, 2003).
ReferencesArnason, J. (1991) ‘Modernity as a Project and a Field of Tensions’, in A. Honneth and
H. Joas (eds) Communicative Action. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Arnason, J. (2003) Civilizations in Dispute: Historical Questions and Theoretical Tradi-
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Arnason, J. (2006a) ‘Contested Divergence: Rethinking the “Rise of the West”’, in G.
Delanty (ed.) Europe and Asia Beyond East and West. London: Routledge.
Arnason, J. (2006b) ‘Civilizational Analysis, Social Theory and Comparative History’, in
G. Delanty (ed.) Handbook of Contemporary European Social Theory. London:
Routledge.
Delanty, G. (2003) ‘The Making of a Post-Western Europe: A Civilizational Analysis’,
Thesis Eleven 72: 8–24.
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52 Thesis Eleven (Number 100 2010)
Eisenstadt, S. N. (2003) Comparative Civilizations and Multiple Modernities, Vols 1
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Gerard Delanty, University of Sussex [email: [email protected]]
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