The West versus the Rest

Twenty-five years ago, Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington penned an influential article on the West and the Rest. Building on his 1993 classic “The Clash of Civilisations”, he argued that the West has won the Cold War, but it cannot flourish in a more hostile world until it abandons its universal aspirations.

- ANDREW SHENG

In his mind, the clash is about identities defined by cultural civilisations. He defined eight civilisations: Sinic, Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Western, Latin American, Orthodox and African. For him, “the west” refers to broadly western Christendom, covering Western Europe and North America, including Australasia. Japan is today counted as part of the West, not just being first Asian state to industrialise, but also to emulate Western imperial history.

European thinkers have long debated the role of the West in sustaining modernity. America now carries the mantle of leading the West, but much of her intellectual power was boosted by European science and social scientists who fled from Nazism or Communism after the 1930s. Milton Friedman’s free market views were hugely influenced by Austrian philosopher/economist Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992). But it was the Hungarian political philosopher Karl Polanyi’s (1886-1964) ideas that are more durable than the neoliberal thinking that pervades the West today.

In his book “For a New West”, Polanyi saw presciently in 1958: “The material and scientific products of the West are avidly consumed by the nascent nations, but with an unconcealed contempt for the interpretations set upon them by ourselves. That cultural entity, the West, of which the thinkers and writers were the traditional vehicles, is no longer listened to; not on account of a hostile public, as we persuade ourselves to believe, but because it has nothing relevant to say.”