The West and the Rest: Globalization and the Terrorist Threat

by Roger Scruton

Book Overview

Roger Scruton argues that to understand adequately the roots of Islamic terrorism, one must understand both the unique historical evolution of the state and the dynamic of globalization. Scruton... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1882926811
• ISBN13: 9781882926817
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Intercollegiate Studies Institute
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 0.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

Clear thinking on difficult issues

Although relatively brief (161 pages) this volume is densely packed with careful analysis and incisive observation. Subtitled "Globalization and the Terrorist Threat," this book explores a number of related themes. A major thesis is how modern Western democracies differ from other types of societies in general, and the Islamic world in particular. His historical and philosophical investigations provide a framework in which to judge both the September 11 attacks, and the ongoing threat of Islamic terrorism. He begins by noting that social bonding can take place by means of either religion or politics. In the pluralistic West, social cohesion is mainly found in the form of the social contract, whereas in the Islamic world, religion alone provides that basis. Roman law and the Christian religion helped provide the basis for the social contract, as well as bring about the Western conception of the demarcation of the religious and political spheres. Islamic societies on the other hand know of no separation of religious and secular authorities, with religion the sole basis of the state. Just as the Communist party was a law onto itself, so "Islam aims to control the state without being a subject of the state". As a result, there are no political or social mediating structures between Allah and His will (Islam) and the submissive Muslim (Islamic citizen). The freedoms of a democracy, including the freedom to oppose the state, to vote for alternative parties, and to freely express dissenting opinions are thus not to be found in Islamic states. In theocracies, such dissent is just not possible. And given that Islam means submission, the good Muslim is an obedient Muslim. Both secular Western societies and Muslim societies have notions of membership. Membership in the West is made up of the voluntary, the tribal, the linguistic and the political. Muslim membership is credal, based only on the religious. The political process of the West allows for the separation of society from the state, while there is no such distinction in Islamic jurisdictions. Thus the political is the religious, whereas the genius of Western democracies is to separate the political from the rest of social and personal life. Democratic citizenship helps to limit state power and deter totalitarian temptations. However as the onslaught of radical individualism and secularism sweep the West, former loyalties and the sense of social membership are quickly giving way. As the concept of citizenship disappears, social membership is strained and the basis of democracies is undermined. In the light of such social and political fragmentation, the religious membership of Islamic societies stands in sharp contrast. However Islamic unity is based on force and power, not consent. Religious toleration, taken for granted in the West, is a foreign concept in Islamic societies. Islamic law applies to every aspect of life, and leads to the denial of the political. All is religious, and mediating s

Profound and highly enlightening

In this fascinating book, British Philosopher (and former university professor) Roger Scruton looks at the West and the Islamic world, and examines what has brought on the present crisis. It is his contention that the both the Western and the Islamic worlds are in a state of crisis. In the Islamic world, the increase in population and the concomitant urbanization has produced alienation, while the march of globalization has brought it face to face with a Western world that it both envies and hates. In the West, the whole of Western culture is under assault from an elitist, post-Modernist "Culture of Repudiation" that wishes to tear down the culture, but has nothing to erect in its place.Along the way, Mr. Scruton treats the reader to a profound and highly enlightening look at the foundations of modern Western and Islamic political ideology; where they came from, where they are going, and what has produced such hostility. The conclusion of the book is small, with some suggestions to "constrain" the process of globalization, thus minimizing the threat perceived by the Muslim world, but nothing more far-reaching than that.I found this book to be both enlightening and somewhat frightening. Mr. Scruton's analysis suggests that the roots of the present hostility emanating from the Middle East are very deep indeed, and not likely to be ameliorated by any simple or easy solution. If there was one book that I would urge everyone to read, so as to understand the present world, this would be it! Please read this book.

Very clear and somewhat frightening

Roger Scruton, who has written more than twenty books, including: LAND HELD HOSTAGE: LEBANON AND THE WEST (1987), has summarized the philosophical background of political thought supporting western forms of government and enterprises, on the one hand, and the most menacing forms of opposition threatening their existence, on the other. The index is quite useful for locating significant figures, where they appear in the text most pertinently. Nietzsche only appears once, on the way to explaining "the appeal of those recent thinkers--Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Richard Rorty--who owe their intellectual eminence not to their arguments but to their role in giving authority to the rejection of authority, and to their absolute commitment to the impossibility of absolute commitments." (p. 75). Former opponents of the Western world as we know it in this book include Karl Marx, "Shortly after the family had been iconized by Hegel, it was satirized by Marx and Engels in THE HOLY FAMILY. But the real intellectual war against the family is a product of the late twentieth century, and part of a great cultural shift from the affirmation to the repudiation of inherited values." (p. 70). "Like Marxism, feminism purports to show us the world without ideological masks or camouflage." (p. 72). Marx is later criticized more philosophically for starting this ball rolling. "All distinctions are `cultural,' therefore `constructed,' therefore `ideological,' in the sense defined by Marx--manufactured by the ruling classes in order to serve their interests and bolster their power. Western civilization is simply the record of that oppressive process, and the principal purpose of studying it is to deconstruct its claim to our membership. This is the core belief that a great many students in the humanities are required to ingest, " (p. 79) at least until men stop signing up for liberal arts classes because they find them so offensive.On the other hand, revolt in Western societies seems to play right into the hands of what the poet, Robert Bly, calls a sibling society. Instead of a society dominated by adults able "to induct young people into the national culture, when loyalties no longer stretch across generations or define themselves in territorial terms, then inevitably the society of strangers, held together by citizenship, is under threat." (p. 82). The vast media domination, assuming the primary influence of entertainment values in areas that used to be under the sway of intellectual thought, produces a society which is easily seen by the rest of the world as dominated by "a dissipation that is both cause and effect of the sex-and-drugs lifestyle of the modern teenager." (p. 82).The fundamental point in Chapter 3, "Holy Law," is perhaps stated most forcefully later, in Chapter 4, "Globalization," considering how the common financial situation determining the future of the demographic explosion has not escaped ancient attitudes. "There is no s

Thoughtful and provocative

British philosopher, aesthetician and cultural critic Roger Scruton's new book -- unfortunately published by a press that is a bit obscure, which means that not all bookstores will carry it -- is a stunning account of the history of the similarities and differences between the West and other social and political dispensations, in an age that will (probably) be known for globalization and terrorism. Anyone looking for a spirited defence of the notion of the West, with its special (but hopefully 'exportable') emphasis on the consent of the governed, will want to have this book.Scruton's argument is that there is something vital and special about the nexus of factors -- economic free market, extensive but not uncurbed private ownership, elected state representatives, civil society, open rather than closed parliament or legislative assembly, and independent judiciary -- that combine to creat the distinctness of Western polities (The West). What is special is that these represent an outgrowth of a long historical movement animated by the need for polities to secure the confidence and faith of its citizens. But not all states were forged in this kind of process, or tradition, which combines loyalty to a greater good (healthy patriotism and/or nationalism) with a respect for plurality, and which allows a fruitful tension between secularity and faith, and between duties and rights. Rather, some states don't have these advantages. A number of these (The Rest) are 'legitimate' states in name only (or because the UN has seen fit to include them on its roster). Here Scruton of course discusses non-Western states. But he saves his most insightful discussion for a learned inquiry into Islamic states, or more to the point, religion, focusing on Islam as a faith which has never experienced the kind of Reformation-like upheaval that could result in a State-Church separation. But these are just some of his concerns, and there are too many to discuss in a brief review. (I've said nothing about his interesting, Tory-Hegelian attitude towards globalization, which should infuriate -- though also hopefully convert -- some libertarians. Suffice it to say that Scruton refuses to fetishize the market, treating it with a healthy suspicion borne of an Burkean understanding of just how destructive of tradition, faith and established values an utterly unregulated market can be.) All in all, as always, Scruton brings his keen analytical mind, as well as his surprisingly moderate tone (for a man as reviled as he is, or was), and his gift for lucid and fascinating explanation and exploration, to bear on a number of important topics. I recommend this book without any hesitation whatsoever, and hope that it finds a vast readership (AND that a number of people go on to read his many other fascinating and well-written books, many of which are pitched at the general, educated reader).

Understanding 9/11 Philosophically

Roger Scruton is one of the most extraordinary figures of our time. He is an English political philosopher who frequently appears in the British press and who has written a monumental history of modern philosophy, as well as the Oxford Past Master volumes on Kant and Spinoza, as well as seminal works on the moral philosophy of the erotic and the philosophy of music, as well as superb works of architectural and art criticism. He has even written two operas, both words and music, and two volumes of satirical pseudo-Platonic dialogues.Perhaps the most notable characteristic of his writing is its originality or freshness. In almost all his works, you get the sense that an incredibly powerful mind is confronting a question or a topic for the first time. That quality is on display here, as Scruton thinks through with his reader the questions which arise in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 9/11. He argues for the uniqueness (and, perhaps, the unrepeatability) of the Western political achievement of "territorial sovereignty." He takes us through the theological, philosophical, and cultural impediments to modernization in the Muslim world. He discusses the effects of globalization on both the West and "the Rest" (of the world).Like many Americans, I read vociferously all the journalistic and many of the academic debates which followed after 9/11. Amazingly, there are more new insights and arguments in this single short book--it can be read in one or two sittings--than in dozens of other long articles and books. This is a marvelous work of synethesis, and it deserves to be the starting point for all future discussions of American policy in an age of terrorism.