In the Name of Progress and Peace: The “Standard of Civilization” and the Universalizing Project

Abstract

Robert Wright has written that more closely we examine the drift of biological evolution and, especially, the drift of human history, the more there seems be a point all. In explaining arrow of the history of life, from the primordial soup the World Wide Web, he argues, Globalization ... has been the cards not just since the invention of the telegraph or the steamship, or even the written word or the wheel, but since the invention of life. (1) This bold claim is reminiscent of Francis Fukuyama's assertion that the end of the cold war marked not just passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government. (2) The evolutionary logic that Wright, Fukuyama, and others see as a natural and inevitable turn of events actually reflects a concerted effort impose a particular ideological rationale the passage of history. That is say, certain forces international politics have a clear-cut vision of the form of international they hope see materialize. These architects of international continue be informed by a belief the Enlightenment ideal of progress and humankind's universal linear march toward modernity--a modernity that is both liberal, globalized, and cosmopolitan appearance. As John Gray argues, it is not too difficult discern ... [a core] project the central Enlightenment thinkers, and detect its presence the new liberals--the intellectual descendants of Kantianism such as [John] Rawls and his disciples--who unreflectively subscribed a version of the Enlightenment philosophy of history which universal convergence a cosmopolitan and rationalist ... was taken for granted as the telos of the species. In essence, the philosophical anthropology of the Enlightenment held that different cultural identities, along with their constitutive histories, were like streams, whose destiny was flow irresistibly into the great ocean of universal (3) Underpinning attempts realize the vision of an interconnected cosmopolitan world order are three interrelated propositions that constitute what Fukuyama calls the democratic syllogism; (4) a syllogism that has become the cornerstone of international public policy the ongoing endeavor civilize international society. Furthermore, one of the primary tools used shape this liberal cosmopolitan world order is the reinvigoration of a standard of civilization international society. According Hedley Bull, a society of states (or international society) exists when a group of states, conscious of certain common interests and common values, form a the sense that they conceive themselves be bound by a common set of rules their relations with one another, and share the working of common institutions. (5) With the expansion of Europe from the fifteenth century and the export of the European states system established by the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, by the time of the postcolonial twentieth century, international was increasingly identified as universal scope. (6) That is say that values and norms that are widely thought of as having their roots the European Enlightenment--such as human rights, democracy, and the efficacy of science and technology--are now thought be embraced by, or are at least aspirations of, a large majority of humanity. In referring the international political arena more generally, Norbert Elias has observed that the pacification of domestic societies--the relatively peaceful life of large masses of people--is in good part based on the state's monopolization of violence. Adding that if the reduction of mutual physical danger or increased pacification is considered a decisive criterion for determining the degree of civilization, Elias says humankind can be said to have reached a higher level of within domestic affairs than the international plane. …

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