A world which, like ours, has been ravaged by some 60 wars in recent decades, can rightly be described as the scene of global disorder. Even today, the same world is traumatized by hot and cold wars, proxy wars, and repeated outbursts of blood-filled mayhem, not to mention the threat of a nuclear holocaust unleashed by big power rivalries. These are not mere statistics, but wounds, in the body of humanity, calling for healing and reconciliation. In biblical terms, human beings are not meant to be the owners or the destroyers of the world, but rather its custodians or caretakers. This collection is a summons to responsible care-taking, and it approaches the subject from an intercultural perspective in a variety of fields, including religion and politics
Gadfly on trial : Socrates as philosopher-citizen -- Mahatma Gandhi : a nonviolent gadfly -- Henry David Thoreau : an American gadfly -- Martin Luther King Jr. : a gadfly in Montgomery -- Albert Camus : a gadfly in purgatory -- Conclusion : gadflies against the tide
Foreword : civilizational revival in the global age / Ahmet Davutoğlu -- Geopolitical turmoil and civilizational pluralism / Richard Falk -- Civilization as instrument of world order? : the role of the civilizational paradigm in the absence of a balance of power / Hans Köchler -- Power in the analysis of world orders / Raymond Duvall and Çiğdem Çıdam -- International society, cultural diversity and the clash (or dialogue) of civilizations / Chris Brown -- The formative parameters of civilizations : a theoretical and historical framework / Ahmet Davutoğlu -- Western democrats, oriental despots? / S. Sayyid -- The Ottoman Empire and the global Muslim identity in the formation of Eurocentric world order, 1815-1919 / Cemil Aydın -- Beyond the "enlightenment mentality" : an anthropocosmic perspective / Tu Weiming -- Globalization, civilizations, and world order / Robert Gilpin -- Liberalism of restraint and liberalism of imposition : liberal values and world order in the new millennium / Georg Sørensen -- The rise of a neo-medieval order in Europe / Jan Zielonka -- Illusions, dreams and nightmares : Japan, the United States and the East Asian renaissance in the first decade of the new century / John Welfield
Das Ergebnis dieser theoretischen und praktischen Anstrengung ist eine intelligente Synthese, die den ursprünglichen Sinn der 'kritischen Theorie' bewahrt und sie gleichzeitig von dem Ballast der deutschen Tradition der Metaphysik befreit; und das, mirabile dictu, ohne in einen positivistischen Szientismus linguistischer oder strukturalistischer Art zu verfallen. Tatsächlich hat ein Großteil von Habermas' philosophischer Arbeit darin bestanden, die überhöhten Ansprüche, die von oder im Namen der empirischen Schule gestellt worden sind, systematisch abzubauen. George Lichtheim