Terra sebv s acta mvsei sabesiensi s

The East and the West: From Holism to Dialogue through Confrontation 

 

113

the Chinese economy in the modern world, the attempts of the Republic of 

Turkey to join the European Union, and the parliamentary system in India. 

Nevertheless, the East is forced to sacrifice and give up some 

elements of its traditional culture in order to move towards integration. As 

an example, consider Japan and South Korea. The peculiarity of the modern 

situation is that for all the differences between the historical paths of 

development of these two historical and cultural regions, they have resulted 

in very similar - to some extent even identical - outcomes. Both the West 

and the East in the 20

th

 century experienced an acute spiritual crisis, the 

roots of which lay not only in the dehumanisation of human culture, but 

also the damage done to traditional Oriental culture, first through 

colonisation and subsequently as a result of globalisation.

23

 

According to these new circumstances, the heirs of Oriental sages, 

unburdened by the metaphysics of truth, had a distinct advantage over the 

Western heirs of Plato and Aristotle. The East can outrun the West, and can 

do so not only economically but also spiritually, as the rapid development of 

China’s economy in recent decades proves. 

It could be said that tradition, culture and civilisation comprise three 

levels, three dimensions of human practice, and culture occupies an 

intermediate, mediating position between tradition and civilisation. The 

main feature of modern times that defines both their greatness and their 

insignificance was the ousting of tradition by civilisation, whereby culture 

itself became essentially an appendage of civilisation. A peculiar feature of 

the modern situation is that despite all the differences between the historical 

paths of development of these two historical and cultural regions of the 

world, they have very similar, even identical results. Both the West and the 

East experienced an acute spiritual crisis, the roots of which lie not only in 

the dehumanisation of human culture, in the sudden alienation of the 

individual, but also in the constant denial of person’s human-ness. 

We can say that this latest and most dangerous form of human 

savagery goes back to the neglect of the symbolic dimension of experience 

and generated cultural norms. “My spirituality is my power over the 

material”: this is the credo of the modern Western man, who made 

machines his idol. “I’ll lead a materialistic life because the spiritual is still 

indeterminable”: this is the position of the modern Eastern man, burying 

his pessimism under the cover of busyness. The world of electronic illusions 

arising from modern scientific and technological revolutions marks the end 

of both the West and the East. For the West, it is the end of the civilisation 

of Classical rationalism. For the East, it is the end of the recollection of 

“eternally absent” sources of spiritual power. Here and there during the 

                                                 

23

 Tomlinson 1999, p. 205-207. 

www.cclbsebes.ro/muzeul-municipal-ioan-raica.html   /   www.cimec.ro

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R. R. Muhametzyanov 

 

114

post-modern era, life is deprived of depth, goes back to the relevance of 

personal experience and becomes a pragmatic reality. 

In ancient times in an era of cultural and historical syncretism, the 

canonical image of Buddha appeared in Gandhara art

24

 as a symbol of the 

merging of the two worlds: the Hindu-Buddhist and the Hellenistic. In the 

20

th

 century, the emergence of new European theatre owes a great deal to 

conscious acquaintance with Japanese and Chinese dramatic traditions. In 

the second half of the 20

th

 century, Europe - the successor of ancient 

spiritual values - gave its attention to the East, trying to work out a new 

crisis-free and tolerant attitude. Relations between the West and the East 

have become isolated: now we talk of the quantity and quality of their 

perception of each other, about how to find a new global syncretism of 

Eastern and Western civilisations whilst retaining their identities and 

distinctiveness. 

Various concepts based on aggregating and making connections 

between characteristics of the West and the East have appeared recently. 

These can lead to ideas that will help to build a dialogue between the East 

and the West. An important step in this direction is the comparative analysis 

of the logic behind Eastern and Western cultural development and the 

specifics of the dialogue between these cultures. But as long as  

“the average European remains a barbarian with respect to the thoughts of 

the Upanishads and the Sung landscape, the intelligentsia of the East cannot 

abandon its role of zealous guardians of these traditions. Until the values of 

the East become congenial and relevant for the entire emerging world 

culture, the writers of the East will have to defend their “soil” from erosion 

of its colourless cosmopolitanism.”

25

 

 

 

The East and the West: From Holism to Dialogue through Confrontation 

  

(Abstract) 

 

The article deals with the development of Western and Eastern civilisations and their 

movement away from unity through opposition in order to seek ways out of geopolitical 

crisis. It is known that of all the bipolarities defining the general trends of cultural 

development in the modern world, the one of greatest significance refers to the “East-

West” divide. The multiplicity of cultural worlds that represents humanity tends to be 

recast into the metacultural “East-West” dichotomy. It is well known that this kind of 

bipolarity has been a source of destructive historical events (the Balkans in Europe, 

                                                 

24

 Gandhara is the ancient name of the area in the north-west of Pakistan; on the territory 

of Gandhara during the first century BC - first centuries AD there existed a kind of art of 

one of the leading art schools in the time of the Kushan Empire, called Gandhara. 

Gandhara art is closely connected with Buddhism.

 

25

 Pomerants 1972, p. 302. 

www.cclbsebes.ro/muzeul-municipal-ioan-raica.html   /   www.cimec.ro

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