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
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