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The STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI issue article summary
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Abstract: The problem of islamic civilization at O. Spengler. The question of Islam and the «clash of civilisations» is everything but new. Although Spengler is on the black list of the officially forgotten authors, a profound lecture of his monumental Der Untergang des Abendlandes can easily prove he already questioned all current issues of nowadays cultural anthropology. We have tried to revenge this ignored dimension. Particularily, focusing on the chapter he dedicated to the Arab and islamic civilisation, we outlined first his comparision between apollinic/faustian/magic styles of cultures. This tripartition corresponds in fact to a large scale cross-examination of irreducible differences that divide ancient greek/ occidental and arab civilisations. We then proceeded to outline on a contrasting manner some of the characteristics of christian/modern treatment of sacred and profane relation, with the fundamental principles of Islam on the same issue. We identified an "islamic crisis of the profane", due to the anthropological structure of magical sentiment of the world ("the impossibility of an autonomous human ego in front of the divinity") and due to the religious definition of umma (the islamic community of believers), which fully integrates the profane into the sacred realm ("the tendency of an identification of the believers community with the State"). The relevance of these spenglerian conclusions needs hardly be argued for the present "clash of civilisation", the religious islamic civilisation and the postmodern occidental civilisation. |
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