The Clash of Civilizations or Conflicts of Politics?:An Intellectual Historical Interpretation of the"Clash of Civilizations"Theory
In the 1990s,Samuel Huntington proposed the"clash of civilizations theory with a fundamental goal to reassess the internal and external environments that the United States was facing.When thinking about civilization,he often defined the relationship between Western and non-Western civilizations through an enemy vs.friend dynamic.From a historical perspective,this was in line with the civilization theory that had served as the ideological discourse of Western colonial expansion in modern times.Confronted with the increasing influence of cultural pluralism in American society after World War Ⅱ,Huntington was concerned with a huge rift that emerged within Western civilization,worrying that it would lead to a political crisis and ultimately to the fading of America's national identity.In his view,in addition to the irreconcilable conflict between and among civilizations in the future,the cultural civil wars within the civilization induced by cultural pluralism demanded more attention.To understand the spiritual roots of America's internal and external policies,it is helpful to re-read Huntington from the perspective of intellectual history,to place his discourse against the background of the unprecedented changes of the last hundred years,and to place his words within the corresponding historical context.
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