美国著名政治学家亨廷顿逝世 Samuel Huntington Died on Christmas Eve

美国著名政治学家亨廷顿(1927-2008)在圣诞节前夕逝世。亨廷顿在他工作事业后期，以‘文明的冲突’学说而闻名，即关于‘西方与其余者’之间不可避免的摩擦。
在《文明的冲突与世界秩序的重组》中坚持关注文化课题，而文化在传统上被其他政治学家认为是个软课题。他确定八种世界文明：西方、儒家（中国、韩朝和越南）、日本、回教、印度教、东正教（以俄罗斯为核心）、拉丁美洲、以及非洲文明。
源于发表于政治期刊‘外交季刊’的1993 年的一篇文章，三年后出版成书。它辩证说冷战后摩擦的主要根源不是国家或理念，而是文化。冲突是亨廷顿对那些认为在共产党垮台后西方价值普遍胜利的敏捷回应。西方傲慢的认为自己文化具普世性，会蒙蔽了他们看到其他文明挑战者的出现，尤其是回教与中国。
文明冲突立刻在学术界引起争议与辩论，尤其是它与福山的看法截然不同。福山是个有影响力的历史学家。他在冷战平和落幕后，写了‘历史的终结’，辩说西方自由民主的出现，是人类理念演变的终点和人类政府最后形式的信号。
那些认为世界政治主要演员是国家而不是文明的人自然的批评他的观点简化当前政治形势。他被指责替西方在国外的军事干预制造理由。
亨廷顿一直站稳他的文明冲突学说立场。去年，他自哈佛退休前说：‘我的见解还是一样，就是文化的一致、敌对、关联在国与国关系中不但扮演一个角色，而且会扮演一个重要的角色。’
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Samuel Huntington (1927-2008), an American political scientist passed away on Christmas Eve. He achieved fame late in his career for his "Clash of Civilisations" theory concerning the inevitability of conflict between the ‘West and the Rest’, notably Islam.
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order was a hard-headed look at what political scientists had traditionally dismissed as a soft subject: culture. He identified eight major civilisations in the world: ‘Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and African civilization.’
Originating as a 1993 article in the policy journal Foreign Affairs, and published three years later as a book, it argued that the key sources of post-Cold War conflicts would not be national or ideological, but cultural. Clash was Huntington’s riposte to those who thought the fall of communism meant the universal triumph of Western values. The West’s arrogance about the universality of its own culture would blind it to the ascent of ‘challenger civilisations’, particularly Islam and China.
The Clash of Civilizations prompted immediate controversy and debate within the academic world, particularly as it contrasted so starkly with the vision of the influential historian Francis Fukuyama, who had written about the End of History, following the largely peaceful resolution of the Cold War. In the book, Fukuyama argues that the advent of Western liberal democracy may signal the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the final form of human government.
Those who believe that nation-states rather than civilisation are the primary actors in world politics would naturally criticise his view as oversimplification of current political situations. He was accused of framing arguments that justified Western military intervention abroad.
Huntington always stood by his clash of civilisations thesis. ‘My argument remains that cultural identities, antagonisms and affiliations will not only play a role, but play a major role in relations between states,’ he said last year, after retiring from Harvard.