Comparative History of the Cycles of Intellectual and Philosophical Ideas in Eight Civilizational Spheres
* Book: : Vincent Citot, Histoire mondiale de la philosophie, Une histoire comparée des cycles de la vie intellectuelle dans huit civilisations, Puf,
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Review
Alfio Nazareno Rizzo:
"In selecting the eight civilizations presented in the book, Citot’s criteria are continuity and quantity. “Many cultures have produced philosophy, but few did so in a massive way, over a long period, and in writing, making it possible to recount their history” (p. 15). It is also a necessary historical requirement that their writings have survived, which considerably reduces the number of civilizations for which the evolution of philosophical thought can be documented. All the remains are eight cultural regions: Greece, Rome, Islam, Russia, India, China, and Japan, which Citot presents in this (non-chronological) order (Chinese and Indian civilization being older than Greek civilization and philosophy).
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To get beyond the model of logical-rational thought that originated in Greece, Citot proposes the following definition: philosophy is “thought that seeks to justify itself by various means that are persistently pursued” (p. 14). Since the work of philosophers belongs to a culture’s broader trends and intellectual expression, philosophy does not exist in isolation from a civilization’s culture and intellectual life. Philosophizing, after all, is not the only way that humans think. Religion and science are, in addition to philosophy, two other ways of thinking that are inherently human. The universal character of human thought manifests itself through three ways of exploring the question of truth: religion seeks truth through authority-based discourses that are socially legitimized; philosophy accesses truth through reasoning and criticism; and science formalizes experience and reasoning, turning them into models. Each of these ways of thinking corresponds to an attempt to decenter existence: religion, philosophy, and science all grasp reality by transcending individual standpoints (p. 17).
Each civilization goes through these three approaches, which correspond to three successive moments in the history of thought: a preclassical period, characterized by religious thought; a classical period, in which philosophy emancipates itself from religion; and a postclassical period, in which science marginalizes other forms of thought. The advantage of grouping together the different expressions of human thought into three categories is that it allows for a better understanding of thought’s evolution. This approach justifies the historiographical decision to examine eight civilizations in terms of their intellectual cycles. Like Vico in the Scienza nuova (as well as Ibn Khaldun, who came up with the idea of historical cycles even earlier), Citot constructs a cyclical narrative of the intellectual history of different civilizations, showing the evolving relationship between religion, philosophy, and science."