Civilization

CIVILIZATION. - The idea of civilization refers to an object so complex, in whose composition so many disparate elements of different natures concur, that the existence of often contrasting definitions cannot cause surprise. In their formulation, in fact, the ideological presuppositions carry preponderant weight, from which, consciously or unconsciously, one moves to the analysis of the datum, and which determine the choice of this or that element in preference to others. To succeed, therefore, in grasping the essence of civilization and at the same time assigning a hierarchical order among the values of which it is composed, one must insist by preference on objective analysis, grafting onto it that much rational speculation which helps to facilitate the ascent from the purely empirical order to that of the most universal values.

If one considers the etymological genesis (from civis or from civitas), the term expressly indicates an ineliminable relation of any form of progress with social man or with society, from which it unfolds and in which it resides. In this sense civilization is equivalent to the condition of material and spiritual life reached by man within collective coexistence in a determined historical period, and it stands generically opposed to barbarism. It is not easy, however, to establish an exact line of separation between civilized and barbarous peoples, to determine where barbarism ceases and civilization begins, since it is undoubted that even among societies considered barbarous there are found certain elements, especially moral ones, which belong to the soul of true civilization. On this observation is founded the usage of the ethnological sciences, which attribute the name of civilization, without distinction of concept or of breadth, to the social state of peoples, distinguishing the various phases of their political and economic organization into primary, secondary and mixed civilizations, according to the prevalence or otherwise of certain characteristics held to be original to a determined culture. However, if adherence to the etymological sense can help toward a classification of primitive peoples, according to an empirical criterion deduced from the development of their social institutions, it cannot suffice for the formation of the adequate concept, to reach which one must refer to its proximate cause. Such a cause, as etymology itself suggests, is social man. The idea of civilization, in fact, has an essential relation with the rational creature, insofar as it is ordered to unfold its own life within a collective organism, necessary for its full development. The end toward which the progress of civilization aims is man: the subject upon which the well-being of civilization pours itself is collective life, whence it then flows back upon its first and original source, the human person. Such is the dependence of the concept of civilization upon the person as a part of a human aggregate, that one cannot conceive of progress without stable relations, nor of a civilization divorced from man. Social man is at once its producer and its bearer. According to this relation, civilization could be defined with Sombart as "the creation of man, which is set against the divine creation of nature," or with Guizot as "the development of social and individual activity in the progress of society and of humanity," or again with a more recent author, Maritain: "the organically determined whole, which has a form and physiognomy of its own, of social values communicable in themselves." Rather vague expressions, to which it is nonetheless possible to attribute a content, insofar as they generically signify that civilization refers to social man, who evolves and fulfills himself with the conquests of science, the applications of technology, the creations of art, the formation of traditions, the construction of institutions, of codes and of laws.

To succeed in obtaining a concept of civilization somewhat more determined and at the same time gradual, according to a precise hierarchy of the values of which it is composed, one must refer to something more objective and scientifically analyzable. Holding firm that civilization indicates a relation to collective coexistence, this element can be discovered in the common good, and then, with Taparelli, one will say that civilization is nothing other than social perfection, that is, the perfection of the common good. The perfection of every entity consists in tending toward its own proper end, in attaining it and actualizing it in itself, so that it will be all the more perfect the more integrally it has actualized the end toward which it naturally tends. Now the natural end of the social aggregate consists in the common good, and therefore it follows that social life can be called perfect only when it corresponds to all or almost all the exigencies of the common good. The common good, moreover, insofar as it represents the end to be attained, requires the union of the wills and efforts of individuals; insofar as it is a good already acquired, it postulates the maximum extension and expansion. A society will therefore be civilized, according to the accepted objective concept, when the social unity is firm, the activity efficacious, the progress natural and tranquil. This is in substance the conclusion reached by Romagnosi, who defines civilization as the best and most cultured coexistence acquired by a State.

To know the elements that are summed up in the composition of a cultured coexistence, it suffices to analyze the fundamental needs and exigencies of human nature, for whose satisfaction society is ordered. Man moves naturally toward the good, in which the operative faculty finds its satisfaction and its rest. It will therefore assume different aspects, according to the various human tendencies and faculties. In the spiritual order the intellect tends toward the good under the aspect of the true, while the will regards the good that is essentially human, that is, the moral good. In the sensible order the common object of the various faculties is the pleasurable good, toward which they tend with no further purpose than their own satisfaction. The elements, therefore, that enter into the composition of civilization, understood as the perfection of the common good, are the true, the moral good and the pleasurable good. A society can then be called civilized when in its sense there will have been actualized the widest expansion of truth, in its multiple forms, religious, speculative, scientific and practical, the most uncontested dominion of the moral good in private and public life, with the observance of the laws of nature and of positive norms inspired by justice, the broadest diffusion of material well-being, which facilitates at once the search for truth and the triumph of morality. To these three orders of good, intellectual, moral and material, all the other means can and must be reduced, which increase the splendor and well-being of associated life, all the varied forms of civil life, in which the tendency toward society is actualized, according to the character, the exigencies and the aptitudes of each people.

In civilization there must be distinguished constant elements and variable elements; from the latter depends the particular physiognomy that it assumes with the changing of times and circumstances. The constant elements are represented by the goods named above, which, being the essential components, must necessarily be found in any particular form of civil life. The variable ones depend either on the degree of perfection reached in their possession by the various peoples, or on accidental superstructures, which derive from the environment, from the psychological character and aptitude of those who are their agents, or from cultural contacts with other peoples. Every people reacts differently to external stimuli and differently takes its stance in the expression of the true, the good and the beautiful. Hence the great variety in the attitudes of thought, in art, in laws and customs, in traditions and institutions.

Thus the hierarchy among the values that compose civilization also remains implicitly determined. At the highest degree stand the spiritual values, which constitute its soul, at the degree inferior all the others, to which is reserved the function of a means for the gradual intellectual and moral elevation of man. Technical progress and that of applied science, material well-being, as the less noble aspects of civilization, have value only insofar as they are accompanied by an equal and greater progress in the field of moral and spiritual values. If this does not come about, there will be a culture and not a civilization, which indeed enters into crisis and dissolves. The dominion of the irrational marks the decline of civilization. Myth, of whatever nature it may be — national, racial or classist — destroys it, just as materialism stifles it, together with any conception that fails to recognize the value and nobility of man, since civilization is the most exquisite fruit of spiritual activity, operating in collaboration with other intelligent beings in social coexistence.

Antonio Messineo