More about Arnold J. Toynbee →
Toynbee contends that the two “congenital diseases”of all civilizations are War and Class, and that modern Western technology—his recurring term is “know-how”—has inflamed these ancient evils into potentially fatal maladies: war now capable of destroying the species, class of disintegrating society. Material progress, he insists, cannot answer humanity’s deeper needs, since “an does not live by bread alone.”
Central to his view is the idea that civilizations grow by responding creatively to successive challenges and break down when they fail to meet them. The West’s survival, he argues, depends on this capacity to respond—above all by abolishing War and Class and by recovering a spiritual and religious dimension he believes secular technological culture has hollowed out. He gives religious history primacy over political and economic history, and ultimately sees history passing over into theology.
The book also critiques Western parochialism: Toynbee argues that the West, having unintentionally unified the world since about 1500, is now the only civilization still clinging to a self-centered, “Chosen People” view of history. He calls for humility, self-reflection, and a recognition that other civilizations’ pasts have become part of the West’s own future.
Against deterministic theories of decline such as Spengler’s, Toynbee is notably open-ended, insisting there is no reason a succession of challenges should not be met by a succession of victorious responses. While critics have debated his religious emphasis and his outlook, Civilization on Trial remains a significant reflection on the ethical and spiritual dimensions of historical change.
“The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding moral achievements of Islam, and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary source“We have invented machines to work for us, but have less spare labor than ever before for human service.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary source“Now civilizations, I believe, come to birth and proceed to grow by successfully responding to successive challenges. They break down and go to pieces if and when a challenge confronts them which they fail to meet.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary source“Man cannot live by technology alone.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary source“Of the twenty or so civilizations known to modern Western historians, all except our own appear to be dead or moribund, and, when we diagnose each case, in extremis or post mortem, we invariably find that the cause of death has been either War or Class or some, combination of the two.”
— Arnold J. Toynbee Primary source• Title: Civilization on Trial
• Author: Arnold J. Toynbee
• Type: Book
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication time: 1948
• Publication place: New York, US
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