Home
Inductive Approach
Koneczny's approach is inductive. There are no a priori notions. Every claim has to be derived from observation, from evidence and not from preconceived ideas. Thus, Koneczny, for example, rejects the biological approach to civilisations used both by Spengler and Toynbee. The claim that civilisations arise, develop, grow, decline and die is not supported by evidence. Some do and others do not. For example, we know nothing about the origin of the Chinese civilisation nor do we observe any signs of its decline. It exists and we can study how it differs from others without making suggestions about the stage of development it has reached.
When studying civilisations, Koneczny looked for laws of history. He proposed some based entirely on documented observations. Here are a few examples:
- Inequality is a fact of life. Effort to catch up and overtake the richest, the wisest, the most virtuous, stimulates material, intellectual and spiritual development. Egalitarian notions hamper development.
- Civilisations differ so much that it is not possible to be civilised in two different ways. Everyone belongs to some civilisation but never to two or more. Someone may have a Jewish father and a Chinese mother but in terms of civilisational affiliation, he will belong to either one or the other or altogether to a different one but he can never be civilised in both ways.
- Civilisations, by their very nature, must be at war with each other. This war has nothing to do with military activity or force. It is a war of ideas. It is a question of who educates whose children. Will they be brought up in the civilisation of the parents or will the parents allow that they be brought up in some other one.
- When a civilisation ceases to fight for its own identity, when it treats other civilisations as being of equal value, the lower one wins. "Lower" means the one that is less demanding.
- Civilisational mixtures can only be mechanical, never organic, and they soon perish because they are inconsistent. There are no historical examples of civilisational mixtures surviving for any length of time.