
From Mesopotamia through Carroll Quigley to Bill Clinton: World Historical Systems, the Civilizationist, and the President
Author(s) -
David Wilkinson
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
journal of world-systems research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.219
H-Index - 2
ISSN - 1076-156X
DOI - 10.5195/jwsr.1995.59
Subject(s) - mesopotamia , materialism , idealization , historical materialism , history , sociology , law , political science , epistemology , philosophy , ancient history , quantum mechanics , politics , marxist philosophy , physics
The noted comparative civilizationist and world-historical systems analyst Carroll Quigley, whose theorizing rested on the whole historical span from Mesopotamia to the 1960's, was a teacher well-remembered by his student Bill Clinton. Quigley, by an intensive process of reduction, or rather idealization, of masses of historical data, derived a procedure for the diagnosis and therapy of ailing civilizations/world-systems, especially the one which he inhabited. The coherent, persistent and personal motifs of the policy discourse and variant initiatives of his student, the President, bear more than a passing resemblance to the hopeful, idealistic, voluntaristic, intellectual, scientific, economistic, demi-materialistic propensities of the civilizationist and teacher