The Imperialist Epistemological Vision

Abstract

There is a view that imperialism, as a historical practice, constitutes
a deviation from western civilization and its conception of the universe,
and that the adoption of the imperialist solution, which involves exporting
problems to the rest of the world and hegemony over other nations, is
inconsistent with being a liberal, humane, and enlightened civilizatian that
has accepted democracy as philosophy of government, laissez-faire as its
economic order, and rationalism and humanism as universal philosophy.
It is our contention, however, that these varied philosophies do not stand
in contradiction to the imperialist epistemological vision. Rather, there is
a close link between these philosophies and the imperialist vision, which
will be fully undelstmd once we turn to the epistemological level. In
order to be aware of such a link, it has to be recognized that all of these
philosophies are secular in nature, in the sense that they do not admit of
any philosophical system outside the domain of the materialistic order.
In our view, secularism is not a separation between religion and the
state, as propagated in both western and Arab writings. Rather, it is the
removal of absolute values-epistemological and ethical-from the world
such that the entire world-humanity and nature- alike-becomes merely
a utilitarian object to be utilized and subjugated. From this standpoint, we
can see the structural similarity between the secular epistemological
vision and the imperialist epistemological vision. We can also realize that
imperialism is no more than the exporting of a secular epistemological
and ethical paradigm from the western world, where it first emerged, to
the rest of the world ...