Last time I explored how James Doull – from a Hegelian perspective – understood the world in the century or two after Hegel, up to the fall of fascism and Communism. This week I’m following up with his analysis of the world he lived at his death in 2001 – still the world we live in today.

In reading Doull’s discussion of post-1989 politics I keep thinking back to Benjamin Barber‘s splendidly evocative title, Jihad vs. McWorld – originally a 1992 Atlantic Monthly article, expanded into a bestselling 1996 book. Doull’s staid prose would never feature such popular terms as “Jihad” and “McWorld”, but it seems to me that his analysis nevertheless rests on roughly the same contrast: a particularist embrace of divisions based on language, culture and “religion”, which emerges stronger as a response to a universalistic globalized technological capitalism. Continue reading →