The historical moment of the position of the problem, from the onset, leads to the heart of the sudden perplexity about the nature, rôle and prospect of “the civilizational question” in our times. While the very category of “civilization” was avoided until recently, a ?urry of amazement-cum-disquiet has been pervading the public mind, more speci?cally the intellectual circles used to the long-prevailing dichotomies of social thought (“left” and “right”; “developed” and “under-developed”; “center” and “periphery”; “conservative” and “radical”; “reactionary” and “progressive”; “religious” and “secular”). All of a sudden, as it were, on the morrow of the implosion of the former U.S.S.R., the end of the bi-polar system, the advent of unipolar world hegemonism in 1989-1991, a resounding essay in 1993 came as a shock. “Civilizations,” ?nally in the limelight, were deemed to “clash.”