1. THE WORLD TOWARDS A NEW MIDDLE AGE?
Fernando Alcoforado *
The world today is moving towards a new Middle Ages? Many authors such as
Umberto Eco, Furio Colombo, Francesco Alberoni and Giuseppe Sacco, with texts
collected in the book La Nueva Edad Media, published by Alianza Editorial in 2010,
consider the prospective hypothesis a regression of civilization to a new middle age.
Umberto Eco, for example, seeks causes the dissolution of social ties in the privatization
of power and conflicts between competing groups. Umberto Eco points out, for
example, the parallels between medieval Europe and contemporary society, such as the
feeling of insecurity, marginalized sects, the visual character of culture, the principle of
authority and love of formalism in intellectual reflection.
Umberto Eco says it is certain that the medieval period is characterized by its wildness
both a personal and social level. However, it is certain that barbarism in our time is of
degrading many aspects such as corruption in politics and the business world, the spread
of drugs at international level, trafficking of women, abortion, etc. According to
Umberto Eco, we live an obscure time of moral and spiritual point of view. The
difference with the former Middle Ages is that the men then found solace in religion.
Today, however, the philosophy of despair with nothing in their creed is the ideology of
the new prophets shift prevails.
Umberto Eco also analyzes the Apocalypse Project of Giuseppe Vacca based on the
degradation of large systems typical of the technological age that is too vast and
complex to be coordinated by a central authority and also to be controlled individually
by an efficient steering apparatus, are doomed to collapse, and by reciprocal
interactions, produce a throwback to the whole industrial civilization. Vacca said that at
this time we are living in full feudal structure. Alliances between local authorities will
rely on the commitment and not the laws, individual relationships will be based on
aggression, the alliance of friendship or community of interest, and reborn elementary
customs of hospitality to the passer. Today living civilizations, cultures at different
stages of development.
In turn, in the book La Nueva Edad Media, Furio Colombo describes technological
concentrations that begin to compete with the state attributes of power and advance
features that will clothe life in new feudal territories. Francesco Alberoni examines the
bleak prospects that await the industrialized countries in the process of decay. Giuseppe
Sacco makes reflection on the possibilities for change through an appropriate policy of
regional development, the disruption towards consensus, social fragmentation and
multiplication of cultural identities and codes of conduct trends.
In early modern princes and states clamored for their independence against the claims of
the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire. Two arguments dominated the thinkers of this
time: 1) The argument of Machiavelli, Hobbes and Bacon, for example, that states and
rulers were in a relationship of "state of nature" with each other, not restricted by
obligations of law or society and were free to use whatever means possessing to achieve
its objectives, as evidenced by the concept of reason of state; and, 2) The argument that
the princes and states could be subject to a worldwide central government to ward off
the "state of nature" which was advocated by Immanuel Kant in Perpetual Peace.

2. Just as in ancient Middle Ages, the new middle age is an anarchic society. Hedley Bull
said in his Sociedade Anárquica (The anarchical society) by IMESP published in 1970
that the international order with respect to a pattern of or disposition of international
activities that support incremental goals. These objectives are, first, the preservation of
the system itself and the society of states. Second, in order to maintain the independence
or external sovereignty of individual states. Thirdly is the goal of peacekeeping. And in
fourth place is common to all social life goals: life, truth and property.
With this image, this evoked a chaotic context marked by insecurity and violence,
Hedley Bull synthesized lines for which tended to international political order. Bull
intuited when the international order was still bipolar (United States and Soviet Union),
that something new was emerging as the twilight of sovereignty exercised exclusively
by national states, technological unification of the world and the revival of private
international violence. A view of the scene, which in many respects already saw the
future, if we look at what happened after 1989, but also to the current international
instability, for economic and financial globalization and the globalization of terrorism,
which threatens spread everywhere.
Bull says the Hobbesian traditions (realistic), Kant (universalist) and Grotian
(internationalist) compete. Each of these traditional models incorporates a description of
the nature of international politics and a set of requirements on the conduct of states.
The call Grotian or internationalist tradition of Hugo Grotius stands between Hobbes
realism and idealism of Kant. He bet on the possibility of cooperation rather than all-out
war of Hobbes or Kant's perpetual peace. Believe coordination, ie, sharing common
interests and values between states. It is a mixture of conflict and cooperation, arising
from the possibility of channeling interests that are not always exclusive.
Grotius defended the thesis that states and rulers together form a society. Even with the
independence of central governments, sovereign states are not in a "state of nature", but
are part of an international community, and form a society among them, even in a
rudimentary way: what Bull called anarchic society or society without government. The
company is present in the current world order [See Grotius e as Relações Internacion
(Grotius and International Relations) posted on the website
<http://www.abavaresco.com.br/revista/index.php/opiniaofilosofica/article/viewFile/57/
66>] . Otherwise can institutionalize Kant Perpetual Peace, we must avoid the "state of
nature", that is, the Hobbes war of everybody against everybody promoting the
humanization of international relations according to the design of Grotius.
*
Alcoforado, Fernando, engineer and doctor of Territorial Planning and Regional Development from the
University of Barcelona, a university professor and consultant in strategic planning, business planning,
regional planning and planning of energy systems, is the author of Globalização (Editora Nobel, São
Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo,
1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do
desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,
http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel,
São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era
Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social
Development-The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Muller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG,
Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (P&A Gráfica e Editora,
Salvador, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global
(Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011) and Os Fatores Condicionantes do
Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), among others.