PART II

CULTURE

            We have insinuated the difficulty to the proposition of the knowledge of the other. The difficulty is more pronounced between diverse human groupings. We have also shown that culture pertains to the complexity of human dynamics within the context of a group. This is due to what is natural of the human as social and cultural. Now, let us put in parenthesis the ordinary meaning of the term: culture, assuming its meaning in the course of the exposition - a meaning different from the usual meaning. It corresponds more to that which is used in cultural anthropology. In fact, to get into the philosophical problematic of culture, we will confront the phenomenon from the side of its diversity and its difficulty of understanding among human groups. In this way, then, it is easier to grasp it, to prove its existence, to understand its nature. Here, it demonstrates the role of historical sciences and from cultural anthropology or ethnology with regards to philosophical reflection of culture. Our data and problems are from the beginning to the end proportionate to the dimensions of the real culture - behavior and environment.

            We will be served mainly by these two sciences, as they present the diverse human groupings globally, in space and in time, as different from us. Sociology gives the facts (the relations between sociology, cultural anthropology, and history, from the point of view of their objects and methods are theoretically very intricate) mainly on the great western society. And given the dimensions of this consideration some more possible aspects are isolated.

            The order of the chapters consists in departure from the cultural phenomenon and maturing to the philosophical problematic.

CHAPTER IV

THE PHENOMENON.

            Human being is a social animal similar to many other specie of mammals. S/he lives with other individuals of the same specie. Thus, the description of human behavior takes into account other individuals and groups. This is a fact that is provided to us by ethology which studies animal behavior: sexual relations, development of babies, procurement of food, avoidance of danger, difference of functions and roles according to age, temperament, etc. And also the animal behavior transforms in some measure the environment. Also among the groups of animals of the same specie, they observe in themselves varied behaviors according to the diversity of natural environment, the constellation of individual relations.

            But, as we have seen in our previous discussions, human behavior has its own unique characteristic that is particular to human beings and they are varied. In fact, if you have traveled to many places or countries you notice this diversity of cultural behaviors. Here, we have to recognize the systematic study of these data by cultural anthropology, human geography, archaeology, and history. In our discussion, without passing moral judgments, we take these data as the starting point for our philosophy of culture.

            The following are the diverse types of behavior, modifications and meanings affecting their environment:

·         Nutrition: position of the body (squatting, setting, crouching), ways (resting, lying), food (dairy products exclusive to China and instead frogs you eat in France, larva of termites in certain parts of Africa, salsa of fish in Siam…), food preparations, times and ways of various pastry (during the day, during the year, in special occasions).

·         Sex: age, modes (forms accepted or not, erotic manifestation: kiss for example is not existent in China, to tickle is an important form of social courtesy among the Indian Guyakis[1]), forms of decency (dress), forms of courtship, rite of puberty and initiation (example: circumcisions), marriages (monogamy, polygamy, possibility of divorce…), exclusions (prohibitions of incest), whole relation with social organizations and families (parental relations, names and matrilineal, patrilineal heredity), with economics, politics, religion, magic…

·         Development and education of Offspring: mode reading, nutrition, permissive education (in New Guinea) or rigid (Spartan), paternal, maternal authority, collective, schools …

·         Procurement of Food: collecting, hunting, fishing, pasturing or agriculture… with unlimited ways of doing it, instruments, times, roles (for example for male and female) connected with all other aspects of life.

·         Protection from Weather: houses, buildings, etc. which are necessary to protect the human specie from very harsh or severe natural environment. But these are also connected with structures and social prestige, with art, religion.

·         Production of Instruments and objects of use: materials and technology, which brings inventions as ceramics, metals, boomerang, etc.

·         Arts: diverse arts or artifacts depending on the people, the era, social classes. The diversification is infinite. Modeling (movement of the body, the words use, the voice), the objects use (materials use in artifacts) decorations… Art relates intricately with religion, magic, social life, “technic”, the tools for daily use, knowledge, the satisfaction of biological needs and impulses (sex, food, shelter, etc).

·         Religion: beliefs, myths, rites, mystics … great religions (Judaism, Christianism, Islamism, Hinduism, Buddhism…), religions of great civilizations (Chinese, Sumerians, Egyptians, Greek, Aztecs) and the animistic religions of the indigenous peoples which are very complex; these provide the motivation and transcendence that pervade the whole life of human groups.

·         Science or Knowledge: regarding nature and man, systematic based accurately on experience (knowledge of the sea by the Polynesians) inserted in the context of myths and hypothesis to the scale of the cosmos, complete or deformed from Para science (occult sciences, alchemy, astrology…), or from ideologies and philosophies.

·         Social Structures: family, political, intermediate groups (class, orders, regions, tribes, etc) that pervade and reflect all the other aspects of human life, they are infinitely varied and complex especially among the indigenous peoples.

·         Affectivity and Ideals that motivate the Behavior: the ideals evidently depend on the social structures, from visions of reality found in knowledge and religion, while affectivity and its spontaneous expression are modeled from all the precedent aspects. E.g. mother instincts, on expression of emotions, on the mode of perceiving, and of remembering. Margaret Mead[2] speaks of the change of temperament proper to a lady and to male according to a culture.

·         Morals: Different cultures based their moral behavior on different sources. Some based it on religion, magic, customs, or social sanctions. The distinction between moral and custom rest always on some theory; but the diversity does not only exist but is often proper to that which makes errors and disconcerted.

I.          Behaviours and Environment of Groups and the Individual

            The diversity assumed by a human group to another is like a grammar of life (Margareth Mead), which does not take away individual differences nor errors and deviations in the behavior of individuals. To give some clarification of such fact, we can make distinction approximately with Ralph Linton[3] on what is internal of a particular culture are common or universal behaviors – i.e. common to all of them in the same circumstance (people in China eat with chopsticks, all the indigenous tribes in Australia submits to the same rite of puberty, in certain period in their history all the Arabs of Arabia professed Islam..), alternative behaviors - that is more a type of behavior by some acceptable choice  (the Christian children in certain period or country or they marry with a religious rite or they inter the convent……..) special behavior to a certain class, caste, profession, sex, etc., and within this set of norms, various individual behavior according to style, temperament, talents, knowledge, the state of spirit of the time….of anyone.

II.        Divisions and Dimensions of Groups.

            Here, we consider the diversity, which we have mentioned in the first section, regarding the particular aspects of human behavior from one group to another. We take the word “group” in the broader sense - people, series of peoples, classes, regions, professions, and so forth. It is noticeable that between two groups there is difference but also similarities on others. Take for example between social classes or regional groups of the same people or nation, or even among the peoples in European nations or between two tribes in Africa. Anthropologists and historians say that it is a question of diversity or variety of the same culture. But the diversity can be noticed between two human groups - in the past and in the present - a diversity that is so widespread. According to historians and anthropologist, this is due to past formation and the question of groups participating in two different cultures. Here, an affirmation of genus is very difficult to make. It implies that there is a certain unity or integration between all aspects of the life of the group, of the cultural structure, of pattern or complex design. For example, we have the case of Europe of the Latin rite and China in the 17^th century.

            With the above explanation, we want to emphasize two things: the terminology and the reality, which the terminology refers.

            As for the terminology, all the aspects of behaviour and of human environment in their diversity from one group to another are captured by the term "culture". All the differences are called cultural differences, and when it is a question of widespread diversity and of the independent derivation between groups, it is usually called "cultures". It is noted that this terminology, which we attribute to history and especially to cultural anthropology, does not have for the moment a connotation that is purely observed empirically. It is in the following chapters that we will deepen the meaning itself in relation to human nature.

            As for the reality that the terminology refers, it is necessary to note that singular cultures have dimensions that are not made equal to each other. A culture can extend itself to a hundreds of million individuals. And such numerical differences bears in some measure also differences of content, because the multitude of human individuals imply notable spaces and with a certain communication, which is rather complex among themselves. Such communication in time is diversified and advanced in content regarding the various aspects of life such as production, the political organization, the technology, etc. Ultimately, it would be the question therefore of the so called 'great cultures', 'Kulturvolker', while cultures that embrace a small number of individuals are said to be 'primitive' (today, indigenous), 'Naturvolker', and so forth. Nevertheless, it is necessary to note immediately that this does not imply necessarily a scale of values, as we will see later. As the anthropologists today insist, cultures of modest dimensions numerically manifest at times astonishing complexity, a great internal unity. They stir spontaneous admiration for their humane resonance.

            Before we go further to other themes, let us focus on these 'primitive' (indigenous) cultures. Anthropologists of our century, who have made a serious effort to understand it truly, do not hide their admiration. In fact, the discovery of their sculptures, masks, facial decorations, especially of the various Indian populations, Africans, of Melanesians and Polynesians, has inspired a good part of our contemporary art.

Claude Levi-Strauss insists on the logical quality of the structures and systems inherent in the myths, in family and social organizations of the indigenous peoples like that of the Indios of the Amazon or those Australian natives. Edward Sapir expresses nostalgia of the harmony of the forms of life proper in the more ‘primitive’ cultures.[4] Paul Radin underlines the indulgent and fraternal humanity of these tribes.[5] Mircea Eliade or the whole Vienna School gives special regards to the purity and profundity of the idea of God or of some mystical experience among the shamans of Northern Asia, the Pigmies, the indigenous peoples of the island of Andaman… The linguists recognize all the existing languages. There is no human group that does not have one, while some languages do not extend further the limits of a primitive culture - the same statute of system of signs with the equivalent complexity and unlimited possibility of signifying.[6] We find everywhere a consciously elaborated use of the language of proverbs, myths, pure poems among the Eskimo, the Maori tribe of New Zealand, the Amazon tribe and other indigenous groups.

            Here is the phenomenon of diversity of behavior and of environment between human groups. We have called it 'culture' as a whole, and 'cultures' in its principal diversification. First reflecting on the nature of the phenomenon, we trace a schematic view of the attitudes and typical responses that human beings assume faced to the discovery of such phenomenon: the cultural diversity of the human being.