CHAPTER
V
ATTITUDES
AND RESPONSES TO THE PHENOMENON
The aim of this chapter is not to present a history of the ideas that emerged from the past regarding the phenomenon as presented in the preceding chapter. It simply presents the types of attitudes-responses, more or less spontaneous, vis-à-vis the phenomenon of cultures. And then we attempt to outline the major philosophical options that more or less arise from it.
The reflection on the terminology already reveals the proposition. Terms like "culture" and "civility" are relatively recent in their current use today. The word "civilization" existed in the French language in the 17th century. But, at that time, it assumed a meaning used in judiciary practice, i.e. the fact of rendering civility to a criminal process. It seems that for the first time, in the real sense, in 1757 Nestor Riqueti of Mirabeau (the father of Mirabeau of th French Revolution) adopted it in his work L’Ami de Hommes ou Traite sur la Population. Ten years later was the English equivalent "civilisation" used in the work of Professor Adam Ferguson: "An Essay on the History of Civil Society". The word "culture" existed already in the Latin Classic as substantive of "coltivare" (to cultivate) the earth, metaphorically the spirit. It did not become dominant until the 18th century.
The
modern meanings of these two terms in different languages are distinct from its
other: "culture" refers to the formation or refinement
of the spirit, therefore to the perfection of the individual, while "civility"
refers to the social organization and to technique. The meaning had equivalents
in the classic world (humanitas). But the meaning implies,
according to Paolo Filiasi Carcano, being ethnocentric, aristocratic or
selective, and absolutist. Ethnocentric because it refers itself to that which
belongs to specific group (nation or more nations) or to groups which the
speaker participates. Selective, because it chooses among aspects of the life
of the group that which weighs more. Absolutist, because it is valued as unique
and undisputed value.
However, the meaning of the term "culture" developed into a more accurate sense as it is used in ethnology and cultural anthropology. Cultural is distinct from the physical which studies the organism and its biological evolution. And also the term "civility" was adopted at one time by history (Arnold Joseph Toynbee), as a result of their empirical content. This is already indicated in the Chapter on Cultural Phenomenon. Thus, culture extends itself to the whole different aspects of human behaviour from one group to another. At least initially, it tries to cut off from absolute valuation, and take as point of reference the group proper. This understanding of culture deconstructs the absolutist, aristocratic or elitist perspective that dominated the previous centuries.
The meaning and the use of the term are very recent. However, the spread of it is very limited: it emerged from the exigencies of historical research of the past century, and of ethnology and cultural anthropology in this century. Based on the anthropological use of the term "culture", we have presented the phenomenon of cultural plurality, as it is observable from the outside. And that which is observable from the outside of individuals and human groupings is essentially their behavior. In fact, it is not only behaviors but on the one part, also psychical acts (believing, judging, understanding, concepts, reasons, perceptions, etc.), and on the other part, the cultural objects (that is, the modifications of natural environment and of natural things, products, clothing, ornaments, constructions, work of arts, instruments…). They all belong to the common consensus of a particular culture. This can be presented in a schema:
Psychical acts (implies) behavior (leads to) cultural objects.
It is not without purpose that we started the course with the problem of the consciousness of the other and proposing a solution.
Now, the conviction and the spontaneous attitude of everybody – which is traditional because it is acquired but increasingly being developed, and being lived in a determined human grouping – is that of identifying the human being with those human variations or human realizations which we know; situating human behavior and his world in the picture of the culture of the group, and coinciding that picture with the structure, and the limits of human nature, and of reality, placing a sign of equivalence between the scale of values inherent in those pictures and lines of perfection in every human being.
The encounter with individuals and groups with their horizons constitutes a "shock", or inspires admiration (in the Aristotelian sense of the word). Does it place a new form fundamental on what is a human being? What is the proper behavior of the human being? What does his/her perfection consist of?
Response and attitude – more or less elaborated and more or less known according to the intensity, duration and the extension of the encounter and according to the capacity set and character of each individual – they tend towards two poles or fundamental types:
a. The first type seems to be the "confirmation of the spontaneous convictions" precedent to the encounter and of "defensive refutation" to that which the encounter excludes.
There is a tendency to identify man as such in terms of the human being in a given culture. And this includes his/her perfection with the behaviors and the aspects of the world, which this culture places in the summit of the scale of values. The eventual reception of foreign elements will be done in the measure in which these are in conformity or it finds itself in line with the development of this particular culture. For example, a culture that values war, it receives also military techniques, a good deal of it is new provided it is not against its cult of honor, and its social structure. This example is true with the so-called "barbarians" of the Europe in the Roman Empire. Such is also true in our time in our local situation, the Filipino culture which value war receives military training and weapons from the USA, however without compromising our national sovereignty, our honour as an independent nation.
All that are excluded from that characteristic of a human being in a given culture, will be considered as strange, primitive, vulgar, deviant, decadent, perverse, proper to the "damned masses", based on the scheme of reference determined by that very culture.
Such type of attitude includes basically a distinction between nature and culture. Culture and civility, as a better manifestation of man in a given group, come to be conceived as way of unique extension of human nature, its perfection and maturity.
This can assume itself in more or less explicit philosophical foundation. Rationalism will justify that culture, so understood and actualized some how in a group, ought to be the fruit of reason. In a more dynamic way, Illuminism and Positivism tend to conceived it as the point of progress of humanity, which renders it decisive to all that which existed and exist beyond it. It must be deep and widespread in the future. Idealism makes a stage more advanced or the necessary process of the spirit, which reassures in itself dialectically all the preceding stages. Dialectical Materialism simply overturns the underlying base of such process. Evidently, the philosophical foundations, which allow the insertion of a given culture in a dynamic context, offer the advantage of reabsorbing in appearance the grouping of the phenomenon, which we have called cultural.
b. The other type of responses and attitudes following the encounter with the phenomenon of diverse culture, would be that of the "curious reception" and of "reflexive crisis".
The encounter with the phenomenon of the cultural diversity renews the question on what really is the human being. If we look with openness to the diversity of behaviors and of the cultural worlds, no amount of refutation in block as simply deformations of man can really justify it. In other words, no one set of human behavior can simplify the complexity of diversity of behaviors and cultural worlds. One, therefore, is placed on a dilemma, at least apparently of one and of many: the unity of human nature in some common aspect acting from the less denominator but declared essentially unique, or the other is admitting the radical multiplicity of the human being himself/herself. Philosophically both sides and horns of the dilemma bring in partial skepticism at least on the value of human existence. It is the motive, for which such type of attitude-response is stated more frequently among individuals whose culture finds itself in crisis: in fact, it is easier to overcome exclusivism of a certain point of view which does not satisfy the cause of the present disorder, and easier to doubt the sense of existence to the cause of anxiety which such disorder provokes.
As to the first horn of the dilemma, an aspect that is common and simple which is essentially unique and is accessible to all, it is individuated by some in an indeterminate relation to the divinity interdependently from social, moral, cognitive contents. This would be a pure religious sentiment to Friedrich Schliermacher, or the Nirvana of some theoretical forms of Buddhism, or a vague pantheism as that of Aldous Huxley. To some, this is only a tendency – as represented by the currents from the Imitation of Christ who are suspicious towards the communitarian and intellectual aspects of Christianity. By others, it is in a purely formal moral like the clean hands, which is so denounced by the existentialists, Marxist, Christians. By others, it is in forms of heroism of Andre Malraux or the stoicism of Henry Montherlant. And finally by many, it is in various historical epochs of decadence (Egypt, Babylon of the century…). Or it is purely in the biological being of man: pure vitalism, a return to pure nature (Rousseau, Romanticists, primitivism of Nietzsche?). The explicit scepticism regarding all cultural forms, concrete and determined, but given the difficulty of separating them from the estimated hazel essential, such response and attitudes seduce easily into total nihilism. This is elaborated in the last pages of "Tristes Tropiques" of Levi-Strauss. In every case, history, culture, every concrete human activity and any determined wish become empty of whatever importance and meaning.
The choice of the other horn of the dilemma – that pure multiplicity – takes away whatever unity of human nature, whatever similarity and commonality which would not be only apparent to human beings of diverse groups. The other can be absolutely considered as non-human or pure enemy as between the society of rats. This justifies slavery, extermination or total isolation, and in these extreme consequences, it reconciles itself strangely to the limited-results of the first type of attitude-response – that of the proper identification of man. It is evidently difficult to advance so much without reservation, and because the concrete attitudes, which emphasize the under-type as presented, they do not have it perhaps never realized. Here, in line with this, some justifications of tendencies of various sources, and that they take as apogee some aspect of man.
It insists on the basis of diversity from racial differences (the tentatives are not successful, also if the actual biology are opposed), or instead more dynamically on the diverse evolutive moment, not being there in human nature (many factors of evolution would be favorable, but nevertheless with regard to the men of past and of the future, not those actually existing).
b. Psycho-Social Point of View:
There are no unsuccessful psychologists (specially in the United States, in the name of optimism and democracy) who believe that man during his plasmic development up to the time that he/she becomes an individual, can become anything: genius or criminal, artist or mathematician or saint or desired personality. In sociology, it is, at times, affirmed that the human individual depends without residue from the society in which he/she belongs. The most famous anthropologist Margareth Mead tends to assert the same thing through temperament and personality of the two sexes. And departing from history, Oswald Spengler has conceived the great cultures as closed organisms in which participants differ totally from each other.
c. Moral Point of View:
There are many, given that no group tolerates moral transgressions moreover certain limits and that moral extends itself in some way to all universal behaviors of the group (being the distinction between "moral" and "customs" and more that between "natural laws" and "positive laws", slow and rather limited to the theory). The great diversity from group to group in that which man makes and must or aspire to make, has become the frequent motive of relativism more or less total in this field, of the negation of contents and moral structures, of a seducing disorientation in nihilism or in a conduct without scruples. We think of the Greek Sophists, a Montaigne, and also of Sartre (although it would be difficult to prove the cultural motivation of his affirmations) according to him Freedom constitutes man as such, being his existence without essence or nature.
d. Religious Point of View:
The affirmations of radical diversity among human beings (in precedence that is to their free personal choice) do not count themselves, for the more with the identification of optimism and valid uniqueness in that which believe itself to possess, reconnecting through this toward the first type of response-attitude. Moreover, a complex factor does seldom intervenes, situated beyond the human in the transcendent initiative of the divine, isolating therefore from our problem; because there is a need to take into account with reservation the examples that come to us in mind – the three types of men the Gnostics, the elect people and the damned masses of the varied Judaic and Christian deformations, pariahs and the impure of Hinduism…
In our presentation of the two types and of the two horns of the dilemma of the second type of attitude-response in front of the phenomenon of cultural diversity indicated in the preceding chapter, we have taken into ourselves the hues, but not the aim of putting in place of the logical consequences which hide themselves there, which have their roots there. Thus, it is easier for us to feel inconvenient with them: the discomfort that derives perhaps in part from our conviction of religious nature, philosophical and moral, but which is based also – we believe – in the superficial mode with which there accepts itself the phenomenon without scrutinizing further the nature. The discomfort, because – in the case of the attitude-response of refuting other cultures – only a minimal part of humanity would realize the exigencies of human nature, while in the contrary case – there is a curious reception – or the great majority of that which men estimate, attempt, and realize…or instead men of diverse cultures would be radically diverse. The discomfort, which therefore pushes us to question ourselves: what is that which is called culture?
In the following chapter we try to understand better the cultural phenomenon by facing in the successive chapters with that which we know, philosophically, of man, and arriving to a judgment of value.