CHAPTER VII

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURAL PHENOMENON

            We have indicated in chapter IV, under the name of culture, the phenomenon of the diversity among the human groups in terms of conducting themselves and the correlative environment. We have seen in the last chapter the types of responses-attitudes. We must now try to understand it in itself and the reciprocal implications with the human nature.

            First, we have to identify the general characteristics of culture. Already, there is an original work of the intelligence, not contented itself of the superficial observation and of the classification in the conceptual schemes - a difficult work given the dimensions and richness of the contents of the phenomenon itself. But historians and anthropologists have partially computed it. And their hesitations and reservations are derived not so much from the intrinsic motives but rather from their aprioristic prejudices of philosophical derivation. In our assertions, then, we will be supported succinctly by their information and knowledge of the data.

I.          The Characteristics of Culture.

As a complex phenomenon we can indicate several characteristics of culture.

a.      From its origin culture is human, social and laborious achievement.

In our previous discourse, we have shown that culture is the product of the work of human beings, a human achievement. We made a clear distinction between culture and nature. Culture bears the intentionality and the efforts of the human being, thus not a product of nature. We also indicated that culture is not of a single individual but of the whole social group. It is a social heritage that the individual at first receives and in his turn transmits. Everything that is totally private does not form part of culture. And the elaboration of culture has to be possessed with much personal effort. One has to learn the language, support the present type of government and understand and reinterpret the scientific method for every generation.

b.      From its form, culture is sensible, dynamic and creative.

Sensible because all the manifestations even the most spiritual is perceptible to the senses, as through poetry, and music. Dynamic since it is in continuous development and transformation, following the nature of the social groups that may be in the process of expansion or contradiction. Chenu attributes the dynamism of culture to the fact that the human being reconstructs truth only through gathered pieces of knowledge. Creative since as an authentic product of the person's genius it expresses his/her transcending mechanical repetition. Mircea Eliade, however, has revived the idea begun in Plato that culture is an imitation of the eternal ideal with his theory of "the myth of the eternal return."

c.       From its end culture is variously considered as religious, humanistic and natural.

Reinhold Niebuhr sees the objectives of culture as not mutually exclusive. Through the development of nature the human being realizes himself/herself as well as the divine design. For this reason, the goods that human efforts seek to realize are not purely temporal and material.

II.        Unity Among The Various Aspects Of A Culture.

            The first notion understood and verified in the data is that of a certain unity among the various aspects of a culture, a complex whole. We have discussed this in our investigation on the cultural phenomenon. It is not clear and distinct notion by rather a vague notion. Historians and cultural anthropologists have conceived and formulated this in various terms: coherent grouping, integration, pattern, configuration, profile. It is not rigid, it leaves a certain space for flexibility. It oscillates independently of individual aspects or components of a culture - a broad space more or less according to the nature of this or that. Therefore, we can say of a "certain" unity only.

            To give us an account of the things being treated here, we should know first some vague but comprehensive concepts, which we know so well: for example, romanticism, renaissance, classical antiquity. Such terms are difficult to define in the proper sense of the word. They refer more to a certain literary and artistic style in determined country in a determined period of time. However, they involve a certain vision of the world or of the human being. They take a certain affective attitude also towards things - a certain taste of the totality of life. From a historical sense, they signify perhaps something more: social institutions, costumes, and political regimes of that time. And similar is true, when we speak for example of Medieval Times. It includes the type of religiosity, its social and economic structures, and so on.

            Also in a certain sense, it makes us see a certain interdependence among various aspects of life in a group: between mentality and material environment (farmer-city guy), between mentality and profession (jurist-business man), between art and the scopes to which it serves (art and religion, art and prestige and social symbol, art for art sake..) and so on.

            It is very difficult to formulate this unity in a clear determined and explicit way. There are obstacles like philosophical prejudices as "empiricism" which tends to reduce everything to isolated data mistrusting of any intelligibility. Or as "rationalism" which deduces, a priori, all in a unique order, or as any preconception of the human being that wants to discover whatever determined motives and order of priority. But above all, cultural life presents extreme complexity even in the "primitive" (indigenous) cultures of human groups, which are more restricted. Max Gluckman, a social anthropologist at Manchester, affirms that the organization of a thousand Tokopia Melanesians is as complicated as that of the city of London. As a consequence, it is at times difficult to establish one sole culture, considering the diverse forms. Or to establish two diverse cultures although many elements are similar. This problem presents itself in space and time, in other cases of the historical derivation as independent and in contrast between two cultures. The situation presents a certain analogy with the biological classification of the animal and vegetal specie.

            However, the historical elements themselves serve spontaneously to the notion of the cultural unity. Here, it is enough to cite the work of Johan Huizinga (Dutch Historian), an authority in Egyptology and Bizantine history, in "The Waning of Middle Ages" (a translation from Dutch). He underlines the inter-relatedness of the different historical elements, but in a certain sense each one constitute an inseparable whole. Arnold Joseph Toynbee (British Historian) calls this the intelligible field of study, wherein the history of England or of Germany in whatever epoch cannot be written without continuous reference to the realizations of the single aspects of which it composes itself - economic production, social organizationn, currents of thought, artistic and literary style… in a series of other countries. The sociologists with the statistical method establish interdependence among some measurable aspects of the great actual society, and Max Weber has proposed the theses of decisive influence of Calvinism on the origin and development of capitalism.

            The anthropologists have tried to determine or to formulate the idea of the unity of culture. Here, they have distinguished minimal elements called "traits": single gestures, objects, relations. They have demonstrated this for instance by the way of blessing or extending the hand as peace, or by structuring time (monochronic and polychronic), of time, or relation as nephew-uncle. Evidently, under the same name, it does not hide the wide variety of traits, the diversity which exist between the relations of nephew-uncles that exist in Europe today and that of those in the Island of Samoa, the blessing of the dying father as that of Isaac and of that of Papal blessing.

            Single traits become a part of a "complex" or a "function" from which they received their meaning. Anthropologists have shown the example of the ax - of the sacrifice, of a court ceremony, or as a weapon of war. Another example is the relation of nephew-uncle - for certain political or education. Another is the extending the hand - in the context of friendship, recognition of membership of the same class. Not only single traits but also the same function can made part of more cultures or limiting itself instead to one only, and its geographical diffusion which is called "cultural area".

            In a culture, the functions change themselves among themselves in a whole. And, according to the findings of Malinowski, the reason for this fact points to the biological needs. Such gives us the "how" of life in a given society. Radcliffe-Brown conceives culture the same as the living organism: the groupings of the functions (the object of physiology) would result from the structure (as the organs of a living organism - object of morphology) and would insure the continuity of that same structure. For Levi-Strauss, the structure would be the fit-model that renders the meaning or intelligibility of all the facts in the ambit of a given culture. Structure as a model is a way of a logical system of interdependent elements formally manipulable. He gives the example of "totemism" (phenomenon very diffuse in "primitive" cultures which is connected to a single animal specie or part of the organism of an animal or also objects with the single human group, clan, etc… resulting sometimes to a taboo, like not eating the same animal specie used by the group with the same totem …). This can be seen as a logical system in which the oppositions and correlation between groups are organised by analogy, metaphorical expression or thought by means of oppositions or correlation among the said objects specie or part of animals chosen because "good for thinking". Others (E. Sapir, Ruth Benedict, C Kluckhon) use the term "pattern" configurations: every culture would have its design and would result a proper "profile" as that of a personality or a face. Nevertheless, many elements or divided traits with other cultures, each would have its orientation, its scope, its proper way of exploiting more or less the single human motivations. Others speak of the scale of diverse values. For others, the modes of conceiving the cultural totality they attribute them much coherence, while every culture would be filled with contradictions, thus its dynamism. And it is true that no culture is totally coherent.

            We have to confront the question of foundation. Given such interdependence or unity among various aspects: traits, functions, single structure…of a culture, would it not be possible to conceive one of these as its reflection? It is not an idle hypothesis, because of the fact that such role is attributed, under a mitigated form of prevalence more than a total determination, to religion, and specially - under rigid or totalitarian form - to the mode of production and distribution of material goods: to the economy.

            As to religion, positively in epoch of faith and of theology, it was natural to think specially of the religious differences among peoples - differences conceived under the form of a list of beliefs, precepts and rites. Here, we deny to simply perceiving it as the matrix of all the errors and human atrocity. Lucrezio perceives it as the fruit of fear by which liberating humanity through rendering it joy. We do not also completely agree to see it as an evolutive stage of humanity, such as the theological state of Comte. Or finality here perceive itself as a form not explicitly of philosophy - this last highest mode of the reflection of the Spirit by Hegel. Toynbee attributes to it the role of the matrix though the birth of the new great civility brought about to a precedent civility, for example, Christianism for the "occidental" civility and oriental Orthodox brought about both by Hellenic. But now no one denies certain autonomy of other aspects regarding the religious, prevailing among the studies a materialistic vision of reality, it tends moreover to derive religion itself. And empirically, the importance of religion (at least, that explicit) seems very much varied according to the cultures and the historical epochs.

            The economic instead is proposed explicitly for the role of the foundation of all the rest from Marxism, which finds easily unique. For classical Marxism, the economic is the structure and all the rest of social life is superstructure.

            Evidently, it is treated as a hypothesis - a difficult hypothesis to demonstrate exhaustively true or false to the cause of the extreme complexity of the gigantic society of the present and the past. Categorical affirmations and negations based themselves, in the ultimate analysis, its philosophical convictions of which is not the case of treating these pages. But, certainly, it is not worth for the cultures while realised themselves in human groups and they rest relatively on the economy simply. The same Levi-Strauss, who proclaims himself a Marxist, says it explicitly and demonstrates the force of the citations of the same Marx together with Engels. They do not attribute in such society the determining role to the modes of productions but to the systems of consanguinity and they recognize the similarities among cultures with the modes of productions very diverse and the diversity among cultures with the modes of identical productions. Paul Radin - an anthropologist who tends to derive religion from the economic insecurity of the "primitives" (indigenous) - in the panorama of the grouping of their cultures, presents great cultural diversity of society from the same economic system (horticulture, agriculture). Or he presents instead the easy passage from one type of subsistence to another (from hunting to agriculture) without changing radically the other aspects of the culture proper, and finally he insists on some common aspects of the indigenous people in their attitude towards the materials goods.

            What we wanted to say in this chapter is not the exact mode of the unity of the unity of a culture, as understood immanent in anthropology, of sociology, and history. What we want to underline is the existence of this unity under the form of a certain interdependence and coherence between its aspects, of a certain profile or physiognomy of the ensemble. On this seem to converge all studies.

III.       Culture and Biology

            Another characteristic concerns the relations of culture with the human biology, a scientific point of view that studies the human specie as living organism. What is given is that the organism presents a notable level of unitary organization. It is easier to consider these relations in a global way. We have already affirmed a certain unity between the different aspects of the behavior and of the cultural world, which is internal in culture.

            The first observation is the following: the determination of behavior and of the environment, which every culture implies, there seems to be plenty of biological needs of the organism and they give the impression of arbitrariness. It is enough for this scope to go by such needs, which ought to be satisfied to secure the survival of the individuals and the continuity of the specie, and not to extinguish it.

            Men must feed themselves, but they do it in different ways and time, and with food, prepared or not, types of a given culture, that refuse for reason of survival, or religious taboo; that dedicate to fasting.

            Sex exists in many animals and vegetable specie as unique means through securing their continuity and seems to appear in the course of the evolution of the single specie. Given its primordial importance and the complexity of its function, it became secured in the animals on the psychological level by great tendential push. The exercise of sex varies so much from one specie of primate to another, in terms of frequency, promiscuity or instead the dominance of the male or the head of the group, the aggresivity or affective tolerance. This render difficulty in every discourse on what would be "natural" for the human specie. But the complications of its forms and conditions in man - among which is the said prohibition of incest are present everywhere (Levi-Strauss considers it the first fundamental passage from nature to culture) - it seems that such is more than purely the biological point of view.

            The protection from the harsh weather of the climate - clothing, shelter… are biologically necessary in the measure in which the human being himself is extended beyond the geographical limits proper to his organism, but he goes obviously much hereafter of such necessity.

            Finally, the physical and psychical energy, which man uses in these and other aspects of life for things apparently broad from its biological needs.

            In short, the psychical activity of man, its behavior, the environment correlative to them, as they result from the observation of the cultural phenomenon, they seem broadly to be reduced to the subordination and to the service of his biological needs, as instead it is the case for other animal species. Because tentative of Malinowski of systematically deriving all cultural functions - directly or indirectly - from the satisfaction of such needs, it is stated abandoned by all anthropologists. Although there are still some - dominated by empiricism and materialism) who holds such theory. However, we see in man as animal more complex and adaptable.

            But assure the good foundation of the observation presented above, there are necessary ulterior considerations, and this proper to the cause of the fact that in a culture all have itself, and therefore it is not enough to take isolatedly examine its single aspects and confronting them to single needs, and also because natural environment, geographical, of man is very varied, and they exist biologically, racially different among humans.

            The second observation regarding the more closely relation between the biological nature and culture, and this by discarding apriori explanations not impossible and of the fact recurrent but in contradiction with the data of the phenomenon.

            First of all it is necessary to discard the derivation of cultural behavior from genetically heredity in the human specie in its whole. The diversity of culture opposes directly such hypothesis, excluding proper the note more characteristic of all which is instinctive, it means the presence of the same behavior in all the individuals of the specie without exceptions.

            It exist but on other mode presenting this derivation for cultural behavior from biological heredity, and that is remaking diversified biologically among themselves not only individually but also racially, is easy in fact which become the idea that the cultural diversity would be proper to that race.

            The conclusion regarding the relationship between biological, culture, and cultures, is therefore that culture of a given human individual is not the result of the membership to the human specie or to such race. And this, how much to the human specie because cultures are diverse and other biological needs, and how much to the race because the diversity of cultures does not correspond to the diversity of races. In other words, the culture is not determined by specific or racial nature of the individual: culture is acquired.

IV.       The Acquisition of Culture.

            The acquisition of culture - of a determined culture, because only such cultures exist - involves itself the whole history of humanity and also the nature of man in the philosophical sense of the term, given the connection between being and becoming, between the point of departure and the mode of change. Reserving for us the turning on the nature of man in the two following chapters and on the history in Part III of this course, we want to content ourselves for the moment of making two general considerations on the mode of acquisition: one regarding negatively the emergence of cultures, the other positive regarding the acquisition of a determined culture on the part of the individual.

            If culture is not determined biologically of individuals, it seems obvious - according to the dilemma of the empiricist hereditary-environment (Nature-nurture) - it searches the origin in natural environment. Natural environment is conceived as geographical environment in relation to needs and the biological possibility of man. Living distributed in whatever place of the earth, human groups confront natural environments as never different and because the cultural diversity would be due to the diversity of environment as reflective of their opportunity and of their exigencies.

            It is clear that all the cultures take account of the environment, as pure history and anthropology come to know it if they want to know it. It imposes limits more or less qualitatively and quantitatively to nutrition, it exacts in various measures protection against the interment weather, offers diverse materials for the technique and art, it addresses the knowledge and procures it first models in the forms, rhythm and proportions of nature, it isolates the group or instead facility in contacts, it exacts more or less effort for obtaining of indispensable geologically. Toynbee has seen the birth of great civilization: for example Egypt, Sumerian, Indian and China… where its territories shaped these civilizations.

            However, enormous variety of cultures more or less 'primitive' in similar environments geographically do not permit of the emergence of single cultures as necessarily reflective and univocal of their natural environment. To explain the emergence and the nature of single cultures need also other factors: heredity and environment are not enough.

            The second consideration is about the acquisition of a determined culture on the part of the single individuals. We have already seen that the race or biological heredity does not predestine a given group to have such and such culture. The great differences in the hereditary basis of individuals are ascertained by genetics, but however they only account partly - the diverse measure in which the individuals participate in their culture to which they belong.

            Because it is needed to understand the acquisition of such and such culture partly of individuals by means to the environment not only natural in which they develop themselves. Cultural environment consists in the modifications of natural environment introduced by the group, but also through any new development in the cultural behaviors of the group and of its members. These are affective meanings of real and circumstances, of symbolic valorization, of social explanations, magic, religious, philosophical… scale of values. We have seen in previous discussion which human behavior regards the means to end as such, is symbol or sign. It can be understood as human.

            Such end from the first infancy, the individual is shaped by the behaviour and cultural environment of the group in the end becoming carriers of its culture. Being infant and adolescence the stage is more malleable; it predetermines the cultural membership of men.

            In this sense, it is said that culture is acquired through traditions, that is transmitted intentionally, or it is that which we learned since the time of our childhood.

            Tradition in this sense opposes itself clearly to biological evolutiion; here the words of the famous specialist of genetics and evolution, Theodosius Dobzhansky:

"Culture (…) is wholly acquired by human beings from other human beings, and not only children from their parents as in biological heredity. Culture is acquired by imitation, training and learning (…). Biological heredity does not transmit characters which a human individual has acquired during his or her lifetime, but culture transmits only characters."

Conclusion.

            The stable and general characteristic of cultural phenomenon - a certain internal unity of any culture, the non-derivability of culture and of every single culture from biological nature of man specifically racially considered, their acquisition not pure reflection of the natural environment and their transmission to new generations through traditions - we know the existence of culture according to a certain intelligibility that is proper to it.

            In fact, culture presents itself inseparable from man himself. Man as biological organism, man participating to a determined culture, man as single person, as purely its natural environment, its cultural world and its personal world - these are all abstract aspects of a unique being correlative globally to the whole which is his world. In every behavior of every individual towards the reality all and three aspects realize individual towards the reality all and three aspects realize themselves together. As they have been said by the anthropologists Murray and Kluckhon " every man is similar in the first place to men, secondly to some, thirdly to no one."

            But to understand culture its is necessary to consider more closely its relationships with human nature, the reality of man's existence. And this brings inevitably the doing of philosophy, as they indicate the divergences of foundation regarding culture and history among the studies itself on these matters. And also the ultimate and radical question on human existence par excellence.

            To say more, groups acquire that culture not simply as replica of the exigencies of natural environment, and by individuals through traditions. And because becoming supposes being as potentiality and as limited, it returns to this proposition, which is the relationship between culture and human nature.

            Finally, this relation is not only of acquisition of the existing culture on the part of the individuals who participate, but also - if it is true that cultures begin and change - of the contribution of the individuals participating to the culture itself.

            And it is not all. A component joints itself to our problematic. Already the responses and attitudes-type in front of the diverse cultures - permeated as they are by the connection to the proper culture or instead by the dismay confronting the multiplicity of the forms assumed of the fact by human existence - they imply in an obvious manner the question of values. Willing to overcome them we must prevent to it of obstructing the passage to a more adequate and deeper knowledge of the culture, but we must also give it some answers. Much more that, based on the conception of the human being to which we inspire ourselves including a reference to the good, judgments of value, love and choice, we cannot abstain from evaluating culture and cultures as picture, direction and theme of such reference, of such judgments, love and choices in the existence of anyone.

            Therefore, here, the problematic that emerges from the chapters developed and the answers to it in the successive chapters.