CHAPTER - VIII

THE HUMAN BEING AND CULTURE

We have seen that culture – any existing particular culture - implies the human being as philosophically understood in Philosophical Anthropology. In determining the relationship of culture and human being externally, we see how the existence of the human being produces the existence of culture, even many cultures.

            It is this deductive and explicative task, which delineates the implications of human existence, presented in the permanent structure, and in the types and levels of acts, which are the components of the human being.

            But immediately there is the need to indicate the limits. First of all, in anthropology, the human being is understood as the active and existent being viewed in a determined culture, which s/he belongs. Second, also having presupposed such point of departure, culture with its components and diversification in more cultures will delineate itself in a way very undetermined and general way. The reason of both limits is very simple: the possible is known fundamentally departing from the existent, the potency departing from the act. The priority of the act on potency, of the existence from possibility is so characteristic of metaphysics and of the Thomistic philosophy of human being (human being understood departing always from the acts). It grounds itself radically on the priority of judgment, which is knowledge in the proper sense, and on its nature which is the affirmation according to a concept, and it takes existence according to essence. Any tentative of complete deduction of all reality by a concept, and in our present case of all the concrete richness of cultures and of the whole of the course of history also future from the nature of human being, reverses this priority, from the pure possible it obtains the actual, which presupposes that the pure possible would be known first; this is typical of rationalism brought to the extremes.

            The usefulness of the task of the present chapter is that of showing the fecundity of the Thomistic conception of the human being, and also of confirming some ways of validity. Moreover, by determining better the relation of human-culture, it prepares us to understand the role of the human individual in the culture to which s/he belongs, and the problem of value of culture itself.

            Let us reconsider first the animal dimension of the human being, passing then to intelligent being and acting, volitive and free.

I.          Human Being as an Animal.

            The human being is an animal in the sense of his/her material being endowed of biological and experiential activity. Because the human being has biological and psychical needs, s/he satisfies them, in some way by means of direct behavior, from psychical experiential acts. His/her psychical activity is complex and flexible, subjected to perceptive, imaginative, affective learning... which render more determined behavior and proportionate to the natural environment in satisfaction of the needs.

            The learning process assumed by the human being plays an important role, in as much as the human specie is, from the evolutionary perspective, a little specialized, a little determined as s/he occupies a determined environment, determined in an ecological niche restricted in the ambit of such environment. This would be more under the organic aspect than the psychical or experiential, and exposing himself/herself for a longer year under his parental care.

            Above all, the human specie is very social specie. This is evidenced by his/her need of the long proper parental care (here s/he already behaves a certain social life). From this we can know the intensity of social life of the human specie. Now, life in-group includes in mammals very important interference amidst the behaviors of its members, with all the perceptive and affective implications. The learning process involves itself, in great part, in relation to the behaviors of the older members and "the experienced" of the group. This is already happening in animal specie as the monkeys’ behavior transmitting to all the members of the group some new ways of behaving itself "invented" by an individual and perpetuating itself thus a little "tradition" proper to the group.

            The plasticity, flexibility and indeterminacy of the human-animal, the role of apprehension, and that of the social life constitute the background on which it should know itself, as from the intellective-volitive activity of human being emerges culture and cultures.

II.        The Incarnate Human Spirit

            According to the philosophy of the human being, the human individual is an animal, a being endowed with the biological and experiential/psychical. It is in the context of such activities that s/he understands and formulates concepts to answer the question: what is it? (Quid sit). The concept emerges from that which s/he perceives, imagines, and lives. Moreover, s/he answers with judgment to the question: is it so? (An sit); verifying its conception, gathering the evidence which grounds the answer. And as new experiences encountered so also new concepts and judgments as further questions arise, this is because the pure desire to know does not stop itself, considering being as being and because of its openness to the infinite, extending itself purely to the subject itself that knows and judges and to its situation of being conditioned by an environment. Occasioned by such situation arises also the first knowledge of good, of order, and of value, which can successively extend itself finally taking the whole reality as ontologically good. And from such knowledge, emanate the volitive tendencies towards things in as much as it is intellectually known: acts which tend towards things in function of the subject but also to enjoy the things and in the subject in as much as they are in itself - love-desire (concupiscible) and disinterested love (of benevolence). Finally, given the nature of knowledge from which they arise which takes the reality in as much as it is finite and in as much as contingent, these volitive acts are free of arbitrary freedom or of choice.

            Now, premised with such activity always accounts the human-animal, it can easily show itself in the existence of the human being which implies the emergence of culture as behaviour and as world. To simplify it, we will follow more or less adopting the arrangement in the preceding chapter, leaving point by point not anymore from that which exist in culture but from the human being himself in his/her capability and the exercise of his/her various acts that are always interdependent with each other, but with variable contents and combinations towards the infinite.

The intellective activity animated by the pure desire to know, beginning from the data of experience will bring the human individual to initiate the knowledge of nature, which surrounds it, the knowledge of self, knowledge of others as a group. The knowledge is filled with difficulty. Its limitation is due to experience and to the broad dimension and not representative of nature of its environment of the men in each group. It gives coherence and unity to the various aspects of the cognitive and also provides other ultimate explanations. This is expressed in symbolic images, in behaviors, and in objects considered as symbols and signs. Here, begins the direct experiential knowledge, of the great unitary theories: social, cosmic, philosophical, and religious type.

The human being lives in a group. And true knowledge, which is presumed to be acquired by the individual, becomes accessible in some way to the other members of the group. In some way, everyone must know and convince himself/herself on his/her account. But it must be in a privilege mode, because the expression of the knowledge of others directs the attention and puts instead those configurations of the data from which springs knowledge. That is, it constitutes the major part of the happy presentation, of the 'phantasma rite dispositum', much more to the cause of the affective importance of the other through the social human-animal and bringing up any new individual in means to the behaviors and to the environment of the group in total prolonged dependence from this.

            We take note moreover that from the beginning the said knowledge, having acquired a direction and diverse configurations from group to group, would be the cause of the diversity of the given individuals and of their distribution from group to group (especially in a small community). It would be the cause of the diversity of natural environment among the groups. It would be finally the cause of the intervention of freedom in directing the knowledge, in doubt or in presumption. And we recall the proposition of the human groups that in cultures technically small are developed through restricted strength and their dependence from the major natural environment, while the human specie is largely diffused on earth from the most distant times. And also elementary logic teaches that a minimal initial difference has effected profoundly to the measure that knowledge accumulates itself and structures itself.

            So therefore, through the very nature of human being - a social animal endowed with the intellective activity - the disinterested knowledge becomes in the great part the common patrimony of the group, expresses itself and incarnates in their behaviors and in their environment (which they become cultural) and differs from one group to another.

            Evidently culture is not everything in disinterested knowledge and this last is never separated from knowledge from, so to say, utilitarian and from the creative, and at least from the whole of human existence. And this is truer in cultures.

            Utilitarian knowledge supposes a certain disinterested knowledge of the situation, of the relationship man-environment, and in this context takes the good of order and of value and motivates the volitions to realize them through behaviors means-to-end. It brings on the environment to satisfy human needs of food, protection from the weather… but also on the social organization.

            With regard to the natural environment, it is treated departing from its observation and from its degree of disinterested knowledge for understanding the possibility of exploitation, verifying it in the experimental activity and serving in action. For actualizing the methods of hunting, of fishing, and of making war, systems of agriculture and of development, types of clothing, this way to modern industry and to sophisticated scientific experimentation destined ultimately to pure knowledge, utilitarian knowledge needs to connect hundreds of observations, to train hundreds of movements, to use various instruments. And all these imply acts of knowledge applied and verified. Every instrument is an original invention, and at least disposes itself of instruments already made, moreover it is difficult to find and to actualize: we think of the instruments of stones, etc. Every time that the human being - intelligent and willing animal - goes to invent a new solution to problems of his/her existence, here his/her behavior means-to-end and the results render to them already available, because they in the future will perceive material and situations similar as potentially workable and modifiable in the same manner. S/he will perceive the produced object as useful in this or that way, all to cause of the operative scheme; these render the available solution also to them. The utilitarian knowledge becomes also common to the group. This can be said to be a social solution.

            Thus the new behaviors informed by the intelligence are accumulated, the environment is not purely natural but seen in the function of use. Here culture emerges.

            Now the diversity introduces itself immediately from the very beginning from group to group according the various qualities of the respective environments and the composition of the groups. Such diversity is cumulative, the inventive geniality, the interest and perseverance of the initiators, the acceptance or less of the new behaviors on the part of the group. And such diversity is cumulative, because once alteration is introduced it would be the human beings rather than the environment, offering new immediate possibility of other solutions and perhaps precluding other or rendering it more remotely would be from the point of view of knowledge and of the execution than from the affective.

            The creative knowledge results from the fact that knowing can also undergo necessary verification to arrive at the knowledge of reality and also to that of the usefulness of behaviors and of their results. In human behavior as superior animals, there is the margin of exploration and of the exercise, not immediately, directed towards the satisfaction of the biological needs. Here, knowledge assumes forms, structures, and relationships by realizing, by putting in place of the behavior itself or in the objects produced, and actualizing it more ulteriorly. There are behaviors and objects that do not express the knowledge of the real nor serve the satisfaction of the biological needs, and, in this sense, they are not creative and gratuitous, and also later can become connected and subordinated to whatever purpose of usefulness (magical, religious, social of prestige and of distinction…) or of communication (symbolic religious, cosmic, social…). But corresponding at the same time to the experiential nature and the intellective of the human being, and liberating it from the limits imposed by reality, they make it to vibrate harmonically in the said esthetic experience.

            Now because it is gratuitous and free from the above mentioned constrictions that limits the possibility of movement and of materials and instruments available, such behaviors and objects derived from the creative knowledge can assume infinite forms and styles. Thus, it can be introspected a priori that which exists in fact in cultures: most varied arts according to the material in which they are actualized (the human body in the voice, in the movement, in the decorations, ornaments and vestments, the stone, the wood, the color, sounds, words…) the technic adopted, the modulation of the space, the styles.

            And also any initiator has disciples and they create themselves traditions as to the varied aspects enumerated above.

            The three knowledge, inextricably intricate, form but one: it is only for the clarity of the schematic exposition that we have them separated. The disinterested knowledge is based on the utilitarian and reflects itself on the creative: this last imprinted to the precedent the technic and it can inspire as the end and also as invention, while it serves of symbolic apogee to the disinterested knowledge; finally the utilitarian knowledge not only procures the processes that they derived of the models of disinterested knowledge but also offers the instruments of observations and of verification. Purely, the various sectors of human life are pervaded by all these three knowledge, so also is religion and the social life.

            The essential of that which renders the knowledge part of culture and makes it diverse according to cultures, derives from the proper fact of the human being that intellective knowledge emerges from experience, that there it reincarnates itself and guides the behavior which at his time together with his products facilitates and directs the knowledge of the other human beings of the group, conducting so to a certain community of knowledge in the group and to the tradition to the new generations of the same.

            The volitive acts, which mediates between knowledge and behavior, in as much as capricious also of the disinterested love and free of freedom of arbitrary freedom, they complete the picture of culture, which derives from the human existence.

            They direct the behavior towards the goods beyond biological needs and thus they assure the search and the verification without which the development of disinterested knowledge would be minimal, the continuation of the ideal orders of life, of society and of his/her relations with ensemble of reality.

            And in doing this, they are not limited to the good of the individual, true or presumed, understood also in the higher sense of the word: because the capacities of disinterested love, they can tend towards the realization of that which comes to be known as the good of the other and of the group also against the proper good, or of the cosmic order, or of the same transcendent divinity. It results the immense effort of conscious collaboration and of the present ideality, although in the various measure and with directions and results to the wrong and deplorable times, in all cultures:

"Heureux ceux qui sont morts dans les grandes batailles,

Couches dessus le sol a la face de Dieu.

Heureux ceux qui sont morts pour des cites charnelles,

Car alles sont le corp de la Cite de Dieu" (song of Peguy)

 

(Happy those who died in great battles, 

Lie down over soil to the face of God. 

Happy those who died for carnal cities, 

Because they are the body of the City of God)

            They volitive acts, in as much as they are free, necessarily bear the choice of possibility opened from the knowledge, always finite, often incompatible among them. The search into a given direction, the effort of the verification, the judgment more or less has come as the consequent behavior according to this or that acquired knowledge, resulting partly by a free choice; and also it is in some measure the acceptance and the recovering for the proper account of other behavior expressive and means-to-end on the part of the members of the group.

            Now this leads to give a determined culture, a further direction emphasized, to the hereafter that is of the casual evolution of the experience, of the individual gifts of the intelligence and of the joyful emerging of such or such other act of knowledge.

            From the choices made results thus necessarily the internal of a culture a certain dosage among the elements which composed the life and a certain scale of values, a certain subordination and order of importance among the elements of the cultural world and among various cultural behaviors.

            Much more, the acts of the will directs, by means of imaginative symbols and their external perceptible actualization the affectivity, itself the human being which - especially if shaped from infancy - becomes the link of the scale of values of that determined culture.

            The limits of culture, of any culture, can be purely derived and explained from that of the human being.

            The intellective knowledge remains difficult to the incarnate human spirit, because in its more simple forms, it requires the collaboration of many individuals and of many generations for developing itself to some extent, and also its expression in symbols and signs are imperfect; moreover the human being is constantly distracted by the needs and the emotions of existence; for becoming a patrimony of culture, it must become in some way approved and accepted by the members of the group. The error, voluntary or not, hides everywhere: the human being in fact as animal is centered on himself/herself, while the intellective activity tends to overcome his/her point of view or perspective, thus knowing things as they are.

            And the same value still through the volitive activity solicited continually by the spontaneous affective tendencies, centered on the subject and dependent from the biological context, but intense; of the rest also whatever scale of values is always in some limited mode, sacrifices all or partially some values for the others. And there seems not to exist a social, economic, educative, technical … that no allowances of the inconvenient account to the advantages, and the same value for the expressive systems of symbols and signs. Being human being, one being, all the sectors and aspects of life are interdependent: in capturing its limited energy, in realizing itself.

            Since culture is always imperfect, and also these limits, resulting to the nature of the human being, can afflict it in a certain measure and multiple forms, contributing to its diversification in cultures.

            It could go itself again in more advances, explaining specie of general schemes of the various sectors of culture - each with more possibility of actualization and with various combinatorial possibilities with regards to the realizations of other sectors. But this would be equivalent to the gigantic task of doing the philosophy of philosophies, that of sciences, that of art or aesthetics, that of society, of politics, of religion, and so forth. On our part, we will be contented here of referring to the three: arts, rites, and technics.

            For art, we refer to the pages, already cited to this proposition in the preceding chapter, of Levi-Strauss, where he made an elaboration regarding arts especially in his "Mythologiques" (1971). He would like that one day he goes back, departing from the human being, to list in a kind of table of all the possibility of humanity of which individual cultures, past and present, would have some actualizations. This thing was discussed and criticized by Dan Sperber.

            For rites, we refer to Jean Cazeneuve ("The Archaic Mentality", 1961), inspired by the works of Levi-Strauss, who sees in the rites as means or ways for overcoming the existential anguish that is caused by the indeterminateness of reality (if we like, from its mystery and from its enforceability), and from the exercise of freedom, both beyond the order of the known. He divides them into three families:

The first family of rites pertains to the various taboos or ritual prohibitions of any kind which have the aim of protection from the unusual or uncommon: disquieting because it goes beyond the accepted rules, the cathartic practices that tend to erase the stains left by the unusual. Another one is the rites of passage (rites of puberty, etc), which exorcises the becoming, or growth.

The second family of rites pertains to the magical rites. These tend instead to impose itself on the unusual or uncommon and its forces. These risk into anguish. Here, what prevails is not the flight but the desire to control.

Finally, the third family of rites is the proper to religious rites. These rites constitute the synthesis of the two tentative precedents. These try to make the participation of the world of rules to that of the superior forces in the rules of making good the human condition of potency, by finding in it a foundation of the beyond itself, without leaving it to the anguish of indetermination.           

            As to the technic - the use of instruments for an end - we have seen with Strasser in the first part of this work, how it separates cognitively the means from the end, and it strips the halo of affectivity that embraces instead the perceived life with the end: we think of the difference that is there between hitting a copy to machine, and the going for the chase also for utilitarian end. But technically in very primitive cultures, the production and use of means are so much connected to the global and symbolic vision with religion, magic, social order, art … For primitive cultures, the work and the means themselves are not seen as an isolated sector, affectively cold, of the existence, as something that disintegrates the human being. And the same is true in some measure to the traditional cultures considering the slow development of the time of elaborations, the integration of the technic already more progressive: we think of the work in the fields of the old European villages or the medieval arts and trades.

            But with the increasing and rapid development of the technology, things do not stand so anymore: the efficiency augmented, rationality triumphs, but the chains of means prolonging themselves, the ultimate end becomes remote and indifferent to the agent. The rapid changes of means together with organization of work separate them from life. Here, the advantages but also the inconveniences of the advancing technology: the alienation not so much economic as human, the lack, that is, of integration of work in to whole of life, the functional coldness of the factories, laboratories, hospitals … on the specialization of the various sectors of life in the actual culture. Cfr. T.E. Eliot (1952).

            From the unity of the human being derives the interdependence of all-human activity and directions which are taken, and also, because of such the unity of culture, any of the cultures. From the difficulty of the exercise of its activity, from the tensions that necessarily hide there, and which emerge with the addition of any new behavior and any new component of the cultural world, derive the disequilibria - such as the incoherence present in various degrees in all cultures.

            From the fact that the exercise of acts and of their constellations comes first, and only after - i.e. partially - knowing them reflectively, it derives that no culture includes the full knowledge of the same and no individual that participates there gathers fully into his/her present state.

            We believe to have abused in some way, as the human being implies cultures, without pretending not only to having exhausted so the nature of culture and of its forms, but even that this would be possible to the human being: no one can take all acts of knowing and of free will, if there is no God in his/her essence and will, because the human essence stands in the openness and perfectibility to the Infinite.

            Having therefore determined in some measure the reciprocal implications between the human being and culture, we intend to present briefly the situation of the human individual in culture, first confronting the question of value of this Ultimate.