Filozofska istraživanja, Vol. 28 No. 1, 2008.
Original scientific paper
Culture as Destiny
Milan Polić
; The Faculty of Teacher Education of the University of Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
As all other living beings, man is partially genetically predisposed, that is, determined even before it completely develops as a human being. However, the thing that differentiates man from all other known living beings is the fact that, compared to them, his predisposition is significantly less natured, and significantly more nurtured. This means that humans compared to other living species are less determined on a genetic, and more on a memetic, cultural level. Cultural, meaning a historically spiritualized environment, children are born into and find with birth, is an important factor of their further development. Thus, humans are not born as humans, but as children that have yet to become human. Namely, unlike the beings that have all the important characteristics of their species at birth, which are thus able to develop through breeding, that is, through encouragement of growth and nurturing of what is biologically given, for human development children need raising that will only introduce them into a specific culture as their spiritual – and truly human – environment. The entire human being, including the physical, grows up in a spirit of a specific culture and springs from it. How and how much culture (pre)determines man is the topic of this discussion.
Keywords
man; child; culture; manipulation; character; education; freedom; creation; destiny
Hrčak ID:
23136
URI
Publication date:
7.4.2008.
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