Preliminary communication
Philosophy as part of culture or its starting point?
Snježan Hasnaš
orcid.org/0000-0002-9445-7671
; Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Philosophy in the modern opinion does not have the privileged status as the queen of science or knowledge in general, but is a part of the modern culture of opinion. However, how we understand the cultural studies’ position of philosophy is the philosophical question of the legitimacy of its discussion. Culture itself is no longer a general concept signifying a state of construction and richness, whether opinion (philosophic or otherwise) or some other domain of human is in question. It is, compared to a period which does not need to go further than the 1950s, a subject of study, as well as legitimacy, of entire systems of knowledge that comprehend both philosophy and all existing theory in its discourse. The label of cultural theories, for example (especially Tony Bennett’s in: Culture), consists of a domain that reaches into many philosophems of modern philosophies(Foucault, Gramsci, Adorno, Benjamin, feminism, etc.) in order to become its relevant parts. The modern relationship between culture and identity significantly discuses how much this relationship is mediated through the philosophical sense (e.g. Žarko Paić in: The Policies of Identity – Culture as the New Ideology). Furthermore, the situating of culture in many modern cognitive and social, cultural and cultural science phenomena, uncovers the possibility of rethinking, philosophical and other, of what culture is (in its post- or some other interpretation) and how it can be understood today (for example, Homi K. Bhabha in: Location of Culture). This means asking whether culture should be understood today as just another empirical process or as a new theoretic endeavor (e.g. Marcus and Fisher in: Anthropology as a Criticism of Culture – the Experimental Moment in Humanistic Science), which no longer sees culture as an empirical substrate of the modern civil society, but as an autonomous theoretical attempt to discuss the basic human problems within or outside of philosophic premises. This is why it is important to discuss the understanding of philosophy as a potential element of some modern thoughts and see if philosophy is only an auxiliary methodological tool for modern questions about culture, or if it more fundamentally grounded in them.
Keywords
culture; philosophy; cultural anthropology; cultural diversity; coevalness; history and temporality
Hrčak ID:
36584
URI
Publication date:
26.2.2009.
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