Synthesis philosophica, Vol. 23 No. 2, 2008.
Original scientific paper
What is Culture? Some Notes and Perspectives
Gottfried Küenzlen
; Universität der Bundeswehr München, Fakultät für Sozialwissenschaften, Neubiberg, Deutchland
Abstract
Through present time we’re experiencing, as in intellectual discourse also in everyday language, one truly inflationary use of the notion of culture. If almost everything can be marked by the name of culture, then the notion and the object lose their diagnostic and analytical ground. This elaboration attempts – through the work of Max Weber and the recent philosophical anthropology (especially the one by Arnold Gehlen) – to explain that culture is one anthropologically founded, socially basic fact without whose involvement there is no possibility of individual’s life nor is understandable history of development of people, nations and societies.
In the background of such re-defining, regarding the understanding of culture, with their actuality, are certain questions, e.g.: clash of cultures (see S. Huntington)? Can there be any multicultural society? Is there a need among societies, peoples, nations for one “dominant culture” as a necessity for their survival? etc.
Keywords
‘Culture’; Anthropology; “Clash of Civilizations”; Multiculturality; Perspectives
Hrčak ID:
37216
URI
Publication date:
13.2.2009.
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