Culture and Human Nature

Introductory Remarks:
- In our previous conversations we indicated the phenomenon of culture (diversity) and the
individual’s response to it as soon as s/he becomes conscious of it.

• Indicated the different characteristics of culture.

• Indicated also diverse definitions of culture from different perspectives.

• Affirmed that culture is a human behavior shaped through membership of a

determined social group and with human environment correlative to such
behavior.
- These are knowledge based on the externals.
- The need to confront it because the human being is indispensably involved in it.
• This leads our conversation to more radical questioning: What is man? Given that
the human being is the bearer of truth, what does really exist? This is now doing
philosophy.
Some Important Points.
1. Culture is the most complex and global phenomenon.

 It presupposes the existence of human individuals in reciprocal relation in

terms of their intricate behaviors.
 The task at hand is to come up with scheme, which implicates these
individuals, in terms of their behavior and the nature of their existence.
2. Human behaviors are shaped by this or that culture.
a) What must be the elements or aspects of which they composed
themselves?
b) What relations and interdependencies among such elements that allow the
comprehension of the complex configurations, flexible and extremely
varied behaviors?
c) What is the result of the analysis and of the consequent synthesis
regarding these?
d) Is it enough to conceive them as the development of purely animal
activity?
 e) Do they involve at least some of their composite elements and
consequently in the ensemble of their organization results an originality of
those?
3. Such behaviors imply much knowledge of the natural and cultural environment
(that is of the cultural modifications) and of its role in the environment.
a) What is the nature of such knowledge purely sensible, empirical, or
structural and external?
b) Such behaviors imply tendency, impulses, attitudes, aspirations towards
the known, but of what nature?
4. With these questions, we will try to come up with a comprehensive philosophy of
the human being.

 Here, we will explain gradually the proper relation between the

philosophy of culture and philosophical anthropology.

 We will demonstrate how culture implicates and presupposes the human

being in his/her permanent structures of possibility.
5. Here, we will speak first of cognitive activity and then the implicit tendency in all
cultures, and finally the unity of the permanent structure of the human being.

 The treatment of culture as a whole, of all cultures, avoids whatever

reduction to empiricism.

 We take note the philosophical treatment of this proposition.

Cognitive Activity
1. Culture implies certain knowledge of the natural and cultural environment of the
other on the part of the human individuals who participate in culture.

 Such knowledge is immediately sensible, empirical:

 based on the senses with which the individual is endowed

 the perceptive and imaginative elaboration of the data, which they

furnish.
 Example: the indigenous peoples: who are directly dependent on the
natural environment for their sustenance, are very knowledgeable,
sensitive to any signs.

 Polynesians: great navigators across the pacific islands.

 Without formal education on navigation and the aid of

sophisticated instruments for navigation their familiarity with
the natural environment at sea is fantastic.
2. In general, anthropologists have learned so much from the culture of indigenous
peoples.

 There is this usual impression that indigenous cultures are lacking in

intellectual knowledge.
 Studies of anthropologists reveal that, in all indigenous cultures, there always
exists knowledge in the full sense of the word: conceptual knowledge.

 We will divide such knowledge into the following:

a) Utilitarian Knowledge: we are not only aware of the nutritional and
medicinal use of the varied plants and animals (as it is done by the
Indians in the Amazon).

 Such knowledge refers to the production of instruments for

destruction and for war (e.g. – the boomerang of the aborigines
of Australia which from the technical point of view is
considered primitive.)

 Instruments made of various materials: wood, bones and stones

(Aztecs and the Incas who have not known metals), fibers of
plants and animal skins, feathers…)
 The great inventions of the Neolithic villages as cited by Levis-
Strauss: “It is in the Neolithic that confirms the mastery, on the
part of the human being, of the great arts of civilization:
poetry, weaving, agriculture, and the domestication of
animals.”

 There is clearly knowledge in the full sense of means-to-end

and by its invention of instruments.
 Therefore, the utilitarian knowledge, implied in every culture,
contains without doubt the intellective activity.
b) Creative Knowledge: the creative aspect departs from the impression
of restricted instrumentality. It refers to the psychical cognitive activity
which leads to art.

 Art exists to a certain degree in all cultures, as we have

indicated its presence in the cultural phenomenon.
 It seems that art can only be found in human beings.

• Levis-Strauss:art as the installation in place of the

structure prevalent in the contingency of a model.
 • Lonergan: speaks of art as the intelligent discovery of
new forms unifying and connecting the content and the
experiential acts.
 The simultaneous liberation of the experience
from its biological utility and of the
intelligence from the construction of the
verified and of the proofs because the work
itself constitutes the convalidation.

• Metaphysics: beauty as the synthesis of the one, true,

and the good, but proportionate to the human being –
the embodied spirit – which has the need of vibrating
harmonically on all the levels of its psychical activity.
• Susanne Langer: “creation of forms symbolizing the
human feeling”.
c) Disintersted Knowledge: the psychical activity tends immediately to
know through the same process of knowing and ends up to its reason
for being.

 This proves the presence of intellective activity more authentic

with its charisma more typical in all cultures.

 In short, this is the kind of knowledge of something for its own

sake.
3. We begin with the systematic knowledge of nature. A good reference to this is the
first chapter of the La Pensee Sauvage of Claude Levi-Strauss.

 He, as a specialist on indigenous peoples, demonstrates his observation on

their behavior.

 He shows the refinement of the classifications of the names of minerals, plants

and animals, and of their proper anatomical parts by the indigenous peoples –
even classifications of environmental sectors.
o Such classifications were based on the finest observations and linguistic
expressions which could be verified in case of doubt on the identification
of an encountered sample.
o The act of classifying is the work of the intellect that knows (distinctions,
relations and unity of property.)

 Conceptualizing, and verifying and to doubt a proposition is the work of the

intellect which seeks the truth of the affirmations.
  Cognitive activities manifest also in predicting the climate based on
observation of plants and animals, also movement of the stars as bases for
their calendar.
o We remember that the temporal order of succession, simultaneity and
regular rhythm is not learned from experience but from the intellective
activity.

 This knowledge of intellective level is certainly natural and a human reality

that we find in all cultures more or less a coherent and unitary comprehension
of all reality.
o The earth and the heavens, the human being and society, the rhythms
discovered… they are all correlated if not in technical philosophical
systems, at least in rites, myths, beliefs, symbolic transpositions…

 This emphasizes the true connections or presumed among

diverse orders or structures by way of analogy of proportion.
o There is a comprehension of the present connections everywhere:

 Between science (to know directly based on experience),

magic and religion (France – Cartesian nation by excellence –
there are more fortunetellers and witches who practice that
occupation than physicians.)

 The interdependence between the different fields is absurd –

one aspect is so far from the other – the celestial bodies and the
organization of the state (the pharaoh is the son of the Sun-God
Rha, the city-state considered as the farm of a god…)
 Between technics and rites. (Priests’ blessings of factories)

 Between human sexuality and fertility of the land.

 Between human blood of the Aztec sacrifice and the
continuity of the natural rhythm of day and night.

 Between clan and matrimonial system and the animal specie

in Totemism.
4. No culture can satisfy completely as far as the knowledge of the experienced reality is
concern.
 The coherence being perceived there: it puts itself the question of origin by
justifying, valuing, founding the cultural behavior and the universal picture in
which it inserts itself.
a. Eliade: All myths would be myths of origin; the great myth of creation, the
cosmogony, and also that which regard some aspect of the daily life and they
 seek the exemplar model in the behavior of the first human ancestors or
divine.

 Death as a fact inserted in the picture of society or nature – it is felt

everywhere which needs explanation as death enters the world.
b. Religion, partly, seems to be the result of such need and dissatisfaction.
c. Finally, the human being is not totally reduced by the vision of things
elaborated by a culture in which he is inserted.

 This is instantiated by the further elaboration of myths and the

capacity of inserting there what is brought by other cultures.

 Paul Radin: In all groups of people even among indigenous ones,

there is a type of human being called “thinker”, who is interested in
the analysis of cultural patrimony to which one participates.
d. All these seem to imply clearly the limited knowledge of the reality known,
of its finality as such, and because of its transcending it towards being and the
Infinite.
5. In summary, all cultures imply an unlimited intellective search of truth, thus, partly
rather than totally.
 Our goal is limited in explicating culture, all cultures, implied in the activity
of human beings who participate in it.

 The presence of proper intellective acts which render human

knowledge in the full and total sense of the term.

 Since it is true that cognitive intellective activity (with all its difficulty,
defects and errors) takes part in every culture, it is also true that it is
related to experience.

 It depends on its origin. Experience directly concerns the natural

environment, human being, society, technic and also arts, which is the
“matter”. Indirectly, reasoning with its conceptual systems transcends
and moves from it.

 It depends purely in its expressions, in its depositing itself in symbols

(symbolic images and their projections in the cultural objects of utility
or of art) and the signs (linguistic, mathematical, scientific…) which
are sensible. We recognize the importance of these mostly in religion.
6. Finally, these knowing, thinking, believing, and presuming – in sum the fruits of
intellective activity proper to a culture – are transmissible, as the ensemble of
culture, through tradition.
  This supposes the proper disposition, the incarnation of the intellective
knowledge in the behaviors and in the objects as a result of knowledge
departing from the perceived data in these same behaviors and objects.

 In other words, the process from certain sensible constellations leading

to the birth of the act of comprehension and the verification of
concepts which lead to judgment.

 We have instances to this effect: (i.e. individuals who have decided to assume
a culture different from theirs.)
 Gonzalo Guerrero, who was taken a prisoner by the Maya. He later on
refused to go back to Spain. He was chosen by the Indios as the head
of their war and died during the war against the conquistadores in
1536.

 Some Anthropologists, who have decided for reason of research, and

also some historians who reconstruct the culture of the past based on
the cultural remains (edifice, instruments, writings …)

 Proper to such connection of the intellective activity with experience and the
transmissibility of knowledge through tradition, they explain largely the
diversity of extension, of profoundness, of approach and emphasis, of error in
the knowledge of a culture to another.

 The desire for the truth and openness to the infinite in this activity
explain the audacity and the transcending aspect of the cognitive
process.
Tendential Activity.

- Evidently, a culture is not only considered in terms of the intellectual knowledge, but the
combination of intellective and experiential.
• In the sense, we can understand the existence and the nature of the tendential
activity which animates the behavior, reflects itself in the world of cultures.

 The intellective knowledge renders forms to the behavior or gives meaning to

the behaviors and directs it towards the environment known,

 It indicates the presence of the tendential acts towards the reality as it

is presented to the intellective activity.

• This is the case of volition, the acts of the will.

 Without the tendency towards the reality according to the intellective
knowledge which the humans in diverse cultures possess, behaviors
do not exist, such as:
 • Means-to-end types of a given culture

• The action that tries to realize the known end through ways
proportionate to the means: technic, social behaviors, rites ,,,

 Without such tendencies, also the disinterested knowledge would not

be possible because of the lack of the direct experience, and the urge
for reflection which constitute the investigation.
 Without this tendential activity, there would not be artistic and literary
expression and also speaking, which is most important.

• Tendential acts, the field opened to knowledge, are directional and limited: a
tending to that which it knows

 A modality offered in some way together with the ends.

 This explains the commonality of ends, of means, of aspirations, which

animates the participants to a common culture.

 And it is not the other, which is the origin and the intellective specification of
the acts of the will.
- Tendential acts are present in all cultures: acts of love, of gratitude, etc.

• it is not possible to show convincingly its behaviors taken abstractly, outside the
context of the single individual and single concrete situation.

• However, as far as disinterested love is concern, all cultures seem to have it a

place, implying it, in the social, cosmic, and religious ideals.

 These are present in religious services, and in the mystical experience

regarding some personal divinity, in fidelity and sacrifice for companions or
members of the family … described in the myths and fables …

 There exist also some form of respect of self, which constitutes the specie of
the ideal imagination of itself or the ideal not only towards I tend, but also
enjoy and be pleased: love of benevolence or disinterested towards itself.
- There are enormous differences of emphasis, of themes, of forms … offered by every
single culture.

• In the religious field, some indigenous cultures hides, in their thanksgiving cult,
the love of esteem towards divinity.

• the oblative love or of true fascination in some Great Religions as for example
(bhakti)

• the love towards a personal God in Hinduism …

- The cognitive arrangement and direction of volitive acts in a given cultural model also
includes the affectivity of thoughts and crystallizing in language and the scale of values.

• They explain the affective diversity from one culture to another culture.

 The pride and aggressivity, the prevalence of meekness and tenderness, of the
serenity or self control …

 Ruth Benedict presented examples of three distinct cultures:

Pueblo Indians as “placid and harmonious”, Dobu Islanders as
paranoiac and mean spirited, and Kwakiuti as self-aggrandizing,
megalomaniac character.
 Bergson has asserted that romantic love expressed the creation of
the discoveries inspired by the medieval mystics.

- Symbols possess an enormous importance, as they involve intelligence at the same time,
but more on the imaginative and perceptive level, they move the affections:

• Through these art, myth, style of gesture … they render the atmosphere, directly
dominating, the typical savor of culture.
 Eliade has insisted that many of its myths move the actual situation of
Western society and that of the Soviets which pretend themselves to be
scientific and rational.
- Arbitrary freedom results itself from the very nature of intellective-volitive activity.

• But, it is implicit empirically, by the fact that cultures present also alternative
norms of behavior.
- Further, individuals find themselves in the context of friction between two cultures or two
cultural variants, or in equilibrium. One cannot be tied up to one or another.

• For example, national citizenship which is in such cases has become a question of
personal choice among members of the same family.

• This shows that the human being transcends virtually his culture, that he is in
some measure more less great and more or less directed, free in his concern.

- The limits of volitive activity: the limits of every human activity is so evident and so
varied from one culture to another.

• This limitation can be found in the objects or ideal contents to which it adheres, in
the human ideals which it tries to realize, in the love and in freedom with which it
involves itself.
  They explain also its proper cognitive context and the affectivity that it
must direct.

• The cognitive context in fact ignores or develops some possibility:

 Marx himself said that man does not desire an epochal data which present
themselves as possible. The past does not repeat itself.

• The affectivity or resistance to the ideals and mode of doing proposed by a

culture, it would be for reasons of individual temperaments at times improper in
particular to such or to other culture (Margaret Mead presents very clearly in the
single tribe of New Guinea).

• It would because this which the culture calls is very unilateral from the affective
point of view or very difficult: as was said by an American sociologist (Park),
"customs can render acceptable something, but they have more difficulty in
making it regarding to some behaviors that regards others."

• It is enough to think of the self-discipline required at one time by the Japanese

samurai or by the youth of some North American tribe in overcoming obstacles in
the rites of puberty.

• Some cultural behaviors seem to be desirable or morally obligatory.

• Malinowski, an old authority in primitive cultures: In his work “Crime and
Custom” – he refuted the baseless assumptions on the life and practices of the
primitive community.

 He tried to paint a picture of a group of saintly savages living peacefully in

the beautiful islands of Melanesia.
• Godfrey Lienhardt, with his exposure to the tribal life of the Dinka – although
they looked fierce and barbaric, he considered them enjoyable to live with.