Week 1: Terry Eagleton Versions of Culture Culture v Nature Word culture derived from nature tending of natural growth

h coulter = ploughshare Francis Bacon the culture and manurance of minds Culture at first denoted a material process-- then became metaphircally transposed to affairs of the spirit. Humanity: rural--> urban Physical --> mental Pig farming --> Picasso Tilling soil --> splitting atom Irony: word cultivated describes urban dwellers Culture sharing latin root w/ Cult Modern fading sense of divinity and transcendence Cultural truths: sacred, protected, revered Culture = religious authority? + occupation & invasion Culture traces historical transitions Culture encoding key philosophical issues Freedom/determinism Agency (capacity of a person to act in the world, esp within social structure)/endurance Change/identity Given/created Culture = tending natural growth Tending = artificial, natural = Natural = dialogue btw. Artificial and Natural Cultural means we use to transform nature are derived from nature Yet nature is made better by no mean But nature makes that mean; so over that art, Which you say adds to nature, is and art That nature makes this is an art Which does mend nature-- change it rather, but The art itself is nature. -- shakespeare, the Winters Tale

Ferdinand beats the surges with his hands to keep himself afloat. He can do so because the waves and water are contentious (argumentative, antagonistic) but it is this resistance of the waves against his beating that creates the upwards force keeping him afloat. David Harvey: theres nothing unnatural about NYC. Tribal ppl r not closer to nature than the west. manufacture originally means handicraft-- and is organic. It only picks up an overtone of artifice when, over time, production became mechanical and massive. Culture - husbandry Regulation + spontaneous growth the culture is what we can change, but the stuff to be altered has its won autonomous existence. Culture - following rules What are rules? What is following a rule? No =rules for applying rules; open-ended Culture= organic determinism v. Autonomy of spirit Rebuff to naturalism & idealism Against naturalism: within nature exists something (autonomist spirit) that exceeds and undoes it Against idealism: even the most high minded of us autonomous spirits are subject to natural biology and environment.