Philosophy of culture
The cultural philosophy asks about the conditions of origin of culture in general and by the cultural unfolding in specific historical and geographical contexts.
This experiment investigates the cultural expression of the people in language, writing, myth, religion, ethics, art, economy, political system, mass media, science and technology.
To the central concept of culture is just as much as to the methodological foundations of cultural studies. An essential part of the philosophy of culture is also the philosophical critique of culture, the modern phenomenon of industrialized society, media and technology, questions of war in the modern society just as concerned as the conflict between mobility and social bonding, questions of distributive justice and globalization or environmental ethics.
Blur in the concept of culture
Access to the topic and the perspective of the philosophy of culture is extremely varied. This is also due to the diversity of determining the concept of culture is hardly manageable. Only the consideration of various aspects enables a differentiated approach to the subject, but hardly over the a final overview is to win.
Claims to a cultural philosophy
Depending on the basis of which worldview ( idealist, empiricist, materialistic, libertarian, Marxist, existentialist, etc.) a philosopher approaches the issues of the culture, is already turn his question differently. Schematically, one can thereby distinguish the following approaches:
History
Precursor
Among the classics of onset only in modern times philosophy of culture include the skeptic Michel de Montaigne, the historian Giambattista Vico, Jean -Jacques Rousseau and Johann Gottfried Herder. Also various works of Friedrich Nietzsche can be seen as a cultural- critical writings. Montaigne drew a pluralistic worldview. For him, values and aesthetics emerged from habits and relative to the respective society - a position so that his essays are widely read in the presence of excited at the beginning of the 21st century great popularity. For Vico the man himself was the creator of his history, which began in myth and cyclically developed in a culture cycle. The power of knowledge of history exceeds by Vico's view, the natural science. Vico thus reflected a fundamental ideas of the Enlightenment, which consisted in the solution of the notion of a divine order. From the criticism of the existing culture and society of his time, Rousseau developed his idea of emerging from the natural state, as compulsory community society in which the separation of the originally focused on gratification kind of economy prevails selfishness and intrigue. The critical analysis presented Rousseau hope for an ever more increasingly important reason accompanied by compassion and moral reflection contrary.
With his work on the Philosophy of History of Mankind (1784-1791) Herder provided the starting point for philosophical investigation of the structural development of society. In addition to the historical perspective he faced the similarities and differences between the cultures of various peoples and the genesis of different cultural systems. Herder understood culture as a progress process of development of a nation. Culture was grow, bloom and die for him excessive nature in which peoples. It also Herder was optimistic that reason and humanity are able to develop more and more. Hegel saw in the Christian consciousness the foundations of Western culture by the religious concentration had a spiritual, focused on eternal life inner world arise confronts a sensuous external world as something alien, which is the subject as the self-realization in the finite field of life available. In the 19th century dominated by Hegel historicism and the explosively developing natural sciences, so that philosophy in general, especially in its speculative form, hardly played a role. As cultural studies merely cultural history, which has been interpreted descriptively, and ethnology were in the foreground. Only the cultural critique of Nietzsche stood out from the positivist thinking of his time, such as in his early Untimely Meditations or in large part of late Twilight of the Idols. A completely different approach to social criticism found the Left Hegelians, which related primarily to religious and economic conditions. Culture Philosophical perspectives of Marxism, in which first the material social relations were at the forefront, are found only in the 20th century, for example, in Lenin's thesis of the two cultures.
Cultural philosophy as first philosophy
The beginning of the 20th century onset of cultural philosophy in the strict sense was founded by Ludwig Stein, the first the term in his work at the turn of the century. Used attempt at a philosophy of culture (1899 ). Rudolf Eucken took this approach in his work spiritual currents of the present ( 1904). 1910, the magazine was founded Logos.Internationale Journal of Philosophy of Culture. Georg Simmel was co-editor. Heinrich Rickert wrote in the first issue the programmatic article from the concept of philosophy. Cultural philosophy was an up herleitender from the philosophy of life and parts of the neo-Kantian antidote to science-based attempts to overcome the crisis of philosophy, such as those found in Edmund Husserl's phenomenology, in the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism or logical empiricism of the Vienna Circle. Cultural philosophy was not (not as a " hyphen " philosophy ) understood as a philosophical branch. Rather, they saw in it a new way to respond to the changing philosophy through science, industrialization and urbanization structures of society. Are as early representatives of the cultural philosophy to name the cultural historian Leo Frobenius, Oswald Spengler, who designed a cyclic model of history a -conceived as an organism culture in The Decline of the West, Jean Gebser (origin and present) or Sigmund Freud, the cultural development of renunciation, the is an integral part of ethics, attributed ( the discomfort in the culture ).
For Georg Simmel ( Philosophy of Money ) culture was the expression of intellectual and creative life. It is formed into shapes for the interpretation of reality (language, myth, art, religion, science) and to order forms of cohabitation ( business, law, education, government, transportation and ethical imperatives ). These forms have a cultural value that is proven historically and everyday life world determined. This cultural value is indistinguishable from the real value, which plays cultural objects. Cultural values have their own logic. If the meaning of property occurs too much in the foreground, this is cause for unease and signs of necessary cultural criticism.
Ernst Cassirer founded culture through his philosophy of symbolic forms. " The man lives in a symbolic and not merely in a natural universe. Instead the things to deal himself, man has in a sense constantly with himself He lives so much in linguistic forms, in art, in mythical symbols or religious rites that he can learn or see anything except by the interposition of this artificial media ". Here, the person usually lives in a natural understanding of culture, yet without reflection. Only in the science of man takes a distanced attitude to himself that makes him recognize his culture-bound situation. So it is the people also only possible in science to investigate his discomfort in the culture and to formulate appropriate criticism.
In Immanuel Kant (not existing in English ) distinction between civilization and culture goes back. "We are cultiviert through art and science in a high degree. We are civilized to over burdensome to all sorts of social civility and decency. But to keep us already for moralisirt, it is still missing a lot. Because the idea of morality still belongs to culture; but the use of this idea, which boils down to only the moral similarity in the sense of honor and decency of the outer, make the mere Civilisierung off ". While civilization being the external, formal, culture is lying in its interior capacity of man to overcome his natural instincts and to act consciously according to the moral law. Accordingly, culture is determined by generally accepted values ( Heinrich Rickert ) or by general principles of timeless rules ( Wilhelm diaper tape ) for the neo-Kantians of the Baden school. This applies to all value determination on the unique and individual in the individual, as it is expressed in cultural history.
Against the neo-Kantian and based on Wilhelm Dilthey's life- philosophical position saw Erich Rothacker as scale and subject matter of cultural studies, the pre-and extra-scientific practices that do not follow a system and is therefore changeable. Accordingly, the methods of cultural studies are not fixed. Rothacker developed as a method in addition to the historical- reporting the systematic- philosophical, the analytical theoretical and the dogmatic explizierende method and introduced the concept of cultural anthropology.
Major names in the field of philosophy of culture are still Theodor Litt Eduard Spranger or ( life forms ). The structuralist and ethnologist Claude Lévi -Strauss looked at cultures as systems that are composed of subsystems such as language, religion, marriage, art or business. He was interested in the analysis of systems of thought in symbols. Culture was the emancipation of man from nature, which also formed an essential basis for him for him. For José Ortega y Gasset ( The task of our time ) cultural achievements were (state, art, morality, religion) only functions of life ( Ratiovitalismus ). Democracy was characterized by expression of the average human mass society for him. Positive impulses can only get from ( aristocratic ) society 's elites, however. Similarly, Arnold Joseph Toynbee for ( Culture at the Crossroads ) was the emergence of cultures of creative minorities dependent. Social development is carried out in its opinion, by the contrast of challenge (challenge ) and answer (response ). The organic cycle, as is noted in submerged cultures, existing cultures can overcome through reason. T.S. Eliot has pointed out that one can not make culture, but that culture is the expression of their way of acting. Culture can be reflected and interpreted. A significant aspect of critical theory has been a cultural philosophy with Herbert Marcuse, for cultural criticism is a reflection on the path of civilization, and Theodor W. Adorno from.
Philosophy of culture in the presence
The current continental -centric culture, philosophy was influenced by theorists such as Jean Baudrillard, Clifford Geertz, Pierre Bourdieu, Vilém Flusser, Jean -Francois Lyotard, and Richard Rorty.
Jürgen Habermas sees culture as a dialectic of skill and will. The danger of the current culture is the dominant interest in all other purposes, a growing mastery of nature. Klaus Christian Köhnke outlines a philosophy of culture after Georg Simmel and Ernst Cassirer. A real stand-alone approach presented Oswald Schwemmer 2005 by addition of media theory argues the solid foundation of Ernst Cassirer and thus gives the philosophy of culture in Germany a new basis.
Increasingly accepts the philosophy of culture on the findings of empirical social and cultural sciences respect. At the same time research from scientific disciplines that deal with cultural phenomena are taken into account - for example, findings from archeology, paleoanthropology, conduct research, but also in the cognitive sciences. For this reason, the boundaries between cultural philosophy and natural philosophy are more permeable. The younger philosophy of culture is also often characterized by an intercultural approach. Thus, the Viennese philosopher Franz Martin Wimmer advocates equal, versatile dialogue ( " Polylog " ) between the various cultures of humanity.