The Importance of Culture, Part II.A: A Definition of Culture

All right, folks, here we go: what is culture?

As any Latin scholars (or even Latin dabblers like myself) currently reading will know, “culture” comes from the Latin word “cultus,” meaning “cultivation” (also “worship,” but we’ll leave that aside for now). This is the source of words like “agriculture” (“agri” combined with “cultus” produces, after some we’re-not-going-to-explain-this-now Latin morphology, “agricultura,” or “the cultivation of the field.” In other words, “cultus” refers to a directed kind of growth, of the sort that a farmer tries to achieve in his fields.

“Culture,” however, at least in English, is applied to human societies, not to the sort of things that one normally expects to cultivate. That, however, is precisely the problem with modern understandings of what culture is (more on that in Part IV). When we use the word “culture,” we commonly think of all the different properties which are common to a given group: music, clothing, language, religion, cuisine, and so on. That is usually the extent of the meaning that the word “culture” produces. Thus, we regularly hear people speaking of “pop culture” and meaning the Backstreet Boys and Adam Sandler movies (or whatever constitutes “pop culture” this week). I would argue that this understanding of “culture” is severely flawed.

The reason I argue this is because “culture” includes a definite, verifiable end. When we speak about agriculture, we’re not talking about just describing a field in all its diverse and verdant splendor. We’re talking about plowing; furrowing; planting; growing; and finally harvesting and preparing the ground for the next plowing. We’re talking about making that field yield forth a very specific and well-defined fruit. Similarly, when we talk about human culture, we are (or should be) talking about “cultivating” a human society toward a very definite, verifiable end.

But not all things which “cultivate” human beings within society toward an end are parts of culture. Rather, those things which are specific to a given people are parts of culture. For example, the Mass is not part of any particular culture. It is unquestionably independent of any culture. Yet the Mass definitely cultivates those who participate in it toward a common end. On the other hand, the once-common greeting “Resurrexit” (“He has risen”), to which was replied, “Sicut dixit” (“As He said”), was particular to given cultures, and cultivates its participants toward an end. It is particular to cultures because it is definitely part of them; it is something which arose out of a culture (even if borrowed from another culture), and over the use of which a culture has complete “control” (in the sense that its use or non-use can develop, solely within that culture, over a given time). This, then, is part of culture. (While the Mass is not part of culture, a particular rite of Mass might be. This is extremely common in the East, and less common, though present, in the West.)

Now, many will decry this explanation as philosophy by etymology, and if they were looking solely at this particular document they would be right to do so. I want to note, therefore, the positions that I’m presuming when I expound upon the meaning of “culture” and use etymology to support it.

1. I’m presuming Aristotelian teleology as explicated and Christianized by the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas. That is, I’m presuming that man has an end and that human societies are necessary for and ordered to the achievement of that end. This does not, of course, exclude a common good in that society.
2. I’m presuming that there is one, verifiable telos (“goal” or “end”) for man, and that societies (here “society” is not necessarily coextensive with “state”) help man toward that end through their various characteristics.

So, in other words, I’m presuming that “culture,” as a characteristic of human societies, is supposed to be ordered toward a given end, not just be a random accumulation of strange dishes and funny hats.

Thus, “culture” is a set of characteristics particular to a given people which directs them toward a common end. This leaves us with two important observations about culture:

1. The “goodness” of a culture can be judged based on the end at which it is directed. If a society’s culture tends to direct them more to, say, nationalistic emperor-worship than to a true, well-ordered patriotism ordered to the veneration of a still higher good, then we can say that it is “less good,” or “more evil,” than a culture which is better ordered to more appropriate ends. It will be very difficult to judge comparatively entire cultures which are directed at the same end (as opposed to individuals parts of those cultures, which may still be easy, or at least possible), but when directed at different ends such judgments should not be difficult.
2. Some things which spread across many cultures may still be considered proper to a given culture. Notice that our definition mentioned “particular to a given people.” That doesn’t necessarily mean “unique to a given people.” The sign of the cross, for example, spreads across all cultures where the Faith is known, but it is still particular to them all. Many customs within a culture will be unique to it—in how many cultures would people honestly eat sauer kraut and say that it tastes good?—but they need not be so to be an authentic part of a given culture.

There we have it, then, folks: a basic definition of culture. Next, we’ll move on to Part II.B, the different parts of culture.

The Importance of Culture, Part I: Introduction

+AMDG

Now I’m going to muse on something else: culture. No, I’m not talking about culturing bacteria or fungi, nor am I talking about what is falsely called “pop culture.” I’m talking about culture, that ancient and perennial traditionalist (truly “conservative,” unlike most of what goes by that name these days) force which so powerfully assists the maintenance of traditional values, and the destruction of which is in large part responsible for the corresponding destruction of those values (an assertion at this point which will, God willing, be supported later on in this series).

Here’s the schedule of updates in which I plan to expound upon this issue (though you saw my success with the Cities thread, so you might want to take this table with a grain of salt:

• Part I: Introduction (here, so not able to be changed)
• Part II: A Definition of Culture
• Part III: The Importance of Culture to Society
• Part IV: An Analysis of Modern “Culture”
• Part V: A Plea for the Revival of Culture

Again with a grain of salt, that should probably be the general pattern. You should also know that much of what I’ll be discussing here can be found, better organized, at the Goretti Publications website, specifically the article What is Culture?. There may, however, be new things here that are not there, since now isn’t then and I may have some new thoughts which I haven’t included there yet. And maybe not. But if you weren’t impressed with that work, try these postings; they’ll be much more informal and probably, therefore, easier to understand.

Brief Musing on Cities, Part III

All right, folks, here it is: rantings on the downfall of the nation-state.

The nation-state is a misguided notion to start with. The idea that a state (that is, the supreme governmental body within a given area) should be coextensive with a nation (a reasonably cohesive group of people sharing a common religion, language, culture, etc.) is artificial, existing in reality only in very isolated places like Japan, and even then rather elusive, with some rogue nationalities (like the Ainu) and some rogue states (that’s what the shogun was for, after all: reining in those rogue states). It has produced countless evils and ought to be abandoned—which it gradually is being, though not in the way I would like it to be.

To start with, however: the development of the nation-state was clearly historically complex as well as historically necessary. We see threats of such development even prior to Protestantism, as overly rebellious nobles threatened the ability of cohesive nationalities to defend themselves (witness the near-conquest of France by the British, for example, or the constant disputes among the Italian states leading to alternate conquest by French, Germans, etc.). Central authorities, generally kings, therefore moved to consolidate their holdings. Furthermore, persistent warfare, largely as a result of ill-defined succession laws, resulted in the necessity of defending one’s own borders against incursions, leading to some curious examples of nation-statism relatively early in the medieval period. Take, for example, Edward the Longshanks; determined to eliminate the constant difficulties with border raids from the Welsh and Scots, he greatly centralized authority in Britain in an attempt to bring the entire island under English control.

Protestantism and the wars of religion sealed the deal, however. Too much fighting and death and destruction; states had to centralize in order to suppress such factionalism. So Protestant states centralized authority in their own hands (though factions within the centralized state often fought one another, England being a primary example) and forced religion on the masses (England again being a primary example). In France, of course, the only thing forced on the people was religious tolerance, until circumstances permitted the king to revoke the edict of Nantes; and France was a uniquely decentralized state up until the Revolution, when it became the paradigmatic nation-state in contradiction of its entire history. But the general pattern holds.

So none of what I’m about to say should be taken to mean that the people who formed nation-states were idiots doing all evil. They acted in what seemed like the best way at the time, and I’m not sure that I can disagree with their assessment even with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight.

However, the nation-state has provoked manifold evils. The most grievous, of course, is nationalism.

The nation-state necessarily produces nationalism. As authority centralizes, the government necessarily seeks to homogenize the state as much as possible. Any regional variation indicates some regional autonomy, which is intolerable, a return to the constant infighting of formerly powerful barons. So squish them, expel them, or otherwise incapacitate them as much as possible. The Revolution is the biggest culprit here, crushing as many of the patoises and even other languages, like Breton, as it could get its hands on, pretending that toute la Republique spoke perfect Parisian French and that everybody else was an aberration, to be reeducated or eliminated. But the same pattern was followed frequently in most places. Nineteenth-century Bismarckian Germany is another great example; Kulterkampf is a frequent concomitant of the unitary nation-state. Sometimes this sort of culture war isn’t deliberate or overt; for example, in the United States it has sometimes been such (as against the Indians), but sometimes not. Here, it has often taken the form of the simple unacceptability of varying norms. Slowly, regional variations, whether due to regional factionalism or simply recent immigration, vanish under the all-inclusive power of the American nation-state. The “peer pressure,” for lack of a better term, simply overwhelms them; while the government never forces anyone to abandon their variations, everybody knows that retaining any but the most superficial of them (certainly nothing deep, like political philosophy) is simply less American, and thus unacceptable.

Nationalism, of course, yields all its concomitant evils of cataclysmic international wars, total wars, and “ethnic cleansing” and genocide. Particularly for the Jews and similar races, it can be a tough go of it. They are, after all, a nation; but they have no state. They are thus at home in no state, and are always considered outsiders. A further evil is that, in a determination to assist the Jews avoid this fate, they were given a state, as though spreading the disease is more effective than curing it; furthermore, they were given a state which was stolen from somebody else, who now feels powerless, dispossessed, and useless because of their lack of a state.

The real answer, of course, is that many nationalities can be perfectly at home in one state without abandoning all their particular variations and virtues. But the nation-state naturally opposes that.

What’s the alternative? Well, a less centralized state which allows many nationalities to exist within it, if necessary. That sort of thing was practiced successfully all the time in the Middle Ages and rarely produced a problem; indeed, trouble often came from those of the same nationality, rather than a different one (e.g., the Anglo-French wars were essentially wars of identical nationalities, since the English nobility were the same nationality as the largely Norman Frenchmen they were fighting against). Where wars were international, they were due not to national differences, but to differing political claims. For a thirteenth-century German to fight against a Frenchman was natural enough; but not because he was French, but because his lord wanted to defend his interests in Italy against the Frenchman’s lord. It was perfectly possible, and totally unremarkable, that the Frenchman’s lord might have been ethnically German, and the German’s French; nobody would have raised an eyebrow, nor expected either to behave any differently because of it. Political claims, after all, are political claims; nationality is great and to be cherished, but has little to do with that.

We can see the nation-state breaking down already, though not really in the way that I or any devoted Thomist would like to see. For example, European nation-states are becoming less and less focused on nationhood and much more focused on what they call “Europe,” as though that’s a unified whole of some kind. My hope would be that individual states would allow their own authority to decentralize somewhat and acknowledge that “the people” and “the nation” are not the only possible units of social interaction; instead, they are further centralizing their authority into a super-state, which, while noxious in many particulars, at least has the virtue of not glorifying one particular nationality. The same sort of thing is happening in North America, as national boundaries become less and less important and some people seriously arguing for the annexation of Mexico.

Granted, there are lots of people in Europe and North America who oppose such things; they are particularly strong in France and the United States, the only two countries with sizable populations which can seriously be called nationalistic in the modern West. Granted also, there are contrary moves on the part of many smaller nations, like the Welsh and the Basques, which run directly contrary to these trends (and in favor of the old school of the nation-state, proposing a “one nation, one state” model). And I’m not prepared to say how far these trends are going to go. But they are going right now, wherever they might end up (and who knows? it may be a backlash and result in a resurgent nationalism; or it may be that something good actually happens on a large scale in the political life of the West for the first time in a long time).

So the unitary nation-state is silly; the alternative is relatively decentralized (not such as to cause the constant rebellion which so plagues many decentralized states, but enough to allow for some more diversity within the state), subsidiary (namely, containing lots of smaller-than-the-state corporations which serve as intermediaries between the state and the individual in certain fields, like guilds, organizations, etc.; and here I mean ones with an actual purpose and authority, not mere lobbying groups), and not ordered primarily to national unity, but to political unity.

Oh, and, of course, a return to the public recognition of Jesus Christ as King. But that, naturally, goes without saying.

Thus ends my informal, incomplete, and rambling dissertation on cities and the state. I hope it was enjoyable for you, and I look forward to rambling about many other topics in the future.