On Culture

Phonograph, issue of November 26th 2008

Alexandra Fol

When in 1st c. AD Roman philosopher, linguist, lawyer and politician Cicero borrowed a Latin agricultural term to digest the Ancient Greek word paideia for the Romans who lacked classical education he was probably unaware of some long-lasting repercussion that his simplified definition would propel. Unfortunately Cicero, who had excellent command of Greek, did not transmit successfully in Latin the meaning of paideia, but settled for cultivation of the soul. He thus used a metaphor borrowed from the common knowledge of his fellow countrymen, who were skilled at cultivating the earth via agriculture to describe how the soul had to be cultivated via cultura, i. e. philosophy.

Cicero’s definition proposed towards the very end of Roman Republic is an uneasy reflection of modern issues of culture – as the term tends to be commonly (mis)understood in the present day – in today’s world, which is easily comparable in its social and state construction and even deconstruction, to the expiring Roman Republic. I shall later return to the question of contemporary definitions of culture.

The possibly haunting social, cultural and even political comparisons between the world at the end of the Roman Republic and the world today can be deduced in many ways, including by remembering a work which appeared in 1911: one of German philosopher and anthropologist Franz Boas’ most important books, The Mind of Primitive Man. The idea that every population is self-reliant and cannot be reduced to another is a somewhat clean and may be even utopian vision of cultural pluralism. Accepting the characteristic of cultural plurality of humankind did result into a politically functioning Roman state about two millennia before the date of Boas’ publication – at least until certain religious sects began to question the state’s universal laws and began melting the borders between cultural and moral pluralism; two concepts, which have been discussed and differentiated, albeit with certain huge unanswered questions by Clyde Kluckhohn among others.

In his attempt to recapture the depth of a 20th c. idea of paideia, Kluckhorn published in 1952 the treatise Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions comprising one-hundred and sixty-four definitions of the term and their explanations. His meticulous treatise, however, could, of course, neither reverse, nor even influence, the continuous trend to equate more and more the cultivation of the soul as imagined by Cicero to external manifestations of aesthetics, such as art in all its forms, and external manifestation of framing, as understood in social theory.
Each type of manifestation, already thrice removed from the multifaceted meaning of paideia was adopted, twisted, misrepresented and ultimately advertised by clever manipulators, pardon, strong leaders, until any relation to and memory of the soul was completely exterminated. Following the always successful Roman principle of divide et impera art emerged divided in “high” and “low” and cultural pluralism became a grotesque mockery which could be tactfully described as multicultural moral relativism.

The deliberate eradication of the relationship between the process of cultivation of the soul and art left a void, which led to the spread of revisionist, reductionist, uninformed and socially divisive commentaries regarding the place of art – the demonization of the financial privilege of wealthy people to commission (occasionally hedonistic) artworks and the branding of artistic solitude as egotism being notable examples.

Cultivation of the soul being long forgotten, art had to be found a new purpose in order its proponents to be allowed public exposure and may be even the occasional public financing in this democratic and tolerant new world where immediate mass appeal and guaranteed financial return are the main criteria for usefulness.

Art resisted Joseph Beuys’ attempts from the 1960s to “widen the definition” and declare “every human being” an artist, because Beuys and other populists misjudged the historical and philosophical relationship of art to the individual as a microcosm of society. For the credit of the ‘average persons’ they were not fooled for long by Beuys’ convictions that universal human creativity is possible without cultura, i. e. without cultivation of the soul. They retained the lingering suspicion that much more needed for them to relate to art, namely culture.

In an age where non-conformism is frequently equated to selfishness being an aristocrat by spirit and promoting cultivation of the soul by means of art to anyone willing, is not only a test of courage, but also the responsibility of any individual who, daring to consider “culture as behaviour” as discussed by Bulgarian philosopher Alexander Fol, remembers that there is nothing more universal, nothing more conscientious and nothing more noble than striving for paideia.