Is there Such a Thing as the Western Culture?
Published by Hanno Kaiser June 26th, 2006 in PhilosophyIs there such a thing as the Western culture and, correspondingly, the Western identity? If so, then it is characterized by enormous internal diversity and conflict at least since the 16th Century. Here is just a brief impressionistic sketch of some of what surely goes into the broth of Western culture (and what follows is by no means meant to be exhaustive, nor does it follow any particular chronology): Universalism, all sorts of particularisms, the Catholic Church, Luther, and Voltaire. The natural philosophers and the birth of science and secularism. Rationalism and empiricism. The invention of capitalism and socialism, the birth of the nation state, of democracy, constitutionalism, and fascism. The kicking off of a succession of information revolutions from the printing press to the telegraph to the Internet. Internal warfare to the brink of extinction, the (always devastating) crusades for spiritual, intellectual, or ethnic purity, and the incrementalist approaches of the realists, along with tolerance and relativism. External warfare, ever greater mastery of applying organized violence on a massive scale, colonization, propaganda, the League of Nations, universal suffrage, emancipation, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The role of the cities and of commerce in bringing down the feudal system, and the universities as the fermenters of new, radical ideas. The dualist denial of sensuality and the invention of romantic love. That’s the wonderful, murderous, self-contradictory dynamism of the West. This is a different picture of the West than the one that cultural conservatives (or progressives, for that matter) are painting. Western identity is not primarily defined by a certain set of core values (even though it would be nice to think so), but by its constant unrest and ferment. And so it seems to me that not core values and enlightenment but the constant struggle between the conflicting forces fully unleashed and accelerated by enlightenment (and the resulting denial of of both the comforts of particularism and of universalism) might outline the contours of a modern Western identity.
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The answer to the question depends on the usage of the term “culture”.
A “culture” seems to be whatever the members of a society do, think, and make at some specified time. “Society” really is a vague catch-all word to describe just about anything that involves human social interaction, which in the loosest sense can capture the idea of an aggregate of people (infrequent interaction, extremely casual), or a community of people (frequent, tight interaction), or anything in between (crowds, groups, etc.) depending on one’s purposes. (But this is all within a certain timeframe, and so, is of limited usefulness. If one wants to talk history, they must bring in the concept of a civilization.)
All of these terms can be understood as sets of persons which are as large or as small as we want to designate, like an elastic band stretched across pegs on a board. If we wanted, we could talk about a multiplicity of Western cultures, because there are surely a number of Western societies. But we can also stretch the set to its outer limit. “The” Western culture would be whatever property(s) all Western cultures have in common in contemporary times: i.e., massive waste and technology, featuring tendencies toward urbanization, bureaucracy, and specialization of labor.