An essay on culture

Despite much uncertainty about what culture is, where it comes from, and where it goes once it is gone, two core understandings are of culture as meaning and value. Both value and meaning are not well known, let alone understood. We probe some common and conventional understandings of culture, and...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Stephan Fuchs, Adan Christian Freitas
Format: Article
Language:Portuguese
Published: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina 2022-07-01
Series:Política & Sociedade
Online Access:https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/politica/article/view/83381
_version_ 1811326639267643392
author Stephan Fuchs
Adan Christian Freitas
author_facet Stephan Fuchs
Adan Christian Freitas
author_sort Stephan Fuchs
collection DOAJ
description Despite much uncertainty about what culture is, where it comes from, and where it goes once it is gone, two core understandings are of culture as meaning and value. Both value and meaning are not well known, let alone understood. We probe some common and conventional understandings of culture, and trace their intellectual history. In the modern history of the West, Kant’s philosophy bestows the highest value on Platonic or Platonist ideas and ideals. But they are already demoted into merely regulative fictions and necessary illusions. After Kant, the history of culture as value and ideal amounts to the ending of their meta-physical and trans-cendental status. Values and ideals first turn into variable and historical a prioris in NeoKantianism and Max Weber, and eventually become facts themselves – the empirical facts of beliefs about values. Nietzsche observes this history of value as an arriving, the advent of nihilism. A sign of this arrival is values being suspected as ideological rationalizations and inflations in which class or status interests and the will-to-power present themselves as Truth. In the light of this truth, culture and values eventually appear as nothing but symbolic objects and cultural capital. The nihilistic erosion of the substance of values means that culture is exhausted and finished, giving rise to, and enabling, its very flourishing as political economics, symbolic industry, and cultural administration.
first_indexed 2024-04-13T14:53:22Z
format Article
id doaj.art-5a834e406b9947ed9d1bfad57a37be0c
institution Directory Open Access Journal
issn 1677-4140
2175-7984
language Portuguese
last_indexed 2024-04-13T14:53:22Z
publishDate 2022-07-01
publisher Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina
record_format Article
series Política & Sociedade
spelling doaj.art-5a834e406b9947ed9d1bfad57a37be0c2022-12-22T02:42:31ZporUniversidade Federal de Santa CatarinaPolítica & Sociedade1677-41402175-79842022-07-01204910.5007/2175-7984.2021.83381An essay on cultureStephan FuchsAdan Christian Freitas Despite much uncertainty about what culture is, where it comes from, and where it goes once it is gone, two core understandings are of culture as meaning and value. Both value and meaning are not well known, let alone understood. We probe some common and conventional understandings of culture, and trace their intellectual history. In the modern history of the West, Kant’s philosophy bestows the highest value on Platonic or Platonist ideas and ideals. But they are already demoted into merely regulative fictions and necessary illusions. After Kant, the history of culture as value and ideal amounts to the ending of their meta-physical and trans-cendental status. Values and ideals first turn into variable and historical a prioris in NeoKantianism and Max Weber, and eventually become facts themselves – the empirical facts of beliefs about values. Nietzsche observes this history of value as an arriving, the advent of nihilism. A sign of this arrival is values being suspected as ideological rationalizations and inflations in which class or status interests and the will-to-power present themselves as Truth. In the light of this truth, culture and values eventually appear as nothing but symbolic objects and cultural capital. The nihilistic erosion of the substance of values means that culture is exhausted and finished, giving rise to, and enabling, its very flourishing as political economics, symbolic industry, and cultural administration. https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/politica/article/view/83381
spellingShingle Stephan Fuchs
Adan Christian Freitas
An essay on culture
Política & Sociedade
title An essay on culture
title_full An essay on culture
title_fullStr An essay on culture
title_full_unstemmed An essay on culture
title_short An essay on culture
title_sort essay on culture
url https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/politica/article/view/83381
work_keys_str_mv AT stephanfuchs anessayonculture
AT adanchristianfreitas anessayonculture
AT stephanfuchs essayonculture
AT adanchristianfreitas essayonculture