PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE a branch of philosophy that studies the essence and meaning of culture. The term was first used in the early 19 th century by the German romanticist A. Müller. Philosophy of culture must be distinguished both from philosophy of history—inasmuch as the process by which mankind creates culture does not match the pace of historical evolution—and from sociology of culture, which is the study of culture within a given system of social relations. Philosophy of culture was first recognized as a field of inquiry by the Sophists, who formulated the antinomy of the natural and the moral (the latter to be identified with culture): thus, according to Hippias, such human institutions as customs and laws “often force us to go against nature” (as quoted by T. Gomperz in Grecheskie mysliteli, vol. 1, St. Petersburg, 1913, p. 346).
The opposition between the natural and the moral was further developed by the Cynics (for example, Diogenes of Sinope and Antisthenes), who reached the conclusion that was needed was a return to nature—that is, to the simplicity of primitive human existence. The Cynics can thus be seen as among the earliest critics of culture. Their criticism, directed against the artificial and depraved state of society, was adopted in a modified form by the Stoics; it subsequently became an integral element of the spiritual atmosphere of early Christian social thought and its “theology of culture. ”
In modern times, questions of philosophy of culture and cultural criticism have been explored in particular by G. Vico, J. -J. Rousseau, F. Schiller (with his concept of “naive” and “sentimental” poetry as the two phases of cultural development), J. G. Herder, and the romanticists of Jena (with their idea of the uniqueness of individual national cultures and their concept of distinct historical stages of cultural development). Philosophy of culture—narrowly defined as a philosophical conception of the various stages of evolving human culture—can be said to date back to F. Nietzsche and in part to the Russian Slavophiles. The central issue was now the opposition between culture as an organic whole and civilization, regarded as the manifestation of a mechanical and utilitarian relationship to life. This view was shared by G. Simmel, O. Spengler, L. Klages, H. Keyserling, J. Ortega y Gasset, and other followers of the school of Lebensphilosophie (philosophy of life), as well as by the Russians K. N. Leon’tev, N. Ia. Danilevskii, and N. A. Berdiaev. Dani-levskii and Spengler furthermore conceived of individual cultures, whether national or historical, as being absolutely locked into themselves and mutually impermeable; a corollary of this view was the denial of the unity of human culture. A. Toynbee, who sought to rise above relativism and skepticism in his interpretation of culture, brought about a revival of Augustine’s religious and philosophical ideas. Finally, S. L. Frank represented culture and civilization as two distinct, contemporaneous, and necessary levels in the development of culture.
Different Types of Philosophical Apologetics If philosophy is hard to define, philosophical apologetics is harder still. Nevertheless, as a working definition, let us characterize philosophical apologetics as a philosophical activity which has as its goal (or perhaps as its result) the increasing or maintaining of the epistemic justification of a Christian world view in whole or in part. 4 Let us accept this gloss as adequate. Note two things about the definition. First, philosophical apologetics involves the direct use of philosophy. Thus, historical evidences per se are not part of philosophical apologetics. Second, philosophy, as well as its employment by Christians, go beyond philosophical apologetics. All cases of philosophical apologetics are cases of philosophy but the converse does not hold. As I see it, there at least four different types of philosophical apologetics. My aim in delineating these is not simply informational. My hope is that when these are clarified, they can help all of us be more intentional in trying to relate our academic work to philosophical apologetics, whatever other purposes we may have.
1. DIRECT DEFENSE In defense, one uses philosophy with the primary intend of enhancing or maintaining directly the epistemic justification of christian theism or some proposition taken to be explicit to or entailed by it (hereafter i will simply refer to christian theism). there are two basic forms of direct defense, one negative and one positive. 5 the less controversial of the two is a negative direct defense where one attempts to remove defeaters to christian theism. if you have a justified belief regarding some proposition p, a defeater is something that weakens or removes that justification. defeaters come in two types. 6 a rebutting defeater gives justification for believing ~p, in this case, that christian theism is false. for example, attempts to show that the biblical concept of the family is dysfunctional and false or that homosexuality is causally necessitated by genes or brain states and that, therefore, it is not a proper object for moral appraisal are cases of rebutting defeaters. an undercutting defeater does not give justification for believing ~p, but rather seeks to remove justification for believing p in the first place. critiques of the arguments for god's existence are examples of undercutting defeaters. when defeaters are raised against christian theism, a negative defense seeks either to rebut or refute those defeaters. by contrast, a positive direct defense is an attempt to build a positive case for christian theism. arguments for the existence of god, objective morality, the existence of the soul, the value and nature of virtue ethics, and the possibility and knowability of miracles are examples. this type of philosophical apologetics is not accepted by all christian intellectuals, e. g. , various species of what may be loosely called reformed epistemology run the gamut from seeing a modest role for a positive direct defense to an outright rejection of this type of activity.
2. Рhilosophical polemics. in philosophical polemics, one seeks to criticize views that rival christian theism in one way or another. critiques of scientific naturalism, physicalism, pantheism, and normative ethical relativism are all cases of philosophical polemics. 3. Тheistic explanation. suppose we have a set of items xi through xn that stand in need of explanation and we offer some explanans e as an adequate or even best explanation of the explananda. in such a case, e explains xi through xn and this fact provides some degree of confirmation for example, if a certain intrinsic genre statement explains the various data of a biblical text, then this fact offers some confirmation for that statement. now christian theists ought to be about the business of exploring the world in light of their world view and, more specifically, of using their theistic beliefs as explanations of various desiderata in the intellectual life. put differently, we should seek to solve intellectual problems and shed light on areas of puzzlement by utilizing the explanatory power of our world view. for example, for those who accept the existence of natural moral law, the irreducibly mental nature of consciousness, natural human rights, or the fact that human flourishing follows from certain biblically mandated ethical and religious practices, the truth of christian theism provides a good explanation of these phenomena. and this fact can provide some degree of confirmation for christian theism. i will mention shortly how the discipline of philosophy enters into this type of intellectual practice because it overlaps with the way philosophy is relevant to the next type of philosophical apologetics.
Religion, philosophy and culture are three "elements" of the human reality. If the first could be compared to the feet with which Man journeys towards his destiny, philosophy could represent the eyes that scrutinize that journey, and culture, the earth on which Man is walking during his concrete pilgrimage. Interculturality represents the relativity (not the relativism) of everything human, and therefore of these three notions. . The question of the nature of philosophy is already a philosophical question, and intimately connected with what Religion stands for. An intercultural approach shows that one cannot separate Philosophy from Religion, and that both are dependent on the culture which nurtures them. In order to do justice to the problem, we need to introduce the function of mythos, which complements that of logos.
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