WS
08/09
Preuß Übersetzung E - D
Klausur, 27. Januar
2009
The word “culture” seems to mean something high, profound,
respectable - a thing before which we bow. It joins nature as a standard for
the judgement of men and their deeds but has even greater dignity. It is almost never used pejoratively, as are “society”, “state”,
“nation” or even “civilization”, terms for which culture is gradually substituted, or whose legitimacy is underwritten by
culture. Culture is the unity of man’s brutish nature and all the arts and
sciences he acquired in his movement from the state of nature to civil
society. Culture restores the lost wholeness of first man on a higher level,
where his faculties can be fully developed without contradiction between the
desires of nature and the moral imperatives of his social life.
“Culture” in the modern sense was first used by
Immanuel Kant, who was thinking of Rousseau when he employed it, particularly
about what Rousseau said of the bourgeois. The bourgeois is selfish, but
without the purity and simplicity of natural selfishness.
He makes contracts hoping to get the better of those with whom he contracts. His faithfulness to others and his obedience to law
are founded on expectation of gain: “Honesty is the best policy”. Thus he corrupts morality, the essence of
which is to exist for its own sake. The bourgeois satisfies neither extreme,
nature or morality. The moral demand is merely an abstract ideal if it asks
for what nature cannot give. Brutish selfishness would be preferable to sham
morality.
But what is the
relation between Kant’s use of the word and ours? It seems there are two
different current uses that, while distinct, are linked. First, culture is
almost identical to people or nation, as in French culture, German culture,
Iranian culture, etc. Second, culture refers to art, music, literature,
educational television, certain kinds of movies - in short, everything that is
uplifting and edifying, as opposed to commerce.
The link is that culture is what
makes possible, on a high level, the rich social life that constitutes a people,
their customs, styles, tastes, festivals, rituals, gods - all that binds
individuals into a group with roots, a community in which they think and will
generally, with the people a moral unity, and the individual united within
himself. A culture is a work of art, of which the fine arts are the sublime
expression. In culture, on the other hand, the individuals are formed by the
collectivity as are the members of the chorus of a Greek drama. A Charles de
Gaulle, or, for that matter, an Alexander Solzhenitsyn saw the United States as
a mere aggregate of individuals, a dumping ground for the refuse from other
places, devoted to consuming; in short, no culture.
Quelle: Alan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, London 1987,
pp. 185, 187-188.
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