Dr.
Mojtaba Sadria
Religious
and cultural confusion is one of the problems our present world faces. Confusion
results from, among other things, the differentiation of social consciousness
and possibly from diversification within social science. With this problem in
mind, the question is raised of whether there are universal elements in culture
and religion or whether everything is of a particular nature. Current concepts
of culture in anthropological and sociological literature are discussed focusing
especially on Clifford Geertz’s semiotic concept of culture. Concerning the
latter, it is argued that the core of culture is not adequately understood as a
system of symbols and that it has to be enlarged to include values. When
distinguishing content and function with respect to symbols and values, one can
see that only their functioning is universal in the strict sense and that their
content is particular. However, some elements of content, that is, values rather
than symbols, are apt to be universalized.
Viele
Lander
sah Zarathustra, und viele Volker: keine grossere Macht fand Zarathustra auf
Erden als die Werke der liebenden; “gut” und “bose” ist ihre
Nahm…Sagt, wer wirft diesem Tier die Fessel uber die tausand Nacken_ Tausand
Ziele gab es bisher, denn tausand Volker gab es. Nur die Fessel der tausand
Nacken fehlt noch, es fehlt das eine Ziel. Noch hat die Menschheit kein Ziel.
(Friedrich
Nietzsche: Also Sprach Zarathustra, p.
53.)
1.
Melee of Modern Culture
Development
and differentiation appear to be a natural outcome of human behavior.
Anthropological and cultural studies demonstrate the enormous differentiation of
the manifestations of the human mind. Today, more than ever, cultural diversity
is an object of wonder but also of apprehension: What are human beings heading
for in terms of culture_ Can a harmonious development be envisioned or will
differentiation accelerate into confusion entailing more problems for the world
of tomorrow_
At
the heart of the matter of human development appears to be the differentiation
of material and spiritual culture. From the time that human beings began to
fashion implements and shape their environment they also created a spiritual
outlook on their world. The more material culture they produced, the more their
spiritual views and ways of seeing things seem to have multiplied. Presently, a
fast developing technology -- and in its wake a many-sided consumer culture --
is changing the lives of millions together with their outlooks on life itself.
New secular and religious movements arise while old religions try to reinvent
themselves. Intercultural exchanges are increasing. How will the cultural and
spiritual scene of our modern world further develop_ At its best, I would like
to envision the image of a Japanese garden as an analogy of harmonious
development and at its worst still more differentiation and possibly chaos.
Curiously enough, the former seems to be the easier to imagine.
A
well-constructed Japanese garden is a model of variety, that is, many plants,
flowers, and other objects are selected to form a harmonious whole and a delight
for the eye. These gardens are never symmetrical in shape, never flat. Usually
they feature a little flowing creek, an irregularly shaped pond, natural rocks
or various shapes, little hills, a variety of shrub plants and trees of various
heights and, as much as possible, flowers that bloom in every season. In a
Japanese garden multifarious and fanciful nature is tailored to human esthetic
dimensions. This is not to say that there is no beauty in symmetrical shapes or
in more monotonous landscapes. Most people probably will agree that there is no
delight in total chaos or total monotony. Both of these defy ordering.
Could
the culture of mankind develop harmoniously to look like a Japanese garden_ I
would like to discuss this possibility and its conditions but to do so I have to
demonstrate that the present situation of world culture is anything but
harmonious. Firstly, I will briefly describe the present confusion of spiritual
outlooks, the world of religion and secular ideology. Secondly, I will trace, to
some extent, the perplexity that is characteristic of the sociological study of
religion as can be seen from the various conceptualizations of the function of
religion in society. Thirdly, I will describe the absence of clarity that seems
to be characteristic of the study of culture. Lastly, the question must be
addressed, at least theoretically, of whether there is a way out of the
labyrinth of culture.
A
way out of this labyrinth that I would like to try is clarifying the nature of
the more important elements of culture, their degree of particularity or
universality. By particularity and u8niversality I mean the narrow or the wide
extent to which certain traits of culture are appreciated. Here, I am not
addressing a philosophical or ideological question. The goal of this discussion
is not a search for the integration of all culture or the establishment of the
priority of universal elements over particular ones. I would argue rather that
diversity can be seen as a value in itself, the opposite of monotony, which is
as sterile as a desert. However, to attain a degree of harmony, diversity should
not deteriorate into confusion impeding comprehension, possibly leading to
meaningless conflict.
Before
proceeding to a description of the labyrinth of culture, let me first explain
confusion as a concept. For present purposes I would like to define confusion as
a sense of perplexity that leaves one uncertain as to what to think or to do.
Theoretically perplexity may be of an emotional, an intellectual, or an
existential kind. Emotional confusion occurs when one has to choose between two
or more good things or between varieties of the same thing. This is confusion of
feelings or moods. Intellectual perplexity tends to occur when one cannot decide
what criteria should be given priority in the case of choice, when something
baffles our understanding or when confronting sheer complexity. This sort of
confusion occurs on the level of thought. Finally, existential confusion I take
to refer to a perplexity in both heart and mind in feelings and in thought. Most
perplexities in real life may fall into this category because things are complex
and because humans are endowed with both emotional and intellectual abilities
that do not function separately on different tracks or in separate channels.
2.
Confusion in the Arena of Heart and Mind
Few
will deny the fact that the world of religion and non-religion, seen concretely
or taken as a whole, is one of utter confusion. If one were able to codify the
beliefs of all existing religious groups this, no doubt, would amount to quite a
collection. The main fare of religious beliefs concerns the ultimate nature of
man and the universe, man’s search for happiness and the ways to realize it.
To the extent that various religious groups envision many ways in which a
spiritual reality bears on earthly life, their beliefs, if not mutually
contradictory are quite contrary to one another. This is not all. If one would
add to this collection folk beliefs and secular views on the same matters, the
amount of our compilation would probably double and so would the extent of
variance and discord. Whereas religious beliefs assume the existence of a
super-empirical, transcendental reality (Robertson 1970:47), secular views
reject anything for which empirical evidence is lacking. These two categories,
therefore, are not merely divergent but worlds apart. Aside from the cleavage
between the religious and the non-religious, all views, which are fundamentally
different, tend to be wary of one another and to hinder mutual recognition. One
fundamental reason for this incoherence in matters of heart and mind may be
found in the fact that they are not only intellectually but also emotionally
adhered to. In other words, every view of life tends to bolster itself with a
strong sense of subjective certainty or truth. Confronted with the inherent
uncertainty of life and its uncertain outcome, or confronted with the large
variety of its meanings, humans tend to absolutize certain positions in order to
avoid existential confusion or to offset the relativity of it all. Therefore, it
is not only religion that formulates “conceptions of a general order of
existence, clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the
moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.” (Geertz 1973:90)
Thus,
the cultural area of heart and mind seen objectively, is an arena of latent
conflict, controversy, and mutual dislike which eventually comes into the open
as overt conflict -- often disastrous in its consequences. The latter problem
cannot concern us now but should we not keep it in mind_
In
the following, I raise the question of why there are so many contrary and
contradictory views concerning the functions of religion in society as an
example of intellectual confusion.
3.
Intellectual Confusion
Not
only are there many definitions of religion (Robertson 1970:34-43; McGuire
1981:3-10), but the role of religion in society has been variously appreciated
and variously conceptualized. In classical sociology religion used to be seen as
an important factor of the social fabric even if interpretations of its role and
meaning were quite varied. Three fundamentally different approaches to the
conception of the role of religion in society are said to be characteristic
(Beckford 1989:4-8).
Firstly,
the socio-cultural integrative functions of religion in society were recognized
but the religious contents and sentiments were taken to be outdated and
obstructive to progress. Very roughly, this was the view of authors like Comte
de Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim and others.
Secondly, authors like Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
explicitly exposed anticlerical views of religion, rejecting both its content
and socio-cultural functions as irrelevant to social issues. Thirdly,
appreciative views of the cultural function of religion are found in the work of
Ernst Troeltsch, George Simmel, and Max Weber. Though in different way, these
authors analyzed religion “as a repository of fundamental cultural meanings
through which both individuals and collectives construct their sense of identity
and social order,” or “as the key to understanding the structure and
processes of human societies,” while they thought of religious values much
like “trumps in the game of culture” (Beckford 1989:7-8).
Presently,
religion is no longer a central concern in sociology. The fact that the problem
of religion in present sociological literature has become marginal is, no doubt,
due to the apparent marginality of the phenomenon of religion itself and its
privatization as a matter of personal choice. However, if we take notice of the
many new religious movements and the resurgence of what is call Fundamentalism,
the marginality of religion is anything but a fact. Also, the typical tendencies
of the classical studies of appreciation and denial are still with us today.
While all sociologists essentially conceive religion as one sphere of
socio-cultural reality, that is, a reality that is humanly constructed, some
focus on this constructiveness itself and analyze religion as a reflection of
psychological or social factors while others continue to center on what religion
does, its positive functions. In a word, there are active and passive views of
religion entailing very different appreciations.
Brian
Turner (1983) and Stark & Bainbridge (1987) are representative of the
passive product-version. Brian Turner, who challenges the cognitively oriented
contemporary sociology of religion with its primary concern for the subjectivity
of the actor, engages in a materialistic study of religion. Even though he does
not totally reject the spiritual dimension of religion, Turner argues that
“[T]he historical and sociological importance of religion as fundamental to
human life can only be grhtmled by an
analysis of the relationship between religion, the body, family and property…
By implication, I am critical of the whole trend in the sociology of religion to treat “the
question of meaning” as a theoretical rather than material issue” (Turner
1983:2, emphasis added.) In his discussion of the matter, Turner voices
allegiance to the materialistic insights of Marx, Engels, Nietzsche, Freud and
related lines of thought by Weber as well as to the structionalist views of
Levi-Strauss and Faucoult’s historical analysis. His central contention is
that religion in the past used to control the sexuality of the body in order to
secure the transmission of property via the family. This having become
unnecessary in modern societies, religious pluralism is being allowed. Turner
maintains that control of their populations has become the main concern of
governments. They do this by means of public disciplines that are exercised
within the school, factory, prison and other “total” institutions. Since the
public sphere is being desacralized in Western societies, religion continues to
be active in the private space of the body of individuals. In Turner’s own
words: “A materialistic interpretation reduces religion to its elementary
forms in the production and duplication of material existence -- the corporality
of individuals and the corpus of society” (Turner 1983:13).
Stark
and Bainbridge theorize about religion as a reflection of human needs and other
conditions of social existence. In this they draw on exchange theory. The most
basic need, according to them, is seeking rewards and avoiding costs. Based on
this need they establish seven axioms. These are very general statements of what
human beings are. From these axioms they derive many more statements about the
phenomenon of religion and what people get from it. The latter are called
propositions of which there are as many as 344. Further, the authors discuss the
concrete characteristics that pertain to the central elements of their axioms
and propositions. These are called definitions; they number 104 items. It is
these definitions that link axioms and propositions. They are the locus for
testing the theoretical statements. Stark and Bainbridge maintain that their
theory can be formalized, that is, represented mathematically so that
redundancies, ambiguities, and missing assumptions will be revealed. However,
they apparently cannot yet proceed to that stage. A point the authors emphasize
is that this theory does not start from facts concerning religion, “it derives
religious phenomena from non-religious phenomena, and it reduces a theory of
religion to a general theory of human action” (Stark and Bainbridge 1987:26).
To this point I will return later.
Talcott
Parsons and Niklas Luhmann are representative of the view of religion as an
active agent in society (Beckford 1989:75-87). With respect to society as a
whole, Parsons pays a great deal of attention to the process of value
generalization and its matrix traditional religion. On the level of individual
action, he focuses on the effective, expressive components of culture and
religion that remain important for the motivation of action, the construction of
personal identity, and domestic morality. Luhmann seems to have further
elaborated Parsons’ system theory. He sees religion as a specialized subsystem
of meaning and action that keeps its capacity to function for both society and
the individual, mainly because the need for reflection on the grounds of all
meaning persists. However religion is only one subsystem among many. As such,
religion is no longer an obvious “given” but a matter of personal choice.
Quite
different in content but similar from a functionalist point of view is Robert
Bellah’s analysis of civil religion in its relation to politics and social
life. Religion in this context is seen as public morality or the stock (supply)
of values a society in general approves of. Therefore, civil religion is quite
different from organized religion but otherwise dependent on it. About the
American civil religion Bellah mentions that it is institutionalized, though
only formally and marginally. It is not formulated in the Constitution but
somehow present in it, serving as an ideological superstructure. It has also its
detractors such as the proponents of philosophical liberalism but it is largely
supported by the infrastructure of the churches (Bellah-Hamilton 1980:3-39).
4.
The Conceptualization of Culture
One
of the most basic words to understand in 20th Century anthropology is
culture. Even though the term has been
discussed in countless books and articles, there is still a large degree of
uncertainty in its use -- Anthropologists use the notion in fundamentally
different ways, frequently without noticing it” (Hatch 1973:1). Beginning with
this statement, Elvin Hatch overviews the work of ten classical figures who has
contributed very much to the establishment of the study of culture, showing how
they differ one from the other. The common ground of these anthropologists is
that all of them are concerned note with causal explanation, but with meaning.
That is, they try to make sense of their data within a specific context. But,
beyond this common approach interpretation of culture and its functions is quite
varied. To what extent then do they actually differ_
According
to Hatch, before anthropology was established as a branch of social science,
culture and human institutions were thought of as products of man’s
rationality in the civilized West and as product of irrationality in primitive
societies. Eward B. Tylor still represents this traditional, intellectualist
view. In American cultural anthropology since Franz Boas not man but culture
itself becomes the focus of study. This view of culture implied, among other
things, that human beings are not necessarily rational and, consequently that
the ultimate intelligibility of culture had to be seen at the level of the total
system. From this position somewhat different but related views develop such as
the idea of “cultural figurations” by Ruth Benedict, the distinction between
basic and secondary feature by Alfred Kroeber, and the practical and utilitarian
views of culture by Julian Steward and Leslie White. On the other side of the
ocean, in British social anthropology, more attention was paid to the individual
and social functions of culture (Bronislaw Malinowski) and to the htmlects of
social structure and social order (Radcliffe-Brown). The latter view is said to
be influenced by Emile Durkheim who focused not only on causal and functional
htmlects but also on subjective htmlects of culture. Finally, Evans-Pritchard is
said to have focused mostly on subjective elements: beliefs, values, and the
sentiments of individuals, thus developing an idealist view of culture (Hath
1973:336-358).
How
different the various views of culture actually are may not be perfectly clear
from this short overview, but we learn that the focus of study -- and therefore
emphasis -- can be very different. First, there was a shift from man to culture
itself. Second, the focus may be structure or function, structure or content,
the individual or the collectivity. Third, viewed externally, culture is seen as
an objective reality while viewed internally, starting from its content, it is
said to be subjective.
These
various approaches seem to be reasonable enough. What is more, the same can be
said about many other views of culture in various studies within the field of
psychology and sociology. In other words, culture is also discussed in relations
to personality, organization, economics and politics. Though apparently
legitimate in each case, the inflationary use of the concept of culture has been
criticized by authors such as Louis Schneider (1973), Clifford Geertz (1973),
and Osamu Nakano (1984). In the following, I will review only Geertz’s view
because he also discusses the matter of religion, which is important for the
present study.
Geertz
starts out with criticizing Clyde Kluckhohn’s many-sided view of culture as a
conceptual morass, too inclusive to be useful. He proposes to limit its use to a
semiotic concept, centering on the sign-content of behavior or its symbolic
meaning. Cultural meaning then is to be analyzed through interpretation and
“thick description” (Geertz 1973:3-30).
Geertz’s
view is best illustrated by his definition of culture. To quote, culture
“denotes a historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a
system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which
men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes
toward life” (Geertz 1973:89). Because the very meaning of this definition
hinges on its key word, symbol, Geertz continues to explain it carefully, but
only after commenting on religious symbols and defining religion in the same
context. He states that “sacred symbols function to synthesize a people’s
ethos -- the tone, character, and quality of their life, its morals and
aesthetic style and mood -- and their world view -- the picture they have of the
way things in sheer actuality are, their most comprehensive ideas of order”
(Geertz 1973:89). Religious symbols, according to Geertz, thus contain and
convey a people’s ethos and world view, that is, normative and cognitive
orientations of culture.
Below
I will return to Geertz’s definition of religion, but let us first consider
his approach to the study of symbols. They refer, he says, “to any object,
act, event, quality, or relation which serves as a vehicle for a conception --
the conception is the symbol’s meaning” (Geertz 1973:91). He goes on to
suggest that symbols form patterns of meaning which function as sources of
information as well as models of and for
behavior, echoing a definition of culture by Kluckhohn (Kluckhohn 1962:73). It
is these patterns that render human existence and life situations cognitively,
emotionally, and morally meaningful. In other words, cultural patterns make the
three versions of chaos manageable: ignorance, sufferance, and evil. The most
realistic way of realizing this is through ritual as consecrated behavior. “In
ritual, the world as lived and the world as imagined, fused under the agency of
a single set of symbolic forms, turn out to be the same world…” (Geertz
1973:112). This does not mean that every day life itself becomes sacred. The
religious perspective moves beyond the common sense of everyday life, making it
religiously meaningful.
Geertz’s
view of culture is well summarized in his neat definition of religion. It merits
a full quote: “A religion is: (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2)
establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by
(e) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing
these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and
motivations seem uniquely realistic” (Geertz 1973:90).
5.
Toward a Revision
The
above discussions of anthropology and culture by Hatch and Geertz show that in
this field of study a general theory is non-existent and that even a
comprehensive conceptual frame of reference is lacking. In other words, neither
sociologists nor anthropologists hold a common scheme of the interpretation of
culture. This means that complexity in this area of study abounds. It seems to
me that agreed upon distinction between the fundamental dimensions of the
general phenomenon of culture and its core features would be a significant step
on the way out of the labyrinth. The following dimensions seem fundamental to
me: culture as an area of study, culture the spiritual dimension of life, and
culture as a concept.
As
an area of study, culture is the sum
total of cultural phenomena, allowing or even necessitating different
approaches, having different goals. For example, objective and subjective,
individual and collective htmlects of culture can be studied for specific
purposes. This view, of course, is nothing new. Indeed, it may be a generally
accepted view, but it should be stressed that the immediate goal here is the
understanding of particular cultural phenomena, not culture as a concept, or its
universal core features.
Culture
as the spiritual dimension of life,
or simply, spiritual culture, is a
human need to be fulfilled. Seen in connection with individual and collective
identities, culture is a task to be realized. It concerns man’s quest for
happiness, the goal of life as reflected in the thought content of culture and
religion. Obviously, spiritual culture is also an “object of study”, part of
the subject matter, but confusion is apt to arise when one treats spiritual
culture merely as an object or a product As a need to be fulfilled or a task to
be realized, spiritual culture is the
meaning-content adhered to, which functions as an important element of
individual and collective identities. Most generally, culture in this sense
functions as an orientation of behavior.
This
dimension of culture is not new either. It is suggested by culture
conceptualized as a matter of patterns and processes
(Kroeber 1963), by culture thought of as patterns of and for behavior (Kluckhohn 1962:73), and by culture patterns seen as
meaning complexes of symbols that function as models of and for reality (Geertz 1973:92-94). The terms
“processes”, “patterns for behavior”, and “models of reality” are
meant to express culture in its functioning as orientation and as agency. In its
totality, spiritual culture is the observable essence of man, that is, of man
who creates and is being created by culture. Seen in this way, culture is not
merely a product of the past. The spiritual culture of mankind of being made
also now, in the present. It will shape the future of mankind. Culture in this
sense reveals a prophetic function -- needless to say, prophetic assertions are
contestable, and, therefore, they are the profounder cause of the utter
confusion in the world of religion and ideology, but this, too, is a dimension
of culture one has to come to terms with.
Then,
there is culture as a concept.
Obviously, culture as a concept is not an object of empirical study. It is an
abstraction one has to arrive at through theoretical elaboration. Culture as a
concept should refer to the most universal features of culture, representing its
core that is present in the various areas of culture, everyday life, religion,
morality, art, and even economics and politics. In other words, thought an
abstraction, the core of culture should be representative not only of the
cultural phenomena that constitute culture as an area of study but also culture
as the spiritual dimension of life. In sum, culture as a concept should refer to
the universality both in its content and its functioning.
Geertz,
in elaborating culture as a semiotic concept, succeeded in abstracting
symbolization as one universal feature of culture. However, I will argue that
one cannot stop there. Paraphrasing Geertz again, the core of culture can be
found in “a pattern of meanings embodied in symbols.” His discussion of
culture in the context of traditional religion leads him to find a close and
significant relationship among symbolization, conceptualization, meaning,
ritual, and values, but he maintains that meaning can only be “stored” in
symbols (Geertz 1973:127). This may be quite all right in the case where
religion remains culturally one of the primary factors of social reality. For
example, with respect to primitive societies, it is easily understood, as
Durkheim explained, that these societies depended for their social cohesion on
symbols and social ritual. Object such as a totem, a leader, even ideas became
apotheosized, i.e., imbued with a special force or power and seen as sacred,
that is, in Durkheim’s view, as separated from other things. Social action
such as the severe mourning ritual of the aborigines functioned in the same way
as a useful means for maintaining the cohesion of the clan. Durkheim therefore
concluded that societies cannot exist without symbolism (Durkheim 1960).
I
argue that the discussion of culture in the context of traditional religion may
have been methodologically misleading. In modern societies the necessity of
symbolism and ritual is not very clear because of their being differentiated to
a considerable degree. Religion has moved to the periphery of society. In this
case even if many people cease to participate in religious ritual or totally
reject religion, they individually do not lose their cognitive, emotional, and
ethical orientations. The latter also are fundamental modalities of culture in a
collective sense. It may be problematic as to what extent people in modern
societies maintain a common cultural ethos and common definitions of reality.
However, they still somehow are apt to share htmlects of traditional culture and
outlooks on life. To me, as I argue below, the sharing of culture seems to be a crucial point for the study of
culture as a concept, as much as differentiation of culture is. Let us return
briefly to differentiation as exemplified in the situation of religion and other
kinds of thought in modern societies.
For
many reasons religion, as we know it today, is a highly differentiated reality,
which is highly controversial at the same time. Seen in a worldwide context,
many people still fervently adhere to various religions and many others as
fervently reject religion while still many different others can be situated in
terms of religion somewhere in between the former two extremes. These systems of
religion and secular thought differ from one another in what is believed,
practiced, and the ideas they advocate concerning human
relations and community. Let us touch briefly on the common differences.
To
most branches of traditional Christianity, all three dimensions of religion,
doctrine, practice and community are important but religious practices vary
greatly among them. Catholicism still keeps its fondness for ritual but
Protestantism does not. From the beginning Protestants stressed the importance
of faith above anything else and they, therefore, reduced ritual and material
religious culture to a minimum.
Hinduism
and Buddhism favor practice above doctrine allowing great variety in matters of
belief, but also their religious practices show considerable variety. They range
from ritual, meditation and ancestor worship to asceticism and magical practices
all of which are varied in their own way. Compared with Christianity these
religions have different conceptions of what good human relations and
communities should be. To them morality often is not a central concern. The
latter is said to be the core of Confucianism showing again a remarkable
religious particularity.
Similar
differences pertain to the new religious movements some of which engage much in
ritual while others do not. Some construct communities similar to traditional
religions, others favor simple or ad hoc
networks, still others only seek to have audiences without considering group
formation.
Nonreligious
people tend to be individualistic in their outlook on life because they do not
belong to any spiritual collectivity teaching them a specific world view. Thus,
they are more apt to develop their own principles of living than people who
adhere to a certain faith.
However,
whatever the degree of differentiation of religion and thought, partial
similarities in the content of world views are apt to remain because of common
human needs and the sheer limits of what is useful in shaping a sense of
physical, material, and spiritual well-being. Simply stated, variation in
fundamental things has its limits. Therefore, it is highly likely that many
people in the world share views, for example, concerning nature, the dignity of
life, the necessity of a safe environment, also concerning education and work as
a means to social status and personal fulfillment, and concerning enjoyment of
life for which they will want a measure of personal freedom and non-interference
by others. In sum, ideas about what a happy life and general well-being are
cannot be totally different from one people to another (Bell, 1997).
Thus,
traditional culture, in general, is widely shared by most people in cultural
areas such as the countries of Western Europe and the Americas, which, though
speaking different languages, used to share religion as a common cultural
patrimony. This is the more so in the case of people who belong to a nation that
doubles as a cultural area such as Japan. In the following I will illustrate the
sharing of traditional culture as seen from Max Weber’s sociology of religion.
One
of Weber’s goals in his sociology of religion was to analyze the relation
between religious and economic activity. He traced and analyzed religious
sentiments, the ideas and conceptions of religious faiths that bore on
people’s attitudes toward work, occupation, the use of money, the enjoyment of
life, and the like. In Durkheimian terms these things could be called collective
representations. As such a sociology of culture may not have been on Weber’s
mind but his sociology of religion contains many elements of a sociology of
culture (Martindale 1991). The studies of Weber included Western, Chinese, and
Indian religion naturally resulting in comparative analysis. Since a comparison
of culture is sociologically only meaningful when it concerns cultural wholes,
he could not but focus on the essentials of culture. Further, in his conclusions
he formulates “unintended consequences”, which again are consequences not of
individual cultural traits but of cultural complexes, or, in each case, of a
cultural ethos. Below, by way of example, I will summarize Weber’s analysis of
Christianity and Western culture.
Weber’s
central argument concerns the Protestant ethic as it developed within Calvinism
and related churches (Weber 1930). The so-called Puritans valued work, having a
decent occupation, and making money for religious reasons. In their daily lives
they developed rational attitudes such as being honest, working hard,
economizing, and devoting themselves to their secular callings. Not all these
attitudes are totally new or radically different from what is found in
traditional Christianity before the Reformation. Protestantism is functional in
the breakthrough of rational attitudes in the economic sphere. It is Weber’s
conclusion that Protestants realized “in the world” what Catholics
envisioned in their convents, that is, the rationalization of their religious
life. In this sense, the ultimate “unintended consequences” are not the pure
and simple result of the Calvinistic way of life but rather of a cultural ethos
that gradually developed within ancient Judaism and the subsequent Christian
tradition. Further, this religious ethic took shape in and blended with the
larger Western cultural complex. Sociologically it is not only the
particularistic elements of subgroups that are important but also what is shared
within the larger context. Actually the amount of culture that is shared within
a Kulturkreis may be larger than the
amount of what is typical for the subgroups. Thus specific ascetic attitudes
with respect to economic activity may have been particular to the Puritans who
shared the larger part of their religion within Western culture with a vastly
larger group of people. Then what did they all share_ They shared beliefs about
the ultimate meaning of life, most generally, a cultural ethos and a worldview.
This is much the same as what Geertz asserted but the big difference is that
this cultural ethos is bound up neither with ritual nor with symbols. The latter
were not shared elements of religious culture.
The
difference between Geertz’s view of the core of culture and what emerges from
our present argument can be stated clear by saying that, finally, it is some
values that were shared. What Catholicism and Protestantism had in common was
the ultimate goal of living a religious life for the glory of God, the former
for ensuring their own eternal life and the latter more directly for realizing
the Kingdom of God in this world but also for their eternal salvation. Because
both were suspicious of wealth and riches, originally they did not differ very
much in what they actually appreciated in daily life either. When the religious
cloak wore out, similar secular values became the new garmenture of the gross of
people who still see themselves as Protestants and Catholics.
From
this short discussion of religion and spiritual culture it should be clear that
it is not symbols, certainly not symbols tied to ritual, that constitute the
most universal part of culture. Not only are there many varieties of ritual, in
many cases it is simply absent. This means that ritual and symbols fall into the
category of what is empirically particular, i.e., that what has meaning for a
limited group of people.
However,
an important distinction remains to be made between content and function -- both
of symbols and values. Only their functioning, that is, symbolization and
valuation, are universal features of culture, deriving from universal human
faculties (abstracting and feeling are two different, universal human faculties,
but they do not concern us here). This specific functionality concerns the
production of symbols and values. Geertz does not adequately distinguish between
function and content of symbols and values. He maintained that only symbols
store meaning. But values, too, can be said to store meaning. Therefore in terms
of content, symbols and values are not fundamentally different. Their main
difference is functional. Symbolization appears to be at the bottom of the
construction of meaning, which can go on and on. This is recognized by Geertz.
Valuation primarily concerns orientation of action, which, as a force of
restraint, is limiting in its essence. However, symbolization and valuation are
two universal features of culture with respect to its functioning. They are
fundamentally different in nature, but they exist together in every cultural
ethos, and as Geertz maintains, they may be fused by religion giving them an
appearance of objectivity or an aura of factuality.
The
matter of symbolization and valuation, symbols and values, have to be discussed
in greater detail but I would like to end the present argument with an
observation concerning the particularity and universality of culture. All
culture is particular in that it arises in particular contexts. However, certain
cultural traits, either symbols, or values, or other cultural contents are shared
by groups of people. This simply implies that culture is shareable and therefore
not particular in essence. Some traits such as symbols and rituals are less
shared than other traits such as values. Symbols and rituals, as concrete
constructs of meaning, show a higher degree of particularity than values. Also,
values are particular since they too can only arise in particular contexts.
However, values are more easily shared not because they are more abstract in
nature, but because they function as attitudes and orientations of action.
Again, some values remain particularistic, while others are more universal, that
is, more widely shared. The general conclusion here is that both particular and
universal parts of culture are empirically and theoretically important, as also
Roland Robertson argues (Robertson 1992:97-114),
Specific
religious contents and spiritual culture today are more differentiated than
ever. This can be explained by the higher degree of particularity of symbols,
not only, but especially, when they are bound to ritual. From this it does not
follow that all dimensions of religion and spiritual culture have the same
degree of particularity. In their orientative functionality they are less so.
Religion and spiritual culture concern the sacred, which can be seen as the
highest category of values. As such, spiritual culture has a greater chance of
becoming more widely shared. As touch upon in the above, the same can be said
about traditional culture. It tends to be more shared not because it is
religious, but because of its orientative character. Tradition contains various
non-religious elements such as ideas about what is useful, good, beautiful, and
true. In this sense, one could say that traditional culture is the
undifferentiated part of culture. Further, traditional and spiritual culture
might be discussed as an orientation for the future, enhancing its chances of
becoming more widely shared.
6.
Conclusion
Nietzsche’s
Zarathustra lamented that mankind lacked a common goal because of the power of
the works of loving people which he called good and evil. Nietzsche saw mankind
as an animal with a thousand necks that defied to be bound or tamed. This is a
misleading analogy. A common goal seems impossible because development of
culture means differentiation. A common goal may be unnecessary either in
morality or in culture. But, a measure of harmony is deemed to be a beneficial
and desirable condition for the future of the world. That is, the kind of
harmony which is characteristic of Japanese gardens that combine a great variety
of features into a small, natural universe.
Certainly
the extent of the present development of culture in various senses and the many
attempts at analyzing and conceptualizing culture are all but reassuring.
Religious and spiritual cultures presently are matters of great controversy. The
differentiation of religion and culture, to which one has to add the vast range
of modern mass culture, may suggest a “Big Bang” theory in culture within
which continuous differentiation seems to be the only rule. Thus complexity
abounds.
However,
harmony among constituting parts, traits, and elements of culture does not
require that they are few in number. In order to reduce its complexity it is
important to discuss and construct a common scheme of interpretation concerning
the core of culture and its fundamental dimensions. Harmony in matters of
culture in this sense is a matter of comprehensibility. The simple insight that
all culture is particular in origin but that it is shareable shows that culture
is not particular in its essence. From this it follows that the particular and
the universal can exist side by side. Universality with respect to some elements
of culture is a matter of their being more widely shared than other elements.
Theoretically more important in reducing theoretical complexity is the
understanding of the core of culture as symbolization and valuation. It is only
these functions that are universal in the strict sense. Some contents of culture
are apt to be more widely shared than other contents. That is, values are more
easily shared than symbols and ritual. Greater sharing of core values could
enhance a more harmonious development of culture.
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