Kulturphilosophie

Traditionally, the concept of culture implicates some form of expectation. However, this enhancement caused a status of marginalisation: Culture changed to sophisticated culture. Apart from this conceptual development, there is a somewhat matter-of-fact comprehension of culture which was neglected for a long time in cultural theory: In early Enlightenment, it was Blaise Pascal who deduced from common convictions and agreements the originary condition of culture which has become independent and thus determines the systems of faith and knowledge.

Three phases of a cultural-philosophical criticism can be distinguished during the last 100 years: Firstly, the metaphysical critique of Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Adorno; secondly, the poststructuralist critique of representation as put forward by Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida; and thirdly, ecological critiques as a countermovement, as emanating from Speculative Realism, New Materialism, and Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory. Beyond critiques of rationality and of power and discourse, ecological critiques situate the human being in the exterior, which in some traits allows a vitalism of matter to return. Most importantly, ecologism, where it sees itself as relationalism, confuses network relations with interpersonal relationships, which are always already socially terminated. Consequently, they prefer ontology over social philosophy.

Recent culture wars, as fueled by right-wing extremists and warmongers over an identitarian and biologistic understanding of culture, require philosophy of culture to contradict and articulate its self-understanding. The article is structured along four theses that contest widespread assumptions, unfold their problematics and outline perspectives of cultural philosophy: 1. culture is not a being; 2. critique is not enmity; 3. technology is not a doom; 4. history is not destiny.

The text asks how the philosophy of culture can contribute to current debates in the social and cultural sciences. Using the discussion on »cultural identity« and »cultural appropriation« as examples, it then shows how divergent understandings of culture can lead to problematic assumptions. In the end, it is argued that the relationship between the philosophy of culture and the cultural and social sciences should be seen as an interrelationship in which the philosophy of culture must modify its concepts as well.

The expression ›the end of nature‹ can have two meanings: it can refer, firstly, to the end of multicellular life on planet Earth and, secondly, to the way the concept of ›nature‹ was used as a counter-concept to ›culture‹ and ›technology‹. Following Latour and Haraway, the essay shows how the ecological crisis is related to the categorical distinctions in which the concept of nature was bound. The removal of the corresponding conceptual contrasts can lead to a more concise perception of the human situation.

Nature is what culture relates to, and culture is what the mind makes of the conditions in which it finds itself. Whether the concept of second nature opens up a more interesting way of thinking about the anthropological problem, that consists in the opposition between mind and nature, is examined in the following contribution, in the light of a debate that arose around John McDowell’s book Mind and World. The guiding thesis is that an ontology of mental being is needed to explain the mind’s peculiar way of referring to the absent in a present way.

Philosophy of culture and philosophical anthropology are coextensive: We find this insight confirmed in Beschreibung des Menschen (from the Nachlass 2006). The essay sketches Blumenberg’s basic idea that distance is the a priori condition of human existence, which is realized in culture as the general medium of mediation, and it shows the conciseness that Blumenberg’s philosophy of culture gains in the systematic connection with the two works, in whose temporal proximity it was written: Arbeit am Mythos and Schiffbruch mit Zuschauer (both 1979). Noteworthy is the finding that the distance figure of the spectator (Zuschauer) does not testify to the author’s interest in aesthetics.

Cultural philosophy must always fathom anew what it means to live in a reflexive, self-reflexive culture of relativisation – in a culture that not only allows but forces the most diverse points of view. A culture in which nothing and no one secures the ultimate truth, the ultimate objectivity. Modern culture is a great possibility-generating enterprise. Cultural philosophy can conceptually express and bring to light the cultural potential for self-relativisation, the potential for self-reflection.

Philosophy of culture is understood as a theory of the objective mind. On the one hand, this means a demarcation from other options, for example, from cultural criticism, from cultural studies and cultural history. On the other hand, it evokes an interweaving of descriptive procedures and normative interpretations, the systematic framework of which is laid down in Hegel’s philosophy of mind.