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Prof. Horst Seidl (Univ. Lateran., Roma)

 

Remarks on a Western Concept of Culture in China Today

 

 

          This paper tries to comment two publications concerning a Western concept of culture, which is received in China today: the one is dealing with the question: What is culture?,_[1] the other with the reception of Karl Popper in China._[2] My aim is to show that this concept does no longer represent the full meaning of Western culture, as understood in its two thousand years old tradition. After my report of the two publications there will follow my critical comment to which I shall add the basic traditional features of Western culture.

 

1) What is culture? – A recent Western concept of culture in China today

 

a) Culture under sociological and psychological aspect: a case-study

          The publication of Ron and Suzanne Scollon about a recent Western concept of culture, as introduced in China today, is published under the title „Intercultural Communication“, which dedicates an own chapter (in the quoted work, page 122 foll. Chap. 7) to the question: „What is culture?“

          The Authors analyse the concept of culture in the field of „intercultural communication and stereotyping“, starting from a case-study: the encounter of an American and a Chinese businessman. In making acquaintance casually on a journey, after the exchange of their business-cards, the American man, Andrew Richardson, invites, in the further conversation, the Chinese man, Hon-fai or David Chu, to use his first name Andrew, even in the familiar form Andy, and uses, vice versa, immediately Chu's first name in his familiar Chinese form Hon-fai, not in the American substitutive form David.

          The analysis of the present case underlines that Mr Chu feels very uncomfortable that Mr Richardson addresses him with the Chinese first name because in China this name is used only among family members or close friends. Richardson’s tentative to improve the relation with Mr Chu, using his Chinese first name Hon-fai, did not turn the situation to the better, but „to the worse“.

 

b) Culture as discourse system

          In passing by, the Authors mention some common features of culture, with regard to every people, such as its history, its worldview, its language and geographical location. Indeed, they do not estimate very relevant such general characterizations of culture because, in their view, what makes culture is not the abstract whole of certain common features but the concrete relations between individuals. Therefore they adopt the „interactional sociolinguistic perspective“ which allows to study culture in forms of discourse as „communication between or among individuals“ (125), like in the study-case given above.

          The Confucian culture-view, expressed in the so-called „Three Character Doctrine “, which was valid in China from the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) until the last century, for eight hundred years, seems no longer acceptable. They taught the people:

       Ren zhi chu, xing ben shan

Xing xiang jin, xi xiang yuan.

      „Man, as born by nature, is good,

people's innate characters are similar, but learning makes them different.“

This teaching, however, is contradicted by Western thinkers in our time, like Robert Sunley, who declares: „No child has ever been known since the earliest period of the world, destitute of an evil disposition – however sweet it appears“ (126).

          Hence, the Authors Scollon disregard the Confucian culture-view and set aside also the so-called high culture, represented in theatres, concerts, expositions, museum’s and the like of the large cities, in order to return to their favorite sociolinguistic perspective of culture as it presents itself, on lower level, in every day's communication among people, more precisely in its „discourse system“. They work out four forms of this system, namely 1. the ideology and 2. the socialization which affects the communication, 3. the forms of discourse and 4. the face system which includes the kinship, the concept of the self, the ingroup-outgroup relationships and what in German language is called Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft.

 

c) The anthropological foundation of culture

          As to the last point, with the concept of the self, which concerns the anthropological foundation, the Authors Scollon adopt the view of the psychological anthropologist Francis L.K. Hsu who considers the self under „the social aspect of the development of human behaviour“, not under the Western individualistic aspect (131-133). Hence Hsu offers a scheme of man whose interior kernel is pre-individual, like the Freudian unconscious and pre-conscious sphere, further the inexpressible and expressible conscious and the intimate social-cultural sphere, whereas the exterior world consists only of the material culture. On the contrary, according to the Western view on man his interior sphere would embrace the unconscious and conscious spheres as well, but exclude the social-cultural sphere which belongs, in this view, to the exterior relations of the individual.

 

2) Critical Comments to 1)

 

          So far my report of the analysis of the Authors Scollon. It presents us useful observations of the various manners of communication between different peoples, in our case between Americans and Chinese. In doing so, the analysis, due to its limitation to the sociolinguistic communication, is occupied rather with customs and conventions or with civilisation in the frame of discourse-communication, not with culture in the appropriate sense. However, the analysis, even if setting aside the features of the proper high culture, should at least refer to it as the foundation of the lower culture in every day's communications among people. In the analysis such reference is lacking. In the case-study the discourse-communication between Mr Richardson and Mr Chu concerns only forms of greeting and address when men encounter each other, with the feelings on both sides (positive in Richardson, negative in Chu), without the very humanly cultured side of such encounters.

 

          To a)

          In the case-study, we reader would expect that, besides the business-interests, which Mr Richardson and Mr Chu may surely pursue, they should feel also a joy in encountering a member of another culture. Such a human feeling would be a really cultural feature in both. Further, we would expect that both have the awareness of the differences of American and Chinese customs in greeting and addressing each other so that when the one fails in a formal rule of these customs, unintentionally, the other pardons this of course, instead of feeling himself uncomfortable what reveals rather a lack of culture. Therefore, we must not, as Scollon’s do, disqualify morally Richardson’s failure.

 

          To b)

          Regarding Scollon’s opinion that culture is realized not in abstracto between cultural groups or circles of peoples, for instance between the American and the Chinese culture in general, but only in concreto between the individuals of those cultural circles, it presupposes that all general determinations of a subject are a mere abstract construct, as useless for the concrete realization, because far from the concrete life of the people. However, I cannot consent to this presupposition which is due to a philosophical position, namely empiricism and pragmatism. It reduces reality, i.e. the things, to mere phenomena, corresponding to sense-related experiences, whereas no reality corresponds to abstract intellectual concepts – what is false. Indeed the concrete things are complex (concreta = „grown together“) consisting of a sensible, material cause and an intelligible formal cause. The universal concepts, abstracted from the concrete things, certainly are opposite to them, but nevertheless related to the formal intelligible cause in them.

          If we apply this to our case of culture we can say: Universal or common features of a cultural group or people are no mere abstractions without corresponding reality of the individuals of this people, but have their foundation in them, namely in the twofold human nature, embracing the physical and psychical principle as well as the spiritual principle. Empiricism reduces human nature to the physical one (i.e. body and instincts) alone, taking spirit or mind as a superstructure of psychic functions, relying on the only physical nature – what contradicts the evidence with which our mind is conscious of his own immaterial substantial being, as part of our human nature.

          For the rest, also Scollon’s the sociolinguistic studies unavoidably arrive at common „stereotyping“ statements, in spite of their intention to be „concrete“. And if their common characteristics are right, they refer surely to real features in the human spiritual nature, notwithstanding the adopted empiricism which (theoretically) does not allow any longer a reference to the spiritual nature of man.

          Also the disregard of the Confucian view of human nature as good results from empiricism which, by reduction of the human nature to the instinctive one, declares it as egoistic, from the beginning, already in the child. However, this is erroneous for two reasons:

1. Human nature is complex and embraces also spirit to which primarily the Confucian statement refers. The instinctive nature in itself is good, in animals as well as analogically in a human child; it is not egoistic when it demands the necessities for self-conservation. Yet in man the instinctive nature is not closed in itself but open in order to be guided by spirit, the higher life-principle in man. Hence spirit has the task to take over, step by step, the guidance of the instincts. And only when spirit is failing in this task then human instinct grows towards egoistic comportment, already in the childhood of man.

2. There is an important traditional distinction, in East and West, between the nature (or essence) of man, by which he exists as specific human being, and the activities exercised by several faculties which have to be educated by learning and lead to the variety of cultures. The Confucian doctrine: people’s nature is good, „but learning makes them different“. The variety of cultures in itself is not bad, even it can express the richness of human spirit. However there is good and bad education, according to good and bad intentions or theories, so that from false education and learning also bad behaviours of men can come forth. Hence, Robert Sunley’ criticism on the Confucian doctrine is not valid. The fact that the Authors Scollon follow him weakens their sociolinguistic studies on culture because it is lacking every reference to the human nature with spirit at the centre.

 

          To c)

          This becomes manifest in Scollon’s explanations of the human self, which they assume from Francis Hsu. As reported above, he conceives the human interior centre as pre-individual in the Freudian sense of the unconscious and pre-conscious sphere, further the inexpressible and expressible conscious sphere, including – in contrast with the Western conception – the intimate social-cultural sphere.

          My comment to this is the following: In Western tradition already the ancients distinguish between the „I“ (ἐγώ, ego) and the „self“ (αὐτός, ipse), ascribing the latter to the rational or intellectual sphere, not – as modern psychology does – to the sensual irrational sphere. Only when intellect is growing up in the activation of its faculties then the individual I is constituted step by step as the subject of all activities, those of the intellect and the feeling heart, in connection with the senses, as well as those of the intellect alone. But the unity in the diversity of all activities is gua-ranteed by the constant reference to the intellect as the substantial foundation of them.

          The self is another expression for the essence of man, defined as „rational animal“, which is common to all individuals of the species of man. Already Aristotle (Ethica Nicom. VIII) points out that in our communication among us the one is for the other „another self“ (ἕτερος αὐτός), defining the self in everyone primarily („mostly“) as the intellect (ἕκαστος νοῦς ἐστιν ἢ μάλιστα).

          Western individualism with an egoistic centralism, accused by Hsu, is a relatively modern phenomenon, connected (theoretically) with empiricism, whereas the classical Western tradition appreciates certainly the individual, but with a non-egoic intellectual self as centre. By this reason also the person, according to the classical definition of Boethius, is „an individual substance of rational nature“, valid even for a little child who does not still dispose on an „I“-speech. The basis is the definition of man as „rational animal“ and as „social animal“, as we read in Plato and Aristotle. The social aspect is founded in the intellectual or rational nature of man, according to his social faculty which is open to the exterior relation with others.

          I am astonished in how large extent the Chinese anthropologist is influenced by modern Western psychology together with its empiricism, so that he takes for granted a great deal of the modern Western concept of man’s interiority, with an unconscious irrational centre. However, according to the Western tradition, unknown for Hsu, the centre is spirit with its inexhaustible depth. On the contrary, one can find some similar spiritual selfconsciousness in Confucianism.

 

3) Popper’s concept of culture, received in China

 

          Passing to the other publication, entitled "Popper in China", composed of several contributions, I select that about the cultural world in Popper. Since this is based upon his theory of science, with which most part of the articles is occupied, I have to begin firstly with this theory.

 

a) Popper’s theory of science

          The main points of Popper’s theory are the following:

          1. There is no human knowledge without error. Therefore every knowledge which claims for truth has to be submitted to critical proof and possible falsification.

          2. Every science makes the claim for truth. Therefore it needs a philosophical method of verification and falsification, because as a matter of fact there are always errors. The proper progress of sciences would consist in constant falsification which leads to new discoveries, to new knowledge. This, in its turn, can be falsified which leads to new discoveries again, and so forth. The main model of this scientific research and progress are the natural sciences.

          3. The so-called induction which claims to arrive at absolute truth has to be rejected.

          4. Man’s cognitive capacity is weak and unable to arrive at absolute immutable truth. Therefore science is possible only in the described way, controlled by the philosophical method of constant falsification.

          5. Popper confesses that there is in human nature a resistance against taking away all certainty and absolute truth, but considers it as irrational which should be overcome by rational critical comportment.

 

b) Popper’s view of culture as scientific search for truth

          Popper’s view of culture is inserted in his theory of falsification. He distinguishes three degrees on which mankind proceeds in approaching truth, expressed in three worlds: the two lower worlds are built up by sense-perceptions and by more or less irrational feelings, the higher „third world“ arrives to the rational critical level of scientific knowledge which reveals the main feature of culture. Even if the lower levels are still present, in some way, nevertheless there exists, now, the cultural demand of scientific progress by falsification.

 

4) Comment on 3)

 

a) regarding Popper’s theory of falsification

          To 1. The theory that human knowledge is always erroneous is not new but appears as scepticism since ancient times and returns fully in the modern English empiricists, like David Hume, from whom Karl Popper in our days depends. It is partly present also in Descartes and Kant. The fact that there is error in human knowledge has been recognized also in the classical tradition, by Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, Plotinus, st. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and others. They have overcome scepticism by pointing to the empiricism on which it is founded and which reduces things to sensible phenomena. Under the empiricist condition intellect has no proper object but only the sensible object. It can only organize, unify and compare sensible data and take the criterion of true knowledge from sensible experience alone. Hence every tentative of an intellectual universal theory which goes beyond sensible experience the scepticist cuts short falsifying it with reference to always new experiences.

          Against this false theory the classics have worked out a very valid epistemology on realistic grounds according to which things do not present only sensible phenomena but also intelligible aspects, – beginning already with there simple act of being and being something determinate, referring to their essence. The sensible aspects are due to their material cause, the intelligible aspects to their formal cause (for instance in living beings: body and soul). The cognitive progress of intellect consists in passing from sensible perceptions, experiences and opinions, which offers only accidental, possibly erroneous knowledge, to intellectual knowledge of the intelligible, essential features of things, i.e. to the proper object of intellect itself.

          To 2. According to the Western classical epistemology, disregarded by Popper, the universal and necessary knowledge of intellect in the essential intelligible nature of things is called science (ἐπιστήμη, scientia). Popper’s theory of falsification is a self-mutilation of intellect which deprives itself of its proper object (constraining itself to be occupied only with the alien sensible object) and takes away the accom-plishment of its own intellectual scientific knowledge of things. It is self-contra-dictory when Popper calls his theory „scientific“. His empiricism hinders the passage from experience to science. Experience permits always a control of possible falsification, yet science never.

          Natural sciences testify their solid universally and necessarily true knowledge in the material laws by their application in technology with great success. However, it is not just to take natural sciences as the prototype of science. According to the traditional epistemology their object is only matter, which contains certainly some intelligible laws, but is in itself undetermined, in contrast with the formal cause in living beings which is the determinant principle. Hence, after the discovery of indeterminables in the subatomic field, the reaction of physicists was false who saw collapsing science as guarantee of certain unshakable truth. Instead of becoming shocked by these indeterminations in the matter one should be astonished, on the contrary, about the many laws being present in the matter, in spite of its indeterminable nature! Further we can learn from the traditional philosophy of nature that nature is more than only matter. Only in this case one could be unquiet about the discovered indeterminables in matter and see collapse nature, even reality in total. On the contrary, nature embraces also non-material formal causes with their determining laws (biological, psychic, spiritual) from which we gain primarily our comprehension of reality.

          To 3. According to the traditional epistemology, the passage from experience to science is induction, with the process of abstraction of universal abstract knowledge from concrete things. The empiricist criticism on this theory of abstraction misunderstands it as if the intellect would abstract universals from the sensible data – what is false. Rather the intellect abstracts – through the medium of sensible data – the universals from concrete things which contain intelligible features (as explained above). By this fact, according to the traditional theory of induction and abstraction, it is sufficient for reason or intellct to observe relatively few concrete cases in order to arrive at some abstract universal insight of essential features of things, whereas, according to empiricists, like Popper, reason, passing through thousands of concrete cases, arrives never to a definite universal insight, which excludes further falsification._[3]

          The traditional doctrine of induction distinguishes two kinds of knowledge: 1. a scientific one which is discursive, proceeding in demonstrations from premises to conclusions, and 2. a non demonstrable, intuitive first knowledge of principles, in the premises themselves. The discursive knowledge is ascribed to reason, the intuitive to intellect. Whereas the former knowledge concerns more the connections of data – subject and properties – in each science, the latter regards the apprehension of these first data themselves: being and essence of the subject and the properties themselves.

          The full form of induction is the definition of the essence of things. It is no bare intuitionism (of which the Kantians accuses it) because it researches in rational discourse the essential features of things, but engages also intellectual intuition which grasps the essential features in their unity. (Falsely Kant denies any intellectual intuition.)

           Popper disregards the traditional epistemology with the doctrine of induction and abstraction, by a certain consequence, because his empiricism hinders him to access this Western tradition. And Chinese philosophers who follow him are also hindered to access it.

          To 4. Popper’s affirmation of man’s cognitive incapacity of solid truth is a result of his own empiricism in which intellect mutilates its insights in essential features of things and their formal causes. Hence intellect denies its proper object, the formal causes of things and itself, the intellect, as formal cause of man, in spite the intellect’s self-consciousness in which it is present to itself as substantial reality. This is not taken into account by Popper’s unreasonable thesis.

          To 5. Popper’s hypothesis of an irrational resistance in man’s nature against the continuous falsification of every claim of permanent truth, is a false interpretation of the natural consciousness of certain evidences which we all have regarding being and being and some essentials of things and ourselves – evidences without which we could not live even a day. This natural consciousness is different from rational reflection, but is not irrational feeling. Rather it is a basic act of intellect, according to Western traditional epistemology (which characterizes this act as νοεῖν, intelligere)._[4]

 

b) regarding Popper’s view on culture

          My critical remarks on Popper’s theory of falsification concern equally his view on culture which is connected with this theory. Especially his empiricism, which hinders the self-presence of intellect or spirit (as mentioned above), is a decisive hindrance for the development of culture. Indeed culture is essentially the interior formation of human spirit, – what presupposes that spirit is present to itself substantially, as faculty of the soul. Empiricism denies soul as substantial reality.

          Further, culture as interior formation of all spiritual faculties concerns far more than only the development of the cognitive faculty towards science, but also the social faculty, the artistic faculty and so forth. Their development cannot be submitted to a process of falsification.

          Chinese Professors who follows Popper in his theory of falsification refute its application in the field of culture, criticizing him that he disregards the broader extension of culture beyond the cognitive scientific field. They would refute also the theory of falsification, if they had acquaintance with the Western tradition. Therefore I would like to conclude my paper with some characteristics of the Western concept of culture._[5]

 

5) Re-gaining the concept of culture of the Western tradition

 

          For a full understanding of the concept of culture we have to go back to the original meaning of the word cultura as cultivation of land, as agri cultura. From this exterior field it has been, then, transferred to the interior field of the soul, in the meaning of cultura animi, cultus litterarum  (Cicero)._[6]

          1. In this proper meaning culture has as subject spirit with its efforts of „cultivating“, so to speak, i.e. forming or educating all faculties of man, bodily, psychic, irrational instinctive emotional as well as rational ones, from a rude state to a refined, educated (in a certain sense) „spiritualised“ state. It covers all domains of human life: from sport until manners of eating, sleeping, working, until compassionate social feelings and behaviours, until literary and artistic activities, summed up under the category of humanities.

          2. The educated state has to be appropriated in such a way by good exercise and customs that it becomes like a „second nature“ of man, accomplishing difficult activities with quasi „natural“ ease.

          3. Having as subject spirit, culture needs a formation or instruction of spirit itself in order to fulfil its task of educating man. But this formation or instruction of spirit itself exceeds culture, being a condition of every culture. In other words, the spiritual activities, taken in themselves, are transcending culture, as can be seen for instance in the sciences, like mathematics, that are transcultural. This can be explained by the fact that spirit belongs to human nature or essence itself, which transcends culture. Indeed the members of all the different cultures, like the American or the Chinese one, are always, in the last end, human beings.

          4. Since moral and religion often are seen as cultural phenomena, I would like to underline that they transcend culture, even if in their historical concretisation they assume also certain cultural features. However, considered in general, all cultural activities have a creative impact, whereas moral and religion have not. Their final end is not creation but actualisation of a natural disposition, obligatory to man’s perfection in virtues. Religion is a high virtue accomplishing perfectly the relation of the soul with God Creator.

 

6) Final remark

          Regarding the Chinese Professors who appreciate so much in Popper that his theory of falsification and of the open society have given an antidote against dogmatism and feudalistic traditionalism, I wish to make the following final remark:

          The word „dogmatism“ originates from the vocabulary of scepticism which refutes every unchangeable, definitely true knowledge. However this scepticism is based on empiricism which is a very questionable theory. It claims, on its turn, definite truth (even if in form as a meta-theory of science) and has been confuted by strongest arguments in Western tradition (since ancient times), ignored unfortunately by modern representatives.

          In my opinion it would be worth-while for Chinese Professors to make ac-quaintance with the classical Western tradition, in its philosophical disciplines of epistemology, ontology-metaphysics, anthropology, ethics and politics. They could find there the same openness to possible errors in human knowledge, critical examination (already from ancient and medieval times: e.gr. Aristotelian elenctic, scholastic disputatio in utramque partem etc.), political theories of democratic freedom and so forth. In other words, they could find there what they praise in Popper, but by far more, thus avoiding his one-sided scepticism, empiricism and logical positivism. This latter hinders us to enter in an adequate philosophy of culture, as I mentioned above.