ABSTRACT

Why “cultures” in the plural rather than “culture”? Knowing, and asserting, that the notion of culture is broader and more comprehensive than that of cultural movement, it is clear that, of itself, a diachronic approach necessitates plurality. It remains to be seen if, within a single temporality, that is, in a synchronic order, there has not been cultural diversity. for example, between invaders and autochthones, between the city and the tribe, between plain-dwellers and mountain-dwellers, between regions, between the modern nations of the present. Such distortions have existed everywhere, except perhaps in Persia, India, and China, where a very ancient mastery in the order of civilization and state has been able to overcome historic breaches and mutations by reference to an ever-present past. Even Islam cannot do as much, by reason of the rapid destruction of its unified state, and of its universal dissemination as religion, culture and civilization.