ABSTRACT
The term “culture” has been understood variously. It can refer to what we are and do as a matter of biological and sociological fact, but it can also refer to what we ought to do as a matter of conscious choice. The reduction of truth to fact is implicit to the assumption that our behavior is grounded in nature or nurture, biology or sociology, and to the problematic Modernist-postmodernist view of culture and science. When the human condition is mistakenly understood as grounded in naturalistic or social facts, in the facts of nature or of nurture, then culture as the exercising of responsible freedom makes no sense. When our lifestyles are a matter of coherent yet subjective choice, they are trivialized; when they are deemed a matter of authentic experiences, they are brutalized. Consequently, culture as the pursuit of objective Perfection or Truth as an act of love is misunderstood as an obstacle to human flourishing.
