Education, religion and culture

The abundance of theoretical approaches and historical interpretations related to the present subject has already been referred to several times in earlier chapters. However, the diversity of approaches should be even more strongly highlighted concerning the historical study of culture and the term itself, which is generally known to be one of the most difficult concepts to define. ¹ First and foremost, the notion of culture in everyday usage primarily includes what is often called high culture, such as the works and ideas of outstanding composers, great philosophers, writers, painters, architects or sculptors. This commonsensical notion of culture mainly reflects the humanistic definition emerging in the eighteenth century, mostly representing artistic dimensions, as well as carrying the connotation of being spiritual and free of purpose, that is, arts have not only educational or moral but also a transcendental value. In contemporary social science, the concept of culture is broader and incorporates everything that is transmitted by way of social but not biological processes in human society, such as norms of family behaviour, eating habits, clothing or national and religious symbols. The standard interpretation used in social sciences originates in the nineteenth-century anthropological meaning that encompasses the entirety of human activities. Edward Burnett Tylor is mostly recognized as the initiator of the anthropological definition, contending in 1871 that culture ‘is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society’. ² In this sense, culture is broadly equivalent to civilization, which corresponds more to French and Anglo-Saxon scholarly traditions of the nineteenth century, rather than to the classic German understanding. The latter holds Kultur to be the representation of human excellence and perfection, as often explicitly opposed to civilization, which incorporates the creations and habits of man as a natural being. Such dualistic contraposition surfaced in other understandings of culture as well. Karl Marx and his followers viewed culture as being determined, or, at least decisively conditioned, by the economic ‘superstructure’, thus essentially attributing the meaning of ideology to culture.