ABSTRACT
A brief consideration of the history of the concept of “culture” in the last century allows us to place this term in three rather different, when not contradictory, contexts of discourse. As a term that originated in the French Enlightenment and the discourse of the German Romantics, “culture,” Kultur, was used at the turn of the nineteenth century primarily in contrast to Zivilisation, “civilization.” Kultur represents those values, shared systems of meaning, signification, and symbolization of a people, usually considered as a homogeneous unity. Kultur refers to forms of expression through which the “spirit” of a specific people, as distinct and distinguishable from all others, is voiced. For the individual, the acquisition of Kultur signifies the immersion and shaping of the soul through education in the values of a spiritual collective. This classical German understanding views culture as a process of intellectual-spiritual formation, of Bildung.
