ABSTRACT
It is only recently that culture has become a focus of study, and one might ask
why this should have happened. Is it perhaps due to the waning influence of
religion in the West and a growing distrust in metaphysics, which in the past
had either determined or explained human life? Religious beliefs situate the
human being in a world related to what is to come, making present reality into
a kind of testing ground for future rewards and punishments. Metaphysics
speculates on the nature of being, the specificity of human nature, and how it is
related to the existing world. However, culture as the latest target area in the
study of humankind trains our gaze on both the need and the capacity of
human beings to build their own world. In this sense, a study of culture becomes
a mirror of the human condition.