Here's the text again, without the extra line breaks:
lw.1.361 Were I to write (or rewrite) Experience and Nature today I
would entitle the book Culture and Nature and the treatment of specific
subject-matters would be correspondingly modified. I would abandon the
term "experience" because of my growing realization that the historical
obstacles which prevented understanding of my use of "experience" are,
for all practical purposes, insurmountable. I would substitute the term
"culture" because with its meanings as now firmly established it can
fully and freely carry my philosophy of experience.
lw.1.361 I am not convinced that the task I undertook was totally
misguided. I still believe that on theoretical, as distinct from
historical, grounds there is much to be said in favor of using
"experience" to designate the inclusive subject-matter which
characteristically "modern" (post-medieval) philosophy breaks
[Page lw.1.362] up into the dualisms of subject and object, mind and the
world, psychological and physical. If "experience" is to designate the
inclusive subject-matter it must designate both what is experienced and
the ways of experiencing it.
lw.1.362 There is, assuredly, nothing novel in holding that
philosophy is distinguished from other intellectual or cognitive
undertakings by the comparative comprehensiveness of its subject-matter;
nor is it innovative to maintain that a linguistic expression is needed
to name philosophy's singular distinction. But by an ironical twist of
events which I failed to comprehend, the theoretical grounds that can be
cited for using "experience" as the needed name are historically
identical with the obstacles that effectively stand in the way of the
name being understood in the senses I intended.
lw.1.362 The historical obstacles are now so conspicuous that I can
at times but wonder how they came to be overlooked. There was a period
in modern philosophy when the appeal to "experience" was a thoroughly
wholesome appeal to liberate philosophy from desiccated abstractions.
But I failed to appreciate the fact that subsequent developments inside
and outside of philosophy had corrupted and destroyed the wholesomeness
of the appeal--that "experience" had become effectively identified with
experiencing in the sense of the psychological, and the psychological
had become established as that which is intrinsically psychical, mental,
private. My insistence that "experience" also designates what is
experienced was a mere ideological thundering in the Index for it
ignored the ironical twist which made this use of "experience" strange
and incomprehensible.
lw.1.362 The name "culture" in its anthropological (not its Matthew
Arnold) sense designates the vast range of things experienced in an
indefinite variety of ways. It possesses as a name just that body of
substantial references which "experience" as a name has lost. It names
artifacts which rank as "material" and operations upon and with material
things. The facts named by "culture" also include the whole body of
beliefs, attitudes, dispositions which are scientific and "moral" and
which as a matter of cultural fact decide the specific uses to which the
"material" constituents of culture are put and which accordingly
deserve, philosophically speaking, the name "ideal" (even the name
"spiritual," if intelligibly used).
[Page lw.1.363]
lw.1.363 It is a prime philosophical consideration that "culture"
includes the material and the ideal in their reciprocal
interrelationships and (in marked contrast with the prevailing use of
"experience") "culture" designates, also in their reciprocal
interconnections, that immense diversity of human affairs, interests,
concerns, values which compartmentalists pigeonhole under "religion"
"morals" "aesthetics" "politics" "economics" etc., etc. Instead of
separating, isolating and insulating the many aspects of a common life,
"culture" holds them together in their human and humanistic unity--a
service which "experience" has ceased to render. What "experience" now
fails to do and "culture" can successfully do for philosophy is of
utmost importance if philosophy is to be comprehensive without becoming
stagnant.»3
lw.1.363 Culture "comprises inherited artifacts, goods, technical
processes, ideas, habits, values. Social organization cannot be really
understood except as a part of culture." Even this brief quotation
indicates the inclusive or comprehensive summarizing of the conditions
and aspects of human life designated by the word. Artifacts include
habitations, temples and their rituals, weapons, paraphernalia, tools,
implements, means of transportation, roads, clothing, decorations and
ornamentations, etc., etc. They, together with the technical processes
involved in their use, constitute the "material aspect of culture." But
then follows the significant statement: "The material equipment of
culture is not, however, a force in itself. Knowledge is necessary in
the production, management and use of artifacts . . . and is essentially
connected with mental and moral discipline, of which religion, laws and
ethical rules are the ultimate source. The handling and possession of
goods imply also the appreciation of their value." The kind of
cooperation involved in production of goods and the common modes of
enjoyment of the products "are always based on a definite type of social
organization." In short, "material culture requires a complement . . .
consisting of the body of intellectual knowledge, of the system of
moral, spiritual, and economic values, of social organization and of
language."
lw.1.363 The intimate connection of philosophical systems with
culture is further clarified by the fact that "the formation of sentiments
[Page lw.1.364] and thus of values is always based on the cultural
apparatus in a society," the sentiments and values defining man's
attitudes "toward the realities of his magical, religious or
metaphysical Weltanschauung." And while I cannot dwell upon its
implications here, I cannot refrain from quoting the statement that
"Culture is at the same time psychological and collective."»4
Tony Whitson
UD School of Education
NEWARK DE 19716
twhitson@udel.edu
_______________________________
"those who fail to reread
are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
-- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
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