Culture and Self

In this post I intend to continue to sketch my view of selves and of culture.

First, a definition: selves are beings who act with respect to other selves qua selves. This is a tad circular, but has important consequences. Spelling these consequences out should clarify why it is difficult to write the definition so as to be completely non-circular. First, selves are agents, since they act. Second, they are able to act with respect to other agents, since they act with respect to selves and selves are agents. Third, some of the agents which they act with respect to can reciprocate, since they are selves, too.

Next, a definition of culture. Culture is the remains of the actions of selves which allows other selves to recognize selves. That is, culture is what happens when selves act in such a way that something is left behind whereby another self can act with respect to them. Culture is, then, the modification of the world by selves in a manner which is recognizable as such.

Selves, being agents which act with respect to other selves qua selves, are bound to inhabit a culture. On the view I am sketching, a self in a community picks up on the remains as actions of selves and appropriates them. Thus, a self absorbs elements of other selves into its own manner of being a self. It learns language and ways of gesturing, for example. A self is the modification of a self-receptive body by culture, or is always a self which has been informed by culture.

Culture is the remains of the actions of selves, and selves are beings which appropriate culture. There is a reciprocal relation between the two such that culture is carried on by selves who, in carrying it on, also change it by developing it in their own selves.

In order to express oneself in culture, a self must be able to modify the world. Likewise, in order to appropriate culture one must have, or at least presume, the capacity to copy it. Culture and selves are thus limited to the same kinds of stuff. If culture is totally physical, then selves must be able to modify the physical. If selves cannot modify the physical, then the culture of such selves cannot be physical. In other words, the cultural world of a self is the world which is shared by other selves. To recognize another as a self is to recognize that individual within culture.

In recognizing ourselves as like others, then, we recognize ourselves as beings who are visible in the shared world of culture. Unless one wants to claim that there is something else available to be recognized--and I suppose one might--this means that our bodies constitute our selves in culture. Likewise, material things constitute culture. Agents, selves, and culture are not material things, but they exist through material things. They (we) may be something along the lines of either events or properties. This is not to say that we do not exist, but rather that most of what we think of as existing are not material things in the way we usually think. That is, most things do not strictly supervene on their material parts. In particular, cultural things, and selves qua beings in culture, exist only with reference to a culture. This does not mean that we would cease to exist on a desert island, but that we would exist only by bringing along our culture with us. Our selfhood can only be recognized via the concepts which a culture provides.

Because we are constituted by culturally situated bodies, our bodies have an impact on how we appropriate culture. Our biology places boundaries on what we can do and imposes consequences which may differ from self to self. Culture is likewise constituted by a world situated among selves. The physical, biological, and environmental nature of the world places boundaries on the development of culture. It likewise imposes consequences on us depending on how we develop it into culture.

In both cases, the consequences imposed by nature, whether our own biology or physical nature, impose norms on how we should act by excluding some actions from the set of those which will permit the flourishing.of selves and culture. Thus, a further value to autonomy is that it allows for the variation in human beings to be properly accounted for. In this way, autonomy is good precisely because our bodies impact how we should seek the good life.

What counts as flourishing in each case is attaining the goals of the kind of thing in question. Thus, a flourishing self will be a self which attains the end of selfhood. A flourishing culture will be a culture will be one which attains the end of culture. We must ask, then, what the particular end of each is.

Because selves are beings which act with respect to other selves, to be a self is to act in a manner which takes into account the nature of other selves as selves. This means that it requires recognizing other selves as like oneself in being selves, and thus as like oneself in being agents whose actions are performed as actions with a cultural meaning and motivated, in part, on account of how other selves are. A culture is the remains and support of such actions, and thus for it to flourish is for it to express correctly the selfhood of all selves and support the mutual recognition of selves. As materially constituted, however, the end of each self is particular to itself and involves the good of the body. Likewise, the end of culture involves the maintenance of the basis of culture. Sustainability is a good of both culture and selves. The sustainability of culture is the ability of the culture to continue as a culture, which includes the ability of the environment to provide the material basis for culture practices, including housing and food. The sustainability of a self is most obviously the ability of a self to survive, but also to avoid burnout and maintain a resilient concern for others.