D.A.M.

Janssen Date: 1 November, 2017

Professor Frank Chouraqui Student ID Number: 1976354

PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE
MID-TERM EXAM, 1st NOVEMBER, 2017, 16:00-20:00.
NB: This is a take-home exam. It is designed to take three hours to complete. You
are given four hours to complete and submit it online. As discussed in class, any
late submission, whatever the reason, will be disregarded. Any plagiarism of any
sort or size will fail the paper.

Please leave all the questions on the page

I-SHORT QUESTIONS: ANSWER EACH OF THESE QUESTIONS IN THE FORM

OF A 8-10-LINE PARAGRAPH.

1-Hobbes and Rousseau are committed to a paradoxical notion of nature,

explain why.

Hobbes and Rousseau are committed towards a paradoxical notion of nature

because both of them saw that nature is what gave birth to culture. Furthermore,
both thinkers also are committed because nature and culture has an ambiguous
relation. Both thinkers furthermore believed that sociability and society are
human constructs that is created through motivation and sacrifice. With regard
to Hobbes, he further believed that man is free to follow his will, but that he is
not free to will. Hobbes further explained how cultural development was
impossible before the creation of the social contract, due to the fact that the
condition of man is a condition of war against everyone in the “State of Nature”.
Furthermore, Rousseau explained how the formation of society through man’s
ability to reason has its origin in nature and how it was a creative act through the
creation of private property. Both thinkers further explained how human nature
itself is important for culture that culture itself counts as a part of nature. Hence,
both thinkers saw that there are mechanisms as well that leads man to come out
of nature, which is firstly that nature has natural development for culture to be
born. Separately though, for Hobbes, it comes from frustration as a lot of time
and energy is used to fight wars against one another. Culture thus served to
satisfy man’s glory as it provided leisure. For Rousseau, the mechanism is by
imagining our desires, which are infinite, as our own needs.

2-In his “Idea of a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan point of View,”

Kant is committed to a paradoxical notion of freedom, explain why.

Kant is committed because firstly of his position as a Bildungstheorist, that

culture is conceived from nature. However, Kant saw that a reconciliation of both
concepts would allow man to understand our place in the world. In
Bildungstheorie it is also seen how nature exists in a different temporality, whilst
culture exists in a linear state. Furthermore, Kant saw how ‘potentialities’ exist
within nature and how actualizing it is required from nature, as nature is
personified, according to Kant. Hence, Kant explained in his “Idea of a Universal
History from a Cosmopolitan point of View” the culture that humans created is a
means that nature uses to have its potentialities fulfilled. Because of this, Kant
saw how man’s job is to complete nature, and that it accelerates the process, as
nature is incomplete without culture and man, due to the fact that man are the
actualizing agents in the context of Bildungstheorie. Lastly, Kant was committed
because he believed that human culture is an instrument of nature. This is
because Kant saw and argued that man is free to create conscious decisions, but
that they are also guided, unconsciously, by nature’s determining plan, which
includes the pursuit of actualizing potentialities that lie within nature. Examples
of the potentialities that can be fulfilled include scientific discoveries and the
production of artworks.

3-Explain why Kuhn describes paradigms as power structures.

In Kuhn’s book, The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn argues that culture
is not just formed through nature. Instead, Kuhn claims that culture is a sphere of
meaning that are formed by paradigms; to live and thrive in a certain culture
means to live in a meaningful world. Furthermore, Kuhn saw how knowledge
and value itself have a circular relation between meaning making and value
setting in the formation of paradigms. Thus, knowledge and value are
interdependent. Kuhn also saw that different cultures in the world act same way
in creating meaning and in postulating value. The result of this is that culture, as
a whole, has no prior justification if they don’t derive it from anything that exists.
Paradigms, therefore, act as the world view of a particular culture, which
originates arbitrariness. How paradigms are power structures are due to many
reasons. First, paradigms try to make the world liveable by consolidating and
imposing worldviews that determines the style of behaviour of people that
follow the paradigm, including larges areas of their experiences. As a result,
paradigms enforce normalization as it affects our discourse on how truth derives
from our values and beliefs that contributes directly from the paradigm. Hence,
Kuhn lastly explained how when two different ideas collide it may lead to a so-
called “paradigm shift”, where one worldview replaces the other.

4-Explain why Simmel’s example of the pear tree constitutes an objection

to Bildungstheorie.

Simmel’s example of the pear tree constitutes an objection to Bildungstheorie

because it shows that we are free to decide and create meaning and culture
without being dependent on nature. As a result, this freedom allows the choices
of human in a world without fixed values to define culture. This aspect of
defining culture is motivated only by our preferences and leads contributes
towards arbitrariness, that there is no right or wrong way. Simmel’s example of
the pear tree is also an objection because we can see that culture is no longer
used for the sake of fulfilling the potentialities of nature but to fulfil the purpose
of humans. As a result, nature has become a ‘tool’ for man. Furthermore, human
agency in this context does not just produce actualities out of the potentialities in
nature but to create cultural objects, which Bildung theorists never theorized
about. Because of this, the result of Simmel’s objection towards Bildungstheorie
also saw how the values are created by human culture and that is also motivated
by human culture. Simmel further used the pear tree example because he saw
how the fulfilment of nature can’t be verified through a philosophical or scientific
method. The reason for this is because Simmel also saw how humans has the
culture can mean in the actualization of natural possibilities and in actualizing
natural potentialities against nature. Lastly, Simmel believed man himself has to
create his own purposes, which gives rise to subjectivity, because nature gives us
the materials to fulfil our needs but not the purpose for man.

5-Give three examples of the ways in which according to Mauss, our

physical behaviours are determined by forms of power. Name the form of
power at play in each example.

Mauss believed through many ways physical behaviours that allow us as humans
to be determined by power. Firstly, Mauss saw that culture is imprinted upon
humans as a habitus, which allows us to understand the relationship between
values, meaning and behaviour. Mauss’ claim in here is that human behaviour
and thinking is ‘normalized’ through the practice and implementation of power.
The first form of power which Mauss explained is social power (Mauss,
Techniques of the Body, 73). Mauss explained here how society determines,
through a collective level the behaviour of its citizen through the use of power
that is reinforced through discourses of efficiency that is dependent on
knowledge. Humans furthermore, don’t want to be outside their own society,
such as not conforming towards the fashion trends or cultural trends that exist in
society. Another form of power is through psychological power. An example of
psychological power is how we as human beings, individually, imitate other
people subconsciously and how our subconscious determines our behaviour and
personality. The last form of power is through anatomical power. An example of
this is that the physical behaviour and physique is what supports the human
where to live, as we cannot live underwater because our bodies do not support
us to live in water.

II-ESSAY: WRITE A 500-WORD ESSAY IN RESPONSE TO ONE OF THE

FOLLOWING QUESTIONS.

1-Discuss the relations between the success of a culture and the level of
happiness of its members.

2-Discuss the relations between power and knowledge in a culture.

3-“There is no difference between nature and culture,” do you agree?

4- “Living in a culture makes us freer,” do you agree?

4.

For this question, I do believe that living in a culture does make us freer, but not
absolutely free, as this is impossible. I will first give a definition of what it is to be
free. To be free, is that everything is permitted and that you can do whatever you
want, regardless of the consequences. The French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre
supported this notion of individual freedom by declaring how we as human
beings are “condemned to be free” (Buckingham, The Philosophy Book, p. 271)
that we are free to create our own purposes and choices. This, however, only
constitutes our freedom of existence in culture.

The ideas of Georg Simmel, on the other hand saw how man is free to create his
own purposes from his example that we can cut the pear tree so that it can
become a boat or that we can keep it to bear more fruit. This separates culture
from Bildungstheorie, in how nature now is used as “tool” to fulfil the purpose of
humans and that we are free to separate ourselves from nature. Simmel,
furthermore, declares that humans are free to create their own purposes as well
through the creation of cultural objects and to freely set values within our own
cultures.

However, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes has a viewpoint how freedom
is limited. In his Leviathan, Hobbes claimed how the state of man has changed
from nature to culture. Furthermore, Hobbes believed that we as humans are
beings with aspirations and glory and that it can be infinite. As a result, he claims
that “man is free to follow his will, but he is not free to will”. Thus, nature uses
culture as a tool.

Rousseau, on the other hand agreed with most of Hobbes’ claims, however
Rousseau saw that freedom is fixed. The reason for this is because Rousseau saw
how the existence of a civil society has replaced our natural freedom, where he
saw that humans lived freely in nature, where we don’t have to take advantage
over nature. As a result, the creation of a civil society through a creative act and
an institutional view saw humans seeking advantage over each other. Thus,
according to Rousseau there is a clash between man’s desire to seek advantage
and in seeking freedom within culture as a whole.

When we take a Kantian perspective, we can see that Immanuel Kant has a more
grim depiction between freedom and culture, where he includes nature. Hence
there is a complete objection to Sartre’s existential claim of freedom. This is
because Kant saw how humans in their respective cultures serve as the
instrument of nature in fulfilling the potentialities that lies within nature.
Because of it, Kant argued that man is a being that is free in making conscious
choices but that they are unconsciously following nature’s will and purpose.

To conclude, I do believe that living in a culture does have an extent of freedom,

but that free will does not exist. This is firstly supported from the statements of
Sartre and Simmel where man is free to create his own purpose. However, the
claims of Kant show how free will is contradictory, where he exclaimed how man
are conscious of their freedom but that they are bound to nature.