The relationship between culture and value is understood in a realistic way in the classical philosophy of being. Although the problems of value appeared mainly in the philosophy of subject, particularly in Kant and in the Baden neo-Kantian school, they are connected with everyday facts and are expressed in natural and especially prescientific language. Natural language serves as a perfect tool of analysis in classical philosophy of being. As is shown by Aristotle's Organon and by the constructive commentaries from the golden age of medieval scholasticism, prescientific language, when subjected to methodological precision, becomes a philosophical language. In common with other real sciences, philosophy is based on prescientific language, and is made philosophical by means of various definatory operations.
THE TERMS `CULTURE' AND `VALUE'
The terms `culture' and `value', before becoming virtually technical expressions of contemporary post-Kantian trends in philosophy, had been used in the classical philosophy of ancient and medieval times. An understanding of these terms was based on daily human experiences which determined a primary and derivative conception of culture and value. Thus the term `culture' derives from the Latin and originally meant cultivation of soil: `agri-cultura'. Other derivatives arose, such as `anima cultura', `tempora cultiora' and `cultus litterarum'. Furthermore, these expressions took on religious and cult meanings: `cultura Christi' or `cultura christianae religionis'.(43) Simultaneously, other terms were used in a sense close to the contemporary understanding of the world "culture." These were the ancient Greek terms: paideia and kolokagatia,(44) and the Christian terms: agape, perfectio, sanctitas, virtus, and others,(45) all pointing to the state of human behaviour perfected through acts. In modern times(46) since Puffendorf, `culture' has denoted a social condition of man opposed to that of `nature', seen as, wild and uncouth. Herder understood cultured man as living in a society which contributes to his development and who is the object of intellectual analyses, especially those connected with Kant's philosophy. The world of culture and its historical diversity, is a manifestation of the spirit and of various national and social attitudes. It reveals simultaneously the tension between the Kantian solle-sein, which supposedly occurs in the consciousness of nations. This tension concerns not only things, but primarily styles of life and forms of collective behaviour--in short, a people's whole way life.(47) Its other manifestations are styles in art. Thus understood, art in the post-Kantian sense would have its ultimate ontological source in a yet unpolluted nature.
Without an understanding of nature itself at first hand, culture as a world of values built upon nature would have been absolutely incomprehensible. Only nature allows man to introduce some new principle of organization of the originally given nature. Thus, in an understanding of culture nature would be the absolute postulate, the primary reality on which the construction of culture could be erected. The field between nature and culture would be similar to that between two poles related as challenge and response, culture being the human response to the imprecisely defined challenge which is reality.(48) The only difficulty encountered is how this reality should be understood.
The understanding of a `value' has also had its own history in which its primary intuitive definitions were connected with the use of everyday language and first philosophical formulations. The term `value' was used interchangeably with the term `goodness'. Goodness is the highest value in Plato's vision of reality; above being and all ideas it is the Self-comprehensible reality through which all is comprehensible. Goodness is the source of any reality, since it is the one and the absolute identity. Plotinus observed that goodness is diffusivum sui, for it goes beyond itself and permeates everything that is.
The greatest dynamic value of goodness was acknowledged by Aristotle in his theory of intentional cause. This states that as the cause of all other causes goodness is the chief principle of cosmic dynamism and motion. Even the Aristotelian god binds cosmic movement by love to himself. Being self-thinking thought, in relation to the world and especially to first heavenly bodies, he is the good and value, the liberating "love which puts the sun and stars in motion."(49) St. Thomas has a similar conception of value, although his understanding of being is somewhat different. On the basis of the composition of being from act as existence and potentiality as essence, he associated any dynamism with the act or self-actualization of existence in the various orders of reality available to man.
Pursuing the line of thought of the classical philosophers with special attention to St. Thomas Aquinas, we will define in the light of a description of being and cognition, the concepts of culture, value, and their relationship one to the other.
BEING AND NATURE
Being is primary in relation to the acts of human cognition and to all psychic acts. It is understood as something which actually exists, and which becomes the real object of specific human cognition, wants, decisions and psychic activity. It exists actually as concrete, self-determined contents, and consists intrinsically of potential factors which are its constitutive concrete contents, and of actual factors which are commensurable existence. Being is subject to a continual process of change, self-perfection and decay. Man, being himself a complex composition, is also immersed in a pluralistic world of concrete beings. There he is subjected to processes of change, namely of self-perfection and of decay. Thus actually existing reality, as a world of concrete analogous real beings in the process of continual change, is a manifestation of the dynamism of being. The set of various, unlimited and inconceivable possibilities of being is at the heart of being really existing in itself. It is this actually existing being, and not a set of possibilities, which designates the state of its various possibilities, and determines the direction of the change, dynamism and self-realization of being. In the words of Francis Sylvestris of Ferrara, possibility is beneath actual existence; really existing being is the justification of the various possibilities and dynamisms of being.
The actualization of possibility in the real world is manifested through the simultaneous interaction of both non-living and living beings. The development and dynamism of the world of living beings is especially important for man. In ancient times this was called nature or physis, for man is particularly struck by the rise, birth and development of beings. Therefore, the world of nature as it emerged in natural birth and was subject to change by the interaction of the other beings was the subject of works by many ancient philosophers. The topics Per Physeos were treated as synonymous with the philosophical problems of the ancient world. Nature or physis became the subject of a concept of nature, which greatly affected science as the starting point for philosophical analysis and justification. Nature itself was understood as a constant set of unvarying factors inevitably constituting a concrete essence, and generating concepts characterized by generality, necessity and constancy. The world of nature is an already existing environment given to and for man; its partner, bound to it by a relationship of necessity, is also man. Man belongs to the real world of nature as to a set bound by various relationships of analogous, concrete, really existing beings.
KNOWLEDGE
Dialectic of Knowledge and Love
The really existing world of analogous beings, which includes man as a creation of nature, is the object of man's intellectual cognition, wants and acts of creation and decision-making. Various kinds of acts of cognition, love, creativity, and decision connect us with the really existing world. These acts do not produce a subject, but presuppose its existence, for being is really, if only selectively and in certain aspects, available for acts of cognition and desire. This means that our acts of cognition can begin on aspects interesting to ourselves and assimilate them in existential propositions in the form of cognitively affirmed conjunctions. These assimilate the existence or factuality of the world and intentional contents in proposition and evaluation. The one intellectually perceived being is at the same time the existing good which attracts our desire and serves as a real motivation and goal for human endeavor. Therefore, through acts of cognition and love, that is, through intellectual desire man is linked with analogously existing beings to such a degree that his internal intellectual, moral, and artistic development is nothing more than a creative interiorization through selective cognition and love of the world of real beings.
There is a sort of circular movement from really existing beings through acts of cognition to the psycho-cognitive soul. In gathering and systematizing these intentional contents, man enriches himself spiritually. Then through his acts of love man somehow "comes out from himself" to the world of real beings as the concretely existing good and goal of human endeavor. The internal growth of man and his enrichment is brought about only through a given being, through reality-nature. This is internalized in acts of personal intellect and will which selectively and in certain aspects, through various acts and human endeavors bring about the molding of the existing reality.
Three Types of Knowledge
Our basic contact with the world of analogously existing being is through human cognition structured by the processes of sensual and intellectual cognition in such specific acts as: seeing, hearing, visualizing, memorizing, conceptualizing, evaluating and reasoning. The contents of every act of cognition comes exclusively from the world of analogously existing beings. It is important, however, to pay attention to the triple character of intellectual cognition as the basis for further personal acts of human endeavor, for according to Aristotle one must distinguish informative, practical and poietic cognition.
1. Informative or theoretical cognition makes contact with reality and assimilates selected aspects of the content of being. Depending on the character and state of this cognition, both its prescientific and scientific phases in a more or less methodical manner internalize the contents of being. The basic criterion of informative theoretical cognition is truth understood in the classical sense as the co-ordination with reality of man's cognitive and evaluatory acts insofar as he can state that something is as it exists. In informative cognition, it is important to pay attention to concepts which are an intentional, sign-bearing presentation of the contents of the really existing thing. One may objectivize the concept through acts of reflection which sometimes allow one to know exactly the aspects grasped of the structure of the being, to perceive its component parts, and then to deal with them separately and abstractly. In this way, informative theoretical cognition may be used in other types of cognition, namely, the poietic and the practical.
2. Practical cognition is particularly connected with human endeavor, for man both for himself and the surrounding world is the source of autonomous endeavor. By causal or practical reason he can set himself in motion and change both himself and his surrounding world through more or less sensible endeavors. As autonomous these human endeavors calls for guidance and self-determination by the proper act of cognition called a practical proposition: "do it now and in such-and-such a way." This type of cognition is not at all an abstract cognitive process. Rather, its content is concrete; here cognition is connected with endeavor. Since man is an open being, free to act in a human way, he requires self-determination to act through the choice of a practical proposition. Through these he wills to act and to make himself the source and causative reason of this endeavor. This choice of a practical proposition is connected with a vision of concrete beings as real and realized completely. These constitute the goal and the good which enable man to rejoice and to love, because they provoke a practical decision which determines the endeavor which produces joy and love. Thus, the criterion of this concrete type of cognition which in classical philosophy is called phronetic is the good. It can never be abstract or general, but is a concrete and really existing being. In relation to such good, there are proportional acts of phronetic cognition. These manifest themselves in the continual process of pronouncing practical propositions. From these, in turn, and through the will we chose some propositions, not always the best and most noble. Through them we can determine our notions and constitute ourselves as a free causative reason which would change existing being, called nature. Certainly, any self-determination is at the same time a human act of decision-making on which depends a moral act which is either positive or negative in moral content. Because practical cognition is so intrinsically connected with morality it is called moral cognition.
3. Finally, the third type of intellectual cognition is poietic. This is creative in relation to previously assimilated intentional content absorbed by informative cognition. In this creative cognition the previous selectively grasped real content is transformed. In the act of creative cognition, one breaks down the complex of intentional content which was given in the act of informative cognition. From the broken elements of the content previously grasped one constructs new sets of contents according to the criterion which we have accepted for this creation. The creative transformation of broken content in poietic cognition was traditionally called a process of art (ars) controlled by a previously constructed intellectual model-idea.
The most interesting moment of a poietic cognitive process is undoubtedly the choice of the criterion of construction and the creation of the new intentional contents to be realized by acts. In ancient and medieval times this criterion was called beauty, though people were aware of the radical analogy of this term. In modern times the concept of beauty was divided into various categories now related to various kinds of art.
It must be emphasized that intentional creativity itself is totally based on the contents of real being, which are previously grasped in a cognitive manner. The transformation of these contents may sometimes be so great and far-reaching that the primary derivation of the intentional contents from the grasped reality is sometimes lost. Moreover, constructed intentional contents in the process of creative cognition never constitute reality, but can be embodied in real concrete matter or spirit, namely, the human psyche. The intentional produce attains permanent existence through its base and through the matter in which it is embodied. Its being is the existence of the matter in which intentional being has been expressed.
CULTURE
Considering both real and concrete existing being, as well as psychic acts, we see the relationship with being of both cognitive and volitional or decision-making acts. Really existing being as found in the world by man is called nature. The basic human contacts with nature are our cognitive acts as the starting point for further acts based on the knowledge of contacts with nature. Man has no personal human contacts with the world of nature apart from acts of cognition. This contact is not limited to structured cognitive acts, but all personal contacts are performed against some cognitive background because all kinds of practice are impregnated with cognition-consciousness.
Thus, a specific intellectualization of nature occurs through cognitive contact. This is an assimilation of content into a process of cognition; it is also the guidance of oneself in one's own behaviour through consciously realized models and ideas constructed by oneself.(50) This intellectualization of nature is the entire object of any human endeavor as a given reality. This reality is both man himself as the object of his efforts to perfect his personal spirituality, and the world of beings surrounding man: both the living and the non-living environments.
In short, the reality in which man is submerged both constitutes the object of human endeavor guided by intellectual cognition and is subjected to changes due to this conscious endeavor. Thus understood, the world of nature as the object of human activities based on cognition becomes a world of culture in its metaphysical sense. The intellectualization of nature on a scale possible for man is culture in its fundamental meaning. Culture is characterized by the informative, practical and poietic cognition of man; it is, however, most visible in the acts of poietic cognition described above.
Culture is not limited to intellectual cultivation. The intellectual cognitive processes are inevitable and fundamentally constitute elements of culture, but they are also assigned to such other psychic acts as desire and creativity. Nonetheless, desire, love, decision, or creativity are not always present in all products of culture, whereas the intellectual elements must always occur in the products of culture. This is true whether this product is a conscious modification of man himself as intellectual, moral, artistic, or physical culture; or in nature as the non-human beings which surround man in a network of bridges, towns, roads, transportation and tools. All these bear the marks of human intellectual cultivation and may be treated as the intellectualization to a greater or lesser degree of existing nature.
Naturally, the metaphysical conception of culture does not exclude such other supplementary conceptions as the sociological, psychological, or religious. These conceptions and theories of culture presuppose, however, some basic, fundamental understanding without which the very phenomenon of culture would eventually be incomprehensible. Otherwise it would treat important and significant manifestations of culture without taking into account the decisive factor "due to" (Dia Ti) which is in fact culture and assumes different forms. This much was said by post-Kantian thinkers.
Ernest Cassirer, however, exaggerates when he says that man lives only in the world of symbols, and thus of culture, and that man's access to the world of nature is impossible because, instead of dealing with things or beings, he is constantly dealing with himself as a producer of symbols. According to Cassirer, culture as a universum of symbols is like a fine net covering man. Even primitive societies are covered over by a net of culture woven with myths, symbols, etc. Symbols, however, are signs and belong to the category of signs constructed by man. By its nature a sign is a mediator because every sign and symbol is a specific cluster of subject-object relationships because it represents object content to a cognizing subject. Moreover, every sign is derived from and made by man, and presupposes basic cognition that is direct and without signs. Thus, culture is a continual transformation of nature by man. Because this human transformation is based on a cognitively affirmed junction, culture is basically the intellectualization of nature on the scale available to man as a person acting freely in the world of nature.
VALUE
Nature as a cosmos of analogous beings is a mosaic of qualities inseparably connected with being as manifestations of its constitutive elements. Aristotle defined quality as the perfection of substantial and dispositional forms. Quantity organizes matter, sorting out its components and arranging them interchangeably outside itself. As a result being is extensive and legible to the intellect according to measure. On the other hand, being is perfected as regards its form, especially substantial form, through quality. This perfecting of being as regards its organizing or, in Aristotle's sense, formal factors concerns, above all, structural moments insofar as they to some extent actualize being by assigning it to endeavor which is perfect according to nature's measure. That is why real qualities which perfect being by assigning to it more efficient and perfect endeavors can be only concrete actualizations. As concrete actualizations assigning being to natural endeavor they make being in itself worthy of desire. Qualities perfecting being strengthen its goodness, which is the object of the love and admiration of the organizing person.
The qualitative character of being has a universal, transcendental scope of which the manifestations are such transcendentals as truth, goodness, beauty. At the same time, it has also a limited scope in respect to the categories. For instance the qualities of a good horse are contained within the limits of the set of horse; the qualities of good steel are limited by the nature of steel, and so on. Both transcendentally and categorically qualitivized being is the cognitive object of our psychic acts as well as of those of desire. Psychological intentions meet with really existing beings which are more or less perfect. It is this being with its qualities and really existing in various forms of nature and culture as the object of our intentional cognitive and volitive acts that assumes the name of a value.
The content and goal of these acts become a proposition. Our intentional cognitive and volitive acts are impregnated with the content of real being which appears in the form of the being of nature or the being of culture. Thus, a world of values is not only obligatory in such domains of culture as logic, esthetics, mysticism, erotica, and philosophy of religion, as Rikert noted. To these correspond the following values: truth, beauty, non-personal sainthood, morality, happiness, and personal sainthood. Value is undoubtedly a correlate of culture occurring in specific human endeavor, but it is, moreover, a correlate of specific human personal endeavor in relation to analogously understood being. For ontological reasons a realm of values is broader than that of human culture for being as the object of our intentional cognitive and volitive acts is value. This can be either a real being of nature or a real being of culture.
It is probably true also that in the understanding of culture and values the specifically human endeavor is an interchangeable and determining correlate, provided that this endeavor by basing itself on cognition is objectivized by analogously existing being.