HUMAN BEINGS : CREATORS AND CREATIONS OF CULTURE

Transcription

1 CHAPTER-I HUMAN BEINGS : CREATORS AND CREATIONS OF CULTURE Any endeavour to understand culture has a necessary reference to being human as culture is embedded in unique features of human existence. The necessity is reinforced by the fact that relation of humans to the world is also mediated through culture. Humans have an ambiguous and unique relationship with natural world as they not only are part of nature, rather through creative interaction have humanized the world also. In an important manner of saying they have created a world of their own, which simultaneously is and is not part of the natural world as it contains entities which are not mere natural objects but embody cultural meanings and significances also. Cultural objects are manifestations of various dimensions at the same time. As natural objects they are part of the natural casual nexus, but more than that they express some purpose for which they are created and comprise significances which are meaningful in more ways than one. It is the purpose, meaning and significance that transforms a natural object into a cultural object. The nature of cultural objects as embodiments of multifarious aspects ranging from natural to non-natural 9

2 ones reflect the distinctive feature of human existence whereby they are part of the natural world much like other living organisms, but transcend their being as creatures of nature in certain very important respects. On the one hand they are creatures among other organisms, having specific needs and derives. At this level they are not much different from other organisms. On the other hand there is a crucial respect in which they differ from other animals. Philosophical manner to describe this difference is to say that they are capable of reflection and are aware of their needs, derives, desires etc. and evaluate themselves in terms of some larger vision of what their lives are creating. This facilitates them to transcend their being as mere creatures and organisms. The distinctive feature of being human is that humans care about kinds of being that they are. Humans are unique beings in so far as they form second order desires about their desires, and aspire to go beyond the immediacy of biological life. We may say that in humans, creature and creator are united. As creatures of nature they have biological and physical needs and as creators they intervene creatively in the processes of nature in order to make their surroundings change in accordance with their needs. The changed 10

3 surroundings give rise to new requirements as well as higher cravings and deeper seekings which are profoundly different from mere biological or physical needs. It is to such interventions that processes of human self-creation can be traced and it is in such dialectics that origins of culture lie. Such interventions and interactions imparted new meanings to the natural objects, events and processes. These meanings were not part of the natural world out there, and they informed the surrounding reality with new sense and significance, thereby facilitating the creation of cultural objects. This initial and primitive cultural world provided them with appropriate space to humanize further. This space not only provided them with opportunities to act in order to create cultural objects, it also offered favourable circumstances to reflect on these constituted objects in order to evaluate them. This evaluation enhanced their freedom to choose and constitute meanings and significances that inform cultural objects, thereby making values a constituent of the human realm. This not only facilitated the expansion of horizons of human consciousness and self-consciousness, but also helped pushing the boundaries of cultural realm from the world of cultural objects to the subtler domains of 11

4 cultural symbols and values. In a manner of speaking self-aware humans are creations of primitive culture who were able to develop higher forms of culture. In this way human self-creation and genesis of culture may be seen as mutually facilitating processes of the same dialectics. These dialectical interactions transformed the activities of humans from mere reactions of creatures of nature to, not only the actions of creators of meaning, but also to the composers of values, thereby constituting the cultural realm as we understand it today. For delineating the dialectics between human creations and creation of humans, certain concepts from the history of ideas provide very important and significant insights. Kroeber s concept of culture as super organic; Husserl s concept of Lebenswelt; Heidegger s concepts of Desein as Being-in-the-world and world as equipment; Wittgensteinian concepts of forms of life and natural history of mankind provide insights towards developing a philosophical framework for understanding the nature of culture and its origins. Delineation of these concepts helps understanding humans as creators and creations of culture. 12

5 Cultural realm as super-organic In studies aimed at comprehending the cultural realm, word super-organic may or may not be mentioned, but more often than not, the thought behind this concept forms backdrop of the studies by informing their basic concepts and methodological tools. Therefore it would be pertinent to note and elaborate this important feature of the cultural realm. The term super-organic was first used by Lippert and was developed further by Herbert Spencer. But it was elaborated in detail by Kroeber who tried to work out important implications of the concept for the study of culture. 1 According to him understanding culture as belonging to super-organic realm means that it transcends organic world and cannot be reduced to organic processes of the nature. But at the same time he also points out that understanding culture as being super-organic does not mean that it is independent of the influences of organic and/or inorganic reality. It only means that it has necessary linkages with organic reality, but these connections are not sufficient to explain cultural realm as it goes beyond them, and is much more than mere organic or inorganic events and processes. 13

6 According to this conception of reality phenomena can be demarcated as belonging to three levels : (a) inorganic, (b) organic, and (c) super-organic. The inorganic realm is considered to be the lowest level that includes material and cosmological phenomena. With emergence of life, a new (i.e. organic) dimension has been added to the reality. Though organic realm has its roots in the inorganic domain and is based on this level, but it cannot be treated as identical with it as various phenomena of life differentiate it from mere inorganic domain. Thereafter during the processes of organic evolution, hominae species emerged and in homo-sapiens the brain developed significantly. The body also underwent important changes including the ability to stand erect, specific formation of hands, focused vision, ability to speak, etc. Emergence and development of complex cultures was enabled by these abilities. All these abilities have organic basis, but culture that developed on these organic foundations is much more than mere organic phenomena. It is in this sense that Kroeber described culture as super-organic. He sought to stress the point that just as organic phenomena belonged to a higher category as compared to inorganic phenomena, similarly super-organic 14

7 phenomena belong to a higher category as compared to organic phenomena. He used the category of super-organic to stress that cultural phenomena are radically different from the biological abilities belonging to organic realm. The conception of culture as super-organic realm is reinforced by the fact that unlike organic traits it is not of hereditary nature and cannot be transferred genetically to next generations. Isolate a few eggs of ants from other eggs and give them favourable conditions to hatch. The offsprings from these eggs will not lack anything in comparison to other ants and will exhibit all the traits associated with ants as these traits being organic are transferred genetically through the generations. Similarly, Kroeber suggests, keep a few new born children apart from the cultural community and place them in isolation. Provide them all the physical comforts and material things, but cut off all types of human interaction with them. They will grow physically but will not acquire the traits of higher cultures in which they were born. It means that humans are born in culture but not with culture. Mere heredity cannot make these children possess cultural traits as culture -rather than being organic- is super-organic. 15

8 The above hypothetical experiment suggested by Kroeber also underscores another important point : that though creators and carriers of culture are human beings but in real-life situations culture can only be acquired through the processes of culturalisation and socialisation, meaning thereby that individuals are creations of culture. This categorization of culture as super-organic provides insights for accepting the multiplicity and heterogeneity of phenomena and encourages us to look at them as they actually are. It also enables us to recognize that there are different and distinct levels of phenomena each having its distinct nature. An effort should be made to study them by appreciating their distinctness and grasping their nature without reducing them to one another, but recognizing the necessary linkages at the same time. It also has important and significant implications for the language used to comprehend the reality that is peculiarly human. Human realm and phenomena peculiar to human reality such as consciousness, self-awareness, reflection and related phenomena of cultural objects, symbols and constructs, though have necessary linkages with physical and biological realms, but they cannot be reduced to organic or inorganic 16

9 reality. Nor can they be understood in categories appropriate for lower realms as these concepts fail to capture the richness of phenomena that are peculiarly human and cultural. Such an approach shows us a path of avoiding the two extremes : on the one hand it saves us from mere speculative approach that denies any necessary linkages between human and material realms; and on the other it protects us against reducing phenomena peculiarly human to material phenomena to be studied by the methodology of natural sciences. If former has been the orthodoxy of times prior to renaissance, the latter has been a dominent trend -under the influence of positivism- in the post-renaissance period. Cultural realm as Lebenswelt The critique of positivism from phenomenological perspective assumes significance for the present study as positivism sought to reduce all significant issues, including the discourse about culture, to the domain to be studied by methods of natural sciences whereas phenomenology endeavoured to restore the primacy of human experience. Husserl s concept of Lebenswelt represents a turning point in unveiling the relation between natural sciences and cultural 17

10 domains informed by sense and significance constituted by meaning giving acts of human consciousness. The movement of thought that he is credited to have initiated endeavours to undo the negative effects of positivistic prejudices on cultural and human realms. He launched a radical critique of post-renaissance philosophy as over-influenced by the findings of natural sciences. In his philosophy the relation between natural sciences and human experience underwent a very important and significant inversion. Whereas naturalism sought to reify and reduce experience to a subject-matter to be studied by methods of natural sciences, Husserl calls for grounding natural sciences in human life-world of experience. Though elaborate description and evaluation of this attempt is besides the scope of present study, but it would be pertinent to note that the insights generated by it penetrated almost all the disciplines related to human realm. Such insights are of immense significance to the study of cultural and human phenomena as they seek to restore the primacy of human experience which is central to such studies. Husserl insists that all truths, including the truths of cultural as well as natural sciences, are required to be 18

11 grounded anew in the living acts of human consciousness. This grounding of truth in experience requires a method capable of describing the manners in which human consciousness originally constitutes meanings through acts of perception, imagination and signification. This method has been termed as phenomenological as it sought to come back to the origins of knowledge by examining how the world first appears to human consciousness. The meaning of the world, he insists, can only be re-understood as phenomena of consciousness. Phenomenology purports to be descriptive and presuppositionless. The goal of being descriptive involves describing phenomena in an unbiased manner as they originally appear to the consciousness. The aim of presuppositionlessness involves scrutinizing theories for their presuppositions in order to undo the bewitchment of thought being done by them. It was proposed as a radical beginning in the sense that it offered post-renaissance modern consciousness a means of returning to the roots of philosophical questioning. It stressed the need to begin philosophy all over again so as to relearn to see world as it really is in our original lived-experience. In this way it 19

12 endeavours to make explicit the manner in which world appears to us in our primordial pre-theoretical experience. Rather than pre-judging the ways of knowing the world in a biased manner, phenomenology purports to eliminate all prejudices by suspending all judgment loaded answerers to the fundamental issues and to question our taken-for-granted standpoints. The most dominant of such standpoints is the natural standpoint that tends to view everything as nature. It even seeks to naturalise human consciousness by treating it as just another thing among natural things. Just like other things it is analysed into entities only difference being that these entities are taken to be mental ones. These entities are treated as peculiar natural objects causaly related to one another, and as bound to certain things called bodies. Cartesianism and introspectionism are instances of such approaches. Realism and materialism also seek to reduce consciousness and person to an object referred to as subject. The natural world is characterized by its externality - being out there as a given fact in space and time. And experience is taken to be an external relation between two entities that exist separately. The subject records the facts about objects 20

13 in a passive manner -resembling the process of photographs being taken by the camera. Under the influence of naturalism, cultural disciplines are treated at par with natural sciences because the natural standpoint assumes the givenness of world as totality of objects of possible experience lying out there complete with the meaning. In other words meaning, sense and significance are also reified to the status of natural entities to be found out there- that are passively received by the object called subject. Husserl considers the conception of experience as something that passively transpires between two ontologically independent entities leaving both of them unchanged and unaffected to be a result of theoretical bias that needs to be cured. Once we reject naturalism and suspend our belief in natural standpoint, we recapture the lived-experience that goes beyond sciences and all types of theorizing -to the world as it appears to an unbiased consciousness. Phenomenology s main purpose is to remind us that primordial meaning of objective world is infact its mode of engaging human consciousness. By the same stroke it also reminds us that the meaning of our subjective consciousness 21

14 is the mode in which it opens up towards the world. The natural standpoint reduces the world to an isolated object and consciousness to a disembodied object called subject. Thus, human subjectivity is alienated from its creative interactions in life-world. In this way it ceases to participate in its own creation through the creation of meanings and significances. Instead, it becomes mere thing among other things a material thing according to materialism and an ideal thing according to idealism. Husserl endeavoured to show how two poles of objectivity and subjectivity -which were sought to be demarcated as opposite poles under the influence of positivism and naturalism are infact ontologically and internally associated through a primordial relation. The experiencing subject and the experienced object are not only united in lived-experience, rather they both get transformed through the experiencing act of consciousness. It is realised that consciousness is not object or a thing, and the fundamental difference between consciousness and natural objects is recaptured as consciousness is considered to be always intentional. Husserl took the concept of intentionality of consciousness as directedness of consciousness from his 22

15 teacher Brenteno and developed it further. He stresses that by intentionality he understands the peculiarity of experience to be consciousness of something. 2 It would be pertinent to note here that this something, as noted earlier is not a natural object lying out there that is reflected unchanged in the mirror of consciousness. Rather it is an intentional object that gets constituted through the act of consciousness in the sense that it is the act of consciousness that imparts meaning to it. This constituted object of consciousness is referred to as noema and the meaning giving act of consciousness is termed noesis. The act of experience is not mere mirroring, rather it is lived-experience that not only constitutes the object as noema but transforms the subject also as ego or I is also created through such acts. The world so constituted is not mere natural or physical world rather it is Life-world or Lebenswelt. Lebenswelt is unveiled as a world for consciousness, since its meaning is constituted not only in and through consciousness but also for it. Similarly the consciousness is also disclosed as consciousness of something i.e., the consciousness of the world. Thus, human mind is unveiled as an intentional activity that moves towards reality beyond 23

16 itself. In this way shortcomings of traditional extremes of idealism and materialism are overcome. It resists the contentions of idealism to move beyond subject-object dualism by confining meaning to consciousness alone, and also rejects the efforts of materialism to resolve subject-object dualism by subordinating consciousness to pre-established realities of the external world. Both these extremes fail to capture the intentional relation between consciousness and the world, which establishes that meaning is neither in the mind only, nor in the world alone, but in the intentional relation between the two. It can be seen that Husserl overcame subject-object dichotomy by pointing out that noema is the objective pole and noesis the subjective pole that are internally and ontologically related to one another in the lived-experience. Meaning, sense and significance are constituted through the intentional acts, and the world does not remain natural world any more and is unveiled as the Life-world or the Lebenswelt which includes signification and sense also. So, the cultural objects, symbols and constructs are not mere natural objects existing out there, rather they are constituted by human consciousness. Human subject is also created through the 24

17 same stroke of meaning giving act and the cultural realm gets constituted as Lebenswelt or Life-world. Being-in-the-world and world as equipment It has been seen that delineation of essential structure of meaning throws important and significant light on the nature and constitution of cultural realm. Previous section emphasises the need to go beyond subject-object dualism in order to understand the structure of meaning. Heideggerian notion of human being as being-in-the-world takes the point to logical conclusion as it insists that even in theory human being cannot be distinguished from its existence in the world. Heidegger s conception of Dasein (the word he uses for human being, which literally means being there) resists the traditional distinction between subject and object as Dasein and world are considered to be constituting a single phenomena. He insists that the compound expression being-in-the-world indicates in the very way that we have coined it, that it stands for unitary phenomena. 3 It implies that human being and the world are not merely juxtaposed to one another, rather self and the world are basic determinants of Dasein itself in the unity of structure of the being-in-theworld. It is not mere spectating consciousness which is basis 25

18 of human being s originary relation to the world. The originary relation of Dasein to world is an internal relation of profound intimacy. It is in the light of this intimacy that other beings which are there in the world are encountered. It is in the shade of this light that they reveal themselves when they come in contact with human beings. Human existence in the world is not primarily a disinterested and decontextualised theoretical gaze, rather it is a being that is profoundly and intimately engagement with other beings and entities encountered in the world. This intimate engagement has been termed as concern by Heidegger. It is the kind of concern which manipulates things and put them to use. Heidegger argued that human beings original encounter with the world is not of cognitive nature in which they confront entities as things. Rather they primarily use entities and their relationship to the world is originally practical in nature in which entities confronted are revealed as tools or equipment. It is not the case that humans are first acquainted with things and then find uses for them, rather they use entities prior to recongising them as things. According to him thinghood is a derivative concept which is derived from the concept of equipment. 26

19 The primacy of encountering entities as equipment is emphasised and they are considered to be ready-to-hand. In their practical concerns humans do not notice the thinghood of entities. They come to notice them as things when something goes astrey in their practical dealings. The entities seen as things are termed as present-at-hand by Heidegger. It does not mean that equipments and things are two kinds of entities present in the world. Rather same entity appears differently in different contexts. The hammer with which the carpenter is hammering is ready-to-hand equipment that he needs for his practical concern. At that stage the characteristics that the hummer has as a thing are not of interest to him and hence they are not noticed. But those characteristics become noticeable, and the hammer-tool is revealed as a hammer-thing when equipment or tool character becomes disturbed some how. The tool character and the thing character become understood through different kinds of knowing. To use Gilbert Ryle s expression, one is knowing how and the other is knowing that. 4 The first is related to encountering an entity as equipment and the second as a thing. A thing has properties whereas an equipment has use(s). A thing has 27

20 causal relationships and a location in space; and equipment on the other hand is employed in a project and occurs in a total tool-context. To the being of any equipment there always belongs a web of equipments and the context. It is in the arrangement of various equipments and the correlated context that an individual equipment shows itself. This embededdness of equipment in totality of the human context can also be understood through the notion of empirical a priori put forward by Prof. Daya Krishna. 5 Dayaji points out that a piece of pottery found at some historical site indicates a whole array of activities of which it formed an integral part. It presupposes a number of things like the art of the potter; whether it was shaped on the wheel or was made independently of it; that it produced something in which people stored things of necessity; the things to be stored had to be of such a nature that they could be stored in it; etc. The design of the pottery would be an indication of the artistic sensibility of both the maker and for whom it was made. The design would also indicate how things were perceived by person who made the pottery as well as by those who were using them. In case the same type of pottery was found in different places, it would indicate a demand for it 28

21 and also trade in it. Trade implies that there must have been a different set of people who must have had means of transporting the pots, that too in a way that they do not get broken in the transit, so on and so forth. These presuppositions imply the notion of empirical a priori, obtained in the realm of human culture. Making, Interpreting and Evaluating The entities confronting human beings appear as things or tools depending upon the context in which they are revealed. There is a dynamic relation between ready-to-hand tools and present-at-hand things. Dialectics of this relationship gets revealed in delineation of the concept of manufacturing. Human beings in their creative interaction with the entities in the world sometimes find that ready-to-hand equipment is not fulfilling their purpose completely and decide to make a new tool. Realisation of such a pursuit requires that entities are seen as present-at-hand things and appropriate modifications are made in order to make them ready-to-hand. For example, in a tribe a person may find that his arrow is not up to the mark and lacks something. He may decide to make a new and appropriate arrow. The arrow that he so conceives is 29

22 neither present-at-hand nor ready-to-hand -rather he will look around for something that can appropriately be converted and made into an equipment or tool. So, tool or equipment is not always already present and an act of making is required to make something from present-at-hand to ready-to-hand tool. It is these acts of making that assume unparalleled significance among human activities as origins of culture lie primarily in such acts. An analysis of concept of making also reveals an act of interpretation since act of seeing as is involved in the apprehension and realization of conceived tool or equipment -rather we may broaden it to say in the making of any cultural object. The act of making reveals a dual constitutional make up : the first one of these i.e. interpreting (or seeing as) belongs to the realm of meaning, sense and significance; whereas the second element represents an application of the former on the manufacturing activity being performed on the object. In such acts both making and interpreting appear as features that are dialectically related to one another since both call and demand one another. In human realm the meeting interface between making and interpreting is 30

23 represented and revealed in manufacturing of the cultural objects. In a manner of speaking it can be said that cultural object is charged with interpretation and interpreting is associated with making. In such acts thought and practical aspects are intertwined in the same act. The pragmatic need informs interpretation, which in turn informs and guides making of the cultural object. Thus making and interpreting have an intrinsic connection and they integrate each other. The dialectics goes further and once created the cultural object does not remain a slave of the interpretation that went into its making because sense and significance are not fixed for all times to come as the meaning of entity is not itself an entity in the world. The cultural object once created is open to various interpretations. No doubt it is informed by meaning and is seen as meaningful, but the meaning may change in the course of time. In this way a newer interpretation may lead to a change of application of the cultural object, and a tool produced for one purpose may be adopted for another. In this manner human beings venture into contra-factual realm. They go beyond the factuality of the object and see it as contra-object with novel properties, uses and meanings. 31

24 Evaluation is an integral part of this contra-factual venture. Cultural objects are not only seen as of use on some other occasion, but are also evaluated as good or bad in accordance with whether they are able to perform that function well or not. The cultural object simultaneously reveals various aspects ranging from factual to interpretative and evaluational. Thus making in human realm involves, and is informed by interpretation and evaluation. Forms of Life and Natural history of humankind The fact that cultural objects reveal various dimensions and cannot be understood completely in terms of any one of the dimensions that they exhibit is rooted in and is dialectically related to the fact that human beings also display various dimensions and cannot be understood in terms of primacy of any one or more dimensions that are reveled in human existence. There are crisscross interrelations, similarities and relations among these dimensions but they cannot be reduced to one another. Similar is the case with the phenomena that are peculiar to human existence -they too cannot be reduced to one another or to any one of them. Let us approach these phenomena through the process of confronting a cultural 32

25 object. There are cases in which while looking at a cultural object, the object does not change but we start seeing it differentially. We may start seeing a sculpture from mere statue to an idol of God. In certain circumstances we may start seeing it as a mass of gold or ivory. These are the cases where a different aspect of the sculpture dawns on us. Wittgenstein -whose insights provide significant guidelines to approach phenomena that are peculiarly human- points out that flashing of an aspect on us seems half visual experience and half thought. 6 It is seeing as and an act of interpretation is involved in the act we see things as we interpret them. It is related to several phenomena of human life, but can neither be reduced to any of them nor to any natural process, event or phenomenon. Similar is the case with hoping, wishing and intending. They are related to one anther, but are neither reducible to one another nor to any other phenomenon. They are embedded in human life, in all of the situations and reactions that constitute human life. 7 They are so much a part and parcel of human form of life that it is difficult to tell how a human being has to behave so that we could say he never hopes. It is almost impossible to answer this question. 33

26 Wittgenstein insists that the word hope refers to a phenomenon of human life and is peculiar to it just like A smiling mouth smiles on a human face. 8 In emphasising complex character of distinctive human phenomena and experiences, he contrasts humans from animals and asks : One can imagine an animal angry, frightened, unhappy, happy, startled, But hopeful? And why not? 9 The answer to this question lies in the fact that hoping is a manifestation of complicated form of life, involving complex propositional attitude towards future. It seems that only a creature who has mastered the use of language can hope. Similar is the case with intending and wishing they too involve envisaging a future state of affairs, which is based on the use of language. Thus, the phenomena of seeing as, dawning of an aspect, hoping, wishing, intending, and interrelated phenomenon of language use are such phenomena that are not present in lower animals and cannot be reduced to any phenomenon outside of human form of life. They belong to the natural history of humankind and are as much a part of our natural history as walking, eating, drinking, playing, 10 etc. They are modes of this complicated form of life. Clarifying 34

27 the concept of form of life, Wittgenstein says, What has to be accepted the given is so one could say forms of life. 11 What belongs to natural history of humankind and forms of life, cannot be explained any further and therefore it needs no justification. He, therefore, observes that, If I have exhausted the justification, I have reached the bed rock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say : this is simply what I do. 12 He rightly points out that our mistake is to look for an explanation where we ought to look at what happens as proto-phenomena. 13 The question is not of explaining, But of noting 14 them. They explain and justify other human activities. These phenomena do not occur as single isolated phenomenon, rather they are located in a dense network of related phenomena that are peculiarly human and form a sort of web. They acquire all the significance that they have as a participant in that web. All these phenomena belong to the natural history of humankind and are modes of this complicated form of life. It is in these features of human existence that origins of culture lie. Origins of Culture Culture is not an entity or a thing that came into being through some invention of early hamars. It is rather difficult 35

28 to venture into the domain of when, where and how of the genesis of culture. But one thing is certain that culture has its roots in the common features of human condition, consciousness and species. Origins of culture lie in the complex constellation of such features. Most of these features mutually call one another. Any one of them by itself cannot play much role in the genesis of culture. Some of these features may sometimes seem to be present in elementary forms in lower animals, but in the absence of other complimentary features, fail to help create culture or build civilization. Marx points out the fundamental difference between humans and animals by insisting that the animal is immediately one with its life activity. It does not distinguish itself from it. It is its life activity, whereas "man makes his life activity itself the object of his will and of his consciousness". 15 Humans are capable of reflection means that they do not merge with their life activity and have a capacity to reflect from a distance on what they are doing. They not only are aware of their activities, rather they are aware of their awareness also. The self-reflexive character of human awareness means that for them their life activity is an object of deliberation also. 36

29 Their ability to deliberate on what they are doing makes their actions fall in a realm different from the deterministic domain of natural causation. Their activities -unlike the events taking place in nature- are not caused. Rather they intervene in the processes of nature with a view to bring about certain changes. They not only intervene, rather they are aware of their capacity to intervene also. The self-reflexive character of human awareness sets their activities apart from mere happenings and events. Their activities are goal oriented activities and are informed by purposes and intentions. The differentia of human activities from mere movements is the goal, purpose or intention of the person. The description of human activities cannot be considered complete by merely citing what happens, rather they have a necessary reference to what humans try to bring about. In envisaging a future state of affairs language plays a crucial role; it is through language that human beings try to make sense of their surroundings and formulate their purposes and goals. So in case of human activities language is used not only by the onlookers trying to explain or describe actions -as is the case with natural events rather it is a pre-requisite 37

30 for the agents to engage in activities themselves. Thus human activities are ontologically related to language as human actions are informed by the language. The fact that humans are language users means their activities are guided by rules as language is a rule-constituted and guided phenomenon. Human beings constitute and follow rules. But rule following is a social phenomenon, and heir in lies the roots of shared context of norms, conventions, customs, social symbols, values and institutions. The context of shared practices forms the basis for the communication and understanding in human realm. Human beings have reflexive awareness of their actions enabling them to be capable of innovations and violations. They are capable of revising, modifying, changing and discarding rules and practices. They make choices and take decisions about their purposes, goals, aims, projects, etc. and also about rules, norms, values and conventions that form the backdrop of their activities. This ability to choose between different alternatives gets echoed in peculiarly human phenomena such as conflicts, responsibility, anguish, dread, etc. These phenomena and other phenomena of human form of life such as hoping, wishing, intending etc. 38

31 give rise to, and in turn are shaped by new capacities, dispositions, emotions, propensities, etc. All these are distinct phenomena, but are interrelated through crisscross relationships where sometimes they expect, presuppose and facilitate one another, and at others they conflict and even contradict each other. This complex whole of related but dissonant phenomena cannot be understood in terms of a single master phenomenon. These phenomena do not remain isolated but inform all aspects of human life. It is in the complex constellation of such phenomena -rather proto-phenomena belonging to natural history of humankind, which are modes of our complicated form of life that origins of culture lie. Being human as a creation of culture Culture is embedded in common features of human existence and species. But it must be noted that the relationship is dialectical as humans belong to a species not only in a natural way but also in a culturally mediated manner. Therefore whereas human beings are creators of culture, at the same time being human is also a creation of culture. As noted, human activities are distinguished by their linguistic and symbolic character. They are viewed as 39

32 meaningful and intentional both by the agents as well as the observers. It is this feature which requires that any adequate account of human activities must take note of meanings, goals, purposes and intentions of the persons. But as Wittgenstein points out An intention is embedded in its situation, in human customs and institutions. 16 Human beings form their intentions within the framework of customs, norms, conventions, traditions, etc. as they are involved in various projects within the framework of complex social institutions and practices. An account of goals, purposes, motives, intentions, beliefs, values, attitudes, preferences, self-images, etc. illuminates the specificities that are unique to each individual. The individual acquires this uniqueness as a participant in a culture. An individual s self-understanding is formed within a set of social relations and it is in interaction with others in a cultural context that one learns language and other dimensions of social life. It is in such interactions that one comes to value one realm or some dimension of life more than the others. Thus humans create themselves as persons through their personal choices made in a shared cultural context. This shared cultural context itself is rooted in previous human choices embedded in common features of human existence. 40

33 Thus, it can be said that human beings are both creators and creations of culture and human history has been a process of human self-creation dialectically related to the creation of culture and building of civilization. 41

34 REFERENCES 1. Kroeber, A.L. (1952) The Nature of Culture, Chicago : University of Chicago Press. 2. Husserl, E. (1960) Cartesian Meditations trans. Dorian Cairns, The Hague : Martinus Nijhoff, p Heidegger, M. (1978) Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, New York: Harper and Row, p Ryle, G. (1986) The Concept of Mind, Harmondsworth : Penguin, p Daya Krishna (1997) Prolegomena To Any Future Historiography of Cultures and Civilizations, New Delhi : Project of History of Science, Philosophy and Culture, pp Wittgenstein, L. (2001) Philosophical Investigations, Oxford : Basil Blackwell, p (1980), Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. II, Oxford : Basil Blackwell, sec (2001), op. cit., sec ibid., p ibid., sec., ibid., sec., ibid., sec.,

35 13. ibid., sec., ibid., sec., Marx, K. (1977) Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Moscow : Progress Publishers, pp Wittgenstein, L. (2001) op. cit., sec