civilization
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Retrospect: the Nature of Culture
Our Philosophical Happy Hour (26 August 2026) inquired into the nature of culture. Here is a brief retrospective survey of our discussion. The word “culture” remains laden with confused significations. Sorting out its meaning, organizing the uses of it, and identifying the proper phenomenon it names proves no easy task. Yet even a relatively short…
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On the Nature of Culture
The title might seem like a paradox. Are not “nature” and “culture” radically distinct, even opposed to each other? To answer this we must ask: what do we mean by “nature” and what do we mean by “culture”? Our Philosophical Happy Hour takes up these questions. I have often said, with only a part of…
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[2022 Summer] An Introduction to the Philosophy of Culture
As the world grew into and through modernity, and technology shrank the distances between centers of civilization, the very nature of culture itself became an explicit philosophical question: most especially when technology produced in the wider reaches of communication something akin to a “global consciousness”: an awareness of people and their cultures all across the…