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so:text
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What then is culture? Every culture is a culture of life, in the dual sense whereby life is both the subject and the object of this culture. It is an action that life exerts on itself and through which it transforms itself insofar as life is both transforming and transformed. "Culture" means nothing other than that. "Culture" refers to the self-transformation of life, the movement by which it continually changes itself in order to arrive at higher forms of realization and completeness, in order to grow. But if life is this incessant movement of self-transformation and self-fulfillment, it is culture itself. Or at least it carries it as something inscribed in it and sought by it. What life are we speaking about here? What is this force that is continually maintained and grows? It is not in any way the life that forms the theme of biology and the object of science. It is not the molecules and particles that the scientist tries to reach through microscopes and whose natures are developed through multiple procedures in order to construct laboriously a concept of them that is more adequate but still subject to revision. (en) |
