VOLUME II, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 13, SECTION 2
Culture's Place in the Modern World, Weber, Boas, Huntington
The last section said culture is hard all the way to the institution layer, and that economy and politics and law all lean on it. And that raises a natural question. This view that culture is the root, is it only the private saying of the Chinese ancestors? This section brings in three of the modern West's great minds, and looks at how they arrived, by different roads, at the same place, to show that culture is the root is no private saying, but a thing agreed on across cultures.
First, Max Weber, the German sociologist of about a hundred years ago. His most famous book is The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. He asked a question. Why did modern capitalism first rise in the Protestant regions of Western Europe and North America? Pure economic factors, capital, technology, markets, cannot fully explain it. And Weber's answer was, because of the cultural ethic of Protestantism, and of Calvinism above all. The Protestants believed that to labor hard was to glorify God, that thrift and the avoidance of waste were virtues, that money was earned not to be enjoyed but to prove oneself one of God's elect. That set of cultural beliefs drove them to work as hard as they could, to save as hard as they could, to put it back into the work as hard as they could, and that, precisely, gave birth to capitalism. Weber proved one thing. Culture, a religious ethic, can shape an economy, capitalism. The economy is not purely economic. There is culture underneath, pushing. And that arrives, by another road, at the same place as the first section's the economy leans on culture.
Second, Franz Boas, the American anthropologist, called the father of American anthropology. His greatest contribution was cultural relativism. Before him, Western people mostly held their own culture to be the most advanced, and other cultures to be backward, or savage, and in need of being remade. Through a great body of fieldwork, Boas held that no culture stands higher or lower than another, that each culture is a coherent and reasonable system in its own right, grown by that people in its own particular setting. You cannot take the standard of your own culture and judge another by it. You can only enter into that culture from the inside and understand it. This view is the Western root of this volume's laying out positions and passing no verdict, and of its no culture is absolutely higher or lower, from the sixth chapter and the eleventh. Boas proved that a culture has to be understood from within, and cannot be judged by an outside ruler brought in from elsewhere. And that arrives, by another road, at the same place as this volume's steady stance.
Third, Samuel Huntington, the American political scientist. His famous book is The Clash of Civilizations. After the Cold War, many supposed that the conflicts to come would be of ideology or of economics. Huntington held that the deepest conflict of the world to come would be neither political nor economic, but civilizational, which is to say cultural. The fault line between different civilizations, he said, is drawn by cultural differences, of language, of religion, of values, of ways of life, and it runs deeper and is harder to cross than any political or economic border. Huntington's judgment is contested, and this volume passes no verdict on whether he is right, but only lays out his position. And yet the one thing he pointed to is of a piece with this volume. Culture is the layer that runs deeper than politics or economics. It is the deepest fault line, which is to say, the deepest root. And that arrives, by another road, at the same place as this volume's culture is the root.
Three of the modern West's great minds, coming from three different directions, economics, anthropology, international politics, and every one of them walked to the same place. Culture is the deepest, most fundamental layer. Weber, culture shapes the economy. Boas, culture is to be understood from within, and has no high or low. Huntington, culture is the deepest fault line. They are two thousand years and the whole width of East and West away from the Chinese ancestors, Confucius and Mencius and Xunzi and Mozi, and they arrive, by different roads, at the same place, culture is the root. What does that tell us? It tells us that culture is the root is not the private saying of the Chinese, not the ancestors talking only to themselves. It is an agreement that crosses cultures and crosses ages. On this one point, the deepest wisdom of East and of West runs together. And this is exactly what this set of books means to do. Not to say how good Chinese culture is, but to borrow the ruler of the Chinese ancestors to speak a truth that everyone can understand and everyone can use, about human beings, about culture, about how not to torment, about how to raise a person who stands.
So here is where this section leaves us. Three of the modern West's great minds, come by different roads to the same place, showing that culture is the root is an agreement across cultures. Weber, culture shapes the economy. Boas, culture is understood from within and has no high or low. Huntington, culture is the deepest fault line. Two thousand years and half a world from the ancestors, they arrive at the same culture is the root, which shows it is no private saying but a thing shared by humankind. That carries the thirteenth stake deeper. Culture is the root is an agreement that crosses East and West and crosses the ages, and not the private saying of one people. So, with the thirteen chapters come this far, it is time to gather the whole first semester into a single picture. The next section draws the picture of one tree, talks about living the hard bedrock, and crosses the bridge into the second semester. See you there.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
SECTION 3 The picture of one tree, living the hard bedrock, crossing into the second semester