Philosophy of Society

Philosophy of Culture

Emergence and Subject

As its name implies, the subject of the philosophy of culture is culture itself. This discipline is relatively young, emerging as a result of shifting research interests in philosophy during the 18th and 19th centuries. The era of great geographical discoveries expanded the European worldview, revealing the existence of numerous other civilizations on the planet, each interpreting the world in its own unique way. Although European navigators reached the Americas and other parts of the world in the 16th century, the cultures that developed on these continents were not immediately studied by Europeans. Time was required to understand the alterity of these cultures and to develop an interest in them. The first to note the peculiarities of languages and the differences in worldviews of these cultures were missionaries. To preach to the peoples of the Americas, Africa, Australia, and Oceania, it was necessary to understand how they thought and spoke. In the 18th century, European scholars began to take a keen interest in the cultures of other continents, analyzing their languages, literatures, religions, customs, social structures, arts, and daily life, highlighting their distinctiveness and uniqueness. Numerous researchers examined all these aspects in an integrated manner. Consequently, they cannot be categorized merely as specialists focusing on language, literature, or social structures alone; their field of study required a comprehensive delineation. The concept encompassing the entire spectrum of their research was culture. They studied culture in its entirety, including language, literature, religion, art, customs, economy, and more within its framework.

Thus, every philosopher who explored and reflected upon any element of culture was a philosopher of culture, and every branch of philosophy simultaneously constitutes a philosophy of culture. Culture cannot be understood apart from the study of history, religious studies, art history, linguistics, economics, psychology, and so on. For example, Wilhelm von Humboldt, renowned as a distinguished linguist, was also a philosopher of culture whose research was crucial for the understanding of world cultures. Sigmund Freud, through his research in depth psychology, also made significant contributions to the development of the philosophy of culture. Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee, who described the cyclicality of history, also developed theories on the cyclicality of culture. There is no branch of philosophical knowledge that cannot be considered a philosophy of culture. However, there are philosophical schools that are difficult to associate with any single aspect of culture; they encompass all manifestations of culture simultaneously. It is therefore appropriate to consider them within the context of the philosophy of culture as a distinct field of philosophical inquiry. Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten that the full scope of the philosophy of culture extends beyond these areas and should encompass all realms of philosophy.