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culture is, and what are its different functions.

The cultural functions of man can be described in a general way as the creative encounter of the self with itself and with its world. I repeat this:

CULTURE ^aIS THE CREATIVE ENCOUNTER^b OF THE SELF

WITH ITSELF AND WITH ITS WORLD.

It is the greatness, the dignity, and the danger and distortion of human existence that man can encounter himself and that, because he can, he has a WORLD which he also can encounter.

"Encounter^c" is a very useful word--I would like to introduce it, more than it has been used, into the philosophical and theological language, because most life processes are processes of encounter. We are used [to hearing], much too much (and I will discuss the reason for this later), that there is a world opposite to us, at which we are looking, which remains as it is up to the moment in which we recognize it or change it. But this is not a true description of man’s relation to his world. The true description is that we are in a continuous process of encounters, of meeting reality, of impressing ourselves upon it and of being impressed by it ourselves. We can describe this situation also as mutual partici- pation^d of the subject of the encounter with the object of the encounter. When we encounter an intensive culture, we then participate in it, in its power-of-being^e, its intensity, perhaps its beauty^f, perhaps its exciting character. And it participates in us, it becomes a part--that is what "participate" means: it takes a part of us into its possession, even if it is a very small part of the glimpse of the eye. In this sense, all life has the character of participation through encounter. In this participation through encounter, both sides are always changed. I am not the same which I was before I came into this room. Now I am here, you look at me, you "participate" in me, and I "participate" in you by what I say. This mutual participation changes you and changes me. This mutual change is going on in every moment of our life processes. This is the "encounter" which makes life life. Therefore I believe that it would be very [much] more precise if we describe the subject-object relationship between ourselves and our world, not so much in terms of looking at it from outside and controlling it from outside, but that we describe it as an encounter of a mutual participation. This is more precise and should be used much more than it is usually done.