Religion and Culture. I.
First Lecture: The Meaning of Religion and
Culture.
[Thanks for the invitation to be a Re??? Lec-
turer at Sancta Barbara, the university of which is a typical
embodiment of the early American spirit, the spirit of a
new beginning, free from the curses of the European past and
??? for the new which gives history its character [But since
even in this country the old has become a power that has es-
tablished itself and has produced new, particularly American
curses, it is good to have a totally new beginning even
here in the new – no longer quite so new world.])
2. Perhaps it is also a new approach which I intend
I. The 2 concepts of religion
1.] The larger concept: Derived by abstraction (heart, soul, mind, strength) from the Great Commandment
and the unconditional seriousness of the religious experience.
Terms expressing it: Being unconditionally concerned about
the meaning of existence; or taking something uncondi abso-
lutely seriously; or being grasped by an infinite interest;
and passion; or experiencing the selftranscendence of life
towards an ultimately sublime or holy.
2.] The universality of this concept: It is an extrapula-
tion from innumerable concrete experiences of ultimate
concern in every religion, culture and personality. The
impossibility of not – having an ultimate concern, even
in the relativist and the dogmatic materialistic or the
antidogmatic cynicist: It can be a person, a movement, an
idea, a funtion (like science or art). Its ultimacy makes it religious.
3] The narrower concept of religion: A movement
or organism a social group with symbols of imagination and
action ritual performance and ethical action expressing intentionally a particular direction of the ultimate concern
(churches, sects, monastic groups, ecstatic movements)
4] Characteristics of these religions is this sense: 1. A group
with uniting symbols which can be identical with other social
groups, families, tribes, nations, or independ cultural units,
or independent within or trespassing such groups. – 2. The
symbols are intended to express the relation of the group
and its members to the embodiment of ultimate concern
in thought, artistic expression and sacramental or verbal partici-
pation personal communication, ??? on the basis of preach sacred words and sacramental
presence. - 3. The ethical action in creating personalities and com-
munities with the direction and the Spiritual power of the
concrete symbols of ultimacy.
5] In this way a holy sphere is being created and
the distinction between the sacred and the secular establi-
shed. The sacred is everything related or belonging direct-
ly to the concrete embodiment of ultimate concern. While secular
(or profane) is everything in its finite interrelation. This
produces the holy objects, times, places, acts, persons,
things, books, language, laws. And in all of them the
holy itself, the source of all holiness is present meant. Therefore
they are "tabu", not easily approached, dangerous, in
need of mediation by priests, demanding sacrifices, pro-
mising and threatening.
6] All this is not dependent on the question of the existence
or ron-existence of a particular being, called God (or gods)
There are religions as original Buddhism where there is no
existing God. and so in the highest formulas of all
mysticism. There are others in which the person-to-person-relation is decisive. A philosophy of religion must start either by
the experience of ultimate concern (the larger concept) or by the
experience of the holy (the smaller concept). But not by a
so called natural theology with arguments for a highest
being.
II. The relation of the two concepts of religion
The second is the a concrete but not exhausting application of the first.
This implies 1] That religion in the sense of the ultimate concern is not bound to the
innerreligious sphere, that it can appear and should appear in
every moment of life, in what is called secular life. The
large concept of religion is the consecration of the secular.
2] It further implies that there is no atheism possible, al-
though the rejection of a special direction in
which the ultimate is embodied, e.g. the theistic one, is certainly
possible. (God above God)
3] While opening up the secular realm the larger con-
cept is the judging principle of all religions. It is the
question of the right embodiment of the ultimate con-
cern, the question of the criterion of what is truely ulti-
mate and worth of infinite passion and interest. Only if
it is truly unconditional and not a finite raised to infinity, idolatry.
4] This criticism within the circle of the religious in
the narrower sense or religious ??? has been called prophe-
tic or Protestant. But this is only the one line, the other
is the mystical elevation over all finite embodiments. The
third is the and the elevation to the immediate union
with the holy or ultimately sublime itself. – This criticism
of the religious principle against every concrete religion is
the key to the dynamics of the history of religion. And it
is also the key to the relation of religion and culture)
III. The meaning of culture and the relation of
the two concepts of religion to it.
1. Morality as the presupposition of both, of culture
and of religion. The meaning of morality is the act in
which we constitute ourselves as a person in a person-to-person-
encounter. In it we are aware of the unconditional de-
mand from the other person to be aknowledged as a person
and not to be treated as a thing; and the same vice versa.
Morality is not submission to laws, human or divine,
But it is the actualisation of our basic potentiality, to
be a person within a community of persons. All human
laws tables of moral laws (10 commandments) are expressing
of this selfactualisation as a person. It has unconditional cha-
racter. Not the particular content! But the moral im-
perative itself. For it represents our true being and there-
fore what we ought to be
2. But Here we discover the first contact with religion,
not with culture, but that which makes both, culture and
religion, possible: the moral imperative. If we take it
unconditionally seriously we are in the dimension of ulti-
mate concern. We are ultimately concerned about our be-
coming what we essentially are. The question is not: Reli-
gious commandments as the basis of the moral act. But the
religious quality of morals is their unconditional character.
And now the the question of the content arises and with it
we are in the realm of culture.
3. Culture is the whole of man's selfgenerating
activities (creative (with a question in arts)). Morality is selfintegration
of life in man; religion selftranscendence of life in man
These functions go down into all life. But this is not our
present concern, but the generating or creative activity of man.
Culture can be mean the act of generating and the result,
the cultural goods or value bearing objects. –
Here I start with the cultural functions of the human
mind (or spirit).
4. The duality of the receiving and reacting re-
lation to reality: In Culture the attitude of theoria,
intuition which includes the cognitive and the aesthetic
transformation of reality in concepts and images, and the
reacting function which establishes appears in the personal and the
social creativity (including social relations, law and politics)
And there is something underlying all of them, the consti-
tutive unity, alliance of language and technical action. The first
word and the first tool belong together in Biblical myth (naming the
animals and cultivating the garden). They make man ???:
"Homo loguens" and "Homo faber". But the first is parti-
cularly related to the first theoria, the second to ???.
5. In this system of culture there is no place for
religion. But religion in the smaller sense is a cultural
phenomenon. And here a profound dialectics arises between religion as ultimate concern and religion
in the sense of "Time-Magazine".
The first second puts religion into a section of
culture (after economics and sports), the first claims for
it general validity presence in all realms of life functions of man's
creative spirit, i.e. in all culture The realm of conflict
in the second, narrower concept, while the first transcends
both of them and judges both.
6. The basis of the conflicts: The concrete religious
group is a particular group besides others. But it represents
something that transcends every particular group concern: The infi-
nite concern. This is the basis for the ecclesiastical authority
over all culture. But in claiming this supremacy it
elevates its own particularity to absolute significance
and evoques the reaction of the independent cultural
functions. The church, e.g. inspite of its finitude, claims
infinite meaning validity control over all earthly powers, because
of the infinite towards which its existence and institu-
tions point. But this same infinite towards which the
church points rejects its claim to be infinite itself. It
rejects the claim of the church that its cognitive assertions
are more valid than those of the philosophers and scientists
(This next time) because they are based on re-
velation, that its artistic style is the true style, because
it is the product of a sacred tradition (this ??? next
time), that its political ideas and decisions are universally true, be-
cause they are expressions of ultimate justice (the last time)
etc. etc. (education, law, social relations).
7. The criticism of cultural absolutism by the
large concept of religion religion in its large meaning (perhaps through the concrete church)
Such absolutisms equally contradicting the finitude of
its bearers. The quasi-religious attitudes their show hostility
towards the religious wave and are judged against them by those who are grasped
by ultimate concern, concretely by religious or cultural critics). – Both culture and religion
under the ultimate judgement, "so that neither boasts."
8. Why concrete religion at all? Its rise from
The relis som fight against religion
is tragically unavoidable. It is The fight against the separation
against the true God. The symbols for the kingdom of
of culture and religion. The possibility of not only conquering the conflicts by
applying the first concept of religion, but also crea-
ting a new phase in the development both of religion
and culture.