New Humanists Defining "Culture" | Episode CVII
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Pop culture. Cancel culture. Judeo-Christian culture. Everyone likes to talk about "culture," but what actually is it? One of the greatest writers of the 20th century, the poet and essayist T.S. Eliot, wrote a short book, Notes Toward the Definition of Culture, attempting to answer exactly that question. Written in the latter days of World War Two, as the Allied nations began to realize that Germany's surrender was imminent and that it was up to them to rebuild European culture, Eliot's Notes Toward the Definition of Culture was part of a broader anxiety among European and American elites about what the postwar world would look like.
In Chapter One, Eliot proposes three necessary ingredients for the existence of high culture: the durability of social classes, regionalism, and the balance of unity and diversity in religion. He also gestures towards two possible definitions of culture: first, simply that which makes life living, and secondly, the incarnation of the religion of a people. Jonathan and Ryan discuss Chapter One, as well as related matters, such as California cuisine.
Alan Jacobs's The Year of Our Lord 1943: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780190864651
T.S. Eliot's Notes Toward the Definition of Culture (in Christianity and Culture): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780156177351
Richard M. Gamble's The Great Tradition: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781935191568
C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060652920
Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780199538744
H.I. Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149
Ayaan Hirsi Ali's "Why I Am Now a Christian": https://unherd.com/2023/11/why-i-am-now-a-christian/
Charles Taylor's A Secular Age: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674986916
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Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com