World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

Page 715

CULTURE, UNIVERSALITY AND FREEDOM
Dr. Shantinath Chattopadhyay
I
Man on Earth, cultivates land, procures material objects through his Interaction with physical environment and in this way he introduces some unique ways or patterns for enriching this programme. Sometimes these ways may be crude as these are for mere material fulfilment and sometimes are refined when man communicates his mental attitudes by writing books composing songs or organising different religious/political and social programmes. All these ways, wether material or mental, are characterised as cultural processes of life which, in the observations of modern thinkers are the forms of 'Culture' and thus it, in the 'Democracy and Education' of Dewey, is evaluated as at least something
cultivated'.
Thus in this modern age of scientificand technological developments man in the cultivation of something as cultural communication, becomes multidimensional with the expression and expansion of his potent creativity through different socio-cultural activities in different directions. This type of cultural analysis of human life and existence may be regarded as the philosophical study of the creative man as an expansion of creativity in human personality situation. In this context, the significance of the term creativity lies in the expression of the potent universality in man in different degrees in a transcendent experiential process. This may be observed as the manifestation of the transcendent value of universality in different individual states of existence, developing an experiential form of socio-cultural relation of unity. In this process we get the proper sociological meaning of culture which is explained by Gisbert, a sociologist," Culture is the direct expression of our nature, in our ways of thought and action, in art, religion, morality and recreation. It deals with interests and values concerned with ends, to which various actions and objects are directed as means".!
This type of Sociological and humanistic analysis of culture examines man as creative unity which in the observation of Taoism in China, is "...both human and divine". Same idea is expressed through the different systems of both Eastern and Weste-rn Cultures which, in the context of the transcendent-experiential programme of advancing unity of humanity and divinity, may be treated as the expression of individuality and universality. In this background the traditional idea of God in different cultures of the world is to be examined as the divine value of godness which, in the humanistic sense, is to be recognised as the creative universality in man as transcendental value or ideal/
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