What is the Distinction between Cultures?

Abstract

We call ‘consciousness’ our faculty that makes the world make sense to us. I use the word ‘culture’ to denote any of the possible modes of our con-sciousness sense-constructing activity. Of those modes, some are shared by some people, and none is shared universally. To make the world make sense, we need to carry out the discernment procedure, which boils down to setting up the opposition-and-unity cluster. The quest for discernment as the basis for sense-constructing activity is universal for the human being, yet there is no universal mode of implementing this discernment procedure. This is why cultures, i.e. modes of sense-constructing activity, not only differ in more or less important details, but sometimes are irreducible to one another. The process-based sense-constructing activity of classical Arabic culture is analyzed as irreducibly contrasting with the substance-based Western culture.