The Dilemmas of a Culturologist
Abstract
The article concerns the recently published book by Marek Pacukiewicz, Landscapes of Context. The author presents the dilemmas of a culturologist – a theoretician and anthropologist of culture struggling with the multifaceted discourse of contemporary humanities. Leading representatives of these sciences, making
culture the declared subject of their research, are often content with the presentation of various epistemological strategies aimed at learning about selected aspects of social practices. The practices they analyse, including those of thought, are relatively rarely embedded in broader contexts, and the concept of culture itself is contested as cognitively non-instrumental. Contrary to these tendencies, Pacukiewicz tries to stand up for the metaphysical dimension of culture and proposes to study it as a self-existent being independent of subsequent methodological fashions. He considers landscape and context to be key concepts for the proposed approach.
Keywords
landscapes; context; culturology; Aristotle; metaphysics; theory of culture
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