``...the unique human essence or species-being is culture.'' CB
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Some noontime thoughts, besides work sucks greatly these days....
This reminds me, that Cassirer got around to the same point, but there are several steps missing in the above, and several steps to go to get back to a more materialist based view. The next leap after the s-b to culture step is the re-definition of culture to include all symbolic forms, with language as the primary example.
The great thing about using symbolic forms is they all have a material basis and are human inventions and of necessity must be shared by a group, so you skip all that individual v. society in any chicken and egg duality. You can argue, analyze, examine, deconstruct human beings through the symbolic forms we use. There are few philosophical pitfalls like what is mind, what is an individual, what is social? etc.
Getting back to something Seth Ackerman wrote about Perry Anderson's critique of Foucault, that you can substitute MF's `power' with `culture', the importance of this shift is similar to the above. We can deal with the economic, social, and intellectual, aka cultural manifestations of some abstract concept like power.
The problem with a metaphysical entity like power is all you can do with it is argue about its essence. Once the metaphysical concept is said to be materially manifest as an aspect of culture or through a symbolic form, then we can directly manipulate it, possibly learn its `ways' and begin to understand it through practice, perhaps study it as an empirical entity, and use many of our conceptual tools from the sciences.
In practical terms, once power is recast as some aspect of culture, we can then use political tools to change its manifestations which bare on our own lives.
CG