What is Human Culture?

For Ibn Khaldun, culture was the interplay between the nature of man and his social development. In biology, a "culture" is often referred to as the growth of some microorganism in a petri dish. Thus culture is developed when land is populated and cultivated. As society develops its culture grows.

Ibn Khaldun believed that the need to be social is a natural physical need of people as only with the cooperation of others can they survive. With others, they can secure their food supply and can defend themselves. Such primitive societies are formed with the instinct to survive. Members are wary of not doing anything wrong as their survival depends on doing the right thing. 

As the primitive society grows, it becomes opulent and its members move from survival mode to being complacent, developing negative characteristics like greed and violence. Soon, they start to wrongfully acquire the property of others violently leading to anarchy.

A powerful leader emerges to establish law and order to bring back peaceful cooperation in society. This is done by establishing a state with all its machinery to manage society. Ibn Khaldun calls the transformation of human nature from the stages of development from primitive societies to states, Human Culture.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Evolution of a State

Image
According to Ibn Khaldun, every state undergoes 5 stages of development in its life cycle. Primitive culture organized itself finding synergy and solidarity in Al-Assabiya and religion, seeking escape from poverty, marginal living, lack of leisure, etc. by seeking an urban living. What can be achieved in urban life cannot be achieved in a primitive lifestyle. Thus, the attraction of wealth, recreation, stability, and intellectual development pulls the nomadic tribesmen to capture city after city, to form a state. Ibn Khaldun calls the refined culture of the cities, "civilization". Initially, the state is established based on zeal and fervor when its sense of social cohesion is strong. It is united by a leader to who the population has given their allegiance. As the state gets established, this sense of solidarity weakens as the heroes who established the state become dispersed throughout the state. The extent of the boundaries of the state will depend on the extent of this s...
Read more

Primitive Culture

Image
A primitive society ( umran badawi ) is the simplest of societies. It is characterized by groups of people of the same extended family, living off the land in nomadic or simple agricultural existence. They typically work hard using the simplest of resources and tools to just survive. Their economy is simple and restricted, often based on barter. Their food is plain. Their characters are strong, upright, and well-rounded. Their skills are broad, deep, and practical, allowing them to survive in the toughest of environments.  There is less possibility for them to be engaged in vice as vice is often detrimental to their subsistent existence. Even if they wish to engage in vices, they usually do not get the opportunities to do so. In contrast, they are more likely to be guided to good moral living if someone preaches that to them as it directly benefits their way of life.  Social cohesion in primitive societies is primarily through natural kinship and affinity to one's relations. T...
Read more

The Birth of New Social Sciences

Image
According to Ibn Khaldun, history has two forms, external and internal. For the most part, history before him was narrated as an external history in the form of a chronology of reports. There were important exceptions to this, most notably the accounts in the Quran, which always have parables and analysis for our guidance narrated with the history. Such internal history, in which there is an analytical study of events, was what Ibn Khaldun was interested in. Thus, he undertook the task of writing the Book of Ibaar (wise lessons from history). He writes in his preface about his theory of history or historiography.  He describes how he developed the solution to the problem of scrutinizing the historical accounts based on their veracity. The traditional method that Islamic historical narrations used was to study the authority of the chain of narrators of a historical report critically which Ibn Khaldun supplemented with a new science he developed -- the Science of Culture -- to valida...
Read more