Teleological human action alone does not constitute culture

Evidence

When a schoolboy trips his fellow to make him fall and to get the other boys to laugh, he has certainly engaged in an eminently teleological act, an exploitation of natural occurrences by intellect and will; but one can hardly categorize it under the concept of culture! — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 548

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sharply delimits culture against mere purposive action through a concrete example.
• CANDY: The schoolboy tripping as a non-cultural act is a vivid, tweetable counterexample.
• XREF: connects to: The collective unconscious is culturally imposed, not biologically inherited — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 668; Culture as constitutive of practice retains contingency and is never finally determined; Human culture originates in the socially mediated relation between man and nature (+3 more)

Related

• One’s own action is misrepresented when understood through the other’s observable teleology (similarity 0.90)
• Culture is the interrelation of all social practices, not one practice. (similarity 0.87)

Broader Connections

• The collective unconscious is culturally imposed, not biologically inherited #expands (0.70) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 668
• Culture as constitutive of practice retains contingency and is never finally determined #expands (0.60)
• Human culture originates in the socially mediated relation between man and nature #expands (0.60)
• Culture is a process of creating and transforming reality, not an environment. #complicates (0.55) — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 323