The advent of the concepts of culture and civilization: Their importance to the self-image of the modern subject

Abstract

The text aims to review through a historical-philosophical analysis the rising of the ideas of culture and civilization in the modern world. On the one hand, it analyses some factors that motivated the outcome of the new social consciousness in the pre-romantic Germany responsible, among other things, for the notions of Kultur and Bildung. On the other hand, it investigates the nature of the philosophical speech that motivated the French notion of civilization in the 18th century. Despite their conceptual and historical peculiarities which, in principle, turn themselves into very different concepts, culture (Kultur) and civilization are crossed by a common determination that would be tied to a set of transformation suffered by the modern subject in the second half of the 18th century.

Key words: culture, civilization, Bildung, subjectivity, barbarity.