Abstract
M.Phil. (Philosophy)
The author's choice of a theme is practical. It is a cultural-philosophical analysis·of the views of GLAZER and MOYNUlAN on ethnicity. 1 The result is studied and viewed in relation to philosophical anthropology and the ·genetic method of explanation of culture of CA VAN PEURSEN and by means of his cultural-historfcal three-tier development
of the mythological, successively followed by the ontological and the functional. The author then suggests the. principle of sovereignty, within the limited sphere of competence of social structures within the same cultural ·entity to overcome the dialectic struggle for supremacy between social structures (i.e.: nation and state or church
and state, etc). Linking this the writer offers a structural analysis of state versus nation (volk) and also rejects a dualistic (soul versus body) concept of man, preferring the model of man as a single integrated existential being. The author finds the views of GLAZER and MOYNIHAN are that ethnic identification is a natural and inevitable fact of human existence. It has its positive aspects (providing identity ... support ... security) and its negative aspects (encouraging isolation ... ethnocentrism ... conflict ... etc). By rejecting humanistic individualism and integration as ideological (therefore ontological) and ethnicity as practical · (therefore functional), and urging governments to recognise ethnicity within the framework of plural democracy, they by implication become the proponents of ethnicity, and culture with them becomes cultural determinism. By so doing they also derived and subscribed to some inevitable pre-empirical and therefore theoretical-philosophical concepts re group identity and the relation betwe€n soul and body and culture versus physical environment. Within each of the cultural-historical development phases posed by VAN PEURSEN the author finds that group identity as the essence of ethnicity is after all, as proposed by GLAZER and MOYNIHAN not so new,
and that ethnicity during the course of history was always coined to the supremacy of an identity carrying social structure (i.e. the state in Greek culture; the church in Roman Catholicism; race in national-socialism; the individual in humanistic liberalism; and the state in dialectic materialism; etc). It is in the functional, practical realm that ethnicity has gained ground during the latter part of this century. The rediscovery of group identity signals the bancruptcy of ontological individualism and the appearance of pragmatism, existensialism and the dramatic growth of cultural anthropology and new-conservatism.
The author sees existensial man as a unitary being and by so doing disacknowledges an inner spiritual world of the soul against the outer world of nature and body. This one-ness of man makes culture his first nature and not his second, as suggested by GLAZER and
MOYNIHAN. Mans cultural identity is expressed in a variety of social structures and by utilysing the principle of sovereignty within each structural sphere of competence, the author wishes to avoid ethnicity or group identity being captured by one structure (i.e. race
in national socialism and volk/nation in ethnocentrism) and thereby becoming an operationalism.