The distinction between culture and civilization — though blurry in English — has remained meaningful in German, French and other non-English languages that adopted these concepts from 18th-century French and German scholars. The German usage of Zivilisation has historically alluded to a utilitarian, outer aspect of human existence subordinated to Kultur, which was perceived as the “real” essence of humans, society, and their achievements. Kant in Idea on a Universal History from the Point of View of Cosmopolitanism (1784) was arguably the first philosopher to use “culture” in the modern sense, distinguishing the “courtesy” of civilization from the “virtue” of culture; Rousseau, his predecessor, named his anti-civilizational alternative not “culture” but “nature.” Herder, in Yet another Philosophy of History (1774), equated civilization with the most alienating forms of industrialization and postulated that “every nation has its center of happiness within itself.”

In the English-speaking world, E.B. Tylor’s Primitive Culture (1872) designed a comprehensive concept of “civilization” that absorbed “culture” as “a complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” This fusion created lasting confusion. American extension of Tylor — exemplified by Charles Beard’s Towards Civilization, which defined civilization as “a technological civilization, resting at bottom on science and machinery” — produced a radically materialist, culture-less idea of civilization. Norbert Elias argued civilization describes a process in constant motion, generalizing and playing down differences, while culture is particularistic and exists only through delimitation.

Huntington attempted to talk away the distinction by insisting “the efforts to distinguish culture and civilization … have not caught on” outside Germany. Critics counter that the distinction remains vital in contemporary debates on globalization, modernization, identity politics, and the conceptualization of Islamo-Christian civilization. In Nazi Germany, anti-Jewish racism was based on a naturalized idea of culture; in European colonies and the United States, anti-black racism was based on the idea that Black people are unable to attain civilization by nature. The German Romantic / Spenglerian opposition frames civilization as “outward turned civilizational exposure” — imperialism, mechanization, world city, money, mass — and culture as “inward turned cultural energy” — home, reverence, folk, the heart, the earth.

Source summaries:

  • v66 (Spring 2012) — Thorsten Botz-Bornstein, “What is the Difference between Culture and Civilization? Two Hundred Fifty Years of Confusion,” traces the distinction through Tylor, Herder, Kant, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Mann, Spengler, and modern critics. The piece documents how the false dichotomy between culture and civilization enabled three 19th-century cardinal beliefs — professionalism, racism, and progress. (v66)
  • v71 (Fall 2014) — Botz-Bornstein extends the discussion in “Thoughts on Religion, Culture, and Civilization,” engaging further with the contemporary relevance of the German-French distinction. (v71)
  • v80 (Spring 2019) — Didier Maleuvre’s The Art of Civilization, a Bourgeois History is reviewed, examining civilization as a bourgeois cultural project and the philosophical limits of the term. (v80)
  • v82 (Spring 2020) — Discussion of Pitirim Sorokin’s Social and Cultural Dynamics and its relevance to the relationship between spiritual, cultural and civilizational orders. (v82)