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Lesson 5 How Culture Defines Moral Behavior

Culture plays a significant role in shaping moral behavior. Culture is learned from birth through enculturation rather than genetics, consisting of both material and non-material aspects like beliefs and customs passed down between generations. As a moral agent, one is born into a specific culture that influences their worldview. Cultures also change over time through enculturation, inculturation, and acculturation as outside beliefs are adopted or integrated. How individuals evaluate and judge various acts is strongly impacted by the culture they were raised in, demonstrating culture's long-lasting hold on defining right and wrong.

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485 views6 pages

Lesson 5 How Culture Defines Moral Behavior

Culture plays a significant role in shaping moral behavior. Culture is learned from birth through enculturation rather than genetics, consisting of both material and non-material aspects like beliefs and customs passed down between generations. As a moral agent, one is born into a specific culture that influences their worldview. Cultures also change over time through enculturation, inculturation, and acculturation as outside beliefs are adopted or integrated. How individuals evaluate and judge various acts is strongly impacted by the culture they were raised in, demonstrating culture's long-lasting hold on defining right and wrong.

Uploaded by

Ann Marie Luna
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Lesson 5:

HOW CULTURE DEFINES MORAL BEHAVIOR


Intended Learning Outcomes:
1. Articulate what culture, enculturation, inculturation and acculturation mean
2. Attribute facets of personal behavior to culture
3. Explain how culture shapes the moral agent

Introduction
 There is no such thing as absolute freedom.
 You were not free to choose whose parents you will be born, what language
you will hear and learn first and the culture where you were born to.

Motivating Activity:
1. When you hear the word "culture" what comes to your mind at once?
2. Any idea about your culture?
LESSON PROPER
What is Culture?
Taylor, 1997
 It is the integrated pattern of human knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors.
 This consists of language, ideas, customs, morals, laws, taboos, institutions,
tools, techniques, and works of art, rituals and other capacities and habits
acquired by a person as a member of society."

Brinkerhoff, 1989
 Is passed on to the next generation by learning not through the genes or
heredity.
 Culture is categorized into material and non-material culture.
a. Nonmaterial culture - consists of language, values, rules, knowledge,
and meanings shared by members of society.
b. Material culture - is the physical object that a society produces: tools,
streets, homes and toys, to name a few."

Kroeber, 1952
1) Includes all human phenomena which are not purely results of human
genetics.

The Human Person and Culture


 As a moral agent you are born into a culture, a factual reality you have not
chosen.
o The Aristotelico-Thomistic culture is a Greco-Roman culture, which has
influenced and shaped the moral life of those who have been exposed to
it.
o Those who were born into this culture, educated under this culture, are
persuaded that there is one God, and later on introduced Jesus as the Son
of God.
 Others with different cultures have with their own different views of reality and
God.
o Hindus believe in so many gods.
o Muslims believe in Allah and the beauty of having many wives.
o Buddhists believe in re-incarnation.
Enculturation, Inculturation and Acculturation
 Cultures change or evolve by enculturation, by inculturation and by
acculturation.

Enculturation
J.M. Herskovits Margaret Mead
 It is the process of learning a culture in all its uniqueness and particularity.
 It is a process of learning from infancy till death, the components of life in
one’s culture which include both the material and non-material culture.
 This learning takes place through example, direct teaching and in patterns of
behavior. What is learned becomes one’s cognitive map, term of reference
that directs one’s behavior.
Examples:
 Muslim men (South of the Sahara) grew up learning that they can marry
more than one woman while women cannot.
 Muslim women grew up learning that they cannot share their love with
other men, while men can.
 Women in India and Muslim countries grew up learning that they can
be sold to other men.
Inculturation
Umoren, U.E. (1992)
 refers to the "missiological process in which the Gospel is rooted in a
particular culture and the latter is transformed by its introduction to
Christianity."
 Is not an action but a process that unfolds over time, one that is active and
based on mutual recognition and dialogue, a critical mind and insight,
faithfulness and conversion, transformation and growth, renewal and
innovation.

Pope John Paul II, 1985 (Redemptoris Mission, n. 52)


 It is the intimate transformation of authentic cultural values through their
integration in Christianity and the insertion of Christianity in the various
human cultures."
Acculturation
 It is the "cultural modification of an individual, group, or people by adapting
to or borrowing traits from another culture."
 It is also explained as the merging of cultures as a result of prolonged
contact."
Examples:
 Immigrants to the United States of America become acculturated to
American life.
 Refugees and indigenous peoples (LP) likewise adapt to the culture of
the dominant majority.
 There are cultural practices that should be stopped because of the painful
harm they do.
Examples:
 Human sacrifice among the Aztecs in ancient Mexico.
 Circumcision of women in Africa and India.
 Cannibalism in Papua New Guinea.

Filipino Immigrants in America adopts the American Culture


How Culture Shapes the Moral Agent
 Culture definitely affects the way we evaluate and judge things.
 Culture has a very long lasting hold on an individual.
Examples:
 African women not as privileged as the African men, but it is alright for
them.
 In ancient times, human sacrifice was not wrong; today it is a criminal
act.
 In some culture like Islamic culture, and African culture (South of
Sahara) having several wives is allowed. In other cultures, it's
concubinage or adultery.
 It is alright for other tribes to avenged their harmed murdered family
members. In Christianity, killing is a mortal sin.

REFERENCE:
Corpuz, R., Corpuz, B. (2020). Ethics . Manila, Philippines. LORIMAR Publishing.

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