Functionality of Concepts: Carl Heinrich Becker and the Culture-Civilization Antagonism in German Social Thought

Abstract

This article focuses on the concepts of culture and civilization in selected writings between 1906 and 1919 from the German Orientalist Carl Heinrich Becker. Becker is seen to have functionalized these concepts according to their role within the contexts of the power relations among Germany, Europe, and oriental societies. The content of these concepts can be argued to have been first shaped in Becker's hands within the atmosphere of German 19th - and early-20th-century social thought. This atmosphere was determined by the factors of Germany's efforts for enhancing its influence in Europe, for constructing a national identity after its political unification in 1871, and for coping with the crisis of modernity. By adding the hostilities between Germany and the Western world during World War I to this picture, culture and civilization evolved into two antagonistic concepts. However, these selected writings from Becker reveal how Becker had placed and functionalized the concepts of culture and civilization into a new context of power relations regarding the Orient so that these two antagonistic concepts became rather complementary.