By Liah Greenfeld

As I argued in my previous post, in contrast to all other animals who transmit their ways of life genetically, i.e., through their genes and genetic capacities which humans as animals share, humans transmit their ways of life symbolically, i.e., through culture. Culture is irreducible to such genetic capacities, but it could not exist without them. Therefore, to understand the specificity of culture as the distinguishing characteristic of humanity, we must first establish what it is not and discuss these animal capacities which are often confused with culture.

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