The lecture by Prof. Wojciech Daszkiewicz, “Characteristics and Challenges of Contemporary Culture: Eastern European Perspectives,” was dedicated to the key characteristics and challenges of contemporary culture understood from an Eastern European perspective, focusing on its impact on personal identity and social life.
In the first part, the historical emergence, development, and shifts in the concept of culture from ancient times to the present day were presented.
In the second part of the lecture, Daszkiewicz outlined six fundamental characteristics of today’s culture:
- A shift from production to consumption, which is linked to the rise of a consumerist worldview.
- The deterritorialization of culture: The decoupling of cultural production from its geographical and historical roots.
- The aestheticization of culture: Life becomes a project of self-creation and experimentation.
- Tolerance toward the Other and the different: The acceptance of alternative worldviews, other religions, identities, and lifestyles.
- A growing diversity of lifestyles.
- A very strong influence of the internet and media.
Since contemporary Western civilization exhibits an inherent internal incoherence, there is an absence of a dominant axiological framework capable of integrating diverse cultural elements, which often coexist without a common point of reference. The result of this is tension, contradiction, and the fragmentation of the cultural sphere.
The third part was dedicated to the concept of contemporary culture grounded in classical thought. The classical understanding of culture provides a coherent anthropological and normative foundation for assessing contemporary cultural transformations. Rather than rejecting modern insights, this approach seeks to ground them in stable principles capable of restoring meaning, orientation, and human dignity within a fragmented cultural landscape. To that extent, the fundamental function of culture today must be linked to the emancipation of the individual.
In this context, the function of culture is the education of the human person, the advancement of rationality and morality, and the search for truth and meaning, whereby “objective values remain essential” – truth, goodness, and beauty.
Such an integral view of culture implies harmony between religion, morality, science, and art, as these are the four main domains of cultural activity. A valuable culture must support authentic human development, a meaningful life, and true human community.