Culture vs. Ethos: What's the Difference?
Table of Contents
Main Difference
The main difference between Culture and Ethos is that the Culture is a range of human phenomena that cannot be attributed to genetic inheritance and Ethos is a Greek word for “character”.
Culture
Culture () is the social behavior and norms found in human societies. Culture is considered a central concept in anthropology, encompassing the range of phenomena that are transmitted through social learning in human societies. Some aspects of human behavior, social practices such as culture, expressive forms such as art, music, dance, ritual, and religion, and technologies such as tool usage, cooking, shelter, and clothing are said to be cultural universals, found in all human societies. The concept of material culture covers the physical expressions of culture, such as technology, architecture and art, whereas the immaterial aspects of culture such as principles of social organization (including practices of political organization and social institutions), mythology, philosophy, literature (both written and oral), and science comprise the intangible cultural heritage of a society.
In the humanities, one sense of culture as an attribute of the individual has been the degree to which they have cultivated a particular level of sophistication in the arts, sciences, education, or manners. The level of cultural sophistication has also sometimes been seen to distinguish civilizations from less complex societies. Such hierarchical perspectives on culture are also found in class-based distinctions between a high culture of the social elite and a low culture, popular culture, or folk culture of the lower classes, distinguished by the stratified access to cultural capital. In common parlance, culture is often used to refer specifically to the symbolic markers used by ethnic groups to distinguish themselves visibly from each other such as body modification, clothing or jewelry. Mass culture refers to the mass-produced and mass mediated forms of consumer culture that emerged in the 20th century. Some schools of philosophy, such as Marxism and critical theory, have argued that culture is often used politically as a tool of the elites to manipulate the lower classes and create a false consciousness, and such perspectives are common in the discipline of cultural studies. In the wider social sciences, the theoretical perspective of cultural materialism holds that human symbolic culture arises from the material conditions of human life, as humans create the conditions for physical survival, and that the basis of culture is found in evolved biological dispositions.
When used as a count noun, a “culture” is the set of customs, traditions, and values of a society or community, such as an ethnic group or nation. Culture is the set of knowledge acquired over time. In this sense, multiculturalism values the peaceful coexistence and mutual respect between different cultures inhabiting the same planet. Sometimes “culture” is also used to describe specific practices within a subgroup of a society, a subculture (e.g. “bro culture”), or a counterculture. Within cultural anthropology, the ideology and analytical stance of cultural relativism holds that cultures cannot easily be objectively ranked or evaluated because any evaluation is necessarily situated within the value system of a given culture. Yet within philosophy, this stance of cultural relativism is undermined and made inapplicable since such value judgement is itself a product of a given culture.
Ethos
Ethos ( or US: ) is a Greek word meaning “character” that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology. The Greeks also used this word to refer to the power of music to influence emotions, behaviours, and even morals. Early Greek stories of Orpheus exhibit this idea in a compelling way. The word’s use in rhetoric is closely based on the Greek terminology used by Aristotle in his concept of the three artistic proofs.
Culture (noun)
the arts, customs, lifestyles, background, and habits that characterize a particular society or nation
Culture (noun)
the beliefs, values, behaviour and material objects that constitute a people’s way of life
Culture (noun)
any knowledge passed from one generation to the next, not necessarily with respect to human beings
Culture (noun)
cultivation
Culture (noun)
the process of growing a bacterial or other biological entity in an artificial medium
Culture (noun)
the growth thus produced
“I’m headed to the lab to make sure my cell culture hasn’t died.”
Culture (noun)
the collective noun for a group of bacteria
Culture (noun)
the details on a map that do not represent natural features of the area delineated, such as names and the symbols for towns, roads, meridians, and parallels
Culture (verb)
to maintain in an environment suitable for growth especially of bacteria cultivate}}
Culture (verb)
to increase the artistic or scientific interest in something cultivate}}
Ethos (noun)
The character or fundamental values of a person, people, culture, or movement.
Ethos (noun)
A form of rhetoric in which the writer or speaker invokes their authority, competence or expertise in an attempt to persuade others that their view is correct.
Ethos (noun)
The traits in a work of art which express the ideal or typic character, as influenced by the ethos (character or fundamental values) of a people, rather than realistic or emotional situations or individual character in a narrow sense; opposed to pathos.
Ethos (noun)
the characteristic spirit of a culture, era, or community as manifested in its attitudes and aspirations
“a challenge to the ethos of the 1960s”
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