Ruth Benedict (1887-1948)
The Gestalt idea of configuration
Like Kroeber, Benedict fully rejected the idea that culture was determined by biology or genetics. This being so, it makes much less sense to say that there is one particular right way for people to live, and Benedict firmly endorsed cultural relativism. She also argued, most famously in her bestselling Patterns of Culture, that every culture has a particular underlying pattern that explains all its elements and draws them together:
Cultures … are more than the sum of their traits. We may know all about the distribution of a tribe’s form of marriage, ritual dances, and puberty initiations and yet understand nothing of the culture as a whole which has used these elements to its own purpose. [Patterns of Culture, 47]
Benedict’s idea of a pattern was influenced by Gestalt psychological
theory. On this view, instead of people
learning by direct stimulus response (like Pavlov’s dogs), they pick up an
underlying pattern in a particular vivid experience and generalize it to all
other circumstances that they perceive to have the same “Gestalt” or “shape.” For example, from being taught that we must
be quiet in Church, we apply this lesson to cathedrals, synagogues, the
This can be applied to cultures by suggesting that cultures have particular characters that explain their diverse elements, and to understand a culture we must grasp its pattern, or Gestalt. Two such patterns she drew from Nietzsche, the Dionysian and the Appollonian – two ways of arriving at the values of existence:
The Dionysian pursues them through “the annihilation of the ordinary bounds and limits of existence”; he seeks to attain in his most valued moments escape from the boundaries imposed upon him by his five senses, to break through into another order of existence… he values the illuminations of frenzy… he believes “the path of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”
In contrast,
The Apollonian distrust all this, and often has little idea of the nature of such experiences. He finds means to outlaw them from his conscious life. He knows but one law, measure in the Hellenic sense [that is, the Classical Greek idea that virtue is found in moderation]. Hew keeps within the middle of the road, stays within the known map, does not meddle with disruptive psychological states. [Patterns of Culture, 78-9]
The “good man” and the “deviant”
Benedict contrasted three cultures:
She compared their conceptions of “the good man”. To the Dobu, such a man is one who was “wrung from a malicious world by a conflict in which he has worsted his opponent” each moment of prosperity, and of whom it is assumed that “he has thieved, killed children and his close associates by sorcery, cheated whenever he dared.” This is Dionysian.
In contrast, for the Zuni, the best person is described as “a nice polite man. No one ever hears anything from him. He never gets into trouble.” This is Apollonian. However, most American Indians are, Dionysian, says Benedict – hence the vision quest involving fasting, drugs and self-mutilation in an attempt to obtain a personal vision of the supernatural.
Cultures do their best to inhibit opposite expressions, and the vast majority of people not only accept the core values of the particular culture, but assume that “their particular institutions reflect an ultimate and universal sanity.” But even then, there are some individuals who reject those values and these are labeled deviants. Benedict argued that “deviation” is essentially a conflict between individual personality and a given culture’s values, and not something universal. That is, if you’re a deviant in one culture, you are not necessarily in another. For example, a deviant in a Dionysian culture would be accepted in another: the deviant in Dobu society was the man who was “naturally friendly.” [“Hi – how’re ya doing?” “Get away from me you sicko!”]
Benedict’s main contribution: the conflict between culture and individual personality. [But what explains the individual personality?]