European thought, built on the respect for hierarchy and on binary value judgement, generated two competing ideas of culture, ideas forming various alliances with one another. The notion of a broadly defined culture took over the old functions of the “human world;” a narrow definition was used to describe all that was intellectually and artistically creative in this world. Both approaches are children of their time and contain traces of conceptualisation determined by convictions, experiences and state of knowledge at the time. The contemporary cult of change, reducing cultural traditions to their ludic, pragmatic or ornamental functions, may cause either an inconceivable change in the social relations we know or a radicalisation of conservative attitudes.
The humanities and their transformations can be described by pointing to the metaphors used in them. The article is devoted to an analysis of two metaphors, characteristic of the Polish reflection on culture today. The first metaphor refers to Cicero’s well-known definition and the Latin etymology of the word colere. The metaphor culture as cult links culture to cultivation and care, but also to cult in the religious sense. Provided the Enlightenment-derived, normative model of development and progress is rejected, the culture as cult metaphor indicates the specific character of studying culture from the perspective of cultural studies as a lifestyle or way of living in accordance with values. In this perspective, cultivation, veneration, respect and care are examples of the process of experiencing values, the process which in its nature is dynamic and transformative. The second metaphor, culture as trance, emphasises the fluidity and openness of culture, the need to go beyond the boundaries set by the existing patterns of learning and studying culture and also by the nomadic nature of cultural studies. Pointing out the transgressive nature of culture and human beings, the culture as trance metaphor is also close to the perception of trance in religious studies, which links it to shamanism and ecstasy. Reflections on culture could benefit greatly from an analysis of religious contexts of both metaphors used in it.
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Free time is one of the significant phenomenon of contemporary life. People‘s attitude towards time and leisure is influenced by the Judeo-Christian tradition as well as by contemporary consumer trends. The author builds on the teachings of J. Pieper and R. Bleinstein and seeks to establish the place of leisure in theology. From philosophical reflections about understanding time he moves to topics of social ethics which are linked with the modern concept of leisure. Leisure consequently appears as an area for the realisation of interpersonal relationships as well as for searching for God, as it corresponds with the biblical idea of the Sabbath. At the end of the article the author reflects on pastoral care in the context of a “leisure society”.
The basic topic of deliberation is the Serbian tradition of holiness and its functioning in the cultural system. In the seventeenth century, the cults of saints were a clear manifestation of the cultural distinctiveness and identity, as well as a key factor that integrates the Serbian community. The body, however, as a constructive ecclesiastical sign projects itself in a symbolic double-layer — the object of the cult and the subject of memory awareness. In the seventeenth century, in Serbian cultural space, the flesh in this fundamental role virtually becomes a real tool to recover memory and to reconstruct the past, but first and foremost to update the present fundamental complex of meaning in the Turkish occupation.
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