A Critique Of Culture Evolutionism

Cultural evolutionism is one of the most important theories of culturalanthropology, and has deeply affected cultural philosophy. Its origin are conception of“evolution” and “progress” from ancient Greece. Classical cultural evolutionismelaborated a model of cultural development, but its model is single track and unitary. Itled to western centralism and social Darwinism, but coexisted with critics from culturaltransmission,cultural relativism, etc. New cultural evolutionism then absorbed themerits of classical cultural evolutionism and cultural relativism. But culturalevolutionism has innate defects. Marxist cultural philosophy inherits philosophicalprogressivism from enlightenment. Although cultural progressivism superficially seemssimilar to cultural evolutionism, they share different essence. The difference comesfrom the different concepts of “evolution” and “progress”. The origin of these twoconcepts begins in the ancient Greece, though they sometimes intertwined, they havesignificant theoretical differences. All in all,“evolution” belongs to biology and“progress” belongs to philosophical skopos theory. Cultural evolutionism cannot get ridof the misunderstanding that regards human culture from biological perspective.Cultural progressivism, as new Marxist cultural philosophy, is based on human’sconcrete and historical praxis and cultural rationality. The criterions of cultural progressare human praxis and level of development of subjectivity. Cultural progressivismtranscends cultural evolutionism and cultural relativism, and avoids their theoreticalfaults.