Custom Versus Culture: A Modest Distinction

To be honest, it took about four readings of Rémi Brague's essay “From What is Left Over” (First Things, August 2017) before I felt confident enough to tell myself I understood it. Some of the perplexity probably stemmed from the word culture being used over 60 times, and not always with the same meaning.

Unlike Isidore of Seville, I don't think that etymology holds the key to the cosmos, but once I realized my confusion concerned this word culture, I consulted a dictionary to guide me out of the perplexity. Yet I also abided by C.S. Lewis's instructions: “One understands a word much better if one has met it alive, in its native habitat. So far as is possible our knowledge should be checked and supplemented, not derived, from the dictionary.” And: “everyone starts telling us what the word does not mean; a sure proof that it is beginning to mean just that.”