The Theory of Culture in Bloch and Dawkins' Philosophy; in Viewpoint of the Elements “Ideas” and “Memes”

Culture is one of the great themes of Bloch and Dawkins’ philosophy. They use ideas of materialism and processtual evolutionism with reduction approach to explain the cultural realm. These common aspects make a comparative/ synthetic study of their philosophy of culture- based on components “Ideas” and “Memes”- possible. The claims of this article are: 1) Bloch's processtual ontology is a proper metaphysics for Dawkins' genetics and theory of culture; 2) Dawkins' genetics explains the relation between the human biological sphere and social/historical structures. This article tries to show that the analysis of the cultural theories in Bloch and Dawkins' thought can provide genuine and profound insight into the fundamental dynamics of society and history and can more clearly explain some philosophical conceptions, for example “alienation” and “social class”. On the other side, two pair's conceptions- mainly “praxis/expanded phenotype” and “mems/plus ultra”- are complementary and can more exactly explain the relation between gene, social structures, and culture. The result of this comparative/synthetic analysis of culture are: 1) A type of philosophical “determinism” that is challenging for some basic Bloch's conceptions: utopia and hope; 2) An example -by adding the Bloch's conception of “teleology” to Dawkins' genetics- of compromising the scientific and philosophical exceptional approach.