Dictionary

culture of death en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (US) audio

Etymology

Coined by John Paul II.

Meanings

1. In contemporary cultural discourse, a culture asserted to be inconsistent with the concept of a "culture of life," such as cultures that support contraception and abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, human cloning, self-absorption, apathy or poverty, or fail to view human beings as ends in themselves in any other way.
2. A society that reveres suicide bombers as martyrs.
   • Suicide bombings ... were still wrong because such reasoning promotes a culture of death and nihilism that will take years to erase from the Palestinian narrative 2009, Joshua Craze, Mark Huband, The Kingdom: Saudi Arabia and the Challenge of the 21st Century, Hurst Publishers, page 289:
   • Still, with ... each individual case ... of individual suicide bombers ... it seems that we have to acknowledge first of all that there is a larger pattern of a culture of death 2007, Israel W. Charny, Fighting Suicide Bombing: A Worldwide Campaign for Life, Greenwood Publishing Group, page 77:
   • But can one nevertheless regard suicide bombing as an expression of the political culture—the culture of death—that has emerged in modern times in the Middle East? 2007, Talal Asad, On Suicide Bombing, Columbia University Press, page 50:

Forms

Translations (3)

pl cywilizacja śmierci (in contemporary political and philosophical discourse, a culture that is deemed to be inconsistent with the concept of a "culture of life") · ka სიკვდილის კულტურა (in contemporary political and philosophical discourse, a culture that is deemed to be inconsistent with the concept of a "culture of life") · pl cywilizacja śmierci (society that reveres suicide bombers as martyrs)