This paper discusses the emergence of the modern concept of Culture, as a double social distinction invented by German intellectuals of the XVIII century, and as a contrast with the medieval concept of civility, from a genealogical point of view. Using the Kantian text 'On Pedagogy', the paper reveals how the link between education and the concept of Culture served to disseminate and idealise the German ways of life, values and cultural productions, and to transform them into the model to be followed by any society. As an effect of the crisis of Modernity, it is argued that after the linguistic turnabout it is impossible to assume this universal meaning for culture, with the result that the modern monocultural epistemology splinters into many multiculturalisms.
culture; multiculturalisms; civility; Kant; Wittgenstein; linguistic turnabout; genealogy