Lonergan argued that the understanding of culture has shifted from the normative notion of culture to the empirical notion of culture. The normative notion of culture means that the culture possesses the right set of meanings and values that are normative to all cultures. The empirical notion of culture is the culture that knows many cultures, that studies and compares them, that knows they are all man-made and subject to development and to decay. The empirical notion of culture realizes that there are as many cultures as there are distinct sets of such meanings and values. In addition, Lonergan recognized that there were three stages of controlled meaning of culture: primitive, classical, and modern stages. The primitive stage of controlled meaning of culture is that the meanings and values are lived in people's lives, but without reflection upon them. The-classical stage of controlled meaning critically examined the culture by questioning the meaning of meanings and the value of values. The modern stage of controlled meaning of culture is concerned with the concrete and the particular, the existential subject's decision and the history of peoples, societies, and culture.
