Leo Strauss in “Jerusalem and Athens”:

The concept of culture is an outgrowth of nineteenth-century Western culture; its application to “cultures” of other ages and climates is an act stemming from the spiritual imperialism of that particular culture. There is then a glaring contradiction between the claimed objectivity of the science of culture and the radical subjectivity of that science… [O]ne cannot behold, i.e., truly understand, any culture unless one is firmly rooted in one’s own culture… But if the universality of the beholding of all cultures is to be preserved, the culture to which the beholder of all cultures belongs must be the universal culture; the universality of beholding presupposes, if only by anticipating it, the universal culture which is no longer one culture among many. The variety of cultures that have hitherto emerged contradicts the oneness of truth.