This essay has two parts. In the first, Husserl's account of categorial forming and Schutz's account of common-sense constructs are used to sketch an interpretationist theory of culture. In the second part, the question is raised of whether that theory is adequate to account for cultural phenomena and the negative answer is supported with a sketch of the pre-conceptual constitution of intrinsic and extrinsic values and uses in valuational and volitional processes of secondary passivity. This stratum below thinking and concepts (...) is called "basic culture" and the full appreciation of this stratum is a counter to naturalism as well as the starting point for approaching problematics such as ethnicity, gender, and the environment in the perspective of the constitutive phenomenology of culture. (shrink)