Philosophical - arises in the 7th century BC. e. (7-6th century), As is known, within the framework of philosophy, the very general idea of ​​culture was developed, and questions were raised that today constitute the actual cultural theme. At 19, the German philosopher A.G. Muller introduced the concept of "cultural philosophy2", understanding it as an independent section of philosophy that comprehends culture - Empirical (Ethnographic) - Arises in the second half of the 19th century. At that time, the colonization of various peoples by European countries begins. The culture of these peoples is being studied with the aim of further skillful management of them. Studied: myths, legends, legends. In ethnography, culture becomes the object of special study, where there is a tendency to understand culture as a complex dynamic system that performs specific social functions. Scientific schools have been formed within the framework of ethnography.

1) School of Evolutionists. Representatives: L. Morgan, E. Taylor, Frazor. Evolutionists believed that all peoples go from savagery to barbarism and the final stage of development is civilization.

2) School of social anthropology. Formed in England. Representative B. Malinovsky.

3) School of cultural anthropology. Formed in the USA at the beginning of the 20th century. Representatives6 A, White, A Boas-Theoretical stage is formed in the early 30s of the 20th century. Culturology is becoming an independent culture. Representatives: Leslie White.-applied stage (modern)

2. Subject, basic concepts and structure of cultural studies

Culturology is a system of knowledge about the essence, patterns of existence and development, the meaning and ways of understanding culture. Culturology studies the genesis, functioning and development of culture as a whole.

The word “Kulturologie” was first used by the German scientist W. Oswald in 1913, the term “kulturologie” was first used by the anthropologist L. White in 1949.

Culturology seeks to study culture in the fullness of its manifestations and in its essence. Culturology summarizes the achievements of philosophy, history, linguistics, archeology, ethnography, religious studies, the history of science, sociology, art history and other disciplines that study various aspects of human existence and society. Culturology is aimed at determining the most general patterns of formation, development and functioning of culture.

Currently, there are several approaches to defining the essence of cultural studies.

The first one considers cultural studies as a complex of disciplines that study culture in its historical development and social functioning, as a result of which a system of knowledge about culture is formed.

The second - represents cultural studies as one of the sections of disciplines that study culture. In this regard, it is possible to identify cultural studies with such a discipline as the sociology of culture, etc.

The third - considers cultural studies as an independent scientific discipline.

The most acceptable is the view of cultural studies as a system of knowledge, as a relatively independent branch of social and humanitarian knowledge.

Culturology is closely connected with a number of other sciences (philosophy, history, sociology, psychology, etc.) and is based on their achievements and experience. This is explained not only by the fact that it is a young, still emerging science, but also by the complex nature of culture itself as its subject.

As mentioned above, the subject of culturology is culture, and the object is the creators and bearers of culture - people, as well as various cultural phenomena occurring in society, institutions associated with culture, the activities of people and society as a whole.

Speaking about the structure of modern cultural studies, one can single out its semantic and structural parts: the theory of culture, the history of culture, the philosophy of culture, the sociology of culture.

The theory of culture, first of all, introduces cultural studies into the range of problems and gives an idea of ​​its conceptual apparatus; it studies the content and development of the main cultural categories, general issues of defining cultural norms, traditions, etc. The theory of culture reveals the patterns of human development of the surrounding world, covers the consideration of all aspects of its cultural existence. Within the framework of the theory of culture, such problems as the relationship between culture and nature, culture and civilization, the correlation of cultures and their interaction, the typology of cultures are considered; criteria are developed for understanding cultural phenomena.

The history of culture covers the origin and formation of culture, different historical epochs of its development and their inherent ways of reading the content of culture and understanding cultural ideals and values ​​(for example, beauty, truth, etc.) The history of culture helps to see the origins of many modern phenomena and problems, trace their causes, establish their forerunners and inspirers.

Philosophy of culture. Cultural studies, as already mentioned, is also a philosophical science. Since culture is a human creation and a human way of living in the world, cultural studies cannot in any way get around how the problems of meaning, purpose, and purpose of human existence are presented in culture. The philosophy of culture is essentially the ultimate version of human science, when a person is taken in the ultimate meaning and expression of his human nature and essence. Philosophy of culture formulates the problems of the relation of culture of man, man and the world, man and society. The philosophical view of the relationship between man and the world is the axis of cultural analysis.

The sociology of culture is a direction of theoretical and empirical research of all parts of the cultural process. Sociality is the initial characteristic of culture, because culture itself arises as a way of organizing a conflict-free existence of a person in society. The sociology of culture studies and analyzes the processes of spreading culture in a particular segment of the population, in a country, in the world, the nature of consumption of cultural products and attitudes towards them.

Culturology begins with the definition and explanation of culture, and first of all - the very category of "culture".

The first thing that fixes attention when considering the concept of "culture" is its ambiguity, its application in various ways.

Turning to the history of the word “culture” itself, we find out that it has a Latin origin. The ancient Romans called them cultivation, processing, improvement. And in classical Latin, the word "cultura" was used in the meaning of agricultural labor -agricultura. Agricultura is protection, care, separation of one from the other ("grain from the chaff"), the preservation of the selected, the creation of conditions for its development. Not arbitrary, but purposeful. The main thing in this whole process is separation, preservation and systematic development. A plant or animal is withdrawn from natural conditions, separated from others, as it has certain advantages discovered by man. Then this selected is transplanted into another environment, where it is taken care of, cared for, developing some qualities and cutting off others. A plant or an animal is modified in the right direction, a product of purposeful human labor is obtained that has the required qualities. If you just transplant a wild apple tree into the garden, then its fruits will not become sweeter from this. Isolation from the natural environment is only the first step, the beginning of "cultivation", which is certainly followed by a long work of a gardener.

In the modern sense, the concept of culture was established in Germany. Already at the end of the 18th century, this word is found in German books, having two semantic shades: the first is domination over nature with the help of knowledge and craft, and the second is the spiritual wealth of the individual. In these two meanings, it gradually entered almost all European languages. V. Dal in his “Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language” gives the following interpretation of this word: “... processing and care, cultivation, cultivation; mental and moral education…”.

In modern cultural studies, there are more than 400 definitions of culture. This is explained both by the versatility and multidimensionality of the phenomenon of culture, and by the dependence of the results of studying research facilities. The main research approaches to explaining culture are:

1. Anthropological, in which culture is understood as an expression of human nature.

2. Another approach to culture can be called philosophical-historical. Another name for it is activity. "Action" here is understood as a prudent, planning change in reality, history. The most common is the idea of ​​culture as a result of human activity. There is a point of view that culture includes only creative activity, other authors are convinced that all types of reproductive activity (reproduction, repetition of what has been achieved) should also be considered as cultural.

3. Another approach to the interpretation of culture: sociological. Here culture is understood as a factor in organizing the life of society. Society creates cultural values, and they further determine the development of this society: these are language, beliefs, aesthetic tastes, professional skills and all sorts of customs.

4. In addition, another approach to the study of culture is axiological (value-based), which defines culture as a set of certain values ​​that form its semantic core. The role of values ​​in the structure and functioning of culture is beyond doubt, since they streamline reality and introduce evaluative moments into its comprehension. They correlate with the idea of ​​the ideal and give meaning to human life.

Thus, in the axiological approach, culture is understood as a set of values ​​recognized by mankind, which it purposefully creates, preserves and develops.

So, culture is a multifaceted concept. It cannot be assigned an unambiguous meaning. One can only speak of a more or less universal approach in search of the essence of the term. This inexhaustibility of the phenomena of culture is a reflection of the nature of its bearer - man. If, however, the main thing in a person is singled out from the point of view of culture, this will be an active life position aimed at understanding and transforming the world, as well as spiritual and bodily improvement of himself.

2. The structure of culture. Culture as a set of material and spiritual values ​​expresses the level of historical development achieved by a person, and the cultural process includes ways and methods of creating tools, objects and things that a person needs. At the same time, the mastery of culture involves the development of skills and knowledge for work, communication and knowledge - the main components of the life of any society, as well as intellectual development and the formation of a humanistic worldview. It thereby reveals the unity of man with nature and society, being a characteristic of the development of the creative forces and abilities of the individual.

According to the two main types of production - material and spiritual - culture is usually divided into material and spiritual.

Material culture embraces the whole sphere of material activity and its results; the totality of material goods created by people. It characterizes the transformative activity of a person (in terms of its impact on human development), revealing to some extent his abilities, creative possibilities, talents. Material culture includes: 1) the culture of labor and material production (tools, technological processes, methods of cultivating the land and growing food); 2) culture of life; 3) topos culture, i.e. place of residence (dwellings, houses, villages, cities); 4) culture of attitude to one's own body, etc. According to the definition of the American sociologist W. Ogborn, the term material culture refers to all material objects, as well as inventions and changes in the development of technology. Material culture is studied by archeology, ethnography, history, economics, and other sciences.

Spiritual culture is a sphere of human activity, covering various aspects of the spiritual life of a person and society. It represents: the spiritual world of each individual and his activities to create "spiritual products" (creativity of scientists, writers, artists, legislators, etc.); the products of spiritual activity themselves - spiritual values, scientific results, books, canvases, laws, customs, etc. Spiritual culture manifests itself through public consciousness (political, legal, moral, aesthetic, religious, national, science and philosophy) and is embodied in art, literary, architectural and other monuments of human activity. The spiritual culture of society includes religion, science, education, art, language and writing, etc.

Spiritual culture can be characterized as a reflected humanity, as a collective history of the mind and feelings of mankind.

There is no rigid dividing line between material and spiritual culture. But priority in this unity, for example, Marxism gives the material basis, believing that it is she who plays a decisive role in the development of culture, ensuring the continuity of social evolution. However, excessive attention to the priority of material factors over spiritual ones had a negative impact on the development of culture as a whole.

Culture is characterized only by the fact that it is a product and result of human activity, but also by the fact that it is a person who occupies a central place in its value content. In all the diverse and often contradictory manifestations of culture, a person is invariably present: his culture develops its own vision, its own image and gives it a certain value status. Because of this, every cultural process serves simultaneously as a process of formation and development of man.

When applied to human society, the term "culture" emphasizes its proper human and not biological existence. Throughout his active life, through activity and communication, through self-awareness and reflection, a person carries out a cultural process that has clearly defined historical features. However, at all times, from pre-class communities to the modern era, humanity is revealed in three main areas of culture. It is the relationship of man with nature; human-to-human relations (public relations); man's relationship with himself. Each of these areas can be considered from the standpoint of Knowledge, Goodness and Beauty, i.e. from the standpoint of science, the laws of ethics and aesthetics. At the same time, the same objects, things, symbols and cultural traditions can be assessed differently by representatives of different research schools.

This feature is typical for the study of any field of culture, therefore, in the study of culture, and more broadly - in the study of the social form of being, there is not and cannot be a single point of view, a variety of views and opinions should dominate and fruitfully develop here. It is from a multicolored palette of opinions that the cultural and intellectual process of cognition of the spiritual world is formed.

The etymology of the term "culture" goes back to the Latin cultura - processing, cultivation. Originating in the era of agriculture, the word cultura fixed the measure of human participation in the ennoblement of nature. For a long time, this concept was used to determine the influence of man on nature, to identify the results that a person achieved in mastering its forces. By the end of the 17th century, in the writings of the German scientist Puffendorf (1684), culture appears in a generalized form as a human act without taking into account the natural in it and the environment. There is a point of view that "culture" is a counterculture. Puffendorf gave the term "culture" a value coloring, pointing out that culture, in its purpose, in its significance, is what elevates a person, acts as a result of his own activity, complementing his external and internal nature. In this interpretation, both the phenomenon and the term "culture" approached scientific understanding. But nevertheless, as an independent phenomenon of social life, worthy and requiring scientific research, culture was recognized and considered in the second half of the 18th century. during the Age of Enlightenment. Enlighteners (in particular, Jean-Jacques Rousseau) singled out culture as something, as a phenomenon that opposes the natural environment, natural Nature. Rousseau interprets culture as something that alienates a person from natural nature. Therefore, the function of culture in Rousseau is destructive. Cultural peoples, in his opinion, are "spoiled", morally "corrupted" in comparison with "pure" primitive peoples. The German Enlightenment at the same time, on the contrary, emphasized the "creative", progressive nature of culture. In their opinion, culture is a transition from a more sensual and animal state to a social order. In the animal state, they believed, there is no culture. With its appearance, the transformation of humanity from the herd nature of the common existence to the public one, from the uncontrolled to the organizational and regulatory, from the non-critical to the evaluative-reflexive, is carried out. An important milestone in the formation of the concept was the ideas of the German educator Johann Gottfried Herder, who interpreted culture as a stage in the improvement of man and, above all, a stage in the development of science and education. In his interpretation, culture is what unites people, acts as a stimulus for development. Another German thinker, Wilhelm von Humboldt, emphasized that culture is the domination of man over nature, carried out with the help of science and craft. Both in the concept of Herder and in the concept of Humboldt, in fact, culture is considered as a content, a characteristic of social progress. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant associated the content of culture with the perfection of the mind, and therefore social progress for him is the development of culture as the perfection of the mind. Another German thinker, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, associated culture with spiritual characteristics: for him, culture is independence and freedom of the spirit. Thus, in the positions presented, culture is characterized as the spiritual side of social life, as a value aspect of the spiritual component of a person. At the end of the 19th century, inheriting enlightenment ideas about the progressive dynamics of social life, the German economist and philosopher Karl Marx, based on a materialistic understanding of history, put forward material production as the deep foundation of culture, which led to a division into the material and spiritual aspects of culture, with the former dominating. K. Marx expanded the content boundaries of culture, including in it not only spiritual, but also material formations. However, the merit of Marx also lies in the fact that he substantiated the connection of culture with all spheres of social life, showed culture in all social production, in all social manifestations. In addition, he saw in culture a functional ability to link the history of mankind into a single holistic process. The first attempt to define culture was made by the English ethnographer Edward Bernard Tylor, the founder of the evolutionist school, who understood culture as a complex whole, consisting of “knowledge, beliefs, art, morality, laws, customs, and some other abilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” His merit is that he gave a fairly broad understanding of culture, which covers a wide range of vital social manifestations. Culture in Tylor's understanding appears as a simple enumeration of heterogeneous elements that are not connected into a system. In addition, he argued that culture can be viewed as a general improvement of the human race. It was this idea and an attempt to transfer Charles Darwin's idea to social development that formed the basis of evolutionism. In the approach of E.B. Tylor to the definition of culture laid another milestone in the development of the concept of culture. This is a study of the relationship between the concepts of culture and civilization. Civilization sometimes acts as a level, a stage in the development of culture. Tylor does not distinguish between culture and civilization, for him culture and civilization in a broad ethnographic sense are identical concepts. This is characteristic of English anthropology. However, in the German (O. Spengler, A. Weber, F. Tennis) and Russian (N.A. Berdyaev) traditions, civilization and culture are opposed. Culture is understood as an "organic" state of society, which is characterized by spirituality and free creativity. Religion, art, morality lie in the field of culture. Civilization, using methods and tools, has no spiritual component, rational, technological. According to O. Spengler, this is the "dead time" of culture. One of the first to come close to understanding culture as a system was the English sociologist Herbert Spencer (1820 - 1903), who considered society and culture as an organism, which has its own organs and parts of the body. And what is essential here is not the identification of culture with the physiological nature of the organism, but the fact that different parts of society, having their own functions, are in unity. Also considering culture as a single organism, the German cultural historian Oswald Spengler takes it a step further by showing in his work The Decline of Europe that every cultural organism is not permanent, but dynamic. But this dynamics is within the boundaries of a certain cycle: birth, flourishing, death, as in any biological organism. It is especially important that Spengler saw the cultural essence of such an organism in the inner structure of the soul of this or that people. Thus, Spengler found himself within the framework of the interpretation of the psychological essence of culture. The names of the English anthropologists Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown and Bronislaw Malinowski are associated with a further stage in the scientific interpretation of culture. They were among the first to single out in the nature of culture its active essence. Radcliffe-Brown, understanding culture as a living organism in action, believed that the study of the structure of this organism includes the study of the functions of structural elements both in relation to each other and in relation to the whole. Malinovsky directly linked culture, its functioning with the satisfaction of activity needs. In the 50s of the XX century. comes the realization that culture is the content of social life, which ensures the integrity and viability of society. Therefore, each society has its own culture, which ensures reproduction and its vitality. Because of this, it is impossible to evaluate cultures according to the principle “worse - better”, more developed or less. This is how the theory of cultural relativism (M. Herskovitz) arises, within which the idea is formed that culture is based on a system of values ​​that determines the relationship "man - the world". The ideas about culture were expanded by the interest shown in it by the Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who linked culture with mental stereotypes. It is within the framework of psychological anthropology that the personality is included in culture. The next stage in the enrichment of the concept of culture is associated with the ideas of structuralism, which has become widespread both as a scientific direction and as a methodology for studying cultural phenomena (we will analyze this direction below). And so the main milestones in the history and logic of the formation of the concept of "culture": - the emergence of the term, its initial connection with the cultivation, processing, ennoblement of the land (ie nature); - opposition natural (natural) - cultural (created by man): the French educator J.J. Rousseau; - the spiritual side of social life, its value aspect: German enlighteners; - division into material and spiritual culture, dominance of material production, understanding of the history of culture as a single integral process: Marxism; - the first scientific definition of culture by listing elements of different orders that are not connected to the system: E.B. Tylor; - the relationship between the concepts of culture and civilization; - an analogy between culture and a living organism, all parts of which, performing their functions, are in a single dynamic system; - identification of the functions of the structural elements of culture in relation to each other and in relation to the whole: functionalism; - the relativity of comparing the values ​​of cultures due to their originality, integrity and viability: cultural relativism; - the inclusion of personality (with its consciousness and subconsciousness, rational and irrational moments) in culture: psychological anthropology, psychoanalysis; - spreading the method of structural linguistics to various areas of sociocultural reality, recreating a system of symbols that reflect the structure of culture: structuralism. From a completely limited, narrow understanding of culture, which has a romantic, subjective connotation, social thought has moved into the sphere of cognition of the whole world of a “second nature” created by man, using methods generally accepted in science in this cognition and being guided in evaluating the results by modern scientific criteria, such as logic, consistency, the possibility of experimental verification. Moreover, by now, the culturological method of analysis itself has been formed, which is used not only in specialized studies of culture, but also in other areas of knowledge. The foregoing does not mean that romantic ideas about culture have completely disappeared from public consciousness: in everyday life they certainly dominate (at least in the ideas that a “cultured” person should attend theaters, read books, etc.), narrow understanding of culture takes place in the media, exists among the technical intelligentsia, who believe that there is science, and there is culture. The culturological method of analysis is in its infancy, it is still quite difficult to fix with a maximum degree of certainty precisely the culturological aspect of the study of the phenomenon of culture, since culturology is an integrative knowledge that is formed in borderline, interdisciplinary areas, operates with material accumulated by the history of culture, relies on the results of ethnographic , sociological, psychological and other research. Cultural studies, which is in the field of tension between social-scientific and humanitarian approaches, has as an object the whole world of artificial orders (things, structures, cultivated territory, historical events, technologies of activity, forms of social organization, knowledge, concepts, symbols, languages ​​of communication, etc.). .p.), and as a special subject, it studies the processes of the genesis and morphology of culture, its structure, essence and meaning, typology, dynamics and language.

The structure of culture.

The word culture originated from the word cult (lat. Worship) - one of the main elements of religion, it can be actions, singing, reading, dancing, aimed at giving a visible expression to a religious bow or attracting divine forces. Cicero for the first time introduces the concept of culture - cultura anima - processing, cultivation, the work of a person on his soul. Culture is a collective image, includes both religion and art, etc. Culture is a historically defined level of development of society, the creative forces and abilities of a person, expressed in the types and forms of organizing the life and activities of people, as well as the material and spiritual values ​​\u200b\u200bcreated by them . Culture is also a way of regulating the preservation, reproduction and development of all social life, culture is understood only through human activity in the dynamics of historical development. Two ways of mastering culture: interpersonal communication and self-education. Culture is subdivided: 1. according to its carrier. A - world (synthesis of the best achievements of various peoples). B - national (cultural synthesis of national layers, classes, and groups of any people). B - class (rural, urban). Mr. professional. D - youth. E - personal, it includes two concepts: culture - the ability to fit into society; spirituality - the desire of the soul to penetrate into the depths. 2. by types of activity A - material, B - spiritual. Material objects are physical objects created by human hands - "artifacts", the culture of labor and material supply, the culture of everyday life, topos. Spiritual culture - includes intellectual, moral, artistic, etc. It is also the result of activity, can be transmitted only through communication. The structure of culture in a broad sense: 1 - the material and spiritual values ​​of mankind. 2. Ways of his life. 3. The level of development of society. 4. a set of people, relationships to each other and the world around them. 5. The originality of life, science and peoples in a certain historical period. 6. Mythology. 7. Religion. 8. Politics. Cultural universals (J. Murdoch) for all peoples are characterized by common norms, values, rules and traditions. Culture is divided into: 1. Home (a set of values, traditions and customs that guide most members of society), 2. Subculture (this is part of a common culture , the system of values, traditions inherent in a large social group), 3. Counterculture (this is a culture that is in conflict with the dominant values, for example, the culture of the underworld). Culture Forms:

1. Elite - created by the privileged parts of society or by its order. It exceeds the level of perception of a moderately educated person (classical music); 2. Folk cultures (folklore) - anonymous creators, do not have professional training (amateur, collective), myths, fairy tales, legends, in execution it is always local and democratic; 3. Mass - this is the culture of today, this is a type of cultural product that is produced every day, presented to different audiences through different channels, designed to satisfy momentary needs. Reacts to any events, quickly dies. It can be national and international.

Functions of culture.

The role of culture in the life of a person and society can be reduced to several main functions it performs. human function. With the help of culture, a person becomes a real person. Culture provides the process of socialization, i.e. inclusion of a person in the system of social relations. Culture determines the content, means and methods of socialization. The transformation of a person into a full-fledged member of society proceeds through the development of the language, the adoption of norms and standards of behavior, values. Socialization, on the other hand, opens up the possibility for a person to become a person, to reveal his true essence. adaptive function. Culture adapts a person to the environment. Culture forms a way of life suitable for the geographical, climatic and other natural conditions of the existence of the people. The biological incapacity of man revealed the ability to flexibly master natural conditions with the help of cultural traditions. Among the peoples living in different conditions, specific ways of adapting to the natural environment are fixed by means of culture in the form of ways of making clothes, building housing, normative prescriptions, national traditions, etc. In the course of his adaptation to nature, man simultaneously transforms nature itself. Information function. Culture accumulates and preserves social information with the help of sign-symbolic means. It is a kind of non-genetic memory that stores ideas, knowledge, norms, values, social experience of both an individual and a people, and humanity as a whole. communicative function. Culture not only accumulates information, but also creates a single space for communication and dialogue between people. It creates the conditions and means of communication, various sign systems, among which the most important is language. Language conveys and stores common meanings and meanings that bind members of a society of the same culture. Thus, culture creates opportunities for the transfer of experience and knowledge from person to person, from generation to generation. Regulatory (normative) function culture is associated with the regulation of various aspects, types of social and personal activities of people. In the sphere of work, everyday life, interpersonal relations, culture determines the norms and framework of interaction, ways of communication. At the personal level, culture regulates human behavior through the assimilation of spiritual, moral, aesthetic values, which form certain needs and orientations. Integration and delimitation functions cultures are that each specific type of culture unites people into one national, ethnic or subcultural community, but separates different peoples or social groups.

Culturology: Textbook for universities Apresyan Ruben Grantovich

2.1. The formation of cultural knowledge

Initially, the study of culture proceeded within the boundaries of philosophical problems and in line with the philosophy of history. For the first time using the concept of "culture" as opposed to "nature" - "nature", the ancient authors defined the boundaries of the study - an artificial world created by man himself. In the philosophy of the 17th-18th centuries, the study of culture takes place as a study of ontological (i.e., related to the most general patterns of being) problems, as well as a process of systematizing accumulated historical knowledge. In European history, the 18th century, called the Age of Enlightenment, became the "age of philosophy." The Enlighteners sought to establish a cult of Reason, therefore, they made everything that was created by the Human Mind the subject of their research.

The authors of that time closely associated the development of culture with ethical and aesthetic problems, but they narrowed the very concept to the limit, in fact making the word "culture" a synonym for the concepts of "education" and "education". Historical knowledge was just as limited, representing a list of names and events in European history since ancient times.

The European historical and philosophical tradition of the 18th century is dominated by eurocentrism - by "culture" is meant only the culture of Europe since ancient times. The first to retreat from this position Johann Gottfried Herder(1744–1803). In his work “Ideas for the Philosophy of the History of Mankind”, he describes the progressive development of European culture - facts from the history of other cultures and peoples were almost unknown to his contemporaries. However, Herder's views are much deeper than those of other authors of his time - historians and philosophers. Culture, according to Herder, is the result of human activity, it includes science, language, religion, art, and the state. At the same time, the history of mankind is the history of its culture. The culture of every nation, every historical epoch is very peculiar, therefore every culture requires deep study and every studied culture should be treated with due respect. Giving a description of the culture of the Middle Ages, which was considered to be the time of decline and degradation of all forms of spiritual life, Herder argues that there are no peoples outside of culture, that the Middle Ages is not a “step back”, but the same stage in the development of culture as Antiquity or Modern times. According to Herder, one can talk about the independent development of culture, but at the same time take into account that quantitative changes occur over time that do not make culture perfect qualitatively, therefore there can be no “bad” or “good” periods in the history of culture. It was a step towards creating cultural anthropology. Herder comes to the conclusion that culture is created by people and it is through acquaintance with culture that a person becomes a proper person.

The development of philosophical thought at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries led to a comprehensive study of the human personality, including in the context of culture. Philosophers raise the question of the essence of man and see its solution in defining the personality as a Homo sapiens, which is presented to them as the result of education and upbringing, i.e., the direct impact of the cultural environment. Enlighteners introduce into active circulation the concept of "culture" as a personality-forming principle.

The study of culture continues in the works of the classics of German philosophy I. Kant and G. Hegel. Immanuel Kant(1724-1804) saw in the development of culture the path of man to moral perfection. According to the Kantian system, man belongs both to the world of "nature", phenomena, and the world of "freedom", noumenons. “Freedom” is what it should be if one follows the highest moral rule, which Kant calls the “categorical imperative”: “Do unto others as you would like them to do unto you.”

In obedience to this moral law, man realizes his freedom. The ability of a person to realize these tasks and try to follow them is culture. However, Kant does not write about "culture" in general, but about its specific forms - the culture of communication, the culture of mental activity. Culturological problems are not singled out by Kant as independent, but are part of his philosophy of nature. Kant extends his critical method not only to the analysis of nature, but also to the study of the spiritual aspects of human existence.

In the philosophical system Georg Hegel(1770-1831) the philosophy of culture does not occupy such a significant place. Culture in Hegel is traditional "education". In his writings, a philosophy of history is formed as a phased embodiment of freedom and its awareness by the spirit.

In the 19th century, which replaced the "age of philosophy", culture is studied by historians. They make civilizations the subject of their research, they study various historical and temporal forms, considering them to be different "cultures". Historians of the 19th century analyze the rapidly growing factual material. Firstly, this is a huge amount of written and archaeological sources relating to the history of Europe. Interest in the history of early Christianity serves as an impetus for the study of ancient history, translation and comparison of texts written in ancient Greek and Latin, and archaeological excavations. Following the tradition of ancient authors, the history of Europe begins with the history of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. All antiquity is divided into "civilized" antiquity and "barbarism", which unites the rest of the world. Both the "civilized" and "barbarian" beginnings of European history require a clear definition of their spatial and temporal boundaries, a comparative analysis. Secondly, The era of the Napoleonic Wars "discovered" Ancient Egypt for Europeans and marked the beginning of the study of the Ancient East. The deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphs made it possible to discover a hitherto completely unfamiliar, wonderful world of ancient civilizations. They also needed to be included in the number of cultural achievements, and this made it necessary to expand the boundaries of the cultural area from European to global. Third, Europeans are "discovering" the contemporary East for themselves. It was necessary not only to study the peculiar achievements of India, China, Japan, but also to comprehend what is the originality of these cultures and, most importantly, what are the foundations and prospects for dialogue with them. Fourth, Numerous missionary trips and geographical expeditions gave a variety of descriptions of the life and customs of those peoples who were still at the primitive stage of development - the natives of Australia, the Indians of America, the indigenous inhabitants of Africa, the peoples of the North. Many different cultures, ancient and modern, had to be studied.

One of the first authors who summarized historical data and conducted their cultural study was Nikolay Yakovlevich Danilevsky(1822 1885). He turned to the question that has been central to Russian social thought since the 17th century - which way is Russia going? Entering into the discussion of this issue on the side of the Slavophiles, N.Ya. Danilevsky saw this problem as a culturological one - what culture is Russia closer to? In his book "Russia and Europe" (1869), he builds a theory of cultural and historical types, speaking about the peculiarities and originality of Russian culture among other "indigenous" cultures. Danilevsky divided all the peoples known to historians into three groups:

Firstly,"positive", that is, those who created great civilizations, called "cultural-historical types." N.Ya. Danilevsky called the following types - Egyptian, Assyrian-Babylonian-Phoenician-Chaldean, or ancient Semitic; Chinese; Hindi-Indian; Iranian; Hebrew; Greek; Roman; neo-Semitic, or Arabic; Germano-Romance, or European. The Mexican and Peruvian types perished without completing the full cycle of their development;

Secondly,"scourges of God", which acted as destroyers of decrepit civilizations, such as the Huns, Mongols, Turks;

Thirdly, a kind of "ethnographic material" that enriched other civilizations, such as the Finns.

All civilizations, like a living organism, go through the stages of origin and formation, flourishing and gradual dying. Their development takes place in accordance with the laws of cultural and historical development:

"Law 1. Any tribe or family of peoples… constitutes an original cultural-historical type, if it is capable of historical development at all due to its spiritual inclinations…

Law 2. It is necessary that peoples, to him (cultural-historical type. - Note. auth.) owned enjoyed political independence.

Law 3. The beginnings of a civilization of one cultural-historical type are not transmitted to peoples of another type.

Law 4. Civilization, characteristic of each cultural-historical type, only reaches fullness, diversity and richness when the ethnographic elements that make it up are diverse - when they ... enjoying independence, form a federation ...

Law 5. The course of development of cultural-historical types is most similar to those ... plants in which the growth period is indefinitely long, but the period of flowering and fruiting is relatively short ... "

Danilevsky defines four main foundations of cultural activity: religious, political and economic, scientific and technological, aesthetic. Each of the cultural-historical types that have passed their life cycle manifested itself in one or two directions, for example, the Romano-Germanic type especially succeeded in the political-economic and scientific-technological directions. It should be replaced by a new type, which is only moving towards its heyday - Russian-Slavic. This type will be essentially different from all previous ones precisely in that it develops equally on all four foundations.

The author, who continued the direction determined by N.Ya. Danilevsky, became Oswald Spengler(1880–1936). His book Oakat of Europe, published in 1914, became a kind of bestseller. Spengler strikes at the concept of Eurocentrism, describing various cultural and historical types, in each of which he sees a manifestation of a natural path of growth, development and death of culture. Life, according to Spengler, is wider and more diverse than culture. Each culture, like a living organism, lives its own "life" and has its own "soul", which makes all cultures inimitable and unique. So, for example, Spengler calls the ancient culture "Apollo", European - "Faustian", Byzantine-Arabic - "magic". Each culture has its own path and its own “destiny”. Spengler seeks to comprehend the crisis of European culture at the beginning of the 20th century, to determine its causes and consequences. Unlike N.Ya. Danilevsky, who did not share the concepts of "culture" and "civilization", O. Spengler contrasts them. He called “civilization” the last stage of the development of culture, when it moves to a technical level, replacing humanistic values ​​with material well-being.

A detailed description of various cultures, their typology and analysis of historical development are given in the work Arnold Toynbee(1889–1975) "Comprehension of History". Toynbee raises the question of the driving force of history, considering "civilization" as the basic unit of history. Like his predecessors, the historian studies in detail the various types of civilizations, following a cyclic pattern: birth, growth, flourishing, breakdown, decay - successive stages in the life of any civilization. He considers the mechanism of development to be a confluence of circumstances that develop according to the "challenge" - "response" scenario. "Challenge" - some events that dramatically change the course of history. In order to “respond”, some group of people is needed who is aware of this “challenge” and will accept it. Considering this process necessary for progressive development, Toynbee assigns the main role to a small elite group - priests, leaders, politicians, scientists, who can lead an uninitiated mass. In his opinion, the growing authority of scientific knowledge and the growing influence of religion can have an active impact on public consciousness, on the economy, and on politics. All known history of culture, or civilization, A. Toynbee divides into several generations. The first is primitive, non-literate cultures that develop spontaneously. The second is dynamically developing cultures that put forward bright personalities who lead them. There were four centers of such cultures - Egyptian-Sumerian, Minoan, Chinese, South American. The third generation, in which there are less than ten cultures out of three dozen, is based on "secondary" and "tertiary" religious systems that have grown out of the "primary". According to the theory of A. Toynbee, the death of civilizations is not fatal. He is looking for some new spiritual theory that can overcome the disunity of humanity and thereby save it.

The analysis of history as a single spiritual being of man was carried out Karl Jaspers(1883–1969). From the cyclic scheme, he again returns to the idea of ​​a single line of human development. In his work “The Meaning and Purpose of History”, K. Jaspers defines culture as a way of human existence. At the basis of the movement of human history, K. Jaspers believes a certain supernatural, religious principle. The periodization of history given by him is based on the principle of the evolution of self-knowledge by a person of himself in the process of understanding the laws of world development. Jaspers identifies four stages of this path - the Promethean era, prehistoric, when a person only becomes himself, that is, a cultural being; the era of the great cultures of antiquity - the Sumerian-Babylonian, Egyptian, Aegean, pre-Aryan and Chinese; the era of the spiritual basis of human existence (axial time) - the emergence of a single axis of world cultures, spiritually united in essence, the formation of culture as such; the era of the development of technology, which will lay the foundations for the formation of new cultures, and on their basis - a new axial time, which will become the time of the formation of a new, universal culture that unites all mankind.

In the second half of the 19th century, man himself as the creator and bearer of culture became the subject of study. The science of the formation of man becomes anthropology. Sociology and ethnography, which later turned into independent sciences, are formed as branches of anthropology. Since that time, we can talk about the emergence of trends that in the 20th century will turn into various schools of cultural studies. Anthropological school was one of the first such schools.

A revolutionary event was the publication in 1868 of the book Edward Tylor(1832–1917) "Primitive Culture". The name itself became revolutionary for that time - the concepts of "primitive" and "culture" were considered incompatible. However, it already follows from the name - there are no uncultured peoples and periods in history. The era of primitiveness, which was previously considered barbaric, pre-cultural, is in fact a manifestation of a special form of culture. Tylor not only describes, but also systematizes a huge ethnographic material, characterizing the common features of not only the material, but also the spiritual culture of primitive times, looking for patterns in the evolution of various forms of culture.

Ethnographic research formed the basis for studying the phenomena of world culture on the basis of traditional cultures in the works Bronislav Malinovsky(1884–1942) and Franz Boas(1858–1942).

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, psychologists began to study culture. School founder psychoanalysisSigmund Freud(1856-1939) considered it possible to apply psychological methods to the study of cultural phenomena - myth, religion, art. Freud saw in the study of culture an opportunity to find the mechanism that limits the manifestation of the biological element, the instinctive principle in the personality of a person, considering him to be a being, which is led primarily by the mind, and the biological manifests itself in the unconscious (for example, in dreams). Work 3. Freud "Totem and Taboo" (1913) was the starting point for the formation psychological school in cultural studies. Freud, based on his experience as a practicing physician and exploring the manifestations of the unconscious in the human psyche, tried to explain the essence of the phenomenon of creativity, wanted to determine the features of the psychological foundations of art, science, and religion. According to the psychoanalyst, culture opposes the manifestation of a person's destructive aspirations, such as, for example, aggression. In The Dissatisfaction with Culture (1930), Freud wrote: "Culture must strain all its forces to put a limit to the aggressive inclinations of a person, to restrain them with the help of appropriate mental reactions." His works such as “Psychology of the Masses and Analysis of the Human Self” (1921), “The Future of an Illusion” (1927) can also be considered culturological.

To a greater extent, cultural issues are manifested in the works K.G. cabin boy(1875–1961). Along with the individual unconscious, Jung explores a deeper layer that, in his opinion, remains in the human psyche - the collective unconscious, which manifests itself in the form archetypes. It is the archetypes - some universal prototypes (the archetype of the Mother, the archetype of the Virgin, the archetype of the Spirit, etc.) that, according to Jung, are the foundations of culture. Studying the evolution of myth, Jung considers the manifestation of the archetypes he singled out in various variants of cultures. The typological approach is used by Jung in the study of psychology, philosophy and mythology of the East. He refers India, Tibet and China to the cultures of the East, deliberately not uniting these cultures with the Islamic one. Analysis of the psychotechnics of the East, such as meditation or yoga exercises, is necessary, according to Jung, to identify common features not only of Eastern, but also of Western cultures, which he constantly compares: “The West is always looking for elevation, ascension; East - dives and deepenings. External reality, with its spirit of corporeality and heaviness, always seems to a European to be much stronger and more demanding than to an Indian. Therefore, the former seeks exaltation over the world, while the latter willingly returns to the maternal bowels of nature.

At the beginning of XX formed symbolic school in cultural studies. The founder of the symbolic school in philosophy E. Cassirer(1874-1945) considered symbolic thinking and symbolic human behavior to be the main foundation of culture. L. White also studied culture from the same positions. The study of culture was carried out in line with the study of various symbolic forms of its existence. A special place was given to the analysis of such a symbolic system as language.

Structural methods studies that originated in linguistics began to be widely used in the history of cultural life (F. Saussure), a hypothesis is put forward about the so-called linguistic relativity (B. Whorf). We are talking about the defining role of language in the formation of the specific features of each culture. According to B. Whorf, each language, on the one hand, is a reflection of certain ideas about the surrounding world, on the other hand, it forms a special, specific way of thinking. It follows that differences between languages ​​(for example, in temporal structures) are due to differences between cultures in the perception and development of the world.

Structural method used in the study of primitive society Claude Levi-Strauss. Exploring the language forms of the American Indians, he shows the formation of culture as a result of symbolization processes reflected in the language.

In accordance with the basic ideas of Russian religious philosophy, the subject of cultural research can only be a phenomenon that is absolutely opposed to reality that can be described historically. Taking as a basis the European opposition of culture and civilization as lack of spirituality, philosophers paid attention primarily to the sphere of the Spirit (recall that philosophers XVIII centuries have defined the Absolute not as Spirit, but as Mind).

The tradition of Danilevsky, Spengler and Toynbee follows Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev(1874 1948), dismissing the linear interpretation of the development of history as untenable. Each culture, in his opinion, is both mortal and immortal, since the temporary elements or values ​​of culture die, while the eternal ones continue to exist. “There is a great struggle between eternity and time in culture, a great resistance to the destructive power of time.” Western culture, according to Berdyaev, has gone through the stages of barbarism, medieval Christianity and modern secular humanism. Humanistic culture, exhausted, led to its own death. Berdyaev himself wrote that "there are two principles in culture - a conservative one, turned to the past and maintains a continuity with it, and a creative one, turned to the future and creating new values" . Culture creates eternal values ​​for their own sake, but as soon as pragmatic tasks arise, it is powerless. Following Spengler, Berdyaev considers the technical stage of the development of culture - civilization - a manifestation of the dying of culture, when the spiritual principle is replaced by the base, instead of organisms there are mechanisms.

But the path of the death of culture through its transformation into civilization is not the only option for its development. Culture can follow a different path - the path of a religious renewal of life. This was the Christian medieval culture, but then Christianity ceased to be a proper religion, verbalized and ritualized. Berdyaev wrote that Russia did not survive the period of humanism and the Renaissance, like Western Europe, but it survived the crisis of humanism much more acutely, since “Russian humanism was Christian, it was based on philanthropy, mercy, pity, even among those who in their minds retreated from Christianity". In his works, Berdyaev is not so much concerned with the problem of systematizing historical types of culture as he considers the development of spiritual culture in a concrete historical aspect. His book "The Origins and Meaning of Russian Communism" is devoted to the analysis of the evolution of socio-political theories in Russia and their influence on the spiritual life of Russian society. One of the burning problems for philosophers and publicists in Russia was the definition of the essence of such a stratum of society as the intelligentsia, and the designation of its role in the spiritual development of the country. Defining the intellectuals as "the best people of their time", Berdyaev was able to predict with amazing accuracy the path of development of Russia in the 20th century, the tragic fate of the Russian intelligentsia.

In the traditions of Russian religious and philosophical thought, the theory P.A. Florensky(1882-1938), who believed that the basis of "culture" is "cult", which he understood as that part of reality where the earthly and divine are combined, and "culture" in all its manifestations is the "side shoots" of the cult.

At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, there was a turn from the study of the philosophy of culture to the problems of sociology culture. The subject of study for culturologists is society.

The problems of the evolution of European culture as the evolution of ideal forms of political structure are considered by Max Weber(1864–1920). Weber is looking for rationalistic foundations for the development of culture. This is the aim of his study of the economic foundations of religious life ("The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism"). According to Weber, in the social sciences, as in the natural sciences, the basis is scientific abstractions, which he calls "ideal types". These are "feudalism" and "capitalism", "city" and "village", "state" and "church". In addition, Weber addresses the problem of method in the social sciences. Speaking about the method, Weber comes to the conclusion about the unity of research methods in the natural and social sciences.

Since the middle of the 20th century, sociological problems have come to the fore. The concrete sociological method in the study of the history of culture applied Pitirim Sorokin(1889–1968). Sorokin collected a huge amount of empirical material, summarizing which he used the mathematical methods adopted in sociology. Analyzing quantitative data, he draws conclusions about the trends and processes that took place in certain periods of history (for example, citing data on the quantitative ratio of religious and secular subjects in works of art in different periods of the Renaissance, he shows an increase in the trend towards the secularization of spiritual life in the period under study) . As a sociologist, P.A. Sorokin reveals the connection between the development of culture and social processes, looking for patterns in such a relationship.

Thus, the formation of cultural studies as a science followed the path of the formation of several schools: anthropological, philosophical, psychological, sociological.

The most important tasks of any science are the definition of its subject, the design of the categorical apparatus, the limitation of the range of problems under study, the development of research methods.