Culturology has become one of the most significant and rapidly developing humanities which undoubtedly has its reasons. Let's try to characterize some of them.

1. Modern civilization is rapidly transforming the environment, social institutions, and way of life. In this regard, culture attracts attention as inexhaustible source public innovations. Hence the desire to reveal the potential of culture, its internal reserves. Considering culture as a means of self-realization of a person, one can identify new inexhaustible impulses that can influence the historical process, the person himself.

2. The need to study the phenomenon of culture is due in part to the professorial ecological crisis. At the present stage of its development, culture is causing more and more harm to the environment. Involuntarily, questions arise: is culture not hostile to nature? is it possible to harmonize their relationship?

3. The question of the relationship between the concepts of culture and society, culture and history is also relevant. In the past, the social cycle was much shorter than the cultural one. When a person was born, he found a certain structure of cultural values. It has not changed for centuries. In the 20th century, the situation changed dramatically. Now for one human life there are several cultural cycles, which puts a person in an extremely difficult position. Everything changes so quickly that a person does not have time to comprehend and appreciate certain innovations and finds himself in a state of loss and uncertainty. In this regard, it is of particular importance to identify the most significant features of the cultural practice of past eras in order to avoid moments of primitivization of modern culture.

Culturology is a complex science that studies all aspects of the functioning of culture, from the causes of its occurrence to various forms of historical self-expression.

The main components of cultural studies are the philosophy of culture and the history of culture, areas of humanitarian knowledge that have existed for a long time. Having merged together, they form the basis of cultural studies as a complex science. Philosophy of culture is a branch of cultural studies that studies the concepts of the origin and functioning of culture. cultural history- section that studies specific features cultures of different historical stages. In cultural studies, historical facts are subjected to philosophical analysis and generalization. Depending on the aspect on which the main attention is focused, various cultural theories and schools are created.

The new sections of cultural studies, the main parameters of which are still being formed, are the morphology of culture and the theory of culture. The morphology of culture is understood as a branch of cultural studies that studies the structure and development of culture. Some aspects of morphology and cultural theory were discussed in chapter 1.

Although culture has become a subject of knowledge since the emergence of philosophy, as an independent phenomenon, it began to be closely studied only in the 18th-19th centuries. Initially, this was carried out within the framework of the philosophy of history and ethics and was associated with the philosophical concepts of J. Vico (1668-1744), J. G. Herder (1744-1803), I. Kant (1724 - 1804). Paying due attention to questions of culture, these thinkers did not yet make it a direct object of study. It acted only as an accompanying link in understanding the existence of history and morality.

The great German poet Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) tried to remove the contradiction between "natural", "sensual", on the one hand, and "moral", on the other, indicated in the works of his predecessors. According to Schiller, culture consists in harmony and reconciliation of the physical and moral nature of man: "Culture must give justice to both - not only to one rational impulse of a person as opposed to the sensual, but also to the latter as opposed to the first." Among Schiller's younger contemporaries - Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling, the brothers August and Friedrich Schlegel - the aesthetic principle of culture comes to the fore. Its main content is artistic activity people as a means of overcoming the animal, natural beginning in them. aesthetic views Schelling are most fully set out in his book "Philosophy of Art" (1802-1803), where the desire to show the priority of artistic creativity over all other types of human creative activity, to put art both above morality and science is clearly seen. “Art is, as it were, the completion of the world spirit,” he wrote, “because in it they find a union in the form of the final subjective and objective, spirit and nature, internal and external, conscious and unconscious, necessity and freedom. As such, art is the self-contemplation of the absolute ". In a somewhat simplified way, culture was reduced by Schelling and other romantics to art, primarily to poetry. To a reasonable and moral person, they to a certain extent opposed the power of a person-artist, a person-creator.

In the works of G. V. F. Hegel, the main types of culture (religion, art, philosophy, law) are represented by stages in the development of the world mind. Hegel creates a universal scheme for the development of the world mind, according to which any culture embodies a certain stage of its self-expression. The world mind is manifested in people as well. Originally in the form of language, speech. The spiritual development of the individual reproduces the stages of self-knowledge of the world mind, starting with "baby talk" and ending with "absolute knowledge", i.e. knowledge of those forms and laws that govern from within the whole process spiritual development humanity. From Hegel's point of view, the development of world culture reveals such integrity and logic that cannot be explained by the sum of the efforts of individual individuals. The essence of culture, according to Hegel, is manifested not in the overcoming of biological principles in man and not in creative imagination prominent personalities, but in the spiritual familiarization of the individual with the world mind. "The absolute value of culture lies in the development of the universality of thought," wrote Hegel.

In the works "Phenomenology of Spirit", "Philosophy of History", "Aesthetics", "Philosophy of Law" Hegel analyzed the entire path of development of world culture. No other thinker has done this before him. Nevertheless, in the works of Hegel, culture does not yet appear as the main subject of study. Hegel analyzes, first of all, the history of the self-disclosure of the world mind.

Works adequate modern idea about cultural studies, appear only in the 2nd half. XIX century. One of them can rightly be considered the book of an Englishman Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917) "primitive culture "(1871). Claiming that "the science of culture is the science of reform," he considered culture as a process of continuous progressive development. Tylor gives one of the first definitions of culture of a generalizing nature, which is considered to this day canonical: "Culture or civilization in in a broad, ethnographic sense, it is composed in its entirety of knowledge, beliefs, art, morality, laws, customs, and some other abilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.

Tylor looked at culture as a continuous chain of transformations of the products of human thought and labor from less perfect to more perfect. With him, all objects and ideas develop "one of the others." This approach is called evolutionary.

In 1869 and 1872 two works appear that are now invariably included among the most significant for the course of cultural studies. These are "Russia and Europe" by the Russian researcher Nikolai Danilevsky and "The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music" by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Here all the signs of a true cultural study are already present: the material on the history of culture is philosophically interpreted and accompanied by calculations of a general theoretical order. And most importantly, culture and its forms are the main object of consideration. The views of Danilevsky and Nietzsche on culture will be discussed in the next chapter. It should only be noted that the fact of the emergence of cultural studies did not yet mean the emergence of science itself. Neither Danilevsky nor Nietzsche called themselves culturologists, and they hardly suspected that they were becoming the forefathers of a new science. Danilevsky perceived himself more as a historian, although he was a biologist by education, and Nietzsche quite naturally acted as a philosopher.

Georg Simmel (1858-1918) pays special attention to the conflict moments in the culture of the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, trying to give them a deeply objective explanation. At the beginning of the 20th century, from the point of view of the philosopher, there is a sharp deviation of the line of development of culture from the previous paths. In The Conflict of Modern Culture (1918), Simmel explains the desire to destroy all old forms of culture, characteristic of this historical period, by the fact that in recent decades humanity lives without any unifying idea, as it was until the middle of the 19th century. Many new ideas arise, but they are so fragmented and incompletely expressed that they cannot meet an adequate response in life itself, they cannot rally society around the idea of ​​culture. "Life in its immediacy seeks to embody itself in concrete forms and phenomena, but due to their imperfection, it reveals a struggle against any form," Simmel writes, substantiating his vision of the cause of crisis phenomena in culture. Perhaps the philosopher managed to discover one of the most significant indicators of the cultural crisis as such, namely the absence of a global socially important idea capable of uniting all cultural processes.

Simmel's point of view is also extremely interesting because it was expressed precisely at the time when culturology was finally turning into an independent science. The feeling of crisis, which is characteristic of the assessment of the state of culture by various thinkers, to a certain extent predetermined the completion of the formation of the science of culture. This happened under the influence of certain events in European culture. They testified to a profound turning point in history, which had not been equaled in previous centuries. The First World War and revolutions in Russia, Germany, Hungary, a new type of organization of people's lives, due to the industrial revolution, the growth of man's power over nature and the disastrous consequences of this growth for nature, the birth of an impersonal "man of the masses" - all this obliged us to take a different look at the character and the role of European culture. Many scientists, like Simmel, considered its situation extremely deplorable and no longer considered European culture as a kind of cultural standard, they spoke of a crisis and the collapse of its foundations.

Here is what the Russian philosopher L. M. Lopatin wrote at the end of 1915 about the events of that time: “The modern world is experiencing a huge historical catastrophe - so terrible, so bloody, so fraught with the most unexpected prospects that before it the thought goes numb and dizzy. .. In the unprecedented historical storm that is now raging, not only blood flows like rivers, not only states collapse ... not only peoples perish and rise, something else is happening ... Old ideals are crumbling, former hopes and persistent expectations are fading ... And the main thing is that our very faith in modern culture is irreparably and deeply wavering: because of its foundations, such a terrible bestial face suddenly looked out at us that we involuntarily turned away from it with disgust and bewilderment. really, this culture? What is its moral, even just vital value?"

Subsequent events in Europe and in the world showed that L. M. Lopatin did not in the least exaggerate the significance of crisis phenomena in culture. It became obvious that a person and culture itself can develop in a completely different way than it once seemed to the humanists of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, that the ideal of a self-developing creative personality in the 20th century was another utopia. A paradoxical situation developed: historical and technical development continued, and cultural development slowed down, turned back, as it were, reviving in man the ancient instincts of destruction and aggression. This situation could not be explained on the basis of traditional ideas about culture, according to which it is a process of organizing and ordering history itself.

Consequently, culturology as a worldview science finally strengthened its position as a result of the awareness of the crisis state of culture at the beginning of the 20th century, just as the boom experienced by culturology now is explained by the crisis of the state of culture of its end.

The feeling of discomfort and uncertainty was so strong that the first volume of Oswald Spengler's The Decline of Europe, published in 1918, was greeted with unprecedented interest. The book was read and discussed not only by specialists: philosophers, historians, sociologists, anthropologists, etc., but by everyone educated people. It has become an integral part of many university programs. And this despite significant criticism of many of the provisions expressed by Spengler. The question of the reasons for such interest in this work is legitimate. After all, Spengler literally repeated some moments from N. Danilevsky's work "Russia and Europe" written half a century earlier, which was noticed only by a narrow circle of professionals.

Undoubtedly, it was a cultural and historical situation. The very name "The Decline of Europe" sounded as relevant as possible. Most of Spengler's contemporaries really felt that they were living in a world of the collapse of old habitual cultural norms, and inevitably posed the question whether this meant the end. European civilization in general or is the beginning of the next round in its development. Reading Spengler, people tried to find an answer to the question of the fate of culture.

Many scholars involved in various aspects of the humanities considered it a matter of honor to take part in the creation general theory culture, reflecting the multidimensionality and complexity of this concept. The term "culturology" did not appear immediately. It was introduced around the 40s. at the initiative of the American cultural researcher and anthropologist Leslie Alvin White. In his works "The Science of Culture" (1949), "The Evolution of Culture" (1959), "The Concept of Culture" (1973) and others, White argued that cultural studies represent a qualitatively higher level of human comprehension than other social sciences, and predicted she has a great future. It so happened that by the time White introduced the name, science itself was already actively functioning.

At the same time, one cannot ignore the fact that cultural studies to this day remains the most controversial and paradoxical science. To create a science of culture, equal in logic, internal unity, fundamentality to other humanities, turned out to be an extremely difficult task: the object of study itself is too multifaceted. This is the reason for the diversity of philosophical approaches to explaining both the essence of culture and the laws of its functioning. This is also the specific attraction of cultural studies.

Culturology(lat. culture

Sections of cultural studies:

2. Culture as a subject of interdisciplinary research (the relationship of cultural studies with other sciences).

important place in the system of cultural sciences occupies philosophy of culture. For a long time, the general theoretical problems of culture were developed within the framework of the philosophy of culture. Now, as already noted, culturology is acquiring an independent status, but still retains close theoretical relations with the philosophy of culture. The philosophy of culture acts as an organic component of philosophy, as one of its relatively autonomous theories. The philosophy of culture represents the highest, most abstract level of the study of culture. She acts as methodological basis of cultural studies.

At the same time, the philosophy of culture and cultural studies differ in the attitudes with which they approach the study of culture. Culturology considers culture in its internal relations as an independent system, and philosophy of culture analyzes culture in accordance with the subject and functions of philosophy in the context of philosophical categories - such as being, consciousness, cognition, personality, society.

Philosophy is the science of the most general principles and patterns of being and cognition. It seeks to develop a systematic and holistic view of the world. And the philosophy of culture seeks to show what is the place of culture in this general picture of being. Philosophy tries to answer the question of whether the world is cognizable, what are the possibilities and limits of cognition, its goals, levels, forms and methods. Philosophy of culture, in turn, seeks to define originality and methodology of cognition of cultural phenomena. An important branch of philosophy is dialectics as a doctrine of universal connection and development. The philosophy of culture reveals how dialectical principles and laws are manifested in the cultural-historical process. It defines the concepts of cultural progress, regression, continuity, heritage. Thus, the philosophy of culture considers culture in the system of philosophical categories and this is its difference from cultural studies.

In the system of knowledge about culture, a special place is occupied by sociology of culture. The significance of this science in recent times increases. The specificity of the sociological approach to society lies in the study of it as an integral system. All social sciences, within the framework of their subject, try to present the sphere and side of social life they study as a whole. Sociology (and this is its specificity) studies society as a whole in two directions:

1. Clarifies the relationship of coordination and subordination between the components of the social system.
2. Analyzes the place and role of individual components of the system in the life of society, their structural and functional status in the social system.

In accordance with the specifics of the sociological approach sociology of culture

Explores the place of individual elements and spheres of culture, as well as culture as a whole in the social system;
- studies culture as a social phenomenon generated by the needs of society;
- considers culture as a system of norms, values, ways of life of individuals and various communities, as well as social institutions that develop and disseminate these values.

Like sociology in general, sociology of culture has a multilevel character. The difference between its levels lies in the degree of historical commonality of the analyzed phenomena. Within the sociology of culture, there are three levels:

1. General sociological theory of culture, which studies the place and role of culture in the life of society.
2. Particular sociological theories of culture (sociology of religion, sociology of education, sociology of art, etc.). They explore the place and role of individual spheres and types of culture in the life of society, their social functions. For example, the sociology of art studies the relationship between art and the viewer, the influence social conditions on the process of creation and functioning of works of art, the problems of perception and artistic taste. In addition, the problems of culture are considered in the form of certain aspects in industrial sociology, the sociology of the city, the sociology of the countryside, the sociology of youth, the sociology of the family, and other particular sociological theories.
3. Specific sociological studies of culture. They are engaged in the collection and analysis of specific facts of cultural life.

Unlike the philosophy of culture, the sociology of culture is distinguished by a practical orientation.. The sociology of culture is directly related to solving practical problems. It is designed to explore the ways and means of managing cultural processes, to develop recommendations for the integrated development of culture.

Close links exist between cultural studies and cultural history. cultural history studies spatially - temporary modifications of the world cultural and historical process, the development of the culture of individual countries, regions, peoples. Stage - regional type of culture, historical era, cultural space, cultural time, cultural picture of the world - key concepts historical - cultural research. The history of culture is at the intersection of historical science, on the one hand, and cultural studies, on the other.

A fruitful approach to the analysis of cultural history was proposed by French historians who united around the journal Annals of Economic and Social History. It was founded in 1929 M. Block(1876 - 1944). The studies of the Annales school made it possible to look at the problem of history as a relationship different cultures. It should be dialogue of cultures when one culture asks questions and receives answers from another culture through a historian striving for ultimate objectivity, with attention to texts, and to the dictionary of culture, and to tools, and to maps taken from ancient fields, and to folklore. All this was done in the works of M. Blok. In the classic work "Feudal Society", he draws on the study of feudalism not only legal, economic documents, but also literary works, epic, heroic legends.

In this way, The Annales school developed a multifactorial approach to the analysis of historical phenomena. Representatives of this trend believed that social facts should be investigated in a comprehensive manner. The combination of social and cultural analysis plays the main role here. The ideas of this school were picked up by historians of many countries, and today this direction is considered the most productive. These methodological principles are also used by Russian scientists in their research. These are works on the medieval culture of the West AND I. Gurevich, according to the European Renaissance L.M. Batkin, ancient and Byzantine culture S.S. Averintseva, historical cultural studies MM. Bakhtin.

The adaptive function of culture

The most important function of culture is adaptive, allowing a person to adapt to the environment, which is a necessary condition for the survival of all living organisms in the process of evolution. But a person does not adapt to changes in the environment, as other living organisms do, but changes the environment in accordance with his needs, adapting it to himself. This creates a new, artificial world - culture. In other words, a person cannot lead a natural way of life, like animals, and in order to survive, he creates an artificial habitat around himself.

Of course, a person cannot achieve complete independence from the environment, since each specific form of culture is largely due to natural conditions. The type of economy, dwellings, traditions and customs, beliefs, rites and rituals of peoples will depend on natural and climatic conditions.

As culture develops, humanity provides itself with ever greater security and comfort. But, having got rid of the old fears and dangers, a person stands face to face with new threats that he creates for himself. So, today you can not be afraid of such formidable diseases of the past as plague or smallpox, but new diseases have appeared, such as AIDS, for which no cure has yet been found, and other deadly diseases created by man themselves are waiting in the military laboratories. Thus, a person needs to be protected not only from natural environment habitat, but also from the world of culture.

The adaptive function has a dual nature. On the one hand, it manifests itself in the creation of the means of protection necessary for a person from the outside world. These are all the products of culture that help primitive, and later civilized man, survive and feel confident in the world: the use of fire, the creation of productive agriculture, medicine, etc. This is the so-called specific means of protection person. These include not only objects of material culture, but also those specific means that a person develops to adapt to life in society, keeping him from mutual extermination and death. These are state structures, laws, customs, traditions, moral standards, etc.

There are also non-specific means of protection of a person is a culture as a whole, existing as a picture of the world. Understanding culture as a "second nature", a world created by man, we emphasize the most important property of human activity and culture - the ability to "doubling" the world, highlighting in it sensory-objective and ideal-figurative layers. Culture as a picture of the world makes it possible to see the world not as a continuous flow of information, but to receive this information in an orderly and structured form.

Significant function

Culture as a picture of the world is connected with another function of culture - symbolic, significative, those. naming function. The formation of names and titles is very important for a person. If some object or phenomenon is not named, does not have a name, is not designated by a person, it does not exist for us. By assigning a name to an object or phenomenon and evaluating it, for example, as threatening, we simultaneously receive the necessary information that allows us to act in order to avoid danger. Indeed, when marking a threat, we do not just give it a name, but enter it into the hierarchy of being.

Thus, culture as an image and picture of the world is an ordered and balanced scheme of the cosmos, serving as the prism through which a person looks at the world. This scheme is expressed through philosophy, literature, mythology, ideology, as well as in the actions of people. Its content is realized fragmentarily by the majority of members of the ethnos; it is fully accessible only to a small number of cultural experts. The basis of this picture of the world are ethnic constants - the values ​​and norms of ethnic culture.

2.3 Cognitive (epistemological) function.

An important function of culture is also cognitive (gnoseological) function. Culture concentrates the experience and skills of many generations of people, accumulates rich knowledge about the world and thus creates favorable opportunities for its further knowledge and development. This function manifests itself most fully in science and scientific knowledge. Of course, knowledge is also acquired in other areas of culture, but there it is a by-product of human activity, and in science, obtaining objective knowledge about the world is the main goal.

The science for a long time remained a phenomenon of only European civilization and culture, while other peoples chose a different way of knowing the world around them. So, in the East, for this purpose, the most complex systems of philosophy and psychotechnics were created. They seriously discussed such unusual for rational European minds ways of knowing the world as telepathy (transmission of thoughts at a distance), telekinesis (the ability to influence objects with thought), clairvoyance (the ability to predict the future) and much more.

The cognitive function is inextricably linked with function of accumulation and storage of information, since knowledge, information are the results of cognition of the world. A natural condition for the life of both an individual and society as a whole is the need for information on a variety of issues. We must remember our past, be able to correctly assess it, admit our mistakes. A person must know who he is, where he comes from and where he is going. In connection with these issues, the information function of culture has been formed.

Culture has become a specifically human form of production, accumulation, storage and transmission of knowledge. Unlike animals, in which the transfer of information from one generation to another occurs mainly by genetic means, in humans, information is encoded in various sign systems. Thanks to this, information is separated from the individuals who obtained it, acquires an independent existence, without disappearing after their death. It becomes a public property, and each new generation does not start its life path from scratch, but actively masters the experience accumulated by previous generations.

Information is transmitted not only in a temporal aspect - from generation to generation, but also within one generation - as a process of exchange of experience between societies, social groups, and individuals. Exist reflexive(conscious) and non-reflexive(unconscious) forms of translation of cultural experience. The reflexive forms include purposeful education and upbringing. Non-reflexive - spontaneous assimilation of cultural norms, which occurs unconsciously, by direct imitation of others.

Sociocultural experience is transmitted through the action of such social institutions as the family, the education system, mass media, and cultural institutions. With the passage of time, the production and accumulation of knowledge is going on at an ever faster pace. In the modern era, information is doubling every 15 years. Thus, culture, performing an informational function, makes possible the process of cultural continuity, the connection of peoples, eras and generations.

Axiological function

Value orientations of people are associated with axiological (evaluative) function their culture. Since the degree of significance of objects and phenomena of the surrounding world for the life of people is not the same, a certain system of values ​​of a society or a social group is being formed. Values ​​imply the choice of one or another object, state, need, goal in accordance with the criterion of their usefulness for human life. Values ​​serve as the foundation of culture, helping society and every person to separate the good from the bad, truth from error, fair from unfair, permissible from forbidden.

The selection of values ​​occurs in the process of practical activity. As experience accumulates, values ​​form and disappear, are revised and enriched. Different peoples have different concepts of good and evil, it is the values ​​that provide the specificity of each culture. What is important to one culture may not be important to another. Each nation forms its own pyramid, a hierarchy of values, although the set of values ​​itself is of a universal nature. It is possible to conditionally divide (classify) the core values ​​into:

* vital- life, health, safety, welfare, strength, etc.;

* social- position in society, status, work, profession, personal independence, family, gender equality;

* political- freedom of speech, civil liberties, legality, civilian world;

* moral- good, good, love, drrkba, duty, honor, disinterestedness, decency, fidelity, justice, respect for elders, love for children;

* aesthetic- beauty, ideal, style, harmony, fashion, originality.

Many of the values ​​mentioned above may not exist in a particular culture. In addition, each culture represents certain values ​​in its own way. So, the ideals of beauty are quite different among different peoples. For example, in accordance with the ideal of beauty in medieval China, aristocratic women had to have a tiny foot. The desired was achieved with the help of painful foot-binding procedures, subjecting them to girls from the age of five, as a result of which these women became crippled.

With the help of values, people orient themselves in the world, society, determine their actions, their attitude towards others. Most of people believe that they strive for goodness, truth, love. Of course, what seems good to some people may be bad to others. And this again testifies to the cultural specificity of values. All our life we ​​act as "appraisers" of the surrounding world, relying on our own ideas about good and evil.

Professional culture

Professional culture characterizes the level and quality of professional training. The state of society certainly does not affect the quality of professional culture. Since this requires appropriate educational establishments providing qualified education, institutes and laboratories, studios and workshops, etc. therefore, a high level of professional culture is an indicator of a developed society.

In principle, it should be available to everyone who is employed in a paid job, whether in the public or private sector. Professional culture includes a set of special theoretical knowledge and practical skills associated with a particular type of work. The degree of mastery of professional culture is expressed in qualification and qualification category. It is necessary to distinguish between a) formal qualification, which is certified by a certificate (diploma, certificate, certificate) of graduation from a certain educational institution and implies a system of theoretical knowledge necessary for a given profession, b) a real qualification obtained after several years of work in this field, including a set of practical skills and skills, i.e. professional experience

Eastern type culture

Oriental culture refers primarily to its two varieties: Indian culture and Chinese culture.

Indian culture is, first of all, Vedic culture. It is based on Vedic literature, on ancient texts - the Vedas, written in Sanskrit and dating back to the 2nd millennium BC. The oldest period of Indian culture is called Vedic. The Vedas contain the first ideas of people about reality. Vedas (from the Sanskrit word "veda" - "knowledge") - this is knowledge about a person and the world, about good and evil, an idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe soul. Here for the first time it is said about the law of karma, i.e. about the dependence of a person's life on his actions. The Vedas convey knowledge about systems for achieving perfection and liberating a person from various kinds of addictions. In the Vedas, subject symbols are also given (such as a circle, a swastika - a sign of infinity, a wheel of the Buddha and other symbols of perpetual motion).

Vedic literature is the oldest in human history. The oldest of the books - the Vedas - is the Rig Veda. Her hymns anticipate the Bible. The world of people, according to the Vedas, was subject to a strict cosmic hierarchy. From ancient times there was a division into varnas (colors and categories). Brahmins are sages, interpreters of the Vedas, their symbolic color is white, the color of goodness and holiness. Kshatriyas are warriors and rulers, their symbol is red - power and passions. Vaishyas are farmers, cattle breeders, their symbol is yellow, the color of moderation and diligence. Sudras are servants, the color black is ignorance. The cycle of birth, life and death corresponded to natural cycles.

According to the Vedas, the cycle of births, lives and deaths of people corresponds to natural cycles. The idea of ​​the eternal cycle of life and the idea of ​​the eternal spiritual source- the foundation of ideas about the eternal immortal soul. According to these ideas, the soul after the death of the body continues to live, moving into the body of the born being. But what body? It depends on many circumstances and is consistent with the so-called. the law of karma. It says that the sum of good and evil deeds of a person (i.e. his karma) received in previous lives determines the form of subsequent births. You can be born a slave, an animal, a worm, a roadside stone. The cause of all your suffering is in you. This idea of ​​karma is the most important, it is a powerful ethical stimulus that determines a benevolent attitude towards nature (since in every natural creation one can see a reborn person, perhaps a recently deceased relative or friend).

The Vedic books give methods and means of liberation from the law of karma. This is a moral and ascetic life, a hermitage, yoga(the word is translated as connection, connection). Yoga is of great importance. It forms a system of self-preparation of a person for a special spiritual life and getting rid of addictions.

Oriental culture relies heavily on mythology. So, the ancient Egyptian sculpture makes a religious and mystical impression. The greatness of the pyramids and the mysterious sphinxes inspired the idea of ​​the insignificance of man in front of the powerful forces of the universe. Ancient Egypt is peculiar with the cult of the pharaoh and the cult of the dead immortalized in mummies and pyramids. Indian culture was not as religious as Egyptian, it gravitated more towards the world of the living, and therefore paid much attention to the development of moral requirements for a person, the formation of a moral law (dharma) and the search for ways of human unity.

Indian culture, more than other Eastern cultures, is focused on self-development individual and society, the concentration of efforts to develop internal and external culture. The intervention of God is only the completion of the activities of people aimed at improving the world. In Eastern culture, prosperity does not come from outside, but is prepared by the entire cultural work of mankind.

Apparently, here lie the origins of inner depth and psychologism. Eastern culture compared to the western one. It is focused on self-comprehension, in-depth, internal, immanent religiosity, intuitionism and irrationalism. This is the difference between Eastern culture and Western culture.

This specificity is also reflected in contemporary manifestations Indian culture. We are also deeply interested in Tibetan medicine; and methods of healing modernized to European thinking (“raja yoga”, hatha yoga, transcendental meditation), and the activities of the Krishna consciousness society, and the philosophy of life under Rajnesh and others. Vl. Solovyov in his work “Historical Affairs of Philosophy” spoke about the “living fruits” of Indian philosophy, which continues to nourish world human thought with life-giving juices. Not a single philosophy had such an impact on Western culture as Indian. Russian cultural figures N. Roerich became its followers and D. Andreev, and German thinkers and writers - R. Steiner and G. Hesse, and many, many others. G. Hesse, author of the world-famous novels "The Steppe Wolf" and "The Glass Bead Game", in the poem "expressed his big love to Indian culture.

The spiritual potential of ancient Indian culture, its moral values ​​have remained almost unchanged to this day. India has given the world the culture of Buddhism, beautiful literature. Love for man, admiration for nature, the ideals of tolerance, forgiveness and understanding are reflected in the teachings of the great humanist of our time - M. Gandhi. The beauty and originality of Indian culture were embodied in the work of Russians and European artists and thinkers.

ancient chinese culture- another important culture of the East. Comparing it with the Indian one shows how different ethnic groups are able to create qualitatively different cultures. The Chinese ethnos gave rise to a socially oriented culture, in contrast to the Indian, which is mainly oriented towards inner world man and his possibilities.

The same role that Buddhism and Hinduism played in Indian culture, played in Chinese culture Confucianism. This religious and philosophical system was founded by one of the most famous sages of antiquity - Confucius. His name comes from Latin transcription Chinese kung tzu - "teacher Kun". Confucius lived in 551-479 BC. and created a doctrine that was more than 2 thousand years ideological basis Chinese empire. Confucius continued the traditions of Chinese culture, laid down in the 2nd millennium BC. He paid special attention not to questions of cosmology, but to practical philosophy: what a person needs to do in order to live with all people in peace and harmony.

The main content of the books of Confucius is associated with moral teachings and justification ethical standards. Within the framework of Confucianism, a system of state-political and individual ethics, norms of regulation and ritual life was developed. The patriarchal nature of Confucian culture is reflected in its demand for filial piety ("xiao"), which extended to both family and state relations. Confucius wrote: “It rarely happens that a person full of filial piety and obedience to elders would love to annoy the ruler. And it does not happen at all that one who does not like to annoy the ruler would have a tendency to rebel. root, then the path is born, filial piety and obedience to elders - is it not in them that humanity is rooted?

In addition to Confucianism, ancient Chinese culture played a special role Taoism, whose ideals were in many ways similar to the moral quest of the Vedic culture of India.

One of the features of Chinese culture was excessive bureaucratization. Since ancient times (at least since the 16th century BC), a bureaucratic system of government has developed in China. Even then, a layer of educated officials stood out, concentrating state power in their hands and regulating the entire life of ancient Chinese society with the help of moral and legal norms and principles of etiquette.

The bureaucracy monopolized the education system, as literacy provided higher education. social status and promotion up the government ladder. The lengthy training and the system of the most difficult examinations had no equal in ancient world. Chinese culture gave the world gunpowder and paper, unique systems of martial arts and peculiar philosophical doctrines.

Eastern culture contains such a wealth of human thought, which leaves few indifferent, both in the East and in the West. The peculiarity of Eastern culture is especially pronounced when compared with Western culture.

Western type of culture

The European (Western) cultural-historical tradition correlated with the East shows us, first of all, a peculiar sequence of epochs (stages) of the development of a civilization that originated in the Aegean Sea basin as a result of the collapse and on the basis of the Cretan-Mycenaean culture. This sequence of historical epochs is as follows:

classical Hellenic culture;

Hellenistic-Roman stage;

Romano-Germanic culture of the Christian Middle Ages;

new European culture.

The last three stages can be considered (against the background of the ancient Greek classics) and as a kind of variant forms of Westernization. traditional culture Romans and Germans, and then all of Romano-Germanic Europe. In Hegel and Toynbee, the two first and two second epochs are combined into independent civilization-historical formations (ancient and Western worlds). For Marx, European antiquity and the Middle Ages, although they form a parallel to the societies of the East based on the Asian mode of production, nevertheless constitute together with them a single pre-capitalist stage of historical development, followed by the universal capitalist era of modern times, which sharply opposes it.

One way or another, but at the origins and in the very foundations of all societies and cultures of the European (Western) civilizational tradition there is something unimaginable from a normal (traditional or Eastern) point of view: economy, society, state, culture, entirely lying on the shoulders of a single, independent , at his own peril and risk, carrying out his "works and days", his activities and communication of a person. A person-society, a person-state, a person-worldview, a truly holistic personality, free and independent in thoughts, words and deeds, Odyssey (as M.K. Petrov says). And, perhaps, it is not at all accidental that Homer's "Odyssey" and James Joyce's "Ulysses" begin and end the paths traversed by European spiritual culture: together with the Odysseys, the market and democracy, civil society and a free personal worldview entered and strengthened European culture. .

The most important inventions European culture at the linguistic-sign level of its representation in the spiritual and ideological sphere are philosophy in the above meaning of this concept and science as a specific form cognitive activity characteristic of the last era of the Western cultural tradition. The line between "sophianic" and "scientized" forms of culture in general (and also in relation to the specifics of the corresponding ideological forms) is so significant that very often only two major periods are singled out in the movement of European culture, taken in its relative independence from the socio-economic and national- ethnic areas of manifestation of civilizational and historical life. Namely:

from the middle of the 1st millennium BC n until the 17th century;

period XVII-XX centuries. (two main terms are used for its designation: the period of the new European culture or the period of technogenic civilization).

Taking into account other criteria, and, above all, the representation of Christianity in the European culture, this simple periodization becomes more complicated: usually in this case they speak (meaning the first large period) about the eras of ancient, Greek and Roman culture, about the culture of the Middle Ages and about the culture Renaissance (from this last era, some authors begin the countdown of the new European culture). Within the framework of the second large period, the culture of the Enlightenment, romanticism and the classical German cultural era are often distinguished. late XVIII- early 19th century This initial segment of the new European culture coincides chronologically with the era of bourgeois and national revolutions in Western Europe and America. It is also the time of approval of the economic formation of society (capitalism).

Second half of the 19th - 20th centuries are characterized differently. But it is quite obvious that over these one and a half centuries the situation in the culture and public spheres of the Western technogenic civilization - despite the constant flow of updates and a number of social and national-state cataclysms - is stabilizing. Including with regard to the ever wider coverage value orientations Western civilization of non-European cultures. As a result, modern western culture is evaluated either in line with Spengler's mythology of "The Decline of Europe", or in optimistic and at the same time clearly Eurocentric tones.

Cultural studies as a science. Characteristics of the main sections.

Culturology(lat. culture- cultivation, farming, education, veneration;

Cultural studies as a science began to take shape in the 18th century. It was mainly formed at the end of the 19th century. The name of science was finally fixed by the American scientist White in 1947.
Culturology studies culture in all its forms and manifestations, the relationship and interaction of various forms of culture, the functions and laws of its development, the interaction of man, culture and society.

Sections of cultural studies:

social - studies the functional mechanisms of the socio-cultural organization of people's lives.
- Humanitarian - concentrates on the study of forms and processes of self-knowledge of culture, embodied in various "texts" of culture".
- Fundamental - develops a categorical apparatus and research methods, studies culture for the purpose of theoretical and historical knowledge of this subject.
- Applied - uses fundamental knowledge about culture in order to solve practical problems, as well as to predict, design and regulate cultural processes.

Table number 3. Sections of cultural studies

There are dozens of such components. Often such familiar phrases as national culture, World culture, urban culture, Christian culture, social culture, art culture, personal culture, etc. Morphology of culture involves the study of all possible variations of cultural forms and artifacts, depending on their historical, geographical and social distribution.

The structure of culture. In accordance with modern concepts, one can outline following structure culture. In a single field of culture, two levels are distinguished: specialized and ordinary. Ordinary culture - a set of ideas, norms of behavior, cultural phenomena associated with the daily life of people. Specialized culture level subdivided into cumulative(accumulation of professional and socio-cultural experience) and translational. At the cumulative level, culture acts as a relationship of elements, each of which is a consequence of a person's predisposition to a certain activity. These include: economic culture, political culture, legal culture, philosophical culture, religious culture, scientific and technical culture, artistic culture. Each of these elements at the cumulative level corresponds to an element of culture at the ordinary level. They are closely related and influence each other. At the translational level, interaction between the cumulative and everyday levels takes place, and cultural information is exchanged.

The American culturologist T. Eliot, depending on the degree of awareness of culture, singled out two levels in its vertical section: the highest and the lowest, understanding culture as a certain way of life, which can only be led by the elite - the "elite". The Spanish culturologist J. Ortega y Gasset in his works "The Revolt of the Masses", "Art in the Present and the Past", "Dehumanization of Art" put forward the concept of mass society and mass culture. If a elite culture is focused on a select, intellectual public, then mass culture is not oriented to the “average” level of development of mass consumers, often encouraging the primitive inclinations of people.

Mass culture- a form of culture, the works of which are standardized and distributed to the general public without regard to regional and religious differences.

Elite culture includes fine arts, classical music and literature created by professionals, intended for the educated and upper class.

folk culture created by creators from the people, remains nameless, reflects the spiritual searches of the people, includes myths, fairy tales, proverbs, legends, songs and dances.

material culture represents the culture of labor and material production; culture of life; the culture of the topos (i.e. the place of residence); culture of attitude to one's own body; physical culture.

spiritual culture acts as a multi-layered formation and includes: intellectual culture; moral; artistic; legal; pedagogical; religious.

According to L.N. Kogan and other culturologists, there are types of cultures that cannot be attributed only to material or spiritual. They represent a "vertical section" of culture, penetrating its entire system. These are economic, political, ecological, aesthetic cultures. Within the framework of the culture of society, one can distinguish subcultures: systems of symbols, values, beliefs, patterns of behavior that distinguish this or that community or some social group from the culture of the majority of society. It is possible to single out Western, Eastern, national, professional, confessional religious subcultures.

According to the content and influence, culture is divided into progressive and reactionary. Such a division is quite legitimate, because culture, as a human-forming phenomenon, can educate a person not only moral, but also immoral. The structure of culture includes substantial elements that are objectified in its values ​​and norms, and functional elements that characterize the process itself. cultural activities, its various sides and aspects. The substantive block that makes up the "body" of culture, its substantive basis, includes the values ​​of culture - its works of a given cultural era, as well as the norms of culture, its requirements for each member of society. This includes the norms of law, religion, morality, the norms of everyday behavior and communication of people. The functional block reveals the process of culture movement. It includes: traditions, rituals, customs, rituals, taboos that ensure the functioning of culture. In folk culture, these means were the main ones, because. it is non-institutional. Thus, the structure of culture is a complex, multifaceted formation. At the same time, all its elements interact with each other, forming single system such a universal phenomenon as culture appears before us.

The dominant features of each of the elements form the so-called "core" of culture, which acts as its fundamental principle, expressed in science, art, philosophy, ethics, religion, law, economics, politics, mentality and lifestyle. Each culture has its own unique value core that embodies its chronotype, i.e. the specifics of its localization in the world (North, South, East, West, sea, mountains, plains, etc.) and its stay in the flow of world history. Thanks to the value core, the integrity of this culture, its unique appearance is ensured. Cultures maintain the continuity of existence by transforming their values. The condition for the existence of culture is its ability to optimally balance universal and specific values, which allows, on the one hand, to preserve its originality and originality, and on the other hand, to find an opportunity for interaction with other cultures.

Functions of culture. You should also pay attention to the main functions , which culture performs in the life of the human community. Let's consider some of them.

The most important - broadcast function(transfer) of social experience. It is often called the function of historical continuity, or information. It is no coincidence that culture is considered the social memory of mankind.

Another leading function is cognitive (gnoseological). A culture that concentrates the best social experience of many generations of people accumulates the richest knowledge about the world and thereby creates favorable opportunities for their development.

Regulatory (normative) function culture is connected, first of all, with the regulation of various aspects of social and personal activities of people. Culture, one way or another, influences the behavior of people and regulates their actions, actions and assessments.

The transformative function of culture(the development and transformation of the surrounding reality is a fundamental human need). Man immanently inherent in the desire to go beyond the limits of the given in the transformation and creativity.

The protective function of culture is a consequence of the need to maintain a certain balanced relationship between man and the environment, both natural and social. The expansion of the spheres of human activity inevitably entails the emergence of more and more new dangers, and this requires the culture to create adequate protection mechanisms (environmental protection, medicine, public order, technological advances, etc.). The need for one type of protection stimulates the emergence of others. For example, the extermination of agricultural pests damages the environment and requires environmental protection. The threat of an ecological catastrophe now makes this function of culture a priority.

semiotic, or sign function - the most important in the system of culture. Representing a certain sign system, culture implies knowledge, possession of it. It is impossible to master the achievements of culture without studying the corresponding sign systems. So, language (oral or written) is a means of communication between people, literary language is the most important means of mastering national culture. Specific languages ​​are needed for knowing the special world of music, painting, theater. The natural sciences (physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology) also have their own sign systems.

valuable, or axiological function contributes to the formation of a person's well-defined needs and orientations. By their level and quality, they most often judge the level of culture of a person.

Humanistic function- the formation of the moral image of the individual (culture as a way of human socialization, a way of developing a person, his abilities, skills, his physical and spiritual qualities).

CHAPTER 3. TYPOLOGY OF CULTURES.

Typology of cultures- the doctrine of the specific differences between cultures, the main types of world culture. For the first time, the idea of ​​the existence of certain and independent "cultural-historical types" was proposed by a Russian thinker of the 19th century. N.Ya.Danilevsky. However, typological ideas about culture became widespread only in the 20th century. In general, three main principles for highlighting cultural differences can be distinguished: 1) geographical - the localization of cultures in geographic space; 2) chronological - the allocation of independent stages in historical development, i.e. localization in time; 3) national - study distinguishing features culture throughout its historical development. All the rest follow from these three basic concepts.

The typology of cultures proposed by O. Spengler is that there are different types of cultures that have not historically changed, but only coexisted next to each other, remaining impenetrable to one another. Spengler identifies only eight cultures of equal maturity, covering the main parts of the planet: Egyptian, Indian, Babylonian, Chinese, Apollonian (antique), magical (Arabic), Mayan culture, Faustian culture (Western European). This approach to the typology of cultures is called the theory of "local civilizations".

We can also highlight the theory of "evolutionary monism" (Hegel) - all countries are included in a single scheme historical movement on the way from the lower, undeveloped, to the higher, developed forms. Hegel considered the Eastern world to be the lowest stage in the development of the spirit in the realization of freedom.

K. Jaspers creates the theory of "axial time" - the axis of world history is chronologically located between the 8th and 2nd centuries BC, when a sharp turn in the history of development takes place all the way from the West to Asia: the struggle of rational experience - Logos with myth, begins, basic concepts and categories are developed, the foundations of world religions are laid. At this time, an individualistic consciousness is formed, the development of rational experience. Those cultures where the transition from mythological consciousness to rational did not take place could not “step over” the axial time. Such cultures had an indirect impact on modern ones through the cultural traditions that have come down to us, literary and archaeological monuments.

Domestic researchers, such as L.S. Vasiliev, M.K. Petrov, L.S. Sedov, considered this problem from the point of view of the antithesis "East-West".

Despite the presence of many different approaches to the typology and periodization of culture, in modern cultural studies there are several real historical stages and forms of culture: archaic culture; pre-axial culture of ancient local civilizations; culture of East and West in the "axial time"; culture of East and West in the Christian era.

There can be many criteria or grounds for the typology of cultures. In cultural studies, there is no consensus on what to consider as types, forms, types, branches of culture.

Branches of culture should be called such sets of norms, rules and models of human behavior, which constitute a relatively closed area as part of the whole.

Types of culture it is necessary to name such sets of norms, rules and models of human behavior that constitute relatively closed areas, but are not parts of one whole.

Any national or ethnic culture we are obliged to classify as cultural types. The types of culture should include not only regional-ethnic formations, but also historical and economic ones.

Forms of culture refer to such sets of rules, norms and models of human behavior that cannot be considered completely autonomous entities; neither are they constituent parts of any whole. High or elite culture, folk culture and popular culture are called forms of culture because they are a special way of expressing artistic content.

Types of culture should be called such sets of rules, norms and behaviors that are varieties of more common culture. We will refer to the main types of culture:

A) the dominant (nationwide) culture;

B) rural and urban cultures;

C) ordinary and specialized culture.

Need a special conversation spiritual and material culture. They cannot be attributed to branches, forms, types or types of culture, since these phenomena combine all four classification features to varying degrees. Spiritual and material culture it is more correct to consider them as combined, or complex, formations, standing aside from the general conceptual scheme.

The proposed typology of cultures is not necessarily the ultimate truth. It is very approximate and not strict. Nevertheless, it has undoubted advantages: logical validity and consistency.

CHAPTER 4. CULTURE AND CIVILIZATION.

FROM An important place in the theory of culture is occupied by the question of the relationship between the concepts of culture and civilization. The concept of "civilization" appeared in antiquity to reflect the qualitative difference between the ancient Roman society and the barbarian environment, but, as the French linguist E. Benveniste established, in European languages the word civilization took root in the period from 1757 to 1772. It was closely associated with a new way of life, the essence of which was urbanization and the growing role of material and technical culture. It was then that the still relevant understanding of civilization as a certain form of the state of culture, an interethnic cultural and historical community of people with a common language, political independence and established, developed forms of social organization, developed. However, a unified view of the relationship between the concepts of culture and civilization has not yet been developed. Interpretations vary from their complete identification to categorical opposition. Philosophers of the Enlightenment, as a rule, insisted on the inseparable positive connection of these concepts: only high culture gives rise to civilization, and civilization, accordingly, is an indicator of cultural development and viability. The only exception was, perhaps, only Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The call put forward by him is well known: “Back to nature!”. Rousseau, not only in civilization, but also in culture itself, found a lot of negative, distorting the nature of man. He contrasted the civilized man of the 18th century with the "Natural Man", who lives in harmony with the world and with himself. Rousseau's ideas found supporters among the romantics. At the turn of the XVIII-XIX centuries. the contradictions that existed between culture and civilization became obvious to many: culture easily turns into its opposite if the material, mass, quantitative principle begins to prevail in it.

For the German cultural philosopher O. Spengler, the entry into the phase of civilization predetermines the death of a culture that is unable to develop harmoniously in the conditions of the mechanistic and artificial nature of civilization. The American ethnographer R. Redfield believed that culture and civilization are completely independent spheres of human existence: culture is an integral part of the life of all, even the smallest and most undeveloped communities of people, the simplest "folk communities", and civilization is the sum of the acquired skills of people living in very complex and changing societies.

The ratio of these concepts in cultural studies is the cornerstone. Both of these concepts have multiple meanings. In the interpretation of their relationship, there are three main trends: identification, opposition and partial interpenetration. The essence of each of these trends is determined by the interpretation of the content of these concepts. In scientific everyday life there is a rather large number of definitions of culture as a set of values, sometimes material and spiritual (Freud, Tylor), and sometimes only spiritual (Berdyaev, Spengler). The concept of civilization arose in the 18th century and its use is associated with the name of Holbach. The word "civilization" is of French origin, but originates from the Latin root civilis - civil, state. There are a number of definitions of the concept of civilization. Of these, the following can be cited: civilization is a synonym for culture; level and degree community development; the era following barbarism; a period of degradation and decline of culture; the degree of domination of man and society over nature through the tools of labor and means of production; a form of social organization and orderliness of the world, based on the priority of the development of new technologies. There is a certain logic in trying to equate culture and civilization. They are due to similarities, which include:

The social nature of their origin. Neither culture nor civilization can exist outside of the human principle. These characteristics are alien to virgin nature.

Civilization and culture are the result of human activity and, in fact, are an artificial human habitat, in other words, second nature.

Civilization and culture is the result of satisfying human needs, but in one case predominantly material and in the other - spiritual.

Finally, civilization and culture are different aspects of social life. They cannot be separated without causing damage, preparation is possible only at a theoretical level.

Z. Freud stood on the position of identifying culture and civilization, who believed that both distinguish a person from an animal.

O. Spengler, N. Berdyaev, T. Marcuse and other thinkers insisted on the position of opposition. Spengler bred these concepts purely chronologically, culture for him is replaced by civilization, which leads it to decline and degradation. “Civilization is a totality of extremely external and extremely artificial states… civilization is completion” 1 .

N. Berdyaev believed that almost throughout its existence, culture and civilization develop synchronously, with the exception of the source, which made it possible for the philosopher to draw a conclusion about the primacy of civilization, because. the satisfaction of material needs anticipated the satisfaction of spiritual ones. N. Berdyaev reveals, first of all, the differences, emphasizes special features and culture and civilization. In his opinion, the spiritual, individual, qualitative, aesthetic, expressive, aristocratic, stably stable, sometimes conservative principle is emphasized in culture, and the material, social-collective, quantitative, replicated, publicly accessible, democratic, pragmatic-utilitarian, dynamic- progressive. Berdyaev notes that the origin of civilization is mundane, it was born in the struggle with nature outside the temples and cult.

The position of opposing the content essence of civilization and culture is also characteristic of T. Marcuse, who believed that civilization is a tough, cold, everyday reality and culture is an eternal holiday. Marcuse wrote: “The spiritual work of culture is opposed to material labor civilization as the weekday is opposed to the day off, work to leisure, the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom” 1 . Thus, according to Marcuse, civilization is everyday routine, a hard necessity, and culture is an eternal holiday, a kind of ideal, sometimes a utopia. But, in essence, culture as a spiritual phenomenon is not only an illusion, but also a reality. Spengler, Berdyaev, Marcuse, putting civilization in opposition to culture as antipodal concepts, nevertheless understood that they are interdependent and interdependent.

Thus, civilization and culture coexist together and are the result of human activity to transform nature and man. Civilization allows a person to solve the issue of social organization and orderliness of the surrounding world, and culture - spiritual and value orientation in it. Russian writer M. Prishvin noted that civilization is the power of things, and culture is the connection of people. For Prishvin, culture is a union of creative individuals, the antithesis of a civilization based on a standard. Both - both culture and civilization - coexist in his view in parallel and consist of different series of values. The first includes "personality - society - creativity - culture", and the second - "reproduction - state - production - civilization" 2 .

The main direction of the influence of culture on civilization is carried out through its humanization and the introduction of awareness of the creative aspect into human activity. Civilization, with its pragmatic attitudes, often crowds culture, compresses its spiritual space. In different historical periods, culture and civilization occupied different shares in society. In the 20th century, there is a noticeable tendency to increase the space of civilization in comparison with culture. Currently, the question of the search for real mechanisms, their mutual fruitful coexistence, is relevant.

CHAPTER 5. ORIGINALITY OF CULTUROLOGY AS A COMPLEX SCIENCE.

Culturology, a complex science that studies all aspects of the functioning of culture, from the causes of origin to various forms of historical self-expression, has become one of the most significant and rapidly developing humanitarian disciplines in recent times. This, of course, has its own, quite obvious reasons. The subject of culturology is culture, and the clearly marked interest in the phenomenon of culture is easily explained by certain circumstances. Let's try to describe some of them:

1. Modern civilization is rapidly transforming the environment, social institutions, and everyday life. In this regard, culture attracts attention as an inexhaustible source of social innovation. Hence the desire to reveal the potential of culture, its internal reserves, to find opportunities for its activation. Considering culture as a means of human self-realization, one can identify new inexhaustible impulses capable of influencing the historical process, on the person himself.

2. The question of the relationship between the concepts of culture and society, culture and history is also relevant. What impact does the cultural process have on social dynamics? What will the movement of history bring to culture? In the past, the social cycle was much shorter than the cultural one. When a person was born, he found a certain structure of cultural values. It has not changed for centuries. In the 20th century, the situation changed dramatically. Now, during one human life, several cultural cycles pass, which puts a person in an extremely difficult position for him. Everything changes so quickly that a person does not have time to comprehend and appreciate certain innovations and finds himself in a state of loss and uncertainty. In this regard, it is of particular importance to identify the most significant features of the cultural practice of past eras in order to avoid moments of primitivization of modern culture.

All of the above is far from exhausting the reasons explaining the rapid development of cultural studies in our days.

Gradually, the terminological apparatus of this science, consisting of the categories of cultural studies, is also being formed. The categories of culturology include the most essential concepts of patterns in the development of culture as a system, reflect the essential properties of culture. On the basis of the categories of cultural studies, the phenomena of culture are being studied.

The main components of cultural studies are the philosophy of culture and the history of culture, areas of humanitarian knowledge that began to exist quite a long time ago. Merged together, they formed the basis of cultural studies. In cultural studies, historical facts are subjected to philosophical analysis and generalization. Depending on the aspect on which the main attention is focused, various cultural theories and schools are created. Philosophy of culture is a branch of cultural studies that studies the concepts of the origin and functioning of culture. The history of culture is a branch of cultural studies that studies the specific features of cultures of various cultural and historical stages.

Newer sections of cultural studies, the main parameters of which are still being formed, are culture morphology and theory of culture.

Culture becomes an object close attention explorers in the 18th century, the Age of Enlightenment.

The German philosopher Herder considered the human mind not as an innate reality, but as a result of education and comprehension of cultural images. By gaining reason, according to Herder, a person becomes the son of God, the king of the earth. He considered animals as slaves of nature, and in people he saw her first freedmen.

For Kant, culture is a tool for preparing a person for the implementation of moral duty, a path from the natural world to the realm of freedom. According to Kant, culture characterizes only the subject, and not real world. Its carrier is an educated and morally developed person.

According to F. Schiller, culture consists in reconciling the physical and moral nature of a person: “Culture must do justice to both - not only to one rational impulse of a person as opposed to the sensual, but also to the latter as opposed to the first. Thus, the task of culture is twofold: firstly, the protection of sensibility from the seizure of freedom, and secondly, the protection of the individual from the power of feelings. The first it achieves by the development of the faculty of feeling, and the second by the development of the mind.”

Among Schiller's younger contemporaries, F.V. Schelling, brothers A.V. and F. Schlegel etc. - the aesthetic significance of culture comes to the fore. Its main content proclaims the artistic activity of people, as a means of divine overcoming in them of the animal, natural principle. Schelling's aesthetic views are most fully expounded in his book Philosophy of Art (1802 - 1803), which clearly shows the desire to show the priority of artistic creativity over all other types of human creative activity, to put art above both morality and science. In a somewhat simplified way, culture was reduced by Schelling and other romantics to art, first of all, to poetry. To a reasonable and moral person, they, to a certain extent, opposed the power of a human artist, a human creator.)

In the works of G.F.V. Hegel, the main types of culture (art, law, religion, philosophy) are represented by the stages of development of the "world mind". Hegel creates a universal scheme for the development of the "world mind", according to which, any culture embodies a certain stage of its self-expression. The “world mind” is also manifested in people. Originally in the form of language, speech. The spiritual development of the individual reproduces the stages of self-knowledge of the “world mind”, starting with “baby talk” and ending with “absolute knowledge”, i.e. knowledge of those forms and laws that govern from within the entire process of the spiritual development of mankind. From Hegel's point of view, the development of world culture reveals such integrity and logic that cannot be explained by the sum of the efforts of individual individuals. The essence of culture, according to Hegel, is manifested not in overcoming the biological principles in man and not in the creative imagination of outstanding personalities, but in the spiritual familiarization of the individual with the “world mind”, which subjugates both nature and history. “The absolute value of culture lies in the development of the universality of thought,” wrote Hegel.

If we proceed from Hegel's culturological scheme, then at present humanity is somewhere halfway between its childhood age of ignorance and the final mastery of the “absolute idea”, “absolute knowledge”, which also determines its “absolute culture”. Despite the fact that Hegel did not devote a single work directly to culture, his views can be regarded as one of the first holistic and fairly convincing precultural concepts. Hegel not only discovered the general patterns of the development of world culture, but also managed to fix them in the logic of concepts. In his works Phenomenology of Spirit, Philosophy of History, Aesthetics, Philosophy of Law, Philosophy of Religion, he essentially analyzed the entire path of development of world culture. No other thinker has done this before him. However, Hegel's philosophy of culture is not cultural studies. In the works of Hegel, culture does not yet appear as the main subject of study. Hegel actually replaces the concept of culture with the concept of the history of the self-disclosure of the "world mind".

Of particular interest to specialists in the field of philology and linguistics are the views of Hegel's contemporary - the German aesthetician, linguist and philosopher W. von Humboldt, who used the Hegelian concept of "spirit" in relation to the culture of individual peoples. He considered each culture as a unique spiritual whole, the specificity of which is expressed mainly in language. Emphasizing the creative nature of the language as a form of expression of the national spirit, Humboldt studied it in close connection with the cultural life of the people. Humboldt's works, to a certain extent, marked a transition from a predominantly philosophical understanding of culture (Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, Schiller, Schelling, Hegel) to its more substantive study.

Nevertheless, works adequate to the modern idea of ​​cultural studies appear only in the 2nd half. XIX century. One of these can rightfully be considered the book of the Englishman E. B. Tylor "Primitive Culture" (1871) . Arguing that "the science of culture is the science of reforms," ​​he viewed culture as a process of continuous progressive development. Tylor gives one of the first definitions of culture of a generalizing nature, which is considered to this day one of the most objective: “Culture or civilization in a broad, ethnographic sense is composed in its whole of knowledge, beliefs, art, morality, laws, customs and some other abilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.

In 1869 and 1872 two works appear that are now invariably included among the most significant for the course of cultural studies. This is "Russia and Europe" by the Russian researcher N.Ya. Danilevsky and "The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music" by the German philosopher F. Nietzsche. Here all the signs of a true cultural study are already present: the material on the history of culture is philosophically interpreted and accompanied by calculations of a general theoretical order. And most importantly, culture and its forms are the main object of consideration. The views of Danilevsky and Nietzsche on culture will be discussed in the next chapter. It should only be noted that the fact of the emergence of cultural studies did not yet mean the emergence of science itself. Neither Danilevsky nor Nietzsche called themselves culturologists, and they hardly suspected that they were becoming the forefathers of a new science. Danilevsky perceived himself more as a historian, although he was a biologist by education, and Nietzsche quite naturally acted as a philosopher.

In the future, the study of problems related to culture becomes more and more familiar. Scientists are finding more and more aspects in this truly limitless phenomenon. V. Dilthey is the initiator of the use of hermeneutics to understand the images of culture. He believes that the method of explanation is not suitable for the study of phenomena associated with human creativity, and should be replaced by a more subtle and psychological method of understanding. Hermeneutics was originally a method of classical philology, which made it possible to meaningfully interpret and translate monuments of ancient literature. Dilthey, on the other hand, proposes using this method to study cultural epochs, recreating their psychological structure. “We explain nature,” Dilthey believed, “and we understand spiritual life (i.e. culture).” Hermeneutical developments became the basis of the "spiritual-historical school" in cultural studies.

G. Simmel pays special attention to the conflict moments in the culture of the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries, trying to give them a deep objective interpretation. The subject of history, he considers the evolution of cultural forms, which is carried out in a certain direction. At the beginning of the twentieth century, from the point of view of the philosopher, there is a sharp deviation of the line of development of culture from the previous paths. In The Conflict of Modern Culture (1918), Simmel explains the desire to destroy all old forms of culture with new ones, characteristic of this historical period, by the fact that in recent decades humanity has lived without any unifying idea, as it was until the middle of the 19th century. Many new ideas arise, but they are so fragmented and incompletely expressed that they cannot meet an adequate response in life itself, they cannot rally society around the idea of ​​culture. “Life in its immediacy seeks to embody itself in phenomena, but due to their imperfection, it reveals a struggle against any form,” Simmel writes, substantiating his vision of the cause of crisis phenomena in culture. Perhaps the philosopher managed to discover one of the most significant indicators of the cultural crisis as such: namely, the absence of a global socially important idea capable of uniting all cultural processes.

Simmel's point of view is also extremely interesting because it was expressed precisely at the time when culturology was finally turning into an independent science. The feeling of crisis, characteristic of the assessment of the state of culture by various thinkers, to a certain extent, predetermined the completion of the formation of the science of culture. The formation of cultural studies was completed under the influence of certain events in European culture. They testified to a profound turning point in history, which had not been equaled in previous centuries. The First World War and revolutions in Russia, Germany, Hungary, a new type of organization of people's lives, due to the industrial revolution, the growth of man's power over nature and the disastrous consequences of this growth for nature, the birth of an impersonal "man of the masses" - all this obliged us to take a different look at the character and the role of European culture. Many scientists, as well as Simmel, considered her situation to be extremely deplorable and no longer considered European culture as a kind of cultural standard, they spoke of a crisis and the collapse of its foundations.

At the end of 1915, the Russian philosopher L.M. Lopatin prophetically said that the modern world is experiencing a huge historical catastrophe - so terrible, so bloody, so fraught with the most unexpected prospects, that before it the thought goes numb and the head is spinning ... In the now raging unprecedented historical storm, not only blood flows in rivers, not only States are collapsing... not only are peoples dying and rising, something else is happening... Old ideals are crumbling, old hopes and persistent expectations are fading... And most importantly, our very faith in modern culture is irreparably and deeply its foundations suddenly peeped out at us such a terrible bestial face that we involuntarily turned away from him with disgust and bewilderment. And the persistent question is raised: what, in fact, is this culture? What is its moral, even just life value?

Subsequent events in Europe and in the world showed that Lopatin did not in the least exaggerate the significance of crisis phenomena in culture. It became obvious that a person and culture itself can develop in a completely different way than it once seemed to the figures of the Enlightenment and the humanists of the Renaissance, that the ideal of a self-developing creative personality in the 20th century looked like a mere utopia. It turned out that even educated people are capable of acts of vandalism and mass destruction of their own kind. A paradoxical situation developed: historical development continued, while cultural development slowed down, seemed to reverse, reviving in man the ancient instincts of destruction and aggression. This situation could not be explained on the basis of traditional ideas about culture, according to which it is a process of organizing and ordering history itself.

Consequently, culturology as a worldview science finally strengthened its position as a result of the awareness of the crisis state of culture of the early twentieth century by the general public, just as the boom that culturology is now experiencing is explained by the crisis of the state of culture of its end.

The attention of the outstanding German sociologist Max Weber was attracted by the problems of religion and culture. Within the framework of historical sociology, Weber made a grandiose attempt to study the role of the Protestant ethic in the genesis of Western European capitalism. His work "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" (1904-1905) subsequently caused a whole series of studies related to the sociological study of the "economic role" of world religions.

Another representative of the Weber family, Alfred, analyzed crisis phenomena in culture, insisting on the integrity of world culture, as opposed to the popular ideas of cyclists, while recognizing the existence of the deepest general crisis of European culture in the first half of the 20th century.

The feeling of discomfort and uncertainty was so strong that the first volume of O. Spengler's book "The Decline of Europe" published in 1918 was met with unprecedented interest. The book was read and discussed not only by specialists: philosophers, historians, sociologists, anthropologists, etc., but by all educated people. It has become an integral part of many university programs. And this despite significant criticism of many of the provisions expressed by Spengler. The question of the reasons for such interest in this work is legitimate. After all, Spengler literally repeated some moments from the work of Danilevsky “Russia and Europe” written half a century earlier, which was noticed only by a narrow circle of professionals.

Undoubtedly, it was a cultural and historical situation. The very name "The Decline of Europe" sounded as relevant as possible. Most of Spengler's contemporaries really felt that they were living in a world of the collapse of old habitual cultural norms, and inevitably posed the question whether this meant the end of European civilization in general, or was it the beginning of the next round in its development. Reading Spengler, people tried to find the answer to the painful question about the fate of culture.

The above statements by Simmel and Lopatin about the general cultural situation of the early twentieth century quite accurately reflect the essence of the issue, but for the consciousness of the layman, all the subtleties indicated by both philosophers may not have been so obvious. But even at the philistine level, the culture of that time carried such a number of innovations that it was extremely difficult to comprehend them and develop a certain attitude towards them. And outside of cultural attitudes, a person cannot exist safely. Recall that the beginning of the century was a time of widespread and rapid introduction of electricity into life, and the radio, telephone, and telegraph associated with it. Gramophone recording and cinematography appear. A car from a curiosity becomes commonplace. Are being created aircrafts(airplanes and airships). Much of what seemed like fantasy and a dream becomes commonplace, but does not bring much happiness to humanity. There is also a radical breakdown of the usual social structures.

The painful perception by a person of the whole complex of significant changes was clearly manifested in artistic creativity. The culture of the avant-garde swept away all the attitudes of the past, some of which had existed uncontested for more than one millennium. First of all, this is the principle of memesis, or life-imitation, which has been considered unshakable for literature and fine arts since the time of Aristotle. Visitors to art exhibitions, accustomed to contemplating recognizable images of contemporaries or familiar images of nature, felt extremely insecure in front of the canvases of the cubists or abstractionists. Considering the fact that until now the tastes of most people are inclined towards realistic art, it is easy to imagine what bewilderment those who first came into contact with avant-garde techniques experienced. More about the basics modernist art will be discussed in the chapter on new trends in the culture of the twentieth century. In the context of this chapter, the mention of abstractionism is necessary as another argument in favor of confirming the sharp breakdown of traditional forms of culture, characteristic of the time of the formation of cultural studies.

Many scientists involved in various aspects of the humanities considered it a matter of honor to take part in the creation of a general theory of culture, reflecting the multidimensionality and complexity of this concept. The term "culturology" did not appear immediately. It was introduced around the 40s. on the initiative of the American cultural researcher and anthropologist L.E. White. In the works “The Science of Culture” (1949), “The Evolution of Culture” (1959). “The Concept of Culture” (1973) and others. White argued that cultural studies is a qualitatively higher level of human comprehension than other social sciences, and predicted a great future for it. He viewed culture as something complete system material and spiritual elements, and the general law of cultural development formulated with almost mathematical precision: “Culture moves forward as the amount of harnessed energy per capita increases, or as efficiency or economy increases in the means of energy management, or that and more together." It so happened that by the time White introduced the name, science itself was already actively functioning.

At the same time, one cannot ignore the fact that cultural studies to this day remains the most controversial and diverse science. To create a science of culture, equal in logic, internal unity, fundamentality to other humanities, turned out to be an extremely difficult task: the object of study itself is too multifaceted. This explains the variety of interpretations of its specificity and constituent components.

“Culturology is focused on the knowledge of the common that connects various forms of cultural existence of people ... Historical and theoretical ways consideration of the forms of cultural existence of a person are in cultural studies in unity. Based on this understanding, cultural studies can be viewed as knowledge about the past and contemporary culture, its structure and functions, development prospects,” writes the Russian culturologist S.Ya. Levit in the article “Culturology as an integrative field of knowledge”, and his position seems to be quite reasonable, fully reflecting the essence of this most interesting science.

Culturology: Textbook for universities Apresyan Ruben Grantovich

2.3. The structure of cultural studies

2.3. The structure of cultural studies

Modern culturology combines a number of disciplines, each of which ensures the fulfillment of the tasks facing this science. These disciplines can be very conditionally divided into theoretical and historical.

The theoretical branch includes:

– philosophy of culture which studies the most common problems existence of culture;

– theory of culture studying the patterns of development and functioning of culture;

– culture morphology - the study of various forms of existence of culture, such as, for example, language, myth, art, religion, technology, science.

The historical branch, in turn, includes:

– cultural history, which deals with the typology of cultures, a comparative analysis of the development of various cultural and historical types;

– sociology of culture which explores the functioning of culture in society, the relationship of social and cultural processes.

– practical cultural studies, which determines at what level human activity acquires a cultural character. Obviously, this level is unique for each historical epoch.