Concepts of civilization in the history of philosophical analysis of culture. The concept of culture and civilization in philosophy. Characteristics of the Enlightenment

The word "culture" comes from a Latin term meaning cultivation of the land, as well as education and development. Initially, it was associated with the rural way of life and interaction with nature. Based on this meaning, in philosophy it means both a specific way of organizing and developing human life, represented by the products of material and spiritual labor, and a system of certain socially conditioned norms and spiritual values. Culture is also often referred to as the totality of people's attitudes towards nature, society and themselves. For convenience, they are divided depending on the historical stages of development - for example, ancient, renaissance, and so on, from groups or communities of people - national, ethnic or multi-ethnic, world, culture of the individual ...

The term "civilization" also has a Latin origin, however, its meaning is not agrarian, but urban, and is associated with such concepts as citizenship and the state. Culture and civilization in philosophy can be close in meaning - for example, the word "civilization" is often used as a synonym for culture. But, as a rule, in a stricter sense of the word, civilization is the degree of development of society, which follows "barbarism", and is also divided into historical stages of development (ancient, medieval ...). We can say that both of these concepts are two facets of one whole.

However, until the 18th century, the scientific community actually lived without the terms "culture" and "civilization". Philosophy introduced them into the lexicon rather late, and at first they were considered synonymous. However, representations close to these concepts in meaning have existed for a long time. For example, in China they were traditionally denoted by the word "ren" (Confucius), in Ancient Greece - "paideia" (well-bredness), and in Ancient Rome they were even divided into two words: "civitas" (the opposite of barbarism, civilization) and "humanitas" ( education). Interestingly, in the Middle Ages, the concept of civitas was more valued, and in the Renaissance, humanitas. Since the 18th century, culture has become more and more identified with the ideals of the Enlightenment in the spiritual and political field - reasonable and harmonious forms of government, science, art and religion. Montesquieu, Voltaire, Turgot and Condorcet agreed in their judgments that the development of culture corresponds to the development of reason and rationality.

Has culture and civilization always been positively perceived by thinkers? The philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a contemporary of the Enlightenment, gives a negative answer to this question. He believed that the further a person moves away from nature, the less true happiness and natural harmony in him. This criticism also had an effect on German philosophy, whose classics tried to comprehend these contradictions. Kant put forward the idea that the problem, whether culture and civilization is good or bad, can be resolved with the help of the “moral world”, the German romantics Schelling and Henderlin tried to do this with the help of aesthetic intuition, and Hegel believed that everything can be resolved within the framework of the philosophy of self-consciousness of the Absolute Spirit. Herder believed that contradictions are generally characteristic of the history of culture, since it develops according to types (Eastern, ancient, European), each of which reaches its maximum, passing on achievements to the next. Humboldt suggested that one of the most significant features of national culture is the language that forms the national spirit.

However, most often she considered the development of culture as a one-line process, and therefore her position did not cover all the diversity that world culture and civilization gives. Philosophy of the 19th century (especially in the person of the neo-Kantians Rickert and Weber, as well as representatives of the "philosophy of life") criticized this position. Neo-Kantians recognized as the main world of values ​​that call a person to do what is due and influence his behavior. Nietzsche contrasted Apollonian and Dionysian, and Dilthey - discursive and intuitive, calling the first "liquefied fluid of the mind." Marxism sought in culture and civilization a material basis and a social group (class) character.

From the end of the 19th century, the study of culture from the standpoint of anthropology and ethnography (Taylor) also began, a structural analysis of culture as a system of values, semiotics and structural linguistics (Levi-Strauss) was created. The twentieth century is characterized by such a direction as the philosophy of culture, the essence of which was represented by symbols (Cassirer), intuition (Bergson) or Philosophers of Culture, just as existentialists and representatives of philosophical hermeneutics saw in each universal meaning, which is revealed when deciphering its symbols. Although there is such a position that rejects such a concept as world culture and civilization. The philosophy of Spengler and Toynbee considers the polycentrism of cultures as evidence of the absence of generally accepted and universal patterns in different civilizations.

It is important to note that one of the founders of modern cultural studies there will be a Russian philosopher N.Ya. Danilevsky, whose original concept of culture is set forth in the book "Russia and Europe".

Slavophile and soil worker, Danilevsky first substantiated a civilized approach to history, creating the concept of cultural-historical types. In his work, Danilevsky expresses the idea that in the general flow of world culture certain formations are distinguished, which are closed species.

Danilevsky's ideas were formed under the influence of the natural sciences, incl. biology. The existence of individual cultures is similar to the existence of living organisms. Thus, cultural-historical types are in constant struggle with each other and the external environment.

Danilevsky calls into question the possibility of the existence of a universal culture and the general line of development. Cultural types are closed and therefore unable to create a common system of values, on the basis of which they could unite in the future. Later Danilevsky's views were developed in the works of O. Schopengler and A. Toynbee.

In addition to ϶ᴛᴏgo, Danilevsky put forward and developed the thesis of Slavic exceptionalism. Material published on http: // site
Danilevsky considers the Slavic cultural and historical type to be qualitatively new and historically promising.
It is worth noting that, according to the philosopher, it will be especially bright in the Russian people, which is the embodiment of the messianic idea of ​​the revival of culture.

The weakness of Danilevsky's theory lies in the mechanical transfer of the laws of biology to society and in the underestimation of world culture, based on the generic essence of mankind.

F. Nietzsche in his work “On the benefits and harms of history for life” defined culture as determination, emphasizing that the creative pathos of Western European culture is fading. The lofty ideas and impulses of the bourgeois are replaced by a career, money and entertainment. This is leading Western culture to disaster.

Nietzsche distinguishes two types of culture: Apollonian (critical and rational) and Dionysian (creative-sensual culture of spontaneous impulse)
It is interesting to note that where Dionysus submits to Apollo, the tragedy of man and culture is born.

The meaning and purpose of history, according to Nietzsche, are not at the end of it, but are contained in its most perfect representatives - outstanding people, giants, supermen. Zarathustra, having freed himself from the fetters of culture and society, preaches, calling for the liberation of other people. Nietzsche's philosophy is a call for the destruction of the creature in man in order to create a creator in him. It is no coincidence that Nietzsche was so popular among the pre-revolutionary Russian intelligentsia, which was distinguished by its love of body.

O. Spengler developed the concept of culture, largely based on the opposition of culture and civilization. In her work “The Decline of Europe”, Spengler criticizes the idea of ​​the unity of world culture. All cultures in their development, like living organisms, go through the same stages of development: childhood, adolescence, maturity and decay. The data is followed by the inevitable extinction of culture. On average, the existence of each culture is given a thousand years, and then in its place there is a new, no less beautiful culture.

Spengler emphasizes the uniqueness and incomprehensibility of each culture. It is worth noting that he introduces the expression "soul of culture" - ϶ᴛᴏ some underlying principle of every culture, indescribable in words and cannot be understood by other people. Therefore, Spengler believes, the interaction of cultures has a detrimental effect on their development - the people's own culture is eroded during ϶ᴛᴏm, while the values ​​of a foreign culture cannot be adequately perceived.

By civilization, Spengler understands the last, inevitable phase of the development of culture. Civilization has the same characteristics in all cultures and will be an expression of the dying of a culture. The victory of technology and big cities, plebeian morality, over-organization - data marks the decline of culture.

Philosophical anthropology also did not ignore the problems of culture. Thus, K. Jung saw psychology as a means of bringing science and religion closer together, opening the way to the knowledge of culture.

At the center of Jung's concept is the "collective unconscious", manifested in archetypes (primitive subconscious images that accompany a person throughout his history). With the development of civilization and consciousness, a person, according to Jung, thinks less and less with his heart and more and more with his head, that is gap between the conscious and the unconscious. Hence the loss of mental balance. The unconscious, seeking to restore ϶ᴛᴏ balance, bursts into our lives, and sometimes ϶ᴛᴏ occurs in the form of primitive and rigid archetypes, which leads not only to individual, but also to mass psychoses.

Culture and civilization

Concepts culture and civilization are closely linked, which allows researchers in some cases to use them as synonyms.

Both culture and civilization are value concepts. Any civilization (as well as culture) is a set of values ​​inherent in it.

At the same time, these concepts also have semantic differences laid down in antiquity. Thus, the term "culture", which is of Greek origin, originally meant cultivation, cultivation (soil, plants), and later was extended to the field of upbringing and education. Note that the term "civilization" is of Latin origin and indicates civil, state characteristics ("civilis" means "civil", "state")

Note that the term civilization” means a certain level of development of material and spiritual culture. This means that chronologically, culture and civilization do not always coincide. So, we can talk about primitive culture, but there is no primitive civilization. Only when mental labor begins to separate from physical labor do handicrafts arise, commodity production and exchange take place, and the transition from primitive culture to civilization takes place.

O. Spengler considered the stage of civilization to be the end of the development of any culture. By the way, this stage is characterized by a high level of development of science and technology, a decline in literature and art, and the emergence of megacities. In ϶ᴛᴏ time, according to Spengler, the people lose the “soul of culture”, there is a “massification” of all spheres of life and their necrosis, a desire for world domination is formed - the internal source of the death of culture.

In addition to ϶ᴛᴏgo, there are a number of phenomena that stand outside of culture and are its antipodes. It is, first of all, wars. Violence and destruction are opposed to the content of culture, creative and humanistic. If civilization suppresses the individual, then culture creates the conditions for its flourishing. Anti-culture can nullify all the efforts of culture and sometimes leads to irreversible consequences. Civilization combines culture and lack of culture, values ​​and anti-values, gains and losses of the people.

Culture, therefore, will be the basis, the "code" of civilization, but it does not completely coincide with it. According to the well-known expression of M.M. Prishvin, culture is the connection of people, and civilization is the connection of things.

Note that the term “civilization” is used in various senses:

• as a historical stage in the development of mankind, following barbarism and characterized by the formation of classes and the state. This definition was used by Morgan and Engels;
• as a characteristic of the integrity of all cultures, their universal unity ("world civilization", "to introduce things in a civilized manner", etc.) We are talking about the most rational and humane way of reproducing human life and existence;
• as a synonym for the term "material culture": that which gives convenience and comfort;
• as a characteristic of the unity of the historical process. This concept serves as a criterion for comparing certain stages of history (“civilization”, “high level of development of civilization”, “lowest stage of development of civilization”)

To explain the diversity of civilizations, it is extremely important to turn to the analysis of the system of norms that regulate social relations, behavior and activities of people. Thus, civilizations differ in the degree of their technical and economic development, in the speed of economic and social processes, in the characteristics of the dominant religious and worldview attitudes and the degree of their influence, as well as in the ways of encoding, storing and transmitting information,

“The reason for the genesis of civilization lies not in a single factor, but in a combination of several: ϶ᴛᴏ is not a single entity, but a relationship,” A. Toynbee emphasized.

Culture creates the conditions for the development of civilization, civilization creates the prerequisites for the cultural process, directs it. Many cultures are formed on the basis of the same civilization. Thus, European civilization includes English, French, German, Polish and other cultures.

Civilizations will be the most important backbone of social life, creating universal forms of culture and social relations. It is worth noting that they are considered by researchers as an external world in relation to a person, influencing him and opposing him, while culture will always be an internal property of a person, ϲʙᴏ free spiritual and material activity in ϲᴏᴏᴛʙᴇᴛϲᴛʙ and with the norms of civilization.

A comparative analysis of the concepts of civilizations and cultures led to an important conclusion that not all phenomena of social life can be attributed to culture. If in the last century these concepts were used as synonyms and many philosophers were inclined to blame culture for all the misfortunes of mankind, then the dilution of the concepts of culture and civilization in the twentieth century. helped to preserve the idea of ​​culture as a field of creation and free creativity of people. Not culture, but civilization with its wars, exploitation, environmental pollution and other anti-cultural phenomena destroys the spiritual world of man and threatens life on our planet.

The main cultural task of the end of the second millennium is to prohibit the attitude to a person as a thing, a "cog in production." The emphasis with ϶ᴛᴏm is on the development of the creative forces of man. Not the satisfaction of material needs, but human development will be the main goal.

The word culture is one of the most popular in discussions about eternal philosophical problems. There are hundreds of different definitions of culture and dozens of approaches to its study. In the most general sense, culture is most often understood as the achievements of science and art, as well as the way of behavior learned in the process of education. Word "culture" appeared in Latin (cultura - cultivation, care) and originally referred to the cultivation of the land. The Roman orator Cicero first used the word culture in a figurative sense to characterize human thinking: "Philosophy is the culture of the mind." The concept of culture correlates with another concept of "nature" (natura - nature) and is opposed to it. Man, transforming nature, creates culture, and at the same time he forms himself.

In our time, culture is studied by a number of sciences: history, archeology, ethnography, anthropology, religious studies, sociology, art history, etc. Each of these sciences chooses its own perspective in the study of culture, explores one of the components of culture as a whole (for example, political science studies political culture, and sociology studies the culture of social relations). At the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. even a special science of culture arose - cultural studies, which set itself the task of studying not individual elements of culture, but culture as a system. The situation of the dialogue of cultures required new approaches in the study of culture, such as, for example, sociological and anthropological. Despite the fact that culture is studied both by cultural studies and a number of social and human sciences, the philosophical analysis of culture retains its importance. The philosophy of culture has long become a necessary organic component of the philosophical understanding of being, the world and man in the world.

Social philosophy highlights the following cultural functions:

- socializing function. Socialization is the process of assimilation by a person of social roles, skills and abilities. Socialization takes place exclusively in the cultural environment. It is culture that offers a variety of roles and norms of behavior. In sociology and social psychology there is also the concept of "deviation" - the rejection of socially approved norms of behavior;

- communicative function, i.e. interaction between people, social groups and societies.

Function differentiation and integration society, since culture is a product of the coexistence of people, which requires the acquisition of common interests and goals, i.e., integration. At the same time, the set of forms of social interaction is constantly changing, i.e., there is a differentiation of culture;

- sign-communicative function of culture. All cultural phenomena, "artifacts", are signs that carry a symbolic meaning. A feature of human activity is precisely its symbolic nature, thanks to which communication between people is carried out. Signs and symbols are ordered and form systems. Culture can thus be seen as a system of symbols;

- game function culture lies in the fact that within its framework there is also a free, creative activity of people, which is based on competitive and entertaining moments (for example, festivities, competitions, carnivals). The concept of "game" is actively used in modern research, as it allows a deeper understanding of the features of human activity.

What is the place of the individual in culture? In philosophy, there is the following statement: Man is the subject and object of culture. Indeed, culture is the result of people's activities, but at the same time, it is culture that influences the formation of a person, socializes him. Culture is also a way of internal regulation that requires reflection, and not just reproduction. To understand the world means to expand one's attitude towards it. If a person shows a consumerist attitude towards culture, refuses creativity, then he culturally "runs wild". On the contrary, the ability to diversify one's life, to find opportunities for creativity means the ability to enter the world of culture.

What is the relationship between culture and civilization? With the ambiguity of the definitions of both concepts, this question does not have an unambiguous answer. Let's get acquainted with the existing definitions of the concept of "civilization".

Civilization(from lat. civilis - civil, state):

1) a synonym for culture;

2) a certain stage of social development, characterized by the presence of urban settlements, the state and writing;

3) a socio-cultural type with its own religious system.

The concepts of culture and civilization are sometimes used as synonyms (which is typical, for example, for the anthropological approach). Civilization can also be considered as a level of cultural development. From such an understanding come, for example, historians and archaeologists. They consider civilization only the culture in which there are urban settlements, the state and writing. The concepts of "culture" and "civilization", while not being identical, are at the same time closely related. Generally, researchers agree that civilization: - this is, firstly, a certain level of development of culture, and secondly, a certain type of culture with its characteristic features. We can talk about Middle Eastern civilizations, ancient civilization, etc. In this case, civilization acts as a certain characteristic of the peoples of the world, necessary for their study. N.Ya. Danilevsky called them "cultural-historical types", O. Spengler- "high cultures" A. Toynbee- "civilizations" P. Sorokin- "sociocultural supersystems",: N. Berdyaev- great cultures.

The understanding of civilization as the final stage in the development of culture was proposed by the German philosopher O. Spengler (“The Decline of Europe”). In his opinion, culture is creativity, and civilization is repetition, reproduction and replication. Focusing on the transition of culture into civilization, Spengler believed that this transition was marked not by the development of culture, but by its decline and death,

O. Spengler identified eight main cultures (civilizations) with their own style:

Egyptian;

Indian;

Babylonian;

Chinese;

Greco-Roman;

Magical (Byzantine-Arabic);

Faustian (Western European).

As the ninth culture, he called the emerging Russian-Siberian.

Spengler proceeded from the idea of ​​the existence of a certain leading characteristic that gives each culture a corresponding specificity. Each of the great cultures during its active phase has a complete relationship between all the elements that make up the culture. Over a certain period, one (leading) quality of culture permeates them all. The primary form of every culture is embodied in symbols.

A civilization is also understood as a cultural-historical type with a single religious system characteristic of it (for example, with this approach, Christian, Buddhist, Muslim civilizations are singled out). Such an interpretation of the concept of "civilization" was proposed by the English historian A. Toynbee, who devoted the multi-volume work "Comprehension of History" to the study of the causes of the development and decline of civilizations. Toynbee civilizations are more of a variant of a cultural community. The concept of "civilization" helps to more fully reveal the uniqueness of the cultures of various continents: Europe, America, Asia, Africa, "North" and "South", "West" and "East". Even broader than the concept of "civilization" is the concept of "civilizational type". As such, the West and the East are singled out (sometimes, for brevity, they simply speak of Western and Eastern civilizations). The terms East and West are not geographical, but cultural and philosophical. The East can be defined as a pre-industrial or traditional society. The West is an innovative society, a technical civilization. There are a number of fundamental differences in the relations between society and man in the West and in the East.

1. If the East is characterized by a slow pace of historical development, the dominance of traditions, then in the West innovation prevailed and there were high rates of historical development.

2. The East is a traditional society with a closed and immobile social structure. A person cannot change his social position, he belongs to the social group in which he was included by the very fact of birth. The East is characterized by despotism as a form of government. Western society is a non-traditional type of society: open and mobile. A person has opportunities to change his status, such as education, career, business. It is in the West that such forms of government as democracy and republic arise.

3. Figurative thinking prevails in the East, and the picture of the world is formed by religious and mythological systems. Rational thinking is developing in the West, the highest expression of which is science, which claims to form its own picture of the world.

4. In the East, the public and the natural were perceived as one. Man very harmoniously coexisted both with the surrounding nature and with his own bodily nature. In the West, nature was seen as an object of social influence, which resulted in the environmental problems of the 20th century.

West and East as civilizational types are a theoretical abstraction that largely helps to understand the difference in the ways of development of society. Of course, at the beginning of the 21st century. The East is undergoing tremendous changes that are comprehended within the framework of the theories of modernization and globalization.

Today the West is synonymous with the concept of "developed countries". The East is modernizing, but with varying degrees of success. Researchers note that those eastern countries where the Confucian religious tradition existed (Japan, China) are the most successful along the path of technical civilization. More difficult is the path of India with its religious system of Hinduism. The biggest difficulties are expected on the way of modernization of the country of Muslim culture.

One of the founders of modern cultural studies is a Russian philosopher N.Ya. Danilevsky, whose original concept of culture is set forth in the book "Russia and Europe".

Slavophile and soil worker, Danilevsky first substantiated a civilized approach to history, creating the concept of cultural-historical types. In his work, Danilevsky expresses the idea that in the general flow of world culture, some formations stand out, which are closed species.

Danilevsky's ideas were formed under the influence of the natural sciences, including biology. The existence of individual cultures is similar to the existence of living organisms. Thus, cultural-historical types are in constant struggle with each other and the external environment.

Danilevsky calls into question the possibility of the existence of a universal culture and the general line of development. Cultural types are closed and therefore unable to create a common system of values ​​on the basis of which they could unite in the future. Later Danilevsky's views were developed in the works of O. Schopengler and A. Toynbee.

In addition, Danilevsky put forward and developed the thesis of Slavic exclusivity. Danilevsky considers the Slavic cultural and historical type to be qualitatively new and historically promising. It manifests itself especially clearly, according to the philosopher, in the Russian people, who are the embodiment of the messianic idea of ​​the revival of culture.

The weakness of Danilevsky's theory lies in the mechanical transfer of the laws of biology to society and in the underestimation of world culture, based on the generic essence of mankind.

F. Nietzsche in his work “On the benefits and harms of history for life” defined culture as determination, emphasizing that the creative pathos of Western European culture is fading. The lofty ideas and impulses of the bourgeois are replaced by a career, money and entertainment. This is leading Western culture to disaster.

Nietzsche distinguishes two types of culture: Apollonian (critical and rational) and Dionysian (creative-sensual culture of spontaneous impulse). Where Dionysus submits to Apollo, the tragedy of man and culture is born.

The meaning and purpose of history, according to Nietzsche, are not at the end of it, but are contained in its most perfect representatives - outstanding people, giants, supermen. Zarathustra, having freed himself from the fetters of culture and society, preaches, calling for the liberation of other people. Nietzsche's philosophy is a call for the destruction of the creature in man in order to create a creator in him. It is no coincidence that Nietzsche was so popular among the pre-revolutionary Russian intelligentsia, which was distinguished by its love of freedom.

O. Spengler developed the concept of culture, largely based on the opposition of culture and civilization. In his work The Decline of Europe, Spengler criticizes the idea of ​​the unity of world culture. All cultures in their development, like living organisms, go through the same stages of development: childhood, adolescence, maturity and decay. This is followed by the inevitable extinction of culture. On average, the existence of each culture is given a thousand years, and then in its place there is a new, no less beautiful culture.

Spengler emphasizes the uniqueness and incomprehensibility of each culture. He introduces the expression "soul of culture" - this is a certain underlying principle of every culture, indescribable in words and cannot be understood by other people. Therefore, according to Spengler, the interaction of cultures has a detrimental effect on their development - the people's own culture is eroded, while the values ​​of a foreign culture cannot be adequately perceived.

By civilization, Spengler understands the last, inevitable phase of the development of culture. Civilization has the same characteristics in all cultures and is an expression of the dying of a culture. The victory of technology and big cities, plebeian morality, overorganization - this marks the decline of culture.

Philosophical anthropology also did not ignore the problems of culture. Thus, K. Jung saw psychology as a means of bringing science and religion closer together, opening the way to the knowledge of culture.

At the center of Jung's concept is the "collective unconscious", manifested in archetypes (primitive subconscious images that accompany a person throughout his history). With the development of civilization and consciousness, a person, according to Jung, thinks less and less with his heart and more and more with his head, that is, the gulf between consciousness and the unconscious deepens. Hence the loss of mental balance. The unconscious, seeking to restore this balance, bursts into our lives, and sometimes it happens in the form of primitive and rigid archetypes, which leads not only to individual, but also to mass psychoses.

Culture and civilization

Concepts culture and civilization are closely linked, which allows researchers in some cases to use them as synonyms.

Both culture and civilization are value concepts. Any civilization (as well as culture) is a set of values ​​inherent in it.

However, these concepts also have semantic differences laid down in antiquity. So, the term "", which is of Greek origin, originally meant processing, cultivation (soil, plants), and later was extended to the field of upbringing and education. The term "civilization" is of Latin origin and indicates civil, state characteristics ("civilis" means "civil", "state").

The term " civilization” means a certain level of development and . This means that chronologically, culture and civilization do not always coincide. So, we can talk about primitive culture, but there is no primitive civilization. Only when mental labor begins to separate from physical labor do handicrafts arise, commodity production and exchange appear, and the transition from primitive culture to civilization occurs.

O. Spengler considered the stage of civilization to be the end of the development of any culture. This stage is characterized by a high level of development of science and technology, a decline in the field of literature and art, and the emergence of megacities. At this time, according to Spengler, the people are losing the “soul of culture”, there is a “massification” of all spheres of life and their necrosis, a desire for world domination is formed - the internal source of the death of culture.

In addition, there are a number of phenomena that stand outside of culture and are its antipodes. It is, first of all, wars. Violence and destruction are opposed to the content of culture, creative and humanistic. If civilization suppresses the individual, then culture creates the conditions for its flourishing. Anti-culture can nullify all the efforts of culture and sometimes leads to irreversible consequences. Civilization combines culture and lack of culture, values ​​and anti-values, gains and losses of the people.

Culture, therefore, is the basis, the “code” of civilization, but does not completely coincide with it. According to the well-known expression of M.M. Prishvin, culture is the connection of people, and civilization is the connection of things.

The term "civilization" is used in various senses:

• as a historical stage in the development of mankind, following barbarism and characterized by the formation of classes and the state. This definition was used by Morgan and Engels;
• as a characteristic of the integrity of all cultures, their universal unity ("world civilization", "to introduce things in a civilized way", etc.). We are talking about the most rational and humane way to reproduce the life and existence of man;
• as a synonym for the term "material culture": that which gives convenience and comfort;
• as a characteristic of the unity of the historical process. This concept serves as a criterion for comparing certain stages of history (“civilization”, “high level of civilization development”, “lowest stage of civilization development”).

To explain the diversity of civilizations, it is necessary to turn to the analysis of the system of norms regulating social relations, behavior and activities of people. Thus, civilizations differ in the degree of their technical and economic development, in the speed of economic and social processes, in the characteristics of the dominant religious and worldview attitudes and the degree of their influence, as well as in the ways of encoding, storing and transmitting information,

“The reason for the genesis of civilization lies not in a single factor, but in a combination of several: it is not a single entity, but a relationship,” A. Toynbee emphasized.

Culture creates the conditions for the development of civilization, civilization creates the prerequisites for the cultural process, directs it. Many cultures are formed on the basis of the same civilization. Thus, European civilization includes English, French, German, Polish and other cultures.

Civilizations are the most important backbone of social life, creating universal forms of culture and social relations. They are considered by researchers as an external world in relation to a person, influencing him and opposing him, while culture is always an internal property of a person, a free spiritual and material activity in accordance with the norms of civilization.

A comparative analysis of the concepts of civilizations and cultures led to an important conclusion that not all phenomena of social life can be attributed to culture. If in the last century these concepts were used as synonyms and many philosophers were inclined to blame culture for all the misfortunes of mankind, then the breeding of the concepts of culture and civilization in the twentieth century helped to preserve the idea of ​​culture as a field of creation and free creativity of people. Not culture, but civilization with its wars, exploitation, environmental pollution and other anti-cultural phenomena destroys the spiritual world of man and threatens life on our planet.

The main cultural task of the end of the second millennium is to prohibit the attitude to a person as a thing, a "cog in production." The emphasis is on the development of human creative powers. Not the satisfaction of material needs, but human development is the main goal.

Civilization and culture are concepts closely related to each other. At present, at a certain level of development of a society or a society that has reached cultural studies and other humanities, civilization is most often understood as a certain stage in its development. It is understood that in the primitive era of the history of mankind, all peoples, all tribes have not yet developed those norms of communication, which later became known as civilizational norms. Approximately 5 thousand years ago, in some regions of the Earth, civilizations arose, that is, associations of people, a society based on qualitatively new principles of organization and communication.

In the conditions of civilization, a high level of cultural development is achieved, the greatest values ​​​​of both spiritual and material culture are created. The problem of the relationship between culture and civilization is the subject of many of the most serious works of well-known theoreticians of culture. Many of them associate it with questions about the fate of culture, civilization, and even all of humanity.

The concept of "civilization" is ambiguous. The term "civilization" comes from the Latin word meaning "civilian". There are at least three main meanings of this word. In the first case, a traditional cultural-philosophical problem is born, which goes back to the German romantics. In this sense, "culture" and "civilization" are no longer perceived as synonymous. The organics of culture is opposed to the deadly technism of civilization. The second meaning of the word presupposes the movement of the world from a split to a single one. A third paradigm-pluralism of individual disparate civilizations is also possible. In this case, the vision of a universal human perspective that goes back to Christianity is being revised.

To develop a more or less precise definition of civilization, it is necessary, in turn, to study major social and cultural phenomena that exist in the form of wholes, i.e. macrohistorical research. N. Danilevsky calls such phenomena cultural-historical types, O. Spengler - developed cultures, A. Toynbee - civilizations, P. Sorokin - metacultures.

All these social and cultural supersystems do not coincide with the nation, or with the state, or with any social group. They transcend geographic or racial boundaries. However, like deep currents, they define a wider civilizational scheme. And everyone is right in their own way. For there is no modern science without taking into account and substantiating the status of an observer.

O. Spengler in his book "The Decline of Europe" formed his understanding of civilization. For Spengler, civilization is such a type of development of society, when the era of creativity, inspiration is replaced by the stage of ossification of society, the stage of impoverishment of creativity, the stage of spiritual devastation. The creative stage is culture, which is being replaced by civilization.

Within the framework of this concept, it turns out, firstly, that civilization means the deadening of culture, and secondly, that civilization is a transition not to a better, but to a worse state of society.

Spengler's concept became widely known, although it was more polemicized than agreed. For example, the great humanist A. Schweitzer assessed Spengler's theory as an attempt to legitimize the right to existence of a civilization free from moral norms, a civilization free from humanistic spiritual principles. According to Schweitzer, the dissemination in society of the idea of ​​the inevitability of a soulless mechanical civilization can only bring pessimism into society and weaken the role of the moral factors of culture. N. Berdyaev called Spengler's mistake that he gave "a purely chronological meaning to the words civilization and culture and saw in them a change of eras." From Berdyaev's point of view, culture exists in the era of civilization, just as civilization exists in the era of culture.

It should be noted that Berdyaev and Schweitzer considered the distinction between culture and civilization to be rather arbitrary. Both great thinkers pointed out that French researchers prefer the word "civilization" ("civilisa-tion"), and the German word "culture" ("Hochkultur", i.e. "high culture"), to refer to approximately the same processes .

But most researchers still do not reduce the difference between culture and civilization to the peculiarities of national languages. In most scientific and reference publications, civilization is understood as a certain stage in the development of society, associated with a certain culture and having a number of features that distinguish civilizations from the pre-civilized stage of development of society. Most often, the following signs of civilization are distinguished.

The presence of the state as a specific organization, management structure, coordinating the economic, military and some other spheres of life of the whole society.

The presence of writing, without which many types of managerial and economic activities are difficult.

The presence of a set of laws, legal norms that have replaced tribal customs. The system of laws proceeds from the equal responsibility of each inhabitant of a civilizational society, regardless of his tribal affiliation. Over time, civilizations come to a written fixation of a set of laws. Written law is the hallmark of a civilized society. Customs are a sign of a non-civilized society. Consequently, the absence of clear laws and norms is a vestige of clan, tribal relations

A certain level of humanism. Even in early civilizations, even if ideas about the right of every person to life and dignity do not prevail there, then, as a rule, they do not accept cannibalism and human sacrifice. Of course, in modern civilizational society, some people with a sick psyche or with criminal inclinations have urges to cannibalism or ritual bloody actions. But society as a whole and laws do not allow barbaric inhuman actions.

Not without reason, the transition to the civilizational stage among many peoples was associated with the spread of religions bearing humanistic moral values ​​- Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism.

These signs of civilization do not necessarily appear all at once. Some may be formed in specific conditions later or earlier. But the absence of these signs leads to the decline of a certain society. These signs provide a minimum of human security, ensure the effective use of human abilities, and therefore ensure the efficiency of the economic and political system, ensure the flourishing of spiritual culture.

Usually, researchers of civilizations point out the difficulties of their interpretation: the complexity of the internal composition of each of the civilizations; intense internal struggle within civilizations for dominance over natural and human resources; intense struggle for hegemony in the symbolic sphere in the form of ideology and religion. Moreover, in such a struggle, warring factions, coalitions and cliques often look for external support against their brothers in civilization, looking for ways to assert themselves in sub-civilizational strife. Material for this kind of thinking is provided by the history of the Arab-Islamic civilization: Hindustan, Indonesian of the 20th century.

Difficulty for the study of civilizations is their internal dynamism. Their appearance is formed not only by centuries of historical background. A dramatic process of interaction between Western and soil-based impulses, rationalism and traditionalism unfolds itself. This interaction can be traced as one of the defining characteristics of cultural dynamics in non-Western societies. For two or three centuries it has been the leitmotif of the history of Russia. The same can be said about Turkey, Japan, Latin America, India and the Middle East. This interaction of oppositely directed impulses remains universal. Moreover, since the 19th century it even managed to establish itself in Western culture - a collision of mondialism and western-centrism.

Political culture obviously plays a significant role in the interpretation of this problem. One can understand the socio-economic and psychological prerequisites of fundamentalism - in the Islamic world, in Orthodoxy, Hinduism and Judaism. Fundamentalism really takes on the appearance of an eschatologically formidable, all-embracing phenomenon. But today's trends are not eternal. In addition, if we take a closer look at fundamentalism in the bosom of various cultural civilizations, in fact civilizational structures, approaching it culturally, then this is most likely an attempt at an activist restructuring of traditional religious consciousness in the current conditions of a deeply unbalanced in many respects Western-centric world.

Fundamentalism is alien not only to rationalism, but also to traditionalism, since it does not accept tradition in its historical changeability and givenness, tries to establish tradition as something charismatically invented, tries to keep it on the path of rational design, to consolidate tradition by rational means. In this sense, one has to speak not about conservatism, but about the radicalism of the main fundamentalist attitudes.

All this indicates that it is difficult to give a strict definition of the concept of civilization. In fact, civilization is understood as a cultural community of people who have a certain social genotype, a social stereotype, which has mastered a large, fairly autonomous, closed world space and, because of this, has received a firm place in the world layout.

In essence, two directions can be distinguished in the morphological doctrine of cultures: the theory of the staged development of civilization and the theory of local civilizations. One of them is the American anthropologist F. Northrop, A. Kroeber and P.A. Sorokin. To another - N.Ya. Danilevsky, O. Spengler and A. Toynbee.

Stage theories study civilization as a single process of the progressive development of mankind, in which certain stages (stages) are distinguished. This process began in ancient times, when primitive society began to disintegrate and part of humanity passed into a state of civilization. It continues to this day. During this time, great changes have taken place in the life of mankind, which have affected socio-economic relations, spiritual and material culture.

Theories of local civilizations study large historically established communities that occupy a certain territory and have their own characteristics of socio-economic and cultural development. More about this theory in paragraph 3 of my abstract.

As P.A. Sorokin, there are a number of points of contact between both directions, and the conclusions reached by representatives of both directions are very close. Both recognize the existence of a relatively small number of cultures that do not coincide with either nations or states and are different in character. Each such culture is an integrity, a holistic unity in which the parts and the whole are interconnected and interdependent, although the reality of the whole does not correspond to the sum of the realities of the individual parts. Both theories - stadial and local - make it possible to see history in different ways. In the stadial theory, the general comes to the fore - the laws of development common to all mankind. In the theory of local civilizations - the individual, the diversity of the historical process. Thus, both theories have advantages and complement each other.