Culture and civilization. The philosophy of their relationship and history of development

The word "culture" comes from the Latin term, meaning land cultivation, as well as upbringing and development. Originally it was associated with rural life and interaction with nature. Proceeding from this sense, the concept of culture in philosophy means as a specific way of organizing and developing human life activity, represented by products of material and spiritual labor, and the system of certain socially conditioned norms and spiritual values. Culture is also often referred to as the totality of the relationship of people to nature, to society and to themselves. For convenience, the forms of culture are divided according to historical stages of development - for example, the ancient, Renaissance and so on, from groups or communities of people - the national, ethnic or multiethnic, world, culture of the individual ...

The term "civilization" also has a Latin origin, however, its significance is not of an agrarian but of a urban background, 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 more strict sense of the word civilization is called 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 represent two faces 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 quite late, and at first they were considered synonymous. However, ideas that are close to these concepts in meaning, have existed for a long time. For example, in China they were traditionally denoted by the word "jen" (Confucius), in ancient Greece - "paideia" (education), and in ancient Rome, even divided into two words: "civitas" (the opposite of barbarism, civilization) and "humanitas" ( education). It is interesting that in the Middle Ages the concept of civitas was more appreciated, and in the Renaissance - humanitas. Since the 18th century, culture has increasingly been identified with the ideals of the Enlightenment in the spiritual and political fields - rational and harmonious forms of government, science, art and religion. Montesquieu, Voltaire, Turgot and Condorcet coincided in the judgments that the development of culture corresponds to the development of reason and rationality.

Is culture and civilization always 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 departs from nature, the less real happiness and natural harmony in him. This criticism also influenced German philosophy, whose classics tried to comprehend these contradictions. Kant advanced the idea that the problem, whether good or bad, culture and civilization, can be resolved with the help of a "world of morality," German romanticists Schelling and Henderlin attempted to do this with the help of aesthetic intuition, and Hegel believed that everything is solvable within the philosophy of self-consciousness of the Absolute Spirit. Herder believed that the contradictions are generally characteristic of the history of culture, because it develops in types (Eastern, Antique, European), each of which reaches its maximum, passing on achievements as follows. Humboldt suggested that one of the most significant features of the national culture is the language that forms the national spirit.

However, classical German philosophy most often considered the development of culture as a one-line process, and therefore its position did not cover all the diversity that global culture and civilization gives. Philosophy of the XIX century (especially in the person of the Neo-Kantians Rikkert and Weber, as well as representatives of the "philosophy of life") criticized this position. Neo-Kantians recognized the main essence of culture is the world of values that call for a person to do what is right, and influence his behavior. Nietzsche opposed the Apollonian and Dionysian type of culture, and Dilthey - discursive and intuitive, calling the first "liquefied fluid of reason". Marxism sought in the culture and civilization a material basis and a social group (class) character.

From the end of the XIX century, also began the study of culture from the positions of anthropology and ethnography (Taylor), a structural analysis of culture as a system of values, semiotics and structural linguistics (Levi-Strauss) was created. For the twentieth century is characterized by a direction such as the philosophy of culture, the essence of which was represented by symbols (Cassirer), intuition (Bergson) or archetypes (Jung). Philosophers of culture, as well as existentialists and representatives of philosophical hermeneutics, saw in each local culture a universal meaning that is revealed when deciphering its symbols. Although there is a position that rejects such a notion as world culture and civilization. The philosophy of Spengler and Toynbee considers polycentricity of cultures as a proof of the absence in universes of universally accepted and universal laws.