The influence of culture on the formation of personality
“I love everything that flows,” said the great blind Milton of our time. Perhaps human life itself is often defined as its flow. If one truly loves what flows, then the first image with which culture will be associated will be the image of a river. Flowing from a small source, a river gradually gains its power and strength, flows through different countries, in which it may even have names in different languages. It always remains itself and always different. One can love a mountain stream and not love a wide swampy lake, not realizing that it is the same river. The same is true of culture. A person may not care that it is culture, and at the same time he may be wholeheartedly devoted to his culture.
When we are dealing with the philosophical understanding of culture, then as a rule, our object is culture as such. Such an approach requires leaving behind brackets, either as examples or images of local culture - both national and regional. And since each researcher is formed in a thoroughly defined focus of culture and identifies himself with a specific people, the goal of understanding culture in any case determines the researcher's exit, his thoughts beyond the limits of existing existence.
However, the problem of local cultures, and not the problem of local culture, is not completely given over to the whims of a particular culturology, for example: sociology of culture, cultural anthropology, ethnography. Local cultures become the subject of philosophical knowledge in the case when they raise questions about the foundations of the existence of a given locality and its specificity. Returning to the image of a river, we can say that an adequate understanding of each of its sections is possible only when mastering it as a whole, namely each section as a part of the whole.
The concept of culture is one of the fundamental ones in modern society. It is difficult to name another word that would have such a variety of meaningful shades.
The issue of culture as a “production of man” can be considered from two sides: culture as the creator of man and man as the creator of culture.
1. The concept of culture.
1.1. The emergence of the concept of culture. Historical evolution of views on culture.
Culture as the content and a certain characteristic of the life of man and society is multifaceted. Therefore, when considering its essence, structure, and specificity, different approaches are possible. As a result of the multifaceted nature of culture, there are a large number of its definitions in philosophy.
The term “culture” itself (from the Latin cultura - processing, upbringing, education) has many interpretations today. They also have in common that culture, as opposed to “nature” (nature, natural), is understood as something that is created by man, artificially.
Previously, this term was found only in phrases, meaning the function of something: developing rules of behavior, acquiring knowledge, improving language, etc. Most linguists have no doubt that the word “culture” owes its origin to the Latin words sólo, colere - (to cultivate, cultivate the land, engage in agriculture). Сultus is agricultural work.
This concept also extends to other spheres of human activity, in particular to the upbringing and education of a person. In the letters of the Roman philosopher Cicero “Tusculan Discourses” he writes “cultura animi philosophi” (culture of the spirit is philosophy). Later, the word “culture” increasingly began to be used as a synonym for education, upbringing of a person, and in this sense it entered all European languages, including Slavic. However, the evolution of the term “culture” does not end there. In the Middle Ages, the complex of knowledge of the specified word gained popularity, according to which culture began to be associated with an urban way of life, and later in the Renaissance, with human perfection. In the 18th century. the word “culture” acquires an independent scientific meaning.
This term, not by chance, is formalized into a scientific concept precisely in the era of the Modern Age. The tangible shifts in the social existence of people that occurred at the turn of the Middle Ages and the Modern Age were characterized, first of all, by the beginning of profound changes in the formation of man towards nature (the industrial revolution associated with the transition from manufacturing to machine production). Man begins to realize himself as a force capable of resisting nature, and the “cultured” European man of the Modern Age is endowed with qualities that significantly distinguish him from the “natural” man of the past. And at this time, the question arises about the essence of the new environment of life created by man in opposition to nature, about the nature of its influence on man himself, about whether the new, artificially created world by man is evil or good. There is a need for a concept that captures the new “unnatural” state of society and man.
Numerous concepts of culture that arose on the basis of the European philosophy of the Modern Age were united by idealistic methodology. Culture was considered, first of all, as a phenomenon of the spiritual order, as a consequence and manifestation of creative activity in the sphere of science, art, religion. Material and production activity was not covered by the concept of culture. Material production during this period had a forced nature. That is, it did not create the proper space for human creative activity. The view of the cultural and historical process as the dissemination of knowledge, education, and improvement of the mind was inherent in both the humanists of the Renaissance and the thinkers of the Enlightenment. In particular, the French enlighteners Voltaire, A. Turgot, M. Condorcet believed that the “culture”, “civilization” of a nation or country consisted in the “reasonableness” of social orders, measured by the totality of achievements in the field of science and art.
But within the framework of the Enlightenment, criticism of the existing “culture” arose. Jean Jacques Rousseau contrasts the corruption and moral depravity of “cultural” European nations with the simplicity and purity of the customs of peoples at the patriarchal stage of development, but this should not be interpreted as a call to go back, but rather a call to find a way to correct a person based on the knowledge of certain advantages of the past and the present.
The founder of German classical philosophy I. Kant believed that culture is based not only on reason, but also on the sphere of morality. In his understanding, culture is the ability of an individual to rise from an animal, natural to a moral existence in which a person gets the opportunity to act freely for the sake of the goal that he himself sets for himself in accordance with the requirements of moral duty.
Schiller believed that the task of culture is to develop and harmoniously reconcile the physical and moral nature of a person, the sensual and the rational. Only art can restore the integrity of a person, free the world from its inherent contradictions, thereby fulfilling the main task of culture.
G. Hegel made an attempt to remove the opposition between the Enlightenment and Romantic interpretations of culture. In his opinion, the essence of culture is determined not by the approach of man to nature, but by the approach of the individual to the world whole, which includes both nature and social history.
Philosophers paid great attention to the religious aspect of culture. Bright representatives of the religious-idealistic philosophy of the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries. are the “Ukrainian school” of Russian philosophy - V.S. Solovyov, M.O. Berdyaev and others. Representatives of this original direction emphasized an important feature of culture - it expresses the aspiration of man, to complete his natural and social life to spirituality. That is, only with the help of culture are the best qualities of man revealed, his harmony with the surrounding world is achieved, his higher purpose is realized. The highest expression of spirituality, according to Orthodox philosophers, is religion and culture is born in this way, from a religious cult.
The opposite position was taken by the revolutionary-democratic trend, whose representatives emphasized the dependence of culture on the material and productive activities of people.
It is difficult to synthesize the materialist and idealist attitude to culture. Both trends, illuminating the complex phenomenon of culture from different sides, contribute to the enrichment of our ideas about culture and the development of our own point of view.
1.2. Modern understanding of the category “culture”.
Leaving aside the narrowly specialized use of the term “culture”, no less than three main approaches can be distinguished.
The first of them is philosophical-anthropological. Culture in this case is perceived as an expression of human nature. It is derived from the personalities of the person himself. Various features of the cultural process are directly read from human nature. Culture is evaluated as a phenomenology of man.
The first anthropological interpretation of the phenomenon of culture was given in 1871 by Edward Taylor (1832-1917), who defined culture as a set of knowledge, morality, law, art, customs and other features inherent in man as a member of society.
A consistent philosophical-anthropological approach to culture is implemented very rarely. The fact is that culture as a phenomenon does not arise from the biological nature of man. The French religious philosopher Jacques Maritain emphasizes that reason and charity correspond to the highest degree to human nature. But this is also a paradox, that the results of reason and the fruits of morality are not initially laid down in human nature. They are added to what is produced by sensual, instinctive nature. That is, the transition to culture determines the search for something in the human being that is not contained in it as in an animal.
The second approach to culture is philosophical-historical. It claims to reveal the mechanism of birth, the emergence of the history of mankind itself. Man in some incomprehensible way makes a leap from animal to himself, from nature to history. Probably, some quality in human nature is unusual, it radically excludes “animality”. It ensures the movement of man from the pack into historical space.
Taylor established a philosophical and anthropological basis for the interpretation of culture and reduced all the diversity of natural phenomena to human activity, to culture. He combined this concept with history, which was understood as a set of cultural processes and phenomena, as the history of civilization. It was he who put the problem of culture on an anthropological foundation and made man a subject of culture. Culture became an anthropological concept. It was understood as a set of various actions of homo faber.
The philosophical view of culture was developed by I.G. Herder, who considered it in the context of evolution. For him, the “philosophy” of man corresponded to reflections on the “education” of humanity and its transition from a “barbaric” state to a “civilized” one. The content of culture in this context is the separation of the human from the animal. Culture is interpreted as the second birth of man. “If man,” wrote I.G. Herder, “had taken everything from himself and developed it without connection with external objects, then, indeed, a history of man would be possible, but not of men, not of all mankind.” But our specific character is such that, born almost without instincts, we are only brought up to the level of humanity through exercises throughout our lives, and this is the basis of our ability both to improve and to deteriorate and decline. We can, if we wish, give this second birth of man, which passes through his entire life, a name associated with the cultivation of the earth - “culture”, or with the image of the world - “education”.
The third approach to the interpretation of culture is sociological. Culture is interpreted here as a factor in the organization and formation of the life of any society. In every society (as in every living organism) there are some culture-forming “forces” that direct its life along an organized, rather than chaotic, path of development. Cultural values are created by society itself, but they then determine the development of the entire society as a whole, the life of which begins to depend more and more on the values developed by it. Such is the peculiarity of social life: a person is often dominated by what he himself has created.
K. Jung defines culture as "a general and accepted way of thinking." The term "culture" in the sociological sense does not contain any evaluation. It corresponds to the way of life of any society as a whole. Each society has its own culture, and each person is cultural in the sense that he participates in one or another culture.
Modern philosophers-researchers define culture, emphasizing either the philosophical-anthropological, or philosophical-historical, or sociological nature of this phenomenon.
"The world of culture is the world of man himself," says V.M. Mezhuev. E.S. Makaryan equates culture with the technology of reproduction and production of human society. In other words, culture is understood not simply as a means of mastering the world, but as the functional orientation of these means on the development of the social whole itself. For Makaryan, culture is a "non-biological developed way of activity".
Thus, the analysis of the development of ideas about culture and modern interpretations of culture provide an opportunity for some generalizations. First of all, culture is a "second nature" created by man. This is a world that is "superimposed" on pristine nature. In other words, culture cannot act as something external to humanity. Where there is society, there is culture. Secondly, culture acts as a system of shared values, material or spiritual.
1.3. Nature and culture.
The special nature of the transforming action of man on the natural environment was determined, first of all, by the fact that it, like other specific manifestations of human activity, began to be non-genetically programmed and executed, thanks to the mechanisms of culture. The phrase that says that culture is the opposite of nature has long become an aphorism. In the end, practically all approaches to mastering the essence of culture in one way or another proceed from this opposition, which has already become an axiom. What is culture and what is its supernatural nature.
At first glance, there are two ways to exclude the unnaturalness of culture. The first - it is a historical image of the subjective spirit (in Hegel). The second - it is a social sphere that gradually ensures the genetic identity of a certain nation, reproduces a person, forms, preserves and transmits from generation to generation schemes of activity (Taylor). However, upon closer examination, both of these paths coincide in perspective.
Philosophers mostly refer to culture as everything man-made. Nature exists for man. She, while working, will create a "second nature", i.e. the space of culture. There is a fundamental contradiction in the traditional view of culture as "second nature". Treating culture as something superimposed on nature, researchers created the effect of their mutual hostility.
Nature and culture are really opposed to each other. But, according to the expression of P.A. Florenskyi, they do not exist apart from each other, but only together. Because culture is never given to us without an elemental basis, which is its environment and matter. At the base of every cultural phenomenon is some natural phenomenon that is continuously created by culture. A person as a carrier of culture does not create anything, but only creates and transforms the spontaneous. On the other hand, P.A. Florensky believes that nature is not given to us without its cultural form, which contains it and makes it accessible for knowledge.
Therefore, culture - a specific way of human existence in nature - not only does not eliminate the importance of the latter in human existence, but is also a means of mutual communication, the basis of human unity with nature. After all, the "trick of the mind" that Hegel and Marx singled out in man consists in the fact that man contrasts natural forces with already tamed forces of nature, already known regularities of natural processes. Culture contributes to the separation of man (society) from nature, its relative liberation from the natural-necessary by mastering it. At the same time, culture is a means of "fitting" a person into nature. The more harmonious interaction between man and nature, the better his life from the point of view of cultural development.
Nature as a set of properties of external material reality, revealed and generalized in the process of interaction with collective ancestral life activity, is the objective basis of human existence as a culture, its general and necessary prerequisite. Culture is a socially developed general form of connection that characterizes the unity of man with nature and acts as a necessary means of human existence in the natural universe. So, for all its originality, culture is in organic unity with nature.
To further define the essence of culture, it is necessary to analyze the basic conditions of its emergence in the system of the natural whole, its uniqueness and specific manifestations in relation to the laws of nature. This involves addressing the analysis of the properties of the human being as the only carrier of culture among all living beings, as well as considering the way of human existence in which culture is born and which is carried out thanks to it.
1.4. Culture and civilization.
Culture exists in objective and personal forms. Objective forms of culture are the consequences of people's activities, a certain system of material and spiritual values: means and tools of labor, household items, scientific knowledge, philosophical and religious systems, traditions, legal laws, etc. Personal forms of culture are people as subjects of activity, carriers and creators of certain cultural values.
Earlier, we drew attention to culture as a process of accumulating wisdom and as a determining factor in the progress of the economy and society. Now is the time when we can look at culture in a broader sense, namely as a creative aspect of the spiritual life of society. Culture is the direct realization of human freedom, which creates new symbols - values, models of human behavior, production and relationships. Therefore, each achievement of culture elevates a person, and unique in its significance, testifies to new human possibilities. So the more diverse human relationships become, the more diverse culture becomes.
But the creation of culture would have no meaning if it were not an object of inheritance, copying, in a word, distribution. The mass of works of masters of culture of the past that we now use would not have reached us if they had not been copied and replicated. The process of mass imitation, repetition of works of culture has acquired the name “civilization”. The word “civilization” comes from the Latin word civilis, which means in Ukrainian - civil, state. The concept of civilization appeared in the 18th century. in close connection with the concept of culture. It is sometimes used as a synonym for culture. But mostly it reflects the level of social development in general, or the degree of development of the material and spiritual culture of a particular society. The concept of “civilization” refers to that period of time in the history of human development, which coincides with the period of the emergence of culture.
On the other hand, the Latin word civilis means “city”. This suggests that it is in cities that the need for mass repetition of cultural achievements first arises, hence the formation of civilization. In cities, better conditions are also created for the selection and preservation of samples of past cultures. It was from cities that these works were then spread to rural areas. Therefore, civilization is always a layering of cultures that took place in the past. It is a kind of, currently operating museum of culture. After all, even in our days, scientific medicine and medicine, plow and tractor, for example, live and compete.
The social decline of a nation always begins with the fact that people more and more often repeat the known achievements of culture and less and less create new cultural values. Therefore, the German philosopher O. Spengler considered civilization even a sign of the death of culture, since civilization is based on stereotypes, templates, mass copying, and not on the creation of the new, unknown.
Human life, due to the mismatch of the essence of culture and civilization, becomes contradictory. Moreover, a person can consume different copies of cultural values and thus be civilized, but remain uncultured, a slave to other people's ideas, knowledge, values. Modern civilization is specific. The formation of a mass consumer of culture, which is manifested in the standardization of life, in its one-sidedness.
Civilized life is one-dimensional, patterned, oriented not towards creativity, but towards the consumption of new standards: new patterned thoughts, buildings, clothes and role models. Often the civilized mass resists culture, that is, creativity, precisely because the latter breaks certain patterns of existence.
The problem of the relationship between culture and civilization has recently become extremely acute. Some researchers regard the encounter of culture with modern civilization as a crisis of culture, even as its catastrophe. Others see this as the birth of a new culture. For example, the famous mathematician and philosopher I. Shafarevych sees in modern “technical” civilization a threat to culture.
“In History,” he writes, “there are lines of development that end in failure. It seems that such is the line of development of technical civilization, which is based on a scientific and technical utopia... Its failure threatens the death not only of local culture, but of all humanity and all living things on Earth.”
With all the correctness in the assessments of the existing spiritualless and anti-cultural tendencies in modern society, the position of the scientist cannot satisfy us, because, denying any cultural content in modern civilization, we reduce civilization and culture to an inappropriate conflict, and thus the death of culture. Yes, we will not be able to literally revive in our days, say, ancient Eastern or ancient culture, but we can and must preserve and use the cultural heritage of previous eras and generations. Therefore, the urgent task now is not to separate modern civilization from culture, not to try to turn the “wheel of history” back, but to identify the cultural content of our civilization and its implementation.
It seems that we should look at civilization and culture not as enemies, but as allies. And if we want to have a future, we must strive for a reasonable compromise between the present and the past. Any attempt to separate culture from civilization turns the idea of the cultural revival of the people into a utopia, because culture needs civilization, as the soul needs the body. Civilization is the body of culture, its material carrier, which has not a natural, but a social origin. A civilization without spirit is a terrible thing, a culture deprived of its material shell is an impossible thing.
We must not forget that there is a limit beyond which civilization, founded on modern culture, can turn into an irreparable disaster for society. Thus, the achievements of culture (industrial inventions, scientific discoveries, new means of art, etc.) when transformed into facts of civilization (industrialization, atomic bombs, power plants, etc.) cause damage to the ecology and call into question the existence of the world and man.
2. Man as a product of cultural evolution and culture as a product of human evolution.
As a human creation, culture surpasses nature, although its source, material and place of action is nature. Human activity is not given by nature, although it is connected with what nature gives to itself. Human nature, considered without this mental activity, is limited only by the abilities of sensory perception and instincts or is considered in a state of fertilization and underdevelopment.
Man transforms and completes nature. Culture is formation and creativity. The opposition “nature and man” does not have an exclusive meaning, since man is to a significant extent nature, although not only nature... There was and is no pure natural man, according to P.A. Florensky.
The opposite of a cultural man is not a natural man at all, but a barbarian. No natural man exists. There is only a cultural man or a barbarian. From the beginning to the end of history, there is and will be only a “cultural man”, that is, “man, the creator”.
However, mastering external nature in itself is not yet culture, although it is one of its conditions. Mastering nature means mastering not only external, but also internal, that is, human nature, which only man is capable of. From this point of view, the culturologist A. de Benoit defines culture: “Culture is the specificity of human activity, that which characterizes man as a species. Man’s futile search for culture, his appearance on the stage of history should be considered as a phenomenon of culture. It is deeply intertwined with the essence of man, is part of the definition of man.” Man and culture are inseparable, like a plant and the soil on which it grows.
Man took the first step towards breaking with nature, starting to build his own world on it, the world of culture, as a further stage in world evolution. On the other hand, man is the only link between nature and culture.
Culture is nature. Which man “transforms”, asserting himself as a man by this means, their opposition always bears losses to human dignity. He is the only being capable of continuous innovation.
Man is the unique creator of history, giving it meaning through the regular change of symbols. For man, culture is more primary than nature, history is more primary than biology. In the literature of the Soviet era, the contradiction between nature and culture is resolved through the category of activity. Many scientists note that culture as a phenomenon became possible only thanks to the abilities of man as activity. Then culture is the result of all human life.
But such a thesis requires critical assessment. The fact is that the expanded interpretation of activity as the substratum of culture does not allow us to reveal the specifics of culture as a phenomenon. Is it possible to compare culture and society in this context. Both are products of human activity. But these phenomena are not identical.
Culture cannot exist without man: he created it. What inspired him? The desire to establish himself in nature as a master, capable of changing gifts? An attempt to rebuild nature? An unconscious play of creative forces capable of infinitely developing their potential? As soon as the question arises: for what? - human activity turns out to be not at all the same in its own focus and sources.
Not every activity gives rise to culture, but only that part of it that is sacred in nature and is connected with the search for meanings that are read in being. In order to understand the secret of culture, it is necessary to go beyond its boundaries and find criteria that are outside it. A person does not always answer the question of the purpose of being and his personal destiny. Human activity is diverse, one can point to such human actions that are associated with an intense creative act, a breakthrough into a new spiritual space, the disclosure of the meaning of the surrounding. This is culture. But there are also such artifacts that do not contain sacred meaning, do not give rise to the burning of the human spirit.
In human activity, much is born for the first time as the discovery of meaning. But much serves the process of replicating what was once found. There is a big difference between a crane and a temple. The temple is the hierarchy of being, something that stands above man, above his human needs.
According to P.A. Florensky, it is not the creation of tools of labor that acts as the existence of culture. And the point is not that the nature of the tools is different. The creation of things useful to man acquires a sacred, that is, cultural meaning, only when the tool is considered as a projection of the extra-creative depths of the human being, and all its own empirical being - the body, its spiritual life. The content of a firewood, a hammer, a pump is not considered directly. The creativity of the mind is manifested in the production of things. The content of which is not obvious. This is the production of symbols, that is, the creation of culture.
Human activity is multifaceted. In one case, it generates culture, and in the other something else: forms of sociality, civilization, etc. Human activity is not always associated with an impulse in the field of the spirit. “Second nature” includes acts of copying, reproduction. The person who invented the wheel is the creator of culture. The worker who makes this wheel on the conveyor is the person of civilization.
2.1. Man as a product of cultural evolution.
The specificity of man as a product of cultural evolution is the focus of determining the originality of culture and its natural necessity on the paths of implementing the universal process of evolution of nature.
Identifying the features of man and his way of being obliges us to consider this phenomenon in the system of the universe. As Teilhard de Chardin emphasized, in the process of self-knowledge, man cannot comprehensively comprehend himself outside of humanity, nor humanity outside of life, nor life outside of the universe.
Such a vision clarifies the fact that man is not a static center of the Universe, which arises simultaneously and suddenly. Man is the product of a complex, rather long evolutionary process, which was not limited to the formation of him as a natural, biological being. The biological qualities and laws of man as a living being are only a part of the natural that is embodied in him. According to today's science, man is the highest synthesis of all the forces of self-development of matter in the Universe. In this sense, he is not only a biological or social being, but, to a certain extent, also a cosmic one. V.I. Vernadsky also emphasized that man must understand that "he is not a random, independent of the environment - the biosphere or the noosphere - a freely acting natural phenomenon. He is an inevitable manifestation of a larger natural process, which has been naturally continuing for at least two billion years." Thus, man is seen as the axis and height of evolution, in the process of which anthropogenesis crowns cosmo- and biogenesis. But this does not mean the end of the evolutionary process. After all, with the appearance of man in the system of the universe, a new world-creating force appears, from which a new stage of evolution begins.
Man is a product of two types of evolution. When considered as a representative of mammals and higher primates, he should be considered a product of biological evolution. However, man is to a greater extent also a product of cultural evolution, because those essential features that distinguish him from animals are the result of this stage of evolution.
However, the paradoxical nature of the human phenomenon is already manifested at the level of his biological formation in deviations from the general mechanism. Thus, variability and heredity, which belong to the general laws of universal evolutionism, fundamentally change in content during the formation of man, acquiring the character of “superorganismal” processes of his development, becoming means of forming the cultural constitution of man.
Only in humans have genetic changes in the brain and central nervous system led to more radical changes in behavior than in animals. Reason is an evolutionary achievement of humans, which gives them a fundamental advantage over other animals. Humans are the only carriers of consciousness that have reached the stage of thought. From the moment they cross the threshold of thought, their evolutionary development begins to go beyond physiological limits. While the implementation of the laws of biogenesis in life is typical for the first representatives of hominids, Homo sapiens has already become that stage of anthropogenesis where the classical mechanism of biogenesis, natural selection, begins to “fail” and is being rebuilt. The mechanism of cultural evolution is included, which radically changes the human being’s ability to adapt: the boundary (not to say, the abyss) between natural and human existence appears absolutely clearly, splitting the integrity of nature into realities that are substantially identical, but sharply different in terms of the method, type, and rhythms of existence.
This entire process of transition from purely biological laws of human development as a species to cultural laws of its existence is outlined by a fairly broad chronological framework, within which anthropogenesis, which began about two and a half million years ago, supplemented by sociogenesis (about 1.6 million years ago), ended with the appearance of Homo sapiens (35-40 thousand years ago). The development of man as a biological being ends at the end of the Mesolithic - at the beginning of the Neolithic. From the point of view of morphological structure, it meets modern standards: in terms of its way of existence, it has completely freed itself from the biological-instinctive form, all biological instincts have been taken under social control. Man has finally entered the stage of cultural-evolutionary development. The most rapid and most significant stage of the evolutionary process begins, where man continues his improvement beyond the limits of biological-natural limitations in the sphere of cultural-spiritual self-development. The qualitative difference in the spiritual and cultural dimension of modern man and the biologically and morphologically identical Cro-Magnon is the best proof of the importance and possibilities of culture as a type of evolution.
With the transition to production activities for the manufacture of artificial tools, to the imitation through the transfer of knowledge of information necessary for survival, to the use of language as a means of non-genetic coding of this information and communication, with the development of social relations in the organization of his existence, man entered a new stage of evolution, where the driving forces were the collective creative possibilities of humanity, which exists and develops through culture.
Man as a product of these stages of the evolutionary process is a “point of intersection” that unites culture and nature beyond their diversity. Nature is the primary basis on which man developed. It is not only “nearby”, but constitutes his very being. At the same time, culture is the existence of being in its human specificity that distinguishes the human being from direct animal dependence on nature. It is thanks to cultural evolution that man acquired and improved his most characteristic features and properties of adaptation and survival in the world around him. By creating culture, man is constantly motivated to further self-development, and also becomes a force for the development of nature. Having achieved in culture an indirect mastery of the fundamental principles of his existence, man, although he has developed the means of subordinating the natural necessary to his needs, has not finally freed himself from it, has not become outside of nature. On the contrary, as a product of nature, occupying the highest level in the natural hierarchy due to the possession of the power of reason in the creation of his being and the being of nature, man is even more closely connected with the natural universe to the extent of responsibility for the transformations that he brings into it. Even beyond the awareness of his duties as a carrier of enormous creative, but at the same time destructive power, man is connected with nature in his physical existence, which requires guarantees of stability and reliability in the elements of the natural environment. Destroying nature, man reduces his chances of life. The biosphere can exist without man. Man is not capable of existing without the biosphere.
So, despite all the differences in the formation of culture as the basis of human existence, there is a constant need to correlate it with nature. The entire experience of the historical and cultural existence of mankind shows that culture cannot develop contrary to its substantial basis - nature. But, on the other hand, there is a reverse dependence, especially in connection with the radicalization of human active intervention in natural processes. Humanized nature increasingly needs a cultural attitude. With each step in the development of human active possibilities, it depends more and more on the level of development of culture, on its ability to appropriately interact with natural forces, on the level of consciousness and responsibility of human attitude towards it. In accordance with this dependence, the quality of the relationship between man and the natural universe becomes an indicator of the level of development of culture, its typological varieties.
It can be said in another way. If culture is what constitutes the essence of human existence or, at least, what distinguishes human existence from all others, then it is itself a method or function of this existence. In the latter case, being will always appear for a person as human being. This is the basis of the ontologization of the phenomenon of culture, considering it primarily as a reality of the human world.
The identification of human and cultural realities leads to the conclusion: culture is something human in a person, and a person is a person as he has mastered the world of culture. Or: a person is the measure of the existing culture, and culture, in turn, is the criterion of human development. Therefore, the identification of cultural and human reality gives very dubious knowledge. The question of what is human in a person gives only one answer - everything. Moreover, this answer is universal, which concerns each individual and the human race. The universality of an unambiguous answer is the statement of the problem. Or as Ursula Le Guin wrote: “When you know the answer, then the question does not exist, and if there is no answer, then the question should not exist.”
The formation of a person takes place in culture. Culture squeezes the disabled person in its strong embrace, giving him a certain form. The formless “I” of the infant falls into the rigid framework of culture, like a liquid into the solid walls of a glass. Only the density and viscosity of this liquid depends on whether it will have time to solidify - in analogy - to become a personality from the “I” - to completely take the shape of a glass, or whether there will be voids, bulges, depressions in it, which only give the solid mass elements of uniqueness, individuality. Outlines, definiteness, rigid forms depend on the rigidity of the human “I”, on its ability to resist external factors, as which the existing culture acts.
Speaking of the development of the “absolute spirit”, Hegel pointed to the stages of religion, art, philosophy. These are the most important forms of spirituality, without mastering which it is impossible to become a cultural, that is, an educated and educated person. These are the “three pillars” of cultural development and self-development. In general, the sphere of spiritual culture includes all forms of social consciousness - political, legal, moral, aesthetic, religious, philosophical, national.
The basis of spirituality is the activity of people and their communication. Spirituality is manifested at two levels - general and personal. At the social level, it is manifested in knowledge, theories, ideas, moral qualities and education of the population. The spirituality of society is manifested in the forms of social consciousness - philosophy, religion, science, morality, art.
The spirituality of the individual is the spiritual world of an individual, his views, ideas and moods. Its features are determined by the specific circumstances of a person's life, his place in the system of social relations, the level of education, upbringing, and acquired life experience. The spiritual world of a person is social in nature. Each person is a representative of a certain social group, nation, people and acts as a product of social conditions. Ukrainian philosopher D. Dontsov wrote: “Does peasant culture not have the right to exist? No one will deny it that. Peasant culture may be rich and ancient in its own way, but nevertheless it will remain peasant, that is, the culture of the lower strata, which itself usually seeks models in the culture of the lords, and not vice versa. Peasant culture, the culture of the Provençal, Hutsul, or Basque has existed and will exist, but the tragedy of our time is that our intelligentsia is trying to make the culture of the working class, the principles of native Provençalism, an orientation center for national culture in general. The culture of plowmen may be sympathetic and highly moral, but it would be absurd to make it a “forming basis for human culture in general””.
The role of culture in the creation of human spirituality lies in the constant creation, reproduction, and increase of material and spiritual values, in the active use of cultural heritage for the spiritual development of society and the human personality.
It is not without reason that in the famous work “To the Kobza” P. Kulish calls on the Ukrainian people to return to culture. He writes “return to the family of cultural workers”. He believes that culture has a great influence not only on art, but primarily on the person “the farmer”.
2.2. Man as the creator of culture.
As we noted above, culture has anthropological dimensions. Man is the measure of culture both in its creation and in social functioning. After all, the ultimate goal of cultural development is the world of man, or “second nature”, which is built by man himself. The anthropologism of culture means, on the one hand, the process of human creation, and on the other - the creation of culture “in the image and likeness” of man. A creative person is like the flower from which culture begins and with whose flower it ends.
Creativity is the generation of something new, the generation of material and spiritual values in the pain and pleasure of labor. “An artist is also a person. He is born, lives and is raised just like other people,” wrote V. Vinnychenko. But a creative person breaks everyday stereotypes of activity and vision of the world, comes to the discovery of non-standard unique ways of cognition, production, leisure. Inheriting certain algorithms of human existence, he creates hitherto unseen forms of life, improves, optimizes the environment and his own world. Creativity is the essence, the “generic” power of man. Unlike animals, who only consume, man produces. Social production is the production of both man himself and his creative abilities.
So, creative abilities have a social nature. They arise and are formed in the process of human social formation. Creativity is the highest form of human life, which arises in labor processes, with the active functioning of thinking and feelings.
Whatever the internal mechanisms of creativity, they all require a person's ability to transcend the boundaries of experience, to break into the unknown. In the modern theory of creative activity, this phenomenon is defined as transgression, that is, a breakthrough, a rise, a leap of reality. Transgression is a decisive step from one measure of things to another, from the banal to the brilliant. This is a kind of "crime" against common sense, ordinary everyday life. It is interesting that the French impressionist Degas once half-jokingly noted that an artist should paint his picture the way a criminal commits a crime. After all, in creativity, norms and canons are violated, the limit of what is permitted is crossed. Vivid examples of such creativity are M. Kotsiubynsky, M. Gogol, L. Tolstoy, F. Dostoevsky. José Ortega y Gasset wrote: “The poet begins where a person no longer exists. The latter’s destiny is to live his human life, the poet’s destiny is to create what does not exist.”
The role of a person in creating culture therefore lies in the ability to think differently from others, to “swim against the current.” It seemed to everyone that parallel lines do not intersect, but Lobachevsky created his theory of “Non-Euclidean Geometry,” where parallel lines always intersect. Einstein’s theory of relativity also turned the world upside down in its own way.
The measure of a creative personality is talent, when luck comes not from the outside, as a gift of fortune, but from the inside, as a gift of the soul. Talent is a whole complex of a person’s creative abilities, a special combination of intellectual, emotional and volitional qualities, which allows them to create in a certain sphere of life. Talent includes both “general” abilities (mental, sensory, aesthetic), and partial, special (mathematical, musical, design, etc.). A talented person is distinguished by knowledge of his business, high skill in its execution. The highest degree of giftedness, personal representation of the abilities of all mankind is the essence of genius.
Outstanding creators of culture appear at all times and among all peoples. Every sphere of material and spiritual production requires talent, creative initiative. Many technical, architectural, artistic spiderwebs of culture were created by masters unknown to us, sincere representatives of the people. It is impossible to imagine the history of Ukrainian culture without the names of H. Skovoroda, T. Shevchenko, L. Ukrainka, M. Hrushevsky, I. Frank, M. Lysenko, I. Hulak-Artemovsky, I. Yablonska, O. Dovzhenko. They all created in the name of the people and for the people.
Works of art are invested with all the power of ideals and pathos of the era. The creative pathos of the artist is imprinted in the soul of the viewer, listener, reader. The aesthetic and social experience of man is deepened, which becomes a source of inspired work.
The main thing is that the very existence of man becomes creative, saturated with search, discoveries, discoveries. The best way to develop one's creative abilities is to create culture, to assimilate and affirm cultural values in all spheres of social and personal existence.
Modern philosophy has raised the issue of man and culture very closely. Since the problems of man and culture are very closely connected in everyday life, in all spheres of human activity. Therefore, modern philosophy has “left the shores” of philosophy into the broad field of modern culture. And above all in such an important and necessary sphere of human activity as the sphere of values. That is why modern philosophers pay great attention to the study of ethics, aesthetics, law and state, religion and science, anthropology, ethnography, psychology, pedagogy, literature and art.
Modern philosophers are people of culture in the highest sense of the word. The rich world culture is inherent in them organically: it is their soil, environment, air, they grew up in it, were brought up, lived and died. It permeated their entire life and all their creativity. Therefore, there is nothing surprising in the fact that cultural issues were and will be in the center of their attention: they place their hopes and confidence in culture, they associate the fate of humanity with it. Cultural values for them have always been and remain the highest values. This explains the wide attention to cultural issues in general. We all must understand that perspective is born from retrospect, theory from history, and true innovation from traditions. So culture is our future.