Local culture. The concept of cultural-historical types (N. Ya. Danilevsky)

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:41

In the twenty-first century, in the era of computer technology and high achievements, it seems that there are no states left in the world that would develop in a different way. Meanwhile, this is not at all the case - how many primitive peoples exist in Africa, for example. However, the fact that they are primitive does not mean that there is nothing to say about them. It is with such ethnic groups that such a concept as local culture is directly connected. What is it?

A bit of history

In order to talk about local cultures, one should first make an excursion into the past - at the time when the concept of local civilizations, which is most directly related to cultures, arose and began to be actively used.

First of all, it is worth clarifying what a local civilization and civilization in particular is. This word has many definitions, which, however, are quite consistent with each other. Civilization is the process of development of society - spiritual and material, each step to the next step - further and further from barbarism. When people realized that different statesand the regions of our planet are developing in a special way, in different ways, and it is impossible to talk about some common path for all countries and peoples, the concept of the diversity of civilizations has appeared. This happened in the nineteenth century, and many scientists turned their attention to this problem. In the middle of the century, the Frenchman Renouvier proposed the term "local civilization", by which he understood the development of society and culture of any area of the Earth apart from other cultures and values, based solely on his religion, his own worldview, and so on. The same term was successfully used a little later by another Frenchman, a historian by profession, in one of his works - there he was singled out ten local civilizations at once with an individual way of development.

After these two authors, there were a number of other scientists who actively applied the concept of local civilization in their works and ideas. Among them was a sociologist from Russia - Nikolai Danilevsky, whose concept will be discussed in more detail later. In the meantime, it is worth returning to the question of what local cultures are.

Definition

So, if a local civilization develops based only on its own culture, then these same cultures will be called local. They are original, original and isolated - and either not connected at all, or very little connected with any others. Moreover, each such culture is doomed to perish, and as soon as this happens, a new one appears.

These are the cultures of primitive peoplesAsia, Australia, America and Africa. They are few in number, but they still exist - and are extremely interesting cultural objects to explore. According to the classification of the famous scientist Oswald Spengler, there are nine such cultures: Maya, ancient, ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Arab-Muslim, Chinese, Indian, Western and Russian-Siberian.

Typical Features

Local cultures have some specific features that characterize them well. First of all, this is the relationship with nature, its rhythms, life. The person doesn't do anything about it. In addition, this is contempt for innovation, as well as the sacred nature of knowledge and the canonicity of art. The basis of any local culture is religion and rituals.

Among the many issues studied by philosophy, sociology and cultural studies, one of the main places for a long time was occupied by the question of the historical and cultural process. Different points of view have been put forward regarding what it is - can it be considered a world culture, or should it be attributed to the constant change of local cultures? Each opinion had its supporters. One of those who adhered to the concept of local cultures was the sociologist Nikolai Danilevsky.

Nikolai Danilevsky

First, a brief introduction to the outstanding scientist. Nikolai Yakovlevich was born at the very beginning of the twenties of the nineteenth century in a military family. He attended the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, then the Faculty of Natural Sciences of St. Petersburg University. He was arrested in the case of Petrashevsky, researched fishing, for which he was awarded a medal. At the age of aboutforty years became interested in the problems of civilization. Also known for disproving Darwin's theory. Died in Tiflis at the age of sixty-three.

In the late sixties N. Ya. Danilevsky published a book called "Russia and Europe", in which he outlined his vision of the historical process. He represented the entire world history as a set of original civilizations. The scientist believed that there were certain contradictions between them, which he sought to identify. He came up with a name for these civilizations that form the historical process - cultural-historical types. These cultural and historical types of Danilevsky, as a rule, did not coincide in periodization and space. According to Nikolai Yakovlevich, they belonged to the following regions: Egypt, China, India, Rome, Arabia, Iran, Greece. He also singled out the Assyro-Babylonian, Chaldean, Jewish, European types. The European was followed by another cultural and historical type - Russian-Slavic, and it is he, according to the scientist, who is capable and even should reunite humanity. Thus, the sociologist contrasted the Western European civilization with the Eastern European one - the result was a struggle between the East and the West, in which it was clearly not the latter who won. At the same time, an important detail somewhat opposite to this conviction is interesting: N. Ya. Danilevsky emphasized in his work that no type, that is, no civilization, has the right to be considered more developed, better than the rest.

According to Danilevsky's theory, cultural types are positive cultural objects, whilethere are also negative - barbarian civilizations. In addition, there are ethnic groups that the sociologist has not identified in one or the other category. Danilevsky's theory of local cultures basically assumes the fact that each cultural-historical type has four stages: birth, flourishing, decline and, finally, death.

In total, as mentioned above, the sociologist singled out eleven civilizations - not counting the Slavic. All of them were divided by scientists into two types. To the first, solitary, Nikolai Yakovlevich attributed Indian and traditional Chinese - these cultures, in his opinion, were born and developed in general without any connection with any other culture. Danilevsky called the second type successive and attributed the rest of civilizations to it - these cultural types developed based on the results of the previous civilization. Such activity, according to Danilevsky, could be religious (the worldview of an ethnic group is a firm belief), theoretical and scientific, industrial, artistic, political or socio-economic activity.

In his work, N. Ya. Danilevsky repeatedly emphasized that although some cultural-historical types undoubtedly influenced each other, it was only indirect, and in no case should it be considered as a direct influence.

Crop ranks according to Danilevsky

All identified civilizations the sociologist attributed to one or another category of cultural activity. The very first category for him was the primary culture (another name is preparatory). Here he included the very firstcivilizations - those that have not proven themselves in any type of activity, but laid the foundation, prepared the ground for the development of the following: Chinese, Iranian, Indian, Assyro-Babylonian, Egyptian.

The next category is monobasic cultures that have shown themselves in one type of activity. This is, for example, Jewish culture - it was in it that the first monotheistic religion was born, which became the basis for Christianity. Greek culture left behind a rich heritage in the form of philosophy and art, Roman culture gave world history a state system and a system of law.

An example of a further category - a dual-base culture - can serve as a European cultural type. This civilization has succeeded in politics and culture, leaving behind outstanding achievements in science and technology, creating a parliamentary and colonial system. And, finally, Danilevsky called the last category as four-basic - and this is just a hypothetical type of culture. Among the types identified by the sociologist, there is no one that could belong to this category - according to Danilevsky, a culture of such a plan must be successful in four areas: science and art as areas of culture, faith, political freedom and justice, and economic relations. The scientist believed that the Russian-Slavic type should become such a cultural type, called, as we remember, according to him, to reunite humanity.

Among Westerners and Slavophiles, the work of Nikolai Yakovlevich caused a huge stir - especially, of course, among the latter. She isbecame a kind of manifesto and served as an impetus for a comprehensive broad discussion by such scientists and thinkers as, for example, V. Solovyov or K. Bestuzhev-Ryumin, and many others.

Oswald Spengler

The work of the German Spengler called "The Decline of Europe", which appeared at the beginning of the last century, is often compared with the work of Danilevsky, but there is no exact evidence that Oswald relied on a treatise by a Russian sociologist. Nevertheless, in many respects their works are really similar - a comparative analysis will be given a little later.

The German scientist published his book exactly after the First World War, and therefore it was an incredible success - it was a time of disappointment in the West, and it was he who was criticized like Danilevsky, Spengler. He also opposed different civilizations to each other, but he did it much more categorically than his Russian colleague. Spengler divided the first civilizations into eight types: Egyptian, Indian, Babylonian, Chinese, Greco-Roman, Byzantine-Arabic, Western European and Maya. He also set Russian-Siberian culture separately. Civilization to the scientist seemed to be the penultimate stage of the development of culture - before sinking into oblivion. At the same time, Spengler believed that in order to go through all the stages - from birth to death - each culture needs a thousand years.

In his work, the scientist claimed the existence of a cycle of local cultures that suddenly appear and invariably die. Each of them has its own attitude, they exist apart from everything else. There can be no continuity according to Spengler, since each culture is maximally self-sufficient for him. Not only that, you can’t even understand a different culture, because you were brought up on different customs and values.

After Spengler and Danilevsky, there were a number of other scientists who turned to the study of this issue. We will not dwell on this, since the analysis of the concept of each of them is worthy of a separate article. Now let's turn to a comparison of the theories of Nikolai Danilevsky and Oswald Spengler.

Spengler and Danilevsky

The first difference between the concepts of the two great minds has already been mentioned in passing above. It was said that, according to Spengler, each culture lives an average of a thousand years. Thus, the scientist sets a time frame - which you will not find in Danilevsky. Nikolai Yakovlevich does not limit the existence of cultures and civilizations to any time interval. In addition, as was also indicated earlier, for Spengler, civilization is the penultimate stage of development - before death; Danilevsky does not describe anything like this in his work.

In order for this or that cultural-historical type to appear, the emergence of a state is necessary - this is the opinion of a Russian sociologist. Oswald Spengler, on the other hand, believes that for this purpose, not states are needed - cities are needed. Nikolai Yakovlevich sees religion as one of the most important elements in all spheres of culture - Spengler does not have such a conviction.

Do not, however, believe that the opinions of great thinkers only diverge. They also havethe same (or roughly the same) ideas. For example, the idea that the existence of an ethnos does not imply the existence of history. Or that all cultures/cultural-historical types are local and self-contained. Or that the historical process is not linear. Both scholars agree that it is impossible to divide history into the Ancient World, Modern Times and the Middle Ages, both of them criticize Eurocentrism - we can go on and on about the similarities and differences in the concepts of the two colleagues.

Modern view: cultures-civilizations

Let's skip the ideas and teachings of the followers of Danilevsky and Spengler and turn to our days. A scientist by the name of Huntington believes that the main problem is the opposition of the so-called culture-civilizations, the main ones among which are eight: Latin American, African, Islamic, Western, Confucian, Japanese, Hindu and Slavic Orthodox. According to the scientist, all these cultures are incredibly different from each other, and it will not be possible to overcome this abyss for quite a long time. In order to erase all boundaries, it is necessary that culture-civilizations receive common traditions, a common religion, a common history. Representatives of different civilizations think differently about freedom and faith, about society and man, about the world and its development, and this difference is colossal. Thus, in Huntington there is a provision about the opposition of Western civilization - Eastern. However, he believes that the West has a tendency to assimilate the main cultural values of other civilizations, for example, interest in Buddhism and Taoism, iftalk about religion.

A little more about cultures

In addition to local, the existence of specific and intermediate cultures is distinguished. In addition, it is impossible not to mention the dominant culture in this connection. These are all those values, norms, rules that are accepted in a particular society. This is what the whole society or a large part of it recognizes. The dominant culture is a variant of the norm for all representatives of a given society, that is, a given civilization. And as it is logical to assume, among those distinguished by Danilevsky, Spengler, and Huntington, any civilization has a dominant culture. These norms are laid down with the help of control over any or several social institutions. Holds in the hands of the dominant culture and education, and jurisprudence, and politics, and art.

Slightly more about the concepts of specific and middle culture - below.

Specific and median crops

The first one is the one that differs from others by some specific features or characteristics. It does not have the characteristics of developed cultures. The second, on the contrary, is most closely connected by all areas and traditions with other cultures, has a set of typical features and characteristics (politics and business, society and religion, education and culture - all these areas have common qualities in several civilizations). It is born due to the combination of cultures of different ethnic groups living in the neighborhood. The middle culture is considered the most viable.

The problem of local cultures, their opposition, as well as clashesEast and West, has been and remains one of the most relevant to this day. This means that there is ground for the emergence of new research and new concepts.