What is the cultural picture of the world? The concept of a cultural picture of the world


The study of the process of cultural genesis unambiguously shows that humanity, united in its roots, in the process of development “branches” into many diverse, special crops. Therefore, considering culture as complex system, it should be remembered that each of the cultures, growing up in specific living conditions (geographical, historical, technological, everyday, etc.), unfolds its own history, develops its own language, and forms its own worldview. The result of this specific vision of the world in which man lives is a cultural picture of the world - a system of images, ideas, knowledge about the structure of the world and man’s place in it.

Concept cultural picture peace. Culture in itself general view is a product of the joint life activity of people, a system of agreed upon ways of their collective existence, ordered norms and rules for satisfying group and individual needs, etc. Its occurrence is due to the fact that when people live together for a long time in one territory, their collective economic activity, defense against attacks form their common worldview, a common way of life, manner of communication, style of clothing, etc. However, each group exists in its own specific conditions - climatic, geographical, historical, etc. For this reason, the existence of a single group becomes impossible. universal culture, uniting all people on Earth. In historical practice, culture appears as a multitude of cultures different eras and regions, and within them in the form of cultures individual countries and peoples, which are usually called local (or ethnic) cultures. Some local cultures are similar to each other due to their genetic relatedness and the similarity of the conditions of their origin. Other cultures vary only as much as the conditions that gave rise to them. In all its diversity local cultures there is not a single “nobody’s” culture. Each individual culture embodies a specific life experience any particular people or community of people. This experience gives the culture of each nation unique features and determines its uniqueness.

The uniqueness of a culture can be manifested in the most different sides human life- in the satisfaction of biological, material or spiritual needs, in natural habits of behavior, types of clothing and housing, types of tools, methods of labor operations, etc. Thus, according to the observations of ethnographers, peoples living in similar geographical conditions and in proximity to each other often build houses in different ways. Russian northerners traditionally place their houses next to the street, while Russian southerners place their homes along the street. Balkars, Ossetians, and Karachais have lived in the Caucasus as neighbors for many centuries. However, the first build one-story stone houses, the second - two-story, and the third - wooden. Previously, only an Uzbek skullcap made it possible to determine from which locality its owner came, and the clothes of a Russian peasant woman of the 19th century. indicated exactly in which province she was born.

The originality of any local or ethnic culture reaches its completion in cultural picture of the world, which is an expression of what is in different cultures people perceive, feel and experience the world in their own way and thereby create their own unique image of the world, a special idea of ​​the world. In its content, the cultural picture of the world is a set of rational knowledge and ideas about values, norms, morals, the mentality of one’s own culture and the cultures of other peoples, and includes unconscious meanings, personal meanings, experiences and assessments. The cultural picture of the world is not a syncretic integrity, but consists of private pictures - scientific, aesthetic, religious, artistic, ethical, legal, etc. culture world norm language

The most important components of the cultural picture of the world are space and time, as well as movement, change, property, quality, quantity, cause, consequence, chance, regularity - ontological categories of culture. These categories are closely related to social categories, such as labor, property, power, state, freedom, justice, etc.

They are woven into the structure of the language people speak, covering everything cultural space, forming together a kind of “grid of coordinates” through which the bearers of a particular culture perceive the world and create their own “national images of the world.” On their basis, the mentality characteristic of a given culture is formed - the general state of mind, the mindset of people belonging to the same culture. Mentality includes both conscious and unconscious moments, therefore the concepts of “mentality” and cultural “picture of the world” can be considered as synonyms.

Mentality always reflects specific features specific culture, in other words, it is always culturally dependent, its content is entirely determined by culture of a given people. This is a historically determined phenomenon, therefore the mentality, although generally stable and conservative, is still changing, albeit very slowly. Mentality is formed in every person in childhood, in the process of enculturation, and enters the structure of the individual psyche, taking root in the unconscious. It can be argued that the mentality of the people is at the same time the mentality individual person. Therefore, the mentality of an individual is determined by the type of society, the characteristics of ethnic and national culture, as well as those subcultures that this person belongs to.

Thus, cultural painting The world is a set of rational knowledge and ideas about the values, norms, morals, mentality of one’s own culture and the cultures of other peoples. This knowledge and ideas give the culture of each nation its originality, making it possible to distinguish one culture from another.

The concept of “cultural picture of the world” is used in a narrow and in a broad sense words. In a narrow In a sense, the cultural picture of the world includes primary intuitions, national archetypes, ways of perceiving time and space, obvious but unproven statements, and non-scientific knowledge. Widely sense, along with the listed elements, scientific knowledge is also included in the cultural picture of the world.

Introduction
Chapter 1. “Cultural picture of the world” as a category of cultural studies
Chapter 2. The essence of the concepts of “mentality” and “archetype”, their influence on the cultural picture of the world
Chapter 3. Norms and values ​​of culture
Conclusion
Literature

Introduction

In this test work the “cultural picture of the world” is considered.
The relevance of this topic lies in the fact that the picture of the world is the foundation for assessing life and understanding the world, and reflects the peculiarities of thinking of representatives of a particular culture. It represents a set of rational knowledge and ideas about the values, norms, morals, and mentality of one’s own culture and the cultures of other peoples. This knowledge and ideas give the culture of each nation its originality, making it possible to distinguish one culture from another.
The study of this topic will help answer questions such as: The cultural picture of the world as a category of culture. What is the cultural picture of the world? What are its features? What is the essence of the concepts of “mentality” and “archetype” and their influence on the cultural picture of the world? What are the norms and values ​​of the culture?
Accordingly, the task of this study is to find answers to the questions posed above.
The logic of the study determined the structure of the test work, consisting of an introduction, three chapters, a conclusion and literature. Chapter 1 examines the cultural picture of the world as a category of cultural studies, its essence, and features. Chapter 2 discusses the concepts“mentality” and “archetype” and their influence on the cultural picture of the world. Chapter 3 is devoted to the norms and values ​​of culture.

Chapter 1. “Cultural picture of the world” as a category of cultural studies

Culturology is the science of the laws of existence and development of culture, of the relationships between culture and other areas human activity.
Culturology has developed as a humanitarian science about the most general laws of the development and functioning of culture. In its structure there are following components :
-An object;
-Item;
-Content;
-Categories;
-Principles;
-Methods;
-Laws;
-Functions.
Categories of cultural studies . Categories are basic logical concepts that reflect the most general and essential connections and relationships between objects and phenomena of reality.
Among the categories, culturologists distinguish the following:
-categories of social and human sciences;
-categories of sciences that are at the intersection with cultural studies;
-own categories (culture, civilization, cultural picture of the world, mentality, mentality, etc.)
Let us consider the cultural picture of the world in more detail.
Culture is a product of the joint life activity of people, it is a system of agreed upon ways of their collective coexistence, ordered norms and rules. This system is formed as a result of long-term joint residence of people in a certain territory, their economic activities, and defense from external enemies. All this forms in people a common understanding of the world, a common way of life, a manner of communication, the specifics of clothing, the peculiarities of cooking, etc.
But each ethnic culture is not a mechanical sum of all acts of life of people of the corresponding ethnic group. Its core is a “set of rules” that developed in the process of their collective coexistence. Unlike human biological properties, these “rules of the game” are not inherited genetically, but are learned only through learning. For this reason, a single universal culture that unites all people on Earth is impossible.
Already ancient thinkers (Herodotus, Thucydides), who were engaged in historical descriptions, noticed that each culture has specific features that distinguish it from the cultures of other peoples. Growing up in specific living conditions (geographical, historical, technological, everyday, etc.), a culture unfolds its history, develops its own language, and forms its own worldview. The entire richness of the existence of a culture, the entire integrity of the existence of a people determines the way of understanding the world and being in it. The result of this specific vision of the world in which man lives is the cultural picture of the world.
Cultural picture of the world – a set of rational knowledge and ideas about the values, norms, morals, mentality of one’s own culture and the cultures of other peoples, a system of images, ideas, knowledge about the structure of the world and man’s place in it.
The cultural picture of the world finds its expression in in different ways to cultural phenomena, includes ideas about the individual, his relationship to society, about freedom, equality, honor, good and evil, about law and labor, about the family, about the course of history and the value of time, about the relationship between the new and the old, about death and soul. The cultural picture of the world is passed on from generation to generation, transformed during the development of society, it is inexhaustible in content and serves as the basis for human behavior.
The cultural characteristics of a particular people can manifest themselves in various aspects of human life: in the satisfaction of biological, material or spiritual needs, in natural behavioral habits, types of clothing and housing, types of tools, methods of labor operations, etc.
The cultural picture is formed depending on the meaning of the world for the person living in it. And a person satisfies even the most primitive needs and impulses in life in a strictly defined way.
Serious cultural differences different nations observed in the processes of eating, its quantity, behavior at the table, forms of showing attention to the guest, etc. When satisfying hunger or thirst, a person follows established traditions characteristic of his culture: he uses certain utensils, certain cooking procedures and eating rituals. The meal thus acquires a special ritual and symbolic meaning.
Thus, Russians, by tradition, immediately lead the invited guest to the table, which surprises Americans, since dinner is usually preceded by small talk with a glass of wine and light snacks. At the table, Russians place each guest on a plate with a variety of appetizers and main dishes, while in the United States, dishes are passed around so that each guest can put the right amount of food on their plate. Russian housewives are trying hard to feed the guest, which is unusual for Americans, since this is not accepted in their culture.
All life manifestations of a person as a subject of a certain culture are fixed by certain rites, rituals, norms, rules, which are significant components of culture that regulate the temporal and spatial processes of human life.
Often peoples living in similar geographical conditions and in close proximity to each other build houses differently. Russian northerners traditionally place their houses facing the street, while Russian southerners place their homes along the street. Balkars, Ossetians, and Karachais have lived in the Caucasus as neighbors for many centuries. However, the first build one-story stone houses, the second two-story, and the third - wooden houses.
Human life is inexhaustibly rich, diverse and multi-layered. Some of its moments, especially those associated with primary sensations, the first attempts of the emerging humanity to realize themselves in this world, are not subject to rational control and arise unconsciously. Therefore, the concept of “cultural picture of the world” is used in the broad and narrow sense of the word.
In a narrow sense, the cultural picture of the world usually includes primary intuitions, national archetypes, figurative structures, ways of perceiving time and space, “self-evident” but unproven statements, and extra-scientific knowledge. In a broad sense, along with the listed elements, scientific knowledge is also included in the cultural picture of the world.
The cultural picture of the world is specific and differs among different peoples. This is due to a number of factors: geography, climate, natural conditions, history, social structure, beliefs, traditions, way of life, etc. In addition, each historical era has its own picture of the world, and they are all different from one another.
At the same time, it is possible to identify a universal picture of the world, characteristic of all humanity, although it will be too abstract. So, for all people, apparently, a binary opposition of white and black is characteristic, but for some groups white will correspond to the positive principle - life, and black - to the negative principle - death, and for others, for example, the Chinese, on the contrary. Any nation will have its own idea of ​​good and evil, norms and values, but each nation will have different ideas.
Each person will also have their own picture of the world, and it will depend primarily on their character: for a sanguine person it is one, for a phlegmatic person it is completely different.
It should also be borne in mind that the picture of the world depends on the language spoken by its speakers, and, conversely, the main points of the picture of the world are always fixed in the language. Of course, the cultural picture of the world is fuller, deeper and richer than the linguistic picture of the world. In addition, the cultural picture of the world is primary in relation to the linguistic one, but it is in language that the cultural picture of the world is verbalized, realized, stored and passed on from generation to generation. Language is capable of describing everything that is in the cultural picture of the world: features of geography, climate, history, living conditions, etc.
Here is a typical example from the field of language interaction. How in different languages are the colors indicated? It is known that the retina of the human eye, with the exception of individual pathological deviations, records color in exactly the same way, regardless of whose eye perceives the color - an Arab, a Jew, a Chukchi, a Russian, a Chinese or a German. But each language has established its own color system, and these systems often differ from each other. For example, in the Eskimo language, to denote different shades and types of snow, there are 14-20 (according to various sources) synonyms for the word white. A person who speaks English is color blind blue and blue, in difference from a Russian speaker, and sees only blue.
But such differences concern, naturally, not only color range, but also other objects and phenomena of the surrounding reality. In Arabic there are several symbols for the word camel: there are separate names for a tired camel, a pregnant camel, etc.
Language imposes a certain vision of the world on a person. When mastering their native language, an English-speaking child sees two things: foot And leg where a Russian speaker sees only one thing - a leg.
In Russian, for obvious reasons, there is and a blizzard, and a blizzard, and a blizzard, and a blizzard, and a blizzard, and drifting snow, and all this is connected with snow and winter, and in English this diversity is expressed by the word snowstorm, which is quite sufficient to describe all snow manifestations in the English-speaking world.
Almost every culture has similar examples. Thus, in the Hindi language there are numerous names for a certain type of nut. This is explained by the role that general culture and subcultures of the Hindustan Peninsula, the fruits of the areca palm (Areca catechu) and hard nuts “supari” are played.
India annually consumes more than 200 thousand tons of such nuts: areca palms grow in a hot, humid climate, primarily along the Arabian Sea, in the Konkan. The fruits are collected unripe, ripe and overripe; they are dried in the sun, in the shade or in the wind; boiled in milk, water or fried in oil squeezed from other nuts - a change in technology entails an immediate change in taste, and each new option has its own name and has its own purpose. Among Hindu rituals - regular, calendar and extraordinary - there is no such thing where one could do without the fruits of the areca palm.”
The existence of a very close connection and interdependence between a language and its speakers is beyond doubt. Language is inextricably linked with the life and development of the speech community that uses it as a means of communication.
The social nature of a language is manifested both in the external conditions of its functioning in a given society, and in the very structure of the language, in its syntax and grammar. Between language and the real world stands man. It is man who perceives and comprehends the world with the help of his senses and, on this basis, creates a system of ideas about the world. Having passed them through his consciousness, having comprehended the results of this perception, he transmits them to other members of his speech community using language.
Language as a way to express a thought and transmit it from person to person is closely connected with thinking. The path from the real world to the concept and further to verbal expression is not the same for different peoples, which is due to differences in history, geography, the peculiarities of life of these peoples and, accordingly, differences in the development of their social consciousness. Since our consciousness is determined both collectively (by way of life, customs, traditions, etc.) and individually (by the specific perception of the world characteristic of this particular individual), language reflects reality not directly, but through two zigzags: from the real world to thinking and from thinking to language. The cultural and linguistic pictures of the world are closely interconnected, are in a state of continuous interaction and go back to real picture peace, or rather, just to real world surrounding a person 1.
But language is not the only component of the cultural picture of the world; it is also formed from thematically understandable, conscious and undoubted contents of artifacts and unconscious meanings and personal meanings, as well as experiences, experiences, and assessments. As a result, from a content-thematic point of view, scientific, aesthetic, religious, ethical, legal and other similar pictures of the world are usually distinguished; from this position, the picture of the world is reduced to a set of information and data. The appearance of these paintings is preceded by the appearance of another picture of the world - a picture of intuitive ideas, meanings and meanings as an expression of the characteristics of the life of a given culture. Moreover, each meaning always represents in a special way the universality of the world in which people live.
The development of connections between cultures leads to the disappearance of the unique characteristics of each of them. So, in the 20th century. peoples and countries begin to unify in everyday life and in thinking. This is especially clearly evidenced by the processes of computerization, which subordinate the logic of thinking of those who work with the computer to a single algorithm. And yet, at the core of every culture, what is preserved is what is “crystallized” under the influence of the country’s nature, its climate, landscapes, food, ethnic type, language, memory of its history and culture. Thus, the cultural picture of the world retains its uniqueness in the processes of universalization of culture.

2. The essence of the concepts of “mentality” and “archetype”
and their influence on the cultural picture of the world

In the 20s In the 20th century, the concept of “ mentality " Its development was carried out by representatives of historical-psychological and cultural-anthropological directions: L. Levy-Bruhl, L. Febvre, M. Blok. In the original context, “mentality” meant the presence among representatives of a particular society, interpreted as a national-ethnic or socio-cultural community of people, of a certain “mental toolkit”, a kind of “psychological equipment”, which makes it possible to perceive and realize in their own way their natural and social environment and themselves.
Currently, two main trends are emerging in understanding the essence of mentality: on the one hand, mentality includes a way of life, features of folk realities, rituals, style of behavior, moral precepts of the people, and self-identification of a person in the social world. In a narrow sense, mentality is what allows you to uniformly perceive the surrounding reality, evaluate it and act in it in accordance with certain established norms and patterns of behavior in society, while adequately perceiving and understanding each other.
Mentality is a mindset, attitude, worldview, spiritual identity of the worldview, world experiences and attitudes of a community and an individual representing a particular culture. Mentality contains unconscious value orientations that are natural for a given people, archetypes that underlie collective ideas about the world and man’s place in it, as well as national images of culture, unconscious and behavioral reactions that cannot be comprehended in any other way than in words. national language. Mentality differs from public sentiments, value orientations and ideology in that it is more stable. Mentality is always a certain integrity of the “worldview”, unity opposite principles– natural and cultural, emotional and rational, irrational and rational, individual and social.
Mentality is a certain set of symbols formed within the framework of each historical and cultural era and nationality. This set of symbols is fixed in people's minds during dialogue with other people. These symbols (concepts, images, ideas) serve as explanations in everyday life, by expressing knowledge about the world and man’s place in it.
Mentality includes basic ideas about man, his place in nature and society, his understanding of nature and God as the creator of everything. These are emotional and valuable orientations, collective psychology, the way of thinking of both the individual and the collective;
Mentality, as the specificity of people’s psychological life, is revealed through:
- a system of views and assessments, norms of mentality, based on the knowledge and beliefs existing in a given society;
- language. Analysis of language makes it possible to very accurately identify the cultural specifics of people’s relationship to the world around them and represents the inner world of a person. One can learn through language the style of thinking;
- the dominant motives in a given group, through the hierarchy of values, which are manifested in beliefs, ideals and interests. All this makes it possible to identify social attitudes that ensure readiness to act in a certain way. Mentality is most clearly manifested in the typical behavior of people, representatives of a given culture, expressed primarily in stereotypes of behavior and decision-making, which in fact mean the choice of one of the behavioral alternatives;
- emotional sphere, through the dominance of any feelings;
- analysis of the main socio-political and ethnic categories that everyday consciousness operates on: “freedom”, “work”, “time”, “space”, “family”.
The concept of “mentality”, which is close in meaning, can be found among representatives of the psychological concepts of E. Fromm, K.G. Jung, Z. Freud, etc. Thus, the Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist K.G. Jung, trying to comprehend the deep foundations of collective psychology, used the concept of “archetype”.
Archetype represents the mental structures of the collective unconscious, which is not a personal acquisition of a person, but inherited from our distant ancestors. Archetypes are unique forms of understanding the world, in accordance with which people’s thoughts and feelings are formed and determine all mental processes associated with their behavior.
The French ethnographer and psychologist L. Lévy-Bruhl thus designates a number of symbolic forms that exist in primitive thinking. The concept of “archetype” received the greatest development in analytical psychology by K.G. Jung, who, exploring, under the influence of S. Freud, the “individual unconscious,” gradually came to the conclusion that there is a deeper layer in the human psyche - the “collective unconscious,” which is a reflection of the experience of previous generations, “imprinted” in the structures of the brain.
Unlike the mentality , limited by spatiotemporal and sociocultural frameworks, the archetype is universal regardless of time and place. If mentality depends on the sociocultural context, with its inherent axiological ideas, then the archetype is axiologically neutral. It represents the basis of cultural and historical processes, to which mentality gives a certain form. Thus, the archetype is a deeply abstract category, and the mentality is historical. It is the archetype of the collective unconscious that, according to Jung, forms a certain image of the world, which is then reflected in mentalities various types society
Thus, cultural archetypes are the basic elements of culture that form constant models of spiritual life. The content of cultural archetypes is typical in culture, and in this regard, archetypes are objective and transpersonal. The formation of cultural archetypes occurs at the level of the culture of all humanity and the culture of large historical communities in the process of systematization and schematization of cultural experience. Because of this, the individual is not clearly aware of his involvement in cultural archetypes, and the reproduction of the archetype by a specific person is a rationally unintentional act.
The most fundamental in the composition of culture universal cultural archetypes And ethnic cultural archetypes(ethnocultural archetypes).
In culture, understood as the “non-hereditary memory of the collective” (B.A. Uspensky), cultural archetypes act as spontaneously operating stable structures for processing, storing and representing collective experience. By preserving and reproducing the collective experience of cultural genesis, universal cultural archetypes ensure the continuity and unity of general cultural development. Ethnic archetypes (ethnocultural archetypes) are constants of national spirituality, expressing and consolidating the fundamental properties of an ethnic group as cultural integrity. Each national culture is dominated by its own ethnocultural archetypes, which significantly determine the characteristics of their worldview, character, artistic creativity and historical fate people.
According to Jung, the actualization of an archetype is a “step into the past,” a return to the archaic qualities of spirituality, however, the strengthening of the archetypal can also be a projection into the future, because ethnocultural archetypes express not only the experience of the past, but also the aspirations of the future, the dream of the people. The active presence of ethnocultural archetypes is an important condition for preserving the identity and integrity of national culture.
Cultural archetypes, while remaining unchanged in essence, manifest themselves diachronically and synchronically in a wide variety of forms (mythological images and plot elements, religious teachings and rituals, national ideals, etc.).
Returning to the consideration of mentality, let us dwell on Russian mentality, around which there has been an aura of mystery, mystery, and incomprehensibility for many centuries.
Modern researchers of Russian mentality note a clash in the minds of Russian people of contradictory attitudes and behavioral stereotypes, which is explained by the middle position of culture in relation to the Western and Eastern ones. “Western” and “Eastern” features in the Russian mentality do not strictly contradict each other, but rather combine and complement each other. Let's try to understand the peculiarities of the mentality of the Russian people and the reasons for their occurrence.
The Russian ethnos took root in the center of Eurasia, on a plain, not protected from the west and east by either seas or mountains and accessible to military invasions from both East Asia, and from Western Europe, and was historically, geographically and psychologically doomed to withstand the most severe pressure from the outside. The only way to maintain independence in such conditions is to occupy as much territory as possible, in which any enemy armies would be bogged down.
A huge, sparsely populated territory required for its development a special type of people, capable of decisive action, daring and courageous. Settling over a vast territory, the Russians created a network of fortress settlements, which also played the role of economic centers for the development of the territory. The population of such prisons was distinguished by their entrepreneurial spirit, extraordinary love of freedom and rebellion.
Colossal spaces, harsh climate and the need to resist the combined forces of many peoples from the West and East at the same time gave rise to the prevailing type of subconscious and conscious psychological attitudes, which were reflected in the mindset of the Russians, in the manner of their thinking.
In general, the variety of traits of a Russian person can be reduced to five main behavioral orientations:
- on collectivism(hospitality, mutual assistance, generosity, trustfulness, etc.);
- on spiritual values(justice, conscientiousness, wisdom, talent, etc.);
- on power(veneration of rank, creation of idols, controllability, etc.);
- on better future(hope for “maybe”, irresponsibility, carelessness, impracticality, lack of self-confidence, etc.);
- on quick solution to life problems
etc.................

The concept of a cultural picture of the world

In the course of its development, humanity has given rise to many different national cultures. Each one reflected a unique worldview. A certain nation or ethnic group sees man and his place in the world in his own way.

Thus,

Cultural picture of the world - concept

The cultural picture of the world is a set of specific views, concepts, views, knowledge about the world order, the mentality of the people, their attitude to the phenomena of reality.

What does the picture of the world consist of?

The foundation of each culture is made up of layers that are associated, first of all, with the original feelings of the nation - archetypes, mythology, figurative system, the way of perceiving the chronotope, etc.

  • With a narrow understanding, the cultural picture of the world includes this very “unscientific” knowledge, which cannot be fully considered from the point of view of rationality.
  • With a broad understanding, scientific knowledge is also included in the cultural picture of the world.

Where and how is the cultural picture of the world formed?

The cultural picture of the world is formed in two layers of life activity:

  • practical (labor, etc.) - the layer on which the life process is directly carried out
  • reflective (intellectual, emotional, etc.) - the layer on which a person conducts introspection, establishing himself in the world.

At the same time, the cultural picture of the world includes those life meanings(moral concepts, values, symbols, etc.), which are the foundation of human culture.

The structure of the cultural picture of the world

A person always builds a picture of the world based on what the world means to him. At the same time, meanings are not always realized and are amenable to volitional change. Culture is not only labor Relations between people, it is something else, standing, as it were, “above the world” and uniting people precisely on this “supra-worldly” basis.

When creating an object, a person involuntarily puts into it not only “benefits”, but also his experience, abilities, and characteristics of being.

In addition, it gives the objects of the objective world a specific place in the world order. This is how all objects acquire meaning. They have value (and therefore a place in the cultural picture of the world) not just as abstract objects, but as objects that perform a certain function in the world order, contributing to the structuring of the world and the integrity of practice.

Everything that people do throughout their lives gradually acquires symbolic meaning for them. Ordinary, often repeated actions - meals, exchanges of greetings, initiation, marriage, death - take the form of rituals, ceremonies, and are surrounded by hundreds of norms and regulations that regulate the order of all temporal and spatial aspects of human activity. All this subsequently forms the basis of the cultural picture of the world, consolidating

And language, as we know, directly influences the psyche, shaping the worldview and reinforcing the picture of the world with an image system, complicating and developing it.

The cultural picture of the world is inherited by each generation, serving both as the basis for human behavior and as the guardian of the mentality of the people. Along with its development, which over time includes a greater number of cultural layers, concepts, images, values, symbols, etc., ideas about it also develop.

Ancient picture of the world

It represented a universal semantic system of the world order, in which numerous gods and heroes played the leading role.

Picture of the world in the Middle Ages

It included the paradigm of the Christian worldview: the world was created by God, the Earth is the center of the world, angels and devils, Heaven and Hell are real, etc.

New time

They included in the picture of the world of this historical period scientific ideas, which is associated with the strengthening of the positions of natural sciences, etc.

Temporal (time) and spatial cultural picture of the world

It is quite reasonable to consider “time” and “space” as “nodal” ideas in the cultural picture of the world, because they are the first abstractly conscious categories.

For a German, space is associated with the concept of “empty,” while for a Frenchman, space is a stretch. Descartes, following Plato, considered space to be completely filled - this is an ideal cultural picture of the world. For Newtonian physics, space is “hollow,” absolute, geometrized. This corresponds to the cultural picture of the world of the New Age as “soulless”, mechanical.

The perception of time has also left its mark on the languages ​​of the world.

The term tempus (“time”) comes from the Latin tendo, “to stretch.”

Those. V Latin time stretches, it is eternal. For the Germans, time is a certain period, and eternity is something that stretches, something that is endless.

All these sensations of chronotope in various linguistic cultures, developing in language, left their mark on the scientific picture of the world.

Different approaches to understanding and types of pictures of the world

A person perceives the world around him from the point of view of structure, i.e. correlates objects and their functions with his life experience and finds their place in a certain system of relationships between objects. Thus he forms objective world, which subsequently, developing with the objective world of other people, expands and includes previously unfamiliar objects and concepts into its sphere and is transformed into a special cultural picture of the world, which E. Husserl called the “life world.” Objects are included in it not by themselves, but in unity with their meaning, therefore, within the framework of the life world, they are reasonable and logical.

The instrumentalist approach to the concept of a cultural picture of the world implies inclusion in life world purely rationalized evidence, that is, something whose existence is not questioned due to the ability to directly feel it (touch, smell, etc.). But this approach, firstly, is very narrow, and secondly, it deprives objects and their meaning of individuality, erasing the differences between individual people’s pictures of the world.

The French philosopher P. Ricoeur believed that human existence– polyphonic. A person strives not only to understand the objective world, but also to “understand the totality, strive” to understand the entire world order. In the world of rationalized evidence, Ricoeur also includes ways of cognizing being: levels of progress, ambiguity, hope.

In the twentieth century there appeared more basic research in the field of cultural studies, which determined modern understanding cultural picture of the world from a content-thematic point of view as a unity of obvious thematic (artifacts) and non-thematic contents and personal perception of the world ( personal experience, assessments, experiences, etc.).

In this regard, we can distinguish pictures of the world that are reduced to a uniform matrix:

  • aesthetic,
  • scientific,
  • religious,
  • ethical,
  • legal
  • philosophical and many others.

However, before constructing these pictures, a person needs to form another picture, filled with intuitive meanings and meanings that different ways convey the universality of the world.

Globalization and individuality as opposites in the picture of the world

Each culture is individual. It was formed under certain conditions - climatic, ethnic, linguistic, historical. Some cultures developed separately, but most came into contact with each other.

In the twentieth century, under the influence of trends common to all humanity, with the development modern means communications and the ability to quickly exchange information, the process of bringing cultures closer together has reached its peak. In cultural studies it received the name.

The development of intercultural ties leads not only to the interpenetration and mutual enrichment of cultures, but also to their certain unification. This is reflected both in everyday life and in the cognitive sphere. Bright to that An example is computerization, which leads to the fact that people working with computers acquire a similar logic of thinking and common behavioral norms, although they belong to different cultures.

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Cultural picture of the world as a tool for describing and understanding history

A Russian academician, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, called for treating the concept of a “cultural picture of the world” as a very conditional term, almost like a metaphor. Since this concept claims to be a holistic, united characteristic of the entire system and worldviews, and religious beliefs, and rational and mythological views, etc., to the extent that its scientifically demonstrable representativeness becomes “dubious.” We cannot reconstruct the past of our and other cultures completely; we do this on the basis of data from archeology, folklore, etc.

It is important to remember that in most cases, the cultural picture of the world is understood as a description elite subculture of this or that society

However, we can analytically model cultural history, in particular in its structural, semantic and figurative configuration. This is the task historical cultural studies, and the picture of the world here is precisely an “instrumental model”.

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The evolution of the holistic perception of the world, its disintegration into objective and subjective components found its representation in the picture of the world. The visible and tangible world is one, but it is perceived differently by ethnic groups. This diversity of views is due to the specific mentality of a particular people. If mentality is a way of perceiving and seeing the reality surrounding a person, then the picture of the world is the result of this perception.

The cultural picture of the world differs significantly from the scientific, philosophical and religious paintings peace.

Under scientific picture of the world is understood as a certain ideal model reality created on the basis scientific ideas and principles. scientific picture world (CM) provides a system of the most general ideas about the world, fundamental concepts and principles of science and acts as a source of possible interpretations of new subjects of science and how research program. For example, the mechanistic picture of the world that emerged in the 17th century gave rise to a new worldview. The action of the laws of nature was likened to the movement of a machine consisting of individual simple elements, which can be studied, predicted, directed. Science, especially in the “face” of mechanics and mathematics, was considered as a tool for understanding the mechanical structure of the world and became the main ideological support of the rationalism that was established during this period.

Philosophical the picture of the world, like the scientific model of the world, is based on scientific knowledge and on the value attitude towards the world. Consequently, the philosophical picture of the world is

it is a synthesis of scientific and value ideas about the world and man.

Religious the picture of the world is a model of reality, expressed in boundless faith in the power of a certain Absolute - in God, in Buddha, transformed into an object of religious emotions and admiration.

Artistic the picture of the world is in many ways similar to the cultural picture of the world, and initial stage human history they are even identical. Artistic painting the world as a systematizing fact has spirituality “as a concrete historical embodied subjectivity.”

Cultural model of the world is a set of rational knowledge and ideas about the values, norms, morals, mentality of one’s own culture and the cultures of other peoples.


This is a general designation for all systems of worldviews characteristic of the society under study, including the totality of rational knowledge, religious beliefs, values, morals, customs, etc. System of value relations and orientations social community(her understanding of good, evil, happiness, relationships to death, love, immortality), her idea of ​​space and time, etc. are the meaningful basis of the cultural picture of the world and give it those features of originality and uniqueness that make it possible to distinguish one culture from another.

In different cultures, people perceive, feel and experience the world in their own way and thereby create their own unique image of the world or picture of the world. Thus, cultural studies uses cultural models of the world as a classification basis.

Preclassical The type of culture characterizes the way of existence of a society, its traditionality, and the “non-Western” way of organizing life. Therefore, its main features are protective: to preserve tradition and subordinate innovation to it. This type of culture is characterized by high moral qualities, spirituality, religiosity, higher

we are collectivities. This picture peace is inherent in Russian culture, formed in the ideals of Orthodoxy and conciliarity.

Classical the type of culture describes the emergence of a person’s “demiurgic” aspirations, focuses on innovation rather than tradition; This type of culture is characterized by a “Western” type of organization of life.

Postclassical The type of culture is a synthesis of pre-classical and classical. This picture of the world became the basis of new thinking at the end of the 20th century, new social practice. Appear here global problems related to the survival of humanity. The development of humanity appears more contradictory and more multidimensional. Priorities are king Western culture and lifestyle. But there is a practice of lack of spirituality, alienation, economic race, etc. However, within this type of culture there arises a desire to borrow advantages that the West does not have from traditional, pre-classical cultures.

The study of the process of cultural genesis unambiguously shows that humanity, united by its roots, in the process of development “branches” into many diverse, special cultures. Therefore, when considering culture as a complex system, it should be remembered that each culture, growing up in specific living conditions (geographical, historical, technological, everyday, etc.), develops its own history, develops its own language, and forms its own worldview. The result of this specific vision of the world in which man lives is a cultural picture of the world - a system of images, ideas, knowledge about the structure of the world and man’s place in it.

The concept of a cultural picture of the world

In its most general form, it is a product of the joint life activity of people, a system of agreed upon ways of their collective existence, ordered norms and rules for satisfying group and individual needs, etc. Its occurrence is due to the fact that when people live together for a long time in the same territory, their collective economic activity and defense against attacks form in them a common, unified way of life, manner of communication, style of clothing, etc. However, each group exists in its own specific conditions - climatic, geographical, historical, etc. For this reason, the existence of a single universal culture that unites all people on Earth becomes impossible. In historical practice, culture appears as a multitude of cultures of different eras and regions, and within them in the form of cultures of individual countries and peoples, which are usually called local (or ethnic) cultures. Some local cultures are similar to each other due to their genetic relatedness and the similarity of the conditions of their origin. Other cultures vary only as much as the conditions that gave rise to them. In all the diversity of local cultures, there is not a single “nobody’s” culture. Each individual culture embodies the specific life experiences of a particular people or community of people. This experience gives the culture of each nation unique features and determines its uniqueness.

The uniqueness of culture can manifest itself in a variety of aspects of human life - in the satisfaction of biological, material or spiritual needs, in natural behavioral habits, types of clothing and housing, types of tools, methods of labor operations, etc. So, according to the observations of ethnographers. Peoples living in similar geographical conditions and in close proximity to each other often build houses differently. Russian northerners traditionally place their houses next to the street, while Russian southerners place their homes along the street. Balkars, Ossetians, and Karachais have lived next door to each other in the Caucasus for many centuries. However, the first build one-story stone houses, the second - two-story, and the third - wooden. Previously, only an Uzbek skullcap made it possible to determine from which locality its owner came, and the clothes of a Russian peasant woman of the 19th century. indicated exactly in which province she was born.

The uniqueness of any local or ethnic culture is completed in cultural picture of the world, which is an expression of the fact that in different cultures people perceive, feel and experience the world in their own way and thereby create their own unique image of the world, a special idea of ​​the world. In its content, the cultural picture of the world is a set of rational knowledge and ideas about values, norms, morals, the mentality of one’s own culture and the cultures of other peoples, and includes unconscious meanings, personal meanings, experiences and assessments. The cultural picture of the world is not a syncretic integrity, but consists of private pictures - scientific, aesthetic, religious, artistic, ethical, legal, etc.

The most important components of the cultural picture of the world are space and time, as well as movement, change, property, quality, quantity, cause, effect, chance, regularity - ontological categories of culture. These categories are closely related to social categories, such as labor, property, power, state, freedom, justice, etc.

They are woven into the structure of the language in which people speak, covering the entire cultural space, collectively forming a kind of “grid of coordinates” through which the bearers of a particular culture perceive the world around them and create their “national images of the world.” On their basis, a mentality characteristic of a given culture is formed - the general state of mind, the mindset of people belonging to the same culture. Mentality includes both conscious and unconscious moments, therefore the concepts of “mentality” and cultural “picture of the world” can be considered as synonyms.

Mentality always reflects the specific features of a particular culture, in other words, it is always culturally dependent, its content is entirely determined by the culture of a given people. This is a historically determined phenomenon, therefore the mentality, although generally stable and conservative, is still changing, albeit very slowly. Mentality is formed in every person in childhood, in the process of enculturation, and enters the structure of the individual psyche, taking root in the unconscious. It can be argued that the mentality of a people is at the same time the mentality of an individual person. Therefore, the mentality of an individual is determined by the type of society, the characteristics of ethnic and national culture, as well as those subcultures to which this person belongs.