What will be typical for material culture. Spiritual and material culture

Material culture

Under material culture usually refers to artificially created objects that allow people to adapt in an optimal way to natural and social conditions life.

Objects of material culture are created to satisfy various human needs and are therefore considered as values. When speaking about the material culture of a particular people, they traditionally mean such specific items, such as clothing, weapons, utensils, food, jewelry, housing, architectural structures. Modern science, by examining such artifacts, is able to reconstruct the lifestyle of even long-vanished peoples, of which there is no mention in written sources.

With a broader understanding of material culture, three main elements are seen in it.

The actual objective world created by man is buildings, roads, communications, instruments, objects of art and everyday life. The development of culture is manifested in the constant expansion and complexity of the world of artifacts, the “domestication” of the human environment. Life modern man It is difficult to imagine without the most complex artificial devices - computers, television, mobile phones, etc., which lie at the basis of modern information culture.

Technologies are means and technical algorithms for creating and using objects of the objective world. Technologies are material because they are embodied in specific practical methods of activity.

Technical culture- these are specific skills, abilities, and abilities of a person. Culture preserves these skills and abilities along with knowledge, transmitting both theoretical and practical experience from generation to generation. However, unlike knowledge, skills and abilities are formed in practical activity, usually by example. At each stage of cultural development, along with the complexity of technology, skills also become more complex.

Spiritual culture

Spiritual culture, unlike material culture, is not embodied in objects. The sphere of her existence is not things, but ideal activity associated with intellect, emotions, feelings.

Ideal forms the existence of culture does not depend on individual human opinions. This - scientific knowledge, language, established norms of morality and law, etc. Sometimes the activities of education and mass communication are included in this category.

Integrating forms of spiritual culture connect disparate elements of public and personal consciousness into a coherent worldview. At the first stages of human development, myths acted as such a regulating and unifying form. In modern times, its place has been taken by religion, philosophy and, to some extent, art.

Subjective spirituality is the refraction of objective forms in the individual consciousness of each specific person. In this regard, we can talk about culture individual person(his knowledge base, ability to make moral choices, religious feelings, culture of behavior, etc.).

The combination of spiritual and material forms common space culture as a complex interconnected system of elements that constantly transform into each other. Thus, spiritual culture - ideas, plans of the artist - can be embodied in material things - books or sculptures, and reading books or observing objects of art is accompanied by a reverse transition - from material things to knowledge, emotions, feelings.

The quality of each of these elements, as well as the close connection between them, determine the level of moral, aesthetic, intellectual, and ultimately cultural development of any society.

The relationship between material and spiritual culture

At the same time, spiritual culture is inextricably linked with material culture. Any objects or phenomena of material culture are based on a project, embody certain knowledge and become values, satisfying human needs. In other words, material culture is always the embodiment of a certain part of spiritual culture. But spiritual culture can only exist if it is materialized, objectified, and has received one or another material embodiment. Any book, painting, musical composition, as well as other works of art that are part of spiritual culture, need material medium- paper, canvas, paints, musical instruments, etc.

Moreover, it is often difficult to understand what type of culture - material or spiritual - a particular object or phenomenon belongs to. Thus, we will most likely classify any piece of furniture as material culture. But if we are talking about a 300-year-old chest of drawers exhibited in a museum, we should talk about it as an object of spiritual culture. A book, an indisputable object of spiritual culture, can be used to light a stove. But if cultural objects can change their purpose, then criteria must be introduced to distinguish between objects of material and spiritual culture. In this capacity, one can use an assessment of the meaning and purpose of an object: an object or phenomenon that satisfies the primary (biological) needs of a person belongs to material culture if it satisfies secondary needs associated with development human abilities, it is considered a subject of spiritual culture.

Between material and spiritual culture there are transitional forms - signs that represent something different from what they themselves are, although this content does not relate to spiritual culture. The most famous form of sign is money, as well as various coupons, tokens, receipts, etc., used by people to indicate payment for all kinds of services. Thus, money - the general market equivalent - can be spent on buying food or clothing (material culture) or purchasing a ticket to a theater or museum (spiritual culture). In other words, money acts as a universal intermediary between objects of material and spiritual culture in modern society. But there is a serious danger in this, since money equalizes these objects among themselves, depersonalizing objects of spiritual culture. At the same time, many people have the illusion that everything has its price, that everything can be bought. In this case, money divides people and degrades the spiritual side of life.

5. Culture is one of the most important characteristics of specificity human life. Each individual is a complex biosocial system that functions through interaction with the environment, which is necessary for a person for his normal functioning, life and development.

Most human needs are satisfied through work. And the labor process is always carried out with the direct participation and guiding influence of human consciousness, his thinking, knowledge, feelings, and will. The system of human culture is a world of things, objects, and now natural environment created by man to satisfy his needs. This means that culture is the “objectified” world of human spirituality.

Culture is a product of human activity, and activity is a person’s way of being in the world. The results of human labor are constantly accumulating, and therefore the cultural system historically develops and is enriched by many generations of people. Everything achieved by humanity in legal, political, government activities, in educational systems, medical, consumer and other types of services, in science and technology, art, religion, philosophy - all this belongs to the world of human culture:

· fields and farms, industrial (factories, factories, etc.) and civil (residential buildings, institutions, etc.) buildings, transport communications (roads, pipelines, bridges, etc.), communication lines, etc. .;

· political, legal, educational and other institutions;

· scientific knowledge, artistic images, religious doctrines and philosophical systems, family culture

It is not easy to find a place on Earth that has not been developed to one degree or another by human labor, that has not been touched by the active hands of man, that has not had the stamp of the human spirit on it.

The world of culture surrounds everyone. Each person is, as it were, immersed in a sea of ​​things, objects of human culture. Moreover, an individual becomes a person insofar as he assimilates the forms of activity for the production and use of cultural objects (developed previous generations of people). In the family, at school, in higher education educational institution, at work, in communication with other people, we master the system of objective forms of culture, “deobjectify” them for ourselves. Only on this path does a person change himself, develop his inner spiritual world, his knowledge, interests, morals, skills, abilities, worldview, values, needs, etc. The higher the degree to which a person masters the achievements of culture, the greater the contribution he can make to it. further development.

Culture appeared simultaneously with man himself, and the first cultural phenomena were the tools created by our distant ancestors.

Culture is a single, complex, integrated phenomenon of human nature, which is conditionally (according to the degree of predominance of the spiritual or material components) often divided into humanitarian and natural science cultures.

It is unlikely that today anyone will be able to describe the entire variety of cultural values ​​achieved and being achieved by humanity. We can highlight only some of the most significant areas of human culture today. Such a division is arbitrary, controversial and largely depends on the views of a particular person. Humanitarian culture.

Humanitarian culture in modern understanding- a human worldview, embodied practically and predicted theoretically, based on the belief that the World around us can be imagined in consciousness. In other words, it is a universal complex of material and spiritual values, created exclusively by the subjective (personal) consciousness of man and society. This is morality, religion, art, politics, philosophy, etc., which is included in the concept of spirituality.

Humanitarian culture is focused on universal human values, such as humanism, democracy, morality, human rights, etc. But the researcher of this culture is located within the problems under consideration. Philosophical systems, religions, and philological studies include features inherent in their creator. His whole life is often inextricably woven into the “fabric” of these systems, religions, etc. Therefore, the research methods used in the field of humanities are strikingly different from the natural sciences and come down mainly to interpretations, interpretations, and comparisons.

Great importance in the humanities they have teleological or finalist explanations, the purpose of which is to reveal the motives and intentions in people’s activities. Interest in such explanations has increased in Lately, it was determined by the results obtained in synergetics, ecology and other natural sciences. But also higher value in the humanities has a research method associated with interpretation, which is usually called hermeneutic.

6. Culture acts as an important factor in the social renewal of society. It is sensitive to all changes occurring in society, and itself has a significant impact on social life, shaping and determining many social processes.

Modern Western sociologists assign a large role to culture in the development of modernization processes. In their opinion, a “breakthrough” of the traditional way of life in a number of countries should occur under the direct influence of their sociocultural contacts with already existing centers of market-industrial culture. In this case, it is necessary to take into account the specific historical conditions of these countries, their traditions, features of the national character, established cultural and psychological stereotypes, etc.

The special role of culture in the evolution of society was noted by the classics of world sociological thought. Suffice it to cite M. Weber’s famous work “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,” which showed how the ideological principles of Protestantism led to the formation of a system of value orientations, motivations and behavioral stereotypes that formed the basis of capitalist entrepreneurship and significantly contributed to the formation of the bourgeois era.

The role of culture as a factor of social change especially increases during the period of social reforms. This can be clearly seen in the example of our country.

In these conditions, the development of a new cultural policy becomes especially important. Cultural policy is understood as a set of measures to regulate the development of spiritual and value aspects of social life. Culture plays the role of forming value-oriented, optimally organized and socially effective activities.

7. The post-industrial state of human civilization is rightfully associated with the development information society- a society whose level is decisively determined by the quantity and quality of accumulated information, its freedom and accessibility. The emergence of the information society is inextricably linked with the awareness of the fundamental role of information in social development, consideration of such phenomena as information resources, new information technologies, and informatization in a broad sociocultural context.

The formation of the information society required ensuring the adequacy of education to the dynamic changes occurring in nature and society, the entire human environment, the increased volume of information, and the rapid development of new information technologies. Of particular importance in the information society is the organization of information education and the improvement of the information culture of the individual.

Today there is every reason to talk about the formation of a new information culture, which can become an element general culture humanity. This will include knowledge about the information environment, the laws of its functioning, and the ability to navigate information flows. Information culture is not yet an indicator of general, but rather professional culture, but over time it will become an important factor in the development of each individual. The concept of “information culture” characterizes one of the facets of culture associated with the information aspect of people’s lives. The role of this aspect in the information society is constantly increasing; and today the totality of information flows around each person is so large, diverse and ramified that it requires him to know the laws of the information environment and the ability to navigate information flows. Otherwise, he will not be able to adapt to life in new conditions, in particular, to change social structures, the consequence of which will be a significant increase in the number of people working in the field of information activities and services.

Currently, there are many definitions of information culture. Let's look at some of them.

In a broad sense, information culture is understood as a set of principles and real mechanisms that ensure the positive interaction of ethnic and national cultures, their connection into the common experience of humanity.

In a narrow sense - optimal ways of handling signs, data, information and presenting them to interested consumers to solve theoretical and practical problems; mechanisms for improving technical environments for the production, storage and transmission of information; development of a training system, preparing a person for the effective use of information tools and information.

The information culture of mankind has been shaken by information crises at different times. One of the most significant quantitative information crises led to the emergence of writing. Oral methods of preserving knowledge did not ensure complete preservation of the growing volumes of information and recording of information on a material medium, which gave rise to new period information culture - documentary. It included a culture of communication with documents: extracting fixed knowledge, encoding and recording information; documentary search. Handling information has become easier, the way of thinking has undergone changes, but oral forms of information culture not only have not lost their significance, but have also been enriched by a system of relationships with written ones.

The next information crisis brought to life computer technologies that modified the information medium and automated some information processes.

Modern information culture has absorbed all its previous forms and combined them into a single tool. As a special aspect social life it acts as a subject, means and result of social activity, reflects the nature and level of practical activity of people. This is the result of the subject’s activity and the process of preserving what was created, distributing and consuming cultural objects.

Currently, a basis is being created for the formation of a contradiction between the category of individuals whose information culture is formed under the influence of information technology and reflects new connections and relationships of the information society, and the category of individuals whose information culture is determined by traditional approaches. This creates different levels of its quality with the same expenditure of effort and time, entails objective injustice, which is associated with a decrease in the possibilities of creative manifestation of some subjects compared to others.

Related information.

Material culture is the world of things created or transformed by man. These include new varieties of plants, new breeds of animals, production, consumption, everyday life and man himself in his material, physical essence. The very first steps of culture on earth are connected with things, tools with which man influenced the world. Animals can also use various natural objects in the process of obtaining food, but none of them has created anything that does not exist in nature. Only man turned out to be capable of creating new objects that expand his capabilities and abilities to satisfy his needs.

This creative process had extremely important consequences. On the one hand, simultaneously with the creation and mastery of tools and the taming of nature (fire, animals), human consciousness gradually developed. For further activities, it turned out that the senses alone, which reflect only the external aspects of things, were not enough for him. Actions with things required an understanding of their internal properties, relationships between parts of objects, the causes and possible consequences of one’s own actions, and much more, without which human survival in the world is impossible. The need for such an understanding gradually develops the abstract-logical activity of consciousness, thinking. The great German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) said that animals reflect only the necessary light of the sun directly for life, humans reflect the radiance of distant stars; Only human eyes know selfless joys, only man knows spiritual feasts. But man was able to come to spiritual feasts only when he began to change the world around him, when he created the tools of labor, and with them his history, in the process of which he endlessly improved them and improved himself.

On the other hand, along with the improvement of tools, living conditions also changed, knowledge of the world developed, relationships between people became more complex, and material culture became more and more intertwined with the also developing spiritual culture, forming a systemic integrity. In order to more fully understand the structure of culture, it is necessary to dismember this integrity and consider separately its main elements.

The culture of production is the most important element in material culture, since it is it that determines the quality of life in which one or another develops. local culture and influences him. From whatever point of view we consider the forms and methods human existence in the world, it should be recognized that only the activity of obtaining and creating material wealth is the basis of our life. A person eats to live, but he also needs other objects, without which life is similar to animal existence (home, clothes, shoes), as well as what can be used to create it. First of all, in the process of human activity various tools are created. It was they who laid the foundation for the formation of man as a rational being (as opposed to an animal) and became the main condition for his further development.

The early period of human existence left us only primitive objects associated with the very main task society of that time - the task of survival. Based on the tools that our ancestor used, we can draw conclusions about his general development, the types of activities and, consequently, the skills that he possessed. But people also made objects not related to work - utensils and decorations, sculptural images and drawings. All this also required for its creation special devices, and certain knowledge about the materials used, and the corresponding skills. Many researchers believe that necklaces are made from natural material, figures, drawings were directly related to the same main task. Each element of the necklace signified the practical achievement of the person wearing it, the figures of people and animals, the drawings carried a magical meaning, everything was subordinated to one single goal - obtaining a means of subsistence. We can say that production activity forms the basis of the entire culture of the world; in any case, it served as the motivating force that revealed human capabilities, developed them and established “active man” (homo agens) in the world.

Already at the most early stages material production, its three main components emerged and became established, which became certain indicators of culture: technical equipment (tools of labor, means of labor and production, etc.), the labor process and the result of labor.

The degree of development of technology and all its elements in society demonstrates the level of knowledge accumulated by it related to providing living space, meeting the needs of each person, and the characteristics of the needs themselves. Each tool of labor is not only objectified knowledge, but also necessary condition activities of people. Consequently, it requires appropriate skills and abilities from those who apply it. Thus, the emergence of new technology and new technologies raises society to a new stage of development. Labor activity creates double bond people with production: a person creates a tool of labor, and a tool of labor creates, changes and, to a certain extent, improves a person. However, the relationship between man and tools is contradictory. Each new tool to one degree or another increases the natural capabilities of a person (expands the scope of his activity, reduces the expenditure of muscular energy, acts as a manipulator where the environment is dangerous for a person, takes on routine work), but thereby limiting the manifestation of his abilities, since an increasing number of actions cease to require him to fully devote his own strength. This increases labor productivity, improves individual abilities and skills of the worker, but dulls all other human data, “cancels” it as unnecessary. Together with the division of labor, a person becomes a “partial” person, his universal capabilities do not find application. He specializes, developing only one or a few of his abilities, and his other abilities may never reveal themselves. With the development of machine production, this contradiction deepens: production needed a person only as an appendage to the machine. Work on an assembly line is dull, since the worker has neither the need nor even the opportunity to think about what actions he is performing; all this must be brought to automaticity. These “demands” of technology on man marked the beginning of a process of alienation, in which both technology and the results of labor begin to confront man as some kind of external force. The creation of automated production intensified the processes of alienation and brought to life many new problems. At the center of them is the problem of a person’s loss of his individuality. The measure of culture of society and production is largely related to whether it will be possible to overcome the process of alienation and return a person to his personal beginning. One thing is clear: the more developed the technology, the higher the certain general, abstract level of skills and abilities, the wider the range of professions needed by society, the richer the range of goods and services. It is believed that all this should ensure high development of culture. But that's not true. There is still no strict relationship between the technical equipment of production and the level of general culture of society. The development of technology is not a condition for the equally high development of spiritual culture and vice versa. Narrow specialization is the opposite of the universality and integrity of a person, and the culture of a society based on highly developed production and high technology forces a person to “pay” for this progress. Those engaged in such production and the people generated by it constitute a faceless mass, a crowd that is manipulated by mass culture. Therefore, modern scientists are looking for ways to resolve this kind of contradictions, suggesting that the culture of society and production itself becomes fully culture only if society compensates a person for his spiritual losses. Thus, the culture of production breaks the boundaries of its existence and turns out to be interconnected with all aspects of society, its goals, principles, ideals and values.

Production culture begins with mutual relations man and technology, which consists in the degree of man’s mastery of technology. But another contradiction arises between man and technology: technology can be improved endlessly, but man is not infinite. Therefore, the development of a culture of technical relations requires the humanization of technology. This means that when creating new technology It is important to take into account the physical and mental characteristics of the person himself. Ergonomics deals with the development and design of tools, equipment and technical systems that best meet human needs.

The labor process is the central link in production culture. It connects together all the stages of product creation, so it includes a variety of elements of work activity - from skills, abilities, skill of performers to management problems. Modern American leadership expert Stephen R. Covey believes that the effectiveness of any activity (he calls it a skill that is developed by a person in the process of activity) is at the intersection of knowledge, skill and desire. We can say that the same qualities underlie the culture of the labor process. If all the elements of the labor process we have named are at different levels of development and perfection (for example: knowledge is higher than skills; there is knowledge and skills, there is no desire; there is desire and knowledge, but no skills, and so on), it is impossible to say and about production culture in general. If in the field of technology the main role belongs to technical relations, then for the labor process the relations between technology and technology (technological relations) and between man and man (production relations) are more significant. High technologies involve and high level knowledge, practical and theoretical, and a higher level of training of specialists. Since high technologies most significantly affect economic, environmental, and moral relations existing in society, the training of specialists for such production should involve the development of not only production skills, but also personal qualities associated with responsibility, the ability to see, formulate and solve problems of varying degrees of difficulty, and have creative potential.

The production system and all the relationships that develop within it are contradictory. The culture of production largely depends on how and to what extent these contradictions are resolved in society. So, if the level of technical development is high, but people do not have the knowledge to work with this technology, then it is impossible to talk about production culture. Another example: workers have the necessary level of development, but the technology is primitive, therefore, in this case we cannot talk about production culture. Production culture in in every sense this word is possible only with the harmony of interaction between man and technology. Improvement of technology should bring to life an increase in the level of professional training of people, and an increased level of professionalism is a condition for further improvement of technology.

Since part of production culture is related to relationships between people, great place it focuses on management culture. In ancient civilizations, production management involved coercion. IN primitive society There was no place for coercion as a form of relations between people: life itself, its conditions, daily and hourly forced people to extract and create material wealth for the sake of survival. Modern highly developed production cannot use direct coercion. The tools of labor became too difficult to use, and professional mastery of them turned out to be impossible without the internal discipline, responsibility, energy and initiative of the worker. As work becomes more complex, there are fewer and fewer possibilities for effective direct control and coercion: “you can bring a horse to water, but you cannot force it to drink.” Therefore, management activity consists of streamlining connections in society as a whole, in production as its main component, and is increasingly replacing coercion. Management culture, on the one hand, is associated with economic, political and legal culture, on the other, includes production ethics, morality, morality, knowledge of etiquette, the ability to place people in the production process in such a way as to take them into account individual characteristics and production needs. Otherwise, the labor process inevitably comes to crises or conflicts. Everything mentioned above relates to a special level of human culture, which is called professional culture.

Professional culture is a complex systemic unity that combines practical skills and abilities in the field of specific activities, possession of the equipment necessary in a given branch of production, special theoretical knowledge directly or indirectly related to production activities, as well as moral norms and rules necessary in the production system. Professional culture is at the intersection of a person’s general culture and his special training, therefore it includes those criteria that determine relationships in the production process and the requirements that exist in society outside of production. The culture of production reveals itself in the creation of objects and things that meet the needs of society. This means that the items produced must be varied, functional, economical, have high quality performance and aesthetic appearance. Each produced object, representing objectified knowledge, demonstrates a specific cultural level society, industry or enterprise. In addition, it reflects the technology of its execution, the materials used speak volumes: all of these are indicators of the culture of this production. Of course, it is possible to produce unique items using outdated equipment, manual labor, and the massive use of unskilled labor, but such production becomes unprofitable. So the efficiency of production, the optimal ratio of costs and profits in it are also indicators of the culture of the enterprise. Manufactured products can influence the entire lifestyle of society, shaping its tastes, needs and demand. Things created in production occupy a central place in everyday culture.

The culture of everyday life is the material environment (apartment, house, production) and at the same time the attitude towards it. It also includes the organization of this environment, in which the aesthetic tastes, ideals and norms of man and society are manifested. Throughout history, the material world has “absorbed” all the features of the economic, social, artistic level development of society. For example, in a subsistence economy, a person himself performed all types of labor: he was a farmer, a cattle breeder, a weaver, a tanner, and a builder, and therefore made things designed for long-term use. “The house, tools, dishes and even clothes have served more than one generation.” All things made by one person reflected his idea of ​​their practical use, as well as the characteristics of his artistic views, attitude and worldview. Most often, these handicrafts are unique, but not always skillful. When things began to be made by professionals - artisans, they became more skillful and decorative - decorated, some of them became more complex. Social inequality among people at this time determines inequality in the design of the material sphere. The surviving household items clearly demonstrate the lifestyle of a particular social stratum. Each cultural era leaves its mark on the world of things, revealing in them its own stylistic characteristics. These features concern not only architecture, home decoration, furniture, but also clothing, hairstyles, and shoes. The material environment “reproduces” the entire system of cultural norms, aesthetic views and all the specifics of a certain era. Using the example of two drawings, comparing the main elements of life of Gothic (Middle Ages) and Rococo (XVIII century), a quick glance is enough to see how the architectural principles, decorative elements, furniture and clothing of people of each period relate to each other.

Gothic style. Rococo.

The emergence of industrial production created a world of standard things. In them, differences in social properties were somewhat smoothed out. However, endlessly repeating similar forms, styles, varieties, they impoverished and depersonalized the environment. Therefore, in the most diverse social strata there appears a desire for more frequent changes in the environment, and then for the search for an individual style in solving material problems. environment.

The culture of everyday life presupposes functionality, aesthetic organization - design (English design “plan, project, drawing, drawing”) and economy of the material environment. The activities of modern designers are devoted to the task of organizing the everyday sphere, eliminating “objective chaos” in it. It can hardly be said that the quantity or cost of things in any way determines the culture of the room, but the fact that they demonstrate it can be said with certainty. By how the interior of the enterprise is organized, one can judge the attitude towards employees or visitors, as well as the lifestyle and activities of the team. If we paraphrase the statement of K. S. Stanislavsky (1863-1938) that the theater begins with a coat rack, then we can say about any room that everything in it is important: from the coat rack to the utility rooms. The same can be applied to home interiors.

Another side of everyday culture is the attitude towards the environment. For example, even in the most undemanding videos, if they want to show a negative social environment, show scribbled walls, untidy, broken furniture, dirty, uncleaned rooms. In the film “Orchestra Rehearsal,” the great film director Federico Fellini (1920-1993) associates such vandalism of people with a symbolic picture of the end of the world, believing that its main symptom is the loss of culture in relation to everything that surrounds a person. However, the attitude towards things can also be exaggerated, excessive, when things are perceived as the only value in life. At one time, the word “materialism” was widespread, characterizing people who, of all human values The possession of prestigious things was put in first place. In fact, the true culture of everyday life treats things as they deserve: as objects that decorate or facilitate our activities, or make them more “human,” bringing warmth, comfort and good feelings into them.

Physical culture is the culture of a person’s attitude towards own body. It is aimed at maintaining physical and spiritual health and includes the ability to control one’s body. Obviously, physical culture should not be associated only with success in one sport or another. Of course, sport can be a guarantee of health, but health is not the only thing that makes up physical culture. Research by specialists has shown that playing any one sport, even a beautiful or popular one, develops a person too one-sidedly and requires a constant increase in loads, and a person, despite all the versatility of his capabilities, is still finite. We know how rare but intense minutes of sports activities are valued business people all over the world. The presence of physical education presupposes that the main goal of a person is to master the characteristics of his body, the ability to use it, constantly maintaining efficiency and balance, adequately responding to rapidly changing living and working conditions. This gives a real unity of mental and physical labor (physical health, endurance, the ability to control oneself, maintain high performance in mental activity, regardless of external factors, and mental activity determines the effectiveness of physical labor). Physical health is not always an indicator of physical and general culture. The world knows people who not only did not have the health of Hercules, but who were simply disabled, who reached high levels of perfection in intellectual and cultural activities. For example, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was chained to wheelchair, but nevertheless he was able to lead the country even in the most difficult years for the whole world - during the Second World War. It follows from this that only the ability to concentrate the capabilities of one’s body, complete mastery of it, allows people to act, and this is the essence of physical culture (culture organizes a person’s physical capabilities). Such a manifestation of human physical culture is a triumph not only of the body, but also of the spirit, for only man exists in the unity of the material and spiritual.

Material culture - these are the achievements of the human mind in the development of productive forces and production relations of society . It is also a set of those values ​​that are aimed at satisfying consumer, material needs and interests of people. Mainly the needs for food, clothing, housing, means of transportation, physical health, warmth, light, household items, etc. This is the process and result of human material activity. Material culture is the culture of labor and material production, the culture of everyday life, the culture of attitude towards one’s own body and physical culture.

Analyzing the internal structure of material culture, within the framework of material activity, we should first of all highlight economic (economic) activity aimed at creating material conditions for human life as the creator of a “second nature”. It includes the means of production, methods of practical activity (relations of production), as well as creative moments economic daily activities of man.

Features of material (technological) culture:

1) She is not concerned with the “value dimension” of activity. Its meanings are concentrated around WHAT and HOW to do, FOR WHY TO DO IT.

2) Values: efficiency, accuracy, strength, utilitarianism(utility);

3) Rationalism. Evolution from mysticism to rationality.

4) In relation to spiritual culture, it plays a subordinate role, service role. The goals of the development of science and technology are determined by the needs of the development of spiritual and social culture.

5) Performing a service role, it turns out to be an indispensable condition for any cultural activity. Professional excellence.

Spiritual culture is a set of norms and values ​​related to satisfying the intellectual needs of people and contributing to the formation of reasonable moral, psychological qualities and abilities in them. Spiritual culture is the process and results of spiritual production (religion, philosophy, morality, art, science, etc.). This area of ​​culture is very extensive. She is presented richest world science and art, morality and law, politics and religion. Of course, all the values ​​of spiritual culture are recorded, preserved, passed on from generation to generation only in the material sphere, indirectly: language, ideology, values, customs, etc. The elements included in spiritual culture cannot be touched with our hands, but they exist in our consciousness and are constantly maintained in the process of interaction. Spiritual culture is represented and functions in a much richer, more extensive objective world and norms of relationships than material.

So, spiritual culture acts as an activity aimed at spiritual development of man and society, to create ideas, knowledge, spiritual values ​​- images of public consciousness. The subject forms of spiritual culture are the results of spiritual activity and relationships between people, the development and realization of human abilities.

The main forms of spiritual culture: myth, religion, morality, art, philosophy, science. Spiritual culture captures the creative side, innovation, achievements, the productive, not the reproductive side.

Features of spiritual culture:

1) N utilitarianism. She is essentially selfless. Its cornerstones are not benefit, not profit, but “joys of the spirit” - beauty, knowledge, wisdom. People need it for its own sake.

2) Greatest With freedom of creativity. The human mind, not connected with utilitarian considerations and practical necessity, is capable of breaking away from reality and flying away from it on the wings of fantasy.

3) creative activity becomes a special spiritual world created by the power of human thought. This world is incomparably richer than the real world.

4) Sensitivity. Most responsive to environmental changes. She is able to detect the slightest changes in people’s lives and respond to them with changes in herself. The most fragile area of ​​culture, the one that suffers the most during social cataclysms, needs the support of society.

But it is impossible to differentiate and contrast the material and spiritual with each other as 2 special areas of culture. They are like different sides of the same coin. For, on the one hand, the whole culture as a whole is spiritual, because it is the world of meanings, i.e. spiritual entities. On the other hand, it is entirely material, because... presented in sensory-perceptible codes, signs, texts. Therefore, by material culture it makes sense to understand not some special area of ​​culture, different from spiritual culture, but the “sign shell” of any culture. Any work of art is a material phenomenon, since it is always embodied in something. But at the same time, any work of art is an expression certain meanings, reflecting the values ​​and ideology of society and era. This division makes it possible to verify that any cultural phenomenon is an objectified result of the ideal, spiritual content of human activity. Thus, architectural buildings are both works of art and serve practical purposes.

The first structural element of culture is material culture, which represents objective, material forms of expression of spiritual meanings.

Material culture is a set of methods for producing material goods and values ​​created by human labor at each stage of the development of society.

Value– this is the positive significance of objects, phenomena and ideas. Objects and phenomena become good if they satisfy positive human needs and contribute to social progress. Material culture is based on a rational, reproductive type of activity, expressed in an objective and objective form, satisfies the primary needs of a person.

Economic culture - this is an activity aimed at creating material conditions for human life as the creator of a “second nature”. It includes, first of all, economic activity - means of production, methods of practical activity for their creation (production relations), as well as creative moments of everyday economic activity of a person.

Economic culture should not be reduced to material production; it characterizes it from the point of view of its influence on a person, the creation of conditions for his life and the development of abilities, their implementation in the economic life of society. This culture is embodied not just in production and technology, but in the implementation of the creative principle of human material activity.

Traditionally, culturologists single out labor culture as objects (forms) of material culture - equipment, structures and tools, means of production, communication systems - routes and means of communication (transport, communications); everyday culture - items of clothing, everyday life, food.

All these cultural objects are carriers of cultural information that create an artificial habitat for humanity and are the process and result of human material activity. All these phenomena are related to the content of productive forces or production relations. However, material culture, being a side of material production, is not identical to it. It characterizes production from the point of view of creating conditions for human life, its development, as well as the realization of human abilities in the process of material activity.

V Spiritual school

Spiritual culture is the totality of spiritual values ​​of humanity (ideas, ideas, convictions, beliefs, knowledge); intellectual spiritual activity and its results, ensuring the development of a person as an individual at each stage of the development of society.

Spiritual culture is based on a rational, creative type of activity, is expressed in a subjective form, and satisfies secondary human needs.

Spiritual culture includes forms focused on the development of knowledge and values ​​in the spiritual sphere - this is a complex of ideas, knowledge, ideas, experiences, motivations, drives, beliefs, norms, traditions of human existence. Spiritual activity has a complex structure and includes the following forms of culture:

Religious culture (religious teachings, traditional confessions and denominations, modern cults and teachings);

Moral culture (ethics as a theoretical understanding of morality, morality as its social expression, morality as a personal norm);

Aesthetic culture (art, its types, directions and styles);

Legal culture (legal proceedings, legislation, executive system);

Political culture (traditional political regime, ideology, norms of interaction between political subjects);

Intellectual culture (science, philosophy).

By type of activity, they are all included in cognitive activity (science, philosophy), value-oriented activity (morality, art, religion), regulatory activity (politics, law).

Cognitive activity is based on man’s knowledge of nature, society, himself and his inner world. This activity is most adequately represented by scientific activity. The science- a specialized area of ​​culture focused on cognition. The main functions of science are to form a system of logically ordered knowledge based on a specially organized theoretical and empirical study of reality; constructing rational forecasts; control of the processes under study based on experiment.

Traditional knowledge passed on from generation to generation, accepted as a “dogmatic banality” that is not questioned, with the advent of a new intellectual environment - scientific - ceases to dominate the minds of people, leading to sharp leaps in the development of the entire culture. Thus, in any society, a system of obtaining, storing, and transmitting information and knowledge, independent of the individual, develops.

Value-oriented human activities include morality (moral culture), art (artistic culture) and religion (religious culture). The meaningful nature of cognition and understanding of the world presupposes not just knowledge about it, but an understanding of the value of the person himself as a subject of activity, the value of his knowledge, creations, the values ​​of the cultural world itself in which a person lives. The human world is always a world of values. It is filled with meanings and meanings for him.

The first most socially significant sphere of culture is moral culture, which provides a normative and value orientation for the attitude of individuals and social groups to all aspects of society and to each other.

Moral culture – this is the level of humanity achieved by society and the individual, humanity in the relations of social subjects, the attitude towards man as the highest goal and self-worth . The moral culture of an individual manifests itself as a culture of action: a motive corresponding to the concepts of good and evil, justice and human dignity. The basis of a person’s moral culture is morality and conscience.

The second form of spiritual culture associated with value-based activities is artistic and aesthetic culture. Art culture - this is a specific sensory-emotional sphere of cognition, assessment and artistic transformation of the world according to the laws of beauty. Artistic culture is based on an irrational, creative type of activity, expressed in both objective and subjective forms, and satisfies secondary human needs (see art in the system of spiritual culture).

The third form of spiritual culture, associated with value-based activities is religious culture, based on religious activity as a person’s ascent to God . Religious culture is embodied by cultic and religious actions, the meaning of which is determined by the corresponding system of values, the main of which is God as the spiritual and moral Absolute.

In spiritual culture, two more forms can be distinguished, focused on the regulatory form of activity - politics ( political culture) and right ( legal culture), related to the state and its institutions and the legal system of society.

Spiritual culture grows as the ideal side of material activity. However, under certain conditions, fixed in the mechanisms of social memory spiritual culture stands outas a stable matrix of spiritual life, stereotype of perception and thinking, mentality of society. It can play a leading role at different stages of the development of society.

To the features of spiritual culture, which is focused on the development of knowledge and values, it is necessary to include the following:

1. Spiritual culture is a special spiritual world created by the power of human thought, which is richer than the real, material world (for example, the art of painting - the direction of surrealism - the artist S. Dali).

2. Spiritual culture gives a person the greatest freedom of creativity (conscious creativity of a person is what distinguishes the world of culture from the world of nature).

3. Spiritual culture is needed in itself, and not for the sake of achieving any goals.

4. Spiritual culture is the most “fragile” area of ​​culture; it is more sensitive to changes in the sociocultural space, it suffers more than all other areas during social cataclysms and needs the support of society.

It should be noted that the concept of “spiritual culture” also includes material objects that include the world of spiritual culture: libraries, museums, theaters, cinemas, concert halls, educational institutions, courts, etc. Any object of material culture is the embodiment of certain human plans, and in real life, the material and the ideal in culture are always intertwined.

Culture as whole system It is customary to divide it into two forms: material and spiritual, which corresponds to two main types of production - material and spiritual. Material culture covers the entire sphere of human material and production activity and its results: tools, housing, everyday items, clothing, means of transport, etc. Spiritual culture includes the sphere of spiritual production and its results, i.e. sphere of consciousness - science, morality, education and enlightenment, law, philosophy, art, literature, folklore, religion, etc. This should include the relationships of people with each other, with themselves and with nature, which develop in the process of producing products of material and spiritual activity.

It has already been said that culture-forming activity can be of two types: creative and reproductive. The first creates new ones cultural values, the second one only reproduces and replicates them. Sometimes this kind of activity, aimed at mechanical repetition of the products of someone else's mind and feelings, is also classified as spiritual production. This is incorrect, because it is not simply the replication of ideas or works of art, but their creation, the enrichment of culture through the efforts of a human creator. Thus, a teacher or university professor who mindlessly repeats other people’s thoughts and does not add anything of his own to them will be engaged not in creative, but in reproductive work, just like printing paintings by I.I. in huge quantities on candy wrappers. Shishkin’s “Morning in a Pine Forest” is by no means a spiritual production or spiritual culture.

That's why when they compare different eras human history or a country by level of culture, then the main Criterion is taken, first of all, not from the quantitative aspect of the artistic or scientific production existing there, but from its national uniqueness and qualitative characteristics. Nowadays one can easily imagine a country that has “absorbed” and used many of the achievements of other peoples, but has not given the world anything “of its own” and nothing new. "Mass culture" - shining example how the desire for imitation and quantity at the expense of originality and quality deprives culture of a national face and turns it into its opposite - anticulture.

The division of culture into material and spiritual only at first glance seems quite clear and indisputable. A more attentive approach to the problem raises a number of questions: where, for example, should we include highly artistic household items, masterpieces of architecture or clothing? Do production relations and labor culture - the most important components of any industrial production - belong to the material or spiritual sphere? Many researchers classify them as material culture.

Therefore, another approach to distinguishing the two hypostases of culture is possible: the first is associated with the creative transformation of the surrounding nature into material products of human labor, i.e. into everything that has a material substance, but was created not by nature or God, but by the genius of man and his labor activity. In this case, the sphere of material culture will become the entire “humanized” part of the objective existing world, a “second Universe” that can be seen, touched, or at least felt. In this latter case, the smell of perfume, for example, will be fundamentally different from the smell of a rose, because perfume is created by man.

In contrast to material culture understood in this way, its purely spiritual manifestations have no substance and are associated primarily not with the transformation of the environment into material objects, but with the transformation of the inner world, the “soul” of a person or an entire people and its social existence. Simplifying and schematizing the question somewhat, we can say that spiritual culture is an idea, and material culture is its objectified embodiment. In real life, spiritual and material cultures are practically inseparable. Thus, a book or a painting, on the one hand, is material, on the other, spiritual, since it has a certain ideological, moral and aesthetic content. Even music materializes in the feet. In other words, there is no object of purely material culture, no matter how primitive it may seem, that does not have a “spiritual” element, just as there cannot be a product of spiritual culture that is unable to materialize. However, it is easy to imagine that in the absence of writing, an unmaterialized spiritual culture can exist in the form of folklore, passed on from generation to generation. The inextricable unity of the spiritual and material principles in culture, with the determining role of the former, is clearly expressed even in the famous Marxist formula: “ideas become material force when they take possession of the masses.”

Speaking about the unity of material and spiritual culture and at the same time without denying their different nature, one cannot help but ask the question: how does this unity manifest itself at different stages of human development? Is it becoming more organic, close and productive or, on the contrary, are the material and spiritual life of a person (and society) separated from one another? In other words, is the division of society into “priests” and “producers”, into people of culture and people-cogs, into personalities and individuals, intensifying? Or another, related question: do a person’s abilities to implement the ideas that arise in him increase, i.e. the possibility of their transformation into “material force”? It seems that there can be only one answer: with the development of society, its democratization, the growth of technical capabilities for reproducing and transmitting cultural products in time and space, the unity in it of material and spiritual principles becomes more and more tangible and brings impressive results. Nowadays there is no longer such a confrontation between the “priests” and mere mortals as there was in ancient times; such fierce battles between science and religion as in the recent past; such a sharp division into the spiritual “elite” and the anonymous masses, as was observed at the beginning of the 20th century. Everywhere, at least in the most civilized countries, the number of individuals is growing at the expense of the mass of individuals, producers of culture at the expense of its passive consumers.

True, the spread of culture and the growth in the number of cultural people are coming not without internal contradictions. After all, “observed” spiritual culture usually serves to satisfy certain material needs of its owner, who often does not even imagine the spiritual content of this or that object belonging to him. It is enough to imagine the mansion of some illiterate nouveau riche, filled with paintings by great artists, or the most valuable library of a modern tradesman who has not opened a single book in his entire life. After all, many people hoard works of art and literature not because of their aesthetic value, but because of their market value. Fortunately, culture lives and breathes at the expense of millions of unmercenaries, primarily among the intelligentsia, with wretched angles or empty apartments, but keeping in their hearts and memories the spiritual riches of the whole world! Speaking about the spiritual culture of a particular people at a certain moment in its history, one should not directly connect it either with the standard of living of a given society or with its material production, for there is such a thing as cultural heritage. The culture of the USA is by no means richer than Russian, French or Italian, behind which the greatness of Ancient Rome is still felt. This once again proves that true culture Unlike machine civilization, it does not develop overnight, but is the product of a very long development.