Who is a person? Animal or something else? Similar questions have tormented people, probably since the appearance of the first Homo Sapiens. Previously, scientists argued that we belong to the highest intelligent animals. However, today there is another point of view, which is firmly established in textbooks, encyclopedias and scientific works, where the word “animal” was replaced by the words “creature” and “subject”:
“Man is a living, intelligent social being, a subject of socio-historical activity and culture.”
However, we have another topic, which we specifically highlighted and emphasized in this formulation: culture. The bright minds of humanity are still arguing whether its rudiments (there is no need to talk about any developed culture) exist in some species of animals. But from any point of view, human culture is something completely special, and no intellectuals from the animal world on the planet have anything similar. Moreover, human civilization has two types of culture - spiritual and material. And despite the fact that both directions are united by one word, their essence is completely different, but at the same time they are deeply integrated into each other.
In this article we will try to find out how spiritual culture differs from material culture. By the way, both concepts include a number of subspecies, so to speak (artistic, mass, technical, etc. culture), which in turn can consist of dozens of subcultures. But our task is to deal with global issues, and not get bogged down in details. First, let's define the meaning of this word.
What is culture anyway?!
Really, what does this concept mean? Why is it one of the main and integral signs of human civilization? There are many lengthy answers to this question. Let’s try to answer too – only more simply and in our own words:
“Culture is the activity of a society of people or an individual, which leads to a spiritual and (or) material change in the life of both a specific human community and entire nations. Created cultural values always influence, to one degree or another, the development of the human community, no matter how insignificant they may seem at first glance.”
Some will consider our definition shallow and incomplete, but this article does not pretend to be a monograph. Those who want to understand this issue We more thoroughly send it to electronic and regular libraries, where there are a lot of serious treatises on this topic.
Material culture
The concept itself material culture very simple and even uncomplicated. It can be expressed in one phrase:
“Everything that man has created with his own hands can be called material culture».
Refrigerator, children's toy, Cathedral Notre Dame of Paris, the Windows operating system are all products of material culture. We will not even describe the main representatives of this type culture. This topic is huge and inexhaustible. Let's just say that with the development of humanity, the list of material values is growing non-stop. It already contains things that cannot be touched with your hands, but they are still classified as material phenomena. For example, technological processes, which are intangible, but as a result of their use, very real physical objects arise. Let's briefly summarize the above.
- Things, objects created by man. The main and most ancient area of material culture. As already mentioned, everything that you can pick up and feel its weight and density belongs to this sphere.
- Technical culture. This refers to our abilities, skills, acquired experience and dexterity that are needed when working to create material objects.
- Technological processes. Like the previous point, technologies do not refer to materialized products. These are systems, stages of creating things, as well as using them.
Spiritual culture
What is “spiritual culture”? The answer lies in the phrase itself:
“Everything that is created by man, but cannot be touched with hands, is spiritual.”
And this is the main difference between spiritual culture and material culture. You can cite huge amount examples of such culture: songs, science, languages, poetry, moral values, high feelings and emotions... And again, and again...
Spiritual culture is a complex substance consisting of hundreds and thousands of building blocks. The ideology and mentality of entire nations are based on such a culture. A person’s worldview, attitude towards oneself, towards others, towards life are connected precisely with spiritual culture. This topic is endless both in breadth and depth. Therefore, we present several generally accepted postulates, one might say, the foundation on which a multi-story building is built.
- Universal spiritual culture. It includes science, general moral principles, richness of language, etc. elements. This culture does not depend on an individual or a community of people. Even a single country will not be able to change the essence of universal human values. A recent example (by historical standards) is Germany during the time of Hitler. One of the leading countries that has made a huge contribution to world culture, overnight rejected a significant part of the spiritual traditions and wealth accumulated by humanity. The result is known to everyone - it is sad, but logical.
- Spirituality of an individual. Education, knowledge gained in educational institutions, self-education, etc. - all this can be attributed to the means of individual spiritual enrichment. On the basis of these components, a specific personality is formed with his own views on life, love, family, behavior in various situations... Most mature (we are not talking about age, but about the spiritual component) people have their own worldview, based on which they live.
- Joint cultural format. It combines the two previous points. The spirituality of an individual is impossible without a common human culture. The connecting elements between the culture of one individual and common culture multitude. This is religion, philosophy, and scientific knowledge, which a talented scientist uses in his research.
Let's give a hypothetical example. The brilliant pharmacist, whose discovery in medicine saved millions of people, was not born with a ready-made formula, a recipe in his head. He studied long and hard, comprehending the experience accumulated by more than one generation of famous and unknown doctors. The result was the creation of a miracle drug that had previously defeated incurable disease. Almost our entire history consists of such examples (not only in science).
Comparison
There would be no need to compile a table of differences between the two types of crops, since this difference, by and large, is only one. But it is so significant that we still decided to show it more clearly.
Conclusion
As long as humanity has existed, its cultural wealth has been developing, and we are now talking about culture as a whole. And no matter how much pundits, cultural experts and all sorts of ideologists argue about the difference between spiritual and material culture, one must clearly understand that these are two entities that, over the millennia of human civilization, have become so closely intertwined and fused that it is no longer possible to imagine them separately. in isolation from the general development of human history.
Let's give a simple example. The book is one of the greatest inventions in the history of our civilization. The book itself is an object of material culture. However, what is written in it certainly refers to the spiritual world of man. While reading it, he holds in his hands a completely material object that has weight, size, density. And at the same time, a person can experience strong emotions from what they read - suffer and empathize with the virtual characters of the book. This is the clearest indicator of the connection, it would seem completely different types crops
Spiritual culture is science, morality, ethics, law, religion, art, education. Material means tools and means of labor, equipment and structures, production (agricultural and industrial), routes and means of communication, transport, household items.
Material culture is one of the parts of an integral human culture, the results creative activity, in which natural object and its material are embodied in objects, properties and qualities and which ensure human existence. Material culture includes a variety of means of production: energy and raw materials resources, tools, production technology and infrastructure of the human environment, means of communication and transport, buildings and structures for domestic, service and entertainment purposes, various means of consumption, material and object relations in the field of technology or economics.
Spiritual culture is one of the parts of an integral human culture, the total spiritual experience of humanity, intellectual and spiritual activity and its results, ensuring the development of man as an individual. Spiritual culture exists in various forms. Customs, norms, patterns of behavior, values, ideals, ideas, knowledge that have developed in specific historical social conditions are forms of culture. In a developed culture, these components turn into relatively independent spheres of activity and acquire the status of independent social institutions: morality, religion, art, politics, philosophy, science, etc.
Material and spiritual culture exist in close unity. In fact, everything material, obviously, turns out to be a realization of the spiritual, and this spiritual is impossible without some material shell. At the same time, there is a significant difference between material and spiritual culture. First of all, there is a difference in subject matter. It is clear, for example, that tools and, say, musical works are fundamentally different from each other and serve different purposes. The same can be said about the nature of activity in the sphere of material and spiritual culture. In the sphere of material culture, human activity is characterized by changes in the material world, and man deals with material objects. Activities in the field of spiritual culture involve certain work with a system of spiritual values. This also implies a difference in the means of activity and their results in both spheres.
In Russian social science, for a long time, the dominant point of view was that material culture is primary, and spiritual culture has a secondary, dependent, “superstructural” character. This approach assumes that a person must first satisfy his so-called “material” needs in order to then move on to satisfying “spiritual” needs. But even the most basic “material” needs of humans, for example food and drink, are fundamentally different from the seemingly exactly the same biological needs of animals. An animal, by absorbing food and water, really only satisfies its biological needs. In humans, unlike animals, these actions also perform a sign function. There are prestigious, ritual, mourning and festive dishes and drinks, etc. This means that the corresponding actions can no longer be considered the satisfaction of purely biological (material) needs. They are an element of sociocultural symbolism and, therefore, are related to the system social values and norms, i.e. to spiritual culture.
The same can be said about all other elements of material culture. For example, clothing not only protects the body from adverse weather conditions, but also indicates age and gender characteristics, and a person’s place in the community. There are also work, everyday, and ritual types of clothing. The human home has multi-level symbolism. The list can be continued, but the examples given are quite sufficient to conclude that it is impossible to distinguish purely biological (material) needs in the human world. Any human action is already a social symbol that has a meaning that is revealed only in the sphere of culture.
And this means that the position about the primacy of material culture cannot be considered justified for the simple reason that there is no material culture in " pure form"simply doesn't exist.
Thus, the material and spiritual components of culture are inextricably linked with each other.
After all, when creating the objective world of culture, a person cannot do this without changing and transforming himself, i.e. without creating oneself in the process of one's own activity.
Culture turns out to be not only an activity as such, but a way of organizing activity.
Everything a person does, he does ultimately for the sake of solving a given problem.
In this case, human development appears as the improvement of his creative powers, abilities, forms of communication, etc.
Culture, if viewed broadly, includes both material and spiritual means of human life, which are created by man himself.
Material and spiritual things created by human creative labor are called artifacts.
This approach makes it possible to use the cognitive capabilities of a wide variety of research methods created by representatives of the sciences that study culture and have high heuristics.
Culture, if viewed broadly, includes both material and spiritual means of human life, which are created by man himself. Material and spiritual realities created by human creative labor are called artifacts, that is, artificially created. Thus, artifacts, being material or spiritual values, do not have a natural origin, but are conceived and created by man as a creator, although, of course, he uses objects, energy or raw materials of nature as source materials and acts in accordance with laws of nature. Upon closer examination, it turns out that the person himself belongs to the class of artifacts. On the one hand, he arose as a result of the evolution of nature, has a natural origin, lives and acts as a material being, and on the other hand, he is a spiritual and social being, lives and acts as a creator, bearer and consumer of spiritual values. Man, therefore, is a child not only of nature, but also of culture, not so much a biological being as a social one, and his nature is not so much material as spiritual. The essence of a person includes qualities and properties both actually natural, material, primarily biological and physiological, and spiritual, non-material, produced by culture and intellectual work, artistic and scientific creativity. Due to the fact that man by nature is a spiritual-material being, he consumes both material and spiritual artifacts.
To satisfy material needs, he creates and consumes food, clothing, housing, creates equipment, materials, buildings, structures, roads, etc. To satisfy spiritual needs, he creates artistic values, moral and aesthetic ideals, political, ideological and religious ideals, science and art. Therefore, human activity spreads through all channels of both material and spiritual culture. That is why we can consider man as the initial system-forming factor in the development of culture. Man creates and uses the world of things and the world of ideas that revolves around him; and his role is the role of the demiurge, the role of the creator, and his place in culture is the place of the center of the universe of artifacts, that is, the center of culture. Man creates culture, reproduces it and uses it as a means for his own development. He is an architect, builder and inhabitant of that natural world, which is called the culture of the world, “second nature,” the “artificially created” abode of humanity. Culture functions as a living system of values, as a living organism, as long as a person actively acts as a creative, creating and actively acting being. A person organizes flows of values through the channels of culture, he exchanges and distributes them, he preserves, produces and consumes both material and spiritual products of culture, and by carrying out this work, he creates himself as a subject of culture, as a social being.
However, the integrity of culture that a person encounters in everyday life- this is the integrity of a person’s material and spiritual life, the integrity of all those material and spiritual means that he uses in his life every day, that is, it is the integrity of material and spiritual cultures. Material culture is more directly and more directly determined by the qualities and properties of natural objects, that variety of forms of matter, energy and information that are used by man as initial materials or raw materials in the creation of material objects, material products and material means of human existence. Material culture includes artifacts of various types and forms, where a natural object and its material are transformed so that the object is turned into a thing, that is, into an object whose properties and characteristics are specified and produced by human creative abilities so that they more accurately or more fully satisfy human needs as " homo sapiens”, and therefore had a culturally appropriate purpose. Material culture, in another sense of the word, is the human “I” disguised as a thing; this is the spirituality of man embodied in the form of a thing; it is the human soul realized in things; it is the materialized and objectified spirit of humanity.
Material culture includes, first of all, various means of material production. These are energy and raw materials resources of inorganic or organic origin, geological, hydrological or atmospheric components of material production technology. These are tools of labor - from the simplest tool forms to complex machine complexes. These are various means of consumption and products of material production. This various types material and subject, practical activities person. These are material-object relations of a person in the sphere of production technology or in the sphere of exchange, i.e. production relations. However, it should be emphasized that the material culture of humanity is always broader than existing material production. It includes all types of material assets: architectural values, buildings and structures, means of communication and transport, parks and equipped landscapes, etc.
In addition, material culture stores material values of the past - monuments, archaeological sites, equipped natural monuments, etc. Consequently, the volume of material values of culture is wider than the volume of material production, and therefore there is no identity between material culture in general and material production in in particular. In addition, material production itself can be characterized in terms of cultural studies, that is, talk about the culture of material production, the degree of its perfection, the degree of its rationality and civilization, the aesthetics and environmental friendliness of the forms and methods in which it is carried out, about morality and justice of those distributive relations that develop in it. In this sense, they talk about the culture of production technology, the culture of management and its organization, the culture of working conditions, the culture of exchange and distribution.
Human activity is carried out in socio-historical forms of material and spiritual production. Accordingly, material and spiritual production appear as two main spheres of cultural development. On the basis of this, all culture is naturally divided into material and spiritual.
Differences in material and spiritual culture are historically determined by the specific conditions of the division of labor. They are relative: firstly, material and spiritual culture are components of an integral cultural system; secondly, there is an increasing integration of them.
Thus, during the scientific and technological revolution (STR), the role and importance of the material side of spiritual culture increases (the development of media technology - radio, television, computer systems, etc.), and on the other hand, the role of its spiritual side increases in material culture (continuous “learning” of production, the gradual transformation of science into the direct productive force of society, the increasing role of industrial aesthetics, etc.); finally, at the “junction” of material and spiritual culture, phenomena arise that cannot be attributed only to material or only to spiritual culture in its “pure form” (for example, design - artistic construction and artistic design creativity that contributes to the aesthetic formation environment person).
But despite the relativity of the differences between material and spiritual culture, these differences exist, which allows us to consider each of these types of culture as a relatively independent system. The watershed foundation of these systems is valuable. In the very general definition value is everything that has one meaning or another for a person (meaningful for him), and therefore, is, as it were, “humanized.” On the other hand, it contributes to the “cultivation” (cultivation) of the person himself.
Values are divided into natural (everything that exists in the natural environment and is important for humans - these are mineral raw materials and gems, and clean air, and clean water, forest, etc. etc.) and cultural (this is everything that a person has created, which is the result of his activity). In turn, cultural values are divided into material and spiritual, which ultimately determine material and spiritual culture.
Material culture includes the entire set of cultural values, as well as the process of their creation, distribution and consumption, which are designed to satisfy the so-called material needs of man. Material needs, or rather their satisfaction, ensure people’s livelihoods, create the necessary conditions for their existence - this is the need for food, clothing, housing, means of transportation, communications, etc. And in order to satisfy them, people (society) produce food, sew clothes, build houses and other structures, make cars, planes, ships, computers, televisions, telephones, etc. etc. And all this as material values is the sphere of material culture.
It should be noted that material culture is understood not so much as the creation objective world people, how many activities to create “conditions human existence" The essence of material culture is the embodiment of various human needs, allowing people to adapt to biological and social conditions of life.
This sphere of culture is not decisive for a person, i.e. the end in itself of its existence and development. After all, a person does not live in order to eat, but he eats in order to live, and human life is not a simple metabolism like that of some amoeba. A person's life is his spiritual existence. Because generic sign person, i.e. what is inherent only to him and what distinguishes him from other living beings is the mind (consciousness) or otherwise, as they say, the spiritual world, then from here spiritual culture becomes the determining sphere of culture.
Spiritual culture is a set of spiritual values, as well as the process of their creation, distribution and consumption. Spiritual values are designed to satisfy the spiritual needs of a person, i.e. everything that contributes to its development spiritual world(the world of his consciousness). And if material values, with rare exceptions, are fleeting - houses, machines, mechanisms, clothes, vehicles and so on and so forth, then spiritual values can be eternal as long as humanity exists.
Let's say, the philosophical judgments of the ancient Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle are almost two and a half thousand years old, but they are still the same reality as at the time of their expression - just take their works from the library or get information via the Internet.
The concept of spiritual culture:
Contains all areas of spiritual production (art, philosophy, science, etc.),
Shows the socio-political processes occurring in society (we are talking about power structures of management, legal and moral norms, leadership styles, etc.).
The ancient Greeks formed the classic triad of the spiritual culture of mankind: truth - goodness - beauty. Accordingly, three most important value absolutes of human spirituality were identified:
Theoreticism, with an orientation towards truth and the creation of a special essential being, opposite to the ordinary phenomena of life;
This subordinates all other human aspirations to the moral content of life;
Aestheticism that achieves the maximum fullness of life based on emotional and sensory experience.
Thus, spiritual culture is a system of knowledge and ideological ideas inherent in a specific cultural and historical unity or humanity as a whole.
The concept of “spiritual culture” goes back to the historical and philosophical ideas of Wilhelm von Humboldt. According to the theory of historical knowledge he developed, world history is the result of the activity of a spiritual force that lies beyond knowledge, which manifests itself through the creative abilities and personal efforts of individuals. The fruits of this co-creation constitute the spiritual culture of humanity.
Spiritual culture arises due to the fact that a person does not limit himself only to sensory-external experience and does not assign primary importance to it, but recognizes the spiritual experience from which he lives, loves, believes and evaluates all things as the main and guiding one. With this internal spiritual experience, a person determines the meaning and highest goal of external, sensory experience.
A person can realize his or her dreams in different ways. creativity and the fullness of his creative self-expression is achieved through the creation and use of various cultural forms. Each of these forms has its own “specialized” semantic and symbolic system. Let us briefly characterize the truly universal forms of spiritual culture, of which there are six, and in each of which the essence of human existence is expressed in its own way)