Цивилизационные исследования: сложности реализации

Abstract

The article examines the methodological problems arising in the transition from the study of individual countries to the study of civilizations. Three circles of problems are distinguished. The first is associated with the limitedness of our empirical knowledge of the history and culture of civilizations. It can only be overcome by the philosophical, i.e. theoretical approach. However, when using philosophical methods, we find ourselves in two hermeneutic circles. The hermeneutic “circle of the historian” arises when we make an uncritical choice of historical events when substantiating the foundations of civilization. The hermeneutic “citizen circle” is associated with the choice of our civil position as a civilized person in real politics. Both cognitive problems have a pronounced ideological character and have a direct impact on civilizational research. The problem of the “hermeneutic circle” always arises when, using simple pairs of categories, they try to consider the interdependence of complex subject-subject relations. But the natural uniqueness of the human person cannot be transferred to another object of study. The category “singularity” poses to philosophers the problem of the unity of cultural forms. Paired categories “cause – effect”, “matter – forms” can be used to understand the relationship “civilization and culture”. The article shows that the forms of social life: religion, state, nationality, language, professional relations have their own cause-and-effect relationships, which can be interpreted in the categorical pair “civilization – culture”. This leads to the emergence of a contradiction between “science” and “ideology” at each stage of the study of civilizations. The task of the philosopher is to create such a concept of civilization so that individual forms of culture are described as complementary to each other.