Phenomenology of Culture and Issues of Culturology in L.N. Kogan’s Academic Work

Abstract

The article examines the creative and theoretical aspects of the scientific activity of Lev Naumovich Kogan (1923—1997), an outstanding Russian scholar, Doctor of Philosophy, Professor of the Ural State University. The uniqueness of L.N. Kogan’s creative activity was rooted not only in his manifold scholarly interests, which included philosophy and culturology, political science and sociology, ethics and aesthetics, but also in his special spiritual potential, manifested both in research and in pedagogical areas. The methodological basis of the scholar’s theoretical heritage was culture — creative and political, economic and ecological, everyday and industrial. The article shows that L.N. Kogan’s interest in phenomenology of culture coincided with the period of emergence and development of Russian culturology (1960s—1980s), when the field of humanities engaged in exploration and development of its specific culturological methodology and when the first conceptual studies in the theory and history of culture were published. The author points out that in his works, L.N. Kogan raised a wide range of humanistic ideas — the purpose and meaning of human life, the issues of an individual’s socialization and self-realization, the moral responsibility of a person before History, before Eternity. L.N. Kogan’s academic legacy, which includes about 450 works published in the USSR, in Russia and abroad, is still relevant in the theoretical and practical space of culturology and other humanities.