Culture is an important part of the publicconsciousness. It is a means of forming a social personality, a sphere of people's communication and realization of their creative potential. The sphere of spiritual culture and its features are the object of study of philosophers, culturologists, intellectuals, who seek to determine the role of spiritual culture in society and in human development.
Human life in the whole historydevelops into a culture. This concept covers the widest sphere of people's lives. The meaning of the word "culture" - "cultivation", "processing" (originally - the earth) - is due to the fact that through various actions the person transforms the surrounding reality and himself. Culture - a purely human phenomenon, animals, in contrast to people, adapt to the world, and a man adapts to their needs and needs. In the course of these transformations, it is created.
In connection with the fact that the spheres of spiritual cultureextremely diverse, a single definition of the concept of "culture" does not exist. There are several approaches to its interpretation: idealistic, materialistic, functionalist, structuralist, psychoanalytic. In each of them, separate aspects of this concept are highlighted. In the broadest sense, culture is the entire transformative activity of a person, directed both outside and inside itself. In the narrow - this is the creative activity of man, expressed in the creation of works of various arts.
Despite the fact that culture is a complex,complex phenomenon, there is a tradition to divide it into material and spiritual. It is customary to refer to the field of material culture all the results of human activity embodied in various subjects. This is the world surrounding people: buildings, roads, household utensils, clothing, as well as a variety of techniques and technologies. Spheres of spiritual culture are associated with the production of ideas. These include theories, philosophical teachings, moral norms, scientific knowledge. However, often this division is purely conventional. How, for example, to divide works of such kinds of art as cinema and theater? After all, the play combines the idea, the literary basis, the actors' play, as well as the subject matter.
The question of the origin of culture is stillcauses lively disputes between representatives of different sciences. Social science, the sphere of spiritual culture for which is an important research area, proves that cultural genesis is inextricably linked with the formation of society. The prerequisite for survival of primitive man was the ability to adapt to his needs the world around him and his ability to co-exist in a team: it was impossible to survive alone. The formation of culture was not instantaneous, but was a long evolutionary process. Man learns to transfer social experience, creating for this purpose a system of rituals and signals, speech. He has new needs, in particular the desire for beauty, social and cultural values are being formed. All this becomes a platform for the formation of spiritual culture. Comprehension of the surrounding reality, the search for cause-effect relationships lead to the formation of a mythological worldview. It symbolically explains the surrounding world and allows a person to navigate in life.
From mythology, over time, all spheres grow.spiritual culture. The human world evolves and becomes more complicated, and at the same time, information and ideas about the world become more complicated, special areas of knowledge are allocated. Today the question of what includes the sphere of spiritual culture, has several options for an answer. In the traditional sense, it includes religion, politics, philosophy, morality, art, science. There is also a broader view, according to which the language, the system of knowledge, values and plans of humanity for the future are included in the spiritual sphere. In the most narrow interpretation of the sphere of spirituality, art, philosophy and ethics are regarded as the domain of ideals.
The first of the mythological worldviewreligion stands out. All spheres of spiritual culture, including religion, represent a special set of values, ideals and norms that serve as reference points in a person's life. Faith is the basis for world understanding, especially for man of antiquity. Science and religion are two antagonistic ways of explaining the world, but each of them is a system of ideas about how man was created and everything that surrounds him. The specificity of religion is that it appeals to faith, and not to knowledge. The main function of religion as a form of spiritual life is worldview. It sets the man a framework of worldview and world perception, gives meaning to existence. Also, religion fulfills a regulative function: it manages the relations of people in society and their activities. In addition to these, faith carries out communicative, legitimizing and cultural-transfer functions. Thanks to religion, many outstanding ideas and phenomena appeared, it was the source of the concept of humanism.
Moral and spiritual culture is the foundationregulation of the relationship between people in society. Morality is a system of values and ideas about what is evil and good, about the meaning of people's lives and the principles of their mutual relations in society. Often researchers consider ethics to be the highest form of spirituality. Morality is a specific sphere of spiritual culture, and its features are due to the fact that it is an unwritten law of people's behavior in society. It is an unspoken social contract, according to which all peoples consider the highest value of a person and his life. The main public functions of morality are:
- regulatory - this specific functionis to control people's behavior, and no institutions and organizations that control people are over them. Fulfilling moral requirements, a person is motivated by a unique mechanism called conscience. Morality establishes rules that ensure the interaction of people;
- an appraisal-imperative, ie, a function that allows people to understand what is good and what is evil;
- educational - it is thanks to her that the moral image of the personality is formed.
Also, ethics performs a number of such socially significant functions as cognitive, communicative, orienting, prognostic.
Human activities aimed at creativetransformation and knowledge of the world, is called art. The main need that a person satisfies with the help of art is an aesthetic one. The desire for beauty and self-expression is in the nature of man. Areas of art are focused on creative mastery and knowledge of the possibilities of the world. Like other spheres of spiritual culture, art performs cognitive, communicative, transformative functions. But in addition, art performs recreational, emotional and aesthetic functions. It allows a person to express his inner worldview, to share his emotions and his ideas about the beautiful and ugly. Spectacular arts - cinema and theater - have a powerful effect, so this form of spiritual culture also has a suggestive function. Art has unique properties, it can cause different people to have the same emotions and unite them. Art in a non-verbal form is capable of communicating ideas and meanings intelligibly and effectively.
Cinema is one of the youngest and at the same timemost mass arts. His story compared to the millennial history of music, painting or theater is short. At the same time, cinema halls are filled daily by millions of spectators, and even more people watch films on television. Cinema has a powerful impact on the minds and hearts of young people.
Today, theater is less popular than cinema.With the ubiquity of television, he lost some of his appeal. In addition, theater tickets are now expensive. Therefore, we can say that visiting the famous theater has become a luxury. Yet the theater is an integral part of the intellectual life of each country and reflects the state of society and the minds of the nation.
Philosophy - the oldest intellectualhuman activity. Like other spheres of spiritual culture, it grows out of mythology. It organically combines the features of religion, art and science. Philosophers satisfy an important need of people to gain meaning. The main questions of being (what is the world, what is the meaning of life) receive different answers in philosophy, but allow a person to choose his own way of life. Its most important functions are ideological and axiological, it helps a person to build his own system of views and criteria for assessing the world around him. Also, philosophy performs epistemological, critical, prognostic and educational functions.
The most recently formed sphere of spiritualculture has become a science. Its formation is rather slow, and it is designed primarily to explain the structure of the world. Science and religion are forms of overcoming the mythological worldview. But unlike religion, science is a system of objective, verifiable knowledge and is built according to the laws of logic. The leading need that man satisfies through science is cognitive. People tend to ask different questions, and the search for answers gives rise to science. Science from all other spheres of spiritual culture is distinguished by strict evidence and verifiability of postulates. Thanks to it the universal objective picture of the world is formed. The main social functions of science are cognitive, worldview, practice-transformative, communicative, educational and regulative. Unlike philosophy, science is based on a system of objective knowledge that is verifiable in the course of experiments.
