Culture and Civilization: Functional and Methodological Aspects

Abstract

The subject of the authors' study is a relationship between culture and civilization and functions of civilization. The relevance of the article is determined by the peculiarities of contemporary civilization and by transformation of moral values and attitudes. Meanwhile, the concepts of "civilization" and "culture" are the most complicated and controversial concepts in contemporary humanities. Methodological distinction of these concepts can help in revealing of many social and cultural phenomena and processes. The paper's authors use historical and comparative research methods, which, in the opinion of the authors, help to get the most adequate results. The authors give views of famous philosophers and highlight five key differences between the concepts of "civilization" and "culture". Culture and civilization are not opposite towards each other, but they are different in their nature. Culture is a creation, it's basically individual; civilization is a transition from the creation (culture) to the acquisition and conservation of cultural results for everybody. There is no civilization without culture. Civilization is its natural and necessary extension; it allows to replicate cultural patterns and to create conditions for further creation in the form of stabilization of social relations for future generations. So, civilization as a sustainable socio-cultural formation realizes various functions. The authors define some functions of civilization. There are adaptive, regulating, unifying, repressive functions. If we compare functional features of civilization, peculiarities of culture and civilization we can come to the conclusion that civilization influences on the person externally. In civilization a person is an object, an individual, one among many people. Culture influences on a person also, but a person here is not only an object in it, it's a subject who creates by means of his internal potential and contrary to existing civilizational norms. A struggle between external influence on a person expressed in various regulations and his internal potential promotes the development of a man. In the context of functional characteristic features of civilization, the authors come to the conclusion that civilization is a necessary condition for development of culture and human development.