Narrative of “Civilization” within Frameworks of Contemporary Philosophy of Culture

Abstract

: This paper examines some philosophical approaches, within frameworks of which have been grounded in the determining influence of characteristics of culture on the whole social field, including the formation of human mental structure. In other words, their authors claim that society and culture are so closely linked, that the process of cultural or civilizational decadence, for example, causes to decline of many key social systems, a separate element of which is the human individual. In the light of the specific dynamic of modern and postmodern cultural reflections, it is worth paying most attention to the encounter of two main approaches in contemporary theory of culture. We are referring to structuralism in its certain variations, including the poststructuralist discourse and, the so-called civilization interpretation. According to representatives of both these directions, it is the culture that is the basis of the social system. The divergence of these approaches consists in their different perspectives on the origins of culture-civilization. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the difference between these two directions