Spirova E.M. Russian Traditions of the Philosophical Concept of Culture

Abstract: The subject of the research is the evolution of cultural philosophical views in Russia. Russian philosophy of culture has solid philosophical traditions. Generally speaking, Russian philosophy has a wide scope of cultural and philosophical issues such as culture and civilization, cultural diversity, equality or hierarchy of cultures and hierarchy of values in culture. Throughout the XIXth century spiritual attitudes and dominating worldview tendencies had been changing. Russian philosophy underwent the periods of Romanticism in the 20s - 30s of the XIXth century, Slavophilism and Westernism of the 40s- 50s and passionate nihilism and materialism of the 60s. In the 70s Vladimir Solovyov started his preachment about the universal all-encompassing unity and integral knowledge. In the second half of the century the development of the social thought was associated with the Narodniks movement. Even though those were absolutely incompatible prerequisites, the philosophers had the same goal to teach a man his own ways of life based on the principles of human nature. In the course of her research Spirova has used the methodology of history research. In addition, she based her research on cultural and philosophical classical works that connected cultural issues with the overall process of social progress. For the first time in the academic literature the author of the article examines Russian traditions developed in the sphere of philosophy of culture. The author shows that in Russia philosophy of culture often preceded European philosophy in stating particular issues of historical development. Long before Oswald Spengler, Nikolay Danilevsky raised the question about cultural diversity and historical fate of different cultures. Konstantin Leontyev discovered crisis processes in culture long before that topic was acknowledged by European philosopher. The author of the present research also demonstrates diversity of cultural philosophical themes in Russian philosophy. 

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