1. Attributions of the term "civilization". The term "civilization" was introduced relatively recently - about two centuries ago - by the French Enlightenment to refer to a civil society in which freedom, justice, and the legal system reign. But soon this quickly taken root concept began to be given completely different meanings. So, the American ethnographer of the XIX century. L.-G. Morgan, followed by F. Engels, defined civilization as a stage in the development of human society, which came after primitive savagery and barbarism and was characterized by the emergence of private property, classes and the state. The English historian and sociologist A. D. Toynbee, using the term "civilization" in the plural, put forward the theory of the circulation of successive local civilizations, which were dynamic cultural and historical systems. English ethnographer of the 19th century. E. Tylor did not distinguish between the concepts of "culture" and "civilization", believing that they mean "knowledge, beliefs, arts, morality, laws, customs and other other abilities and habits acquired by a person as a member of society."

Many more definitions of the concept of "civilization" can be given in order to make sure that there is no strictly defined definition of it. Although the concept of "civilization" has entered the thesaurus of a number of sciences: history, ethnography, philosophy, cultural studies, and others, its generally accepted definition still does not exist. Having studied in the course of a detailed and comprehensive discussion the existing approaches to determining the essence of civilization in science, B. S. Erasov proposed a generalized concept of civilization, which includes the following provisions:

- civilization is a complex socio-cultural system that has its own patterns of development that affect both the material culture and the spiritual life of its society;

- civilization is original, separate, has its own historical destiny;

- Civilization is characterized by dynamics, covering long historical periods, during which it goes through the phases of genesis: growth - maturation - withering - decline - decay. Dynamics is determined by internal laws inherent in each civilization;

- civilization has its own structure, in which value-semantic and institutional (economic, social, political) components of the development of society enter into a certain ratio.

Civilization performs the following functions:

- implements the unity of the spiritual life of a large-scale community, consisting of various ethnic groups, developed and undeveloped peoples, residents of the periphery and the center;

- maintains continuity in the existence of society for a long time (centuries and millennia), as it solves the problem of the relationship between the past, present and future;

– regulates various types of life activity of societies through the connection of a subjective (personal) factor;

- maintains the unity of society through the regulation of the principles of universality and strict hierarchical regulation;

- coordinates interaction with other cultures and civilizations.

The concept of civilization proposed by B. S. Erasov contains an extremely important idea that civilization is a complex multi-component socio-cultural system that has specific mechanisms of self-regulation.

Another domestic scientist, Yu. V. Yakovets, having studied the experience of considering the theory of civilization in Western European science, proposed to clearly distinguish between the meanings attached to this word, so he introduces the concepts of “world civilization” and “local civilizations”. World civilization is a stage in the history of mankind, characterized by a certain level of needs, abilities, knowledge, skills and interests of a person, technological and economic methods of production, a system of political and social relations, a level of development of spiritual reproduction (culture, morality, ideology).

Local civilizations express the cultural, historical, ethnic, religious, economic and geographical features of a particular country, group of countries, ethnic groups, connected by a common destiny, which reflects and refracts the rhythm of general historical progress.

Yu. V. Yakovets believes that his approach is based on the primacy of man: taking into account the needs, knowledge, skills, spiritual world of a person of a particular civilization. He even explains the development of productive forces - one of the determining factors of historical progress - by the emergence of new human needs, which are supported by his knowledge, abilities, skills, desire and will.

In accordance with the proposed classification, Yu. V. Yakovets distinguishes seven world civilizations: neolithic, early class, ancient, medieval, pre-industrial, industrial, post-industrial. The change of world civilizations expresses successive stages in the development of human society, determined by the epicenters of historical progress. For the first three world civilizations, the epicenters of progress were located in the Mediterranean region, the Near, Middle and Far East, Hindustan. Here, on the lands of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine, Asia Minor, India, China, Persia, Central Asia, the Balkan and Apennine Peninsulas, local civilizations existed for a long time.

World civilizations were polycentric, they included a number of local civilizations that appeared at different times (with a gap of millennia), had their own rhythm and trajectory of the flow of historical processes, but disintegrated both as a result of conquests or the completion of internal cycles of development, and as a result of weakening and death world civilizations.

2. Criteria of civilizations that arose in the era of the Ancient World. The International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, as well as the authors of the multi-volume History of Humanity, name the criteria for the first civilizations in the history of mankind, which manifested themselves in the economic, socio-political, intellectual spheres of society.

Civilization occurs when a society achieves significant success in food production, the development of crafts and management skills, when a system of economic relations appears based on the division of labor. The means of production, including living labor, fall under the control of the emerging political elite, which organizes and redistributes the surplus product, withdrawing it from the producer through dues or taxes. The emergence of a network of regular exchange, controlled by the merchants or the emerging state administration, deepens the contradictions that have arisen in society. The tribal organization based on descent and kinship is replaced by the sacralized power of the chief and the tribal elite, which is based on coercion.

The formation of civilization is accompanied by transformations in ethics (norms of behavior), worldview principles, and ideas. New value orientations developed by the elite become the driving force of history.

The intellectual criteria of civilization include: the creation of exact and predictive sciences (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy); the introduction of generally accepted symbols for the preservation and transmission of information (the appearance of writing in the form of picture writing and notation of numbers); fixing measures of weight, time, space; the development of aesthetic forms of consciousness - various types of art, pushing aside the forms of folk art.

The flourishing of civilizations occurs in conditions of political and cultural independence.

The main architects of civilization are usually considered the agricultural communities of the valleys of large rivers: the Nile, Euphrates, Tigris, Indus, because it was here that alphabetic writing, works of plastic arts and the construction of monumental buildings appeared, astronomical calculations began to be carried out, measurement of time using solar and lunar calendars; mythology was created here, based on physical experience and folk memory.

Of course, we must not forget that behind these external signs of civilization were processes of an internal, deep nature, characterizing the level of development of society (as mentioned above).

3. Civilization and culture. For many decades, since the word "civilization" entered the scientific circulation, disputes around this concept, which is often identified with the concept of "culture", have not ceased.

The etymology of the word "culture" goes back to the Latin root of the verb "colere", which had two meanings: "revere" and "cultivate". In modern Russian, both are preserved in the same root formations: "cult" and "cultivate, cultivation."

The first meaning - “cult” brings culture closer to the concept of faith, sometimes put forward as akin to it, accompanying it, sometimes as the opposite, when there is no genuine worship, service to culture.

The second meaning - "cultivating", at the dawn of history associated with the peasant consciousness, - over time, acquired a general cultural meaning: the cultivation of the land as a peaceful conquest of space, its subordination to oneself, a change in its status. With the first furrow drawn on the earth, man separated himself from nature, left the former state of unconditional dependence on it. Now he lived by the fruits of his own hands, forcing nature to serve him. By creating a second nature, man gave rise to his cultural activity.

In the future, the word "culture" increasingly began to correlate with the "soul". In the works of the Roman philosopher and statesman of the 1st c. BC e. M. Tullius Cicero, there are expressions “cultivation of the soul”, “culture of the soul”. Well acquainted with the heritage of ancient Greek culture, Cicero believed that education, science, philosophy, various arts do not exhaust the concept of "culture". Genuine culture for Cicero is a special way of life, in which the spiritual state of a person and the interests of the state are inseparable unity. Trying to bring this speculative socio-political ideal closer, Cicero attached great importance to public speaking before citizens. The word for him was the most important sign of a cultured person - he attributed everyone who did not speak the word to the barbarians. Cicero sought to arouse the interest of educated Romans in philosophy, because it was with philosophy that he associated the "cultivation of the soul", "weeding out vices in the soul" and obtaining a "bountiful harvest" of noble ideas and intentions that could strengthen civil peace and the foundation of republican government.

In modern cultural anthropology, the category "culture" denotes the content of the joint life and activities of people, related to biologically non-inherited (memorized) phenomena and artificial objects created by people (artifacts). The subject area of ​​the study of culture is organized collections of artificial material objects, ideas and images; technologies for their manufacture and operation; sustainable relations between people and ways to regulate them with the help of forms and models of culture (schemes of perception, feeling, thinking, behavior, action); evaluation criteria available in society (sociocultural norms and value formations). Thus, culture is understood as an artificial environment created by people for existence and self-realization, which includes mechanisms for regulating social interaction and behavior.

The concept of "civilization" (from Latin - civil) also appeared in ancient Rome. As a rule, it was used to emphasize the insurmountable differences between the ancient society and the barbarian environment. Since the barbarian world was associated with a primitive, archaic way of life, lack of education, ignorance and wild behavior of its inhabitants, the underdevelopment of civil society, the insecurity of man from the manifestations of the despotic power of kings, against this background, ancient society looked like a fundamentally new stage in the development of mankind, based on respect for the individual. citizen, the protection of his rights and freedoms, the availability of education and outstanding cultural achievements.

When the concepts of "civilization" and "culture" are given an evaluative meaning and begin to be judged from the point of view of the value system adopted in a particular society, assuming the use of exemplary "measures" of the historical maturity of cultural forms, this leads to their convergence, and sometimes identification (as in the works of P. A. Holbach and A. D. Toynbee). However, this is not entirely legitimate, since cultures are not “best” or “worst”, but only different. They are not located in a single-line historical sequence according to the principle “from the lowest to the highest”, but are a collection of cultures that are equivalent, although different from each other, corresponding to different types and forms of human society. Such an approach cannot be considered justified when a person is seen only as a "set of social relations", the essential characteristics of which are derived from the social structure and the method of production of material goods, although in this case, "culture" approaches "civilization", if we mean "world civilization" as a major, objectively determined stage in the development of society. Such a contrast between “culture” and “civilization” looks rather superficial, when the concept of “culture” is narrowed down to a characteristic of the inner world of a person: his education, good breeding, the perfection of his soul, controlled by ideals and values, and only the mechanism and form of integration are associated with the concept of “civilization”. person into larger and more organized communities (for example, an urban community).

The relationship between culture and civilization is more complex than the oppositions of "spiritual" and "material" that we have noted.

Culture is a set of spiritual possibilities of human society at one stage or another of development. Civilization is a set of conditions necessary for the realization of these possibilities. Culture sets the goals and meanings of social and personal existence. Civilization provides forms of social organization, technical means, rules of social behavior. Civilization turns the ideal plans of culture into real programs, in the implementation of which masses of people are involved. Civilization determines the place and role of each person in culture, establishes the rules of human society, in which they find a more or less adequate expression of the goals and ideals of culture.

Civilization is the historically determined boundaries of culture, the limit of its possibilities. Borders can expand, increasing the space of culture. But they can also shrink, holding back cultural incentives, narrowing the cultural world.

Civilizations create the social body of cultures, protecting them from barbarism and destruction. They characterize the unity of cultural and social.

Civilization

Civilizations

One of the first to introduce the concept of "civilization" into scientific circulation was the philosopher Adam Ferguson, who meant by the term a stage in the development of human society, characterized by the existence of social classes, as well as cities, writing and other similar phenomena. The staged periodization of world history proposed by the Scottish scientist (savagery - barbarism - civilization) enjoyed support in scientific circles at the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th century, but with the growing popularity at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century of the plural-cyclic approach to history, under the general concept of "civilization ” began to mean “local civilizations” as well.

The emergence of the term

An attempt to establish the time of the appearance of the term was one of the first made by the French historian Lucien Febvre. In his work “Civilization: the evolution of a word and a group of ideas”, the scientist came to the conclusion that for the first time the term appears in printed form in the work “Antiquity, exposed in its customs” () by the French engineer Boulanger.

When a savage people becomes civilized, by no means should the act of civilizations be considered complete after the people have been given clear and indisputable laws: they must regard the legislation given to them as a continuing civilization.

However, this book was published after the death of the author and, moreover, not in its original version, but already with significant proofreading made by Baron Holbach, a well-known author of neologisms in that era. The authorship of Holbach seems even more likely to Fevre in the light of the fact that Boulanger mentioned the term once in his work, while Holbach repeatedly used the concepts of "civilization", "civilize", "civilized" in his works "The System of Society" and "The System of Nature". Since that time, the term has been included in scientific circulation, and in 1798 it first enters the Dictionary of the Academy.

The Swiss cultural historian Jean Starobinsky does not mention either Boulanger or Holbach in his research. In his opinion, the authorship of the term "civilization" belongs to Victor Mirabeau and his work "Friend of Humanity" ().

Nevertheless, both authors note that before the term acquired a socio-cultural meaning (as a stage of culture opposed to savagery and barbarism), it had a legal meaning - a judicial decision that transfers the criminal process to the category of civil processes - which was lost over time.

The same evolution (from legal to social meaning) the word took place in England, but there it appeared in the printed edition fifteen years after the publication of Mirabeau's book (). Nevertheless, the circumstances of the mention of this word indicate that the word came into use even earlier, which also explains the speed of its further distribution. Benveniste's research indicates that the emergence of the word civilization (one letter difference) in the UK was almost synchronous. It was introduced into scientific circulation by the Scottish philosopher Adam Ferguson, the author of the essay “An Essay on the History of Civil Society” (in the Russian translation “Experience in the history of civil society”) (), where already on the second page he noted:

The path from infancy to maturity is made not only by each individual, but by the human race itself, moving from savagery to civilization. original text(English) Not only the individual advances from infancy to manhood, but the species itself from rudeness to civilization.

And although Benveniste left open the question of the authorship of the term, the possible borrowing of the concept by Ferguson from the French lexicon or from the early works of his colleagues, it was the Scottish scientist who first used the concept of "civilization" in the theoretical periodization of world history, where he contrasted it with savagery and barbarity. Since that time, the fate of this term has been closely intertwined with the development of historiosophical thought in Europe.

Civilization as a stage of social development

The periodization proposed by Ferguson continued to be very popular not only in the last third of the 18th century. but throughout most of the 19th century. It was fruitfully used by Lewis Morgan ("Ancient Society";) and Friedrich Engels ("The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State";).

Civilization as a stage of social development is characterized by the separation of society from nature and the emergence of contradictions between natural and artificial factors in the development of society. At this stage, social factors of human life activity prevail, the rationalization of thinking progresses. This stage of development is characterized by the predominance of artificial productive forces over natural ones.

Also, signs of civilization include: the development of agriculture and crafts, a class society, the existence of a state, cities, trade, private property and money, as well as monumental construction, a “sufficiently” developed religion, writing, etc. Academician B.S. Erasov identified the following criteria that distinguish civilization from the stage of barbarism:

1. A system of economic relations based on the division of labor - horizontal (professional and social specialization) and vertical (social stratification).
2. The means of production (including living labor) are controlled by the ruling class, which centralizes and redistributes the surplus product withdrawn from primary producers through quitrents or taxes, as well as through the use of labor for public works.
3. The presence of a network of exchange controlled by professional merchants or the state, which supplants the direct exchange of products and services.
4. A political structure dominated by a stratum of society that concentrates executive and administrative functions in its hands. The tribal organization based on descent and kinship is replaced by the power of the ruling class based on coercion; the state, which ensures the system of social class relations and the unity of the territory, forms the basis of the civilizational political system.

Local civilizations and a pluralistic-cyclical view of history

Study of local civilizations

First time word civilization was used in two meanings in the book of the French writer and historian Pierre Simon Ballanche "The Old Man and the Young Man" (). Later, the same use of it is found in the book of Orientalists Eugene Burnouf and Christian Lassen "Essay on Pali" (1826), in the works of the famous traveler and explorer Alexander von Humboldt and a number of other thinkers. Using the second meaning of the word civilization contributed to the French historian François Guizot, who repeatedly used the term in the plural, but nevertheless remained faithful to the linear-stage scheme of historical development.

Joseph Gobineau

First time term local civilization appeared in the work of the French philosopher Charles Renouvier "Guide to Ancient Philosophy" (). A few years later, the book of the French writer and historian Joseph Gobineau "Experience on the inequality of human races" (1853-1855) saw the light, in which the author singled out 10 civilizations, each of which goes its own way of development. Having arisen, each of them dies sooner or later, and Western civilization is no exception. However, the thinker was not at all interested in cultural, social, economic differences between civilizations: he was only concerned with the common thing that was in the history of civilizations - the rise and fall of the aristocracy. Therefore, his historiosophical concept is indirectly related to the theory of local civilizations and directly related to the ideology of conservatism.

Ideas consonant with the works of Gobineau were also expressed by the German historian Heinrich Rückert, who came to the conclusion that the history of mankind is not a single process, but the sum of parallel processes of cultural and historical organisms that cannot be placed on the same line. The German researcher first drew attention to the problem of the boundaries of civilizations, their mutual influence, structural relations within them. At the same time, Ruckert continued to consider the whole world as an object of European influence, which led to the presence in his concept of relics of a hierarchical approach to civilizations, the denial of their equivalence and self-sufficiency.

N. Ya. Danilevsky

The first to look at civilizational relations through the prism of non-Eurocentric self-consciousness was the Russian sociologist Nikolai Yakovlevich Danilevsky, who in his book "Russia and Europe" () contrasted the aging European civilization with the young Slavic one. The Russian ideologue of pan-Slavism pointed out that not a single cultural-historical type can claim to be considered more developed, higher than the rest. Western Europe is no exception in this respect. Although the philosopher does not endure this thought to the end, sometimes pointing to the superiority of the Slavic peoples over their Western neighbors.

Oswald Spengler

The next significant event in the development of the theory of local civilizations was the work of the German philosopher and culturologist Oswald Spengler "The Decline of Europe" (). It is not known for certain whether Spengler was familiar with the work of the Russian thinker, but nevertheless, the main conceptual provisions of these scientists are similar in all important points. Like Danilevsky, resolutely rejecting the generally accepted conditional periodization of history into "Ancient World - Middle Ages - Modern Times", Spengler advocated a different view of world history - as a series of cultures independent of each other, living, like living organisms, periods of origin, formation and dying. Like Danilevsky, he criticizes Eurocentrism and proceeds not from the needs of historical research, but from the need to find answers to the questions posed by modern society: in the theory of local cultures, the German thinker finds an explanation for the crisis of Western society, which is experiencing the same decline that befell the Egyptian , antique and other ancient cultures. Spengler's book contained not so many theoretical innovations in comparison with the previously published works of Rückert and Danilevsky, but it was a resounding success, because it was written in bright language, replete with facts and reasoning, and was published after the end of the First World War, which caused complete disappointment in Western civilization and exacerbated the crisis of Eurocentrism.

A much more significant contribution to the study of local civilizations was made by the English historian Arnold Toynbee. In his 12-volume work "Comprehension of History" (1934-1961), the British scientist divided the history of mankind into a number of local civilizations that have the same internal development scheme. The rise, rise and fall of civilizations has been characterized by such factors as external Divine impulse and energy, challenge and response, and departure and return. There are many common features in the views of Spengler and Toynbee. The main difference is that Spengler's cultures are completely isolated from each other. For Toynbee, these relations, although they have an external character, are part of the life of civilizations themselves. It is extremely important for him that some societies, joining others, thus ensure the continuity of the historical process.

Russian researcher Yu. V. Yakovets, based on the work of Daniel Bell and Alvin Toffler, formulated the concept world civilizations as a certain stage "in the historical rhythm of the dynamics and genetics of society as an integral system in which mutually intertwined, complementing each other, material and spiritual reproduction, economics and politics, social relations and culture" . The history of mankind in his interpretation is presented as a rhythmic change of civilizational cycles, the duration of which is inexorably reduced.

Deployment of civilization in time (according to B. N. Kuzyk, Yu. B. Yakovets)

global civilization	World civilizations	Generations of local civilizations	Local civilizations
First historical supercycle (8th millennium BC - 1st millennium AD)	Neolithic (8-4 thousand BC) Early class (late 4th - early 1st millennium BC)	1st generation (late 4th - early 1st millennium BC)	Ancient Egyptian, Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Hellenic, Minoan, Indian, Chinese
	Antique (VIII century BC - V century AD)	2nd generation (VIII century BC - V century AD)	Greco-Roman, Persian, Phoenician, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Ancient American
The second historical supercycle (VI-XX centuries)	Medieval (VI-XIV centuries)	3rd generation (VI-XIV centuries)	Byzantine, Eastern European, Eastern Slavic, Chinese, Indian, Japanese
	Early industrial (XV - mid-XVIII century) Industrial (mid-18th-20th centuries)	4th generation (XV-XX centuries)	Western, Eurasian, Buddhist, Muslim, Chinese, Indian, Japanese
The third historical supercycle of the XXI-XXIII centuries. (forecast)	post-industrial	5th generation (XXI - beginning of the XXIII century - forecast)	Western European, Eastern European, North American, Latin American, Oceanic, Russian, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Muslim, Buddhist, African

Criteria for the selection of civilizations, their number

However, attempts to introduce criteria for distinguishing civilizations have been made more than once. The Russian historian E. D. Frolov, in one of his works, listed their most common set: common geopolitical conditions, primordial linguistic kinship, unity or proximity of the economic and political system, culture (including religion) and mentality. Following Spengler and Toynbee, the scientist admitted that "the original quality of civilization is due to the original property of each of the structure-forming elements and their unique unity."

Cycles of civilizations

At the present stage, scientists distinguish the following cycles of civilizational development: origin, development, flourishing and extinction. However, not all local civilizations go through all stages of the life cycle, unfolding on a full scale in time. The cycle of some of them is interrupted due to natural disasters (this happened, for example, with the Minoan civilization) or clashes with other cultures (the pre-Columbian civilizations of Central and South America, the Scythian proto-civilization).

At the stage of origin, a social philosophy of a new civilization arises, which appears at a marginal level during the completion of the pre-civilizational stage (or the heyday of the crisis of the previous civilizational system). Its components include behavioral stereotypes, forms of economic activity, criteria for social stratification, methods and goals of political struggle. Since many societies were never able to overcome the civilizational threshold and remained at the stage of savagery or barbarism, scientists have long tried to answer the question: “assuming that in primitive society all people had a more or less the same way of life, which corresponded to a single spiritual and material environment, why did not all these societies develop into civilizations? According to Arnold Toynbee, civilizations give birth, evolve and adapt in response to various "challenges" of the geographical environment. Accordingly, those societies that found themselves in stable natural conditions tried to adapt to them without changing anything, and vice versa - a society that experienced regular or sudden changes in the environment inevitably had to realize its dependence on the natural environment, and in order to weaken this dependence to counter it with a dynamic transformational process.

At the stage of development, an integral social order is formed and develops, reflecting the basic guidelines of the civilizational system. Civilization is formed as a certain model of the individual's social behavior and the corresponding structure of social institutions.

The flourishing of a civilizational system is associated with the qualitative completeness in its development, the final folding of the main systemic institutions. The heyday is accompanied by the unification of the civilizational space and the activation of the imperial policy, which, accordingly, symbolizes the stoppage of the qualitative self-development of the social system as a result of the relatively complete implementation of the basic principles and the transition from dynamic to static, protective. This forms the basis of a civilizational crisis - a qualitative change in the dynamics, driving forces, and basic forms of development.

At the stage of extinction, civilization enters the stage of crisis development, extreme aggravation of social, economic, political conflicts, and spiritual break. The weakening of internal institutions makes society vulnerable to external aggression. As a result, civilization perishes either in the course of internal turmoil, or as a result of conquest.

Criticism

Pitirim Sorokin

The concepts of Danilevsky, Spengler and Toynbee were ambiguously received by the scientific community. Although their works are considered fundamental works in the field of studying the history of civilizations, their theoretical developments have met with serious criticism. One of the most consistent critics of civilizational theory was the Russian-American sociologist Pitirim Sorokin, who pointed out that “the most serious mistake of these theories is the confusion of cultural systems with social systems (groups), that the name “civilization” is given to significantly different social groups. and their common cultures - either ethnic, then religious, then state, then territorial, then various multifactorial groups, or even a conglomerate of different societies with their inherent combined cultures, ”as a result of which neither Toynbee nor his predecessors could name the main criteria for isolating civilizations, just like their exact number.

Historian-orientalist L. B. Alaev notes that all criteria for distinguishing civilizations (genetic, natural, religious) are extremely vulnerable. And since there are no criteria, it is impossible to formulate the concept of "civilization", which is still the subject of controversy, as well as their boundaries and quantity. In addition, the civilizational approach appeals to concepts that go beyond the scope of science and, as a rule, are associated with “spirituality”, transcendence, fate, etc. All this calls into question the actual scientific nature of the doctrine of civilizations. The scientist notes that ideas similar to him are usually raised to the shield by the elites of the countries of peripheral capitalism, who prefer instead of backwardness to talk about the "originality" and "special path" of their countries, opposing the "spiritual" East to the "material, decaying, hostile" West, provoking and supporting anti-Western moods. The Russian analogue of such ideas is Eurasianism.

At present (2011), the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations continues its activities. (English) Russian which holds annual conferences and publishes the Comparative Civilizations Review.

Notes

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• Semyonov Yu.I. Philosophy of history. (General theory, main problems, ideas and concepts from antiquity to the present day). - M .: Modern notebooks, 2003. - 776 p. - 2500 copies. - ISBN 5-88289-208-2
• Kuzyk B. N., Yakovets Y. V. Civilizations: theory, history, dialogue, future: In 2 volumes. - M .: Institute of Economic Strategies, 2006. - Vol. 1: Theory and History of Civilizations. - 768 p. - 5000 copies. -

What is the life cycle of civilizations in Toynbee's concept? Are the terms of their life predetermined or nothing forbids the development of civilization for an arbitrarily long time? Here is how Toynbee answers these questions. Each civilization goes through the following stages on its life path: Stage of origin - genesis. Civilization can arise either as a result of a mutation of a primitive society or on the ruins of a "mother" civilization. The stage of genesis is followed by the stage of growth, in which civilization develops from an embryo into a full-fledged social structure. During the growth, a civilization is constantly in danger of moving into the stage of breakdown, which, as a rule (but not necessarily!) Is replaced by the stage of disintegration. Having disintegrated, civilization either disappears from the face of the Earth (Egyptian civilization, Inca civilization) or gives birth to new civilizations (Hellenic civilization, which gave rise to Western and Orthodox Christianity through the universal church). It should be immediately noted that in this life cycle there is no that fatal predetermination of development that is present in the cycle of Spengler's civilization. If Spengler’s civilization is a living organism that necessarily grows, matures, withers and finally dies, then Toynbee departs from the interpretation of civilization as some kind of indivisible entity, believing that “society is not and cannot be anything other than mediator through which individuals interact with each other. Individuals, not societies, make human history." Such an interpretation of society makes it possible to answer the question of the predetermination of development: if all the individuals that make up a given society can overcome the fracture in their souls, then society as a whole can get out of the fracture stage. "The fractures of civilizations cannot be the result of repeated or progressive actions of forces beyond human control." It follows that Toynbee rejects fate in matters of the development of civilization, believing that the last word always remains with man.

Having singled out the main stages in the development of civilization, it is necessary to answer the question: what is the “motor” of civilization, what makes a primitive society that has lived stationary for many thousands of years wake up one day and begin a continuous forward movement; is there something single, standing behind all stages of the development of civilizations? In search of this first principle, Toynbee arrives at the concept of Challenge-and-Response. Not finding deterministic, "inanimate" reasons for the birth and development of civilizations, Toynbee introduces contradiction as the main driving mechanism of history through the myth of the temptation of the creature of God by the Devil and the subsequent transformation of the tempted through the creation of the Lord. At the first stage, the Devil (Challenge) brings the system out of the balanced and passive state of Yin into the excited and active state of Yang. The answer to the challenge must be either growth - "transition to a higher and more perfect in terms of the complexity of the structure" state, or death, loss. Having reached a new stage, the system is again taken out of balance, and so on, until the next challenge is followed by an adequate response. Challenges can be both external (stimuli necessary for the genesis of civilization) and internal (the creative impulse of a genius, the development of science). Moreover, the system requires only the initial presence of external incentives, which then, as the system develops, turn into internal challenges. It is this dynamic, progressive contradiction that is the key to the development of civilization and the individuals that make it up.

As mentioned above, some of the calls may receive decent answers, while others may go unanswered. If the severity of the challenge is increased indefinitely, is this guaranteed an infinite increase in the energy invested in response to the challenge? Toynbee answers this question quite logically: the most stimulating effect is the challenge of medium strength. A weak call cannot force the system to move to a qualitatively new level, while an excessively strong call can simply destroy it.

How does the concept of Challenge-and-Response look like in application to civilization and to the analysis of its development? Who is the challenge for - society as a whole, or each person individually? As already mentioned, Toynbee's system is anthropocentric in the sense that society is given the place of a field of action in it, and not a carrier of creative power. Therefore, the challenges are intended, first of all, for people. Here Toynbee takes the position of the French philosopher Henri Bergson: “We do not believe in the “unconscious” factor of History, the so-called “great underground currents of thought”, which are so often referred to, perhaps only because large masses of people turned out to be carried away by someone one, a person nominated from the general number. There is no need to repeat that social progress is determined primarily by the spiritual environment of society. The leap is made when society decides to experiment; this means that society either succumbed to persuasion, or was shaken by someone, but by someone.” However, most members of society are inert and passive and unable to give a worthy response to the blows of fate. In order for society to be able to respond to the challenge, it must have Personalities, superhumans. It is they who are able to give an answer, it is they who are able to lead everyone else. Who are these superhumans? Toynbee points out that they can be both individuals (Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha) and social groups (English non-conformists). In any case, society is splitting into two interacting parts: into a creative minority bearing potential and the main inert mass. How does the ability of a creative minority to respond to a challenge turn into a response of the whole society? According to Bergson, “It takes a double effort. First of all, on the part of individuals who are aimed at an innovative path, and along with this - all the others who are ready to accept this innovation and adapt to it. Only that society can be called civilized in which these reciprocal efforts have merged into one. In fact, the second condition is more difficult to fulfill. The presence of a creative personality in society is a necessary and sufficient factor

and for the emergence of the process ... However, for the response movement, certain conditions are needed under which a creative person can captivate the rest. What is the mechanism of interaction between the creative minority and the passive majority? Toynbee called this mechanism "mimesis" - social imitation. Mimesis appears in a person long before society enters the phase of development. It can be seen both in societies with a primitive way of life and in advanced civilizations. However, the action of mimesis in these two cases is directly opposite: if in primitive societies mimesis, expressed in customs and imitation of elders, is directed to the past and is a guarantor of the stability of society, then when society enters the path of civilization, mimesis is mainly directed to the creative minority, being, thus, a link between its active and passive members. Therefore, for a successful response to the challenge, the following factors must be present in society:

• - there must be people in society who are able to understand the challenge and give an answer to it;
• - the majority should be ready to accept this answer, that is, roughly speaking, “ripe” for an answer. In the following it will be shown how the concept of Challenge-and-Response and the Minority-Majority interaction manifest themselves at each of the stages of the development of civilization.

As already mentioned, Toynbee distinguishes two ways for the emergence of civilizations: through the mutation of a primitive society and through the alienation of the proletariat from the ruling minority of pre-existing civilizations. As expected, in both cases, Toynbee explains the genesis using the concept of Challenge-and-Response, while rejecting both racial theories postulating a different "state-forming" power of different races, and favorable natural conditions, allegedly being the key to the emergence of civilizations. Noticing that natural conditions can influence the nature of civilization, he, however, says that for a successful birth, the appearance of a Challenge-stimulus is necessary.

Toynbee highlights the main incentives that can positively influence the successful genesis of civilization:

• - Stimulus of the natural environment.
• - Barren land incentive.
• - Stimulus of the new earth.
• - The stimulus of the environment.
• - Impact stimulus (reaction to attack).
• - Stimulus pressure ("outpost").
• - Incentive of infringement (poverty, slavery, national discrimination).

As you can see from the list above, incentives can be both natural and social. It is the appearance of a stimulating effect on the part of nature or the surrounding peoples that can bring a primitive society out of a stationary state and force it to begin to develop. To prove his assumption, Toynbee analyzes a large number of different civilizations and in each case finds such a stimulus. Among all the incentives, I would like to single out the incentive of the new land, or rather, its variety - the incentive of overseas migration. It not only encourages society to begin to develop, but also encourages it to do so on a fundamentally new basis: “Another positive effect arising from the experience of overseas migration relates to the political field. A fundamentally new type of political system is emerging - a republic, in which the connecting element is an agreement, not kinship. As for the origin of civilization from the bowels of the mother civilization, here Toynbee also uses the concept of Challenge-and-Response. The ruling minority, which is no longer a creative minority, is incapable of responding to the challenge facing society and destroying it. Then, among the proletariat, a new creative minority arises that is really capable of giving an answer. Gradually, the mimesis of the masses is redirected to a new creative minority, which subsequently leads to the emergence of a new civilization. Thus, the formation of civilizations of this type is due to the inability of the old minority to give a successful response to the challenge facing them.

In starting to analyze the stage of growth in Toynbee's civilization, it is necessary to understand what he considers the criterion of growth. First of all, territorial expansion is by no means an indicator of the development of civilization. Territorial expansion is usually accompanied by bloody wars and indicates rather not the growth of civilization, but regression. The seizure of foreign territories often indicates the inability of a society to cope with an internal challenge. “A society in decline seeks to postpone the day and hour of its demise, directing all its vital energy to material projects of gigantic proportions, which is nothing but the desire to deceive an agonizing consciousness, doomed by its own incompetence and fate to death.” Toynbee also refuses to accept the growth of power over nature as a sign of growth. Progress in engineering and technology is often caused not by the general development of society, but by the order of the military, which again indicates a breakdown. In addition, technological progress can lead to its idolization as the only criterion for the development of civilization and neglect of the spiritual sphere of human development. What kind of progress can we talk about if the latest achievements of science are used to destroy their own kind? “Man's influence on the forces of Good and Evil has increased incredibly with the development of new sources of energy, but this, alas, did not add wisdom or virtue to Man, did not convince him that in the kingdom of people mercy is more valuable than clockwork.” The essence of progress, according to Toynbee, lies in the law of progressive simplification - esterification. Its meaning lies in the fact that the progressive system must move to "energies more and more elementary, subtle and comprehended only with the help of abstract categories." The law of esterification manifests itself ambiguously. This includes both the development of technology and the movement of art from plastic to music. However, for Toynbee, as a believer, religious esterification is most important: “The gradual ascent of Religion to the Gods with an increasingly clearly defined personality and more clearly defined relationships among themselves means, in the end, absorption into the concept of some single divine personality; and this in turn causes a transition from the external to the internal idea of ​​God, the transition of Religion from static to dynamic. Etherification inevitably leads to "transfer of the field of action" - the transition from the macrocosm to the microcosm. Contradiction Man-Nature is gradually turning into contradiction Man-Man, the external challenge is transformed into an internal one. If at the beginning of the development of civilization a person has to mainly respond to the challenges of Nature, then as the development progresses, social contradictions become the main ones: the struggle between classes, religious, national issues. At the human level, growth means less dependence on physiological needs and more and more progressive influence of moral problems. “Growth means that a growing personality or civilization seeks to create its own environment, to generate its own troublemaker and create its own field of action. In other words, the criterion of growth is a progressive movement towards self-determination.

How is the movement of civilization along the path of progress? Considering the microcosm as the primary factor, Toynbee says that the growth of civilization is determined by changes in the inner world of the individual. But these changes can occur in the soul of not any person, but only among the creative minority. The answer to the challenge in this case is the transition of the Personality to a higher level of development. However, the vast majority of society remains where it was. Thus, another very important contradiction "minority-majority" arises. The majority can approach the minority through the mechanism of mimesis. However, there is no guarantee that this will happen. Hence there is a danger of separation of one social group from another. With the growth of civilization, this gap becomes wider and wider, which, in the end, can lead to a breakdown of civilization: a challenge to which the minority is no longer able to adequately respond.

As a result of growth, each civilization passes its own unique path of development. At the same time, the experience gained by each civilization is also unique. This Toynbee explains the difference between civilizations. The more developed a given civilization, the more unique the life path it has traveled and the more unlike it is to others. Thus, as civilizations grow, their differentiation arises, which affects the worldview of individuals, culture, and art. Unlike Spengler, who explains the difference between civilizations (in Spengler - cultures) by the difference of primordial phenomena - the primary symbols that underlie each civilization, Toynbee sees the initial internal unity of all civilizations, the differences of which are caused by the uniqueness of the life path of each civilization: "The diversity represented in human nature , human life and social institutions - this is an artificial phenomenon and it only masks the internal unity.

QUESTION:
And yet, by what criteria, on what scale can one assess the degree of development of civilization?
For technogenic civilizations, it can be estimated by the amount of energy used and controlled, for example (Kardashev scale). By the ability to transform the surrounding material space - since there is a material body. It is impossible to live in Malkuth and be free from it)
For non-technical civilizations, how to compare who is more advanced?
I believe that one of the criteria may be the very fact of constant change towards the complication of consciousness. But if the same dolphins have a complex mentality, but it is static and has not changed for thousands and millions of years, then this is a dead end branch of evolution.
What will constant development lead to, to the termination of incarnations in the material world? Then there is a certain limit to the development of civilization for this world.

ANSWER:
This is a painful topic for me…. What is happening now on the planet and the concept of the norm, and the prospects that are coming: the loss of life, consciousness into even lower forms, marking the processes of the Kali Yuga. For me, an Developed Civilization is one that has a high level of Consciousness and, at the same time, is in the maximum Balance and Ecology in relation to the environment. It will supervise and direct external evolutionary processes, while it will rather be so ecological that it is not noticeable, indistinguishable from the Environment itself and its natural processes for less developed, but with aggressive characteristics, forms that are trying to transform more and more space for themselves, endowing its artificiality, giving rise to something that does not carry the Vibrations of the Living World - plastic, chemical poisonous waste, radiation, etc.
As for dolphins… They appeared about 70 million years ago. Who knows what evolutionary rings they went through, perhaps your favorite technological ones? Despite all the cataclysms of the planet and the disappeared humanoid civilizations and species, they have survived to this day ... What is the forecast for humanity, how long will it last?
Further .. Morphologically: the human brain is 300 g smaller, and the convolutions are 2 times less than in dolphins. By abilities: dolphins are able to turn off one hemisphere of the brain so that it rests (they are not turned off for 6-10 hours - the need for sleep in humans); they have their own language, for this period people have identified about 14 thousand signals from their vocabulary (the average person manages 800-1000 signals, or even less, preferring to explain everything through “mentioning the genitals and intersexual intercourse” ...); the sounds of dolphins contain high-frequency vibrations that affect the surrounding space, they are able to heal people, incl. children suffering from problems in the development of the Central nervous system (we refer to this as magic, and a magician - alas, not everyone yet); they have echolocation, there are also magnetite crystals in the brain, which allow at least to simply navigate in the Earth's magnetic field (and possibly correct it): they have unique regeneration mechanisms and properties of the immune system; have a social organization and are able to empathize emotionally…. I think that you can continue for a long time ... But for what? To convince the civilization of termites or humans that there are other intelligent forms on the planet besides them?
And yes, on my internal scale, I single out both termites and people into a common group.
Farther…. There are people, even spiritually developed people, and their ceiling for the development of civilization is the way out of the material World... But even among them there is such a rare phenomenon as a Bodhisattva, who dedicated their incarnations to the service of the World, raising its Vibrations and the Salvation / Liberation of ALL living beings. We are unlikely to see and evaluate them by the diplomas of completed institutes or bank accounts, or the processes of creation, forms of matter that do not have a Spark, or the processes of destruction of the biosphere around ...
Think about it... The mind at a higher stage of evolution will have other characteristics, goals and strategies than is familiar and understandable to mankind!
The very first, most important consciousness here is the Earth itself! We can’t even perceive it ... I want to scream, but there is no one here to hear ..

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This is followed by a cycle of evolution, or a light cycle, culminating in the phase of awareness of the root cause itself as darkness and light and beginning to realize itself as perfection as a synthesis of darkness and light. The cycle follows...

photo from EM archive

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