Ilya I. DOKUCHAEVSaint Petersburg State University
7-9, Universitetskaya embankment, Saint Petersburg, 199034 Russian Federation
Head of the Department of Ontology and Theory of Knowledge of the Institute of Philosophy
Doctor of Science (Philosophy)
Professor
e-mail: ilya_dokuchaev@mail.ru
ORCID: 0000-0002-0506-2927
The Middle ages in the Historical Dynamics of CultureAbstract: The article considers the Middle Ages as a category of historical typology of culture. It is shown that this category has a negative content, but it is used to designate a key period in the history of European culture. However, its typological features are poorly defined; the feudal nature of production relations cannot be such a sign, since this closes the prospect of using the category of the Middle Ages to describe non-European cultures. The article proposes a substantiation of the key properties of the culture of the medieval type. Its most important features are synthetic, rationalization of tradition and world religion. The Middle Ages as a synthetic type of traditional culture presupposes rationalization and unification within the framework of a whole cultural sources of different origin and content. Thus, the European Middle Ages includes the following main elements: Greco-Roman antiquity, European agricultural culture, religious culture of Judeo-Christian origin and aristocratic culture of European peoples. The Islamic Middle Ages includes the traditional agricultural aristocratic and folk cultures of Iran, the Arabian Peninsula and the Turkic ethnic groups, Islamic culture and ancient European heritage. Buddhist Middle Ages – aristocratic and folk cultures of Japan, China, India, Tibet and Southeast Asia, Buddhist culture. The rationalization of tradition ensures the unity of these sources of medieval culture, turning eclecticism into a strict and consistent system. The main subjects of the cultural genesis of the Middle Ages are the Christian Church, the Muslim Ummah and the Buddhist Sangha, the principle of cultural genesis is a rationalized tradition that synthesizes the original cultural material, the main type of cultural artifacts that ensures the effectiveness of cultural genesis and the unity of its subject on the basis of a key existential value and faith is the world religion, which is either universal monotheism, or the practice of transition to an absolute sacred reality.
Key words: Culture, Middle Ages, rationalization, traditions, synthetic cultures, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, church, world religions, culture typology, church, umma, sangha.
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For Citation: Dokuchaev, I. (2023) The Middle ages in the Historical Dynamics of Culture. International Journal of Cultural Research, 2 (51). 56–65. DOI: 10.52173/2079-1100_2023_2_56
DOI: 10.52173/2079-1100_2023_2_56