Spheres of spiritual culture: science, religion, art, cinema and theater

Culture is an important component of public consciousness. It is a means of forming a social personality, a sphere of people's communication and realization of their creative potential. The sphere of spiritual culture and its features are the object of study of philosophers, culturologists, intellectuals, who seek to determine the role of spiritual culture in society and in human development.

The concept of culture

Human life activity in the whole history develops into a culture. This concept covers the widest sphere of people's lives. The meaning of the word "culture" - "cultivation", "processing" (originally - the earth) - is due to the fact that with the help of various actions the person transforms the surrounding reality and himself. Culture - a purely human phenomenon, animals, in contrast to people, adapt to the world, and man adjusts to their needs and needs. In the course of these transformations, it is created.

In connection with the fact that the spheres of spiritual culture are extremely diverse, there is no single definition for the notion of "culture". There are several approaches to its interpretation: idealistic, materialistic, functionalist, structuralist, psychoanalytic. In each of them, separate aspects of this concept are highlighted. In the broadest sense, culture is the entire transformative activity of a person, directed both outside and inside itself. In the narrow - this is a person's creative activity, expressed in the creation of works of various arts.

Spiritual and material culture

Despite the fact that culture is a complex, complex phenomenon, there is a tradition to divide it into material and spiritual. It is customary to refer to the field of material culture all the results of human activity embodied in various subjects. This is the world surrounding people: buildings, roads, household utensils, clothes, as well as a variety of techniques and technologies. Spheres of spiritual culture are associated with the production of ideas. These include theories, philosophical doctrines, moral norms, scientific knowledge. However, often this division is purely conventional. How, for example, to divide the works of such types of art as cinema and theater? After all, the play combines the idea, the literary basis, the actors' play, as well as the subject matter.

The emergence of spiritual culture

The question of the origin of culture still causes lively disputes between representatives of different sciences. Social science, the sphere of spiritual culture for which is an important research area, proves that cultural genesis is inextricably linked with the formation of society. The prerequisite for the survival of primitive man was the ability to adapt to his needs the world around him and his ability to co-exist in a team: it was impossible to survive alone. The formation of culture was not instantaneous, but was a long evolutionary process. A person learns to transfer social experience, creating for this purpose a system of rituals and signals, speech. He has new needs, in particular the desire for beauty, social and cultural values are being formed. All this becomes a platform for the formation of spiritual culture. Comprehension of the surrounding reality, the search for cause-effect relationships lead to the formation of a mythological worldview. It symbolically explains the surrounding world and allows a person to navigate in life.

Main Areas

From mythology, over time, all spheres of spiritual culture grow. The human world evolves and becomes more complicated, and at the same time, information and ideas about the world become more complex, special areas of knowledge are allocated. Today, the question of what includes the sphere of spiritual culture, has several options for an answer. In the traditional sense, it includes religion, politics, philosophy, morality, art, science. There is also a broader view that the language, the system of knowledge, values and plans of humanity for the future are included in the spiritual sphere. In the most narrow interpretation of the sphere of spirituality, art, philosophy and ethics are regarded as the domain of ideals.

Religion as a sphere of spiritual culture

The first of the mythological worldview stands out religion. All spheres of spiritual culture, including religion, represent a special set of values, ideals and norms that serve as reference points in a person's life. Faith is the basis for world understanding, especially for man of antiquity. Science and religion are two antagonistic ways of explaining the world, but each of them is a system of ideas about how man was created and everything that surrounds him. The specificity of religion is that it appeals to faith, and not to knowledge. The main function of religion as a form of spiritual life is worldview. It sets a person a framework of worldview and perception of the world, gives meaning to existence. Also, religion fulfills a regulative function: it manages the relations of people in society and their activities. In addition to these, faith carries out communicative, legitimizing and cultural-transfer functions. Thanks to religion, many outstanding ideas and phenomena appeared, it was the source of the concept of humanism.

Morality as a sphere of spiritual culture

Moral and spiritual culture is the basis for the regulation of relationships between people in society. Morality is a system of values and ideas about what is evil and good, about the meaning of people's lives and the principles of their mutual relations in society. Often researchers consider ethics to be the highest form of spirituality. Morality is a specific sphere of spiritual culture, and its features are due to the fact that it is an unwritten law of people's behavior in society. It is an unspoken social contract, according to which all peoples consider the highest value of a person and his life. The main public functions of morality are:

- Regulatory - this specific function is to control people's behavior, and no institutions and organizations that control people are over them. Fulfilling moral requirements, a person is motivated by a unique mechanism called conscience. Morality establishes rules that ensure the interaction of people;

- appraisal-imperative, ie, a function that allows people to understand what is good and what is evil;

- educational - it is thanks to her that the moral image of the personality is formed.

Also, ethics performs a number of such socially important functions as cognitive, communicative, orienting, prognostic.

Art as a sphere of spiritual culture

Human activity aimed at the creative transformation and knowledge of the world is called art. The main need that a person satisfies with the help of art is an aesthetic one. The desire for beauty and self-expression is in the nature of man. Areas of art are focused on creative mastery and knowledge of the possibilities of the world. Like other spheres of spiritual culture, art performs cognitive, communicative, transformative functions. But in addition, art performs recreational, emotional and aesthetic functions. It allows a person to express his inner worldview, to share emotions and his ideas about the beautiful and ugly. Spectacular arts - cinema and theater - have a powerful effect, so this form of spiritual culture also has a suggestive function. Art has unique properties, it can cause different people to have the same emotions and unite them. Art in a non-verbal form is capable of communicating ideas and meanings intelligibly and effectively.

Cinema and theater

Cinema is one of the youngest and at the same time the most popular arts. His story compared with the millennial history of music, painting or theater is short. At the same time, cinema halls are filled every day by millions of spectators, and even more people watch films on television. Cinema has a powerful impact on the minds and hearts of young people.

Today, theater is less popular than cinema. With the ubiquitous spread of television, he lost some of his appeal. In addition, theater tickets are now expensive. Therefore, we can say that visiting the famous theater has become a luxury. Yet the theater is an integral part of the intellectual life of each country and reflects the state of society and the minds of the nation.

Philosophy as a sphere of spiritual culture

Philosophy - the oldest intellectual activity of man. Like other spheres of spiritual culture, it grows out of mythology. It organically combines the features of religion, art and science. Philosophers satisfy an important need of people to gain meaning. The main questions of being (what is the world, what is the meaning of life) receive in the philosophy of various answers, but allow a person to choose their own way of life. Its most important functions are ideological and axiological, it helps a person to build his own system of views and criteria for assessing the world around him. Also, philosophy performs epistemological, critical, prognostic and educational functions.

Science as the sphere of spiritual culture

The most late formed sphere of spiritual culture was science. Its formation is rather slow, and it is designed primarily to explain the structure of the world. Science and religion are forms of overcoming the mythological worldview. But unlike religion, science is a system of objective, verifiable knowledge and is built according to the laws of logic. The leading need that man satisfies through science is cognitive. People tend to ask different questions, and the search for answers generates science. Science from all other spheres of spiritual culture is distinguished by strict evidence and verifiability of postulates. Thanks to it, a universal objective picture of the world is formed. The main social functions of science are cognitive, worldview, practice-transformative, communicative, educational and regulative. Unlike philosophy, science is based on a system of objective knowledge that is verifiable in the course of experiments.