To start to define themselves with the term "civilization".Philosophers and historians have put into this word several different semantic content.Consider the types of civilizations, called "localized in time and space companies."Various historians emit different amounts of local civilizations.Englishman Arnold Toynbee believed that over the last millennium there was (and still alive) five civilizations: Western, Orthodox (which include Russia), Muslim, Hindu, and Far East (China, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia).Just a historical period he counted thirty-seven civilizations.
types of civilizations, according to Toynbee, divided into chains of three elements.All existing civilizations are the third, the last link.For example, our civilization is the last in the chain: the Minoan civilization - Hellenic - orthodox.That is, according to him, we live in an era of global change on the eve of cool historical trend.However, it is not known when and in what form it is going to happen.
In the conventional popular cultural studies adopted a simplified view of the existence of the Western cultural tradition, which is opposed to the type of Eastern civilization, has a number of basic features.They are, first and foremost, a different attitude to the individual in society and the attitude to property.
This opposition, of course, is vulgar.The main types of civilizations are not limited to the division into East and West.Yes, the very definition of the eastern civilization needs to be clarified.From the perspective of the European man in the street, the civilization of Iran, Kazakhstan and China - it is something about the same, differing only in minor details and refers to the type of Eastern civilizations.Meanwhile, any competent person (not to mention the inhabitants of these countries), it is clear that in the first case we have the classical Muslim Shiite state in the second - have been subjected to the Muslim influence of the culture of the nomads Great Steppe (the term Lev Gumilyov), and the third - a complex conglomerateincluding Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian components richly flavored communist ideology.
And modern Europe regarding the idea of "what is good and what is bad," is very different from medieval Europe.The views of Savonarola, Torquemada and the Duke of Richelieu, which became the de facto ruler of France, have nothing to do with today's domestic policy priorities of the majority of European countries.
all that, according to the European man in the street, now characteristic of eastern civilizations - collectivism, the low status of the individual in society - it was in the old Europe.It is not that Europe is "grown."Just down the degree of drive.Old World grew fat, lazy to a certain extent.Therefore, so feel at ease in Europe, the newcomers from the south and east, supports different cultural traditions.Something similar could happen in the classical eastern country - Japan, constitutional lawyers who wrote the American occupation forces in the hope to inculcate Western values.But the Japanese are too great is the power of tradition.It is a vibrant community that can protect itself from outside influences.So different "types of civilizations" has nothing to do with it.
