Cultural philosophy or philosophy of culture is a branch of philosophy that explores the essence, development and significance of culture. The first attempts to comprehend the importance of culture in society were made in ancient times. So, sophists owe the merit of revealing the antinomy between the natural and cultural-moral motivations of man. Cynics and Stoics supplemented this idea and developed the theory of the depravity and artificiality of “public culture”. In the Middle Ages, many prominent minds thought about what culture is and about its place in God's creation. Later, in modern times, and especially in the Enlightenment, much attention was paid to public culture. JJ Rousseau, J. Vico, F. Schiller and others developed ideas about the individual identity of national cultures and the stages of their development.
But the term "philosophy of culture" was introduced at the beginning of the XIX century. German romantic A. Muller. Since then, it has become a special branch of philosophy. It should be separated from the philosophy of history, since the process of cultural development of mankind in general and of nations and nationalities in particular does not coincide in rhythm with the process of historical development of civilizations. It also differs from such a science as the sociology of culture, since the latter focuses on culture as a phenomenon functioning in a given system of social and social relations.
Especially fruitful in terms of the development of the philosophy of culture was the end of XIX - beginning of XX centuries. A whole galaxy of philosophers appeared (F. Nietzsche, O. Spengler, G. Simmel, H. Ortega y Gasset, in Russia N. A. Berdyaev, N. Ya. Danilevsky and others), who devoted their works to understanding the individual stages of the evolution of culture of humanity. In this sense, the cultural philosophy of Spengler, the German philosopher, historian and culturologist (1880-1936) made an invaluable contribution.
Spengler put forward a very original concept of the cyclical development of a certain culture as a kind of living organism. Using the achievements of his predecessors, the philosopher also contrasts “culture” and “civilization”. According to Spengler, each culture is born, develops, going through all stages - infancy, childhood, adolescence, maturity (in which culture reaches its peak of development), and then decrepitude, old age and, finally, death. When a culture dies, it turns or degenerates into civilization. The life cycle of cultures lasts from a thousand to one and a half thousand years. Spengler’s cultural philosophy is most fully revealed in his work with the eloquent title “Sunset of Europe”, in which the philosopher predicts the death of European civilization and its degeneration into a soulless race for fashion, pleasures, hoarding, desire for power and wealth.
The philosophy of culture in the teachings of Spengler is based on two basic concepts - “culture” and “civilization”. However, although the philosopher endows civilization with such unflattering epithets as “mass society” and “soulless intellect,” one should not simplistically think that he completely denied the benefits of scientific and technological progress. It’s just that culture has a soul, and civilization is inherently unspiritual, because culture is looking for a connection with another world, something that does not lie on the plane of things, and civilization is aimed at studying and mastering this world, at managing things. Culture, according to Spengler, is closely connected with the cult, it is religious in its definition. Civilization masters the surface of the world, it is soulless. Civilization strives for power, for domination over nature, culture sees in nature a goal and language. Culture is national, and civilization is global. Culture is aristocratic, and civilization can be called democratic.
The philosophy of culture, during the life of Spengler, dealt with 8 impenetrable cultures that had already died, both Egyptian, Babylonian, Mayan, Greco-Roman (Apollo), and fading - Indian, Chinese, Byzantine-Arab (magical) and Western European (Faustian). Naturally, there will be no end of the world with the decline of Europe, Spengler is convinced: there will be a period of an unspiritual era of mass consumption, until somewhere else, in some corner of the world, another culture "ripens and blossoms," like flowers in a field. "