The difference between spiritual and material culture.

Who is man? Animal or something else? Such questions have plagued people, probably since the appearance of the first Homo Sapiens. Previously, scientists argued that we belong to the highest intelligent animals. However, today there is a different point of view, which is firmly established in textbooks, encyclopedias and scientific works, where the word “animal” was replaced by the words “creature” and “subject”:

"Man is a living rational social being, a subject of social and historical activity and culture."

However, we have another topic, which in this formulation we have specially highlighted and emphasized - it is culture. The bright minds of mankind are still arguing whether there are rudiments of it (there is no need to talk about any developed culture) in some species of animals. But from any point of view, human culture is something completely special, and no intellectuals from the animal world of the planet have anything similar. Moreover, human civilization has two types of culture - spiritual and material. And despite the fact that both directions are united by one word, their essence is completely different, but at the same time they are deeply integrated into each other.

In this article we will try to find out how the spiritual culture differs from the material one. By the way, both concepts include a number of subspecies, so to speak (artistic, mass, technical, etc. culture), which in turn can consist of dozens of subcultures. But our task is to deal with global issues, and not drown in details. First, let's define the meaning embedded in this word.

In general, what is culture?!

Indeed, what does this concept mean? Why is it one of the main and integral features of human civilization? There are many lengthy answers to this question. Let's try to answer and we - only in a simpler way and in our own words:

“Culture is the activity of a society of people or an individual, which leads to a spiritual and (or) material change in the life of both a specific human community and entire nations. The created cultural values ​​always influence, to one degree or another, the development of the human community, no matter how insignificant they may seem at first glance. "

Someone will consider our definition shallow and incomplete, but this article does not claim to be a monograph. Those wishing to understand this issue more thoroughly are sent to electronic and ordinary libraries, where there are a lot of serious treatises on this topic.

Material culture

The very concept of material culture is very simple and even uncomplicated. It can be expressed in one phrase:

“Everything that a person has created with his own hands can be called material culture ”. This is the price of culture.

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