Philosophical and psychological features of aesthetics of new time

In the article an attempt to tie up the reasons of decline of the European culture with some philosophical and scientific conceptions of New and Newest time is undertaken. In the end of the 18th century nominalism became the most meaningful factor of intellectual life. Thereafter the spiritual constituent of human existence begins swiftly losing its value. Instead of understanding a human being as a «character and likeness of God», he is treated as an exceptionally physiological creature who doesn’t need any high thoughts. It is a commonplace to argue that people no longer differ in content from other species of animal world. The author watches the internal logic of this process, distinguishing as its key stages the doctrine of I. Kant, voluntarism of A. Schopenhauer, theory of Ch. Darwin, psychoanalysis and Frankfurt school.