Logical mechanisms of comprehending culture: an experience of a theoretical and methodological research

Cultural centrism is a concept that considers culture as an ontological reality. The fundamental foundations necessary for the formation of methods of comprehending various aspects of culture as reality are insufficiently specified. The aim of the study is to determine the set of paradigms of methodological concepts that are associated with the logical comprehension of culture. The sources of the study were various representations of cultural centrism: as a social strategy, as a research program, as a worldview position. The methodological foundations for comprehending culture should reflect its ontology, multidimensionality and metalogical complexity. The study was carried out in two stages: through the act of comparison, the grounds for the formation of methodologies of logic, dialectic and antinomy were specified, then the scope of applicability of each methodology in relation to culture was shown. The methodological basis for comprehending the ontology of culture was developed based on the positions of cultural centrism. The research methods are differentiated analysis and conceptual modeling within the framework of a system-structural approach to the object of research. The objectivity of the methodology requires that the logic of cognition be consistent with the nature of the perceived reality. The main methodological element of the cognizing act is the implementation of a logical comparison operation, which can be resolved in three ways, forming the methods of logic, dialectic and antinomy of culture. The logic of culture coincides with its morphology, it reflects the existence and development of objective forms of culture (symbolic, normative, axiological and objective representations, enshrined in the corresponding theories of cultural genesis, are fundamental ones). The dialectic of culture repeats personal inculturation and cultural creation. The antinomy of culture reflects the inconsistency of the ontological reality of culture, which unambiguously and inseparably connects the subject and the object of culture. This allows us to consider in unity all the particular concepts of describing culture’s specific reality (nature-centric, sociocentric, anthropocentric and theocentric) and all the types of culture’s actualization (objective, normative, axiological and symbolic). As a result, the concretization of methods of comprehending culture is proposed. The concretization reflects the ontology of culture itself. The results obtained are promising for the development of general and specific methodologies for comprehending culture.