The ontological paradox of culture: types of manifestation

The article is devoted to the problem of existence, considered in the cultural aspect. The author fixes the paradox of “presence absence” characteristic of culture, when a phenomenon perceived as a “physical fact” is evaluated as nonexistent, while ideal formations and deceased people act as being. The article is based on the methodological tradition of existential philosophizing and hermeneutics, in the center of which is the topic of significance. In culture, what is ontologically real is what it means, carries those meanings that serve as motives for people’s behavior and influence them. In this regard, the act of recognition comes to the fore in the analysis of the topic: the legitimization of something as existing is determined by its recognition and support. The article includes two main sections. The first of them deals with the issues of contextuality of existence in culture, when a physically existing person, an actual socio cultural institution or value ceases to “mean” and act as non existent, although they continue to function in other contexts. The second section examines the situation when ideas and images, being not physical, act as quite real facts of spiritual life. Their existence is indisputable, but again only if they are significant and recognized. Both mental formations and artifacts located in the horizon of the past and the future, according to the paradox of “presence absence”, are ontologically real in culture, according to the author’s position, if they have not lost their significance and remain recognized and supported.