Oppositions and metaphors of visual thinking in culture

This article presents the results of the study of the visual thinking phenomenon in its various forms of cultural representation. In the course of the research the properties of an image in connection with such traditional perspectives of the European philosophy as epistemological, anthropological, moral, psychological and metaphysical oppositions are analyzed. The relationships of concept and image in cognitive process, the role of an image in understanding and explanation, image as ethical restriction of thinking, corporal and sensual base of thinking, and adaptation functions of an image are considered. The main metaphors of a mimetic image - shadow, mirror, artist, ladder, vestment, storage - are considered. In compliance with this the following properties of visual thinking are marked out: seriality, exact reflexivity, procedurality, aspiration to individualization or socialization, representation instead of presentation, and spatiality connected with visuality. The properties of visual thinking which are manifested at interaction of human individual desire and social experience are revealed. It is strong-willed tendency not only to truth, but also to a victory in dispute. Also it is the free temporality setting dynamics of the person's social adaptation in culture. On the basis of the received results, the conceptualization of figurative thinking as a learning tool, an anthropological phenomenon and the mechanism of individual consciousness adaptation to the cultural environment is carried out.