Reflection on the problem of expressiveness in modern culture: a methodological aspect

The main problem of the research is the definition of expressiveness as a methodological principle of modern culture. The research materials were the results of investigations of Russian and foreign philosophers, culturologists, literary critics. The ontological approach allowed treating the expressiveness problem as something that assumes meeting the Other, as the expression of focusing on the Other. Moisei Kagan’s synergetic and systems approach contributes to the determination of the methodological significance of the expressiveness problem. This approach helps reveal the spirit of the transformations in modern culture, identify the connection between its different forms, and perceive the content of culture expression in the 21th century. The author notes that expressiveness gives an idea of how a new understanding of the relationship between the world and man forms. The substantiation of expressiveness is the basis for the transformation of modern culture. It is argued that in the existing humanitarian paradigm, when the consequences of a person’s self-expression in the world are ambiguous and an objective view cannot claim to be the world’s foremost authority, expressiveness is the condition for self-expression in the world, and it provides the opportunity to follow the transformation of self-expression in modern cultural practices. Reflection on expressiveness in modern culture is connected with social creativity, which brings the problem out of linguistics and art history towards a larger axiological context. The analysis of the problem of expressiveness in the humanities has made it possible to single out the following schools: artistic aspects of expressiveness (S. M. Volkonsky, S. M. Eisenstein); linguistic and literary aspects of linguistic expression (Yu. M. Lotman, A. A. Potebnya, E. Sapir, A. Hansen-Loeve, et al.); existentialist and philosophical perspective of expressiveness (M. M. Bakhtin, A. F. Losev, V. A. Podoroga, et al.). The connection with the philosophy of art and the history of philosophy creates new perspectives for the study of methodological aspects that influence the modern humanitarian paradigm. Reference to the concepts of B. Croce (expressiveness as a genius expression in its primary form), S. Langer (symbolic expression of feelings), T. Adorno (expressiveness as a criticism of the inexpressible and recognition of frank expression), V. S. Solovyov (expressiveness as an expression of unity), P. A. Florensky (expressiveness as an expression of antinomic cultural phenomena), A. F. Losev (expressiveness as a human dimension) allowed classifying the main approaches to the problem of expressiveness and defining its categorical status.