Siberian Federal University

Issue

Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences. 2010 3 (3)

Authors

Aslamazishvili, Dina N.; Ignatov, Nikolay A.

Contact information

Aslamazishvili, Dina N. : American University for Humanities, Tbilisi Campus , 2 Tornike Eristavi st., Tbilisi, 0192, Republic of Georgia; Ignatov, Nikolay A. : Siberian Federal University , 79 Svobodny, Krasnoyarsk, 660041 Russia , e-mail:

Keywords

mankind; symbol; culture; civilization; myth; religion; philosophy

Abstract

There has been investigated genesis of symbolism in the cultural history. «Among such socialphilosophic notions as society, culture, civilization, system, human, sense, sign, truth and others, concept «symbol» takes a special place» (Aslamazishvili, 2008, 49). The crises of culture and civilization were interpreted as transitional phases of culture and its symbolic systems. A closer look at the symbols and their application in various cultures gave rise to approach the history of mankind through a number of various views of many a thinker who had developed their both profound and fascinating theories of symbolism. Outstanding thinkers treated the symbol as a multi-sense of its various meanings. Nevertheless, the multi-sense symbol could not ultimately open its «truth» and its force and its sense of this world and of the beyond. The symbol persisted in being the same unique thread which had been leading human society since its origin to its only protosense, prasense, out-ofreach and outright truth of being. Many a thousand years ago the ancestors of modern man having been singled out by toil from the animals, started to create and apply symbols that enabled them thereby to become human beings - homo sapiens. Thus developing the symbolics made for translating the possible into the probable and the real. The advanced results of symbolization in mythologies and religions had already made for generalizations of symbolizing practice and facilitated understanding the problem of symbolization in the incipient philosophy. Symbols had been mentioned by philosophers long ago before Socrates and ancient Greeks interpreted the world as the symbolic Universe. However the first categorization of the symbol was performed in religious and philosophical doctrines in the Middle Ages, and the philosophical reflection of the symbol as a separate category was being further developed by I.Kant and J.W.Goethe who had been suggesting symbolism as a research method to study culture.

Pages

330-343

Paper at repository of SibFU

https://elib.sfu-kras.ru/handle/2311/1688

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).