Первопонятия. Ключи к культурному коду

✓ Бессмертие, Вера, Возможное, Интересное, Ничто, Событие, Творчество, Удивление

Summary

What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.

St. Augustine

This book is devoted to the main concepts that shape our mentality: life and death, love and fate, soul and body, power and play, wisdom and conscience, future and eternity… These universal elements of conceptualization underlie such cognitive processes as inference, memory, learning, decision-making, and goal-setting. Primary concepts – which are concise in expression, but extremely capacious in meaning – have power over the public consciousness and form the sign code of culture. The minimal sign construct, a single word, encompasses the maximum of mental content; the greatest is manifested in the least. With these concepts, we express our understanding of the world – but they themselves, by virtue of their breadth and depth, are the most difficult to understand or explicate. As alluded to in the epigraph, they seem self-explanatory, and precisely for this reason, they elude definition.

As Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” This book is intended for anyone who wants to master the language of concepts in order to more fully comprehend their own existence. Primary concepts are ancient, universal thought-formations. They could perhaps be called “arche-concepts,” by analogy with Jungian archetypes; but unlike the latter, primary concepts belong to the sphere of the collective consciousness rather than the unconscious. They are anthropological universals – primary elements of human experience, diversely refracted through national languages and cultures. The universality of these concepts, however, is not of an abstract nature, as in the case of such metaphysical or logical categories as “essence,” “quantity,” “quality,” “identity,” “difference,” “unity,” “multitude,” etc. Primary concepts are more concrete in meaning, and evolve not as a result of logical analysis, but as the most vital, profoundly meaningful elements of the human experience. At the same time, primary concepts differ from such scientific notions as “quantum,” “galaxy,” “gene,” or “organism,” many of which are international terms derived from Greek or Latin. By contrast, primary concepts are most often derived from native roots, since they belong to the consciousness of an entire people. Unlike scientific terms, which are reducible to one rigorous meaning, they stand out as polysemic, and enjoy the broadest use in various styles, from colloquial to academic. The smallest units of intellectial energy, they designate the ultimate values and purposes of existence.

Such is the task of this book: to explore the capacious significance of these primary concepts, the meanings they derive from their linguistic origin and acquire in the context of modern culture. The book contains a systematic description of sixty concepts that cover the main aspects of human life: from phenomena of nature and society to subjective moods and emotions. The concepts are thematically organized around several major themes: Life, Reality, the Human, Feeling, Mind, Power, and Creativity.

1. Life

Life

Fate

Event

The New

Future

Age

Death

Immortality

Eternity

2. Reality

Reality

The Possible

Miracle

Depth

Shell

The Small

Thing

House

Void

Nothing

3. The Human

The Human

Soul

Conscience

Faith

Guilt

Body

Purity

Lightness

Charm

Vulgarity

The Uncanny

4. Feeling

Feeling

Love

Desire

Jealousy

Mood

Sadness

Longing

Resentment

Surprise

Tenderness

5. Mind

Mind

Insanity

Consciousness

Thinking

Wisdom

6. Power

Power

People

Intelligentsia

Motherland

7. Creativity

Creativity

Genius

The Interesting

The Poetic

Play

Image

Word

Silence

Writing

Reading

Book

Each concept is presented as a point of departure for different cultural trends, philosophical views, and critical interpretations. Arranged in alphabetical order throughout the book, the concepts are cross-referenced at the end of each entry with related concepts (see → sign).