OF PHILOSOPHY AND CULTURE

The relations between human society and nature contain problems and contradictions as well as developmental prospects. Humankind and nature are subject to common laws whose violation can lead, sooner or later, to man-made ecological disasters. Even now we recognize that our misuse of natural resources has resulted in changes of climate and desertification. Mother Earth takes revenge against the exhaustion of the soil. Yet, ecological concern has become one of the fundamental aspects of modern global culture. It is now international in character and influences all spheres of the vital activity of humankind.

The life of primitive human was strongly dependent upon nature. At that time the first appearance of ecological culture idolized natural events in the first mythological world outlooks. Primitive culture and ancient civilizations have many examples of humane relations to the processes of nature.

The idea of unity between human beings and nature is an ancient tradition. According to the ancient Chinese treatise Guan-Che (III B.C.) water is the blood and living energy of earth; it is clean, soft, humane and modest. The author of this treatise attributed to water the best ethical qualities, such as honesty, justice, nobility and so on.

In ancient Eastern civilizations this system of values remained invariable for a long time as they venerated nature. It was also an object of aesthetics and, for the first time in history, laws of the protection of animals and plants were developed. For example, the Mongols turned up the toes of their shoes to keep from damaging the grass cover.

The ancient Eastern civilizations were the first ecological civilizations in history. In the Indian philosophical tradition there was a concept of non-interference with the development of natural processes. The basis of these traditions was deep thought about the reincarnation of everything on earth and also in the universe. According to the principles of Indian philosophy, the human is just one part of the transformation from one form of life to another, for which reason in Indian philosophy any manifestation of life must be preserved.

Muslim culture retained the ancient Eastern tradition. A. Nasr wrote: "Nature in the Islamic countries is considered as one’s `own house’ where one must live not as in an enemy country that is to be conquered".

A special place in the history of attention to nature is held by Russian philosophical thought of the end of the 19th century and first years of the 20th century. The 20th century brought great changes in cultural orientations. Russian philosophers for the first time in philosophical history looked upon the world as if from space. Such philosophers as V. Soloviev, P. Florenskiy, N. Rerikh, K. Ciolkovskiy, N. Fedorov and V. Vernadskiy created new philosophical principles for relations to nature according to this view from space. This point of view was very original for that time especially for Russia, and became well known in Europe. Every philosopher of the Russian Religious School had his special theory regarding the need to overcome tensions between nature and society, but all the theories had common ideas, for example, the idea of "universal ethics" or "space mentality". Russian religious philosophers used such terms from the Orthodox Church as "Unity of the Universe" and "micro and macrospace".

Nature as the result of God’s creation and the Incarnation harmony is of the greatest value and evokes the best from people. This was the main principle of the Russian religious philosophical school: that Earth is part of space and one step in the development of the Universe. Humans are the best part of nature because they are in the likeness to God. The human being is responsible for the order of space and the unity of all humankind. Therefore, the human as, on the one hand, a likeness of God and, on the other, a part of nature is the key to the "unity of the Universe". Humans are not values in themselves, but are completed by their surroundings.

The deepest ethical problems of Russian space philosophy are found in the works of Vladimir Soloviev. According to V.Soloviev, ideas and ideals acquire great significance for humankind, and his own interests centered on the person which is the source (or egg) of the harmony of space. Thus, a human is both dependent upon the universe and responsible for the world’s fate because he or she is a spiritual-moral substance. Moral existence and the improvement of the person is a basis for the improvement of the world.

Ethical rules must create the future culture. The main aim of this new culture is the aspiration for space even beyond the world because in space, as in the body of God, there will be a united, spiritual-moral humankind. This will relate to nature as a living substance and to the human as an inimitable being. The highest ethical category, goodness, must be realized through the category of Beauty to save nature from death. Humankind must save itself from moral death. Moral law and order regulate all spheres of human life and decide even economic questions. The ideal is that economic progress to enter into moral progress. Nature has the some roots as man: it is the result of creation and is connected with the Absolute through human relations. The task is to create moral ethical relations in order to separate from chaos God’s order of humankind and the world.

Very close to Soloviev’s conception is the ethical conception of Nikolay Fedorov. In his literary works the Russian writer, N.I. Dostoevski, used and illustrated the ideas of this Russian religious philosopher. The subject of his interest is humankind and its moral preoccupation. The improvement of humankind is moral improvement on the basis of a transformed evolutionary space. This process will be possible only when humankind transcends the earth. The intellect of humankind must spread into space, keeping and improving science, philosophy, culture and religion. It must begin to transform space as the environment for future generations. To protect the spiritual-moral potential of humankind will be impossible without acknowledging the objective and necessary connections between humankind and space. Humankind must become a force in space.

The reasonable assimilation of nature is a necessary condition and "common enterprise" of philosophy and a main subject of Fedorov. He understands it as unity of moral practice, duty and responsibility, past and future. Ecological culture has gone out from the biosphere of earth and become a global space problem. The main goal of humankind must be to change the world according to moral laws, which process is to "give us a basis for the decision to spread the human intellect through the solar and other star systems for control of these systems by the human brain". Fedorov suggested space travel from one star to another and after him K.Ciolkovskiy "the pioneer of the new space era" suggested the principles of building rocket jet engines.

The ideas of the Russian philosopher and scholar, V.Vernadskiy, are most important for the modern ecological situation. He suggested a new sphere of human life — which sphere he called the "noosphere". This term was suggested, for the first time, by the French philosopher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Vladimir Vernadskiy met him at a scientific conference in the 1920s and took this idea. The main book of Vernadskiy is The Living Substance in which he described all the spheres of the Earth, such as atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere and biosphere and described their evolution.

According to V.Vernadskiy the biosphere is the cradle of human society, which one day it will have to leave. The noosphere is a process of the conscious human transformation of the natural environment; it is not just a new state of biosphere: it is not a context, but a scientific transformation of nature. The human is a "part of the biosphere and is a product of evolution, but he is the main and the basic factor of the development of the noosphere". The noosphere is the most difficult conception. The evolution of matter has two levels: the first level is geological, the second is evolution.

The evolution of inanimate substance and its unity formed a biosphere and created a new quality of living substance. In a human society, the next step in the evolution of living substances must be a new state of biosphere, the "noosphere". Vernadskiy studied not only the objective conditions of the formation of the noosphere, but also the subjective conditions of this process. According to Vernadskiy humankind has to understand its place in the evolutionary process in order to understand itself as a new geological force and after that as a new unitive space power.

Of course, there are many factors which make this process most difficult and it is possible that our civilization may die. But V.Vernadskiy thought we have a chance to decide these problems: "The process which has been developing during billions of years could not be stopped. That is why the biosphere must transfer, sooner or later, into the noosphere".

This thought is illustrated by the idea of the aphtotrophical substance of humankind as a part of living nature, which depends on inanimate substance. The greatest part of aphtotrophical substance is plants. The higher forms of life are dependent on lower forms, but not otherwise. This is the evolutionary order. Vernadskiy thought that one of the characteristics of the noosphere is a transformation of humankind from geteratrophical substance to aphtotrophical existence. Humankind must be free from its dependence upon lower forms of life, and the noosphere must push out into the biosphere; this will be possible if humankind is creating new artificial food products, operating biological processes and so on. The resolution of these problems will ensure the future of humankind. For Vernadskiy, man is not standing "out" or "above" the biosphere, but is a part of it; he is a product of evolution and the main factor in its development. The scientific thought of humankind is working in the biosphere and transforming it into the noosphere.

The noosphere has a very complicated structure, which includes a unity of material and ideal components, the work and brain of man. The most important part of the noosphere is the highest level of social consciousness, scientific thought and the conscious activity of people who transform the world.

However, the activity of the mind does not mean intellectual activity, which the modern ecological situation corroborates. Ecological culture is the most important component of the noosphere and has a specific activity. It is a measure of the consciousness of the noosphere because in culture humans are able to show their value as ecologically creative.

Ecological creativity has taken place on every level of social life. On the social levels ecological culture operates by processes of the creativity of the noosphere. On the level of personality the noosphere is created by the "internal" noosphere, according to a unity of natural and social laws. Ecological culture helps to ensure the humane essence of humankind, which is changing its quality and improving not just its relation to nature, but also its social relations.

Ecological culture is a new prospective part of human culture. All dimensions of nature are connected; ecological culture is a synthesis in itself of different levels of their development. The interaction between ecological culture and civil society has two aspects: First, ecological culture as a whole is a new cultural phenomenon reflecting the ecological situation and is an indicator of the value dynamic of modern civilizations; second, ecological culture stipulates the direction of the development of material and spiritual culture and determines the formation of the quality of the new values, goals and ideals of humankind. Nature and culture are two opposites, interconnected and interacting upon each other. The "world of nature" and "world of culture" each suffer: nature from the ecological crisis and culture from a spiritual crisis.

The development of an ecological culture is impossible without aesthetics, that is to say, the realization of nature as a special spiritual-aesthetic value. Just as the human is a requirement of nature, aesthetic value is a part of spiritual culture. At present aesthetics, as the so-called "natural" conception of beauty, is popular. Nature, together with its physical, biological and other characteristics, also has an "aesthetic" character founded on such natural objective laws as harmony, rhythm, proportion and measure. The beauty of nature has the same level as its other characteristics; in the creations of nature, humans discover beauty.

Analysis of the results of research on the reflection of nature in art lead to an appreciation of nature as an aesthetic value. These analyses show its beauty, for example, a picturesque landscape is connected first of all with its expressiveness. In the landscapes of Turner, Resdale, Backhausen, van der Meer, Claude Monet, van Gogh, Ayvazovsky, Rerikh and other artists of different countries, periods and nations what appear before us is not just pictures of the woods, fields, mountains, seas and so on, but types of exalted, inspired nature. Sometimes it is "enraged", "somber" or "depressing"; sometimes "reconciliating", "agitated" or "joyful"; sometimes it is "triumphant" or "majestic". Our apperception of nature is very closely connected with our emotional condition and our vision of the world. The wavy, angular, softly bent or straight line of limbs, roads, fields, forms of stones and lakes are manifestations of nature. The interactions of the elements of a landscape evoke impressions which engender intellectual activity shaped by one’s emotional condition. Art by its essence is a means of harmonization of different processes of human life, which is able to balance the relationship of the human with the environment. That is why art has close relations and interactions with ecological culture.

There are interesting connections between ecological culture and architecture as forms of "second nature". Architecture means "first creation" (translation from Greek), by which meaning architecture is an unachieved synthesis of different kinds of art, culture, science and technique. Architecture is a prototype of the harmony between the human and the world, because it is a harmony of different branches of art and culture. It impresses a spirit on (or "inspirits") a stone, the symbol of architecture. We can analyze past epochs through the monuments of those epochs.

The penetration of ecologization into art and architecture creates a good foundation for an approach to aesthetics and ecological culture. Dostoevski wrote: beauty saves the world, Nockolay Rerikh added one word: the realization of beauty saves the world. The ecological interpretation of this expression is that "the creation of the beauty saves the world" because it is very closely connected with goodness, the love of humans for the world, and affirmation of the harmony between personality and nature. The ideal of humanity is the whole and includes the harmonious developing personality and the cultural as well as ecological facts. This ideal is achieved only if society has a high ecological culture in all spheres of material and spiritual activity.

Another concept which unites ecological culture and aesthetics is the ecology of culture. The Russian Academician, D.S. Likhachev, suggested the term "ecology of culture" for the first time in 1988. In that year he wrote: "The ecology of culture is more than the task of preservation of biological surroundings. The human lives not only in a biological environment, but also in an environment that was created by one’s ancestors and by oneself. Preservation of the cultural environment is as important a task as is the preservation of nature, because while nature is necessary for people for their biological life, culture is necessary for their spiritual, moral life." According to D.S. Likhachev the patrimony of the cultural environment is very limited, so that sometimes restorers, working according to their own unreliable views or the modern understanding of beauty, destroy monuments.

Therefore, ecological content has two sections: biological and cultural. These two sections unite, because an exact border cannot be drawn between culture and nature. It’s impossible to save the original beauty of an architectural masterpiece without the original landscape; that is why it is necessary to keep a monument and its landscape together, to keep a cultural object in its natural environment, and to keep both of them in the soul.

Technocratic and ecological culture are not just two different approaches to the task of developing relations between culture and society, they are two different ways of realizing these relations, two different kinds of reflection and self-awareness of culture. Technocratic culture has a high transformative potential, but is less sensitive to its relations to values. A technocratic mentality is little sensitive to its ecological relations to the biosphere and to the crises of nature due to the actions of humans and of society. "Material industry" and "ecological culture" are less compatible, but society depends on its economic and industrial culture. Without economic consciousness and culture an ecological culture is impossible. The social culture of labor, industry, exchange, distribution and consumption compose a socio-economic basis for the formation and development of ecological culture. Its level and the character of this basis depends upon the quality of the process of production and the economic relations in society. Hence, the development of the techniques and technology of industry and economic laws must be combined with the laws, characteristics and qualities of nature.

However, such recreation zones as Amudaria, Cirdaria, the lake of Issic-cul, Gurtulin reservoir, the eastern seaboard of the Caspian Sea and also the suburbs of the big cities are intensively polluted by rubbish. All Central Asian rivers are polluted by chemical and organic fertilizers, city sewerage and the refuse of industry; only artesian well water remains drinkable.

The total mineral concentration is considerably higher in the territory adjacent to the Aral Sea. The main effect upon the environment caused by the Sea’s recession consists in the movement of sand. Repeated dust storms and drought increased during the period of the Sea’s intensive recession. Several protective measures for the dry surface along with reduced wind speeds during the past years have slightly diminished this development.

The fate of the Aral Sea has concerned many international organizations, such as the United Nations. Uzbek President I.A. Karimov has said that the decline of the Aral Sea is one of the greatest disasters of the 20th century and requires the collaboration of many countries and organizations.

In spite of different conditions in the various countries, the socio-ecological results of the scientific-technical revolution are common for all countries. As with other forms of politics, ecological politics must serve social progress. The government of Uzbekistan declared 1994 and 1995 years of "Ecology and Health" and developed a great program for protection of nature. The role of ecological culture is to work out criteria and rules for such programs.

Vernadskiy, V. The Living Substance (Moscow, 1984), p. 125.

Likhachev, D.S. Memory of Culture (Moscow, 1988), p. 205.