Doi: 10. 17516/1997-1370-0640 Socio-Cultural Determinacy of Human Loneliness

Culture as a prerequisite
for maintaining community
and openness between people
Next, our focus falls on the culture. How-
ever, specialists have different understanding 
of it. Let us list some versions of the concept 
of this phenomenon that appear in the works of 
authoritative Russian philosophers. L. N. Ko-
gan, in particular, interprets culture as a pro-
cess which serves as a framework for the es-
sential forces of man to be formed and fulfilled 
(Kogan, 1981: 41). M.S. Kagan sees in culture 
something that produces specific historical 
forms of communication and ensures their im-
plementation (Kagan, 1988). D.V. Pivovarov 
believes that culture is the ideal-forming aspect 
of human life (Pivovarov, 1996: 50). V.S. Stepin 
understands culture as a ‘genetic code’ devel-
oped by society ensuring the reproduction and 
development of forms of human life (Kuda idet 
rossiiskaia…, 2009). Yu.M. Lotman considers 
culture as a special activity aimed at the repro-
duction and development of human social be-
ing (Lotman, 2002).
Despite all the discrepancies in the above 
and other theoretically consistent definitions, 
there is something that unites all of them, serv-
ing as their common denominator: culture is 
the content of the community’s vital activity 

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– 1267 –
Igor A. Belyaev and Maksim N. Lyashchenko. Socio-Cultural Determinacy of Human Loneliness
(F. Tönnies, K. Levi-Strauss) aimed at homini-
sation and formation of the necessary qualities 
for living together, becoming the next mech-
anism of evolution of human existence after 
nature (Markov, 2009: 24). Presumably, only 
when this circumstance is taken into account 
can one understand why culture:
‒ produces ideals (traditions, notions, 
values) not only ensuring the continuity of pub-
lic behavioural patterns, but also ‘contouring’ 
the horizons of man’s seeking to go beyond the 
limits of the present existence; 
‒ guarantees the continuity and dura-
tion of human transformative activity, and, ac-
cordingly, the continuity between generations, 
thereby linking the time horizons of the past, 
present and future into a single whole;
‒ sets a value-semantic determination, 
which expresses the relevance of the growth of 
autonomous and integral individuality to some 
extent relieving a person from external circum-
stances and from their own impulses and needs 
(Gert, 2016: 300); accordingly, culture acts as a 
kind of measure of spiritual and moral self-im-
provement of a person and his self-construc-
tion as a person;
‒ is a value-semantic space that binds 
and connects man, society and nature into a 
single whole; entering a value-semantic space 
with a Significant Other through the Meeting 
allows a person to find integrity, completeness 
and self-identity of his being; at the same time, 
culture is the world “between” (M. Buber), 
connecting and fastening man with other peo-
ple, man with nature, etc.;
‒ ensures emergence and development 
of the dialogue between man and the world; 
when man enters culture, he becomes its liv-
ing particle and develops a dialogue with the 
surrounding world by its means; culture, in its 
turn, encodes the surrounding world by means 
of meanings and values, which man in the 
process decodes, internalises setting new val-
ue-semantic horizons (i.e. re-encodes them); 
‒ prepares the entry of a person into 
the world of people, the Meeting with Signif-
icant Others; culture, accordingly, is the only 
possible way man’s existence in a humanised 
form, in which the spiritual heights of being are 
available to him, making him free in a prede-
termined and acquired integral spiritual and 
moral image;
‒ conditions man’s disclosure of him-
self to other people, being together with them, 
which allows him to feel and realise the spiri-
tual and personal integrity and wholeness of all 
being.