Book: Stepanov Yuri Sergeevich “Constants: Dictionary of Russian culture. Book: Stepanov Yu.S.

Encyclopedia of Harmonized Concepts

STEPANOV Y. S. CONSTANTS: DICTIONARY OF RUSSIAN CULTURE: RESEARCH EXPERIENCE. Moscow: School "Languages ​​of Russian Culture", 1997. 824 p.

Yuri Sergeevich Stepanov, as the experience of his scientific and editorial activities shows, masterfully masters all genres and many scientific fields. The author of the first and still the best popular book on semiotics, published in 1972, the compiler of a famous anthology on semiotics (1983), the author of a university textbook on general linguistics, which has gone through several editions, a linguist with a wide range of knowledge - from Indo-European syntax to philosophical and aesthetic aspects of logical semantics. His book, “In the Three-Dimensional Space of Language,” is read by linguists, literary critics, philosophers, poets and artists.

It must be said that the “author’s dictionary”, that is, a dictionary that does not provide objective impersonal information, but is fundamentally incomplete, subjective and conceptual, is now one of the most read genres: “Bulgakov’s Dictionary”, “Dictionary of Quotations”, “Encyclopedia of Literary Heroes” ", "Dictionary of 20th Century Culture" - you can't count them all. But Yu. S. Stepanov has a clear priority here. The book, as the preface indicates, was completed in 1993. For reasons that are vaguely technical, it remained in publishing for 4 years. But 1993 is the year of the end. How many years does it take to write a book of 66 printed pages - not two or three, obviously!

The structure of the work under review is characterized primarily by the fact that it contains few articles, but large articles. So, for example, the article “number” is a small monograph. The articles are arranged according to a rather complex principle, which can conventionally be called nested in the semantic sense. For example, the article “World” has subarticles “Mental worlds (Imaginary world, possible world, and also the Universe universe)”. The order of presentation within each article is also quite complex. As a rule, first comes the etymology of the concept, then its history, the Russian concept is compared, as a rule, with European ones, and then a modern understanding of the concept is given.

To make everything more or less clear, let's consider the introductory meta-concepts - culture and concept.

Culture is defined by Yu. S. Stepanov as “a set of concepts and relationships between them, expressed in various “series” (primarily in “evolutionary semiotic series”, as well as in “paradigms”, “styles”, “isoglosses”, “ranks” , "constants, etc.) (p. 38). Before giving this final definition, the author lists the most worthy definitions of culture belonging to authors of the 20th century. The authors are A. L. Kroeber, Bronislav Malinovsky, Pitirim Sorokin, Edward Taylor, A. Leroy-Gouran. We will not say whether this list is complete or not. We are interested in one single person - the lack of definition of culture by Yu. M. Lotman as a system of norms and prohibitions. This absence seems far from accidental to us. The fact is that the main, if not intellectual, then emotional concept of the book is of a harmonizing, pacifying nature. This begins with the image of the Mother of God by Petrov-Vodkin on the binding (by the way, the book was designed with great tact and taste by the artists Sergei Zheglo and Valery Korshunov). Lotman’s position as a culturologist is always provocative, dialogical, provoking a response. As we will show further, Stepanov’s Dictionary carefully avoids all this and we will try to explain why. However, on the other hand, the no longer scary Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr is mentioned all the time, and this is one of the great advantages of the book, since to this day Marr seems to many to be a kind of fairy-tale monster, Kashchei the Immortal. Using the example of Marr's so-called functional semantics, Yu. S. Stepanov shows the constructive and reasonable aspects of his linguistic concept. But with A.F. Losev, Yuri Sergeevich, calling him the only Russian philosopher (not expelled), clearly went too far. Of course, Losev is a great philosopher, but why forget others! For example, Merab Konstantinovich Mamardashvili. Or Alexander Moiseevich Pyatigorsky.

The next article is "Concept". Its definition is as follows: “a concept is, as it were, a clot of culture in a person’s mind; something in the form of which culture enters the mental world of a person. And, on the other hand, a concept is something through which a person, an ordinary, ordinary person, does not” the creator of cultural values" - he himself enters into the culture, and in some cases influences it" (p. 40).

The structure of the concept is three-layered: (1) “a new, relevant feature;

(2) additional, or several additional, “passive” features that are no longer relevant, “historical”; (3) internal form, usually not at all conscious, imprinted in external, verbal form" (p. 44) (hereinafter in quotations, the discharge of Yu. S. Stepanov. -IN. R.)

The example of this three-layer concept, which is given by Yu. S. Stepanov, is so successful and, at the same time, so characteristic of the “ultimate dictionary” (R. Rorty’s term, see more below) of the author that we will quote it in its entirety:

“Everyone knows that in recent decades, until the very last time in the life of the current active population of Russia, the day of February 23 was the annual “holiday of men,” and the day of March 8 was the “holiday of women.” On the first of these days, all men were the subject of celebration, regardless of their profession and age, at home, in factories, in schools from the first to the last grade and even in kindergartens, boys received congratulations and small gifts from girls.On the second of these days, men and boys do exactly the same in relation to women and girls. This fact of cultural life forms a concept. In this case, we also have a “double concept”, consisting of two related ideas about two holidays. This fact of cultural life also has some structure - the two holidays are symmetrical, opposed and located according to the calendar in close proximity to one another (In addition, by a strange but remarkable coincidence, February 23 in the old style falls on March 8 in the new style, i.e., in a sense, both dates are the same date. ) Let us denote the described state of affairs as “state of affairs I”.

It is equally well known that these two holidays are different in origin and are in no way connected with each other. February 23 was celebrated (and still is in the life of the older generation) as “Soviet Army Day,” that is, a holiday for the military, or, as is commonly expressed in modern Russian life, military personnel. March 8 was celebrated (and for a certain part of the older generation is still celebrated as “International Women’s Day,” i.e., the day of the struggle of “all progressive humanity” (and not just the women themselves and not just men for the sake of women) for the equality of women with men, for the emancipation of women. In this capacity, both holidays do not correlate with each other, and certainly not “symmetrical” (“state of affairs 2”).

Finally, historians and some of the simply educated people know (and more about February 23 than about March 8) the historical facts of the distant past, which subsequently led to the establishment of these memorable days. On February 23, 1918, the then newly organized regular army of the Soviet state - the Red Army - won a major victory over German troops near Narva and Pskov (the First World War was still ongoing). This event is associated with the name of L. D. Trotsky (a fact that Soviet propaganda subsequently tried not to remember), who was then People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. March 8 was designated as a holiday on the initiative of Clara Zetkin (1857-1933), an active activist in the international women's and communist movement; (“State of Affairs 3”).

It is quite obvious that all three states of affairs - (1), (2), (3) are reflected in the “concert of February 23 and March 8” that exists in our minds. But they are reflected in different ways, with varying degrees of relevance, like different components of this concert. Component (1) is the most relevant; in fact, it is the main feature of the content of the concept “holiday”. Component (2) is still involved in the concept of “holiday”, but not so vividly, not so “hotly”, forming it as if an additional, inactive, “passive” sign. Component (3) is no longer recognized in everyday life, but is "internal form" of this concept" (pp. 42-43).

What does this extensive quotation tell us about the features of the author’s “ultimate vocabulary”, about his emotional attitudes. Suppose that Solzhenitsyn, Sinyavsky or Galkovsky would write about February 23 and March 8. The first would breathe anger, the second would laugh cynically, and the third would not miss the opportunity to talk about the Jewish-Masonic symbolism of numbers - regarding the “coincidence” of dates, a fact that seems very strange to us. Yu. S. Stepanov’s attitude is extremely calm and balanced. It cannot be said that, writing these lines, he felt any nostalgia for the Soviet system; rather, he describes its concepts with the reasonable care with which Taylor or Turner described the life and customs of traditional societies. This, in our opinion, is the fundamental property of this book. One could argue that a dictionary is objective, balanced information. I will remind you of Diderot and d'Alembert's "Encyclopedia" or Russell's "Philosophical Dictionary", in which the authors actively promoted their ideas.

As already mentioned, most often the consideration of concepts begins with a consideration of their etymology - a direct path to the internal form. Often Yu. S. Stepanov puts forward his own etymologies. Here are some of them that seem most interesting to us (we cannot judge their persuasiveness, since this is not our specialty). \

"Koschey" is erected to bones, the one who sows bones, that is, Koschey in this sense, according to the author, “was” something like a shaman, a mediator between life and death.

The word "world" in the meaning of the Universe is associated with the Latin mundus (world) and with the ancient Indian mandata (mandala, magic circle, ball). “The Latin word “mundus,” further writes Yu. S. Stepanov, “meant, in one meaning, “that world that is above us, the firmament,” in another meaning, “that world that is below us, the kingdom of Ceres,” - in other words, it meant two hemispheres folded into a single whole, a ball; and, finally, it meant, in the third meaning, the very place of connection of these hemispheres-half-worlds, which externally looked like a hole in the ground, a hole-altar. All this is very similar to the ancient Indian concept of the mandala as “a circle, or ball, of the world”” (p. 104).

Using the etymology of the word "chaos" as gap, abyss, Yu. S. Stepanov interprets the ancient Greek thesis “Cosmos arises from chaos” “in accordance with the literal meaning of its constituent words, “The world arises from a crack, a hole.” “We, modern people,” the author further writes, “again create the impression that here the most ancient ideas in some strange way correspond to the most modern views, quite scientific ones, such as, say, the idea of ​​cosmic “black holes”.

The etymology of the word Pinocchio is extremely interesting, which Yu. S. Stepanov associates with the character of the Indian legend about Burta-Chino,“a boy who was thrown into a lake, saved by a she-wolf and became the founder of the Turkish state” (the motivic analogies with “The Adventures of Pinocchio” are obvious) (p. 705).

Also extremely interesting is the etymological explanation of the concept of the “Black Hundred” “as a special part of the Moscow philistinism, which had a separate legal status” (p. 608), which later led to its use as a pogrom anti-Semitic and anti-Bolshevik force.

A very strong side of Yu. S. Stepanov’s book is his constantly practiced comparison of Russian concepts with European ones. For example, he correlates the Soviet concept of “party spirit” with Breton’s concept of “revolutionary art,” as well as the French concept of “engagement,” analyzed by Roland Barthes (p. 327).

The book by Yu. S. Stepanov is replete with apt and witty remarks and interpretations. For example, he talks about the “familiar attitude towards the concept of “Time” in the first decades of Soviet power, when the authorities sped up time (“Time, forward!”, “Eternity flies right in front of your face,” such expressions as “cut off the deadline” or “count off six months in a year".

Now let's talk about controversial or insufficiently covered, from our point of view, problems and concepts in the book by Yu. S. Stepanov. In essence, almost all of them are associated with the tendency that we talked about, the desire for a harmonious, “good-natured,” non-conflict description and interpretation of facts, which we associate with the evolution of the scientist’s views from Anglo-Saxon Westernism, the apogee of which was the book “ In the three-dimensional space of language" to moderate pochvennichestvo and Orthodoxy. There could be no complaints here if this did not make the book look somewhat one-sided in some places. So, for example, only a paragraph is allocated to the “semantics of possible worlds,” while concepts such as Love, Faith, Joy, Eternity, Sofia, Russia, and Native Land are given dozens of pages. One might argue that this is a dictionary Russian culture, but in other cases broad comparisons are made with European concepts. In addition, this harmonious lack of conflict prevails in purely “Russian” articles. For example, the article “Slavophiles and Westerners” does not show either the struggle between these trends or the government’s attitude towards them. The latter, meanwhile, is extremely interesting. As D.E. Galkovsky writes in “Endless Deadlock,” referring to an endless number of documents, the Russian government, paradoxically, secretly supported dangerous Westerners and also secretly persecuted harmless Slavophiles, closing their magazines for insignificant reasons, while Sovremennik was published when Chernyshevsky was already in hard labor. Apparently, Galkovsky believes, the government saw in the Slavophiles a much more serious hostile force, and with the Westerners it entered into behind-the-scenes and complex games, which emerged at the end of the 19th century - as an ugly series of mutual betrayals and provocations among revolutionaries and gendarmes, which could only Borges could dream (Galkovsky 1997). Of course, such a purely conflictual presentation of events is eliminated by the pacifying concept of Yu. S. Stepanov. Another example in the article “Secret Power” is essentially about the special services, that is, not about secret, but about secret power. Really secret"power structures" such as Freemasonry or the Mafia, which have truly enormous power, are not considered. They are disharmonious.

Us. 328, the section ““Truth-Truth” is introduced in modern Russian culture" (emphasis added - V.R.) however, the presentation is conveyed only to Mikhailovsky and Berdyaev. Russian modernity is disharmonious, where there is truth in it, and where the truth is, you won’t understand.

Speaking about the duality of Russian culture, its cultural bilingualism and dual faith, Yu. S. Stepanov seems to forget that dual faith and bilingualism are universal phenomena. He refers here to Yu. M. Lotman and B. A. Uspensky, but the same Yu. M. Lotman, in articles of the second half of the 1970s, proclaimed cultural bilingualism as a universal feature of any culture, which compensates for the incomplete knowledge of the world by stereoscopicity" ( Lotman 1977, 1978) In turn, Lotman’s concept was a generalization of N. Bohr’s principle of complementarity, which is in no way directly connected with Russian culture.

The article “Intelligentsia” is of great interest, but I rather agree with the one mentioned by Yu.S. Stepanov with a note by Alexander Ivanov that the concept of “Intelligence” is now defunct, and the intelligentsia as a set of “people who are constantly spiritually restless” (p. 628) (an excellent, accurate definition!) is degenerating, transforming into a Western intellectual who is concerned only with his creative problems , but in all other respects he lives like all ordinary people. Let us recall the article by M. 0. Gershenzon in “Vekhi”, which Yu. S. Stepanov himself quotes on p. 625: “[...] with all its past, the intelligentsia is placed in an unheard of, terrible position: the people for which it fought, hate it, and the authorities, against whom she fought for turns out to be her protector, whether she wants it or not. [...] with our own hands, without realizing it, we have woven this connection between ourselves and the authorities, this is the horror, and this is what I am pointing out.”

Almost a hundred years later, a modern publicist writes in the same spirit: “The intelligentsia is a kind of countless bastard, existing thanks to the need for ideological expansion and military-technical progress realized by the state. The intelligentsia cannot exist outside a socially homogeneous state; this state feeds the intelligentsia, like one Siamese freak of another" (Brener 1995: 89). It’s no secret that it was the Russian intelligentsia that prepared and carried out the October revolution. That is, one of the characteristics of the concept “Russian intelligentsia” includes the description “potential desire to do good to the people and actual doing evil to the people.” It's weird not to write about it.

It is characteristic that in the article “Genius, Angel” Yu. S. Stepanov speaks only about the “ancient” meaning of the word “genius”, as if the modern one does not exist at all. And it’s clear why. A genius in the romantic and post-romantic sense is a person for whose soul God and the devil are fighting - this is the etiology of creativity (for more details, see (Rudnev 1996)). Again conflict, disharmony.

My last remark will concern the description of the concept “Time”. Here on p. 184-185 the author gives 12 different concepts of time. Among them are such exotic ones as “pulsating time”, “time as a sequence of points”, etc. Meanwhile, the classical characteristics of time, known since the beginning of the 20th century, are not given. First of all, this is the distinction between external natural scientific time and internal time (Bergson, Husserl). Further, this is the most fundamental concept in this matter about the direction of time (Reichenbach 1962), which can be entropic (this is natural scientific time) and informative (Wiener 1968, Rudnev 1986) (in essence, the last dichotomy coincides with Augustine’s contrast between the time of the earthly city and the City God's). Time may not have a definite direction: in the microcosm, in thoughts, in memory (in Russian culture, such “disrupted” time is reflected in classical works - “The Mirror” by Andrei Tarkovsky and “School for Fools” by Sasha Sokolov. Time can move not only forward or back, as we are used to, but up and down, as T. A. Mikhailova showed using the example of the Celtic model of time (Mikhailova 1995). Time can be considered as dynamic and static. The static concept of time was characteristic of representatives of British absolute idealism, first of all J. McTaggart. From this point of view, it is not time that moves, but we move in time (Withrow 1964). Finally, time can be considered as multidimensional. The author of this concept, the English philosopher of the 1920s John William Dunne, showed that if we consider time being multidimensional, then one of the dimensions becomes space-like and one can move forward and backward along it, as through space.This explained the phenomenon of visions of the future in dreams and clairvoyance (Dunne 1920). In fact, the entire work of Borges is built on Dunn's serial time.

I don’t want to write a ritual formula that all the noted comments are of a private nature. No, they are of a fundamental nature. I'll say it differently. Contemporary American philosopher Richard Rorty writes that each person has his own set of concepts, which he calls the “ultimate vocabulary” (Rorty 1997). When people communicate, their “ultimate vocabularies” tend to be in an overlapping relationship. There are no matching final vocabularies. Any description, according to Rorty, is the imposition of one finite vocabulary on another. Naturally, the final dictionary of Yu. S. Stepanov does not and cannot coincide with the final dictionary of his reviewer. But they haven’t yet come up with another way to exchange information.

In conclusion, I would like to wish that Stepanov’s book stands on the shelf of every educated person, of whom, fortunately, in Russia there are probably more than the book’s circulation of 2 thousand copies.

Vadim Rudnev

Literature

Brener A. Zilch of the intelligentsia // Art magazine, 9, 1995.
Viner N. Cybernetics. M., 1968.
Galkovsky D. E. Endless dead end. M., 1997.
Lotman Yu. M. The place of cinema in the mechanism of culture // Uchen. zap. University of Tartu, vol. 411, 1977.
Lotman Yu. M. Phenomenon of culture // Ibid., vol. 463, 1978.
Mikhailova T.M. Something about the spatial model of time // Semiotics and Informatics, vol. 38. M., 1995.
Reichenbach G. Time direction. M., 1962.
Rorty R. Randomness, irony and solidarity. M., 1997.
Rudnev V. The direction of time in culture // Wiener slawistscher Almanach, Bd. 17, 1986.
Rudnev V. Culture and psychocatharsis // Independent Psychiatric Journal, 5, 1996.
Withrow J. Natural philosophy of time. M., 1964.
Dunne J. W. An experiment with time. L., 1920.

A) The structure of the concept and its reality

A. Concept in modern logic and linguistics

The concept, as it is studied in logic and philosophy, is distinguished volume- a class of objects that fits this concept, and content- a set of general and essential features of a concept corresponding to this class. In mathematical logic (especially in its most common version, also adopted in this Dictionary - in the system of G. Frege and A. Church) the term concept they only call content concepts; thus the term concept meaning. While the term meaning becomes synonymous with the term scope of concept. To put it simply - meaning words are the object or objects to which this word is correct, in accordance with the norms of a given language, applicable, and concept this is the meaning of the word. In cultural science the term concept is used when one abstracts from cultural content and speaks only about structure, in general the same way as in mathematical logic. The structure of the content of a word is also understood in modern linguistics.

Let's give an example. In Russian the word rooster has “meaning” and “sense”. Its “meaning” is all birds of a certain appearance (which corresponds to their zoological characteristics): a walking (not flying) bird, male, with a red crest on its head and spurs on its legs. The meaning is otherwise called “denotation”. The “meaning” of the word rooster there will be something else (although, of course, in accordance with the “meaning”): a) a poultry, b) a male chicken, c) a bird that sings in a certain way and marks the time of day with its singing, d) a bird named for its special singing : rooster from the verb sing[the same connection is also found in the Lithuanian language, which is closely related to the Slavic languages: gaidỹs “rooster”, gaidà “chant, melody”, giesmẽ “solemn song (in the old days: ritual singing)”, giedóti “solemnly sing” (for example, anthem) and “to sing” (about a rooster)]; e) a prophetic bird, with which many beliefs and rituals are associated.

“Meaning is the way people come to a name,” these are the words of a famous logician and mathematician Gottlob Frege(1848-1925), with which he summarized the relationship between meaning and name in relation to mathematical logic, is also true for culture. But in cultural studies, such an understanding of meaning includes the history of the concept, as if subjected to “compression,” compressed and synthesized. This is the dominant line in the structure of the concept, considered from a cultural point of view.

B) The question of method as a question of the content and reality of concepts

Since the concept has a “layered” structure and different layers are the result, “sediment” of the cultural life of different eras, then from the very beginning it should be assumed that the method of study will not be one, but a combination of several different methods (or, one might say, “techniques” , - but this difference in words is not significant). We will see below that this is actually the case. Let's start with the “third” layer, the least relevant, the most distant in history, because it was in relation to it that the question of method was first raised.

1) “Literal meaning”, or “internal form”, or etymology of a concept and cultural phenomenon

For the first time in its entirety, the question of method as a question of the content of concepts (although the term “concept” was not yet used) arose in the 40s of the 19th century. in connection with the study of the life and antiquities of the Russian people using monuments of ancient literature and law. During these same years, Russian ethnography was founded, initially associated with the creation of the Russian Geographical Society in 1845. According to the fair remark of A.N. Pypin, “besides the fact that very important material of factual data was collected, the new science acquired moral and social significance when, for example, Buslaev’s research for the first time explained in folk poetry not only its archaeological antiquity, but also the deep moral feeling" (Ist. Russian liter., IV, 1899, p. 593; it would be worth noting that in connection with this Fedor Ivanovich Buslaev(1818-1897) received in 1859 an invitation to give the heir to the throne, Nikolai Alexandrovich, a course on “The History of Russian Literature, in the sense that it serves as an expression of the spiritual interests of the people”; the course was taught. Nikolai Alexandrovich (1843-1865) - eldest son of the Emperor. Alexander II, died young; his brother ascended the throne - as Alexander III).

The question of the method was clearly raised for the first time - not only on a Russian, but also on a European scale. Konstantin Dmitrievich Kavelin(1818-1885). He began his work in this direction with the study “A Look at the Legal Life of Ancient Rus'” (1846, first published in the journal Sovremennik, 1847, book 1; below is quoted from the publication: Collected works of K.D. Kavelin T. I. Monographs on Russian history, St. Petersburg, 1897). First, here Kavelin draws attention to the superficial, directly observable features of the Russian way of life, to - we would say - literal meaning relations between people: Russian peasants call the landowner and any boss father, yourself - him children, younger than older - uncles, aunts, grandmothers; equals, people of the same generation - brothers, sisters, etc. Consequently, he concludes, “the Russian Slavs initially had one purely family, related way of life, the Russian-Slavic tribe was formed in ancient times exclusively by one way of birth. This is consistent with the first historical news” (pp. 10, 11). Later, K.D. Kavelin expanded his approach to all kinds of customs and rituals. “The very interpretations,” he wrote, “that the people give to these customs, rituals and beliefs, often no longer correspond to reality. At first they were not a symbol, but a very definite concept or living action. The time comes when those natural and everyday conditions under which this concept was formed or this way of action was established change; then the previous idea becomes a sanctified tradition, a belief, and the course of action becomes a ritual. Their original meaning is often completely lost as conditions change; people continue to adhere to them, honor them, but no longer understand them. He gradually gives these ancient monuments a meaning consistent with his new way of life. This is how a difference is formed between the original meaning of a fact and its interpretation among the people” (quoted from: New Enc. Sl. Brockhaus - Efron, vol. 20, column 270). Hence the requirement of the method that Kavelin formulates: when studying folk rituals, beliefs, and customs, look for them immediate, direct, literal meaning- this is the same thing that linguists later called internal shape(words, customs, rituals). Kavelin explains his position with an example: “Do, according to our wedding rites, matchmakers come with a staff and talk to the bride’s parents as if they were strangers who had never heard of them, although they live backyard-about-yard - believe that these are now symbolic actions were once living facts of daily life; whether the bride cries of her own accord, whether the wedding song expresses her fear of going to a strange, unfamiliar place - these symbols were also a living reality in the old days” (st. 271). This “was done by Kavelin,” notes Maxim Maksimovich Kovalevsky, himself an outstanding legal historian, in an article about him, “at a time when not only in Russia, but also in the West, it was barely beginning, for example, in the writings of the Grimm brothers about German legal antiquities or in treatises devoted to the study of the Edda and the Nibelungs, the history of folk beliefs, legends and tales" (New Enc. Sl. Brockhaus - Efron, vol. 20, column 271).

In the field of method, K.D. Kavelin had a great predecessor (which Kavelin probably did not know about) - the ancient Greek historian Thucydides(460-396 BC). Contemporary researchers write about him, perhaps somewhat exaggeratedly, like this: “The greatest merit of Thucydides as a historian is his use of documentary sources in his work (texts of treaties, official decrees and other documents), the establishment of chronology..., as well as the use of what he discovered an ingenious method of reconstructing the past by reversing conclusions on the basis of rudiments ("cultural remnants")." This method consists in drawing conclusions from the remnants of various institutions that have survived in the life of society about what they were and how they acted in those times when they were completely necessary. (Stratanovsky G.A. Thucydides and his “History” // Thucydides. History. M.: Ladomir - Science, 1993, pp. 428-429 [Series “Literary monuments”]).

The genius of Thucydides in this matter lies, perhaps, in another thing - in the fact that he invited historians to conclude about spiritual the meaning of something in the past material the remnants of this “something” in the present. This is how he applies his method in practice (History, 1, 5) - we are talking about the strange custom of the Greeks to address those who sailed on ships with the question: “Are you not robbers?” “Already from ancient times, when maritime trade became more vibrant, both the Hellenes and the barbarians on the coast and on the islands turned to sea robbery. Such enterprises were headed by people who were not lacking in funds, seeking both their own benefit and food for the poor. They attacked villages unprotected by walls and plundered them, thereby obtaining most of their livelihood, and such an activity was not at all considered shameful at that time, but, on the contrary, even a glorious deed. This is indicated by the customs of some mainland inhabitants (among them, to this day, dexterity in such an occupation is considered honorable), as well as by ancient poets, who ask visiting sailors everywhere the same question - are they robbers, just as those who are asked , should not consider this activity shameful, and those who ask, it does not cause censure...”

As for the “ancient poets,” commentators point, for example, to two passages from the Odyssey where this custom is mentioned. In both cases (3, 71 ff. and 9, 252 ff.) the question is asked in the same form (in the translation by V.A. Zhukovsky, which we give here for 9, 252, it is given somewhat differently):

Wanderers, who are you? Where did you come from along the water road?

What is your problem? Or are you wandering around idle,

Back and forth across the seas, like free miners, rushing,

Playing with your life and causing misfortune to the people?

But in the first case, this question is asked by Elder Nestor, and in the second, in the same form (in the original) - by the Cyclops Polyphemus! This means that before us is no longer a simple form, but stable formula, which in itself has already become a new custom of “asking”. Thus, the “rule of Thucydides,” just like the “rule of Kavelin,” also applies to relics preserved in the language.

We have already seen above that “literal meaning” can be present both in those cultural phenomena that are contained in words or associated with words, and in those that are not verbally designated in any way. An example of the former is the holiday “March 8th,” where the literal meaning is that the day of March 8th is celebrated, and not any other day of the year. According to the conceptual content, as “international day for women’s equality” or simply as “women’s day”, the same holiday could be dedicated to any day. An example of the second, not verbally indicated phenomena, is the custom of accepting matchmakers as complete strangers. Consequently, our expression “literal meaning” is a scientific term applied to those cases where there is no “letter” or sound of the word at all. This term means the same as “internal form” - a term that came from the study of language, but is applicable to all cultural phenomena (for example, to the symbolism of a temple building).

The term "inner form" is considered an invention Wilhelm von Humboldt(1787-1835), however, Humboldt has only general philosophical considerations about form, in particular about the form of language, which can hardly be applied to research. Humboldt tried to specify general considerations Gustav Gustavovich Shpet(1879-1940) (book “The Internal Form of the Word”, M., 1927). The most clear and “working” definition was given by (1835-1891). Potebnya defines the internal form of a word as “the way in which the previous word from which the given one is derived” is represented in an existing word. Thus, Potebnya’s definition applies only to words and, moreover, to derivative words. But thanks to this narrowing, it is clear and can serve as a starting point for further generalizations to non-verbal phenomena.

So, in a derived word, the “internal form” is the idea of ​​the generating word: nuclear scientist- “person (this is indicated by the suffix -schik), related to the atom”; snowdrop- this is “an object (this is indicated by the suffix -Nick), located under snow or protruding from under snow"; breakfast(za-mor-ak) - this is “some business that follows immediately in the morning" and so on. Representations like these are “self-explanatory” from the meanings of words and suffixes.

In non-derivative words or in words that seem non-derivative at the present time, everything is exactly the same, with the only difference that the “internal form” is no longer intelligible to modern speakers of a given language or no form is visible at all. In such cases, the “internal form” is discovered only by the researcher in the form etymology words. For example, English, breakfast (“breakfast”) and French. déjeuner (“breakfast”) literally means “refusal of fasting, breaking the fast”: break “break” + fast “fast, prohibition of eating”; dé deny. prefix particle + jeune “fasting, not eating.” Thus, these English and French words meaning the first meal of the morning, breakfast, have an internal form of the word "fasting, fasting, prohibition of eating" and "denial, ending of this prohibition", and are associated with the ancient ritual prohibition of eating at night , before dawn.

Here again the important question we have already raised above arises: are “internal forms” or “literal meanings” really significant? The question arises all the more because, as we ourselves said, in many cases “internal forms” are not recognized at all by modern speakers and are restored, and even then not always, only by researchers in the form of etymology. But, let us emphasize once again: - the answer to this question comes from the method, - see below.

2) “Passive”, “historical” layer of the concept

The methodological technique, which we can now call the “Kavelin method,” has been fully developed in our time. He is followed, for example, by such an outstanding researcher of Russian fairy tales as Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp(1895-1970): “The fairy tale must be compared with the social institutions of the past and its roots must be sought in them... So, for example, we see that the fairy tale contains different forms of marriage than now. The hero is looking for a bride in the distance, and not at home. It is possible that the phenomena of exogamy are reflected here: obviously, for some reason the bride cannot be taken from one’s own environment. Therefore, the forms of marriage in a fairy tale must be considered and the system, that stage or phase of social development in which these forms actually existed must be found” (Historical roots of a fairy tale. L.: Leningr. Univ. Publishing House, 1986, p. 22). This situation is actually discovered by ethnographers in the clan system, in the phenomena of exogamy, i.e. “marriage outside” - outside one’s kind, in another kind; in the prohibition of marriage between men and women of the same kind.

Using techniques similar to the “Kavelin method”, by the beginning of the 20th century. the errors in understanding the legal issues of the structure of the Russian land community, the “world”, were quite clearly understood (see below World [community]): “Examining peasant customary law, i.e. actually existing order of relations between peasants, they try to explain not this order, but what lies in it legal contemplation peasantry..."; “Therefore, actual norms on the basis of which conflicts over law are resolved are often excluded from the law... I.e. don't discriminate sanctions customary law in the eyes of the peasants from the actual reasons for their formation" (Russia. Encyclical words. Publishing house Brockhaus - Efron, St. Petersburg, 1898, p. 547).

This position is now formulated almost literally in the same way in modern Western ethnography, or ethnology, or cultural anthropology (all these are different names for the same science, adopted in different countries). “We must,” writes the French ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss(born in 1908), - imagine social structures primarily as objects that do not depend on how they are perceived by people (although people control their very existence), and they can also differ from ideas about them, like physical reality differs from our sensory impressions of it and from the hypotheses we create about it” (Structural anthropology // Translated from French. M.: Nauka. Chief editor of Eastern Literature, 1985, p. 108); “History generalizes data related to the conscious manifestations of social life, and ethnology - to its subconscious foundations” (ibid., p. 25). (The word “manage” here is perhaps inaccurate and even vague: such “objects” exist, as it were, “through people”, thanks to their actions, carried out for a completely different purpose than the purpose of managing these objects; people do not control the existence of such objects and do not can change them, except in such rare cases as reforms or revolutions.The most typical example of the relationship between people and such objects is language: everyone knows how attempts to control natural language, reform it, or generally influence it as a system as a whole end. More precisely, the point of view of E. Durkheim, see paragraph 3 below.)

Thus, further here the tasks of the ethnologist, historian and researcher of spiritual culture in our understanding diverge in three different directions. How exactly the paths of an ethnologist and a historian differ is clear from what has been said above. But let us summarize this difference in relation to our topic - concepts.

A. Ethnologist explores the deep layer that exists in the modern state of culture in a latent form, unconscious to people (cf. above C. Lévi-Strauss). The researcher of spiritual culture in this part follows the ethnologist and uses his method, with the latter’s main technique being the “Kavelin method.” Close to this, somewhere at this “junction” of two sciences - ethnology and history (using completely different terminology) the largest Russianist of our century, Academician, placed the task of “historical semantics of the Russian language”. Viktor Vladimirovich Vinogradov(1894/95-1969): “Identify the patterns of development of the all-Russian dictionary in connection with the ideological development of Russian society” (“Abstracts of scientific research works for 1944. Department of Literary and Language.” M.-L.: Publishing House Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1945, p. 6).

b. Historian explores the “historical” layer of the concept and, accordingly, acts using the historical method. For us, a remarkable example of such work is the study Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky(1841-1911) “Terminology of Russian history”, repeatedly cited in the future.

Of course, it cannot be said that the concepts of “ethnological method” and “historical method” are completely and unambiguously defined for all researchers. For V.Ya. Propp, in relation to his field of research - fairy tales and mainly fairy tales - this is a “formal method”. For C. Lévi-Strauss, and his area is much wider - this includes the mythology and culture of “primitive societies” in general, and he began to work in it much later, this is the “structural method”. For L.N. Gumilyov, this is something else, etc. What "historical method" is is also defined differently by different scholars, depending on what they understand by their subject - "history". And this last question is so complicated that we can only limit ourselves here to what all non-specialists intuitively, approximately, but more or less equally understand by “history.”

In general, in order to at least understand the complexity of the issue, we recall the work, remarkable, but not indisputable, of an English specialist in the philosophy of history RJ Collingwood(1889-1943) “The Idea of ​​History” (translated from English. M.: Nauka, 1980). From Collingwood's extensive survey of what is meant by "history", including hundreds of examples of various opinions from Hesiod to the present day, we will single out only one understanding close to our topic (Collingwood joins him) - Hegel's understanding of history. According to Hegel, “all history is the history of thought. In so far as human actions are mere events, the historian cannot understand them; strictly speaking, he cannot even establish that they occurred. They are cognizable to him only as the external expression of thoughts. (We will see something similar immediately below, in our material, when we come to the “synonymization” of words and things in the history of culture. - Yu.S.)... And here Hegel, of course, is right. The correct task of the historian is not to find out what people did, but to understand what they thought” (Collingwood, op. cit., pp. 11-12).

V. Criticism of the classical "historical" method in the works Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev(1912-1992). This criticism must necessarily be taken into account in a work such as ours, and it must necessarily supplement the view of history outlined above. We will limit ourselves here to one of the numerous and equally important works of L.N. Gumilyov - his last book “From Rus' to Russia. Essays on ethnic history" (M.: Ecopros, 1992). In the conclusion of this book, L.N. Gumilyov writes: “We have traced the logic of the main events in the ethnic history of Rus' and Russia. It is easy to see that the presentation of this logic is not at all similar to the narrative of social history. The ethnic history of any country, that is, the history of the peoples inhabiting it, cannot be considered in the same way as we consider economic relations, political collisions, the history of culture and thought. The history of Russia, presented in an ethnic aspect, is no exception: it cannot be imagined as a linear process going from Rurik to Gorbachev. The events of the ethnogenesis of the peoples of our Fatherland constitute the historical outline of the life of at least two different super-ethnic groups. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish between the history of Ancient Kievan Rus (from the 9th to the 13th centuries, including the history of Novgorod until its fall in the 15th century) and the history of Muscovite Rus' (from the 13th century to the present day)” (p. 292).

What is the cardinal difference between the approach of the “classical historians” and the approach of Gumilyov himself? In his words: “Historians, naturally, deal with cultural phenomena in the broad sense of the word - monuments of the most varied properties. This is where the possibility of substituting concepts lurks: human creations are directly identified with those who gave birth to them, and the continuity of the cultural tradition is directly transferred to the ethnic tradition” (p. 297). Gumilyov has already said above that the ethnic history of Kievan Rus is before the 13th century, and the ethnic history of Muscovite Rus' is from the 13th century. these are two different stories with a gap between them.

What should a cultural historian do, according to Gumilyov? - “Indeed, if we mean culture, that is, everything created by people, then we can agree with the thesis about continuity with sin in half. But since we are talking about enthogenesis, then this thesis is generally inapplicable to it. Unlike cultural tradition, ethnic tradition is not the continuity of dead forms created by man, but the unity of behavior of living people, supported by their passionarity. As for the stereotypes of behavior of people in Kievan Rus and in the Muscovite state, they, as we have seen, differed quite significantly” (p. 296).

In general, we accept the point of view of L.N. Gumilyov. The history of the cultural concepts that form the subject of our book is constructed as a continuity of concepts, and this is because the concepts themselves consist of successive layers; continuity lies in concepts. Of course, the historian of concepts also records breaks in continuity when, according to his material, they occur. But in such cases we still have before us the history of one concept, albeit marked by discontinuities. This is the case in most of the concepts we have examined.

However, although rare, there are other cases, for example, the concept "Faith". We must state (based mainly on etymological data) that the original path of development of this concept in Proto-Indo-European civilization, associated with the ritual action of “giving your heart (or another organ, for example, liver) to god,” was abandoned, just as they were abandoned - in the material world - some ancient caravan routes, and the concept of “Faith” from a certain moment, even before the emergence of Christianity, began to develop on a different basis - on the awareness of “contractual principles, contractual trust” between the two parties.

Different aspects of a culture may be marked differently by such discontinuities, and even just one aspect of it. Thus, the Russian language: with regard to grammar, the modern Russian language is assessed by most researchers as a different, in any case, a different system, language than the Old Russian language, the language of Kievan Rus; meanwhile, with regard to the lexical composition, vocabulary and meanings of words, and therefore concepts, there is no gap between them (for more details, see Language ).

But, of course, the situation is different in the main subject of the history of ethnogenesis, or history in the aspect of ethnogenesis, which was created by L.N. Gumilev. Indeed, complete continuity cannot be established in behavioral stereotypes, belonging to two different ethnic histories. Therefore, let's say a concept like "Russian character" turns out to be a difficult subject for the cultural historian at the present time (and the reader should not expect much on this issue from this Dictionary either). (See, however, Motherland .)

3) The newest, most relevant and active layer of the concept. The cultural historian in the face of this fact

Above (starting with the Preface) we have repeatedly emphasized that the subject of the science of culture in general and this Dictionary in particular is not the concepts of how they mentally exist in individual consciousnesses (and where in particular cases one or another of them may be absent altogether - let’s compare , for example, concept "Civilization, Civilized Society" and the mentality of modern teenagers in Russia), and concepts as a kind of collective heritage of Russian spiritual life and the entire Russian, Russian society. It is therefore necessary to define concepts from this, namely the social, side.

Concept of collective consciousness as a special social phenomenon, not reducible to either individual consciousness or the sum of individual consciousnesses, was first introduced into science by a French researcher, whom we readily recognize as the founder of scientific sociology, Emile Durkheim(1858-1917). Having devoted his first work (1893) to the problem of the division of social labor, already in his second work (1895), Durkheim came to the urgent need to explore the method of the new science. The work is called “The Rules of the Sociological Method” (“Les règles de la méthode sociologique”; in the Russian translation - “The Method of Sociology”, hereinafter quoted in the Russian translation according to the edition: E. Durkheim. On the division of social labor. The method of sociology M.: Nauka, 1991).

There is, writes Durkheim, “a category of facts distinguished by very specific properties; it consists of ways of thinking, acting and feeling that are outside the individual and endowed with coercive force, as a result of which they are imposed on him. Therefore, they cannot be confused either with organic phenomena, since they consist of ideas and actions, or with mental phenomena that exist only in the individual consciousness and through it. They therefore constitute a new species, and it is to them that the name must be given. social"(p. 413). Durkheim gives examples that are also important for our topic.

“When I act as brother, husband, or citizen, when I fulfill the obligations I have entered into, I fulfill duties imposed outside of me and my actions by law and custom. Even when they agree with my own feelings and when I recognize their reality in my soul, the latter still remains objective, since I did not create them myself, but internalized them through my upbringing.

In the same way, a believer at his birth finds the beliefs and rituals of his religion already ready-made; if they existed before him, then that means they exist outside of him. The system of signs that I use to express my thoughts, the monetary system that I use to pay debts, the instruments of credit that serve me in my commercial relations, the customs observed in my profession, etc. - all of these function regardless of the use I make of them. Let them take one by one all the members that make up the society, and everything that has been said can be repeated about each of them. Consequently, these ways of thinking, acting and feeling have the remarkable property that they exist outside of individual consciousnesses.

These types of behavior or thinking are not only outside the individual, but are also endowed with coercive power, as a result of which they are imposed on him regardless of his desire” (p. 412).

In the preface to the 2nd edition of his book, E. Durkheim responded to critics' comments on the first edition. Two points are especially important for our topic; they directly relate to the concepts discussed in our Dictionary.

Collective consciousnesses are like “things”.“The position according to which,” Durkheim notes, “social facts must be considered as things, the position that lies at the very basis of our method, has caused the most objections. We found it paradoxical and outrageous that we liken the reality of the social world to the realities of the external world. This means being deeply mistaken about the meaning and significance of this comparison, the purpose of which is not to reduce the highest forms of being to the level of lower forms, but, on the contrary, to demand for the former a level of reality at least equal to that which everyone recognizes for the latter. We are not really saying that social facts are material things; these are things of the same rank as material things, although in their own way.

What is a thing really? The thing is opposed to the idea as that which is known from the outside, to that which is known from the inside. A thing is any object of knowledge that in itself is impenetrable to the mind; this is everything about which we cannot formulate an adequate concept for ourselves by a simple method of mental analysis; this is everything that the mind can understand only if it goes beyond itself, through observations and experiments, successively moving from the most external and immediately accessible signs to the less visible and deeper ones” (pp. 394-395).

The difference between the conscious (conscious) and unconscious layers in collective consciousnesses or ideas. This position is also important because it is a general point in which the method of sociology, as formulated by Durkheim, and the method of ethnology, as it is understood, for example, by K. Lévi-Strauss, coincide, and how it goes back to the “Kavelin method.” Indeed, Durkheim says: “Even when it comes simply to our private actions, we have very little idea of ​​the relatively simple motives that govern us. We consider ourselves unselfish, while we act like egoists; We are sure that we submit to hatred when we yield to love, to reason - when we are captives of senseless prejudices, etc. How can we more clearly distinguish the much more complex reasons on which the actions of a group depend? “It is necessary that, when penetrating the social world, the sociologist realizes that he is entering into the unknown. He needs to feel that he is in the presence of facts whose laws are unknown, just as the laws of life were unknown before the creation of biology. He must be ready to make discoveries that will amaze him and confuse him” (p. 396).

After Durkheim's beautiful words, there is little left to add. We just need to summarize, so - Let's summarize.

Method of the cultural historian, at least in part relating to the concepts of culture, it differs from the methods of an ethnologist, historian, sociologist; a cultural historian, in particular a historian of cultural concepts, combines all three, using them respectively in three different layers of the content of cultural concepts.

To this we only need to add that the cultural historian must strive to show not only collective performances, as the reality of society, but also hypotheses created about this reality the most prominent members of society. The attribute “most outstanding member of society” here is not a subjective assessment, it simply means a member of society, a thinker or writer, recognized by society itself as such.

Since, however, hypotheses also become material, it is natural that the very descriptions of “spiritual values” - concepts, as they are given in this book, are also, to a certain extent, hypotheses. But one should not exaggerate their hypothetical nature. By using the word “hypothesis” here, we do not want to emphasize some particularly large measure of their “hypotheticalness,” “author’s subjectivity,” etc. This measure is, in any case, no greater than in other humanities studies; for example, all etymologies of words in linguistics are hypotheses, all descriptions of “collective ideas” in sociology are hypotheses, precisely because they are not given in direct observation, etc. We only want to emphasize the special nature, the special nature of the relationship of concept descriptions to reality: they describe reality, but a special kind of reality - mental. And in any case, they have at least one very solid basis - the literal meaning of a custom, idea, belief, term, word. This is each time the starting point for the further development of the concept in mental reality itself, in the actually existing collective consciousness, and in the development of the researcher’s hypothesis that he builds on this matter.

From here follows, by the way, one compositional requirement, relating both to the definition of a cultural concept, as it is given in the Dictionary, and to the construction of the text of the Dictionary article itself - this requirement genetic sequence. Defining each concept is a process similar to definition of a concept in logic. But there is a very important difference between both. The definition of a concept, as we outlined above, consists of historically different layers, different in time of formation, origin, and semantics, and therefore the method of summing them up in the definition is essentially genetic; the concept always receives a genetic definition.

Let us now consider some important phenomena in the sphere of concepts that go beyond individual concepts or even groups of concepts - what we call in rows.

B) Evolutionary semiotic series of concepts(this section is a continuation of the corresponding section of Art. Culture )

If a concept, as we said above, consists of layers of different times of origin, then it is natural to imagine its evolution in the form of a certain sequence or series, the links of which are the stages of the concept, or, in other words, a given concept in different eras. Between these links, as soon as they are arranged quite consistently, special relations of continuity of form and content are immediately revealed, thanks to which something from the old stage of the concept becomes a sign in its new stage. Such relations must, for this reason, be associated with the principle of the sign, or, more precisely, with the principle of organization of sign systems. Since the study of sign systems is most often called semiotics, we called this arrangement of concepts in rows evolutionary semiotic series. Let us consider several examples of such series given by different scientists (sometimes in discussion with each other). First place, of course, by the very essence of the matter should be given to representatives of the evolutionary school - by the way, they were the only ones who used the concept of “evolutionary series” (others considered actually the same phenomena without calling them that).

A. Tylor's evolutionary series occupy first place here, of course. The concept itself (without a corresponding term, our term) was introduced back in the 70s. last century - see about it in detail in Art. Culture . It is also the starting point for studying the evolution of concepts. But here we will consider its consequences and its derivatives in science itself, arranging in a single row what the authors of its individual links did not consider or even notice in this capacity.

b. The so-called “functional semantics” of N.Ya.Marr

Observations similar to those made by E.B. Tylor on a number of things and spiritual concepts were carried out in Russia (then USSR) by academician. Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr(1864-1934) over parallel rows of things and their names, i.e. words of natural language. Thus, N.Ya.Marr managed to identify some specific pattern, which we can now call precisely semiotic, but which N.Ya. Marr himself called “functional semantics”.

The essence of this pattern is that the meanings of words - names change depending on the transition of a name from one object (or action) to another object, replacing the first item in the same or similar function. Marr established, for example, that with the appearance of a new animal on the farm, Name that animal whose function the new one took on: thus, according to Marr, the name deer was transferred to the horse (in different languages); the name acorn was transferred to bread, since the acorn as a food product was replaced by bread, etc. (Marr N.Ya. Means of transportation, tools of self-defense and production in prehistory. Towards linking linguistics with the history of material culture // Marr N.Ya. Selected works. T. III. Language and society. L, 1934, p. 123 and seq.; see also the article “The origin of the terms “book” and “letter””, ibid., pp. 219 et seq.). N.Ya. Marr's observations - in general terms - are confirmed by archaeological data and data on rituals. Thus, in the Pazyryk mound in Altai, ritually buried remains of horses wearing deer masks were found (see Art. Culture , ibid. ill.). In some linguistic details, these provisions of N.Ya.Marr caused criticism from linguists and should be corrected. (Two specific examples by N.Ya. Marr are analyzed in detail below in paragraph “d”; the transition “stone” => “axe” in Art. Craft , the transition “acorn” => “bread” in Art. Bread .)

The presence of some ambiguities in the concept of N.Ya.Marr was felt already in his time, immediately after his publications, although the nature of these ambiguities and omissions became clear only now and is illuminated by us here. However, an alternative concept immediately arose, in opposition to the concept of N.Ya. Marr, about which a few words need to be said.

V. The existence of a concept in a latent form, in an “image” - concept by O.M. Freidenberg(1890-1955)

“Completely agreeing with Marr in the practical results of his linguistic analysis“, - this researcher wrote, “I would like to emphasize that I see here not a “transition of meanings according to function,” but a fundamental, general law for the entire system of semantization, which shows that each meaning has a different, special form of existence, completely different from this one , and that these different states transform into each other, live in a hidden form or appear, losing their meaning” (Freidenberg O.M. Myth and literature of antiquity. M.: Nauka, 1978, p. 46).

The researcher explained her idea with an example: “slave” appears before the emergence of the social institution of slavery: “Yes, the concept exists before the fact it defines, and not because of an alternative - either first a fact, and then a concept about it, or first a concept, and then a fact, but because both the fact itself and the concept of this fact always arise from species that are dissimilar to themselves, different in relation to themselves (we see how Marr’s statement about naming within one evolutionary series is replaced by the exact opposite - the essence of naming is in transition, in jumping from one row to another. - Yu.S.). Thus, the image of a “slave” in relation to the concept of “slave” is progenetic, pre-conceptual. The concept of “slave” was created in an image that had nothing in common with this concept, and it is precisely in this image that it was created, in an image that logically in no way connects the essence of the social phenomenon, the slave, with the word that defines this essence. So the concept of “slave” exists even before slaves historically appeared. How does it exist? In the form of a "slave". A phenomenon, when it is not there, lives in another form or another meaning; the hidden appears, the revealed takes the form of the hidden. This great law of semantization (in another aspect - morphogenesis) far outstrips the small empirical facts of individual development, staged changes and other types of apparent evolution. His discovery has been the soul of my work since my student days. Marr called this law “naming according to functional characteristics” and was understood by Marr as “the transition of word meanings according to functions in production.” According to Marr, the first, genetic value was created by production needs; it was then passed along the function. So, for example, acorns served as the first food; when cereals and bread appeared, they, performing the function of an acorn, began to be called acorns in many languages. Marr and I have the same facts, but their theoretical basis is different. Marr has a linear transition of linguistic meanings according to the production function of the named object. I deny that primitive consciousness could understand the production function: the object was named metaphorically, without any relation to its real function in production” (ibid., pp. 45-46).

Although O.M. Freidenberg herself persistently emphasizes that in her dispute with N.Ya. Marr we are talking about “the same facts,” but in reality this is not quite the case. It is true that the immediate subject of the dispute was the same facts (for example, “acorn” => “cereal, bread”). But this is only a small group of facts that belong, so to speak, to both concepts at the same time. In fact, Marr’s concept belongs to the “production” subject area, while Freudenberg’s concept refers to the “non-production phenomena” subject area. And in these - different - areas, both concepts are true at the same time (see below Bread ).

(K.K. Zhol in 1990 drew attention to the fact that the concept of O.M. Freidenberg is akin to the concept of L.S. Berg in the field of biology, according to which the appearance of an animal organ precedes its work, i.e. function, and even needs for it (L.S. Berg “Nomogenesis”, 1922). If this is so, then both concepts, Freudenberg and Berg, can be put in direct connection with semiotic theories - with the teaching of Jakob von Uexküll about the “goal”, about teleological organization of the external and internal world of the animal: the external world, for example, such and such a type of plant as an animal’s food item, appears in the animal’s world consequence the internal plan of his body - see further about this: Stepanov Yu.S. Semiotics. M.: Nauka, 1971; and here in Art. Reason and purpose; Evolution .

Let us now consider two concepts that, in logical sequence, should be considered - as we see it now - as a development, with some criticism, of Freudenberg's ideas, although in actual history the authors of these concepts initially did not in any way connect their views with Freudenberg's views, and it is unlikely that at all knew about them.

G. Rows as random associations. Naming as a random choice of a distinctive feature, according to B.A. Serebrennikov

The first position of academician B.A. Serebrennikova(1915-1989) in his concept of naming, very closely corresponding to the idea of ​​O.M. Freidenberg: “Without going into polemics regarding the thesis about the obligatory verbal nature of human thinking (which Serebrennikov rejects. - Yu.S.), we will try to substantiate our main thesis: experience creates an invariant generalized image of an object, which usually precedes its name" (Nomination and the problem of choice // in the book: Language nomination. General questions. M.: Nauka, 1977, p. 148) .

The most common method of nomination, the same author further notes, is the use of a ready-made sound complex, i.e. any existing word or onomatopoeic complex, meaning one of the characteristics inherent in a new, called object. Thus, we emphasize that in Serebrennikov’s concept we are talking about “non-production” series, and the existence of “production” series and functional semantics (which was fundamental in Marr’s concept) B.A. Serebrennikov, who was in sharp opposition to the teachings of N.Ya. Marra doesn’t seem to notice at all.

Next, B.A. Serebrennikov formulates his main thesis: “Most often, the choice of a characteristic as the basis of a name does not depend on any external conditions and is the result of purely random associations"(ibid., p. 155). Such a sign, according to Serebrennikov, being signified by means of a sound complex, itself becomes a conventional sign of a new, called object, its identification mark.

We will consider B.A. Serebrennikov’s examples in more detail below, but for now we will immediately state our concept.

d. Criticism and synthesis of previous concepts in the concept of “conceptualized area (sphere)”

As noted above, B.A. Serebrennikov’s approach not only did not take into account and critically did not overcome, but simply did not notice N.Ya. Marr’s concept associated with the concept of functional semantics. This must be done in a new, synthesizing concept, correlated with the original theoretical concept of evolutionary semiotic series. In addition, Serebrennikov’s concept requires criticism on one special point, namely, about accidents naming based on characteristics.

Let's first give our example - naming "Human". In Indo-European languages, human designations fall into two clearly separable layers. One, apparently historically newest (although quite ancient), is the Proto-Slavic *čеlovẽкъ, which does not have a generally accepted etymology. But, according to the most reliable etymology, it is a compound; its first part, from I.-E. *kel- means “clan, tribe, clan”, cf. lit. kẽlis “knee, generation, clan”, Russian. servants- 1. “The population of the feudal estate of Ancient Rus'; 2. Domestic servants (as a collective),” and its second part, -vẽкъ, is related to lit. vaikas - “child”; those. this whole complex word means “a child of (our, “our own”) clan, tribe” (see. Man, Personality ) .

The second layer, the oldest (since it is represented in many Hebrew languages), includes the names of a person, formed from a root with the meaning “earth”: Lat. homo with humus - “earth, surface layer of the earth - soil, humus”; Old-Irish duine at dū, r. case don - “earth”; lit. žmogùs with žemé - “earth” (with a guttural suffix, the same as in the next word, with a different root, *mogio - “man, man, husband”, cf. Russian husband). Thus, all these names in different, variable forms mean the same thing - “earthly, earthly,” which serves as a designation for a person. In terms of form, all these words go back to the same Indo-European root, also represented in Greek. χθών “earth, soil” - *g z hem- //*g z hom- (P. Chantraine. Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue grecque. Histoire des mots. Paris^ Klincksieck. T. IV-2, 1980, p. 1259; for We leave here the notation of the first consonant of the author of this dictionary, although it also has other notations). It is obvious that all these different forms are included in one single opposition “earthly” - “heavenly”, i.e. “earthly” (man) is contrasted with “heavenly” (god). The ancient Greek language preserved this opposition in an expanded form, as in the Iliad (24, 220): epichthónioi ánthrōpoi (έπιχθόνιοι άνθοωποι) “terrestrial (or: above-earthly) people” versus “heavenly (or: above-heavenly) gods”, epouránioi theol (έπουσάνιοι θεοί). (Why the gods are interpreted as “above-heavenly” beings, that is, those who are not just above, in the sky, but above the sky, is explained in connection with the ideas of the ancients about the structure of the world: the heavens had “layers” or “spheres”; ancient Greek the gods lived above the sphere that formed the “sky” itself - “uranos”; see further in Art. World ).

Thus, of course, there is no need to talk about the “accidentality” of naming a person. After all variations the names take place here within the framework of the same fundamental opposition “man” - “god” (see below Man, Personality ).

Let us now look at the examples of B.A. Serebrennikov from the point of view of the relationship clarified here - “the randomness of the attribute” with the “non-randomness, fundamentality of the main category or opposition.” We will see that in other cases this relationship holds true.

Concept "have": Serebrennikov's example - German. haben is cognate with Latin. sare “grab” (i.e. semantic development seems to be random); but the connection between the concepts of “grab” and “have” can be traced in many languages ​​with very different initial roots, i.e. with - seemingly - “random” primary signs of the name: Russian. have And imate; Lit. turěti "to have" and tvérti "to grab", etc., and in Latin itself the verb meaning "to grab" is in the same way connected with the verb "to have"; in other words, “to have” is the result of “grasping.” (See Art. for some details. Will [Want].)

Concept "morning, early": Serebrennikov's example - German. Morgen "morning" is related to Lit. mérkti “to close the eyes” and “to dim the light” (Serebrennikov erroneously indicated a different meaning); while it is mute. früh is related to the Indo-European root *pro - “forward”; but - our addition is the root represented in it. Morgen and in Lithuania. mérkti quite obviously means not only “adding light”, i.e. “dawn, morning”, but also “diminishment of light”, while the root *pro- in the same way means being both in front, in front of a person’s face, and behind, behind his back (see Art. Time ); Thus, despite the apparent randomness and diversity of signs, in fact here we again have the same fundamental opposition “beginning” and “end”, and, moreover, with a changing order of these terms (see more about Russian. Start And end, end in Art. Law ): “position in front of the eyes” and “position behind the back”, “beginning of the day” and “twilight” (this is a Russian word from the same root as German Morgen, Lit. mérkti), “future and past” - ultimately account of the same opposition.

So, the sign of the primary name (as well as the subsequent transfer of the name, i.e. the name of the secondary) seems accidental only from an incorrectly chosen point of view - namely, if isolated cases are considered outside the semantic series to which they belong. On the contrary, within the limits of its semantic series - if it is correctly defined by the researcher - the signs of naming do not appear at all as random. Or, to be more precise, the spread in the choice of features can be quite large, but apparently never goes beyond the boundaries of a certain semantic series; in another series there will be another, perhaps equally “scattered” set of selected characteristics, but again not violating the boundaries of this series. The freedom to choose a feature (“randomness”) is thus limited. But thereby nature of the pattern It is not the end result itself - the name - that acquires, but the series within which the name is made. The series no longer belongs only to language, but to the sphere of culture, and the pattern of naming from the sphere of language is transferred to the sphere of culture, associated, in particular, with language. We will call such a sphere, or more precisely, each such sphere (i.e., “row”) "conceptualized area (sphere)".

Here the course of our reasoning necessarily bifurcates, a “fork” in the reasoning arises (we often have to deal with this circumstance in this Dictionary, as well as in other articles). In this case, we can first go further along the path of the topic “On the non-randomness of naming in cultural concepts,” and then along the second branch of the “fork” - along the path of the phenomenon of the “conceptualized area” itself, or vice versa - first along the second path, and then along first, this does not change the essence of the matter. Nevertheless, for reasons of convenience for the reader, we choose the first path for composition.

D) Names of concepts: non-randomness of naming in culture

The non-randomness of naming in culture is the main thesis that we intend to pursue - already as a generalized position, as a principle - in this part of the article. Meanwhile, the exact opposite statement (F. de Saussure) is also known: about the absolute arbitrariness of the name, i.e. about the randomness of naming, also formulated as a principle. Nevertheless, our article is not polemical at all: it contrasts not two opinions, but two different scientific paradigms, to which, in particular, the named provisions belong.

Let us recall how the Swiss linguist formulates his position Ferdinand de Saussure(1857-1913), with the subtitle “The First Principle: the Arbitrariness of the Sign”: “The connection connecting the signifier with the signified is arbitrary, or, in other words, since by sign we mean the whole resulting from the association of the signifier and the signified, we can say more simply: the language sign is arbitrary. Thus, the idea of ​​“sister” is not connected in any internal relation with the change of sounds s-ö-r (sœur), which serves as its “signifier” in French; it could be expressed by any other combination of sounds; this can be proven by the differences between languages ​​and the very fact of the existence of different languages: the signified “bull” is expressed by the signifier b-ó-f (French bœuf) on one side of the linguistic boundary and o-k-s (German Ochs) on the other side” (Course of General Linguistics / Translated from French by A.M. Sukhotin. M.: OGIZ. SOTSECGIZ, 1933, p. 79).

The author continues: “The word arbitrary also raises a comment. It should not be understood in the sense that the signifier depends on the free choice of the speaking subject...; we want to say that it unmotivated, i.e. arbitrary in relation to the signified, with which it actually has no natural connection” (ibid., pp. 79-80).

The position put forward by F. de Saussure served as one of the cornerstones not only of the structural theory of language, but also of the then emerging structuralism as a whole - the new (then) paradigm of the humanities. However, this linguistic statement itself gave rise, as we know, to a huge debate that lasted for several decades. In the course of it, it was thoroughly, if not shaken, then at least clarified. An important stage in this process was the work of E. Benveniste “The Nature of the Linguistic Sign” (1939; see translation and our commentary in the book: E. Benveniste. General Linguistics. M., 1974). Having shown the internal “two-part, two-part nature” of this position of de Saussure, Benveniste refuted one part and left the other in force. He concluded his article as follows: “Consequently, the contingency inherent in language manifests itself in the name as a sound symbol of reality and affects the relation of this symbol to reality (this is one “part” - Benveniste preserves it. - Yu.S.). But the primary element of the system - the sign - contains a signifier and a signified (this is another “part”. - Yu.S.), the relationship between which should be recognized necessary"(decree, cit., pp. 95-96).

Let us now turn our attention to the first “part” - to naming as the relationship of a linguistic sign to reality and see to what extent this relationship can be interpreted as “random”. Since we are talking about the relationship between “name” and “thing,” we will need to go beyond purely linguistic theory and consider language in the context of culture - which is one of the foundations of the new paradigm.

Let's return to the example of F. de Saussure. The French word bœuf "bull" directly goes back to the Latin. bovem (vin. case of the word bos “bull”), which in turn continues the I.-e. *g ụ ōụ-s, which served as a generic designation for an individual of cattle, without distinguishing the sex of the animal, i.e. “bull” and “cow” are indifferent. Therefore, in Latin the word bos acts as both a masculine and a feminine word.

However, as linguistic facts indisputably demonstrate, the system of designations for domestic animals in Indo-European culture was three-fold. In addition to the generic name (such as the one given above), there was also a pair designation for two different sexes of the corresponding animal - “male” and “female”. These paired names were, as a rule, names not only of clearly opposed genders - masculine and feminine, but also names of different roots. Thus, the name of the “stud bull” was derived from i.-e. root *ụeg ụ -, ug ụ - (in another notation *weg w -, ug w -) with the meaning “to moisten, moisten”; This is where the Gothic *auhsa - husband comes from. R. "bull", originally "stud bull", Skt. uksā “bull”, Tocharian Bokso “bull; in general, a male large horned animal” and what interests us is silent. Ochse "bull" (Saussure gives this word in the example above in its colloquial form, without ending -e). All listed words are derivatives with determiners -s- And -n-. If we take into account the alternation of determiners -n-//-r-, then lat can also be included here. uxor - “woman, wife” as a designation of letters. “moistened individual” (W. Lehmann. A Gothic etymological dictionary. Leiden: E.J.Brill, 1986, A 229).

We find exactly the same three-term structure in the designation for “pig”: a generic term reflected, for example, in Latin as sus husband. and wives R. or as porcus husband. r., two private ones are subordinated - uerres husband. R. "boar-producer" and porca (fem.) R. or porcus femina lit. “pig-woman, sow” (this three-part design is preserved in French: le porc - “pig” is a generic term, le verrat - “boar-producer”, la truie - “sow” - the last of porcus troianus). The root contained in the designation of “boar-producer”, uerres, and here, as in the fragment “bull - cow”, means “fertilizing moisture” - Indo-European *ụer-os, "ụer-s-. It is also represented in Greek . hersẽ - “beneficial dew, fertilizing rain” - as is known, Zeus, for example, often appeared in the form of such rain to his mistresses; in another meaning, this Greek word means “young cattle - lambs, etc.”

This semantic convergence of two initially different roots, *ụer-os, "ụer-s-, is an example of a “conceptualized domain,” the concept we introduced above. However, some authors consider these two roots to be initially identical, i.e. the same root with different morphological “determinants”.

Thus, ultimately, the French and German designation of “bull” is not only not “arbitrary” and not “accidental”, but, moreover, they are in some sense identical: both go back to the stable cultural reality of Indo-European culture - to the idea of ​​domestic animals as some three-membered organization. One might even say that this performance is one of constants of Indo-European culture.

But what prevented F. de Saussure from making the same observation and abandoning his thesis about the arbitrariness and contingency of the linguistic sign in relation to the thing designated? (Or at least abandon the example that poorly supports this thesis?) Certainly not the lack of etymological data (although the data we used above are the result of the latest research).

This was prevented, it was “blocked” by another provision of his theory, closely related to the first one - the prohibition to involve historical data, the requirement of strict synchronicity, or “synchrony”. Of course, these two positions at the same time support each other. The concept of de Saussure, as, in the apt expression of A. Meillet from his review of de Saussure’s book, and the language itself in Saussure’s view, is “a system, ù tout se tient, where everything holds on to each other.” This is one of the defining features of the Saussurian paradigm.

The concept of F. de Saussure is built in a sense in the same way as a “well made play”, “a well-made play” on the stages of his era - remember the French playwrights Sardou (Tosca) or Scribe (Adrienne Lecouvreur) - a genre so beloved by some and so hated by others (for example, Bernard Shaw).

But we live in a different era and think in a different paradigm. And we have other material. Evolutionary series of various kinds are the main material that contradicts the position of F. de Saussure. Let's continue to consider them.

Synonymization of “words” and “things” in spiritual culture. Further development of the concept of “conceptualized area (sphere)”

Synonyms are words that are similar in meaning or in meaning (concept). But above we have already noticed such cases when a thing - to the extent that thing may have a “meaning” - due to this meaning it is close to any in a word. Let us now consider this phenomenon in more detail.

Let's start with a detailed example (it was previously given in joint works by the author of these lines and S.G. Proskurin). In some Indo-European languages ​​there is a close semantic connection, “concatenation of meanings,” between the concepts of “tree” and “middle”. First of all, it is noted in the root I.-e. *medh-, which gives, on the one hand (for example, in the Baltic languages), words meaning “tree” or “forest” - lit. mẽdis "tree", Latvian. mežs “forest”, and on the other hand, for example, in Russian. - boundary“middle, border between two pieces of land” and the preposition itself is Russian. between(protoslav *medι-).

How can this semantic connection be explained?

Firstly, it cannot be explained by the “random” choice of a trait or the “random”, “individual” development of a given i.e. root The fact is that exactly the same connection is presented in another i.e. root *u(e)idh- “to divide into two”, as well as in a combination of two roots in one stem - *ui- “between, apart from” + *tero - suffix of the comparative degree of adjectives and paired objects (cf. Lat. al -ter “one of two, the other”). This is evidenced, on the one hand, by the Irish. fid “tree”, Old English, widu, wudu, modern. English, wood “forest”, and on the other hand, lit. vidùs “average”, and, in addition, lexemes where both meanings are directly combined: lit. viduõlis “a tree with a dry center, but still alive, green”, Old Norse. viđ, viđr “separately, opposite (about objects)” and viđr “tree - boundary” or “forest dividing settlements” (Jóhannesson A. Isländisches etymologisches Worterbuch. Bern: Francke, 1956, S. 168).

But, on the other hand, this semantic connection cannot be explained by some general, universal semantic pattern, according to which the concepts “tree” and “middle” should always and inevitably be associated, like, for example, how, according to the laws discovered by M.M. Pokrovsky are always and inevitably associated with the concepts of “vessel” and “contents of the vessel” (spoon of butter);“the boundary of space, line” and “the entire given area of ​​space” (circle of cheese, circle of people), and so on. This connection is far from universal, since it is not observed not only among the peoples of the non-Indo-European group of languages, but also among other Indo-European peoples outside the noted area.

Of course, as soon as this phenomenon was discovered in the etymology of words, the opinion was expressed (back in the 1920s by the Lithuanian linguist K. Buga) that this connection of concepts is explained by the special division of the land among some peoples - plots were divided by a tree or a forest. And this is undoubtedly the case. However, this explanation is valid only for the everyday sphere of life. The latest observations have shown that the noted phenomenon is widespread mainly in those areas of Indo-European culture where the cult of the tree and the mythological motif, the mythologem of the “world tree,” are attested. “” is a symbol of the middle of the world: a huge tree growing in the middle of the world connects the “lower world” (the underworld), the “middle world” (the world of people) and the “upper world” (the world of gods; however, the existence of this motif among the Slavs among some researchers doubt it).

Therefore, based on such observations, in addition to the concept of “conceptualized area”, our concept introduces the important concept of “synonymization”, which has two different meanings, interconnected: 1) synonymization of different word roots, 2) synonymization of “words” and “things” .

Synonymization in the first sense is understood as the convergence of two words of different roots (or, in terms of etymology, two different roots), which by origin are in no way related to each other, but become synonyms within a given conceptualized area. This phenomenon turns out to be the fact that opposes N.Ya.Marr’s position on the crossing of words and, ultimately, the crossing of languages ​​in general.

In fact, according to Marr, the fact of synonymization, i.e. semantic convergence, the convergence of semes or the meanings of words in general, is recognized. But Marr supplements this position, which fully corresponds to the facts, with another statement - about the indispensable convergence of the roots of words and words in general, which supposedly accompanies any semantic convergence. In addition, Marr understands convergence very broadly and vaguely - as the convergence of words both in function (functional semantics) and due to contacts of tribes and ethnic groups (“crossing”). An example of the latter is the well-known Marrovian explanation of the Komi-Zyryan name for the land - muzem, which supposedly comes from the addition of the original name of the land among the Komi - mu and the name of the land earth or root earth- among Russians who had contact with the Komi. The presence of two synonyms ends, according to Marr, with their connection, “crossing”, in one word(or in one root). Hence, the analysis - Marr calls it a “paleontological analysis” of language and speech - should reveal such connected multi-ethnic elements.

Marr takes this principle to its extreme by attempting to find the absolutely finite elements belonging to the four ancient tribes for which each of these elements, according to Marr, served as a self-name. Thus, four tribes - four elements: “sal”, preserved in the name “Sarmatian”, “ber” - in the name “i-ber” (Iberia), “ion” - in the name “ion-yane” (Ionia, region in Ancient Greece), “rosh” - “eth-Rusk” (Marr N.Ya. Language // Language and History: Collection of the first. L., 1936, p. 21). This is the notorious “four element analysis” of N.Ya. Marr.

However, the very phenomenon of “synonymization” at its basis was correctly noted by N.Ya. Marr and should be preserved, but limited. Let us cite as an example the reasoning of N.Ya. Marr himself precisely in a limited sphere - one functional series (or, in our terminology, one conceptualized area). We are talking about the origin of the ancient Greek word άρμα, άρματα “cart; war chariot."

In etymological studies, it is currently associated with the root i.e. *ar- “to connect, fasten”, cf. gr. άραρίσκω, lat. arma “tool, weapon”, etc. However, not everything in this etymology is convincing, in particular the presence of a “thick aspiration”, a correspondence to which is not found in the original root and related words. It is assumed that this “aspiration”, /h/, according to the laws of the structure of the Greek word, was transferred to the initial syllable from /s/, which was in the suffix: *ar-smo > *har-ma (Ernout-Meillet, s.v. armus). Marr's interpretation is, in any case, no more problematic: he connects this word with the name of the tribe Sarmatian, harmat and with a certain draft animal, namely the horse. “From the Greek texts it is clear that this type of cart was associated with a “horse”; in Homer it is a two-wheeled war chariot drawn by a pair of horses, and, what is more curious, the word was used by the Greeks as if in poetic imagery, directly instead of an animal’s harness - “ horses": άρματος τροφεύς (Plato, Leg. VIII, 834 b), in Euripides άρματα τρέφειν (lit., “to feed the carts.” - Yu.S.) “to keep horses for chariot racing,” but this is actually a performance of a subconscious experience (“relic.” - Yu.S.) in speech that harma, actually harmat, originally meant an animal, namely later - “horses”, originally - “deer”. ...The question arises: do we have an independent crossing in the term when used as a common noun, will it be a “cart”, or even more so paleontologically assimilated (i.e. assigned. - Yu.S.) to it the meaning of “horses”, originally “deer”, or is it a complete reproduction of a ready-made tribal name, “Sarmatian”, ethnonymically used directly, of course, in prehistoric times - before the appearance of the Greeks, in all of the listed meanings from the totem animal, depending by era - “deer”, “horse”, up to the “cart”, first wheelless - “sleigh”, and then two-wheeled - “chariot” (Marr N.Ya. Means of transportation, tools of self-defense and production in prehistory [To link linguistics with the history of material culture] // Marr N.Ya. Language and society. Selected works. T. III. M.-L., 1934, pp. 143-144).

The expression “to feed the carts” is, of course, an elementary metonymy instead of “to feed the horses that are harnessed to the chariot carts,” and on the basis of this phrase it is hardly possible to draw any far-reaching conclusions (this is just an example of N.Ya’s arbitrary address .Marr with specific linguistic facts). But the very connection of the cart as a material fact, as an invention, with the horse was felt correctly by Marr. Modern research shows that the invention of the war cart - the chariot - was associated with the acquisition of a new powerful draft vehicle - the horse, which replaced the old slow draft vehicle - the bull or ox. The ox, or bull, team corresponds to a completely different technical device of what “stretches” - the cart itself (see: Kozhin P.M. On the problem of the origin of wheeled transport // Ancient Anatolia. M.: Nauka, Chief editor of eastern. lit., 1985).

(To complete the picture, we note that the discussion about the origin of the name of the Sarmatian people, unfortunately, without taking into account the hypothesis of N.Ya. Marr, continues. O.N. Trubachev establishes a parallel between Sarmatian And Croat, considering that both names of peoples go back to the same Indo-Iranian prototype with alternations - *sar-ma(n)t-//*har-va(n)t - “feminine, replete with women” with archaic, relict designating a woman with the root sar-//har-. These names could be the names of peoples who have "many women", i.e., probably, the number of women is greater than the number of men, or perhaps simply the designations of peoples with the power of women, i.e. matriarchy, against the backdrop of surrounding tribes with a system of patriarchy. O.N. Trubachev also drew attention to the fact that both names are associated with the Azov area, where the myth of the Amazons, female warriors, was localized. - See: Etymol. Dictionary of slavs and languages. M.: Science. Vol. 8, 1981, p. 151. Other hypotheses there and in the book: Ageeva R.A. Countries and peoples: origin of names. M.: Nauka, 1990, p. 33, and also here in v. Rus', Russia... )

So now we have enough material to determine the general concept of a “conceptualized subject area” in language and culture. By it we mean a sphere of culture where words, things, mythologies and rituals are united in one common idea (cultural concept) (of course, in each specific case the entire listed set of these entities does not necessarily have to be present).

Within a separate “conceptualized area” there is a word and a ritual object, a word and a mythologeme, etc. can be semantically combined in a special way - acting as a substitute or symbolizer for one another. We call this process of conceptualization in the cultural sphere "synonymization of things and words"(So synonymized"tree" and "middle").

“Conceptualized areas”, synonymization in the indicated sense, become one of the important principles of grouping words and “things” in new ideas about culture - along with groupings according to the principles of “fields”, “rows”, “thematic groups”, etc. It is in such phenomena, belonging simultaneously to language and culture, that the deep motivation of naming is revealed - non-randomness naming. Language forces, or, better said, does not force, but gently and beneficially guides people in naming, connecting what is named to the deepest layers of culture.

And isn’t there something more behind this than just a non-randomness? Some expediency and purpose? Some kind of teleology?

We will leave these questions for the future. But here is a more relevant conclusion from the above: in culture, not only words, but also material objects can carry spiritual meaning; There is no sharp, uncrossable boundary between spiritual and material culture. Further we will consider the series of concepts and the series of “things” as parallel, on the same grounds: in culture there are neither purely spiritual concepts nor purely material things; every cultural phenomenon has these two sides (see also Culture ).

E) Concepts can “float” above conceptualized areas, expressed both in word and in an image or material object

The property noted in this subtitle follows as a consequence of the observations made above. Naturally, materially this “floating” is expressed in the fact that the concept is located in some context - or text - of any nature. They can be a pictorial motif, a legend or a myth (at least verbally it was retold in countless different variations), etc.

This position, by the way, imposes new requirements on the work of the etymologist: the basis of etymology is not the comparison of paradigms and individual lexemes (words), but the text: the true and true etymology is always in the text.

The distant foundations for such a modern understanding of the conceptualized field and text were outlined in the works E. Benvenista 1950s In French there are two verbs voler - voler "to fly" and voler "to steal". “The coexistence of these two verbs should not, however, cause the linguist to desire to combine them in an unlikely unity” (Benveniste E. General linguistics. M.: Progress, p. 333). The verb in the meaning of “fly” is included in a wide semantic field (series) - voleter “to flutter”, s"envoler “fly away”, volatile “flying”, volaille “poultry”, etc., while the verb in the meaning "steal" gives only one derivative - voleur "thief". This limitation alone suggests that voler "steal" goes back to some special use of the first verb - "fly". The condition for such use would be a context where the first verb , "to fly", could be used in a transitional construction. Such a context is indeed found in the language - and at the same time in the ritual - of falconry: 1e faucon volume la perdrix lit. “a falcon flies a partridge”, i.e. “The falcon (flies and catches) a partridge.” Thus, we would say now, we have before us a context, a text, a ritual, a conceptualized area where the concepts of “flying” and “grabbing, abducting” are combined, are synonymized, and the corresponding lexeme, voler, splits into two - voler “to fly” and voler “to abduct, steal.”

Let us now show, using one example, what a conceptualized area can be in the proper (narrow) sense of this term, i.e. in the non-productive sphere and outside the evolutionary semiotic series. We are referring to the reconstruction made by N.N. Kazansky of the text of the poem by the ancient Greek poet Stesichorus (c. 600 BC) “The Fall of Troy.” For a long time, only 9 words were known from this poem. In 1967, significant but scattered fragments of the poem were discovered on badly damaged papyrus. N.N. Kazansky (like some researchers before him) used sculptural image the same plot on the bas-relief of the so-called Ilion Table, where there is an indication that the image corresponds to the poem of Stesichorus (see: Kazansky N.N. Problems of the early history of the ancient Greek language [linguistic reconstruction and the problem of language norms]: Abstract of doctoral thesis. L. , 1990, p. 19). The reconstruction turned out to be successful.

But what is a plot that is reconstructed, on the one hand, on the basis of a written text, and on the other, on the basis of a sculptural image? Obviously, nothing more than a sequence of certain images, or ideas, or episodes, embodied not exclusively in linguistic form, but in two forms - linguistic and pictorial. Thus, the very sequence of performances, episodes, etc. (no matter what these components of the sequence are called) is a stable set of certain concepts, or a micromotive - a separate small conceptualized sphere.

It is in this sense that we also use the term “conceptualized domain.”

Let us now return, however, to the basic form of concepts, linguistic - to the word, to the phrase and, above all, to the name.

G) Two important types of concepts are “framework concepts” and “dense core concepts.” Linguistic form of concepts

The distinction between these two types is not a priori, but follows from our observations (although, as we will see later, it also has some a priori grounds). In order not to present a large amount of material here again, we ask the reader to refer to the articles Civilization And Intelligentsia. Both of these concepts are examples of the “frame type.” Each of them has some basic, actual feature (or some small set of such features - this difference is not significant here), which, in fact, constitutes the main content of the concept. In the case of “Civilization” it is “a certain favorable state of society in all respects (which ones can be further determined”). In the case of “Intelligentsia” it is “a social group that declares itself as the bearer of the social consciousness of the entire society.”

The emergence of a concept as a “collective unconscious” or “collective idea” - in the examples given this is the content that is described in quotation marks - is the result of the spontaneous, organic development of society and humanity as a whole. In these examples, this content constitutes the “frame”. But then these concepts, in fact their “frame”, can be “tried on”, “superimposed” on this or that social phenomenon, in these cases - on this or that society (others are excluded), on this or that social group (and others are also excluded). Here we are dealing with another process, which can hardly be called “organic” or spontaneous. This is a process of social assessment, bringing it under the norm, a process associated with the conscious activity of social forces and even with their struggle.

Here further gradation or classification is possible, since the two examples given are already different. In the case of “Civilization,” no one, it seems, no social group is specifically fighting to associate this concept with one or another specific country in the world and exclude the rest (however, some attempts in this regard were made by the ideologists of “communist civilization” as the highest civilization - see in decree article). In the case of the “Intelligentsia”, some social forces are trying to “pull” this concept onto some social groups or classes, while others are trying to “pull” it from these groups or even even declare the concept itself “non-existent” (see in decree art.). But this difference does not determine the different essence of the matter in these two concepts, but only their importance for society - their various social ranks. From this point of view, the concept of “Intelligentsia” should, of course, receive a higher rank in modern Russian spiritual life than the concept of “Civilization”.

Of course, they can say that not only the concepts that we called “framework” are distinguished by this feature, that many, and perhaps all, spiritual concepts have some ideal content (which, in fact, constitutes the concept itself), which can be “ try on” to various specific social or personal phenomena. At the same time, such phenomena are “subsumed” under the concept or, on the contrary, such subsuming fails. So, we say, for example, that “this (some specific something) is Love”, but “this (something else) is not Love" In the same way, one can talk about certain phenomena as “Faith”, and exclude some others from being included under this concept as “superstition”, etc. and so on. However, there is a significant difference between these concepts and the concepts of the first group, “framework”. The second, i.e. “Love”, “Faith”, etc. culturally significant in their integrity, in their entire composition of features, and the abstraction of one of them as a “frame” of the concept, although possible, is only an artificial logical procedure. In the first case, on the contrary, the “frame” is the main content of the concept due to which the concept is culturally and socially significant - the highest point of its development.

The indicated difference between the two types is thus, we emphasize once again, the result of empirical observations (they are demonstrated further in the articles of this Dictionary). But this difference can be put in parallel with some philosophical considerations about the division of concepts into two groups - a priori concepts and a posteriori (experimental or empirical) concepts.

For the first time in a clear form, this difference in European philosophy of modern times arose, apparently, in the debate between Leibniz and Locke, in fact, in the thesis of Leibniz against Locke. Leibniz(1646-1716) in his essay “New Experiments on Human Understanding” (here cited from the edition: Leibniz. Soch. M.: Thought, vol. 2, 1983, p. 49) wrote: “This leads to another question , namely to the question of whether all truths depend on experience, i.e. from induction and examples, or there are truths resting on another basis. Indeed, if some phenomena can be foreseen before any experience in relation to them, then it is clear that we bring something from ourselves here. Although feelings are necessary for all our actual knowledge, they are not sufficient to communicate them to us completely, since feelings always provide only examples, i.e. private or individual truths” (p. 49).

Further, this difference was directly perceived and developed by Kant (without reference to Leibniz): “The concept is either empirical or clean; a pure concept, in so far as it has its origin exclusively in the understanding (and not in the pure image of sensibility), is called notio. A concept consisting of notiones and going beyond the limits of possible experience is idea, or the concept of reason. For those accustomed to this distinction, it is intolerable for the idea of ​​red to be called an idea. In fact, this idea is not even a notio (rational concept)" (Kant. Critique of Pure Reason. Section II. Transcendental Dialectics. Book I. On the Concepts of Pure Reason; Section 1 // Kant. Works. in 6 volumes. M.: Mysl, vol. 3, 1984, p. 354). Here Kant expresses the “pure concept” with the German term der reine Begriff or the Latin notio, the latter goes back etymologically to the word nota “note, notation” and thereby represents the lowest level among pure concepts, and the highest is the “idea”, which Kant otherwise calls “transcendental” " From this point of view, “pure or a priori” concepts include the concepts of “uniqueness,” “plurality,” etc., as well as “number” (see the article in this Dictionary). “Empirical or a posteriori” concepts include the concepts “vertebrate (animal)”, “cat”, “dog”, “pleasure”, “love”, etc.

It is interesting that some researchers (for example, R.J. Collingwood) also classify the concept of “Civilization” as “transcendental”, and we classify the concept of “Love” as “empirical”. Thus, these results of actual research coincide with Kant's philosophical distinction.

In passing, let us note only as a note, what has been said here allows us to pose the question about the form of a concept or concept. Leibniz (op. cit.) believed that what later, according to Kant, came to be called “pure concepts” can be expressed not only in the form of a separate word - a term, but also in the form of a proposition, statement or sentence. Leibniz used the Greek in this second sense. a term dating back to the Stoic school is prólēpsis (πρόληψις). But most researchers since then still believe that own form concept, or concept, is a word-term, while a proposition, or statement, is its improper form, some equivalent (more or less) transformation. The last form, proposition, or statement, is rather a proper form of "idea." Thus, “concept” and “idea” are different mental formations - also in our Dictionary.

Originally formulated, one might say “beautifully formulated,” the distinction between an idea, a concept, a word belongs to O. Sergius Bulgakov in the work “Philosophy of the Name” (written in 1930-1949, published in 1953 in Paris: YMCA-Press). Like Leibniz, Bulgakov - rightly - believes that there is a difference between those mental categories that can be expressed both in the form of a word and in the form of a proposition, and the rest. Bulgakov calls the first “ideas” in contrast to “concepts”: “An idea cannot be expressed about many things because it is abstract, and because, as a concept, it can be applied to everything that is included in its scope. The latter is only a special case, the realization of what is given in the predicate as such. But this property of an idea is not associated with abstractness or volume (see about the volume of a concept in contrast to its characteristics and meaning at the beginning of our article - Yu.S.), but with a predicate that always and essentially contains an idea. And that very noun (gram.), which was just concrete as a subject, subject, turning into a predicate, an idea, takes on the character of universality: for example, wolf. Ideas are never abstract or concrete (such are concepts, logical preparations of ideas), they are always vast, pure meanings” (p. 74).

Perhaps we must agree with this: concepts, like Bulgakov’s “ideas,” also, apparently, should be considered as volumeless (as opposed to concepts), pure meanings.

But S. Bulgakov’s other position is hardly accurate. In any case, if an idea has many forms, including predicative, statement, proposition, then the concept has one main form - a word or phrase equal to a word - a name. This idea of ​​ours fits well with the line thrown by Bulgakov: “Ideas are verbal images beings, names - theirs implementation"(p. 60).

H) Another important type is concepts about a person. A special manifestation of time in the evolutionary series of concepts

Let's start again with one example. About half of the 15th century, writes V.O.Klyuchevsky(Course of Russian history. Part 2. // Klyuchevsky V.O. Works in 8 volumes, etc. M.: State publishing house political, lit., 1957, pp. 25-27), worked in the monastery he founded, the monk Paphnutius Borovsky, “one of the most unique and strong characters known in ancient Rus'”; his colorful stories, recorded by listeners, have reached us. By the way, Paphnutius told how in 1427 there was a great pestilence in Rus', they died with a “sore pimple”, perhaps it was a plague. One nun was dying then, but did not die, but having recovered, she told who she saw in heaven and who in hell, and the listeners found that this corresponded to the lives of these people, that it was true. In heaven, she saw Prince Ivan Danilovich Kalita, who always carried a bag of money in his belt, from which he generously gave to the poor. “Once a beggar approaches the prince and receives alms from him; he comes up another time, and the prince gives him another alms; the beggar did not calm down and came up a third time; Then the prince could not stand it and, giving him a third alms, said with his heart: “Here, take it, you unfed zenki!” “You yourself are insatiable zenki,” the beggar objected, “you reign here, and you want to reign in the next world.” This is subtle praise in a rough form: the beggar wanted to say that the prince, through alms and love of poverty, is trying to earn himself the kingdom of heaven.” “The nun also saw in hell the Lithuanian king Vytautas in the form of a big man, to whom a terrible black murin (demon) put red-hot ducats into his mouth with pincers, saying: “Get your fill, damned one!” The good-natured humor, continues Klyuchevsky, which permeates these stories, does not allow one to doubt their folk origin. Do not be confused by the chronology of the story, do not dwell on the fact that in 1427 the nun, even in hell, could not meet Vytautas, who died in 1430. Folk memory has its own chronology and pragmatics, its own concept of historical phenomena. folk tale, forgetting chronology, contrasted the Lithuanian king, the enemy of Rus' and Orthodoxy, with Ivan Danilovich Kalita, a friend of the smaller, poor brethren, whose great-grandson Vasily Dmitrievich restrained the pressure of this formidable king on Orthodox Rus'. Popular thought vividly perceived this closeness of both powers, princely and ecclesiastical, and brought the participation of feelings into the legendary development of the images of their bearers” (emphasis added in the text. - Yu.S.).

The fact that, as Klyuchevsky notes here, “folk memory has its own chronology” is essentially a property of all concepts. In all concepts, ideas that arose at different times, in different eras are added up, summarized - historical time, “chronology” does not play a role in this at all. What is important are only associations, the addition of ideas that harmonize with each other (in concepts - “semantic features”). In images of people, this circumstance, the discrepancy with real chronology, only appears clearly, becomes especially noticeable due to the fact that the people themselves are chronologically “precisely dated.” People live in real, historical time, ideas - in mental time or, perhaps, outside of time in general (see below To be, to exist; Time; Mental worlds ).

I) About the boundaries of knowledge of concepts

These boundaries were revealed both “from above” - in the sphere of abstract definitions, and “from below” - in the sphere of individual experience.

Let's start from the top. An idea that can frighten the bourgeois and the average person is that a native speaker, in principle, cannot know the meaning of words in his language. Of course, the understanding of this aphorism (and in fact it goes back to a Platonic idea) depends on an understanding - far from trivial - of the words “meaning” and “know”, which will be discussed further. But first, let’s document that this idea really exists.

“If any natural language, such as English, consists partly of syntax and semantics, then, according to Montagu's theory of syntax and semantics, the English language is such that no natural speaker of English can know English” (Barbara Hall-Party. Grammar Montague, mental representations and reality / Translated from English // Semiotics, compiled by Yu.S. Stepanov, M.: Progress, 1983, p. 285). Some may say that this can happen with the English language, but not with Russian and not in Russia! However, we are discussing the problem in a general form, and “Montague's grammar” is precisely one of the best theoretical descriptions applicable to any language.

A distant premonition of this idea already lay in the discovery of the “relativity of meaning” - the discovery of the concept of “significance” (valeur), made by the Swiss linguist already mentioned above F. de Saussure. If “meaning” (as we said at the beginning of this article) is an indication by a word of an object or class of objects, then “significance” is not a direct indication of an object or class, but the relative meaning of a word - the part of the semantic field allocated to it, depending on the distribution of values ​​between the words present in this field. For example, meaning Russian word green is, as it is defined, for example, in the Dictionary, ed. D.N. Ushakov, “colors of greenery, grass, foliage.” Significance same words green there will be something different - “a part of the spectrum delimited by parts assigned to words yellow And blue" Already with a careful analysis of the concept of “significance” (at one time such an analysis was not done), it was possible to foresee that with an increase in the group of words that determine the significance of a particular word, the speaker may not be able to know the entire group, and therefore he will not know the meaning of each individual word.

The further development of this concept in linguistics and logic followed precisely the path of expanding groups (sets, ensembles) of units that define the concept of significance and the significance of each individual unit. The logically defined concept of significance came to be called “intension.” Intensional is another term, a synonym for what we called at the beginning of this article meaning(for further information on this line, see Art. Language ).

But why is this idea “Platonic”? The final lines of the mentioned article by B. Hall-Party answer this: “So, we have come to the conclusion that the intensions of lexical units are not mental entities and they are not fixed by the properties of the psyche of native speakers. ... Intensions themselves, as functions from possible worlds to objects of various kinds, are abstract objects that can exist independently of people, like numbers"(p. 296). - But this is Plato’s idea (see below Number, Count ).

Let us now look at the border running “from below”. We have already seen from the example of the Russian concepts “February 23” and “March 8” that the wealth of associations (the number of features, the content of the concept) is greater, the narrower the circle of people using this concept in all its “layers”: the most limited content is in in general Russian usage, it is simply a “men’s holiday” and a “women’s holiday”; more rich associations among the military, even richer among the military of the older generation, but the circle of such people is much narrower than the previous one, etc., until we reach the collective-group, then the family and, finally, the intimate-personal circle of associations . This can no longer be described in the dictionary, and sometimes it cannot be described and in general, in principle, is indescribable.

Let us consider, for now only preliminary and only as an example, the concept of “Faith” (see more fully in Art. Faith ). We mean faith in the religious sphere.

"Faith"- the concept is unique, therefore, although here we could take the routine route and start with determining the “occurrences” of the word (its distribution), we will save ourselves and the reader from this and start immediately with the categories. Some concept researchers (and some authors of explanatory dictionaries) subsume the concept “Faith” under the category “religion”. For example, in the French dictionary “Petit Larousse” (“Little Larousse”): “Faith (la foi) - confidence in fulfilling obligations; loyalty to obligations; conviction in the truths of religion"(this is generally the way characteristic of Western Christianity - to define “faith” through the dogmas of religion). But here the category is hardly defined correctly: strictly speaking, “Religion” is not a category for the concept “Faith”. Let us compare two questions addressed to an individual, to an individual: “What is your religion?” and “What is your faith?” The answer to them will be different, and the first question is unlikely to be given a meaningful answer at all: “my faith” is understood by every person; on the contrary, “religion” is a concept from the concept of a researcher or theologian.

“Faith” is more successfully defined in S.I. Ozhegov’s dictionary: “1. Confidence, confidence in someone. or in sth. Faith in victory; Faith in people. 1. Conviction in the existence of God. 3. Same as religion.” Here “Faith” does not fall under the category “Religion” and does not fall under any category at all, because “belief” is not a category, but a designation of an inner feeling. This is the concept of “Faith”: it is the internal state of a person, of each individual person.

How to describe this state? No way. Here is the limit of scientific knowledge and description of the concept. And this point of view coincides exactly with the position of Orthodox theology about apophatism - refusal of verbal definitions.“Apophatism teaches us to see in the dogmas of the Church, first of all, their negative meaning, as a prohibition of our thoughts to follow their natural paths and form concepts that would replace spiritual realities"(Lossky V.N. Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. // Lossky V.N. Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. Dogmatic theology. M., 1991, p. 35; Vladimir Nikolaevich Lossky, 1903-1958, Russian theologian and philosopher in exile, son of the famous Russian philosopher Nikolai Onufrievich Lossky, author of the best treatises on the system of Orthodox theology, which made up the named book.)

One might think that this is the case only in this unique case, i.e. only in the concept “Faith”. But no, the concept of “Faith” is only the most illustrative case, precisely because it has been comprehensively examined in different systems - logical, theological, philosophical (see below Faith; Dual faith in this Dictionary). We find exactly the same limit in all spiritual concepts, whether we take Cosiness; Love; Is it true And True and whatever else, everywhere we can bring our description only to a certain point, beyond which lies a certain spiritual reality, which not described, but only experienced.

Here is the limit of description in general, and of this Dictionary in particular.

3. The evolution of the concept “Word” was closely connected with the formation of the cycle of sciences about words (of course, calling them “sciences” can only be done with a large degree of convention). Since Slovak logos are not only true, but also false, the need for a science of true reasoning penetrating through the shell of words is felt - logic has become such a science. In accordance with the fact that words serve not only cognition, but also the expression of individual and group emotions, desires, aspirations, etc., two sciences of reasoning arose that did not receive a common name - dialectics and rhetoric. Rhetoric was originally thought of as the art of oratory, dialectics - as the art of establishing truth through the detection of contradictions in the statements of opponents, i.e. as the art of conversation leading to correct knowledge. Aristotle, a universal genius, created “parallel” works in each of these areas: “Categories”, “On Interpretation” and “Analytics” were devoted to logic; the sciences of speech - dialectics and rhetoric - treatises “On Sophistic Refutations” and “Rhetoric”.

At the same time, a third science was created, philology - about the “pure” word, about the word as such. Already around the 4th century. BC. in the Greek language the verb “to love science, strive for learning” and the corresponding names appeared: noun “love of scientific reasoning, scientific debate, learned conversation” (cf. above division into logic and dialectics) and adjective "loving scientific reasoning, scientific debate." At first these words acted as cantonyms for “dislike science and scientific disputes”: “<...>my attitude to reasoning, says Laches in Plato,<...>ambiguous: after all, I can at the same time seem like a lover of words and their hater "(Laches, 188 pp.; translation by S. Ya. Sheinman-Topshtein). Later, in Plotinus, Porphyry (III century), Proclus (5 century), the concept of “philologist” acquired the meaning “attentive to words, studying words.” Stress shift - - emphasized the difference from the previously established which meant an educated person in general. In turn, both words were opposed to the word , loving knowledge, wisdom, sophia" (thereby, along the way, knowledge was abstracted from words and presented as an independent entity).

Even in the Hellenistic era (III-I centuries BC), before the separation of the two meanings of the word , i.e. Before the emergence of a special discipline, scientists were already engaged in philology, without distinguishing it, however, from grammar, and were called "grammarians, grammarians." Founded in Alexandria (sanctuary of the muses), a state institution under the special care of the king, and a famous library for which manuscripts were acquired from all over the Greek world. To publish the works of the Greek classics, and above all Homer, Alexandrian grammarians (and essentially philologists) launched a huge amount of work: they sorted and selected manuscripts, compared text versions, separated the authentic from the attributed, established the most authoritative text, emphasized it, commented on unclear places, outdated and unclear words, etc. The famous philologist and grammarian Aristophanes of Alexandria (257-180 BC) can be considered the founder of scientific lexicography.

In the era of Christianity, the main object of attention of word lovers, philologists, is the divine word: liturgical, prayerful, etc. Gradually, interpretations of Holy Scripture (“a word about a word”) become very subtle, philologically and theologically sophisticated, and along with the word (in its new, philological meaning) another term appears - “scientific commentator, scholiast” [this term was first recorded in Origen (about 185-253 or 254)]. Thus, one of the main disciplines in the study of the word was founded - criticism of the biblical text, which in the 19th and 20th centuries. developed into hermeneutics and merged with philosophy.

The current state of the concept “Word” is associated, first of all, with philology as a special branch of human knowledge. In Russian philology there are two top definitions of it: one belongs to F.F. Zelinsky, the other - G.O. Vinokuru. Zelinsky’s definition states: historical and philological science is “a science that has as its content the study of the creations of the human spirit in their sequence, that is, in their development” (1902, 811). This requires a difficult delimitation of the “spheres of influence” of its two fields - philology and history. Because the "material the distinction between both areas is impossible" (1902, 811-812), Zelinsky tries to draw boundaries between them, relying on the ideas of German science of the end of the last century: according to the author himself, his article "is the first attempt to build a system of F<илологіи>(more precisely, historical and philological science) on the basis borrowed from Wundt thoughts" according to which " F<илологія> - this is the side of historical and philological science addressed to monuments, history - addressed to the general laws of development; history and F<илологія>- not two different sciences, but two different aspects of one and the same field of knowledge” (1902, 816, 812).

Warmly supporting this statement of Zelinsky, G.O. Vinokur categorically stated: “With all decisiveness, it is necessary to establish first something that philology is not a science, or more precisely, that there is no science that, unlike others, could be denoted by the word “philology”.<...>The empirical content of everything that philology deals with is completely covered by the subject of the corresponding special sciences that study individual guardians of historical reality” (1981, 36). This thesis needs a purely terminological clarification related to scientific attempts to differentiate the object of science and its subject. Unlike the object, the subject of research is determined by the chosen method, and therefore philological research has its own subject. By the way, Vinokur himself calls it: this is a message understood in an extremely broad sense (1981, 36-37). “A message is not only a word, a document, but also various kinds of things,” unless we limit ourselves to their practical application. This is, for example, furniture placed in a museum. We, of course, “can take it in our hands,” but in our hands in this case we will “only have a piece of wood, and not the very style of its processing and not its artistic and historical meaning. The latter cannot be “taken into hand,” it can only be understood” (1981, 37). Vinokur’s point of view is surprisingly modern: for the “philological semiotics” of our days, both series of scraps and series of things are equally carriers of information. But the universal (invariant, archetypal) accumulator of meaning is precisely the word, and first of all the written word: as Vinokur rightly notes, “a written text is an ideal message” (1981, 37-38).

So, philology is a field of humanitarian knowledge, the direct subject of study of which is the main embodiment of the human word and spirit - communication, and its most perfect form is the verbal written text. At the same time, philology deals exclusively with texts addressed to a reader, even an indefinite one. The text, in principle devoid of an address, has nothing to do with philology - it is impossible to understand it.

NOTES

1 The title of the future book is “Constants: A Dictionary of Russian Culture.” Of course, the “constancy” of concepts does not mean their immutability, but only their constant presence in the cultural consciousness.

Stepanov Yu.S. Constants. Dictionary of Russian culture. 2nd ed., rev. and additional - M.: Academic project, 2001. - 990 pp., illus. 5000 copies - ISBN 5-8291-0007-X. (United Humanitarian World / Cultural Studies / Summa)

REVIEWS of such books are usually concluded with a notice (explicit or allegorical) that the work mentioned must be read by every intelligent person, and especially by those interested in problems of national identity (and therefore there is nothing surprising in its rapid disappearance from bookstore shelves). It is surprising that the first edition in 1997 was almost not noticed by the press, although it became popular in academic circles (for example, it was noted in the report of the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences). However, another circumstance seems more important (and more noteworthy): the design of this dictionary is such that for any sane person there is a need to self-determinate, to indicate for themselves their own position in relation to the issues under discussion.

We are faced here with an attempt to reproduce a holistic image of culture - not so much from a linguistic point of view, but from a cultural and philosophical one. What is the culture in whose space we live and act, and whose tools we use? What can we hope for, what plans can we make? The crisis of culture, as we know, is not that something is missing in it - some ideas, concepts, strategies, but that we have the wrong attitude towards culture as a way of involvement in the world, we do not reflect our attitude towards her instruments.

In a situation where there is no agreement among members of society or its individual groups (political elites) regarding fundamental concepts and ideas about the role of cultural mechanisms in the life of society, only the study of culture can open ways to overcome the crisis. It is necessary to take a few steps back in order to grasp the entire situation, to connect its individual aspects, to clearly understand the existing opportunities and limitations, and to reconstruct the actions that shaped today's picture of the world.

Similar words have been uttered many times, but this characteristic is fully applicable to the book under review. After all, the study of sociocultural constants turns out to be especially relevant in conditions when the issue of developing a national-state ideology or “Russian idea” on the basis of a reflexive awareness of one’s own national (territorial, linguistic, geopolitical) identity is on the agenda.

BEYOND LINGUISTICS

By studying etymology, we learn something new, important and significant about the world. In this sense, any dictionary is a work of a philosophical nature - a collection of ideas about the world, structured in a certain way, explicating the principle of its own composition. It is not surprising that compilers of dictionaries and other philologists usually do not favor philosophy: from their point of view, it seems superfluous, since any picture of the world can be exhaustively studied with the help of the sciences of language. On the other hand, purely philosophical studies of categories (ideological, ideological, political) often turn into historically ordered lists of opinions, which is why the essence of the forest is lost for the trees.

But Stepanov manages to move along the unclear line between philosophy and philology (linguistics, etymology), without falling into either extreme, stepping over the pits and gaps in one discourse by appealing to another.

Truth and truth, Koschey the Immortal and Baba Yaga, number and counting, fire and water. “Ours” and “strangers”, the world as the Universe and the world as a community, fear and melancholy, money and business. Civilization and the intelligentsia, word and action, law and conscience, home and Pinocchio. The second edition added: fathers and sons, saints and righteous people, eternity... Echoing each other, the explicit concepts open before our eyes the shimmering facets of Russian cultural spaces. The genre of the dictionary itself calls to mind the Book of Grains of Sand and the Library of Babel, the poetics of the catalog and mosaic montage. It is characteristic, however, that all these heterogeneous plots appear to us in the organic unity of sociocultural integrity, united by the author's intention.

The closest analogue is the “Dictionary of Indo-European Social Terms” by Emile Benveniste, the famous French linguist and cultural historian, whose apprenticeship had a significant influence on the formation of scientific concepts of Yuri Stepanov. In the same row are the works of Theodor Mommsen and “Terminology of Russian History” by Vasily Klyuchevsky. Having synthesized the two main approaches of his predecessors - historical research and branch linguistic research, Stepanov received an unusual subject alloy that correlates with his own original philosophical base.

BEYOND PHILOSOPHY

It's about creating a "new Russian realism." The sources of this movement are the semiotic philosophy of language, the patristics of the Eastern Christian Church and the theory of art. Combining various aspects, sections and angles of consideration, new realism seeks to harmonize the relations of “logic” and “metaphysics” and considers “World” and “Mental object” as key concepts. This program is described in more detail in Stepanov’s book “Language and Method. Towards a modern philosophy of language” (See “EL-NG” # 41 (62) for October 1998). The obvious proximity to the tradition of Platonism, the degenerate conceptualism of Aristotle’s “Categories” and the neoplatonism of Alexei Losev does not at all turn the dictionary into an abstract philosophical work. Moreover, we can talk about Stepanov’s philosophical non-partisanship: we are dealing with a philosophical experience that does not seek to institutionalize itself as such, but claims to have general cultural significance. The author’s goal is not to create a special scientific exercise, but to identify the horizon of the holistic view of a native speaker, a subject of culture.

Culture is imprinted in the meanings of words: it is a set of “forms” in which the world appears to man. The author argues with the radicalizations of pragmatics (meaning is use) and believes that above individual uses there necessarily exist general “concepts” - constants of the culture in question. This publication is not a “dictionary of words”, but a dictionary of concepts.

Stepanov's concepts partly overlap with the concepts of Deleuze-Guattari. According to these classics of so-called postmodernism, philosophy generally deals only with concepts that every thinker, creator of an original concept must create in order to at least formulate his position. But Stepanov cannot be classified as a postmodernist, also because his goal is to highlight sociocultural invariants. These universals, being transformed in a special way and embodied in different ways, form the body of national culture. (An example of this kind of transformation is how the proposed book expands our understanding of the content of the concept “dictionary”.)

A culture that exists in a gap, in a tension between what is and what should be, does not and cannot remain neutral, independent of its descriptions or research. Any kind of statement about it (which, by the way, constitutes its own component) changes it. Understanding this circumstance, which is fundamental for cultural texts, creates an additional dimension of reflection. Stepanov consciously builds his work as an action in the sphere of culture: being the quintessence of conceptualizing intellectual practices, it at the same time transforms, rearranges, coordinates the power lines of mental space, setting not only content characteristics, but also value orientations.

WITHIN CULTURAL SCIENCE

Culture as a whole is considered as a set of concepts and their relationships, found in the corresponding semiotic series - evolutionary and synchronic, intertwined with each other, creating “mental isoglosses” in culture. “Concepts are not “tightly” and rigidly connected with any one word; they seem to “hover” above the words, entering into relationships with different verbal forms and thereby becoming “synonymized,” often in very bizarre and previously unpredictable forms.” A kind of “interference” of cultural fields arises: Christian and pagan, ancient and Western European (New Time) traditions each leave their mark in the etymology, in the meaning of the word, form references to other concepts (Knowledge - Law - Friend and Alien - Word - Reason and Purpose - World - Eternal, etc.). All these traces are reflected in the practice of using language and in a special way color the meanings of various words - which we use, unaware of their specialness and background, as if they were our personal property.

Numerous quotations, indexes, and cross-references create the structural basis of a multicultural (comparisons and juxtapositions are inevitable: there is no monoculturalism in history) vocabulary space, in which diverse plots of interactions between ordinary and exotic characters, everyday objects and universal categories unfold. “So, 1) etymology, 2) early European history, 3) Russian history (to one degree or another), 4) today, with a dotted line between them - this, in general, is the composition of each individual dictionary entry.” The alphabetical order of Glagolitic and Cyrillic letters stands out against the backdrop of the conceptual sequence of cultural constants, and apt observations and witty remarks organically complement the dictionary, which turns into a compendium of explications of meanings and values. We have before us an attempt on the part of linguistics to get closer to a fundamental synthesis in the cultural sciences.

We are not talking about finding some universal meanings for words, universal ideas about objects and phenomena. The problem of universals is solved here in a special way (although echoes of Platonic-Aristotelian esotericism are also noticeable in the project of new realism). The concepts are not similar to Platonic ideas, although they are described by similar means; their ontology is practically taken out of consideration; concepts are the most general, fundamental images through which all others are constructed; these are categories of language and national culture. These are the main cells of culture in the human mental world. All concepts, in turn, rely on some ultimate basic invariants of human life: group community, corporeality (existential moments associated with personal history and human physiology), hierarchy of groups and relationships of signification.

The concept includes everything that determines the meaning and meaning of the concept, as well as everything that makes it a fact of culture: etymology, history, application in scientific disciplines, accompanying social assessments. The concept is experienced: it is a holistic “bundle” of ideas, concepts, knowledge, associations, intentions, memories.

“Russian culture really exists to the extent that there are meanings of Russian (and Old Russian) words meaning cultural concepts. To the extent that these words and the concepts they express etymologically arise from common Slavic and Indo-European words.” In other words, Russian culture does not exist as a timeless absolute idea or as a set of material objects. More precisely, its authentic (in relation to the transitory vanity of the world) existence in the mental world manifests itself as an invariant in (national) variants, in historical reality, in a chain of cultural connections.

BOUNDARIES OF IDENTITY

The issue of national self-identity is resolved (or avoided?) here very correctly. The purpose of the study is to highlight and record the ultimate foundations of Russian specialness, and not its manifestations and consequences, and certainly not about the practical application of this knowledge on the border “Friends - Foreigners”. Russian culture does not need to be planted and cultivated - it itself is cultivation. Russian culture does not need to cherish its individual characteristics - they do not belong to its essence. The essence of Russian culture is that, firstly, it is a culture, that is, a certain way (movement) of establishing order in the mental world of a person and in the world of his activity, going back to the divine order, and, secondly, it is manifested and transmitted through historical events, and therefore acquires a number of random details that form a special optics of looking at the world through the prism of a given culture. Specificity is a fact, not a guide to action.

Sometimes the peculiarity of Russian culture is puzzling. For example, the concept of “law” in Western European culture means the custom of free citizens, the order that they establish for themselves. And in the Russian language, the law is, first of all, an impersonal “limit set to freedom of will or action” (according to Dahl), an external, unmotivated restriction. “Kon” - in Old Russian the beginning and the end, a hitching post marking the border; hence “behind the law” - beyond the border, a limit that cannot be crossed, but “beyond which lies some other sphere of the life of the spirit,” which is attractive in its own way and provokes disobedience to the limit (not necessarily criminal). In the European tradition, the idea of ​​​​an “other”, lawless sphere of the life of the spirit does not find a response - after all, the entire life of the spirit proceeds in accordance with the law established by people for themselves, for the organized community of large or small groups.

Is it possible to liken concepts to some kind of collective unconscious? Their world is depersonalized; there is no place in it for personal fate, biography, or action. So, it turns out that man himself does not play any role in culture? But if he does not have a designated place in this world (that is, he cannot liken himself to God), then what obliges him to take into account all these abstractions? How should the fact that a certain concept is included in a more general integral chain of concepts and meanings be reflected not only in the formal, but also in the substantive side of cultural activity based on this concept?

Any intellectual action of a person takes place in mental space - he is inevitably forced to deal with concepts, no matter how he relates to them. Even the denial of their existence reveals a (even negative) connection with them (the existence of what is denied in this case?). Individual creativity therefore becomes possible precisely in correlation with the constants of the existing culture - their rethinking turns out to be at the same time an act of their reproduction and/or change, the identification of new concepts.

The gap between metaphysical mechanisms, in which an outbreak of human freedom is possible, may sometimes open up in a rather unexpected way. An example of this is the concept of “Pinocchio” - the image of a boy striving for the sea and the sun, for freedom without addictions; Accordingly, the description in the dictionary is constructed, reminiscent of a fun game. On the other hand, Pinocchio as a concept is alarming. After all, it is perhaps true that this is an established feature of our culture - disdain for any laws, the desire to free ourselves from them and establish a world order according to our personal whim.

Stepanov does not describe the metaphysical basis of his research program in detail, indicating it with hints or using suitable quotes. He has no orientation at all towards either the Platonic (ontological) or the Cartesian (rationalistic) ideal of a philosophically perfect language. The peculiarity of the “new realism” is the recognition of the historicity (accidentality) of those most general modules through which language forms a picture of the world and which need to be recorded by linguistic methods; this does not mean a rejection of Platonism, of the monistic unity of the world: although the features of the concept, its connections with other concepts, words and things are historical in nature, the very principles of connection, similarity, order are universal and go back to a single source.

The world order is one and universal, it is the divine order; The One is the container of the human mind and the basis of all forms of its life. Stepanov clearly contrasts his concept with the revolutionary modernist practices of building culture “anew,” from scratch, at the own whim of the “masters of culture.” After all, if the loss of historical tradition, no matter how alienated it may seem in relation to the existing state of affairs, turns into the idea of ​​the possibility of absolute arbitrariness in relation to people, to social institutions, to the state, to culture as a whole, then the result will be a tragedy of man and a tragedy of society , which falls apart into inconsistent fragments and loses its integrating and coordinating functions.

The “Dictionary of Russian Culture” does not offer any complete metaphysical doctrine, and certainly does not introduce a generally binding model-template, according to which all cultural practices should be verified. The author views his project primarily as an action that can expand the horizon of culture and confirm the significance of its historical foundations - a worthy position and deserving of respect.

Yu.S. Stepanov writes that “a concept is a phenomenon of the same order as a concept. In their internal form in Russian, the words “concept” and “concept” are the same: “concept” is a tracing paper from Latin conceptus"concept", from the verb concept“begin”, i.e. means literally “conception, conception”; “concept” from the verb “to sing”, Old Russian. “to seize, take ownership of, take a woman as a wife” literally means generally the same thing; in scientific language these two words sometimes act as synonyms, one instead of the other. But they are used this way only occasionally. Currently, the areas are quite clearly demarcated [Stepanov 1997: 35].

Yu.S. Stepanov defines the concept as follows: “A concept is like a clot of culture in the human mind; that in the form of which culture enters the mental world of a person. And, on the other hand, a concept is something through which a person - an ordinary, ordinary person, not a “creator of cultural values” - himself enters into culture, and in some cases influences it” [Stepanov 1997: 51].

According to Yu.S. Stepanov, the number of basic concepts is small: “four to five dozen, and yet the very spiritual culture of any society consists largely of operations with these concepts” [Stepanov 1997: 85].

In the book by Yu.S. Stepanov “Constants - a dictionary of Russian culture” we encounter a more common version: “the term concept refers only to the content of the concept, thus the term “concept” becomes synonymous with the term “meaning”. While the term “meaning” becomes synonymous with the term “scope of concept”. To put it simply, the meaning of a word is the object or objects to which this word is correctly applied, in accordance with the norms of a given language, and the concept is the meaning of the word” [Stepanov 1997: 87].

According to Yu.S. Stepanov's concept has a complex structure. On the one hand, it includes “everything that belongs to the structure of the concept” [Stepanov 2001: 43], and on the other hand, the structure of the concept includes “everything that makes it a factor of culture” [Stepanov 2001: 43], and namely etymology, history, modern associations, assessments and more.

The linguocultural approach to understanding a cultural concept is that the concept is recognized as the basic unit of culture, its concentrate. “The structure of a concept includes everything that makes it a fact of culture - the original form (etymology); history condensed to the main features of the content; modern associations; grades, etc.” [Stepanov 2001: 44].

The structure of the concept includes a value component, conceptual and figurative elements. In the conceptual element of the concept Stepanov Yu.S. identifies the following layers or components that each concept has: the first layer includes the actual main feature; the second layer includes one additional or several additional features; The third layer of the concept is its internal form.

Here the question arises about the existence of concepts, namely to what extent concepts exist for people of a given culture. To answer this question, Stepanov Yu.S. formulated the following hypothesis: “concepts exist differently in their different layers, and in these layers they are different in reality for people of a given culture” [Stepanov 2001: 48].

Yu.S. Stepanov identifies three components, or three “layers” of the concept:

1. Main, relevant feature;

2. Additional or several additional, “passive” signs that are no longer relevant, “historical”;

3. Internal form, usually completely unconscious, imprinted in external, verbal form.

In the first layer, that is, in the actual attribute, the concept really exists “for everyone who uses this language as a means of mutual understanding and communication” [Stepanov 2001: 48]. Since the concept is a means of communication, in this “layer” the concept is included both in the structures of communication and in thought processes.

In the second layer or in additional, “passive” features, the concept really exists “only for some social groups” [Stepanov 2001: 48].

The third layer, or inner form, is just being discovered by researchers. But this does not mean that the concept does not exist in this layer. “The concept exists here as the basis on which the remaining layers arose and are supported” [Stepanov 2001: 48].

From all of the above, it follows that the question of the existence of concepts is closely related to the question of its content, and the question of content is closely related to the question of the method by which its content is established.

Since a concept has layers in its structure, and “these layers are the result of the cultural life of different eras” [Stepanov 2001: 49], it can be assumed that there will be several methods for studying concepts. Let's look at the methods in more detail.

1. A method for determining the literal meaning or internal form.

For the first time, the question of the method was raised and applied to the third layer, since it is this layer that is most remote in history. The question of method as content arose in the forties of the nineteenth century in connection with “the study of the life and antiquities of the Russian people based on monuments of ancient literature and law” [Stepanov 2001: 49]. This question would be posed to K.D. Kavelin. He explored the features of the Russian way of life, namely the literal meaning of relations between people - rituals, customs. As a result of his research, Kavelin formulated the requirement of the method, which is cited by Stepanov Yu.S.: “when studying folk rites, beliefs, customs, look for their immediate, direct, literal meaning or internal form (words, customs, rites)” [Stepanov 2001: 50 ]. In the area of ​​research Kavelina K.D. included the great ancient Greek historian Thucydides. One of Thucydides’ greatest merits as a historian is “his use of the method of reconstructing the past through inverse conclusion based on cultural survivals” [Stepanov 2001: 51]. This method consists in using the remnants that have been preserved in the life of society to “conclude what they were and how they acted in those times when they were completely necessary” [Stepanov 2001: 51]. Thucydides also suggested that historians infer “the spiritual significance of something in the past from the material remains of this something in the present” [Stepanov 2001: 51]. The literal meaning can be present in cultural phenomena contained in words or associated with words (for example, “The Eighth of March”), but also in cultural phenomena that are not verbally designated in any way (for example, customs).

The term "literal meaning" is synonymous with the term "internal form". Potebnya A.A. defines internal form as “the way in which an existing word represents the previous word from which the given one was derived” [Stepanov 2001: 52].

2. Historical methods.

This method is most applicable to the second layer - passive. The first method or “Kavelin method” has been widely developed in our time. He is followed by the outstanding researcher of Russian fairy tales Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp. He believes that a fairy tale should be compared with the social institutions of the past and its roots should be looked for in them. That is, when exploring concepts, you need to turn to history.

In this method, an important role is played by the ethnologist, historian and researcher of spiritual culture. But their research paths diverge. An ethnologist explores “the deep layer that exists in the modern state of culture in a hidden, unconscious form” [Stepanov 2001: 54]. The researcher of spiritual culture follows the ethnologist and uses his method. And the historian examines the “historical” layer of the concept and acts using the historical method. The essence of the historical method is that “the history of cultural concepts is constructed as a continuity of concepts” [Stepanov 2001: 56]. That is, concepts must be studied on the basis of data that previously existed and was passed on from generation to generation. And here the opinion of one of the scientists should be cited: “Turning to the historical past of a word can help in understanding its meaning” [Yakovleva 1998: 43].

3. Social methods.

The third method is applied to the third layer of the concept - the active, or actual, layer. Since the subject of the science of culture is not concepts, but how they mentally exist in the mind of the individual, namely concepts, concepts can be represented as “a kind of collective property of Russian spiritual life and the entire Russian, Russian society” [Stepanov 2001: 57] . That is, concepts should be defined from the social side. There is a category of facts that is distinguished by specific properties: “it (the category of facts) consists of ways of thinking that are outside the individual and endowed with coercive force” [Stepanov 2001: 58]. These facts consist of ideas and actions and are called social (for example, rituals, customs). Thus, to study concepts is to study how they exist in society.

Cultural concepts “describe a special kind of reality - mental” [Stepanov 2001: 60]. This implies a requirement for the description of concepts: “the requirement of genetic sequence” [Stepanov 2001: 60]. The definition of concepts consists of historically different layers, different in time of formation, in origin, in semantics, and therefore “the way of summing them up in the definition is essentially genetic” [Stepanov 2001: 60].

As a result, we can conclude that when researching a concept, one should turn to history, etymology and associations. All this data can be found in various dictionaries, and can also be identified experimentally.