On the connection between social and epistemological aspects of the civilizational approach

The article is a review of the monograph of the professors of the Department of Ontology and Theory of Cognition of the RUDN University V.M. Naidysh and O.V. Naidysh Civilization and Rationality. Essays on the Philosophy of Mythology (Moscow: Rusains, 2020. 286 p.) which explores social-philosophical and epistemological aspects of the civilizational approach. The issues of rationality and civilization are connected by the theory of consciousness presented as a form of reflection of reality by the active subject included in the networks of (direct and indirect) communication systems, as an integrator of cognitive activity, sensory-emotional experience of the world and volitional intentionality of the subject. The review focuses on two civilizational paradigms - civilization as an ethnosociocultural community and civilization as an institutionalized society that developed during the ‘Neolithic revolution’. The monograph analyzes a wide range of issues: theoretical-methodological prerequisites of models of the historical process, origins of the civilizational model of history, concepts of civilization in the 19th - early 21st century, the structure of the foundations of civilization, the role of rationalism and myth-making in the life of civilization, processes of rationalization and derationalization of culture, the genesis of thinking, the nature of the archetypes of culture, the formation of rationalism in the cultures of the Ancient East, concepts of barbarism and neo-barbarism, etc. The monograph also examines the debatable issue of possible prospects of civilization: among the models of post-civilization, transhumanism seems to be the most popular (the program of the artificial transformation of the natural-biological foundations of man). The authors call for a balanced and critical perception of transhumanism, because its most radical, extreme versions are a contemporary form of ‘social alchemy’.