The Crisis of European Culture and Its Historical Transformations (the Work of Pitirim Sorokin)

Abstract

The essay is about the problem of the development of European historical Cultureand its crisis — based on books by Pitritim Sorokin. That famous sociologistreferring to the thought of the Russian Slavophiles. In his conception, cultures aretransformed into (in the historical process) a cyclical manner. History of the worldhas formed two main types of cultural systems: ideational (reality is spiritual) andsensate (reality is material). The third type (idealistic) is the combination of theother two. The crisis of modern European Culture was understood by Sorokin asthe exhaustion of sensate culture. It meant abandoning faith in God (rejection ofideational culture).