Sacralization of the value structures of human existence in the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai

Popov Evgeniy Aleksandrovich Doctor of Philosophy Professor of the Department of Sociology and Conflictology of Altai State University; Professor of the Department of History and Philosophy of the Barnaul Law Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia 656038, Russia, Barnaul, 66 Dimitrova str., room 513 popov.eug@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

  The article was prepared within the framework of the state assignment of the Altai State University "The Turkic World of the Greater Altai": unity and diversity in history and modernity" (project number - 748715F.99.1. BB97AA00002) and REC of Altaic studies and Turkology "Big Altai".

One of the basic elements of any traditional culture remains the sacralization of values; in philosophical, cultural and interdisciplinary scientific research, the thesis is often predominant that understanding the features of traditional culture, rethinking its key properties is possible mainly in the aspect of identifying the sacred (sacred). This point of view, for example, is shared by J. Bataille and K. Peno ^[1], R. Otto ^[2], M. Eliade ^[3] and others. Indeed, if we are talking about spiritual culture, which also has a pronounced ethno-regional flavor, then the sacralization of values in the space of such culture contributes not only to the preservation of sacred meanings of being, their transfer from one generation of cultural carriers to another, but also, in fact, provides spiritual security to an ethnic group or people. From this point of view, through the sacralization of values, it is possible to trace the historical path of culture, the formation of its cultural-historical type (according to N.Y. Danilevsky ^[4]), to identify the specifics of the value-normative system of culture and the main features of its socio-cultural dynamics. At the same time, the reception of sacred values should take into account the interpretation of culture as a value-semantic system that forms the key meanings of human individual and collective existence and determines their conjugation with the fundamental values of traditional culture.

         The sacralization of values in this work is understood as a mechanism for designating sacred meanings of being in the phenomena of everyday life of cultural carriers and their generations, as well as the endowment of attributes of everyday life, states of nature, cosmos, world order with divine properties, symbols and codes. In this case, such a definition follows from a generalization that can be made based on the positions of some researchers of sacredness ^[5-9]. It is also worth emphasizing that, for example, cultural codes most often become the subject of consideration in cultural studies, since they are the "final" forms of value-semantic transformations and therefore can be objectified in one way or another in numerous traditional or archaic rituals, rituals and ceremonies. In this regard, the decoding of cultural codes provides quite convincing information about the identity of culture as a whole, about the features of its value-normative system. Another thing is that there are often questions about the mechanisms of decoding such cultural codes: in this case, an adequate choice of the appropriate methodology of analysis is important.

         The spiritual culture of the Greater Altai is a single sacred space of culture; with all the contradictions of the socio-political and socio-economic fate of the Greater Altai, polyethnicity and polyregionalism, the space of its culture remained more "stable", accumulating invaluable generational experience in the transfer of social experience and key sacred values. It seems that on the material of the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai and, above all, religion and mythology, it is possible to trace the path of the sacralisation of values; an important point will be the confirmation of the hypothesis that the sacralisation of values supports cultural traditionalism and provides a single sacred space of culture in which the spread of common sacred values, including the most important consolidating function and also contributing to the spiritual security of the ethnic group. Thus, we can talk about the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai as a monolithic phenomenon based, among other things, on sacred values.

         Sacred values can be defined as the significance for cultural bearers of sacred meanings of the divine and substantial, which determine the daily life of individuals and societies, and are also the basis for the formation and development of a religious and mythological worldview and correlate with the ontological system Creator - Man – World. With such identification of sacred values, the degree of their possible objectification increases, when they are perceived not only as abstract models or meanings of being, but also completely "fit" into the everyday existence of cultural carriers or their generations, i.e. in this case they can also receive attributive characteristics, for example, a sacred stone, a sacred mountain, sacred water etc. On the other hand, other types of sacred values are common in religion and mythology, which have substantial properties and cannot be subject to any attribution. Nevertheless, their significance for culture and its bearers is immutable and decisive for the genesis of the value-normative system.

         The substantial level of sacralization of values in the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai, on the one hand, has no fundamental differences depending on the area of development of culture, its regionalism – it is obvious that substantialization is characteristic of human culture as a whole, on the other hand, the specificity of the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai allows us to identify some nuances of the sacralization of values. The key "ontos" of the culture of the Greater Altai is the world order; the search of generations of culture bearers was associated with the power personifying the path to the Creator, overcoming obstacles and conflicts, finding harmony with the World and oneself, etc. The world order as the basis for the substantialization of values is not characteristic of all traditional cultures – mainly, as some foreign authors note, culture acts as "the unconscious flip side of civilized life, beliefs and preferences taken for granted, which we must be vaguely aware of in order to be able to act" ^{[10, p. 44]}.

It is the civilizational factor that often determines the levels of sacralization of values and determines most of the processes of socio-cultural dynamics. The world order can also become the basis of the civilizational level of sacralization of values, but only in those cultures that are placed under the condition of survival, loss of their identity, etc.; for such cultures, the world order appears as a mechanism for ordering value systems, therefore, in such cultures, sacred values are mainly associated with specific natural phenomena – rivers, lakes, forests, the sky, earth. The world order as the basis of the substantial level of the sacralization of values demonstrates a state of culture in which these values are correlated with the vital force, spiritual force, sacred force, it ultimately must correlate with the senses of perception of the motherland, native home, native place, but in any case, in the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai, the world order is part of the human path to the Creator and the world. Why is this level of sacralization characteristic of such an ethno-regional culture as the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai? The fact is that the contamination of values and norms that occurred in the space of this culture naturally had to find its orderliness – but this could only happen in two directions: civilizational and substantial; since the civilizational factor had a greater impact on the contamination processes of the cultural and civilizational development of the Greater Altai, the substantial factor (or the level of sacralization) became determining for further "ontologization" of ethno-regional culture. Moreover, as the researchers put it, "in fact, Altai can become the core and symbol of the spiritual-ecological (or noospheric) commonwealth of the countries of Greater Eurasia, peacemaking and unifying in its very essence" ^{[11, p. 11]}. Without delving into this problem, we emphasize that sacred values at the substantial level are associated with such meanings of being that have a consolidating meaning not according to the principle of ideology, politics, economics, but in accordance with the foundations of spirituality, moral and moral principle.  

Regarding the "unity" of sacred values that support the cultural traditionalism of the Greater Altai, performing the most important consolidating function, contributing to the spiritual security of the ethnic group, in the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai, all these characteristics are confirmed: the world order is the brightest sign of traditional culture, in it values and norms are so ordered that they balance all spheres of being – ideological, political, philosophical, religious and ideological, etc. In addition, the world order at the substantial level reinforces the essential properties of spiritual security: the search for the beginning of the world of its ultimate, the acquisition of destiny, the sacred source of life and other sacred values of the substantial level contribute to the state of spiritual security.

Thus, the substantial level of sacralisation of values in the spiritual culture of the Greater Altai makes it possible to determine the fundamental essential qualities of ethno-regional culture, to preserve its traditionalism and continuity of the value-normative system for future generations.