Classification of civilizations Part 1

Arnold J. Toynbee (1889 1975)  a prominent British historian, philosopher and cultural studies. Its main work  a 12 volume work “Study of History” (1934 1961), which made a huge systematization of the material, based on which analyzes the processes of emergence, growth, fracture and collapse of civilizations.

In 1991 was the first digest of this work  “Study of History”, compiled by local researchers. Currently we have shortened version of the translation of a work, published in 1947, ed. Charles D. Somervell County and with the direct participation of the author, and his other works. Unlike their predecessors, AJ. Toynbee comes to ideas of civilized approach is not of general philosophical concepts and systems, and methodologies based on historical and empirical data, is widely involved in it to justify the chosen theme. We refer to the opinion AL Kroeber, who called it “a colossal figure”, said that Arnold Toynbee  the only professional historian who seriously engaged in the comparative analysis of civilizations “and that his credit that he wrote and broke stopped civilizations have not reached in the development of normative model it is just what they did was not in Spengler.

In his memoirs, AJ. Toynbee wrote it, first picking up the work of Spengler “The decline of the Western world,” trying to understand not provided or Spengler its research. Though he calls Spengler “brilliant genius”, though noted that the question of the genesis of civilization there is still work to do, for Spengler, the remark AJ. Toynbee, “was just as impressive dogmatic on this issue.” Toynbee develops and thorough manner complementary theory of civilization created by predecessors, but rejects those theories, which states that “every civilization is nearing completion of its biological lifetime as civilization  the objects of this kind, which is not subject to the laws biology”.

Unlike Spengler, AJ. Toynbee explores rather than culture, and a society that equated them with civilization. Defect doctrine he sees in the interpretation of isolation cultures, their total fragmentation and tightness in their very incomplete list, which they transformed into a spirit of “openness” cultural historical process. Established AJ. Toynbee typological concept of civilizations has a very impressive character, because it takes into account not only civilization that survived until the XX century. But also analyzed the processes of heredity and mutual him all known societies.

In the center of the main scientific work of AJ. Toynbee is the question of how the historian as a result of reconstruction empirical field studies highlight the basic “cell” of historical analysis. The main topic of research AJ. Toynbee  no coverage of different cultures, but rather classification societies. Already in the introduction of the first volume “Study history,” he states that “intelligible unit of historical study is not a nation state, and on the other hand, humanity as a whole, and any group of people that we call society.” So, the real purpose of the study  “society.” To distinguish the life of primitive societies (known them named about 650 who live relatively short lives, few and limited geographically, among them “dead”, “left” and is alive today), A. J. Toynbee distinguishes and less civilized society. Thus, the concept of “civilization” is in his unit socio cultural organization. He notes a striking advantage over primitive societies, civilizations and states that the number of known civilization companies is relatively small.

The way his reasoning is this: from now existing companies, he has five (Western Christendom, Orthodox Christian, Islamic society, a society is Hindu and Far Eastern society)  to seek their predecessors. According to Toynbee, no nation or national state of Europe may not show history, which could be explained from itself. Therefore, the continuity of history should be understood as successive generations: Western society has the same relation to the Hellenic society that has a child to his father. This explains the terminology comparing AJ. Toynbee, which captures the relationship of different societies, “his father filial relations,” “filial relationship,” “society, is the father” and others. With thorough evaluation of the degree of continuity character set  a term used AJ. Toynbee to refer to “filial related” companies (from the Latin. Filius  son, Eng. To affiliate  affiliate, establish paternity).