Dialectics of natural and cultural in artistic interpretations of man in the 19th century

The transformation of the concepts of man and artistic images in different eras occurs gradually, changes are brewing, sometimes, for centuries. But there are historical periods when these transformations occur rapidly, which reflects the accelerating dynamics of processes in culture. This was the 19'h century, which was characterized by sharp fluctuations in the worldview and attitude of European society. The acceleration of processes, contrasting fluctuations, opposition of trends - all this reveals the existential state of culture, allows us to see in this era the threshold of cardinal upheavals of the next century, to anticipate the approaching tectonic shocks of the cataclysms of our time. In the 19th century, the antithesis of the natural-bodily and spiritual in man, asserted by Christian doctrine, developed in its own way by enlightenment rationalism and cultivated by the idea of the absolute priority of the Spirit in German classical philosophy, ceased to be indisputable. The centuries-old hierarchy between man (as a carrier of the spiritual) and nature is beginning to be overcome, which is associated with the deepening of materialistic tendencies in worldview, atheistic positions, and the development of natural sciences. The boundaries between nature and man are beginning to blur again, but not as in ancient syncretism, but on the basis of a new, scientific worldview. This caused sharp fluctuations in the understanding of the relationship between different beginnings in man - natural and spiritual and cultural (which was transposed into the social). The epoch offered a wide range of anthropological representations and images of man. The fluctuations were reflected in various human interpretations within different artistic systems and were carried out in a wide range. Its poles: on the one hand, the accentuation and idealization of the spiritual hypostasis of man in the philosophy, aesthetics and artistic practice of Romanticism (F. Schelling, F. Schlegel, Novalis), on the other hand, it emphasizes the biological nature, heredity in materialistic philosophy (L. Feuerbach), naturalism and partly realism in art (E. and J. Goncourt, E. Zola, G. Maupassant, O. Balzac). In the first case, the spiritual spreads (spreads) over the whole of nature, in the second - the biological fills the spheres of the human, social. This mobility in the interpretation (understanding) of the relationship between natural and cultural in man prepares for more radical fluctuations in modern culture - from Freudian conceptions to reflections on the irrelevance of the human body and the triumph of artificial intelligence, which sound in the era of information technology. The amplitude of the oscillations is gaining more and more scope. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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