2 3 Aesthetic elements in the culture of primitive days

Systematization of the laws of artistic activity and analysis of expressive forms of reality began as a scientific problem in ancient Greece. However, the idea of ​​​​appropriate forms, expressiveness of these forms, the value of aesthetics in human life has a much longer history. Aesthetic formation, the creation of expressive forms have been known since ancient times. It began during the Upper Paleolithic, about 35-40 thousand years BC, and reflection on the phenomena of aesthetics is recorded for the first time in the countries of ancient civilizations of the Middle East. Modern science shows great interest in the historical past of mankind, in particular in terms of the development of formative skills and ideas about the environment and the place of man in it. Numerous images of animals left on the walls of caves - dwellings of Paleolithic man (the Lascaux and Trois Freres caves in France, Altamira in northern Spain, Kapova Cave in the Urals, Kamennaya Mogila in Ukraine, etc.) have come down from ancient times. Modern man is amazed by the subtle, with knowledge of the anatomy of modeling figures and conveying the mental state of images. Among them are polychrome, certifying good command of color. There is an increase in skills (pictorial technique), compositions, as well as a variety of plots. In the 20th century, a hypothesis was formed about the role of numerous images of a hand. Some researchers (A. Breuil, A. Luke) see the beginning of the formation of fine art in the image of the silhouette of a hand. The hypothesis of the ritual nature of animal images intended for cult ceremonies is widespread. It is quite clear that the image is multifunctional. It is impossible to separate magical and mythical experience from practical experience in them, since human consciousness has a syncretic nature. Data from modern anthropology, archeology, paleoanthropology confirm: art developed on the basis of collective experience and from the needs of collective magical ritual actions that had the character of a spiritual and practical stimulator, an incentive for the development of consciousness. "The real consciousness of a person," says the famous psychologist S. Rubinstein, "in contrast to the theoretical abstraction of consciousness as a whole, is always practical consciousness; in it, the attitude of things to the needs and actions of the subject as a social individual and his attitude to the surrounding world plays a significant role" [12, p. 168]. Despite the validity of this opinion, it is no less important that a person clearly separates himself from the world around him and creates another - symbolic reality as its inherent environment of life. This is anthropomorphization, that is, the humanization of natural forces and the creation of relationships with them that have a character determined by man, and not by natural forces. B. Cassirer, studying the early forms of thinking (mythological period), comes to the conclusion: myth is not a reflection of existing being, but acts as a special way of forming an image that reaches beyond the simple sensory perceptions of reality. The philosopher considers the myth of the early form of aesthetic fantasy. Its function is to "construct" the world - to create its image with the help of symbolic forms (language, expressive objects, rituals, fine art). It is this world and the object of human development that has an aesthetic character, since it is a world of images formed by the imagination that must be experienced and tested. A person is defined in the status of a person if she has mastered the human experience of relationships, received design in images and is fixed as an achievement of consciousness in myths, rituals, ways of organizing life and communication, numerous types of subject-practical activity. In relation to the natural world, all the above-mentioned achievements of consciousness arise from the symbolic world. The myth of reality - the natural givenness of the world - is the activity of its formation, a creative act. This is the formation of sensory-given images of natural forces that personify the human attitude towards them, objectified and images of fear, worship and veneration, or the unity of both (gods, demons, ghouls, water spirits, etc.). B. Cassirer comes to the conclusion: "The mythological world is not "concrete" because it deals with sensory-objective elements of consciousness and rejects, pushes away all purely "abstract" moments, everything that is exclusively meaning and sign - it is concrete in that both moments in it, the moment of the thing and the moment of meaning, can be transformed into one another without distinction, grow together here into a direct unity, become "concretions" [3, p. 36]. In this regard, one can trace the transformation of the performer of a ritual action (mythological action) into a god or demon, which he depicts, which is typical for mythological consciousness, that is, material, bodily existence is transformed by consciousness into some ideal essence. This pattern, B. Cassirer notes, can be traced "from the most primitive manifestations of magical views of the world to the highest manifestations of the religious spirit" [3, p. 53]. The life of consciousness in myth - in its image

structure - appears self-sufficient. With reference to Levi-Bruhl, B. Cassirer comes to the conclusion: for mythological thinking, the division of the general idea into separate elements has not yet occurred, in particular into the objective moments of perception and the subjective moments of emotional attitude. The world in mythology appears as a whole, formed by fantasy, connected by internal connections arising from the qualities and functions provided to objects. In this sense, mythological consciousness is a product of the aesthetic "processing" of reality in the imagination. The construction of objectivity in the context of mythological consciousness is the process of providing things with magical entities, thanks to which they are able to influence those who communicate with them, that is, they are "assigned" certain functions of the spiritual plane (magical properties). This contains the beginning of the aesthetic, which is defined as the ability of real objectivity, thanks to the symbolic meaning provided to it, to really influence the mental structures of the subject of perception, being an organizing principle.

Practical objectivity created by people of naive cultures has aesthetic properties. After all, the expediency of form in it acquires a universal symbolic load. For example, savages in different parts of the planet have been creating expedient forms since ancient times, taking the human figure, tree trunks, plant shapes, fruits, etc. as prototypes. Moreover, not only form, but also rhythm, strength, that is, dynamic forms of life can be traced in the images, so they are full of internal vitality and grace, as noted by researchers of early cultures [5, p. 224]. The end of the Paleolithic and the Neolithic period - the period of the formation of agriculture, the development of crafts, the construction of housing and religious buildings - are characterized by an expansion of the subject matter of the image and a variety of technology. The connection with the animal world (the basis of life of primitive man) gives way to a connection with "supernatural forces": the sun, moon, rain, wind, which acquire a human form, become gods - an object of worship and appeasement. Mythological heroes enter into connections with supernatural forces, demonstrating the capabilities of man. This period is characterized by the individualization of the spiritual, including artistic experience of various tribal and ethnic formations. Artistic experience is of primary importance, because it is associated with the "formation" of the surrounding world (providing images to natural forces) and the creation of objects, which reflects active connections with nature, providing it with objects of a new image. This is also the creation of relationships in the form of ritual and ceremonial actions both in relation to natural phenomena and in relation to human life (for example, funeral rites, rites of honoring a leader, ruler, etc.).

Thus, the symbolic and figurative nature of the world, which forms the consciousness of a person in the early periods of history, is the phenomenon of creating an ideal (spiritual) image of the natural world as a special environment of specifically human vitality.