The book is devoted to problems of history and theory of culture. The articles included in the collection were written at different times from 1966 to 2001. For this edition, previously published articles were revised; many articles were written specifically for this book. Culture is considered as a form of social consciousness, reflecting the nature and structure of society, consisting of individuals who reproduce themselves in the process of everyday practice, and supra-individual norms and ideas based on the generalization of this practice and regulating the behavior of individuals in the process of the same practice. Culture embraces both of these spheres and, accordingly, knows, as it were, two movements - “up”, towards abstraction from everyday worries and generalization of life practice in ideas and images, in science, art and education, in theoretical knowledge, and “down” - to this practice itself, to the regulators of everyday existence and activity - habits, tastes, behavioral patterns, relationships within social groups, everyday life. The advantage of the book is that theoretical generalizations are based on specific material and arise from facts and images of the history of art, science, and society as a whole.