Unity, plurality and fractality of culture in the contemporary world

The article is dedicated to the philosophical investigation of the problem of unity and plurality as features of culture in the contemporary world, which is carried out on basis of the methodology peculiar to the present-day paradigm of understanding science. The paradigm in question is denoted as “post-non-classical” and features nonlinear, dialectical approach to its objects of study that appear as unique and human-commensurable self-organizing systems. Taking such an approach into account, it is argued that the phenomenon of multiculturalism in today’s world could be adequately understood as a kind of fractality of human culture, as ‘unity in plurality’ that is opposed to the quasi-classical assertion of unity and plurality of culture as factors that are said to exclude each other. In fact, not only many cultures could coexist in one national country – they do present a form of coexistence in many human beings, in the form of their plural cultural identity. Such a supposition, in its turn, allows defining national cultural identity as the one that cannot justify its claims for an exclusive status – as well as to set up a framework of the hierarchy of human identities which proliferate. Under such a hierarchy, acknowledgment of the universal all-human culture as a certain “higher stage” of the constitution of human cultural identity does not contradict or exclude national, gender, professional, religious, or other plural identities. On the contrary, such a multitude and a proliferation of identities is made possible by the whole non-linear understanding of the hierarchy in question, where the ability to consider ourselves as human beings per se allows us to concretise universal identities in the multitude of other forms while providing the basis for mutual understanding in the complex contemporary world and affirmation of humanistic values.