The textbook is a concept of the theory of culture as a whole with a description of the specific laws of its existence. The basic laws and categories of cultural studies as a science, features of the spiritual culture and life of society, the own measure of a generic person are given; the view of civilization as a technocratic direction in the development of culture, as opposed to humanitarian, is substantiated, which leads the idea to consider the dialectics of culture through relations between East and West.