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voluntarily assuming the responsibility for the society. The opposition of high
culture of the ‘creative minority’ found its serious philosophical basis in the XIX
century, namely in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.
Nietzsche 's views influenced the and ideological cultural processes of the

XXth century: the outlook of the philosophers of the ‘lost generation’ whose youth
was during World War I, existentialist philosophers, ideology of Nazism.
Nietzscheanism was reflected in the art (artist Knut Hamsun).

The art of the XXth century was significantly affected by another thinker -
French philosopher Henri Bergson. He introduced the concept of intuition contrary
to predictive knowledge. He perception of time (‘true’, ‘particular’, with a certain

duration) was admired by many creative individuals, particularly by French writer
Marcel Proust (his novel ‘In Search of the lost time’).
Notable thinkers of the XXth century were Russian philosophers: B.

Solovyov (the theory of the Russian Symbolism), I. Berdyae, M. Bulgakov, S.
Trubetskiy, P. Florenskiy.
Existentialism (‘philosophy of existence’) emerged during World War I and
gained retained the worldwide fame in the late 60s. The scientific method was

considered irrelevant for the process of human self-knowledge. The uniqueness of
a human life could not be expressed in any language concepts. The theoretical and

literary works of French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre and Camus gained a great
popularity.
The Structuralism became known as trend for its transition from the
humanitarian descriptive empirical methods to more abstract and theoretical

studies. The object of study of structuralism was culture as a set of symbolic
systems of language, science, fashion, rituals, customs etc. The most famous
representatives of this trend were M. Foucault, G. Barth, J. Lotman. The artistic

avantgarde practice led to the emergence of post-structuralism postulating a
simplified laguageof perception of works of art.

3. Art in the culture of the XXth century
In the art of XX century the role of games increases. The ancient tradition of
considering a life as a game with a destiny and the world as a theater became a

major cultural trend. Y. Heyzynh’s book ‘Homo ludens’ (‘The man who plays’)
about the nature and value of the game as a source of culture was a sign of the
above mentioned tendency. A number of works in literature, theatre and cinema
were constructed as ‘a novel in the novel’, ‘performance in the play’, ‘film in the

film’. The art work balanced on the edge between reality and game (film ‘8 1/2’ by
F. Fellini. In the literature, stories were constructed according to the principles of
relativity theory and probability: a number of separate episodes that can be read in

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