The article discusses the main approaches to understanding the designated terms in scientific thought in the second half of the XX - early XXI centuries. Within the framework of modern sociocultural research, on the one hand, national traditions are developing in defining the concepts of "culture" and "civilization", on the other, new connotations are being created. According to the authors of the article, the considered approaches to determining the meanings of the phenomena of culture and civilization are the most significant, revealing the essence of modern society. Culture appears as: an anthropological category, reflecting the creative activity of a person, as an ontological category, suggesting that outside of culture there is no meaningful and meaningful human being; as an axiological category representing a system for storing and transmitting spiritual experience, values and ideals. Civilization acts as a praxeological category that characterizes the level of social and technological development of society, which is characterized by alienation from natural life, the priority of social values over environmental ones, and the transformative-deforming nature of activity.
