The increasing use of the civilizational approach in modern domestic humanitarian science highlights several crucial tasks, particularly concerning the clarification and problematization of its elements in light of new social and political challenges. A major issue in the study of civilizations is defining parameters for comparative analysis. This article aims to refine the methodology of the civilizational approach by developing a framework for comparative analysis that formulates universal parameters to highlight the essential traits of each civilization. Current methodologies for comparative analysis (R. Inglehart, G. Hofstede, S. Schwartz) primarily address various types of communities, with a focus on national cultures. However, this concentration reduces the heuristic efficacy of these methods in analyzing supranational communities with unique cultural specifics. The article presents an innovative vector-axial approach for assessing civilizational diversity, using six parameters to assess cultural ranges based on dominant values. These parameters (systemicity, sociality, anthropicity), arranged in opposing pairs (expansion-concentration, connectivity-splitting, logicality-emotionality), offer value guidelines for representatives of different cultures or civilizations. The dominance of any of these vectors helps to determine the most distinctive features of a society. The authors suggest that these characteristics should be viewed not as intrinsic and inevitable community traits but as current value orientations that allow for identifying value differences within comparative frameworks.
culture; civilization; comparative research; values; language; vector; coordinate system; social development.