Introduction 2 1 Basic functions and structural mechanisms society as a social system 4 2 Structural elements of society 7 3 Subsystems of society responsible for performing basic functions 8 4 Cultural system and social consciousness 12 5 Modern society according to Pasons’ theory 14 Conclusion 17
Introduction
We will begin our knowledge of the global world by considering the question of how modern human society is structured. After all, each of us lives in a certain society, is a citizen of a certain state, part of a certain people. This means that a certain number of people, united by a common origin, common territory and general power, always forms a certain unity, which is called “society”. How do people live together? What are the conditions under which this life will reproduce? Who should do what in society? The theory of society should give answers to these and other questions. But such a unified scientific theory still does not exist. The fact is that in social science, unlike natural science, the object of study is not nature, but a person endowed with consciousness, his activities and social connections. In addition, in social science it is extremely difficult to apply the rigorous research methods used in natural science and based on mathematics. And if in the natural sciences there is usually a certain number of theories that explain any object, and their reliability is accessible to objective, scientific verification, then in social science the situation is noticeably different. There are quite a lot of theories here that explain society, but there are practically no ways to verify their truth. The question of man's place in the world was inevitably associated with attempts to identify or establish the laws according to which human society is structured and develops. In European Antiquity Plato and Aristotle, in the Far Eastern culture Confucius, in modern times N. Machiavelli, T. Hobbes and J. Locke, philosophers of Germany and France, Enlightenment thinkers J.-J. Rousseau, D. Diderot, Voltaire, at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries. I. Kant and G. Hegel, later K. Marx and F. Engels, O. Comte and G. Spencer, the great Russian philosophers and sociologists V. Solovyov, I. Ilyin, P. Sorokin, S. Frank tried to build their theories of society . IN Modern times theories of society appeared, largely based on new knowledge about the world and people and which became the property of all humanity. They make attempts to identify the laws of development of society, the features of its structures, and their dependence on each other. Among those who developed these theories we can include E. Durkheim and M. Weber, A. Schutz and N. Luhmann, M. McLuhan and F. Lyotard, E. Giddens and J. Habermas, Z. Bauman and P. Bourdieu. In this case, to get an idea of society, we will use the research of the American sociologist Talcott Parsons (see his works: “On the structure of social action”, “On social systems”). In the 60-70s. last century, he developed a theory that considers society as one of the types of “social system”, which, in turn, is one of the forms of the “system of action”. If the object of study is understood as a system, this means that all its components (any objects of nature, society, thinking) are considered in interconnection. The method of interconnection or the order of organizing the interaction of all parts of the system is denoted by the concept of structure. Devices that ensure the constancy of the method of interconnection, or carriers of order, can be called structural elements. | Each object acts in coordination with others, and they all produce | | a certain result that allows the system to survive and develop. All sorts of things | | the action of the system is always the satisfaction of one of its most important | |needs. Satisfying needs allows the system to maintain | | and reproduce itself in a relatively unchanged form - save | |“equilibrium state”. All the various needs can be reduced | |to the main ones - the basic ones. Activities of the system to satisfy a certain | |basic need is denoted by the concept of function. | | | | | |1 Basic functions and structural mechanisms of society as a social system | | | |The theory of society as a “social system”, developed by Parsons, received| |name of structural-functional theory. She is the most | |universal and least ideological, and therefore the most scientific. | |Her role in the development of modern social knowledge can be likened to the role of | | mechanical physics of I. Newton, which became the basis of scientific | |worldview of the New Age and made the technological revolution possible.| | | |Of course, the structural-functional theory of society is criticized | | and clarifications. But its potential is undeniable. She offers simple | | and visual explanations of why any society is structured this way, and not | |otherwise. Finally, it is in Parsons' theory that one can find the answer to the question of what | | the fundamental difference between societies that are called “modern” and those | | which preceded them and are therefore called “traditional”. |
Conclusion
We - people - live in constant communication with our own kind. This is called the scientific term - society. The entire history of mankind is the emergence, development and destruction of societies of various types. However, in all societies one can find constant properties and characteristics, without which no association of people is possible. The description of these properties and characteristics makes it possible to construct a theory of society as such. The theory of society as a system is considered to be the most scientific and least ideological. It was developed by an outstanding American sociologist of the 20th century. Talcott Parsons. To understand any human society, he believed, it is necessary to highlight its structure - that which allows society to maintain its appearance and determine the basic functions, i.e. those types of activities without which society cannot reproduce itself. Parsons' theory is called structural-functional theory. The adaptation function in society is provided by the economic subsystem, the goal-setting function by the policy subsystem, the coordination function by the legal subsystem, and the integration function by the socialization subsystem. Humans have a consciousness that allows us to understand and evaluate the world. Cognition and evaluation constitute the essence of culture as a system, which acts as a controlling level in relation to society as a social system. At this level, social consciousness is created in various forms. All societies can be divided into two main classes - traditional and modern. Globalization is a product of the activities of modern societies. Thus, it becomes possible to consider society as a substantially autonomous reality, not reducible to the sum of the individuals that form it. Translating this philosophical statement into the language of sociology, we have the right to classify society as a special class of real social groups. From the above, it becomes clear that real social groups are based on the systemic interaction of the subjects that form them. Such interaction creates special integral realities of joint activity that go beyond individual human actions and influence their content, largely determining it. This is exactly how real groups are structured, in which individual actions of people are woven into a system of organized interaction, and each individual has a place and his role (his status and his function) in collective activity. The presence of such collective activity, guided by supra-individual interests, goals, values, norms and institutions, is the main and decisive feature of a real social group, different from the sum of the individuals that form it. From the point of view of Vedic theory, all humanity, despite external differences, strives for the same goals. We want to live forever, have perfect knowledge and be completely happy. If you study the history of human society, you can see that the activities of all states were aimed precisely at these goals. But, unfortunately, now we do not have a single example where it would be possible to show the possibility of people achieving these goals. You can pay attention to modern Western society from the point of view of material perfection, but spiritual degradation is obvious. Many people lose the meaning of life and become a burden to their surroundings. There is no doubt that the Western concept of world development does not lead to the achievement of harmonious coexistence of material and spiritual well-being. Are there any other models of social development? Yes. By studying the Vedic scriptures, which are more than 5,000 years old, we can find descriptions of the ancient Aryan culture, in which human society achieved a unity with nature and God that has no analogues in modern history. This culture was built on four foundations or paths of development of society: dharma, artha, kama, moksha.
Bibliography
1. Kuznetsov V.G., Kuznetsova I.D., Mironov V.V., Momdzhyan K.Kh. Philosophy: Textbook. - M.: INFRA-M, 2004. - 519 p. 2. Polyakov L.V. Social science. Book for teachers http://www.prosv.ru/umk/obshestvoznanie/index.html 3. http://www.i-u.ru/
Society is in constant motion and change. The pace and scale of transformations can be different: in the history of mankind there were periods when the established order of life did not change for centuries, but there were also times when social processes were carried out rapidly. Social development, according to Hegel, is a movement from imperfect to more perfect. People continuously create new types of interactions, transform social relations, and change the value-normative order. Sociologists divide the diversity of societies into certain types: agricultural and industrial, traditional and modern, simple and complex, closed and open. The most widespread in modern sociology is the civilizational approach, which distinguishes the following stages of social development - industrial society, traditional society, post-industrial society and information society. The transition from one stage to another is determined by a change in the method of production, form of ownership, social institutions, culture, lifestyle, and social structure. Changes in technology are reflected in the organization of social connections; the level of scientific, technical and scientific information development is of decisive importance in the modern period.
Traditional society– a stage of social development, which is characterized by sedentary social structures and a tradition-based method of sociocultural regulation. In this society there is a natural division of labor, extremely low rates of production development, which can satisfy the needs of the population only at a minimum level. The behavior of individuals is regulated by customs and strictly controlled by the sociocultural environment. Individual freedom is sharply limited.
From traditional society grows a modern, industrial society associated with the emergence of industrial production and the secular nature of social life. It is characterized by the flexibility of social structures, allowing them to be modified as people's needs change. This ensures a reasonable combination of freedom and interests of individuals with general principles governing the joint activities of people.
In modern society, the market has entered all spheres of social relations and influences people's lifestyles. The continued division of labor and the growth of corporate organizations caused an increase in the state administrative apparatus to maintain a complex system of economic production in interactions with other systems of society. Transformations in labor organization were the main axis of movement of society, dominated by localism and tradition, to its modern forms with a predominance of modernization and innovation.
Industrial society- a stage of social development, which is characterized by concentration of production, a developed and complex system of division of labor with its expanded specialization, and an increase in population in large industrial centers. Mechanization and automation of production, an increase in the number of management personnel leads to significant professional stratification. The increasing share of mental labor requires highly skilled workers, which has led to the expansion of access to education for many segments of the population. The introduction of scientific discoveries into production activities contributes to the production of high-quality goods to meet the growing demand of the population. The proclaimed legal equality of opportunity leads to the erasing of rigid barriers between segments of the population and is aimed at weakening class antagonism in society.
Technological changes transform society into a new social system, which scientists have defined as post-industrial society- This is a stage of social development, at the basis of which science and education acquire a leading role. The theory of post-industrial society was developed by D. Bell and O. Toffler. Technology is creating a new definition of rationality, a new way of thinking for people and a new way of living. It is knowledge that becomes the axis around which technology, economic growth and the stratification of society are organized. Priority sectors are distinguished by environmental and social comfort, efficiency in the consumption of raw materials and human resources. At the same time, an important criterion for the progressiveness of introduced technical innovations is the principle: whether they contribute to expanding the sphere of self-realization and self-regulation of a person.
There is a sharp increase in production output, a transition from a commodity-producing to a service economy is taking place, and the sphere of “services” is significantly expanding. The availability of consumer goods ensures a decent existence for the majority of the country's citizens. This allowed sociologists to use concepts such as “affluent society,” “consumer society,” and “welfare society.”
Universities and research centers, as the central institutions of society, led to the creation of an all-powerful electronic-cybernetic elite with their new technology decision-making, which has a decisive impact on the development of society, the interaction of science and politics. The basis of social relations, according to Western sociologists, is not property, but knowledge and level of qualifications. Entrepreneurs cease to be ruling class. In a post-industrial society, the main thing is “a game between individuals,” which presupposes social solidarity and cooperation between members of society.
The computer and communications revolution, due to its truly unlimited technological capabilities, indicates the entry of modern industrialized countries into the information society.
Information society– this is a stage of social development, based on a new role of information. Informatization is understood as an activity aimed at providing all structures of society with comprehensive data through the use of the latest technical means and technologies in order to create favorable conditions for human life.
Characteristic features of the information society:
1. Information becomes the dominant sphere of material production. Information production is fundamental in the entire infrastructure, and scientific capital becomes dominant over material capital in the structure of the economy. Information and computer programs are turning into the most valuable commodity. A new technological structure is emerging in the economy, based on the massive use of promising technologies, computer technology and telecommunications. The speed of information processing and its assimilation increasingly determines the efficiency of material production.
There is a process of creating and developing a market for information and knowledge as factors of production in addition to the markets for natural resources, labor and capital. In the information society, it is not the cost of labor that becomes primary, but the cost of knowledge. Along with traditional forms of wealth, the accumulation of information wealth is becoming increasingly important. In the information society, intelligence and knowledge are produced and consumed, which leads to an increase in the share of mental labor. A person is required to have a developed ability for creativity, and the demand for constant replenishment of knowledge is increasing. The material product becomes more information-intensive, which means an increase in the share of innovation, design and marketing in its value.
Information advantage becomes an important social force that contributes to the redistribution of economic, social and power resources. It is estimated that over 60% of all US resources are information resources. Information processing has become a new industry, employing up to 80% of the employed population.
With the development of communication and information technologies, information is turning from a national resource into a global resource. There is a sharp increase in the information needs of people and society, and more and more sectors of the economy are focusing on their satisfaction.
2. In connection with the expansion of the scope of information activity, the professional and educational structure of society and the nature of work are changing. The role and functions of the most important element of the production forces - man - are changing; intellectual and creative work is replacing the work of the individual directly involved in the production process. In the information society, the main thing is labor aimed at receiving, processing, storing, transforming and using information; creativity takes on primary importance in motivating work activity.
The organization of work activities is becoming more and more flexible. Thanks to personal computers, the process of “domestication of labor” is underway. According to forecasts, in the first half of the 21st century in advanced countries, half of the workforce will be employed in the field of information, a quarter in the field of material production and a quarter in the production of services, including information. The elite of the information society are communities of people who have theoretical knowledge, and not land and capital. Knowledge in the modern world is the most important resource that allows you to really improve the quality of social management and use the capabilities of the organization without resorting to other types of capital.
Internet opened up the opportunity for millions of workers to work anywhere in the world without leaving their country. It is believed that 50% of all known professions can function within telework. Successful use of computers and obtaining more productive results with their help increases a person’s self-esteem and confidence in his ability to solve professional problems. The widespread use of telework methods can bring significant benefits to both society and the individual.
3. The formation of a single communication space both within the country and on a global scale opens up prospects for streamlining social interactions and affects the versatility of communication between peoples and states. Thanks to computer technology, television, and the Internet, it is possible to overcome space-time barriers between people. Free access to a variety of information contributes to the transformation of the socio-political activities of society, opening up new opportunities for holding debates, conferences, electronic clarification of public opinion, holding referendums, and direct communication between citizens and politicians. The introduction of information technology into the political sphere of society makes it more open to the entire world community. Information acts as a global resource for humanity, strengthening and deepening social ties between states and peoples of the planet.
4. In the information society, the entire way of life and the value system are changing qualitatively, the importance of cultural leisure in relation to material needs is increasing, and new forms of communication are appearing. The use of the Internet and other computer networks is associated with the emergence of a new social organization - virtual network communities community. The desire for active communication among Internet users with the aim of exchanging knowledge and experience contributes to the socialization of community members, the process of self-learning and the formation of social norms. The boundaries of online communities, as well as their areas of interest, are overwhelmingly blurred; the unifying factor is a common system of values. Different groups of online communities, having common group-forming characteristics, nevertheless differ in some aspects of their social behavior.
Scientists predict the transformation of the entire world space into a single computerized and information community of people living in electronic apartments and cottages. Any home will be equipped with all kinds of electronic devices and computerized devices. People's activities will be focused mainly on information processing. And this is not a utopia, but an inevitable reality of the near future.
5. Humanity is faced with the task of creating an effective system for ensuring the rights of citizens and social institutions to freely receive, disseminate and use information as the most important condition for democratic development. At the present time, information inequality is and will continue to increase. Freedom of access to state information resources does not imply free access to the resources of private firms, which, having made significant investments in obtaining and actually processing information, have the right not to share the acquired knowledge with other structures of society. Social groups deprived of access to information resources initially find themselves in a deliberately disadvantageous economic position compared to the online community, since a person’s success largely depends on his ability and ability to use information. Fluency in several languages facilitates the process of an individual’s entry into online communities.
The development and widespread use of information and communication technologies requires regulation of information transfer for the integration of the economies of the world community into the global economic system. That is why the concept of forming an “electronic government” remains relevant, the main functions of which will be: realizing the rights of citizens to free and prompt access to information through the global Internet and creating a system for protecting information from terrorist organizations; ensuring “transparency” and efficiency of relations between government agencies and business when purchasing works (services) for the needs of the country, automating tax calculations, organizing feedback from government structures to citizens.
The creation of a single computer space is associated with globalization social processes. Currently, humanity is approaching transformation into a single organic whole. There is a humanization of international and interpersonal relations, the main principle of which is freedom and respect for the dignity of a person, regardless of his origin, religion and social status. The deepening trend of globalization of the world, as the integrity and humanization of human relations, will lead, according to scientists, to the transition of the information society into a humanistic one, the basis of which will be a holistically developed personality, whose creative individuality will be revealed in its entirety. All citizens will be provided with the same “starting” opportunities and conditions for realizing human potential. Spiritual production will become dominant.
How human society works
Momdzhyan K.H.
1. Society: reality or universal?
At the very beginning of our presentation, we noted the polysemy of the term “society”, which has several meanings, the broadest of which is the understanding of society as a set of phenomena that have special societal properties that distinguish the world of people from the world of natural realities.
To avoid confusion, we abandoned this interpretation of the term, characterizing the world of supernatural phenomena using a different concept - “society”. We decided to reserve the term “society” for solving other, more specific problems of social philosophy.
In fact, so far we have been talking about the most general properties of human activity, which allow us to distinguish social phenomena from natural phenomena. In other words, we studied the abstractly taken essence of the social, abstracting from the question: under what conditions is the existence of this essence possible, that is, the real emergence and reproduction of social phenomena?
Let us remind the reader that we proceed from the fact that in the behavior of Robinson, abandoned on a desert island, one can find all the main signs that distinguish a social being from natural phenomena - be it the conscious nature of actions, a special type of labor adaptation to the environment, a variety of needs, interests and the means of satisfying them that the animal does not have, etc.
But it is equally clear that observing Robinson will not give us an answer to the question: where did his properties that are absent in animals come from? How did he manage to master thinking? Where did Robinson's ability to build houses, cultivate land and keep time come from? Was he born with these abilities or acquired them in some other way?
The answer to these and similar questions leads us from the study of the abstract properties of the social to the analysis of society as the real environment in which Robinsons arise with their inherent societal qualities. In other words, society appears to us not as “sociality in general,” but as a special organizational form of sociality, as a set of conditions that ensure its emergence, reproduction and development.
What are these conditions under which the reproduction of human activity with its special supernatural properties is possible? We associate the answer to this question with a necessary characteristic of social life, which was already mentioned above - with its collectivity.
Accordingly, moving from an analysis of the essence of the social to the study of society as organizational form its real existence in time and space, we proceed from the fact that society is a certain group of people. In fact, we are moving from an analysis of the universal properties of activity, represented in any individual human action, to the study of the specific properties of interaction between people within the framework of their inherent collective way of life. It is assumed that such a collective has special laws of self-organization and development that cannot be revealed when considering human action (quite sufficient to create an idea of the essential differences in the behavior of people and animals). In other words, interaction as a form of subject-subject mediation is not reduced to the forms of subject-object mediation, which constitutes the abstract-logical essence of action as an elementary cell of social substance.
It is characteristic, however, that even this initial assumption causes disagreement on the part of philosophers and sociologists who recognize interaction as a necessary condition of sociality and at the same time refuse to substantive it as a reality that is not reducible to individual human actions. Let us explain in more detail what we are talking about.
It may seem strange, but in social philosophy and general sociology the question has long been debated: “does society exist at all as an original reality, as a special area of existence?”1.
This question, continues S.L. Frank, “may seem at first glance idle. Who would seem to deny this? Doesn’t the presence of the very concepts of “societies” and “ public life”, as well as a special field of scientific knowledge - “social science” or the so-called “social sciences” - that all people see in society a special side or area of being, a special subject of knowledge?
In reality the situation is not so simple. Just as, for example, a modern astronomer, recognizing astronomy as a special science, sees in its subject - the sky - still not a special, original reality (as was the case in the ancient and medieval worldview), but only a part - homogeneous to other parts - of the general physics. chemical nature, which embraces both heaven and earth... - so a social scientist may not see any original reality in the face of society, but consider it only a conditionally distinguished part or side of some other reality. One can even say that in most modern socio-philosophical views this is exactly what is happening. Namely: for the majority of positive sociologists and social scientists, society is nothing more than a generalized name for the aggregate and interaction of many individual people, so they do not see or recognize any social reality at all, reducing it to the summarized reality of individual people.”2
This approach of S.L. Frank calls it “singularism” or “social atomism,” tracing its philosophical origins already to the Sophists and especially to Epicurus and his school, “for which society is nothing more than the result of a conscious agreement between individuals about the structure of a common life”3.
The singularist view of society is contrasted with the point of view of socio-philosophical “universalism”, according to which “society is a truly objective reality, not an exhaustive set of individuals included in its composition”4. Frank leads the historical and philosophical tradition of universalism from Plato, for whom “society is “ big man", a certain independent reality that has its own inner harmony, special laws of its equilibrium”, as well as from Aristotle, for whom “society is not derived from man, but, on the contrary, man is derived from society; a person outside of society is an abstraction, as impossible in reality as a living hand is impossible, separated from the body to which it belongs.”5
We see that the debate between “universalism” and “singularism” rests on the problem of the systemic nature of society, the establishment of which of the forms of integration of phenomena we have already considered to which it belongs. Should society be considered a constellation of elements, the connection of which does not create a new quality different from the sum of the qualities of its constituent parts? Or is society a systemic unity that has integral properties of the whole that are absent from the parts that form it? If this assumption is correct, then should society be considered as a system formation of a lower type, created by the interaction of relatively autonomous parts, or does it belong to unities of an organic type, in which the whole is primary relative to its parts and determines the very need for their structural isolation and the way of existence in the system ?
Questions of this kind, as S.L. correctly notes. Frank, have long occupied philosophers and sociologists, offering a variety of answers to them. At the same time, the variety of such answers, as we believe, is too great to sort them into the “two shelves” of singularism and universalism proposed by the Russian philosopher.
In reality, such a dichotomous division of socio-philosophical concepts does not take into account the full complexity of the problem, in particular the differences between alternative approaches that exist within “singularism” and “universalism” in their given understanding.
Let's start with the fact that among theorists who are convinced of the derivativeness of society from man, who, according to the criteria proposed by Frank, should be classified as supporters of the “singularist” approach, there are the most serious disagreements in understanding the forms and degrees of the primacy of man before society.
It can be argued that the most primitive form of singularism interprets the derivation of society from man as a genetic derivative, insisting on the chronological primacy of man, who was able to exist before society and created it to satisfy his needs, which were formed outside of society and independently of it.
At the same time, such a theory of “social contract” is decisively rejected by many theorists, whom S.L. Frank would undoubtedly be in the “singularitarian” camp.
Take, for example, the point of view famous philosopher K. Popper, convinced that “the “behavior” and “actions” of such collectives as states or social groups should be reduced to the behavior and actions of individual people”6. However, such a view of society, which Popper calls “methodological individualism” and contrasts the position of “methodological collectivism” (“universalism”, in the terminology of S.L. Frank), does not prevent him from believing that the hypothesis of the substantial primordial nature of the individual is “not only a historical , but, so to speak, also a methodological myth. It can hardly be discussed seriously, since we have every reason to believe that man, or rather his ancestor, became first a social and then a human being (considering, in particular, that language presupposes society).”7 “People,” continues Popper, “i.e. the human psyche, the needs, hopes, fears, expectations, motives and aspirations of individual human individuals, if they mean anything at all, do not so much create their social life as they are its product”8.
We see that a commitment to “methodological individualism” can be combined with the understanding that the properties of human individuals from which collective behavior is to be explained are not their original property. On the contrary, “smart” singularism perfectly understands that the specific properties of a person that distinguish him from an animal (his supraorganic, “societal” needs, his inherent consciousness, etc.) were formed during a collective way of life, expressing the needs of a person as a being who posits other people and what they believe.
This does not mean, however, that when discussing the problem of “man - society” in its genetic aspect, we can insist on the chronological primacy of society. Paradoxically, the “methodological individualist” Popper goes too far in the opposite direction, believing that the formation of sociality can chronologically precede the formation of man. Obviously, in the phylogenetic aspect of the problem concerning the formation of the genus “man,” we can accept the idea that our ancestor “became first a social and then a human being” only if we interpret “social” as “collective” , more precisely, as a pre-social form of collectivity. This is so, since its social form arises only together with a “ready-made” person, in a single, chronologically synchronous process of anthroposociogenesis. There is not and cannot be a “ready” person outside a mature society, just as there cannot be a real society without a full-fledged Homo Sapiens.
Thus, the dispute between “universalism” and “singularism” must be transferred from the plane of formation of man and society to the plane of functional subordination of already “ready-made” realities. Let a person be possible only as a collective being, who not only cannot live alone, but is also not capable of becoming a person outside of and apart from interaction with his own kind. Let the properties of his generic nature be formed taking into account the constant “correction for others”, under the influence of the original need for cooperation with others - as objective as the need for daily bread.
All this is true. However, one cannot help but see that the process of formation of Homo Sapiensa, which acts as a process of internalization of the collective, ends with the fact that the “ready” person acquires the property of subjectivity, i.e. the ability to initiate his own activities aimed at achieving goals and satisfying the needs that Regardless of their “social” origin, they become his personal property, distinguishing him from other people. Interaction with them still remains a necessity for a person, but does this mean that the collective life of formed people has the properties of a substantial reality, irreducible to the elements that form it?
Let us recall that the condition under which a whole formed by parts acquires an independent form of existence is the emergence of integral properties that are inherent only to the whole and are absent from parts taken separately.
This principle of substantialization of the whole is very clearly described by E. Durkheim. “Whenever,” he writes, “when any elements, combining, form new phenomena by the fact of their combination, one must imagine that these phenomena are no longer located in the elements, but in the whole formed by their combination. A living cell contains nothing but mineral particles, just as society contains nothing outside of individuals. And yet it is quite obvious that the characteristic phenomena of life are not contained in the atoms of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and nitrogen... Life... is one and, therefore, can have as its location only living substance in its integrity. It is as a whole, and not in parts... And what we say about life can be repeated about all possible syntheses. The hardness of bronze does not lie in copper, tin, or lead, which served as its formation and are soft and flexible substances; it is in their mixture..."9.
Applying this principle to social theory, Durkheim formulates the problem of the uniqueness of society as follows: “If the indicated synthesis sui generis, which forms every society, gives rise to new phenomena that are different from those that take place in individual consciousnesses (and actions of people. - K.M. ), then we must also assume that these specific facts lie in the very society that creates them, and not in its parts, that is, in its members”10.
To clarify the essence of the problem, let's look at a simple example. Let's imagine that we need to analyze the activity of a certain person A, carrying a heavy log. To do this, we will first have to determine the goal that he set for himself, i.e. understand the subjective meaning of his activity, the expectations that he associates with the performance of this hard work. Without limiting ourselves to such psychological introspection (which is satisfied with the supporters of “understanding sociology”), we will try to establish the needs and interests of A, the actualization of which caused the intention to carry the log in his mind. We will further analyze how successful this activity A can be from the point of view of its possible result. To do this, we will have to understand whether the goal he sets corresponds to his actual needs, whether he needs to carry logs to satisfy a felt need, or whether he should engage in another activity for this. Having stated right choice goal, we will have to establish the adequacy of the means chosen to achieve it, that is, find out whether the properties of the log correspond to the expectations associated with it. From considering such significance of an object, we will move on to the real properties of the subject, i.e., we will try to take into account the real ability of A to carry the log to its destination, etc.
The question arises: will this research procedure change if we move from considering individual action to analyzing interactions between people? Let's imagine that person A has agreed with person B, who also needs wood, to combine their efforts in order to achieve the desired goal with less effort. As a result of this, we get a small, but still a team, a team consisting of two interacting people who need each other to achieve their goals.
Of course, the micro-collective we took as an example, which is an organization consciously created by people, is significantly different from society as a spontaneously emerging community of people; of course, it does not contain even a small fraction of those complex mechanisms of socialization and reproduction of individuals with which the existence of the latter is associated. However, proof of the substantiality of the collective can only be successful if, already in its simplest forms, some supra-individual realities of interaction that are absent in individual actions are discovered.
The question arises: does such interaction result in a certain new social reality that is not reducible to the sum of “ideal human actions?” In this case, does quantity transform into quality, creating some new needs, interests, goals, means, results of activity that cannot be understood by combining knowledge about the needs, interests, goals of A with essentially the same knowledge about the behavior of B?
Below, considering the question of the structure of society, we will try to give a meaningful answer to this question, telling the reader about the special supra-individual realities of collective life that go beyond the component composition and properties of “elementary” social action.
Thus, we have to show that the interaction of people gives rise to a special class of social objects, without which the individual activity of a person carrying a log is conceivable, but the coordinated joint activity of two individuals who are forced to negotiate with each other about its nature and conditions is unthinkable (meaning symbolic, iconic objects and processes that serve as means of communication and mutual programming of individual consciousnesses).
We will try to show further that even in the simplest acts of joint activity, a reality that goes beyond individual actions arises as a set of organizational relations between interacting individuals, including here the relations of division of labor: the distribution of its acts, means and results. In cases more complex than the joint carrying of a log, the division of labor creates a system of stable impersonal (i.e., independent of the individual properties of the carrier) social roles and statuses, into which living individuals are forced to “embed”, carrying out various professional functions, performing the duties of “ superiors" and "subordinates", "owners and those deprived of property", etc. The totality of such roles and statuses forms a system of social institutions that ensure the performance of "general functions" to which each individual must adapt (obliged to serve in the army, even if he is not inclined to give away sums of money to the tax authorities that he would willingly spend only on himself, etc.).
Finally, we will try to show that the motives and goals of the simplest forms of interaction will be incomprehensible to us if we do not take into account the existence of individual phenomena of culture, which is a system of mutual relations and mediations, “logically significant integration” (P. Sorokin) between symbolic programs of behavior , interrelated meanings, meanings and values of human behavior. It is enough to remind the reader that in the country of their residence, and in the class or professional environment, in political associations and even in their own families, people are faced with impersonal norms of law and morality, passed on from generation to generation, by stereotypes of thinking and feeling that clearly go beyond individual consciousnesses and program them, given to people forcibly, imposed on them by the system of socialization accepted in society11.
The totality of such supra-individual realities of collective life, as we will see below, creates a socio-cultural environment for the existence of individuals - just as objective, independent of their desires, as the natural environment with its law of gravity or the principles of thermodynamics. On the contrary, it is this environment, which in the aspect of phylogenesis arises together with the “ready-made” person, in ontogenesis precedes him and shapes human individuals “for itself,” determining their sociocultural characteristics. This means that a person born in a certain ethnosocial environment, by the very act of his upbringing in France or Russia, in the family of a feudal lord, peasant or bourgeois, acquires a certain sociocultural status (in its class, professional, power, economic, mental expressions). Of course, a person can dispose of this inheritance in different ways, maintaining or changing his original “parameters” depending on his own efforts and opportunities provided by “open” or “closed” societies. However, this possible transformation does not cancel the strong determinative influence of supra-individual realities on the formation of people, which allows us to classify human society as an organic type system in which the resulting whole is capable of exerting a formative influence on its parts.
It would seem that, characteristic feature“methodological individualism” must be a complete denial of such realities of social life, a refusal to see in it something that goes beyond the scope, properties and states of individual human actions.
And in fact, a considerable part of the supporters of “methodological individualism,” sharing the premises of philosophical nominalism, are convinced that society as a whole and the stable forms of collectivity existing in it are social and cultural systems (i.e., systems of mutually mediated roles and interrelated ideas, values and norms) - do not represent an ontological systemic reality, but only “convenient” constructions of the cognizing consciousness, to which nothing corresponds outside its boundaries, in actual small existence. Supporters of “individualism,” according to R. Bhaskar, who criticizes them, believe that social institutions are simply “abstract models designed to interpret the facts of individual experience. Jarvie even declared himself a supporter of the linguistic thesis that “army” is simply a plural form of “soldier” and that all statements about the army can be reduced to statements about the individual soldiers who compose it.”12
However, again we must state that not all philosophers and sociologists, whom Frank would classify as “singularists,” are prone to such an extreme form of socio-philosophical and sociological blindness, which is the denial of the very fact of the existence of supra-individual realities of social life, an attempt to transform reproducible forms and mechanisms of mutual exchange of actions in the “universal”, the state of “pure” consciousness.
The same K. Popper, who in every possible way supports “a healthy opposition to collectivism and holism”, “a refusal to be influenced by Rousseauian or Hegelian romanticism”, readily recognizes the existence of supra-individual “structures or patterns of the social environment” that develop independently of the desires and aspirations of acting individuals, “ turn out to be, as a rule, indirect, unintended and often undesirable consequences of such actions”13.
Another example is J. Homans, a staunch opponent of “methodological collectivism,” who sharply criticizes the paradigm of structural functionalism under the banner of “return to man.” This does not prevent him, however, from recognizing the existence of such supra-individual realities as norms of joint activity; special “clusters of norms called roles,” as well as “clusters of roles called institutions.” “Of course,” says Homans, “one of the tasks of the sociologist is to uncover the norms that exist in society. Although role is not actual behavior, in some respects the concept is a useful simplification. Of course, institutions are interconnected, and studying these relationships is also the task of the sociologist. Institutions do have consequences... It is certainly one of the tasks of the sociologist to ascertain the effects of institutions and even, although this is more difficult to do, to find out which of them are useful and which are harmful to society as a whole.
What makes scientists who recognize the existence of supra-individual interaction structures consider themselves convinced of “methodological individualism”? The answer is simple - not a denial of the fact of the existence of such structures, but the belief that the source of their genesis and development are the individual actions and interactions of people as the only possible subjects of social life.
In other words, the pathos of “methodological individualism” is not directed in this case against the recognition of supra-individual “matrices” social interaction”, but against attempts to attribute to them the properties and abilities of a self-acting social subject. The result of such attempts is the transformation of forms of social collectivity (including society and the groups that form it) into special collective, integrative subjects, carrying out some independent activity, which is caused and directed by the collective’s own needs and goals, different from the needs and goals of the people who form it. Let us take a brief look at this important issue.
PAGE_BREAK-- 2. Is society an integrative entity?
The essence of the problem can be illustrated using any form of collective activity - for example, playing football. The fact that the collective interaction of football players is not reduced to the arithmetic sum of individual efforts is beyond doubt among anyone except the most die-hard “atomists.”
We all know that final goal This game does not consist of passing the ball and shots on goal carried out by individual football players, but in victory over opponents, achieved only through team efforts and organized interaction of athletes.
Recognizing this circumstance, we must recognize that the actions of the team include not only the individual actions of the players, but also a set of means and mechanisms for their coordination, including a system of distribution of functions between football players, which clearly goes beyond the scope of individual activity.
In fact, based on the individual properties of the players, we will be able to explain why each of them performs the duties of a goalkeeper, striker, defender or midfielder on the field, but we will never understand the very need to divide the team into these impersonal functional statuses for which living football players are selected in order to achieve success in team wrestling. From the properties of current players, the long-established traditions passed on from generation to generation cannot be understood, the playing style of great teams, which allows an experienced fan to distinguish them from each other without knowing a specific set of players, etc., etc.
The presence of such “integrals” of joint activity allows us to distinguish the play of a team from the movements of individual players. It becomes clear, in particular, the old sports proverb “order beats class”, according to which the team play of average-skilled athletes who play well with each other, playing according to a “system” that takes into account the optimal balance of functions, gives them an advantage over individually strong “stars” who own masterly dribbling and accurate passing, but not taking into account the laws of football interaction15.
But does this mean that we must literally interpret the speech of a sports commentator, in which the verbs characterizing certain forms of activity refer not only to individual players - a striker scoring a ball, or a goalkeeper parrying a shot, but also to teams taken as a whole? “CSKA equalizes the score with a penalty and continues to attack the gates of Spartak,” we hear and take this phrase for granted, although the scoreboard indicates that the goal from the penalty spot was scored not by a man named CSKA, but by a football player with a different, normal human name.
Does this mean that we must recognize a football team as an independent subject of activity, although we understand perfectly well that the “subject” called CSKA is not capable of sweating while running across the field, or bruising his arms and legs, as living human individuals do when playing football? ? Doesn’t such recognition mean that we attribute our own activity, its consciously or spontaneously formed supra-individual conditions, regulatory mechanisms and results to a certain mythological subject, quite similar to Hegel’s absolute idea, acting through living people?
Similar questions arise when considering any group of people acting together, including society. A striking example of the subjectivization of the collective in this case can be E. Durkheim, who interpreted the objective reality of the collective, the matrix of social interaction (primarily supra-individual states of consciousness) as evidence of the existence of an equally supra-individual subject acting along with individual individuals16.
A similar point of view was shared by many of our domestic thinkers, for example N.A. Berdyaev. Characterizing the national principle in history, he writes: “A nation is not an empirical phenomenon of this or that fragment of historical time. A nation is a mystical organism, a mystical personality, a noumenon, and not a phenomenon of the historical process. A nation is not a living generation, nor is it the sum of all generations. A nation is not a component, it is something primordial, an eternally living subject of the historical process, all past generations, no less than modern generations, live and abide in it. The nation has an ontological core. National existence conquers time. The spirit of the nation resists the devouring of the past by the present and the future. A nation always strives for incorruptibility, for victory over death; it cannot allow the exclusive triumph of the future over the past”17.
It is this understanding of collectivity that causes a sharp protest from many philosophers and sociologists, whose arguments (as translated by S.L. Frank) look like this: “... if we do not want to fall into some kind of vague mysticism or mythology in the understanding of society, then is it even possible to see Is there anything else in it other than the totality of individual people living a life together and interacting with each other? All talk about society as a whole, for example about the “public will”, about the “soul of the people”, are empty and vague phrases, at best having some kind of only figurative, metaphorical meaning. We are not given any other “souls” or “consciousnesses” other than individual ones in experience, and science cannot but take this into account; social life is ultimately nothing more than a set of actions arising from thought and will; but only individual people can act, want and think.”18
Who is right and who is wrong in the debate about the existence of a collective subject? A full answer to this question can only be obtained after we understand the laws of structure and mechanisms of functioning of the social system called “society”. For now, let us remember that we called the subject of activity the bearer of the activity ability, with whom its “trigger” and regulatory mechanisms are associated.
In other words, a subject is one who has his own needs and interests, initiates activity aimed at satisfying them, which is carried out and controlled through independently developed and learned ideal programs of behavior, collectively called the consciousness (and will) of the subject. We refused to consider as subjects of activity living systems capable of non-symbolic forms of purposeful behavior, as well as automated cybernetic devices that imitate human activity, but do not have their own needs and goals that cause the latter.
For the same reason, we cannot extend the property of subjectivity to the functionally specialized organs of the acting subject. It is clear that when we press a trigger with our finger or kick a soccer ball, the subject of the activity is ourselves, and not a separate arm, leg and other organs that are not capable of developing and implementing their own information impulses and programs of social behavior.
Guided by this understanding, we will be able to recognize the existence of a collective subject only if one of two program assumptions is proven:
1) human individuals acting within a certain social group lose the immanent property of subjectivity, becoming like organs of the body or cogs of a machine, unable to have and realize their own needs, interests and goals of behavior;
2) while maintaining the overall subjectivity of individuals, the social group nevertheless acquires some subjective properties (independent needs, interests, goals, goal-realization activity), which are unique to it and cannot be detected in the individual behavior of its members.
What is the situation with the provability of the first thesis? Are such forms of social organization possible in which an individual loses the status of a subject, transferring it to a group, the executive body of which he turns out to be in this case?
One can hardly agree with such an assumption. Of course, it is possible for the existence of social groups in which individual freedom of behavior is maximally constrained and a person is de facto only a means of achieving certain supra-individual (not to be confused with “non-individual”) goals of behavior.
The most obvious example of such an organization is military unit. The position of a soldier within such a structure can be set against his will (forced mobilization); his actions are focused on the unconditional execution of external commands, which do not always take into account the performer’s own desires. In extreme cases, such an order may imply the death of its executor, who is obliged at the cost of his life to contribute to the achievement of a common victory over the enemy or to minimize losses in the fight against him.
However, all of the above does not mean that we are dealing with a social organization in which an individual person loses the property of subjectivity - the ability to be guided by his own needs and his own goals.
In fact, in many cases, the behavior of soldiers represents a voluntary and completely conscious adherence to the goals of protecting their loved ones, friends and compatriots from a hated enemy, which (goals) he recognizes as his own, sharing them with his fellow soldiers and commanders. However, in alternative cases, when a soldier is forced to war (in the necessity or justice of which he does not believe), such coercion has its limits, without turning people from subjects of activity into its passive objects. In real, even extreme conditions of social life (excluding the “zombie” so popular among modern science fiction writers), a person does not lose the substantial opportunity to choose - to accept the rules of behavior imposed on him for the purposes of biological self-preservation, survival, or to rebel against them, preserving his freedom at least at the inevitable cost death. All external influences on a person become significant reasons(and not the conditions) of his behavior only when internalized by the subject, transformed into a system of his own needs, interests and goals of existence, allowing us to remain existentially free even in conditions of social unfreedom that prevents us from doing what we would like to do19.
It is equally difficult to agree with the second argument in favor of the existence of a collective subject. To imagine a social association of people with their own needs, interests and goals, different from the interests of the people who form them, is a task more likely of science fiction than of sober philosophical and sociological analysis.
From this point of view, all the needs attributed to a collective of people always act as a sublimation of the not always explicit needs of the human personality. For example, the “desire for incorruptibility”, discovered by Berdyaev in the nation, is in fact reduced to individual needs for solidarity and self-identification, “love and belonging” (A. Maslow), which determine the ethnic self-awareness of people, as well as to the needs for self-preservation, which spreads a person not only to himself, but also to “membership groups” - his relatives, like-minded people, colleagues or compatriots.
Let us repeat once again: the fact that these and similar human needs developed in the process of internalization of collective forms of existence does not give us grounds to take them away from the true owner and attribute them to impersonal organizational forms of human reproduction, which is society and other groups.
Of course, it is difficult for people who are accustomed to viewing the system of human needs as the intentions of a subject, completely enclosed in the sphere of his consciousness, to imagine that serving in the army and paying taxes are included in the system of objective interests of people who seek to evade both. However, this statement is undoubtedly true. It would be strange to suggest that "army dropouts" (to use youth jargon) or tax evaders have no interest in maintaining the security of their country or the proper functioning of public services. Such a frequent misunderstanding by people of their own deep needs or a conscious preference for them of immediate “self-interested” benefits does not alienate a person from their own needs and interests and does not provide grounds for attributing to a certain community of people factors of behavior that are in fact characteristic of the individuals themselves and arising from their own generic nature (guided by the reverse Logically, we must admit that the baby’s mother, who forbids him to eat a third helping of ice cream, acts against the interests of her own child, since her actions cause a deafening roar and other forms of disagreement on his part)20.
The situation is more complicated with conscious goals of behavior, which - unlike needs and interests - can actually be alien to people, imposed on them from the outside. A military order from a commander, dooming a soldier to possible death, or a disciplinary order from a trainer do not always coincide with the own intentions of his subordinates. However, in any case, such imperatives of behavior are strictly personalized in nature - the order to a soldier or football player is given not by a team or division, but by a coach or commander, guided by considerations of the common good, which in a critical situation is placed above the good of the individual.
Thus, a person’s habit of talking about various collectives in subjective forms - “the party decided”, “the motherland ordered”, etc. - should not hide the fundamental fact that neither the “party” nor the “motherland” themselves know how to think , neither desire nor act. All this is done by people and only people, acting as social beings, connected by interaction, formed and acting in certain supra-individual conditions of the sociocultural environment, which are quite real, but this does not make them subjects at all. Even in the case of collective forms of activity that involve the entire “numerical composition” of a certain organization or even a country, one must remember that it is not Germany or France as independent beings who polemicize, fight or trade with each other, but the Germans and the French - large communities of people, having common needs, interests and goals and protecting them through joint coordinated activity (even if for some part of the population this activity is associated with external coercion from another part).
Of course, it is not uncommon for a patriot who sacrifices his life for his countrymen to think that he is serving not specific people in present and future generations, but an integrative entity called Germany, France or Russia. However, in this and similar cases, the integrative subject is not a phenomenon of “social being”, but a phenomenon of “ public consciousness”, which could be called (to use the terminology of Niklas Luhmann) “paradox and tautology in the self-descriptions” of man and human groups.
So, let's summarize what has been said. Considering Frank's opposition of “singularism” and “universalism,” we support the latter’s position to the extent and as long as it recognizes the existence of integral properties of collective activity that are not reducible to the properties and states of individual human actions. However, this support ends at the moment when supporters of “universalism” begin to unfoundedly “humanize” the matrices of social interaction, attributing to them the abilities of the acting subject.
If the opposition to “universalism” so understood is called “methodological individualism,” then we are inclined to recognize it as a completely adequate doctrine. Such “individualism” does not deny the laws or structures of collective life, their decisive influence on the formation of man and his functioning in society; he only insists that these laws and structures are not capable of acting on their own, that the ability for purposeful activity is granted only to people and to no one else21. The logic of “self-movement” of social structures in this understanding turns out to be the logic of the behavior of people who are forced by the circumstances of social life, resulting from their own activities, to act in the direction dictated by the needs of their generic nature and a specific historical system of interests22.
It is not surprising that such an “individualistic” approach easily copes with social problems, insoluble from the standpoint of extreme “social atomism”. We mean the problem of spontaneous institutions of social life, the emergence of which cannot be explained by the agreement of people regarding their creation.
This circumstance is recognized by S.L. Frank, distinguishing two forms of "singularism". The first of them is “naively rationalistic individualism” in the spirit of “social contract” theories, which do not understand that only on the basis of “spontaneously and unintentionally formed general order and unity is generally possible in the future, in some particular and limited areas and cases, a deliberate agreement or generally a deliberate, conscious influence on the social life of individual people”23.
“It’s not so naively simple,” Frank continues, “but another type of singularism takes a much more serious view of the matter, which arose mainly in the literature of the 19th century as a result of overcoming its first type... According to this view, the unity and community of social life do not arise at all as a result of deliberate agreements, but the essence is a result of the spontaneous crossing of the wills and aspirations of individual people, not foreseen by anyone and not consciously implemented. The fact is that human aspirations and actions have, in addition to the goal they consciously set, other consequences that are not foreseen by their participants. And this is especially the case when they interbreed; For the most part, people in general actually achieve not what they themselves strived for, but something completely different, often even undesirable for themselves. “Man proposes, but God disposes,” says the Russian proverb, but by “God,” from the point of view of this positive worldview, we must understand here a simple case, a spontaneous result of the clashes of many heterogeneous wills. The leaders of the French Revolution wanted to realize freedom, equality, fraternity, the kingdom of truth and reason, but in fact they realized the bourgeois system; and this is how it happens for the most part in history. It is in this way that morals, customs, fashion are formed, social concepts are strengthened, power is established, etc.... In short: unity and community in public life, being independent of the conscious will of individual participants and in this sense arising “by itself,” everything are not the action of any higher, super-individual forces, but only the result of a spontaneous, unintentional crossing of the same individual wills and forces - a complex that is composed and consists only of the reality of individual, individual people”24
It is characteristic that S.L. Frank is not inclined to deny the fact that much in society is the result of a spontaneous crossing of individual wills. However, this statement, in his opinion, does not explain exactly what needs to be explained, namely: “why does this crossing result not chaos and disorder, but community and order?” Considering that singularism is not able to answer this question, the Russian thinker concludes: “It is obvious that if from a disorderly, unregulated crossing of individual elements something common is obtained, some kind of unity, some kind of order, then this is possible only on the condition that through through individual elements certain general forces act and exert their influence.”25
Disagreeing with this approach, we believe that any of the versions of the “common force” - be it the Absolute Idea, God’s will or the “destiny of nations” - considered as a hyper-subject of history, represents a mythologization of public life. The problem of social order, as we will see below, is quite understandable from the actions and interactions of human individuals, the needs of their self-preservation, dictating the need for joint coordinated activity, the need for society as an organizational form of human interaction. The spontaneous results of such interaction cannot be interpreted in the spirit of Hegel’s “cunning of the world spirit,” if only because these results are not always of an adaptive nature: they contribute to the self-preservation of man and society, and do not hinder it (as is happening now with the spontaneous destruction of an ecosystem such as the “ozone holes"). Of course, we can interpret this negative spontaneity as a warning from heaven, but it can only be stopped by the joint efforts of people who rely only on themselves, and not on forces external to them.
After these clarifications concerning not only society, but also social groups in general, we can move on to the specific characteristics of society itself as a special collective, a special group of people.
continuation
PAGE_BREAK-- 3. Society as a real group of people
All of the above allows us to consider society as a substantially autonomous reality, not reducible to the sum of the individuals that form it. Translating this philosophical statement into the language of sociology, we have the right to classify society as a special class of real social groups.
As is known, in sociological theory there are many classifications of social groups and associations, which are divided into formal and informal, self-referential and objective-status, communities and organizations, etc., etc. To understand society, we will first of all have to define the difference between real groups and nominal groups, which is important for social philosophy and philosophy of history.
From the above, it becomes clear that real social groups are based on the systemic interaction of the subjects that form them, outside of which it is impossible (or difficult) to achieve their personal goals, tasks of individual self-preservation and development. Such interaction creates special integral realities of joint activity that go beyond individual human actions and influence their content, largely determining it. The systemic nature of real groups is manifested in the presence of a pronounced relationship between the parts and the whole, in which a significant change in each selected part affects the properties and states of other parts and the whole, and, conversely, a change in the integral properties and states of the whole affects its parts.
This is exactly how real groups are structured, in which individual actions of people are woven into a system of organized interaction, and each individual has a place and his role (his status and his function) in collective activity. The presence of such collective activity, guided by supra-individual interests, goals, values, norms and institutions, is the main and decisive feature of a real social group, different from the sum of the individuals that form it.
Nominal groups, on the contrary, do not have the properties of internal systemic self-organization. In reality, they represent certain statistical aggregates of people not connected by forms and institutions of joint activity, identified by an external observer on the basis of characteristics that either cannot be, or have not yet become the cause of real consolidation of human groups.
In the first case, we are talking about socially neutral characteristics, the commonality of which “normally” does not give rise to any significant social consequences in people. Take, for example, nominal groups such as “sweet tooth,” “shortsighted,” “people of average height,” or “wearers of yellow leather shoes.” It is quite obvious that the mere height of people or the style of their shoes does not create among them either common interests, or collective goals, or the joint coordinated activity resulting from them. Accordingly, groups selected for these characteristics lack both a real social community and its self-awareness, that peculiar sense of “we” that is present among Spartak football players, members of a carpenter’s team or functionaries of the liberal democratic party.
Of course, we must take into account that in some cases, the attitude towards sweets or the nature of people’s clothing can acquire a certain socio-cultural meaning - as happened, for example, in the Kin-dza-dza galaxy (in the comedy of the same name by G. Danelia), where wearing crimson pants meant the high social status of their owner (something similar happened, as we know, in real feudalism with its inherent institution of prestigious consumption, which allowed only strictly defined class groups of people to wear furs). But this does not mean at all that the features of clothing became the real basis for the consolidation of people - on the contrary, they only symbolized real relations of property and power, not being able to replace them as such a basis, just as a number from a wardrobe cannot replace what it denotes. fur coat In this case we have classic example“relations of representation”, which were mentioned above in connection with the understanding of ideality as the ability of sociocultural objects and processes to represent something else, to designate something different from themselves.
Further. When identifying such nominal groups (which, in our opinion, should not be called groups at all, if not for the established sociological tradition), we must remember that their difference from real groups is absolute only as long as we consider them as “ ideal types,” classificatory taxa rather than actual taxonomic units. In the latter case, when we are dealing with historically specific groups or statistical aggregates of people, their difference is not absolute and does not exclude mutual transitions between them.
Thus, real social groups can, over time, turn into nominal aggregates, as happens, for example, with former members State Duma, connected only by a common line in the biography. On the contrary, a completely nominal set of people can, in principle, become a real social group. In fact, if we assume that a certain government begins to persecute such a statistical group of people as “redheads,” there is a high probability that the “nonconformist” members of this community will create a real centralized organization, a kind of “Union of Redheads.” ", united to protect their interests.
A less funny and much more real example of this kind is race and racial relations between people. There is no doubt that neither the “whites,” nor the “blacks,” nor the “yellows” have ever acted as a single integrated force in history. This is not surprising, given that races are distinguished on the basis of purely anthropological characteristics (skin color, skull proportions, some features of psychophysiology, etc.), which in themselves are not capable of generating significant impulses for social action and human interaction. This means that the color of a person’s skin does not mean that he is astronomically predetermined to have a place in the “club” of owners or those deprived of property, the status of a ruler or a subordinate, a consumer of the benefits of culture rather than a producer of them, etc.
However, we know that in the historically established sociocultural environment, skin color can become a reason for discrimination and violation of economic, political and other rights of people. This forces people belonging to the same nominal group - a race - to create unique “self-defense unions”, which are very real social associations.
This does not mean, of course, that the races themselves turn into real social groups: we must remember that under any circumstances, the sociological and cultural concept of the “black community of the USA” does not become synonymous with the anthropological concept of “blacks.” However, racial characteristics are essentially neutral and socially(no matter how the ideologists of racism argue with this statement), they express and designate the real status of their bearer in the most important relations of the division of labor, property and power.
Nevertheless, within the framework of the socio-philosophical formulation of the problem, limiting its analysis to the universal norms of social organization and without yet delving into the complexity and intricacy of the real human history, we have the right to consider as nominal any non-systematic collections of people selected by an external observer on the basis of socially neutral statistical characteristics.
The situation is more complicated in a situation where such a selection is carried out on the basis of socially significant criteria. Take, for example, groups of people such as “men” and “women”, or “young” and “old”. Whatever the famous philosopher X. Ortega y Gasset, who explained social events by the struggle of generations as real subjects of social life, thought on this matter, we are convinced that never in history have age and sex groups acted as a single integrated force. The norm of social life does not include a situation in which the line of division between interacting and opposing economic, social or political forces would pass along the “passport” data of age and gender - when all men would unite against all women or all youth would be on a different line of barricades, than people of older generations26. It is obvious that it is not communities of gender and age that operate in public life, but women’s councils, feminist parties or youth organizations that are different from them, i.e., real groups that take on the function of expressing and protecting the interests and goals inherent in gender and age communities.
It is important, however, that both are by no means fiction. It is impossible not to see that the type of social integration that is associated with division based on gender and age is different from the ephemeral integration that we have in the case of “sweet tooth” or “short-sighted”. The whole point is that gender, age and similar communities of people are associated with the presence of common characteristics that have a very definite socio-cultural meaning, very definite social consequences for their bearers.
In fact, being female is not only a “medical fact”, an anatomical property of a person, but also a very definite characteristic of his role and position in societies of different types. The first forms of social division of labor, as we remember from history, were associated precisely with its gender and age specification, in particular with the biological specialization of women as continuers of the human race, features of physiology and psychology that excluded or limited the participation of women in “prestigious” male processions (such , like hunting, war, etc.). The negative consequence of this division of labor has been the economic and political inequality of the sexes, which is still preserved by a part of modern humanity and is difficult to overcome by another part (with constant debate about whether the equality of women implies total professional equality or is an outrage against female nature, when includes the right to kill one's own kind as a soldier in war or to engage in weightlifting).
Be that as it may, in the social group called “women” we will find quite obvious similarities of interests (related, for example, to the protection of motherhood) and a pronounced self-awareness of a “common destiny”, a sense of “we”, which is absent in the group wearing yellow shoes or putting two spoons of sugar in a glass of tea.
To designate such social communities that have such signs of real groups as objective similarity of interests and goals, but lack the most important sign of self-organization and initiative, P.A. Sorokin suggests using the term “as if integrated groups”. The same type of social integration was meant by K. Marx, who, using the example of the small-scale peasantry of France, talked about a “class in itself”, a group of people who are placed in the same economic position, which gives rise to similarity of interests and goals, but are not yet able to unite and coordinate their efforts, in order to realize common aspirations through joint activities. Such a “class in itself,” according to Marx, resembles potatoes poured into one bag (and in which each of the tubers exists on its own, without interacting with its own kind), and is qualitatively different from the “class for itself,” which has realized its common interests and acting as one integrated force27.
So, in formulating the difference between real, nominal and “sort of organized” groups, we must unconditionally classify human societies as belonging to the first type, considering them as a systemic collection of interacting people. This follows from the very definition of society as an organizational form of social reproduction, which involves the joint activities of people aimed at creating the necessary conditions for their existence.
Of course, it must be said that not all philosophers and sociologists agree with the understanding of society as an organizational form of interaction within which the needs common to all its members are satisfied. We know that a different understanding of society turned out to be very influential in the social theory of the 20th century, in which it was presented not as a group of interacting people with common interests and goals, but as a kind of springboard on which an uncompromising battle of opposing armies unfolds.
Thus, from the standpoint of orthodox Marxism, the active unity of all members of society is absolutely impossible as long as it is devoid of social homogeneity, as long as there exist, in particular, classes with opposing economic and, therefore, political and spiritual interests. The unity of such a society can only be fictitious, and the state, which declares itself to be the guarantor of unity, a third-party “supra-class” force, is shamelessly hypocritical. In reality, it is in the service of the ruling class, is a “committee for managing its affairs,” an instrument for the violent suppression of its opponents.
Guided by this approach, V.I. Lenin, as we know, believed that under capitalism the existence of a single Russian society is impossible, he singled out in it “two nations” and “two cultures”, which are irreconcilable hostile forces, social partnership or “class peace” between which is impossible in principle.
The question of the existence of classes and the nature of the relations between them will be considered below. For now, let us note that the presence of social conflicts - even as serious as class conflicts - in itself does not give reason to doubt the real integrity of societies (although it forces sociologists to differentiate them according to the “solidarity index”, dividing them into “societies” proper and “communities” ”, as F. Tönnies did, into societies with “organic” and “mechanical” solidarity, as E. Durkheim did, etc.). The most acute conflicts between the groups that form a society do not mean that they lack objectively common mutual interests and goals, and do not call into question the need for joint efforts aimed at maintaining the “unity of opposites.” Failure to understand this truth has come at a great cost to those societies that have failed to develop stabilization mechanisms that do not allow political extremists to provoke artificial antagonism where it can be avoided, to “rock the boat” in which all the conflicting social forces are located.
Community of interests and awareness of this community, expressed for generally accepted purposes as a condition for coordinated joint activity, is, therefore, a necessary feature of any society capable of normal functioning, which has not entered into a period of dissimilation, disintegration of social ties, antagonistic opposition of its constituent groups, coming to replacement of their conflictual interaction (more on this below). Such degeneration of societies often happens in history, forming, however, not the norm of social life, but its pathology28.
However, one cannot help but see that the sign of initiative, the property of being a real, and not a nominal, human collective is a necessary, but not sufficient characteristic of society. In fact, as we saw above, both an army and a football team, which we consider not societies, but “parts” of a full-fledged human society, can have common interests and goals and act as a single whole. What other features characterize such a society, distinguishing it from other real groups?
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PAGE_BREAK-- 3. Society as a self-sufficient social group
It would hardly be correct to see the desired difference in such characteristics of a group as, for example, its size and number. We all know very well that a party of many millions - as follows from the etymology of the word "party" - is just a part of society, while a tribe of savages, not reaching even 1000 people, is a real full-fledged human society.
The specificity of society is associated, of course, not with its size and other external properties, but with the sign of self-sufficiency, meaning that only such a group of people can be considered a society that is capable of independently creating and recreating the phenomenon of social life with all the “societal” properties that distinguish it from natural processes. What exactly are we talking about?
To answer this question, let's imagine an ordinary social group - the same football team mentioned above. We already know that it can be considered as a real group of people connected by common interests and goals, striving to achieve them through joint coordinated activities. At the same time, there are important reasons why we cannot consider this group a full-fledged human society.
The whole point is that the existence of football players as social beings capable of social activities cannot be ensured by the efforts of the football club itself, which will immediately disappear from the face of the earth if left to its own devices.
In fact, let's not forget that the concerns of professional football players do not include the production of food, the design and construction of stadiums, the provision of surgical care for injuries, etc., etc. These and similar items and services are absolutely necessary for the team to function properly. However, the team receives them “from the outside,” “from the hands” of other specialized groups, providing them in exchange with the product of their own activities, namely a football spectacle. In a similar situation, as you might guess, not only football players are in a similar situation, but also actors, police officers, members of parliament and representatives of other public groups that do not have the status of society.
Now let’s imagine that our football players or actors, due to certain circumstances, found themselves on a desert island, where they were left to their own devices. The question arises: will they still remain just a football team or a theater troupe? Intuition tells us the obvious answer: people on a desert island can survive only if they try to transform themselves from a private social group into something more, make an attempt to become like a full-fledged human society.
The question is: what must change in the life of a collective for it to become a society? What is the magic crystal that could transform forwards and midfielders, tragedians, comedians and heroines into a social system somewhat like France, Japan or the USA?
In answering this question, we, following the American theorist T. Parsons, will have to use the word “self-sufficiency,” considering society as “that type of social system that reaches the highest level of self-sufficiency.”
In reality, the “scary” word hides a rather simple content. Sociology calls self-sufficient such real groups of people who are capable of creating and recreating all the necessary conditions for coexistence through their own activities. In short, to produce everything needed for collective life.
This means that our actors will no longer be on stage, but in real life, will have to play the roles of fishermen and woodcutters, hunters and builders, doctors and teachers, scientists and police officers. The number of such activities will grow and multiply until all the functions necessary for coexistence find their performers. This will mean that the collective has acquired self-sufficiency, which is the main difference between society and “non-societies” that are not able to survive “alone” and independently provide themselves with everything necessary for life.
A completely appropriate question would be: what exactly will people who find themselves on a desert island have to do, what is the exact set of functions without which the reproduction of social life or the real existence of social entities is impossible? This question is in fact a question about the structure of society, which we will discuss below. In the meantime, we should clothe the theoretical abstraction of society in concrete historical garb, that is, answer the question: which particular groups existing in human civilization fit the definition of real self-sufficient groups and can be considered as an organizational form of production and reproduction of social life?
As noted above, on planet Earth the real social life of people was and still is carried out as the life activities of individual social groups, separated by space and time, language and culture, national borders, economic and political differences in lifestyle, historical past and prospects for the future .
For example, the Eskimos of Alaska, the aborigines of Australia or the inhabitants of the Japanese islands for a long time were left to themselves and did not come into contact with each other and the rest of the world. Nevertheless, such isolation did not prevent them from creating enclave centers of sociality, differing from each other in “quality of life,” but equally corresponding to the general criteria of social life in its difference from natural processes. All these formations were full-fledged societies that ensure the socialization of human individuals, the organization of joint activities of people aimed at satisfying their life-sustaining (“organismic” and “societal”) needs, the transmission of the historical baton from one generation to another, etc., etc. P.
Different scientists call such self-sufficient groups using different terms - “peoples”, “countries”, “states”, etc. Without delving into the problem of classifying real subjects of history, we note that initially self-sufficient social groups were represented by ethnic groups, i.e. . groups of people connected by commonality historical origin, enshrined in the unity of language and culture. Ethnic groups such as the Egyptians, Jews, Chinese, etc. represented the historically initial form of existence of societies (which, starting from tribal unions, were, as a rule, monoethnic in nature, existing under a single “national roof”, so that a Russian living outside of Russia, was very rare).
Later in history, ethnic and social principles begin to diverge. Thus, ethnic groups often cease to be societies, preserving the spiritual community of language, religion, historical identity, etc., but losing the unity of the national territory, economy and administrative-political management, as happened, for example, with the Jewish ethnic group. A difference arises between the “ethnic core”, represented by self-sufficient ethno-social groups, the “ethnic periphery”, which is made up of people of the same nationality living compactly outside their historical homeland, and the “ethnic diaspora” - a nominal group of compatriots scattered “across cities and villages” "
On the other hand, real societies are losing their “mono-ethnic” coloring (thus, modern French society includes people who are not necessarily ethnic French, for example Algerians who are fully committed to their national values and at the same time permanently living and working in France, who are aware of themselves and are its full citizens). The ancient Roman society was already multinational, not to mention the modern American one, which is a “melting pot” of the most diverse races and nationalities that managed to integrate into a nation - a single socio-economic political and cultural system. Often a single society takes shape as a voluntary federal or confederal association of different nationalities (as is the case in modern Switzerland, which is a single multinational society). All this means that the sociological concept of society is broader than ethnographic categories denoting one or another form of nationality.
On the other hand, the concept of society does not always coincide with the concepts of “country” or “state”, if we understand them as a single political and administrative entity with a common system for managing state borders, monetary circulation, taxes, etc. We know that during the period of colonial rule of Great Britain it represented a similar imperial structure, and yet the British, Australians, Indians, Pakistanis and other peoples who lived in a state painted on the world map with the same color never formed a single sociological sense of society, because they never possessed spiritual unity, a consciousness of common life goals and destinies. Political integration, especially based on violence and conquest, in itself is not capable of creating such a stable social system as society, as evidenced by the inevitable collapse of all famous history empires forged only by force of arms.
Let us note, finally, that society differs from the state even if we understand the state no longer as a country on political map world, but as the most important political institution, including various government bodies, army, police, court, etc., designed to ensure the political and administrative integrity of society and coordinate various spheres of its life. It is obvious that the state understood in this way is only a part of an integral society. However, this truth was not immediately understood by social thinkers, who for a long time identified the part and the whole - society and the state created by it, representing its states. Only in modern times were European thinkers able to quite strictly distinguish the state from the so-called “civil society”, which began to be understood as the entire set of non-political social groups (classes, estates, trade unions, families, etc.), whose interests it tries to coordinate in one way or another , subordinate the state.
Accordingly, it became clear that a real human society with a developed social structure represents a contradictory unity of the state and “civil society”, which presuppose the existence of each other.
Leaving aside now all the subtleties of the historical existence of society, we note that, in the opinion of most scientists, the so-called “national-state” associations of people that have an autonomous social life (in its organizational, economic, social and spiritual dimensions) meet its criteria below). It's about about Japan, Poland, the USA and similar associations of people who had and still have the status of real self-sufficient groups.
At least the following “philological” consideration can serve as evidence in favor of such a conclusion. It is not difficult to understand that the acquisition of self-sufficiency inherent in society means at the same time the loss by a social group of that special private function that distinguished it from other groups. In fact, none of us would have any difficulty asking why police officers, actors or football players exist. However, not every person will find an answer to the “childish question”: why does French or Polish society exist, what are they called upon to do as real amateur groups? It is obvious that society does not have the main and only function, unless we consider it the integral task of survival and development, for the sake of which it performs all the functions necessary for the coexistence of people. That is why a person can be a professional politician, military man or shoemaker, but he cannot be a “professional Pole” or Frenchman - these concepts mean belonging not to one or another occupation, profession, but to a self-sufficient social group that “combines” all the necessary professions.
Is the criterion we propose, however, strict enough? Let's try to subject it to historical verification and ask ourselves: are there no social groups in history that would have pronounced self-sufficiency and at the same time could not be considered as full-fledged societies?
It would seem that one should not look far for examples. Take, for example, the peasant community in medieval Europe. Didn’t she, leading a closed subsistence economy, provide everything necessary for life - not only her own, without coinciding with the multi-layered feudal society?
Equally erroneous would be attempts to consider as a real self-sufficient entity such social groups as the well-known Lykov family, lost in the “taiga dead end” about which Komsomolskaya Pravda wrote. At first glance, we are dealing with a human team carrying out joint activities on the basis of complete and absolute self-sufficiency. In fact, unlike the medieval community, the members of such a family had not only economic, but also organizational self-sufficiency, i.e., they completely independently regulated relationships in their team, independently ensured their own security, did not pay any taxes to government authorities, etc. and so on.
But does this fact mean that we are dealing with a truly self-sufficient entity, which forces us to clarify the criteria of society so as not to consider them a small group of people so different from national-state entities?
Attempts at such clarification have been made in the history of social thought. We mean the desire of some theorists to connect the difference between society and “private” social groups with the peculiarities of the historical emergence of both. Indeed, and political parties, both the army and production teams are quite consciously created, “invented” by people (although this does not always happen at the whim of human will: people one way or another realize the necessity or expediency of such an “invention” and consciously bring it to life). At the same time, neither Poland, nor France, nor Japan were created “according to plan,” but arose in the process of completely spontaneous ethnogenesis. Accordingly, such societies are no longer just organizations of people, but historically emerged communities, that is, they have features of genesis that are clearly absent in the Lykov family.
Let us note that such a difference in the mechanisms of the emergence of social groups does occur, but it is neither sufficient nor a necessary criterion for distinguishing between societies and “non-societies”29. To prove that a small family group lost in the taiga cannot be considered a society, we do not need such additional criteria. You just need to correctly understand the phenomenon of self-sufficiency, to realize that it is not limited to either the economic sphere or administrative self-regulation, but includes mental, spiritual self-sufficiency, which is clearly absent in the case we are considering. In fact, we can consider the Lykov family an independent society only if we prove that the spirituality of these people, their habitual stereotypes of thinking and feeling force us to consider them not Russian Old Believers who found themselves in conditions of artificial isolation, but representatives of a new, independent ethnic group .
In this regard, not every group of people leading an autonomous practical life is a society, often representing nothing more than a “colony” created for one purpose or another. The question arises: under what conditions do the inhabitants of Spanish military settlements in Latin America, practically independent of the metropolis, cease to be Spaniards and become Colombians, Chileans or Argentines? The answer is clear: only when the economic, administrative and political self-sufficiency of the group is complemented by real cultural autonomy, which is expressed in stable, passed down from generation to generation, peculiarities of thinking and feeling of people, enshrined in language, art, standards of behavior, etc., etc. . P.
Considering the main feature of society to be its functional self-sufficiency, we cannot help but pose another difficult question. Everyone knows the highest degree of mutual dependence that exists between countries and peoples in modern history. Before our eyes, a system of international division of labor has developed, which makes the economic situation in France dependent on the policies of the American president, the successful operation of Japanese enterprises on stable oil production in the Middle East, etc., etc. Doesn’t this mean that modern countries Societies can no longer be considered to be just individual uncivilized tribes living in conditions of economic autarky, political and cultural self-isolation (or supranational civilizations, as, for example, the famous English historian and philosopher A. Toynbee is convinced of this)30?
The answer to this question cannot be unambiguous. It is quite possible that modern humanity has entered the process of forming a single planetary civilization, in which individual countries and peoples will indeed lose the status of autonomous self-sufficient units (the countries of the Common Market, close to the creation of the “United States of Europe”, are moving with the greatest intensity in this direction - contrary to V.I. Lenin’s belief in the impossibility similar integration of non-socialist countries). And at the same time, modern humanity is only at the beginning of this process, in that phase when the concepts “ National economy", "national policies" have not yet become fictitious, and individual countries are still societies that have not lost the fundamental ability to survive in an autonomous existence mode (i.e., maintaining potential self-sufficiency).
So, analyzing society in the narrow sociological sense of this concept, we consider it as a self-sufficient social system - a product of the joint activity of people capable of creating the necessary conditions of existence through their own efforts. A natural question is: what exactly “necessary conditions” are meant? To answer it, we must move from defining the concept of society to studying the specific laws of its organization. Such a study, as noted above, begins with a structural analysis of society, establishing the totality of its constituent parts.
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PAGE_BREAK-- Bibliography
To prepare this work, materials from the site were used www.i-u.ru/
Momdzhyan K.H.
1. Society: reality or universal?
At the very beginning of our presentation, we noted the polysemy of the term “society”, which has several meanings, the broadest of which is the understanding of society as a set of phenomena that have special societal properties that distinguish the world of people from the world of natural realities.
To avoid confusion, we abandoned this interpretation of the term, characterizing the world of supernatural phenomena using a different concept - “society”. We decided to reserve the term “society” for solving other, more specific problems of social philosophy.
In fact, so far we have been talking about the most general properties of human activity, which allow us to distinguish social phenomena from natural phenomena. In other words, we studied the abstractly taken essence of the social, abstracting from the question: under what conditions is the existence of this essence possible, that is, the real emergence and reproduction of social phenomena?
Let us remind the reader that we proceed from the fact that in the behavior of Robinson, abandoned on a desert island, one can find all the main signs that distinguish a social being from natural phenomena - be it the conscious nature of actions, a special type of labor adaptation to the environment, a variety of needs, interests and the means of satisfying them that the animal does not have, etc.
But it is equally clear that observing Robinson will not give us an answer to the question: where did his properties that are absent in animals come from? How did he manage to master thinking? Where did Robinson's ability to build houses, cultivate land and keep time come from? Was he born with these abilities or acquired them in some other way?
The answer to these and similar questions leads us from the study of the abstract properties of the social to the analysis of society as the real environment in which Robinsons arise with their inherent societal qualities. In other words, society appears to us not as “sociality in general,” but as a special organizational form of sociality, as a set of conditions that ensure its emergence, reproduction and development.
What are these conditions under which the reproduction of human activity with its special supernatural properties is possible? We associate the answer to this question with a necessary characteristic of social life, which was already mentioned above - with its collectivity.
Accordingly, moving from the analysis of the essence of the social to the study of society as an organizational form of its real existence in time and space, we proceed from the fact that society is a certain collective of people. In fact, we are moving from an analysis of the universal properties of activity, represented in any individual human action, to the study of the specific properties of interaction between people within the framework of their inherent collective way of life. It is assumed that such a collective has special laws of self-organization and development that cannot be revealed when considering human action (quite sufficient to create an idea of the essential differences in the behavior of people and animals). In other words, interaction as a form of subject-subject mediation is not reduced to the forms of subject-object mediation, which constitutes the abstract-logical essence of action as an elementary cell of social substance.
It is characteristic, however, that even this initial assumption causes disagreement on the part of philosophers and sociologists who recognize interaction as a necessary condition of sociality and at the same time refuse to substantive it as a reality that is not reducible to individual human actions. Let us explain in more detail what we are talking about.
It may seem strange, but in social philosophy and general sociology the question has long been debated: “does society exist at all as an original reality, as a special area of existence?”1.
This question, continues S.L. Frank, “may seem at first glance idle. Who would seem to deny this? Doesn’t the existence of the very concepts of “societies” and “social life”, as well as a special field of scientific knowledge - “social science” or the so-called “social sciences” - indicate that all people see in society a special side or area of existence, a special subject? knowledge?
In reality the situation is not so simple. Just as, for example, a modern astronomer, recognizing astronomy as a special science, sees in its subject - the sky - still not a special, original reality (as was the case in the ancient and medieval worldview), but only a part - homogeneous to other parts - of the general physics. chemical nature, which embraces both heaven and earth... - so a social scientist may not see any original reality in the face of society, but consider it only a conditionally distinguished part or side of some other reality. One can even say that in most modern socio-philosophical views this is exactly what is happening. Namely: for the majority of positive sociologists and social scientists, society is nothing more than a generalized name for the aggregate and interaction of many individual people, so they do not see or recognize any social reality at all, reducing it to the summarized reality of individual people.”2
This approach of S.L. Frank calls it “singularism” or “social atomism,” tracing its philosophical origins already to the Sophists and especially to Epicurus and his school, “for which society is nothing more than the result of a conscious agreement between individuals about the structure of a common life”3.
The singularist view of society is contrasted with the point of view of socio-philosophical “universalism”, according to which “society is a truly objective reality, not an exhaustive set of individuals included in its composition”4. Frank traces the historical and philosophical tradition of universalism from Plato, for whom “society is a “big man,” a certain independent reality that has its own internal harmony, special laws of its equilibrium,” and also from Aristotle, for whom “it is not society that is derived from man, but On the contrary, man is produced from society; a person outside of society is an abstraction, as impossible in reality as a living hand is impossible, separated from the body to which it belongs.”5
We see that the debate between “universalism” and “singularism” rests on the problem of the systemic nature of society, the establishment of which of the forms of integration of phenomena we have already considered to which it belongs. Should society be considered a constellation of elements, the connection of which does not create a new quality different from the sum of the qualities of its constituent parts? Or is society a systemic unity that has integral properties of the whole that are absent from the parts that form it? If this assumption is correct, then should society be considered as a system formation of a lower type, created by the interaction of relatively autonomous parts, or does it belong to unities of an organic type, in which the whole is primary relative to its parts and determines the very need for their structural isolation and the way of existence in the system ?
Questions of this kind, as S.L. correctly notes. Frank, have long occupied philosophers and sociologists, offering a variety of answers to them. At the same time, the variety of such answers, as we believe, is too great to sort them into the “two shelves” of singularism and universalism proposed by the Russian philosopher.
In reality, such a dichotomous division of socio-philosophical concepts does not take into account the full complexity of the problem, in particular the differences between alternative approaches that exist within “singularism” and “universalism” in their given understanding.
Let's start with the fact that among theorists who are convinced of the derivativeness of society from man, who, according to the criteria proposed by Frank, should be classified as supporters of the “singularist” approach, there are the most serious disagreements in understanding the forms and degrees of the primacy of man before society.
It can be argued that the most primitive form of singularism interprets the derivation of society from man as a genetic derivative, insisting on the chronological primacy of man, who was able to exist before society and created it to satisfy his needs, which were formed outside of society and independently of it.
At the same time, such a theory of “social contract” is decisively rejected by many theorists, whom S.L. Frank would undoubtedly be in the “singularitarian” camp.
Let us take, for example, the point of view of the famous philosopher K. Popper, who is convinced that “the “behavior” and “actions” of such collectives as states or social groups should be reduced to the behavior and actions of individual people”6. However, such a view of society, which Popper calls “methodological individualism” and contrasts the position of “methodological collectivism” (“universalism”, in the terminology of S.L. Frank), does not prevent him from believing that the hypothesis of the substantial primordial nature of the individual is “not only a historical , but, so to speak, also a methodological myth. It can hardly be discussed seriously, since we have every reason to believe that man, or rather his ancestor, became first a social and then a human being (considering, in particular, that language presupposes society).”7 “People,” continues Popper, “i.e. the human psyche, the needs, hopes, fears, expectations, motives and aspirations of individual human individuals, if they mean anything at all, do not so much create their social life as they are its product”8.
We see that a commitment to “methodological individualism” can be combined with the understanding that the properties of human individuals from which collective behavior is to be explained are not their original property. On the contrary, “smart” singularism perfectly understands that the specific properties of a person that distinguish him from an animal (his supraorganic, “societal” needs, his inherent consciousness, etc.) were formed during a collective way of life, expressing the needs of a person as a being who posits other people and what they believe.
The history of everything in the world, the subtleties of evolution and the difficulty of self-determination
To bookmarks
The Mindvalley Authors blog team has published a list of seven books that, according to the authors, help to better understand the structure of the world and reevaluate their views.
1. A Brief History of Almost Everything, Bill Bryson
“Remember your boring school textbooks? Most likely no. This book will change the way you look at science,” writes the author of the material. IN " Brief history almost everything in the world" Bryson, who is known for his travel notes, in simple words describes scientific facts and inventions, intertwining them with stories of pioneers in various fields. “You will finally be able to understand complex scientific terms and theories - from gravitational constants to how to calculate the mass of the Earth.”
The author also draws attention to the stories described in the book about how inventors came up with new ideas. He believes that the main message of the work is that a person can achieve a lot - especially when trying to solve the unsolvable.
Excerpt from the book:
Some scientists now believe that up to 200 trillion tons of bacteria may live under our feet, forming so-called subsurface lithoautotrophic microbial ecosystems, abbreviated SLiME. Thomas Gold of Cornell University calculated that if you took all the bacteria from the depths of the Earth and dumped them on the surface, they would cover the planet with a layer 1.5 meters thick. If his calculations are correct, then there may be much more life under the Earth than on the surface.
2. Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters by Satoshi Kanazawa and Alan Miller
The book contains ideas about the nature of human evolution. In particular, the authors propose the theory that beautiful parents more often give birth to daughters rather than sons - thus nature ensures the continuation of the human race. According to the authors, the main advantage girls have over their rivals in the fight for young man It is precisely beauty, but for young men this is not so important - and evolution provides them with such an advantage.
“Many of the book's assumptions are controversial, but it will help you understand why you acted the way you did in some situations,” writes the Mindvalley Authors team.
3. Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari
“This book opened my eyes. And this best work, which I read - and in any field,” writes the author of the note. The book describes the history of mankind. Harari writes that at least six subspecies of humans existed on Earth in the past, but all but Homo Sapiens eventually became extinct. It reveals the reasons why Homo Sapiens were able to gain dominance on the planet and how man evolved.
“Regardless of skin color, ethnicity and history, we have more in common than we have in common. But unfortunately, we remain predictable primates,” the author concludes.
Excerpt from the book:
Capitalist and consumer ethics are two sides of the same coin, two complementary commandments. The first commandment of a rich man: “Invest.” The first commandment for everyone else: “Buy!”
Most previous ethical systems presented people with difficult choices. A person could count on eternal bliss, but for this he needed tolerance and compassion, he had to free himself from greed and anger, and renounce selfish interests. For most, this was an impossible task. The history of ethics is a sad tale of beautiful ideals that no one lives up to. Most Christians do not imitate Christ, most Buddhists do not find the strength to follow Buddha, and Confucius would have had a stroke at the sight of most Confucians.
Today, most people happily follow the capitalist-consumerist ideal. The new ethic promises paradise provided that the rich remain greedy and try to earn more money, and the masses give free rein to their desires and buy and buy without measure. The first religion in history whose followers do exactly what they are called to do. But how do we know that we will be rewarded by receiving heaven? Oh yes, we were told on TV.
4. “True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements,” Eric Hoffer
“To understand why Americans voted for Trump, it is worth reading two historians: Plato and Eric Hoffer.” The book "The True Believer" was published in the 1950s. Hoffer, according to the author of the collection, became a legend in his field and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom - one of the two highest awards in the United States, which is awarded personally by the president of the country.
Excerpt from the book:
There is such a tendency: to judge a race, a people, or a certain group of people by their unworthy members. Although this is clearly unfair, there is some truth in it, for, indeed, the character and fate of any group are often determined by its worst elements.
The average people of a nation, for example, constitute its inert mass. The lives of decent average people doing the main work in the cities and villages of the country are subject to the constant influence of the minority on two sides - the best minority and the worst minority.
Prominent figures- be it in politics, literature, science, financial and commercial areas or industry - play a significant role in the formation of the entire people, as well as individuals of the other extreme - losers who have not found a place in life, pariahs, criminals and everyone who has lost position in society or never had one. The game of history usually involves the best and the worst, and the game goes over the heads of the majority sitting in the middle.
The lower elements of a people can exert a noticeable influence on the course of events because they have absolutely no appreciation for the present. They consider their own lives and everything present to be irreparably damaged, and therefore they are ready to squander and destroy them to the ground: hence their recklessness and desire for chaos and anarchy. They still passionately strive to dissolve their distorted and meaningless selves in some kind of soul-saving public performance - hence their tendency to united actions. That is why they are among the first conscripts of revolution, mass migrations, religious, racial or chauvinistic movements: they put their stamp on these shocks and movements that create the character and history of a nation.
5. Abundance, Steven Kotler and Peter Diamandis
“Stop looking at depressing news headlines and focus on positive trends. It will remind you of human potential and that we all move forward. The media focuses on negative news because our brain reacts more sharply to danger than to positive events,” writes the author of the material.
If all you do is read newspapers, you're probably afraid of a lot of things, and often make choices based on fear. In fact, the world is becoming a better and safer place every day. Teach yourself and your children not to give up and not worry about our future.
6. “The Book of the Taboo of Knowing Who You Are” by Alan Watts
In the book, Alan Watts explains in a light and sometimes humorous manner why a person needs to realize himself and why it can be difficult for him to find his purpose. “We need a new experience, not a new religion,” says the author.
Excerpt from the book:
Unconditional adherence to any religion is not just intellectual suicide, it is a positive manifestation of unbelief, because the mind of a fanatic is completely closed to new possibilities for seeing the world, while true faith primarily implies trust, openness to the unknown.
A zealous follower of Jehovah's Witnesses once tried to convince me that if God really loved mankind, He would certainly give them a book that could become a reliable and unshakable guide for them. I told him that no sane God would deal such a crushing blow to the human mind. Indeed, in this case, a person’s life would become monotonous - he would not need to think about anything, it would be enough to just look at one book, the Bible, which gives answers to all questions. Yet the use of words, and therefore of books, suggests that they point to something other than themselves—to a world of lived experience that includes more than just words or ideas. Books are not real life just like money is not real, consumable wealth. Blind worship of scriptures is like eating paper money.
So I want the book that slips furtively from my hands into the hands of my children to be slippery itself. While reading it, they must slip and fall into a new dimension - the realm of feelings and sensations, and not just ideas. It should be a temporary medication, not a permanent diet; a starting point from which a journey begins, and not an absolute authority for all time. They will read it and that will be enough, because if it is well written and clear, they will not need to return to it again and again in search of hidden meanings and to clarify vague ideas.
We don't need a new religion or a new Bible. We need a new experience - a new awareness of what it means to “be yourself.”
7. “Death in a Black Hole and Other Cosmic Difficulties,” Neil deGrasse Tyson
According to the Mindvalley Authors team, the book answers many questions about space, and shows why people are so sensitive to “an insignificant speck in the sky.”
Excerpt from the book:
Please note that where you gain in range, you lose in accuracy - we perceive the intensity of signals from the surrounding world on a logarithmic, not a linear scale. For example, if you increase the intensity of a sound by 10 times, this change will seem insignificant to your ears. Double the intensity and you won’t notice the difference at all.
The same applies to the ability to capture light. If you've ever witnessed a total solar eclipse, you've probably noticed that the sun's disk must be at least 90% obscured by the moon before anyone can say that the sky appears to have darkened. The star brightness scale, the well-known acoustic decibel scale and the seismic scale of earthquake strength are built on a logarithmic basis, largely because this is how we naturally hear, see and feel the world around us.
