The main theoretical models of society (K. Marx, T

Are you here: Children's games

TOPIC IV. Theoretical models of society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The emergence of systemic ideas about society. Naturalism as an attempt at a scientific interpretation of society. The concept of society in the works of G. Hegel. Materialistic interpretation of society and its processes. The specifics of views on society in the twentieth century. A look at society from the standpoint of global evolutionism.

The knowledge accumulated by the middle of the 19th century in the field of natural science and the social sphere contributed to the emergence of systemic ideas about society. Philosophers of previous eras understood that society is a complex entity, but they failed to develop the concept of society, because there was a lack of knowledge on the problems of social development. In this period, an objective opportunity arises and the vital importance of accumulating, generalizing, comparing the facts of historical development, searching for the causes of the historical dynamics of society. Their authors manage to generalize a vast array of humanitarian knowledge, singling out one or another slice of reality as a fundamental one.

There are the following systemic approaches to the study of society that arise in the nineteenth century: naturalism, idealism, materialism.

For the first time, an attempt to find objective, regular, rational foundations of society was realized in naturalism. The naturalistic understanding of social life is based on the belief that the freedom of the human will is limited, first of all, by the factors of the natural environment that directly affect people's activities. So, G. Spencer in his writings argued that permanent relations between parts of society are similar to permanent relations between parts of a living being. Society is a living organism, the structure and functions of which he likened to the organs and functions of a living body (money was compared with blood; skin cover - protection organs, etc.); man was assigned such a place as a cell in the body. Society was seen as a natural continuation of the laws of nature, the animal world. Spencer considered the law of survival of the fittest societies to be the basic law of social development. His philosophy summarized the principles and factual material of natural science in the mid-nineteenth century. G. Spencer's followers formed a direction in social philosophy, ĸᴏᴛᴏᴩᴏᴇ was called the organic school. Their influence in the second half of the twentieth century was not significant.

A higher level of conceptualization is inherent in systemic theories, which are based on idealistic ideas. In them, the essence of the connections that unite people into a single whole is seen in the complex of certain ideas, beliefs, myths. Hegel argued that philosophizing without a system cannot have anything scientific in it. In his all-encompassing system of the absolute idea, by which he understood the mind as the origin or substance of everything that exists, the doctrine of society and world history occupies a significant place.

Assessing the step in the development of social philosophy associated with his name, it should be noted that Hegel was perhaps the first to offer such a multifaceted analysis of society. His merit is that, with all the recognition of the role of political institutions in the life of society, he was able to overcome the methodology of political centrism and draw a detailed picture of social development. Continuing the best traditions of humanistic philosophy, he put the idea of human freedom and the idea of its realization into the basis of society and its history.

In ʼʼPhilosophy of Spiritʼʼ, the final part of his philosophical system, Hegel in the paragraph ʼʼObjective Spiritʼʼ explores the socio-historical aspects of social life: the concepts of law, morality, good and evil, family, civil society, state, world history.

The emergence of society, in Hegel's concept, is the result of the development of the Absolute Idea, by which he understood reason. Mind, reasonable principle (Absolute idea) lies at the base of all phenomena of nature and society. In its development, it goes through three stages: 1) the development of the idea in its own bosom, in the "element of pure reason"; 2) the spirit in its otherness - in nature; 3) a spirit that has reached itself ʼʼin itself and for itselfʼʼ. The absolute idea, outside and before man, is realized as an internally lawful, extremely important thing. According to the Hegelian scheme, the ʼʼspiritʼʼ wakes up in a person to self-knowledge, first in the form of a word, speech, language. Tools of labor, material culture, civilization appear as later derivative forms of the embodiment of the same creative power of the spirit (thinking).

On a materialistic basis, the emergence and development of society is analyzed in the philosophy of Marxism. K. Marx and F. Engels create a doctrine that is a generalization of the experience of all previous socio-historical practice. Their attention is focused on understanding social life and public consciousness, the role of production in social development.

Marx and Engels create a coherent theory of society and the social life of people - historical materialism - the science of the general and specific laws of the functioning of socio-economic formations. Under the socio-economic formation they understood a historically defined type of society. The category of socio-economic formation is one of the central ones in Marxist philosophy; it covers every society as a whole. The material basis of the socio-economic formation is the mode of production. The relations of production, taken together, form the basis of the socio-economic formation. The data system of production relations, which form the basis, corresponds to the political-legal and ideological superstructure. K. Marx presented social reality in the form of activity, practice, in which a person actively and purposefully transforms the material conditions of his existence. The emergence of society, state, politics and law is interpreted in their concept from the standpoint of a materialistic understanding of history. K. Marx and F. Engels consistently extended materialism to the understanding of society, arguing that the basis of its development is the mode of production.

The social transformations of the twentieth century, associated with scientific and technological progress, the destruction of estate partitions and the formation of a mass society, the emergence of mass media, changed the worldview, as well as the very way of philosophizing, the style of philosophical thinking. These processes revealed the incompleteness and limitations of the philosophical systems of social development developed in the 19th century. In them, as a system-forming beginning of the world, a certain unified foundation of being is considered, and the world itself is considered as a certain integrity. In the twentieth century, an inexhaustible variety of forms of being is revealed, its unity appears as internally different, heterogeneous, discrete, contradictory and diverse. The opened variety required new forms of understanding of the world and new technologies for constructing philosophical concepts. They reflect social reality in a new way. The classical understanding of society was characterized by the desire to maximally exclude the subjective world of an individual from theoretical consideration. Despite the fact that social reality consists of the subjective actions of individual individuals, it was assumed that in its foundations it does not depend on subjective arbitrariness. In the 20th century, the idea of the unity of world humanity is being abandoned. A feature of the social philosophy of the twentieth century is a new image of social reality, which is now interpreted through the prism of an individual. In the 20th century, criticism of those concepts that defended the priority of the public over the individual unfolded. Classical thought insisted that society was "higher" and wiser and more valuable than the individual. At the same time, philosophical classics proceeded from the thesis of radical goodness in human nature. Postclassical representations of social reality evolved with the realization of the simplification of the understanding of the relationship between society and man that came from the Enlightenment, as well as with a more in-depth understanding of human nature. The postclassical model of social reality is built on the recognition of not only the objective, but the subjective side of social life. Secondly, subjectivity itself appears in a new way, primarily as intersubjectivity. Intersubjectivity - ϶ᴛᴏ a special kind of reality that develops in the relationship of people.

Modern socio-philosophical concepts are very numerous, diverse in their subject matter, content, conceptual and categorical apparatus, and forms of expression.

Today, in the philosophical and scientific literature, special attention is paid to the study of the processes of functioning and development of complex self-organizing systems. The methodological basis for the study of such systems is the idea of them as fragments of a single world process of self-motion and self-organization of matter. This scientific position is becoming more and more generally accepted. Its foundations were laid by such Russian philosophers as N.F. Fedorov (ʼʼPhilosophy of the common causeʼʼ), V.N. Sukachev, N.V. Timofeev-Resovsky (ʼʼBiogenocinologyʼʼ), A. Bogdanov (ʼʼGeneral Organizational Science or Tectologyʼʼ). Their position is characterized by a holistic view of the development of matter, its self-organization. In this context, the origin of life on Earth and the emergence of human society are links in the same chain. Such an approach can allow one to penetrate deeper and determine the ways of development of civilization; new paradigms of explanation and understanding of sociocultural systems may arise. What is new about such an understanding of society?

Most researchers emphasize that the essence of self-organizing systems (such is society) is not a mechanical sum of properties characteristic of their individual parts, but some new property that cannot be derived from these parts. This means that it is impossible to understand the essence of society through the mechanical sum of its properties. In society as a self-organizing system, despite the actions of people endowed with consciousness, objective laws are manifested, that is, they do not depend on the will of people. The differences between the individual goals and actions of people and the cumulative result of their activities at the supra-individual level serve as the basis for opposing the individual to the social, the subjective to the objective, and the random to the extremely important.

A specific feature of all self-organizing systems is that in them there is a coherent interaction of individual individual forces, aspirations, motives and goals, as a result of which it is almost impossible to predict with any certainty the options for changes. To take into account all the chances and to predict the result of their action, at best, is possible only with some degree of probability. This uncertainty of the future is one of the features of self-organizing systems. Pointing out that stochasticity (randomness) is one of the most important principles of self-organizing systems, N.N. Moiseev wrote ʼʼAll processes occurring in the Universe are not deterministic – the world is stochastic by its nature. There are fundamental uncertainties in itʼʼ /8, p.60/. This follows from the general principle of self-organization, which is the occurrence of bifurcations or branches at the moments of transition from the old structure to the new one. In the process of development of such systems at the so-called bifurcation points, imperceptible accidents can radically change the further trajectory of the system due to the non-linear nature of perturbing factors: a small impact can lead to a qualitative change in the system, affect the nature of its further evolution. It is accidents that contribute to the emergence of new structures, forms, things and phenomena, both in natural and socio-cultural systems. These threshold or bifurcation mechanisms function not only at the level of inanimate nature, but also manifest themselves in the processes of biological and sociocultural life. The processes of social life are also characterized by uncertainty.

In addition to mechanisms of the bifurcation type, an important role in the processes of self-development is played by the mechanisms of adaptation, co-adaptation, co-evolution, which are also characteristic of society as a self-organizing system. At the same time, at the level of society, they have their own characteristics. The development of society is connected with the conscious activity of people, which is objectified in the results of material and spiritual labor, in the system of social norms and institutions, in spiritual values. This system of objectified results takes the process of self-organization beyond the limits of natural conditionality and determines the way a person enters the system ʼʼsociety - natureʼʼ. The mechanisms that contribute to the acquisition by a person of socially acceptable forms of existence, and thus the way of self-organization and maintaining the integrity of social relations, are the mechanisms of culture. The processes of production and reproduction of social systems have two tendencies: self-organization and organization. In the context described above, in which self-organization is perceived as a general property of systems of varying degrees of complexity, organization is a special case of self-organization.

Τᴀᴋᴎᴍ ᴏϬᴩᴀᴈᴏᴍ, from the point of view of global evolutionism, society, culture, morality are considered as the results of a necessary organic evolution, as natural processes of development of complex systems.

Questions for self-control:

1. When did the first conceptual ideas about society arise?

2. On what philosophical grounds are systemic ideas about society developed?

3. What is a socio-economic formation?

4. Why didn't naturalistic conceptions of society gain popularity in the 20th century?

5. What lies at the basis of social life according to the views of G.V. Hegel?

6. What is the basis for the development of society in Marxist philosophy?

7. What is the difference between postclassical interpretations of social reality and classical ones?

8. What is intersubjectivity?

9. How is society viewed in the context of global evolutionism?

Literature

1) G.V. Hegel. Philosophy of spirit. Compositions. M.: L, 1934.

2) Kemerov V.E. Introduction to social philosophy: textbook. manual for humanitarian universities / V.E. Kemerov - M.: Aspect Press, 1996.-215 p.

3) Marx K. Toward a critique of political economy. Foreword // Marx K., Engels F. Works. T. 13.

4) Moiseev N.N. Paths to creation. M., Respublika, 1992. 207 p.

5) Moiseev N.N. The logic of universal evolutionism and cooperativeness // Questions of Philosophy, 1990, no. 8, p.53.

6) Ogurtsov A.P. Tectology A.A. Bogdanov and the idea of co-evolution // Questions of Philosophy. 1995, No. 8, p.61.

7) Ruzavin G.I. Self-organization and organization in the development of society // Questions of Philosophy. 1995, No. 8, p.65.

THEME VII. The concept of the social structure of society

Philosophical understanding of the term ʼʼstructureʼʼ. The social structure of society as its qualitative definition. Criteria of social inequality: social subordination and differentiation of society. Marxist theory of the social class structure of society. Concepts of social stratification and social mobility.

In the process of life, people enter into various relationships. The diversity of these relationships, roles, positions that a person occupies in society leads to differences between people in each particular society. The reasons for this are social factors: social division of labor, lifestyle, occupation, etc.
Hosted on ref.rf
Groups of people generated by social differentiation are components of a single whole - society and in their totality constitute its social structure.

In philosophy, ʼʼstructureʼʼ is understood as a set of functionally interconnected elements, links and dependencies that make up the internal structure of an object. The structure of the object is characterized by: the number of components, the order of their location, the nature of the relationship between them. In the sciences of nature, the concept of structure is used to characterize the relationship of parts that form a single whole. Such an understanding of this category is also possible in the study of the social organization of society, in connection with this, approximately from the middle of the twentieth century, the term ʼʼsocial structureʼʼ has become relatively widespread.

A structural approach to society, considering it as a whole, the parts of which are identified and receive their meaning through their relationship with the whole, was already developed in the works of O. Kont, K. Marx and G. Spencer. Thanks to their research (especially G. Spencer's ʼʼPrinciples of Sociologyʼʼʼʼ), the term ʼʼstructureʼʼ was transferred to sociology.

The social structure of society is a set of social groups and communities of people, interactions and relationships between them, Social structure is a qualitative definition of society, covering the placement of all relations, dependencies between people, including social institutions, groups and communities of different types, norms and values. The structure of a social object provides the necessary stability and functioning of social elements: groups and institutions. At the same time, with the accumulation of quantitative changes that occur in it under the influence of various factors of social life, incl. technological-organizational and socio-economic conditions, the mode of production, there are structural changes in society. These factors determine the emergence and existence of appropriate stable communities and groups of people, social institutions, collectives, families.

The most important elements of the social structure are: social groups and social institutions. A social group is represented by a set of people who interact with each other in a certain way, are aware of their belonging to this group and are considered members of this group from the point of view of others. The basis for distinguishing different social groups is social subordination and differentiation. Social differentiation and subordination are the most important aspect of the system of social relations inherent in each particular society. The term ʼʼdifferentiationʼʼ is used in this case as a synonym for the word ʼʼdifferenceʼʼ and serves to classify statuses, roles, position in society of people and social institutions. Social differentiation causes property, power and status inequality. It also implies social differences that are not related to social inequality, for example, inequality of people's abilities. Inequality is an important condition for the organization of social life, it manifests itself in all spheres and at all levels of social life. The division into managers and executors exists in any sphere of public life. In every social group, regardless of its size (class, collective, estate, crowd), there are leaders who have special powers and privileges. This contributes to the legitimization of the social group, its stability. The trend towards the consolidation and preservation of social inequality can be traced in the activities of social institutions and organizations, as well as in the functioning and development of society as a whole.

The fact that society consists of social groups that differ in position, functions, rights and obligations has always been obvious, but a stable concept of the idea of the social structure of society was formed only in the 19th century. The original idea of the social structure of society was the idea of class division of society. But the concept of social structure is broader than the concept of the class division of society, since class relations by no means exhaust the whole variety of human interaction. Later, many socio-philosophical concepts of the division of society appeared, and most researchers began to consider the Marxist doctrine of the social class structure of society as a special case of the theory of social stratification /3/.

The doctrine of the social class structure of society and the class struggle is an integral part of historical materialism - the Marxist concept of social development. The author of this theory, K. Marx, together with another scientist, F. Engels, created a coherent system for the progressive development of human society. It should be noted that already before K. Marx, economists, historians and philosophers introduced this concept into social science. At the same time, none of them gave such a deep and comprehensive substantiation of the class structure of society. According to Marxist theory, social progress proceeds from the primitive communal system, in which there is no division into classes, through antagonistic societies to a classless communist society. Classes - ϶ᴛᴏ large groups of people that differ from each other in a number of essential ways. The main class-forming feature is the attitude towards the means of production. A person's place in the historically determined system of social production is determined by whether he is the owner of the means of production or not. This, in turn, determines the social status of people, their working and living conditions, social psychology and ideology.

Marxist theory explains the emergence of classes by economic reasons: the growth of labor productivity, which leads to the emergence of a surplus product and, consequently, to the use of the labor of captives, who from a certain time are not killed, but used as labor power. At a certain stage in the development of society, there is also a division of labor. The first major division was the separation of pastoral and agricultural tribes, then handicraft and trade, later mental and physical labor. An important process in all these changes is the emergence of private property as the basis of class division. Those people who became owners of the means of production got the opportunity to exploit those who were deprived of the tools of labor and land, that is, the means of production. Using the state apparatus, which is emerging as an instrument of power, they suppress the revolts and revolts of the exploited classes. For thousands of years, a class struggle has been going on, the apogee of which is social revolutions, as a result of which there is a change in socio-economic formations, that is, periods in the history of mankind. The forms of exploitation and the forms of struggle of the oppressed classes changed, but the essence of exploitation did not change. In the 19th century, objective reasons appeared for the transition to new non-antagonistic, classless relations - communist. Τᴀᴋᴎᴍ ᴏϬᴩᴀᴈᴏᴍ, class theory divides society according to alternative criteria into exploiters and exploited, into owners of the means of production and into those deprived of them.

At the beginning of the 20th century, such an approach to the social structure of society was not considered as adequate to reality, because, firstly, in addition to class division, there was caste and class inequality, and secondly, in modern societies, all attempts to highlight class antagonisms are unsuccessful, thirdly, there has always been a gender, national, cultural and status inequality in society. In Western sociology, ideas and attitudes have been developed that are opposed to the Marxist doctrine of classes and their essence. In particular, a coherent theory of social stratification and social mobility was created, and to a certain extent in polemic with Marxism. Social stratification, as P. Sorokin defines it, is the differentiation of a given set of people (population) into classes in a hierarchical rank /4/.

There are many stratification criteria by which society can be divided. In particular, the following types of stratification systems are described in the scientific literature: physical-genetic; slaveholding, caste, class, etakraticheskaya; socio-professional, class; cultural and symbolic; cultural and normative.

Physical-genetic stratification is associated with the differentiation of social groups according to ʼʼnaturalʼʼ, socio-demographic characteristics. This stratification system was dominant in the primitive community, but continues to be reproduced in modern conditions. The second - the slave system - is also based on violence, but not physical, but military-legal. The third type of stratification system is caste. It is based on ethnic differences, which in turn are reinforced by religion. Each caste is a closed, as far as possible, endogamous group, which is assigned a strictly defined place in the social hierarchy. In contrast to caste, in the estate stratification system, groups differ in legal rights, which in turn are associated with their duties. Some resemblance to the estate system has a etakratic stratification type. He points to the differentiation in groups, which is associated with the position of people in the power-state hierarchies. The etacratic system is revealed with all the greater force, the more authoritarian character the government assumes. The division of groups according to the content and conditions of their work represents a socio-professional stratification system. Approval and maintenance of hierarchical orders in this system is carried out with the help of certificates (diplomas, grades, licenses, patents). The socio-professional division is one of the basic stratification systems, of which various examples can be found in any society. The most popular system is the class system, which is sometimes opposed to the stratification approach. At the same time, as noted above, we consider class division as a special case of stratification division. This type of differentiation is characterized by belonging to classes, which is not regulated by law, is not inherited. The cultural-symbolic type of differentiation is associated with access to socially significant information, the possibility of its interpretation. For example, in the Middle Ages, church ministers and interpreters of sacred texts made up the bulk of the literate population; in modern times, this role is gradually shifting to scientists, technocrats, and party ideologists. And lastly, the type of stratification system is cultural-normative based on the prestige of the way of life and norms of behavior followed by a given group of people. Tastes and habits, manners of communication and etiquette, a special language can distinguish certain groups of people. There are other systems that classify people's inequality. For example, they distinguish economic, political and professional differentiation. Economic stratification is expressed in the difference in incomes, living standards, the presence of rich and poor people. In the political sphere, there are hierarchical ranks that differ in authority, prestige, titles and honors. Professional differentiation - ϶ᴛᴏ division of society into groups according to their occupation, occupation. American sociologists argue that the following stratification criteria are of greatest importance: the prestige of the profession; the degree of power of might; amount of income and wealth; educational qualification.

In society, there are cyclical strengthening and weakening of economic inequality (stratification). The economic condition of social groups or society as a whole can increase or decrease in different historical periods and in different social conditions.

It is important to note that modern Western sociology is characterized by an emphasis on mobility, the mobility of people relative to strata. The study of social mobility was started by P. Sorokin. On this occasion, he wrote: ʼʼUnder social mobility it is customary to understand any transition of an individual or a social object (value), that is, everything that is created or modified by human activity, from one social position to anotherʼʼ /4/. The main types of social mobility are horizontal and vertical. Horizontal mobility is the transition of an individual from one social position to another, located at the same level. An example of such mobility is a change of workplace while maintaining professional status, divorce and remarriage, a change of confession by a believer. Vertical mobility is the movement of a subject from one stratum to another. Given the dependence on the direction of movement, there are two types of vertical mobility: upward and downward. That is, vertical mobility is associated with either social ascent or social descent. For example, the promotion of a person in the service, the defense of a dissertation, the election of a politician to an elected position is an example of upward vertical mobility.

The development of the theory of stratification and social mobility proceeds both along the lines of clarifying and improving the conceptual apparatus, and through the introduction of new radical moments in accordance with the realities of today's social and economic process.

Questions for self-control:

1. What is meant in philosophy by the concept of ʼʼstructureʼʼ?

2. When did the term ʼʼsocial structureʼʼ become relatively widespread?

3. What is social differentiation and why does it occur in society?

4. What is the essence of the class theory of the social structure of society? Why, at the beginning of the 20th century, was it insufficient to explain social structure?

5. What is social stratification? What types of social stratification do you know?

6. Describe the types of social mobility taking place in the social differentiation of the population in the history of Belarus and at the present stage.

7. What is social mobility?

Literature:

1) Weber, M. Basic concepts of stratification /M. Weber // Sociological research. - M. -- 1994. 147-156 p.

2) Marx, K., Engels, F. Manifesto of the Communist Party / K. Marx, F. Engels. -- Collection.
Hosted on ref.rf
Op. -- 2nd ed. - M .: Politizdat, 1965. - T.4. -- 424 - 436 p.

3) Radaev, V.V., Shkaratan O.I. Social stratification: textbook. allowance /V.V. Radaev, O.I. Shkaratan. - M.: Aspect Press, 1996. - 318 p.

4) Sorokin P. Social stratification and mobility / P. Sorokin. -- Man, civilization, society. M.: INFRA-M, 1992. - 302 - 334, 353 - 392 p.

THEME VII. Philosophy of history: origin and method

Concepts of history and philosophy of history: criteria for delimitation. Interpretation of the historical process in the early stages of the development of society. Linear and non-linear interpretations of the historical process. Materialistic understanding of history and formational approach to its study. Features of understanding history in the twentieth century. Theories of local cultures.
Hosted on ref.rf
Civilizational and cultural approaches to the interpretation of the historical process.

In a broad general scientific sense, the term ʼʼhistoryʼʼ is understood as a sequential change in the states of any object. In this sense, one can speak not only about the history of mankind, but also about the history of nature. In the social sciences, history is called not only the past life of people in time, but also knowledge about this life, ĸᴏᴛᴏᴩᴏᴇ establishes, classifies and interprets the life of people in its development. ʼʼHistory - ϶ᴛᴏ the science of events (acts), an attempt to answer the question about human actions committed in the pastʼʼ - writes the English historian and philosopher R. Collingwood /7/. Such an understanding of history allows us to interpret it as an event-based specification of social life. History is the realm of individual events in which the general and particular features of the social organization of society exist and through which are manifested. The concept of ʼʼhistoryʼʼ can be considered as a concretization of key socio-philosophical categories. In particular, it concretizes the concept of ʼʼsocietyʼʼ, pointing to the actual forms that society has taken in real time and space. The eventful life of people in time and space, called history, being the real being of social life, embraces all its manifestations.

There is also a philosophical interpretation of history, which differs, first of all, from historiography in that in its context, the development of general methodological problems of historical knowledge is carried out. That is, the philosophical understanding of the historical process primarily involves the search for scientific methods on the basis of which it itself can be carried out. Viewing history as an endless stream of events not subject to laws does not contribute to its transformation into rigorous scientific knowledge. It is philosophers who define the very concept of history, correlating this concept with other concepts of the socio-philosophical sphere: ʼʼsocietyʼʼ, ʼʼsocietyʼʼ, solve the problem of the lawfulness of the historical process - the presence of objective, non-random connections in the historical eventfulness, allowing the historian to consider himself a scientist explaining historical events. A feature of philosophical reflection on history is the abstraction from its diverse, specific event-related manifestations. The main thing for the philosophy of history is to reveal the fact of changes in events in space and time, to determine the causes and factors of social development, its regularities and accidents. At the same time, in the context of the philosophy of history, there is a solution of such problems as the chronological division of the historical process; its sense-theoretical comprehension, a holistic perception of the object, how society and its specific history act.

The comprehension of social reality, the development of methods for studying the historical process, are very difficult, since the world of social life is a reality, each element of which is unique.

As you know, the methodology of any research depends on the specifics of its object. The object of study of historical science is society in its retrospective, which makes it impossible to observe the object of study directly, and it has to be studied indirectly, through the study of documentary evidence. Indeed, the historian, like other representatives of social and humanitarian knowledge, learns mainly by examining texts. Their interpretation is the main method of historical knowledge, and the question of its effectiveness and adequacy occupies a significant place in philosophical research. Historical texts, according to some scholars, do not provide reliable information, because their creators often distorted events, sometimes doing it unintentionally, due to ignorance, sometimes consciously. The distortion of texts was aggravated in the process of their interpretation, since the interpreter, for the same reasons, does not come to objective truth. Subjectivity and tendentiousness are the main obstacles to objective knowledge of the past. But in order for historical knowledge to receive the status of scientific knowledge, it must be as close as possible to objectivity. At the same time, as we have already said, the achievement of objectivity in historical research is associated with enormous difficulties. As you know, the methods of natural sciences are not applicable to this area. But is it possible in connection with this to assert that social and humanitarian knowledge, incl. historical, does not have scientific potential, does not carry a great desire for reflection on the entire sphere of reality. After all, a person wants to know not only the natural reality, but also the social sphere of his life. Finally, in order to dwell in history, a person must comprehend history. In this context, understanding history and staying in it coincide. Man is the only historical being on earth.

A scrupulous reflection of the methodology of historical knowledge makes it possible to see its ambiguity and peculiarity of its presence in the spiritual experience of mankind. This search for methods applicable to the analysis of history begins with the study of history, when the first historical writings appear. But only in the context of the philosophy of history, which takes shape in the 18th century, a purposeful scientific reflection on the methodology of historical knowledge begins.

Historical interpretation originates in ancient philosophy. The mythological worldview, which is characterized by timelessness, did not consider the presence of a person in history as its integral property, while it is the awareness of oneself in history that is one of the most important factors of self-knowledge.

TOPIC IV. Theoretical models of society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. - concept and types. Classification and features of the category "THEMA IV. Theoretical models of society in the 19th-20th centuries." 2017, 2018.

Society as a subsystem of objective reality is studied by social philosophy. Philosophical and theoretical analysis involves the study of society as a complex system of "man-society". The basis of this system is the general laws of the structure, functioning, development of society, its driving forces. The task of social philosophy is to reveal the fundamental foundations of social life, its backbone factors, to give an analysis of the social essence of man.

Consideration of the essence of social phenomena, the causes and foundations of the development of society, its driving forces occupied a significant place in the history of socio-philosophical thought.

These and other fundamental problems of the existence of society in social philosophy are considered from different points of view.

There are four main models, approaches to their solution: idealistic, naturalistic, materialistic and pluralistic (factorial) model.

The idealistic model was widespread in the history of philosophy and dominated until the middle of the 19th century.

It is based on the recognition of the absolute priority of consciousness in relation to other aspects of human activity.

The argument is the fact that the basis of any actions of people are ideal motives, goals, attitudes that precede their real actions.

The idealistic interpretation of society has real grounds - the complexity of social processes and their knowledge. In society, unlike nature, there are people endowed with consciousness and will, who set certain goals for themselves and act under the influence of conscious motives. The absolutization of the role of consciousness in the life of society led to the conclusion that consciousness is the ultimate cause of historical events.

The idealistic explanation of the essence of society leads to the denial of the objective laws of its development.

The denial of the natural nature of the functioning and development of society predetermined the solution of the problem of the driving forces of history. The decisive role was assigned to great personalities, the spiritual elite, the creative minority. History appeared as the result of their activity, the people were assigned the role of an inert, passive mass, a crowd.

naturalistic the model (or geographical direction) assigns the leading role in the development of society to natural conditions. From the point of view of the supporters of this theory (Ch. Montesquieu, G. Bockl, L, Mechnikov), the natural environment (climate, soil, minerals, etc.) determines the character, the psyche of people, the establishment of one or another political system (for example, monarchy or republic), dictates differences in the level of development of economic and other social activities.

In the XX century. these ideas formed the basis of the reactionary philosophical direction - geopolitics (F. Ratzel, K. Haushofer, R. Chellen).

However, the naturalistic model, rightly emphasizing the importance of natural conditions in the development of society, a certain dependence of the development of individual countries, including the psyche, people's behavior on certain natural, climatic factors, at the same time exaggerates, absolutizes their role in social processes.

The opposite of the idealistic and naturalistic models is materialistic the theory of society, the basic principles of which were formulated by K. Marx and F. Engels. This concept meant a materialistic solution to the main question of philosophy in relation to society. Without denying the existence of ideological motives in public life, answering questions about the ultimate causes of the emergence and existence of these motives, the materialistic model is based on the fact that it is not the consciousness of people that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being determines consciousness.

social being- this is objective social reality, the real process of people's lives, which determines basis and the essential content of which is the production of material goods.

public consciousness- the spiritual side of social life: views, ideas, theories, ideas that reflect social life.

The primacy and determining role of social being is argued as follows:

public consciousness arises on the basis of social being and does not exist without it, being its reflection;

social consciousness borrows its content from social being;

· the source of changes in public consciousness are, ultimately, the needs of development and changes in social life.

In the materialistic model, the natural nature of the development of society, its consideration as a product of the conscious activity of people, various social communities, was substantiated. At the same time, the decisive role is assigned to the people - the creator of material and spiritual values.

Pluralistic (factorial) model (M. Weber, R. Aron), in contrast to the considered models that study society within the framework of a monistic approach to explaining the historical process, considers it as the result of the action of equivalent phenomena (economy, religion, law, morality, etc.), denying the existence of a single determining factor.

A comparative analysis of the theoretical models of society allows us to conclude that none of them can serve as a universal key to revealing the essence of society and its causal relationships, but each of these approaches has certain cognitive capabilities.