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 justified. 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.

Social philosophy differs from other sections of philosophy in that it explores the universal relations of social being, considering the historically homogeneous uniqueness of social life as one of the subsystems of the material world, which occupies a specific place in it. Taking into account the relations and connections of society with other spheres of reality surrounding and embracing people , it studies the specific regularities of the manifestation of people's vital activity, which are characteristic of it as a special form of being of the world as a whole. In other words, social philosophy represents an integral view of the world of human existence as a whole, inaccessible to any other form of knowledge about society except for it.

The object of knowledge of social philosophy is society, as a way and result of the interaction of people with each other and with the outside world. The concept of society is used in a narrow and broad sense. Society in the narrow sense is understood as associations of groups of people for joint activities, or a certain stage of human history (primitive society), or the historical life of an individual people or country (Belarusian society, medieval French society). Society in a broad sense is a part of the material world isolated from nature, but closely connected with it, representing a historically changing system of connections, relations and forms of association of people that arises in the process of their life activity.

The object of socio-philosophical knowledge is the constantly changing reality of social life in the unity and diversity of all human relations, intricately intertwined random and regular causal factors and consequences.

The subject of social philosophy is the knowledge of the universal foundations of the integrity of social life, the factors and patterns of its development. All this determines the main problem of social philosophy - the question of what society is or what its nature is, the laws of existence and development.

Social cognition has a pronounced specificity, especially when compared with the natural-science form of cognition. First, if in the natural sciences, initially, any subject can be considered in isolation from others, abstracting from its connections and mutual influences of the real world, then social cognition deals exclusively with a system of interconnections and relationships. Imagine any subject of research: - property, power, ideology, culture, etc. - without taking into account the system of relations and mutual influences it is impossible.

Secondly, if the action of the laws discovered by the natural sciences is fairly invariable and has a universal character, then the laws that operate in society, due to the extreme mobility, variability of social life, have the character of trends, and not rigidly determined and universal dependencies.

Thirdly, a feature of the object of social knowledge is its historicity, since both society and the individual, and the forms of their interaction are dynamic, not static.

Fourth, if in the natural sciences, as is known, the so-called rigid cognitive procedures are widely used, then in the cognition of social life, the use of mathematical and similar procedures is possible only to a fairly limited extent, and sometimes it is simply impossible.

Fifth, since society is both a subject and an object of cognition, social cognition acts as self-cognition.

Sixth, social theories, unlike those of the natural sciences, are subject to moral evaluation.

The construction of a theoretical model of society begins with the definition of the basis of its existence and development, which determines its structure and functioning, characteristic features.

The idea of ​​the essence of society appears with the birth of philosophy. So, according to the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, the main thing in society (in the state) is the establishment, implementation of the idea of ​​social justice. This idea expresses the operation of the world law of cosmic harmony in society. It is necessary to bring the existence of society closer to the idea of ​​social justice through the knowledge of this idea, reasonable management, derivation of the laws of the state from it. However, it is completely impossible to implement it in practice. Aristotle expressed the idea that the basis of the existence of society is the unification of people for the most complete satisfaction of "social instincts". Society is of natural origin and is the result of activities and relationships between people to meet their social needs. The ancient Chinese thinker Confucius believed that society is based on moral norms that have a “heavenly” origin. The most ancient also include the ideas of the contractual foundation of society and the state, expressed in the philosophy of Buddhism in Ancient India, in the teachings of Epicurus and Lucretius, as well as by some philosophers of the Middle Ages. It was assumed that social organization is based on a conscious agreement between people. In the views developed by the religious philosophy of the Middle Ages (Augustine, Thomas Aquinas), social being was deduced from their divine prescription.

The Renaissance is marked by the emergence of a new look at human society and its history, at the state and rights. Major thinkers of the 16th century (N. Machiavelli, J. Vodin) considered society as the result of the activities of the people themselves, raised the question of the laws of historical development. So, Woden, emphasized the influence of the natural sphere on the formation of society, Machiavelli considered the political struggle and material interest to be the main driving force of social life.

In the XVII-XVIII centuries. in Europe, an industrial society is taking shape and a mechanistic worldview is being established. Within its framework, both society and man are presented as complex mechanisms, machines, and the main problems of social philosophy are the rational structure of society and the appropriate upbringing of man. In the conditions of the same historical epoch, dissimilar concepts of society and man develop, which reflected the multi-layered nature of social life and the multidirectional nature of social development, the peculiarity of the existence of national cultures, the peculiarities of history and the real richness of previous philosophical thought, each of the systemic theories of society has quite definite general philosophical and socio-philosophical foundations, this is manifested in the initial principles of the theory, the network of tools (ideal objects), categories and laws, the general picture of historical life. Let us consider the systemic theories of society, the philosophical foundations of which are naturalism, idealism, and materialism.

The essence of naturalism is many-sided, but, one way or another, it manifests itself in the identification of society with the animal and plant world or individual populations, in the extension of the laws of biology, mechanics to society, in the announcement of certain elements of the natural environment as determining factors in the history of mankind.

Thus, the French philosopher L. Montesquieu argued that the “spirit of laws” must correspond to nature. According to the Englishman G. Buckle, the organization and development of society depends on the influence of climate, soil, food. The Russian scientist L. Mechnikov explained the uneven social development by changing the importance of water resources and communications (river, sea, ocean).

G. Spencer (England) devoted his writings to a large extent "to the presentation of the grounds that allow us to assert that the permanent relations between the parts of society are analogous to the constant relations between the parts of a living being." Claiming that “society is an organism”, Spencer likened the structure and functions of society to the functions and organs of a living body (money was compared with blood, railroads with blood vessels, etc.). A person in society was given the same place as a cell in the body. Spencer called the law of survival of the fittest beings the basic law of human history.

Spencer's followers constituted a branch of social philosophy known as the organic school. Its influence in the second half of the 20th century can hardly be assessed as significant. This also applies to other vulgar naturalistic schools (social Darwinism, neo-Malthusianism, geopolitics, etc.). On the other hand, it is impossible not to notice that the principles of naturalism are, to one degree or another, included in many socio-philosophical theories, which are very different in their foundations. The naturalistic explanation of society, however, was of great theoretical and philosophical significance, since for the first time an attempt was made to find objective, regular rational foundations of society.

In the XVII-XVIII centuries, the so-called “contractual” concept of society became widespread. Representatives of this Concept (Hobbes, Rousseau) are characterized by the idea that people, under the pressure of circumstances, are forced to transfer control over their actions to society (the state), alienating their own freedom. It is this act, according to Rousseau, "creates its moral and collective unity." But they considered the state as a consequence of the development of social consciousness, and not economic development.

Serious criticism of the “social contract theory” was made by Hegel, who put forward the concept of “civil society”, which, in contrast to “political society”, was understood as a set of property relations that determined the way of life of people and their relationships. Characteristically, it was property that was considered by Hegel as a guarantee and expression of human freedom.

Following Hegel, Marx considered civil society as a sphere of material, economic life and human activity. But unlike Hegel, who considered the “world spirit”, the “absolute idea” to be the basis of all development, Marx showed that the very property, material relations underlying the political life of society are determined not by the ideas of people, but by the achieved level of development of the productive forces, that the development of society is based on the method of production of material goods.

Marx, thus, overcame naturalism and idealism by presenting social reality in the form of activity, practice, by which a person actively and purposefully (subjectively) transforms the material conditions of his existence. Social life is essentially practical. If classical philosophy derives the essence of society from objective spiritual culture, then Marx appeals to the social activity of subjects, that is, to material production practice.

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:

Social 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 social 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 justified. 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.

Society is not only a specific, but also an extremely complex system. Knowledge of the patterns of functioning and development of this system has certain features. Theoretical, scientific analysis of society as a certain system takes place on the basis of a certain ideal model of society. Each branch of science actually creates its own model or theoretical object. In other words, not the entire object of the social organism is considered, but only any specific part of it. So, for historians, the real historical process appears not in itself, but through separate fragments of reality: archival materials, documents, cultural monuments. For economists, the economy appears in the form of digital calculations, statistics.

Society can be analyzed in different ways. For example, the Russian thinker A.A. Bogdanov (1873 - 1928) considered society from the perspective of organization and management. This is characteristic of general systems theory. Any human activity, he believed, is objectively an organization or disorganization. This means that any human activity - technical, social, cognitive, artistic - can be considered as a fragment of organizational experience and studied from an organizational point of view.

There are well-known attempts to describe society as a living population without revealing the specifics of the social. The modern philosopher and social scientist V.S. Barulin approaches society from the standpoint of considering various areas of people's activities that ensure their life.

The researchers did not set and do not aim to cover the entire object. Considering it from a certain point of view, as an ideal model, scientists get the opportunity to analyze the phenomena "in their purest form."

The ideal or theoretical model of this or that fragment of society and the real society are different. However, the analysis of the model makes it possible to identify the essential, regular in the object, not to get lost in the most complex labyrinth of social phenomena, facts and events.

The ideological basis for the construction and subsequent study of the theoretical (ideal) model of society are: naturalism, idealism and materialism.

Naturalism- he tries to explain the laws of functioning and development of society by the laws of nature. He proceeds from the fact that nature and society are one, and hence there are no differences in the functioning of the natural and the social.

In the XVII - XVIII centuries. the naturalistic conception of the interpretation of social life became widespread. Proponents of this concept tried to declare social phenomena solely the action of natural laws: physical, geographical, biological, etc.

French utopian socialist Charles Fourier(1772 - 1837), for example, tried to create a "social science" based on I. Newton's law of universal gravitation. He saw the task of his life in the development of "social theory" as part of the "theory of world unity", based on the principle of "attraction by passion", a universal pattern that determines the natural inclination of a person to some kind of collective labor.

Naturalism reduced the higher forms of being to the lower ones. Thus, he reduced man to the level of a purely natural being. This approach is characteristic of all forms of metaphysical materialism. His main mistake was to belittle human activity and deny human freedom.

Indeed, if the subject is considered only as a natural phenomenon, dissolves in nature, loses its qualitative certainty, then this inevitably leads to the rigid inclusion of human behavior in the chain of natural causes and effects. Here there is no place for free will, and the concept of social events inevitably takes on a fatalistic coloring.

Denying freedom and belittling the spiritual essence of man, materialism becomes inhumane, "hostile to man."

Another shortcoming of the naturalistic approach to society is that a person is likened to a social atom, and society is likened to a mechanical aggregate of individual atoms, closed only on their own interests. Mechanism organically follows from naturalism and becomes the theoretical justification for individualism, anarchism and egoism.

In other words, naturalism notices in man only natural substance, absolutizes it. As a result, human ties acquire a natural character. The essence of the naturalistic approach is that human society is seen as a natural continuation of the laws of nature, the animal world and, ultimately, the Cosmos. The type of social structure and the course of history are determined by the rhythms of solar activity and cosmic radiation (A. Chizhevsky, L. Gumilyov), the characteristics of the geographical and climatic environment (Montesquieu, L. Mechnikov), the specifics of man as a natural being, his genetic, racial and sexual features (E. Wilson, R. Dawkins). Within the framework of this direction, it is assumed that society can change the form of its existence, begin cosmic existence as a new round of its evolution (K.E. Tsiolkovsky).

Idealism- accepts consciousness (an absolute idea or a complex of sensations) as the final and determining cause of social development. Idealism spiritualizes a person, tears him away from nature, turning the spiritual sphere of social life into an independent substance. Such an understanding of history arises as a result of the absolutization of the spiritual factor in human existence. In practice, this means following the enlightenment principle that "opinions rule the world."

Idealism, in principle, does not deny the objective factor of history. But if, from the point of view of naturalism, the development of society is completely determined by the action of the laws of nature, then in idealism this function of the creative principle, the social prime mover, is performed either by the world mind, or by undetermined human and, above all, spiritual-volitional activity. In the first case, fatalism is introduced into social philosophy (which also takes place in naturalistic materialism); in the second, a purely subjectivist understanding of the historical course is substantiated.

In some idealistic systems, for example, in Kantianism and Russian religious and moral philosophy, there was a positive principle in the approach to man and history. It consisted in substantiating the freedom of the subject, his creative activity. No matter how spirituality is understood, no one thinks of it without morality, the latter presupposes the existence of freedom. Only a free person can be spiritual and moral, therefore it is necessary to overcome the narrow limits of naturalism, to turn towards humanistic values. And this implies the assimilation of the entire wealth of spiritual traditions.

The negative consequences of the idealistic understanding of social phenomena are: the separation of theory from practice, the ideal from interest, the formation of alienated, fetishistic forms of consciousness that begin to dominate people. An idealistic understanding of history gives rise to social mythology and dooms social subjects, who are at the mercy of myths, to the pursuit of mirages.

In the idealistic approach, the essence of the connections that unite people into a single whole is seen in the complex of certain ideas, beliefs, myths. There are many examples of theocratic states in history. In such states, unity was ensured by one faith, which became the state religion. Totalitarian regimes were based on a single state ideology, which served as the basis of the social structure. At the center of this ideology was usually a leader, not infrequently a religious one, on whom the fate of the country depended (wars, reforms, etc.).

Thus, both naturalism, which dissolves a person in nature, grounding him too much, and idealism, which separates a person from nature and turns the spiritual principle in him into a self-sufficient essence, are oriented towards a one-sided understanding of society.

Materialism- takes as a basis social being, the real process of people's lives, which is based on a certain mode of production, the level of development of culture, the prevailing way of life and the mentality corresponding to it, i.e. mentality, the nature of feelings and thinking.

The materialistic approach is associated with a philosophical analysis of interpersonal connections and relationships that are of a decisive nature and that arise in appropriate natural conditions, in the presence of certain social ideas or religious beliefs. Society is a certain system, structured in a special way into parts to which it cannot be completely reduced. A person realizes himself depending on the place he occupies in society and participation in the general social process of life. The relations of people are determined not by an agreement (contract), but by consensus (consent of members of society). Links people into a "social organism" productive forces and production relations and the corresponding socio-cultural sphere.

Each of the approaches discussed above has its own merits. With their help, explanations of social processes were given, certain steps were taken in the knowledge of society. But a critical attitude to these approaches makes it possible to reasonably substantiate the advantages and disadvantages of each of them.

Similar information.

The main philosophical and theoretical models of society

The branch of philosophy concerned with the study of social life is called social philosophy. The formation of social philosophy as a special discipline of philosophical knowledge refers to the 20-40s. 19th century

Subject social philosophy are the most common foundations, conditions and patterns of social life. There are various definitions of society in the literature. Specifically, society is defined as:

- a reality separated from nature and interacting with it, characterized by a systemic organization and the specifics of the objective laws of development;

- the system ("world") of human activity, as well as its objective condition and result;

- a system of interaction between people, provided by their collective way of life and contributing to the coordination of efforts in achieving the goals;

- a system of social communication between people who realize their interests on the basis of existing common cultural values;

- a system of relations between social groups with their characteristic corporate interests;

- a system of functioning social institutions that ensure the stable development of society;

- a system of interrelated and complementary spheres (economic, political, social and spiritual), in each of which the corresponding needs and interests of society are realized.

Problem field social philosophy consists of studies of the qualitative specifics of social reality, the fundamental laws of the functioning of society, its value foundations and social ideals, as well as the logic and prospects of social processes.

Specificity method socio-philosophical cognition is due to the fact that, unlike natural science cognition, which is focused on the study of objective reality, social cognition deals with object-subject and subject-subject interactions. Social events and processes are characterized by:

- fundamental contextuality: no object can be taken “by itself”, abstractly;

- a complex combination of objective and subjective factors;

- the interweaving of material and spiritual manifestations of social life.

The development of ideas about social reality took place in conditions of sometimes acute confrontation between different approaches. By the middle of the nineteenth century. in social science, naturalistic, cultural-centric, and psychological approaches have established their positions.

Naturalistic approach in social philosophy was actively formed in the XVIII century. influenced by the successes of natural science, developed in the 19th century, and was also widespread in the 20th century. Its representatives (Thomas Hobbes, Paul Henri Holbach, Charles Montesquieu, Herbert Spencer, Alexander Chizhevsky, Lev Gumilyov and others) likened society to natural objects: mechanical, biological; defined geographic, cosmic factors as leading in the development of society.

culture-centric an approach based on the works of Johann Herder, Immanuel Kant, Georg Hegel, and others, considered society as a non-individual formation, the development of which is determined by spiritual values, ideals, cultural meanings and standards.

Psychological the approach presented by the works of Lester Frank Ward, Jean Gabriel Tarde, Vilfredo Pareto, and then continued in the socio-psychological tradition in the works of Sigmund Freud, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and others, considered society as a special mental reality: will operates in society; instincts; desires; the unconscious of the individual; psychology of groups, masses of people or the whole society.

The ideas developed within the framework of these traditions had a great influence on the development of social philosophy, they were characterized by a certain reductionism - the desire of thinkers to find a single substance of social diversity, to explain it close to the ideals of accuracy and objectivism of classical natural science, a predominantly non-historical and contemplative interpretation of man as a social subject.

The desire to overcome reductionism dictated such influential currents in social philosophy of the late nineteenth century as sociologism and historicism.

Sociologism - a socio-philosophical tradition associated with the interpretation of society and its development as an objective reality, outside the individual consciousness. The conceptual design of sociologism is associated with the name of Emile Durkheim (1858–1917). The classic expression of sociologism is the Marxist model of social reality. Marxism rejected subjectivism and idealism in explaining social phenomena, put forward a materialistic idea, according to which society is the result of the development of the socio-historical practice of people. The identification of the objective (economic) foundations of social life allowed K. Marx to identify the systemic socio-economic conditioning diverse social phenomena of a socio-political, spiritual order.

historicism - the tradition of cognition, which is based on the idea of ​​removing the subject-object opposition of social and historical reality on the basis of the immanent inclusion of the cognizing subject in it. The founder of the tradition, Wilhelm Dilthey, proposed a substantive distinction between natural science as a complex of "natural sciences" and social science as a series of "sciences about the spirit" and drew attention to the fact that the study of a social, historical event presupposes not only its explanation, but also its understanding. Within the framework of the program of historicism, representatives of the Baden school of neo-Kantianism (W. Windelband, G. Rickert) posed the problem of special socio-humanitarian methods for studying social reality.

In the activities of these areas, if you try to summarize all their developments, there have been three fundamental theoretical concepts of society which had a significant impact on the development of modern social science.

Society as a relational system ("system of social relations"). The starting point for this concept is the materialistic understanding of history formulated by K. Marx, which says that "it is not the consciousness of people that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being determines their consciousness." In other words, material life of society(that is, the mode of production and those economic relations that develop between people in the process of production, distribution, exchange and consumption of material goods) defines his spiritual life(a set of public views, desires and moods of people). Society primarily "expresses the sum of those connections and relations in which individuals are to each other."

The basis of society is production and economic relations, which Marx also calls material and basic. They are material because they are formed between people with an objective necessity, existing outside and independently of their will and desire - in order to exist, people are forced to jointly participate in the production of material goods, enter into trade relations, etc. determine the economic structure of society, as well as fully determine the corresponding superstructure- political, legal, moral, artistic, religious, philosophical and other relations, as well as institutions corresponding to them (the state, political parties, churches, etc.) and ideas.

Society as a structural and functional system. Founder of the school of structural functionalism in American sociology of the twentieth century Talcott Parsons, interpreting society, states the important role of the individual activity of people. He proceeds from the fact that the system-forming element of society is precisely a single social action, the structure of which includes an actor (actor), goals of activity, as well as a social situation represented by means and conditions, norms and values. Therefore, society can be understood as a system of social actions of subjects, each of which performs certain social roles assigned to it in accordance with the status that it has in society.

In the future, T. Parsons begins to use in the interpretation of society paradigm of sociological universalism, focused not so much on the study of the motives and meanings of individual social actions, but on the functioning of impersonal structural components of society - its subsystems. Using systems concepts of biology, he formulated four functional requirements for systems:

1) adaptation (to the physical environment);

2) goal achievement (obtaining satisfaction);

3) integration (maintaining conflict-free and harmony within the system);

4) structure reproduction and stress relief, system latency (maintenance of samples, preservation of regulatory requirements and enforcement of them).

In society, these four functions of the social system, known by the acronym AGIL(A - adaptation, G - goal setting, I - integration, L - latency) are provided by the relevant social subsystems (economics - politics - law - socialization). At the same time, they complement each other as parts of a single social organism, making it possible to measure the social actions of actors and avoid contradictions. This is achieved through symbolic intermediaries - “means of exchange”, which are money (A), power (G), influence (I) and value commitments that provide social recognition and satisfaction from doing what you love (L). As a result, the equilibrium of the social system and the stable, conflict-free existence of society as a whole are achieved.

Society as a result of the rationalization of social action. A well-known German sociologist and social philosopher of the late XIX - early XX centuries. Maximilian Weber, who is the founder of "understanding sociology", also proceeds from the interpretation of society as a subjective-objective reality. However, in this process, for him, the determining factor in understanding what modern society is is the nature of the social actions of individuals. To understand it means to explain what is happening in society. This is the essence of the research approach of M. Weber, called methodological individualism.

The system-forming element in the theoretical model of society by M. Weber is a social action, which, unlike ordinary human actions, has two obligatory signs - "subjective meaning", which a person gives to his behavior and which motivates a person's actions, as well as "expectation", "orientation towards the Other", representing a possible response to the social action taken.

Describing the social actions of individuals, M. Weber identifies four of its main types that are found in modern society:

1) affective- based on actual affects and feelings and determined by emotional-volitional factors;

2) traditional- prompted by traditions, customs, habits and not being sufficiently meaningful, having the character of social automatism;

3) value-rational- characterized by conscious adherence to the system of values ​​accepted in society or a social group, regardless of its real consequences;

4) purposeful rational- determined by the conscious setting of a practically significant goal and the prudent selection of appropriate and sufficient means to achieve it, the criterion of which is the achieved success of the completed action.

If the first three types of social action dominated in traditional (pre-industrial) societies, purposeful rational action is typical for modern Western civilization. Acquiring a universal character, purposeful rational action leads to the rationalization of the entire social life and the "disenchantment of the world", the elimination of orientation towards traditional values ​​as prejudices. The formally rational principle constitutes and determines the existence of all spheres of society and human activity.

In the considered theoretical models of society , as well as in the concepts that gained popularity in the twentieth century J. G. Mead, J. Habermas, P. Bourdieu and a number of other thinkers, the philosophical understanding of society as a subjective-objective reality is clearly visible. The difference between them is that what considered in them as the system-forming elements of society, ultimately - social action as a substratum of "subjective meaning" or impersonal social structures, whose functions acquire an objectively logical character.