Philosophical reflection. Introduction

This specificity lies in the fact that society, unlike other natural objects, exists as a result of a constantly ongoing production process. This production requires physiological and biological prerequisites. However, they do not determine the essence of material production. Industrial complexes, which serve as the main instrument of human influence on natural objects, were created by man, not by nature. In the process of material production, man acts as a transformer of nature.

Animals also change nature, but they change by virtue of their presence. Thus, monkeys use thin leaves to fish out termites from nests, and with the help of chewed leaves they make something similar to a sponge for extracting water. However, animals not only do not improve their tools from generation to generation, which characterizes humans, but also do not change their animal way of life, which is adaptive in relation to nature.

For a person, one or another form of constant contact with nature is at the same time a certain way of life. By changing the tools with which a person influences nature, he changes his way of life. In addition, in the tools of labor and the products of his activity, he “materializes” and records his psychology, his worldview.

Society, as a specific subsystem of objective reality, is characterized by the presence of rational, spiritual elements in the form of philosophical, religious, aesthetic, environmental ideas, corresponding relationships, and institutions (institutions).

Any subsystem, including society, can be considered as a system that represents an inextricable unity of its constituent elements. The properties of a system cannot be reduced to a simple sum of its constituent elements. In relation to the outside world, in this case in relation to society and nature, the system acts as a whole.

Thus, society, on the one hand, acts as an inextricable component of a single whole - nature. On the other hand, having emerged from the depths of nature as a result of long evolution, it, in turn, acts as a certain system of elements.

The existence of any system is always based on the interconnection of its constituent elements. The moment of connection and interaction of system elements is usually called relationships. Based on this, we can say that society, as an integral social organism, it is a social system that includes a single set of social relations and interconnections, the bearers of which are a person and social layers and groups formed by people. It is formed and functions on the basis of a certain method of production, sociocultural sphere and way of life.

Since the production of material goods and the functioning of society as a social system cannot be carried out without the human (subjective) factor, it is human activity that acts as a specific way of existence of the public (social) as a material carrier of the social form of movement.

Personality is a complex biosocial phenomenon. There are many definitions of this concept, but they all consider the problem of personality in connection with the concepts of “man”, “individual”, “individuality”.

« Human“- this is the most general concept that characterizes a living being (homo sapiеns), exhibiting one or another degree of intelligence.

In public life, a person acts as an individual. Under the concept " individual“is understood as an individual representative of the human race without taking into account its biological characteristics, the specifics of real life and activity, i.e., as an impersonal being. Individuality- This is the unique identity of a person.

Every person living in society is characterized as a representative of a gender, as a specialist in some profession, as a citizen, as a family member. Thus, on the basis of life experience and the learning process, he realizes a certain social principle, manifests himself as personality.

The concepts of “person” and “personality” are often identified and used as synonyms. However, there is a difference between them. Firstly, a person is an integrity, and a personality is a part, a component of a person. Secondly, a person is a biosocial being, while the concept of “personality” characterizes the social side of a person, a person who has risen to a certain level of socialization.

Personality – This is a separate person with certain character traits, individual abilities and inclinations.

This concept is used only in relation to an individual person, and, moreover, starting only from a certain stage of his development. This cannot be said about the personality of a newborn or a small child. A person in the specific sense of the word is a person who has his own worldview, his own positions and a clearly expressed attitude towards life.

The integral features of personality are rationality, speech, ability to work, independence, desire for freedom, willpower, originality of feelings, responsibility. These personality traits are determined by the entire system of social relations, the entire structure of social life.

The main activity of an individual is work. Work reveals the social qualities of a person that make him a person. In this regard, it can be argued that society shapes a personality through its socialization, through the influence of the social environment on it.

Personality is not only shaped by society and the social environment, but also influences them depending on education, profession, social status and activity. The decisive role in this process belongs to society, which creates appropriate conditions for the activities of the individual.

At the same time, it must be taken into account that the relationship between the individual and society manifests itself depending on the individual life activity of the individual, as well as on the needs and capabilities of society, on what conditions are created in it for communication and isolation of the individual, for its self-creation.

One should also take into account the possibility of aggravation of the relationship between the individual and society, especially during periods of crisis in the social system, in conditions of weakening controllability of social processes and their inefficiency. These processes are now inherent in our society and are expressed primarily in value and practical reorientation in the field of economics, politics and spiritual spheres.

The social determination of personality is expressed in categories social status And social roles. These concepts determine the individual’s place in the social system, specify his lifestyle and social functions of the individual.

The concepts of social status and social roles are interconnected as possibility and reality, as potential and actual existence. Their mutual connection means that any status can be realized in one or another set of roles, determined both by this status and by the individual characteristics of the individual.

The relationship between social status and social roles is one of the aspects of freedom. That social system is freer, which, while eliminating the rigid definition of an individual’s status, at the same time allows for a greater number of role manifestations of the individual within each status.

The boundaries of an individual’s role behavior in society are clearly defined, since the displacement of different functions or their inadequate performance can lead to an imbalance of the entire social system. To ensure the boundaries of role behavior, an entire system of social control is used.

The diversity of social life also predetermines the variety of social roles of the individual. The student must understand the original, basic role of the individual, which consists Firstly, is that the individual is a hard worker. Secondly, a person always strives to act as an owner, using for this the results of his physical or intellectual labor. Third, the individual always manifests himself as a consumer of the values ​​produced by society. Fourth, the individual plays the role of a family man, which consists of household activities and raising his children. Fifthly, the individual performs the role of a citizen in accordance with the rights and responsibilities granted to him. At sixth, the individual plays a decisive role in protecting his country from any form of external aggression.

The listed main social roles are all interconnected and are performed by the individual depending on social maturity and professional preparedness.

The degree of this maturity and the level of activity determine the role of the individual in society, are a convincing basis for dividing personalities into ordinary and outstanding, and, therefore, determine their role in the historical process.

In this regard, it is necessary to understand the existing ideas about the role of personality in history.

Voluntarism denies the objective nature of the laws of social development and asserts that the development of society depends on the will of the “heroes” leading the “crowd”. Here the idea of ​​the determining role of the individual in the historical process is proclaimed.

Fatalism On the contrary, denying the role of the individual, he believes that in human history everything is predetermined by fate, that a person is not able to influence the destined course of events.

The leading thesis of modern socio-philosophical science in understanding the role of the individual in history is the thesis that the development of society is a natural process carried out thanks to the activities of people. If all history is made up of the activities of the masses and the individual, then each person makes his own contribution to the general flow of social life. This contribution depends both on social conditions and on individual personality traits. The conclusion follows from this: the most outstanding of them also have a deeper and more widespread impact on the course of historical events.

Theoretical, scientific analysis of society as a certain system occurs 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 - a social organism - is considered, but only some specific part of it. Thus, for historians, the real historical process does not appear in itself, but through individual fragments of reality: archival materials, documents, cultural monuments. For economists, the economy appears in the form of digital calculations and statistical materials.

The researchers did not and do not intend to cover the entire object. By viewing it from a certain angle, as an ideal model, researchers have the opportunity to analyze phenomena “in their pure form.”

The ideal or theoretical model of a particular fragment of society and the real society are different. However, analysis of the model allows us to identify the essential, natural in the object, and not get lost in the most complex labyrinth of social phenomena, facts and events.

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

Naturalism– attempts to explain the patterns 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.

Idealism– accepts consciousness (an absolute idea or complex of sensations) as the final and determining cause of social development.

Materialism– takes as its basis social existence, the real process of people’s lives, which is based on a certain method of production, the level of cultural development, the established way of life and the mentality corresponding to it, i.e., the mindset, the nature of feelings and thinking.

Each of the worldview approaches discussed above has its own merits. With their help, explanations of social processes were given and certain steps were taken in understanding society.

Sociocultural sphere includes science, culture, political, legal, ethical, aesthetic, religious and other views.

The essence of social consciousness is revealed through the solution of the question of the relationship between social existence and consciousness. Social existence- this is the real process of people’s lives, those social relations that develop in society on the basis of a given method of production and culture.

From the point of view of idealism, consciousness determines being. This point of view, which received its concentrated expression from Hegel and his followers, is based on the so-called “common sense”. People participate in social actions, guided by certain views, feelings, and motives, and researchers draw a conclusion from this about the determining role of consciousness. At the same time, the role of economics, engineering and technology in people’s lives is underestimated, the fact is ignored that a person, despite his consciousness, is not able to fully foresee the results of his activities (remember the catchphrase: “We wanted the best, but it turned out as always” ). Moreover, even in marriage contracts we are talking not so much about the spiritual, but about the material foundations of the people creating a family.

For materialists, social consciousness is derived from being, that is, being determines consciousness. From this point of view, public consciousness- this is a set of ideas, theories, views, views, feelings, moods existing in society that reflect the existence of people, their living conditions.

Social consciousness does not function outside the consciousness of specific people, but this is not proof of the identity or identity of individual and social consciousness. Individual consciousness- this is the inner (spiritual) world of the individual, her life experience, attitude and worldview. Through the prism of the specific conditions of a person’s life, it reflects not all of reality, but only its individual aspects and features, capturing much that is private, unique, and valuable for a given person.

The emergence, functioning and development of individual consciousness is the functioning and formation of the consciousness of a particular person. With the death of a person, individual consciousness completes its cycle, although certain results of the individual’s activity, his consciousness in one form or another are transmitted to other people and continue to live in their memory or in specific types of spiritual existence: musical works, poems, phrases, aphorisms. Persian poet of the 15th century. Ata Allah Arrani expressed the existence of traces of individual consciousness in the spiritual sphere in the following way: “And at the hour when my trace in all hearts is erased, only at this terrible hour say that I have died.”

In contrast to the individual, social consciousness acts as a collective, comprehensive memory, a diverse spiritual experience of society. As long as humanity exists, social consciousness will function. Abstracting from the particulars inherent in individual consciousness, it acts as a generalizing picture of the human worldview.

Social consciousness, by its origin (genetically), is formed from the most important achievements of individual consciousness. Certain ideas, concepts, forecasts pass through a “sieve” public opinion. Then, the existing “solid” residue is very meticulously passed test of time, eras with their constantly changing values, attitudes, approaches to understanding the achievements of human thought.

In turn, individual consciousness is social consciousness, since each person becomes an individual only in the process of socialization, assimilating what humanity has accumulated in the public consciousness in the previous period. According to Hegel, individual consciousness is an abbreviated, time-compressed invariant (fr. invariant– unchanging) tribal, social consciousness. Its task is to assimilate what has already been mastered by human culture.

Social consciousness is a multifaceted, very complex phenomenon of social life. It has a certain structure , which refers to the division of consciousness into its component elements and the nature of the relationship between them. There are many approaches to analyzing the structure of social consciousness. One of them is next. The structure of social consciousness is considered in three main aspects:

1. Specific historical , highlighting types of consciousness: consciousness of primitive society; consciousness of previous eras: antiquity, the Middle Ages, modern times; consciousness of modern society.

2. Epistemological (epistemological), highlighting the types: empirical, theoretical, artistic and figurative, mass, professional; and levels of consciousness: everyday (cognition of phenomena) and scientific (cognition of essence).

3. Sociological , highlighting the spheres: ideology and social psychology - and forms of consciousness: political, legal, moral (morality), aesthetic, religious.

Considering that when considering consciousness in the sociological aspect, its social component is most prominently highlighted, let us dwell on the analysis of social consciousness in this aspect in more detail.

The most important features of social consciousness are most clearly represented in ideology and social psychology.

Ideology is a holistic system of ideas and views that reflects the living conditions of people, their social existence from the position of certain social forces, as well as goals (programs) aimed at strengthening or developing (changing) existing relations in society.

Ideology arises through the activities of theorists: scientists, writers, religious, public and political figures. In form, acting as an expression of the needs of the entire society or certain social groups, ideology includes a worldview, slogans, directives for activity and aspirations for certain practical results. The main feature of ideology is its focus on socio-economic reality, its focus on mass consciousness, where the factor of faith is stronger than the factor of knowledge. In addition, an ideology must offer a certain way of life; without this, it cannot be accepted by people and cannot captivate them.

Ideology finds its expression in the Constitution of the state, in the policy statements of political parties, in religious scriptures, and in other documents and materials.

Social psychology is a system of beliefs, feelings, emotions, attitudes, which reflect, first of all, the immediate conditions of people’s existence.

Social psychology, unlike ideology, is a product of the spiritual life of the entire society or specific groups of people. It does not appear in the form of a generalized system of views, judgments and views, but manifests itself in individual unsystematized thoughts, emotions, feelings, and moods. Ideas and views in social psychology are empirical in nature, where emotional aspects are intertwined with intellectual ones.

Social psychology does not exist outside the psychology of individuals and develops in close connection with the development of individual psychology. However, if the phenomena of individual psychology are inherent only to the individual, then the phenomena and processes of social psychology are collective in nature and manifest themselves as the psychology of certain social groups, parties, societies, and nations. By their nature, people of the most diverse social groups and strata can be similar to each other or differ sharply from one another. But not only and not so much the individual characteristics and individual psyche of people prompt them to act in a certain way, but rather their common material and spiritual interests and needs.

The determining factor in the development of human psychology is social existence and especially the state of the economy, culture, education, and traditions. However, ideology also has an important influence on social psychology. Moreover, the impact of social existence (and how it is based on material conditions) and ideology has its own specifics. If material conditions influence social psychology without visible effort, spontaneously, then ideological influence presupposes certain targeted efforts. This focus lies, first of all, in the desire to develop a certain orientation of people, to push them to certain active actions. Ideas themselves lead to the work of thought, to the exchange of opinions, while people are pushed to action by feelings, moods, and psychological attitudes. One of the most important points in this process is the desire to turn ideas into beliefs and motivation for corresponding actions. This is necessary because knowledge of certain theoretical provisions does not yet mean actions in accordance with this knowledge. You can have excellent knowledge of certain theories and laws, but knowing and being convinced of their correctness and acting in accordance with them is far from the same thing. A person, for example, can perfectly know the existing laws of Ukraine and be a violator. It is great to know the rules of personal hygiene and not brush your teeth. In other words, ideology becomes a real force only when its main provisions are assimilated by people, encouraging people to take active action, determining the norms of their everyday behavior and life activities.

And one more important point: people’s devotion to certain ideas does not indicate the truth or falsity of these ideas, the morality or immorality of the adopted attitudes. In their activities, people can be guided by the best wishes, in maintaining their ideas they can reach the point of self-sacrifice, as, for example, suicide terrorists do today, but objectively they can defend false views, be reactionaries, conservatives, obstructing social and scientific and technological progress .

In turn, social psychology has a significant influence on ideological processes and political practice. Ideologists in their theoretical constructions took into account and are taking into account the specific state of social psychology. The history of human development shows that social psychology often contributed to the emergence and formation of ideology. This happens when ideologists, in their theoretical conclusions, come to the conclusions that this or that social group or society strives for in its needs and aspirations, and make a kind of “crystallization” of social psychology. But ultimately, ideology, given the state of social psychology, is created not so much as a result of its conceptualization, but on the basis of the previous spiritual heritage in the form of previous theories and views.

In the process of functioning of the spiritual sphere in the public consciousness, special forms of consciousness have differentiated, performing various social functions. Form of social consciousness is a system of social ideas, views, feelings, attitudes and beliefs that reflect a certain area of ​​spiritual life. The following most important forms of social consciousness are distinguished: political consciousness, legal consciousness, moral consciousness, aesthetic and religious consciousness.

With the emergence of civil society, the state appears and a new type of human activity emerges - politics.

Policy is the activity of social groups, nations, parties, the state, the core of which is the problem of power. Engaging in politics means defending the interests of certain groups of people and managing political processes.

Politics as certain relationships and actions is reflected in political consciousness.

Political consciousness is a set of ideas, theories, views, feelings, sentiments that reflect the relationship of social groups, parties, and society to power.

It includes political ideology and psychology.

Political ideology – it is a system of views that justifies the policies pursued by a particular party, social group or state. It finds its theoretical expression in the constitutions of states, in the programs and slogans of parties, in the programmatic statements of the leaders of political parties and social groups.

Political psychology includes feelings of solidarity and hatred, emotions, behavioral attitudes, sentiments of a particular social group or society, manifested in the process of implementing political goals and objectives.

Political consciousness is not constant, unchanging. It functions, develops and changes depending on the state of social existence, on changes in social practice and the sociocultural sphere.

Legal awareness– it is a set of people's beliefs regarding the legality or illegality of the duties, rights and actions of people in society.

Legal awareness is specific. Each social group, ethnic community and other associations of society have their own legal views on social processes, their own legal consciousness. Despite this, everyone is forced to reckon with the laws and rights existing in society.

Right is a system of mandatory norms, rules of human behavior, expressed in legal laws.

Law is a product of a specific economic, social, political, environmental, cultural state of society, historical traditions, the state and alignment of political forces in society. Legal norms are formed as a result of a compromise between various social groups and strata of society. This reconciles the interests of different social groups and prevents society from splitting. The right is protected by the power of the state.

Law, like political and legal consciousness, appears with the emergence of civil society and the state and has a certain impact on all aspects of society.

Unlike them, moral consciousness (moral) is the most ancient form of consciousness and social form of regulation of human activity. Morality is a set of views, ideas, norms and assessments of people’s behavior in society from the point of view of good, evil, justice, injustice, honor and dishonor.

Norms of morality or morality differ from other social norms, in particular from legal norms. If a right is violated, then the state, using the apparatus of coercion, can force a person to obey the requirements of the law. Behind morality, where the elements of social psychology are most clearly expressed, is the power of persuasion, example, traditions, public opinion, and culture. The requirements of law and morality do not coincide in everything. In law, punishment is in the foreground; in morality, education is in the foreground.

Moral relations, as a rule, have an emotional connotation, while in the categories of legal consciousness the logical, rational element predominates. For example, the law does not provide punishment for lack of politeness or sloppiness, while morality condemns it (emotionally). It is emotionality, as a specific feature of moral consciousness, that gives the principles and norms of morality greater vitality and flexibility. Through its influence on the consciousness of the individual (society), his psychology, morality fulfills its role as a regulator of behavior and contributes to the creation of certain moral relations between people.

Just like law, morality is historical and concrete. It contains a number of universal human elements, such as: “Thou shalt not steal!”, “Thou shalt not kill!” Along with them, there are many elements that different social forces in different historical eras have different value assessments.

Philosophy is the study of morality ethics. She explores the role and place of morality in the system of spiritual life of society, studies the genesis of morality, and also theoretically substantiates one or another of its systems.

One of the oldest forms of consciousness, along with morality, is aesthetic consciousness. In work, in the course of everyday practical activity and artistic creativity, a person has developed in himself the most valuable ability - the aesthetic reflection of reality. Its main feature is that the object is comprehended emotionally when a particular phenomenon undergoes aesthetic evaluation.

Aesthetic consciousness– it is a system of views and feelings that reflect reality from the point of view of the beautiful and the ugly, the comic and the tragic, the majestic and the insignificant.

The highest form of aesthetic consciousness is art. Art - This is a form of reflection of reality in artistic images.

As a form of reflection of reality, art includes specific types of art: literature, theater, music, painting, sculpture, cinema, etc. Each type of art in turn is divided into a number of varieties. Thus, literature includes prose, poetry, drama; music is divided into symphonic, chamber, pop, etc.

Art performs the following functions: 1) cognitive (for example, people know more about the Second World War from works of art than from historical documents); 2) aesthetic (works of art make people rejoice and admire, hate and be indignant, perceive the beautiful and be determined in relation to the base and ugly); 3) educational (communication with the world of beauty teaches people to distinguish the noble from the vulgar, the majestic from the insignificant); 4) social, ideological (works of art specifically express certain interests, emotional mood, feelings, attitudes and worldviews of certain social groups, their political, legal, moral and other views, ideas, concepts).

Art and its various types are the subject of a special study of art theory - aesthetics. Aesthetics as a philosophical science studies two interrelated types of spiritual phenomena: the essence of the aesthetic as a specific manifestation of a person’s value relationship to existence and the sphere of artistic (aesthetic) activity of people.

Religious consciousness– one of the ancient forms of awareness of the world and regulation of human activity. It is based on belief in and worship of supernatural forces.

The history of mankind has known a great many different types and variants of religions: primitive and complex; pagan, associated with belief in many gods and belief in one god; national and international or global.K world religions relate : Christianity, Islam and Buddhism.

Every religion includes three main elements: mythological– belief in the real existence of certain supernatural, miraculous powers; emotional – religious feelings arising under the influence of faith; normative – requirements for compliance with religious regulations.

The essence of religion is that believers perform certain actions in order to win over supernatural forces and, with their help, ward off various disasters from themselves and other people or obtain some benefit.

Religion, offering a person not just a body of abstract knowledge, but a way of life defined by one or another religious dogma, has a total impact on the individual. Religious education is, to a certain extent, the coding of personality with the help of rituals, its inclusion in a certain system of values. At its core, it is destructive, since it offers to escape from worldly worries and come to God, or, at worst, to engage in God-seeking or God-building.

In recent years, the spiritual life of Ukraine has seen profound changes in views on the role of religion in social life. Until recently, the word “religion”, translated from Latin, was interpreted as “belief in the existence of supernatural forces”, “object of worship”, “piety”. Nowadays, religion is often interpreted as “careful thinking”, “re-reading”, “unification”, and they also add: “piety”, “conscientiousness”, “piety”. The revival of spirituality is an important achievement of independent Ukraine.

In philosophy, consciousness is viewed as a multidimensional phenomenon, which is reflected in the existence of several main traditions of its study.

The substantial tradition proceeds from the recognition of the intrinsic value and self-sufficiency of consciousness, correlating the individual consciousness and spiritual world of a person with the substantial spirituality of the universe as a whole.

In the ancient Eastern mythological and philosophical worldview, such a correlation is illustrated by the ideas of Atman, Purusha, Tao (as the moral law of Confucius), in ancient Greek - by the ideas of Nous, the Logos, transforming world chaos into an ordered cosmos and partially embodied in the human mind. In modern times, this tradition has found clear expression in the interpretation of thinking as socio by R. Descartes, the transcendentalism of I. Kant, the idealism of G. Hegel, in postclassical philosophy it is reminded of by the structuralism of M. Foucault, the concept of consciousness of E. V. Ilyenkov, etc.

The attributive (functionalist) tradition considers human consciousness as the property of highly organized matter - the human brain - to reflect reality in the form of ideal images. It turns out that individual consciousness is determined by the forms of material existence twice: firstly, by the external world, reflected by consciousness and giving its phenomena an objective character (the origins of the understanding of consciousness as a reflection of reality are found in the “theory of outflow” of Democritus); secondly, by the activity of the brain as a material substrate of consciousness (a guess first expressed by the ancient Greek physician and philosopher Alcmaeon). In the first case, a psychophysical problem arises concerning the adequacy of the reproduction of objects of the external world in the human mind, in the second - a psychophysiological problem addressed to the analysis of neurophysiological (material) and mental (ideal) processes in human life.

If the first two traditions have an alternative nature in solving the problem of “substantiality or attribution” of human consciousness, then the existential-phenomenological tradition, formed in post-classical philosophy (E. Husserl, M. Scheler, M. Heidegger, J. P. Sartre, etc.) refuses such opposition. The founder of this tradition, E. Husserl, identified two, in his opinion, illegitimate tendencies in the understanding of consciousness, characteristic of classical philosophy and in fact expressing the essence of the two traditions we have already considered: the tendency of transcendental idealism, for which “objectivity exists in consciousness and through consciousness,” and the tendency of naturalism, which contains a “natural attitude”, meaning an unconditional belief in the existence of objects of the external world outside and independently of human consciousness.

In contrast to the substantial, attributive and existential-phenomenological traditions, for which consciousness is decisive in the structure of mental activity, the psychoanalytic tradition places it in a subordinate position in relation to another component of the psyche - the unconscious. Classical psychoanalysis, which found its expression in the works of S. Freud, had a dual influence on the further development of ideas about consciousness: on the one hand, it limited the sphere of influence of consciousness on human activity, thereby contributing to the debunking of the ideal of the “reasonable man” of the Enlightenment, on the other - gave a powerful impetus to the study of the influence of unconscious drives on human behavior in society.

Within the framework of non-classical psychoanalysis (A. Adler, K. Jung, E. Fromm, etc.), another tradition of studying consciousness (which, however, arose long before its appearance) was gradually honed - cultural-historical. According to it, man is a social being both by origin and by nature. The essence of man is not some constant value, but changes in the process of socio-historical development. This tradition of consciousness research has developed in several variants, among which the Marxist concept of the practical nature of consciousness occupies a prominent place. In it, consciousness is considered in inextricable connection with material, concrete-sensory activity to transform reality, as a result of which human consciousness itself is endowed with the ability not only to reflect the world, but also to be a special kind of activity for constructing subjective reality.

The sociocultural tradition of the study of consciousness endows it with such characteristics as ideality, objectivity, intentionality, projectivity, lability, highlighting as the main functions regulatory, cognitive, significative, axiological, prognostic, functions of goal setting, self-awareness, etc. Such multifunctionality of consciousness indicates its heterogeneity and multidimensionality. Therefore, in the structure of consciousness, levels (sensory-emotional, intuitive-volitional and rational-discursive) and projections (cognitive, axiological and regulatory) are sometimes distinguished. The main elements of the structure of consciousness are: firstly, the forms of sensory-visual and associative consciousness; secondly, forms of abstract logical thinking; thirdly, emotional-volitional regulators (emotions, feelings, experiences), giving human consciousness a unique, individual-personal character.

Speaking about human consciousness, we proceed from the fact that it is always individual and is associated with a person’s awareness of his existence in the world, his uniqueness (inimitability), as well as his involvement in what constitutes the secret of the existence of humanity as a whole. The desire to unravel it, relying both on one’s own life experience and on the experience of other people, gives rise to reflection, introducing a person to attempts to consider existential (meanings of life) problems. These are problems of a metaphysical nature that do not have an unambiguous and universal solution, and their comprehension does not imply the achievement of some pragmatic result like prescription knowledge. Nevertheless, their production is extremely important for a person, because it records the degree of his spiritual maturity.

A person who has a certain spiritual experience simply cannot help but think about what he is, what he will leave behind, and why he lives. . . It is impossible not to ask oneself these questions, since thinking about them allows a person to realize his individuality and try to comprehend his purpose in the world, feel connected to the world and declare himself as a being who thinks, doubts, suffers, but at the same time asserts his spiritual sovereignty.

Addressing these issues is all the more important for modern man, who, while comprehending the secrets of nature and transforming the world, is unable to understand himself, causing harm to his body, soul, and spirit. We can agree with M. Scheler that our era is the first when man has become completely problematic. He no longer knows what he is, but at the same time he knows that he doesn't know it. This last “knowledge” leaves hope that not everything is lost for a person, since he thinks about the existential problems of his own existence.

Consciousness can, with some degree of convention, be divided into 3 parts: mind, feelings and will.

The mind is the main part of consciousness. By definition, a person is a rational being. Reason is a condition and consequence of cognitive activity, which can be carried out rationally and irrationally. Reason can take the form of fantasy, imagination and logic. Reason provides the mutual understanding of people necessary for their communication and joint activities.

Feelings are a condition and consequence of a person’s selective attitude towards the world. Everything that exists in the world evokes in a person positive and negative emotions, or a neutral attitude. This is due to the fact that something is useful to a person, something is harmful, and something is indifferent, something in the world is beautiful, something is ugly. As a result, a person develops a rich emotional world, because everything that happens in the world has varying degrees of significance and a different nature of significance for a person. Emotions and feelings express an evaluative attitude towards the world. The wealth of feelings and emotions is manifested in the vocabulary of the language. There are several hundred words that contain feelings and emotions. The poverty of a person’s individual vocabulary also speaks of his emotional poverty of his consciousness, and, consequently, of his personality.

Will is a part of consciousness that ensures the achievement of pre-set goals by mobilizing the forces necessary to achieve them. A person, unlike an animal, is able to look into the future and consciously, through the will, form the options for the future that he needs. Willpower is needed to concentrate attention on certain thoughts, feelings, actions, and objects of the external world. Will is also needed to resist adverse influences and to ensure mental stability. Lack of will makes a person susceptible to adverse influences and unable to achieve goals due to the inability to make choices and concentrate on a given direction.

Consciousness and subconsciousness. The human psyche includes, in addition to consciousness, the subconscious. The subconscious is a part of his psyche that is closed to a person. The subconscious, unlike the conscious mind, works continuously, even when a person is sleeping. Sleep is the shutdown of consciousness only. The subconscious contains everything that a person had in his consciousness: in his mind, in his feelings, in his will. The content of consciousness passes into the subconscious. In a state of hypnosis, you can open a “room” of the subconscious and help a person replay any episode (any picture) of his life that is imprinted in consciousness.

On the other hand, a variety of ideas, guesses, and intuitive insights constantly come from the subconscious into consciousness, helping a person solve complex problems that he cannot solve with the help of pure logic. Creative thinking is impossible without these ideas that come from the subconscious to the conscious.

Today there are a large number of educational, training, therapeutic, and management methods (technologies) that are based on a direct invasion of the subconscious, bypassing consciousness. It has been noticed that while giving a momentary effect, they lead to the destruction of the psyche, impaired memory and thinking. Ultimately, this leads to a weakening of the powers of the soul necessary for other, non-earthly purposes.

Consciousness can be interpreted as a complex multi-level system, including natural-psychic, individual-personal and sociocultural projections. Accordingly, the problem of the genesis (origin) of consciousness can be considered at several levels: in the context of general natural evolution, in connection with the formation of culture and society, and in the aspect of ontogenesis (individual human development). The natural basis for the emergence of consciousness was the property of reflection as the ability of an object to reproduce the characteristics of the object interacting with it. Acting as an information reflection, consciousness is rooted in this general natural property, presented at the levels of inanimate, living and social matter. Development of forms of reflection in living nature: irritability (immediate holistic reaction of the body to biologically important (biotic) influences); sensitivity (direct differentiated reaction of the body to biotic factors, arising in connection with the formation of the nervous system and the ability to sense); psyche is the highest form of reflection in nature, characterized as an adaptation mechanism that ensures the search behavior of highly organized animals in accordance with the orientation towards biotic and abiotic factors. The psyche is based on species-specific, genetically fixed programs of life activity (instincts) and on individual experience of adaptation to the external environment (a set of conditioned and unconditioned reflexes). At the same time, human consciousness is qualitatively different from the psyche of animals. The main distinguishing features here are: abstract logical thinking, associated with the ability to reproduce the essential characteristics and connections of reality, not given directly in perception; goal setting as the ability to ideally construct the desired product of activity, which allows a person to creatively transform reality, rather than passively fit into it; self-awareness, which determines the possibility of separating oneself from the external environment; language as a second signaling system, forcing us to navigate not so much by real physical processes, but by their sign-symbolic, linguistic correlates. The formation of these features became possible thanks to socio- and cultural genesis. At the origins of consciousness there was a practice where the primary act of thinking actually acts as an “internal action”, carried out not with real objects, but with their ideal projections. The specificity of the prelinguistic stage in the evolution of consciousness, which chronologically coincides with the period of anthropogenesis (5 million years ago). - 50-40 thousand years ago), is associated with its visual and effective nature. Well-known archaic cultures illustrate the next qualitative stage, associated with a figurative and symbolic perception of the world and represented in models of the mythological worldview. The transition “from myth to logos” took place in the 8th and 20th centuries. BC e. and at the level of cultural genesis is associated with the emergence of philosophy as rational-theoretical knowledge that concretizes logical-conceptual thinking. It is significant that the ontogenesis of consciousness in its main characteristics reproduces its phylogeny. J. Piaget distinguishes such stages of intelligence development as sensorimotor, associated with the implementation of direct actions with objects, pre-operational, where symbolic actions are already performed, and operational, which already implies the possibility of complex combinations of “internal actions”, initially with specific symbols, then with concepts . The transition from an action to a word-symbol, and then to the combinatorics of concepts, apparently, is reproduced in a single genetic sequence both at the level of individual development and in the history of mankind.

. In mythological thinking there is no there is no opposition between man and nature

The actual theoretical attitude towards nature consists of separating philosophy from mythology. In terms of value, this relationship turns out to be twofold:

That part of nature involved in human activity is interpreted from a utilitarian-pragmatic point of view as a source of resources for man and his place of residence (this value position remains to this day);

Nature as a whole is perceived as an ideal of perfection and harmony. This type of value relationship also determines the direction of theoretical reflections on nature. In ancient philosophy, nature is interpreted as the focus of logos, the standard of organization, the measure of wisdom.

The attitude towards nature changes significantly with the affirmation of Christianity, which considers it as the embodiment of the material feather, as the “bottom”, opposed to the absolute, spiritual, that is. To God, contrary to the aga of antiquity, the main idea here is not merging with nature, but rising above it. The Renaissance again turns to the ancient ideals of interpreting the natural as the embodiment of harmony and perfection. This position is later reproduced in various contexts, namely in the concept of natural law. Rousseau, in the schools of literature and philosophy, which proclaimed the slogan "back to nature" seeing in it the only salvation from the destructive influence of bourgeois orders

This ideal of attitude towards nature. Modern times have played a significant role in transforming nature into an object of scientific research. Experienced natural science puts forward the idea of ​​“testing” nature. In relation to the cognitive and practical activity of man, nature begins to act as a sphere of activity, as an inert force that requires submission, the establishment of dominance over him by reason and reason.

This type of relationship to nature persists until the world created by human activity reaches a planetary scale and becomes equal in volume to the scale of processes in nature. Then it's utilitarian. The pragma of climate change towards nature is complemented awareness of the dependence of nature itself on man. On this basis, a new type of value attitude towards nature is emerging. (socio-historical) which comes from the assessment of nature as a unique and universal space where man and his entire culture are located. Such an assessment presupposes a responsible attitude towards nature, a constant measurement of the needs of people and the capabilities of nature, taking into account the fact that man himself and humanity are part of nature.

In scientific and theoretical terms, this value reorientation corresponds to the transition from the idea of ​​absolute domination over nature to the idea of ​​relations between nature and society as relations of partners, commensurate in their potential. The first theoretical identification of this position was created. E. Vernadskim noosphere concept

Awareness of the potential and sometimes actual superiority of society over nature is gradually giving rise to a new approach based on the idea of ​​a unified, balanced and responsible management of social and natural processes and conditions.

Currently, the term “nature” is used in both a broad and narrow sense. In a broad sense nature - this is everything that surrounds us. Nature - objective material reality in all its versatility and unity of forms. In this sense, nature is objective reality that was originally given, not created by man

In a narrower sense nature - this is an object of science, or rather - cumulative object of natural science

The concept of “nature” provides a basic scheme for understanding and explaining a particular subject of study (for example, ideas about space and time, movement, causality, etc.). This general concept of nature is developed within the framework of the philosophy and methodology of science, which reveals its main characteristics, while relying on the results of the natural sciences. For example, with the creation of the theory of relativity, views on the spatio-temporal organization of natural objects changed significantly, the development of modern cosmology enriched the idea of ​​​​the direction of natural processes; achievements of microworld physics contribute to a significantly broader concept of causality; the progress of ecology has led to an understanding of the deep principles of the integrity of nature as a single system.

The most common interpretation of the concept of nature is the totality of natural conditions for the existence of human society. In this sense, the concept of nature characterizes its place and role in the system of historically changing attitudes towards it of man and society. This concept is used to designate not only natural, but also the material conditions of human existence created by man - “second nature”.

The real basis of man’s relationship to nature is its activity, which is always carried out in nature and the materials provided by him. Therefore, changes in attitudes towards nature throughout the history of society are due, first of all, to changes in the nature and scale of human activity.

The production process, taken in its most general form, is the influence of people on objects and forces of nature in order to obtain and create the means of subsistence necessary for their life: food, clothing, living background, etc.

. Human labor in the true sense of the word, it is a purposeful activity, as a result of which an object is created that was already in a person’s mind, i.e. perfect. Human labor differs from the activities of even the most developed animals in that:

Firstly, it represents man's active influence on nature, and not a simple adaptation to it, which is characteristic of animals;

Secondly, it involves systematic use and, most importantly, production of tools;

Thirdly, work means purposeful conscious activity person;

Fourthly, from the very beginning it has a social character and is unthinkable outside of society; it precedes society and human activity, forming their universal and necessary prerequisite

It is the opposition between man and nature that is formed historically and arises in religious consciousness. There is a gap between man and nature

The basis of the relationship between nature and society is objective-sensual, expedient practice. Nature forms for a person the totality of natural conditions for the existence of human civilization, the subject of human labor, the objective material principle in man himself, the general and main object of scientific knowledge and ignorance in relation to practice, distinguish between “virgin”, “pure” nature and the second created by man in the process of labor nature" - humanized, or socialized; - crowded, or socialized.

. Production is a process of interaction between society and nature. In the production process, people not only create material products and means of subsistence. By producing material goods, people thereby produce and reproduce their own social relations.

Directly or indirectly the development of society and people's activities is influenced by the geographical environment . Geographical environment- part of the earth’s natural environment, which is included at a given historical stage in the process of social production and is a necessary condition for the existence and development of society

The influence of the geographical environment on social life is always mediated by material production. However, in some sociological concepts, the influence of the geographical environment on society is either completely ignored (geographical indeterminism), or is considered as the main cause of historical progress. Thus, supporters of geographical determinism (French philosopher Montesquieu, English historian Bocquel and French geographer Reclus) tried to explain the differences in the social system and history of individual peoples by the influence of the natural conditions in which they live.

The most reactionary doctrine within the geographical schools has become geopolitics - a doctrine that tries to justify the aggressive policy of states by the geographical environment, in particular the peculiarities of their geographical position, the wealth or poverty of mineral resources, the rate of population growth, etc. Geopolitics arose before. The First World War. One of its founders. FRATZEL (Germany) considered states as organisms that must fight for “living space.” Geopolitics became especially widespread in the fascist era. Germany and Japan i. Japan.

In justifying external expansion, geopolitics appeals to geographical determinism, racism, Malthusianism, social Darwinism and organic theory, while the history of society is explained as a struggle for existence and “living space” between various state formations and systems that are likened to biological organisms.

The leading place in modern geopolitics has been occupied by the justification of the superiority of "Western European civilization" over the peoples of other continents (E. Hartington), as if changed by the climate, as well as the geographically conditioned antagonism of the "oceanic" states. West and "continental" states. East, between the "advanced" industrial. North and "backward" agrarian. The South, that is, developed countries and what are called developed countries and those that are developing.

Of course, the direction of people’s economic activity varies among different nations; it largely depends on the geographical conditions of their life, but the importance of this factor should not be exaggerated

The history of philosophy goes back about 2600 years, during which time its scope has expanded greatly. Today, the range of questions and problems that philosophy considers goes far beyond the scope of problems of ancient philosophy. On the other hand, in philosophy there are so-called “eternal” questions, as a kind of core around which its diversity is formed.

It turns out that with all the changes in social life, something unchanged remains in the essence of man, constantly reproducing fundamental questions (the question of the meaning of life, of time and eternity, of the relationship between freedom and necessity). Eternal questions are also called worldview questions. In the 8th-6th centuries. BC. (the so-called “Axial Age”) there is a split in traditional society, an attempt to create a rational worldview, and the emergence and emergence of eternal questions.

The main problem (or main issue) of a worldview is a person’s attitude to the world as a whole. Worldview is a person’s attitude to the surrounding reality and to himself, enshrined in ideals, beliefs, knowledge, principles and systematically reproduced.

Topological structure of worldview:

Philosophy has always been interested in the problem of identifying the essence and purpose of Man, thinking about his place in the world, his relationships with the world and with other people, etc. In this regard, philosophy responded to the “demands” of the era, acting as the self-awareness of culture.

The subject of philosophy is universal properties and connections.

The main question of philosophy is the question of the relationship of consciousness to being, spiritual to material, the solution of which predetermines the polarization of philosophies. teachings, their belonging to one of two chapters. directions in philosophy - materialism and idealism.

Materialism is one of the chapters. f. directions, cat. recognizes the objectivity, primacy, non-creation and indestructibility of matter existing outside and independent. from consciousness and the underlying fundamental reality. Idealism is one of the chapters. eg f.; comes from the primacy of the spiritual, mental, mental and the secondary nature of the material, natural, physical.

In modern literature the following problems are formulated: How does spirit relate to matter? Do supernatural forces exist in the depths of existence? Is the world finite or infinite? In what direction is the Universe developing and does it have a purpose in its eternal movement? Do there exist laws of nature and society, or does man only believe in them due to his inclination towards order? What is a person and what is his place in the universal interconnection of the phenomena of the world? What is the nature of the human mind? How does a person understand the world around him and himself? What is truth and error? What is good and evil? In what direction and according to what laws is human history moving and what is its hidden meaning?

The subject area of ​​philosophy is most clearly presented in I. Kant. Kant formulates the main questions that philosophy must answer in its world-historical meaning:

What do I know?

What should I do?

What can I hope for?

What is a person?

The answers to these questions, Kant writes, allow philosophy to determine: “1. The sources of human knowledge, 2. The scope of the possible and useful application of all knowledge, and, finally, 3. The limits of reason.”

"What is a man?" This, according to Kant, is the result of philosophizing, when, based on the solution of previous problems, the role, place and purpose of man in the world are clarified. This is the subject of what today we call philosophical anthropology.

Each level of philosophy corresponds to a specific philosophical discipline. In addition, there are “auxiliary” philosophical disciplines. Let us consider the areas of philosophical knowledge.

1. Ontology. The most important questions of ontology as a doctrine of being are what it means to exist, what truly exists, how being and existence are related, questions related to the categories of space, time, patterns, matter, memory and communication.

2. Philosophical anthropology considers man as the subject of research. An attempt to identify the universal in the existence of people contributes to a person’s self-awareness and clarification of his own place in the world, his differences from living nature. This discipline is of particular importance in our time, when the development of humanity as a whole is becoming more and more meaningful and people acutely feel that their self-development must be combined with the development of society, the latter must provide every person with a decent existence. The main problems are: finding out who a person is, whether there are any unchangeable foundations of human existence, what is the origin of a person, what forces drive a person in the world, what are the capabilities and prospects of a person.

3. Epistemology acts as a branch of philosophy that studies the conditions, essence and boundaries of knowledge, the relationship of knowledge to reality, as well as the conditions of reliability and truth of knowledge. The subject of epistemology is the process of cognition and knowledge as the result of this process. Fundamental questions of epistemology: how is knowledge possible, what is knowledge, what is its structure and what types of knowledge exist, what is the essence of cognitive activity, what is truth, what are the criteria for the truth and reliability of knowledge, what means and methods are needed to obtain true knowledge. The main question of epistemology is the question of the fundamental knowability of the world by human consciousness (is the world knowable?).

4. Social philosophy is a discipline associated with clarifying questions about what society is, what can be classified as social phenomena, how social patterns realize themselves in general existence. A section of social philosophy is the philosophy of history, which explores the essence, meaning and course of the history of society and man as a subject of the historical process. The phenomenon of sociality as a special kind of being.

Main questions: what is essentially a “social organism” (society), how nature and society interact, what is the structure of society, what is the role of the individual in society, questions about the end and beginning of history.

Philosophy is a form of social consciousness associated with understanding the essence of social and natural existence, the world as a whole, man’s place in this world, man’s relationship to the world and the meaning of human life.

Philosophy is a special form of social consciousness and is characterized by the following most important features:

1) The starting point and goal of philosophy is man, his place in the world and his relationship to this world;

2) Philosophy studies the most general foundations of socio-natural existence, the universal patterns of development of the world as a whole;

2) The main means of knowledge is the human mind - Logos;

3) The empirical basis of knowledge is the entire set of special sciences and socio-historical practice;

4) Philosophy combines, in the process of studying reality, a theoretical-cognitive approach with a value-based approach (where and how the acquired knowledge finds its practical implementation, and what is the value and significance of this knowledge for man and humanity).

The specificity of philosophy is expressed in the specificity of its language. The language of philosophy is the language of categories and concepts, i.e. philosophy operates with concepts, categories - products of reason.

If we talk about the language of philosophy, it is different from the language of science, since science and philosophy have different subject areas, philosophy and science master the world with the help of different languages. The language of science is concepts and terms. The language of philosophy is categories (the concept of the highest degree of generality). The problems facing science are solved sooner or later, without turning into eternal problems, and the solution to these problems occurs in accordance with methodological principles. Their use in science systematizes phenomena, correlates them with one or another paradigm; philosophy cannot rely only on scientific methods, such as analysis, synthesis, deduction and induction.

Reflection (from Late Latin reflexio - turning back) is the subject’s turning to himself, to his knowledge or to his own state.

In psychology, as well as in the everyday sense, reflection is called any reflection of a person aimed at analyzing himself (self-analysis) - his own states, his actions and past events. Reflection, in a simplified definition, is “talking to oneself.”

As a special problem, reflection was the subject of discussion already in ancient philosophy: Socrates emphasized the tasks of self-knowledge, Plato and Aristotle interpreted thinking and reflection as attributes of the divine mind, through which the unity of the conceivable and thought is manifested. In medieval philosophy, reflection was interpreted as self-expression through the Logos of the peace-making activity of God, his “smart energy.” Starting with Descartes, reflection is given the status of the main methodological principle of philosophy. It was argued that thanks to self-awareness, a person is freed from direct attachment to existence and is elevated to the hypostasis of a free and autonomous subject of thought, around which the surrounding world is centered.

In philosophy the task is completely different from that in natural science. Its task is not reflection of thought about an object, but reflection of thought itself. Having a mental reflection of an object, we reflect in natural science the content of the thought, but not the thought itself. In thinking about thinking, we must reflect on the thought itself, that is, figuratively speaking, we must catch the network itself. It is this problem of philosophical reflection that is central in the work of M.K. Mamardashvili. To cognize the thought itself, he said, you need to get rid of its content, because the content of a thought is consciousness about something that obscures the thought itself. Reflection on the content of a thought is just new content.

REFLECTION is a concept of philosophical discourse that characterizes the form of human theoretical activity, which is aimed at understanding one’s own actions, culture and its foundations; the activity of self-knowledge, revealing the specifics of the mental and spiritual world of man. Reflection is ultimately an awareness of practice, the world of culture and its modes - science, art, religion and philosophy itself. In this sense, reflection is a way of defining and a method of philosophy, and philosophy is a reflection of reason. Reflection of thinking on the ultimate foundations of knowledge and human life is the actual subject of philosophy. The change in the subject of philosophy was also expressed in a change in the interpretation of reflection. Reflection has two meanings - reflection, which is objectified in language and works of culture, and reflection itself, reflecting on the acts and content of feelings, ideas and thoughts.

One of the problems posed in connection with reflection procedures was the possibility of the existence of pre-reflective and, in principle, unreflective experience. If classical rationalism did not allow the existence of pre- and extra-reflective experience, gradually expanding the scope of reflection from perception to will, as long as reflection presupposes the efforts of thought and will, then irrationalism emphasized the irreducibility of direct experience, its originality and impossibility of reflection. Reflection is often identified with the processes of self-awareness, self-knowledge, self-understanding and understanding of the Other, although for a long time in the history of philosophy, acts of self-awareness belonged to anthropology and psychology, and acts of reflection - to ways of organizing and justifying thinking focused on comprehending the truth, and thereby to the extrapersonal, divine or transcendental knowledge. The promotion of the idea of ​​reflection and its application to cognitive acts was associated with the metaphysics of light and with the interpretation of knowledge as the “natural” or “divine” light of the mind.

Features of reflection are:

1) retrospectiveness, which assumes that thought turns back to the experiencing subject,

2) makes his acts and their content an object of reflection,

3) opposes creation and objective-practical activity,

4) producing your subjectivity

5) and maintaining a detached distance between what is reflected and the subject of reflection.

The metaphysics of subjectivity, which considered reflection as thinking about thinking, is contrasted in modern philosophy with the ontological interpretation of acts of understanding, inseparable from the reality with which they are associated and which they express. Thinking is interpreted as thinking-in-the-flow of life, and the distancing associated with the emphasis on the reflexive interpretation of thinking is seen as limited and requiring deconstruction.

The problem of reflection was first posed by Socrates, according to which the subject of knowledge can only be that which has already been mastered, and since The activity of his own soul is most subject to man; self-knowledge is the most important task of man. Plato reveals the importance of self-knowledge in connection with such a virtue as prudence, which is knowledge of oneself; there is a single knowledge that has no other subject than itself and other knowledge. Theoretical speculation, philosophical reflection, is valued as the highest virtue. Aristotle considers reflection as an attribute of the divine mind, which in its pure theoretical activity posits itself as an object and thereby reveals the unity of the object of knowledge and knowledge, the conceivable and the thought, their identity.

The difference between the object of thought and the thought, according to Aristotle, is inherent in the human mind; the divine mind is characterized by the identity of thought and the object of thought: “the mind thinks of itself, since we have the best in it, and its thought is thinking about thinking.” In the philosophy of Plotinus, self-knowledge was the method of constructing metaphysics; having distinguished between sensation and reason in the soul, he considered self-knowledge to be an attribute only of the latter: only the mind can think of the identity of itself and the thinkable, for here thought and thought about thought are one, because the thinkable is a living and thinking activity, i.e. active thought itself.

Self-knowledge is the only function of the mind, reflection is associated with self-contemplation of Sophia's wisdom, with the transfer of an object into the subject and contemplation of it as something unified, in this case the process of contemplation is similar to the process of self-contemplation. Only by plunging into the depths of his own spirit can a person merge with both the object of contemplation and the “deity approaching in silence”; his soul becomes a self-soul, and his mind becomes a self-mind, which generates external objects from the depths of his own spirit. Ancient philosophy was interested primarily in ways to introduce man to the world of ideas (eidos). Self-awareness of the individual, the justification of a moral decision in the subject himself presupposes not just the moral sovereignty of the individual, but the justification of all norms and regulations by the subject himself with the help of his reflection. For ancient philosophy, virtue coincided with knowledge, and eidetic discourse coincided with ethical-axiological discourse.

In medieval philosophy, reflection was considered primarily as a way of existence of the divine mind and as a way of existence of the spirit on the path to faith: the spirit knows the truth insofar as it returns to itself. Augustine believed that the most reliable knowledge is a person’s knowledge of his own being and consciousness. Delving deeper into his consciousness, a person reaches the truth contained in the soul, and thereby comes to God. According to John Scotus Eriugena, the contemplation of one's essence by God is the act of creation. Thomas Aquinas noted the need for reflection on acts of thinking: “Truth is known by the intellect according to the fact that the intellect turns to its actions and ... knows its own actions.” He interprets reflection as a specific ability of the mind, which allows one to comprehend the universal and thanks to which a person achieves an understanding of form. Renaissance thinkers, putting forward the idea of ​​man as a microcosm in which all the forces of the macrocosm are expressed in a concentrated form, proceeded from the fact that knowledge of natural forces is at the same time self-knowledge of man, and vice versa.

Changes in the interpretation of reflection in the philosophy of the New Age are associated with highlighting the problems of substantiating knowledge and with the search for the foundations of knowledge in the subject. The autonomy of reflection as a way of organizing knowledge was first conceptualized in the metaphysics of subjectivity. In Descartes' Metaphysical Meditations, reasoning was based on methodical doubt: only one thing is certain and beyond doubt - my own doubt and thinking, and thereby my existence. The consciousness about oneself obtained through reflection - the only reliable position - is the basis for subsequent conclusions about the existence of God, physical bodies, etc. Locke, rejecting Descartes' concept of innate ideas, pursues the idea of ​​the experiential origin of knowledge and, in this regard, distinguishes two types of experience - sensory experience and reflection (internal experience).

The latter is “...the observation to which the mind subjects its activity and the methods of its manifestation, as a result of which ideas of this activity arise in the mind.” Possessing independence in relation to external experience, reflection is nevertheless based on it. From reflection on the appearance of various ideas in our minds, ideas of time arise - sequence and duration, thinking, active force, etc. Locke expands the scope of reflection, believing that feelings can also serve as its source. The object of reflection can be not only the operations of our mind, but also perception, doubt, faith, reasoning, cognition, desire - “all the various actions of our mind” (ibid.). L. Vauvenargues defined reflection as “a gift that allows us to focus on our ideas, evaluate them, modify them and combine them in different ways.” He saw reflection as “the starting point of judgment, evaluation, etc.”

Leibniz, criticizing Locke's distinction between external and internal experience, defined reflection as “attention directed to what lies within us” and emphasized the existence of changes in the soul that occur without consciousness and reflection. Having distinguished between distinct and indistinct ideas, he connects the former with the reflection of the spirit reflecting on itself, and the latter with truths rooted in feelings. In reflection, he saw an ability that animals do not have, and he distinguished between perception-perception and apperception-consciousness, or reflective knowledge of the internal state of the monad.

In self-awareness and reflection, he saw the source of the moral identity of the individual, whose transition to the next stage of its development is always accompanied by reflection. Leibniz drew attention to the difficulty that arises when we assume that there is nothing in the soul of which it is not conscious, i.e. to the exclusion of unconscious processes: “It is impossible for us to reflect constantly and explicitly on all our thoughts, otherwise our mind would reflect on each reflection ad infinitum, never being able to move on to any new thought.” He argues with Locke regarding the fact that simple ideas are created through reflection. In Leibniz’s concept, reflection becomes an independent act of thought, determining its specificity, and acts as the ability of monads to apperceive, to realize by thought their acts and their content.

Kant considered reflection in connection with the study of the foundations of the cognitive ability, a priori conditions of knowledge, and interpreted it as an integral property of the “reflective ability of judgment.” If the determining ability of judgment appears when the particular is subsumed under the general, then the reflective ability is needed in the case where only the particular is given, and the general still needs to be found. It is through reflection that concepts are formed. Reflection “does not deal with the objects themselves in order to obtain concepts directly from them,” it is “... awareness of the relationship of given ideas to our various sources of knowledge, and only thanks to it their relationship to each other can be correctly determined.”

Kant distinguished between logical reflection, in which ideas are simply compared with each other, and transcendental reflection, in which the compared ideas are associated with one or another cognitive ability - with sensibility or reason. It is transcendental reflection that “contains the basis for the possibility of objective comparison of ideas with each other.” Relations between representations or concepts are fixed in “reflective concepts” (identity and difference, compatibility and contradiction, internal and external, defined and determined), in which each member of the pair reflects the other member and at the same time is reflected by it. Rational knowledge, based on reflective concepts, leads to amphiboly - ambiguities in the application of concepts to objects, if its methodological analysis is not carried out, its forms and boundaries are not identified. Such an analysis is carried out in transcendental reflection, which connects concepts with a priori forms of sensibility and reason and constructs the object of science.

In Fichte, reflection coincides with philosophy, interpreted as a scientific doctrine, i.e. as a reflection of scientific knowledge about oneself. Reflection, which obeys certain laws, belongs to the necessary modes of action of the mind. “Scientific teaching presupposes that the rules of reflection and abstraction are known and significant.” Schelling contrasts creation and reflection. He places emphasis on direct comprehension of the essence, intellectual intuition. At the same time, reflection characterizes the third era in the development of philosophy as the history of self-consciousness. In the highest act of reflection, the mind reflects simultaneously on both the object and itself, “being at once an ideal and a real activity.” Unlike Fichte, who sought to limit reflection to thinking about thinking itself, Schelling spoke of the unconscious existence of reflection in nature, which in man comes to awareness and actualization of its potentials. Nature, becoming an object of reflection, “for the first time completely returns to itself, as a result of which it is evident that it is initially identical with what is perceived in us as rational and conscious.”

In Hegel's philosophy, reflection is the driving force for the development of the spirit. Considering rational reflection as a necessary moment of the cognitive process and criticizing the romantics in this regard, Hegel at the same time reveals its limitations: fixing abstract definitions, reflection of reason is not able to reveal their unity, but claims to be final, absolute knowledge. In “Phenomenology of Spirit,” the spirit’s reflection on itself appears as a form of self-development of the spirit, as a basis that allows one to move from one form of spirit to another. Hegel traces here the specifics of the movement of reflection at each of the three stages of the development of the spirit. Logical forms of reflection correspond to historical forms of self-consciousness, the development of which ends in the “unhappy consciousness”, bifurcated within itself and therefore fixing the abstract moments of reality in their isolation from each other.

Hegel believed that the object embodies the spirit, which reveals itself in it (as Hegel put it, the object itself reflects into itself). The essence of reflection in a logically generalized form is considered by Hegel in “The Science of Logic” in connection with the analysis of essence and appearance; Unlike the categories of being, which are characterized by a transition from one to another, and from the categories of the concept, where we are talking about their development, the doctrine of essence fixes the relationship of paired categories, each of which is reflected - reflected, shines in the other.

Hegel identifies three types of reflection:

1) positing, which corresponds to the descriptive sciences,

2) external, or comparative, which reflects the dominance of the comparison method in science, and

3) determining.

The latter captures the moments of essence in their independence and isolation from each other. In general, Hegel’s doctrine of reflection reveals the categorical structure of that science that fixes identity, difference and opposition, but does not comprehend contradiction, a science that contrasts the subject with a thing as its object and does not reveal their unity, expressed in the life of the absolute spirit. The ascent from the abstract to the concrete appears in Hegel as a self-reflective mutual illumination of abstract moments and the grasping of their integrity in speculative thinking. Reflection turns out to be a way for Hegel to mutually reflect and unite opposites, a form of self-conscious production of the spirit.

The philosophy of German idealism, which emphasized the reflexive mechanisms of thinking activity and the relationship of thought to reality, was opposed by another line that emphasized the importance of non-reflective processes (the philosophy of feeling and faith of F. G. Jacobi, the anthropology of L. Feuerbach, the philosophy of will of A. Schopenhauer, the philosophy of the unconscious E. . von Hartmann, etc.). S. Kierkegaard, emphasizing that a single individual is hidden, made a distinction between objective and subjective thinking. Objective thinking “is indifferent to the thinking subject and his existence, relies on the result in everything and contributes to humanity being deceived,” subjective thinking has a different type of reflection, namely “a type of internality, a type of possession, as a result of which it belongs precisely to this subject and to no one.” to another."

Subjective reflection is a double reflection that thinks of the universal and at the same time the internal that subjectivity possesses. Kierkegaard's analysis of double subjective reflection allows him to draw attention to the problematic nature of the message that exists in dialogue - on the one hand, internally isolated subjectivity “wants to communicate itself,” and on the other, it strives to remain “in the interior of its subjective existence.” The existential message is presented in a dialogue, the subject of which is in the inter-existence sphere, in the common territory between the existence of the questioner and the answerer. The reality of existence cannot be communicated, and it is expressed only in style. Kierkegaard drew attention not only to the fundamental differences between the forms of reflection, but also to the significance of dialogue as a double reflection, where I and the Other are in a relationship of double reflection, and the internal subjectivity of an isolated thinker takes on a universal form and, without dissolving in the Other, shines with its reflection, reflective light.

In Marxism, reflection was interpreted as a way to substantiate metaphysical, rational philosophy. A negative attitude towards reflection as a specifically rational way of identifying the characteristics not of an object, but of everyday consciousness and its prejudices presupposed an appeal to the comprehension of acts of thinking-in-history, which would not oppose itself to the object under study, but would be included in the historical process as its necessary component . Already in The Holy Family, K. Marx and F. Engels showed that idealism reduces a real, actual person to self-consciousness, and his practical actions to a mental criticism of his own ideological consciousness. Criticizing rational reflection, which opposes itself to practice, Marx and Engels show that in reality reflecting individuals never rise above reflection.

The fundamental limitations of rational reflection, its inability to penetrate into the essence of the subject under study, were analyzed by Marx in connection with the criticism of vulgar political economy, which was ossified in reflective definitions and therefore was unable to grasp bourgeois production as a whole. Marx and Engels associated rational reflection with the specifics of human development under conditions of division of labor and alienation, when a person turns into a partial person, and the one-sided development of his abilities leads to the fact that a partial social function becomes his life calling. It is in such conditions that reflection on thinking about oneself becomes the vocation of a philosopher and is opposed to practice.

Reflection becomes a central concept in European philosophy of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, revealing the uniqueness of the subject of philosophy in the system of sciences and the specificity of the philosophical method. Since philosophy has always been interpreted as reflection about knowledge, as thinking about thinking, the emphasis on the problem of reflection among modern philosophers expresses the desire to defend the autonomy of philosophy, to understand its subject as self-awareness of acts of cognition and its content. This line was pursued in neo-Kantianism (Cohen, Natorp, Nelson, etc.). At the same time, Nelson specifically highlights psychological reflection as a means of realizing direct knowledge (a type of this reflection - introspection - was the main method of introspective psychology).

Husserl specifically highlights reflection among the universal features of the pure sphere of experience, connecting with reflection the possibility of a reflective turn of view, when acts of thought become the subject of internal perception, evaluation, approval or disapproval. Reflection is “a general rubric for all those acts in which the flow of experience with all the diversity encountered in it becomes evidently grasped and analyzed.” He gives reflection a universal methodological function. The very possibility of phenomenology is justified with the help of reflection: the implementation of phenomenology is based on the “productive ability” of reflection. Reflection is the name of a method in the knowledge of consciousness in general. Phenomenology is designed to dissect different types of reflection and analyze them in different orders. In accordance with the general division of phenomenology, Husserl distinguishes two forms of reflection - natural and phenomenological, or transcendental.

“In everyday natural reflection, as well as in reflection carried out in psychological science. we stand on the soil of the world pregiven as being. In transcendental-phenomenological reflection we leave this ground thanks to the universal?ποχ? in relation to the existence or non-existence of the world." Husserl associates the formation of a position of disinterested observation with transcendental reflection. Phenomenology is the method of returning the view from the natural attitude to the transcendental life of consciousness and its noetic-noematic experiences, in which objects that are correlates of consciousness are constituted. Late Husserl turned to the concept of “life world,” which is interpreted as a set of pre- and extra-reflective attitudes, practical and pre-theoretical positions, which led to a change in his attitude to reflection. M. Heidegger, using the phenomenological method, interprets it ontologically as a path from existence to being, which allows for the destruction of metaphysics.

He criticizes the previous metaphysics, which identified being with existence, reflection with representation (conception). “Subjectivity, object and reflection are interconnected. At its core, repraesentatio rests on reflexio.” “Through subjective reflection on thinking that has already established itself as subjectivity,” it is impossible to achieve being. In the old metaphysics of subjectivity, “being is explained and clarified from its relation to thinking. Explanation and clarification have the character of reflection, which makes itself felt as thinking about thinking. Thinking as reflection means the horizon, thinking as reflection of reflection means an instrument for interpreting the being of beings.” In contrast to reflection, which is inextricably linked with the interpretation of being as a being and thinking as a representation, Heidegger appeals to the procedures of hermeneutic interpretation and acts of understanding, which allow us to comprehend the a priori structures of human here-being (Dasein), and above all, care.

A person’s existence can only be revealed when he is left alone with the silent voice of his conscience, in fear of nothing. Contemporary postmodernism, continuing this line of deconstruction of previous metaphysics, has an equally negative attitude towards the concept of reflection and takes the next step, emphasizing the inexpressibility of the individual’s internal experience and its inability to be subject to both reflexive analysis and understanding. Thus, M. Foucault, contrasting phenomenology and the postmodern understanding of internal experience, wrote: “In essence, the experience of phenomenology comes down to a certain manner of placing a reflexive gaze on some object from the experience, on some transitory form of everyday life - in order to grasp their meanings. For Nietzsche, Bataille, Blanchot, on the contrary, experience results in an attempt to achieve a point of view that would be as close as possible to the unexperienced. Which requires maximum tension and at the same time maximum impossibility.” Internal experience turns out to be associated with experiences in borderline situations, and reflection deals with language and writing, which retroactively record and convey the experience.

At the same time, in modern philosophy, a number of trends retain interest in the problems of reflection as a way of organizing philosophical and scientific knowledge. Thus, neo-Thomists, distinguishing psychological and transcendental types of reflection, use it to justify various forms of knowledge. Psychological reflection, focused on the area of ​​aspirations and feelings, determines the possibility of anthropology and psychology. Transcendental reflection, in turn, is divided into logical (abstract-discursive cognition) and ontological (focus on being), with the help of which the possibility of philosophy proper, set forth according to all the canons of pre-Kantian metaphysics, is substantiated. In the philosophy of science, which understands the foundations and methods of scientific knowledge, various research programs have been proposed. Thus, in the philosophy of mathematics in the 20th century. not only various concepts of metamathematics were built, but also various research programs for the substantiation of mathematics - from logicism to intuitionism.

In neopositivism, the concept of reflection is actually (but without using the term) used to distinguish between thing language and metalanguage, because the subject of philosophical and logical analysis is limited only by the reality of language. In Russian religious philosophy, living, universal knowledge, direct intuition of a specific unity, and faith were contrasted with knowledge that had its source in conceptual thinking. Therefore, reflection was perceived as a unique feature of Western abstract philosophy, to which Russian thought is alien. So, N.A. Berdyaev, considering any form of objectification a fall of the spirit, emphasizes that the categories that epistemology reflects have their source in sin, and “the cognizing subject is itself being, and not only opposes being as its object.” A. Bely, developing the anthroposophical approach to spirit, tried to understand the history of the culture of thought as the history of the formation of a self-conscious soul.

In Russian philosophy of the 20th century, especially in the 70s, the problem of reflection became the subject of philosophical and methodological research. With its help, the levels of methodological analysis are identified (V.A. Lektorsky, V.S. Shvyrev), the specificity of methodology is shown as a study of means and techniques of work, as a way of organizing methodological thinking and activity, which “introduces individual thinking and individual activity to the social, universal." By the beginning of the 80s. Not only did the “devaluation of reflection” recorded by many philosophers occur, but also various options for constructing a number of scientific disciplines on the basis of the concept of reflection, primarily psychology, psychotherapy, and pedagogy, appeared. Already S.L. Rubinstein noted that “the emergence of consciousness is associated with the separation from life and direct experience of reflection on the world around us and on oneself.” A.N. Leontiev defined consciousness as “reflection by the subject of reality, his activity, himself.” B.V. Zeigarnik, explaining motivational disorders in schizophrenia, associated them with pathological processes occurring with a person’s self-awareness, with his self-esteem, with the possibility of reflection.

In Russian philosophy of the 70-80s gt. various levels of philosophical reflection are highlighted:

1) reflection on the content of knowledge given in various forms of culture (language, science, etc.), and 2) reflection on the acts and processes of thinking - analysis of the ways of forming ethical norms, logical foundations and methods of forming the categorical apparatus of science. In its essence, reflection is critical, because, while forming new values, it “breaks” the existing norms of behavior and knowledge. The positive meaning of reflection lies in the fact that with its help, mastery of the world of culture and human productive abilities is achieved. Thinking can make itself the subject of theoretical analysis only if it is objectified in real, objective forms, taken outside and can relate to itself indirectly. Reflection is thus a form of mediated knowledge.