Collective and individual consciousness. Individual consciousness
We will not dwell in detail on the definitions of individual and social consciousness and will focus on the nature of their relationship, especially in terms of understanding the mode of existence and functioning of social consciousness.
Social consciousness is a necessary and specific aspect of social life; it is not only a reflection of changing social existence, but at the same time carries out organizing, regulatory and transformative functions. Like social existence, social consciousness is of a concrete historical nature. This is a certain set of ideas, ideas, values, standards of thinking and practical activity.
Without going into an analysis of the complex structure of social consciousness and its forms, we note that the phenomena of social consciousness are characterized primarily by their specific content and a specific social subject. What exactly are these ideas, teachings, attitudes, what is their social meaning, what is affirmed and what is denied, what social goals they set, what and in the name of what they are called to fight against, whose interests and worldview they express, who is their bearer: what kind of social group, class, nation, what kind of society - these are approximately the basic questions, the answers to which characterize certain phenomena of social consciousness, reveal their role in public life, their social functions.
However, the above questions still determine only one, although perhaps the main plan for analyzing the phenomena of social consciousness. Another theoretical plan for the analysis of social consciousness, especially important for developing the problem of the ideal, is given by the following questions: how and where these phenomena of social consciousness exist; what are the features of their ontological status in comparison with other social phenomena; what are the ways of their “life”, social effectiveness; what are the specific “mechanisms” of their formation, development and death?
The above two theoretical planes of description and analysis of the phenomena of social consciousness are, of course, closely related. Nevertheless, they form different logical “valences” of the concept of “social consciousness,” which must be taken into account when studying the problem of interest to us. For brevity, let us call them a description of the content and a description of the mode of existence of phenomena of social consciousness.
The distinction between these planes of description is justified by the fact that logically they appear to be relatively autonomous. Thus, social ideas, norms, views, etc., which are opposite in content. may have the same specific “mechanism” of their formation as phenomena of social consciousness and the same way of existence and transformation. Therefore, when studying the content and social meaning of certain social ideas, it is permissible, to one degree or another, to be distracted from the “mechanism” of their formation and the method of their existence, as well as vice versa. In addition, distinguishing between these planes of description is very important when considering the relationship between individual and social consciousness.
Individual consciousness is the consciousness of an individual person, which, of course, is unthinkable outside of society. Therefore, his consciousness is primordially social. All abstractions used to describe individual consciousness, one way or another, directly or indirectly capture its social essence. This means that it arises and develops only in the process of communication with other people and in joint practical activities. The consciousness of each person necessarily includes as its main content ideas, norms, attitudes, views, etc., which have the status of phenomena of social consciousness. But that peculiar, original thing that is in the content of individual consciousness also represents, of course, a social property, and not any other property. “Individual consciousness,” note V. J. Kelle and M. Ya. Kovalzon, “is an individual consciousness, in which, in each individual case, features that are common to the consciousness of a given era, special features associated with the social affiliation of the individual, and individual traits determined by upbringing, abilities and circumstances personal life individual."
The general and the particular in individual consciousness are basically nothing more than internalized phenomena of social consciousness that “live” in the consciousness of a given individual in the form of his subjective reality. We observe here a deep dialectical relationship and interdependence of the socially significant and personally significant, expressed in the fact that social ideas, norms, and value systems are included in the structure of individual consciousness. As special studies show, the ontogenesis of personality is a process of socialization, the assignment of socially significant spiritual values. At the same time, it represents a process of individualization - the formation of immanent value structures that determine the internal positions of the individual, his system of beliefs and the directions of his social activity.
Thus, every individual consciousness is social in the sense that it is permeated, organized, “saturated” with social consciousness - otherwise it does not exist. The main content of individual consciousness is the content of a certain complex of phenomena of social consciousness. This, of course, does not mean that the content of a given individual consciousness contains the entire content of social consciousness and, conversely, that the content of social consciousness contains the entire content of a given individual consciousness. The content of social consciousness is extremely diverse, and it includes both universal human components (logical, linguistic, mathematical rules, so-called simple norms of morality and justice, generally accepted artistic values, etc.), as well as class, national, professional, etc. Naturally, no single individual consciousness can accommodate all this substantive diversity, a significant part of which, moreover, represents mutually exclusive ideas, views, concepts, and value systems.
At the same time, this individual consciousness can be in a number of respects richer than social consciousness. It is capable of containing such new ideas, ideas, assessments that are absent in the content of public consciousness and can only enter it over time, or may never enter it. But it is especially important to note that individual consciousness is characterized by many mental states and properties that cannot be attributed to social consciousness.
In the latter, of course, there are some analogues of these states, which are expressed in certain social concepts, ideological forms, in the social psychology of certain classes and social strata. However, for example, the state of anxiety of an individual person differs very significantly from what is described as the “state of anxiety” of a wider social stratum.
The properties of social consciousness are not isomorphic to the properties of individual consciousness. Nevertheless, there is an undoubted connection between the description of the properties of individual consciousness and the description of the properties of social consciousness, for there is no social consciousness that would exist outside and apart from the multitude of individual consciousnesses. The complexity of correlating the properties of individual and social consciousness gives rise to two extremes. One of them represents the tendency to personify the collective subject, i.e. to transfer onto it the properties of an individual subject, personality. The inconsistency of this was shown by K. Marx using the example of Proudhon’s criticism: “Mr. Proudhon personifies society; he makes of it a society-person, a society that is far from the same as a society consisting of persons, because it has its own special laws that have nothing to do with the persons composing the society, and its own “mind” - not the ordinary human mind, but a mind devoid of common sense. M. Proudhon reproaches economists for not understanding the personal character of this collective being.”
As we see, K. Marx opposes such a description of society, which has “no relation to the individuals composing the society.” He shows that Proudhon's personification of society leads to its complete depersonification, to ignorance of the personal composition of society. It turns out that the “mind” of society is a certain special essence that has “no relation” to the minds of the individuals forming the society.
The other extreme is expressed in an attitude that is formally opposite to the personification of social consciousness. She begins where personification of the Proudhonian type ends. Here, social consciousness appears in the form of certain abstracts, living their own special lives, outside the individual consciousnesses of members of society and completely manipulating them.
We have deliberately depicted the second extreme in a pointed form, since, in our opinion, it expresses a common train of thought that has its roots in the philosophical systems of Plato and Hegel. Like the first extreme, it leads to a similar mystification of the social subject and public consciousness (the extremes converge!), but unlike the first, it is based on a number of very real premises that reflect the specifics of spiritual culture. We mean the important circumstance that the categorical-normative framework of spiritual culture and, consequently, spiritual activity (taken in any of its forms: scientific-theoretical, moral, artistic, etc.) is a transpersonal education. Transpersonal in the sense that it is specified for each new personality entering social life, and forms its basic properties precisely as an individual. Transpersonal in the sense that it is objectified and continues to be constantly objectified in the very organization of social life, the system of activities of social individuals, and therefore an individual cannot arbitrarily change or abolish historically established categorical structures, standards of spiritual and practical activity.
However, this real circumstance cannot be absolutized, turned into a dead, ahistorical abstract. The transpersonal cannot be interpreted as. absolutely impersonal, as completely independent of real personalities (currently existing and living). Established structures of spiritual activity, standards, etc. act for me and my contemporaries as transpersonal formations that form individual consciousness. But these formations themselves were formed, of course, not by a super-personal being, but by living people who created before us.
Further, these transpersonal formations do not represent some rigid, uniquely ordered and closed structure, i.e. such a structure that tightly encloses the individual consciousness and holds it captive of its once and for all given paths of movement and patterns of connections. In reality it is a flexible, in some respects ambiguous and open structure. It presents to the individual consciousness a wide field of choice, the possibility of creative new formations and transformations. It is historical in its essence. But this historical (and, therefore, creative) essence is not visible when it is taken in a “materialized” form, as a kind of “ready-made” structure. It is revealed only in active existence, i.e. in the living consciousness of many real people, and here it is no longer possible not to take into account the dialectical connection between the transpersonal and the personal. Otherwise, we fall into the fetishism of “ready-made”, “materialized” knowledge, which makes a person a slave to the available algorithms of thinking and activity, killing his creative spirit. Knowledge cannot be reduced only to the results of cognition. As S. B. Krymsky emphasizes, it also presupposes “a certain form of possession of these results.” “This form can only be consciousness of the results of cognition.” Consequently, there is no knowledge outside the consciousness of real people, and this immediately eliminates the “claim for abstract, suprahuman objectivism” and indicates the paramount importance of the socio-cultural and personal aspects of epistemological research.
We completely agree with G. S. Batishchev’s criticism of the fetishization of “materialized” knowledge and simplified models of spiritual culture. “Only by returning objectified forms from their isolation from the world of the subject back into the active process, only by restoring the entire multidimensionality of this living process, can one create that cognitive atmosphere in which the subject gains the ability to see true knowledge in its dynamics.” Otherwise, the statics of “ready-made” knowledge (and, we add, “ready-made” values) is no longer “a sublated, subordinate moment of the dynamic process, but itself dominates over it, suppresses it, leaving its creative rhythm and multidimensionality outside the limits of its frozen structures, their formations."
These words correctly capture the prerequisites of that way of thinking that leads to the separation of the structures of social consciousness from the structures of individual consciousness and its activity, as a result of which the former turn out to be nothing more than external coercive forces in relation to the latter.
When considering social norms, an inextricable connection between public and individual consciousness, transpersonal and personal, objectified and subjectivized, objectified and disobjectified is clearly revealed. A normative system as a “structural form” of social consciousness “becomes really normative” only insofar as it is assimilated by a multitude of individual consciousnesses. Without this, it cannot be “really normative.” If it exists only in an objectified, objectified form and does not exist as a value structure of individual consciousness, if it is only “external” for him, then this is no longer a social norm, but a dead text, not a normative system, but simply a sign system containing some information. But thereby it is no longer a “structural form” of social consciousness, but something completely “external” to it. It is possible that this is a former “structural form” of social consciousness, long extinct, the mummified content of which is found only in historical sources.
That which, according to its content, can be called social norm, is not a “structural form” of social consciousness and, if this content is known to people, appears in the individual consciousness as “just knowledge”, which does not have a value-effective quality, motivational status, is deprived, in the words of O.G. Drobnitsky, “the moment of obligatory compulsion.”
Here we would like to turn to a small but very informative article by V. S. Barulin, which reveals the dialectics of social and individual consciousness from the point of view of the problem of the ideal. He believes that “posing the question of social consciousness as external to individual consciousness is in principle erroneous”, “the phenomenon of consciousness - both social and individual - is fixed only where there is an ideal.” “The objective existence of spiritual culture is, as it were, an untrue existence, it is only its external form, an other existence, nothing more. These objects acquire their essence, their true social meaning only when they are reproduced ideally in the perception of a social individual or individuals.” Therefore, everything that is not “present”, is not reproduced in individual consciousness, is not social consciousness.
It only remains to add that this opens up an important perspective on the problem of the ideal. We are talking about the time of “life” of an idea in the public consciousness and the intensity of this “life” (some ideas are extremely “influential”, they cover millions, in whose consciousness they are constantly updated and function; other ideas barely “smoulder”, less and less often are actualized in the minds of fewer and fewer people, etc.), about how ideas “die” (when they long time no longer function in the individual consciousness, drop out of the social consciousness), about how they sometimes “resurrect” or are born again (remember the history of the idea of the steam engine), and, finally, about the emergence of this kind of new ideas, which in fact turn out to be very old, long existing, but forgotten. These and many other similar questions are of considerable interest in terms of analyzing the dynamics of the “content” of social consciousness, occurring within its composition historical changes, its variability and that meaningful invariance that has been preserved over many centuries and even throughout its history.
Thus, social consciousness exists only in a dialectical connection with individual consciousness. Taking into account the necessary representation of social consciousness in a variety of individual consciousnesses is a prerequisite for explaining the mode of existence and functioning of social consciousness. In addition, it is extremely important to remember the existence of contradictions between individual consciousness and social consciousness, and not to lose sight of the “activity” of the relationship between individual consciousness and social consciousness. This is correctly noted by A.K. Uledov, emphasizing at the same time the need to study such a factor as “individual characteristics of assimilation of the content of social consciousness.”
The connection between social consciousness and the individual clearly expresses the dialectic of the general and the individual, which warns against the mystification of the “general” and the “social” (arising from their break with the “separate” and the “individual”). If “the true social connection... of people is their human essence,” wrote K. Marx, “then people, in the process of actively realizing their essence, create, produce human public communication, a social essence, which is not some abstract universal force opposing the individual, but is the essence of each individual, his own activity, his own life...”
The “structural form” of social consciousness “is not some abstract universal force opposing the individual.” We consider it necessary to emphasize this once again, since in our literature there is a fetishization of the transpersonal status of social consciousness, as a result of which the role of the individual in the spiritual life of society is belittled. In this kind of construction, a living person, the only creator of ideas, cultural values, the only bearer of reason, conscience, creative spirit and conscious responsibility, “evaporates”, his abilities and “powers” are alienated in favor of one or another “abstract universal force”.
Conceptual guidelines that overly contrast social consciousness with individual consciousness “depersonalize” the processes and forms of the spiritual life of society and reveal inconsistency both in ideological and methodological terms. Conceptual attitudes of this kind hinder the study of social consciousness precisely as a “historically established and historically developing system,” because they eliminate specific factors and “mechanisms” for changing social consciousness (at best, they leave them in the shadows).
We think that such an image of theoretical thinking is the result of an excessive tribute to Hegel’s Logic, in which it is the “abstract-universal force” that reigns supreme over a living, real person: the Absolute Idea at every step demonstrates to the individual his absolute insignificance. Hence Hegel’s arrogantly condescending tone when he speaks of the individual soul: “Individual souls differ from each other by an infinite number of random modifications. But this infinity is a kind of bad infinity. A person’s uniqueness should not, therefore, be given too much importance.”
In this regard, T. I. Oizerman rightly writes: “In Hegel, the individual very often dissolves in the social. And the degree of this dissolution is interpreted by Hegel as a measure of the greatness of the individual. The Marxist understanding of this problem should not be interpreted by analogy with Hegel's. The Marxist understanding of the problem lies in the recognition of the unity of the individual and the social. The individual cannot be considered a secondary phenomenon, a value of the second rank, because this leads to a distortion of the Marxist concept of personality.”
Changes in social consciousness are determined, as is known, by changes in social existence. But just repeating this key point is not enough. It is necessary to make it more specific, to show how qualitative changes occur in the process of spiritual life of society, what is the “mechanism” for the emergence of new ideas, new moral standards, etc. And here we see that the only source of new formations in the social consciousness is precisely the individual consciousness. Unique in the sense that there is not a single idea in the social consciousness that was not first an idea of individual consciousness. “Social consciousness is created, developed and enriched by individuals.” This provision is of fundamental importance for the analysis of the specific “mechanism” of changing the content of public consciousness.
If this or that idea correctly reflects the emerging changes in social life, trends in its development, economic, political, etc. interests of a social group, class, society, if it personifies socially significant values, then in this case its initially narrow communicative contour quickly expands, it acquires new forms of interpersonal objectification, is intensively reproduced, and is constantly transmitted to social systems communications and gradually “wins the minds and souls of people.” Thus, it enters into the value-content-activity structures of many individual consciousnesses, becomes an internal, “subjective” principle of thinking, a guide to action, a normative regulator for many people forming one or another social community.
Of course, both in the process of the formation of an idea as a phenomenon of social consciousness, and in its subsequent functioning at this level, the primary role is played by sanctioning social mechanisms, various social organizations, institutions, institutions that carry out mass communications and control the content of social information. Depending on the type of ideas, more precisely, the system of ideas (political, moral, artistic, scientific, etc.), their content is differently objectified in systems of interpersonal communications, differently translated, sanctioned, “approved,” institutionalized through the activities of special public bodies.
The activity of these bodies is also not something abstract and impersonal; it consists of a certain regulated activity of professional individuals, whose responsibilities include (depending on the social function they perform) the reproduction of ideas in certain objectified forms, control of their circulation in communication circuits , adjustment and development of their content, development of means to increase their effectiveness, etc. In other words, even in the sphere of purely institutionalized activities, in the activities of special state bodies, phenomena of social consciousness “pass” through the filters of individual consciousnesses, leaving their mark on them. The immediate source of changes in public consciousness lies in individual consciousness.
Content changes or new formations in the public consciousness always have an authorship. Their initiators are specific individuals or a number of individuals. History does not always preserve their names, so we understand authorship in a general sense - as the personal creation of an idea, theory, cultural value. In a number of cases, we can accurately indicate the author of a new spiritual value that has entered the fund of public consciousness. Most often this applies to the field of art and scientific creativity. The personality of authorship is especially indicative of works of art. Socially significant artistic value has a special integrity, it is unique, any violation of it in the processes of reproduction worsens or completely spoils it. Co-authorship is rare in this field. The author of a great work of art, whether he is known or not, is, as a rule, “lonely”, the only one.
The situation is different in science. Products of scientific creativity are not as discrete and isolated among cultural phenomena as works of art. They are not unique (because they can be produced independently of each other by several persons), they are not as holistically original as works of art, because they have very strong and numerous external logical-theoretical connections (with other scientific ideas, theories, metascientific principles ).
When the objective prerequisites for any discovery mature in society, a number of people come close to it (let us recall at least the history of the creation of the theory of relativity, the results of Lorentz, Poincaré, Minkowski). Most often, authorship (not quite fairly) is assigned to the one who expressed new ideas somewhat more fully or clearly than others. However, the lack of uniqueness of authorship does not negate the assumption that it is necessarily personal. The same should be said about those cases when a new spiritual value is the fruit of the joint activity of a number of people.
Finally, the creators of many scientific, technical, artistic and other ideas, often of fundamental importance for public consciousness and, consequently, for social practice, remain unknown and, perhaps, will never become known. But this does not mean that the corresponding ideas did not arise in the individual consciousness, but in some other, supernatural way (if we exclude the transfer of knowledge to our civilization from the outside!).
The situation is especially difficult with authorship in the field of moral creativity and the changes it causes in public consciousness. But here, too, researchers discover basically the same specific “mechanism” for the formation of moral principles, norms, and rules. History shows that the emergence of new moral values and their establishment in the public consciousness begins with the rejection by individuals of the prevailing moral norms as, in their opinion, not meeting the changed conditions of social life, class interests, etc. This process, according to A.I. Titarenko, is realized “through the violation of already established norms and customs, through actions that, especially at the beginning, looked immoral in history.”
History can provide many such examples. “The role of the individual in changing the prescriptive (commanding) content of morality is performed primarily through a person’s approval of a new behavioral practice, the commission of a new type of action, the adoption of a previously unknown course of action.” This requires, as a rule, from the individual not only deep conviction that he is right, but also courage, boldness, great fortitude, and often a willingness to give his life in the name of new ideals.
“Committing a new type of action” causes a public outcry. New moral principles are first adopted by the avant-garde layers and only over time become the property of public consciousness as a whole. Moreover, in the field of morality, as G. D. Bandzeladze notes, creative acts are “of the most widespread nature.”
Analyzing the processes of moral creativity, O. N. Krutova notes that although the process of establishing new moral norms is the result of individual creativity, traces of the participation of individual people in it are gradually erased, the content of morality takes on an “impersonal appearance.” This process expresses the typical features of the formation of phenomena of social consciousness as transpersonal formations.
We emphasized above only one aspect of spiritual production, which nevertheless expresses its necessary creative component - the movement of new content from individual consciousness to social consciousness, from the personal form of its existence to the transpersonal. But at the same time, it is important not to lose sight of the dialectical interpenetration of the general and the individual. After all, creative new formations taking place in the bosom of individual consciousness cannot be “free” from logical and value structures immanent in individual consciousness, certain principles, ideas, attitudes, etc., which form the level of social consciousness. The latter, in each specific case, can perform not only a heuristic, but also an initial (fettering) function. Fundamental new formations in individual consciousness (both those having high social significance and those completely devoid of it, for example, all kinds of naive projector or mystical innovations, etc.) certainly disrupt and reconstruct these structures.
But here it is important to keep in mind the complexity of the logical-categorical and value-semantic structures of social consciousness. They are alien to linear ordering, include relations of both hierarchical dependence and coordination and competition, and in a number of points are clearly antinomic in nature. This is manifested in the correlation of universal, class, national, group structures of social consciousness, which are “combined” in individual consciousness. In it, moreover, structural differences are not presented as rigidly as is the case in socially objectified and codified ways of expressing the existing content of social consciousness.
Here we discover a historically determined measure of freedom of individual consciousness and its inescapable problematic nature, and at the same time its creative intention, for which any objectivity, any “finished” result is only an intermediate product, for it knows only the implementation and does not know the realized, absolutely completed .
This creative intention constitutes the most important feature of the ideal. It means an unstoppable aspiration beyond the limits of existing objective reality, into the realm of the possible, desirable, better, blessed - aspiration towards the ideal.
Reconstruction of the complex, multi-stage process of formation of new phenomena of social consciousness (ideological, scientific-theoretical, etc.) requires painstaking historical research, the results of which remain often problematic. E.V. Tarle wrote: “It is unlikely that anything could be more difficult for a historian of famous ideological movement, as searching for and determining the beginning of this movement. How thought arose in the individual consciousness, how it understood itself, how it passed to other people, to the first neophytes, how it gradually changed...” Reliable answers to these questions involve, in his words, “a path of following the original sources.” And here, of significant interest is the identification of those factors (socio-economic, ideological, psychological, etc.) that promoted or hindered this process, those collisions, clashes of opposing views, interests with which it is so often marked. In this regard, another facet of the problem usually opens up - clarifying the true goals, motives, and intentions of a historical figure, regardless of what he himself wrote and said about himself.
The dialectic of individual and general, personal and transpersonal forms the most important problem node in the dynamic structure of cognitive activity. These questions have been widely developed in our literature devoted to the study of scientific knowledge (works by B. S. Gryaznov, A. F. Zotov, V. N. Kostyuk, S. B. Krymsky, V. A. Lektorsky, A. I. Rakitov , G. I. Ruzavin, V. S. Stepin, V. S. Shvyrev, V. A. Shtoff, M. G. Yaroshevsky, etc.). In this regard, a critical analysis of post-positivist concepts of development was essential. scientific knowledge. Particularly instructive is the experience of critical analysis of K. Popper’s concept of the “three worlds,” which has already been discussed.
Without dwelling on the theoretical contradictions in the views of K. Popper, revealed not only by Soviet, but also by a number of Western philosophers, we will emphasize only one fundamental circumstance. K. Popper absolutizes the moments of the general, transpersonal, “become” in human cognition. He, according to the fair remark of N. S. Yulina, actually denies the “creative amateur essence human consciousness" “It turns out that it is not specific historical people endowed with individual characteristics who create new ideas from which the total content of culture is composed, but only culture creates individual consciousness.”
The inconsistency of the Popperian operation of “splitting off” logical norms and forms “from the real activities of people in the real world” is convincingly shown by M. G. Yaroshevsky, whose research is especially important for our purpose. This relates to his development of a conceptual image of science, in which the subject-logical, social-communicative and personal-psychological coordinates of the analysis of its development are organically combined. It is in this conceptual context that M. G. Yaroshevsky explores the dialectics of the personal and transpersonal, the role of categorical structures of thinking in the creative activity of a scientist. During the analysis, he designates these categorical structures (constituting the most important element of social consciousness) with the term “supraconscious”, since the scientist often does not reflect on them and since they are given to him by the existing culture. But their predetermination is not their indestructibility. An individual scientist in the process of creative activity is able to modify these structures to one degree or another, not always giving himself a clear account of the categorical transformation carried out. “The deeper the changes made by this scientist in the categorical system, the more significant his personal contribution.”
“It would be a deep mistake to think of the supraconscious as external to consciousness. On the contrary, it is included in his inner fabric and inseparable from it. The supraconscious is not transpersonal. In it, the personality realizes itself most fully, and only thanks to it does it ensure, with the disappearance of individual consciousness, its creative immortality.” By changing categorical structures, a person contributes to the fund of social consciousness, which will “live” and develop after his death (this, by the way, is one of the meanings of “transpersonal”). But social consciousness continues to “live” and develop after the death of any specific individual, not only in objectified forms of culture, but also certainly in the individual consciousnesses of living individuals.
We tried to show the inextricable connection between social consciousness and the individual, focusing on a critical assessment of those conceptual attitudes that lead to their excessive opposition, to the absolutization of the “social” and the “transpersonal”, to the annihilation of the living, creative subject or to such a truncation of the “personal” when it turns into a function of “transformed forms”, into a pathetic puppet of the “material world”, into a kind of “tool” that has nothing to do with the originality, creative activity and self-worth of the individual.
As already mentioned, the central moment of the spiritual life of society (its core) is the social consciousness of people. So, for example, spiritual need is nothing more than a certain state of consciousness, and manifests itself as a person’s conscious urge to spiritual creativity, to the creation and consumption of spiritual values. The latter are the embodiment of the mind and feelings of people. Spiritual production is the production of certain views, ideas, theories, moral norms and spiritual values. All these spiritual formations act as objects of spiritual consumption. Spiritual relationships between people are relationships regarding spiritual values in which their consciousness is embodied.
Social consciousness is a set of feelings, moods, artistic and religious images, various views, ideas and theories, reflecting certain aspects of social life. It must be said that the reflection of social life in the public consciousness is not some kind of mechanical mirror, just as the natural landscape located along its banks is reflected in the mirror surface of a river. In this case, one natural phenomenon purely externally reflected the features of another. The public consciousness reflects not only the external, but also the internal aspects of the life of society, their essence and content.
Social consciousness has a social nature. It arises from the social practice of people as a result of their production, family, household and other activities. It is in the course of joint practical activity that people comprehend the world around them with a view to using it in their own interests. Various social phenomena and their reflections in images and concepts, ideas and theories are two sides of the practical activities of people.
Being a reflection of the phenomena of social life, various kinds of images, views, theories are aimed at deeper knowledge by people of these phenomena for their practical purposes, including for the purpose of their direct consumption or other use, say, for the purpose of aesthetic enjoyment of them, etc. d. Ultimately, the content of social practice, of all social reality, comprehended by people, becomes the content of their social consciousness.
Thus, social consciousness can be interpreted as the result of a joint understanding of social reality by people practically interacting with each other. This is the social nature of public consciousness and its main feature.
One can, perhaps, agree to some extent with the proposition that, strictly speaking, it is not man who thinks, but humanity. An individual person thinks insofar as he is included in thinking process of a given society and humanity, i.e.:
- engages in the process of communication with other people and masters speech;
- gets involved in different kinds human activities and comprehends their content and meaning;
- assimilates objects of material and spiritual culture of past and present generations and uses them in accordance with their social purpose.
By assimilating to one degree or another the spiritual wealth of his people and humanity, mastering the language, and becoming involved in various types of activities and social relations, an individual masters the skills and forms of thinking and becomes a thinking social subject.
Is it right to talk about the individual consciousness of a person if his consciousness is directly or indirectly determined by the society and culture of all mankind? Yes, that's legal. After all, there is no doubt that the same conditions of social life are perceived by individual people in some ways more or less the same, and in others differently. Because of this, they have both general and individual views on certain social phenomena, sometimes significant differences in their understanding.
Individual consciousness individual people are, first of all, the individual characteristics of their perception of various phenomena of social life. Ultimately, these are individual characteristics of their views, interests and value orientations. All this gives rise to certain characteristics in their actions and behavior.
In the individual consciousness of a person, the features of his life and activities in society, his personal life experience, as well as the features of his character, temperament, the level of his spiritual culture and other objective and subjective circumstances of his social existence are manifested. All this forms the unique spiritual world of individual people, the manifestation of which is their individual consciousness.
And yet, while giving due credit to individual consciousness and creating opportunities for its development, it should be taken into account that it does not function autonomously from social consciousness, and is not absolutely independent of it. We need to see his interaction with public consciousness. It is true that the individual consciousness of many people significantly enriches the public consciousness with vivid images, experiences and ideas, and contributes to the development of science, art, etc. At the same time, the individual consciousness of any person is formed and developed on the basis of social consciousness.
In the minds of individual people, most often there are ideas, views and prejudices that they have learned, albeit in a special individual refraction, while living in society. And a person is richer in spiritual terms, the more he has learned from the spiritual culture of his people and all humanity.
Both public and individual consciousness, being a reflection of the social existence of people, do not blindly copy it, but have relative independence, sometimes quite significant.
First of all, social consciousness does not simply follow social existence, but comprehends it, reveals the essence of social processes. Therefore, it often lags behind their development. After all, a deeper understanding of them is possible only when they have taken mature forms and manifested themselves to the greatest extent. At the same time, public consciousness can be ahead of social existence. Based on the analysis of certain social phenomena, it is possible to detect the most important trends in their development and thereby predict the course of events.
The relative independence of social consciousness is also manifested in the fact that in its development it is based on the achievements of human thought, science, art, etc., and proceeds from these achievements. It is called continuity in the development of social consciousness, thanks to which the spiritual heritage of generations accumulated in various areas of public life is preserved and further developed. All this shows that social consciousness not only reflects the social life of people, but has its own internal logic of development, its own principles and its own traditions. This is clearly seen in the development of science, art, morality, religion, and philosophy.
Finally, the relative independence of social consciousness is manifested in its active influence on public life. Various kinds of ideas, theoretical concepts, political doctrines, moral principles, trends in the field of art and religion can play a progressive or, on the contrary, reactionary role in the development of society. This is determined by whether they contribute to his spiritual enrichment, strengthening and development, or whether they lead to the destruction and degradation of the individual and society.
It is important to consider to what extent certain or other views, scientific theories, moral principles, works of art and other manifestations of public consciousness meet the true interests of the people of a particular country and the interests of its future. Progressive ideas in all areas of public life are a powerful factor in development, because they contribute to a deep understanding of the present and anticipation of the future, instill confidence in people’s actions, improve their social well-being, and inspire new creative actions. They form the very spirituality without which society and individuals cannot live and act normally. Everything suggests that the role of social consciousness in life modern society is very significant and is constantly increasing.
Social consciousness is a set of ideas, views and assessments characteristic of a given society in its awareness of its own existence.
Individual consciousness is a set of ideas, views, feelings characteristic of a particular person.
SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS is formed on the basis of the consciousnesses of individual people, but is not their simple sum. Each individual consciousness is unique, and each individual is fundamentally different from another individual precisely in the content of his individual consciousness. Therefore, social consciousness cannot be simply a mechanical unification of individual consciousnesses; it always represents a qualitatively new phenomenon, since it is a synthesis of those ideas, views and feelings that it has absorbed from individual consciousnesses.
INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS human consciousness is always more diverse and brighter than social consciousness, but at the same time, it is always narrower in its view of the world and much less comprehensive in the scale of the problems under consideration.
The individual consciousness of an individual does not reach the depth that is inherent in social consciousness, which covers all aspects of the spiritual life of society. But social consciousness acquires its comprehensiveness and depth from the content and experience of the individual individual consciousnesses of members of society.
Thus,
social consciousness is always a product of individual consciousness.
But in other way, any individual is a bearer of both modern and ancient social ideas, social views and social traditions. Thus, elements of social consciousness always penetrate into the individual consciousness of individual people, transforming there into elements of individual consciousness and, therefore, social consciousness is not only formed by individual consciousness, but also itself forms individual consciousness . Thus ,
individual consciousness is always largely a product of social consciousness.
Thus, the dialectic of the relationship between individual and social consciousness is characterized by the fact that both of these types of consciousness are inextricably linked, but remain separate phenomena of existence, mutually influencing each other.
Social consciousness has a complex internal structure, in which levels and forms are distinguished.
FORMS OF PUBLIC CONSCIOUSNESS – these are different ways of intellectual and spiritual mastery of reality: politics, law, morality, philosophy, art, science, etc. Thus, we can talk about the following forms of social consciousness:
1.Political consciousness. This is a system of knowledge and assessments through which society understands the sphere of politics. Political consciousness is a kind of core of all forms of social consciousness, since it reflects the economic interests of classes, social strata and groups. Political consciousness has a significant influence on the grouping of political forces in society in the struggle for power and, accordingly, on all other spheres of social life.
2.Legal consciousness. This is a system of knowledge and assessments through which society understands the sphere of law. Legal consciousness is most closely related to political consciousness, because both the political and economic interests of classes, social strata and groups are directly manifested in it. Legal awareness has a significant impact on the economy, on politics and on all aspects of social life, since it performs an organizational and regulatory function in society.
3.Moral consciousness. These are historically developing principles of morality in relations between people, between people and society, between people and the law, etc. Moral consciousness, therefore, is a serious regulator of the entire organization of society at all its levels.
4. Aesthetic consciousness. This is a reflection of the surrounding world in the form of special complex experiences associated with feelings of the sublime, beautiful, tragic and comic. A feature of aesthetic consciousness is that it forms the ideals, tastes and needs of society associated with the phenomena of creativity and art.
5.Religious consciousness expresses the internal experience of a person associated with his feeling of his connection with something higher than himself and the given world. Religious consciousness interacts with other forms of social consciousness, and, above all, with such as moral consciousness. Religious consciousness has a worldview character and, accordingly, has a significant impact on all forms of social consciousness through the worldview principles of its bearers.
6.Atheistic consciousness reflects the ideological view of those members of society who do not recognize the existence Higher man and world existence, and deny the existence of any reality other than material. As a worldview consciousness, it also has a significant influence on all forms of social consciousness through the life positions of its carriers.
7. Natural science consciousness. This is a system of experimentally confirmed and statistically consistent knowledge about nature, society and man. This consciousness is one of the most determining for the characteristics of a particular civilization, since it affects and determines most of the social processes of society.
8.Economic consciousness. This is a form of social consciousness that reflects economic knowledge and the socio-economic needs of society. Economic consciousness is formed under the influence of a specifically existing economic reality and is determined by the objective need to comprehend it.
9.Ecological consciousness. This is a system of information about the relationship between man and nature in the process of his social activities. The formation and development of environmental consciousness occurs purposefully, under the influence of political organizations, social institutions, media, special social institutions, art, etc.
The forms of social consciousness are diverse, just as the social processes that a person comprehends are diverse.
Public consciousness is formed at TWO LEVELS:
1. Ordinary or empirical consciousness. This consciousness stems from the direct experience of everyday life, and is, on the one hand, the continuous socialization of a person, that is, his adaptation to social existence, and, on the other hand, the comprehension of social existence and attempts to optimize it at the everyday level.
Ordinary consciousness is the lowest level of social consciousness, which allows you to establish separate cause-and-effect relationships between phenomena, build simple conclusions, discover simple truths, but does not allow one to penetrate deeply into the essence of things and phenomena, or rise to deep theoretical generalizations.
2. Scientific-theoretical consciousness. It's more complex shape social consciousness, not subordinate to everyday tasks and standing above them.
Includes the results of intellectual and spiritual creativity of a high order - worldview, natural science concepts, ideas, foundations, global views on the nature of the world, the essence of being, etc.
Arising from everyday consciousness, scientific-theoretical consciousness makes people's lives more conscious and contributes to a deeper development of social consciousness, since it reveals the essence and patterns of material and spiritual processes.
Social consciousness and its role in society. Forms of social consciousness
1. Social and individual consciousness
2. Relative independence of social consciousness from social existence
3. Structure of social consciousness
4. Forms of social consciousness:
1) political consciousness;
2) legal consciousness;
3) moral consciousness;
4) aesthetic consciousness;
5) religious consciousness;
6) economic consciousness;
7) environmental consciousness.
5. The problem of forming value orientations
Social and individual consciousness
Consciousness – This is an amateur, self-created process of inscribing individual events, phenomena, impressions, sensations into the total (single, all-encompassing) field of intellectual, subject design.
Consciousness– it is not just an image of reality, but a special form of mental activity, focused on reflecting and transforming reality.
Social consciousness – This is a set of ideal forms (concepts, judgments, views, feelings, ideas, concepts, theories) that embrace and recreate social existence, which were produced by humanity in the process of exploring nature and social history.
Social and individual consciousness are in dialectical unity, since they have common source - the existence of people , which is based on practice. At the same time, the dialectical unity of social and individual consciousness does not mean their absolute identity.
Individual consciousness more specific, richer than public. It includes unique features inherent only to a given person, which are formed on the basis of the specific features of his particular existence. It is important to take into account the fact that the consciousness of an individual is not only knowledge, but also an attitude to existence, to activity and to oneself. On the other side, social consciousness is not just an arithmetic sum of individual consciousnesses, but a new quality.
Social consciousness, compared with the individual, reflects objective reality deeper, more fully, richer. It abstracts from certain specific characteristics, properties of individual consciousness, absorbing the most significant and essential. Thus, social consciousness seems to rise above the consciousness of individuals. However, this does not mean leveling the individual’s consciousness. On the contrary, taking into account the specifics of individual consciousness, its versatility, uniqueness represents the essence of a person’s spirituality and is an extremely important condition for the formation and development of the values of spiritual culture and human consciousness.
Individual consciousness includes:
Ø independence:
– awareness of “I”,
– self-awareness of “I”.
Ø emotions and feeling:
– intellectual,
– moral,
– aesthetic,
– ethical,
– affects.
Ø knowledge:
– empirical,
– theoretical.
Ø will:
- determination,
– choice of means of activity.
Ø thinking:
– figurative,
– sensual,
– rational.
Ø memory:
– motor,
– sensory,
– figurative,
– emotional,
– verbal-logical,
– short-term,
– long-lasting.
In society, consciousness acts as public consciousness, as a sphere of spiritual life, in which the interests and ideas of different social groups, classes, nations and society as a whole are comprehended, substantiated, ideologically formalized and realized.
Social consciousness is a social way of spiritual behavior of people.
Concept public consciousness characterizes the real content and mode of existence of the consciousness of a particular society.
The real social consciousness of a particular society is determined by:
1) as mass consciousness, the expression of which is mass consciousness,
2)as the spiritual life of society.
Mass consciousness– consciousness of the entire mass of members of society.
Mass consciousness – a special case social consciousness, which are realized in the mass of individual consciousnesses, but do not coincide with each of them separately.
In the mass consciousness, displayed knowledge, ideas, norms, values that are shared by certain sets of individuals and produced in the process of their communication with each other.
Mass consciousness is characterized by:
1) social typicality
– its constituent components, aimed at eliminating individual differences,
2)social recognition of components
, sanctioning them by a collection of individuals.
Social thought acts as a form of manifestation of mass consciousness.
Social thought - a complex of views, judgments, emotions of people in certain groups, local communities and society as a whole regarding the most significant events or problems of political, economic and spiritual life.
Individual consciousness.
Individual consciousness is the consciousness of a separate individual, reflecting individual existence and, through it, to some extent, social existence. Social consciousness is the totality of individual consciousnesses. Along with the peculiarities of the consciousnesses of individual individuals, it carries within itself general content, inherent in the entire mass of individual consciousnesses. As the collective consciousness of individuals, developed by them in the process of their joint activity and communication, social consciousness should be decisive only in relation to the consciousness of a given individual. This does not exclude the possibility of individual consciousness going beyond the limits of existing social consciousness.
Each individual consciousness is formed under the influence of individual existence, lifestyle and social consciousness. Wherein vital role plays the individual way of life of a person, through which the content of social life is refracted. Another factor in the formation of individual consciousness is the process of assimilation by the individual of social consciousness. This process is called internalization in psychology and sociology. In the mechanism of the formation of individual consciousness, it is therefore necessary to distinguish between two unequal sides: the subject’s independent awareness of existence and his assimilation of the existing system of views. The main thing in this process is not the internalization of society's views; and the individual’s awareness of his own and society’s material life.
Individual consciousness is determined by individual existence and arises under the influence of the consciousness of all humanity. 2 main levels of individual consciousness˸
1. Initial (primary) - “passive”, “mirror” Formed under human influence external environment, external consciousness. The main forms of concepts and knowledge in general. The main factors in the formation of individual consciousness: educational activities environment, educational activities society, cognitive activity the person himself.
2. Secondary - “active”, “creative”. Man transforms and organizes the world.
Posted on ref.rf
The concept of intelligence is associated with this level. The end product of this level and consciousness in general are ideal objects that arise in human heads. Basic forms: goals, ideals, faith. The main factors are will and thinking - the core and system-forming element.
Between the first and second levels there is an intermediate “semi-active” level. The main forms of the phenomenon of consciousness are memory, which is selective in nature, it is always in demand; opinions; doubts.
The category of consciousness is used in two senses: broad and narrow. In the broad sense of the word, consciousness is the highest form of reflection, associated with the social existence of a person and being a rather complex multi-level formation. In the narrow sense of the word, consciousness is... .
Man owns wonderful gift- the mind with its inquisitive flight, both into the distant past and into the future, the world of dreams and fantasy, creative solutions to practical and theoretical problems finally, the embodiment of the most daring plans. Since ancient times... .
The world of man begins with his immediate existence and extends to the boundaries of the universe. In this interval, the objective factor of human life is formed, the conditions for his self-realization, self-expression, and self-affirmation are formed. Personal existence of a person... .
As already mentioned, the central moment of the spiritual life of society (its core) is the social consciousness of people. So, for example, a spiritual need is nothing more than a certain state of consciousness and manifests itself as a person’s conscious urge to... .
Individual consciousness is the spiritual world of the individual, reflected social existence through the prism of specific living conditions this person. This is a set of ideas, views, feelings characteristic of a particular person, in which his individuality and... [read more] are manifested.
1) The concept of “consciousness” is ambiguous. In a broad sense, the word means mental reflection reality, regardless of what level it is carried out - biological or social, sensory or rational. In a narrower and more special... .