Throughout the history of human civilization, most people have strived for goodness and creation, because they intuitively felt the correctness of this path in life. At the same time, at all times there were tyrants and criminals who aspired to power, totalitarianism and wars, as a result of which it was possible to seize other people's wealth and gain even more power. However, despite all the obstacles, moral values have always been perceived as the main factor in determining a person and his place in society.
Scientists and thinkers of the past noticed that morality is an integral part of every person, since it is inherent in him from birth. The proof of this is the fact that there are no bad children. All children from the point of view of psychology and higher ethics are good, because they do not yet have an adult outlook on life and the desire for profit, wealth, power over other people. A child may misbehave, but this does not mean that he is bad. Every child needs to be instilled with moral values, since they should become the main guideline for him in our troubled world.
The main feature of modernity is the absolutization of the concept of "freedom". It is she who becomes the main criterion for choosing the path of development for a person. Constitutional rights enshrined in law have become for many people the main factor in the commission of certain acts, and this, unfortunately, is not a very good indicator. If earlier moral values clearly defined the concept of good and evil, today such distinctions are practically not made, since there is no longer a clear understanding of these meanings. Evil is the violation of a certain law and the commission of an illegal act that violates the freedom of another person. If the law does not prohibit any action, then it automatically becomes permitted and correct. This is the most negative thing, especially for our children.
The main determining factor that played a significant role in the development and improvement of the human soul was religion. Today, it has been reduced to a simple, everyday ritual that no longer carries any spiritual significance. Despite the fact that people continue to celebrate Easter and Christmas, they no longer put spiritual meaning into these sacred holidays. This has become commonplace, as a result of which the moral values of most people have significantly decreased.
Freedom has become the main factor in the development, which today in actions and actions is guided not by the concepts of "moral or immoral", but "legal or illegal". Everything would be fine if our laws were adopted by really honest and decent people, and if they also corresponded to honor.
A good example can be moral values in philosophy, since for thinkers and sages, justice, honesty and truth are above all. Therefore, it would be useful to plunge into ancient wisdom and get acquainted with at least the well-known sayings of the thinkers of the past. As for our children, it is extremely necessary for them to learn from us adults about the basics of correct behavior and attitude towards other people from a very early age. play a major role in this, because initial stage development help the child to refrain from wrong actions and deeds, and subsequently give him a guideline when choosing the right path in life. After all, honesty and decency always win in the end, since this is a cosmic law, which a person cannot influence.
The moral way of mastering the world is characterized by its own special methods of human orientation. This is not only a value-oriented activity, but also prescriptive (imperative). Morality not only allows one to evaluate people's behavior in terms of good and evil, but also determines the guidelines for a "worthy" act. Thus, the value orientation acts as a moral regulation of people's life. The moral behavior of a person is not due to any considerations of personal gain, but is dictated by the need for goodness, justice, honesty, truthfulness. The need for the good, along with the needs for beauty and truth, is generally recognized as the most important basic human need. Taken together, everything that is connected with the moral attitude of a person to the world, to the environment, with the moral self-awareness of the individual and his moral needs, constitute moral values. The study of the problem of the origin of morality shows that its origins are most directly related to human nature. K. Lorenz, for example, even connected the nature of morality with the biological nature of man. He believed that the formation of moral norms occurs in the process of natural selection. In the course of it, the transformation of instincts into conscious behavioral options is carried out, the accumulation of experience in conditioned reflex behavior. Human evolution, therefore, is accompanied by a transition from situational ways of regulating behavior to their consolidation and awareness as norms and rules, i.e. as behavioral stereotypes. The transmission of these rules from generation to generation is carried out through learning, imitation, prohibitions. Naturally, one cannot deny the natural and biological prerequisites for the emergence of morality, since a person is a biosocial being and moral norms fix not only the rules for the implementation of a person's social roles. Morality is what connects the social and biological in a person, makes him an individual. The understanding of what is "good" and what is "evil" makes possible the common life of people, in which everyone refuses the full implementation of vital needs (food consumption, sexual desire, the need for security, the desire for significance and possession) in favor of the implementation social values (recognition of the rights of another person. Justice, self-control, fidelity, tolerance, endurance, etc.) Morality, therefore, is a set of historically formed and inherited norms, principles and values that ensure the joint life of people. From the point of view of ethics, morality appears as an evaluative attitude of a person to the world from the standpoint of good or evil, which is realized in his behavior and practical activities. It is no coincidence that morality is sometimes defined as a worldview, since the social characteristics of people's behavior at the same time turn out to be their moral characteristics. Motives, needs, goals and intentions, the means used by people, become not only the subject of social assessment, but also moral. With all the desire to prove the independence, for example, of economics or politics from morality, it is extremely problematic to do this. As spheres of public life, both economics and politics imply jointly organized activities of people, the implementation of which is built not only according to the specific laws of these spheres, but also in accordance with the principles of morality - duty, decency, honesty, responsibility. Without moral evaluation and regulation, the most good deeds turn out to be untenable, anti-human. Characteristic of this or that system of moral values is that they always have a specific historical content. In this or that period of history, its own, different from other periods, system of moral values develops and functions. Depending on the time, one or another of the moral values may come to the fore: duty or selfishness, solidarity or nationalism, justice or injustice, love or hatred. The moral values of each society are formed over the centuries and the promotion of one or another of them is carried out on the basis of the fundamental socio-political and cultural values of their time and people. They always express the general moral orientation and value meaning of human behavior and therefore have a normative character. In this regard, moral values act as regulators both in the relationship between the individual and society, and in the behavior of individuals. They have a motivating effect on their consciousness and behavior. It is also characteristic of moral values that they are perceived differently by people. If for one part the values accepted in society are self-evident and they tend to rely entirely on them and be guided by them in their behavior, then for others these values are unclear and unattainable. Real life testifies that, fundamentally, people cannot live and act, focusing only on their individual values. A person needs strong, more or less established guidelines on which he could build his behavior and activities in all difficult and especially non-standard circumstances. The absence of such a system of values means blurring the boundaries between good and evil, justice and injustice, love and hate. The effectiveness and degree of a person's perception of the moral values of society, their implementation in everyday activities are significantly influenced by factors of an objective and subjective order - relations in society, family, team, the level of education and culture of the individual himself, the nature of the moral and psychological properties of the individual, life experience, art and other factors. For the formation of a person's moral value system, it is specific that the destruction of personal moral guidelines outstrips the emergence of new ones. This gives rise to human oscillations between different states and positions. In the behavior of an individual, principledness and ease of judgment, kindness with harshness, romantic ups and downs with sober practicality can simultaneously manifest themselves and be interconnected. The loss or deformation under the influence of any external circumstances of the system of moral values often plunges a person into the most difficult mental states. Periods of crisis, reassessment of values that happen both to individuals and to society as a whole are accompanied by great personal and social dramas. The loss or destruction of an established system of moral values means serious losses for the moral health of society. In their totality, moral values form the moral culture of the individual, which is a historically specific and socially determined measure of a person's mastery of the moral means of life and the practical embodiment of moral values in various fields of activity and behavior.
The authors of the article explore the problem of moral values in modern society. It is emphasized that a person becomes a person only through familiarization with the values of human culture, moral values. The authors prove that, despite the crisis state of modern society, moral values belong to the category of the highest human values. Keywords: morality, morality, value, man, world, space of modern society, crisis.
At present, the crisis situation caused by the rapidly developing globalization of the world space deepens both economic and social contradictions in society. Today, these contradictions testify to a civilizational shift, a violation of the harmony of the existence of human civilization, the emergence of contradictions in all spheres of life. Let us ask ourselves the question: why do contradictions cause an imbalance in society as a single, ordered system? Contradiction, as such, affirms the identity of initially different objects of social and spiritual existence of a person, thereby giving rise to chaos and confusion in ideas, concepts, and understanding of life.
It is quite natural that this crisis situation is reflected in the life of every person, starting with moral and ethical contradictions between people and ending with wars between states. Such a rapidly changing world, with a shift in vital coordinates, instills confusion in a person, “knocks out” him from the habitable, well-known space of being, and throws him into an unfamiliar, and therefore frightening world of “being here”, where the lack of definiteness of form reigns, the unsteadiness of life landmarks. Naturally, such a world throws a challenge to a person, which consists in testing his ability to have a correct moral, ethical orientation in this world, the ability to make decisions that are adequate to the human essence of his being. No one doubts the fact that a person becomes a person only through familiarization with the values of human culture.
This is explained by the fact that a person exists not only in the world of things and processes. It exists, exists, first of all, in the world of values and, generated by these values, the world of meanings. Values set the goals of human existence, and these life goals ensure the formation and transmission of a valuable universal culture. It is axiology, as a science of values, that has created the fundamental foundations for the development of modern human knowledge. The category of "moral value" acts as a human-dimensional reference point that determines the essence of a person's value approach to developing himself as a unique, individual personality and understanding the social problems of contemporary society. “Moral values are one of the forms of manifestation of the moral relations of society. Values are understood as, firstly, the moral significance, the dignity of the individual (a group of individuals, a team) and her actions or the moral characteristics of public institutions; secondly, value ideas related to the field of moral consciousness - moral norms, principles, ideals, concepts of good and evil, justice, happiness, ”we read in the Dictionary of Ethics.
Thus, moral, ethical values belong to the category of higher values that encourage a person to make the right choice between good and evil, truth and lies, cruelty and mercy, enmity and peace in favor of goodness, truth, humanity. But how difficult, sometimes, it is to make this right (moral) choice! What is behind such a simple and well-known concept of “correct moral choice”? Each of us will find our own answer to this question. One of the answers may be the following: “To make a moral choice means to choose morality, to overcome immorality as confusion, disintegration” . Of course, the moral values developed by culture can only be organically perceived by a person and appropriated to them at the personal-semantic level, when they are experienced personally: intellectually, emotionally, sensually. Therefore, the existence of a person in the world of moral values is a process of his spiritual communication with the world and himself as a particle of this world. In fact, the whole life of a person is a constant struggle, a struggle with oneself, with the phenomena of the surrounding world, this is the overcoming of some forces by others. The same applies to values: some values, over time, seem to lose their relevance, recede into the background; others, on the contrary, acquire actual significance and the status of the most dominant in the modern world.
However, thanks to this eternal opposition, life on Earth continues, man evolves and develops. Through weaving this “lace” “human, too human”: thoughts, feelings, emotions, affirmed value principles, the space of human being is created. In my deep conviction, a person is a born meaning. In the process of being, he reveals himself to the world as a proper immanent meaning, distinguished by self-worth. This immanent meaning enters into a relationship with the surrounding mechanisms of social integration and disintegration. This is how a rational, self-aware, human world is created. The interaction of people with each other, the exchange of feelings, information, experience - these are meetings in a meaningful world, since the world of people is a world of meanings and ways to translate them. The semantic understanding and acceptance of moral, ethical values is available to an ethical person, that is, a person who has absorbed the entire heritage of universal morality. Moral values form in the mind of a person a kind of hierarchical ladder, a "pyramid" of values, they are speculative values (values of persuasion) and practical, embodied in a specific action, deed (values of behavior). The diversity of these values creates a sensual, emotional fullness of a person's life, a feeling of the fullness of his existence, makes it possible for a person to participate in the creation and development of vital values.
But the desire of a person to do good, to affirm the norms of human morality without appropriate practical actions, deeds, remains only a desire, an unfounded intention. The will of a person turns from motivation into action only when it is aimed at comprehending and creating a value, the implementation of which requires a great moral effort from a person, which consists, firstly, in the upbringing of an internal moral culture (readiness to perceive moral value) and, secondly, in the ability to independently master moral values (the ability to comprehend existing values and produce new ones). This manifests the creative essence of man as a homo faber - a man-creator of the personal, purely individual world, and the external world that makes up his anthropic space. Despite the fact that moral value, as such, is not a real education, it is, nevertheless, objective and material due to the ability to determine the content of human behavior.
The existential situations of a person in the world, in their repetition and, at the same time, uniqueness, are part of his ethical being. The choice of a line of conduct (moral choice), in a given life situation, is subject to the free will of a person, and this will to fulfill one's moral duty, to choose good, in a situation of confrontation between good and evil, a person needs to grow in himself as one of the determining factors. anthropic signs. “Every creature on earth and every human body has some purpose, which it serves. At the same time, one can keep in mind a purely subjective goal that calls a person to satisfy his personal needs and leads him to personal success in life. But one can also have in mind an objective end, the last and main end of life, in relation to which all subjective ends will turn out to be only a subordinate means. This is the great and main goal of man, comprehending every life and every deed, the goal, in fact, beautiful and sacred, - not the one for which each individual bends and groans, tries and grows rich, humiliates himself and trembles with fear, but the one for which for which it is really worth living in the world, for it is worth fighting for and dying for. This attitude of a person to life is the result of a special subject-social value act, in which the central position is occupied by a reflecting person as a subject of evaluation, realizing this value act. Currently, the human world is experiencing a crisis in all vital areas. The crisis society demonstrates the full power of its destructive power: the decline in the level of sociality of people has led to an increase in their sense of alienation and aggression. “There has been an alienation of the familiar, or traditional, world.
It's scary: the universe in which we are and which we are no longer seems to us the way it should be in essence: solid. It becomes shapeless, unreliable, problematic, shaky. To be in it means not to stand on your feet, but to fall, get lost, suffocate. The consequence of such crisis processes is the “shrinking” of social space, which loses its most important human-dimensional characteristics: regularity and narrative (progressiveness) of development. The social space of our time acquires the features of chance, as a result of which an eschatological disappointment of a person in life, society, and himself comes. There is a situation of absurdity of existence as such. “... Nothing is what it should be, nothing is itself, but at the same time it turns out to be its opposite, everything, anything - and it’s not the damage to our mind that is to blame, but the damage to the world, which, having turned into delirium and deceit, plunges us into madness!
The world has gone mad, gone mad, and we are immersed in it.” As a result, a person loses a sense of self, accompanied by a crisis of self-identity, he is absorbed by a state of apathy, boredom, his own uselessness and loss. That is, a person "isolates himself" from the world and lives in his limited social space. Society, as a result of organized joint activity, disappears, giving way to hostile people towards each other. “When the instrumental possibilities of aggression surpass cultural limits (established by moral norms and values - V. M.) and extensive growth begins, public consciousness and mass moods acquire the appropriate properties. With the growth of needs, the feeling of omnipotence and permissiveness intensifies. This feeling of omnipotence and permissiveness “shatters” that axis of the human-dimensional world, which is based on moral values.
The most painful point of the moral and ethical crisis of modern society is the refusal of modern man from the system of moral values that has been established for thousands of years. And this already poses a threat of denying the existing context of culture, which, in itself, is destructive and dangerous: in isolation from the value-based cultural context, a rich, full-fledged text of the culture of the human world cannot be created. Thus, the study of the problem of the existence of human morality, morality, the mechanisms of their determination does not exclude the disclosure of the essence of a person not only as a creator of values, but also as their destroyer. We can see this especially clearly in today's situation. When complaints are heard that moral values have been destroyed, one should look at oneself and be puzzled by the question: who destroyed these values? This question is rhetorical: moral and ethical values are destroyed by each of us when we forget about the golden rule of morality in relation to each other. The crisis of modern society is characterized by the strengthening of the rational beginning of human life, which turns into impoverishment of the spiritual life of man. The rational principle has led to the rooting in our lives of such an immoral phenomenon as consumerism. Today we live in a world of disposable objects, disposable relationships that do not oblige you to anything: you used it and threw it away: from home, from memory, from thoughts. Of course, it is at least inappropriate to talk about the moral values of love, friendship, duty in such a situation.
I dare to express the hope that the situation of the moral crisis of our modern society is just a situation subject to change, and not some finally established social changes. As an argument for the above, I will cite the following: a person cannot be finally fixed due to his self-reference and the reflexivity that accompanies it. Even when the rational principle of a person, as a thinking being, prevails, human existence stubbornly continues to define itself as human, based on intention, emotion, experience. Equality, love, friendship, sympathy, being human companions, fill our life with humanity. The basic values of the human world: faith, hope, love, patriotism, freedom, leadership are the phenomena of constituting the human self, they oppose the total unification imposed by modernity.
Turning to the history of the problem of moral values, we can state that a critical view of the morality and morality of contemporary reality was characteristic of many enlightened people of different eras. For example, the outstanding ancient Greek poet, philosopher Hesiod, who lived as early as the 8th century BC, writes in the poem “Works and Days”:
“If I could not live with the generation of the fifth century!
Before he died, I would like to be born later.
The earth is now inhabited by iron men...
Children - with fathers, with children - their fathers will not be able to come to an agreement.
A comrade will become alien to a comrade, a host to a guest.
Old parents will soon cease to be honored altogether;
……………………………………………………………..
Truth will be replaced by a fist. Cities will be sacked.
And neither the oath-keeper will arouse respect in anyone,
Neither fair nor kind. Hurry to the insolent and the villain
Honor will be given. Where there is power, there will be right.
Shame will disappear."
It becomes scary how actual and prophetic these lines, written in the 8th century BC, sound today, in the 21st century! We cannot but admit that each of us, modern people, continuing to perform our functions at work or at home with greater or lesser success, loses the anthropic, human foundations of our own existence, turning into a human function. This happens because we are destroying the fundamental basis of human existence - morality, morality.
As a result of this, the values of human morality lose their attractiveness for us, and with it the obligation, I would even say, the obligation to follow them. Entertaining culture, which currently represents a special layer of modern culture, destroys moral values, pushing a person to total oblivion of his human nature, and promotes pleasure as the main principle of life. Of course, enjoying life is wonderful, but when, for the sake of enjoyment, the moral values developed by generations are recklessly destroyed, this “enjoyment” loses its positive characteristics, becoming nothing more than hedonistic oblivion. As noted above, the problem of moral values is topical not only for us, people living in the 21st century, it has been modern and relevant throughout all cultural and historical eras of mankind, and has been the subject of research by many scientists. For example, this problem was deeply developed in the works of the founder of German classical philosophy, Immanuel Kant.
It is known that he considered the essence of man as a combination of two principles: natural (the world of cruelty and evil) and spiritual (the world of culture, morality). The philosopher emphasizes that morality is the force that intentionally elevates a person above the ordinary, creating his cultural being. Moral deeds, according to Kant, can only be carried out by a reasonable, free person who treats himself and other people with equal respect: “A duty to oneself, as well as to others, is to influence each other with one’s moral qualities ... others; although to make oneself the immovable center of one’s principles (highlighted by V.M.), but to consider this inscribed circle only as part of a comprehensive circle of the way of thinking of a citizen of the world, not in order to bake about the blessings of life as a goal, but only in order to cultivate means indirectly leading to them: pleasantness in society, tolerance, mutual love and respect (friendliness and decency ...), and thus attached the graces to virtue; the fulfillment of this is itself the duty of virtue.
That is, according to Kant, a person's act is moral only when it is dictated by duty, conscious adherence to a categorical imperative. I. Kant affirms the idea of the autonomy of morality, the moral law, according to his teaching, cannot be deduced from any other laws: the beginning of moral laws is the person himself. According to the philosopher, morality is free, it is not created by the science of morality, but is based on the moral sense of a person. I. Kant believes that moral regulators are independent of external grounds, even such fundamental ones as religion: a person as a being endowed with reason has his own will and is able to act in one way or another. At the same time, his view of a person is quite pessimistic. Kant does not share the opinion of J.J. Rousseau about the goodness of man, in particular, in his work “On the Primordial Evil in Human Nature”, he writes: “The fact that the world lies in evil is a complaint that is as old as history, even as even older poetry, more how the oldest among all forms of creativity is the religion of the priests" and further: "The judgment of man is evil... expresses only that man is conscious of the moral law and yet accepts in his maxim a (accidental) deviation from it." Nevertheless, the philosopher analyzes the makings of a person's personality, reflecting on the initial makings of goodness in human nature: "The makings of a personality is the ability to perceive respect for the moral law as a sufficient motive for arbitrariness in itself." I. Kant's assessment of a person as a free personality, creating human morality, is obvious.
In the context of the problem we are studying, the following thought of the philosopher is especially noteworthy: "... I declared morality a science that teaches how we should become worthy of happiness (highlighted by V. M.), and not how we should become happy ". To be worthy of happiness, according to I. Kant, means to have such qualities that ensure the harmony of the natural environment and the goals of the individual, including her moral aspirations. The desire to become happy is a completely natural desire of every person, but how important it is today not to forget the Kantian one: “we must become worthy of happiness”! This happiness must be suffered, deserved by one's own moral attitude towards oneself and the people around. Questions of moral values were investigated by Johann Gottfried Herder, who considered the whole human as "the cultivation of humanity." According to the philosopher, “the goal of earthly existence is humanity ... Everything needs to be educated: rational ability must become reason, subtle feelings - art, attraction - noble freedom, motive forces - philanthropy." I. G. Herder compares the upbringing of humanity, which is one of the fundamental moral values, with a divine phenomenon in life, believing that “all human institutions should follow the goal of humanization” . He considers the entire course of human history, the development of culture, spiritual progress from the standpoint of this highest moral value of mankind - the value of humanism, expressing the conviction that humanism contains the highest meaning and content of the sciences, education and arts that make up the world of human existence.
The humanistic ideas of morality, following I. Kant and I. Herder, are continued in their works by G.V.F. Hegel. In his writings, a person must master the divine idea during his life. The education of a person, which means introducing him to cultural values, serves, according to Hegel, to “cultivate” a person. Under the influence of the world of cultural values, it must acquire its social and cultural nature. The moral worldview, from the point of view of the philosopher, is “the postulated harmony of duty and reality”, it consists “in the ratio of moral in-itself-and-for-itself-being with natural in-itself-and-for-itself-being. At the basis of this correlation lies both the complete indifference and own independence of nature and moral goals and activities in relation to each other, and, on the other hand, the consciousness of the sole essentiality of duty and the consciousness of the complete lack of independence and insignificance of nature. The duty that Hegel writes about is dictated by human reason, thanks to which everything in the world has its being. The philosopher's remark about the "complete dependence and insignificance of nature" leads us to the conclusion about the beginning of the world as the beginning of a human, active, purposeful. The absolute idea, the product of which is a person, directs his thinking and actions to perfection in search of truth. It is noteworthy that in the doctrine of the objective spirit, G.W.F. Hegel focuses on the development of the spirit, which receives its further expression in collective activity, in the practice of the human race, and not in the activity of the individual "I". This emphasizes the importance of the social principle of a person, whose inner world, according to the definition of the philosopher, is morality. The moral will of a person is manifested in his actions and no good intention can serve as an excuse for a bad deed. Of interest is Hegel's distinction between morality and morality.
Morality, according to Hegel, characterizes the personal position of the individual, while in morality a form of community of people is manifested: the emergence of the family, civil society, and the state. Based on the philosopher's statement that "... morality is the spirit in its immediate truth", we can conclude what place in Hegel's philosophy is occupied by the moral and ethical principles in the human world. “... The performance of actions is nothing more than the translation into reality of an internal moral goal, nothing more than the generation of some reality determined by the goal, or the creation of harmony between the moral goal and reality itself.” Thus, reality, presented by Hegel in a special spiritual and semantic way, is perceived as an axiological essence. Exploring the crisis of moral values in modern society, we cannot miss the next significant point. The world of man, his activities to develop himself and society is an integral system of interrelations and interdependencies.
In the context of coexistence with other people, coexistence in the world of moral values, such fundamental characteristics of human existence as time and space undergo changes. In a situation where a person is guided by moral values, these changes contain positive aspects: a person begins to feel the value of the time of his earthly existence, his thoughts and feelings get the opportunity to focus on moral reflection, rethinking life's vicissitudes, and making the right moral choice. In a situation of denial of moral values, a person focuses on the present, as a moment of procedural formation, in anticipation of the inevitable approach of a frightening and unpromising future. Time, in this case, is no longer a guarantor of the self of a person, it focuses on the "here and now being", on rapidly replacing each other, unstable, subject to change, manifestations of a person's existence in a society of other people. It ceases to be not only time, in the traditional sense for us, but also a cultural shell in which human existence unfolds: narrative, progressiveness, and together with them integrity, disappear, giving way to fragmentation, fragmentation, clip-like consciousness of a person as a whole, and moral , his moral consciousness, in particular. The consequence of this is the emergence of other moral and ethical paradigms, often regressive, that is, those that do not contribute to moral progress, but plunge a person into the abyss of immorality and immorality.
The past and the future for a modern person practically lose their ontological status, he ceases to be aware of himself as a subject of society, a subject of co-existence. Changes are also taking place in such an important characteristic of human existence as space. A person who accepts moral values as his own, personal values transforms the space of his being into the space for the implementation of his social programs, goals and interests. By his practical activity to transform the surrounding world, a person expands and enriches this space, which, thanks to cultural processes and the interaction of people as subjects of morality, is both a condition for the formation and a condition for the development of a person. In a situation of “moral impasse”, denial and violation of moral values, a person tries (and creates!) A new spatial reality outside the boundaries of the usual parameters of being - a virtual reality, which is nothing more than a collective hallucination of millions of people.
In this illusory space, you can take the place that you deserve, fencing off everything that causes suffering: unfulfilled hopes, ruined plans, your own helplessness. This new man-made space, a kind of mirage, is just an information landscape in the computer's memory, and no matter how a person tries to give it topological certainty, the space closes simultaneously with the computer turning off. Leaving the world of real life values, a person finds himself disoriented in the real space of being, because, captured by the virtual space as an object, he loses his subjective and unique human essence. We should not forget that a person of the late XX - early XXI century - homo ludens - a person who plays. He has a certain carnival playfulness, a craving for visual spectacle, but in this desire to live life in vivid impressions, he loses the true, real, which makes him a man - his human moral character. “Nothing real, genuine. A terrible country dance of "correspondences" nodding at each other. Eternal wink.
Not a single clear word, only hints, omissions. The rose nods at the girl, the girl at the rose. Nobody wants to be themselves." In the situation of the crisis of morality of modern man, we forget that moral and ethical values constitute the basis of universal culture on which the human world is built. But "... culture begins where the spiritual content seeks its true and perfect form." This is the “spiritual content” and “perfect form”, about which Ivan Alexandrovich writes
Ilyin, their harmony is ensured by following the values of human morality and morality. The moral "I" of a person realizes itself as a finite, personal "I" in an endless process of self-creation. A person for whom moral values have not lost their significance, throughout his life, works to transform the potential “I” into the actual “I”, strives to be, to exist, thereby realizing his human program. A person, by the effort of understanding, surprise, questioning, disagreement, creates, creates the moral space of his being. This is the destiny and destiny of man, first of all, as homo sapiens - a reasonable person and, no less important, as homo faber - a human creator.
In the broadest worldview perspective, the evolution of moral values only has a positive value for society when it is carried out not under the dictates of its internal structure, but in accordance with the human, personal priorities of the members of this society, and only if they fulfill their creative function of building and improvement of social space. “Society is the goal to which we devote the best forces of our being, and therefore it cannot but be aware that, breaking away from it, we at the same time lose the meaning of our activity. One of the main characteristics of the crisis of moral values of modern society is that it does not abolish the idea of what is morally proper, but destroys the possibilities for its implementation. In the sociological sketch “Suicide”, E. Durkheim very convincingly and clearly proved that the main reason for a person’s suicide is not material deprivation and not the misfortunes that have fallen on a person. The main reason for a person's decision to commit suicide is the loss of life guidelines, the loss of the meaning of life. Thus, overcoming the crisis in the surrounding society is overcoming the crisis in oneself through the volitional effort of acceptance, familiarization with those moral foundations that allowed humanity to preserve itself in complex historical realities and evolve. So, the moral space of society is created by people: their intellect, reflection, practical activity. The human hierarchy of people is determined by the degree of their morality, morality, ability to protect and increase these values. Of course, it is very difficult to investigate value-based moral and ethical phenomena, because they do not fit well with such epistemological categories as, for example, "truth" and "falsehood", which are difficult to verify and difficult to prove.
No less difficulty in the scientific study of moral values is that most of them cannot be deduced from anywhere. In the study of the problem of moral, ethical values, it is necessary to proceed from the principles of connection, and not causality (which we often observe today). Such an approach will save us from endless wandering in the world of value orientations in search of an invariant solution to certain moral and ethical problems. This problem of studying the principles of communication is a promising field for further research. scientific research many humanities. Modern society needs, in confronting the moral crisis, to integrate on the basis of the eternal moral values of mankind. This is both the foundation and the peak, the highest point of faith in the victory of moral values, potentially able to bring to life a moral catharsis of a person. modern world. In modern society, moral values should have the character of axioms as indisputable truths that do not require proof, and not theorems as statements, the validity of which must be constantly proven.
Literature 1. Dictionary of Ethics / Ed. A. A. Guseynov and I. S. Kona. - 6th ed. - M.: Politizdat, 1989. - 447 p.
2. Kozlova O. N. Socio-cultural development in the mode of exacerbation /O. N. Kozlova // Synergetic paradigm. Man and society in conditions of instability. - M.: Progress-Tradition, 2003. - S. 157 - 166. - 584 p.
3. Ilyin I. A. About education in the future Russia / Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin // Our tasks. Articles 1948 - 1954: in 2 vols. T. 2. - M .: Airis-press, 2008. - S. 176 - 180. - 512 p.
4. Ortega y Gasset H. Leibniz's idea of the beginning and the evolution of deductive theory / José Ortega y Gasset // What is philosophy. - M.: Nauka, 1991. - S. 290 - 336. - 408 p.
5. Nazaretyan A.P. Homo prae-crisimos - Pre-Crisis Man Syndrome /A. P. Nazaretyan // Synergetic paradigm. Man and society in conditions of instability. - M.: Progress-Tradition, 2003. - P.228 - 239-584 p.
6. Hesiod Works and days / Hesiod; [per. from ancient Greek A. I. Zaitsev]. - // Reader on the Literature of Ancient Greece: The Age of Cultural Revolution / Comp. M. Pozdnev. - St. Petersburg: Azbuka-classika, 2004. - S. 85 - 98. - 928 p.
7. Kant I. Metaphysics of morals in two parts / Immanuel Kant; [per. from German.] // WORKS IN SIX VOLUMES. [Under the general ed. V. F. Asmus, A. V. Gulygi, T. I. Oizerman] - M.: Thought, 1965. V.4. Part 2. - S. 109 - 439. - 478 p.
8. Kant I. On the inherent evil in human nature Preface to the edition of 1793 / Immanuel Kant; [per. from German.] // WORKS IN SIX VOLUMES. [Under the general ed. V. F. Asmus, A. V. Gulygi, T. I. Oizerman] - M.: Thought, 1965. V.4. Part 2. - S. 7 - 16. - 478 p.
9. Kant I. On the inherent evil in human nature Immanuel Kant; [per. from German.] / WORKS IN SIX VOLUMES. [Under the general ed. V. F. Asmus, A. V. Gulygi, T. I. Oizerman] - M.: Thought, 1965. V.4. Part 2. - S. 5 - 59. - 478 p.
10. Kant I. On the saying “Maybe this is true in theory, but it is not suitable for practice” 1793 / Immanuel Kant; T. 4. Part 2 [per. with him. .] / WORKS IN SIX VOLUMES. [Under the general ed. V. F. Asmus, A. V. Gulygi, T. I. Oizerman] - M.: Thought, 1965. V.4. Part 2. - S. 59 - 107. - 478 p.
11. Gerder I.G. Ideas for the philosophy of human history. / Johann Gottfried Herder; [per. from German]. - M.: Nauka, 1977. - 703 p.
12. Hegel G.W.F. The Science of Logic / Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel; [per. from German] // Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences. - T.1. - M.: Thought, 1975. - 452 p.
13. Hegel G.W.F. Phenomenology of Spirit The Science of the Experience of Consciousness / Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel; [per. from German] // Phenomenology of Spirit. Philosophy of history. - M.: Eksmo, 2007. - S. 7 - 477. - 880 p. - (Anthology of thought).
14. Mandelstam O. On the nature of the word / Osip Mandelstam // Works in 2 volumes. - M.: Fiction, 1990. - V.2. - S.172 - 187.
15. Ilyin I. A. Fundamentals of Christian culture. / Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin // Lonely Artist Articles Speech Lectures. - M.: Art, 1993. - S. 291 - 337. - 348 p.
16. Durkheim E. Suicide: A sociological study / Emile Durkheim; [per. from fr. with abbr.; Ed. V. A. Bazarova]. - M.: Thought, 1994. - 399 p.
Moskalyuk V. M. Chertkov D. D.
The spiritual world of the younger generation has its own moral components: the meaning of life, moral position and spiritual values. At one time, L.N. Tolstoy drew the attention of young people to the fact that the gift of life and its meaning is to “love others”, and not just yourself. The meaning of life is not innate. Man must find it in the process own life. If a person manages to do this, then he will be alive with meaning, idea, word. This is the basis of human existence. The loss of spirituality is one of the important problems of today. The younger generation meekly plunges into a state of spiritual emptiness. Today's high school student does not understand Derzhavin's poetry at all, the literary critic says that it is "heavy" and does not correspond to the spirit of the present time and therefore uninteresting, and the philologist teacher agrees with this and imposes an imaginary "global" culture on schoolchildren, neglecting the depth and originality of Russian literature. As a result, it turns out that pragmatism, rationalism, boring efficiency come to many young people early. Sociological surveys show that the goal and meaning of a young person's life is to become rich, have a house and a luxury car, and make profitable acquaintances. And if his system of values is shifted to the area of egoistically speculative interests, then this leads to spiritual poverty. Ch. Darwin argued that "it is spirituality that distinguishes a person from an animal." Spirituality characterizes two fundamental and interrelated human needs - the individual need for knowledge and the social need to live "for others." Spirituality elevates a person above material life, helps him to live a full-blooded intellectual and emotional life. The essence of the modern point of view on human development is to focus on its creative side, on the possibilities to improve the world. The most important requirement of life is to translate the energy of youth into positive, so that the activity-intellectual potential is rationally used for the benefit of society and brings social benefits. Therefore, it is important to increase efforts to educate the younger generation of such important human qualities as civic dignity and pride in one's country. Meanwhile, disbelief flourishes in our society, the most important value has been forgotten - a feeling of love for the Motherland. The patriotic feelings of Russians are now often spoken of with irony, which has a pernicious effect on the spiritual and moral health of the younger generation, its worldview, social behavior. Equally necessary for the younger generation high morality. Therefore the scope human relations constantly demands that morality, culture, humanistic ideals be put forward in the first place in life. The spiritual and moral health of the younger generation is threatened by the lack of a culture of feelings. Young people lack warmth and humanity that can be transferred to others, and this deprives them of a moral core, leads to a moral decline. Therefore, it is necessary that in real life the law of rapprochement of hearts should operate, since for the younger generation a feeling of love acquires a special sound. And although love, with all its intimacy, is a universal feeling, not everyone is capable of sublime love. Many are deprived of this gift, while others do not even realize its value.
To all that has been said, it can be added that the youth turned out to be culturally disadvantaged. The surrogates of mass culture propagated by the media played their negative role. Their pernicious influence destroys moral ideals in the minds of young people, the differences between good and evil, crime and heroism. The hustle and bustle of today's irresponsible postmodern culture has reached incredible proportions. The consciousness of a contemporary is literally torn between imaginary values that are aimed at distorting and simplifying our identity. Some young people neglect their historical past, the traditions of their native land, the customs of their people, the history of their family. In this case, their future will be miserable. Therefore, every young person must be convinced that if he retains himself as a faithful reader of Pushkin and Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Chekhov, and not summary their works, if from childhood he will listen to the sounds of folk music and bell ringing, then he will be involved in the national culture. There are things that are necessary and obligatory for everyone: to know who his great-grandfather was, what his grandfather fought for, how charming, smart and talented his grandmother was in her youth, with what dignity his mother went through her difficult life, what his father was ... Very it is disturbing when the younger generation absorbs a negative attitude towards culture. This results in a cult of consumerism taking hold, and the young consumer is filled with contempt for anything that is not profitable. Thus, the traditional values that are the pride of Russia are distorted, turned into their opposite: the ethics of hard work degenerates into a vulgar code of making money; heroism - in the worship of pop idols; civic participation in public life - in street rallies; sport - into a commercial spectacle. The conviction is being introduced into the consciousness of the younger generation that life is an adaptation not only biological, but also social. It is sad that more than half of young people would be able to transcend moral principles in order to succeed in life. However, it must be said that a rather high level of denial of vulgarity, this serious disease that is dangerous for the moral health of the individual, remains in the national culture. The path of our people shows that the soul of a Russian person, without rejecting the reality of the earth, has always tirelessly drawn to a different reality - eternal and good. This is our soil, our tradition. The ancients said: "It is necessary that our children not only know how to dance well, but that they dance well." That is why the work to preserve and protect tradition is of particular strategic importance for us. The spiritual meaning of culture lies in this - not to let the petty and vicious take possession of the mind and heart of a person, to bring him into a state of unconsciousness and nonsense. The younger generation must be taught a serious and meaningful orientation, a moral choice of position, to explain to him "what is good and what is bad." A law is needed to ensure the spiritual security of the rising generation. A special role in his upbringing should be played by national culture, all spheres of education and enlightenment.
In the system of world perception of most modern people, such an idea of religion is absent. This is due, first of all, to the fact that modern culture has largely lost its traditional character, has become secular, extra- and even anti-religious. Throughout the 20th century, the process of secularization was especially intense: the influence of religion, the presence of traditional elements in various spheres of modern culture were reduced to a minimum, or completely destroyed. For a modern person, religion has ceased to be a significant part of the inner spiritual experience, the basis of world perception. In the minds and lives of most of our contemporaries, it has been pushed into the sphere of external elements of archaic, at best traditional, social culture. Personally, religion is sometimes associated with only vague ideas or memories. One of the Russian church writers of the 20th century spoke about it this way: "For religion, we often take an indefinite mixture of childhood memories, sentimental feelings sometimes experienced in church, painted eggs and Easter cake" . With the pain of a believing heart, this writer completes his reflections with the question: "How can we let modern people at least feel the way of the cross of our sinful soul to God?" moral sphere. The non-religious context does not allow a clear distinction between the concepts of good and evil, truth, dignity, duty, honor, conscience; distorts and replaces traditional (for Russian culture, undoubtedly Orthodox) ideas about a person and the meaning of life. In this regard, in modern culture, the traditional understanding of "morality" as good manners, agreement with the absolute laws of truth, human dignity, duty, honor, a clear conscience of a citizen .For Russia, this means the loss of continuity in the spiritual and moral culture, ideology, since the traditional Russian view of the world has been based for centuries on the fundamental idea that involves understanding life as a religious duty, the universal joint service to the gospel ideals of goodness, truth, love, mercy, sacrifice and compassion. According to this worldview, the goal of a person in his personal life, the meaning of family life, public service and state existence in Russia was and is the feasible embodiment in life of those high spiritual principles, the permanent guardian of which is the Orthodox Church. Russia has no other religious-moral, ideological, ideological alternative. After all, the true greatness of Russia in the world, its recognized contribution to world science and culture became possible only on the basis of traditional spiritual culture and ideology; By the way, their elements were also used in the Soviet period. The loss of Russia's former greatness at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries is nothing more than a consequence of the rejection of Russian ideology, the Orthodox faith, traditional values and ideals of the Russian state. It is clear that for Russia any attempt to move in an unconventional direction is fraught with the moral and ethical degradation of society, the demonization of Russian reality, and the complete paralysis of the spiritual forces of the people. The main means of restoring the spiritual, moral, intellectual potential of the people is the revival of the system of spiritual and moral education. By "spiritual and moral education" is meant the process of promoting the spiritual and moral development of a person, his formation
- - moral feelings (conscience, duty, faith, responsibility, citizenship, patriotism),
- - moral character (patience, mercy, meekness, gentleness),
- - moral position (the ability to distinguish between good and evil, the manifestation of selfless love, readiness to overcome life's trials),
- - moral behavior (readiness to serve people and the Fatherland, manifestations of spiritual prudence, obedience, good will). In Russia, spiritual and moral education has traditionally contributed to the spiritual and moral development of a person on the basis of Orthodox culture in all forms of its manifestation (religious, ideological, scientific, artistic , household). This gave and gives the Russian person (in comparison with the Western cultured person) the possibility of a different, more complete and voluminous perception of the world, his place in it. The Orthodox Christian principles of love, harmony and beauty in the arrangement of the world, man and society have invaluable educational and upbringing opportunities. It is on their basis that it is possible to overcome the current crisis of culture, science, education, the crisis of the inner world of man. moral education youth
Summing up what has been said, we can say that the creation of a system of spiritual and moral education of children and youth is necessary for the spiritual revival of Russia, the return to the generation of the 21st century of the Orthodox faith, freedom, family, homeland, which the modern world is trying to reject in fruitless doubt and delusion.
Federal State Educational Institution of Higher Professional Education
"RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF CIVIL SERVICE
UNDER THE PRESIDENT OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION"
Institute of Higher Professional Education
Department of Philosophy
ABSTRACT
at the rate
"Philosophy"
on the topic
Moral values, their place
in the life of society and the individual "
Performed:
Mogilevskaya O.S.
Faculty student
basic educational programs
distance learning
4 courses, 47 groups
Grade:_______
Teacher's signature:_______________
Moscow 2010
Introduction 4
1. The concept and types of morality 5
2. The origin of morality. eleven
3. Moral values. 13
4. The influence of moral values on the individual and their place in modern society. 15
List of used literature. 20
Introduction
Morality is one of the ways of normative regulation of human behavior, a special form of social consciousness and a type of social relations. There are a number of definitions of morality, in which one or another of its essential properties is highlighted.
The formation of civic identity in the moral and ethical aspect as a necessary condition requires differentiation in the minds of young people of the concepts of patriotism and nationalism
Morality is a system of principles and norms that determine the nature of relations between people in accordance with the concepts of good and evil, fair and unfair, worthy and unworthy accepted in a given society. Compliance with the requirements of morality is ensured by the power of spiritual influence, public opinion, inner conviction, and human conscience.
A feature of morality is that it regulates the behavior and consciousness of people in all spheres of life (production activity, everyday life, family, interpersonal and other relationships). Morality also extends to intergroup and interstate relations.
Moral principles are of universal importance, they cover all people, they fix the foundations of the culture of their relationships, created in the long process of the historical development of society.
Consideration of the value content of morality from the standpoint of the theory of human activity allows us to raise the question of the possibility of identifying a certain minimum of fundamental (basic) moral values, which we include: goodness, conscience, honor, duty, responsibility, justice. Basic moral values in the upbringing and development of the personality, in its orientation in life, cognitive activity, perform important functions: a) the indicative function is manifested in the choice of a moral ideal, which acts as a goal and as a model of the life of the individual; b) the assigned moral values act as the driving force behind the upbringing and development of the individual, which is associated with the satisfaction of value needs; c) the predictive function of moral values is to determine the ways, the choice of means to achieve the moral ideal.
The purpose of this work is the disclosure of the concepts of morality and moral values, their essence and functions performed by them in the public life of society and in the process of personality formation.
Work items are the individual and society.
Objects of work are morality and moral values, as regulators of social relations and factors in the formation of the individual.
Tasks to be solved during the work on this essay:
consider the content of the concepts and functions of morality and moral values,
consider the origin and change of the moral foundations of society over time,
consider the relationship and influence of moral values on the individual and society.
1. The concept and types of morality
The word "morality" (from the Latin mos, mores-- temper, mores, customs) in modern language means about the same thing as the word "morality". Therefore, most specialists do not draw a strict distinction between morality and morality and consider these words to be synonymous 1 .
Morality is embodied in the norms and rules governing the behavior of people, their relationships. Every social action, that is, every human action, has its own moral depth, its own measure of morality; along with the objective result specific to each individual case, it produces and reproduces certain moral values. Moral values do not exist separately from technology, material content and the result of actions, although, of course, they are not limited to them. The whole diverse range of bodily and objective manifestations of human activity can serve as a way of fixing morality: facial expressions, gestures, speech, silence, clothing, housing, etc. - behind all this, a certain moral position can be hidden and, as a rule, is hidden.
Morality as a social relation in its, so to speak, pure form is found (reflected) in moral consciousness, in moral feelings and concepts. Feelings (guilt, remorse, etc.), demands (personal virtues, norms, codes, etc.), other manifestations of moral consciousness are specific forms of describing moral relations, they, in fact, are their immediate reality 2 .
The moral life of a person is divided into two levels: the sphere of being, that is, actually practiced mores, and the sphere of what is due, that is, the normative attitudes of a soaring moral consciousness. It should be emphasized that morality is not reduced to moral consciousness. Morality is not only moral concepts, virtues and norms, but, above all, what lies behind them and is reflected in them (not always adequate, and often completely distorted). These are not the edifications that a person hears from parents, teachers, from the pages of newspapers and from TV screens, but the real value meaning that lies in the social relations that make up his essence.
The opposition of good and evil is specific to morality, but, of course, it does not exhaust its content. Good and evil, like other moral concepts (duty, honesty, etc.), are basically specific forms of social relations between individuals, the objective properties of their actions. In this sense, moral consciousness is a reflection and expression of moral relations, a way of fixing them. Therefore, there is nothing surprising in the fact that the definitions of morality very often contain a logical circle, namely, a reference to the moral concepts themselves, primarily to the concepts of good and evil, which are fundamental in ethics. Without referring to the data of moral consciousness, it is impossible to identify morality. We can say that morality is such a quality of social relations between individuals that allows them to be characterized within the framework of the opposition of good and evil 3 .
To show the originality of morality, let's try to briefly compare it with science. They differ from each other both in subject matter, and in goals, and in ways of functioning. The subject of science is the world in itself, in its objective, internally regular connections; science deals with the question of what these or those things and processes are. The subject area of morality is different, it can be indicated by the question: how should one relate to things, to the world? Moreover, only such an attitude of the individual to the world is meant, which is realized in free choice. Morality deals with human behavior; it expresses an internal, indissoluble bond between social individuals, which is a way of their self-creation. For example, the laws of planetary motion are within the competence of science; they are completely alien to morality and are not subject to moral qualification. On the other hand, the question of whether parents should apply physical punishment to children is primarily a moral one and has no direct relation to science. It is possible, of course, to subject it to a rationally reasoned analysis, which is partly done in pedagogy, ethics, but the conclusions obtained in this case do not change the essence of the matter much, because parents beat their children not because they are ignorant, and stop doing it not because they have become enlightened 4 .
The main goal of science can be defined as the production of knowledge, science moves within the framework of an alternative of truth and error. Morality, on the other hand, produces values, reveals the measure of the humanity of the processes of the external world, and moves within the framework of the alternative of good and evil. For example, the statement about the existence of Atlantis can be true or false, it is outside the opposition of good and evil, while, say, the question of the permissibility of adultery is inherently valuable and can be comprehended only on the basis of the concepts of good and evil, it is little connected with the alternative of truth and error.
Science and morality also differ in the way they function in a living individual. The psychological driving force of science is the mind. The psychological foundations of morality are much broader; they are also rooted in the emotional-unconscious sphere. Thus, whether a person can assimilate the theory of relativity or not depends on the power of his intellect, but the reasons why he is miserly or generous do not come down to the state of his mind.
Knowledge is acquired in the process of learning, while moral values are acquired in the living experience of communication, largely acting as the result of skill, habit. A person, for example, cannot become a man of honor and duty only through the assimilation of a book, even if he reads the Nicomachean Ethics or the Critique of Practical Reason: for this he needs to practice the corresponding actions every day. On the other hand, he will not be able to assimilate the philosophy of Aristotle and Kant by developing certain habits, even if it is the habit of reading 5 .
Morality is not the result of human arbitrariness, it is objectively determined and acts as a necessary form of self-realization of social individuals. To think that a person can change suddenly, in any direction, that he can develop any moral qualities in himself and follow any principle, and that the task, in fact, is to come up with the most correct, true principle, to think so - means at best indulge in romantic illusion. Socio-moral behavior has its own strict logic, and perhaps no less strict than the causality of nature.
The theory of morality inevitably assumes a philosophical character. Morality, as already mentioned, permeates the whole variety of connections of a social person, all types and specific manifestations of his socially significant activity. This "ubiquity", "omnipresence" of morality makes it extremely difficult, and in addition to the unusual individualization of moral manifestations, simply excludes the possibility of its holistic description by precise, empirical methods. Even the father of ethical science, Aristotle, noted that in it we are dealing with truth on a large scale and with consequences that are more probable than necessary, and that the degree of accuracy allowed in ethics differs from the degree of accuracy inherent, for example, in mathematics and astronomy. Due to the nature of morality, there is no other means of penetrating into its essence and revealing its specificity as an integral phenomenon, except for abstraction. A number of considerations show that the abstraction itself in this case inevitably acquires a philosophical character. Real moral life is divided into two levels: on the one hand, a relatively independent realm of moral consciousness, and on the other, the world of moral relations, the real value meanings of real forms of social relations between people. Moral theorists are faced with questions about how these two levels relate to each other, in what relation are moral principles to the living practice of moral behavior, to the moral foundations of the very way of life. The answer to them turns out to be a concretization of the main question of philosophy and depends on the initial philosophical position of the researcher. The fundamental historical defect of idealistic ethics lies in the fact that it takes the subjective manifestations of morality for morality itself and interprets it as a set of abstract norms and virtues.
Further, one of the central problems over which all moral theorists struggled was to comprehend morality in its correlation with other factors of human existence. It was formulated as a ratio of virtue and happiness, virtue and benefit, moral perfection and success in life, duty and inclinations, categorical and conditional imperatives, etc. . The problem was not always posed in an adequate form, but it was always about finding out what relation morality has to the economic, political and other objective goals of man and society. There is no need to prove that the solution of this problem directly depends on the general socio-philosophical theory and objectively leads to a certain general philosophical view of society 6 .
Idealistic ethics tends to absolutize morality. She considers it as an end in itself, as a kind of independent realm, located on the other side of causality. It turns the moral man into a moral man. In it, morality is alienated from specific individuals, opposes them in the form of eternal and unconditional laws, requirements, rules. Morality is interpreted as a force designed to dominate individuals. It is assumed that being moral is already happiness.
From the point of view of materialistic ethics, morality is one of the moments in the chain of causes and effects, a property of a social person; being necessary for the fullness of human existence, it does not exhaust it. Morality reveals its humanistic possibilities only to the extent that it is not alienated from living individuals, but is continued in their empirical interests and goals 7 .
2. The origin of morality.
The origin of morality as one of the main ways of normative regulation of human actions in society, a special form of social consciousness and the type of social relations is explained in different ways by various philosophical systems. There are at least three main approaches to solving this problem.
Firstly, religious-idealistic, considering morality as a gift from God. Like a lightning strike, morality cuts off man from the animal world.
Secondly, naturalistic, considering morality as a simple continuation, complication of the group feelings of animals that ensure the survival of the species in the struggle for existence. Representatives of naturalism in ethics reduce the social to the biological, erase the qualitative line that distinguishes the human psyche from the animal. They identify animal group feelings and morality.
Third, sociological, considering morality as a phenomenon that arose along with communication and collective labor actions and ensures their regulation. With this approach, morality arises as a person leaves the animal state, receiving developed forms along with the emergence and deepening of social differences within the tribe. The main reasons that caused the need for moral regulation are the development and complication of social relations: the appearance of a surplus product and the need to distribute it; gender and age division of labor; singling out clans within a tribe; streamlining sexual relations, etc.
Since it is the sociological approach that seems to you the most correct, let us consider in more detail the mores of the tribal system, the society in which morality is born, the foundations of material and spiritual culture are laid.
The direct social prerequisites that determined the emergence of morality and the need for moral regulation of primitive society were 8:
development of consciousness and speech;
the emergence of cattle breeding, agriculture, crafts (pottery, metal smelting, weaving, etc.);
the formation of simple rules of communication, a sense of community, mutual support, etc.;
the emergence of primitive collectivism as an awareness of consanguinity, the unity of all members of the tribe.
The morality of a person is closely related to his ability to freely choose. It is expressed, first of all, in the ability of people to distance themselves from selfish material and physiological needs in order to subordinate actions to moral rules and principles. People are given not just to "live" some experience, but also to relate morally to their experience, for example, suppress their fear and encourage courage. Free choice is a choice freed from the inevitable influence of external and internal circumstances, it is an act of personal decision, an expression of the individuality of the subject.
3. Moral values.
In moral life there should be certain authoritative guidelines - moral values that would cement and guide the moral life of society and the individual, would be a kind of compass in everyday moral creativity. The fact that moral behavior is not the mechanical execution of some set of prescriptions is easily revealed in the daily interaction of people. Some we meet with a smile, while others are emphasized dryly, coldly.
What can be attributed to moral values? Obviously, first of all, human life itself, which is associated with harmony, order, freedom, and the opposite - death - with lack of freedom, decay, disharmony. Of course, it is worth thinking about the remarks of those philosophers who condemn cowardice, betrayal, meanness, with the help of which some people try to save their lives in extreme situations. However, it should be recognized that such situations are rather the exceptions that confirm the rule.
Thus, in morality, along with the most diverse norms, there is a layer of higher moral values - life, freedom, respect for the honor and dignity of every human person. It should be emphasized that it is moral values that fill our everyday life with fullness and spirituality, with a special meaning. Spirituality should be understood as the desire of a person to correlate his finite existence in time and space with Eternity, to go beyond the boundaries of his being. It is these aspirations that fill the moral life with a high meaning, and morality itself is taken out of the framework of simplified ideas, protecting it from being reduced to a set of simple rules of behavior.
Value is a characteristic feature of human life. For many centuries, people have developed the ability to identify objects and phenomena in the world around them that meet their needs and to which they treat in a special way: they value and protect them, they are guided by them in their life. Being one of the key concepts of modern social thought, the concept of "value" is used in philosophy, sociology, psychology to refer to objects and phenomena, their properties, as well as abstract ideas that embody social ideals and thus act as a standard of due. The content of this concept is characterized by the majority of scientists 9 through the selection of a number of features that are inherent in one way or another to all forms of social consciousness: significance, normativity, usefulness, necessity. In ordinary word usage, “value” is understood to mean one or another meaning of some object (thing, state, act), its dignity with a “plus” or “minus” sign, something desirable or harmful, in other words, good or bad.
Moral value is a category that reflects the attitude of a certain individual in relation to his moral choice, which determines the strategy of his own behavior in any particular situation.
The main features of moral values that distinguish them from other, albeit close, phenomena, according to M. Fritzkhan, Doctor of Philosophy, include:
1) prescriptiveness, which also acts as validity;
3) the universality of moral values, interpreted as being related to any addressee without any exception; However, within the framework of the universality of moral values, two modifications should be seen: one is universal, when values and norms apply to the entire human race, and the other is communal, that is, one that covers all members of a given community (family morality, professional ethics, class morality, national morality, etc.);
4) the specificity of the moral sanction, which operates within the framework of dispersed social control, public opinion, as well as through the mechanisms of psychological self-regulation;
5) the priority of moral values over other values and norms in case of their conflict with each other; this priority is not something uniquely and completely objectively given.
Thus, for a value to be moral, it is sufficient that it be prescriptive, categorical, universal, sanctioned by public opinion, taking precedence over other values and generating a motive and a maximum will to perform.
4. The influence of moral values on the individual and their place in modern society.
At the present time, the problem of value is of great importance. This is explained by the fact that the process of renewal of all spheres of public life has brought to life many new, both positive and negative phenomena. Developing scientific and technological progress, industrialization and informatization of all spheres of modern society - all this gives rise to the growth of a negative attitude towards history, culture, traditions and leads to the devaluation of values in the modern world.
The absolutization of material values led to a change in moral, political values and the spiritual degradation of the individual.
The lack of spiritual values is felt today in all spheres. Many of our ideals have changed drastically in the course of change. The spiritual balance was disturbed, and a destructive stream of indifference, cynicism, disbelief, envy, and hypocrisy rushed into the resulting void.
Today, anyone would agree with the statement that the problems associated with human values are among the most important. The most important, first of all, because values act as an integrative basis both for a single individual and for a social group, culture, nation, and finally, for humanity as a whole. P. Sorokin saw in the presence of an integral and stable system of values the most important condition for both internal social peace and international peace. "When their unity, assimilation and harmony weaken...the chances of an international or civil war increase...".
The destruction of the value base inevitably leads to a crisis (this applies both to the individual and to society as a whole), the way out of which is possible only by acquiring new values and preserving those that were accumulated by previous generations. All this is closely connected with the current situation in Russian society, which is split into groups and little groups and is deprived of a single unifying platform. This split is a direct product of the value crisis that erupted after the collapse of the totalitarian ideology, which implied the existence of a uniform system of values for the entire population and quite successfully formed these values through a nationwide system of education and propaganda.
The destruction of these value orientations was not accompanied by the emergence of any equivalent new ones. This is where many of the social problems that we face today originate in a fairly obvious way: the crisis of morality and legal awareness, social instability, demoralization of the population, the decline in the value of human life, and much more. There is a value vacuum, throwing from one value to another, and many other symptoms of social pathology that arose on the basis of a change in the value base and a change in worldview.
Values in the process of development of society, of course, change; what was a value yesterday may cease to be a value today, and in the future a turn to the values of the past is possible, along with the emergence of new values 10 .
The values that exist in society, actual and potential, essential and insignificant, represent that side of the surrounding reality that directly affects a person.
Given this circumstance, it is possible to determine the role of values in modern society. Through the development of diverse values, a person is socialized, that is, he acquires social experience, social information, joins the culture. Acting within the framework of this, a person creates new values or preserves old ones, which, in turn, affects the further development of society.
Spiritual values are not subject to obsolescence to the same extent as material values. Their consumption is not a passive act, on the contrary, in the process of their assimilation, a person is spiritually enriched, improves his inner world.
In modern society, one can accept or not accept this or that ideal. But there are some general trends that should be taken into account. If there is evil, there is good, there is humanity, beauty, joy, happiness. Only this will help the society and new generations to survive.
Conclusion.
The relationship between public and individual moral consciousness is complex and contradictory. On the one hand, moral consciousness is an expression of the most typical morality of individuals in a given society, but is not reduced to the sum of individual consciousnesses, because it is a relatively independent spiritual system that has developed in a particular social environment, including moral ideals, norms, and views. , concepts.
On the other hand, public moral consciousness becomes effective only when it has "transformed" into an individual one. The degree of this “transformation” determines whether moral consciousness will become truly social. In turn, individual moral consciousness is nothing but the result of the internalization of the moral consciousness of a given society, i.e. a peculiar form of expression of the latter.
Public moral consciousness acts in relation to individual consciousness as an objective system, the leading side: the assimilation of historically established public morality by a person not only determines the general structure of a person’s moral consciousness and behavior, but also is the basis for his further development as a social and moral being. Any society is a unity of diversity, covering certain social strata, nations and nationalities, professional groups, etc., which differ in their socio-economic, cultural, ethnic development and other characteristics. The social moral consciousness is also the unity of the manifold. It includes elements that, by their very nature, have a different degree of generality, i.e. those that are inherent in all mankind, or only a certain society, social stratum, nation or nationality, etc.
Speaking about the relationship between the public and the individual in moral consciousness, it should be noted that their relationship to each other is selective and active. Not every concept that has arisen in the moral consciousness of an individual is necessarily transformed into a public moral consciousness; even when it has a social significance, certain specific historical conditions may prevent its socialization.
List of used literature.
- Coursework >> Sociology
The process of creating spiritual values, their preservation, distribution, consumption ... of the institution, its places V society, switching mechanisms ... education. It reinforces moral the authority of the church, on the one hand... personalities. 3.3 The role of the institute of culture in life societies ...
Legal culture and its functions in modern society
Abstract >> State and LawAnd legal conscience their place V life societies, assimilation of legal values, their implementation in practice... content, etc. Legal education personalities expressed in three states - ... nurtured social significance and moral values legal regulations and...
Society and social processes
Abstract >> Sociology... value there may be money, for others - moral... communities, institutions, organizations and personalities, individuals. It's a relationship... and a vicious one with their points of view life societies. In modern conditions ... according to their opinion places in the reformed society or lost...
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values and moral priorities. Therefore, the doctor performs his ...
