Characteristics of the spiritual life of society philosophy. Spiritual life and human needs
on the topic: "Spiritual life of society"
Prepared by:
doctor philosophical sciences,
Professor Naumenko S.P.
Belgorod - 2008
Introductory part
1. The concept, essence and content of the spiritual life of society
2. The main elements of the spiritual life of society
3. Dialectics of the spiritual life of society
Final part (summarizing)
To the most important philosophical questions relating to the relationship between the World and Man, also includes the inner spiritual life of man, those basic values that underlie his existence. Man not only cognizes the world as a being, seeking to reveal its objective logic, but also evaluates reality, trying to understand the meaning of his own existence, experiencing the world as proper and improper, good and harmful, beautiful and ugly, fair and unfair, etc.
Universal human values act as criteria of degree as spiritual development and the social progress of mankind. The values that ensure human life include health, a certain level of material security, social relations that ensure the realization of the individual and freedom of choice, family, law, etc.
Values traditionally classified as spiritual - aesthetic, moral, religious, legal and general cultural (educational) - are usually considered as parts that make up a single whole, called spiritual culture, which will be the subject of our further analysis.
Question number 1. The concept, essence and content of the spiritual life of society
The spiritual life of man and humanity is a phenomenon that, like culture, distinguishes their existence from purely natural and gives it a social character. Through spirituality comes the awareness of the world around us, the development of a deeper and more subtle attitude towards it. Through spirituality there is a process of a person's knowledge of himself, his destiny and life meaning.
The history of mankind has shown the inconsistency of the human spirit, its ups and downs, losses and gains, tragedy and enormous potential.
Spirituality today is a condition, a factor and a subtle tool for solving the problem of the survival of mankind, its reliable life support, sustainable development of society and the individual. How a person uses the potential of spirituality determines his present and future.
Spirituality is a complex concept. It was used primarily in religion, religious and idealistically oriented philosophy. Here it acted as an independent spiritual substance, which owns the function of creation and determining the fate of the world and man.
In other philosophical traditions, it is not so commonly used and has not found its place both in the sphere of concepts and in the sphere of the socio-cultural being of a person. In studies of mental conscious activity, this concept is practically not used due to its “non-operational” nature.
At the same time, the concept of spirituality is widely used in the concepts of "spiritual revival", in studies of "spiritual production", "spiritual culture", etc. However, its definition is still debatable.
In the cultural and anthropological context, the concept of spirituality is used when characterizing the inner, subjective world of a person, as " spiritual world personalities." But what is included in this "world"? By what criteria to determine its presence, and even more development?
Obviously, the concept of spirituality is not limited to reason, rationality, culture of thinking, level and quality of knowledge. Spirituality is not formed exclusively through education. Of course, there is no and cannot be spirituality outside of the above, but one-sided rationalism, especially of the positivist-scientist type, is not sufficient to define spirituality. The sphere of spirituality is wider in scope and richer in content than that which relates exclusively to rationality.
Equally, spirituality cannot be defined as a culture of experiences and sensory-volitional exploration of the world by a person, although outside of this, spirituality as a quality of a person and a characteristic of his culture also does not exist.
The concept of spirituality is undoubtedly necessary to determine the utilitarian-pragmatic values that motivate the behavior and inner life of a person. However, it is even more important when identifying those values on the basis of which meaningful life problems are solved, which are usually expressed for each person in the system of “eternal questions” of his being. The complexity of their solution lies in the fact that, although they have a universal basis, every time in a specific historical time and space, each person discovers and solves them anew for himself and at the same time in his own way. On this path, the spiritual ascent of the individual, the acquisition of spiritual culture and maturity is carried out.
Thus, the main thing here is not the accumulation of various knowledge, but their meaning and purpose. Spirituality is the acquisition of meaning. Spirituality is evidence of a certain hierarchy of values, goals and meanings, it concentrates problems related to the highest level of human exploration of the world. Spiritual development is an ascent along the path of acquiring "truth, goodness and beauty" and other higher values. On this path, the creative abilities of a person are determined not only to think and act utilitarianly, but also to correlate their actions with something "impersonal" that constitutes the "human world".
An imbalance in knowledge about the world around us and about oneself gives contradiction to the process of forming a person as a spiritual being, who has the ability to create according to the laws of truth, goodness and beauty. In this context, spirituality is an integrative quality that belongs to the sphere of meaningful life values that determine the content, quality and direction of human existence and the “human image” in each individual.
The problem of spirituality is not only the definition of the highest level of human mastery of his world, attitude to it - nature, society, other people, to himself. This is the problem of a person going beyond the limits of a narrowly empirical being, overcoming himself of "yesterday's" in the process of renewal and ascent to his ideals, values and their realization on his life path. Therefore, this is the problem of "life-creation". The internal basis of self-determination of the individual is "conscience" - a category of morality. Morality is the determinant of the spiritual culture of the individual, which sets the measure and quality of the freedom of self-realization of a person.
Thus, spiritual life is an important aspect of the existence and development of man and society, in the content of which a truly human essence is manifested.
The spiritual life of society is an area of being in which objective, supra-individual reality is given not in the form of an external objectivity opposing a person, but as an ideal reality, a set of meaningful life values that is present in him and determines the content, quality and direction of social and individual being.
The genetically spiritual side of a person's being arises on the basis of his practical activity as a special form of reflection of the objective world, as a means of orientation in the world and interaction with it. As well as subject-practical, spiritual activity generally follows the laws of this world. Of course, we are not talking about the complete identity of the material and the ideal. The essence lies in their fundamental unity, the coincidence of the main, "nodal" points. At the same time, the ideal-spiritual world (of concepts, images, values) created by man has fundamental autonomy and develops according to its own laws. As a result, he can soar very high above material reality. However, the spirit cannot completely break away from its material basis, since in the final analysis this would mean the loss of orientation of man and society in the world. The result of such a separation for a person is a departure into the world of illusions, mental illness, and for society - its deformation under the influence of myths, utopias, dogmas, social projects.
Question number 2.The main elements of the spiritual life of society
The structure of the spiritual life of society is very complex. Its core is social and individual consciousness.
Elements of the spiritual life of society are also considered to be:
spiritual needs;
Spiritual activity and production;
Spiritual values;
Spiritual consumption;
spiritual relations;
Manifestations of interpersonal spiritual communication.
The spiritual needs of a person are internal motivations for creativity, the creation of spiritual values and their development, for spiritual communication. Unlike natural, spiritual needs are set not biologically, but socially. The individual's need to master the sign-symbolic world of culture has the character of an objective necessity for him, otherwise he will not become a man and will not be able to live in society. However, this need does not arise on its own. It must be formed and developed by the social context, the environment of the individual in the complex and lengthy process of his upbringing and education.
At the same time, at first, society forms in a person only the most elementary spiritual needs that ensure his socialization. Spiritual needs of a higher order - the development of the wealth of world culture, participation in their creation, etc. - society can form only indirectly, through a system of spiritual values that serve as guidelines in the spiritual self-development of individuals.
Spiritual needs are fundamentally unlimited. There are no limits to the growth of the needs of the spirit. The natural limiters of such growth can only be the volumes of spiritual wealth already accumulated by mankind, the possibilities and strength of the desire of a person to participate in their production.
Spirituality is involved in any social phenomena to a certain extent, which is represented by various aspects, types, etc. Therefore, determining the place and role of the spiritual factor in social phenomena and processes becomes a necessary moment of learning patterns public life. The theoretical development of the problems of the spiritual life of society and its culture is primarily important for those areas of practical activity in which spiritual elements play a noticeable, sometimes decisive role. The methodological significance of these concepts is determined by their belonging to the system of fundamental categories of social philosophy, reflecting the main ones above society as a whole and revealing the relationship between them. This role is manifested both in the study of the historical process as a whole, and in the concrete study of individual social phenomena, when it is necessary to clarify the relationship between the subjective and objective sides.
What is the meaning of the spiritual life of society and its culture?
1 The essence of the spiritual life of society and its structure
The life of society is the real life process of a social subject (personality, social group, class, society as a whole), which takes place in specific historical conditions and is characterized by a certain system of types and forms of activity as a way of assimilating reality by a person. IN real life Societies are united and equally necessary both material, material, and ideal, spiritual. To characterize the spirit of the ram in modern literature, the categories "spiritual life of society", "spiritual production", "social consciousness", "spiritual culture" are used. These categories are very close in meaning, but there is a certain difference between them, but between them there is authority.
The spiritual life of society is the broadest concept of all those mentioned. It covers multifaceted processes, phenomena associated with the spiritual sphere of people's life, the totality of their views, feelings, ideas, as well as the processes of production of social and individual ideas and their assimilation. Spiritual life is not only ideal phenomena, but also its subjects that have certain needs, interests, ideals and have social institutions involved in the production, distribution and storage of spiritual values (clubs, libraries, theaters, museums, educational institutions, religious and public organizations, etc.).
Spiritual production is a type of labor activity, the essence of which is the creation of objects for the spiritual needs of people. Spiritual production develops on the basis of material production and has features in common with it. However, spiritual production is characterized by specific features. The main ones are:
a) if the result of material production is material values, the world of things, then the result of spiritual production is spiritual values, the world of ideas;
b) if material production is aimed at creating directly significant values, then spiritual production is values that only ultimately become socially useful;
c) if in material production an object is used as a material form - it is absorbed or attached to something, that is, it disappears as an independent one, then in the process of spiritual production the informational use of the object takes place regardless of its material form, i.e. the object not only does not disappear, but can have a much larger volume.
As an important component of social production, spiritual production acts as the production of social consciousness, in which the main meaning of the spiritual life of society is concentrated. This is the core, the quintessence of spiritual life.
Social consciousness is a set of ideal images, namely: concepts, ideas, attitudes, ideas, feelings, experiences, moods that arise in the process of reflection by a social subject of the surrounding world, in particular public consciousness. In other words, this is an understanding of reality by the relevant social groups or society as a whole at a given stage of their development (France of the era. Napoleon I; the Soviet society of the 20s or the period. Great. Patriotic War; society in Ukraine after 1991). Public consciousness is an independent spiritual formation, it does not exist empirically, but as a philosophical category, denoting the peculiarity of social subjects to reflect social life as a real process of people's lives. Social consciousness and social being are the most general categories, they are used to identify what is predominantly defining, what is determined in public life, beyond these limits their opposition does not make sense. Ideal, spiritual components are inextricably intertwined, and public life is studied about them. Public consciousness - part social being, and being itself is social, since the social consciousness-omity functions in it.
Public consciousness has an extremely complex dynamic structure, which is due to the structure of social life. The analysis of this structure is carried out in two aspects: epistemological (cognitive) and sociological. According to the epistemological (cognitive) capabilities and features of the reflection of social life, two levels of social consciousness are distinguished: ordinary and theoretical.
The sociological aspect of social consciousness is the moment of its activity, it is not separated from the system of relations in which this activity is carried out. In this aspect, public consciousness is differentiated by spheres and is represented by social psychology and ideology. In addition to these elements, there are forms of social consciousness, which are forms of cognition of reality and, at the same time, spiritual and practical forms of understanding the world and man.
Let us consider these elements of social consciousness in more detail. The everyday level of social consciousness is a reflection of reality within the limits of everyday life. Ordinary consciousness is often called healthy sense. Ordinary consciousness is formed spontaneously, in the process of direct life. It includes empirical knowledge accumulated over the centuries, norms and patterns of behavior, ideas, traditions. These are scattered and unsystematized ideas and knowledge about the phenomena that lie on the surface of life and therefore do not need substantiation and finishing. The theoretical level of social consciousness goes beyond the empirical conditions of people's existence and acts in the form of a certain system of views. He seeks to penetrate into the essence of the phenomena of objective reality, to reveal the patterns of their development and functioning. Only theoretical consciousness can reveal regular tendencies and the complex dialectics of the development of social life in all its complexity and versatility. The creator of theoretical knowledge is a relatively minor professionally trained part of society - the scientific intelligentsia.
Do you need ordinary consciousness in the presence of a theoretical one? knowledge, science, ordinary consciousness will be needed. However, the absolutization of ordinary consciousness leads to the emergence of illusions and delusions in the public consciousness. It is important that the sciences, in particular the social sciences, go to the theoretical level in order to scientific concepts were not replaced by ordinary concepts and ideas, since in this case the knowledge system loses its scientific status.
Let us now consider the sociological aspect of the structure of social consciousness. According to this aspect, two spheres are defined in the structure of social consciousness - social psychology and ideology. Social psychology is a combination of social moods and feelings, customs, traditions and public opinion, which are formed spontaneously, in the process of everyday life of society. Social psychology and empirical knowledge are on the same level of social consciousness. But in social psychology, it is not the knowledge of reality in itself that is dominant, but the attitude to this knowledge, the assessment of reality. Social psychology performs the regulative function of the immediate life of people. It reflects the psychological traits and sensual states of social groups and society as a whole;
Social psychology, with its emotional coloring, plays an important role in social movements, prompting them to various kinds of actions. That's why statesmen It is important for political parties and politicians to study the mood of people, to predict their reaction to certain events.
Ideology is a system of views, ideas, theories, principles that reflect social life through the prism of interests, ideals, goals of social groups, classes, nations, society. Ideology, as well as sus general psychology, aimed at regulating social relations. Between them there is unity and complementarity. However, these spheres of public consciousness also have certain differences, namely:
1) social psychology is a direct and spontaneous expression of the interests of a certain class or social group, while ideology is created purposefully, by certain groups of people employed in the field of spiritual production
2) in contrast to social psychology, ideology is an ordered and theoretically formalized system, i.e. in cognitive terms, it acts at the level of theoretical consciousness;
3) social psychology covers the entire set of views of people who have a homogeneous, i.e. undivided character. Ideology is divided into separate types - political, legal, aesthetic, religious and other beliefs of people;
4) social psychology finds its manifestation in solving the practical problems of everyday life, while the ideology is aimed at solving global social problems
One should distinguish between progressive and conservative ideology, reactionary and scientific, relatively true and unscientific, illusory. The nature of an ideology depends on whose social interests it must correspond to and how it correlates with the needs of social development.
No ideology should acquire the character of a state, official, coercive, monopolistic character. It must proceed from ideological pluralism, the rivalry of different ideologies. The practice of St. Why, that hopes for a complete "de-ideologization" of society, i.e. deprivation of ideology in general, were not justified and were true.
In the structure of social consciousness, the leading place belongs to its forms. Forms of social consciousness are relatively independent, more or less systematized spiritual formations in terms of level, reflecting the side of the objective world and social life. Each form of social consciousness reflects the world in its entirety, but according to its specificity and purpose. They define such forms of social consciousness as: political, legal, moral, aesthetic, religious, philosophical, scientific, etc.
there is no one single sign that it would be possible to distinguish one form of social consciousness from another, does not exist. Researchers involved in the study of the forms of social consciousness identify four main principles, which together could be such a criterion, they believe that the forms of social consciousness are different:
a) on the subject of reflection;
b) by display forms
c) according to the peculiarities of its origin and development;
d) for the social functions they perform
Forms of social consciousness are characterized not only by differences, they also have common features. All forms have one object of reflection - the material life of society, social being, they all act as separate types of a single spiritual complex - social consciousness; all add up and function at both levels (with the exception of scientific consciousness): both everyday and theoretical (at the theoretical level, they also turn out to be more distinct). All forms are interconnected, interpenetrating and mutually enriching.
In every modern society An extremely important form of social consciousness is political consciousness. Political consciousness is a set of ideas, views, teachings, political attitudes, which are reflected in social group, class relations in society, the center of which is a certain attitude towards power. The very concept of power is key to political consciousness. Political consciousness includes ideological and psychological aspects. The ideological aspect is associated with ideology as a system of views, ideas, reflecting the fundamental interests of certain social communities, strata, groups, etc. The psychological aspect is associated with psychology based on unsystematized views, feelings, moods of certain subjects of political relations.
Legal consciousness is closely connected with political consciousness. Legal consciousness is a set of ideas and views regarding the legality or illegality of actions, the rights and obligations of members of society, the fairness or injustice of legal laws. Legal consciousness provides public order, regulates public relations, based on the requirements of proper behavior, from the point of view of the law, formulated and approved by legal institutions and institutions. Legal awareness at the level of the individual is the awareness and upholding of one's rights by defining and observing the corresponding obligations.
Law cannot regulate all social relations without exception, it regulates only the most important, from the point of view of the state, relations. The rest of social relations are regulated by morality (as well as habits, traditions and rituals, public opinion, which are partly included in morality). moral consciousness is the sum of the rules of socially approved behavior of individuals. It covers reality in the form of moral norms - the requirements that a person must adhere to according to society and their own ideas of good and evil. Moral claims do not have validation in certain institutions or institutions. They are supported by public opinion, the authorities, and the established norms, assessments of society and social groups. Moral consciousness at the level of society is those requirements that are attributed to the individual and which he must fulfill by virtue of social duty. Thus, public morality is a way of adapting to the social environment, a sphere of social necessity and validity.
The needs of people in the perception and creation of the perfect, the sublime, which would give them spiritual pleasure, brought art and aesthetic consciousness to life. They arose, like other relations and forms of consciousness corresponding to them, on the basis of the socio-historical, formerly industrial practice of people. The specificity of aesthetic consciousness is determined by its subject matter, the artistic-figurative way of reflecting the artistic and functional aspects. Aesthetic consciousness includes tastes, ideas, thoughts, ideals, views and theories that reflect the aesthetic value of objects and phenomena of objective reality, as well as objects and phenomena created by man himself. The reflection of reality in the aesthetic consciousness is carried out through the concept of the beautiful and the ugly, the sublime and the vile, the comic and the tragic. This display is carried out on the ideological and ordinary psychological levels.
Religion and religious consciousness play an important role in the spiritual life of society. It covers religious ideology and religious psychology. Religious ideology is a more or less coherent system of religious ideas, views of the world. Religious ideology, as a rule, is developed and developed by theologians. Religious psychology, developing mainly spontaneously, directly in the process reflects the daily conditions of people's lives, including unsystematized religious feelings, moods, customs, ideas, mainly associated with belief in the supernatural. An essential place in household religious consciousness and occupies the process of religious worship or cult, represents the most conservative element of any religion. In the course of the implementation of such worship, a person experiences a significant and versatile spiritual, emotional, psychological influence in the spit.
There is something in common between religious and philosophical consciousness. Both religion and philosophy are aimed at understanding the ultimate meanings of human existence, at the search for deep unity and connection between man and the world universe. But this realization is carried out in different ways, in different ways. Thus, philosophy is a theoretical, conceptual reflection on the problems of the meaning of human existence. It's getting closer. Her to science. But, unlike science, philosophy serves not only the goals of theoretical knowledge, but also the goals, and above all, human self-determination in the world, the goals of harmony between a person and the world of his being. Therefore, the highest value of philosophical knowledge is wisdom, as the experience and awareness of the truth, as a personal comprehension of the meanings and knowledge of everything that exists, the ways of a person's creative self-development. Religion, relying not on knowledge, but on religious faith, points to the spiritual and practical way of comprehending the meaning of life. It gives a person spiritual guidelines for achieving immortality, having specific forms of awareness of the unity of man and the world and light.
Science as a form of social consciousness is aimed at reflecting the objective patterns and relationships of the natural and social world. It systematizes objective knowledge about reality in an intellectual and conceptual (rational) way. Truth is the result and its main value. Science has a theoretical and empirical (experimental research) level of research and organization of knowledge, based on a specially developed system of scientific methods of cognition and bringing knowledge to people. As a social institution, science took shape in the 17th-18th centuries. According to its types, science is divided into the humanities, technical sciences and natural sciences.
An important place in the structure of social consciousness belongs to its bearers: mass, collective and individual consciousness. Mass consciousness is the level of social consciousness, the subjects of which are large communities that make up the majority of the population. Mass consciousness arises on the basis of the unity of socio-economic, ideological-political and cultural-ethnic conditions of life of many people and includes common, typical ideas, views, aspirations, ideals, moods and emotions, customs and traditions that are formed in the process of spiritual and practical development world and are directly woven into daily practical activities. Mass consciousness is an integrating manifestation of the interaction of individual and group levels of social consciousness. It is formed under the influence of scientific-theoretical and everyday consciousness, ideology and social psychology. Mass consciousness acts as a direct motivating force for the social actions of the masses, their socially transforming activity.
Individual consciousness is the spiritual world of each individual
Man as a social being sees the world through the prism of a certain society - society, nation, class, era as a whole. Individual consciousness reflects social ideas, goals, ideals, knowledge, beliefs, I, are born and exist in the social environment. Consciousness is a reflection of the social being of individuals; it always finds its manifestation in public form. In one case, a person reflects the world and realizes his being in the form mythological consciousness, in the second - philosophical, scientific consciousness, in the third - artistic, religious, etc. Consciousness as such, regardless of the specific social form, simply does not exist. Social consciousness is the existence of consciousness in social form in the form of a certain cumulative result human activity, in the form of a common heritage, the achievements of society.
Social consciousness is not a simple collection of individual consciousnesses. A feature of social consciousness is that it, penetrating individual consciousness, shaping it, acquires an objective form of existence that is independent of the individuals of their consciousness. It is embodied in various objective forms of the spiritual culture of mankind - in language, science, philosophy, art, politics and law, morality, religion and myths, in folk wisdom, in social norms and ideas of social groups, nations, humanity as a whole. All these elements exist relatively independently of individual consciousness and social existence, are relatively independent, have their own characteristics of development, are inherited, passed down from generation to generation. Each individual forms his consciousness through the development of social consciousness.
But individual consciousness, just like social consciousness, is a relatively independent system; it is not absolutely determined only by social consciousness. The spiritual world of a person has an individually unique form of m. Individual features of the consciousness of an individual are associated not only with the specific features of his life. They depend on his neurophysiological structures, mental characteristics, genetic organization, on the level of his own strengths and abilities.
In their development, individual and social consciousness mediate each other: each individual develops his consciousness through the creative comprehension of the spiritual achievements of past generations and the present, and the development of the spirituality of mankind is carried out through individual achievements, spiritual discoveries of individuals.
Philosophy
Spiritual life of society
Introduction 3
The essence and content of the spiritual life of society 4
The phenomenon of social consciousness in the history of philosophy 15
Correlation of public and individual consciousness 18
Conclusion 21
References 22
Introduction
Society is a complex system of various social relations. Social relations are divided into material and spiritual. Material relations are formed outside our consciousness and exist independently of it. Spiritual relationships are formed, first passing through the consciousness of people. The connection between them is of an indirect nature: material relations, reflected in the public consciousness, give rise to certain spiritual values, which are the basis of spiritual relations.
Spiritual life can be filled with rich content, which creates a favorable social atmosphere, a good moral and psychological climate. In other cases, the spiritual life of a society can be poor and inexpressive, and sometimes real lack of spirituality reigns in it.
The main elements of spiritual life are the spiritual needs of people, spiritual activities to create spiritual values, spiritual consumption and spiritual relations between people.
The basis of the spiritual life of society is spiritual activity. It can be considered as an activity of consciousness, in the process of which certain thoughts and feelings arise, images And ideas about natural and social phenomena. The result of this activity are certain views of people on the world, scientific ideas and theories, moral, aesthetic and religious views.
A special type of spiritual activity is the dissemination of spiritual values in order to assimilate them to as many people as possible. The result of such activity is the formation of the spiritual world of people, and hence the enrichment of the spiritual life of society.
The essence and content of the spiritual life of society
Structural elements stand out in the spiritual life, endowing them with specific properties and, as a result, guiding social life in different ways. Every individual, collective or society has some or other store of vital forces which find expression in affective moods and actions. Love passion or hatred, enthusiasm, anger or apathy, horror or a surge of disgust, embracing the individual, become the source of the corresponding actions. But society as a whole can come into a state of enthusiasm or apathy, indignation or satisfaction, aggressiveness or fatigue. It depends on the current situation, on the challenges that he has to face and which in one way or another affect (or do not affect) his fundamental interests. An important characteristic of such moods is the need for immediate (or as soon as possible) satisfaction of the passion that owns an individual or society, the desire to relieve tension or express it - through a rally, picketing, agitation, march, strike, pogrom, voting, etc. 1.
Of course, any full-fledged socio-cultural system also includes a special area, allocated in time or space, where affective behavior is allowed and even encouraged that violates norms and values that are considered generally accepted and normal, but ordinary. Such, in particular, are many manifestations of festive culture, which, perhaps, receive their most vivid expression in carnivals and folk festivals, accepted by all peoples. Such are the many manifestations of mass culture that have become widespread in the modern world, but in areas that are clearly separated from production with its rigid rationality and principles of efficiency. This topic will be discussed in more detail in the section on popular culture.
At the same time, the regulatory role of culture lies in the fact that it sets limits, limits the natural manifestations of human nature or a social group that does not fit within the normative framework. For many centuries, the main means of such regulation has been religion, which subordinates the behavior of the believer to values and norms that have an unconditional sacral sanction. Naturalness was sinful and was allowed in a limited form only at the lower levels of being. A detailed analysis of such drives and states is the realm of social psychology. Of course, both the sociology of culture and social psychology study to some extent the same field - the patterns of people's behavior and activities, due to their intrinsic motivations, beliefs and habits. These internal motivations invariably correlate with some external spiritual factors that are formed as a collective consciousness or as an unconscious principle. However, culture embraces more permanent or long-term, stable and orderly ways of spiritual regulation. If psychology takes into account the states and movements of small groups, temporary associations, crowds or individuals, then culture determines the nature of social strata, ethnic or national groups or civilizations over longer periods of time.
Of course, the individual is also an essential bearer of culture. Thus, in the phenomenon of fashion there is undoubtedly a cultural component that determines the general style of fashion development, its national identity. But psychology determines the rhythms of changing details and ornamentation, the degree of their distribution, slow or accelerated variability in clothing and appearance.
Of course, the influence of culture is also reflected in the fact that the higher the degree of development of culture, the more differentiated all its elements and components become, including fashion. Ethnic cultures make do with a set of permanent clothing options, quite observable in a good museum of ethnography. The capital usually hosts several fashion houses that showcase the latest seasons.
Even M. Weber formulated his concept of the transformative impact of religion on human behavior as overcoming those ecstatic and orgiastic states that turn out to be temporary and transient and lead a person to a state of devastation, which in religious language is referred to as God-forsakenness. , and in the secular - aimlessness and meaninglessness of being 2 .
P. Sorokin described this position in more moderate terms, stating that in the natural affective states of a person, his changeable psychological characteristics, his direct reactions to life influences, subject to situational and transient moods, are revealed. However, culture transforms these affective states, regulates them and directs them to achieve significant and long-term goals of human existence. At different stages and levels of development of society, in its different spheres and structures, the ratio of affective and culturally regulated factors may be different. But they are necessarily present in some connection as the cultivation of human material.
Following the process of "de-deifying" the world and reducing the influence of religion, it was the turn of secular normative culture in its established, classical form. These shifts were explained and justified in the psychoanalytic direction, represented primarily by the works of Z. Freud and E. Fromm. They showed that the current type of culture is largely repressive in nature, suppressing the individual "ego" in its very significant vital and personal manifestations. The curbing of instincts, on the one hand, is a necessary principle, since otherwise their revelry threatens society with self-destruction. Various forms of control, including morality, religion, social sanctions, and the state, were seen by Freud as basically the result of a compromise between spontaneous drives and the demands of reality. Being repressed into the sphere of the unconscious, these drives give rise to psychological neuroses and conflicts of the individual with himself and society. The sublimation of these instincts is the source of artistic and scientific creativity, which gives rise to high achievements of religious or secular culture. Developing these ideas in line with neo-Freudianism, E. Fromm deeply criticized those social and cultural mechanisms of capitalist society, primarily its extreme technism, the cult of profit and success, which lead to the alienation of human essence, the loss of oneself in the process of social vital activity.
However, the liberation of a person from a repressive culture is limited by certain socio-cultural frameworks. Affective behavior that deviates from the norm can take on the character of deviant behavior with varying degrees of antisocial and criminality. The study of such behavior is the primary property of social psychology and sociology. But cultural studies cannot ignore such behavior, since it also has its own rather strict rules and principles that regulate the behavior of individuals in a criminal environment. As we shall see, there is a complex interplay of normative culture and deviant options in society. The significant spread of such behavior requires special consideration of the reasons for the disorganization of sociocultural regulation and the degradation of the human community 3 .
The simplest types of behavior are formed primarily on the basis of holistic, habitual patterns of behavior performed on an established occasion at a certain time and in a certain place. The model fits into some part of the activity, its segment, not subject to a clear division, change or reflection. The term "custom" can be identified with the terms "tradition", "rite", "ritual", "mores". However, tradition still refers to a wider range of phenomena and in application to more differentiated forms of regulation of activity, although it receives a semantic overload in this case (for which see Chapter VI). Rite and ritual are more formalized variants of habitual behavior adopted in certain parts of the total cultural regulation. Rite and ritual - a formalized behavior or action that has primarily a symbolic meaning, devoid of immediate expediency, but helps to strengthen ties either between permanent members of the group, or in interaction between groups, relieving tension, distrust and increasing the level of communication ty. Marriage and funerals are among the most important ceremonies that are universal in every culture.
The term "mores" usually expresses the established forms of regulation of mass behavior. However, in a culturological context, mores can mean a more mobile, changeable and not far-reaching layer of habitual behavior, subject to differentiation depending on the social environment, the psychological state of certain layers, the historical situation, etc. d. ("O times! O morals!"). War and peace, revolution, reforms, shock therapy, modernization, etc. - processes implying large-scale changes in mores, which entail a gradual shift in broader areas of culture, which by no means means the loss of its qualitative certainty 4 .
Although custom acts as the main regulator of behavior only in primitive ethnographic societies, in a stable domestic environment, in inert social groups, it is also present at all more advanced levels. Socially recognized patterns are formed into customs, according to which the accumulated experience is transmitted from generation to generation and from individual to individual. Customs include traditional labor practices, forms of behavior, way of life, and education. In everyday life, the usual rules of hygiene apply, the existing hostel options. Custom regulates the hours and conditions of eating and sleeping. The choice of food is dictated by no means only by the needs of the body. In Russia, for example, it is not accepted to eat snakes, dogs, frogs, cats. Hindus do not eat beef, but Muslims do not eat pork. In societies with a traditional nomadic culture, horse meat is eaten. The choice in this case is not determined by the nutritional value of food, but by traditions. At the entrance to a dwelling, the first thing a European will do is take off his headdress, an Eastern person first of all remembers shoes. It is not always possible to directly relate both to the situation, but this is the custom. Customs are universally recognized and approved by the power of mass habit. For the most part, they do not receive explanation and may not be recognized by the members of the collective themselves. To the question "Why are you doing this?" they answer: "That's the way it is."
MOSCOW INSTITUTE FOR ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATIONS
Ufa branch
Specialty GMU
Course 2
ABSTRACT
on the topic "Sociology"
in the discipline "Spiritual life of society"
Ufa 2010
CONTENT
INTRODUCTION
The relevance of research teams as a modern trend conditioned the need to resolve the contradiction between the knowledge about the organization's need for the formation of teams and, at the same time, not knowing the theoretical approaches to this problem.
The purpose of our study is to study the role of spiritual culture in the development of personality.
1. Spiritual life of society
“Unlike nature, society, and man himself, culture turns out to be a system formed by the mutual transformation of three specific forms of its real existence, three modalities: human, in which culture appears as a set acquired by man, and humanity, and each individual, and not biologically innate qualities; activity, which is formed by a combination of developed by people, and not instinctive, biologically innate, methods of activity; subject, which covers the entire “second nature” created and created by man now - things, social institutions, scientific, ideological, philosophical writings, works of art, pedagogical acts and games.
The spiritual life of society is usually understood as that area of being in which objective reality is given to people not in the form of an opposing objective reality, but as a reality present in the person himself, which is an integral part of his personality. The spiritual life of a person arises on the basis of his practical activity, is a special form of reflection of the surrounding world and a means of interacting with it. As a rule, knowledge, faith, feelings, experiences, needs, abilities, aspirations and goals of people are referred to spiritual life. Taken in unity, they constitute the spiritual world of the individual. Being a product of social practice, spiritual life is closely connected with other spheres of social life and is one of the subsystems of society. “The functioning of culture becomes not a movement in a vicious circle, but a spiral process of the progressive development of mankind, continuously transforming non-existence V being." 1
The spiritual sphere of society's life covers various forms and levels of social consciousness: moral, scientific, aesthetic, religious, political, legal consciousness. Accordingly, its elements are morality, science, art, religion and law.
Since the spiritual life of society is nevertheless generated by material life, its structure is in many respects similar to the latter: spiritual needs, spiritual activity (spiritual production) and the spiritual benefits (values) created by this activity.
The first link in this chain is spiritual needs, which are the objective need of people and society as a whole to create and master spiritual values. Quite often in philosophical literature, spiritual needs are also defined as a certain mental state of people that encourages them to create and master spiritual values.
Unlike material needs, spiritual needs are not set biologically, they are not given to a person from birth. They are formed and developed in the process of socialization of the individual. The peculiarity of spiritual needs is that they are fundamentally unlimited in nature: there are no limits to their growth, and the only limiters to such growth are only the volumes of spiritual values already accumulated by mankind and the desire of the person himself to participate in their multiplication.
For the sake of satisfying spiritual needs, people organize spiritual production. Spiritual production is usually understood as the production of consciousness in a special social form, carried out by specialized groups of people professionally engaged in skilled mental labor. The purpose of spiritual production is the reproduction of social consciousness in its entirety. The results of spiritual production include: ideas, theories, images and spiritual values; spiritual social connections of individuals; man himself as a spiritual being.
A distinctive feature of spiritual production lies in the fact that its products are ideal formations that cannot be alienated from their direct producer.
Spiritual production is aimed at improving all other spheres of social life - economic, political, social. New ideas and technologies created within its framework allow society to develop itself.
Scientists distinguish three types of spiritual production: science, art and religion. Some philosophers tend to add to them also morality, politics and law.
The main property of spiritual production, which distinguishes it from material production, is the universal nature of its consumption. Unlike material values, the size of which is limited, spiritual values do not decrease in proportion to the number of people who possess them, and therefore they are available to all individuals without exception, being the property of all mankind.
“The process of upbringing, education, training of every young being entering the world should form all three facets of his systemic-holistic being - natural and innate to the individual, acquired in the course of mastering the wealth accumulated by the history of world culture, and generated by the social structure of the social environment in which his life and work. 2
2. Various spheres of spiritual culture and their influence on human development.
2.1. The influence of science on the spiritual development of man.
At the initial stages of its existence, science did not exert any noticeable influence on the development of society. However, over time the situation has changed. Approximately from the 19th century, science begins to play a prominent role, outpacing the development of material production, which in turn begins to change in accordance with the logic of the development of science. Science becomes a special kind of spiritual production, the products of which predetermine the emergence of new branches of material production (chemistry, radio engineering, rocket science, electronics, the nuclear industry, etc.). A huge role is played by the so-called scientific models of social development, with the help of which society gets the opportunity, without resorting to such methods of knowledge as experiment, to determine the goals and direction of its development.The most important social functions of science are:
a) cognitive-explanatory: it consists in knowing and explaining how the world works and what are the laws of its development;
b) worldview: it helps a person not only to explain the knowledge he knows about the world, but also to build it into an integral system, to consider the phenomena of the surrounding world in their unity and diversity, to develop his own worldview;
c) predictive: science allows a person not only to change the world around him according to his desires and needs, but also to predict the consequences of such changes. With the help of scientific models, scientists can show possible dangerous trends in the development of society and give recommendations on how to overcome them.
Today, science is the main form of human knowledge. At the core scientific knowledge lies a complex creative process of mental and subject-practical activity of a scientist. General rules of this process, which is sometimes called Descartes' method, can be formulated as follows:
1) nothing can be accepted as true until it appears clear and distinct;
2) difficult questions must be divided into as many parts as necessary for resolution;
3) research should begin with the simplest and most convenient things for cognition and gradually move on to cognition of difficult and complex things;
4) a scientist must dwell on all the details, pay attention to everything: he must be sure that he has not missed anything.
Representing a subsystem of a more complex system called society, science experiences a certain impact of the latter:
1. The needs of the development of society are often the main factor determining the problems of scientific research, the so-called social order that society gives to scientists (for example, to find ways to save humanity from cancer and other serious diseases);
2. The state of scientific research depends on the material and technical base of society, on the funds that are directed to the development of science. So, for example, in Russian Federation Now the problem of financing the fundamental sciences, that is, those in which research does not give immediate results, is very acute. Meanwhile, it is the discoveries made in these branches of scientific knowledge that largely determine the level of development and the state of applied sciences, the main task of which is to find solutions to current, sometimes momentary problems.
Being a special form of social consciousness, science has a relative independence. Fulfilling the social order, it, nevertheless, develops according to its own internal laws. So, for example, there is a law of “development of science in reserve”, according to which the solution of any scientific problem can be carried out only if science has already accumulated an appropriate amount of knowledge for this. If there is no such reserve, then science is not able to fulfill the social order.
2.2. Art is a part of spiritual culture.
Another important type of spiritual production is art. By creating artistic images that, with a certain degree of conventionality, can be equated with scientific models, experimenting with them with the help of their own imagination, people can better know themselves and the world in which they live. With the help of art, artists, writers, sculptors often reproduce hidden, imperceptible, but very significant aspects of the surrounding reality.Art is the highest form of aesthetic consciousness. It is a necessary element of social consciousness, ensuring its integrity, mobility, stability in the present and orientation to the future.
The subject of art is a person, his relationship with the outside world and other individuals, as well as the life of people in certain historical conditions. Art is conditioned by the world of nature and social relations that surround individuals.
Art as a cultural phenomenon is divided into a number of types, each of which has a specific language, its own sign system. Scientists distinguish the following types of arts.
1. Architecture (architecture) - an art form, which is a system of buildings and structures that form a spatial environment for human life.
Architecture occupies a special place among other arts because it does not depict objects, but creates them. Architecture can be public, residential, urban planning, landscape gardening, industrial, restoration.
2. Painting - a kind of art, the works of which are a reflection of life on a certain surface with the help of color.
The socially transforming function of art is manifested in the fact that it, having an ideological and aesthetic impact on people, includes them in a directed and holistically oriented activity to transform society.
The consoling-compensatory function is to restore in the sphere of the spirit of harmony lost by a person in reality. With its harmony, art affects the inner harmony of the individual, contributes to the preservation and restoration of its mental balance.
The artistic-conceptual function is expressed in the property of art to analyze the state of the surrounding world.
The function of anticipation characterizes the ability of art to anticipate the future. Fantastic, utopian and socially predictive works of art are based on this ability.
The educational function of art reflects the role of art in the formation of a holistic human personality, feelings and thoughts of people.
The inspiring function is manifested in the impact of art on the subconscious of people, on the human psyche. In tense periods of history, it plays a leading role in the overall system of the functions of art.
The aesthetic function is the specific ability of art to form the aesthetic tastes and needs of a person, to awaken in the individual the desire and ability to create according to the laws of beauty.
The hedonistic function shows the special, spiritual nature of art, designed to give people pleasure. It is based on the idea of the inherent value of the individual and implements it, delivering to a person the disinterested joy of aesthetic pleasure.
Cognitive-heuristic function reflects the cognitive role of art and is expressed in its ability to reflect and master those aspects of life that are difficult for science.
The specificity of art as a form of artistic knowledge lies in the fact that, firstly, it is figurative and visual. The subject of art - the life of people - is extremely diverse and is reflected in art in all its diversity in the form of artistic images. The latter, being the result of fiction, nevertheless, are a reflection of reality and always bear the imprint of real-life objects, events and phenomena. The artistic image performs the same functions in art as the concept in science: with the help of it, the process of artistic generalization takes place, highlighting the essential features of cognizable objects. The created images constitute the cultural heritage of society and are capable, having become symbols of their time, to have a serious impact on public consciousness.
Secondly, artistic cognition is characterized by specific ways of reproducing the surrounding reality, as well as the means by which artistic images are created. In literature, such a means is the word, in painting - color, in music - sound, in sculpture - volumetric-spatial forms, etc.
Thirdly, a huge role in the process of knowing the world with the help of art is played by the imagination and fantasy of the cognizing subject. Artistic fiction allowed in art is completely unacceptable, for example, in the process of scientific knowledge.
Unlike various social sciences that study certain aspects of people's lives, art explores a person as a whole and, along with other cognitive activities, is a special form of cognition of the surrounding reality.
Art is included in an integral system of forms of social consciousness, which, along with it, includes the philosophy, politics, law, science, morality, and religion already discussed above. All of them realize their functions in a single cultural context that arises due to their interrelations.
2.3. Religion is a part of spiritual culture.
As for religion, as a type of spiritual production, the theories and ideas created with its help played an important role in the development of society, especially in the early, pre-scientific stages of its development, forming abstract thinking in people, the ability to isolate the general and the special in the world around. However, the spiritual values that arise within the framework of religious beliefs and the social ties that develop on their basis still play an important role in the life of many societies and individuals.Any religion includes several essential elements. Among them: faith (religious feelings, moods, emotions), teaching (a systematized set of principles, ideas, concepts specially developed for a given religion), a religious cult (a set of actions that believers perform in order to worship the gods, i.e. rituals, prayers, sermons, etc.). Sufficiently developed religions also have their own organization - the church, which regulates the life of the religious community.
The functions of religion were most briefly and aphoristically defined by Z. Freud, who wrote: “The gods retain their threefold task: they neutralize the horror of nature, reconcile with the formidable fate, which appears primarily in the form of death, and reward for the suffering and deprivation imposed on a person by life in cultural community." For many people, religion plays the role of a worldview, a ready-made system of views, principles, ideals, explaining the structure of the world and determining the place of a person in it. Religious norms are one of the powerful social regulators. Through a whole system of values, they regulate the public and private life of a person. Many millions find consolation, comfort, and hope in faith. Religion allows you to compensate for the shortcomings of imperfect reality, promising the "Kingdom of God", reconciles with earthly evil. Given the inability of science to explain many natural phenomena, religion offers its own answers to painful questions. Often religion contributes to the unification of nations, the formation of united states.
2.4. spiritual culture
The word cultura comes from the Latin verb colo, which means "to cultivate", "to cultivate the soil". Initially, the word culture denoted the process of humanization of nature as a habitat. However, gradually, like many other words of the language, it changed its meaning.In the modern language, the concept of culture is used mainly in two meanings - "broad" and "narrow".
In a narrow sense, when speaking of culture, they usually mean those areas of creative activity that are associated with art.
In a broad sense, the culture of society is usually called the totality of forms and results of human activity, entrenched in social practice and transmitted from generation to generation with the help of certain sign systems (linguistic and non-linguistic), as well as through learning and imitation.
2) that culture is a special human form of being, which has its own spatial and temporal boundaries;
Material culture is understood as technology, production experience, as well as those material values that in their totality constitute an artificial human environment. Subspecies of material and cultural phenomena are:
1) natural objects that have undergone some human impact and have changed their original form (the cut of a primitive man);
2) artificial-natural objects that retain their natural form, but exist in a way that is not found in natural conditions (Japanese rock garden);
3) synthetic-natural objects, i.e. such objects that are synthesized from naturally occurring materials (plastics);
4) social and cultural facilities, the construction of which involves the use of natural and artificial materials (highways);
5) social and material objects serving the society in the industrial sphere (computers, machines).
Spiritual culture usually includes science, art, religion, morality, politics and law. Speaking of spiritual culture, one should distinguish between its form, which is material, and its content, which is ideal. The form characterizes what the phenomena of this type of culture are embodied in, and the content characterizes what they mean for the individual and society.
Spiritual culture can be classified in the same way as material culture, that is, on the basis of the degree of creative and transformative activity of the person who created it. Based on this criterion, the following subspecies of spiritual culture are distinguished:
1) works of monumental art that have a material form that the artist gave to natural or artificial materials (sculpture, architectural objects);
2) theatrical art (theatrical images);
3) a work of fine art (painting, graphics);
4) musical art (musical images);
5) various forms of social consciousness (ideological theories, philosophical, aesthetic, moral and other knowledge, scientific concepts and hypotheses, etc.);
6) socio-psychological phenomena (public opinion, ideals, values, social habits and customs, etc.).
The relative independence of the material and spiritual spheres of social life in relation to each other sometimes leads to an overestimation of the role and place of the material culture of society and an underestimation of its spiritual culture. In contrast to this approach, the concept of the sociocultural sphere of social life has become increasingly widespread in sociology in recent years.
The sociocultural sphere is understood as the leading sphere of the development of society, accumulating the experience of previous generations and ensuring social stability over a fairly long historical period.
Scientists single out the following functions of this sphere:
a) translational (transfer of social values from the past to the present, and from the present to the future);
b) selection (assessment and classification of inherited values, determination of their place and role in solving the problems of society at this stage);
c) innovative (updating social values and norms).
The social values and norms accumulated by Russian society in the 20th century are now being seriously revised. In this regard, we can note a number of positive and negative processes taking place in the socio-cultural sphere.
CONCLUSION
Despite various assessments of the influence of culture on people's lives, almost all thinkers recognized that:1) spiritual culture plays an important role in the life of society, being a means of accumulation, storage and transmission of the experience accumulated by mankind;
2) that culture is a special human form of being, which has its own spatial and temporal boundaries;
3) culture is one of the most important characteristics of life, both of an individual and of a particular society as a whole.
Traditionally, culture is usually divided into material and spiritual.
Spiritual culture usually includes science, art, religion, morality, politics and law. Speaking of spiritual culture, one should distinguish between its form, which is material, and its content, which is ideal. The form characterizes what the phenomena of this type of culture are embodied in, and the content characterizes what they mean for the individual and society.
Spiritual activity is performed for the sake of satisfying spiritual needs, that is, the needs of people in the creation and development of spiritual values. The most important among them is the need for moral perfection, for satisfying the sense of beauty, for the essential knowledge of the surrounding world. Spiritual values act in the form of ideas of good and evil, justice and injustice, beautiful and ugly, etc. The forms of spiritual development of the surrounding world include philosophical, aesthetic, religious, moral consciousness. Science also belongs to the forms of social consciousness. The system of spiritual values is an integral element of spiritual culture.
REFERENCES
- Bolshakov V.P., Novitskaya L.F. Features of culture in its historical development (from origin to the Renaissance): Textbook. - Veliky Novgorod: NovGU im. Yaroslav the Wise, 2000.
Introduction to cultural studies . Course of lectures / Ed.Yu.N. Corned beef , E.G. Sokolova . SPb., 2003. S.6-14
Erasov B. S. "Social Culturology". - M., 1996.
Morphology of culture. Structure and dynamics”, 1994
Ponomareva G. M. and others. Introduction to cultural studies. - M., 1997.
Sokolov E. V. Culturology. Essays on the history of cultures. - M., 1994.
Introduction
The most important philosophical issues concerning the relationship between the World and Man include the inner spiritual life of man, those basic values that underlie his existence. Man not only cognizes the world as a being, seeking to reveal its objective logic, but also evaluates reality, trying to understand the meaning of his own existence, experiencing the world as proper and improper, good and harmful, beautiful and ugly, fair and unfair, etc.
Universal values act as criteria for the degree of both spiritual development and social progress of mankind. The values that ensure human life include health, a certain level of material security, social relations that ensure the realization of the individual and freedom of choice, family, law, etc.
Values traditionally classified as spiritual - aesthetic, moral, religious, legal and general cultural (educational) - are usually considered as parts that make up a single whole, called spiritual culture, which will be the subject of our further analysis.
Question number 1. The concept, essence and content of the spiritual life of society
The spiritual life of man and humanity is a phenomenon that, like culture, distinguishes their existence from purely natural and gives it a social character. Through spirituality comes the awareness of the world around us, the development of a deeper and more subtle attitude towards it. Through spirituality there is a process of cognition by a person of himself, his purpose and life meaning.
The history of mankind has shown the inconsistency of the human spirit, its ups and downs, losses and gains, tragedy and enormous potential.
Spirituality today is a condition, a factor and a subtle tool for solving the problem of the survival of mankind, its reliable life support, sustainable development of society and the individual. How a person uses the potential of spirituality determines his present and future.
Spirituality is a complex concept. It was used primarily in religion, religious and idealistically oriented philosophy. Here it acted as an independent spiritual substance, which owns the function of creation and determining the fate of the world and man.
In other philosophical traditions, it is not so commonly used and has not found its place both in the sphere of concepts and in the sphere of the socio-cultural being of a person. In studies of mental conscious activity, this concept is practically not used due to its “non-operational” nature.
At the same time, the concept of spirituality is widely used in the concepts of "spiritual revival", in studies of "spiritual production", "spiritual culture", etc. However, its definition is still debatable.
In the cultural and anthropological context, the concept of spirituality is used when characterizing the inner, subjective world of a person as the "spiritual world of the individual." But what is included in this "world"? By what criteria to determine its presence, and even more development?
Obviously, the concept of spirituality is not limited to reason, rationality, culture of thinking, level and quality of knowledge. Spirituality is not formed exclusively through education. Of course, there is no and cannot be spirituality outside of the above, but one-sided rationalism, especially of the positivist-scientist type, is not sufficient to define spirituality. The sphere of spirituality is wider in scope and richer in content than that which relates exclusively to rationality.
Equally, spirituality cannot be defined as a culture of experiences and sensory-volitional exploration of the world by a person, although outside of this, spirituality as a quality of a person and a characteristic of his culture also does not exist.
The concept of spirituality is undoubtedly necessary to determine the utilitarian-pragmatic values that motivate the behavior and inner life of a person. However, it is even more important when identifying those values on the basis of which meaningful life problems are solved, which are usually expressed for each person in the system of “eternal questions” of his being. The complexity of their solution lies in the fact that, although they have a universal basis, every time in a specific historical time and space, each person discovers and solves them anew for himself and at the same time in his own way. On this path, the spiritual ascent of the individual, the acquisition of spiritual culture and maturity is carried out.
Thus, the main thing here is not the accumulation of various knowledge, but their meaning and purpose. Spirituality is the acquisition of meaning. Spirituality is evidence of a certain hierarchy of values, goals and meanings, it concentrates problems related to the highest level of human exploration of the world. Spiritual development is an ascent along the path of acquiring "truth, goodness and beauty" and other higher values. On this path, the creative abilities of a person are determined not only to think and act utilitarianly, but also to correlate their actions with something "impersonal" that constitutes the "human world".
An imbalance in knowledge about the world around us and about oneself gives contradiction to the process of forming a person as a spiritual being, who has the ability to create according to the laws of truth, goodness and beauty. In this context, spirituality is an integrative quality that belongs to the sphere of meaningful life values that determine the content, quality and direction of human existence and the “human image” in each individual.
The problem of spirituality is not only the definition of the highest level of human mastery of his world, attitude to it - nature, society, other people, to himself. This is the problem of a person going beyond the limits of a narrowly empirical being, overcoming himself of "yesterday's" in the process of renewal and ascent to his ideals, values and their realization on his life path. Therefore, this is the problem of "life-creation". The internal basis of self-determination of the individual is "conscience" - a category of morality. Morality is the determinant of the spiritual culture of the individual, which sets the measure and quality of the freedom of self-realization of a person.
Thus, spiritual life is an important aspect of the existence and development of man and society, in the content of which a truly human essence is manifested.
The spiritual life of society is an area of being in which objective, supra-individual reality is given not in the form of an external objectivity opposing a person, but as an ideal reality, a set of meaningful life values that is present in him and determines the content, quality and direction of social and individual being.
The genetically spiritual side of a person's being arises on the basis of his practical activity as a special form of reflection of the objective world, as a means of orientation in the world and interaction with it. As well as subject-practical, spiritual activity generally follows the laws of this world. Of course, we are not talking about the complete identity of the material and the ideal. The essence lies in their fundamental unity, the coincidence of the main, "nodal" points. At the same time, the ideal-spiritual world (of concepts, images, values) created by man has fundamental autonomy and develops according to its own laws. As a result, he can soar very high above material reality. However, the spirit cannot completely break away from its material basis, since in the final analysis this would mean the loss of orientation of man and society in the world. The result of such a separation for a person is a departure into the world of illusions, mental illness, and for society - its deformation under the influence of myths, utopias, dogmas, social projects.
