Social development and social change. The social ideal as a condition for social development

IN modern conditions an urgent task is to provide an opportunity for Russia to independently and freely determine for itself the conditions, forms and directions of development, taking into account its historical, economic, geopolitical, social and mental characteristics.

Before directly analyzing the problem of the social ideal in Russia, let us remind the reader that the concept of "civilization", in our opinion, fixes a certain stage historical development associated with the emergence of cities, writing, the state, social classes, etc.

the differences between civilizations are the differences in characteristics that determine the ways of the state consolidation of society based on the unification of initially dissimilar cultures and the state ordering of the daily life of this society. These methods represent various combinations of the basic state-forming elements - strength, faith (in the sense of interpreting the basic socio-cultural universals), law and the institutions corresponding to them. Their (that is, elements and institutions) long-term viable concrete combinations and hierarchies in a society or a group of societies, in a country or a group of countries, we consider it possible to call civilizations. It doesn't matter what languages ​​the peoples of a given social association speak, it doesn't matter what religions they profess. Defining in this case serves what has recently been called mentality, that is, a system of views on a person, society, economy, property, power, on such correlations of basic sociocultural universals as “collective” and “personality”, “man” and “state”, productive labor and life goals”, “freedom” and “power”, etc.

In this case, the terms Orthodox civilization” and “Russian (Russian) civilization”, widely used by modern social scientists, are not entirely correct. We do not think that the mentality of the Orthodox Byzantine Empire is so similar to the system of views on the world of a Russian of the New and Contemporary Times. In the form of a religious and philosophical understanding of the world and society, Orthodoxy came to Rus' in the 13th century. as the teaching of an almost intrafamilial sect of hesychasts of the Byzantine royal family of Palaiologos. Until that time, Orthodoxy in Rus' existed only in the form of a rite designed to unite the disparate East Slavic tribes. Hesychasm, developed in the ideas of the Orthodox patriarchs of the time of Ivan the Terrible and proclaiming the emanation of the divine essence from God to the sovereign and further to the state and community, formed the basis of the Russian understanding of the world, the basis of Russian statehood.

Troubles at the beginning of the 17th century. revealed the historical exhaustion of the civilizational synthesis of supra-legal power and the Orthodox faith, on which the Moscow statehood of the Rurikovich was based. The lack of power, which was revealed even during the Livonian War lost by Ivan the Terrible, became obvious - the state did not have enough resources not only to wage wars, but also to streamline its internal life. And, as it became clear to Boris Godunov, it was impossible to eliminate this deficit without borrowing European knowledge and technology.

All the more indisputable was the need for such borrowings for the Romanovs who reigned after the Time of Troubles. It was they who had to carry out the correction of the civilizational choice of the country through its westernization, which they carried out consistently, deepening throughout their three-hundred-year reign. Therefore, we consider the entire period of their reign as something integral and one-vector. There are enough grounds to separate Peter I from the first Romanovs. But from a civilizational point of view, they were not so much followers of the Ruriks as forerunners of Peter.

Increasing strength through borrowing and assimilation of a foreign culture threatened, however, with a serious conflict with faith. Such conflict was not only undesirable, it was unacceptable. And because it prevented the acquisition of a new dynasty - elective, and not "natural" - the sacredness of the former dynasty. And because faith during the Time of Troubles turned out to be one of the main sources of popular strength, which helped restore the collapsed statehood. Hence the novelty of the civilizational strategy of the first Romanovs and its multidirectionality.

To make up for the lack of strength, they had to open the way to the country not only for European knowledge and technology, but also for a new interpretation of the principle of legality for Rus', placing power under its protection in the Cathedral Code of Alexei Mikhailovich.

On the other hand, in order to achieve the same goal, they had to seek support in the faith and raise the status of the church: the elevation of its leaders to the rank of second sovereigns, which took place under the first two Romanovs, was unthinkable in Muscovy of the Rurikids. Borrowing the culturally alien while erecting additional bastions to protect against it, including the administrative imposition of Orthodox piety - such was this new civilizational strategy, in which the main role was assigned to faith. It was she who was called upon to neutralize the consequences of the onset of Westernization, which threatened the national-state identity of Rus'.

However, faith, even when united with the law, could not return to the restored autocracy its former strength and, accordingly, the fullness of power over its subjects, because its former fullness was also conditioned by the fact that Rus', having freed itself from the Mongols under the Rurikovich, acquired in the eyes of the elite and the population religiously a consecrated universal status that corresponded to the idea of ​​the truth of the Moscow Orthodox faith as opposed to the falsity of other faiths. The idea of ​​the “Third Rome” as the only earthly kingdom destined for salvation is the idea of ​​the universal, embodied in the local space of Muscovite Rus'. It was this circumstance that largely explained the strength of its princes and kings, whose power could not be shaken even by the horrors and devastating consequences of the oprichnina and the Livonian War. But the very involvement of Ivan the Terrible in this war, as well as the campaigns against Kazan and Astrakhan that preceded it, testified that the claim to religious universality and chosenness required confirmation by military victories over the Gentiles, and the unlimited power of the sovereign within the country - additional legitimation his success in the foreign arena.

It is clear that the new dynasty needed such confirmation even more. And not only because its strength was not initially in any comparison with the strength of the Rurikovich. The main difficulty in building a civilizational strategy lay precisely in the fact that the Romanovs, unlike the Rurikids, had to undermine its spiritual foundations with foreign cultural innovations in order to strengthen the material foundations of the “Third Rome”. The latter called into question both the civilizational self-sufficiency of Rus', and its God-chosenness, and hence its claims to a universal status.

The path along which the Romanovs moved is a path fundamentally different from before, the universalization of faith by expanding the local Moscow civilizational space to the pan-Orthodox one with the center not in Moscow, but in Constantinople. Such a reorientation required bringing worship and church books in line with the original Greek canon, which was perceived by many as apostasy and ultimately led to a religious schism.

Starting Westernization, Moscow did not feel the ability to resist on its own spiritual influence Catholic and Protestant Europe. To resist, knowledge was needed, which was not in Rus'; its theological culture was in its infancy. This lag became especially noticeable after the annexation of Ukraine: in matters of faith, Moscow not only could not claim leadership in relation to Kyiv, but was also forced to become an apprentice to him.

Orthodox Ukraine, which was part of the Commonwealth, had to enter into fierce competition with Catholicism in order to preserve its religious identity. On its territory, the Jesuit order operated, building schools with free education, arranging disputes in which its representatives demonstrated their superiority in knowledge, argumentation, and polemical sophistication. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church responded by developing its own academic education, and by the time it joined Moscow Rus, it had managed to form a highly educated spiritual elite. The invitation of its representatives to Moscow as teachers played the role of a cultural bridge between Russia and Byzantium.

Such an indirect connection with the Greeks through the Ukrainian spiritual elite could not stop the movement towards a religious and ecclesiastical schism: Ukrainians, like the Greeks, were suspected in Muscovy of being subject to Catholic influence. But this did not force us to abandon the chosen civilizational vector oriented towards Byzantium - they continued to move in this direction even after the split became a fact. Accordingly, faith remained the main link in the civilizational strategy throughout the 17th century.

This strategy is in various forms and with temporary deviations from it - will accompany the entire three-hundred-year rule of the Romanov dynasty. It started with it, and it will end its historical age with it, without being able to realize it. The Romanovs will not be able to refuse it, which testifies to the civilizational lack of self-sufficiency of Russia, the deficit of its own symbolic capital. But they will not be able to implement this strategy either - there will not be enough power resources to implement it. Even after Peter I, shifting the emphasis from faith to strength, makes a radical breakthrough in this respect, Russia will be destined to remain a country of unrealized civilizational projects.

Peter abandoned the Byzantine or, what is the same, the anti-Turkish orientation of his predecessors, although not immediately. He began with the Azov campaigns - historical and cultural inertia made itself felt. But the country did not yet have the opportunity to fight Turkey alone, and Peter failed to acquire allies in Europe. At the same time, a long trip abroad convinced the tsar of the futility of the civilizational strategy of his predecessor Sophia, the essence of which was Europeanization through Ukraine and Poland, borrowing from the former ways of resisting Catholic influence, and from the latter, her secular culture. Under the conditions of a religious schism and with the church weakened by it, such an orientation did not lead either to the restoration of spiritual consolidation or to the legitimization of cultural and technological borrowings. In other words, it did not contribute to the build-up of state power and military competitiveness, which was the main goal of Peter's predecessors, who ruled the country after the turmoil. This predetermined the radical revision of the civilizational choice carried out by him.

Peter made the main bet on the Protestant north of Europe. Not in the sense of spiritual submission to him, and not even in the sense of looking for a place in it for Russia, but for the sake of forced transfer to Russian soil and military use of his achievements. This was motivated by the fact that by that time the Protestant world had become the leader of modernization, and Protestantism did not cause such rejection and rejection in Rus' as Catholic "Latinism". But religious motivation was not decisive in the choice of the king. In Petrine Russia, power separated from faith and began to build up in addition to it and even in spite of it, which found its institutional embodiment in the liquidation of the post of patriarch and the transformation of the church into one of the state departments.

Following Western models, Peter transformed religious state into the secular, shifting the functions of ordering in it from faith to law. This corresponded to the movement that began in Europe from the first axial time to the second and the civilizational shifts that accompanied such a movement. It was the law that became in the hands of the reformer the instrument with which he carried out the Westernization of the lifestyle of the elite, forcing it to master European knowledge and European culture. Peter tried to give this instrument a universal meaning, declaring the obligatory obedience to the law for everyone, including himself; under him, even the power of the autocratic tsar for the first time began to be legitimized not in the name of God, but in the name of the law. However, in reality, it remained a supra-legal force, the legitimacy of which was ensured mainly by the military victories of Peter. The latter became possible thanks to the total militarization of the country and the creation of the institutions necessary for this: a standing army, a guard, and a secret police service. From this, in turn, it follows that Peter, strictly speaking, did not leave behind any new civilizational quality: he created a state adapted for war, while civilizational originality reveals itself only in conditions of peaceful everyday life.

The principle of legality, introduced by the reformer into Russian public life, did not integrate Russia into the European civilizational space, also because, in the interpretation of Peter, this principle not only excluded the idea of ​​civil rights, but also assumed legalized universal lack of rights. Peter's successors quickly realized that a long-term stable statehood could not exist on such a militaristic foundation, and they began to demilitarize it. From a civilizational point of view, this meant that through the “window” cut through by the reformer, they moved to Europe - not so much for the sake of new conquests, but for the sake of mastering and transferring to Russia the basic foundations of its life order. Such a movement in the Russia of the Romanovs continued - taking into account the changes taking place in Europe itself - throughout the entire post-Petrine period. Not without temporary setbacks, but it continued.

Europeanization of domestic statehood was carried out in two main directions.

On the one hand, the universality of the principle of legality from a declarative one gradually - and also not without digressions and historical zigzags - turned into a real one, extending, among other things, to the autocrat himself. The legislative monopoly he retained did not negate the fact that significant changes took place within its borders.

On the other hand, the Europeanization of Russian statehood was manifested in the movement from total lack of rights to the legalization of rights: first on a local estate, noble, and starting from 1861 on a national scale. The gradual giving them the status of universality, along with the universalization of legality, allows us to say that post-Petrine Russia, following Europe, mastered the civilizational principles of the second axial time. However, it never became a part of European civilization, just as it did not become a special and self-sufficient civilization. A culturally divided country, constantly deepening the split with new borrowings from other cultures, cannot acquire its own civilizational identity. She is doomed to seek this identity outside. And Russia continued to look for it until the Bolshevik coup. The main direction of the search remained the same as in the time of Alexei Mikhailovich. The direction remained Byzantine. Without the liberation of Constantinople from the Turks and the establishment of control over it, the special civilizational status of Russia was not perceived as either achieved or secured.

Peter's sharp turn towards the Protestant West and the successful assimilation of his achievements, which turned the country into a strong and influential military power, did not by themselves predetermine the place of Orthodox Russia in the Catholic-Protestant European civilizational space, because the transformation of religious statehood into a secular one does not eliminate the religious component of civilizational identity. It is all the more interesting that religiously neutral projects were put forward in Russia. They are interesting not because they were not realized and could not be realized, but because they appeared and were put into practice during the reign of Catherine II, marked by the most purposeful search for Russia's place within the European civilizational space.

The first project, carried out at the beginning of Catherine's reign and called the "northern system", assumed that Russia would gain a place in European civilization while abstracting from its Orthodox identity, but taking into account religious differences in Europe. This was a continuation of the foreign policy of Peter I: the idea of ​​the "northern system" was to create an alliance with the Protestant countries (England and Prussia with the inclusion of Denmark), opposing the European Catholic world (France, Austria and Spain). However, this strategy did not and did not lead to the acquisition of a civilizational identity: Russia failed to find its place in Europe.

The Europeans could not but reckon with its sovereign power; in disputes and conflicts among themselves, they were ready to seek and sought its support. But neither the Catholic nor the Protestant states had sufficient cultural prerequisites for building a unified civilizational strategy with Russia. In this state of affairs, political pragmatics acquired decisive importance, forcing St. Petersburg at that time to rapprochement not with London and Berlin, but with Vienna: Austria bordered on Poland and Turkey - Russia's closest neighbors, relations and conflicts with which largely determined the direction of its foreign policy. Therefore, the “northern system” collapsed without having time to take shape. The civilizational project, which continued the line of Peter, turned out to be untenable.

However, the search for civilizational identity not only did not end there, but became even more energetic and purposeful. Failures in the north brought the Russian political elite back to the south, to pre-Petrine plans for Byzantium. True, with the essential difference that now these plans have lost their religious overtones: Catherine tried to build a civilizational strategy for a secular state created by Peter.

This strategy, which went down in history under the name of the "Greek project", took shape under the influence of Russia's military victory over the Turks, and the subsequent annexation of Crimea became the actual beginning of its implementation. Without going into the details of this project and the ideological subtleties of its justification, we only note that it did not already imply the annexation of Constantinople to Russia, and even more so, the transfer of its capital there. It was about the fact that the imperial throne in Greece liberated from the Ottomans was to take, becoming the ancestor ruling dynasty, the grandson of the Empress, Tsarevich Konstantin, to whom the name was given in view of his future mission. Thus, it was supposed not just to ensure the union of Greece and Russia with the supremacy of the latter. It was assumed that Russia, being the heir of Orthodox Byzantium, would also become the heir of its predecessor, that is Ancient Greece and its civilization. It will become, in other words, the successor not only of Constantinople, but also of Athens - it is not without reason that the latter were also considered as contenders for the role of the capital of the revived Greece.

In the implementation of the "Greek project" the question of Russia's place in Europe was removed by itself: in this case, she got the opportunity to firmly establish herself not only in the European space, but also in European time. Moreover, the state, which was in succession with ancient Athens, turned out to be more deeply rooted in this time than the states of Western Europe, because they were considered and considered themselves the successors of the later - in relation to Athens - Rome.

Political pragmatics correlated much better with the "Greek project" than with the "northern system". If Catherine assigned the role of the successor to Athens to Russia, then the successor to Rome in her strategy was Austria, whose rulers retained the title of emperors of the Holy Roman Empire. At the same time, religious differences between countries were relegated to the background: in the era of the establishment of secular states, the truth of faith was no longer perceived as a defining criterion, on the basis of which one could judge the justification of their international ambitions.

The alliance concluded with Austria and its readiness to participate in the division Ottoman Empire did not mean, however, that the "Greek project" had a chance of being implemented. Its implementation would lead to a sharp change in the balance of power in Europe, which could not receive support from other powers, which Russia and Austria were not able to resist. Catherine's "Greek project" is an impressive utopia, almost immediately and forever forgotten after the death of the Empress, and left behind only the Greek names of the Crimean cities, given to them instead of the former Tatar ones. But it is precisely his notorious utopianism, not noticed by Ekaterina, who is alien to projecting, that makes it possible to better understand how acute and relevant the issue of civilizational identity was perceived in Russia after it gained sovereign status. Therefore, the development of new civilizational strategies continued in post-Stekaterin times.

The essence of these strategies, for all their differences, however, boiled down to the same thing, namely, the return of faith, pushed aside by Peter I to the periphery of state life, while maintaining and strengthening the Peter's synthesis of force and legality. These were responses to the challenges coming from revolutionary Europe and forcing a correction of domestic and foreign policy and its ideological justifications.

Russia had sufficient power to claim the restoration of monarchical legitimacy in Europe, shaken by the French Revolution and Napoleon's subsequent expansion into neighboring (and not only neighboring) countries. The sovereign power inherited from Peter I and his successors made it possible, it seemed, to leave behind the post-Petrine search for one's place in European civilization and act as its savior, thereby ensuring dominance in it. The only thing that was missing for this was the spiritual and cultural component, without which any civilizational projects involving consolidation different countries, are obviously untenable.

Orthodoxy could not lay claim to such a consolidating role - it was impossible to impose it on Catholic-Protestant Europe. Therefore, under Emperor Paul, a new civilizational strategy began to take shape, which took shape under Alexander I in the Holy Alliance established on his initiative. We have already talked about this. Here it is enough to repeat that it was about the return to the state ideology of religious faith, in which the confessional originality of Orthodoxy was relegated to the background for the sake of establishing a common Christian civilizational community with Russia playing the main role in it.

The vulnerability of the new strategy lay in the fact that it was based on superiority in force, and therefore the Austrians and Prussia involved in its implementation were perceived not as a voluntary strategic choice, but as a forced temporary necessity. Its vulnerability also lay in the fact that it did not have deep cultural roots in Russia itself. Relying on sovereign identity, updated by the war with Napoleon and the victory over him, this strategy did not correlate with the Orthodox identity and, accordingly, with the majority of the country's population.

Meanwhile, the defeat of Napoleon, his expulsion from France and the restoration of the monarchy there did not draw a historical line under the revolutionary era: revolutions broke out in different parts of Europe again and again. Russia, to which they have not yet reached, began to look for ways to prevent them. This led to another correction of its civilizational strategy.

Given that Europe was shaken by the mass movements of the grassroots escaping from government control, the new strategy was focused specifically on the people and their identity. The trans-confessional Christian universalism of the Holy Union was not compatible with it. The return to the secular statehood of Peter, which synthesized force and law while marginalizing faith, did not correlate with this identity. The response to the challenges coming from Europe was the partial resuscitation of the ideological foundations of pre-Petrine statehood, that is, religious-Orthodox. The formula of Count Uvarov: “Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality”, which dressed St. Petersburg Russia in the ideological dress of Muscovite Rus', revived the state status of faith and its main role in ensuring the spiritual unity of power and people. But at the same time, this formula was also an application for a new civilizational project, an alternative to European civilization, which, at the time of the revolutionary upheavals that fell upon it, began to seem to many in Russia without a future. It was an original project Russian civilization designed and capable of preventing revolutions.

The unconscious paradox of such a strategy lay in the fact that the civilization building was supposed to be erected on the foundation of a culture that was not affected by civilization. It was supposed to be erected on the basis of the archaic culture of the peasant majority, preserved in a pre-state state. The “freezing” of the redistribution-communal way of life blocked the universalization of the principle of legality, and thereby the rooting of the majority in the civilization of the first axial time, not to mention the second. The Slavophil apologia for conscience as an instance higher than the law actually represented a romanticization of the local and unformalized customary law, according to which the Russian village continued to live. If we take into account that in the non-peasant strata of the population since the time of Peter I, the principle of legality has gradually taken root and even brought to the legalization of class rights, then the essence of the next civilizational project of the Romanovs will become obvious.

It was a project of maintaining the status quo, translating a cultural split into a civilizational split. But a divided civilization cannot be considered a civilization by definition.

The revolution, for the sake of preventing which this project was put forward and carried out, could not be prevented with its help. Therefore, it had to be declared invalid. But there was nothing to replace him. The forced universalization of the principle of legality, its extension to the previously inviolable autocracy, which after 1905 was for the first time legally limited, was tantamount to ascertaining the civilizational lack of self-sufficiency of the Romanovs' Russia: the restriction of autocracy deprived it of its only subject of original civilizational design. This lack of self-sufficiency was also evidenced by the equally forced legislative expansion of civil rights, brought to the right of free exit from the community. That was a movement towards another, European, civilization, which was part of the second axial time. But in conditions when the popular majority had not yet firmly settled in the first, the Europeanization of the country ran into obstacles that turned out to be insurmountable.

When today they talk about "a unique Russian civilization", I want to understand what exactly they are talking about. After all, in search of a civilizational identity, Russia throughout its history has used various combinations of force, faith and law, none of which has become final and each of which has largely revised, sometimes radically, the previous combination.

Is it possible, for example, to consider that the Orthodox-Byzantine strategy of Alexei Mikhailovich and the religiously neutral “Greek project” of Catherine II lie on the same civilizational plane? What do they have in common - besides, of course, that both of them were nominated by the autocratic authorities?

Is it possible, further, to assert that the originality of Russian civilization includes that combination of force and legalized general lack of rights that was characteristic of Peter's militaristic statehood, or that combination of force, legalized rights and emergency laws that protected the state from the society that developed after the reforms? Alexander II?

Finally, do the legal restrictions on autocracy that marked the last decade of the Romanovs and the laws that dismantled the rural community have anything to do with the uniqueness of Russian civilization? Is this a confirmation of uniqueness or a departure from it (if so, in what direction)?

And the last thing: how to evaluate the fact that it was precisely the insistence on civilizational singularity and exclusivity that turned out to be the catastrophe of 1917 for Russia?

The domestic elite continued to adhere to an original civilizational strategy throughout all the post-reform decades, trying to synthesize its Orthodox component with the pan-Slavic one. The tops of Russian society could not reconcile themselves to the fact that Russian statehood, starting from the Crimean War, showed a decline in its former strength - not only in relations with other countries, but also within its own country. The elite hoped, as in the days of Alexei Mikhailovich, to make up for this lack of strength by strengthening faith. The expulsion of the Turks from it opened, as it seemed, the historical road to the unification of the Orthodox Slavic world under the auspices of Russia, and thus the road to an alternative civilization in relation to Europe.

The end result of such an orientation was, as is well known, Russia's involvement in the First World War, the defeat in which will pass the final verdict on the Orthodox-Pan-Slavist civilizational strategy. It was an inertial attempt to prolong the religious universalism of the first axial time in conditions when Russia itself had already made great progress in mastering the principles of the second, thereby confirming the validity of the claims of these principles for universality, alternative to religious. So what does it mean when one speaks of a “unique Russian civilization”? Life reality or unrealized projects?

However, what the Romanovs failed to do, and then the Provisional Government, which inherited the dream of Constantinople, three decades after their abdication last representative Russia will still be able to partially implement. True, she will never get Constantinople, but almost the entire Slavic world will be under her control. This will be done during the implementation of another civilizational project, which went down in history under the name of the communist one. However, his life will turn out to be very short by historical standards, and the question of a civilizational choice remains open for post-communist Russia as well.

The Romanov dynasty, which took over the country after the Troubles, had to restore and strengthen the shaken statehood, ensure internal stability and military-technological competitiveness in the foreign arena. Solving these problems, the Romanovs from the very beginning had to carry out transformations that set the vector for Russia's development for centuries to come, predetermining both its subsequent achievements and the difficulties that it will face and which will ultimately prove insurmountable.

The Romanovs carried this idea through their entire three-century reign. It took shape in various civilizational projects - religious and secular, none of which could be implemented. The same fate eventually befell the "non-Constantinople" project of the Holy Alliance, put forward by Alexander I and involving the formation of a common Christian civilizational community under the auspices of Russia. But the very fact of such a permanent design testified to the civilizational lack of self-sufficiency of Russia. To acquire a civilizational identity, neither high-profile military victories, nor a huge and constantly growing territory are enough. For this, it is necessary to have a fixed place not only in world space, but also in world time, for which, in turn, an appropriate symbolic capital is also needed.

Russia, which adopted the faith from the Greeks, who were subsequently defeated and subjugated by the Turks of other faiths, did not have such capital. He had to look outside. In other words, in order to find one's place in world historical time, it was necessary to acquire that part of world space, the mastery of which would symbolize rootedness in world time. Byzantium was such a part. But Russia failed to capture it. Her claims to Constantinople ended in being drawn into a world war and the collapse of statehood.

The question of acquiring a civilizational identity arose before the Romanovs' Russia the more acutely, the further they moved - voluntarily or involuntarily - along the path of Europeanization, moving from borrowing scientific knowledge and technology to borrowing the principles of European life order, because these principles did not correlate well with the fundamental principles of autocracy - the main and the only political tool that held together a divided society. While civilizational projects were various combinations of strength and faith, and the law was only an auxiliary means of protecting power from powerless subjects, who were under the control of the autocrat, they did not affect the foundation of statehood. But cracks appeared in it when, under Catherine II, laws appeared that were not subject to repeal and were not subject to the sovereign's will. Foreign body in autocratic statehood were civil rights protected by law. They were foreign already when they were granted as estate privileges, and even more so they became such as they spread to the entire population and brought to political rights.

The post-Petrine civilizational projects of the Romanovs were designed to ideologically integrate European civilizational principles of the Second Axial Age into Russian statehood, which gave universal significance to law and individual rights. But the universality of law and law came into irresolvable conflict with the universality of the autocracy. Hybrid political ideals that combined the autocratic-authoritarian principle with the liberal and democratic principle cast doubt on this universality.

Their implementation, while Europeanizing Russia, did not introduce it into European civilization. And not only because the overwhelming majority of the country's population by the beginning of the 20th century had not settled in the first axial time, had not mastered the written culture and was guided in their daily life by custom, and not by law. European civilization moved from the primacy of the state to the priority of the individual, whose rights were legalized as natural, given to a person from birth. The Romanovs, on the other hand, tried to combine the rights of the individual with the supremacy of the state in the person of autocratic power. Therefore, these rights were considered not natural, but bestowed. And for this reason, the autocracy, having legally limited itself at the end of its historical period and removed the word "unlimited" from the legislation, retained the status of autocracy. But these were palliatives, testifying to the fact that the country, borrowing the civilizational principles of the European way of life, tried to preserve its own civilizational identity, which, however, it was not able to acquire.

After the secular projects of Catherine II found their failure and the strategic unreliability of the all-Christian Holy Alliance began to be realized, the Romanovs had the only resource left for civilizational design - Orthodox faith. Therefore, they sought to revive its former state role, dressing the secular statehood of Peter I in old Moscow religious clothes. But faith could provide Russia with a special civilizational status, that is, root it in world historical time, only if all Orthodox peoples and mastering the symbolic capital of Byzantium, which was under the rule of the Ottomans. This meant betting on a war that Russia was not destined to win. Failures in the war led to the collapse of the last civilizational project of the Romanovs and revealed the exhaustion of the historical resources that the domestic autocratic-monarchist state had at its disposal.

Values ​​are objects of various kinds that can satisfy human needs (objects, activities, relationships, people, groups, etc.).

In sociology, values ​​are seen as having historically specific character and as eternal universal values.

The value system of a social subject may include various values:

1) meaningful life (ideas about good, evil, good, happiness);

2) universal:

a) vital (life, health, personal security, well-being, family, education, food quality, etc.);

b) democratic (freedom of speech, parties);

c) public recognition (industriousness, qualifications, social status);

d) interpersonal communication (honesty, disinterestedness, goodwill, love, etc.);

e) personal development (self-esteem, desire for education, freedom of creativity and self-realization, etc.);

3) particular:

a) traditional (love and affection for the "small Motherland", family, respect for authority);

Social development and social change.

The social ideal as a condition social development.

In all areas of society, we can observe constant changes, for example, changes in social structure, social relationships, culture, collective behavior. Social change may include population growth, wealth growth, educational attainment, and so on. If new constituent elements appear in a certain system or elements of previously existing relations disappear, then we say this system is undergoing changes.

Social change can also be defined as a change in the way society is organized. Change in social organization is a universal phenomenon, although it occurs at different rates. For example, modernization, which in each country has its own characteristics. Modernization here refers to a complex set of changes that occur in almost every part of society in the process of its industrialization. Modernization includes constant changes in the economy, politics, education, traditions and religious life of society. Some of these areas change earlier than others, but they are all subject to change in one way or another.

Social development in sociology refers to changes that lead to differentiation and enrichment. constituent elements systems. Here we mean empirically proven facts of changes that cause constant enrichment and differentiation of the structure of the organization of relations between people, constant enrichment of cultural systems, enrichment of science, technology, institutions, expansion of opportunities to meet personal and social needs.

If the development taking place in a certain system brings it closer to a certain ideal, which is evaluated positively, then we say that development is progress. If the changes taking place in a system lead to the disappearance and impoverishment of its constituent elements or the relations existing between them, then the system undergoes regression. In modern sociology, instead of the term progress, the concept of "change" is increasingly used. As many scientists believe, the term "progress" expresses a value opinion. Progress means a change in the desired direction. But in whose values ​​can this desirability be measured? For example, the construction of nuclear power plants, which changes represent progress or regression?

It should be noted that in sociology there is a view that development and progress are one and the same. This view is derived from the evolutionary theories of the 19th century, which asserted that any social development is, by nature, at the same time progress, because it is improvement, because an enriched system, being more differentiated, is at the same time a more perfect system. However, according to J. Schepansky, speaking of improvement, we mean, first of all, an increase in ethical value. The development of groups and communities has several aspects: the enrichment of the number of elements - when we talk about the quantitative development of the group, the differentiation of relations - what we call the development of the organization; improving the efficiency of actions - what we call the development of functions; increasing the satisfaction of members of the organization with participation in public life, an aspect of the feeling of "happiness" that is difficult to measure.

The moral development of groups can be measured by the degree to which their social life conforms to the moral standards recognized in them, but can also be measured by the degree of "happiness" achieved by their members.

In any case, they prefer to talk about development separately and adopt a definition that does not include any assessment, but allows the level of development to be measured by objective criteria and quantitative measures.

The term "progress" proposes to leave to determine the degree of achievement of the accepted ideal.

The social ideal is a model of the perfect state of society, an idea of ​​perfect social relations. The ideal sets the ultimate goals of activity, determines the immediate goals and means of their implementation. Being a value guideline, it thus performs a regulatory function, which consists in streamlining and maintaining the relative stability and dynamism of social relations, in accordance with the image of the desired and perfect reality as the highest goal.

Most often, during a relatively stable development of society, the ideal regulates the activities of people and social relations not directly, but indirectly, through a system of existing norms, acting as a systemic principle of their hierarchy.

The ideal, as a value orientation and criterion for evaluating reality, as a regulator of social relations, is an educative force. Along with principles and beliefs, it acts as a component of the worldview, influences the formation of a person's life position, the meaning of his life.

The social ideal inspires people to change the social system, becomes an important component of social movements.

Sociology considers the social ideal as a reflection of the tendencies of social development, as an active force organizing the activities of people.

Ideals that gravitate towards the sphere of social consciousness stimulate social activity. Ideals are turned to the future, when referring to them, the contradictions of actual relations are removed, ideally the ultimate goal of social activity is expressed, social processes are presented here in the form of a desired state, the means of achieving which may not yet be fully determined.

In its full scope - with substantiation and in all the richness of its content - the social ideal can be assimilated only with the help of theoretical activity. Both the development of the ideal and the assimilation of it presuppose a certain level of theoretical thinking.

The sociological approach to the ideal involves making clear distinctions between what is desired, what is real, and what is possible. The stronger the desire to achieve the ideal, the more realistic the thinking of a statesman and politician should be, the more attention should be paid to the study of the practice of economic and social relations, the real possibilities of society, the real state of the mass consciousness of social groups and the motives for their activities and behavior.

A moral ideal is a process built on the perception of moral requirements through a certain image of a person. It is shaped by a number of characteristics. Later in the article, we will analyze in more detail the concept of " moral ideals"(Examples of them will be given below). What can they be? What goals do they pursue?

General information

Spiritual and moral ideals of the individual serve Society imposes on people certain requirements of moral behavior. Its bearer is precisely moral ideals. The image of a morally highly developed personality embodies those positive qualities that serve as a standard for relations and behavior between people. It is these characteristics that make a person in particular and society as a whole improve their moral character, and therefore develop.

Attitude of scientists

Ideals and different times differed from each other. Many famous thinkers and poets raised this topic in their works. For Aristotle, the moral ideal consisted in self-contemplation, knowledge of the truth and renunciation of worldly affairs. According to Kant, inside any person there is a "perfect person". The moral ideal is the instruction for his actions. This is a kind of internal compass that brings a person closer to perfection, but at the same time does not make perfect. Each philosopher, scientist, theologian had his own image and his own understanding of the moral ideal.

Target

Moral ideals undoubtedly contribute to the self-education of the individual. A person, by an effort of will and understanding that the goal must be achieved, strives to achieve and conquer the heights of the moral plane. Moral ideals are the basis on which norms are further formed. All this happens on the basis of interests in human life. The life situation in which a person lives is also important. For example, during the war years, moral ideals were focused on the image of a courageous, valiant man who owns weapons, but uses them only to protect his land and his relatives.

Impact on the development of society

The understanding of the moral ideal has spread to the whole society. A person dreams of seeing himself in a society that will be built on humane and fair principles. In this case, the ideal is the image of such a society in which it is possible to express the interests of certain social groups, their concepts of higher justice and the social order that would be better.

The moral indicators of the social ideal consist of the equal distribution of life's blessings among the members of society, the correlation between human rights and duties. The highly moral elements include the abilities of the individual, his place in life, his contribution to public life and the amount received in return for it. Moral ideals determine positive indicators of life and the ability to achieve a happy existence. In striving for perfection, which is the ultimate goal of all efforts, man and society must use only highly moral means.

Lenin considered moral ideals to be the "moral highest", combining positive characteristics. In his opinion, they represented everything necessary for people and were a model for society. From the moral properties, evaluated on the highest scale, the content of the ideal is built. Consciousness elevates to a superlative degree those highly moral features, qualities, attitudes of people that are real and real in their essence. Society and the individual strive to realize moral values. Each member of the society should think adequately and correctly, be able to build relationships and interact. The ideal is accompanied by certain positive emotional manifestations. These include, in particular, admiration, approval, the desire to be better. All this is a strong stimulant that makes a person strive for self-education and self-development. There are several types of ideal: regressive and reactionary, real and utopian. The content of moral qualities has changed in the course of history. The ideals of the past, due to their illusory nature and isolation from reality, not aimed at the activity of an individual, remained inaccessible. Even the essence of progressive highly moral indicators was taken as a basis for subjective wishes, without realizing the impartiality of the law and the ways to achieve it.

Influence of modernity

In the days of the communist system, moral ideals were called upon to serve the formation and strengthening of the existing system. An indicator of the high morality of modern society is a harmoniously developed personality. It is distinguished by the pursuit of moral perfection. Society imposes certain moral requirements on its members. Together they form a model of a fully developed personality. Constantly enriched, replenished with something new, they reflect the development of the moral practice of socialist society. The society of the times of socialism in the first place puts the culture of the individual, active civil position, a sense of non-divergence of words and deeds, honesty.

The moral ideals of our time are active and efficient, connected with the needs of society. They acquire real outlines in the socialist interaction of members of society. modernity are active in the areas of self-improvement and self-development. Plekhanov said that the more actively a person strives to achieve a social ideal, the higher he becomes in morally. But even in socialist times, highly moral indicators, not coinciding with reality, go one step ahead. They set certain goals for a person, consisting in constant movement, a continuous process of development. Increasing the social activity of the individual, improving social practice and moral education - all this in combination will resolve the contradictions that have arisen between reality and the moral ideal.

Question 2. Ideal

1. Definitions of the ideal given by I. Kant, V.F. Hegel and others.

2. Ideal from the point of view of modern ethics

1. The concept of the ideal first arose in Christian morality as a result of awareness inconsistencies between what should be and what is :

Human dignity and real life conditions;

The appearance of an earthly man and the image of Jesus Christ.

Christian morality as an ideal claimed the image of a martyr, an ascetic.

I. Kant wrote: "The ideal is what you have to strive for and what you will never achieve," it is "the necessary guide to the human mind." Ideal , according to Kant, unchanged for all times, divorced from real life. The ideal of freedom is the freedom of the spirit.

V.F. Hegel claimed that ideal:

Is opposite (?) reality;

Develops through this contradiction;

It is realized in the fruits of the activity of the world mind.

A. Feuerbach believed that ideal is a "whole, comprehensive, perfect, educated person."

utopian socialists, considered ideal the human right to free development, which is possible only as a result of the elimination of class inequality.

K. Marx and F. Engels determined moral ideal as a component of the social ideal "the liberation of the oppressed class in a revolutionary way." The founders of Marxism believed that the ideal reflects the developing reality: "History cannot receive its final completion in some ideal state ... it is ... movement ... with which reality must conform ".

2 Ideal is a value and imperative representation (asserts the unconditional, positive content of actions), which determines the content of good and evil, due, etc.

Modern ethics considers the ideal from the standpoint anthropocentrism. Moral ideal - This:

Universal, absolute, moral idea of ​​the good, due;

The image of perfect relations between people;

The structure of a society that ensures perfect relationships between people (social ideal);

The highest example of a moral personality.

3. Personal moral ideal of a person - it is the pursuit of happiness, life satisfaction It must have social significance. Aspects of personal ideal:

Sensual-emotional (ideas of personal happiness);

Understanding the purpose and meaning of life;

Motives of activity;

Attitude towards other people.

Determining the purpose of a person's moral activity;

Motivation of a person to moral deeds;

Combining what is due and what is;

Determination of the moral character of a person.

moral ideal may be based on a social ideal. social ideal:

Determines the way of life and activities of society;

Includes moral attitudes;

Morally orients society

The pagination of this e-book matches the original.

9) About the social ideal. 1)

Man is aware of himself as free. The present and the future appear to him not as a series of causes and effects, the only possible one under given conditions, but as a series of different possibilities, the realization of one or another possibility depending on his will, on his actions. Opportunity choice and the denial of the need only possible course of events—this is the specific content of the idea of ​​freedom, which is revealed to everyone in his immediate consciousness. This does not mean, of course, that a person has the freedom to perform, or, in other words, possesses omnipotence; it is subject to the iron law of objective causation and can act on it only as one of the causes, one of its elements. And this does not also mean that a person acts completely without reason, that is, apart from any motives - on the contrary, all his actions are necessarily motivated or causally conditioned. Nevertheless, a person is aware of himself free to incline to one or another motive, makes a choice between them.

The freedom of choice, directly experienced by each of us, we also recognize in relation to other people. Although we are sometimes able to foresee how this or that person will act under given circumstances, we are still unable to get rid of the idea that he can act differently and that in doing so he has the same freedom of choice that we attribute to ourselves. This view is based on our

__________________________

1) Published in Questions of Philosophy and Psychology, 1903, III. (68).

Practical attitude towards other people, exhortations, requests, agitation, etc.

The feeling of freedom cannot be removed from our consciousness, whatever our metaphysical explanation of this fact may be. We can completely deny free will in the metaphysical sense and consider the feeling of freedom we experience as a kind of mental state accompanying volitional acts; we can, on the contrary, see in this feeling a manifestation of our true essence, a free self-determining spirit. This question is finally resolved only in connection with a general metaphysical worldview (and, above all, ontological teaching), but this or that solution of a metaphysical question has no significance for the existence of a sense of freedom, as direct fact of consciousness. In any case, this fact cannot be eliminated from consciousness, even if we deny free will in the metaphysical sense. One can assume, together with Spinoza, that a magnetic needle, if it had consciousness, would consider its movement to the north to be its free work, or, together with Kant, make a similar assumption regarding a rotating spit. But the illusory nature of this self-consciousness of the arrow and the spit can be a fact only of our, human, or in general extraneous consciousness, but neither the arrow nor the spit are able to simultaneously recognize themselves as both free and not free. In the same way, there are no grounds for not admitting that for some being alien to us, our freedom is likened to the freedom of a magnetic needle and a spit, but we ourselves, while the field of our consciousness is occupied by a feeling of freedom, cannot simultaneously recognize ourselves as not free, i.e. . not only theoretically allow, but also practically experience two mutually exclusive states. In practice, we recognize ourselves as free, and in view of the absolute indisputability of this epistemological fact, we can leave aside the metaphysical question of free will here.

Since freedom in our consciousness puts the limit of mechanical causality in everything that concerns our desires (as well as the desires of other people), it is obvious that these desires, according to the law of causality, turn out to be unknowable for us. Further, psychological causality or motivation is subject to an already accomplished act of will, an act, but not the desire itself, which precedes it and is accompanied by a sense of freedom. Therefore, no matter how much we postulate the universality of the law of causality and, in particular, the law

The numbering of social phenomena, of ourselves, we will involuntarily think of as free and put outside of this regularity, considering it as the outer limit of our freedom. We cannot think of ourselves under the exclusive domination of the category of necessity, and on this basis, social science, which would show us our future actions not as free, based on free choice, but as necessary and the only possible ones, leads to unbearable contradictions in our consciousness, because she is impossible. Of course, such knowledge of everything that exists is logically conceivable, in which all of it is presented as one connected act, united by the unity of a causal connection, but such knowledge is possible not for us, but for an absolute spirit that stands above us and outside of us with our limitations and with our consciousness. real or illusory free will. We must jump out of our own skin to know our own subjectively free actions like subjectively necessary. Therefore, social prediction, in which our future free actions are portrayed as necessary, includes an epistemological contradiction and is an ideal unattainable for man. We cannot consistently enforce the doctrine of determinism without ceasing to be ourselves. Happiness or misfortune in this for a person, but this is a fact, moreover, a fact connected not with this or that level of development of social science, but with the fundamental properties of your spirit, with the constant content of our consciousness. This fundamental impossibility of exceptional determinism was shown quite clearly by Stammler in his well-known study Wirtschaft und Recht nac h der Maierialistischen Geschichtsauf f assung", and this is his great merit to social science. Stammler clarified the contradiction of consistent determinism using the example of the so-called. scientific socialism, which on the one hand postulates the need for the onset of the socialist system of society, but at the same time appeals to the free will of man, inviting him to a certain course of action to achieve this result. As Stammler rightly remarks, it is impossible to found a party whose goal is to promote the onset of a lunar eclipse, which will come in its own time with natural necessity. One of two things: either the socialist order of the future society is necessary, as moon eclipse, then the appeal to the freedom of man is superfluous, or he cannot be thought of by us as

Necessary and is really only the goal of our free aspirations. There is no middle ground or compromise between freedom and necessity as states of consciousness, and therefore every doctrine of consistent determinism, regardless of this or that particular content, is subject to these irreducible contradictions. In particular, the idea of ​​"scientific socialism", according to which the socialist system is simultaneously the necessary result of the causal dependence of the phenomenon and the ideal or obligation for free will, in other words, the idea of ​​causal obligation or free necessity is a kind of wooden iron or iron tree.

The freedom of the human will in the above sense is expressed, as has been said, in the faculty of choice. Choice, on the other hand, presupposes discrimination and comparative evaluation. Among the motives that appear to our consciousness, some we condemn, others we approve or justify. The ability to evaluate, the difference between good and evil, is more or less characteristic of everyone, at least adults and healthy people. The possibility of such an assessment obviously implies the presence in our minds of some criterion or norm for this assessment. This norm may be clearly or vaguely recognized in each individual case or in each individual subject, but its very consciousness is an indisputable fact, and we state this fact in every judgment: this is good, this is bad. Since we are specifically interested here in the question of social relations or social behavior, we will focus our attention precisely on the question of social obligation. The norms of social behavior that are present in the minds of everyone presuppose a well-known social ideal, from the height of which social reality is assessed, and in accordance with such an assessment

1) In my old article on Stammler's book ("On the Regularity of Social Phenomena", see above), I objected to this fundamental proposition. Thinking the question over again, I finally came to the conclusion that my objections circumvented the question and did not really destroy Stammler's argument at all.

To avoid misunderstandings, I note that the exclusively epistemological formulation of the question of free will, in which we find it in Stammler, and also take it in the present presentation, being completely sufficient for the purposes of social science, of course, is by no means exhaustive and final. On the contrary, the main problem of free (or non-free) will in the metaphysical sense is not touched upon here, although the question of free will in the epistemological sense necessarily leads to this metaphysical problem.

The activity of people is also lying. What is the content of this ideal and how is it justified? Does its justification lead beyond the limits of political economy and experimental science in general, or, on the contrary, is it possible within these limits?

Let's take a look at the last opinion first. It is expressed most decisively in the teaching of scientific socialism, which in theory eliminates any independent meaning of obligation. There is not a single grain of ethics in Marxism, as Sombart once formulated this feature of his. The concept of natural necessity and class interest, as a natural reflection of objective economic phenomena, is put in place of obligation here. Is it possible to build a coherent system on such grounds? social policy What is undoubtedly Marxism in general and as a whole, and does it, in this construction, remain true to its own theoretical principles?

As far as natural necessity in general is concerned, as the guiding principle of social policy, this principle does not give anything, because it gives too much. The whole future, from the point of view of consistent determinism, is equally necessary. Therefore, all the filth and abominations that still have to be committed in history are necessary, along with the exploits of love and truth. The idea of ​​natural necessity therefore does not provide any criterion for distinguishing the phenomena of reality, and yet the evaluation is necessarily based on distinction and choice. And, of course, the followers of Marx have always made and are making this choice, distinguishing between positive and negative phenomena, progressive and reactionary, and in the antagonistic system of capitalist society consciously taking the side of the workers, not the capitalists, although both classes are an equally necessary product of the social history of the new time. On the basis of what criterion, then, is such a distinction made, if any independent significance of the ideal and obligation is denied in advance?

However, a correction is introduced here in the form of the concept of class interest as a natural criterion of politics. But does this criterion turn out to be sufficient, does not an extra-estimated borrowing from the denied ethics take place?

If we accept the class or group interest as the norm of politics as a natural fact, then we will get as many such norms as there are individual class interests. From this point of view, which does not allow any evaluation of the various classes

Of all interests but their ethical value, the working class turns out to be just as right in its demands as are the classes of landowners and capitalists, for all these interests equally appear to be naturally necessary. Humanity, as it were, is divided into several castes or different breeds in accordance with the difference in class interests. However, all classes, hypocritically or sincerely, the seemingly natural fact of their class interest, strive in a certain way to justify it, to reduce it to the highest demands of justice or social duty. On the other hand, there are also class defectors, traitors to their class, and some of them for some reason suddenly declare themselves to be representatives of the interests of the working class, to which, however, in fact, they never belonged and do not belong. This is how the non-class intelligentsia defines itself. How, then, is it possible to explain this class reincarnation if we do not recognize the independent significance of the obligation in the name of which this reincarnation takes place?

But let's go further. Does the concept of class interest itself have such definite and indisputable features that would clearly delimit it? First of all, it is obvious that it is not the class that defines the class interest, but, on the contrary, its existence is determined depending on the existence of such a common interest. A class is a group of persons having the same economic interests. Therefore, the only sign of class and class politics remains the commonality of economic interests. In theory, it is usually assumed a priori that homogeneous social groups also have common economic interests, and this assumption is considered to correspond to concrete reality. However, if we begin to build the concept of class not from above, but from below, but posteriori, and we look in concrete reality for the actual unity of interests in order to determine class groupings on the basis of it, then the expected unity of interests of vast social groups that have much in common in their external position we won't find. Take, for example, the working class, which

__________________________

1) Sometimes this is motivated by the fact that the conditions of economic progress are connected with the interests of the working class. It is easy to see, however, that in such a case the norm of politics is no longer class interest, but economic progress; consequently, the original criterion is replaced by another.

generally distinguished by the greatest cohesion and is often accepted as having a homogeneous economic interest. In fact, within this class there are the most diverse groupings of different interests, and it is quite possible that the worker, while belonging to one group with some of his interests, belongs to a completely opposite group in others. Between workers belonging to different national economies, conflicts are possible on the basis of competition in the world and even in the domestic market, both commodity and labor (a classic example of the latter is, for example, the current desire of American workers to limit the immigration of foreign labor, while than, as is known, this movement has already led to a number of laws that extremely restrict and impede the immigration of Europeans and actually prohibit the immigration of the Chinese). A strife of interests is also possible within the same country with respect to the workers of various industrial regions competing with each other. Even more often this is observed with regard to workers employed in various branches of production: for example, in Zap. Europe and especially in the American Union. In the United States, the interests of industry and agriculture are now hostilely clashing, and this, to a certain extent, is expressed by a dull or open antagonism between the respective categories of workers. Finally, even workers employed in the same branch of production may, under certain conditions, have unequal or even opposing economic interests. We have a vivid example of such a temporary opposition of interests in cases of violation of the strike, the so-called. Strikebr e hell. Some workers start a strike in the name of their economic interest, others break it in the name of their economic interest. Who is right here, if we remain on the basis of the consistently carried out doctrine of economic class interest?

Consequently, if we turn to concrete reality to define the concept of class interest, we will be completely helpless in the face of the complexity and contradictory nature of individual interests and positions. Not only do we not find the stable definiteness of economic groupings, which is supposed to be taken for granted in the teaching of Marxism, on the contrary, here we observe endless diversity and constant change. The consistent development of the doctrine of class interest, as a norm of social policy, necessarily leads to

Rejection of any norm, any general principles, leads to social atomism (Bentamism). the last concept to which this logical regressus leads will not even be an individual, for the same individual at different times and in different situations can have different and even opposing interests, and each individual act economic activity. The class interest turns out to be a shadow and slips out of our hands as soon as we make an attempt to catch it. And with it, the concept of class also slips away, since it is constituted by the sign of the unity of class interest.

The policy of class interest, consistent and consistent, obviously must be able to understand this sea of ​​concrete contradictions of economic interests and have a criterion for justifying some economic interests as correctly or ideally understood class interests and condemning others from the same point of view, for example, to sanction interests strikers and condemn the interests of the Strikebrechers. In this case, class interest turns out to be not a naturally necessary fact, but an ideal norm. In the name of an ideally understood class interest, you must act this way and not otherwise; this is the real content of the idea of ​​class politics, which is revealed to us by an analysis of the concept of class. And if so, the doctrine of class politics has no right to oppose itself to social idealism or the doctrine of the independent role of the social ideal or obligation. It is only a separate case of this obligation, its particular formula, which is subject to discussion from the side of its special content, but it is not at all the fundamental negation of obligation in general. So, if we openly reveal the whole content of the idea of ​​class politics, which is secretly contained in this doctrine, then it will be completely like this: out of all existing social groupings fairness correspond to the economic aspirations or interests of the working class, but in a certain way understood why and the policy that meets the ideal of justice is a policy in the direction of the interests of this class. But even the real interests of this class can serve as the norm of politics only in so far as they correspond to the requirements of justice, or to the ideally understood class interest. One has only to turn to the popular literature of the Social-Democratic Party, to its newspapers, leaflets, appeals, etc., and we

different forms, but at every step we encounter a repetition of this same motive: in the name of class interest, understood as an ideal norm, as a demand for social justice, agitation is carried out, literary polemics are waged, the enemy is denounced, and a relentless struggle is preached. All Social-Democratic propaganda, one might say, is imbued with the very ethics from which Marxism does not want to introduce a grain of salt into its doctrine. Although this is inconsistent, it is quite natural and inevitable, because a person can refuse his ethical nature even if a doctrinaire scheme prompts him to do so. To Marxism, in this case, one can apply the words of Marx himself that a person is not really what he thinks of himself. Rejecting ethics in theory, in practice, social democracy is one of the most powerful ethical movements in contemporary social life.

But what in Marx's teaching is tolerable only against the will and, as it were, smuggling, constitutes the central problem for us: what determines social obligation, what is the content of this social ideal that imparts the quality of justice or injustice to individual social aspirations and actions, what is its nature?

First of all, it is obvious that this obligation is not inextricably linked with any specific economic requirements, on the contrary, as a predicate, it can be combined with an economic content that is directly opposite and generally very different (for example, in England during the time of Ad. Smith, emancipatory ideals were associated with the requirements of economic individualism - Laiss e z faire, laissez passer, and now with diametrically opposed demands of socialism). Otherwise, this duty would not have the character of universality, general applicability, which is necessarily characteristic of it. And if the predicate of the proper belongs to a given economic demand, but by virtue of its special content, but only its relation to the social ideal, then this latter also cannot be a definite demand of an economic nature and, being higher and common to any economic content, can be rooted in social economy, but only in morality. This raises the question of the nature of the mutual relations of morality and social policy.

In Marxism we saw an attempt to cut off morality from social

noah policy, sacrificing the first to the last. There are also opposite attempts - to destroy the independent field of social policy for the sake of the autocracy of morality. From this point of view, it is considered sufficient to have personally good, loving relations with everyone and everything; moral life is here limited to the area of ​​\u200b\u200bso-called personal morality. This is how the question of the relationship between morality and politics is resolved by two otherwise extremely distant doctrines, both of which strive to give a correct interpretation of Christian teaching: the Byzantine-monastic worldview, on the one hand, and the teachings of L. N. Tolstoy - with another. Extremes meet. The first doctrine denies the independent field and significance of social and political reforms, at best it simply ignores it; regards the idea of ​​social progress with distrust and suspicion, if not outright hostility, believing that a real reform of human relations can only be carried out in the human heart. Therefore, only personal piety and morality are of paramount importance, perhaps also morals, but by no means institutions. (It is known that this Old Testament and fundamentally false view entered the political worldview of the old Slavophiles, who denied the importance of legal guarantees, even treating them with disdain, as a bad invention of the rotten West). L. N. Tolstoy's teaching on non-resistance to evil leads to the same final result; limiting itself only to the negative precepts of non-participation in evil, without the positive demand of fighting evil, this teaching naturally approaches the same socio-political nihilism as the Byzantine monastic doctrine. Both of these teachings must be countered with the moral axiom that morality, whether autonomous or religious, must give answers and indications to all the demands of life and not turn away from any of them. We cannot build reality according to our own will, arbitrarily closing our eyes or declaring important aspects of it to be non-existent or unimportant. And in this reality, undoubtedly, there are such relations that go beyond the limits of personal relations of man to man and therefore remain outside the sphere of personal morality. This includes public life, the field of law and socio-economic relations. Each specific question in this area has to be decided on the basis of not an immediate feeling, but an abstract

Cheni-rational principles. In principle, to exclude this area from the sphere of morality and its tasks means consciously giving it to the undivided domination of dark instincts and elemental forces. But besides that, living in a certain environment, we cannot even exercise non-intervention and abstinence, which are required by the doctrine in question. After all, it is not difficult to understand that non-participation is only a certain form of participation (as in political economy everyone admits that the politics of laissez faire is, after all, a definite form of politics). Living with a well-known state organization and consciously keeping myself out of politics, I nevertheless passively support this organization (not to mention the direct financial support that I provide as a taxpayer). In the same way, we are all conscious or unconscious social politicians, not only Bismarck passing the workers' insurance law, but also the last worker to take part in a strike or reject it. Therefore, there can be no talk of fundamental non-participation in public life, because it is generally impossible. That is why, by the way, very often, especially among clerics, this speech is simply a mask for protective tendencies or a bad cover for social indifference.

Thus, politics or public morality becomes close to personal morality, representing its necessary development and continuation. Morality turns into politics. At the same time, politics, of course, cannot be something independent or alien to morality in relation to the basic and guiding principles, although the principles of morality are necessarily and refracted in the social environment.

The highest standard of personal morality is the commandment of love for one's neighbor. Applied as a criterion of social policy, this beginning turns into a requirement justice, recognition for each of his rights. Justice is a form of love, as Vl. Solovyov (in "Justification of the Good"). In fact, love for one’s neighbor simply as a person presupposes an equal attitude towards every human person, alien to any arbitrarily shown preference for one over others, presupposes, in other words, justice as a self-evident and in this sense the natural norm of human relations: fair and unjust are concepts that we constantly use in our lives. The dispute about co-

In social ideals there is nothing more than a dispute about justice and the correct understanding of its requirements, we will try to reveal the main content, which is the concept of justice as the norm of human relations.

Formula of justice - s uu m caique, to each his own. Each person is recognized as an inalienable suum, the sphere of his exclusive right and domination. On what does this recognition for each human personality of such a sphere rest? This question cannot be answered without resorting to the ridiculed and forever, as it seemed at one time, eliminated, but in fact indelible from human consciousness, the concept natural law.

Natural law is a legal and social obligation, these are ideal norms that do not exist in reality, but which must exist and, in the name of their objective obligation, deny the existing law and the existing social way of life. Criticism of law and social institutions there is an inalienable and ineradicable human need, without this social life would stop and freeze. And this criticism is, of course, not made empty-handed—such pointless criticism would be mere grumbling—but in the name of a certain ideal, an ideal obligation. The existing, historically established and therefore inevitably imperfect way of life is opposed to the ideal, normal structure of human relations, and this idea of ​​ideal or natural law provides a criterion of good and evil for evaluating social and legal concrete reality. On the basis of such an assessment, one or another demand for reforms is developed, and these demands, of course, change in history, are subject to the law of historical development (this is the so-called das natürlich e Recht mit wechs el dem In h alt). But the legal ideal itself, the ideal norm of human relations, representing natural law in the proper sense, is absolute and, therefore, must also have an absolute sanction.

Natural law in this sense, as an ideal and absolute norm for evaluating positive law, is reduced to a few moral and legal axioms that are consciously or unconsciously implied in any legal judgment. The first of these axioms concerns equality of people. People are equal to each other as moral persons: human dignity, the most holy of titles - a person, equalizes all

Between themselves. A person for a person should be of absolute value; the human personality is something impenetrable and self-sufficient, a microcosm.

This position is firmly rooted in the consciousness of modern civilized mankind; if we mentally try to remove it, all morality is destroyed, all values ​​\u200b\u200bare depreciated. (As is well known, this experiment was carried out by Nietzsche.) What is it based on, on what basis can this doctrine be affirmed, the inviolability of which is only confirmed by attempts to shake it?

First of all, it does not belong to the number of innate and therefore irremovable data of human consciousness. It does not resemble, for example, the forms of sensory perception - space and time, which we cannot remove from consciousness, even if we wanted to. On the contrary, the idea of ​​the absolute dignity of the human person and the equality of people as bearers of this dignity enters the consciousness of mankind gradually, is in this sense a product of historical development. This idea was unknown to ancient antiquity, whose greatest thinkers - Plato and Aristotle - did not extend human dignity to slaves. Although the idea of ​​the equality of people was characteristic of the Stoics, it received worldwide significance only in the preaching of the Gospel.

The idea of ​​equality does not represent an unavoidable fact of consciousness, even in the sense that it does not at all correspond to our actual psychological experiences in this regard. We feel in too many ways that we are unequal to other people, above or below them, and in any case deeply different from them (on which the sense of individuality is based). If, finally, we turn to empirical reality, then here we will find that the indisputable fact of this reality is not the equality of people, but, on the contrary, their inequality. People are unequal in nature, unequal in age, in sex, in talent, in education, in appearance, in conditions of upbringing, in success in life, in character, etc., etc. Consequently, we draw the idea of ​​equality from experience could not, from experience we might rather get antique or Nietzschean ideas. The equality of people not only is not a fact, but cannot even become one, it is only norm human relations, an ideal that directly denies empirical reality. However, if the idea of ​​equality was recognized by mankind only in historical development, then perhaps it is simply a prejudice of our era,

her taste, whim? At ancient Hellenic and the modern European has different culinary tastes, fashions and costumes, different astronomical, physical and so on. scientific views; Perhaps these differences should be compared with the difference in attitudes towards the human person? But try in fact to equate this difference with all other features that distinguish us from the Hellenes, as we will immediately see all the huge and fundamental difference that exists here. I can dress in a frock coat and antique toga; I can have certain eating habits; I can, finally, have certain chemical, physiological, etc. views—all this in no way affects and does not characterize my moral personality, and these differences seem to it accidental and insignificant. On the contrary, in order to renounce the idea of ​​absolute human dignity, which is the same in me and in my neighbors, I must morally mouth, brutalize, harden, change your moral self. This idea turns out to be more stable and significant for the definition of a moral personality than the countless individual characteristics that in their totality form my empirical self, it constitutes, as it were, an integral part or core of it. My consciousness gives me a definite indication that this idea has not a subjective and therefore only an accidental meaning of whim or taste, which I can change daily, but an objective and essential one. It is true about me and my neighbors.

By affirming the equality of people, in spite of their empirical inequality, and the absolute dignity of the individual, in spite of its existing humiliated position, we deny empirical reality and behind the “crust of nature” we see the true, divine essence of the human soul. People not the point equal and people essence are equal, here are two contradictory provisions that we need to agree on. They can only be agreed upon by referring these contradictory predicates to different subjects. People are not equal in the natural order, like empirical beings, but equal in the ideal order, as intelligible entities, as spiritual substances. But at the same time, the ideal order provides a norm, natural law, for the natural order. Only in this way is it possible to think, without contradiction, equally indisputable truths for us about man both as a natural and as an ideal being. It follows from this that the doctrine of the equality of people and the absolute dignity of the human person, which is moral

The essential foundation of the latest democratic civilization necessarily implies a transcensus beyond the limits of experientially given reality, into a super-experimental area, accessible only to metaphysical thinking and religious faith, and this transcensus by itself leads to dualism, to a bifurcation of reality, to the world of truly existing, ideal, and the empirical world, reproduces the age-old antithesis of Platonism. It is based on the religious doctrine of the nature of the human soul and its relation to the Divine, from which it receives its absolute dignity. We have already mentioned that the idea of ​​the absolute dignity of the human person and the equality of all before God, as “sons of God”, is preached by the Gospel and is inextricably linked in it with the doctrine of God and the world, with the basic provisions of Christian metaphysics. All democratic ideals of our time feed on this idea. But - in a strange way - not only the origin of this idea is forgotten and its real foundations are lost, but over time the ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity began to be considered something alien and even opposed to Christianity. There is no need here to analyze all the causes of this deplorable historical misunderstanding; but this misunderstanding leads to the fact that the above-mentioned ideals, torn off from their natural and, moreover, the only basis, turn out to be hanging in the air and open to all kinds of (Darwinian, Nietzschean, etc.) attacks, because they can have only one indisputable justification - religious - metaphysical. And if faith in man is preserved in the modern soul, then it is supported by the old habit of consciousness, which has outlived its foundations for a long time, unconscious religiosity. On the contrary, holding on to the soil of consistent positivism, judging a person by what empirical reality gives us, we have every reason to conclude that people are inequality and, based on this actual inequality, to reject the preaching of equality as harmful and utopian. This was done by the fearless positivist Nietzsche, who deeply and rightly understood his anti-Christianity as a denial of the ideas of equality and democracy, both political and economic. (Therefore, one cannot help but be surprised at the blindness with which Nietzsche's preaching is now being attempted to fit the ideals of democracy and to adorn with bright feathers borrowed from Nietzsche the lifeless skeleton of the most ordinary positivism.) On this point, Nietzsche is more consistent than Comte and more consistent than Marx, for he reveals everything he can

give a philosophy of positivism without any borrowing from religion.

The idea of ​​equality must be led to the conclusion that no person has and cannot have a natural right to suppress the moral personality of another by violent means. The idea of ​​human equality necessarily includes the idea freedom as the norms of human relations or the ideal of social order. " Right is freedom, conditioned by equality. In this basic definition of law, the individualistic principle of freedom is inextricably linked with the social principle of equality, so that we can say that law is nothing but a synthesis of freedom and equality. The concepts of personality, freedom and equality constitute the essence of the so-called. natural law 1).

Here some explanation is needed as to what real meaning the idea of ​​equality and freedom can have.

The idea of ​​the equality of people as moral persons does not and cannot destroy their empirical inequality and difference, and not only secondary, created by social conditions, but also given as an initial fact. Differences in gender, age, intelligence, talent, and inclinations cannot be made non-existent. Mechanical alignment under one would be the greatest inequality, gross violation suum cuiqu principle e , yes, besides, it would be virtually unfeasible. The ideal of equality has meaning and significance, corresponds to the supreme idea of ​​justice only as a requirement for the possible equality of conditions for the development of the individual for the purpose of its free self-determination, moral autonomy. In other words, the whole practical content of the idea of ​​equality is reduced to the idea of ​​individual freedom and to the requirement of social conditions for its development, which are the most favorable for this freedom.

However, the demand for freedom does not negate any dependence of the individual on society. Such freedom is possible only on Robinson's Island; it must be sought in that prehistoric age when man wandered as a solitary savage. The life of people in society necessarily determines the interaction between them, which is a certain dependence of people on each other. This dependence takes the most diverse forms, in view of the existing empirical inequality of people.

_________________________

1) Vl. Solovyov. Law and morality. Sobr. op., vol. VII, p. 499.

It is easy to distinguish between internal or free dependence and external or compulsory, the first we have in the relationship of the student to the teacher, the reader to the writer, the son to the father, etc. Such dependence not only does not violate the spiritual freedom of the individual, but, in fact, it represents a field for its manifestation, for the freedom of the individual is actually realized only in communication with other people. Dependence of the second type is created by the conditions of existence of a person as a physical being, connected with the outside world by an iron necessity to defend his physical existence. The consequence of this necessity is the emergence of a state and economic union, and a person becomes dependent on the forced organization of both. He cannot completely free himself from this dependence, remaining a slave to physical necessity. The ideal of individual freedom in this case comes down only to weakening or neutralizing this dependence as far as possible, turning it from external to internal, from compulsory to free.

Dependence on the state does not appear to us as political oppression, not as such, not because the state exists in general with its own demands, but only at those points where these demands contradict our moral sense and cannot be accepted and fulfilled freely, without coercion. It does not seem to us, for example, that it is a violation of freedom to prohibit stealing or killing; receiving full sanction from the moral consciousness, these demands of the state are fulfilled by us freely. On the contrary, those restrictions of a private and public law nature that are strongly condemned by our moral consciousness (as restrictions on the freedom of the individual, conscience, speech, etc.) are experienced as political oppression. The ideal of political freedom therefore does not consist in the destruction of the state (what is the theory of anarchism), but in its transformation in accordance with the requirements of moral consciousness.

Economic dependence takes place when the organization of production, the economic system, determines the external and forced subordination of one to another. This kind of dependence, based on the separation of labor from the instruments of production, is naturally experienced as economic oppression. Determined by a thousand individual circumstances in their details, the existence of such oppression allows one person to imperiously restrict the will of another, therefore, here in every

The case is a violation of the natural character of the freedom of the individual. However, the ideal of freedom here, too, can consist in the destruction of the economic union in general—such a senseless demand would be tantamount to an invitation to universal suicide—and, consequently, not in the severing of economic ties between people, which, together with economic progress, as is well known, will not weaken, but strengthen and become more complex, but precisely in the neutralization of this dependence. It can only be neutralized by destroying the personal character of this dependence, for it is precisely this that offends the moral sense. This, so to speak, depersonalization and at the same time the destruction of economic dependence takes place with the growth of economic collectivism, along with which the place of a private entrepreneur or capitalist is increasingly replaced by society or the state, which is an abstract personality (more precisely, even impersonality). And every step forward that is taken towards the replacement or limitation of personal dictatorship, whether it be the factory law, or the municipal enterprise, or the cooperative, marks a gradual increase in the emancipation of the individual from personal economic oppression. However, from this point of view, certain forms of economic individualism are also equivalent to economic collectivism, namely, small-scale individual farming, an example of which we currently have in peasant farming, which is progressing in the West. If one can still argue against independent peasant farming for reasons of economic expediency and progress, then, from the point of view of the social ideal, this kind of individualism is quite equivalent to collectivism. That is why, by the way, considering purely economic arguments against peasant farming to be erroneous, I include in my economic program, along with collectivism in industry, peasant individualism in agriculture 1) (of course, replenished by the development of agricultural cooperatives), moreover, from the point of view of the general ideal freedom, such a seemingly contradictory combination turns out to be consistent and internally consistent.

Based on what has been said so far, it is clear that the moral foundation of socialism is provided by individualism, the ideal of individual freedom. Socialism and individualism are not only not the essence

__________________________

1) See my book: "Capitalism and Agriculture", 2 volumes, St. Petersburg, 1900.

Opposite beginnings, but mutually condition one another. Only their correct combination and balance ensures the possible completeness of the freedom of the individual and his rights. At the same time, for all the inseparability of both principles, their combination contains an irreconcilable antinomy: for the sake of freedom, the individual must submit to society, and this dependence of the individual on society increases as his freedom increases. On the other hand, in assuming the task of protecting the freedom of the individual, a public organization can carry it out only by vigorously maintaining the legal order against encroachments on it by the arbitrariness of individual individuals. It is impossible even in theory to delimit exactly and indisputably where the rights of society and the state end and the area of ​​inviolable rights of the individual begins. In history, this frontier is constantly shifting first to one side and then the other, it is constantly being searched anew along with changes in historical conditions. Thanks to this irremovable antinomianism, there is always a dull struggle between the individual and society, and it can always flare up, turning into open defiance, on the one hand, or violent actions, on the other. Because of this antinomianism, even the most ideal social order can only have an unstable equilibrium.

Both members of this antinomy, taken in isolation and turned into "abstract principles", give rise to the ancient ideal, on the one hand, and the anarchist, on the other, these two poles of socio-philosophical thought. The ancient world recognized only a society in front of which the individual is annihilated; the idea of ​​natural duties for the ancient consciousness seems to be much more indisputable than the idea of ​​natural rights. The ancient ideal of communism, just as precisely as the primitive or patriarchal communist system, can no longer serve as an ideal for us, because it lacks precisely that which, in our eyes, gives a moral value to communism, for which it serves only as a means - freedom personality. On the contrary, anarchism wants to know only the rights behind the individual, only "den Einzig e n u nd sein Eigenthum" by Max Stirner with his "lch habe meine Sach'auf Nicpts gestüllt" and his denial of obligations towards his own kind. (Nietzsche's ideal of the superman is also antisocial.)

This is the content of the social ideal: the commandment of love = social justice = the recognition of equal and absolute dignity for each person = the demand for the greatest fullness of rights

and individual freedom. The substantiation of this ideal is given by the religious and ethical doctrine of the nature of the human soul and the obligations of man to man that follow from this. The ideal of freedom, which constitutes the moral core of modern democracy (political and economic), is not revealed in political economy or the science of law: in empirical knowledge, a person seeks only means for the realization of an absolute ideal. At the same time, the political and social ideals that inspire humanity today are undoubtedly Christian ideals, since they represent the development of the doctrine brought into the world by Christianity about the equality of people and the absolute value of the human person.

To understand the nature of the social ideal, it is essential not to forget that, being given a priori or externally for social policy, it cannot serve as a historical goal, one of those goals that can be achieved and left behind 1) .

Only concrete goals are achievable in historical development, while the ideal of justice is abstract and, by its very meaning, can be combined with various concrete contents. It is only a regulative idea, providing a framework for moral judgment and evaluation. Changing concrete conditions bring new data for the solution of this problem and for a new discovery of this world-historical sought. We cannot think without contradiction of the complete solution of this task in history (“heaven on earth”), because this would mean the end of all history, the immobility of death, or absolute perfection, which is unattainable under the conditions of empirical being. Let us not forget that the ideal of equality and freedom is the negation of these conditions, and for this reason alone cannot be fully embodied in them.

However, if the concept of history also implies the idea of ​​infinite development, this latter takes place in certain direction, has an ideal target; hence the very definite meaning and idea of ​​progress. The entire course of historical development appears to us as continuous (albeit zigzag) progress, the triumph of freedom and justice in the external forms of social life, the emancipation of the human personality,

_____________________________

1) Stammler, in whom the regulative nature of the social ideal is excellently clarified, quite rightly points out that such an ideal cannot be thought of as achieved, the movement towards it is endless, and therefore In this sense and the social question within the bounds of history is not definitively resolved.

Gradual gathering and external unification of historical humanity. One of the most important tasks of world history lies in the emancipation of the individual and the socialization of mankind. But here we are already on the threshold of the philosophy of history, which there is no need to cross in this exposition. Let us only note that the philosophical discussion of the social question, the problem of social duty, necessarily leads us to the philosophy of history, to the problem of social and historical being, which, in turn, is connected with all the basic problems of philosophy. This connection exists equally for the metaphysical and positive thinkers, not only for Hegel, but also for Marx.

It should also be emphasized that the ideal of individual freedom differs significantly from the utilitarian or hedonistic criteria with which it is often substituted by positivists. A person should be free because it corresponds to his human dignity; external freedom is a means, more precisely, a negative condition of internal, moral freedom, which is the image of God in man. Kant expresses the idea that man, as a free-reasoning person, is the goal for which God created the world, that world necessity exists for the sake of human freedom. This idea should be strengthened and especially confirmed in relation to the history of mankind, for which the development of individual freedom is the supreme ideal. But by presenting this demand for freedom as an absolute religious and moral postulate, we do not connect it at all with the question of how exactly a free person wants to use this freedom of his, and also about whether he will be happy with it. A person can, like moral personality leading good and evil, decide both in one direction and in the other, and none of the people can predetermine this, nor decide for him. Only free human actions have a moral value, only in them does a person discover the true nature of his spiritual self, realizes a person in himself. It is also unlikely that anyone will dare to confidently say that, becoming more conscious and freer, a person generally becomes happier; in general, hedonistic progress is more than doubtful and remains, in any case, debatable. But even if it were proved absolutely indisputably that, in the hedonistic sense, civilization is accompanied by a positive regression, then even then humanity would have to be called forward to freedom and towards this regression,

and not back to sleepy contentment - freedom is such a priceless good that can redeem everything, and birthrights should not be sold for any lentil soup.

The question of the autonomy of the social ideal and the value of human freedom is posed with amazing force by the Grand Inquisitor (in the legend of Dostoevsky), who, as it were, is bargaining with Christ for human freedom. For the sake of the happiness of people, consisting in satiety, contentment and peace, the Inquisitor deprives them of what should be for a person above all earthly blessings - their moral freedom 1) .

Dostoevsky rightly sees here a denial of the main idea of ​​Christian morality and depicts the Inquisitor as a conscious enemy and adversary of Christ. The commandment of freedom, as history shows, is one of the ideas most difficult and reluctant to assimilate by mankind. That is why the Inquisitor has always collected and still collects many and many. Moral violence, violent virtue, such are the precepts not only of medieval, but also of the latest inquisitors, with the difference, however, that in accordance with the general softening of morals, fires have now been replaced by prohibitive and punitive laws.

Since the social ideal will only provide a scale for evaluating social phenomena, in itself it is not yet associated with any specific concrete content, the discovery of which is an independent task. And if the social ideal is presented to social science as given or given, and therefore, in a certain sense, super-scientific, then in finding its concrete content, one can and should use the data of scientific experience to the fullest extent possible; a concrete ideal must be constructed scientifically, and this is the truth of the so-called. scientific socialism. Consent to the absolutely just demand of Marx, affinities for the realization of the ideal should not be invented out of the head, but found with the help of a scientific analysis of reality. Idealist politics should not be utopian, but realistic; idealism in politics can and must be practical. The logical possibility and even the necessity of combining idealism with sober realism is still insufficiently understood, thanks to the completely erroneous and arbitrary confusion of idealism with utopianism, when in fact there is nothing in common between the two. On the contrary, utopian psycho-

__________________________

1) Wed. "Ivan Karamazov as a Philosophical Type", pp. 99 et seq.

Logically, it is rather connected with positivism due to the fact that in the latter the absolute is sought in the relative, while in idealism the correct philosophical perspective is observed.

Socio-political realism, based on philosophical idealism and fundamentally opposed to unprincipled practicality and adaptation, does not at all consist in the fact that the ideal should be exchanged for trifles and dragged along the earth. The demands of a realistic politics guided by an absolute ideal can by no means be a preaching of small deeds and a denial of broad historical and social tasks. Of course, every practical activity consists of small deeds, i.e., of individual disparate actions, but these actions can and must be considered in organic connection with the great historical tasks that give life to them. These tasks are historical in the sense that they are not abstract postulates of morality, but quite concrete and feasible demands for the reorganization of reality in the direction of the ideal. It is precisely such tasks, and not abstract moral principles, that determine the programs of political parties and give definite content to the political and social struggle. These tasks can, of course, differ from each other in their breadth and require different times for their implementation; If sometimes a single parliamentary session is enough to put into practice a factory law, then the combined work of a number of generations is required for a radical social reform or political liberation of the country. It is quite possible, therefore, that such a task, without losing its historical character, in relation to the individual life of an individual, plays the role of only a regulative idea that determines the direction of activity, but does not entirely fit into it. There is therefore a gradation between concrete historical tasks according to the degree of their breadth and difficulty; the deeper the spiritual needs of the individual, the wider the historical tasks with which he connects his activities. Broad horizons are necessary not only for the eye, but also for the spirit.

The ideal of justice is inherent in every person. There is no such person who would rebel against justice as such, who would consciously want to be unjust in his actions. The moral nature of people is the same and there is no reason to divide humanity in this respect into sheep and goats only on the basis of the fact of their belonging to

different socio-economic and political groups. And at the same time, it seems impossible to find two people who would agree in their understanding of the specific requirements of justice in all the smallest details, and all of humanity, as you know, is currently disintegrating into a number of parties or groups with different, even diametrically opposed, understanding of the requirements. justice. How can this be explained?

You can specify whole line the reasons why, in the name of a single ideal of justice, the most diverse demands are made. First of all, one must take into account the entire complexity of social life and the resulting possibility of a completely sincere and conscientious disagreement when evaluating the same phenomena; Of course, this disagreement does not destroy the central significance of a single ideal of justice, just as scientific disagreements do destroy a single truth as an ideal or norm of scientific knowledge. A striking example of such a sincere and conscientious dissent is the socio-political views of Evg. Richter, the leader of the free thinkers on the one hand, and the Social Democrats on the other. The ideal of both Richter and Bebel is one and the same - the freedom of the individual; but one, in the name of this ideal, puts forward the demands of socialism, while the other, fearing the possibility of the despotic absorption of the individual by the state in a socialist society, puts forward the opposite program of Manchesterism. Fundamental disputes and fundamental struggles are generally waged on the basis of different understandings of the specific requirements of justice. The possibility of equally deep and sincere disagreements exists in the evaluation of individual measures, small and large deeds that make up social policy. Experience shows that for every question practical there are endless disagreements among social politicians, even with a complete commonality of guiding ideals: for an example, it is enough to cite the differences on the peasant question, on the question of workers' unions, co-operatives, parliamentary activity, etc., existing in the environment of the present German Social Democracy.

The third and, perhaps, the most important reason for differences in the understanding of justice is the fatal limitations of man, the narrowness of his spiritual outlook. The worldview of each person develops depending on the whole sum of individual conditions, which differ sharply for different social groups. Prejudices absorbed with mother's milk, education,

Ignorance of many aspects of life, involuntary and unconscious adaptation of the worldview to the conditions of life, a natural tribute human weakness, all this will create a kind of mental warehouse of entire social groups, as they say, class psychology. To explain the peculiarities of class psychology, there is no need to reduce them to bare class interest, which has nothing in common with the ideas of justice; they are quite adequately explained on the basis of a general fact - the empirical limitations of man, thanks to which a different understanding of the requirements of justice becomes completely bona fide. A separate individual, to the extent of his spiritual strength and development, can weaken or break this empirical limitation of his worldview, psychologically declassify. However, one must not forget that such a declaration requires absolutely exceptional spiritual strength, sometimes heroism.

For all given reasons If people were guided in their actions solely by the demands of justice, as everyone understands them, then even then there would inevitably be a struggle between them, due to the difference in this understanding and the natural desire of everyone to defend their own truth, and civil strife and wars would arise on this basis. But not only ideal motives, ideas about what is due and fair, but also selfish motives and personal interests have power over people. Extreme need or predatory instincts, weakness of the will or lust for power, hatred or slyness, envy or greed - in a word, the most diverse motives can cause actions performed either directly contrary to the requirements of justice, or even more often in addition to considerations about them; a habit is created in a whole series of actions to be guided by an egoistic instinct, not at all asking questions about justice, a kind of practical immorality is established with respect to entire aspects of life, of course, for everyone in their own way and in different sizes. The similarity of the economic situation and the identical direction of personal interests due to it creates class or group interests that play the role of levers in social life.

The individual life of every person is a psychological tangle of a wide variety of motives, both ideal and base, and to determine which of them belongs big role in a person's life, there is no possibility. Therefore, by the way, the doctrine of the dominant role of class

self-interest, understood in the sense of a selfish instinct, is at least an unprovable assertion. However, if we are not able to unravel or calculate the motives of actions, then these very actions, accessible to direct observation, can be subjected to study and grouping. Important as knowledge of inner motives is for moral judgment, for the purposes of social policy, it is sufficient to know the usual course of action of individuals or social groups, whatever their motives, in order to be able to practically reckon with it. In the ranks of one and the same political party, no doubt, there are people driven by the most diverse motives, with different convictions and mental moods; however, this difference is extinguished by a certain unity of action corresponding to the objective goals of the party, and this practical unity makes it possible to ignore all other differences, however great they may be. Such a view does not sin with moral indifference and is not a compromise, because the party and socio-political grouping does not take the whole person as a whole, but only a certain side of his activity, and demands from him certain actions, without searching for their innermost motives. Party discipline cannot and must not go beyond what is absolutely necessary for the purposes of party action, leaving in all other respects complete freedom of the individual. Unfortunately, a correct understanding of the boundaries of party discipline is poorly inculcated in practice.

Since there are various and even diametrically opposed aspirations in life, it is obvious that all of them cannot seem equally fair to us if we have a certain ideal, our own understanding of justice. Otherwise, we would have to turn the whole logic upside down and abolish the basic logical laws, above all the law of identity, contradiction and the excluded middle, and justify black and white at once. Or else we are left with criminal and flabby indifference, the fatherland of chaos and darkness, to use the beautiful expression of Kant. Approaching life with certain requirements and finding in it a strife of interests and aspirations, which does not depend on my will and therefore must be accepted by me as a fact, I must necessarily take in it

_________________________

1) It goes without saying that a certain ethical minimum is also required here, but it consists mainly in demands of a negative, and not of a positive nature.

A clear and unambiguous position, joining any of the existing currents or taking your own direction. Consequently, any form of active participation in life fatally, against our will, draws us into fight for life is a struggle, and the truth in it not only unites, but also divides. Bright festive robes can only be preserved by those who leave life, and every vital person puts on a working apron or battle armor in order to work for his truth or fight for it.

Therefore, a concrete supra-class or universal policy is impossible, it is an empty place, in reality there is only class, party or group politics, a policy not of unity, but of division and struggle.

But do we not fall into a hopeless contradiction with ourselves? After all, at first we denied the independent foundations of class politics and established the universal ideal of social policy, and now we come to the conclusion that in reality only class politics is possible, and universal human politics is an empty ghost? The apparent contradiction, however, disappears if we pay attention to the real meaning of the two supposedly contradictory statements, of which the first concerns the ideal end, and the second the concrete means leading to its realization. It remains indisputable that the ideal of social policy, the criterion for evaluating certain specific phenomena and activities, is given by the idea of ​​the equivalence of the human personality and its natural rights, which follow from this. This absolute requirement of morality determines the direction in which community development. In relation to this absolute goal, all means of social policy, which are determined in detail by specific conditions, must be evaluated. From this point of view, class politics also has an ideal value, not because it is class politics, or because the interests of a given social group are something sacred or preferable in themselves, but simply because in this case these requirements coincide with the requirements of social justice, and this connection is purely historical, and not logical, the demands of social reforms, which are currently emanating from the working class and in main features coinciding with its class interests, receive their ethical value not because of this coincidence, but because these demands can be supported in the name of universal human interests, not alien to the capitalists,

The human dignity of which also does not correspond to the voluntary or involuntary position of the exploiters, in the name of the destruction of classes and class interests. Of course, the ideal interests of the human person in this case collide with the material interests of the given subject, placed in certain external conditions of life, and on this basis a struggle arises. But in this case, the struggle is the only way to the future, even if it is a distant world, to a world based not on cowardly reconciliation with untruth, but on the victorious triumph of truth.

Based on the above grounds, denying the socio-philosophical doctrine of Marxism and proceeding from completely different philosophical grounds, I still remain faithful to him in everything that concerns the basic issues of a specific social policy, deviating from him only in those points of the economic doctrine where the latter seems to me erroneous due to arguments of a special economic nature (for example, in the agrarian question).

Theoretically, we distinguish between two ideals that give life to political economy: economic 1) and social. Of course, in concrete life there is no separation between economic and social phenomena, which is possible only in abstraction. In reality, economic requirements have social significance and vice versa. Social liberation is also connected with economic liberation, freedom from social oppression is inseparable from freedom from poverty. However, although the requirements of social and economic policy may run in parallel and merge to the point of indistinguishability, it is theoretically possible to artificially separate and even oppose them. Each of the two ideals of political economy can be turned into an "abstract principle" and, developed one-sidedly, lead to socio-political absurdity. In this case, the question naturally arises, what is more important and what is easier to give up: freedom from poverty or from slavery, economic or social freedom? There is no way to give a satisfactory answer to this question, just as it is impossible to answer, for example, the question, which death penalty is preferable: by hanging or guillotining? To the question which is worse, here we have to answer: both perspectives are worse. Both economic and social freedom constitute an equally essential, albeit negative, condition for the development of the human personality. Right

_________________________

1) See the previous article "On the economic ideal".

It is more reasonable, therefore, to regard the two ideals of political economy as equivalent; in the complete absence of any reason whatsoever for giving preference to one or the other, the right policy must therefore be recognized as one that pays equal attention to the interests of both social and economic progress. These requirements, at least in principle, are satisfied by the social policy of Marxism, which consciously seeks to reconcile the interests of economic progress with the requirements of social justice. An example of a one-sided passion for economic progress is given by the bourgeois English and non-English apologists, who looked at a person exclusively as an instrument for the production of wealth, and this one-sided aspect subordinated their socio-political demands. This was accompanied by the most outrageous indifference to the suffering of the working class, which bore on its shoulders the burden of accumulating wealth, an example of the opposite extreme - the recognition of the demands of social justice alone, without any attention to the requirements of economic progress, is the doctrine of simplification by L. N. Tolstoy. Outraged by modern disasters and all social injustices, Tolstoy offers a simple and immediate way to destroy them by simplifying and destroying the division of labor with all its consequences. Perhaps social slavery would certainly plunge mankind into economic slavery, that is, into hopeless poverty, which, given the current density of the population, could easily lead to starvation. This is exactly what the Germans characterize as splashing out of the bath along with the water and the baby. Thus, the requirements of economic and social policy must always be consistent with each other, and such an agreement in each individual case is a questio faeti, sometimes very difficult to resolve. But this question is already decided on the basis of the data supplied by empirical political economy, and goes beyond the limits of social philosophy.

So, the building of social policy is affirmed on two grounds - on the ideal of economic and social, and on the pediment of this building one word is inscribed, expressing the entire content of both of these ideals, and, consequently, all the tasks of social policy, and this magic word - Liberty.

Page generated in 0.02 seconds!