Individuals, carrying out their actions, enter into connections (interconnections) and relationships (relationships) among themselves. are the actions of people that take into account possible actions other people. In another way it is called interaction. Social connection is determined by the collectivity of human life, the dependence of people on each other. It can be expressed as follows: “I depend on others when the objects, benefits, conditions that I require are at the disposal of others. And vice versa." For example, I get on the bus, pay the fare, and the driver takes me along the designated route.

Main elements social connection are: 1) different people (for example, passengers and drivers) with their motivational mechanisms(needs, values, norms, beliefs, roles); 2) situations of social connection (objects, money, power, law, statuses of people, etc.); 3) coordinated actions, the performance of roles (for example, passengers and drivers), the result (the benefit received and the associated satisfaction or dissatisfaction) of people. Thus, a social connection is a connection between the actions of people in a certain situation, prompted by some needs, motives, incentives (Scheme 1).

By joining a social connection, a subject specifies his needs, values, norms in relation to a situation consisting of objects (consumer goods, tools, transport, etc.), other subjects, and their actions. The elements of the situation acquire a specific meaning (meaning) for the acting subject, i.e. the acting subject actualizes the system of his needs and the expected actions of others in a given situation with the help of mentality.

Scheme 1. Scheme of social connection (interconnection)

By becoming a participant in a social connection, a person acquires a certain status—a role-function. For example, in a family people become husbands, wives, children, etc. In their interaction they form family connection(family). In the social environment, a person’s objective position is determined by the nature of the social connection in which he finds himself. At the same time, each person in a social connection is focused on other people and their roles. He acts at his own discretion and implements a model of behavior in a given situation.

Social connection includes, on the one hand, social relations (internal), and on the other hand, external conditions. Social relations (relationships) form the conscious (subjective) essence of social connections: needs, values, norms (programs of action within the framework of a social connection), a state of satisfaction or dissatisfaction. External (objective) conditions social connections include the needs of other people, objects and conditions, roles and actions of participants, the result of social relationships in the form of some kind of benefit. We will use the term “social connection” in the unity of “interconnection” and “relationship”.

The most important feature of a social connection (educational, labor, army, etc.) is responsibility And coordination actions of people. It is provided by the general needs, values, norms, beliefs of people, as well as external regulators (orders, laws, authorities, etc.), which turn people’s actions into a social connection. Military communications include activities to defend the country (military training, shooting, attacks, etc.); it is regulated by orders. In scientific communication, where greater freedom opinions, the regulator is beliefs scientists. The law of social relations is maintaining mutual role expectations: if this does not happen, i.e., mutual role expectations are not confirmed, then the social connection disintegrates. For example, if passengers do not pay and the driver does not stop at stops, then the transport ceases to function.

The effectiveness of a social relationship depends on the degree to which the needs of its participants are satisfied. The more satisfied they are, the more stable the social connection. Further, it is determined by the degree to which people assimilate the roles that form a social connection (in our example, the roles of the driver and passengers). Finally, a social connection must be socially useful and correspond to the values, norms, and beliefs accepted in society. A change (increase or sharp decrease) in the number of communication participants also affects its effectiveness, requiring new ways of regulating it.

Social system- a form of social connection formed by “states and processes social interaction between acting subjects"; qualitatively it is greater than their sum. It includes four types independent variables:

• values— ideas about the desired type of social system in people’s heads;
• norms - specific ways (rules) of orienting people's actions in specific situations;
• teams - groups of people implementing a common goal based on values ​​and norms;
• roles - programs for coordinated behavior of people.

In light of the above, society is a complex and interconnected social connection, the structural elements of which are numerous social systems(subsystems) and relationships between them.

Typology of social connections

Social connection can be either direct, simple, or complex, indirect. In case direct Communication subjects coordinate their actions visually, verbally, and physically. An example of such a connection could be the behavior of a person on a bus, greeting, providing assistance, etc. Such a social connection has the form social contact, into which we enter every day: we learn from a passerby how to get somewhere, etc. Contacts can be single (contact with a passerby) and regular (with a cloakroom attendant). During contact, the connection between people is superficial: there is no system of coordinated actions of partners in relation to each other.

Indirect connections in which people do not directly come into contact with each other are of greater importance in society. The bearers of these connections are not words, gestures or views, but some material, economic, political, legal, artistic, etc. benefits. These are production and economic relations between enterprises, mediated by products, money, loans, etc., as well as regulated by legal rights and obligations.

With the development of society, the network of indirect social connections, as well as the needs, values ​​and norms manifested in them, becomes more complex; the number of intermediaries and the number of nodes through which it must pass increases. The communication impulse, passing through these steps, loses individual characteristics, turns into a bundle of social energy and motivation. Such deindividuation creates the illusion of an impersonal network of social connections, the absence of the need and will of specific people. But this is not so: as a social network, such a network is regulated by an orientation towards others, by the expectation of a response from the counterparty.

Types of social connections

Depending on time and frequency, social communication is divided into (1) random and (2) necessary (sustainable). This affects the nature of regulation of the social degree of obligation and responsibility of its participants. You behave differently with your neighbor on the bus than with your housemate. With the latter you behave more obligingly, i.e. taking into account all the various motivations for relationships, since your neighbor’s attitude towards you is largely determined by your attitude towards him.

Social communication can be formal or informal. Informal The relationship is characterized by a lack of subordination, a natural division of its participants into statuses and roles that express their needs, values, norms, beliefs, embodied in traditions. Such a social connection is characteristic of a traditional (agrarian) society and family and kinship ties. Within its framework, participants are not regulated by legal and administrative norms, and there is no governing body or leader. This is also friendly conversation, scientific discussion, team work, etc.

Formal communication presupposes legal and administrative norms for its regulation; it divides those participating in it into statuses and roles that subordinate them. In such a social connection there is a governing body that develops norms, organizes people, controls the implementation of instructions, etc. Such a body could be, for example, a church or a state. Formal-impersonal communication is the basis of industrial society (in particular, capitalist and Soviet).

Exchange(according to D. Howmans) - a form of social communication in which people interact based on their experience, weigh possible profits and costs. Exchange occurs during purchase and sale, provision of services to each other, etc.

Conflict - a form of social connection, which is a struggle between opposing motives (intrapersonal), people (interpersonal), social entities— social institutions, organizations, communities (social).

Competition - a form of social connection in which people enter into a struggle for favorable working conditions and sales of goods, for political programs and power, for new ideas and organizations. As a rule, it is carried out within the framework of moral and legal rules, is a source of wealth (according to A. Smith), and is a process of cognition, learning and discovery of new knowledge, as well as new goods, markets, technologies (according to F. Hayek).

Cooperation - a form of social connection when the statuses, roles, and actions of people are clearly coordinated: for example, in a family, at a factory, in a store, etc. In cooperation, a social connection takes the form of a social institution and organization, i.e. it represents system of sustainable, direct And indirect, formal And informal social connections. Cooperation can be forced (administrative) and voluntary (democratic). Social cooperation is characterized social capital its participants, representing a set of such informal values ​​and norms as truthfulness, honesty (fulfillment of obligations), cooperation.

Social connection (exchange, competition, conflict, cooperation) can be demographic, economic, political, spiritual, etc. depending on the subject, nature and subject of communication. For example: the subject of economic interaction is an economic good (money, profit, wealth, cost, shares, etc.); interaction is of a financial and economic nature and presupposes certain knowledge, actions, and experience; an economic subject has an economic need, a motive, a value orientation that prompts it to economic interaction.

Before moving on to further consideration of the problem of relationships, it is necessary to dwell on clarifying the problem of social dependencies. Without going into the general definition of dependence, which can be found in textbooks of general methodology, we emphasize that the term “social dependence” can mean either dependencies that arise between people living in the same society, or dependencies arising from conscious influences on each other as members society. These are two different questions. In the first case, the expression “A depends on B” means that A in his undertakings must take into account the existence of B, with his range of rights and obligations, that the existence of B creates a certain framework for A’s undertakings. Dependence arises here from a common membership in an organized system. In the second case, the expression “A depends on B” means that B can directly impose a certain way of behavior on A. In other words: in the first case we are dealing with a structural-functional dependence resulting from the fact that A and B operate within the same structure; in another case - with intentional dependence, arising from B’s immediate intentions in relation to A and - an essential condition - from the possibility of realizing these intentions, which B has. This essential condition makes it possible to define social dependence more broadly, as Czeslaw Znamierowski did: “B depends on A when A has the opportunity to fulfill

some action that creates a state of affairs affecting B, and some state of affairs affecting B alone, whether it is a state of the body or soul of this B, or the state of his affairs (stan jego tworzywa).” In other words, B depends on A for certain objects or values ​​that are important to B but are in the power of A.

This definition has many advantages. It covers both structural-functional and intentional dependencies, without, however, specifying whether A and B are directly in contact, are aware of their dependence, determine each other mutually, and establish interaction with each other on the basis of this subjective determination. Consequently, it covers dependencies due to belonging to economic, political, religious and other systems, as well as intentional dependencies arising from moral, customary norms governing social relations.

The concept of dependence plays an important role in sociology in that the analysis of dependence is the basis for establishing laws. For the question arises whether social dependencies, being dependencies arising from the possibility of forming someone else’s behavior, allow themselves to be studied in the same way as dependencies between objects, phenomena and processes occurring in nature, and therefore, whether it is possible to establish constant laws of dependency that allow making predictions . We mention this here only to emphasize the importance that the concept of dependence has in sociological analysis, without intending to discuss this issue further.

We emphasize that we are talking here about “social dependencies” and “social relationships”, and not about dependencies and relationships in general, that therefore the addition of the adjective “social” introduces an essential qualitative characteristic.

Let us now return to the consideration of social relations and pose the question: is it possible to put an equal sign between these concepts? We think not. Dependence is a certain element of a social relationship, but it does not exhaust it. A social relationship is a complex system in which a certain dependence arises between partners, arising from the nature of the connecting link and from the nature of the responsibilities, but the relationship is also something more than a system of dependencies. On spoken language we would say that addiction is one of the relationships that binds people. This is just a shortened way of saying it. When we say, for example, that A and B are connected by a relationship of official dependence, we mean that A is the leader of B, that they are partners in a relationship in which A is the leader and B is the performer, that the connecting link between them is institutionalized activity of a certain kind, that within the framework of their mutual responsibilities towards each other they implement some tasks and that in this division of labor A performs leadership functions. Service dependence is only one of the elements of this system, since their relationship covers much more than just service dependence.

We introduce here only the concept of social relations, without trying to carry out either classification or systematization. Relationship theory is an important area of ​​general sociology. After all, they are the main component social connection that unites groups and other social communities.

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Moscow 1969
Translation from Polish by M. M. Gurenko J. Szczepansky ELEMENTARY CONCEPTS OF SOCIOLOGY Editor O. Popov Artist

From the publisher
The book “Elementary Concepts of Sociology” brought to the attention of the reader was written by Jan Szczepanski - a famous public figure, a prominent Polish scientist, president of the International Sociological

Subject and scope of sociological research
Generally speaking, the subject of sociological research is the phenomena and processes of the emergence of various forms life together people, the structures of various forms of human communities occurring in

Sociology and other social sciences
Already this cursory listing of the branches of sociology shows that it must maintain close contacts and collaborate with other social sciences. Therefore, for a sociologist

Philosophical and methodological premises of sociology
Sociology, like any science, is based on a certain set of basic premises concerning the reality it studies. These are, first of all, ontological premises, that is, talking about how

Objectives of this work
Real work is not a systematic reference book on sociology and does not represent the results of research and the state of knowledge in individual areas of specific or general sociology. She serve

Bibliographic index
COMMENT. In addition to the works indicated in the notes, which give a broader view or supplement information about the problems under consideration (mainly works in Polish), bibliographical references

Natural foundations of social life
The study of human societies and the phenomena and processes occurring in them begins with the study of the basic conditions in which they arise and which determine their “life.” We distinguish between natural, econo

Social life concept
We will use the concept of “social life” to denote a complex of phenomena arising from the interaction of individuals and communities located in a certain limited space. Volume fl

Animal communities
Studies of animal communities are even more interesting for sociology, since in animals one can notice stable connections based on the connection of motives that have

Biological foundations of human social life
To the biological foundations of social life we ​​include the characteristics of the human body, the physiological processes occurring in it, the mechanism of inheritance of properties, impulses,

Geographical conditions of social life
Another set of factors that make up natural foundations social life are geographical, or, more broadly, geophysical conditions. Man is a zoological species. He lives on

Demographic foundations of social life
Speaking about the biological foundations of social life, we meant biological processes, occurring in the body of individuals and determining their mental, and as a result, also social processes

Bibliographic index
"Historical Materialism", Under general ed.. Corresponding member Academy of Sciences of the USSR Konstantinova F.V.. 2nd ed., M., 1954, chapter II. Robert Behrstedt, The Social Order, New York, 1957, ch. II. "The Na

Social life
How biological organism man is part of nature. But this belonging to the natural world is not a condition that completely determines his activities and his social life. For man put on

Bibliographic index
Oskar Lange, Ekonomia polityczna, t. I, Warszawa, 1961. Z. Madej, 0 funkcjonowaniu gospodarki socjalistycznej, Warszawa, 1963. Andrzej Malewski, Empiryczny sens te

Definitions
It is difficult to imagine a term more ambiguous and more widespread than “culture.” This term has many meanings not only in everyday language, but also in various sciences and in philosophy.

Internal structure of culture
Culture is always localized in space and society. It does not exist outside of human communities. However, several distinctions need to be made. Namely, one should distinguish between personal culture and

Bibliographic index
J. Chalasinski, Kultura amerykariska, Warszawa, 1962. O. Kosven, Essays on the history of primitive culture, Ed. 2nd, M., 1957 V. G. Сhilde, Postep a archeologia, Warsza

Sociological concept of man and personality
The reasons why sociology should deal with problems of the human personality are very simple; social life is a set of phenomena and processes occurring between people, therefore especially

Various theories of man
The seemingly simple question of what a person is was answered by theology, philosophy, anthropology, both physical and cultural and philosophical, psychology and sociology. Theological views advocated

Concept of human nature
Concept human nature formulated by philosophers and psychologists of the earliest times, who believed that each person has, in principle, the same mental or psycho

The problem of instincts
This problem has troubled the social sciences for many years. Around 1860-1925, discussions took place on the role of instincts in human behavior. These discussions were

Social personality and its components
Now we are aware of the complexity of the problem. On the one hand, the progress of research into the biological and physiological mechanisms of human behavior, then experimental psychological

Integration of personality elements
Biogenic, psychogenic and sociogenic elements of personality, which are presented above separately, as if in a dissected form, are mutually adapted to each other, are associated and constitute an integral unit

Bibliographic index
N. N. Gerth and C. W. Mills, Charakter and Social Structure, New York, 1953. N. Gross, W. S. Mason and A. W. McChern, Explorations in Role Analysis, New York, 1958.

Social connection
In the course of the previous presentation, we touched upon the problems of the natural, economic and cultural foundations of social life. We also outlined the process of formation of a person’s personality in this

Spatial contact
Any relationship between people must begin with some contact in space, with mutual observation and with the establishment of the fact of possession of one of the individuals.

Psychic contact
Observing certain traits can lead to interest in them. This interest is born on the basis of already existing needs observer. Without prejudging at the moment

Social contact
Mental contact can turn into social contact if A and B meet and begin to interact with each other to achieve an exchange of values, regardless of whether

Interactions
Interactions develop based on social contacts. Social contact already presupposes a certain amount of actions, but these actions relate to an object or other value that is

Social Actions
Here we must dwell in more detail on the characteristics of social actions themselves. Following general theory, formulated by F. Znaniecki, we consider social actions or actions as

Social relations
Interactions lead to the formation of stable social relationships. We should start by defining what we mean by this ambiguous term. Under the influence of

We said that social relationships are the main element of social communication that maintains the stability and internal cohesion of groups. The relationship lasts as long as it is long

Social control
When considering institutions, we said that they are an integral element of the system of social control. What is control and how does it relate to social communication? Let's start with “naive” questions. Ka

Social organization
In this chapter, we focused on how the social connection that brings communities together arises and is maintained. Speaking metaphorically, this connection is like a system of ropes and threads entwining members

Social connection
We have thus completed the analysis of the complex of factors, forces and phenomena that form a social connection. At the beginning of this chapter, we defined a relationship as a collection of relationships and dependencies

Bibliographic index
E. T. Hiller, Social Relations and Structures, New York, 1947. R. T. LaPierre, A Theory of Social Control, New York, 1954. F. Znanieski, Social Organization and In

Definitions
A social connection connects individuals into certain stable associations, which can appear in different forms and different types. Let us dwell on what forms of such stable associations we m

General characteristics of the community
After these introductory remarks and after introducing the basic terms, let's move on to more detailed description separate types of community. Pair or deuce. This is the form

Group structure
All these constituent elements of the group are arranged in a certain way to ensure the functioning of the group. We call the system of constituent elements of a group and the principle of their mutual ordering a structure

Types of groups
IN sociological literature You can find many different classifications of groups. American sociologist Eubank (E.E. Eubank), who collected and analyzed ways of classifying groups, meetings

Target groups
Family is special type social life, satisfying purely personal needs, which, however, are extremely important for the stability of the group, therefore their satisfaction arouses interest and finding

Bureaucracy
When considering target groups, we must also consider the phenomenon that arose among them and has become of great importance in modern societies, namely bureaucracy. In the sociological meaning of this

Territorial communities
We call territorial communities those communities whose members are connected by bonds of common relations to the territory in which they live, and by bonds of relations arising from the fact of living on a common

Communities identified on the basis of cultural individuals
These communities are sometimes also called ethnic communities. We include tribes, nationalities, and nations among them. Evolutionists created a theory of the development of ethnic communities, according to which their beginning was the family

Communities based on similarities in behavior
With this complex name we define a number of relatively free social formations that can, however, sometimes develop amazing ability to activities that do not have and

Global society
In the course of the previous presentation, we very often used the terms “society” or “global society” without defining them more precisely. In addition, the term “society” is used in everyday language and in

Ontological problems of social reality
In the course of considering communities and groups, we have repeatedly had the question: what exactly is a social group? Is it the sum of its constituent individuals or is it due to the fact

Bibliographic index
Wilson Logan, The Sociography of Groups, in: Twentieth Century Sociology, 1945, p. 139-171. F. Znanieski, Social Groups in the Moderns World, in: M. Bergeri in. eds., Freedom and Control in Modern S

Social processes
Let us briefly recall the content of the previous presentation: on natural and economic fundamentals, as well as within a certain culture, human personalities are formed; satisfying your needs,

Concept of social process
We will call processes relatively homogeneous series of phenomena connected by mutual causal or structural-functional dependencies. For example, the growth of an organism is a process, since

Social mobility
The next category of life processes occurring in communities is the processes of mobility. Let's distinguish between horizontal and vertical mobility. Toward horizontal mobility m

Bibliographic index
M.H. Neumeyer, Social Problems and the Changing Society, New York, 1953 R. E. L. Faris, Social Disorganization, 1955 D.R. Taft and R. Robbins, International Migrations, New York,

Technical and scientific inventions
Technical inventions usually arise from new ways of combining existing elements of technology and gradually modifying them. Therefore, technical inventions have a cumulative nature

Interpenetration of cultures
Uneven development individual societies is a historical fact, and we will not bother to explain it here. It follows from it important process, called cultural diffusion, consisting of exchange

Social movements
Social movements usually arise on the basis of economic and cultural changes, on the basis of transformations in the material basis of society, or new ideas introduced from other societies. Traces

Law as a factor of social development
All reform and revolutionary movements strive to ensure that the changes implemented in life are consolidated in the form of laws. WITH sociological point from a viewpoint, law is a set of formalized

Social progress
There have also been many discussions and controversies around the problem of progress. Some theories of social progress proceed from the fact that development is also progress, then

Bibliographic index
N. G. Bemet, Innovation: The Basis of Cultural Change, New York, 1953. S. C. Gi1fi11an, The Sociology of Invention, Chicago, 1935. M. Ginsberg, The Idea of ​​Progress, Boston, 195

Afterword
The author of this book is a prominent Polish scientist and public figure, director of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the People's Republic of Poland, president of the International Sociological Association. Published back in 1965

To denote a system of relations use various concepts: “social relations”, “public relations”, “human relations”, etc. In one case they are used as synonyms, in another they are sharply opposed to each other. In fact, despite the semantic similarity, these concepts differ from each other.

Social relations are relationships between or their members. A slightly different layer of relations is characterized by the concept of “social relations”, which is understood as the diverse connections that arise between these communities, as well as within them in the process of economic, social, political, cultural life and activity. Relations are classified on the following grounds: - from the point of view of ownership and disposal of property (class, estate);
- by volume of power (relations vertically and horizontally);
- by spheres of manifestation (legal, economic, political, moral, religious, aesthetic, intergroup, mass, interpersonal);
- from the position of regulation (official, unofficial);
- based on the internal socio-psychological structure (communicative, cognitive, conative, etc.).

In addition to the concept of “social relations,” the concept of “human relations” is also widely used in science. As a rule, it is used to designate all kinds of subjective manifestations of a person in the process of his interaction with various objects of the external world, not excluding his attitude towards himself. Social relations are expressed in the form of production, economic, legal, moral, political, religious, ethnic, aesthetic, etc.

Relations of production concentrated in a variety of professional and labor roles-functions of a person (for example, engineer or worker, manager or performer, etc.). This set is predetermined by the variety of functional and production connections of a person, which are set by the standards of professional and labor activity and at the same time arise spontaneously as it becomes necessary to solve new problems.

Economic relations are implemented in the sphere of production, ownership and consumption, which is a market for material and spiritual products. Here a person plays two interrelated roles - seller and buyer. Economic relations are woven into production relations through (labor) and the creation consumer goods. In this context, a person is characterized by the roles of master and owner of the means of production and the products produced, as well as the role of the labor force that is hired.

Economic relations can be planned-distributive and market. The former arise as a result of excessive government intervention in the economy. The latter are formed through liberalization and freedom of economic relations. However, the degree of their freedom varies - from complete to partially regulated. The main feature of normal economic relations is self-regulation due to correlation. But this does not mean that the state is completely removed from control over economic relations. It collects taxes, controls sources of income, etc.

Legal relations in society are enshrined in legislation. They establish the measure of individual freedom as a subject of production, economic, political and other social relations. Ultimately, legal relations provide or do not provide effective implementation roles socially active person. Legislative imperfections are compensated by unwritten rules of human behavior in real communities of people. These rules carry a huge moral burden.

Moral relations are enshrined in relevant rituals, traditions, customs and other forms of ethnocultural organization of people’s lives. These forms contain the moral norm of behavior at the level of existing interpersonal relationships, which stems from the moral self-awareness of a particular community of people. In the manifestation of moral relations there are many cultural and historical conventions that come from the way of life of society. At the center of this relationship is a person who is seen as his own value. According to the manifestation of moral relations, a person is defined as “good-bad”, “good-evil”, “fair-unfair”, etc.

Religious relations reflect the interaction of people, which is formed under the influence of ideas about the place of man in the universal processes of life and death, about the mysteries of his soul, the ideal properties of the psyche, spiritual and moral principles existence. These relationships grow from a person’s need for self-knowledge and self-improvement, from the consciousness of the highest meaning of existence, understanding of one’s connections with the cosmos, explanation mysterious phenomena, which are not amenable to natural scientific analysis. In these relationships, the irrational principles of the mental reflection of reality, based on feelings, intuition and faith, predominate.

The idea of ​​God makes it possible to combine scattered and vague premonitions of random and natural events in human life into a holistic image of man’s earthly and heavenly existence. Differences in religions are, first of all, differences in ethnocultural concepts of deity as the guardian of the human soul. These differences are manifested in everyday, cult and temple religious behavior (rituals, rites, customs, etc.). If all believers are united in accepting the idea of ​​God, then in the ritual part of worship and approaching God they can become fanatically irreconcilable with each other. Religious relationships are embodied in the roles of believer or non-believer. Depending on religion, a person can be Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Mohammedan, etc.

Political relations center around the problem. The latter automatically leads to the dominance of those who possess it and the subordination of those who lack it. The power intended to organize social relations is realized in the form of leadership functions in communities of people. Its absolutization, as well as its complete absence, is harmful to the livelihoods of communities. Harmony of power relations can be achieved through the separation of powers - legislative, executive and judicial. Political relations in this case should acquire the character of a democratic process, in which the task of power structures and leaders is to maintain a balance of the rights to freedom of each member of society. Ethnic relations arise from differences in the similarity of lifestyle of local population groups that have a common anthropological (tribal) and geographical origin. The differences between ethnic groups are natural and psychological, since the way of life of an ethnic group enshrines the structure of social relations that contribute to the optimal adaptation of a person to a specific natural (geographical and social) environment. This way of life naturally follows from the characteristics of the reproduction of life in specific conditions. The corresponding way of life of an ethnic group is fixed in stereotypes of behavior and activity, in language, rituals, traditions, customs, holidays and other cultural forms of social life.

Aesthetic relations arise on the basis of the emotional and psychological attractiveness of people to each other and the aesthetic reflection of material objects of the outside world. These relationships are characterized by great subjective variability. What may be attractive to one person may not be to another. Standards of aesthetic attractiveness have a psychobiological basis, which is associated with the subjective side of human consciousness. They acquire constancy in ethno-psychological forms of behavior, undergoing cultural processing through various types of art and becoming entrenched in socio-historical stereotypes of human relations.

In psychology, for many decades now the category of relationships has been being developed in a manner specific to this science. But for the sake of objectivity, it should be noted that other psychological schools were wary of attempts to create a theory of human relations. However, this approach is clearly unjustified, since this theory carries with it the strongest humanistic beginning. E. Mayo is considered the founder of the theory of human relations in the West, although in Russia, simultaneously with him, V.M. wrote about the need to develop a theory of relations in psychology. , A. F. Lazursky, V. N. Myasishchev.

The concept of “human relations” is broader than all others that denote certain relationships. What content should be included in the category of relationships?

Let us abstract from the many aspects of existence with which each person is connected and to which he has his own attitude, and let us dwell only on his relations with the various communities of which he is a member, as well as on his relations with certain people. In this case, it can be revealed that the attitude, firstly, involves the actualization of knowledge in figurative and conceptual form about the community or personality of those who interact; secondly, it always carries within itself one or another emotional response of interacting individuals (communities) to the community or personality; thirdly, at the same time it actualizes a certain treatment with them. Then, if you further objectify the “psychological underside” of each of the relationships in the system of which a person is included, you can see the goal that the individual pursues when interacting with communities and individuals, necessarily the needs that directly affect the nature of his relationships. Each individual usually has different relationships with some community and even with an individual who is part of his immediate or more distant environment. In the relationship of one person with another, a characteristic sign is revealed - the presence of positive or negative emotional reaction to another person. This reaction can be neutral, indifferent or contradictory. Naturally, some relationships, due to their nature, can be constructive and “work” for the mental, moral, aesthetic, labor and physical development of the individual, while the action of other relationships can have a destructive result for him. In this sense, relationships with subjectively significant people are especially important for an individual. They are the ones who most strongly influence a person’s perception of the environment and push him to non-standard actions.

A special problem in studying the interdependencies of communication and attitude is to establish the degree of correspondence between the nature of the attitude and the form of its expression in human behavior, or, as V.N. Myasishchev, in the treatment of man with man. Forming as a personality in a specific social environment, a person also learns the “language” of expressing relationships characteristic of this environment. Without dwelling on the peculiarities of the expression of relationships noted among representatives of various ethnic communities, it should be noted that even within the boundaries of one ethnic community, but within its different social groups this “language” may have its own very specific specifics.

Deep intelligent person expresses his dissatisfaction with another person in a correct, non-degrading form. For a poorly educated, rude person, the form of expression of such dissatisfaction is completely different. Even the manifestation of joy among representatives of the same social subgroup differs depending on their inherent differences. Naturally, in order to adequately perceive and understand his attitude when communicating with another person, one must show very subtle observation, including to the form of expression of this attitude. Of course, what has been said does not mean that the attitude is conveyed only through speech and voice. In the living direct communication Both facial expressions and pantomime are involved. And finally, the form of expression of attitude can be action and deed.

However, there are not only customized forms expressions of the same relationship. There are cases in life when a person in communication skillfully imitates some other attitude that he actually does not have. And such a person is not necessarily a hypocrite. Most often, when communicating, the true attitude is hidden, and another attitude is imitated if a person wants to appear better than he really is in the eyes of those whose opinion he values. We envy a more successful colleague, but pretend to rejoice at his success. We don’t like the boss’s leadership style, and we not only don’t contradict him, but also out loudly approve of his actions. There is a common phrase in life: “Don’t ruin relationships!”, the meaning of which is exactly what the given examples correspond to. Of course, in such cases people make a deal with their conscience. The moral price of this transaction is higher, the more serious the social consequences of our duplicity. What has been said does not mean at all that you should never, under any circumstances, hide your true attitude to something or someone. Thus, in the work of a doctor, investigator, intelligence officer, trainer, situations sometimes arise when it is impossible to solve one’s professional problems without masking the experienced attitude.

A detailed description of other types of social relations, which were not the subject of consideration in this textbook, is contained in the book by D. Myers “Social Psychology”.

When discussing the problem of the relationship between communication and attitude, as well as the dependence between the content of the attitude and the form of its expression, it should be emphasized that a person’s choice of the most psychologically appropriate form of expressing his attitude in communication occurs without tension and conspicuous deliberateness, if he has formed the mental properties of his personality, which are required for successful interpersonal communication: the ability to identify and decenter, empathy and self-reflection. The hostility or sympathy experienced by the participants in communication affects its ease and sincerity, the degree of ease of developing a common opinion, and the psychological consequences with which each of the participants “leaves” the communication that took place. Psychological mechanism The effect of attitude on the unfolding process of communication is clear: a hostile attitude makes a person blind to the merits of a communication partner and pushes him to underestimate positive steps on his part, aimed at a successful outcome of communication. In the same way, a hostile attitude provokes a person to behavior that does not lead to a deepening of mutual understanding between those communicating or to the establishment of genuine cooperation between them.

If the relations of the participants in communication are, so to speak, asymmetrical, for example, one of the communicaters shows ardent love for the other, and the latter experiences hostility and even, perhaps, hatred towards him - normal interpersonal communication will not happen. Most often, on the part of one of the communicators there will be a desire for genuine interpersonal interaction, and on the part of the other - either communication at a formal level, or attempts to “put the communication partner in his place,” or outright avoidance of communication.

So, we examined, the subjects of which were individuals. However, in everyday life In addition to a person’s communication with real partners, there is communication with oneself. Such communication “in the mind” is called prolonged. An individual may mentally continue a conversation with a person with whom he recently communicated, especially if they were arguing and some arguments came to his mind later.

In the internal, mental plane, a person’s pre-communication also occurs: he can think about the upcoming conversation in advance, assume possible arguments and counter-arguments of the participants in the communication. As a rule, conversation tactics are thought out, involving orientation in the content of communication, in possible types contacts, spatio-temporal organization of communication (location of participants, start time of communication, etc.).

Thinking through communication tactics “in the mind” presupposes that a person has an image of a partner (partners) for interaction and, above all, an anticipation of who will strive to dominate in communication or occupy a subordinate position, and who is disposed to equal communication, cooperation and mutual understanding. Based on what has been said about prolonged communication and pre-communication, we can talk about communication with an imagined partner, an imaginary interlocutor. Unlike communication that occurs in the imagination of writers, here there is a representation of the image of a really existing person who is currently absent. This type of communication is extremely important for the development of personality and the formation of its self-awareness. This can be communication with your second “I” or inner speech, which is retroreflection, i.e. analysis actions taken, actions, their critical assessment in the present period.

A type of communication with oneself can be an extreme version of egocentric speech. In this case, communication can proceed with real person or specific people, but the person is so carried away by delivering a speech, by his own statements, that he forgets about his partners and continues to talk “endlessly,” although the listeners are clearly tired of this and have stopped listening.

Here communication is clearly one-sided. This paragraph provides the most general characteristics of communication and relationships, which will be further covered from a new perspective and more specifically.

An obsessive state, without which normal existence is impossible, is called addiction. Over time, the object of desire becomes the meaning of life, and the habit turns into mania. All types of human addictions are of the same nature and arise under the influence of a combination of certain factors: social, biological, psychological. Is it possible to overcome addiction?

What are the causes of human addictions?

Causes of human addictions

The word “dependency” means lack of independence, the inability to achieve satisfaction in healthy ways.

Psychologists identify the following causes of human addiction:

single-parent family;

busy parents, lack of communication with the child;

absence of other children in the family;

poor relationships between parents (misunderstanding, fights, scandals, violation of gender roles);

excessive parental care.

As a result, the child may develop depression and, as a result, the search for accessible pleasures, which turns into a vicious addiction. In relation to alcohol dependence, the influence of heredity has also been proven.

Main types of dependencies

The types of human addiction are numerous, their list expands with each stage of development of society. Today the main ones are the following:

Narcotic. The need to take drugs that cause mental disorders.

Alcoholic. Its danger is that a person drinks first to lift his spirits, for company. As a result, he ceases to control the situation and can no longer exist normally without alcohol. Today in our country this is the main dependence of a person.

Smoking. This type of addiction is dangerous because it has both a physical component (nicotine is involved in metabolism) and a mental component (often it is this that does not allow you to give up the habit).

Gambling addiction. Gambling becomes of great importance to a person. Addiction can lead to the loss of huge sums and debts.

Internet addiction. The painful need to constantly be online.

Medicinal. Occurs as a result of long-term consumption of medications. Over time, a person takes them all in large doses.

Sexy. Promiscuity leads to the fact that sex becomes the basis of existence.

Overeating. People suffering from bulimia lose control over their eating. Addiction leads to mental illness and nervous system disorders.

Workaholism. Making money career growth become a priority in a person’s life.

Each of the unhealthy addictions brings a lot of problems both to the addict himself and to his loved ones. It is often impossible to solve this problem on your own, but there is still a solution.

How to deal with addiction?

A person must show fortitude and determination to end addiction once and for all. In most cases, you have to resort to the help of specialists. Basic human addictions are eliminated using traditional methods.

Evolution of social forms

The historicity of the structures of human experience. – Schemes of activity as connections of being and standards of communication. – Development of elements of social thinking. – The formation of the concept of a separate individual, an abstract social connection, the social quality of things. – Identification of abstract forms of the social process and the possibility of the emergence social science. – Economics as the metaphysics of social production. – Social existence in the temporal dimension. – Social science and real abstractions for constructing his paintings. – Search for scales to characterize the social process.

Until quite recently, the idea of ​​“neutral” or unchanging forms, which, in contrast to specialized scientific or practical forms, exist as a kind of constant quantities of human existence.

New cultural schematisms are attached to them or built on top of them, but they themselves remain constant standards human activity, naturally accompanying the actions of every normal person.

Only in last decades this gaze began to crowd scientific statements and practical assumptions associated with the understanding that it is the forms of everyday behavior and thinking that must change, and change faster, so that people solve the problems of modern life with less stress.

The sense of novelty of the changing forms of human activity was reinforced in scientific research into the archaic history of mankind, in a careful description of the first months and years of the formation of the human personality.

It turned out: both in the history of the family and in the history of the individual, patterns of behavior before becoming for a person natural norms, had to undergo a long development in the communication and activities of people. Only then did they acquire the significance of quasi-natural automatisms of human behavior, only then could they “hide” the historicity of their origin. Independent use human objects for a one-year-old child in this case it seems quite natural. And a person’s attempt to enter new scheme actions if it does not fit into existing forms communication may be regarded as unnatural. In general, individual innovation of this kind is apparently a relatively late product of human history: at first, such new formations were actually evolutionary in nature and went “on top” of the slow flow of human everyday life. The history of reproduction and the history of modification of patterns of human activity gradually diverged. In separation joint activities people, this divergence became quite obvious over time.

The discrepancies and contradictions of ordinary reason and scientific logic are precisely a problem indicating that the pace and rhythms of ordinary and scientific thinking have ceased to be combined, have acquired their own special “metrics,” and have presented different demands to people. Each of these ways of understanding reality began to develop its own story, and each of these stories depended on people in its own way, was built into their consciousness in its own way, and dictated to them its own logic of thinking and behavior.

In the foreground of the history of forms of human activity is the growing diversity of schematisms of human behavior, the coupling of these schemes into various “bundles”, “rows”, aggregates, etc. But the historicism of these schemes is most clearly visible in the change in the nature of a person’s relationship to these schemes on different stages social evolution, to their role in the life and development of the human individual.

In the early stages of social history, the individual accepts patterns of activity as a natural law of his existence. He actually identifies himself with the sequence of patterns that the clan offers him: a person is formed and lives as an individual embodiment of the clan ritual, the clan myth, repeating (and thereby preserving) in his behavior long-established forms of communication and action.

As the practical capabilities of society develop, rigid schematization of individual behavior becomes difficult and further impractical. Schemes are developed that define only general forms of interaction between people according to special social positions, types of occupations, and general situations. So, for example, in the moral sphere, the strict regulation of prohibitions is replaced by a number of basic commandments, and these, in turn, are concentrated in generalized norms and principles of human relationships. Relatively speaking, “master schemes”, which completely subordinated human behavior, give way to “guideline schemes”, outlining a person’s field of life and activity, highlighting a vivid image of the world that awaits him or surrounds him. Naturally, a distance arises between “reference schemes”, “symbol schemes” - on the one hand, and a person’s everyday experience - on the other. A person has to adapt the patterns of activity at his disposal to his life on his own: now at the individual level the problem of mastering and developing life forms, and therefore the problem of the individual path, the special human biography, personal choice.

Just a century ago, this problem seemed peripheral to the lives of the bulk of people, to society; it was described and perceived in an individualistic and romantic spirit. However, the pace of social change forced society and individuals to look at it differently, because the ability of people to transform the patterns of their activities became part of the necessary conditions for maintaining normal human existence. “Guidance schemes” and “standard schemes” thus become dependent on people’s self-realization, on the consistent, but dynamic and changeable process of their event.

For now, I am only outlining the plot of a person’s relationship with the forms of the social process to which he submits, which he reproduces, changes, and creates. It is important to emphasize the involvement of man himself in the development of these forms, their connection with the “internal” and “external” life of human individuals, with the patterns of their activity, communication, and consciousness. The evolution of these forms over time is diverse and in a certain sense similar biological evolution, if, of course, we mean not the structures of organisms, but the patterns of their behavior. It is also represented in various ways in the space of human history, in various geographical, ethnic, and national systems of human interaction.

Here we are faced not only with variations of “schemes-standards”, “schemes-guidelines”, “schemes-concepts”, but also with unequal needs for schematization of social forms, with preferences for “schemes-images” to “schemes-signs” or “schemes -concepts" "schemes-symbols".

Culturologists, for example, have noticed that in Russian logos preference is given to “schemes-symbols”, that there is a certain a priori preference for uncertainty (indefiniteness) over certainty, that “orientation schemes” open up a certain space of thought or action, but do not outline specific contours of the field of application of human forces. In such a logos, there is and continues to be an attitude towards overcoming narrow, “schematic” definitions that highlight and emphasize the minimum characteristics of objects. On the contrary, it assumes that the subject is not subject to definition, that definition is incapable of being an expression of the subject’s existence. Such a fluid, blurry, unfixed vision of nature, sociality, and man is of course supported real behavior people who contradictorily combine creative openness and the absence of traditions of clear substantive thinking.

The clarity of the patterns of human activity and their substantive meanings indirectly indicates the practical elaboration of these patterns, their formation in history. Millennia pass before a person begins to distinguish himself from those connections and dependencies according to the forms (or logic) of which he acts. There must be large and lasting changes in the experience and culture of mankind before people begin to look at things through the prism of the connections and actions that use those things. The vision of the wheel in rotational processes and the circle in the wheel - no matter how we relate to the problem of authorship - is a vision developed by generations. This is a schema-idea that has permeated experience not only individual. And in this regard, the form is not psychological, but a form developed and modified by people in the course of its use, a historical and cultural form.

Taking into account the changing “life” patterns of human activity allows us, albeit tentatively for now, to say that any human experience, any human psyche, any “common” sense contains more or less definite structures, developed or perceived. The human psyche inevitably turns out to be psychology, because it latently or explicitly contains a logos, a connection between things and people that “passes through” a person. Therefore, it is, at least to a small extent, consciousness, because it connects the dependencies of people, strengthens their direct and indirect connections. It turns out that human experience cannot be neutral in the cultural-historical sense, and therefore one cannot simply attach cultural, social, and epistemological forms to it, as was previously imagined by many philosophers and psychologists.

The problem, therefore, is not to contrast the integrity of (personal primarily) experience and the clarity of logical, rational, technical, legal schemes. It is to understand why schemes stand out from the initially undifferentiated (more precisely, poorly differentiated) experience of people, as this is expressed in terms of external-material and practical, as in the conscious-psychic, spiritual level, what it gives to the human personality, that “ takes away" from human individuality.

The problem of historicism of patterns of human activity includes one more aspect that cannot be ignored here. We are talking about the transition from image-schemes to sign-schemes, about their genetic connection, about expanding the scope of the latter, about attempts, with the help of sign diagrams and their combinations, to move from the spatial representation of things and states to consistent expressions of processes and their relationships.

Transition from figurative representations sign-symbolic expressions should not be understood in in this case as a replacement of the first by the second or as an addition of the latter to the first. The images of human consciousness, insofar as they are included in the jointly shared activity of people, necessarily turn out to be signs, i.e. pointers to collaborating individuals, to the means, methods and possible results of their activities. The image of an object turns out, among other things, to be a sign of a tool, the image of a tool is a sign of another person, the image of a person is a sign of action, the image of action is a sign of communication, etc. One can, apparently, talk about the initial unity of the image, symbol and sign in the pictorial representation of the object, about some subordination of the symbol and sign to the image, about their “inscription” in the latter. To some extent, this is probably what is associated with a person’s “grasping” in an object of properties and qualities that are not visually represented in it. Here, probably, lie hidden the possibility of describing objects that are not physically formed and spatially not defined (or not definable). Having pointed out this possibility, let us return to the actual cultural aspect of the problem.

So, there is a historical tendency to “hustle” out of complex (albeit undifferentiated) images schemes-orientations, schemes-meanings that generalize specific images and objects of human activity. At the next stage there is separation from specific types activities and stable forms of communication of abstract, deindividualized patterns of behavior. The simplest, elementary functions become “atoms” from which interactions can be built different people. Let us emphasize that the simplest, “elementary”, is not historically initial in this case: “elementary” schemes turn out to be the historical product of an increasingly complex socio-human process. In this regard, the problem of schemes turns out to be a problem of their isolation from the direct individual existence of people, from the cultural and other characteristics of specific human communities, from the “guild” characteristics of individual activities. This is a problem of elaboration and, in this sense, of cultivating, “cultivating” the everyday experience and behavior of people, creating universally significant and accessible means of constructing being for every person. Such cultivation of patterns of human activity, of course, contributes to the fragmentation of the picture perception of life, dividing it into relatively independent fragments and connections. It subjects orientation schemes and meaning schemes to rigorous testing, “falling” into their vagueness and incompleteness. However, one way or another, such cultivation of schemes develops elements of social thinking. And this is worth dwelling on in more detail.

The question of the position of people in the social process becomes the subject of special study in the middle of the 2nd millennium AD. Physics then developed coordinate systems to define things, their positions and interactions. Social practice cultivated a system of measurements that connected and united the geographical space of human activity. Social world begins to change noticeably. There arises a need for means that determine social evolution, its special phases, stages, and transitional states. Attempts are being stimulated to identify the general logic of social evolution and to determine its line. At the same time, attention to the diversity of human communities and their characteristics is increasing. The problem of relationships between different social forms, their subordination or inconsistency arises.

In some European societies, as a result of violent revolutions, economic, political, and legal orders are changing before the eyes of a generation. People directly record social changes and begin to think about the impact of their own actions on social institutions. Thus, the question of the position of man in the social process gradually grows into a set of questions about the influence of human individuals on social evolution, on the forms in which it flows, on the system of measurements that serves to organize and understand it. Completion geographical discoveries establishes the real commonality of human history. A single space of collective human activity is formed, gradually filled with economic interactions, the struggle of political interests, scientific connections and cultural contacts. There is a need to create a common language that describes space, giving geography social significance. The world map becomes a preliminary blueprint for various human relationships.

New opportunities arise for human forces, cooperation and their consolidation in special structures of production, economics, technology, law, science, education. These structures acquire a kind of independent existence, they “overgrow” with material forms, external to people, and begin to influence the structure of people’s relationships, activities, and thinking. They are not simply objectified and frozen, like ancient giant structures: they are reproduced, “work” and set a certain cyclic rhythm everyday behavior of people. Moreover, unlike the nature-earth, which from time immemorial accustomed man to the cycles of its existence, they create “organs” or tools that allow them to change rhythms and accelerate the pace of human activity; they change and force people to change.

The era of geographical discoveries is ending: the possibilities for discovering new spaces seem to be exhausted. But the era of the discovery of time, the discovery of its new sections and dimensions begins.

Time reveals its significance in the connection between different people. It connects the lives of generations, renews the production of goods, and organizes the days and labors of an individual. The present tense reveals volume, depth and perspective; it never ends, it constantly finds itself in the role of the present continuous tense. The activities of people are grouped around it, and the order of this activity in time, and not the order of things in itself, begins to determine the forms of cooperation of people.

The use of time is associated with an increase in speed: the movement of things, the manufacture of goods, the transportation of goods, the training of workers, the circulation of capital, the receipt of interest, etc. This kind of competition of different human activities in speed presupposes “pure” time, i.e. time, cleared of all specific human, material, cultural and other characteristics. Common space and the “pure” abstract time of human interactions create conditions for the compaction of human activity, for the deeper cultivation of non-human and human nature.

Begins new stage man's domestication of things and the design of his own strength. New level The penetration of man into the world of things is due to the fact that man has already practically prepared the means for using not the things themselves, but individual useful properties extracted from things combined into rows and systems. He creates special tools and their combinations, mechanisms and machines for “distilling” specific things into “pure” materials and elements. The interactions of these materials and elements begin to obscure and replace the concrete material image of the natural world in the human imagination.

The changes taking place cannot but affect the person himself. Having discovered his new relationship with time, he begins to feel and understand himself more and more as the force of being, as its special element, quintessence, not exhausted by any specific characteristics - class, physical or workshop. However, the need to consolidate activity forces him to do with his powers and abilities approximately the same thing that he does with natural things. He begins to cultivate in himself properties that are not so much the properties of his personality, but the properties of those producing systems - including education, science, politics, culture - in which he is included in the process of his activities. Mastering the “depths” of human nature, cultivating the field of human activity is, as it were, divorced from the direct development of the human personality: the image of personality - as the actual and potential integrity of an individual person - is constantly present in the life of a real individual, but as an unmanifested, shadow reflection of it.

Man's taming of his new active forces is possible only if they are taken outside, into the system of generalized space and abstract time, only by putting them in an instrumental, thing-like form.

Their formation and development in such forms, of course, poses the threat of “detailing”, “fragmentation” of the concrete existence of human individuals, and creates the problem of adapting external social forms to the needs of a particular person.

Changing structures of existence can acquire complete forms, “locking themselves” in the consciousness of people, in the structure of their psyche: new structures begin to work only when a corresponding picture of existence appears before their eyes, and the corresponding generalized scheme of the life process begins to function in their activities, or ontology. The new logos of being must take root in the psyche of people, connect external social forms with the realization of some powers of individuals, and open access to some external forms to the organic nature of the inner being of the individual. It is clear that a complete coincidence of external and internal forms does not occur. But some features in the structures of external and “internal” activities of people must coincide or, in any case, clearly correspond to each other, “translate” into each other’s language with sufficient completeness.

In this regard, we especially emphasize the formation of developed images of time, process, and continuity in the consciousness of modern European man. These images or diagrams turn out to be rather abstract records and projects of activity as a special kind of duration, in successive intervals of which the fusion, addition and multiplication of various human forces take place. Such a person’s consciousness flowing over time gives him an understanding, a concept of distant events, an abstract, abstract concept, but nevertheless quite definitely influencing the person’s construction of his behavior. Figurative structure human consciousness acquires depth and perspective, spatial-material forms are organized by their deployment in time, the question of man’s place in the social world, in essence, is replaced by the question of man’s position in the social process.

The identification of a person’s individuality, his isolation, and immersion in the social process, of course, is consistent with the changes occurring in the nature of social connections. They are increasingly losing the meaning of “links” that carry out the direct dependence of a person on a person, on a class, on a workshop, on a specific and limited social space. The isolated human individual turns out to be historically isolated precisely from these direct social connections, and, therefore, separated from the immediate “link” to those forms of activity that were previously associated with his social affiliation.

If we talk about the concept of the individual not in a logical, but in a specific historical sense, in which it became practically significant for many people, was built into new forms of relationships and activities, then it characterized a person, first of all, as the bearer and owner (subject) of active forces, possessing the ability to apply these forces to solving various life problems and free in this regard both from class restrictions and from direct social support. The existence of an individual and his activity were freed from a concrete social form and began to acquire social meaning, coming into contact with impersonal means of activity, through them penetrating into the world of abstract social dimensions. In the spatial plane, the individual appeared in the image of a special acting (and thinking - Descartes) thing (and this was entrenched for a long time in everyday consciousness and some philosophical ideas). But in the procedural, temporal plane, a deeper, non-physical meaning of human existence was revealed, and this became one of the most difficult problems of philosophy. The human individual has become separated from the web of immediate social dependencies; his connection with society, a group, and other people has ceased to be direct, tangible, and contact. It has acquired an indirect character - through conditions, means, results and the process of activity itself. It became a social relationship in the proper sense of the word, because it unfolded as a process of correlation, juxtaposition and synthesis of activity.

She compared the various efforts and abilities of people with abstract standards (and above all abstract time) and thus demonstrated the social significance of these abilities and forces.

In other words, the social significance of the individual, ceasing to be a form of his direct dependence on the class, workshop, clan, received indirect expression in abstract forms of construction and implementation of activity. Sociality escaped from the immediate compatibility of human existence, from its figurative, pictorial and emblematic definitions and revealed itself more and more indirectly, as it “spread” over time, “distributing” in complex relationships of individual acts, series and levels of human activity.

So, an isolated individual as a certain historical form(and the corresponding concept) is associated with a certain form social connection, which excluded the direct dependence of a person on a person, group, society, turned into a social relationship, into a quasi-independent real abstraction.

The human individual is freed from direct social dependence, and it becomes a social connection separated from the person, a social connection foreign to him, a social relationship that functions as if apart from him as a special kind of thing. On the “other side,” production turns out to be a thing or a system of things of a special kind, separated from individuals and their direct dependencies. Tools and means of activity begin to “break away” from the individual forms of human existence, gather and group in aggregates and rows, create a special sphere of social life, new norms of human behavior, realization and development of human powers. Production was formalized as a set of material conditions, tools, means, combined to obtain material products that preserve and replenish the existence of people. The people who animate the production process also appeared primarily from their “material side” as carriers of energy, as a bodily motive force. And even social relations, having taken the form of indirect human dependencies, acquired a material character. Production unfolding as subject structure, a special mechanism of human existence, it seemed, gave all other aspects of people’s lives a material appearance and method of manifestation.

But it was not physical laws, not the logic of things that determined the preservation and growth of production. Things in it move and interact according to the forms of human activity, and people in it must be adapted precisely to these forms. Of course, it seems strange that production, being isolated and developing according to the forms of human activity, at first “consumes” the worker as muscular energy and physical strength, that it appears and is interpreted (by many to this day) as the production of things. In essence, the production of things is only a moment of reproduction of materialized social forms and human forces. In other words, a person in production comes into contact not with things, but with the forms of movement of human forces expressed in them. Therefore, the worker - the further, the more - is required to be able to control these forces, and not just be a clot of energy that excites them. And this is no longer physics that characterizes production from the point of view natural laws. This is metaphysics, which considers the production of things as a moment in the social-human process.

The “first metaphysics” of production arose in economics as a special dimension, a special concept that characterizes the production process from the point of view of its effective saturation with human forces and interrelations. I talk about economics as the first metaphysics of production because culture and history were later to give both the “second” and “third” metaphysical interpretation of the socio-human process and show, in particular, the limitations of “economic metaphysics”, its ability to see only abstract shapes realization of human powers, and therefore the impenetrability of many important aspects of human existence. However, at first, it was economics that brought human thinking to the understanding of production as the objective body of civilization, the objective “condensation” of interconnected human forces. By presenting production as a special system of things, economics laid the foundation for identifying social forms in this system and using these forms as measures of the effectiveness of human actions. This is also where the divergence between two interpretations of activity comes from: as a quasi-natural process and as an objective synthesis of human forces and connections.

Economics has highlighted the functioning and development of human connections through production. Thus, she defined a new system for measuring human strengths and abilities, natural things and cultural values. All this acquired a common abstract measure, independent of the specific properties of people and things. Let us emphasize the fact that human qualities were included in situations of comparison and measurement among other things, i.e. as reified forms, separated from their subjects.

Economics, with its abstract dimension, as an all-pervading radiation, has revealed internal communications and the functions of various subsystems of society. In the context of economics, the concepts of state, law, science, and culture acquired a new dimension and depth. Some of them, for example, the concepts of state and law, had to change significantly, thereby determining the prospect of practical changes in the relevant areas. Others, for example, the concepts of culture, art, morality, “resisted” the economic dimension with their entire being, however, they also experienced powerful pressure from real abstractions that stimulate the “economic metaphysics” of human existence.

The acquisition of new characteristics by social concepts meant a change in the structure of people’s everyday behavior and their thinking: concepts became means of people’s adaptation to new principles of the functioning of social connections, to their abstractness, anonymity, “extension” and reproducibility over time. Getting used to the unfolding of one's social existence in time meant for a person the development of new forms of understanding, new forms of connecting concepts. Concepts that “extend” along the time axis, connecting, for example, the scheme of an employee’s actions with the scheme of his employee’s actions in an activity separated in time, lost their direct imagery, picturesqueness and acquired the form of diagrams or symbolic records. Concepts-representations were replaced by concepts-schemes, and concepts-schemes - by concepts-signs, diagrams-“notes”: this was the inevitable price of thinking for trying to express the processuality of social existence. Or let’s put it this way - people’s thinking needed to mobilize their expressive reserves (sign schemes and “note” schemes) and develop new means in order to continue to effectively serve a person in a changing system of social connections.

Such an orientation of thinking, in a certain sense, began to isolate it from everyday experience, from the “living” feelings and impressions of the human individual: mental patterns that take a person beyond what is happening at the moment turned out to be necessarily formal. However, this formalism of thinking is not something fundamentally new; each of previous eras imposed on the individual its formalism of thinking: the ritual formalism of antiquity, the class formalism of the Middle Ages. The peculiarity of new European formalism is that it is not directly imposed on the individual; it gives him the opportunity, with the help of thinking, to insert himself into any abstract connections, but at the cost of dissolving his individual properties in these abstractions. And if in previous eras the formalism of thinking fit into the structures of people’s individual existence, now formalizing thinking begins to go far beyond the boundaries of individual existence, and it requires its own territory to master the growing array of abstract objects of knowledge and practice.

New times give rise to new science (some researchers believe that science in its proper sense is just emerging at this time). This is no longer a science about things, but about the connections and relationships in which things appear; their properties form special forms, “elements,” objects. Science, in essence, works with these “secondary” things that hide the connections between their generation and functioning. She catches the relationships encrypted in things and tries to introduce them into the sphere practical use and into everyday human experience. But, since hidden relationships are not built into the images and ideas of everyday human experience, science gives them indirect expression in the language of sign-symbolic formulas. This corresponds to the state of things in science: here they represent not themselves, but certain series, types, systems of relations, i.e. they actually function in science as symbols and signs of some processes.

All this must be taken into account as a condition for the emerging social science (later - sciences). Social science, as it were, has been prepared by reality itself with objects of study: isolated individuals, their isolated relationships, a special sphere of production. And all this can be studied as things: counted, measured, weighed, without referring to the subjective testimony of people, i.e. all this can be done in the same way as “normal” natural science does. However, this orientation towards the general scientific ideal and standard is fraught with a trap, and the emerging social science certainly falls into it: the thing-like appearance of the objects of social science masks their nature, hides the “springs” that bring them into action: moreover, the coincidence of the objects of social science with their the material, directly represented form also turns out to be an illusion. The result is a “birth trauma” of social science: defects in methodological vision, ignorance about one’s own cognitive capabilities, uncritical assimilation of research standards of natural science, which, moreover, are not sufficiently comprehended by natural science itself. Under the influence of this defect, social science practically did not notice the metaphysical nature of its objects, especially objects natural sciences. All this subsequently gave rise to a set of questions that amounted to in the 20th century. main problems of science. But at first, social science turned to describing and measuring its objects as a special kind of thing.

One way or another, the concepts about the main constituent elements of social existence, about the main “things” on which people’s lives are built, became clearer, formalized and took on the form of tools constantly used in people’s daily activities. They contributed to the inclusion of people in systems of production, law, culture, science that were isolated from them, into increasingly complex forms of communications, and helped people master new spaces and times.

The emerging scientific social science arranged social “elements” and “things” into certain rows, aggregates, grouped and compared them. The problem arose of representing society as a system with relatively strong structures and “mechanisms” of reproduction. But this same problem, taken in perspective, pointed to the possibility of understanding society as the entire human community, uniting various social systems, not subject to the rigid linear logic of development.

However, at first, scientific social science was more interested in the question of the existence in the social process of sustainable forms of its reproduction, about the means of studying, using, and managing them. This was probably prompted by the example of natural science, which revealed regular dependencies in nature and images of natural laws embodied in cultural traditions, and the concept of legal laws, which become the basis for the functioning civil society.

1. What elements make up the picture of society?

2. What is the history and logic of identifying these elements?

3. What are the basis for changes in the connections of sociality?

4. How do social forms that compare people and things influence the formation of scientific social science?

5. If individuals are autonomous, how are they related?

6. Why is knowledge about society before the 19th century. was not considered scientific?

7. What does it mean to give a scientific explanation of social life?

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