Smirnov Talibzhan Anatolievich, Candidate of
Philosophic Science, Assistant Professor.
Department Head.
The Department of
Philosophy, History and Foreign Languages.
FSBEE HPE “Norilsk
Industrial Institute”.
Russia. Norilsk.
Modern Conception of Society
(Social-Philosophical Aspect).
Key words: society, activity, stratification, differentiation,
community, social environment, will, civilization, law, culture.
Annotation: The article deals with the problems of society formation and
development, its perspectives, essential characteristics and forecasts. The
article may be of use while lecturing, specialized training and carrying on
semanars in social philosophy.
Aim:
·
to consider main conceptions of society;
·
to determine regularities of its development.
Tasks:
·
to analyse conception of post-industrial society of D. Bell;
·
to investigate communicative societies of N. Luhmann;
·
to carry out analyses of F. Tennis community and society conception.
A society is a natural phenomenon but at the same time it is a synthetic
and innovational one. Groups, classes, labour division, material and spiritual
production, public and individual consciousness – all of them are social
processes of common notion “reasonable humanity”. The process lasting for some
million of years is developing according to definite regularities and in many
respects it doesn’t depend on the consciousness of people. And at the same time
the subject of any society is a man who is a reasonable and active personality.
There are many theories of society development and in different historic
periods this or that theory took dominating position. Beginning from the times
of Plato and Aristotle (Ancient Greece), Confucius, Lao-tsze and Mo-tsze
(Ancient China) till modern times (M. Veber, K. Marx, F. Tennis, N. Luhmann, D.
Bell, A. Toffler, T. Parsons, P. Aron, A. Toinbi, F. Haieck, S. Huntington and
others) – nobody could find veritable answer.
D. Bell [1] was the first to delineate post-industrial society and to
distinguish its main characteristic peculiarities:
1) transition from the economy producing goods to the economy providing
services;
2) domination of technical competence and processing of information;
3) theoretical knowledge is the basic of social innovations; possibility
of their solving belongs to the people providing control over theoretical
knowledge.
D. Bell shows that transition dynamics from the industrial society to
the post-industrial one depends on the correlation among three logics of a
society functioning:
1) economics follows rationality and creates hierarchy;
2) politics organizes participation of all citizens in political life;
it is based on equality and follows the Tokville principle: the more equality
the more unbearable is inequality;
3) culture gives sense to the life of individuals who want to express
themselves: it is the sphere of personal freedom instigating to diversity/
The main “measurements of the post-industrial society” according to D.
Bell are:
1.
Increasing role of theoretical knowledge for production and other
spheres of social development.
2.
Creation of new intellectual technology and its growing role; for
example, mathematical and economical methods based on computer linear
programming, modeling, system analyzing and so on.
3.
Formation of the “knowledge producers class”, which will be the greatest
group of the American society.
4.
Transition from goods production domination to services production
prevalence.
5.
Change of labour character: instead of “play” between man and machine
there is a “play” of another type: interaction of man with man.
6.
Growing social activity significance of women as great social group.
7.
Intensification of science social role; its connection with state and
industry.
8.
Together with classes – “horizontal” social subdivisions interacting
according to the principle of state subordination there appear formation of
“cytoces” – “vertical” subdivisions formed according to the functional area of
its members in the society (such “cytoces” as scientific, technological,
administrative, cultural, etc.)
Interaction of cytoces will be realized in accordance with the principle
of interaddition. But the struggle of interests is inevitable and it will shift
towards cytoces.
Communicative societies according to N. Luhmann [2] have stages of
segmentation, stratification and functional differentiation in their evolution;
after all the society undergoes the state autonomization (division) of its most
important systems. Economics, politics, law, science and religion are being
reproduced by means of their own rules, and it results in incoherent,
uncoordinated and disharmonic social medium development.
All social spheres (specialized systems of relations) of society speak
different languages or use different symbolically generalized means of
communication, that’s why their
semantic worlds are not clear to each other and values of one subsystem are
indifferent for another one.
Since the Luhmann society consists of communications with the complexes
which are self-reproduced (they are autopotetic systems) and self-realized as
correlated to them themselves (self-referent), people perform background role
in it. In the process of social society evolution many changes take place, for
example division of social systems and their separation from the direct
interpersonal communication. It may be simply described as autonomization of
different social medium spheres and devastation (abstraction increase) of
society as such one. If at different stages of its development a society
presented an integral system and could identify (self-interpretate) itself as a
state - with the priority of political sphere or market society (developed,
developing or underdeveloped – these ones are economic characteristics) – with
the priority of economic sphere, but now it turned out into perfect possibility
of communications, general social information interaction. This is the world
society.
F. Tennis [4] investigated difference between a society and community in
his work “Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft” in 1887. Family and people represent
typical community; family is the community of love, property and fate; people
have common spirit, language, culture and fate. F. Tennis takes will as the
base of social contacts. The type of will determines the type of contact.
Interaction of wills rejections and negations may take place but they must not
be considered in the pure sociology frames because where hostility plays the
main part there is a totality of people, but there are no real social contacts.
F. Tennis developed standard type of will in his main work “Community and Society”
in 1887.
F. Tennis distinguishes will because it contains mentality as well as
mentality because it contains will. (Tennis, 1920. p.71) He calls the first
type of will the “essential will” and the second one is the “selective will”.
Essential will represents “psychological equivalent” of a body.
Mentality considers will as an organism to have been formed; there are a lot of
rudiments and ideas of future activity. Social, firmly established relations of
people are built on the basic of will directing their activity. The result of
it is the typology of sociality according to F. Tennis: there is a community
with the first type of will and a society with the second type of will. The
subject of essential will is organic unity which is determined by itself but it
can contain other minor organic unities or correlate with other equal unities
and constitute as well as represent a whole one.
It leads to the difference of the main economic-legal categories. In the
first case (community) one takes into account such notions as “possession”,
“land”, “territory” and “family law”; in the second case (society) one takes
into consideration the following notions: ‘property”, “money” and “trade law”.
All these facts state that in the course of history community sociality is forced
out by public sociality.
Conclusion. Thus society is considered as the arena of struggle for
power and domination in which there are different stages of development: from
pre-industrial to industrial and post-industrial socium where bifurcational
processes create alternative variants of unstability, complexity and difference
in development. In such societies non-prediction and variability take the
position of domination pointing to the difficulty of interrelations with the
environment and problems of inner existence conditions.
Thus, it’s impossible to forecast or prognosticate the future of
society. One can hardly expect stability and reliability in such societies.
According to Luhmann’s riews a society at earlier stages of development
was presented as integral system and could identify (self-interpritate) itself
as the state with the political sphere priority or market society (developed,
developing or underdeveloped – these ones are economic characteristics) with
the economic sphere priority: but now it turned out into perfect possibility of
communications, universal social-informational interaction. This is the world
society.
German thinker F. Tennis supposed that in the course of history the
mainly communal society is forced out by the public sociality. This is the way
for the analyses of morals, law, family, economy, rural and urban life,
religion, state, politics, social opinion, etc.
The role of theoretical knowledge for production and other spheres of
social development is increasing. D. Bell stated that in the post-industrial
society the role of new intellectual technology will dominate and it will be
formed as the “knowledge producers class”, the transition from the goods
production domination to the service production prevalence will take place,
labour character will be changed: instead of a “play” between a man and machine
there will be another type of a “play” – interaction of man with man.
The list of literature
1.
Bell D. “Future Industrial Society”. M., 1974.
2.
Luhmann N. “A Sociological Theory”. N.Y., 1993.
3.
Parsons T. “System of Modern Societies”. M., 1998.
4.
Tennis F. “Community and Society”/ Sociological Journal. 1998. p. 3-4.
5.
Toffler A. “Third Wave of Civilization”. M., 2009.
Norilsk. 50 Let Oktyabrya St, 7. 663310,
Smirnov Talibzhan Anatolievich