2020/4, стр. 383 - 390

ACTUALIZATION OF AXIOLOGY DEVELOPMENT: PROBLEMS, SEARCHES, SOLUTIONS

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Abstract. The article examines the concept of “value” in the context of the general planetary process of anomie at the level of local cultures and subcultures, when the possibilities of value-normative regulation of social processes are reduced to a minimum. Under these conditions, the predictive function of axiology has become particularly relevant, and the authors raise the question of the basis for the values evolution reproduction. The search to this answer involves the application of system analysis and retrospection. The study of the main axiological concepts based on the connection between objective and subjective in this perspective allows to identify the main contours of value consciousness that coincide with the dominant concepts: biological (objective-naturalistic concept), social (dialectical-materialistic concept), individual (subjective-psychological concepts) and existential (objectivetranscendental and ontological ideal realistic concepts). The material summarizes the main methodological and cognitive limitations of these concepts, which are in fact natural, since they belong to specific contours of value consciousness. At the same time, a number of provisions can be considered as general ones. As a result, the authors hypothesize the possibility to develop a synthetic concept of axiology allowing predicting the development of cultural value core as an imperative of socio-cultural processes.

Keywords: values; concept; anomie; developmental biology

The concept of “value” in modern social and humanitarian discourse is currently one of the most widely used. This is primarily due to anomia, which has taken on a planetary scale for several decades. Because of the absence of a single world phenomenon culture, as an ontological law, a universal synthetic construct reflecting the common core values for all social groups, researchers are dealing with a partial disintegration and fragmentation of value systems at the local cultures and subcultures levels (Pletnev, 2013). This process defined by globalization and the accompanying horizontal cultural diffusion is largely catalyzed by the exponential acceleration of technological change and the entrenchment principles of so-called European civilization.

On a global scale, humanity faces to new complex environmental, demographic, energetic and social challenges that are virtually unknown, nobody is able to predict and manage them, using previously developed models of world dynamics. At the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, it became obvious that the models created in the late 60s and early 70s of the 20th century, based on extrapolation forecasting of the economy and society in the resource paradigm are not viable (Sadovnichy, 2012).

They do not take into account a degree of distribution of irrational, symbiotic patterns of human behavior in society (the socio-psychological reasons for their appearance and spread studied in the work of E. Fromm (Fromm, 1998), which is currently expressed in the partial or complete lack of opportunities for valuenormative regulation of crisis and transition situations. This determines the special relevance of philosophical, cultural and socio-psychological applied research of the category of values in our days to overcome the ultimate relativism, rethink and restore the value basis of humanism, culture and universal communication. It is necessary to determine the basis for the human value system evolution and reproduction.

The history of the scientific values study begins with the primary understanding of the essence and meaning of value in Ancient Greece, when Socrates considered the ethical categories of “justice”, “happiness”, “virtue”, and Plato and Aristotle, exploring the nature of good, reason, beauty and perfection introduced the first value classifications. European philosophers created system axiological concepts only in the XVIII century (A. Turgot, E. Shaftesbury, T. Hutcheson, A. Ferguson and others), and up to our days (and the most active research on axiology can be attributed to the XX – XXI centuries). Philosophical thought has formed a set of seemingly diametrically opposite approaches to nature understanding, structure and sources of values, the mechanisms of their formation, assimilation, transmission and evolution. With the development of culture, science, and social institutions, the person's value consciousness changed and approaches to understanding the nature of values deepened.

Systematizing a variety of approaches and concepts, by the nature of the relationship between objective and subjective (which reflects a natural human tendency to evaluate objects from the position of individual significance), the following basic axiological concepts are distinguished (Ovcharova, 2004).

1. A group of subjective psychological concepts represents values in the context of the world of feelings. They define value as the psychological relationship of the subject (person or group of people) to the object (object, process, event), individual psychological experience – the subject gives a value to the object that does not belong to it. Thus, value is socially determined and set through a subjective criterion: a feeling of pleasure or displeasure (hedonism, eudemonism, utilitarianism, developed, for example, in the concept of V. Frankl), the object's desire for the subject (works by Christian von Ehrenfels, I.K. Kreibig) or sense of value (works of Alexius von Meinong), Lossky (1994). For example, V. Frankl argued, “values can be defined as universals of meaning that crystallize in typical situations faced by society or even all of humanity” (Frankl, 1990). The meanings for V. Frankl are existential.

A key limitation of subjective psychological concepts is that outside the field of research is the foundation of the assessment and origin of value orientation. The nature of value experiences enjoyment, happiness and satisfaction “is only a symptom of achieving a goal, making sense” (Ovcharova, 2004: 481).

V.K. Shokhin developed this direction in modern Russian philosophy raising the question of an alternative to the “generally accepted, and therefore nonproblematized, format of considering values, accepted as the initial presumption in classical axiology” (Shokhin, 2006).

2. The dialectical-materialistic concept represents values because of practical activity, subject-object relations, meaningful in terms of goals, subject's interests and needs not reducible to individual significance, but “setting an objective standard of human actions” (Korshunov, 1988). Concept developed within the framework of the Marxist school and in domestic science is represented in the works of O.G. Drobnitsky, V.P. Tugarinov, A.G. Zdravomyslov). They considered values as a component of social being and a regulator of relations in society determining the meaning of human being (Kondrashov, 2011). From this position, the value of an object is determined not by its natural properties, but by its inclusion in specific social relations. It is fundamentally important that value is ideal (by its social nature) and is considered as the objective basis of subjective assessment – whether an object is able to satisfy the needs of the subject, and therefore, cause interest.

A significant limitation of the dialectical materialist concept is that the values in it ultimately identified with goals. From this position, the basis for choosing goals is lost giving no opportunity for studying the phenomenon of value objectification. In addition, the fundamental logical error of this concept is that the full foundation of values is postulated by society. In this case, the life concept as the highest value should be deduced from social relations. In addition, this cannot precede a phenomenon of a higher order: We must first state the first premise of all human existence, and, therefore, of all history, namely, the premise that people must be able to live in order to be able to “make history” (Marx, 1955).

3. The objective-naturalistic concept defines value as a blessing, an objective property that can satisfy human needs. This applies to both natural and man-made benefits, and it does not depend on their perception by man. The value ultimately comes down to usefulness and, in the limit, turns out to be identical with the subject itself (an example is the concept of “intrinsic natural value” proposed by J. Locke, which, however, was contrasted with the “imaginary value of money”, as well as the work of theorists R. Perry, F. Tenkant, D. Parker). A significant limitation of this approach is that it does not define a criterion for the emergence of value relationships, and ultimately, they can arise between any objects, including those related to inanimate nature (Ovcharova, 2004). Thus, human being with its spiritual components is reduced.

4. The ontological idealistic conception considers value as being itself directly from a certain angle of view – it is determined by the value of one being for another in the immanence of non-spatial, timeless, ideal connection: “being is not only a carrier of values, taken in its significance, the value itself is good and evil” (Lossky, 1994, p. 287). The spiritual and ideal foundations of being in this approach have connection with attitude and knowledge (these ideas were developed in the works of N.O. Lossky, F. Nietzsche, M. Heidegger). This approach, in fact, eliminates the factor of society in the formation of the value consciousness of a person. Thus, the values within this concept are ideal; the absolute (comprehensive, primary, unconditional) perfection, Good is the Absolute fullness of the existence of God, is a self-worth. N.O. Lossky introduced the category of derivative value to denote the fact that allows a person to approach or, on the contrary, moves him away from ideals.

Thus, the essence of God as a comprehensive law, its intensity, remains outside the subject of research, which significantly restricts the study of the Genesis of values as a criterion for choosing a person who has free will and value consciousness, and blurs the concept of derivative value. In addition, this restriction is not removed by the introduction of the principle of reverence for life as the highest value (which is proposed by representatives of modern humanism, for example, Schweitzer (1992)).

5. The objective-transcendental concept belongs to the direction of idealism and gives values an independent existence in the world of ideal meanings with the object and subject on the other side. In other words, value exists independently of the object and subjective act of evaluation and, as an ideal being, dictates norms of behavior for a person. I. Kant, F. Herbert and G. Lotze laid the foundations of the concept. I. Kant provided the European philosophical culture with a systematic axiological vocabulary, developing the concept of "absolute internal value" of a person, which is attributed not to his physical and mental perfections, but to “pure good will” (Shokhin, 2006, p.p. 405 – 406).

F. Gerbert developed Kant's idea of dividing philosophy into theoretical and practical depending on the attitude to value (Stolovich, 2009). Finally, G. Lotze postulated that the feeling of pleasure and displeasure is, in fact, a means of awareness of value (but not subjective, as with hedonists, but objective). V. Windelband, G. Rikkert developed the ideas in the direction of neo-Kantianism (works of the Baden school) who sought to “interpret the meaning of human life on the basis of the doctrine of significant values” (Rickert, 1914), as well as representatives of intuitionism.

The main limitation of this concept is that ideal values are given the property of ideal ought, while the individual and society are deprived of an active beginning.

Thus, the scientific world still lacks a unified understanding of the essence, ontogenesis and place of values as an extremely complex and simultaneously significant phenomenon in the life of a person and society. Often, concepts like needs, interests, desires, priorities, and even evaluation (in the economic sense) are used as the equivalent of value in the context of goal setting, which unduly simplifies and even distorts the understanding of the system and the ontogenesis of values. The development of a unified axiological concept is also complicated by the fact that values are studied in many areas of science: philosophy, sociology, psychology, cultural studies, and others. In each case, specific goals are pursued and the subject of research is formulated in a special way depending on the context: good, utility, properties of criteria and prescriptivity, motivational character, etc.

D. A. Leontiev identified six possible oppositions: significance, need, special abstract reality, metha-individual reality, activity regulator, ideal. He also considered three forms of existence of values: social ideals, objectively embodied values, and personal values (Leontiev, 1996).

Attempts of such generalization and synthesis are being made. N. S. Rozov formulated the concept of constructive axiology and made a reinterpretation of the idea of “three-part stratification of significance levels”, which one can find in V. K.

Shokhin's work (Shokhin, 2006). Analyzing the N. S. Rozov, L. N. Kharchenko’s approach O. V. Berezovskaya points out “the main task of constructive axiology, as a modern direction of philosophical thought. The author of the concept sees in the synthesis of all known cultural, psychological, sociological, economic theories of value and criticism both correction and construction of value and worldview bases of lifestyle and social decisions” (Kharchenko, 2013).

With all the variety of concepts, it is necessary to highlight a number of axiological provisions that can be considered generally accepted today with a certain degree of conditionality, including applied issues value studies:

1. values determine the intentional structure of the personality, form the core of its formation: “The content of values reflects the goals that guide people when they think, make decisions and act” (Pochebut, 2010);

2. the nature of values is dual, it is born through the mechanism of dispositions in a complex dialectic of objective and subjective aspects of value belief;

3. values have a hierarchical structure and form a system;

4. a person realizes values in the context of social relations in the situation of assessing the relative importance of something in a heterogeneous and ambiguous world. They are the basis to understanding oneself as a part of society, mutual consent and interaction (at the same time, social relations are only a special case: due to G. P. Vyzhletsov the focus of research should include not only man and society, but also nature and God (Vyzhletsov, 1996).

5. values determine the homeostasis of social institutions, as well as the possibility to a successful socialization and self-realization of a person;

6. the nature of value has a material and spiritual dimension, and the border between these categories is conditional, subjective and not constant;

7. values form a uniquely subjective existence through the unity of personal aspirations, experience-possession in the present and keeping memories;

8. values are objectified in a specific cultural and historical environment expressed through subjective will and value is objectified in the public consciousness in various forms of society's activity, in specific relationships;

9. the highest social expression of the system of values shared in a particular society is a set of norms-morals, the observance of which is regulated by conscience (personal aspect) and legal awareness (social aspect);

10. values are a socio-cultural imperative, ensure horizontal and vertical social integration, and are subject to historical re-evaluation.

Returning to the problem of anomie identified in the beginning of the article, it is important to emphasize not only the relevance of the synthetic concept of values. One should take into account the limitations of the previously developed approaches and the relevance of a concept. That would allow understanding the ontogenesis of a value system without the elements of “black box” what would provide the necessary predictive function of axiology. Only in this case, modern philosophy will provide applied science with a methodological basis for research of ongoing processes, and for the formation of strategic models for managing the development of society, by predicting the cultural core value (Martseva, 2017).

Thus, the current sociological research on the dynamics of value orientations of a person and society is based on the priority of the inductive method (when values are understood through their objectification), extreme subjectivism (when the understanding of values inherent in certain social groups. They occur not through cultural artifacts, but through value judgments) and the static nature of social institutions as mechanisms and ways of transmitting, preserving and evolving values. In conditions of anomie, social institutions lose their stability and functionality. Thus, a phenomenon of a higher order than social institutions is involved in ensuring the homeostasis of society, which requires constant accumulation and purposeful transformation of experience (and, of course, it is not reducible to self-regulation of processes in the biosphere, but rather only reveals itself in this). It ensures the purposefulness and consistency of evolution being the product of a system of values, in a specific cultural and historical context. There cannot be a self-sucient mechanism ensuring the preservation and simple transfer of these values as an imperative of socio-cultural processes.

The disclosure of this phenomenon, the study of its role, essence and significance in the ontogenesis of the value system is a priority task that will create the basis for building a synthetic, internally non-contradictory axiological concept with an ordered conceptual apparatus.

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