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Frank L.S. Spiritual foundations of society. Essay

1st year student of the Faculty of Philosophy of St. Petersburg State University Shchepanovskaya Siyana

In the book " Spiritual foundations of society" L.S.Frank lays out the foundations of social philosophy, develops it as a subject and discipline that can serve as the foundation for the philosophy of history.

In the introduction (“On the Tasks of Social Philosophy”) he poses the question of what is the nature of social life, expanding it to the question of what its place is in cosmic existence. This formulation of the question is related to the depth of the problem, what is a person and what is his true purpose.

Frank begins with the statement that human life is always shared, i.e. namely social life. This proves that people are willing to sacrifice their lives for social goals and ideals. For Frank society specifically exists as whole, and all single devoid of connection with the general, there is abstraction: "for it lives only as a whole, being rooted in it and feeding on its juices."

The task of understanding social philosophical knowledge stands out all the more acutely in Frank’s time because, as the philosopher claims, the contemporary moment is characterized by two features: old forms state life are actively replaced by new ones, and at the same time old ideas and beliefs are shaken, and there are no new ideals that would inspire humanity. There is even disappointment in the idea of socialism; it no longer motivates creative minds. And along with faith in socialism, the humanistic ideal collapsed (belief in the natural goodness of man, in the possibility of an earthly paradise) - and was not replaced by any other.

Frank here puts forward an interesting thesis that history is made by faith- and without this, “having lost the ability to create history, we are at the mercy of its rebellious forces: we do not create it, but it carries us.” Therefore, he sets the task of “gaining positive faith,” an understanding of the goals and objectives of social life: “We must again become imbued with the consciousness that there is... an eternal unshakable beginning human life emanating from the very essence of man and society."

Frank defines social philosophy as “an attempt to see the outlines of social reality in its true, comprehensive completeness and specificity.” He contrasts her sociology, as a positive science, which sets as its task to understand the laws of social life, similar to the laws of nature - but misses higher human problems: freedom and necessity, the relationship between ideal and reality. And these are problems in the sphere of philosophy of spirit and, therefore, require philosophical study.

Frank also contrasts social philosophy philosophy of law, the purpose of which is to understand the social ideal and determine the most just system. The philosophy of law is “revolutionary and oppositional” in relation to the existing social order; it relies on the autonomy of ethics (as it should be), without considering the phenomenological and ontological aspects of the study of society. Frank argues that man at all times has an inherent desire for good, but the forms of social life are different, and we have no right to believe that our ideal is better than the previous ones, especially since the old forms of life have already been tested, and therefore are viable, But the same cannot be said about new ideas. Therefore, Frank considers the philosophy of law to be only a part of social philosophy.

Moreover, Frank criticizes " historicism", according to which there is nothing immutable about ideas about man and society, they completely depend on the era. Frank evaluates this as socio-philosophical relativism, as well as “a product of unbelief” and “blindness to the eternal” of the modern era: this view contributes to the fact that the current era does not know how it should live: “Previous eras lived and believed, the current one is doomed only to know how they lived and what they believed the former ones." The philosopher once again emphasizes his thesis that " history exists and is created precisely because people believe in something other than history itself".

As the knowledge of the eternal in social life, social philosophy forms the foundation philosophy of history. Frank here criticizes this type of philosophy of history, which sets the task of understanding the ultimate goal historical development, is based on faith in progress and often sees the current state of society as its pinnacle (as represented in the philosophy of Hegel, who considered the best form of government to be the contemporary monarchy, and even in the three stages of human development: theological, metaphysical and positive - O. Comte). With this approach, Frank writes, “the hopes and exploits, sacrifices and suffering, cultural and social achievements of all past generations are considered simply as fertilizer needed for the harvest of the future, which will benefit the last, the only chosen ones of world history,” which is neither moral nor scientifically unacceptable. A true philosophy of history, according to Frank, must be based on the supra-temporal unity of the spirit, finding in any era all its historical states.

Part 1 . Frank thinks there is ontological patterns social life - on which the theory of “natural law” was based and which man, as a free being, can violate - but this leads to the death of society. And the philosopher calls the first part of the book “The Ontological Nature of Society.”

Here he begins by reviewing the concepts " universalism", according to which society exists as a truly objective reality, elevating it above individuals (as for Plato, society is the “big man”), and “ social atomism" or singularism, where society is only the name of the totality of people, the summation of their separate realities (as for Hobbes: a social contract is necessary to harmonize the struggle of all against all). Frank notes that socialism, with all its emphasis on collectivism, proceeds from social atomism, anarchic initiative of parts - that is why forced socialization is considered necessary (and not natural, free). [- Thus, the philosopher finds the ideological error of socialism, which undermined the authority and viability of this idea.]

For Frank, there is truth in both concepts. They reflect interior And outer layer social existence.

Frank turns to the dialectic of the individual and the general, and shows that society is the unity of the heterogeneous in people, not only the homogeneous. This view leads to organic theory of society (society as an organism) - here Frank criticizes Spencer’s naturalistic bias (the analogy of a social organism with a biological one) - but in general he sees the merits of this concept [close to the modern understanding of society as a system of systems]. The difference is that the unity of consciousness of society is not given as subject, How internal connection of separate individual consciousnesses.

Frank considers the ontology of the unity of subjects through the concept of " We"which he considers primary category personal, and therefore social, existence of a person. The formation of a person from childhood occurs in communication with others, hence it is obvious superficiality and the failure of an individualistic sense of life and worldview - as well as ontological depth public life.

Frank denotes the difference between two layers of social existence: internal (universal unity) and external (social atomism) through the terms conciliarity And public. Frank uses a religious term to emphasize the spiritual unity of people, which takes place in any unification (the philosopher gives an example of a purely “mechanical” organization of an army: even in this case, the soldiers are welded together by internal solidarity, and without a sense of patriotism the army cannot win). However, the discrepancy between the external empirical reality of society and its ontological essence is tragedy human existence.

In society there are life forms of conciliarity: This marriage and family unity, religious life And commonality of fate and life any united multitude of people. Frank emphasizes that here there is not only a unity of consciousness, but a genuine unity of life.

He describes the following features of conciliarity:

1) The unity of “we” is internally present in every “I”, it is the internal basis of his own life. Therefore, the unity of conciliarity is a free life, as it were, a spiritual capital that nourishes and enriches the life of its members.

2) Connected with this is that conciliar unity forms the vital content of the individual himself. It gives the individual spiritual nourishment. Other people and society as a whole here are not the external means of life, but precisely its internal content, the richness of which determines the flourishing and fullness of the individual’s life itself. Any separation from conciliarity is experienced by the individual as a belittlement, impoverishment of himself, as deprivation.

3) The collective whole, of which the personality feels itself a part and which at the same time forms the content of the latter, must be as concretely individual as the personality itself. It itself is a living personality.

4) Behind the external, temporary aspect of the present in social life lies, as its eternal foundation and the source of its strength, a supertemporal unity, which is an expression of the supertemporality inherent in the consciousness and mental life of an individual person. Social consciousness is a supra-temporal unity of supra-individual memory and supra-individual goals.

Chapter II . In the second chapter, “The Spiritual Nature of Society,” Frank goes directly to the description of this side of it, which directly follows from the idea of conciliarity, [in its broad Orthodox understanding. It is no coincidence that the idea of society as an expression of morality is a characteristic feature of Russian philosophy.]

Frank starts with critics of materialism in the understanding of society. He emphasizes that social life is not perceived in the external sense, and is known only in a certain internal experience: “What is a family, state, nation, law, economy, political or social reform, revolution, etc., in a word, what is social being, and how a social phenomenon occurs - this cannot be seen at all in visible world physical existence, this can only be known through inner spiritual participation and empathy for the invisible social reality". This leads him to the conclusion: “Social life is essentially spiritual and not material.”

He also pays great attention to the criticism of psychologism, pointing out that “It is not social life that takes place in me, but, on the contrary, I live “in society”... The state, law, power, everyday life, etc. are something stable, impenetrable, hard, and if I voluntarily do not want to reckon with this objective reality, I am doomed to break my forehead against it, as if I were colliding with a stone or a wall." That. they are not reduced to a phantom of human imagination, a product of his mental life, they are extremely objectified [and fighting them is by no means the same as fighting windmills]. In addition, they last longer than human life, they span many generations. If we consider simply the totality of mental phenomena in the psyche different people, it will not give rise to society as some kind of fundamentally new unity, and Frank thinks of society exactly like that.

Further, he considers social existence as spiritual life: as objective idea. He even compares it with the sphere of ideal relationships in the environment of mathematical and logical concepts, emphasizing that the truths of moral consciousness are independent of the mental life of people, and proposes to think about the nature of social existence according to the model of this abstract sphere. However, he makes reservations that 1) social being, in contrast to abstract-ideal being, is concrete being; it flows through time. The content of mathematical truth has the power to objectively exist once and for all, at all times and for all people; but the law, the social relation do not have such a timeless existence; on the contrary, they arise, last and disappear in time.

2) In addition, the existence of mathematical and logical “ideas” regardless of whether people are aware of them or not - and the existence of a social phenomenon presupposes not only the general existence of people in relation to whom it has force, but also their subordination to this phenomenon, if, for example, no one in society no longer obeys the will of the monarch, does not believe in the dignity of the monarch, then thereby the monarchy no longer exists; if a union of friendship or love ceases to have power over the souls of its participants, then it no longer exists. [By this he shows the nature of social reality, different from spiritual and material, and draws important conclusions regarding it.]

Frank sees the uniqueness of the objective-ideal existence of a social phenomenon in the fact that it is " exemplary idea, model idea", i.e. the meaning of which is that it is the goal of the human will, teleological force in the form of what should be, what is ideal. “Since communication between people occurs simply in the order of actual interaction and the intertwining of their mental processes, it is not yet a social phenomenon. Only when the unity underlying this communication is perceived as a force to which the participants in communication are subordinated as an exemplary idea that they must implement in our communication, we have a truly social phenomenon" . And power in society exists only where the relationship is subordinated idea authorities.

In addition, Frank comes to the interesting conclusion that social existence by its nature goes not only beyond the antithesis “material - mental”, but also beyond the antithesis “subjective - objective”. It is both “subjective” and “objective” at once, no matter how paradoxical this may be from the point of view of contemporary philosophical concepts. It depends on the human" confessions ".

Social existence in this regard is part of spiritual life and is, as it were, its external expression and embodiment, and exists as a kind of sediment produced by the human spirit. In this sense, social life is completely mystical. “Mystical, the state is a unity that appears as a superhuman personality, which we serve, often giving our whole lives, the meeting with which causes religious awe in us and which sometimes crushes and destroys us, like Moloch. Mystical is the “law” that we obey, which coldly and mercilessly commands us, without us knowing exactly to whom and what we obey in it - whether the will of a long-dead man who has decayed in the grave, who once published it, or the words printed in some book standing somewhere somewhere on a shelf. The marriage and family union is mystical, in which people are subordinated to the higher, from some deepest depths of their being, the forces that unite them. Even “public opinion”, morals, fashion are mystical, despite the fact that we clearly see their "human, all too human" origins" .

From The spiritual nature of social life leads to an understanding of history as “a great dramatic process of embodiment, unfolding in time and in the external environment of the spiritual life of humanity, the emergence and formative action of superhuman forces and principles lying in the depths of the human being.” . The definition of man as “a being who makes tools turns out to be untenable”; the sign of man is precisely his superhuman, divine-human nature.

In understanding law and power, it is essential for Frank that they reveal the subordination of social life to an ideal principle due . Right Frank understands how “just due V human relations", "implementation of the absolute command of truth." Power– as that individual or collective will, which is recognized as having superhuman, ideal dignity due and in this sense demanding obedience. Her authority is based on this.

IN chapter III "The fundamental dualism of social life " Frank contrasts law and morality, "grace" and "law", "church" and "world" and, in general, the ideal and empirical forces of social life, raising the question of whether ideas or passions- and answers that the active historical force of life is neither one nor the other separately, but only man in all his integrity.

Arguing that society has a spiritual nature and its basis is formed by a moral principle, the subordination of human will " due“, which is an expression of the superhuman, divine-human being of man himself, Frank pays attention to the fact that society, in its outer empirical appearance, has the character not of the internal spiritual life of people, but of the “external environment” of their life, where egoistic impulses operate, which are restrained only by the external the reins of coercion and intimidation.

Because of this dualism, ought exists in two independent forms: the form morality and form rights(law as something transcendentally objective, addressed to a person from the outside). Frank considers it a mistake of Kant (reproducing the main motive of ancient Stoic ethics) that he considers morality in the form of a law (“categorical imperative”), and thereby merges it with natural law, missing its spiritual moment [which is higher than the purely rational principle and naturalness of external life ]. He proposes to think about the moral principle from the Christian position of discernment law And grace, which he defines as “living essential morality,” the presence of God in us and our life in him. The dualism between legal laws and morality as grace, when observing social life, is painfully felt by a person as a kind of abnormality and imperfection - and serves as a constant source of desires for reforming society.

Frank suggests social and philosophical understanding of the church How the presence of the divine principle in a social association of people. The social function of the church is to be, as it were, the “soul” of society, connecting and ideally directing public life. In conciliarity, that is, the internal unity of “we” and “I,” there is a moment that constitutes a genuine internal connection of the social whole - as connection between members of a social whole, so their connection with the whole, as such. This is important because the beginning of “we” is not more primary than the beginning of “I,” and the rivalry between public and personal does not have a decisive higher authority within these two principles themselves. Only through the affirmation of both principles in the third, highest - in the service of God, absolute truth - do they find their lasting agreement and reconciliation. Thus, “the last source of social connection lies in the moment ministry » .

Contrasting the “church” and the “world” as the “soul” and “body” of society, Frank thinks of society by analogy with a person who must become a God-man. – History in this light is a tireless struggle, but also a tireless collaboration of “ideas” and “lusts.” ", the spiritual and carnal moment of human life. Social life, as a process of self-overcoming and spiritual formation of a person, is an organic, inseparable, unmerged cooperation and confrontation between the ideal and real forces of a human being.

Second part of the book Frank calls " Basic principles of social life", specifying its contents with the subtitle " About the social ideal".

The task here is outline basic principles arising from the ontological nature of society normative principles of social life, which could be considered eternal and universal (which is dedicated to chapter IV). At the same time, Frank points out that socio-political ideals in their concreteness must be determined not only by general eternal principles, but also by the nature of the experience to which they are applied: the material conditions of life of society, the spiritual state of its individual layers, their relations (classes, nationalities) and the historical task that this moment stands before society.

But all concrete social ideals are relative not only in the sense that they depend on empirical conditions, but also in the fact that none of them is an absolute realization of absolute truth. The best system is always only relatively better. The utopia of an earthly paradise is fundamentally untenable, because it does not take into account the ontological fact of the imperfection of human nature (sinfulness in the religious understanding).

The most general expression of the ontological being of man and the highest normative principle of social life Frank thinks principle ministry : “Man, by his very essence, is never an autocratic master of his life; he is, on the contrary, an executor of the highest command, a conductor of God’s truth, a servant, not a master.” [Such an understanding, organically inherent in the religious approach since the Middle Ages, can be compared to Heidegger’s “Man is the Shepherd of Being”]. It follows from this that the highest and truly primary category of human moral and social life is only duty , but not right : right can only be a secondary reflex and a derivative reflection of duty. “All human rights flow from one single ‘innate’ right to him: the right to demand that he be given the opportunity to fulfill his duty.”

From the beginning of service flow and are connected with it, as its concrete implementation in human life, the beginnings solidarity And freedom . The absence of freedom is tantamount to being locked up and closed in the human soul; spiritual suffocation, the absence of the influx of that spiritual air, without which a person cannot exist as a person. Freedom is not some absolute and “innate” human right simply because such rights do not exist at all; Freedom is, on the contrary, the primary duty of man, as a condition for the fulfillment of all his other duties, and only as a duty does it become a right, since a right is an absolute claim to the fulfillment of an obligation.

Any attempt to paralyze the individual will, leading to a person’s loss of his being as the image of God, thereby leads to paralysis and deadening of the life of society, to the accumulation of destructive, anarchic forces, to the decomposition and death of society.

In Chapter V « Hierarchism and equality“Frank views hierarchy as an expression of the natural social order resulting from the unity and complex plurality of society.And equality is an ontologically substantiated normative principle of social life, which does not contradict the principle of hierarchy, but is realized precisely within the hierarchical structure of the whole, primarily as equality in the voluntary performance of duties depending on the place in the hierarchical structure of society, and in the recognition of human dignity.

Frank believes that power is always the power of the minority - it is important that it serves the interests of society as a whole. He introduces the concept of charisma, popular today: “the true basis of authority and hierarchically highest state a person is " charisma ", the consciousness of the objectively divine chosenness of man, his destiny for social leadership."

The democratic demand for equality comes into conflict with the beginning of hierarchism as a pointless expression of subjective envy, looking at the other, the desire that the other is not higher than me and I am not lower than him. And since the majority always stands on a lower spiritual level than the chosen minority, then virtually any attempt equation leads to a decrease in the level of social existence, to cutting off its top.

But a different understanding of the principle of equality is possible.“There is only one relationship in which all people are ontologically equal: this is their relationship to God. In the face of God, all people are created creatures, filled with powerlessness and sinfulness, aware of their common insignificance, their opposition to God and distance from him. What follows from this relationship is not equality of rights and claims, but equality of poverty, not dignity and humility; no one has the right to consider himself superior to other people, not to see in another person an equal participant in the common task of improvement. The principle of equality is expressed here not in selfish resentment for oneself and the desire, looking at another, to receive as much as he does, but, on the contrary, in the consciousness that everyone else is no worse and no more insufficient than me, deserves no less than me; the principle of equality is an aspect of the beginning of solidarity, love for one's neighbor. On the other hand, since each person is the “image and likeness” of God, in comparison with the rest of the created world, he is a higher being, aristocratic in his ontological origin and purpose. And in this sense, all people are also equal to each other. From this relationship also follows not equality of rights and claims, but equality of dignity and duties, a sense of solidarity in special chosenness and the need to justify it.

Equality among men is a consequence of the universal priesthood; every person is a free servant of God, a free participant in God's work. Equality in its true, ontologically substantiated sense is nothing more than universality of service . Democracy is not the rule of all, but the service of all. It is not the predatory, selfish or power-hungry desire of the “people” to be the master and manager of their destiny, the sovereign ruler of life, that is its basis, but a sense of obligation for the active participation of all in the common service of truth.

Where the beginning of universal free service is paralyzed or forgotten, where there are social strata that are only passive objects, and not active subjects of service, there social life itself is weakened and anarchic passions are cultivated in the human soul, and rebellion is being prepared.

ChapterVI“Conservatism and creativity in public life "is dedicated to the duality of tradition and creative innovation that ensures the vitality of society.

Frank returns to the previously expressed idea that the past does not disappear, but continues to live in the present. The essence of life is in the unity of supertemporality and temporal flow, and in the depths of spiritual life these two moments are in harmonious unity. But in the outer layer of the public they act separately and enter into confrontation. At the same time, the carrier traditions, the beginning of stability and continuity of social existence is social unity, society as a whole, while as a carrier of temporary variability, creative activity becomes individual personal freedom.

From their ontological unity of these two follows the need for their constant reconciliation, bringing them into an internal living connection with each other.“We have, in the beginnings of conservatism and creative initiative, such opponents who, despite their tireless antagonism, are called to peaceful cooperation and agreement.” “Where the principle of preserving the old begins to suppress the freedom of personal initiative and creative creation, the very foundation of society, its ontological substrate - spiritual life - freezes, for life is a stream of formation, a creative impulse. Everything that is ossified, paralyzed, deprived of the influx of living spiritual blood inevitably falls apart, falls into pieces; and on the other hand, delayed flow spiritual creativity, not finding direct embodiment for itself, becomes a destructive whirlpool of rebellion. Thus, preservation itself becomes destruction.

On the other hand, where the principle of creative initiative does not mature calmly in the bosom of long-standing traditions, is not imbued with their strength, there it remains internally powerless; every decisive and radical break from tradition is a separation of the sprout from the soil that nourishes it. Here the appearance of novelty may remain, but instead of a healthy, genuine birth, which is not the denial or destruction of the old, but its overcoming through its internal transformation, powerless convulsions arise, destroying the womb in which they take place, but not creating anything. Conservatism, which has become a reaction, a desire to preserve not life, but lifeless ossified forms, is destructive; radicalism, which has become rebellion, revolution, is reactionary in its very essence, because it does not lead life forward, but through its weakening pushes it back to a lower level.”

An ontologically based policy is a policy of spiritually free conservatism, not constrained by prejudices and deadened habits, or a policy of innovation that draws its creative forces out of reverent respect for the living content of the past, already embodied spiritual life. What in the political dictionary of the last century is called “left” and “right”: the policy of rebellious uprising, breaking the shackles of the past, asserting the unbridled willfulness of the forces of free initiative rushing into the open - and the policy of violent, forced curbing of this anarchic element and the preservation of old social forms, aimed at externally constraining the self-will of the individual is equally an expression of a painful crisis.

ChapterVII“Planning and spontaneity of social life » is considering state And civil society in their dialectical complement to each other. The first affirms the beginning rationality and planning in the organization of public life, second - irrationality and spontaneity.

The state is the unity of the planned and arranging public will . Since the organic primary multi-unity that forms the essence of society is aware of itself, develops into an integral social consciousness, it must realize itself in the form of a conscious, deliberate will, systematically build and strengthen itself. But since plurality is not a single subject, it is capable of carrying out planned and volitional actions only by creating a special representative body: state power. Civil society is based on the free interaction of individuals, on the spontaneous implementation of social unity.

“Liberalism” tends to minimize the first, conservatism and socialism - the second (absolutizing state power, which alone exercises a guiding role) - in fact, both the state and civil society are equally necessary. “Civil society is, as it were, a molecular social bond that links individual elements from within into a free and plastically flexible whole.” “The task of the state is only to protect the very freedom of internally growing life, and not to create a collective homunculus in a retort.” The independence of members of society is a necessary form of their mutual connection and social unity.

Since man is only the manager of existence, and not its master, ownership should also not be unlimited, but carried out to the extent that it serves public life .

Right, as a set of norms issued by state power, there is, as it were, reflex state principle in the sphere of civil society itself. It cannot be entirely decreed by the state, be the fruit of an arrangement from above of the entire totality public relations, the state can limit and direct relations within certain limits, but not create them at its own discretion.All attempts to interpret and implement the law as a set of unconstrained norms, determined only by the arbitrariness of state power, arbitrarily forming the social structure, like a sculptor - clay - that is, to assert the absolute primacy of the state over society - or only as an expression of the free interaction of the wills of individual participants in society - that is, to assert the reverse primacy of civil society over the state - consistently lead to either despotism or anarchy.

Chapter 1. Society and the individual

Understanding the constant laws of society ... which a person cannot transgress with impunity and conscious agreement with which alone can ensure the rationality and success of his life - this understanding ... must be achieved through knowledge of the very immanent nature of society. The first question that arises is this: does society exist at all as an original reality, as a special area of existence?

The question may seem idle at first glance. Who would seem to deny this? Doesn’t the existence of the very concepts of “society” and “social life”, as well as a special field of scientific knowledge - “social science” or the so-called “social sciences” - indicate that all people see in society a special side or area of existence, a special subject? knowledge? In reality the situation is not so simple. Just as, for example, a modern astronomer, recognizing astronomy as a special science, sees in its subject - the sky - still not a special, original reality (as was the case in the ancient and medieval worldview), but only a part - homogeneous to other parts - of the general physics -chemical nature, encompassing both heaven and earth; or just as the mechanistic biologist sees in the kingdom of living nature only a part - perhaps a little complicated, but not fundamentally different from all other parts - dead nature, - so a social scientist may not see any original reality in the person of society, but consider it only a conditionally distinguished part or side of some other reality. One can even say that in most modern socio-philosophical views this is exactly what is happening. Namely: for most positive sociologists and social scientists, society is nothing more than a generalized name for the aggregate and interaction of many individual people, so they do not see or recognize any social reality at all, reducing it to the summarized reality of individual people. Therefore, the first question of social ontology should be the question of the relationship between society and the individual.

1. Historical introduction

<…>We ask...: is society nothing more than a name for the totality and interaction of individual people, nothing more than an artificial, i.e. subjective, summation of the reality of individual people produced by us, or society is some truly objective reality, not an exhaustive set of individuals included in its composition? In order not to confuse this purely theoretical issue with questions and disputes of a practical and evaluative nature, we will use to designate the two possible directions here not well-known terms like “individualism and “collectivism” (which are too polysemantic), but purely abstract philosophical (albeit somewhat heavy and unusual) terms of “singularism” (or “social atomism”) and “universalism”.
These two directions constantly fight and replace each other in the history of socio-philosophical thought. The social views of Plato and Aristotle, and also partly of the Stoics, have the character of “universalism.” For Plato, society is a “big man”, a certain independent reality that has its own internal harmony, special laws of its equilibrium. According to Aristotle, society is not derived from man, but, on the contrary, man is derived from society; a person outside of society is an abstraction, as impossible in reality as a living hand is impossible, separated from the body to which it belongs. For the Stoics, society is an example of that world, cosmic unity that penetrates and embraces every multitude; They even considered nature itself, the universe, the whole world as a kind of society - “a state of gods and people.”

But already in ancient thought we find the opposite direction of singularism or “social atomism.” It is already found among the Sophists (in Plato’s socio-ethical discussions of the rhetorician Trasymachus and Callicles about society and power as an expression of the struggle between classes and individuals). As a completely complete theory, it is expressed by Epicurus and his school, for which society is nothing more than the result of a conscious agreement between individuals on the structure life together.

Since that time, these two views have permeated the entire history of social and philosophical thought. The medieval Christian worldview is essentially universalistic - partly because it is philosophically based on neo-Platonism and Aristotelianism, and partly and primarily because it must think of at least the church as a true reality, as the “body of Christ.” Beginning with the Renaissance, and especially in the 17th and 18th centuries, singularism developed again. Gassendi and Hobbes renew the materialistic atomism of Epicurus, and with it social atomism. Although Hobbes considers society a “Leviathan,” a huge whole body, he emphasizes that it is an artificial body, composed to overcome the natural fragmentation of individual individuals, “the struggle of all against all.” In the 18th century, the prevailing idea was that society was the artificial result of a “social contract,” a conscious agreement between individuals. In the reaction of the early 19th century, after the difficult experience of the French Revolution and the collapse along with it of the rationalistic individualism of the 18th century, the ideas of social universalism were revived again... Further political development, the successes of liberalism and democracy were associated in the theory of society with a new awakening of social atomism. The so-called "classical school" of political economy comes from a "singularistic" point of view. In particular, it should be noted that socialism - despite its practical tendencies - is theoretically almost always based on social atomism. Socialism - like Hobbes's social philosophy - precisely because it requires forced "socialization", as if forcibly external cohesion or gluing into one whole of particles of society - individual people, which imagines society ontologically and in its "natural" state precisely as a chaotic heap and an anarchic clash its individual individual elements.<…>
What should be our systematic assessment of these two directions?

2. Singularism in its two main types

Singularism or social atomism is usually a simple expression of positivism or the "common sense" point of view in social philosophy. They usually say: if we do not want to fall into some kind of vague mysticism or mythology in understanding society, then is it even possible to see in it anything other than a collection of individual people living a life together and interacting with each other? All talk about society as a whole, for example about the “public will”, about the “soul of the people”, are empty and vague phrases, at best having some kind of only figurative, metaphorical meaning. We are not given any other “souls” or “consciousnesses” other than individual ones in experience, and science cannot but take this into account; social life is ultimately nothing more than a set of actions arising from thought and will; but only individual people can act, will and think.
<…>…We must now look first of all at how singularism, from its point of view, explains the concrete nature of social life. Society is already purely empirical; it is precisely as a society that there is not pure chaos, not a disorderly and random collision and crossing of many social atoms among themselves, but a kind of unity, consistency, order. How can this be explained from the point of view of singularism?
Here we encounter two possible types of explanation. The old naive social atomism, associated with the rationalistic individualism of the 18th century, imagines all coherence, all unity of social life to be possible only as a result of a conscious, deliberate conspiracy between individuals. People, in their common interests, agree among themselves that they will all abide by a certain general order life, if possible, do not interfere or harm each other, obey general rules, jointly elected authorities, etc. The unity of society is the result of a voluntary, deliberate coordination of wills and cooperation of actions between individuals. This, in essence, was the once famous theory of the “social contract”.

It is unlikely that there is now an educated sociologist who would support this point of view without limitation - it has now become so obvious that it contradicts the indisputable facts of social life. The fact is that, along with the orders that were really “consciously” introduced through legislation, we find in society a lot of common, uniform, ordered things that were not consciously “introduced” by anyone, that no one ever thought about and that no one deliberately strived for . And moreover, it is precisely this last area of social life that is the main, dominant side in it. Who ever conspired, for example, to introduce a common language for all members of a people? It is clear that this could not have happened because the conspiracy itself already presupposes mutual understanding, i.e., a common language. But everything in general that in public life has the character of “generally accepted” - morals, customs, fashion, even law, since it is common law, prices for goods (since there is no state tax and rationing) - all this exists without any collusion and agreements, arising somehow “by itself,” and not as a deliberately set goal of the general will of all. History shows that the state itself and state power arise and exist in exactly the same order, “by themselves,” and are by no means the result of a conscious social agreement. Only on the basis of this spontaneously and unintentionally established general order and unity is it possible in general in the future, in some particular and limited areas and cases, a deliberate agreement or generally a deliberate, conscious influence on the social life of individual people - leaders, people's representatives, statesmen.
Such naive rationalistic individualism, therefore, cannot explain and, in its blindness, simply does not see the most basic and essential in social life. Its inconsistency is obvious. Another type of singularism, which arose mainly in the literature of the 19th century as a result of overcoming its first type, looks at the matter not so naively and simply, but much more seriously. Philosophically, it is most precisely and clearly formulated, for example, in “Sociology” by Georg Simmel.

According to this view, unity and community in social life do not arise at all as a result of a deliberate agreement, but are the essence of a spontaneous crossing of the wills and aspirations of individual people, not foreseen by anyone and not consciously implemented. The fact is that human aspirations and actions have, in addition to the goal they consciously set, other consequences that are not foreseen by their participants. And this is especially the case when they interbreed; For the most part, people in general actually achieve not what they themselves strived for, but something completely different, often even undesirable for themselves. “Man proposes, but God disposes,” says the Russian proverb, but under “God”, from the point of view of this positive worldview, we must understand here simply an accident, a spontaneous result of clashes of many heterogeneous wills. The leaders of the French Revolution wanted to realize freedom, equality, fraternity, the kingdom of truth and reason, but in fact they realized the bourgeois system; This is what happens most of the time in history. Using the same model, one can explain the unforeseen general consequences of the crossing of aspirations that set themselves completely different, private goals. Paths in the forest and field arise not because many agreed to build them together, but because each individual, one after the other, for himself and without conspiring with others, goes to certain direction; the traces of this walking of many people themselves form a common path. Each person, when buying and selling goods, does not think about introducing a common price; but as a result of the aspirations of many people, thinking only about their own benefit, about buying cheaper and selling more expensive, the total price of a product develops, as a result of the multiplicity of supply and demand. This is exactly how morals, customs, fashion are formed, social concepts are strengthened, power is established, etc. This is how the first princes, “gatherers of the earth,” thinking only about their personal benefit, expand and enrich the state; thus, the masses of farmers, in search of a new land and a freer life, in their migration, together, unknown to themselves, colonize new countries, etc. In short: unity and community in social life, being independent of the conscious will of individual participants and in this sense arising “themselves themselves,” nevertheless, are not the action of any higher, super-individual forces, but only the result of a spontaneous, unintentional crossing of the same individual wills and forces - a complex that is composed and consists only of the reality of individual, individual people.

This is the dominant, modern explanation of society in terms of social singularism. The following must be said about it: being in itself, as a simple statement, obviously and unconditionally correct, it, however, has the significant drawback that in reality it does not explain precisely what is to be explained here.

In fact, that everything in society is directly the result of the spontaneous crossing of individual wills is completely indisputable; At the same time, only one thing is unclear, but precisely the most essential thing: why does this crossing produce not chaos and disorder, but community and order? Let us imagine that they tell us: a book is the result of a combination of many individual letters. This, of course, is certain; but still, if the letters were not selected by the typesetter on the basis of the author’s manuscript, but simply haphazardly, as a result of chance, were dumped into the typesetting desks, then what would come out of this would not be a book, but a meaningless set of letters. Why doesn't the same thing happen in society? Why is society not a chaos of human atoms rushing into different sides, randomly colliding with each other and mechanically flying apart different directions, and the general order, the general form? If we limit ourselves to the explanation under consideration, then the only “natural” state of society could only be absolute, unlimited anarchy. But such a state can no longer be called society, but is precisely its absence.
It is obvious that if from the disorderly, unregulated crossing of individual elements something common is obtained, some kind of unity, some kind of order, then this is possible only on the condition that through the medium of individual elements certain general forces act and manifest their influence. But in this case, the riddle of “common” or “unity” in social life is not resolved, but is only pushed deeper. We are again faced with the question: how, in what form is there really something common in society, and not just isolated, self-contained individuals who only come into contact with each other from the outside?

3. The logical problem of “general” and “individual” as applied to social life

The question posed in this way immediately takes on the character of a general philosophical or, more precisely, logical problem of reality and the objective significance of the “general” and the “individual”. Does the “general” as such exist objectively, in the very reality of things, or does only one individual “exist” in the precise sense of the word, while the “general” is only a subjective synthesis, a kind of mere mental unification produced by our thought, our consciousness?
This is not the place to discuss this issue in detail, which, as is known, has essentially formed since the time of Plato the subject of a long dispute between “nominalists” who deny the reality of the general, and “realists” who affirm it. We limit ourselves here to reference to the results of modern logic and theory of science, which have shown with the utmost convincingness that the general, as such, is not deducible from the individual, and that by denying the objective significance and reality of the general, neither the very formation of concepts nor their significance for knowledge turns out to be inexplicable (Husserl, Lossky). The whole dispute here is based on a long-term, centuries-old misunderstanding: a person of “common sense” assumes that a logical “realist,” asserting the reality of the “general,” affirms its reality in the form of the reality of the individual, familiar to sensory consciousness, i.e., in the form of spatially and temporally localized existence; according to Lossky's apt instructions, the nominalist imagines that the assertion of the reality of a “horse in general” is equivalent to the assertion that this “horse in general” grazes in some meadow. If we take into account that the general precisely as a general is not individual and therefore cannot “be” in a certain place and a certain point in time, but can only be super-spatial and super-temporal - so that “a horse in general” cannot be “an individual horse” ", or maybe only as a real unity that penetrates the entire multitude of individual horses and exists in it - then the misunderstanding disappears by itself. The “horse in general” does not exist in the same way that an individual horse exists; but it really exists as a unity of the zoological species of horse, which is not invented by people, but is a true reality in nature itself.

Applying these general considerations to the problem of society, we can say that the unity of society is the closest reflection of the real unity of “man in general,” of certain common human principles and forces operating in individual people and through them and therefore affecting the reality of their life together. If each individual person were a self-contained and completely unique reality, having nothing in common with another person, then society as a unity of joint life would be obviously impossible. The unity of society, the community of order and forms of life are determined most immediately by the community of human needs, human nature, and this community is a genuine real unity hidden behind the multiplicity of individual individuals - just as behind the disorderly play of “atoms” in physical nature lies the reality of those acting in them general forces of nature, expressed in the general pattern of natural phenomena. Social “universalism” is in this sense simply an application to social science of general logical “realism” as a comprehensive principle of scientific knowledge in general.<…>
But no matter how important it is to understand and take into account reality common principles in social life - the above formal-logical explanation of the unity of society from the reality of the “common” in human life, as in any being in general, still turns out to be insufficient. It helps us understand the nature of society, but does not explain the most basic question: how is society at all possible as an ordered unity of joint life? In fact, the “general” in the formal logical sense as unity, concretely expressed in the sameness of many individual beings, obviously does not yet contain an explanation of the concrete unity of their life in the sense of its unity. Human beings are, of course, alike in many respects, being the embodiment of a single species of “man in general”; All people eat, drink, work, and are filled with the same, in general, needs, passions, strengths and weaknesses. But this sameness could, it would seem, be expressed in every person even without people being united into one specific whole, just as there are species of animals that live separately, alone. Moreover: after all, the forces of separation, the forces of selfishness and selfishness, are also common to all people; It is precisely from the fact that all people, having the same nature and the same needs, want the same thing - but each for himself - that the struggle between people follows, the desire not for a common life, but for mutual destruction. Kant, in his ethical reasoning, ironically notes the imaginary “harmony” that follows from this community of egoistic, dividing human desires. Hobbes's teaching about the “natural” state as a war of all against all, i.e., as the absence of society as a united whole, is also based on the affirmation of the general nature of man precisely as a “wolf” in relation to his neighbor.
Society is thus more than unity in the sense of sameness of life; it is unity and community in the sense of unity, the togetherness of life, its orderliness as a single concrete whole. On the other hand, this last unity, which forms the very essence of society, is not only the unity of the homogeneous, but also the unity of the heterogeneous in people and their lives. Every society is based on the division of labor, on mutual replenishment and coordination of heterogeneous things. The basis, unit and prototype of society - the family - has its unity not simply in the homogeneity of its members as “people in general”, but at the same time in their heterogeneity - in the heterogeneity between husband and wife, between parents and children. We have the same thing in the social unity of various classes, estates, professions, etc. Society is a concrete whole as a unity of the heterogeneous, and therefore, from this side, seeing the reality of social unity in the mere reality of the “common” as such is not enough.
We cannot therefore, in our analysis of the nature of society as a unity, stop at this consideration of the logical nature of the “common”, but must go deeper and raise the question of the specific nature of this unity in the form that determines precisely the specific essence of society.

4. Organic theory of society

If you are imbued with this consciousness that society is a concrete unity, a certain real whole - a whole not in the sense of a simple sum or aggregate of individual people, but in the sense of a primary and true reality - then the idea of society almost inevitably arises as a living being, having an analogy with a sensory perceived individual, for example with an individual person or any biological organism in general. On this path of thought, the so-called “organic theory of society” arises, asserting an analogy or even identity between society as a primary living whole and an organism.

This theory has a very long origin, since in a certain sense it seems to suggest itself. One of its first formulations is found in the “fable” of Menenius Agrippa, known from ancient Roman history, with the help of which, according to legend, he stopped the struggle between the patricians and plebeians by indicating that different classes societies perform functions different organs body and that without peaceful cooperation here, as there, the life of the whole is impossible.<…>IN Old Testament we repeatedly encounter the likening of the Israeli people to a living being, for example, to the “bride” or “wife” of God. The Christian Church recognizes itself as a living unity, as a single mystical “body of Christ,” and individual members of the church as organs of this body (I Corinthians, 12, 12-27).

<…>Whatever the similarity between the unity of society and the unity of a biological organism, one must not lose sight of the essential difference between them, that the unity of society, like society itself, has some kind of spiritual character, that the connection between the members of society, from which it is composed or in by which this unity is expressed is a spiritual connection, whereas in a biological organism the connection of cells in the body, despite all its incomprehensibility for us, is still some kind of naturally material connection. Spencer himself must indirectly acknowledge this difference, expressing it, however, in an unconscious and somewhat naively comic form. He points out that the identity between a biological organism and society finds its limit in the fact that the cells of the organism are fused into one continuous physical body, while the cells of society - individual people - form a whole, despite their spatial separation from each other. But where, in fact, does this strange difference come from, why do people - unlike the cells of the body - do not need to physically touch each other, be physically attached to each other in order to constitute a unity, why, for example, a part of the body that is physically distant from its whole, for example, cut off from him, ceases to belong to him, while a member of a family or state may continue to remain such, living in a completely different place - this Spencer cannot explain. It is quite obvious that this is explained precisely by the fact that the connection between members of society is spiritual, and not material, and therefore super-spatial, that it is a connection between the consciousnesses of people; from here it is clear that all the identities that this theory finds between society and a biological organism, such as the likening of the government to the central nervous system, railways to blood vessels, etc., are at best interesting analogies, and behind which are hidden very significant differences.
Much more important for us general idea organic theory of society, independent of the purely biological-naturalistic form which it sometimes takes. Taken in its general form, this view, in essence, affirms precisely the indisputable fact that has become clear to us of the primary, truly real unity of society. In contrast to the prevailing opinion of “common sense”, according to which only that which can be sensually and visually perceived as unity appears to be a true unity, a single being, this view quite rightly sees that such wholes as society, which for sensory perception consist of separate parts separated from each other, yet the essence of real unity, the activity of which has the character of a united, integral life of a certain single being. If we saw earlier that the “general” is not a creation of our mind, but a reality, then the same must be said about the sensually non-perceptible and non-localized “whole”, united by the compatibility, mutual connectedness of life and activity of its parts. But, taken in this form, the organic theory is not, in essence, an explanation of the real unity of society, but only a simple statement of it.
On the other hand, it becomes risky, since this unity begins to be thought of, by analogy with the unity of an animate being, as a true unity of consciousness. True, such concepts as, for example, “soul of the people”, “spirit of the era”, etc., are undoubtedly more than simple metaphorical expressions; they point to some truly real integral forces or principles. In the spiritual life of humanity, in its history, such very real collective wholes actually appear and reveal their very significant effect; their reality can only be denied by consciousness, for which nothing exists except the sensory-visual perceived; Contrary to this tendency of “common sense,” “Platonism,” the ability to see the reality of the ideal, which is not clearly given, here, as elsewhere, retains all its indisputable power. The above-mentioned mystical theory of the church as a living spiritual organism is also not a “blind” faith in something that is not really given and even impossible, but rather a direct mystical perception of a holistic spiritual reality that is not accessible only to sensory contemplation; and the same applies to every society. And yet, such concepts, when taken literally, have a certain vagueness that can lead one astray.
The significant obvious difference between society and a single animate organism is that in the latter we are given its individual consciousness, while in society there is no single subject of a holistic, conciliar consciousness, and spiritual unity is expressed in the internal connection of the individual individual consciousnesses of the members of society. Whatever reality is inherent, for example, in the “soul of a people,” it is a “soul,” at least not in the same sense in which we talk about the soul of an individual person. Here, as indicated, there is no single subject of consciousness; in other words, the spiritual unity with which we are dealing here is not a simple, absolute unity of the subject, but rather a multi-unity, a unity that exists and acts only in the coherence and unity of many individual consciousnesses. Because of this, this multi-unity does not cease - contrary to the ideas of “common sense” - to be a genuine, real, and not just a subjectively conceivable unity, but it is a unity of a different kind than the unity of individual consciousness.<…>The unity of society is expressed not in the presence of a special “social” subject of consciousness, but in confinement to each other, in the interconnectedness of individual consciousnesses, together forming a real effective unity. If we reduce this consideration to a brief formula, then we can say that society, in contrast to an individual animate being, is, as a conciliar unity, not a certain “I”, but a “we”; its unity exists, present and active as the consciousness of community, as the idea of "we" in its individual members.

<…>…In a truly adequate comprehension of the concept of “we” as the primary unity of many subjects, for the first time a truly accurate understanding of the ontological nature of society as a unity can be found.

5. "I" and "We"

The new Western European philosophy, starting with Descartes, sees in the “I,” in the further indefinable carrier of personal individual consciousness, some absolutely primary, incomparable and all-encompassing principle. This carrier and center of personal consciousness coincides, from this point of view, with what is called the “epistemological subject,” i.e., with the “knowing” or “conscious.” Everything else that is in one way or another accessible to human consciousness and cognition opposes this “I” as an object or content of cognition, as a “not-I” and at the same time is encompassed by it, since it exists only in it or in relation to it , for him. Compared with this absolute primacy and with this supremacy of the “I”, with this ideal point in which being is for itself, in which it is first revealed, illuminated by consciousness, the collective whole that we mean, “we”, is something completely derivative and external. By “we” here can be understood (in accordance with the usual teaching of grammar, for which “we” is the “plural” of “I”) only the subjectively conscious multiplicity of individual subjects, the collection or sum of many “I”s, which, in contrast from the “I” itself, is no longer a “subject”, not something primary and existing for itself, but only the content of the consciousness of each individual “I”.
<…>...This philosophical teaching is only a reflection of a certain primary feeling of life of the new European man, his fundamental and instinctive individualism. It seems to be something completely self-evident, an indisputable and primary philosophical axiom, the starting point of any further philosophizing (remember Descartes’ “cogito ergo sum”, the only and exclusive self-certainty discovered by Descartes - among the general doubtfulness of everything else - personal self-consciousness). In reality, it reflects, as indicated, only a peculiar, very deeply rooted vital feeling of individualism; taken as an objective scientific and philosophical theory, this teaching is not only not self-evident, but is full of hopeless contradictions.
First of all, it is not true that that living personal self-consciousness, which we call “I,” coincides with the epistemological subject, with the “knower.” The subject of knowledge is, it is true, a part of the “I,” but from the fact that the knower is “I,” it does not follow that the “I” is identical with the knower, with the pure “subject.” The pure subject of knowledge is, as it were, a completely impersonal, qualityless, motionless point; my “I,” on the contrary, is something living, qualitatively unique and original, full of content and inner life. Immersion in pure contemplation, the transformation of oneself into a pure “subject of knowledge” is always associated with the disappearance of the living individual “I”... If “I” and the subject of knowledge coincided with each other in the sense of complete identity, then in my experience, in what was given to me as an object of knowledge, other beings similar to me, whom I call other “I”, could never meet. Meanwhile, the following fact in the history of philosophical thought is remarkable: if there were many thinkers who were not afraid to affirm subjective idealism and believed that everything in the world, except my “I,” is only “my idea,” then there was not a single one (at least least any major) thinker who would dare to deny the existence of other consciousnesses, many “I”s, that is, to profess “solipsism.” Falling into contradiction with themselves, all idealists admit the existence of many consciousnesses. Obviously, the presence of an “alien self” is something much more convincing and integral to my consciousness than the existence of the external world. But if the “I” were identical with the subject of cognition, then it is obvious that it (or a similar being or principle) could not be found as part of the object of cognition.

It is even more important for us that the general doctrine of the primacy and exclusive immediacy of the “I” and of its derivativeness in relation to everything else makes the theory of communication, the meeting of two consciousnesses, completely unrealizable. “Naive realism” imagines that someone else’s consciousness is directly given to me, just as all other phenomena of experience are given. Philosophical analysis, based on the primary self-evidence of “my self,” easily reveals the inconsistency of this naive view. “Given” to me are only the sensory-visual elements of someone else’s body—the voice, gestures, face of another person—but not “someone else’s consciousness.” It is not difficult to show that all attempts here to explain knowledge about “alien consciousness” as indirect, mediated knowledge turn out to be untenable. This includes the so-called theory of “inference by analogy” (by analogy with my own “I” I conclude that behind the words and gestures of another human body similar to me, a consciousness similar to me is hidden), and a more subtle theory of “feeling” developed German psychologist Lipps (when meeting another person, I am directly “infected” by his state of mind and, experiencing it as “not-mine,” I relate it to someone else’s consciousness). All these theories are broken by the simple fact that in order to somehow reach the “alien consciousness”, the “other”, i.e. the non-my “I”, one must already have the concept of this “not-my self” in advance ". But if the subject of consciousness is accessible to me only as “my self,” as something fundamentally unique, then “alien consciousness” is the same contradiction as “black whiteness” and “round square.” Whatever is given in my experience, I must perceive it either as my own self or as a not-self, as a dead object, and there is absolutely no way out of this vicious circle.

Title ( font-family: "Verdana"; font-size: 110%; hyphenate: none; ) body ( font-size: 80%; font-family: "Calibri"; ) cite > p ( font-size: 90% ; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: justify; margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; text-indent: 0px; ) poem ( font-size: 90%; text -align: left; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; text-indent: 0px; ) text-author ( font-size: 90%; text-align: right; font-size: 90%; text-indent: 3em; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; ) religion Semyon Ludvigovich Frank S. L. FRANK. SPIRITUAL FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIETY. Introduction to social philosophy.

The book “Spiritual Foundations of Society” falls into two sequential themes: the first analyzes the most popular social concepts of the 19th–20th centuries: historicism, biologism, psychologism. These idols of social science of the 19th century. created the illusion of the possibility of reducing social life to “natural” fundamental principles that could be described in the language of positive science. The simple but compelling arguments of S. L. Frank reveal the internal contradiction of these attitudes, which vainly strive to bring the highest from the lowest. At the same time, the author introduces, for him, a fundamental distinction between “conciliar” and “public”. Society is not a derivative association of separate individuals, but a primary integrity, in it (and only in it) a person is given as concreteness. By choosing WE or I as the initial principle, philosophers choose the “lie of abstract collectivism” or the “lie of abstract individualism.” Not inferior in the subtlety of analysis to the pillars of existentialism and dialogism, S. L. Frank proves that “I”, “you” and “we” are correlative and “equally primary”.

Religion, Orthodoxy, Holy Scripture, Gospel, Christianity, ethics, philosophy, spirituality, society, sociology ru Vladimir Shneider http://www.ccel.org/contrib/ru/xml/index.html OOoFBTools-2.9 (ExportToFB21), FictionBook Editor Release 2.6, AlReader2 January 2013 Vladimir Shneider OOoFBTools-2013-1-24-7-40-18-1421 2.0

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S. L. FRANK. SPIRITUAL FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIETY. Introduction to social philosophy. Proofreading:

S. L. FRANK

SPIRITUAL FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIETY

Introduction to Social Philosophy

Society is a collective unity realized through external submission to a single guiding will, which is power and law. But underneath the external unification, the power of internal human unity, the power of “conciliarity,” operates. S. L. Frank considers the main life forms of conciliar unity to be marital and family unity (this is the main “educational force of conciliarity”), religious life, as well as “community of fate and life,” that is, the force that cements people into a living ethnos or community.

The philosopher identifies four aspects of conciliarity that distinguish it from other social phenomena. 1) Sobornost is the unity of “I” and “you”, growing from the primary unity of “we” in this regard. 2) Conciliar unity is rooted in life content personality itself, which is basically love. 3) You can only love the individual, and therefore conciliarity exists where the personal principle can be discerned. 4) In conciliarity, the supra-temporal unity of human generations is realized, when the past and the future live in the present. It is not difficult to notice that what we have before us is not entirely Slavophil conciliarity. In the concept of S. L. Frank, the communal is reduced to a minimum and, for the most part, is classified as social. In the foreground is the ability of the individual, thanks to love, to enter the dimension of community, remaining himself.

From the article:

A. DOBROKHOTOV. FOR THE PUBLICATION OF FRAGMENTS OF S. L. FRANK’S BOOK “SPIRITUAL FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIETY”

PREFACE

The proposed book is an abbreviated sketch of the system of social philosophy on which I have been working intermittently for more than 10 years. According to the original plan, this system of social philosophy was supposed to form the third part of that “trilogy” in which I hoped to express my philosophical worldview and the first two parts of which are represented by my books “The Subject of Knowledge” and “The Soul of Man.” Partly external circumstances in connection with the all-Russian tragedy experienced, which overturned all the calculations and assumptions of every Russian person, partly the further deepening, over this long period, of one’s own philosophical convictions somewhat disrupted the harmony of this plan. Nevertheless, the proposed book, although being a completely independent whole, stands in close connection with my general philosophical worldview and is organically included in its composition. This book is the result of many years of study of social science, begun in early youth, and general religious and philosophical achievements, and that instructive in its tragedy life experience, which all of us, Russian people, have had over the last decade. To what extent I managed to merge these three ingredients into a harmonious, internally unified whole is not for me to judge. I myself am well aware of the imperfection of the external form of the book, written in spite of long preparation, somewhat hastily and under unfavorable external conditions. I hope, however, that the religiously and socially interested reader, who is not afraid of abstract philosophical justification of ideas, will find in the book a system of thoughts that has both theoretical value and useful for that purpose. practical problem spiritual and social renewal, which now faces every thinking Russian person.

Spiritual Foundations of Life is a wonderful introduction to spiritual life written by the great Orthodox philosopher Vladimir Solovyov. Vladimir Solovyov, in the first part of his “Spiritual Foundations of Life,” examines the “primary concepts,” so to speak, of spiritual life: prayer, fasting and almsgiving - the personal dimension of the spiritual life of a Christian. In the second part, Soloviev examines the “social” dimension, spiritual life from the perspective of all humanity: Christianity, the Church, the Christian state and society.

Vladimir Solovyov summarizes the main provisions of the “Fundamentals of Spiritual Life” in his other major work, “Justification of Good” in the following words(with remarkable unity of philosophical reasoning, theological teaching and interpretation of Scripture):

“The real-mysterious guarantees of higher life, or the Kingdom of God, received in the sacraments of the church, do not depend in their beginning and essence on the will of man. Nevertheless, this higher life, like the divine-human one, cannot be content with our passive participation alone; its process requires the conscious and free assistance of the human soul to the highest Spirit. Although the positive forces for this assistance come from the very first beginning from the grace of God (inattention to this truth gives rise to harmful errors of semi-Pelagianism), they are assimilated by the human will, which is formally distinguished from the will of God, and are manifested in the image of its own action (forgetting this second truth , just as important as the first, was expressed in Christology as the Monothelite heresy, and in moral teaching as quietism). Actually human actions or actions consistent with the grace of God (and caused by its preliminary action), obviously, must express the person’s normal attitude towards God, towards people and towards his material nature, corresponding to the three general foundations of morality: piety, pity and shame. The first concentrated active expression of religious feeling, or piety, its work par excellence, is prayer; the same work of pity is alms, and the work of shame is abstinence, or fasting. These three deeds determine on the part of a person the beginning and development in him of a new grace-filled life, as is depicted with amazing clarity and simplicity in the sacred narrative of the pious centurion Cornelius, who was “do alms to many people and pray to God always,” and further like himself says: “From the fourth hour of the day even to this hour I was fasting, and at the ninth hour I was praying in my house, and behold, a man stood before me in bright clothing and said: Cornelius, your prayer was heard and your alms were offered in memory before God” ( there follows a command to invite Simon, called Peter, who has the words of salvation) (Acts of the Apostle X). If the hidden, preliminary action of the grace of God, not rejected by Cornelius, prompted him to deeds of human good and supported him in these deeds - in prayer, alms and fasting, then these deeds themselves, as is directly indicated here, caused new obvious actions of the grace of God. .

“When we have felt a heartfelt disgust from the evil that dominates the world and ourselves, when we have made efforts to overcome this evil, and have been convinced by experience of the powerlessness of our good will, then the moral necessity arises for us to seek the help of another will, such , which not only wants good, but also possesses good and, therefore, can impart to us the power of good. There is such a will, and before we look for it, it already finds us. She informs our soul of herself in faith and unites us with herself in prayer,” Vladimir Solovyov begins his work on the foundations of spiritual life.

Topic 10. Social philosophy.

1. The problem of social philosophy

What is social life itself? What is its general nature, which is hidden behind all the diversity of its specific manifestations in space and time, starting with the primitive family unit, with some horde of wild nomads, and ending with complex and vast modern states? What place does social life occupy in a person’s life, what is its true purpose and what, in fact, does a person strive for and what can he achieve by building the forms of his social existence? And, finally, what place does human social life occupy in world, cosmic existence in general, what area of existence does it belong to, what is its true meaning, what is its relationship to the final, absolute principles and values that underlie life in general?

All these questions, in themselves, that is, as purely theoretical questions interesting enough to attract intense attention and become the subject of philosophical inquisitiveness, at the same time have far more than just “academic” or theoretical interest. The problem of the nature and meaning of social life is, obviously, a part, and moreover, as is clear by itself, a very significant part, of the problem of the nature and meaning of human life in general - the problem of human self-awareness. It is connected with the question of what a person is and what is his true purpose. This basic religious and philosophical question, which is, in essence, the final goal of all human thought, of all our mental quests in general, from some very significant aspect comes down to the question of the nature and meaning of social life. For concrete human life is always a joint, that is, social, life. And if human life in general is full of passionate and intense struggle, so that, in the words of Goethe, “to be a man is to be a fighter,” then most of all this is revealed in social life. Millions of people throughout world history sacrifice their lives and all their property to the social struggle - whether it be the struggle between peoples or the struggle of parties and groups - with the greatest, all-encompassing passion, devoting themselves to the implementation of any social goals or ideals; they obviously give this realization some kind of absolute meaning that justifies such great sacrifices. But, in essence, it is obvious that every individual social goal acquires value and meaning only as a means of implementation or a form of expression of the general goal and, therefore, the general essence of social life as such. And if in reality, in practice, human societies and parties live and act in the same way as individual people, under the rule of blind, unreflective passions, without realizing exactly why and why they strive to achieve this goal, then this does not change the essence of the matter: on the contrary, it is precisely in view of this blindness that the demand for a genuine understanding of social life, the development of genuine social self-awareness acquires all the greater practical urgency...

In other words, the problem of social philosophy - the question of what, in fact, society is, what significance it has in human life, what its true essence is and what it obliges us to - this question, in addition to its constant theoretical philosophical significance, has precisely in our time, it is of enormous, one might say, fundamental practical significance. If ever, then now is the time for reflection - that reflection which, without stopping on the surface of life and its current demands of today, is directed into the depths, into the eternal, imperishable essence of the subject. All genuine, deepest crises in spiritual life - be it the life of an individual or an entire society and humanity - can only be overcome in this way. When a person gets lost and reaches a dead end, he should not continue to walk at random, looking only at his immediate environment; he must stop, go back, think in order to again orient himself as a whole, to take a mental look at the entire space through which his path passes. When a person no longer knows what to start and where to go, he must, forgetting for a while about the present day and its demands, think about what he is actually striving for and, therefore, what his true being and purpose are. But it is precisely this question, when applied to the joint, socio-historical life of people, that is the problem of social philosophy, the philosophical understanding of the general essence of social existence.

Inattention and disregard for this, the only correct, philosophical understanding and justification of social self-knowledge through knowledge of the eternal and general foundations of social existence is a reflection of that dismissive and negative attitude towards philosophical knowledge in general, which is characteristic of the so-called “practical” people. It is based on one misunderstanding, which constantly dominates limited minds, unable to perceive reality in all its depth and completeness, and is especially dominant in our time of general democratization and barbarization. This misunderstanding consists in the assertion that philosophy leads thought away from knowledge of concrete reality, the only thing necessary for practical life, into the realm of abstractions. Only the individual, here and now standing in front of us, sensually visible and acting on us, is considered concrete; everything general, eternal and all-encompassing is an unnecessary or, in any case, impoverishing abstraction. In fact, for someone who knows how to truly see reality, the opposite is true. The general—namely, the truly general—is not an abstraction, it is the whole; but specifically there is a whole. On the contrary, everything individual, torn out of connection with the general and considered in isolation, is precisely impoverished, discolored, mortified, for it lives only in the whole, being rooted in it and feeding on its forces. Truly and concretely there is not a part, but only a whole; everything particular is then understood in its fullness and vitality, when it is comprehended against the background of the whole as an integral moment and a unique expression of the whole. Philosophy is therefore not the most abstract, but, on the contrary, the most concrete, or rather the only concrete science; for, aimed at total unity, it deals with reality in its entirety and, therefore, with the only true reality.

Today cannot be understood without connection with yesterday and, therefore, with the long past; what is here and now is understandable only in connection with what is everywhere, for only in this connection, or rather in this unity, is it truly real; its contemplation outside of this unity, its transformation into a kind of self-sufficient being, into an atom closed in itself, is precisely “detached”, i.e. abstract, and therefore imaginary knowledge of it, in which only its fleeting shadow remains of the concrete fullness of reality. So-called “practical” people, people of today, who despise philosophical generalizations and the intuition of the whole, can, of course, act correctly by guesswork and instinct; but when they begin to reason and think, it is they who turn out, for the most part, to be hopeless dreamers living in a world of dead words and walking schemes. And if philosophers themselves are not yet successful practical political figures - for there is still a long way to go from theoretical knowledge to the ability to practically apply it to life - then, in any case, all the true statesmen who truly deserve the name “real politicians” always possessed a direct intuition of the eternal and all-encompassing principles of human life. Peter the Great appreciated Leibniz; Napoleon, who despised “ideology,” admired the wisdom of Goethe; Bismarck derived his ability to rule sovereignly over people not only from his knowledge of the intrigues of diplomacy and political parties, but also from the study of Spinoza and Shakespeare. A true realist is not one who sees only what is directly in front of his nose; on the contrary, he is for the most part doomed to be a doctrinaire, for he does not see the broad light of God as it really is, but only a small artificial world limited by his interests and personal position; a true realist is one who knows how, having risen to a height, survey the wide distances, see reality in its completeness and objectivity.

Social philosophy is an attempt to see the outlines of social reality in its true, comprehensive completeness and specificity.

2. Social philosophy and sociology

But isn’t the task that we attribute to social philosophy the subject of another, long-known and, moreover, “positive” science - namely sociology? The question here, of course, is not about the name of this field of knowledge - everyone can choose the name to their liking; the question comes about the nature and methodological nature of generalizing social knowledge.

It should be noted that the so-called “sociology” first arose - in the works of Auguste Comte - from a plan and spiritual need similar to those that we outlined above to substantiate social philosophy. After the collapse of the French Revolution, this unbridled and rebellious attempt to realize the social dreams of radical reformers, to build human society anew by the willful, rational, self-initiated human will, the consciousness arose that there were limits to human arbitrariness, that there were eternal, unchangeable principles of social life over which no one had power. human will. This is precisely the main content of the brilliant, religiously meaningful intuition of Joseph de Maistre, under the influence of which the idea of “sociology” of Auguste Comte arose. Comte contrasts the “abstract” or “metaphysical” worldview of the doctrinaires of the 18th century, who wanted to build a social order on the basis of abstract plans, with “sociology” as a positive science about society, cognizing the natural law of social life, irrevocable by human will. This is how the idea of generalizing social knowledge was born, which since then, for almost 100 years, has been developed under the name of sociology.

It is curious, however, that, despite this long history and the presence of a huge literature, “sociology” still has neither a precisely defined subject nor generally accepted methods and scientific traditions; in essence, there is still no sociology as a definite science, but there are almost as many individual sociologies as there are authors who have written about it. From this alone it is clear that her plan was unsuccessful and suffers from some internal defect. There is no need for us to dwell on this literature and go into the details of its controversies. For our purposes, it is enough to indicate what is the main shortcoming of the general plan of sociology and how this plan differs significantly from the task of social philosophy that we have outlined.

“Sociology” from the very beginning set itself the task of cognizing the “laws” of social life, analogous to the “laws” of nature; it wanted and wants to be a positive science about society, and, moreover, a science modeled on natural science. They believe in advance that overcoming abstract utopianism is possible only in one form - in the form of extending to social science the principles of a naturalistic worldview, knowledge of man and his social life as a special case of the life of nature. But is genuine generalizing social knowledge in this form legitimate and even possible? And said experience sociological knowledge, which did not give any definite and positive results, and general philosophical considerations lead to a negative answer to this question.

Social life is human life, the creation of the human spirit, into which all the powers and properties of the latter are invested and participate. Generalizing knowledge of social life inevitably has, as already indicated, the character of human self-knowledge. Who renounces philosophical knowledge in advance? social phenomena and sees in them only objective objective reality, cognizable by “positive” science, he blocks his way into the depths, into the true, and, consequently, into the genuine general essence of social life.

Questions such as, for example, the question of the relationship between freedom and necessity, or the relationship between the ideal and reality, or the uniqueness of the laws of social life, inevitably fall outside the purview of any positive science. The main questions of generalizing social knowledge are essentially questions of the phenomenology of the spirit and therefore require philosophical study. Positive science, which studies the empiricity of reality, here - as elsewhere - can only be a special science; the threads connecting particular areas into a higher, general unity pass through depths inaccessible to empirical knowledge. And when positive science, as is the case in the design of sociology, not only ignores such, the most general and fundamental aspects of its subject, but from the very beginning proceeds from a philosophically unfounded, biased subsuming of them under certain categories - namely, under the categories of a naturalistic worldview, - when she immediately decides that the subject of her knowledge is no different from the subject of others, namely the natural sciences, she not only closes and limits her knowledge, but leads it along the wrong or, in any case, arbitrary path.

Is man and his social life really a “natural phenomenon” or something else? Can, and if so, to what extent, the regularity of social life be equated with the regularity of natural phenomena - these are the questions that are subject to discussion in general social science, which , therefore, cannot proceed from a preconceived, ready-made decision. That, in essence, naturalism in social science, like naturalism as a general philosophical trend in general, is a false worldview - we do not need to expand on this here; It is enough that it is arbitrary and predetermines precisely what is still subject to philosophical clarification.

But even if we admit that there is a side to social life in which it is analogous to the realm of “natural” existence and can be known according to the model of natural science, then there is no doubt that there is another side to it that is no longer accessible to objective-naturalistic knowledge and is either ignored by it , or directly distorted. Whatever grain of truth there may be, for example, in the widespread view of society as something analogous to a biological organism, an unprejudiced consciousness clearly senses that this analogy has limits and that forgetting them turns this concept into stupidity, a tasteless, distorting fantasy. Generally speaking, if we recognize as correct the plan of sociology to discover the natural regularity of the phenomena of social life, then in any case it is obvious that this plan does not exhaust the tasks of generalizing social science; Other, more significant questions arise before us, which we outlined above as the subject of social philosophy, and these questions are already beyond the purview of sociology.

Since in the so-called “sociological” literature we find truly valuable and fruitful research, they usually concern areas that are borderline between individual areas of social life and therefore not captured by traditional social sciences. But since “sociology” does not understand the limitations of its plan and confuses it with the task of a real comprehensively generalizing social science, then this serious and legitimate research is usually combined with some involuntary, unconscious and therefore unmethodical and amateurish philosophizing on social topics. The sterility, lack of formality and vastness of “sociology” is explained precisely by the fact that it is a kind of free marketplace where the fruits of all kinds of philosophical amateurism are displayed. Contrary to its conscious design, sociology could not and did not escape the fate of being a social philosophy; but this philosophy, being unconscious, is usually vulgar and banal, spiritually and scientifically not deepened and not substantiated; for the most part, it is dominated by trends that have long been overcome by philosophical thought, but have established themselves in the public opinion of the crowd, such as evolutionism, Darwinism, materialism, or popular ethical idealism, etc.

Whether we recognize or not the legitimacy of the science called “sociology”, from what has been said, in any case, it is clear that it cannot replace the clearly and consciously stated plan of social philosophy and that a truly generalizing social science that covers its subject sufficiently deeply and widely can be only a social philosophy.

3. Social philosophy and philosophy of law

There is another science that seems to compete with the idea of social philosophy - unlike sociology, it is not a “fashionable” science, not the fruit of the mental mood of modern times, but a science sanctified by a long, ancient tradition. This is the philosophy of law, which already in Plato and Aristotle “appears as an established discipline with clear outlines, but constitutes the main subject of reflection of the “sophists” and was already outlined in embryonic form by one of the most ancient Greek thinkers - Heraclitus. In what relation to this science is the idea of social philosophy?

Philosophy of law, according to its main, traditionally typical content, is the knowledge of a social ideal, an understanding of what a good, reasonable, fair, “normal” structure of society should be. It is pointless to raise the question of the legality of this kind of research - it has already been justified historically, as a natural satisfaction of some constant, ineradicable request of the human spirit. At all times, people thought and had to think about what the true truth is, what should be in their social life, and it is natural that this thought and spiritual concern should have developed into a special scientific discipline. That the philosophy of law in any case does not exhaust socio-philosophical knowledge is clear by itself; for in addition to the question of the social ideal, there remains the question of the essence and meaning of social existence; Along with social ethics stands, as a special, non-coinciding field of knowledge, social phenomenology and ontology. But in order to understand whether the well-known, and, moreover, significant and practically most essential, department of social philosophy does not coincide with the philosophy of law, it is necessary to establish the true relationship between ontology and ethics in social science, that is, to understand the methodological nature and conditions possibilities of the philosophy of law itself.

Two types of philosophical and legal constructions are possible and actually exist. One type, perhaps even more common in the literature of so-called “political doctrines,” has the character of a direct confession of public faith. In different eras, under the influence of different “needs of the time” or the experienced consciousness of the abnormality of one or another aspect of the existing social order, different social demands and aspirations arise. Their mouthpieces before they become the slogans of political parties organized social movements or unorganized public opinion, at first there are usually individual “political thinkers”. The demand for one or another social reform often takes on a “philosophical” character with them in the sense that it is clothed in a holistic social worldview, in which what is required is presented as a certain central, fundamental and vital principle of normal social life in general. Despite the external philosophical or scientific appearance of works of this kind, they, like any pure confession of faith, an expression of the immediate demand or request of the human spirit, stand outside the sphere of objective knowledge; they express not thought, but will, an effective call to a new value affirmed by human will. Literature of this kind, with all its obvious legality and naturalness, is, in essence, not “philosophy”, but journalism; it expresses political passions and concerns, or, at best, practical spiritual aspirations; it can, like everything in the world, be an object of knowledge, but it itself does not contain knowledge.

In principle, significantly different from this type (although in practice it is often mixed with it) is another type of literature, which in the strict sense of the word alone deserves the name of philosophy of law: this includes works in which the social ideal is not simply decreed and required, but is philosophically justified and is derived either from a general philosophical worldview or from an analysis of the nature of society and man. Only with regard to the philosophy of law in this sense can the question of its relationship to social philosophy be meaningfully posed and of significant importance.

Philosophy of law in this sense, as a philosophical doctrine about the social ideal, is obviously part of social philosophy; moreover, since the ideal is based in it on the analysis of the nature of man and society, since social ethics is based on social phenomenology and ontology, it can, in essence, even coincide with social philosophy, differing from it not in essence, but, as it were, only psychologically - namely the fact that the main interest of the study is focused on the problem of the social ideal. And the question may be raised: why is it necessary to change the old name, consecrated by a long-standing tradition, and talk, instead of philosophy of law, about social philosophy?

In fact, here, as in the question of attitude to sociology, the matter is not about the name, but about a very important point in the essence of the matter. A widespread philosophical mindset, psychologically very natural and theoretically supported by the dominant Kantian worldview, sharply contrasts the ethics of ontology, the knowledge of what should be, with the knowledge of what is, separates the first from the second and lays claim to perfect “autonomy”, to the self-sufficient authority of pure ethics as such. Together with ethics, the philosophy of law, which is based on it, is thought of as a purely “normative” science, turns into a system of norms, regulations and obligations of social life, derived only from the “ideal”, from the “idea of good”, but not based on the very essence , on the ontological nature of society and man. The philosophy of law, so understood, acts - regardless of the specific content of its teachings - revolutionary or oppositional not only in relation to the given, existing social order, but in principle in relation to everything that exists and has existed; She contrasts the entire historical experience of mankind with everything concretely realized with the sovereign right of the human spirit to freely affirm the social “good” - what should be. Philosophy of law, as such a fundamental and self-sufficient social science, is based on the idea of the absolute autonomy of ethics as free spiritual creativity, drawing from itself or directly discerning the ideal of life, without any relation to what empirically or metaphysically exists independently of the goal-setting human will.

But precisely this view, for which the philosophy of society becomes the philosophy of law, the ethical-teleological construction of an ideal society, is essentially false. Specifically, empirically or psychologically, its falsity is revealed in the fact that it is based on the illegal conceit of a separate, individual person (or a separate generation), arbitrarily creating or affirming a true ideal. After all, man and society do not exist from today; historical reality, the forms in which man has lived in all past centuries and epochs are the expressions and embodiments of the same thing common to man at all times, the desire for the ideal, for the good. How do I know and what right do I have to believe that I am smarter and better than all the people who have lived before, what reason do I have to neglect their faith, embodied in their experience? Moreover: no matter how imperfect the old forms of life may seem to us, they already have this significant advantage over the new ideal, that they have already been tested, that the moral concepts expressed in them have been experimentally tested and have been able to exist more or less for a long time without only an idea, but in life embodiment.

The fundamentally philosophical falsity of the view, in which the ideal is in no way connected with existence and is not derived from it, is clear from the fact that it leads, in essence, to the complete arbitrariness of ethical construction. From the failure of Kant’s attempt to derive the content of the moral ideal from its general form, as a “ought” in general, it is clear that ethics as a self-sufficient, deriving its content from itself and at the same time a well-founded area of knowledge is generally impossible. The content of what is due is either simply decreed, required without any theoretical basis, according to the principle “sic volo, sic jubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas”, i.e. so I want, so I command, let my will be done - and then we return to the above type of philosophy of law as pure outside scientific journalism- or it must be based on something else, that is, it must somehow be deduced from the knowledge of existence.

The Kantian objection that being, as something in itself outside of the ethical, is itself subject to ethical assessment, ethical judgment, and therefore cannot serve as a basis for what is due; only the relation of ontologically existing is true. It is immediately clear; that ethics as well-founded knowledge can only be a part of religious philosophy or a conclusion from it. “Good” is not only an “ideal” established by human will, otherwise it would remain arbitrary; good, as such, is not only a “should”, a requirement - it appears as such only in relation to imperfect human will. It would be incomprehensible why I, in fact, should realize good - and how I can hope to realize it, if it is a pure ghost, an idea that has no roots in being itself and hovers outside it, as if in the ethereal emptiness of pure ideality. Only if good is a moment of absolute existence, if in a moral demand we recognize a voice emanating from the depths of existence and ontologically grounded, its implementation acquires reasonable meaning for us. If there is no God, then there is no point in obeying moral demands, because they themselves are devoid of any internal, rational authority. Humanity has been directly aware of this at all times, and the attempt of modern times to secularize and “autonomize” ethics is powerless and untenable; if its inconsistency has not yet been revealed with sufficient obviousness in practice, it is only because powerful religious instincts, rejected by its consciousness, still continue to operate in the blood of humanity. If good is not needed to establish a normal, strong connection between my personality and the final depths of being, if it is not for me the path to my father’s house, does not give me the final strength and is established in being, that is, does not save me, then it has no power over there is no power in my soul, there is a ghostly human invention, and then my only testament remains the slogan: seize the moment!

But it immediately follows from this that ethics is ontologically determined not only by the essence of God, but also by the essence of man. Both do not exist separately at all, but exist only in the indivisible unity of God-manhood. The moral consciousness of man is generally nothing more than the practical side of the consciousness of his divine-human being, the action of God in us and on us, is the condition of our own existence. Therefore, ethics, being religiously based, thereby also has an anthropological, and therefore a socio-philosophical basis.

Good is a condition for the preservation, affirmation and development of human life. Therefore, only by understanding the essence of man and his shared social life can one know what is good for him. Just as ethics in general requires knowledge of the eternal being of man and his relationship to God, so social ethics requires knowledge of the eternal foundations of common human life. The true purpose and calling of man and society, opposing his imperfect, full of evil and weakness, empirical reality and rising above it, at the same time does not oppose his ontological reality, but, on the contrary, is affirmed in it and follows from it. The Hegelian formula “everything rational is real, and everything real is rational,” which to myopic people who confuse ontological reality with empirical reality has always seemed like a morally unprincipled “fact-worship,” has absolute force with a clear distinction between ontological reality and empirical reality. It is not the loss of any criterion for distinguishing good from evil in existing things, but, on the contrary, the establishment of a single, justified criterion. Ethics is a practical conclusion from a person’s self-awareness, that is, from his knowledge of his true being.

Therefore, in the field of social self-awareness, the fundamental science is not the philosophy of law, not the self-sufficient knowledge of the social ideal, but precisely social philosophy, as phenomenology and ontology of social life. A truly justified social ideal can neither contradict the essence of social existence nor be independent of it, but must flow from knowledge of this essence. Therefore, despite all his independence from the private individual empiricism of social life, the holistic historical experience of mankind cannot be indifferent to him, for it is through him that the abiding, ontological being of man and society is cognized. Plans for the future ideal structure of society deserve attention only if they take into account the entire historical experience of mankind and are built on an understanding of the immanent essence of social life, and do not oppose it to the unauthorized creations of their abstract thoughts, their personal understanding of the good. The abstract recipes of such self-made healers and saviors of humanity should be met with the greatest distrust.

From another point of view, one can show the subordinate position of the philosophy of law in relation to social philosophy. After all, for a social ideal to be justified, it requires not only that it be a true ideal, but also that it be feasible. Therefore, our knowledge of the ideal cannot be limited to knowledge of its internal content, but must extend to its relationship to the real forces that actually create social existence and constitute it. Not distracted moral ideal, as such, and the specific real moral will of a person is the true content of moral life. Moral consciousness must be directed to that specific point of existence at which the ideal comes into contact with the real, becomes, on the one hand, itself a real active force and, on the other hand, must overcome the opposition of other, counter-moral forces of the human spirit. Outside of the knowledge of this specific moral life, standing on the threshold between good and evil, God and dark nature - a life full of tragedy and difficulties, achievements and failures, ups and downs - there is no living, full and fruitful moral consciousness. Here - on the other hand side - it turns out that ethics is not the contemplation of detached “ideal values”, but the specific self-consciousness of a person, that is, the consciousness of the ideal in its positive and negative relation to reality. Good is not ethereal and powerless, shining only in heaven, the covenant - good, with all its ideality, is a real force acting in the moral will of man and at the same time fighting with other forces of the human will that are hostile to it. Concrete ethics therefore cannot be simply a system of prescriptions and pure goals - it must be an orientation in the holistic, ideally real drama of human existence, an orientation that gives an understanding of not only goals, but also the means to achieve them, and the boundaries set for this achievement.

The ideal - in personal life, as well as in public life - is only a moment of an integral concrete human life. And therefore, just as ethics in general is subordinated, as a derivative part, to religious philosophy and anthropology, so the philosophy of law is subordinated to social philosophy.

Questions to the text:

1. How should we understand Frank’s thesis that philosophy is “the only concrete science”? How does Frank explain this thesis?

2. What does Frank see as the main purpose of social philosophy?

3. What does Frank see as the social and ideological prerequisites for the emergence of sociology and social philosophy?

4. Why, when considering social reality, is it impossible to limit ourselves only to sociology (“the positive science of society”)?

5. What questions come out of the circle in e do sociology belong to the competence of social philosophy?

6. What does Frank mean by “philosophy of law”? What issues fall within the competence of this discipline?

7. On what basis does Frank criticize the common philosophical mindset that contrasts ethics (and legal philosophy) with ontology?

8. Why does ethics as “self-sufficient, drawing its content from itself and at the same time a well-founded field of knowledge” seem impossible to Frank?

9. Why is ethics possible only as part of religious philosophy?

10. On what basis does Frank distinguish between “ontological reality” and “empirical reality”?

11. Why does the philosophy of law occupy a subordinate position in relation to social philosophy?