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• The Outlines of Meaning’s Analysis of Social Phenomena in the Concept of S. L. Frank

  14 p.

  Natalya Matveeva

  Views:

  357

  The present paper deals with the problem of how cultural meanings are perceived in S. L.
  Frank’s social theory. His conception lies between two main paths of sociological thought:
  Durkheim’s cognition of social facts as objective phenomena on the one hand, and Weber’s
  cognition of subjective meanings of personal actions, on the other. In his theory Frank concentrates
  on the concept of objective forming idea-force, which resembles the concept of
  social fact in its quality of exerting pressure on individual consciousness and volition, but it
  should be brought into harmony with interpretive methodology. In Frank’s view social ideas
  are regarded as a force forming social relations and therefore lie in the foundation of social
  institutions. These are, for example, ideas of state, of family, of friendship and so on. Social
  ideas are connected with the consciousness of the individual by their moral force. That is
  why such ideas are accepted by the individual at the emotional level of his spiritual life,
  because they believe that these ideas are true and organize their meanings and activities according
  to them. Thus social meanings of moral good or evil in human relations and in the
  social structure arise. At the same time they signify the emergence of sacred phenomena in
  society. Human beings, according the Frank’s theory, have an internal need to be possessed
  by the sacred senses that give them the feeling of the participation in the implementation of
  the transcendent goals. Society is an objective living idea which provides sacred meanings
  for the individual. On the whole, a society’s life is formed by the historically specific complex
  of ideas that are freely accepted or rejected by individuals and determine their feelings and
  behavior. There is no contradiction between personal freedom, creativity and social structure
  in S. Frank’s theory. The author of the present paperfinds similarities between S.Frank’s ideas
  and the fundamentals of cultural sociology.

• The Search for a Social Ideal as a Cultural Tradition of Russian Thought

  Natalya Matveeva

  Views:

  155

  This study investigates some important lines of Russian social thought of the 19th and early 20th centuries in the context of the interpretation of the social ideal. Four perspectives of the problem are outlined: the first one is cultural geographic, divided into three branches (Westernism, Slavophilism and, Eurasianism), the second one is sociological positivism, the third one is philosophical liberalism, and the fourth one is religious thought. The cultural-geographic orientation created  a wide field of the work of social thought in studying the paths of social development. Sociologists positivists P. Lavrov and N. Mikhailovsky, who were founders of ‘narodnichestvo’ movement, formulated the notion of social ideal as an object of sociological research. The positivist perspective that was intended for the ideals of social solidarity, transformed into the left the traditionalism that was narodnichestvo ideology. Narodnichestvo created the ideal prerequisites for the dissemination of  Marxism in Russia. Liberal philosophic thought offered the original concept of the development of personality as a social ideal (P. Novgorodtsev). The fourth perspective was closest to the modern comprehension of the processes of unification of humankind and the development of the world economic system. The issue of social ideal thus became the main tradition of thought in the pre-revolutionary Russia.