Образ человека будущего, Том 7
Шрифт:
A remnant of the past, far from the present <...>,
Nevertheless, the evil is for us a reality.
We see the evil, we create the evil and we are exposed to the evil.
Lars Svendsen "A Philosophy of Evil"
Today, international terrorism is considered to be the world"s main evil. This is what the President of Russia said in his annual address, drawing parallels between the fight against terrorism and the one against Nazism - the main scourge of the twentieth century [Epistle,
1 Article is prepared with financial support of the Russian scientific fund, the project No. 15-18-00038 "Extremism and the ethnosocial conflicts among young people of the polietnichny region: fore-casting and prevention."
Khagurov, Temyr, 2017
36 Future Human Image. Volume 7, 2017
Evil as a Subject of Sociological Cognition: Methodological Reflections by Temyr Khagurov
2015]. In fact, the term "evil" quite frequently sounds in the speeches of politicians and journalists: let us recall the notorious phrase "evil empire", which is so relished by American presidents. Hence, a vital methodological question occurs: whether what is defined as "evil" can be the subject of a scientific rather than philosophical and journalistic analysis.
"Good" and "Evil" from the viewpoint of the 19th century positivists are considered in the social sciences and humanities to be incorrect notions. Undoubtedly, such direct assessment and value judgments should be excluded from the "truly scientific" text. Following Max Weber"s advice, they need to be replaced with reference to value: in a certain society, at a particular time people supposed that "X" stands for Good, while "Y" - for Evil [Weber, 1990]. These impersonal formulas, concealing the subjective position of a scientist, entirely permeated the minds of the modern humanities. The scientist must be objective, and thus, not putting forward a personal attitude to the subject, follow the facts. This sounds positive in theory, but an extremely difficult and controversial in practice - the principle borrowed from the experiential scientists (perhaps there have been some reasons at first, but then they were obviously lost) which was finally brought to an end by postmodernism. After all, it was vital to abandon the "subjective" attributing the phenomenon to the category of Good or Evil for the sake of objectivity. It was postmodernism which destroyed objectivity. There is simply none - penetrate into the works of Jean-Francois Lyotard or Jacques Derrida (as well as Julia Kristeva, Gilles Deleuze, Pierre-F'elix Guattari or Paul-Michel Foucault) that contain no objectivity, no notions of Good or Evil. There is only the infinite variety of phenomena (even not phenomena), and an infinite number of interpretations, which is called "the death of meta-narrative" [Lyotard, 1998]. Any objectivity observed here?
However, our goal is not to clarify the dispute between positivism and postmodernism. The main thesis of this article is equal to the opposite of both of them and implies the approval of the real (and quite objectively comprehensible) existence of Good and Evil. Let remember that these categories are very important for the spirit level of human reality [Ostapenko, 2014]. We strongly believe that these notions are not just real (i.e. having an objective, "material" and the absolute nature), but the fundamental parameters of social and personal being, which requires the introduction of these categories in the space of social and humanitarian knowledge not only philosophically, but also on the conceptual and scientific level. This undoubtedly controversial statement is required to deploy the argument.
Let us begin with the assumption that Evil (as well as Good) is extremely difficult to define on the terminological level. However, this does not imply that we cannot conceptualize it by all means. The science, of course, tends to adhere to obvious definitions, which in terms of logic have the "A is B and C" form. However, a great amount of things, to a huge regret of intellectuals of all types, does not reflect such definitions, being at the same time crucial for us. They are as follows: "Love", "Justice", "Happiness" or "Seeking Life Fullness" as well as "Person", "Man". "Good" and "Evil" are likewise. However, for such difficult realities we can exploit ostensive (to show) or contextual (to discuss) definitions. At the same time, some advocates of strict science will argue that the things defined in this way are inevitably subjective and cannot be used as facts. However, anyone who has suffered from "subjective" love or "subjective" consciousness of their own sin (fault) is perfectly aware of the fact that this suffering was of quite an objective, real nature. It has been caused by Love or Sin, but not "subjective experience of sentiments." Here we deal with the empirical law, well known not only to writers and playwrights, but also to all of us through life experience: the human soul suffers from unfortunate love and from a committed sin. In addition, this phenomenon, in our
Future Human Image. Volume 7, 2017 37
Evil as a Subject of Sociological Cognition: Methodological Reflections by Temyr Khagurov
opinion, is quite objective. On the contrary, the illusion of subjectivity is created by the fact that different types of mental organization, depending on upbringing, experience, hereditary constitution and other conditions, can endure and reveal this suffering in a different way. To put it briefly, the Evil can be conceptualized, or it is possible to show some of its forms and to argue about its nature.
Any research starts with an attempt to review the reference sources. In our case, the similar step will turn out to be inevitably fragmentary for several reasons. Firstly, we do not claim for an extensive research of such a difficult subject in any way. This article is rather an attempt of a dialogue, sometimes an attempt to discuss the most widespread approaches in modern sociology and psychology of deviant behavior. Therefore, our purpose consists in the statement of a problem rather than in its thorough analysis. Secondly, we can come across the main and the deepest attempts of understanding and the analysis of phenomena of Good and Evil in religious and philosophical texts as well as in the works of art. The review of at least of the most part of the above-mentioned texts could demand the independent scholarly monograph. Hence, some of them will be mentioned below. Anyway, the fragmentary nature of bibliography and reference foundation of our introduction to a problem is obvious, and can be justified only by the fact that we present no more than the first step in the designated direction to a reader.
In our viewpoint, the fundamental coordinates of modern scientific approach to the understanding of a perspective of the Evil issue have been laid in the works of Karl Marx, 'Emile Durkheim, Karl Popper, Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche. Herewith, Marx and Nietzsche in their treaties have set the polar ideas of Evil phenomenology on the social and philosophical level.
Marx has formulated the idea of the class nature of moral discourse. Durkheim has contributed to it with the idea of collective consciousness as the carrier of the moral authority, emphasizing that collective consciousness never covers all the community members, but only the majority. Respectively, the understanding of norm in sociology was approved as a statistical phenomenon - what the majority in this social community at present do (sometimes - with the reservation of adaptability of such behavior) is considered normal. These ideas, which are often rather freely interpreted, have given way to constructivism - the theory according to which the concepts of "good" and "evil", "norm" and "deviation" are a product of social constructing and accord. This, though making a start from objective reality of primary individual and social needs, has a huge historical and cultural variability. The treatise of Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann "The Social Construction of Reality" [Berger & Luckmann, 1995] became the most famous and deep sociological achievement of this idea. Amongst modern works of Russian scientists on the subject of deviantology "The Construction of Deviance" under Yakov I. Gilinsky"s edition [Designing, 2011] stands out. In terms of classical constructivism, the main form of Evil is an anomy - the so-called state of abnormity - being in fact the interpretation by Durkheim of Hobbes" "wars of all against all." "The law is changeable, but it is the Law and without it life turns into chaos" - that is the credo of classical constructivism.
Postmodern interpretations of the idea of constructivism (mainly by Michel Foucault [Foucault, 2010] and Jacques Derrida [Derrida, 1997]) have brought it, in our opinion, to the point of absurdity. We will refer to this subject again later on. For the time being we will only make a notice that even "moderate" constructivism is in difficult correlation with social reality, constantly solving a dilemma what elements of this reality are ontologically caused and a little
38 Future Human Image. Volume 7, 2017
Evil as a Subject of Sociological Cognition: Methodological Reflections by Temyr Khagurov
changeable, even in different forms, and which of them are purely an essence of any and easily changing social scenery.
In psychology the understanding of evil (deviation) has been substantially reduced to a problem of unadaptation, in many respects due to psychoanalysis and behaviorism, i.e. Sigmund Freud and John Watson"s ideas which are quite different at first sight, yet, deeply similar when it comes to profound understanding of a person and motives of his or her behavior.