Субстанциальный подход в теоретическом обществознании, его необходимость и принципы

Abstract

The author of this article is convinced that modern history, which has entered the crisis period of “unsecured outcomes”, poses the most difficult problems to theor­etical social science, the solution of which is facilitated by successful adaptation of people to new social realities. At the same time, the modern social theory ex­periences a crisis of fragmentation and does not have proper conceptual means for adequate comprehension of the changing world. Unfortunately, many modern the­orists seek to legalize the categorical chaos in social theory, to present it as its “natural state”. On the contrary, the author proceeds from the belief that subject-conceptual unity and categorical order in social theory remains “sine qua non” of its existence. Conceptual fragmentation is natural and inevitable in a value social philosophy that evaluates the world and searches for the meaning of human exist­ence in it, but it is intolerant in reflective philosophy, trying to reveal its own logic of the social world, independent of the value preferences of the scientist. The author considers the substance-based approach, the principles of which are disclosed in the article, to be a tool for conceptual optimization of social know­ledge. Relying on the ideas of B. Spinoza and G.V.F. Hegel the author analyzes the category “substance”, proving its necessity for modern social science and hu­manities. The author considers a substance in its modern understanding to be a procedural beginning, which defines a special way of existence inherent in self-targeted information systems with an organic type of integrity, capable of self-originating, self-sustaining and self-development. Correspondingly, the author considers human activity as a substance of the social world, which creates “from itself and for itself” all forms of social life, its subjective, objective, organiza­tional, attributive, taxonomic and other manifestations. Everything that exists in social reality is a modus, attribute or accidence of activity, which allows us to discover objective logical links and transitions between the categories of philo­sophical and sociological knowledge.