IDEOLOGICAL IMPACT ON SOCIAL BEHAVIOR: THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS (BEGINNING)

Abstract

This article examines the actual aspects of the influence of ideologies on the social life of the entire modern society and on its individual members. The author attempts to provide a theoretical and methodological justification for the answers to the following questions: what do scientists understand by political ideology? how to research ideology scientifically? how is it possible to identify different ideologies? what role do individual ideological doctrines play in politics? In order to answer these questions, the article provides a scientific analysis of the nature and essence of ideology, the specifics and forms of expression of individual ideological doctrines, their impact on public consciousness and social behavior. Numerous discussions about the essence of ideology are reduced to a dispute about the truth or falsity of the set of ideas that is designed to control, including manipulative, mass consciousness and behavior. Nevertheless, there are also objective, value-neutral approaches to this phenomenon. The complexity of an adequate interpretation of ideology is due to the fact that it varies between political theory and political practice, representing a synthesis of fundamental and operational levels, the level of "thought" and the level of "action". The objective, scientific study of ideology, first of all, can be greatly facilitated by the fact that within the framework of ideology as a specific form of public consciousness, integral and relatively autonomous systems of political thought – "political ideologies" function. Within the framework of various political ideologies, a holistic and at the same time specific set of attitudes has been developed regarding the essence of the relationship between the individual and society, society and the state, positions in relation to traditional and modern social institutions. At the same time, they always rely on classical theories of political philosophy. The article provides a detailed analysis of the key constructions of the ideology of classical liberalism, as well as critically examines the neoliberal constructions that, in the author's opinion, led to the transformation of liberalism into a totalitarian dogma of the fundamentalist kind. Following liberalism, conservatism is analyzed, which, like liberalism, is based on a specific set of ideas about the nature of human existence and social life, borrowed from the classical concepts of political philosophy, which form its theoretical core. A differentiation is made between conservative constructions that have been developed in Western Europe and the USA, with their emphasis on aggressive foreign policy, and Russian conservatism, reflected in the works of outstanding Russian social scientists – M.N. Katkov, K.N. Leontiev, L.A. Tikhomirov, K.P. Pobedonostsev, who substantiated their ideas about the existence of the state, the functions of power, about morality and human freedom in line with a conservative worldview. In addition, the conclusion is substantiated that it is the conservative, or rather, moderately conservative ideological doctrine that contains a set of ideas that most fully reflect the geopolitical, economic and social realities of Russia, the peculiarities of its spiritual and cultural tradition