The Crisis of Ideology of Universal Mind as a Challenge to the Social Structure of Modernity

Abstract

The article examines the articulation and clarification of the concept of cultural ideology. According to the author’s position, both for describing of ideal “horizons” of social reality and for clarifying the cultural role of ontological beliefs associated with these horizons, the concept of cultural ideology is more successful than the previously used concepts of “garment of ideas” (Ideenkleid) “social representation,” “dominant worldview.” Unlike Heidegger’s concept of the essence of being that is ruling in history, the concept of cultural ideology claims to describe only the subjective attitudes of individuals, who, by a joint cultural activity, constitute an intersubjective space of meanings and actions. However, these attitudes form the foundations of cultural experience that determine the social structure and social being in each specific historical era. In our days, there are signs of the transformations of the foundations of the cultural ideology that originated in the age of Enlightenment and dominated in the society of Modern Times. The evidence of those transformations is a phenomenon of “post-truth.” The denial of the singularity of truth is an evidence of the crisis of the universal mind that is a justifying and legitimizing foundation of sciences and technologies. Moreover, the crisis of the cultural ideology of universal mind endangers not only the science itself but the entire social order (including its values, universal rights and freedoms) that was formed by the belief in the universality of mind.