The Genesis of Social-Philosophical Thought

The Development of Social Philosophy in the Second Half of the 19th and 20th Centuries

In the second half of the 19th century and into the 20th century, the Enlightenment illusions that scientific and technological progress, along with the reorganization of the socio-political system on the principles of the rule of law, would automatically lead to a higher and more harmonious stage of societal development began to dissipate. Instead of the anticipated benefits, the triumphant march of capitalism during this historical period resulted in a decline in the well-being of broad segments of the population, an intensification of colonial exploitation, and an escalation of international conflicts. In these circumstances, social philosophers divided into various camps that engaged in fierce struggles with one another, with the pivotal dividing line being their stance towards scientific-rational knowledge. Proponents of positivism, such as Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer, sought an escape from the crisis of rational thought by eliminating the philosophical, “metaphysical” level from social cognition and by creating universal scientific systems that would unite knowledge of the general laws of nature and society. Founders of dialectical materialism, namely Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, while sharing a desire to uncover the laws governing social development, retained philosophy as a means of revealing the unique material-ideal nature of humanity and society, thus striving to avoid the danger of reducing them to mere natural material entities. The theorists of Neo-Kantianism—such as Wilhelm Windelband, Ernst Cassirer, and Heinrich Rickert—refuted the possibility of understanding societal laws, asserting the descriptive, “ideographic status” of the social sciences. The most extreme anti-scientific position was taken by the adherents of “philosophy of life,” including Friedrich Nietzsche, Wilhelm Dilthey, Georg Simmel, and Oswald Spengler, who identified the cult of reason as the primary cause of all social ills. The most significant ideological influence on subsequent epochs stemmed from the dialectico-materialist concept and the philosophy of life. Taking this into account, let us illuminate their content in greater detail.

Karl Marx (1818—1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820—1895) began the development of their system by reinterpreting the dialectical methodology of G.W.F. Hegel and the anthropological ideas of Ludwig Feuerbach. Denying the notion of a higher spiritual source of existence, they established the foundation of the universe in matter itself, which exists in an endless state of development according to the laws of dialectics (the unity and struggle of contradictions, the negation of negation, the interrelationship of quantitative and qualitative changes, etc.). Based on this, humanity and society are viewed as specific stages in the development of the material world. The main feature of humanity lies in its capacity for conscious, transformative, practical activity, during which its needs and interests are satisfied and the surrounding environment is “humanized.” The fundamental form of activity is labor—“the purposeful activity of creating consumer values, appropriating what nature offers for human needs, the universal condition for the exchange of matter between humanity and nature, and the eternal condition for the preservation of human life.” In the process of labor, individuals are always participants in social relations, acquiring specific social qualities and constituting themselves as socio-natural beings. Thus, in contrast to previous philosophers, who generally perceived the substantial basis of human nature in its spiritual-intellectual properties, Marx and Engels defined the essence of humanity as the sum of social relations. At the same time, spirituality is not disregarded; instead, it is considered a secondary determination of the specificity of human existence. The ability to reason and to conceive ideal images of future outcomes resulting from the transformation of nature is an indispensable condition for human existence. However, phenomena of consciousness possess a material nature, acting as a reflection of the objective world and drawing their origins from practice and the concrete conditions of life.

According to this view, material production forms the base of society, upon which its superstructure—state, law, social institutions, and forms of social consciousness—is built. The mode of material production encompasses the totality of productive forces and production relations. The former characterize the forces through which society influences and transforms nature, while the latter represent the relations that arise between individuals in the process of production, linked to the division of labor and ownership of its means. The contradictions between productive forces and production relations serve as the source of development for the material-productive sphere and society as a whole. “The means of production of material life determine the social, political, and spiritual processes of life in general. It is not the consciousness of individuals that determines their being, but rather, on the contrary, their social being determines their consciousness. With the change of the economic foundation, a transformation of the entire vast superstructure occurs more or less rapidly.” This assertion is sometimes interpreted as a manifestation of economic determinism, reducing social and spiritual phenomena to economic factors. However, such an interpretation oversimplifies the concepts of Marx and Engels, who repeatedly pointed to the relative autonomy of superstructural phenomena and their ability to exert a reciprocal influence on the base, either hindering or accelerating social development. Accordingly, previous social-philosophical ideas were criticized for their speculative nature, emphasizing the necessity of reorienting theoretical knowledge towards the resolution of practical problems. “Philosophers have only interpreted the world differently; the point, however, is to change it.”

In exploring the concrete-historical forms of unity between the base and superstructure, Marx employs the term “socio-historical formation,” which designates a specific type of social system that develops according to its own laws based on a particular mode of production. The starting point of history is the primitive formation, based on a low level of development of productive forces, collective ownership of the means of labor, and the indivisible unity of the individual and society. The development of material production, the emergence of surplus products, and private property contributed to the increase of individual freedom while simultaneously provoking a contradiction between the interests of the individual and the communal society, leading to the dissolution of the primitive tribal structure. Under conditions of antagonism between personal and societal interests, social integrity was initially maintained through slave and feudal formations, which were based on the personal dependency of laborers on the owners of means of production, a dependence reinforced by political-legal and ideological forms. The intense struggle between oppressors and the oppressed destabilized the foundations of these societies, determining their decline and the emergence of a new capitalist formation.

During the establishment of capitalism, personal dependency of the exploited classes on their exploiters transformed into a “thingly” dependency, which is characterized by the transformation of the results of labor into commodities that are estranged from the direct producer. This dependency weighs heavily on individuals and society, dictating antisocial interests and values, and restricting the free development of individuality. At the same time, capitalism, while ensuring scientific and technological progress, the concentration of production in the hands of monopolists, and the division of society into a vast majority of impoverished individuals and a handful of wealthy elites, prepares the conditions for its own negation and the emergence of a new formation. The latter does not arise automatically; rather, it is born amid struggles, during the revolutionary fight of the working class for political power, which must be used to dismantle the bourgeois state apparatus, abolish private property, and build a just society. The outcome is communism, grounded in the highest level of development of productive forces, the socialization of the means of production, the disappearance of class antagonism, and the reproduction of free individuals, with relationships among them built on the principle: “the free development of each is the condition for the development of all.” It is acknowledged that the outlined communist future has an open character—it is “not an ideal to which reality must conform, but a real movement that abolishes the present state of things.”

Subsequently, numerous followers of Marx and Engels focused on the issue of defining specific guidelines for realizing this forecast. Among the various proposed options, two main directions emerge. The representatives of the first direction (Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Rosa Luxemburg, Antonio Gramsci, Georg Lukács, and others) developed the concept of socialist revolution, acknowledging the special significance of the subjective factor and allowing for the possibility of revolutionary violence. In contrast, representatives of the second line (Georgi Plekhanov, Karl Kautsky, Eduard Bernstein, and others) argued for the possibility of a peaceful transition to communism through the activation of legal political struggles by the working class, strengthening democratic and legal institutions, and the gradual intensification of the objective prerequisites for the socialization of society.

The real historical process has confirmed the predominant trajectory of societal development towards overcoming the alienation of humanity from nature and society along the paths of scientific and technological progress, ensuring the systematic organization of production, limiting entrepreneurial caprice, and the humanization of production relations, among other aspects. At the same time, a significant degree of schematism and historical limitation in communist predictions became evident. Specifically, the abolition of private ownership of the means of production and the establishment of a "dictatorship of the proletariat," enacted in practice during the socialist revolutions in several countries throughout the 20th century, led to contradictory outcomes. On one hand, the planned economy, founded on the monopoly of state ownership, contributed to the disappearance of the extremes of social polarization and expanded socio-economic rights for individuals (to work, rest, education, healthcare, etc.). On the other hand, unchecked power became concentrated in the hands of state-party bureaucracy, giving rise to authoritarian and, at times, totalitarian regimes that devalued the real content of citizens' political and personal rights, stifling their freedom and initiative. The overcoming of the alienation of the state from individuals and society, thus formed, became possible through the liberalization of political and economic relations, the introduction of various forms of ownership, and the recognition of the socio-legal significance of state regulators. In this sense, actual history proved to be "more dialectical" than the theoretical constructs of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; it did not reject private property, the state, and law as "unnecessary," but rather addressed their potential anti-social distortions, retaining their positive potential.

"Philosophy of Life" presents a vision of humanity and society that stands in opposition to Marxism. At the roots of this movement lies the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788—1860), who perceived the foundation of the universe as the play of blind will, the essence of which lies in the conflicting tension of life forces in connection with the satisfaction of an endless chain of needs and desires. Accordingly, humanity is, first and foremost, a "willing" being, and only subsequently a "thinking" one.

In this light, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844—1900) interpreted the world as "life"—an eternal becoming that occurs through a senseless combination of random forces. This process is governed by the "will to power," or, in other words, the "thirst for life"—a continuous effort directed at the preservation of life, its growth, and expansion. Thus, society is a constellation of clashes between individual and group "wills to power," in which the weakest perish and the strongest survive. Rational thought, morality, religion, and the like are derivatives of the will to power. At the same time, cultural forms can become alienated from their source, restraining and "killing" the free flow of life. Nietzsche arrives at an understanding of the repressive function of culture in one of his early works, "The Birth of Tragedy," where, analyzing the cultural sphere of Ancient Greece, he contrasts the cults of Dionysus and Apollo. The former (the god of earth and fertility) symbolizes instinctual "thirst for life," the exuberance of sensual passions, and creative energy. The latter (the god of science and the arts) embodies the necessity of ordering human life. Culture is the synthesis of these two primordials, with the "Dionysian" aspect being accorded a leading, life-affirming role.

Nietzsche pessimistically evaluated Western society, finding in it a clear predominance of the "Apollonian" aspect, which reproduces passive individuals incapable of struggle and creativity. From this standpoint, he sharply criticizes Christianity for preaching submission, poverty, and asceticism. Declaring that "God is dead," the thinker constructs the ideal of the "Übermensch," or "overman"—an individual endowed with unique volitional and intellectual qualities who independently determines what is evil and what is good. Such a person will emerge as a result of the improvement of the human species, through the selection and upbringing of its best representatives. In this regard, notable historical figures (Zarathustra, Alexander the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, etc.) serve as prototypes of the "Übermensch."

Thus, individual personality, its autonomy and originality, is exalted, while the role of society and the collective creativity of the masses is diminished. The extreme individualism of this position, coupled with value relativism, made possible the reinterpretation of Nietzschean thought in the spirit of propagating the rights of individual nations and races to world dominance, carried out by the ideologues of fascism in the first half of the 20th century. However, it is a mistake to see in Nietzsche's teachings merely a form of legitimizing misanthropic struggles for the conquest of "living space." A distinctive aspect of his concept, adopted by many philosophers and writers (e.g., José Ortega y Gasset, Maxim Gorky, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Martin Heidegger, Franz Kafka, etc.), was a critique of the bourgeois-consumer orientation of the "average person," which stifles creative impulses and creates a conducive environment for the affirmation of the worst forms of authoritarianism.

Oswald Spengler (1880—1936) emerged as a successor to Nietzsche's ideas, applying the fundamental tenets of "philosophy of life" to substantiate a civilizational model of historical societal development. Instead of the traditional periodization of history into antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times—suggesting intertemporal continuity—the scholar analyzed historical development as a succession of independent, self-contained, and unique cultures. Emerging as a purposeless product of life, these cultures resemble living organisms that undergo stages of birth, flourishing, and decay. Based on a comparative analysis of world history, Spengler identified seven fundamental cultures (Chinese, Babylonian, Egyptian, Indian, "Apollonian" (classical), "Faustian" (Western), and Maya), each characterized by its unique soul, comprising a certain amalgamation of irrational potentials directed toward self-realization. The decline of any culture signifies the advent of civilization, which marks the "ossification" of sociocultural forms and their inability to create anew. Thus, Western European culture, arising in the 9th century, flourishing in the 15th to 18th centuries, dies in the 20th century, transforming into a civilization that crushes higher spiritual values with selfish rational calculation, reducing people to a mass. Spengler's works contributed to the reconstruction of the uniqueness of the life activities of specific societies, revealing the specifics of their social-psychological accounting and mentality. At the same time, the exaggeration of historical-cultural discreteness devalued the concept of "humanity," obscuring the universal unity in the diversity of national cultures and values, instilling a sense of inevitability, and diverting attention from the active struggle against the cultural degradation of humanity and society.

Overall, such a mindset corresponded to the historical conditions of the first half of the 20th century—a time of unprecedentedly large-scale world wars, extraordinarily acute revolutionary cataclysms, accompanied by a profound spiritual crisis and the disintegration of bourgeois value orientations. In this context, the exploration of the sources of duality and contradiction in culture becomes characteristic not only for "philosophy of life" but also for several other socio-philosophical currents. For instance, Sigmund Freud (1856—1939) perceived the roots of the tragic contradiction between individual aspirations and cultural imperatives in the psychological life of humanity. The foundation of the Austrian psychologist's social-philosophical inquiries lies in his psychoanalytic concept, which explained human neurotic disorders through an internal conflict between subconscious drives (Eros—the "life instinct," sexual desire, and Thanatos—the death instinct, the inclination towards self-destruction) and conscious regulators assimilated by the individual during the process of socialization. Utilizing this framework to analyze the development of the human species as a whole, the scholar viewed sociocultural institutions as a form of stabilizing instinctual aspirations, retaining them within socially acceptable bounds. However, sooner or later, the energy of subconscious processes reaches a critical point, beyond which it destroys existing institutions, clearing the way for new forms of culture.

The teachings of Sigmund Freud marked a significant advance, as they were the first to analyze the influence of the subconscious on social processes. However, the reduction of individual motives for action and the driving forces of societal history to biopsychological instincts appears highly contentious, failing to consider the reciprocal impact of social relations on the psychological life of individuals. Moreover, social mechanisms that produce the needs and interests of the individual remain inadequately addressed. Subsequently, Freud's followers—such as Alfred Adler (1870—1937), Carl Gustav Jung (1875—1961), Erich Fromm (1900—1980), and others—sought to transcend the biopsychological one-sidedness of Freudian thought, synthesizing biological, psychological, and social aspects of human life.

The critique of attempts to reduce human nature and society to subconscious mental processes or socio-economic factors is encapsulated in existentialism—a defining movement in 20th-century global philosophy. Among its representatives are philosophers such as Nikolai Berdyaev (1874—1948), Lev Shestov (1866—1938), Martin Heidegger (1889—1976), Karl Jaspers (1883—1969), Jean-Paul Sartre (1905—1980), Gabriel Marcel (1889—1973), Albert Camus (1913—1960), and others. This movement is genetically linked to the philosophical system of Søren Kierkegaard (1813—1855), the Danish religious thinker who first employed the concept of “existence”—a unique and spiritually assimilable form of human existence that always exists initially, pre-empting its own essence, manifested in the capacity to ideally transport oneself into the past and future, projecting oneself. The origins of existentialism are also found in the works of the German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859—1938)—the author of the phenomenological concept, which borrowed techniques for purifying consciousness from various manifestations of the external world, scientific knowledge, stereotypes, psychological experiences, and more. What remains as a result forms the foundation of “existence”—“pure consciousness,” intentionally directed toward some object, constituting it in accordance with its own structure. Furthermore, this “pure consciousness” is not rationally cognizable and constitutes the “mystery” of existence.

In everyday life, existence is distorted, transformed into inauthentic existence, manifesting as the dissolution of the individual within the mode of being of the “other,” a loss of the ability to perceive the world independently, and submission to dominant societal norms and stereotypes. In essence, the individual becomes alienated from their own existence. The question of overcoming this alienation is approached in various ways. For instance, Sartre, interpreting the Marxist concept in an existential spirit, develops an “anthropology of practice,” according to which the alienated individual does not turn into a “thing,” retaining the ability to realize a project for their future through action and labor, thereby restoring the integrity of their being. Marcel, noting one manifestation of alienation in the subjugation of individuals by private property, sees a way out of this situation in love, sacrifice, art, and philosophy, which can return existence to individuals. Jaspers perceives the resolution of alienation in specific “limit situations” (the awareness of inevitable death, illness, fear, religious ecstasy, mental disturbance, etc.) that stimulate an understanding of the true purpose of life. In general, existentialists characteristically acknowledge the inalienable nature of freedom, which is defined as impulsive, emotional choice, typically revealed to the individual in feelings of unease, anxiety, and abandonment. Thus, the return to authentic existence is ultimately determined by an individual’s independent decision for which they are responsible.

In our view, such a position overemphasizes the independence of freedom from external circumstances, consequently impoverishing its content by reducing it to a choice between life and death. Furthermore, by placing the burden of responsibility for everything that happens in society solely on the individual, existentialists encounter difficulties in establishing objective criteria for the conformity of any given act to existence, given that existence possesses an unknowable, unrepeatable, individual character, being distinct for each person. Therefore, any behavior, including antisocial behavior, may be justified by references to the realization of one's unique mode of existence.

An important aspect of existentialism is the understanding of the impact of scientific and technological progress on humanity and society. Jaspers characterized the modern historical period as an epoch of technological development that creates a new foundation for human existence. The role of scientific and technological achievements is ambiguous; on one hand, they provide unprecedented opportunities for the self-realization of the individual, while on the other, they threaten the physical existence of humanity, subjugating individuals to their demands. Heidegger also analyzes the problems and paradoxes of human relations with a technogenic environment. Technology or “the standing reserve” serves as a form of objectification of all that exists for production, supplying human needs. Individuals find themselves at the center of this “standing reserve,” transforming into providers of the “available state,” losing themselves in an eternally producing cycle, the ability to hear the voice of true existence. The way out of this situation lies in changing the attitude toward technology by establishing its profound “beyond-technical” foundations within the overall culture of society.

If existentialists acknowledge the leading role of cultural factors in the interplay between culture and technology, then representatives of the technocratic perspective (e.g., Thorstein Veblen (1857—1929), Raymond Aron (1905—1983), Daniel Bell (born 1919), John Kenneth Galbraith (1908—2006), Walt Rostow (1916—2003), Edward Maruda (1905—1995), Alvin Toffler (born 1928), and others) emphasize the decisive role of technology and technological advancements. The formation of a technocratic approach was spurred by the mass application of science and technology in production, which radically improved living conditions, elevated material well-being, and enriched the interests and aspirations of millions of people worldwide. In this way, conditions were created for the revival of Enlightenment and positivist ideas, which linked social progress with the progressive refinement of means and technological organization of production. This line of thought was realized in the development of concepts such as the “stages of economic growth” (Walt Rostow), industrial society (Raymond Aron, John Kenneth Galbraith), post-industrial society (Daniel Bell), informational society (Masuda), and the “third wave” (Alvin Toffler). The outcome was the identification of three main epochs in historical development. The first (agrarian) is based on direct interaction between humans and nature. The second (industrial) is founded on human interaction with nature that has been transformed by them. The third (post-industrial or informational) centers on the production of knowledge and the exchange of information through interpersonal interaction.

To avoid the one-sidedness of narrow technicism, a “multifactor analysis” of social changes is undertaken, taking into account the reciprocal influence of politics, culture, and spirituality on scientific and technological development. Thus, Toffler, considering the “technosphere” as the basis of society, establishes connections between it and the spheres of social relations, power, information, and mental processes. At first glance, a parallel can be drawn here with the corresponding tenets of Marxism. However, such an analogy is misleading, as, unlike Marxists, technocrats minimize the influence of property on the formation of social-class structures. It is emphasized that private property is transformed into personal property, as knowledge and information (the primary productive resources of the post-industrial era) cannot be alienated from their producers. Therefore, an individual’s place in the social hierarchy is determined by their educational level and their ability to transform information into knowledge, while society divides into an intellectual elite and lower strata, alienated from knowledge-intensive production.

We can agree that the intensification of the flow of intellectual property alters the nature of commodity relations, as under new conditions, capital is objectively compelled to distribute surplus value more evenly between itself and the bearers of highly qualified creative labor. However, conclusions about the overcoming of private property still seem premature, as, amid the progressive differentiation of information production, it is problematic to assert that all participants have equal access to the final intellectual products. Moreover, the increasing share of intellectual wealth in the gross national product still has its basis in the corresponding development of direct material production; at present, the economy has yet to free itself from dependence on traditional sources of raw materials and energy, which are typically controlled by private capital. Ultimately, although significantly transformed, capitalist relations and the processes of social alienation they engender persist in the modern world. Insufficient attention to this fact hinders proponents of the technocratic approach from providing a materialistic explanation for the adverse consequences of scientific and technological progress, which manifest in the exacerbation of ecological issues, the rise of social inequality, and the proliferation of instrumental, consumer values. In this manner, a critique of the role of science and technology from idealistic positions becomes possible, seeking the preconditions for their alienation within human consciousness.

The delineated line is drawn within the framework of postmodernism—an influential current in contemporary philosophy represented by names such as Roland Barthes (1915—1980), Gilles Deleuze (1925—1995), Félix Guattari (1930—1992), Michel Foucault (1926—1984), and Jean Baudrillard (1929—2007), among others. Postmodernists identified the roots of societal malaise in the traditional tenets of European philosophy that affirm the right of the individual to act as a subject in the active transformation of the surrounding world. From this premise, attempts were made to displace the categories of "subject" and "object" from consciousness and culture. Deleuze and Guattari, for instance, characterized the latter as manifestations of "centrism," which isolates the subject from the system of natural relations, bestowing upon it a special privileged status while simultaneously relegating a multitude of other relationships within the "human-world" system to the periphery. It was emphasized that such constructions lay the theoretical foundations for a totalitarian socio-political project, a violent social hierarchy, and a consumerist and irresponsible attitude towards nature.

In contrast, French postmodernists proposed a distinctive replacement for the subject-object opposition with the conceptual pair "land-territory." "Thought is not a thread drawn between the subject and the object, nor is it the rotation of the former around the latter. Rather, thought is realized through the relationship between territory and land." Here, "land" is interpreted not merely as a diverse object of labor but as a singular, indivisible essence, a complete body, an uncaused permanence, a higher element in relation to production; whereas "territory" is understood as an artificial body that unites economic, social, and technical machines. The unity of territory and land is ensured by "territorialization" and "deterritorialization." The former process unfolds from land to territory and involves the formation of a collective of "territorial machines," that is, specific social forms. The latter occurs from territory to land and expresses the formation of a particular transcendent space, wherein binary oppositions between depth and surface, center and periphery, are transcended.

Deleuze and Guattari employ these concepts within their framework of "schizoanalysis," which, based on a critical reflection of psychoanalytic and Marxist approaches, offers an original perspective on the issues of individuality, the state, and capital. Notably, the source of the repressive character of culture is linked to the territorialization of free flows of singularities within the realm of the subject, which is predicated on the denial of diversity and otherness, manifesting as paranoia that embodies "the investment of the subjugated group: both in the form of sovereignty and within colonial formations of the herd system." The task of "schizoanalysis" thus becomes the deterritorialization of these flows from the dominion of the "state-hierarchical thinking" of the subject through the dissemination of "nomadic thought," which seeks to preserve differences and promotes the reproduction of a schizoidiac attitude towards the world. This, in the authors' terminology, signifies not only the quality of actions among the mentally ill but also a particular mode of behavior among individuals free from the repressive pressure of societal normative structures.

These critical assertions, from which we believe a philosophical justification for an anarchic socio-political project can be drawn, should be approached with caution and, in turn, scrutinized critically. It appears that, in terms of actualizing the potent potential of archetypes expressed in ancient mythical images—such as the "Mother Earth," "Homeland," and others—the utilization of the concepts of "land" and "territory" expands the culturally cognitive matrix of activity, rendering it more flexible, and awakening attention to the internal "intentions" of the environment that arise from its nature and certain natural-historical regularities. Furthermore, a positive aspect of the reflections of French philosophers is the problematization of the concept of "subject" concerning the following inquiries: first, establishing the boundary beyond which active human agency devolves into the "territorialization" of oppressive space, and second, identifying who, indeed, is the subject of action: the individual, the social organism, or someone else? The latter inquiry is among the most pressing, as the realities of a consumerist society result in both the depersonalization of the individual and the dismantling of its subjectivity and freedom, alongside a disruption of the civic institutions that constitute societal subjectivity as a whole. This leads to the alienation of activity, transforming it into an impersonal territorial machine that utilizes both the individual and society as means of its operation.

However, this does not imply that one should acquiesce to the negation of the traditional subject-object framework of interpreting the structure of activity as posited by Deleuze and Guattari. In our view, the dangers of this approach lie in the absolutization of "free flows of singularities" while simultaneously fostering a nihilistic skepticism regarding the authoritative and organizing principles of human existence, failing to account for their nonlinear and ambivalent nature, and undervaluing their role as a factor in the realization of freedom. The paradoxical outcome of the programmatic call to "not fall in love with power" is a kind of practical deadlock, wherein the proposed theoretical deconstruction of "the semantic space of social oppression" is not complemented by a corresponding political program of positive action due to fears that it may manifest as a new cultural form of human bondage. Moreover, the relativization of relationships between subject and object, the blurring of clear categorical distinctions between them, leaves the question of personal responsibility—and thus, the question of its freedom—open. Essentially, there arises a risk of theoretically "legitimizing" the depersonalization of activity by shifting the discourse to the realm of an impersonal schema of "land-territorial body."

In summarizing the review of the development of global social philosophy in the 20th century, we note that the high degree of its diversity provides grounds for an optimistic assessment of its potential for future development. At the same time, the pluralism of forms and contents of social-philosophical reflections, which has significantly increased, bears a counterpoint—the heightened risks of eclecticism and relativism. In the vast, multidimensional world of contemporary social philosophy, it is quite easy to become lost, and it is not always possible to timely recognize the potential threats posed by various "fashionable" ideas. One means of alleviating this danger is the preservation and development of national philosophical traditions, which ensure a spiritual connection between the individual and specific society, thereby stabilizing the process of engaging individuals with the universal philosophical heritage. However, for national philosophy to fulfill this role, it must undergo continuous development, necessitating reflection upon its foundations, that is, an examination of its own history.