Ethics in social relation

The article raises attention to the problem of social relations that the authorconsiders important, i.e. their moral dimension, and in particular the possibility of rational grounding of ethical norms of universal nature.The author analyses views of three outstanding social theorists of the XX century: V.M. Chernov, Karl-Otto Apel and V.B. Pastukhov. Thefollowing conclusions were made. V.M. Chernov, the main ideologist of Russian neo-populism in the early XX century, considered ethicsone of the principal regulators of social relations and factors influencing social development. Being an atheist in his thinking, he proposed amethod of developing "scientific ethics" that would rely on such branches of science as sociology and psychology, because he made it one ofhis paramount investigation tasks to reveal the "links between subjective human needs and objective means of their satisfaction". A contemporaryGerman philosopher Karl-Otto Apel also gives a positive answer to the question of rational justification of morality. Like Chernov, hedoes not discard Karl Marx's ideas, believing that interpretation of Marxism form the point of view of communication theory reveals itssomewhat ethically-justified function. Besides, Apel proposes to look for methodological tools in "psychoanalysis and criticism of ideology",which he calls "critically-liberating sciences" of the modern times. As for V.B. Pastukhov, he focuses on proving the productivity of synthesizingideas of "Russian Marxism" and Russian religious philosophy. In his view, such synthesis can give birth to "Russian neo-Marxism"based on culture. Culture should take the place in theory that in "Russian Marxism" was previously occupied by society. The new concept,according to Pastukhov, will drastically change the "image of the social world", pushing to the forefront such features as "interaction andprobability" instead of excessive objectivism. The views of the three thinkers belonging to different ideological branches reveal certain obvioussimilarities, which the author does not consider a mere coincidence. Rather, it is a trend of development of the existing and emergingsocial phenomena. As a result, the author of the article concludes that there is a need to newly analyze the ways of combining subjective andobjective aspects of social reality and their reflection in the human individual, that were proposed by neo-populism, providing interdisciplinarymethodology for such analysis. This is important since it becomes easier to determine the subject of progressive social transformationsif ethics is regarded as one of the main objective factors of social development. Further, it will allow to better understand the mechanism ofarising of moral feelings in broad masses of society as one of the channels of their successful socialization.

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