Publication Details

Abstract

The author analyzes two approaches to problems of social consciousness. The first approach, based on the overemphasis of the antagonism of matter and consciousness, is characterized by the fact that 1. consciousness is reduced to cognition and is not conceived as totality of gnoseologic, semantic, axiologic, normative and active components, 2. consciousness is studied in accomplished, objectified appearances detached from active individuals — as various „kinds“ and „forms“, accordingly without a subject and outside the framework within which it works in the real life of individuals, groups and classes, 3. such a reduced consciousness is interpreted,formally and mechanistically only and is not conceived as an innerly rich, materially structured whole.

The second approach, which is being put through and which seeks to examine social consciousness also at the level of the relative antagonism of matter and consciousness, understands social consciousness as an active moment of the totality of social, structured life activities of social groups and classes and thus as socially rooted, historically concrete ideological millieu, materialized in sign systems.