The role of the humanities in the development of society

Humanities (from humanus - human, homo - man) - sciences that specialize in man and his life in society.The humanities arose as a logical continuation of scholasticism. According to the object, subject and methodology, studies are often identified or intersected with the social sciences, while being opposed to the natural and abstract sciences based on the criteria of the subject and method. In the humanities, if accuracy is important, for example, the description of a historical event, then clarity of understanding of this event is even more important. Unlike the natural sciences, where subject-object relations predominate, in the humanities we are talking mainly about subject-subject relations (in connection with which the need for intersubjective relations, dialogue, communication with another is postulated). In the humanities, the concept of truth plays an important role: wherever cognition unfolds around a person, the cognizer cannot remain an indifferent observer - he is transformed along with cognition; knowledge acquires a moral component; epistemology becomes epistemology; the truth of humanitarian knowledge is identified with the truth. The humanities include some sections of philosophy, cultural studies, religious studies, philology, linguistics, literary criticism, art history, partly (in cooperation with the social sciences) history, psychology, anthropology, ethnography, cognitive science, as well as a number of other, non-conventional disciplines, for example, those studying human metamorphosis and humanity under the influence of the techno-environment (techno-humanism).

Based on the classification of sciences by Francis Bacon, the French educator D'Alembert was the first to combine logic, history, legal, economic and political sciences, literature and art into the science of man, laying the foundation for the modern concept of "humanities".

After the unification of sciences by d'Alembert, French schools, especially private ones, began to reform the system, separating the humanities and technical sciences, it is known that at the beginning of the 19th century, tests were introduced to determine the inclinations of children either to the humanities or to the technical sciences, after which they made schedules for certain groups, but this practice did not last long.

The humanities began to take shape as institutionalized (university) disciplines only in the 19th century. At this time, the complex of the so-called. The humanities are united under the name of "sciences of the spirit" (Geisteswissenschaften). For the first time, the concept of "science of the spirit" is found in the translation of Schiel's "System of Logic" by J. St. Mill (translation of the expression "moral science"), but some German researchers believe that the formation of this concept began even before the translation of Schiel. The concept of “science of the spirit” is widely used thanks to the work of V. Dilthey “Introduction to the sciences of the spirit, which substantiates the methodological principles of the “sciences of the spirit”. Dilthey in his works considers a number of issues underlying the "sciences of the spirit" (for example, the historicity of these sciences, their linguistic nature, as well as the problems of experience and understanding). At the very beginning of the Introduction to the Sciences of the Spirit, he noted that if before the beginning of the 18th century. metaphysics prevailed over the sciences of society and history, then already from the middle of the same century they fell into an equally hopeless subordination to the natural sciences.

One can also note the transformation of the traditional division of sciences, leading its history from Aristotle along the lines of Kant - Cohen -Bakhtin. Namely, the separation of the logical, ethical, aesthetic and in a very special way the religious experience of responsibility.

In logic, the cause-and-effect relations of the objective are considered in the sense of natural scientific rationality, in this respect the world is considered from the position of the subject, which objectifies and arranges the objects of the world of existence. In a way, this is a certain scale of the attitude towards the world of phenomena as a universal and absolute substance. In ethics, the attitude to the other as to oneself, in this area significant moral maxims and references to authority are formulated. In aesthetics, we are talking about the relationship between the author and the hero, the viewer and the work. In this regard, two consciousnesses that do not coincide with each other always collide, where one completes the other in all moments transgredient (background, image, decoration, etc.) to it.

The area of religion correlates with the ethical, but goes beyond this division, since we are talking about communication with God (including reading religious literature, the form of this communication, etc.). Here, first of all, we are dealing with Cohen's idea of predetermined research in a chosen way and attitude to description, or, in the words of G. Cohen, "the methodology of the approach constitutes the subject of research."

In Martin Heidegger's article "The Time of the Picture of the World" in the humanities, the criticism of sources (their discovery, selection, verification, use, preservation and interpretation) corresponds to the experimental study of nature in the natural sciences. M. M. Bakhtin in his work “On the Philosophical Foundations of the Humanities” writes that: “The subject of the humanities is expressive and speaking being. This being never coincides with itself and therefore is inexhaustible in its sense and meaning”, but the main task of humanitarian research, in his opinion, is the problem of understanding speech and text as objectifications of a producing culture. In the humanities, understanding passes through the text - through questioning the text in order to hear what can only be said: the intentions, the reasons, the reasons for the goal, the intentions of the author. This understanding of the meaning of the utterance moves in the mode of analysis of speech or text, the life event of which, “that is, its true essence, always develops at the boundary of two consciousnesses, two subjects” (this is a meeting of two authors).

Thus, the primary given of all disciplines of the humanities is speech and text, and the main method is the reconstruction of meaning and hermeneutic research. The key problem of the humanities is the problem of understanding. M. N. Epshtein in his books on the theory of the humanities characterizes them as self-reflective: in them the very subject of knowledge - man and humanity -becomes the subject of study. “The paradox of self-reference stands at the center of the humanities, determining the complex relationship between their humanitarian and scientific character. The humanities study the student himself, name the namer…” Therefore, in the humanities “human science is inseparable from human creativity. The subject of human science cannot be fully objectified because it is in the process of becoming, and each act of self-description is also an event of its self-construction. In humanistics, a person not only discovers something in the world of subjects, but also produces his own subjectivity in the course of self-knowledge. Mikhail Naumovich Epshtein: From knowledge to creativity. How the humanities can change the world., M. - St. Petersburg: Center for Humanitarian Initiatives, 201.

As N. I. Basovskaya notes: “The humanities are distinguished by interest and attention to a person, his activity, and, first of all, spiritual activity”. According to G. Ch. Huseynov - “The humanist is engaged in the scientific study of the results of human artistic activity”