What are the spiritual and moral guidelines of a person? What is their role in human activities? Moral values ​​and guidelines

Living together people is impossible without the development of written and unwritten rules and norms, which are adhered to and guided by all participants in social life in everyday life, work, politics, personal, group, international relations.

Each field of activity develops its own specific rules and norms: codes of honor, statutes, regulations, technological rules, instructions. However, within the framework of each culture, its own specific and universal regulator of social life and social relations is being developed. Such a regulator is morality - a system of general norms and rules, requirements imposed on each individual and fixing the general and basic that constitutes the culture of interhuman relations that has developed in the centuries-old experience of the development of a given society.

Morality (from lat. moralis- moral) applies to all members of a given society, thereby ensuring the consciousness of community and unity, the belonging of each person to a certain community. Morality as a system of moral norms, rules and requirements should be distinguished from morality - the degree of acceptance by an individual and society of the requirements of morality and their leadership in real life.

Morality is realized not only in norms and requirements, prohibitions and restrictions, but also in customs, positive models, ideals, which are examples of moral behavior from the glorious past, selfless and exemplary behavior of contemporaries. Such examples and ideals act as moral values ​​expressing ideas about the desired, proper, "accepted" behavior.

The strengthening of moral values ​​and morals in society in general is served by: family education, the system of school and extracurricular education, cultural and educational work of institutions and cultural organizations, various public organizations and movements. Morality and ethics serve as a prerequisite and basis for law - a system of social regulation based on laws, the adoption of which, as well as control over implementation, is entrusted to state authorities.

The study of morality, its constituent moral values ​​is engaged in a special branch of philosophical knowledge - ethics. The highest moral value is good (good). A great many philosophical treatises, religious sermons and instructions are devoted to various interpretations of good, the criteria for distinguishing it from evil. The overwhelming majority of works of art in one way or another express these ideas, their inconsistency and eternal relevance. Despite the fact that different societies and in different eras have their own ideas about good, as human civilization develops, universal human values ​​are developed - ideas about good that are common for representatives of different peoples and different religions. These values ​​are human life, the quality of this life, freedom and dignity of the individual, justice.

Freedom and responsibility

The ultimate goal of morality and ethics is the autonomy of a moral person, capable of accepting duty. The real content of the philosophy of morality lies in the recognition of the dignity and value of each person, their freedom, and hence the right to responsibility. On the other hand, evil always acts as belittling, humiliation of human dignity. People need, in principle, not so much for happiness: guarantees of recognition of their dignity, the right to freedom. Moral duty cannot be imposed - it is always the result of a person's free choice. Even demanding the return of borrowed money, the performance of any obligations is possible only if we have previously received a promise to return the money, and the obligations - to fulfill.

Hypocrisy and slyness is the demand from people for selfless heroism. The meaning and significance of a heroic act is that it is an act free self-determination personality.

The imposition of a personality from the outside of humility can take deeply tragic and perverse forms, as, for example, it was with people who went through the hell of fascist and Stalinist concentration camps, in which the dignity and honor of a person were mockingly trampled. In the camp, a person was deprived of the main component of dignity - the ability to bear responsibility for their actions. Every minute of life did not belong to a person, he was completely deprived of free will, in fact, the ability to perform actions.

In order not to fall completely into the state of the "ideal prisoner", i.e. in order not to become a completely crushed and smeared personality, a person has the only way of salvation - to create a "zone of freedom" around him, ie. the sphere of life in which a person does what no one forces him to do. He himself makes decisions for action and is responsible for them. Let it even be a decision to brush your teeth. Even brushing your teeth can become an act, a straw that preserves the dignity of a person, himself as a person. This is the first condition for the self-preservation and survival of a person devoid of dignity from the outside. The second is the establishment of a certain "line" in behavior, which cannot be crossed. Such a feature in actions that determines the area of ​​autonomous behavior - necessary minimum preservation by a person of his own personality in antihuman conditions.

The internal guarantor of self-esteem is duty, self-giving, self-restraint, literally - self-determination (setting a limit for oneself, "traits") of the personality. But this is not a duty imposed from the outside, not "required" from the individual. This is "I can not do otherwise" - a conscious own vocation and moral choice. Moral is only an internal duty, taken upon by a person himself, and the ethics of duty is possible only as an internal self-determination, when a person is obliged to everyone, but nobody is to him. If the ethic of duty is applied to others, it becomes immoral and leads to violence.

A person who does not know the limits of his freedom and responsibility finds himself outside of morality. The responsibility that a person who has become internally free from the world has grasped, and which he is trying to realize in life, is ethics. The wider the zone of autonomous (free) behavior, the wider the zone of responsibility. And a person is the more ethical (freer = more responsible), the wider this sphere is. Traditional societies limited the sphere of freedom by their ethnicity, later it was limited by race, nation, class. Today, ethical self-determination in the sense of delineating the limit of freedom and responsibility is much broader, in fact, extending to the world as a whole.

The self-worth of a person is not a value for oneself, in front of oneself, but an expression of the desire to realize oneself, to find one's place in life and to do what no one but you can ever do. Man not only participates in the world, is not only arbitrary from it, but is also responsible for it, for its future, since he lives in it, creates in it, participates in its cognition and transformation. Even Seneca in his "Moral Letters to Lucilius" expressed the idea of ​​the degree of possible meaning of life as a requirement that a person should be useful to as many people as possible; if this is not possible, then at least to a few; if this is not possible, then at least for his neighbors; if this is also impossible, then at least to himself.

The Seneca Principle is broad enough to realize virtually any self-determination that justifies and gives meaning to life. Life is not given to a person "ready". He is given only opportunities, a perspective, on the basis of which he builds his life himself. No one will live his life for him, it is a matter of his choice. And the clearer a person's understanding of his capabilities and the boundaries of these capabilities, the more responsible his choice, the more acutely he experiences the freedom of his will.

Moral guidelines for human activity. Morality is a set of rules, norms of behavior that regulate and direct the activities of people. Morality is a form of normative and evaluative orientation of an individual, communities in behavior and spiritual life, mutual perception and self-perception of people. Morality is a historically formed set of unwritten laws, norms, rules. Morality is the norm of consciousness. Morality is the implementation of the norms of consciousness in life, in the practical behavior of people. Ethics is the science of morality and ethics. "The golden rule of morality": - "Act towards others as you would like others to behave with you." The categorical imperative (Immanuel Kant) is an unconditional, compulsory demand (command) that does not allow objections, binding for all people, regardless of their origin, position, circumstances. Functions of morality: 1. Evaluative - evaluation through the prism of good and evil, justice and injustice. 2. Cognitive - through the assessments of others, there is knowledge of oneself as a person. 3. Worldview - through the system of values, morality conveys worldview attitudes. 4. Educational - the individual learns to commit good deeds and to condemn bad, external norms gradually turn into internal regulators of behavior: conscience, shame, duty, etc. Categories of morality: 1. Good - everything is morally positive, that which is not evil and accompanies happiness. 2. Fairness is a measure of correspondence between the actual content of various actions and their assessment in public opinion from the standpoint of what should be done. 3. Duty is a moral task. 4. Shame is an internal control mechanism, a person's awareness of his inconsistency with accepted norms or the expectations of others. 5. Conscience - a person's assessment of their actions. 6. Freedom - the right of a person to the independence of his inner spiritual life and the ability to determine his own beliefs. ("Freedom of conscience" freedom of religion and organized worship) 7. Mercy - compassionate, benevolent, caring, loving attitude to another person, striving to help everyone in need. 8. Happiness - satisfaction with your life, experience and awareness of beauty, truth. 1 Happiness and pleasure are interconnected states of the human soul. Pleasure (enjoyment) is a feeling and experience that accompanies the satisfaction of needs and interests. Hedonism (pleasure) is a system of views and a way of life, which is based on the idea that the pursuit of pleasure and aversion from suffering is the root meaning of human actions, the real basis of happiness. Hedonism is the ethics of pleasure, its basic principles: 1. "Enjoyment is the goal of life, and everything that gives pleasure and leads to it is good." 2. "Act so as to experience as much pleasure as possible." A person is born a hedonist (the child's pleasures in feeding, rocking, the warmth of the mother's hands, caressing, playing, etc.), but as he grows up, a person increasingly has to face restrictions and learn that any pleasure, a happy state is given at a high cost and effort. This requires a person to control his desire for pleasure, the ability to endure displeasure. An extreme form of hedonism ("enjoyment at any cost") leads to violence and cruelty. Limiters of hedonism: 1. To enjoy one at the expense of all is prohibited by society. 2. Endless pleasures sooner or later lead to satiety. One of the forms of manifestation of hedonism is adventurism and a thirst for risky adventures. If an adventure is a form of private life, then there is no great harm to society. But in history there are many great adventurers who made destructive raids on entire countries and continents. (Pirates). Reasonable hedonism can be not only tolerated, but also encouraged by society if it turns into an engine of creativity, art, science. (The process of writing a book, composing a symphony, developing a scientific theory brings maximum pleasure to a person). From a biological and psychophysiological point of view, hedonism is invaluable, because contributes to the reduction and extinction of internal stress (physical and mental), helps to restore the vital functions of the body. Moral categories are characterized by the following concepts: 1. Moral norms. 2. Moral values. 3. Moral qualities. 4. Moral principles. 5. Moral ideals. Moral categories are positive and negative: 1. Good and evil. 2. Virtue and vice, etc. 2 The paradox of virtue lies in the gap between knowledge and deed: people generally know what virtue is, but many (and sometimes most) act viciously. We demand virtue from others, but when it comes to ourselves, we do not act in the right way, but in the way that pleases us. The moral ideal is the concretization for given historical, cultural, social conditions of ideas about good and evil, duty, conscience and other moral concepts. Moral choice is the most optimal way practical assertion of the highest moral values ​​in a specific life situation. Value - the positive or negative significance of objects of the surrounding world for a person, social group, society as a whole. Values ​​(in the broad sense of the word) are generalized, stable ideas about something as preferred, as a good, i.e. about what meets some needs, interests, intentions, goals, plans of a person. 7 fundamental values: Truth, Beauty, Goodness, Benefit, Dominance, Justice, Freedom. 1. Social sphere - Justice. (Equality, brotherhood, collectivism, friendship, exchange, cooperation are based on justice). 2. Economic sphere - Benefit. (Profit, benefit, etc.) 3. Political sphere - Domination. (Struggle for power, leadership, career, etc.). 4. Spiritual sphere - Truth, Beauty, Goodness. (Science is built around truth, religion - around good, culture and art - around beauty, education - at the intersection of good and truth). Freedom is a state common to all, a value common to all. (A value that is needed by all people in all areas). Values ​​can coexist, enter into an alliance. (Striving for profit and domination). Spirituality is the turning of a person to higher values ​​- to the ideal, as a conscious desire of a person to improve himself, to bring his life closer to this ideal, to become spiritualized. The main features of morality: 1. Universality. 2. Voluntariness. 3

What is the essence and significance of the Golden Rule of Morality? What is good and evil. duty and conscience? What is the theoretical and practical significance moral choice and moral assessment?

Social norms (see § 6), morality and law (see § 7).

There are several scientific definitions of morality and ethics. Let's cite one of them: morality is a form of normative-evaluative orientation of the individual, communities in behavior and spiritual life, mutual perception and self-perception of people.

Sometimes morality and morality are distinguished: morality is the norms of consciousness, and morality is the implementation of these norms in life, in the practical behavior of people.

Morality is ethics - a theory that considers the essence, problems of moral choice, moral responsibility of a person, concerning all aspects of his life, communication, work, family, civic orientation, national and confessional relations, professional duty. Therefore, ethics is considered to be "practical philosophy."

SPIRITUAL LIFE REGULATOR

You already know that, being a social being, a person cannot but obey certain rules. it necessary condition the survival of the human race, the integrity of society, the sustainability of its development. At the same time, rules and norms are designed to protect the interests and dignity of an individual. Among such norms, the most important are the norms of morality. Morality is a system of norms, rules governing communication and behavior of people to ensure the unity of public and personal interests.

Who sets moral standards? Different answers are given to this question. The authoritative position of those who see their source in the activities and commandments of the founders of world religions - the great teachers of mankind: Confucius, Buddha, Moses, Jesus Christ.

Christ taught: "... In everything you want people to treat you well, so behave yourself with them." So, in ancient times, the foundation was laid for the main universal human normative moral requirement, which was later called the "golden rule of morality." It reads: "Treat others as you would like others to behave toward you."

According to another point of view, the norms and rules of morality are formed in a natural-historical way, on the basis of mass life practice, they are polished in various life situations gradually turning into the moral laws of society.

Based on experience, the people were guided by moral prohibitions and Requirements: do not kill, do not steal, help in trouble, tell the truth, keep promises. At all times, greed, cowardice, deception, hypocrisy, cruelty, envy were condemned. Freedom, love, honesty, generosity, kindness, hard work, modesty, loyalty, mercy have always been approved.

The moral attitudes of the personality were investigated by the greatest philosophers. One of them - Immanuel Kant - formulated the categorical imperative of morality, the imitation of which is very important for the implementation of the moral guidelines of activity. A categorical imperative is an unconditional compulsory requirement (command) that does not allow objections, binding for all people, regardless of their origin, position, circumstances.

How does Kant characterize the categorical imperative? Let us give one of the formulations, think it over, discuss it, compare it with the "golden rule". There is, Kant argued, one categorical imperative: "Always act according to such a maxim (maxim is the highest principle, a rule that you can at the same time consider a law)." A categorical imperative like " Golden Rule", asserts the personal responsibility of a person for his actions, teaches not to do to the other what you do not wish for yourself. Therefore, these provisions, like morality in general, are humanistic in nature, because the other acts as a friend. Speaking about meaning." the golden rule "and the Kantian imperative, the modern scientist K. Pred wrote that" no other thought has made such a powerful influence on the moral development of mankind. "

Any person does not live by himself, he is surrounded by other people. He must live in society, obeying the established requirements. This is necessary for the survival of humanity, the preservation of the unity of society and the reliability of its improvement. But society does not require a person to sacrifice his own material interests for his sake, because principles have been approved that are designed to defend the needs and benefits of an individual. The moral foundations and spiritual guidelines of the individual are of paramount importance.

The spirituality of human life

Courage of people coincides with their awareness of themselves as individuals: they try to evaluate personal moral qualities and develop a sphere of spiritual addictions, including erudition, beliefs, emotions, sensations, desires and inclinations. Science defines the spirituality of human society as the full range of emotions and intellectual conquests of humanity. It concentrates the knowledge and research of all spiritual traditions perceived by human society and the creative creation of the latest values.

An individual, developed spiritually, is distinguished by significant subjective characteristics, strives for lofty spiritual goals and designs that determine the nature of his initiatives. Scientists consider spirituality to be an ethical aspiration and human consciousness. Spirituality is seen as understanding and life experience. People with weak or completely soulless are not able to perceive all the many-sidedness and splendor of what surrounds them.

The advanced worldview considers spirituality to be the highest stage of the formation and self-determination of an adult individual, when the basis and life essence are not personal desires and attitudes, but the main universal human priorities:

• good;
• mercy;
• beautiful.

Mastering them forms a value orientation, a conscious readiness of society to change life in accordance with these principles. This is especially important for young people.

The origin of morality and its study

Morality means a complex of customs and canons that regulate contacts and communication of people, their actions and manners, as well as serve as a guarantee of harmony of collective and personal needs. Moral regulations have been known since ancient times. There are different points of view on the sources of appearance moral standards... It is believed that their primary source was the practice and sermons of the greatest mentors and teachers of mankind:

• Christ;
• Confucius;
• Buddha;
• Muhammad.

Theological manuscripts of most beliefs contain a textbook principle that later became the highest law of morality. He recommends a person to act with people as he would like to be treated with him. On this basis, the basis of the primary regulatory ethical prescription was laid in the culture of hoary antiquity.

An alternative point of view argues that moral principles and canons are formed historically and are borrowed from numerous everyday experiences. Literature and education contribute to this. Relying on existing practice has allowed humanity to form key moral orientations, prescriptions and prohibitions:

• do not shed blood;
• do not kidnap someone else;
• not to deceive and not to testify;
• help out a neighbor in difficult circumstances;
• keep your word, fulfill your covenants.

In any era, it was censured:

• greed and stinginess;
• cowardice and indecision;
• deceit and double-mindedness;
• inhumanity and cruelty;
• treachery and deceit.

The following properties were approved:

• decency and nobility;
• honesty and honesty;
• disinterestedness and spiritual generosity;
• responsiveness and humanity;
• diligence and diligence;
• restraint and moderation;
• reliability and dedication;
• responsiveness and compassion.

The people reflected these qualities in proverbs and sayings.

Remarkable philosophers of the past studied spiritual and moral human guidelines. I. Kant deduced the formulation of the categorical requirement of morality, which coincides in content with the golden principle of morality. This approach states the personal responsibility of the individual for the deed.

Fundamental concepts of morality

In addition to direct regulation of the course of action, morality also contains ideals and values ​​- the embodiment of all the best, exemplary, irreproachable, significant and noble in people. The ideal is considered the standard, the height of perfection, the crown of creation - what a person should strive for. Values ​​are called especially valuable and revered not only for one person, but for all of humanity. They show the relationship of the individual with reality, with other people and with himself.

Anti-values ​​reflect the negative attitude of people towards specific manifestations. Such assessments are dissimilar in different civilizations, among different nationalities, in different social categories... But on their basis, human relationships are built, priority is established, the most important attitudes are indicated. Values ​​are divided into the following categories:

• legal, or legitimate;
• state and legal;
• pious;
• aesthetic and creative;
• spiritual and moral.

Primary moral values ​​form a complex of traditional and moral orientation of a person, coupled with the concept of morality. Among the main categories are good and evil, virtue and vice, correlated in pairs, as well as conscience, patriotism.

Taking morality in thoughts and activities, the individual must control his actions and desires, make increased demands on himself. Regular implementation of positive deeds strengthens morality in consciousness, and the absence of such deeds undermines the ability of humanity to make independent moral decisions, responsibility for their actions.