4. RELATIONSHIP OF PERSONALITY AND SOCIETY

The problem of relations between the individual and society by sociologists is treated ambiguously. No one doubts the fact of dependence of a person on society. Differences of opinion raise questions:

1) Does a person have independent features?

2) Is there a reverse effect?

3) to what degree can a person change social life?

Three different positions are represented in the concepts of the classics of sociology: Emile Durkheim, Max Weber and Karl Marx.

E. Durkheim recognizes that society arises from the interaction of individuals, but once it arises, it begins to live according to its own laws. And now the whole life of individuals is determined by social reality, to influence which they can not or only slightly, without changing the essence of social facts. Durkheim, therefore, gives preference to the strength of social reality as objectively existing and personality-determining conditions. The very same person is helpless in relation to society - a special transpersonal real power.

The position of Max Weber is directly opposed to the point of view of Emil Durkheim. For M. Weber there is no social reality, except for individuals: all public education is only a process of their interaction. He believes that a class, a nation, a state or a joint-stock company cannot, by themselves, act purposefully, and therefore are not subjects of social development. The status of a social object in the sociology of Max Weber is only an individual. The concept of "social status" is introduced into Weber sociology.

In the theory of Karl Marx, a person is recognized as a subject of social development along with classes, nations, family, state and humanity, although it is not highlighted and does not fall into the number of driving forces of social progress. According to Marx's concept, a person is not only a subject, but also an object of society. The individual’s livelihoods are comprehensively determined by society in the form of the social conditions of its existence, the heritage of the past, the objective laws of history, which it, like other subjects of activity, can neither change nor cancel. But some space for the social action of the individual still remains. According to Marx, “history” is not some special person who uses a person to achieve his goals, she is nothing more than the activity of a person pursuing his goals. Realization of human goals is possible thanks to the objective practice, the development of the objective world and its transformation in the labor process.

Marx's subjectivity of a man is the result of his practice, during which people constantly expand the sphere of their freedom and responsibility for the results of their own labor. Every individual involved in the practice is a subject of social development. The historical result is the resultant efforts of many people pursuing different goals. Therefore, the consequences of activity are often the opposite of the subjective intentions of the individual.