Daily Life As A Phenomenon Of Modern Philosophical Discourse

Abstract

The article is focused on the analysis of the phenomenon of everyday life, the study of which allows us to trace the transformation of human culture at the present stage of its development. The problematic field of analysis of everyday life covers the life world of a person – the subject of everyday empirical reality, whose life world is represented by the sum of the evidences that determines certain features of thinking and behavior patterns. To achieve this goal, the author formulated the following series of questions that will help to obtain positive results: to analyze the philosophical foundations of the emerging and use of the phenomenon of everyday life; to identify the semantic boundaries of the emerging of the everyday life concept; to reveal the causation of the spatio-temporal transformations of everyday reality within the framework of modern culture. The purpose of the study is to analyze the theoretical and practical aspects of everyday life, which allow us to reveal the causation of the spatio-temporal transformations of everyday reality within the framework of modern culture. The following conclusions are made: the life world of each person is represented by a wide palette of many realities, in which everyday life reflects the sphere of the unmediated being of a person as such. Everyday life takes place in certain space and time, and therefore, these phenomena are complementary and interdependent. The study of everyday life can contribute to the study of the nature of the transformation processes experienced today in ethnic cultures.

Keywords: Daily routinelife worldsubjectobjective realitysocial reality

Introduction

The relevance of the issue of everyday life is due to the situation of global changes in the structures of social ties and relations, demonstrating the need to study the transforming life of modern human. In the context of sociocultural transformations, especially experienced by modern traditional society (Akayev, 2017), the philosophical understanding of everyday life and its genesis allows not only to get an objective picture of the mental and cognitive metamorphosis of the consciousness of modern man, but also has prognostic value. The culture of everyday life reflects the way of life of different segments of the population, which in their diversity create a single space of the vital world of everyday life.

Problem Statement

The problematic field of analysis of everyday life covers the life world of a person (Husserl, 2004) - the subject of everyday empirical reality, whose life world is represented by a sum of evidence that determines certain features of thinking and behavior. The promotion of everyday life as a subject of discussion is due to the fact that in the modern information-enriched world, there is a tendency of transformational shifts in the emphasis of traditional values of ethnic and cultural identity. The problem of everyday life is the subject of research by many scientists both abroad and in Russia. Some philosophers develop the ontological status of everyday life (Heidegger, 2003), seeing in it a multi-layered structure, others use a phenomenological approach (Husserl, 2001; Berger & Lukman, 1995; Schütz, 2003), others - within the framework of hermeneutics (Gadamer, 1988). The domestic formulation of the problem of everyday life is reflected in the fact that some conceptualize common knowledge and common sense as the modes of everyday life (Pukshansky, 1987). Others distinguish between everyday life and its specific images: everyday reality and everyday consciousness, everyday experience, and common-sense philosophy (Kasavin & Shchashelev, 2004). A few researchers consider various aspects of everyday life: mental, sociocultural, spiritual. The study of everyday life is productive in the analysis of its mental and cognitive aspects, which makes it possible to trace the causation of the spatial-temporal transformations of everyday reality in the ontological structure of the phenomenon of "everyday life". Thus, the versatility of the phenomenon of everyday life as a complex object of research outlines the problem area of its explication.

Research Questions

To achieve this goal, the author formulated the following series of questions that will help to get positive results:

- to analyze the philosophical basis of the birth and use of the phenomenon of everyday life;

- to identify the semantic boundaries of the birth of the concept of everyday life;

- to reveal the causation of the spatial-temporal transformations of everyday reality in the framework of modern culture.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the study is to analyze the theoretical and practical aspects of everyday life, which allow us to trace the causation of the spatial and temporal transformations of everyday reality in the framework of modern culture.

Research Methods

The methodological basis of the study is the general philosophical dialectical method, which allows us to consider the subject of research from the point of view of its connection and development within the social sciences.

General scientific research methods: system and structural-functional analysis.

The basis of the work consists of the fundamental positions of foreign and domestic researchers of everyday life.

Findings

If we touch upon the origin of the concept of “everyday life”, then it should be noted that “everyday life” has become the subject of research by scientists of the 20th century. The authors have already turned to the analysis of this phenomenon (Betilmerzaeva, 2017). With the philosophical understanding of this phenomenon, we meet in the philosophy of E. Husserl, who declares that "each of us has its own life world, which is thought of as a world for all" (Husserl, 2004, p. 336). The life-world is given to us in ordinary experience and is the basis of all objective knowledge (Husserl, 2004). For E. Husserl, “the universe is given in advance as the universe of “things”, “which” each have their own specific types, expressed in the“ main words “of a given language” (Husserl, 2004). Further, the problem of the life world of E. Husserl gave impetus to numerous studies of everyday life, first in Western writings, for example, A. Schütz, I. Hoffman, G. Garfinkel, P. Berger, T. Lukman, then domestic thinkers such as I.T. Kasavin, M. Bakhtin, Yu.M. Lotman, E.V. Zolotukhina-Abolina et al. (Garfinkel, 2007; Hoffman, 2003).

As the researchers note, a person, due to the fact that he is a thinking being with a rational ability to comprehend his own essence, creates reality around himself and becomes an inhabitant of this reality. But the creativity of the subject of reality is determined by the factors of his upbringing and education. Alfred Schütz, a well-known Austrian sociologist and philosopher, at the beginning of his article “On the multiplicity of realities,” notes that according to James, an American philosopher and psychologist, the nature of reality is characterized as subjective. Thus, probably, based on the plurality of subjects, there are infinitely many different orders of realities, each of which assumes its own and separate style of existence. James calls them "subuniversums" and cites as examples the world of sensations or physical things, the world of science, the world of ideal relationships, the world of "idols of the race", all sorts of supernatural worlds of mythology and religion, various worlds of individual beliefs, worlds of complete madness and eccentricity. In the popular consciousness, all these sub-worlds are comprehended incoherently; in dealing with one of them, he temporarily forgets about his relationship with the others. But any subject we think of refers to at least one of these sub-worlds. "Every world at that moment, when attention is directed to it, is real in its manners, only its reality eludes attention."

We create around us a multitude of worlds conditioned by our practice, and these worlds together constitute a single “world of everyday life”. According to Schütz, the “world of everyday life” should designate the intersubjective world that existed long before our birth, experienced and interpreted by others, our predecessors, as an organized world now given to our experience and interpretation. But the new interpretation of the world by the subject is initiated by the stock of his previous experiences - his own, inherited, established in the process of education and training, which acquire the status of "present knowledge."

Schütz (2003) notes that “this stock of cash experiences includes our knowledge that the world in which we live is a world of clearly limited objects with certain qualities” (p. 4). If a philosophical or psychological analysis of the structure of our experiences can be retrospectively described as the influence of elements of this world on our sensations, when through active perception our mind selects certain properties from the perceptual field, then from the perspective of a natural installation, the world appears from the very beginning as a world of intersubjective interaction.

Interaction involves the structural organization of the system, represented by various elements that act on each other and condition each other's existence. “The world of everyday life is a scene and at the same time an object of our actions and interactions”, which appear to be objects that resist our actions. And we must either overcome this resistance or surrender to the world. The world, in this sense, according to Schütz (2003), is something that we must modify with our actions, or something that modifies our actions. Our modification of the world is a creative process.

If A. Schütz takes the world for granted, then Garfinkel (2007) clarifies that this world appears as "the natural facts of life." “Familiar scenes of everyday life, interpreted by individuals as “natural facts of life”, are the most important facts of individuals' daily existence both as the real world and as a product of activity in the real world” (Garfinkel, 2007, p. 46). Daily routine is interpreted not as one of the “finite regions of meaning”, but the condition of those. There are certain stereotypes, standard background expectations, which contribute to the interpretation of a fact-event by a subject. Using background expectations as an interpretation scheme, “real phenomena become recognizable and understandable to him as phenomena-familiar-events” (Garfinkel, 2007, p. 47). Background expectations as a universal scheme of interpretation of the social world are not always open to the subject, and distance is necessary to see them.

According to Garfinkel (2007), to see how social structures normally reproduce, it is necessary to disrupt order — one must “produce and maintain confusion, fright and confusion, produce socially structured effects of nervousness, shame, guilt and resentment and disorganize the interaction” (p. 48).

Revealing the “strangeness of a steadily familiar world,” Garfinkel (2007) suggests deliberately deviating from the expected course of everyday life. And if earlier sociology appealed to the "affective", it was not in that context: it did not consider the "background of common understandings" (p. 55), a violation which, according to Garfinkel, leads to a violation of the usual structures of communication.

The list of background expectations formulated by Garfinkel largely corresponds to Schütz’s designs. “The individual supposes, supposes that the other supposes, and supposes that, just as he supposes, the other person assumes the same about him”.

Also, the “social order” is of interest for ethnomethodology as a “standardized order of everyday life”: formed by practical, common-sense actions. Therefore, an analysis of “order” is a consideration of its invisible background — expectations that allow interaction participants to present their actions as “reasonable”, “fair”, etc. Everyday practice is thus organized by actions identical to the explanatory models resorted to by individuals to interpret situations, i.e. “Society” is real only as methods used to explain it.

Any social interaction, according to Hoffman (2003), proceeds within a certain framework, or in frames. The term “frame” implies a certain situation created in accordance with the principles of the social organization of events and depending on the subject involvement in them. According to Hoffman (2003), social life is characterized as a joint activity that is based on differentiation and integration. And the main role in this process is found in the signs-guides, which are represented by Hoffman (2003) as status symbols dividing the social world of people. Status symbols help to maintain intracategorical and intercategorical solidarity. Status symbols must be distinguished from collective symbols that deny the categorical difference. Thus, the implementation of joint activities in the context of differentiation and integration is observed. Hoffman (2003) correctly notes the fact that the behavior of people who represent a particular social class is more often affirmed in the same positions.

Berger and Lukman (1999) in their studies emphasize the fact that a person is aimed at finding a meaningful place in the reality of his daily life. Berger and Lukman (1999) argue the idea that any knowledge is a consequence of social interaction.

Studies of everyday life, as we see, has a long history. An important stage in the study of everyday life was the transition of historical analysis to the historical and anthropological plane in the writings of representatives of the scientific direction of historical anthropology: J. Burckhardt, J. Huizinga, M. Blok, L. Fevre, F. Braudel, A.Ya. Gurevich, Yu.M. Lotman, G.S. Knabe and others (Braudel, 1986). In their works, an interest appeared in ordinary things, trifles, details, interest in those ideas and meanings, which were hidden in themselves simple, everyday things, intensified. The concept of "everyday life" expresses the methodological setting of the French historical school "Annals", whose representatives believed that history does not occur from time to time, not from event to event, but daily. Braudel (1986) considered historical time as internally heterogeneous, distinguishing various levels in it — a short time, a time of average duration and a long time — that characterize the various structures of people living together. In the daily experience of man, F. Braudel also distinguishes three levels: material life is people and things. Food and beverages, housing and building materials, furniture and stoves, costumes and fashion, transportation and energy sources, luxury goods and money, tools and technical inventions, diseases and methods of treatment, plans for villages and cities - everything that serves man that relates to him in everyday life. Changes in this zone are extremely slow. Above it rises the second floor - a more mobile zone - a market economy, production and exchange mechanisms associated with the activities of people in agriculture, with workshops, shops, banks, fairs and markets. The third floor is transnational forces that can distort the course of the economy and shake the established order. These three levels have their upper and lower limits, which demarcate the boundaries of the “possible” and “impossible”. According to Braudel (1986), studies of the first tier make it possible to see what caused the course of history. In everyday life, bread plays a big role. Braudel (1986) cites the well-known proverb: “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are,” (p. 118) as food also shows the culture of a person, his social rank, material capabilities, national habits, level of civilization, age, taste preferences.

The course of time is also coupled with spatial parameters that dictate a tempo of time. Spatio-temporal aspects of everyday life together determine the modern originality of everyday life as a multidimensional phenomenon, the structure of which reflects all areas of social reality: politics, ideology, economics, science, education, etc. Scientific knowledge of everyday life implies such an attitude of the observer, when he can reflect on the everyday individual fact, to perceive the individual as a substitute class of objects, and to return to the fullness of the experience of a situation. In such a methodology of knowing every day, we can see the difference between scientific knowledge and ordinary observation.

Conclusion

The analysis of everyday life led to the following conclusions: the life world of each person is represented by a wide palette of many realities in which daily life reflects the sphere of the person’s direct existence as such. Daily life takes place in a certain space and time, and therefore these phenomena are complementary and interdependent. The study of everyday life has both theoretical and practical significance and can contribute to the study of the nature of the transformation processes experienced today in ethnic cultures.

References

1. Akayev, V. Kh. (2017). The mentality of the peoples of the Caucasus in the studies of Jan Chesnova: philosophical and anthropological analysis. The legacy of the ages, 4, 57–62.
2. Berger, P., & Lukman, T. (1999). Social Construction of Reality. Treatise on the sociology of knowledge. Moscow: Medium.
3. Betilmerzaeva, M. M. (2017). On the issue of mental features of everyday life (on the example of Grozny residents of the beginning of the XXI century). In The All-Russian Historical and Ethnographic Forum “The Role of the North Caucasian Cities in the Socio-Economic, Historical and Cultural Development of the Caucasus”, dedicated to the 200th anniversary of the foundation of the city of Grozny. 27–28 September. Grozny, Chechen Republic.
4. Braudel, F. (1986). Material civilization, economy and capitalism. XV–XVIII centuries. Per. with fr., vol. 1. The structures of everyday life: the possible and the impossible. Moscow.
5. Gadamer, G. (1988). Truth and Method. Moscow.
6. Garfinkel, G. (2007). Research on ethnomethodology. St. Petersburg, Peter.
7. Heidegger, M. (2003). Being and Time. Kharkov, Folio.
8. Hoffman, I. (2003). Frame analysis: an essay on the organization of everyday experience. Moscow: Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences.
9. Husserl, E. (2001). Cartesian Reflections. St. Petersburg: Publishing House "Science".
10. Husserl, E. (2004). The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology. St. Petersburg: Publishing House "Vladimir Dal".
11. Kasavin, I. T., & Shchavelev, S. P. (2004). Analysis of everyday life. Moscow: Kanon +.
12. Pukshansky, B. Ya. (1987). Ordinary knowledge. The experience of philosophical understanding. Leningrad: Publishing House of the Leningrad University.
13. Schütz, A. (2003). On the multiplicity of realities. Sociological review, 3(2), 3–34.