Social Time In The Life Of A Man And Society :: Philosophy Philosophical Essays Sociology

Social Time In The Life Of A Man And Society ABSTRACT: The subject of this paper is social time-the peculiarities of the Past-Present-Future in social processes, and their unbreakable connection. I also focus on the necessity of taking stock of time in human activities and in the societal development. The Past in progress of society signifies the Already-happened which has become the possession of history. This Past exerts an enormous influence on the Present, determining it both directionally and functionally. The Present includes the Present itself, a part of the Past, and some elements of the Future. It represents the only reality for human beings as life is lived in the Present only. The Present creates the material and spiritual preconditions for the Future. Resolution of contemporary global problems is crucial for our Future which runs sequentially in three stages: immediate Future, visible Future and distant Future. All three exert influence on the Present by providing ideological and informational images. Time disciplin es our minds and wills, organizes our actions and promotes our cognitions of the Past, the Present and the Future. All the scientific philosophical systems, worked out in the history of mankind, have a big methodological and educational meaning. Separate categories, like social time, having attributive qualities are not an exception. Everyone: a scientist, a politician, an ordinary person, the whole mankind can't help taking into account the factor of time in their life and activities. We can say that they need it like the air to breath. That is why time was investigated in the theoretical systematized form by well-known philosophers and scientists of the past centuries - Aristotle, Augustine, Kant, Newton, Hegel, Marx, and ones of the Modern Age - Einstein, Russell, Heiddeger, Spirkin, etc. Each of them contributed to the understanding of time and its qualities. The most important issues of the past can be summarized in the following statements. Time is an attribute of the matter, its integral quality; time is indissolubly connected with space and motion; there is no "absolute" time in the material world. Time in the form of category, being abstract, can exist only in the theory and be used in scientific purposes. Time has important qualities: objectivity, that is it exists as the matter irrespective of our will and consciousness; it is characterized by the eternity of its duration - it has neither begging nor end; and it is contradictory. The latter means: from the one hand, time is eternal, on the other hand, all objects and processes exist for a certain time and have an end.