SOCIAL-PHILOSOPHICAL RECONSIDERATION OF THE CONCEPTS OF PROPERTY, WEALTH AND PROFITABILITY IN THE CONDITIONS OF WAR

Abstract

It has been demonstrated that the full-scale war initiated by the Russian Federation against Ukraine radically transforms the fundamental philosophical categories of social being—particularly those of property, wealth, and wellbeing — by displacing them beyond traditional legal and economic definitions and imbuing them with new situational, symbolic, and normative-value meanings. War is presented as a universal social construct that simultaneously affects institutional structures and everyday experience, prompting a reassessment of the concepts of stability, legitimacy, and prosperity. The triadic nature of these categories has been revealed, each of which operates within philosophical, societal, and sociocultural discourses. Property is interpreted not merely as a formalized right but as a form of social ordering that marks individual belonging, identity, and moral legitimacy. Wealth is conceptualized as the potential for surplus accumulation, signifying the capacity for influence, autonomy, and symbolic domination. Well-being emerges as a normatively acceptable threshold of sufficiency that shapes the image of an orderly life, social acceptability, and moral self-realization. It has been substantiated that war disrupts the traditional balance between these categories: well-being is increasingly detached from material property, wealth loses its juridical solidity, and property itself no longer guarantees prosperity. Instead, situational security, access to public resources, and the capacity for symbolic positioning in society gain importance. This transformation indicates a shift toward a new social ontology, characterized by flexible, adaptive, and unstable forms of legitimation. Profound contradictions between public perceptions of wealth, property, and well-being have been identified, manifesting in status paradoxes, moral ambivalence, and a loss of trust in traditional social hierarchies. These contradictions stem from a rupture between normative expectations and actual social practice—especially intensified in wartime conditions. The study has analyzed how the aforementioned categories function across various discursive dimensions, ranging from the philosophical-ontological (as forms of being) to the everyday-cultural (as notions of “a proper life”).