ETHOS, MORALITY, HARMA: TO THE GUESTION OF THE OBJECT OF DESCRIPTIVE ETHICS

Abstract

In line with the discussion of the ambiguity and confusion of definitions of the term morality, the concept of morality as a multilayered phenomenon and the object of descriptive ethics is clarified. Morality includes (1) behavioral patterns, regularly reproduced in human communities (part of the ethos), which in turn are associated with (2) specific psycho-emotional and motivational-volitional mechanisms of regulation of individual behavior in the social environment, (3) a special way of recording information in social memory and the cultural-genetic mechanism of imitation, ie belongs to socio-cultural mechanisms and is not limited to what operates at the level of individual mental organization. And the fourth layer here is the actual mental activity, woven into a network of social communications, which affects individual behavior (morality in the narrow sense). Component of the ethos of the community, which is reproduced as a cultivated norm of the “right” person, which includes his ability to subject his will to certain rules of relations, to lead a proper life, which is highly valued in this community, which increases social status and self-esteem. the desire to imitate her and protect her as one’s own, as a personal value, as a significant person, is a harma. The harmа of ethos is a cultivated model of man as a social measure of “humanity”, its paradigm. He who meets this standard, the charm, is his own and deserves to be like him. Otherwise, the mechanism of xenophobic alienation is triggered. The presented distinction between the terms morality, ethos and haram allows us to more clearly structure the problematic field of descriptive ethics, distinguishing between established patterns of behavior characteristic of a particular community (its ethos), cultivated in it a sample of “his”, which fixed protection and selective mechanism (in the narrow sense) as part of the social impact on the individual and social consciousness in the form of teachings, guidelines, explanations, and so on.