Subjective category. IV. Suffixes of subjective assessment I really like this kind of subjective categories

Genus category- this is a lexico-grammatical category of a noun; it realizes itself not in different forms of one word, but in different lexemes with the entire system of their forms, that is, it belongs to classification, or non-inflectional, categories.

The category of gender is defined as a category with an erased meaning; usually its grammatical content is seen in the ability of nouns to be combined with forms of agreed words specific for each gender variety.

The means of expressing the meaning of gender are associated with different levels of language, they are also criteria for differentiating nouns based on gender: semantic, morphological, word-formation, syntactic.

The gender of animate lexemes is expressed semantically, since their belonging to one or another gender is determined by the lexical meaning. Words that name males and male animals are masculine; names of female persons and female animals - to the feminine gender ( father - mother, bull- cow ). Moreover, in some cases, only the semantic criterion underlies the classification of nouns to one gender or another: boy - girl, grandfather - grandmother, uncles - aunts, in others it is combined with morphological: groom - bride, ram - sheep etc.

The names of persons and animals form generic correlations, among which the following types are distinguished:

Formed in a suffix way: teacher - teacher, wolf - she-wolf;

Formed using suffixoflexion: Alexander - Alexandra, raven - crow;

Formed suppletive: father - mother, drake- duck.

Gender correlations for nouns naming persons are quite regular; correspondence is violated in the following cases:

The names of persons by profession, position, or rank often lack feminine lexemes, which is explained by the predominance of male labor in these areas or by opposition and conservatism of the language system itself: professor, engineer, associate professor(formations with the suffix -sh(a) often indicate the role of a woman in a joint relationship: professor - professor’s wife, etc.);

Potentially possible formations of the masculine gender are absent for extralinguistic, non-linguistic reasons: childbirth worker, schoolgirl, bigamist;

Formally, masculine and feminine correlative nouns differ in their meanings: machinist - typist, technician - technician.

Lexemes naming birds and animals have more restrictions in the formation of correlative pairs:

1) lack of correlations in general, one lexeme names both a female and a male, and it can be a noun of both masculine and feminine gender: porcupine, perch, bullfinch, squirrel, tit, monkey etc.;

2) one noun names the female, the second - the male and is at the same time a generic concept: bear - she-bear (bears), elephant - she-elephant (elephants);

3) one word names a male, another a female and at the same time serves as a generic name: cat - cat (cats), ram - sheep (sheep);

4) one word names a male, another - a female, and the third is a generic name: stallion - mare (horse), gander - goose (goose).

Limitations in the formation of correlative pairs are explained by the frequency and conditions of use of the corresponding names in speech. The more often a lexeme is used, the more common it is, the sooner its correlate appears. And vice versa: there is no correlativity in rarely used names of animals and birds. Usually there are no correlates for the names of exotic animals, as well as small individuals; differentiating them by gender is not relevant for Russian people.

Thus, ultimately, the development of correlativity and the presence of limitations are explained by historical and cultural factors, the connection of language with the history and culture of the people.

For the animate nouns discussed above, the category of gender is meaningful, semantically significant, while for inanimate lexemes it is formal, and their differentiation by gender occurs on the basis of formal criteria, the most important of which is morphological.

Morphological indicators of the genus can be the ending in I. p. unit. h.: sea , window; the nature of the base and ending in I. p. units. h.: house(solid base, zero ending - masculine indicator), endings of R. p. and T. p. units. numbers for nouns with a soft base and a zero ending in the I. p. unit. numbers: guest - bone; R.p. - guest, bones; etc. - guest, bone.

Each genus has its own system of inflections, but there are exceptions. Okay, ending -A - sign of feminine words (country, freedom), but it can also be in masculine words (youth, governor), and for words of general gender (crybaby, crybaby), in such cases, gender is determined semantically or syntactically.

Indicators of gender can be word-forming means, either additional to inflectional indicators or acting as basic ones.

Together with inflection, suffixes express the meaning of the masculine gender -tel, -nik, -chik (-schik), -un, -ik etc.; feminine meaning - suffixes - nits- -k (a), -j (a), -ost, -sh (a), neuter meaning - suffixes -nits-, -k-(a), -stv-:teacher, mentor, pilot; teacher, student, runner; building, taking, tenacity etc.

Only the word formation criterion makes it possible to determine the meaning of gender for nouns like little house, domina, nightingale, hare: formations with such suffixes preserve the gender of the generating word.

Syntactic means are the most universal; they are used independently ( new coat ), and together with morphological ( interesting book ) and semantic ( beautiful lady ) criteria.

Means of expressing the category of gender

The gender category of a noun is a non-inflectional, syntagmatically identified morphological category, expressed in the ability of a noun in singular forms. h. treat selectively the generic forms of a word form consistent (in the predicate - coordinated) with it: desk, big tree; The evening has come, The girl would be walking; The window is open; The night is cold.

All nouns in the Russian language, except pluralia tantum, are classified under one of three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. When characterizing the gender of nouns as a morphological category, the first question that arises is whether the expression of gender can be attributed to the ending of nouns, since only in this case can gender be considered a morphological category of nouns.

This question arises for a number of reasons.

1) Gender is not always associated with inflection; it is also present in indeclinable nouns: attache – m.r., madam - and. r., foyer – Wed r.

2) Endings of nouns in plural do not have the ability to differentiate the gender of a word.

3) The gender of a modified noun in the singular cannot always be determined by its ending, for example, lexeme little house in I. p. has an ending -O, a refers to the masculine gender; lexemes domina, young man have an ending in I. p. -A, and also belong to the masculine gender.

4) Proper nouns (i.e., not substantives like dining room, sick, sick) do not change by gender.

5) Shape type keys/key, dahlia/dahlia form variants of one lexeme.

The listed reasons indicate that the gender of a noun is not always expressed by an ending. However, this does not mean that the endings of nouns are not related to gender at all: there is a certain dependence of gender on the type of substantive declension.

Thus, the gender of nouns forms a grammatical category without specific morphological means of expression. When expressing gender, substantive inflection needs to be supported by other features of the word. Thus, in the expression of the category of gender, means of different linguistic levels are involved:

1) morphemic (morphological) endings: pond, river, lake, tailor, dining room, roast;

2) phonemic - the final phoneme of the stem (zero inflection is an indicator of the masculine gender if the stem of the noun ends with a paired hard consonant or : house, table, sanatorium);

3) word-forming – substantive suffixes, most of which have a generic affiliation: candle- Nick, sugar- prostrate oh brother- stv-O;

4) lexical – gender is “predicted” by lexical semantics (grandfather, uncle, apprentice, madam, dandy;,

5) syntactic (agreement of adjective and verb with noun: new coat, district MTS, black coffee, the house was visible, the coat fell).

Due to the fact that gender is expressed by linguistic means of different levels, the gender of a word can be determined on different grounds.

There are words whose gender is determined by one feature: in the word dad- according to the lexical meaning, and in the word dining room - by morphological (ending -aya). But in most cases, gender is predetermined by a set of characteristics: in non-derivative words like pond, river, lake gender is determined by the ending (after the corresponding consonants) in combination with inanimateness; in derived suffixal nouns, gender is expressed by suffixes in combination with a system of inflections: teach- tel, teacher- prostrate-ah, gentle- awn, cap- spruce, noble- stv-oh, fall- eni j -e, raven-j -ё(with the exception of nouns formed using subjective evaluation suffixes: house- ishq-oh, for- ink-ah, cold- in-A) etc. In addition, there are words whose gender is determined by the type of declension, although the very assignment of a noun to one or another type of declension in the language is not motivated in any way. These are, firstly, underived masculine and feminine nouns with a zero ending after soft consonants and after sibilants (laziness, day, scourge, night, knife, rye), secondly, neuter words in -name (banner, tribe, seed etc.). We can say that in modern Russian the gender of such words is determined on the basis of usage, although it is expressed by a set of endings. It is no coincidence that in words of this type, when used, fluctuations in gender are often observed: my shampoo, my shampoo, my poplar, my poplar, my veil, my veil, my tulle, my tulle.

Even less is the gender of indeclinable nouns determined by the properties of the word itself. By general rule, words naming males are masculine, words naming women are feminine: madame, lady, Frau, Carmen, Helen, rentier, hidalgo, entertainer, dandy, curé, attache. If the indeclinable noun is animate (but does not name a person), then it can be used in both masculine and feminine genders (my kangaroo And my kangaroo). The gender of the remaining unchangeable words, i.e. inanimate nouns, established on the basis of usage, determined by the dictionary. It can be noted that most inanimate indeclinable words belong to the neuter gender (alibi, depot, puree, foyer, metro, coat, burime, confetti, taxi), Some words are used in two genders: coffee m. and wed., penalty m. and wed., whiskey m. and wed., stew Wed . and m.r. When there is a word with a gender meaning in relation to an indeclinable noun, the gender of the latter most often coincides with the gender of the first: kohlrabi and. r. (cabbage), salami and. r. (sausage), tsetse and. r. (fly), Avenue and. r. (street), Hindi m.r. (language), sirocco m.r. (wind), names of cities, magazines are usually masculine, names of rivers, newspapers, republics are feminine.

In indeclinable abbreviations, gender is determined by the main word of the combination, collapsed into an abbreviation: MSU m. r. = Moscow State university, UN and. r. = Organization United Nations, CDRI m.r. = Central house art workers But this rule does not apply consistently: abbreviations RONO (district department of public education), ROE (erythrocyte sedimentation reaction) and some others are neuter.

When determining the gender of nouns, words with suffixes of subjective assessment are especially emphasized -onk-A, - onk-A(- yenk-A), - in-A, - looking for-e, - ishq-a/o, - ear-a/o. When such suffixes form words indicating gender (masculine or feminine), their gender is determined by their lexical meaning, e.g. dad → papa, man → little man m.r. In other cases, the gender of the derived word is determined by the gender of the generating word: thought and. r. → little thought and. r., hare m.r. → bunny m.r., letter Wed r. → letter Wed r., house m.r. → little house m. r., domina m.r., home m.r., soldier m.r. → little soldier m.r., cold m.r. → cold m.r.

Syntactically (using agreement) you can express the gender of any noun. But it is not always possible to determine the gender by agreement. In the forms of adjective-substantive phrases, it is possible to differentiate gender in the I. p. unit. h.: new pencil, new pen, new pen, this penalty, this penalty, this kohlrabi. As for indirect cases (V. p. is not taken into account), they distinguish only feminine and non-feminine genders: this kohlrabi and. r., this penalty m.r. and Wed r. Outside of agreement, that is, on the basis of other types of connection, the gender of nouns is not determined by syntactic means.

3.2. Classes of nouns distinguished by attribute
gender of the word

Gender is a classifying grammatical category; it divides nouns into the following classes:

1) masculine nouns. These include all words that change according to male paradigms, such as grandfather. Mikhailo, dandy, Central House of Arts, little house, word journeyman, word path, as well as all indeclinable words with which adjectival forms of the masculine gender are combined;

2) feminine nouns. These include all nouns that change according to feminine paradigms (words with the ending -a/-i and zero inflection of the third declension), excluding the lexeme path, words like grandpa, bunny, bully and words to -name (banner, tribe, seed etc.) The feminine gender also includes all indeclinable words with which adjectival forms of the feminine gender are combined;

3) neuter nouns. The neuter gender includes words that change according to the corresponding paradigms (i.e. with inflection -o/-e in I. p. units h.), except for the word journeyman, words like Mikhailo, little house, little house. Nouns are neuter burden, time, udder, banner, flame, tribe, name, seed, stirrup, crown, as well as all indeclinable lexemes with which neuter adjectival forms are combined;

4) nouns (mostly inanimate) with unstable grammatical gender. These are words like rail/rail, galosh/galosh, key/key, sideburn/sideburn, burr/burr, plane tree/plane tree, mongoose/mongoose, veil (what)/veil (what) etc. In language there is a tendency to assign one gender characteristic to similar nouns. For example, in modern language token engraving is used only in the feminine gender, and in “Dead Souls” by N.V. Gogol it occurs as a masculine noun: Several paintings were hung crampedly and awkwardly on the walls: a long, yellowed engravings some kind of battle... Doublet generic forms such as hall, cloud, sanatorium, hospital(f.r.), report card(f.r.), young man, haymaking, biscuit, adventure and many others;

5) animate nouns of general gender (or bigender substantives). The core of this class are words that name a person by a characteristic action or property, stylistically marked: dirty, slob, neat, stupid, scoundrel, quiet, dude, suck-up, weasel, stutterer, fidget, idle talker etc.

Words of general gender also include

Diminutive proper names for male and female persons: Valya, Lera, Sasha, Shura, Sima, Zhenya;

· foreign indeclinable surnames ( Joliot-Curie, Rossini, Verdi, Dumas, Rabelais, Hugo), Ukrainian surnames -o (Shevchenko), surnames like Long, Twisted,

· indeclinable personal nouns like counterpart, protégé, Sami.

Words of general gender are specifically characterized by three obligatory properties. Firstly, they must denote persons of both male and female gender, secondly, in phrases and sentences they must be combined with consistent forms of the masculine and feminine gender, thirdly, without agreement, their gender cannot be defined as either masculine or feminine. like a woman.

Words that exhibit some of the listed characteristics do not belong to the general gender. For example, in the sentence Someone wrote to him from Moscow that a famous person would soon enter into legal marriage with a young and beautiful girl(Pushkin) word individual denotes a male person, but it cannot be attributed to the general gender, since it has a fixed gender, and an adjective in the masculine form is not attached to it.

Nouns like doctor, professor, historian, expert, fighter, naming persons by profession or some quality. Although such nouns are similar to words of the general gender in meaning and in agreement between the forms of the predicate (Doctor took/took patients from two o'clock to seven), but they do not completely coincide with them. Firstly, the words doctor, professor, historian gender is determined out of context. Secondly, in the structure of the phrase they are not combined with feminine adjectival forms, i.e. it is impossible to use: *I’m going to see a professor I know/a new doctor for a consultation.

In the same way, animate and inanimate words are not words of the same gender. concrete nouns, used in figurative (negatively evaluative) meanings: donkey, bear, camel, fox, pig, crow, snake, saw, knife, hat.

According to the observations of researchers, words of a general gender are heterogeneous; they are divided into three groups. The first group includes words that are genetically feminine, for example, smart girl. When combined with a masculine adjective, such lexemes name male persons, and in combination with feminine adjectives they can name both female and male persons: He is a great smart guy (Yura is a great smart guy). He is a great smart guy. She is very smart.

The second group consists of words of a general gender, genetically ascending to the masculine gender: headman, judge, sang, caroused. They are often used in the masculine sense. The masculine form of the adjective with them indicates a male person, and the feminine form indicates a female person (our/our headman).

The third group includes nouns with an equal degree of manifestation of feminine and masculine properties. These include, first of all, diminutive proper names and indeclinable surnames. The distinction between the sexes of these nouns is also achieved using compatible word forms: our Sasha said, our Sasha said;

6) sixth grade form pluralia tantum (perfume, scissors, sleigh), i.e. words that do not have a morphological gender.

Related information.

Just as in the masculine and neuter system, in the feminine declension there is a group of suffixes of subjective assessment. There are more expressive form-building suffixes of the feminine gender than for words of the masculine and neuter gender.
The forms of subjective assessment here also come in different degrees (hand-handle-handle; birch-birch-birch tree; river-river-river-river-river-little river, etc.).
Suffixes that are similar in their sound composition but different in meaning are differentiated by stress. Thus, the suffix -ushk(a), -yushk(a) has a connotation of familiar derogation or irony, condescending disdain: Marfushka, Vanyushka, talker, playful, fat, spinner, etc. Wed: pub, simple-vulg. kinushka (cinema). The unstressed suffix -ushk(a), -yushk(a) has a pronounced affectionate meaning: cow, dear, mother, aunt, river (but derogatory: river), willow, little head, etc.16
The main meaning of the suffix -yonk(a), -onk(a) is derogatory and contemptuous: old woman, woman, little soul, little skirt, girl, nag, fur coat, money, etc. However, sometimes this meaning is absorbed by the diminutive: little hand, shirt, etc.
The unstressed suffix -enk(a), devoid of expressive shades, produces feminine names: Frenchwoman, Circassian, cf. also: beggar.
It is necessary to compile a catalog of the main diminutive and derogatory suffixes of the feminine hard declension:
1. Productive suffix -k(a) with a diminutive meaning: book, pen, leg, droplet, bedroom, bathing suit, etc.17
2. Unproductive suffix -ts(a), -ts(a) with a diminutive meaning, attached to soft consonant stems such as dust, laziness, etc.: pollen, fortress, trot, door, mud and the like, as well as words in -from (a): red, dirty, etc. But cf. also: with cunning (from cunning).
3. The unproductive suffix -its(a) with a diminutive meaning: water, strawberry, gruel, little thing, request, etc.
4. Productive suffix -echk(a), -ochk(a) with an affectionate meaning (second degree of subjective assessment): dimple, little book, needle, etc.
5. Unproductive suffix -ichk(a) [second degree from diminutives in -itz(a)]: sister, water, zemlychka, etc.
6. Productive suffix -nk(a), -enk(a), -onk(a) with a caressing connotation (second degree of subjective assessment): river, aunty, darling, zorenka, girlfriend, night; V proper names: Nadenka, Katenka; Wed in proper male names: Vasenka, Petenka, Nikolenka, etc. After the hard s, z and labial bases, the suffix -onk(a) is added: striped, birch.
7. Productive suffix -yonk(a), -onk(a) with an expression of contempt: little river, little horse, little cow, little girl, little hut, little room, etc.
8. -shk(a) with a hint of familiar, somewhat dismissive affection (cf.: ashki, beshki - the former familiar designation for students of groups A, B in high school).
9. Unproductive suffix -ushk(a), -yushk(a) with an affectionate meaning and in common nouns often with a touch of folk poetic stylization (almost exclusively within the category of animation): sweetheart, little head, nanny, Manyushka, etc.
10. Productive suffix -ushk(a), -yushk(a) with contemptuous and derogatory (rarely with affectionate) meaning: pub, river, little room, village, hut, etc. But cf.: little daughter, little girl, etc. Words in -ushka were originally derived from words with the familiar affectionate suffix -ush(a) through the suffix -k-. Currently, the suffix -ush(a) outside of proper noun formations is very unproductive. Wed. -ush(a) in a few verbal formations: klikusha, krikusha [cf. suffixes -uh(a), -un, -un(ya)]. Wed. from Leskov in “The Islanders”: “Here other mermaids are frolicking to the left - laughing, tickling.” In formations from nominal stems that are not related to proper names, the suffix -ush(a) is also unproductive. Wed. act.-jarg. darling, dear. The shades of expression of the suffix -ush(a), -yush(a) in proper names can be judged by this remark by L. Tolstoy in “Resurrection”: “... half-maid, half-schoolgirl. She was called by her middle name - not Katka and not Katya, and Katyusha."
11. Unproductive suffix -yoshk(a), -oshk(a) with a pronounced expression of contempt: firebrand, little fish, etc.
12. Productive suffix -ishk(a), -ishk(a) with a contemptuous meaning: hard worker, passion, cards, beard, etc.
13. Productive suffix -yonochk(a), -onochk(a) (third degree of endearment) with a hint of familiar enhanced endearment: little girl, little hand, little shirt, etc.18
14. Dead suffix -urk(a) with an affectionate meaning: daughter, girl, stove. Wed. Snow Maiden.
Thus, in the system of forms of subjective assessment, the supporting feminine suffixes are -k(a), -shk(a), -chk(a), -n(b)k(a).

Mental phenomena are most often and most closely defined through the categories of ideal and subjective. These categories are indeed of paramount importance for clarifying the specifics of the psyche; however, they are used extremely ambiguously. The meaning of the terms “ideal” and “subjective”, used in philosophical and psychological literature, varies over a very wide range, which creates serious complications when developing a psychophysiological problem.

Let us consider the most common interpretations of the categories of ideal and subjective in our philosophical and psychological literature.

IN recent years the question of the nature of the ideal was specifically discussed by many authors (M. B. Mitin, 1962; E. V. Ilyenkov, 1962, 1964; M. A. Logvin, 1963; Ya. A. Ponomarev, 1964a, 1967; F. I. Georgiev, 1963, 1964; V. S. Tyukhtin, 1963, 1967; B. I. Vostokov, A. M. Korshunov, A. F. Poltoratsky, 1966; Art. The most difficult point has always been the relation of the ideal to the activity of the brain. If the ideal is a quality inherent in our thinking, and the latter is a product (or function) of the human brain, then the question of the relationship of the ideal to material brain processes cannot be ignored. But it is precisely at this point that the most significant disagreements arise in the interpretation of the ideal, and they have an extremely negative impact on the development of theoretical concepts of modern neurophysiology, which was recently specifically noted by P.K. Anokhin (P.K. Anokhin, 1966a, pp. 288- 289).

Some authors tend to characterize the ideal in such a way that it appears to be outside the boundaries of the human brain and the subject in general. This happens in cases where the ideal is qualified exclusively as a product of the social, production activity of the subject, when the social connections of the subject are exorbitantly hypertrophied - so much so that the real subject completely evaporates, and instead of it society as a whole begins to appear as a subject, and now the property of the ideal, the ability to think and act is attributed to a certain “body of civilization”, and not at all to the human individual. From this point of view, the well-known position of K. Marx that “the ideal is nothing more than the material, transplanted into the human head and transformed in it” (K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, vol. 23, p. 21) , is interpreted in the sense that the ideal does not exist in the head, but “through the head” and that, therefore, it has its existence outside the head individual subjects, namely in the products of their joint production activity and in general in intersubjective connections, in the “body” of the social system, and not in the “body” of the human brain. Thus, M.P. Lebedev (1956) goes so far in this direction that he gives the quality of an ideal to a book taken by itself.

This kind of concept of the ideal is substantiated more subtly and impressively by E.V. Ilyenkov in an article written for the Philosophical Encyclopedia, specifically devoted to this issue. E.V. Ilyenkov rightly criticizes vulgar materialistic interpretations of the ideal, pointing out the inadmissibility of identifying the ideal with neuro-brain processes. Materialism, he writes, is not about making this identification, but “about understanding that the ideal, as a socially determined form of human activity that creates an object of a certain shape, is born and exists not “in the head,” but with the help of head in the real objective activity of man as a real agent of social production. Therefore, scientific definitions of the ideal are obtained through a materialistic analysis of the “anatomy and physiology” of social production of the material and spiritual life of society, and in no case the anatomy and physiology of the brain as an organ of the individual’s body” (E.V. Ilyenkov, 1962, p. 221 ).

In other words, the ideal has its existence to the same extent in a person’s head as outside his head, in the process of objective activity, in the “body of civilization.” If we were talking about the fact that the ideal is “born and exists” in the “body of civilization”, in the system of social relations, in the sense that it is born and exists only in the head of a real person, and a person necessarily acts as an element of society and outside is unthinkable, then everyone would agree with such a trivial conclusion. But E.V. Ilyenkov has something completely different in mind; he resolutely defends (not only in the cited work, but also in his other works) the existence of the ideal precisely outside the boundaries of the individual human personality (see E.V. Ilyenkov, 1968a, p. 215, etc.).

With such an interpretation of the ideal, however, its original certainty is lost. The concept of ideal becomes so “flexible” that it can be used with equal success to designate both subjective reality and objective reality, because outside the human head there is only objective reality. In this regard, there is an implicit identification of the display with the object of the display, which already begins to noticeably resemble Hegel’s logical constructions.

The ideal is a subjective reflection of an object. Since this can be any object, the ideal is, in principle, any content, and it is thus capable of covering the entire “humanized” universe, but the ideal is localized only in the head of the individual, in his brain, because beyond the boundaries of this material system the subjective display does not exist. To say that the ideal “is born and exists not in the “head”, but with the help of the head in the real objective activity of a person” means creating a precedent for logical misunderstandings when trying to correlate the categories of the ideal and the material.

K. Marx speaks of the ideal as an internal form of activity; in E.V. Ilyenkov, the ideal simultaneously becomes an external form of human activity. In this regard, the concept of E.V. Ilyenkov was subjected to well-deserved criticism from a number of authors (F.I. Georgiev, 1963; V.I. Maltsev. 1964; V.I. Pernatsky, 1966; St. Vasilev, 1969, I.S. . Narsky, 1969). The desire to isolate the ideal from the brain can in no way be justified, even if it is carried out only partially and under the most plausible pretexts (in order to justify the connection of thought with practical action, the activity of the subject, etc.). In the concept of E.V. Ilyenkov, this tendency to isolate the ideal from the activity of the brain (i.e., to move the ideal beyond the boundaries of the human individual) stems from an overly rigid, mutually exclusive opposition between philosophical and natural scientific research thinking, outright ignoring the natural science aspect of the study of the ideal.

In this regard, it is worth once again thinking about the following statement of V.I. Lenin, emphasizing the importance of taking into account the results of natural science to understand the essence of the ideal: “Every person knows - and natural science studies - the idea, spirit, will, mentality, as a function of a normally functioning human brain; to tear this function away from matter organized in a certain way, to transform this function into a universal, general abstraction, to “substitute” this abstraction for the entire physical nature - these are the nonsense of philosophical idealism, this is a mockery of natural science” (V.I. Lenin. Complete Works , vol. 18, p. 241).

The ideal is an exclusively subjective reality and “is born and exists” only in a person’s head, without going beyond it, although this quality is naturally associated with external influences, more precisely, with the outside world, with the active activity of man as a social being. In other words, the category of ideal denotes a reflection and action specific to the human psyche on a subjective level, in contrast to objective actions that produce changes in material objects; this category denotes such a property of the activity of our brain, thanks to which the individual is directly given the content of the object, a dynamic model of the object, free from all real physical qualities of an object, from its material “weightiness”, “cumbersomeness”, from its “fusion” with other objects, and to that extent allowing it to be freely operated in time. The ideal is information updated by the brain for the individual; this is the ability of the individual to have information in its pure form and operate with it.

The ideal as such is in all cases immaterial and only within the boundaries of opposition to the material has meaning. The ideal is a mental phenomenon (although not every mental phenomenon can be designated as ideal); and therefore the ideal is always represented only in the conscious states of the individual. If someone suddenly put all people into deep sleep for ten minutes, then in this interval of time there would not be an ideal time on our planet.

Therefore, S. L. Rubinstein’s description of the ideal as “a product or result of mental activity” is not accurate enough (S. L. Rubinstein, 1957, p. 41). A phrase recorded on paper or on a tape can be regarded as a product of mental activity, but such a product does not contain the ideal. S. L. Rubinstein writes: “Ideality primarily characterizes an idea or image, as they, being objectified in words, being included in the system of socially developed knowledge, which is for the individual a certain “objective reality” given to him, thus acquiring relative independence, as if isolated from the mental activity of the individual” (ibid.). This statement, made, as we see, in a very cautious manner, raises a number of objections.

Every idea, image is initially included to one degree or another in the system of socially developed knowledge, because the personality is initially included in the social system, is its element, and ultimately every idea (image) turns out to be a given social system, i.e. a person does not there are superhuman ideas and images. When original ideas or images that have arisen in the head of an individual, being embodied in oral, graphic or objective form, become the property of other individuals and even the majority of individuals, then this aspect of the matter has a very indirect relation to the characteristics of the ideal, since for the latter it is indifferent whether the idea, the image was transmitted to other individuals or was experienced only once for a few seconds by a single person; to characterize the ideal, it makes no difference whether the thought of a given individual became the property of three individuals or three millions, whether it justified itself as a guide to action or not. In other words, the definition of the ideal is independent of the category of truth, since a false thought is also not a material, but an ideal phenomenon; equally, the definition of the ideal is independent of the quantitative and communicative side, since the ideal is necessarily associated only with the current mental state of the individual.

As for the objectification of an idea or image in a word, it is necessary to clarify in what sense we are talking about objectification. Words written or heard on the air do not in themselves contain anything ideal. At the same time, every consciously experienced mental phenomenon is, to one degree or another, connected with internal or external speech and is cast into verbal forms. In this sense, objectification can indeed be associated with the ideal (although the term “objectification” would be more correct in this case to be used only to designate the transformations that make up external speech production; but then this term will have only an indirect meaning for the definition of the ideal).

The ideal does not exist on its own; it is necessarily connected with material brain processes; it is nothing more than a subjective manifestation, a personal inversion of brain neurodynamic processes. In this sense, the ideal is immutably objectified, because otherwise it does not exist. The ideal is a purely personal phenomenon, realized by a brain neurodynamic process of a certain type (still extremely poorly studied). This special type of neurodynamic process updates information for the individual, and only in the interval of this kind of ongoing updating of information does the ideal exist. Just as information not actualized by a person, stored in the neural, subneural and, apparently, molecular structures of the brain, is only the possibility of the ideal, and not the ideal as such, in the same way information recorded in the memory of society (in books, drawings, works art, cars and others material systems), is not ideal, without being actualized (in a given interval) in the consciousness of the individual. Therefore, we cannot agree with S. L. Rubinstein’s assumption that the ideal characterizes products of mental activity that acquire relative independence and exist, as if “isolated from the mental activity of the individual.” The ideal is in no way isolated from the mental activity of the individual.

Man is an element of society as an extremely complex self-organizing system. In this regard, it is methodologically important to take into account not only the conditionality of the properties of an element by the qualitative features of the system, but also the inverse relationship - the conditionality of the properties of the system by the qualitative features of the element.

From the fact that the ideal is a social product and a necessary component of social self-organization, it does not at all follow that it should be theoretically “localized” within the social system as a whole, and not within the social individual or individuals. And this should be taken into account when we consider, in terms of the problem of the ideal, a “system of socially developed knowledge”, the phenomenon of spiritual culture.

Human culture (the complexes of theoretical, ethical, artistic, technical, etc. values ​​accumulated by historical development) is characterized by the category of the ideal in only one aspect - in the aspect of the functioning of cultural values ​​in a certain form, namely: as the internal, subjectively experienced activity of a certain set of individuals (whose activities, however, go beyond these limits, since they include processes of communication and action on the external plane). However, in the strict sense of action on the external plane, forms of storing cultural values, as well as those links of communication that are realized, so to speak, in interpersonal space - all these phenomena cannot be directly characterized using the category of the ideal.

A unique concept of the ideal has been developed in recent years by Ya. A. Ponomarev (1964a, 19646, 1967). We will not explain this concept in detail, as it is better to get acquainted with it first hand. Let us dwell only on some provisions that, from our point of view, are of fundamental importance. Ya. A. Ponomarev’s interpretation of the category of the ideal is largely due to his understanding of the psyche, according to which there are two approaches to the study and definition of mental phenomena - epistemological and ontological. In the epistemological aspect, he qualifies the psyche as ideal. In the ontological aspect - as material. Above (in § 5) we tried to show that such a theoretical approach leads to unsatisfactory results. It should be emphasized that the epistemological aspect cannot be eliminated when studying mental phenomena.

Ya. A. Ponomarev is certainly right in that not every mental phenomenon can be characterized as ideal. However, the author does not pursue his point of view consistently enough, because the initial principles he accepted oblige him, in an epistemological examination of the psyche, to qualify any mental phenomenon as ideal. According to Ya. A. Ponomarev, any “original-copy” relationship is material; it becomes ideal “only in the abstraction of the knowing subject” (Ya. A. Ponomarev, 19646, p. 62). For example: “the perception of an animal is ideal only in the consciousness of the cognizing person, in his abstraction, isolating a copy of the original from the carrier of this copy - a dynamic model of the object present in the brain of the animal and comparing this copy with the original” (Ya. A. Ponomarev, 19646, p. 61). In exactly the same way, the quality of ideality, according to Ya. A. Ponomarev, acquires the imprint of a wolf’s paw in the snow or the imprint of a leaf in seams of coal. In other words, the ideal is a product of “idealizing abstraction” (ibid., p. 66). Potentially existing connections like “original - copy” everywhere become ideal only in the “idealizing abstraction” of the subject, through which the copy is isolated from the original. Moreover, the ideal, according to Ya. A. Ponomarev, can also be inherent inanimate objects, “it is not an unconditional monopoly of the mental” (Ya. A. Ponomarev, 1967, p. 59). But at the same time, it is associated only with an “idealizing abstraction.”

A number of questions arise here. If “idealizing abstraction” is characteristic only of the cognizing subject, then how can the ideal exist outside the boundaries of the psyche? What is an “idealizing abstraction”? Is it the result of a special theoretical analysis? Or, perhaps, is it initially inherent in any human sensory image? Let us clarify these questions. Let's say I now remember the wolf I saw yesterday at the zoo; This idea was very vivid and occupied me for several seconds, which I told my fellow philosopher about. The process of my representation was not accompanied by any theoretical reflections about the nature of this representation. On the contrary, my fellow philosopher quickly informed me that the image of a wolf that arose in my mind is a “copy” of a real wolf, and not the wolf itself, that this “copy” is adequate to the original, etc. According to Ya. A. Ponomarev, my the comrade in this case is an undoubted bearer of the ideal, since he produced an “idealizing abstraction.” The question is, can the image-memory I experienced be called ideal? Apparently, it is impossible, since I did not produce a special “idealizing abstraction.” Therefore, my image should be called material? But my image is not an objective reality either for me or for my fellow philosopher. How can this be?

At this point, Ya. A. Ponomarev’s concept is very vulnerable.

“A fairly careful analysis of the nature of the ideal shows,” writes Ya. A. Ponomarev, “that the ideal is only an abstraction - a concept necessary to identify and fix the relations of homomorphism, isomorphism, similarity, analogy” (Ya. A. Ponomarev, 1964a, p. 55. My course. - D. D.). In what sense is this just an abstraction? After all, “material”, “psyche”, “mass”, “energy”, “image”, “abstraction”, etc. are abstractions! In this regard, the “ideal” has no privileges compared to the “material”. But every abstraction must have a certain meaning, must denote some invariant of a set of phenomena, independent of the arbitrariness of the theorist, i.e., it must reflect some reality that exists not only in the mind of a given theorist. Therefore, the ideal is not only an abstraction. This is some reality. Any sane person cannot fail to recognize the reality of the images and thoughts of other people, although it is wrong to call the images and thoughts of other people objective reality (they exist outside of my consciousness, but they do not exist outside of consciousness at all). My images and thoughts, as well as similar mental phenomena inherent in other individuals, are a subjective reality that is reflected in the corresponding abstractions. The ideal exists as a subjective reality, and not just as a specially manufactured product of an “idealizing abstraction.”

Ya. A. Ponomarev writes: “The psyche appears ideal only when it itself turns out to be the subject of cognition aimed at clarifying the isomorphism of its models with real things and phenomena” (Ya. A. Ponomarev, 1964 b, p. 66). This means that if “my image” is not a special object of cognition for me at a given period, then it follows that it is material. If I (or anyone else) begins to study the image in the plan indicated by Ya. A. Ponomarev, then this will be enough for the image to become ideal. These are the paradoxes generated by the theoretical position about the need for an epistemological and ontological approach to understanding the human psyche. It is much more logical, in our opinion, to qualify some mental phenomena as ideal, regardless of whether they turn out to be an “object of knowledge” or not. This class of mental “phenomena” always belongs to the category of conscious ones, and to that extent they possess, to one degree or another, the property of reflexivity, i.e., reflection of reflection.

The ideal is an abstraction that has meaning only when it is used to designate directly perceived subjective reality. This directly conscious subjective reality, associated with the reflection of not only an external object, but also oneself, can be studied in many respects that do not at all fit into the artificial alternative of the ontological or epistemological approach to the psyche. Moreover, it remains unclear what a purely ontological approach to the psyche means. As if it were possible to study mental phenomena, completely abstracting from the actual mental phenomena. Moreover, is it really possible to study anything thoroughly, completely distracted from the study of the means of study, that is, from understanding the specifics and capabilities of the cognitive means we use, both experimental and theoretical. The inability to comprehend this extremely significant circumstance is the lot of crude empiricism in natural science, sanctified in philosophy by naive ontology.

Note that the focus on studying the psyche in two aspects - ontological and epistemological - leads to paradoxes not only in the case when the psyche is called ideal in the epistemological aspect and material in the ontological aspect, but also when it is recognized as ideal in both in another case. So, for example, I. Tsvekl writes: “This property of consciousness “to be ideal” exists objectively, and it must be taken into account not only in epistemology, but also in ontology and in the social sciences, since in order to be considered as correct or incorrect, a thought must first of all exist” (J. Cvecl, 1963, p. 313. My course - D. D.). In the above statement, the ideal becomes indistinguishable from the material, since the statement that the ideal exists objectively is equivalent to the statement that the ideal is material. From here the illusory nature of the so-called ontology in its pure form becomes obvious, because the concept of being, reality, in a strict sense cannot be identified with the concept of objective reality, since it can also be extended to subjective reality; and only within the framework of the latter does the ideal make sense. Otherwise, the ideal is explicitly or implicitly substantialized, which only creates the appearance of an easy solution to the problem (the substantialization of the ideal can be either clearly idealistic or dualistic in nature, or take the form of a vulgar materialistic “reification” of the ideal). Let us recall once again the words of V. I. Lenin, spoken regarding those provisions of I. Dietzgen, in which objective reality is identified with reality in general: “That both thought and matter are “real,” that is, they exist, this is true. But to call a thought material means to take a mistaken step towards mixing materialism with idealism” (V.I. Lenin. Complete Works, vol. 18, p. 257).

It is important to emphasize that, contrary to neopositivist attitudes. tendencies towards the substantialization of spiritual phenomena (the ideal) are currently very fashionable among Western naturalists. Let us cite as the most striking example the views of the English scientist V. Firsov. According to his conviction, “thoughts, perceptions, feelings, etc., which make up the psyche, are real entities, a kind of “objects,” although they cannot be detected or measured with existing instruments and the application of quantitative methods of physics to them, except for probabilistic laws, is excluded . “I personally,” continues V. Firsov, “are of the opinion that the essence of this elusive psychic substance may lie in the properties and interactions of the subatomic world, the study of which is carried out at the forefront of modern science... “Psychic substance” cannot arise from nothing: it must be present at all stages of organic evolution down to the inorganic world. In other words, we can say that there must be a connection between mental substance and the world of ordinary energy and matter” (V. Firsov, 1966, pp. 25-26). And further V. Firsov puts forward the assumption that “there is a transformation similar to, say, Einstein’s equation m = E/c2, connecting mental substance with energy and matter and being the basis of the interaction between them. I want to make one more assumption: the DNA molecule may be the simplest physical apparatus that produces or reacts to mental substance, that is, acting like a miniature brain” (ibid., pp. 48-49). Essentially, in the above statements, “mental substance” most likely means some as yet undiscovered physical phenomenon. But such an interpretation cannot be carried out consistently, and V. Firsov ultimately turns out to be very close in his views to classical dualism, leaning, in particular, to the concept of J. Eccle (see ibid., pp. 49, 68-69 and etc.); he is ready to admit the possibility that “the mind has the ability to acquire information about certain facts without coming into contact with them in time or space” (ibid., p. 123), referring in this connection to Rhine’s parapsychological experiments and especially to the phenomena of telepathy.

The substantialization of the ideal (V. Firsov always understands the spiritual and ideal as the psychic) ​​very logically leads to idealism and dualism; when it is consistently carried out in a materialistic manner (we demonstrated examples of this in § 5), then the category of the ideal is simply eliminated; but then mental phenomena with their content. sides become completely inexplicable.

Naturally, in most cases the ideal is interpreted in Marxist literature not in a substantial, but in a functional sense. Recently, the functional nature of the ideal has been specially emphasized and analyzed in the works of a number of authors (V. S. Tyukhtin, 1963, 1967; B. I. Vostokov, A. M. Korshunov, A. F. Poltoratsky, 1966, etc.), “The functional nature of the ideal explains the apparent “strangeness” of the ideal, which consists in the fact that the ideal does not contain a single grain of the substance of the reflected object, that it is an unextended property that cannot be measured, weighed, perceived, although it can be detected by its external manifestation in activity subject" (B. I. Vostokov, A. M. Korshunov, A. F. Poltoratsky, 1966, pp. 245 - 246). The ideal is “free” not only from the materiality of the displayed object, but also from the materiality, from physical properties imaging substrate. This “liberation” from all physical properties exists only as a subjective reality.

As V.S. Tyukhtin notes: “Intangible (ideal), that is, relatively independent, “liberated” from the material carrier, can only be structure, attitude, image, knowledge, etc., taken as such, in “pure” form, that is, extracted from their carrier in a special functional way and compared with the original” (V.S. Tyukhtin, 1967, p. 44). This kind of extraction of information (content) from a material medium is a subjective act associated with the characteristics of information processes occurring in the brain. The mechanism for extracting information itself is hidden about the subject; the individual is directly given the content as such and the ability to operate with it. At the same time, the “extraction” of information, i.e. its givenness and the ability to freely operate with it, presupposes not only its comparison with the original, but also with other ideal phenomena and with the personal “I”. An image or thought as an ideal not only reflects an external object, but also reflects itself in the field of the personal “I”, i.e., through an ideal image, a person not only is aware of a certain object, but also realizes that he is aware of this object. It is with this circumstance that the peculiarity of the ideal is connected, i.e., the given information to the individual in its pure form and the ability to operate relatively freely with it.

The ideal characterizes that variety of subjective phenomena that are directly recognized by the individual. These are those mental phenomena that are recognized by the individual in the interval in which they occur. As for some subconsciously occurring mental phenomena that are capable of being realized to a certain extent by a person after they have occurred, they cannot be classified as ideal.

In this regard, the term “psyche” should be clarified, since the human psyche is often characterized as ideal. This characteristic is justified in the sense that (without the ideal there is no human psyche (the human psyche necessarily includes an ideal reflection, but is not exhausted by it); on the other hand, the ideal exists only in the psyche and, therefore, only in the form of an individual subjective state. However, in in a more precise sense, “psyche” represents a certain integrity (integration) of all mental phenomena, isolated and described modern psychology. With this understanding of the psyche, the ideal constitutes only a fragment of it. In the unified context of different types of mental phenomena, the ideal acts as the most “strange” and most difficult side of the psyche for scientific understanding. And there is no doubt that without taking into account this side, this necessary fragment of the psyche, a thorough study of it is impossible. In other words, that unique class of mental phenomena that is described through the category of the ideal must be interpreted through the categories of specific sciences, in particular through the categories of natural science, and become the object of study of these sciences. But this is where the biggest theoretical difficulties arise, creating serious obstacles to research into the psyche in connection with brain activity. These difficulties make themselves felt especially strongly in psychophysiology, neuropsychology, neurophysiology, psychiatry, cybernetic modeling of brain functions, in some areas of clinical medicine, etc. In many respects, these difficulties are not new and have constituted a chronic disease of natural scientific thinking of the last century; starting from the second half of the last century, they confronted researchers in the form of the so-called problem of mental causation.

Since the beginning of our century, there have been numerous attempts to overcome these theoretical difficulties by removing the category of the ideal from natural scientific thinking. Despite the fact that each such attempt led to an imaginary result (for the removal of the category of the ideal meant the removal from scientific research of real problems, which nevertheless did not cease to exist), no proper lesson was drawn from this.

More recently, a similar attempt was made, for example, by A. N. Kochergin. Discussing methodological issues of modeling mental activity, he expressed the opinion of the need to “rethink the traditional approach to the question of the relationship between the “ideal” and the “psyche”, excluding the concept of “ideal” from the natural science consideration of mental activity” (A. N. Kochergin, 1969, p. 246). A. N. Kochergin believes that when considering the psyche as the activity of the brain, the category of the ideal “does not work.” In his opinion, in this case only the category of material “works” (ibid., p. 247).

The fact is that the category of the material is quite widely interpreted through the categories of natural sciences, such as matter, field, mass, energy, etc. But this cannot be said about the category of the ideal, around which there really is a kind of vacuum (no other category dialectical materialism is not in such a position isolated from natural scientific categories as the category of the ideal). From here, however, it does not follow that the category of the ideal has no meaning in the natural sciences and that it “does not work” here. The category of the ideal captures an essential property of mental activity, and if the system of categories of modern natural science is not the area of ​​its interpretation, then this circumstance can only indicate the insufficient maturity of modern natural science. It should be borne in mind that we are talking about established, so to speak, classical categories of natural science. Meanwhile, the categorical structure of the natural sciences is gradually being transformed; During this process, new concepts and ideas emerge, which are initially far from classical accuracy, but mark a significant deepening of scientific knowledge as a whole.

It is these new concepts and ideas that dynamize some areas of the categorical structure of natural science, and it is in one of these areas that the category of the ideal “works” more and more actively (note that it has always “worked” in the sense that it stimulated the search for a natural scientific explanation of the psyche and one way or another , explicitly or implicitly, set, so to speak, a frame of reference for all related theoretical constructions; and this is not difficult to see even among radical behaviorists).

In our opinion, at the current level of scientific knowledge, real opportunities are opening up for a thorough natural scientific interpretation of the category of the ideal. Opportunities of this kind are associated with the development of cybernetics and the design of the category of information. The latter, being a category of natural science, is capable of laying a bridge to the explanation of those mental phenomena that are usually described through the category of the ideal.

For a more detailed analysis of the category of the mental in connection with its relationship to the category of the ideal, one should specifically consider the category of the subjective, since the latter is an irreducible participant in all definitions of the mental and the ideal, regardless of whether it appears in the forefront of theoretical constructions or behind the scenes. This indispensable participation of the category of the subjective complicates the matter in that it is used even more polysemantically than the category of the ideal.

In recent years, the category of the subjective has been studied in many works of a general philosophical nature (V. A. Lektorsky, 1965, 1967; J. Muzik, 1964; L. Holata, 1965; F. B. Sadykov, 1965; K. A. Abulkhanova-Slavskaya, 1969, etc.). Let's consider the most typical meanings that are usually associated with the term “subjective”.

In philosophical terms, L. Golata (Holata, 1965) identifies three main meanings. In terms of the main question of philosophy, subjective means ideal (and objective means material); in terms of the question of the knowability of the world, subjective means an approximate (“approximative”) form of reflection of reality in our consciousness, and objective means an “adequate form” of reflection (note that the differences here are indicated very vaguely); finally, the third meaning is formed in the plane of issues falling within the competence of historical materialism. Here the subjective is associated with the activity of the social subject and the role of the individual in the historical process.

V. A. Lektorsky (1967) rightly emphasizes that an object is a part of objective reality with which the subject entered into practical or cognitive interaction, and therefore there is no object without a subject. At the same time, focusing on the social nature of cognition, V. A. Lektorsky means by subject not so much a person as a superpersonal system, which is a carrier of knowledge, an implementer of the social process of cognition. In this sense, the subjective actually denotes the cognitive activity of society as a system of individuals.

A different interpretation of the subjective is proposed by V.S. Tyukhtin, who shifts the focus of attention to the psychological plane: “The active nature of mental activity, the ideal form of reflection and the individual characteristics of the subject’s activity - these three signs determine the positive meaning of the subjective. They are contained in the definition of both sensations, perceptions, and thoughts and feelings (with varying predominance of certain moments)” (V.S. Tyukhtin, 1963, p. 99). As a negative meaning of the subjective, V.S. Tyukhtin notes “subjectivism, that is, a false, distorted reflection of reality” (ibid., p. 100).

The given examples of interpretation of the subjective show a fairly wide range of meanings. Of course, certain connections can be established between all these meanings; however, some of the meanings clearly go beyond the category of the mental and cannot be correlated with it directly.

Since we are primarily interested in the category of the mental, and the mental is defined, as a rule, through the category of the subjective, we will focus on the analysis of those meanings of “subjective” that may be directly related to the characteristics of mental phenomena (analysis of the entire range of meanings of the term “subjective” is an independent task that goes beyond the scope of this work).

In the most general view subjective means what is characteristic of the subject, any qualities that are inherent in a person as an individual; subjective means human. Here, the certainty of the subjective is achieved by the relative opposition of a person to the object of his knowledge and action as objective.

Let us note that the certainty of the subjective remains satisfactory in this regard only as long as the object of cognition and action is thought of as an external object (in the case when the object of cognition becomes, for example, a person’s own actions, the distinction between the subjective and the objective loses its original certainty and requires additional clarifications). This alone shows that the given meaning of the subjective is not only extremely general, but also collective. This use of the term “subjective” implicitly conceals many different private meanings, which are important to differentiate from each other at least to a first approximation, because some of them differ quite significantly from each other.

It should be emphasized that “subjective”, taken in a general and collective sense - as that which is inherent in the human personality - is quite rightly used as a predicate of “mental” (if we limit ourselves to the human psyche); but such a characterization, emphasizing only the fact that mental phenomena exist only as properties of a person, turns out to be at the same time extremely abstract and in itself clearly insufficient.

If we recognize that the certainty of the “subjective” is maintained only under the condition of its obligatory opposition to the “objective”, then the subjective can only be clearly defined as the ideal (for the subjective is then equivalent to subjective reality and is not an objective reality). However, such a contrast is often not observed in scientific practice. If it were strictly observed, then mental phenomena in all their varieties could be qualified as ideal. But such a characterization is incorrect, because some properties and actions of a person represent an objective reality. The fact that this opposition is not observed is precisely one of the manifestations of the theoretical illegality of extending the category of the ideal to all mental phenomena. The violation of the certainty of the “subjective” creates a kind of salutary uncertainty. However, it is difficult to reconcile with such uncertainty, even if we are fully aware that it arises in an area bordering between philosophy, psychology and a number of other disciplines that have man as their subject. (In the field of theoretical questions of psychology, this uncertainty arises because psychology is forced to use for its own special purposes certain philosophical concepts, adapting them to its empirical material, which is why they are noticeably modified, but at the same time do not completely break with their original content.) Let us dwell on more details on this.

The term “subjective” is often used to express such personality properties as individuality and activity (for example, in the above statement by V.S. Tyukhtin). In this sense, by means of “subjective” it is possible to characterize not only a person, but also any living system, including one that is not necessarily credited with the presence of a psyche. The concepts of activity and individuality adequately reflect not only the specificity of mental phenomena, but also the specificity of physiological phenomena. This is especially clearly seen in the example of the concept of individuality, because each individual living system is different from another, that is, it is genetically original, and therefore has original features of biochemical and physiological processes. This is true even for identical twins. The more complex a living system is, the more clearly its individuality is revealed both in biochemical and physiological, as well as in psychological terms, i.e., its isolation from the environment increases, including its isolation from among its own kind, and, so to speak, the degree of its uniqueness. At the same time, the original and common ground psychological originality is (as we already noted in § 3) genetic originality, manifested in the unique features of the morphological organization, metabolic processes and physiological acts of a given organism (this trio forms an inseparable unity; therefore, the concept of individuality is equally applicable to the morphological side of each organism) .

As for the concept of activity, it has a less wide range of applications in comparison with the concept of individuality, since it cannot be used to describe a number of properties of an organism or its subsystems identified analytically (which, nevertheless, can be described using the concept of individuality, as, for example, the morphology of an organism or an individual organ). However, in principle, the concept of activity is applicable to physiological phenomena, since they are not passive responses to incident influences, but are expedient. Hence the validity and fruitfulness of that direction of scientific thought called the physiology of activity.

So, “subjective” in the sense of active and individual represents a very general meaning, applicable with equal right to both ideal and material, both mental and physiological phenomena. Taken in this sense, “subjective” cannot be clearly opposed to “objective” and, moreover, is not a specific predicate of mental phenomena, although it is entirely legitimately used to describe them.

In a narrower sense, the term “subjective” is used to denote the activity of an individual. Personal activity is a system of purposeful actions and organically includes not only external acts, but also internal states of the individual (motivations, emotional experiences, sensory images, thoughts, etc.). In this sense, “subjective” also cannot be logically clearly opposed to “objective”, since external motor acts are not ideal, but material activity, i.e. some objective reality. However, in this sense, “subjective” is a specifically psychological characteristic, since every mental phenomenon is included in the context of activity understood in this way or determines it from one side or another, in one way or another (note that the meaning of the more general sense is also retained here, indicated above, since the activity of the individual is active and individual in nature).

Finally, very often the term “subjective” is used in an even narrower sense, namely: as a special internal state of the individual, not necessarily always associated with external motor acts, as a certain unity of many similar states, as the “subjective world” of the individual. In this sense, I. P. Pavlov uses the term “subjective” in most cases. Here the “subjective” can be quite clearly contrasted with the “objective”. In this sense, “subjective” denotes the entire class of consciously experienced mental phenomena, taken by themselves, in abstraction from the exteromotor acts associated with them, from the external causes that caused them and the cerebral neurodynamic processes that determine them. This includes sensations, perceptions, thoughts, emotional experiences, any integral conscious states that occur in a certain interval and include a wide variety of combinations, transformations, degrees of “presence” of phenomena of the subjective world analytically isolated by traditional psychology.

Let us emphasize once again that such personality states have relative independence and are not strictly connected with activity on the external plane; they can be carried out in the form of activity on a purely internal plane.

Thus, the term “subjective”, used for psychological purposes, can carry two types of meanings that quite significantly do not coincide with each other, but nevertheless are extremely weakly and reluctantly differentiated in theoretical psychology.

The first type of meaning represents subjective reality, that is, a range of phenomena, none of which can be said to exist objectively, outside consciousness or independently of the individual’s conscious experiences. The thought of virtual particles or functional purpose Renshaw cells do not exist objectively; Moreover, this cannot be said about the sensation of pain or passionate desire. From the fact that thought (desire, etc.) is objectified in words, actions, objects created by man, it does not at all follow that thought exists objectively, that it is an objective reality. The fundamental physical concepts of mass and energy are inapplicable to the phenomena of subjective reality (without gross violence against logic), since they do not have the slightest explanatory meaning in this area. This is the area of ​​higher-level information processes; in its entirety, it has so far been covered only by psychological phenomenology, which is and will be a kind of empirical basis for the study of subjective reality.

Of course, there is no impassable gap between subjective reality and objective reality, because every phenomenon from the category of subjective reality exists only in an objectified form, embodied in brain neurodynamics, and manifested in the actions of the individual. But this is a different question, creating a different plane of research. A clear distinction between subjective reality and objective reality is theoretically very important for psychology, as it helps clarify its problems. Focusing on the concept of subjective reality, psychology has as its task the explanation of the so-called internal, spiritual world of the individual. In this regard, the entire set of mental phenomena that form subjective reality represents the entire set of ideal phenomena.

The second type of meaning expressed by the term “subjective” includes either some objective reality associated with the personality and understood in the behaviorist sense as behavior, a chain of objectively recorded actions of the individual, or - in most cases - some undifferentiated unity of the phenomena of subjective and objective reality, limited by the personality . In this latter meaning, “subjective” expresses any properties of a person, both subjective (in the sense of subjective reality) and objective, and to this extent it completely covers any mental phenomena. Here “subjective” reflects (or contains) three closely interrelated, but psychologically different categories of phenomena, namely: 1) conscious states (this includes subjective phenomena of any degree of awareness in any combination and integration), 2) unconscious states that have an a significant influence on conscious states or forming the hidden content basis of the latter, 3) personal actions, understood as a sequence of expedient motor acts. Moreover, all these three categories of mental phenomena are applicable both to a specific time period in the history of the individual, and to any interval of the history of the individual in general. In the latter case, they express some stable personality properties, and not just current states and actions (meaning such stable personality properties as character, temperament, abilities, interests, volitional qualities, etc.).

Each of the listed categories forms a specific problem of psychological research and, accordingly, specific areas of neurophysiological interpretation of mental phenomena. Although all these areas are closely related and should be theoretically correlated with each other, and ultimately form an integrative whole, modern stage development of psychology, each of them clearly stands out in terms of the characteristics of its explanatory tasks. This is also based on the fact that conscious states represent a relatively independent process in relation to the objectively realized actions of the individual, while the latter necessarily include a more or less clearly recognized goal and assessment of the action process and its results. As for unconscious states, they can also occur in a specific time interval relatively independently of the current conscious states and actions of the individual, although any current conscious state or action of the individual includes unconscious states as a necessary moment or basis. In addition, the task of explaining conscious states (phenomena of subjective reality) in comparison with the task of explaining unconscious states or the task of explaining the actions of an individual requires the use of concepts and methods special for each case.

Thus, the entire set of mental phenomena cannot be subsumed under the category of the ideal. When they say that the psyche is ideal, they usually mean only that totality of mental phenomena that represent subjective reality. It is in this sense that the terms “psyche” and “mental” are most often used. The conclusion that not every mental phenomenon is ideal does not contradict the previous presentation. When in § 5 we had a polemic with the authors who defended the thesis about the materiality of the psyche (that the psyche is a form of movement of matter), then we had the same subject of dispute and everywhere we were talking about subjective reality (sensations, thoughts, phenomena of consciousness, etc.); so all the criticisms expressed in § 5 against supporters of the concept of the materiality of the psyche remain valid.

The entire set of mental phenomena can be divided into two groups: ideal and material. If the first of them includes phenomena that constitute subjective reality, i.e., well-known to each of us, experienced more or less consciously, personal states, then the second includes phenomena that constitute the objective reality of personal processes, i.e., individual actions and those information processes occurring at the level of the brain, which are largely responsible for both the results and dynamics of conscious states, and for the implementation of the actions of the individual, but are not recognized by the individual either at the moment or in general.

In contrast to the phenomena of subjective reality, i.e. ideal phenomena, which represent information “open” to the individual and therefore accessible to arbitrary manipulation with it, phenomena that form a subclass of unconscious states represent information “closed” to the individual at a given moment, in the overwhelming majority of cases or in general, and therefore directly inaccessible for arbitrary manipulation.

The assertion that all mental phenomena are ideal obviously leads to the exclusion, exclusion from psychology of the study of unconscious states of the individual and his actions, which is absurd. Equally theoretically untenable is the statement that all mental phenomena are material, for it means ignoring the specifics of the most unique class of phenomena of all known to natural science and, in essence, removes the problem of their study and explanation.

Of course, both ideal and material mental phenomena are caused by brain neurodynamics and are carried out by it. But it is important to keep in mind the features of neurodynamic interpretation in each of these cases (the task of neurodynamic interpretation of conscious states has a number of specific features compared to the task of neurodynamic interpretation of unconscious states and actions).

The entire set of mental phenomena can be subsumed under the category of subjective. However, one should keep in mind the fact that in this, i.e. psychological, respect, the category of subjective means all personal characteristics. To avoid misunderstandings, when analyzing a psychophysiopogical problem, it is legitimate to distinguish between at least two meanings of the term “subjective” - broad and narrow, namely: 1) as any characteristic (property) of a person and 2) as a phenomenon of subjective reality, i.e. ideal. It would be advisable to designate these different meanings using different terms in order to avoid ambiguous interpretation of this term. In what follows, we will use the term “subjective” only in the sense of ideal phenomena (phenomena of the subjective world); in those cases when we are talking about the first, broader meaning, we will use the term “personal” and not “subjective”.

In this regard, we will try to briefly discuss a question that has often been raised in our philosophical and psychological literature devoted to the psychophysiological problem, namely: is it legitimate to describe the relationship between the physiological and the psychological through the categories of objective and subjective. Some authors categorically deny this possibility (V.P. Petlenko, 1960; N.V. Rybakova, 1962; E.V. Shorokhova and V.M. Kaganov, 1962, and others); They justify this by the fact that the mental is not only subjective, since it carries objective content and is a product of the reflex activity of the brain, but at the same time they take the term “subjective” in a very vague sense, in which its epistemological and psychological meaning are mixed. On the contrary, other authors insist on the legitimacy of describing the relationship between the physiological and the mental through the concepts of objective and subjective, considering the mental as the subjective side of certain physiological changes in the brain (F. P. Mayorov, 1951; V. I. Maltsev, 1964, and others).

In our opinion, such a description is quite acceptable if by mental we mean only ideal phenomena and, accordingly, use the term “subjective” in the narrow psychological sense indicated above, i.e. in the sense of phenomena of subjective reality, directly conscious, ideal phenomena. As V.I. Maltsev rightly writes: “The mental is not “built on” over the physiological, but represents an ideal moment that coincides with the objective physiological process, a certain subjective state” (V.I. Maltsev, 1964, p. 118). In this regard, the mental is indeed rightfully qualified as a subjective side, or, better, as a subjective manifestation of objective brain neurodynamic processes. This applies only to that subset of mental phenomena that constitute the class of ideal ones.

Another subset of mental phenomena, personal actions, can be qualified as objective manifestations of objective brain neurodynamic processes. In other words, the brain neurodynamic code of subjective states, on the one hand, and personal actions, on the other hand, are different in many significant indicators.

The above considerations about the use of the categories of ideal and subjective were intended to show the need for differentiation different meanings, usually associated with these categories, which is especially important when they are used for theoretical constructions in psychology or in the field of psychophysiological problems, i.e. not in a broad philosophical sense, but in research specific tasks modern science.

In conclusion, let us briefly dwell on the question of the applicability of the concepts of ideal and subjective to the mental activity of animals. There is great disagreement among authors dealing with this issue. Thus, E. V. Shorokhova (1961), M. Pastrnak (M. Pastrnak, 1963), M. Moravek and E. Menert (M. Moravek, E. Menert, 1965) and others consider it mandatory to use the category of subjective when characterizing mental phenomena in animals. On the contrary, B.I. Vostokov, A.M. Korshunov, A.F. Poltoratsky (1966) and others categorically deny this possibility; According to the latter, animals do not have subjective images, since they do not have knowledge. V. S. Tyukhtin (1963) claims that animals have ideal images, and Ya. A. Ponomarev (19646) resolutely denies this. Such disagreements stem, as a rule, from a very abstract and vague use of the concepts of subjective and ideal. Discussion of this issue without first clarifying the meaning of the terms “subjective” and “ideal” used in this case turns out to be completely unproductive, if only because different authors express different phenomena with their help. For example, M. Moravek and E. Menert believe that “the concept of subjectivity must be extended as a general biological phenomenon to all organisms” (M. Moravek, E. Menert, 1965, p. 162), while they qualify subjectivity as the activity of an organism. Other authors, speaking about the subjective, mean primarily the properties of the mental image in animals, or they mean by the subjective some very undifferentiated content, including activity, individuality, and the properties of the mental image, etc.

In our opinion, the essence of the question is whether it is possible to attribute to the animal psyche the property of subjectivity in the narrow sense indicated above, coinciding with the meaning of the term “ideal” (for the legitimacy of using the concept of subjective in other respects - in the sense of activity, individuality, etc. - there is not the slightest doubt here).

Animal psychology materials, especially the latest ethological data (N. Tinbergen, 1962; K. Lorenz, 1970, etc.), force one to discard simplified views on animal behavior and, most likely, give a positive answer to the question posed. Very convincing facts in this regard are contained, for example, in the works of A. Alpers (A. Alpers, 1960) and J. Lilly (1965), devoted to the study of the life of dolphins. One can also note the experimental data of A. Ya. Markova (1967), who showed the presence of image-representations in lower monkeys. Of great interest in this regard are the original studies of M.A. Goldenberg (1961) and his colleagues, who created animal models of psychosis during infections and various intoxications (atropine, quinine, tofranil, etc.). These studies in the field of experimental psychopathology showed that animals can experience hallucinations and states resembling delirium and other psychopathological syndromes, and that animals differentiate in some form between image and object, and therefore, in some respects, distinguish themselves from the environment. Summarizing the results of research in this area, P. P. Volkov and T. P. Korolenko write: “Subjective identification of the image of an object with the object itself in the mental activity of animals occurs only in conditions of experimental pathology, namely in hallucinatory states, when the animal’s reflection of the external world is disrupted and their behavior turns out to be adequate not to the real surrounding situation, but to the content of hallucinatory experiences” (P. P. Volkov, T. P. Korolenko, 1966, p. 23). The authors provide the following description of the experimental “delirium” caused in dogs: “They seem to attack or defend themselves, examine invisible objects with fear and run away senselessly, or, barking strongly, frantically seem to resist, sometimes they “grab flies” and exhibit parasthesia” ( ibid., p. 26).

These data very seriously indicate that the mental images and experiences of an animal can be regarded as subjective reality, which implies the applicability of the concept of the ideal to the psyche of animals. Of course, when we talk about the ideal in animals, we should see a qualitative difference in the human psyche. Perhaps we should even consider introducing some other term for subjective reality in animals. We considered it appropriate to emphasize the commonality rather than the difference, with the goal of showing the inconsistency of the existing simplified ideas about the psyche of animals. This issue requires special discussion and careful research.

In the most detailed way relationship between the concepts of subjective law and the exercise of law studied by V.P. Gribanov. All subsequent studies on this issue are either based on the previously mentioned work of V.P. Gribanova “Limits of the implementation and protection of civil rights”, or represent its criticism.

Comparing the content of subjective law and its implementation, V.P. Gribanov, firstly, identified the common features of the two indicated concepts, and secondly, identified their differences. Common to the content and implementation of the subjective right of V.P. Gribanov believed that “both the very content of subjective right and its implementation presuppose a certain behavior of the authorized person.” However, behavior (actions or inaction) in the content of subjective right and in its implementation is different. Firstly, this is the relationship between possibility and reality. Secondly, it is also the relationship between objective and subjective. However, a significant element of subjectivity is present in the content of law (when the law is established, for example, by a contract), and an element of objectivity is present in its implementation, when the process of exercising subjective law is regulated by the norms of objective law. It’s just that objective principles prevail in the content of law, and subjective principles prevail in the implementation of law. Thirdly, the relationship between the content and implementation of subjective right is the relationship between the general and the specific, the general type of behavior and the specific forms of its manifestation. Finally, “the content of law, as it were, characterizes law in its static state, while the implementation of law is a dynamic process of its development, its implementation” *(21) .

Although V.P. Gribanov does not express this directly; subjective right, in accordance with his position, is a certain behavior pattern. The functional characteristics of this model are determined by the content of subjective law. The exercise of the right is that practical real process, which was described in the ideal legal model.

In parallel with V.P. Gribanov dealt with the problems of the implementation of subjective rights by a number of Saratov authors, in particular S.T. Maksimenko and V.A. Tarkhov. The merits of the works of these authors include the fact that they considered the institution of the exercise of subjective civil rights not in connection with the problems of the limits of the exercise of rights and abuse of rights, as is usually the case. It is worth agreeing with S.T. Maksimenko, that addressing issues of the implementation of subjective rights only insofar as it is necessary to solve one of the most interesting problems of civil law - the problem of abuse of law, impoverishes this institution and leaves unexplored a large range of issues of serious scientific and practical importance *(22) . These issues include the issues of correlation implementation processes civil law and performance of civil duties, problem place of subjective right and subjective obligation in the mechanism of legal regulation finally, the question of the relationship implementation of subjective law and implementation of norms of objective law. Questions about the relationship between the institution of the exercise of law and such institutions as legal capacity, civil liability, legitimate interests and the legal status of a subject of civil law are also interesting, but they go far beyond the scope of this study.

Regarding the first question - about the relationship between the processes of exercising rights and fulfilling obligations, - then here as the initial theoretical premise of S.T. Maksimenko uses the following interesting thesis: “The close connection of rights with responsibilities is not generated by the specifics legal regulation, but by the objective nature of social connections of persons, since any relationships of people in society essentially represent the interconnected possibilities of some and the necessity of the actions of others" *(23) . Unfortunately, the author does not further disclose this thesis, pointing out only that “the exercise of subjective civil rights and the fulfillment of obligations are actions of bearers of rights and obligations, realizing the opportunity or necessity that constitutes the content of the right or obligation.”

Proposed by S.T. Maksimenko and V.A. Tarkhov’s consideration of the relationship between the processes of exercising subjective rights and fulfilling duties from the standpoint of the so-called conditions for the exercise of subjective rights arouses some interest, however, it does not seem to fully reveal the depth of the problem.

The category of “external and internal conditions for the exercise of civil rights” was first developed by V.A. Tarkhov in his work “The Exercise of Civil Rights” *(24) . The author referred to the external conditions for the exercise of rights as legally established guarantees, and to the internal ones - those factors that depend on the authorized entity itself. Subsequently S.T. Maksimenko proposed a more correct term “objective and subjective conditions for the implementation of law.” By objective conditions, he understood “guarantees as factors that are formed by the entire objective course of development of society, embedded in the economic and political system of society, or provided by this society (state) to ensure rights and obligations.” However, here we must agree with the author: there are also “subjective factors (conditions) depending on the authorized persons, without which implementation is generally impossible or is an improper or even illegal act.” *(25) . Among the subjective factors S.T. Maksimenko refers to the expression of the will of the bearers of rights and obligations, as well as the conscientiousness of the implementation of rights and obligations.

The relationship between the exercise of subjective rights and the fulfillment of duties was studied in more detail by S.T. Maksimenko when considering the relationship between these processes and the process of legal regulation. In this case, the author uses the category of so-called common rights: “The rule of law already contains some rights and obligations, but they cannot be assessed as subjective, since they are not yet associated with any specific person. The most suitable term for them seems to be “general rights and obligations.” The term " general" reflects the content of these rights in the sense that they are not transferred to a specific subject, but belong equally to all persons subject to the given system of law" *(26) .

“Analysis of the relationship between objective and subjective law and the construction of general rights allows us to understand how the abstract possibility of legal ownership, established by a rule of law as belonging to everyone (general rights and obligations), is transformed with the help of the general possibility of everyone (legal capacity) into the specific legal ownership of an individual (subjective right) , carried out in his behavior... The general process of realizing law must be analyzed from the point of view of transforming a general, abstract possibility (norms of objective law, general rights and obligations) into a concrete possibility (subjective law) and then into reality (exercise of rights and fulfillment of obligations )" *(27) .

More specifically the relationship between the implementation of objective law norms and the implementation of subjective rights S.T. Maksimenko discussed in his article “Exercising civil rights and fulfilling duties”: “The exercise of subjective civil rights and fulfilling duties should be considered as a stage in the implementation of rights.” Further, the author makes a fundamentally important conclusion about the relationship between the two indicated processes: “Objective law is ultimately realized through the implementation of subjective law” *(28) . Usually, researchers noted an inverse relationship; in particular, G.F. wrote about the secondary nature of subjective law in relation to objective law. Shershenevich, Yu.S. Gambarov, N.S. Malein, S.S. Alekseev *(29) . N.I. Miroshnikova solved the problem of the relationship between subjective and objective law even more harshly: “Subjective law arises on the basis of objective law and fully corresponds to it... The difference between these terms emphasizes the primacy of one and the secondary nature (dependence) of the other, i.e. the priority of objective law, which exists independently , regardless of whether on its basis subjective rights or obligations arose among individuals" *(30) . Meanwhile, it is methodologically incorrect to talk about the primacy of one of the two concepts and the secondary nature of the other: just as the implementation of objective law is possible only through the exercise of subjective rights and the fulfillment of obligations, so the exercise of rights is possible only in the conditions of action, the implementation of the norms of objective law. L.S. Yavich noted in this regard: “The exercise of law is the way of its being, existence, action, and the fulfillment of its main social function. Law is nothing if its provisions do not find their implementation in the activities of people and organizations, in social relations.” *(31) .

Some authors, in particular S.T. Maksimenko and S.S. Alekseev, rightly point out that the relationship between the processes of exercising subjective right (fulfilling an obligation) and implementing the norms of objective law can manifest itself differently depending on the nature of the models embedded in legal norms. If we summarize the theses of these authors, we can draw the following conclusions. The process of legal regulation (the mechanism for implementing the norms of objective law) and the process of exercising subjective rights (fulfilling duties) are the same for the entire legal system. However, this does not mean that these processes proceed equally in all areas of public life, in all areas of legal regulation. In particular, in the sphere of private law relations, the implementation of law (both objective and subjective) is distinguished by a fundamentally important feature - dispositivity, i.e. freedom.

The optionality of regulation in the private legal sphere, the optionality of the process of exercising rights and fulfilling obligations determines special order implementation of the right. If we use the terminology of S.T. Maksimenko and V.A. Tarkhov, there are special conditions for the implementation of rights in the private sphere, different from those that ensure the implementation of rights in the public sphere: the presence of guarantees for the real implementation of rights, the establishment of the principle of good faith in the exercise of rights and the fulfillment of obligations, the possibility of real and free exercise of rights, i.e. the ability to choose the method of exercising the right at your discretion. V.F. wrote about this. Yakovlev: “Dispositivity as the ability to choose within certain limits of options for behavior has certain grounds in relations regulated by civil law... The endowment of rights itself includes, as an indispensable component, also the endowment of dispositivity, for law as a measure of possible behavior includes difference from an obligation, an alternative: the authorized person may not use this measure of behavior at his own discretion" *(32) .

Understanding the dispositive nature of legal regulation and the dispositive nature of the exercise of rights in the private sphere is also important when considering the operation of law from the point of view of the modeling process. Dispositivity means the presence of alternatives in the possible actions of subjects. All these alternatives, one way or another, must be covered by an appropriate legal model. However, the inclusion in the legal model of a large number of alternative ways of exercising subjective right requires a similar consolidation of alternative ways of behavior obligated persons. That is, discretion in the exercise of rights must be ensured by responsibilities.

Many authors, including the above-mentioned V.F. Yakovlev, consider one of the features of private law relations to be the presence absolute rights. Such rights are characterized by the largest number of options for their implementation. They are opposed by the obligation of an unlimited number of persons to refrain from violating this absolute right. These duties are characterized by a relatively narrow content (only the duty to refrain from actions), but apply to all subjects of law. The establishment of obligations of this kind creates conditions for the free exercise of rights by the copyright holder, i.e. dispositivity of the implementation of rights.

In addition to the duties corresponding to absolute rights, the freedom to exercise subjective civil rights is ensured by two groups of duties, which, using the terminology of V.P. Gribanov, can be classified as so-called general. In contrast to the category of "general rights", " general duties" is a rather apt term: these duties are truly general in the sense that they apply to all subjects of law, regardless of their location in specific legal relations. Among such duties V.P. Gribanov included, firstly, the duties of prohibitions (the inadmissibility of unilateral refusal to fulfill an obligation, the inadmissibility of an agreement to limit or eliminate liability for a deliberate violation of an obligation), secondly, the obligations associated with the exercise of rights and the performance of duties (principles for the exercise of rights and the performance of duties) *(33) . Reinforcing the general conditions of behavior of subjects of civil law, these obligations allow them, at their discretion, to exercise their rights within the framework outlined by law. “General duties,” thus, also act as the most important condition for dispositivity in the implementation of law, securing the “external framework” of the legal model that describes possible options for the behavior of subjects.

Finally, do not forget about responsibilities in relative legal relations. Although the discretion in the exercise of rights by an authorized person in relative legal relations is much lower than in absolute legal relations, and even more so than in the exercise of legal capacity, alternativeness is manifested here too. For example, this is the possibility of a party’s unilateral refusal to fulfill certain types of obligations, the possibility of filing a demand to conclude an agreement for a new term, etc. In each case, each possible option for the exercise of rights by the authorized person corresponds to the obligation to satisfy these claims. The range of possible alternatives in such duties is narrower, but it nevertheless provides a measure of freedom granted by law or contract to the authorized person.

Understanding the exercise of rights and fulfillment of obligations as implementation of measures of individual freedom matters primarily from the standpoint of the science of private law. The aspects of the category of exercise of rights (fulfillment of obligations) discussed above are the exercise of rights as the final stage of legal regulation, the fulfillment of obligations as a guarantee of the implementation of rights, etc. - make sense only in relation to the operation of law in the private sphere. In the sphere of public law, where, as emphasized by S.S. Alekseev, the method is obligation, the final stage of legal regulation is rather the fulfillment of obligations rather than the exercise of rights. As for the relationship between rights and obligations in the field of public law, G.F. Shershenevich generally wrote about it this way: “In public law, there are legal relations in which there is only an obligation, without a corresponding right. So, for example, the relation of a judicial investigator to the accused constitutes a legal relation, as far as it is determined by law, but here there are only the duties of the investigator, and if sometimes they talk about his right, for example, to arrest a suspect, then this is only in the sense of the obligation, if the conditions specified in the law are present, to subject the criminal to punishment." *(34) . Despite the controversy of this thesis, one must agree that if for public law the obligatory implementation of rights is the norm, then in private law this is an exception *(35) .

These differences must be kept in mind when defining the concept of exercising subjective civil law (fulfilling an obligation) and identifying the main characteristics of these categories.