On Social Mentality

This dissertation holds its basic standpoint and methodology on historical materialism , social epistemology and axiology, starting with the relationship between the social mentality and human subjective capacities and essential powers, argues that the social mentality is not only a kind of mental state and dynamics with a certain social universities, but also a mode by which human subjective capacities and essential powers appropriate themselves and realize themselves on the plane of mentality. Therefore the social mentality penetrated with some existential value order or value system marks actual situation of human existence. All of the social mentality is at bottom formed in human sensory activities among which the key to understand the social mentality is the tensions and conflicts between tradition and actuality, between knowing and evaluating. Or in another words, all of the social mentality could be explained by way of social episteme and values appearing in the contradictions between a given social actual developments and traditional conventions. With the historical development of sensory practice and the logical advance of human essential power, with the development of human capacities of knowing and evaluating, social mentality promotes the human development and social progress in its self-realization.This dissertation falls into five chapters and an introduction additional. In the introduction, the author points out the contemporary implications of researching the social mentality, and argues that social mentality highlights as an object for knowing and as a actual problem in human existence. Furthermore, the author overviews the present researches of social mentality and some questions at the aspects of the scope, paradigm, perspective and depth in those researches, in order to argue for the importance of his research presented in this dissertation. Finally the author presents his basic lead of thinking: firstly, the philosophical problems are refined through the insight into the appearances and confronting with the problems as to dig out the deep structures; the second step is to bring to light the nature, generation .historic evolutions and actual permutations of social mentality by starting with the relationship between social mentality and human subjective capacities and essential powers. And the author thinks his methods as practical, systematic and class-analyzing.In chapter one, the author explains the concept of social mentality and its constitution and mail characters. Beginning with analyses of the relations between social mentality and individual mentality, between social mentality and social ideological trends, the author outlines the connotation and extension of the concept of social mentality. The author holds that the social mentality is consist of the mental internality and mental representation. The mental internality is the inner basis of the mental representation which is the action direction and external ization namely objedification of the mental internality. Two elements are constituent of the social mentality: social recognition and social evaluation. Socialrecognition is the logical start-point of inner mental process of social mentality. Social recognition determines the social mentality: the nature and degree of the former determine the nature and status of the latter, the falsehood or truthfulness of the social recognition, various recognitive structures and perspectives, different cultural contexts, diverse thinking modes and orientations, all of those have impact upon the social mentality. On the other hand, social evaluation and values are at the heart of the social mentality which always reflects a certain of value preferences. The mental representation includes public opinions, discursive systems and social morals, and so on. As a level of social consciousness, social mentality is characterized by such features as native, ordinary experienced, closing to the present, infectiviry, differentia, prior and lag, and so forth.In the chapter two, the author explores the practical generation of social mentality. Traditionally there are six modes explaining the generation of social mentality: environmentalist determinism, thought determinism, mental-background determinism, psychological determinism, multiple-factors determinism and reductionism. All of those modes have their deficiency in common, lying in that they are based on the abstract and substantialist mode of thinking. Opposition to that mode of thinking, Marx substitutes the way of relationship thinking for substantialist mode. As a result, dialectic or concrete relationship thinking becomes the principal instrument for exploring the generation of social mentality. According to that methodology, social mentality is no longer understood as a product of a given and existing substance, but the result of human activity. Hence the conclusion is that the sensory practice alone is the basis for the generation and development of social mentality. The actual and concrete social mentalities are always embed in some mode of production, dependant on some ways of live, communication and other behaviors and constrained by some cultural traditions, social ideologies and social institutions which embody the sensory practice and its products.In chapter three, the author discusses the basic forms of social mentality in it historical development. It is through its historical evolution that the social mentality and its generation are explained. The existence of social mentality is in the mental forms which are accumulation of the ways of existence and life in the ideal level. The mental forms are formed by national spirit or Zeitgeist, values preferences, morals and conventions. And as the modes of existence penetrated with certain of value order, the mental forms are a way of self-appropriating of human subjective powers. In this chapter, the author explores the historical evolution of social mentality in its diachronic dimension. Together with human development, social mentality lives through its historical developments. Human production modes, ways of live, communication approaches and social relations are presented in the historical progresses, stages and continuity of social mentality. Accordingly there are four forms emerging out of the history of social mentality: "self-denial" mentality in primitive society including mentalities of natural worship and kin worship; "dependent" mentality inagricultural society including such mentalities as the attaching to land, authority worship, conservatism and pragmatism; "independent-reifying" mentality including such manifestations as autonomy, equality and liberty, etc; "multiple-maze" mentality in the information society.In chapter four, the author considers the transmutation of social mentality. The author examines separately systematic transmutation and actual transmutation of social mentality .By way of the systematic sciences , especially the theories of the dissipation structure and chaos, the author argues that , taking the social mentality as a independent system, its transmutation presupposes the status of removed balance; the basic form of transmutation is chaos; the inner mechanism of transmutation is il-linear intervention and fluctuation; the trend of transmutation if the unity of determinism and non-determinism. As for the actual transmutation, the author argues that the transmutation of social mentality has its sources in the actual social life: the conflicts and tensions between the tradition and modern, between the recognition and evaluation. Moreover the author sums up the law of lopsided development in the transmutation of social mentality, which has four aspects , taking the contemporary Chinese social transformation as the background: the inconsistency in the developments of material, institutions and ideology results in the conflicts and loss of synchronization of the transmutation of social mentality; the loss of synchronization of between the disorganization of the old elements and emerging of the new elements results in the conflicts and loss of synchronization of the developments of social mentality; the unbalance of social economy in various regions brings out the unbalance of the development of social mentality;In chapter five, the author explores the regularization of social mentality .Aiming at leading the social mentality to promoting the social stability and progress, the author expounds the necessity, possibility, objectives and approaches of regularization of social mentality in the course of Chinese social transformation. The author elaborates that the regularization of social mentality as an important content of social spiritual civilization ensures the social stability and modernization. The objectives which the regularization of social mentality is supposed to attain including the improvement of the situation of social mentality, the formation of the sound personality and the culturing of the collective co-operative consciousness. The main approaches to the regularization are proved to be the developing the productivity, the establishing of correct mode of thinking , the correcting the value orientation, the critically inheriting of the traditional culture, the holding of the right leading of public opinion , the providing of service of psychological consultation.