Maksimov L.V. Knowledge and values in the structure of humanitarian disciplines

Abstract: The subject of this research is the equivocal – simultaneously value and cognitive – status of humanitarian disciplines. Despite the obvious presence of the value component in composition of these disciplines (notably, presence not only as the object of cognition, but also as the scholar’s own value position), the are usually qualified in the philosophical-methodological literature as the branches of knowledge, specific sciences (compared with other sciences). The article gives a different interpretation of the structure and functions of humanitarian disciplines. It is demonstrated that in this field have practically established the two interrelated and formally inseparable, but in essence, discordant types of intellectual activity: alongside the humanitarian sciences, which describe and explain the realities of human existence, it is also the value-normative doctrines, which suggest and rationally substantiate certain life orientations of the people. The methodological foundation lies in the non-cognitivist approach that stands for the beyond cognition specificity of the value-normative phenomena of consciousness, as well as their profound irreducibility to knowledge. This approach formed in the last several decades as the alternative to the traditional cognitivist paradigm that interprets human mentality in general as the area exclusively of the knowledge and cognition. The important practical result of discrediting of the cognitivist paradigm consists in the radical retargeting of the methodology of ethical upbringing: rejection of the traditional “educational” orientation (according to which, the values are retransmitting through the transfer of “knowledge” of good, duty, etc.; in other words, by means of moral edifications) in favor of the more efficient methods of psychological and socio-deterministic impact upon the souls of the educates.

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