RELATIONSHIP OF ETHNOPSCHOLOGY AND MORALITY: METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS

Abstract

Purpose. The purpose of the article is to reveal the essential features of the relationship between ethnopsychology and morality as an ethno-moral model of individual formation, as well as a certain community. This requires a solution of the following tasks: a) to emphasize the different aspects of the relationship of these phenomena; b) to reveal ethnopsychological possibilities of the morality of Ukrainians.

Methods. The methodology of the study is based on the use of cultural genetic, structural-systematic, comparative-historical methods for revealing the essential characteristics of the relationship between ethnopsychology and morality as specific components of both personality and a particular community.

Results. The directions of interconnection of ethnopsychology and morality in three “aspects” are found: historical (on the background of which the process of design and development of their content takes place), socio-psychological (in which the universality and uniqueness of ethnos are grasped) and cultural (in which archetypes function as “general” rules” regulating not the form but the direction of activity).

Conclusions. Ethno-psychology, beginning as a science that studies the ethnic features of the psyche of people, showed its rights to interpret such a phenomenon as “the national spirit”, that can be interpreted: first, as a special systematic formation, which reflects the mental similarity of individuals belonging to a particular ethnic group; second, as their self-awareness, a certain way of reflexion. In this context, the problem of “ethnos-morality” acquires a praxeological character as the acquisition of personality traits characteristic to a particular ethnic group and their influence on its life activity and behaviour, as well as the awareness of the ethnos of one’s own qualities and identification of oneself with a certain community. Such aspect helps to understand how a person acquires national traits and self-consciousness under the influence of various factors, how the mentality, its moral attitudes are formed. If we compare ethno-psychology and morality in terms of their meaning-forming functions, we can say that the first answers the question: “What is the basis of life of an ethnic group and how to preserve life?”. And, the second, deepening the semantic nuances, answers the question of why it should be saved and reproduced.