Differentiation of Processes of Generational Exchange in a Changing Society

Abstract

The paper studies the problems of methodology and theory of
intergeneration attitudes. As the initial methodological basis of this
problem Platon’s idea about the patrimonial person is designated as
well as the views of Russian philosophers about Patrimonial integrity
as the linker between the person and the society. The philosophers
M. Heidegger’s and E. Husserl’s idea of intersubjective experience
which is treated as the attitude between old and new generations,
between the adult and the child or as generative attitude is analyzed.
In a changing environment, society demands to be seen as a historical
process based on the concepts of rebuilding and changing social
relationships, continuity and disunity, traditionalism and innovation.
In this sense, generation serves as a historical instrument for
measuring the scale and direction of long-term, time-varying social
change. “The successive emergence of new ‘biological beings’ inevitably
leads to some loss of the accumulated cultural wealth; but, on
the other hand, makes a “new selection” of what has been achieved
only when it is necessary. This encourages us to reevaluate what we
have accumulated, and teaches us to forget what is no longer needed,
and to strive for what we failed to achieve. The “step” of a generation
helps to determine the balance between the past state of society and
its movement into the future.