ABSOLUTES IN NATIONAL VIEWS OF THE WORLD: REPRESENTATIONS OF FRENCH PEOPLE AND RUSSIANS ABOUT GOOD AND EVIL / RIGHT AND WRONG

Abstract

The article is devoted to a contrastive analysis of the categories of good and evil / right and wrong in the French and Russian mentality. These notions belong to the basic worldview categories. In the formation of these concepts, mythological substrata, philosophical systems of different epochs, and religious doctrines also take part. The result of the study shows that the Russian conception of good and evil was mostly influenced by Christianity, while the French one -- by the antiquity. This determines the characteristics of all the concepts derived. The most striking differences between the French mentality and the Russian one are seen in the analysis of a concept that sounds like good ( dobro ) in Russian. In the French ordinary consciousness, it is quite different (as well as kindness). We associate this fact with the specific interpretation in the French culture of the concept of disinterested action. Undoubtedly, it is present in the French mind, due to Christian principles, but in everyday consciousness the ideas connected with pragmatic activity aimed at human prosperity (good) turn out to be more prominent. This is confirmed not only by the infringement of the concept of good in the French language, which is seen in compatibility, but also by special meanings, which appear in the fortune , occasion , vérité , accentuating the good. Epithets characterizing human behavior from the point of view of this particular moral category («good, kind») are also replaced by epithets that describe not the essence of temper but socially significant manifestations of it. We associate this difference between two cultures with the ascent of these concepts to fundamentally different origins.