THE ESSENCE OF THE CONCEPT "VALUE ORIENTATIONS"

Abstract

The current state of development of Ukrainian society is characterized as a crisis, and therefore it is conditioned by the search for one's own path of development and change of values. Ukraine, as an independent state that has embarked on an independent path of forming new socio-economic, political, and spiritual guidelines, largely connects its ideas, dreams and hopes with the youth. Modern scientists and practitioners of social work, pedagogy, psychology, management, sociology, and law determine the main values of modern youth, which they use today and which make up their inner world and shape their attitude to the world around them. It should be noted that today the culture and values of youth are formed under the influence of many factors, which, unfortunately, are not always positive. Young people are rethinking spiritual values, norms, changing their ideals and ideas, which form the basis of determining the priority directions of the state's development, including changing views on the formation and establishment of democratic value foundations. The current situation is characterized by violations in the mechanism of continuity, young people reject the entire past, do not accept the experience of their parents. The problem of value orientations is central in modern sociology, psychology, pedagogy and philosophy. It is also important for understanding the process of regulating the relationship between a person and society. The social significance of this problem, the multifacetedness of its investigation, the growing interest in social development – all this requires a systematic analysis of values and value orientations, their essence, nature, interrelationships of the value system, value orientations of the individual, society as a whole, and those sociocultural transformational processes that happening in our society. Along with today's changes, with economic and national problems, the problem of values becomes relevant. Value orientations show their importance when analyzing the structure of human activity, which is impossible without orientation in the surrounding world. So, as we can see, the question of studying the nature and essence of value orientations is very important today, since they are the basis of the successful life of every person in society. Value orientations are integrative, freely and responsibly chosen attitudes of the individual, which are broader and more inclusive than any fixed or even basic social attitudes, orientations and ideals. Value orientations characterize an individual's attitude to the most important goals of life and to ways of achieving these goals. Even in stable societies, the processes of development and the change of generations lead to the opposition of competing normative and value systems. A much broader understanding of the essence of the concept of "value orientations" is presented in the sociological dictionary, in which the authors see the social, economic, political, moral, religious, aesthetic, epistemological, ontological and/or ideological foundations of the subject's evaluation judgments about the environment under this phrase reality, one or other of its aspects, spheres, objects that form the meaningful side of the personality orientation. Therefore, when examining the essence of the concept of "value orientations”, it should be stated that the problem of value orientations needs a significant rethinking in the conditions of modern dynamic social changes, which involves the simultaneous self-determination of a person in different loci of cultural space, which are subject to different cultural norms and are imposed, accordingly, by different values, which are not always related to each other. The key to understanding of the value orientations should be sought not in the subject-object relations of people, but in intersubjective ones. Our goal is to further investigate the value orientations of young people, which are changing under the influence of today's complex realities, namely: the continuation of military rule in Ukraine, the deepening of the economic crisis, and the emergence of a new youth movement “PVK Redan”.