Impact of Post-Modern Realities on the Contemporary Man’s Values According to M. Maffesoli

Abstract

The article analyzes the ideas of the French sociologist, Michel Muffesoli, the bright representative of postmodern thought. The questions of the transformation of the contemporary man’s values, the correlation between the newest phenomena of tribalism, emotionalism and presenteeism in modern society are revealed. It is established that according to Michel Maffesoli, the society develops not in a linear way, nor in a cyclical one, but by spiral, returning to certain phenomena that seemed to be passed away already from the historical point of view, but they return in present times in a different form of their existence, providing not literally the transformation of the society in its pure sense, but its transfiguration – the different form of the known phenomena. Michel Maffesolli's main theses suggest the shift in post-modern society from individualism to tribalism, from progress to presentheism, from rationalism to emotionalism, from the universal morality to the ethics of tribes in the postmodern society. The thinker’s observations in the sphere of sociology of everyday life help to rethink about the contemporary socio-cultural processes and to see the perspectives of modern social realities.