The philosophical content of the definition of the national mentality

Abstract

The notion of national mentality is widely used in sociophilosophical and related discussions concerned with the conjunction of the categories of cultural and mental, but its definitions and operationalization often remain implicit. The research goal of the presented article is to reconstruct the proximal philosophical content of the term national mentality. The following research questions are raised: the extensiveness and exhaustiveness of current definitions presented in publications; the influence of contexts of use of the term on its definition; the coherence of aspects of definitions of mentality by different definitions. The methodology of the work is represented by theoretical modeling. It involves critical and comparative analysis of secondary and primary sources. The article conceptualizes the categories that highlight the issues of national mentality. The results emphasize the limitations of current definitions and the insufficient differential capacity of a one-dimensional definition, given the complexity of the phenomenon's structure. The article highlights the dynamics of the concept's development and contextual conditionality, which is considered as a prerequisite for the crisis of our time. The role of individual agency and ways of transforming national codes are emphasized. The author characterizes the etymology and genesis of the concept as a consequence of imperialist influences on European philosophical schools. A combination of empirical-based discrete and holistic continuous dimensional approaches is proposed, using the primitives of the level structure of mentality. The provided detail is offered as an alternative to the traditional understanding of national mentality as a single mental reality. Implications. These results serve as the basis for the restoration of the cognitive process of the national mentality in the Ukrainian philosophical tradition, in accordance with the standards of empirical-based research. The proposed way of understanding the relationship between culture and psyche allows the term to be used in studies of related fields that do not have a descriptive category to denote the ways of being of an ethno-cultural community. By providing a more nuanced and precise understanding of the subject, these categories can help counteract culturally based simplifications that threaten to segregate and exclude. The principles of national mentality conceptualization outlined above are necessary for the correct implementation of the results obtained in practice. In fact, interventions aimed at the thinking aspect of society, such as pedagogical, political, or managerial, should be based on a substantial philosophical foundation.