Absolutes in National View of the World: Russian and French Ideas of Truth and Lie

Abstract

The article is devoted to a contrastive analysis of the categories of truth and lie in the French and Russian mentality. The study was carried out by the method of analyzing the etymology of the indicated concepts, their mythological processing and representation, contrastively analyzing the compatibility of words and their synonyms, reconstructing and comparing the real connotations (according to V. A. Uspensky) of central concepts from synonymous series, the results were presented in a standardized form, results. Comparison of these categories showed that the French ordinary consciousness does not disclose the notion of truth, but only the rights, which everyone possesses, and therefore they are subjective and not objective. This is a fact worthy of attention, because other thought categories in the French language, such as reason, consequence and goal, for example, demonstrate a stable duality of objectivity / subjectivity. The French concept of lie ( mensonge (n.f.)) is close to the Russian notion of lie, it has a similar set of meanings: the Russian language picture in this area clearly demonstrates the division of the conceptual field into top and bottom, higher and a terrestrial. Representation of heaven life where not the pantheon of the gods, but good and evil / right and wrong operate, shows the connectedness of the Russian consciousness in this area with the Christian, and not the pagan interpretation of the world. The French mentality is characterized by the domination of the ancient view of life over the Christian, expressing, for example, in mixture of concepts of deception and fiction - the first related to the intent to defraud, the second, is not associated with the intent to betray in a selfish way, but to entertain. This correlation is directly linked to the ancient origins of ideas in this area and is reflected in many European languages.