The essence of man as a problem of philosophy
Among the essential definitions of a person, there are many that marked entire epochs in the history of philosophical thought: ʼʼman is a rational animalʼʼ, ʼʼman is a political animalʼʼ, ʼʼman is an animal that makes toolsʼʼ, ʼʼa religious personʼʼ, ʼʼa rational personʼʼ, etc.
Hosted on ref.rf
German philosopher Max Scheler(1874-1928) wrote ˸ ʼʼA person is something so vast, diverse that all known ᴇᴦο definitions can hardly be considered successfulʼʼ. Man is the object of study of many sciences. Among them - biology, physiology, psychology, genetics, anthropology, ethnology. Yes, in the center anthropology(the doctrine of man) is the problem of the origin, the formation of a modern type of man, in the center psychology - patterns of development and functioning of the psyche as a special form of life, in the center genetics - laws of heredity and variability of organisms. At the same time, man is also the main subject philosophical knowledge. ʼʼMan is the measure of all thingsʼʼ, - said ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras.
Hosted on ref.rf
What is this measure? What and how does it manifest itself? These issues have been discussed for about 2.5 thousand years and cause heated debate. The philosophical approach to the study of man is that man is perceived as the pinnacle of the evolution of the living, as the revelation of the creative potential of nature and society, as the creator of the spiritual world. When Aristotle distinguished between the plant, animal and human souls, he showed the place of man in the natural hierarchy and ᴇᴦο dependence on lower material states. Questions arise: why are there so many essential characteristics of a person? Why are they so different, although they mean the same object - a person? Let's try to understand these issues.
GREAT MYSTERY - MAN
Man is a complex system, he is multidimensional. From a scientific point of view, man, as you know, is a unique product of the long development of living nature and at the same time the result of the cosmic evolution of nature itself. At the same time, a person is born and lives in society, in a social environment. He has a unique ability to think, thanks to which the spiritual world of man exists, ᴇᴦο spiritual life. Society mediates the relationship of man to nature, and therefore a being born by man becomes really a man only when he is included in social relations. These truths allow us to speak about essence of man as a unity of natural and social. There is nothing more obvious and at the same time more complex than a person. modern man hundreds of thousands of years separate from ᴇᴦο distant ancestors. Therefore, it is not surprising that much of the life of the human race at the dawn of ᴇᴦο emergence remains unknown, mysterious, enigmatic. And our contemporary gives no reason to take ᴇᴦο for a predictable and open being. Even people who are wise in life often realize the insufficiency of their knowledge of ʼʼbrothers in mindʼʼ, since people familiar and unfamiliar every day present something incomprehensible, unexpected in their behavior and way of thinking.
1. Man as a problem for himself.
2. Man as a contradictory unity of the natural, social and spiritual.
3. Man as a person.
1. The problem of man is central in philosophy, because it comprehends not the world as such, but the meaning of human existence in the world. Therefore, the knowledge about a person that philosophy gives is always value-laden. Man for her is not a thing among things, not an object among objects, but a self-conscious subject, capable of changing the external world and himself. In this change there is always room for freedom, creativity, spontaneity.
The problem of man was already indicated in philosophy ancient world. In this era, cosmocentrism dominated as a type of philosophical thinking. Everything that exists was considered as a single and immense Cosmos, and man was thought of as its organic part. It was assumed that a person is not free, because the world huge and mysterious, and often hostile. The ideal existence of man is life in harmony with this world.
In the philosophy of the Middle Ages, theocentrism dominated as a type of worldview, represented in all forms of social consciousness of that era. God was considered at that time the center of the universe, and man was only one of his many creations. The meaning of human life consists in comprehending the divine, approaching it, and thereby saving oneself. Man does not believe in himself, he believes in God.
The philosophy of the Middle Ages, to a greater extent than the ancient one, drew attention to the inner, spiritual world of man. This created the prerequisites for separating man from the external, natural world and gradually opposing him.
The Renaissance, with its spirit of anthropocentrism, not only raised man above the rest of the living world, but also sowed in him the seeds of pride and boundless individualism.
In the philosophy of modern times, man was studied from the standpoint of mechanism as philosophical outlook. It was believed that man, like the outside world, is also a mechanism, a complex machine. This machine is a product of nature, the fruit of its long evolution. The main quality in a person is his intelligence. Man's calling is to change the world with the power of knowledge.
In German classical philosophy, an activity approach to understanding a person was established. He was studied as an exclusively spiritual being, the creator of history and the world of culture (I. Herder, I. Kant, G. Hegel, I. Fichte). The history of society was considered as the history of the formation of the freedom of the human race through its activities. The ultimate goal of history is humanism as a state of humanity, overcoming alienation and gaining freedom.
Classical Marxism considered a person in the context of the totality of social relations and the history of mankind. The central ideas of Marxism are the idea of human sociality, the social essence of man, understood materialistically and concretely historically: the essence of man is the totality of social relations.
Russian religious philosophy is entirely anthropological in its content, it is addressed primarily to the human soul. God and man, the meaning of history, good and evil - all these are the most important topics for this philosophy. The highest vocation of a person is to create and transform this world, to bring love, beauty, goodness and other high spiritual and spiritual qualities into it. moral values. Russian philosophy has always been morally oriented, so it was very interested in the theme of freedom and human creativity. She raised and resolved questions about the meaning of life, death and immortality of man. Ultimately, she saw the vocation of man in achieving harmony in the world by overcoming selfishness, multiplying love for all living things.
In foreign philosophy of the XX century. there was also great interest in the subject of man. important place in modern philosophy the topic of global problems of modern civilization and the human condition in connection with the crisis situation in the world took over.
In the 20-30s of the XX century. in Western Europe, existentialism arose as a "philosophy of human existence." The main theme in this philosophy was the theme of human existence in the alienated world of social relations. The existentialists taught that a person is doomed to be free if he does not want to die as a person, spiritually. The world and a person have a future only if a person finds the strength in himself not to die, but to create this world, making it more humane.
Philosophical anthropology, which was formed in the 20th century, set the task of creating a holistic image of a person based on the synthesis of a special-scientific study of various forms of human existence with its philosophical comprehension. She concluded that a person is not so much biological and social as spiritual being capable of distinguishing between its own essence and existence.
Thus, philosophy is called upon to comprehend a person as a being of three worlds - natural, social and spiritual. Unlike other creatures, he is able to overcome his own biological species limitations, be part of the living world and rise above it. From this follows the openness, incompleteness of man, his constant self-development.
2. The correlation and interaction of the social and biological, acquired and inherited, cultural and natural in man constitutes the content of the biosocial problem.
Under the biological in a person, it is customary to understand the anatomy of his body, the physiological processes in it. The biological forms the natural forces of man as a living being. The biological affects the individuality of a person, the development of some of his abilities - observation, forms of reaction to the outside world. All these forces are transmitted from parents and provide a person with the opportunity to exist in the world.
Under the social in a person, philosophy understands, first of all, the ability to think and act expediently. They are acquired by him in society through familiarization with the world of culture as a crystallization of the spiritual and practical experience of mankind.
There are two main positions on the question of the relationship between the biological and the social. According to the first, human nature is entirely social. According to the second, it is not only social, but also biologically loaded: there are biologically programmed primary social patterns of behavior. Supporters of both points of view provide serious arguments for their conclusions. Supporters of the first, arguing that a person is born with a single ability, “the ability to acquire human abilities” (A.N. Leontiev), refer to an experiment set by nature itself. We are talking about deaf-blind-mute children (who were born or became so in early childhood) from a special school in Zagorsk. Before school, they led not even an animal, but a plant lifestyle. They had cut off all the most important ties with the world, even before mastering at least a small part of the cultural content necessary for the formation of man. By itself, this content was not formed. And only at school, using special techniques, they were gradually accustomed to instrumental activities, starting with eating and ending with complex writing skills. Broken down by operations, they were taught articulate speech, reading, and writing using the Broglie alphabet. As a result, spiritually full-fledged people were formed, and four of them graduated from the psychological faculty of Moscow University.
Proponents of the second point of view refer to sociobiological data. According to sociobiology, most of the stereotypical forms of human behavior are characteristic of mammals. The founder of sociobiology, E. Wilson, refers to such forms as mutual altruism, protection of one's habitat, aggressiveness, forms of sexual behavior fixed by evolution, and nepotism. However, here we are not talking about a conscious choice based on the distinction between good and evil. When biologists talk about altruism, they mean social interaction that expands evolutionary possibilities where they are accompanied by increased reproductive success. Recognizing the decisive influence of cultural evolution, sociobiologists point out that the forms of our thinking and our actions are also influenced by the biological in man.
Natural in a person is a necessary condition for the development of social and spiritual qualities in an individual. The task is to combine the natural and the social in a person, to bring them into a state of harmony. Z. Freud was the first to characterize the human psyche as a battlefield between the forces of nature - instinct, consciousness and culture, and revealed the importance of unconscious mental processes in human life (see Chapter III of this manual).
Consciousness and self-awareness of a person, the ability to purposeful activity are formed only in society, in the process of communicating with their own kind in a system of certain social relations. However, social relations, the world of culture is not mechanically integrated into the subjective world of a person, but selectively, individually. If there were no such selectivity, individuality, then society itself would stop in its development, because it would "stamp" the same people and reproduce the same structures. Therefore, the essence of a person is not in the totality of social relations, but in his spirituality, in value-semantic self-affirmation.
The concept of spirit originally had an exclusively religious meaning. Over time, it has taken on a broader meaning. Spirit is the sphere of ideals, higher values. Spirit - good or evil - is always something that is higher than a person that controls him. The power of the spirit over a person is so great that it can outweigh the impact of both social and natural forces including the life instinct. In the name of an idea, ideal, faith, a person can go to selfless deeds, to death. The spiritual world of a person is the whole Universe, which he carries in an ideal way in himself. In it, a person models various options for the world order and his own life order.
The concept of the soul is closely related to the concept of the spirit, but not identical to it. In the spirit, a person rises above himself and above the existing system of values, while the soul is immediately given, the sphere of immediate experiences, thoughts. The soul is mobile, but the spirit is stable and solid.
Man is undoubtedly a part of society, but not a mechanical part. Arming a person with the cumulative experience of mankind, society forms a person, as it were, “for itself”. But as a spiritual being, a person discovers his intrinsic value and can resist it, carry within himself the impulse to transform society. Society, creating a person, thereby carries out its change. Thus, the social existence of a person is contradictory: “he is constantly “closed” in society and constantly goes beyond its limits, reproduces and transforms it.” (V.S. Barulin. Social Philosophy. Textbook. - Ed. 2nd. - M .: FAIR-PRESS, 1999. P. 474).
3. For the study of man, philosophical thought has developed a number of concepts that allow a fairly complete and detailed answer to the question of the essence and nature of man, the meaning of his existence.
The concept of "man" is a generic concept that expresses common features the human race, the socialized man. This concept combines the biological and general social features of a person.
For studying individual person in philosophy and other sciences, the concept of "individual" is used. Under "individuality" refers to the original, unique features and qualities inherent in this individual.
Personality is the social qualities of an individual acquired by him in the process of education and self-education, spiritual and practical activities and interaction with society. Personality has primarily spiritual qualities, because personality is not given to a person from the outside, it can be formed only by himself. The true personality is not a frozen phenomenon, it is all dynamic. Personality is always creativity, victory and defeat, search and acquisition, overcoming slavery and gaining freedom.
Personality is any person (and not just bright, exceptional), considered in his sociality as a responsible and conscious subject (doer) of social life. Individuality can be inherent in every person, and not just the most talented people.
The problem of "individual and society" is considered in two main relatively independent, but closely related perspectives.
First is aimed at understanding how social life is organized, how social institutions, communities, society as a whole correlate with the needs of an individual; insofar as the former should and can express its interests, or they are independent of it, subject exclusively to their own logic of development.
Being the only real participant in social life, a person somehow organizes his inventions, creations (meaning social institutions, social communities, society as a whole) as phenomena ultimately derived from his own needs. Each social institution expresses personal interests and serves them. At the same time, he acquires a certain and quite tangible independence, has his own logic of development, which is irreducible to the logic of elementary connections between people.
Second angle problems of "personality and society": how a person interacts with other people in a particular society, how much he is able to show his independence, autonomy; or society, public relations, institutions quite rigidly program values, their hierarchy, life path personality, its ups and downs.
The interaction of the individual and the social environment in the most general form is understood as the activity of an individual who satisfies his needs, pursues his goals in specific social connections and interactions. In other words, we are talking about the active assertion by the personality of its needs, about its independence, where adaptation, adaptation to the environment is just a moment subordinated to the tasks of self-realization of the personality.
To the extent that any phenomenon depends on the conditions of its existence, to the extent that a person naturally depends on external conditions, the circumstances of his life.
The relationship between the individual and the social environment can rather be described by the formula: search(personality) - offers(societies) - choice(personality proposed by society). The autonomy, and therefore the responsibility of the individual, is manifested both in the process of perception, comprehension by her of the proposals, conditions, requirements imposed by society (after all, everyone understands these requirements in their own way, selectively, in accordance with their ideas about the proper, good, valuable), and in the process of fulfilling her social roles.
Freedom is a fundamental value for a person, but it must have limits. Otherwise, it will turn into arbitrariness, self-will and anarchy, into tyranny and violence against other people, i.e. into negative freedom. The boundaries of freedom are the interests of another person, social groups and society as a whole, as well as nature as the natural basis for the existence of society.
If the interests of the individual and society coincide in gaining freedom, the concept of freedom should be supplemented by the idea of regulating people's activities. The state should do this not by means of violence and coercion, but with the help of an economic mechanism and strict observance of human rights. The state is obliged to guarantee the observance of human rights, recognizing that the value of the human person is higher than any values of a nation, class, group of people, etc. This is a guarantee against totalitarian suppression of human rights. Ignoring or belittling the rights of the individual leads to inevitable degradation, both of the individual and society.
Freedom is impossible without the responsibility and duty of a person to the world in which he exists. Responsibility is the inevitable price of freedom, the payment for it. Freedom requires from a person reason, morality and will, without which it will inevitably degenerate into arbitrariness and violence against other people, into the destruction of the surrounding world. The measure of a person's responsibility is always specific within the limits of his competence and range of possibilities.
It is necessary to form truly humanistic values, to develop an attractive social ideal that includes the idea of individual freedom as the main point of its content. At the same time, individual freedom should be understood as the interaction of a harmoniously developing society, in which the interests of all its members are taken into account, and with a maximum of opportunities to meet the needs of development and self-expression of the individual. The development of a person as a person occurs in creativity. Thanks to creativity, there is an expansion and enrichment of the spiritual world of both the creator himself and other people. However, creativity should not be associated with an unbridled thirst for the transformation of nature and society. Consideration should be given to what the consequences of these changes will be. We are talking about the relationship of freedom, creativity and responsibility of the individual.
Achieving the ideal of freedom is possible only if all aspects of the individual and all the conditions of his social existence are simultaneously improved. A free economy, united with the rule of law, the main principle of which will be the social protection of the individual, ensuring the equality of all subjects of rights and freedoms in relation to the law, the inviolability of the freedom of the individual, his rights and interests, the mutual responsibility of the state and the individual will create a new version of a democratic and humane society, able to translate into reality the freedom of the individual and the all-round development of man.
Key words and terms:
Cosmocentrism, man, labor, human individual, personality.
The problem of man is one of the most important for all philosophy, since philosophy expresses the attitude of man to the world. It explores not the world as such, but the meaning of human existence in the world. And moreover, it considers the unique features that are inherent only to man and no one else. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to isolate in the complex of philosophical significance those plots that relate specifically to a person. Whatever problem we take, it eventually leads to the theme of man. Thus, the problem of man in philosophy is practically inexhaustible.
The first ideas about man arise long before philosophy itself. At the initial stages of history, people are characterized by mythological and religious forms of self-consciousness. In legends, tales, myths, an understanding of the nature, purpose and meaning of man and his being is revealed. It was in this way that the first teachings about man arose.
In ancient philosophy, man was considered as an image of the cosmos, i.e. from the point of view of cosmocentrism. In his human manifestations, he is subordinate to the highest principle - fate.
Beginning with Socrates, the philosophers of Antiquity considered man to be a real being, consisting of a body and a soul. Plato correlated the soul with the idea, Aristotle considered the soul a form.
In the Middle Ages, man was seen as part of the world order established by God. Man is perceived as a being in which two principles are inextricably and contradictory connected: soul and body, as well as man and God. For example, Augustine represented the soul as independent of the body and identified it with man, Thomas Aquinas considered man as a unity of body and soul, as an intermediate being between animals and angels. Human rafts are an arena of unchanging passions and desires. Hence the constant desire of a person to comprehend the divine light and truth, which frees from the devil's fetters. The main task is communion with the highest essence - God, and thus, finding consolation in sorrow and salvation on the day of the Last Judgment. This view is alien to the thought of the finiteness of human existence: belief in the immortality of the soul often brightens up the harsh earthly existence. The whole drama of human history is expressed in the paradigm: fall into sin - redemption. And each person is called to realize this, commensurate their actions with God. In Christianity, everyone is responsible for himself before God.
In modern times, the specificity of a person is seen in the mind, in thinking, rationality. God moves to the periphery human life. The man breaks away from him. He now believes in himself. During this period, the beginning of experimental science was laid. The main sphere of human activity is knowledge, and the world is governed by reasonable laws that correspond to the laws human mind. It was natural science that created models for the study of human nature. But an even greater merit of this time was the recognition of the autonomy of the human mind in the cognition of its own essence, which was reflected in the concepts of Hegel, Fichte, Feuerbach.
Philosophy of the XIX-beginning of the XX century. continues the search for the authenticity of man, considers his spiritual beginning, reducing his essence to the rational, then to the irrational. For example, the phenomenologist Hussel proclaims that the true nature of man is the experience of his consciousness - the formation of Eides, understanding in accordance with them the world of objects, life.
Over time, a person becomes the center of philosophical knowledge, which connects society with the entire universe. And there are no less mysteries in it than in the universe. Moreover, man is the main secret of the universe, the inexhaustible crown of the nature of creativity.
Consider a riddle that has not yet been fully solved to this day. In accordance with evolutionary theory It is believed that humans evolved from monkeys. This is evidenced by numerous fossil remains of transitional creatures, despite their various variants. Although religious versions of the divine act of human creation came into conflict with scientific data. There are circulating hypotheses about the extraterrestrial origin of life, that the real ancestors of man are aliens. There is no reliable scientific data that could confirm such bold assumptions.
However, the labor theory of the origin of man has become widespread. Its supporters believe that it was labor that created man. In the course of labor activity, the human hand becomes more flexible and free. At the same time, the brain develops, an ever closer cohesion of people is achieved, and there is a need to say something to each other. Thus, tool activity, cohesion in society, speech and thinking are the decisive factors in the transformation of ape and man. Then the regulation of marital relations, morality and many other aspects of the formation and existence of a person are added.
Thinkers of different eras saw the uniqueness of man. They saw her in a special physicality in high organization as a biological individual. But, nevertheless, the signs of the manifestation of the human essence are extremely diverse - this is the mind, will, character, emotions, work, communication. The question of which one is distinctive has troubled many philosophers. A person thinks, rejoices, suffers, loves and hates, constantly strives for something, achieves what he wants and, not being satisfied with it, rushes to new goals and ideals. Among these signs that define the essence of man is labor. It is in labor that a person constantly changes the conditions of his existence, transforming them in accordance with his constantly developing needs, creates a world of material and spiritual culture, which is created by a person to the same extent that a person himself is shaped by culture. Labor is not possible in a single manifestation and acts as a collective, social one.
Thus, a person is a unity: biological, psychological, social, and at the same time it is the subject of labor.
Man is a natural being, but at the same time social and natural. Nature gives a person much less than life in society requires of him. How does a person unite his biological and social principles? A person is born with incompletely formed anatomical and physiological systems, which are completed in the conditions of society, that is, they are genetically laid down just like human ones. The mechanism of heredity, which determines the biological side of a person, includes his social essence. A newborn initially turns out to be the owner of a special ability to imitate adults - their actions, sounds, etc. Curiosity is inherent in him, and this is already a social quality. He is able to be upset, experience fear and joy, his smile is innate. A smile is a human privilege. Thus, the child is born precisely as a human being. And yet, at the moment of birth, he is only a candidate for a person and cannot become one in isolation. He is introduced into the world of people by society, it is this society that regulates and fills his behavior with social content.
Every sane person has fingers obedient to his will, he can take a brush, paint and start drawing, but this will not make him a real artist. It is the same with consciousness, which is not our natural property. Conscious mental phenomena are formed in vivo as a result of upbringing, training, active mastery of the language, the world of culture. Thus, the social principle penetrates through the mental, into the biology of the individual, which is the basis of his conscious life.
So, the human individual is a unity of the biological, mental and social. which leads to the emergence of a new qualitative stage - the human personality.
concept personalities more concrete and more meaningful than the concept of a person. In general, a person is a person who has self-consciousness and worldview, who has reached an understanding of his social functions, his place in the world, acting as a subject of knowledge and transformation of the world and realizing his rights and obligations. The personal qualities of a person depend on his self-conscious mind and on his social lifestyle, therefore a person is a social developed person. A child, especially at a very early age, is a person, but not yet a person. It only<проклевывается>a person, he still has to become one, if the social ties of a person are not violated or adverse or tragic circumstances do not occur.
Personality is formed in the process of activity, communication, that is, in the process of socialization of the individual. During life, a person may, to one degree or another, lose personality traits due to the development of chronic alcoholism, drug addiction, etc. Personality includes common features that are characteristic of a representative of the human race; its inherent and special features as a representative of a certain society with its specific socio-political, national, historical traditions, forms of culture, as well as its hereditary features and unique conditions of the microenvironment in which it is cultivated. All this creates a unique personal experience and forms the socio-psychological uniqueness of the individual.
Thus, the uniqueness, originality, originality of the individual is not just the greatest social value, but the need for the development of a healthy, rational, organized society.
So, man is the highest level of living organisms on Earth, the subject of the social process, the creator of culture and historical development. Interest in the problem of man has not weakened to this day. The difficulty lies in the fact that he has different features that contradict each other, he is largely excluded from the organic world of nature, although he is rooted in it. Human qualities are paradoxical and give rise to ideas about an exceptional being. Man is a great mystery both for others and for himself. With this secret in himself and for himself, he will be born and live until the end of his days, taking his secret to another world, especially the secret of his soul, his consciousness and mind.
Questions for self-control:
1) What are the main historical stages philosophical reflection human problems? Describe them.
2) What are the main problems of the relationship between the biological and the social in man?
3) What is a personality?
4) What is the uniqueness of a person?
1. Human problems in philosophy
1.1 Man as a subject of philosophy
1.2 Anthroposociogenesis
1.4 The unity of natural and social in man
1.5 Spirituality and the problem of the meaning of life. Is there a meaning to death?
List of sources used
1. Human problems in philosophy
1.1 Man as a subject of philosophy
Plato saw in man “a wingless, bipedal creature with flat nails; the only being receptive to knowledge based on reasoning." Aristotle believed that man is a social animal endowed with reason, morally improving in a just state. According to the philosopher, sociality distinguishes a person from other living beings. Aristotle was the first to introduce the term "anthropology", put forward the idea of a consistent complication of the organization of living beings ("ladders of beings").
In addition to the idea of improving the individual through his inclusion in the social whole (in the state), the idea of a virtuous and happy life by liberating a person from the power of the outside world, from the socio-political sphere (for example, in the ethics of Epicurus). Plutarch (I century) believed that the character of a person through the concentration of his will is realized in activity, which is the embodiment of desire - the desire for a goal, guided by reason and feelings. For Plutarch, an act, activity is a condition for success in life's struggle with circumstances and fate.
IN medieval philosophy person was seen as component divine order in the world. Augustine represented the soul as independent of the body and identified it with the concept of "man". Thomas Aquinas saw in man the unity of body and soul, considered him as an intermediate being between an animal and an angel. A tragic split was seen in a person (inconsistency. - V.K.). He owns a divine gift - free will and at the same time is in slavery to his passions and inclinations. Man is above the cosmos and should be the master of nature, but because of his fall he has no power even over himself and is completely dependent on divine mercy.
The Renaissance, instead of the religious-ascetic idea of the sinfulness of the flesh and the earthly life of a person, proclaimed his greatness, dignity, substantiated the self-sufficient value of a person and his earthly life.
In modern times, attention was paid to inner world person. Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662) emphasized the connection between reason and morality, asserted: "Man is just a reed, the weakest of the creatures of nature, but he is a thinking reed." An attempt was made to reveal the nature of man, which was presented as “the sum of it. abilities and powers, such as the ability to eat, move, multiply, feel, reason, etc. These abilities. are contained in the definition of man as a gifted animal with reason. Physical and spiritual abilities, the basic qualities of people (reasonableness, striving for well-being, happiness, justice, virtue) can be realized, according to Hobbes, in a state built on the basis of a social contract.
D. Locke attached great importance to the formation of the harmony of the physical and spiritual principles of the individual (“A healthy mind in a healthy body”). Man began to be regarded as a thing operating with material and ideal objects. In the XVIII century. American W. Franklin defined man as "an animal that makes tools." Holbach saw the real essence of man in the realm of morality and thought. Thus, the philosopher distinguished man from animals and shared the general educational idealistic attitude - "ideas rule the world." At the same time, Holbach leaned towards mechanism, assuming that our souls are subject to the same physical laws as material bodies. Man, according to Voltaire, is involved in good and evil, pleasure and suffering, endowed with passions in order to act rationally, he is incomprehensible, as the rest of nature is incomprehensible. La Mettrie, relying on the data of comparative anatomy and physiology, proved the unity of living matter, wrote about the possibility of transforming apes into humans under certain conditions. He approached the idea of natural selection, arguing that all kinds of wildlife are the result of a process of replacing less perfect organisms with more perfect ones, better adapted to survive. Man is the result of the self-development of matter, and the human body is a self-winding machine, the personification of continuous movement.
The representatives of the classical German philosophy. Based on the dualistic understanding of man as a being belonging to two worlds - natural necessity and moral freedom, Kant distinguished between "philosophical anthropology" in "physiological" and "pragmatic" respects: the first gives an idea of what nature makes of a person, and the second - what man makes himself. In a later (from the end of the 19th century) interpretation, the concept of "philosophical anthropology" means the doctrine of the nature and essence of man. Hegel believed that a person realizes his spiritual essence, overcoming naturalness (biology), through inclusion in the diversity of social life relations (family, property, state, law, etc.). Considering human labor, Hegel interpreted it as an expedient activity occurring within the framework of causal dependencies, and revealed the dialectic of the individual and the social. However, Kant, Fichte, and Hegel understood practical activity in the abstract as the activity of thinking, will, and spirit. According to L. Feuerbach, the essence of a person is largely determined by his body, and the person himself has a mind, heart and will capable of love. Man, including nature as his basis, is the universal and highest subject of philosophy. In this approach, along with undoubted advantages, there is no specific historical view of a person, it is not explained why different people the content of their lives is so different.
K. Marx and F. Engels developed the general materialistic idea of the determination of man by objective natural and social reality. This concept is supplemented by the idea of human activity, activity, which developed within the framework of idealism. Marxism connects the understanding of the essence of man with the social conditions of his functioning and development, conscious activity in the course of which man becomes a prerequisite and a product of history. F. Engels noted that man belongs to nature with all his flesh and blood. However, the main thing in human nature is social conditioning. Marxism does not level or belittle the specific qualities of individuals, it takes into account the character, will, abilities, passions of a person.
F. Nietzsche believed that Europe of the XX century. will be the Europe of the dehumanized mass, the crowd. In contrast to this, the philosopher rejected the leveling of man. Nietzsche's ideal was the image of the "superman" as a representative of a new type of people focused on self-creation, self-improvement, superior to their contemporaries in their moral and intellectual qualities. "Superman" Nietzsche rejected the cult of profit, believed in the power of active love. Underestimating the average person (representative of the masses) is at least inhumane, but Nietzsche's idea of the progressive evolution of mankind based on cleansing from vices and using the strengths of more gifted individuals is productive.
Representatives anthropological philosophy, especially the existentialist, opposed the "dictatorship" of philosophical abstractions and material things, they chose existence, the spiritual world of man, as the main topic of their reflections. For example, in a subjectivist interpretation of a person, J. Sartre wrote that a person exists insofar as he realizes himself through the totality of his actions, through the decision to take a certain position. Existentialists believe that the existence of man is under threat due to the technization of society and man, the danger of nuclear war, the Marxist doctrine, which absolutizes the universality of labor and technology.
In the context of accelerating social progress, religious philosophy is updated, "anthropolized". ON THE. Berdyaev noted that many were written justifications of God, theodicy, it is time to write the justification of man - anthropodicy. According to the philosopher, a person is placed in front of many worlds in accordance with different forms of activity: the world of everyday life, religious, scientific, artistic, political, economic. These worlds put a seal on the formation of personality. Berdyaev in his works “The Existential Dialectics of the Divine and the Human”, “On the Appointment of Man” saw the dialectical inconsistency of a person: he is limited and infinite, has little capacity and can accommodate the universe, in the depths of the unconscious goes beyond the boundaries of consciousness and joins the cosmic elements. Man potentially contains everything and actualizes only a little. He is a being dissatisfied with himself and capable of outgrowing himself. In general, a person, - Berdyaev noted, - is a prerequisite for any philosophical knowledge After all, man philosophizes for man.
Modern naturalism in the interpretation of man is realized in the description of man by analogy with other complex organisms, in the version of man as a "failed animal", doomed by his biological inferiority to search for "unnatural" ways of existence.
A significant contribution to the development of philosophical anthropology was made by Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945), who determined that man is an animal that invented symbols and lives in their world, and Max Scheler (1874-1928), who argued that man is a free, open being, still in development and development.
Modern philosophical anthropology analyzes all layers of a person's life (instincts, drives, emotions, etc.), is looking for anthropological foundations for life, culture, morality, law, social institutions, studies interpersonal relationships based on people's natural sympathies, on acts of recognition " other”, mutual involvement due to empathy or common language. Arnold Gehlen (1904 - 1976) in his main work "Man. His nature and his position in the world" (1940) gave an integrative description of man as an integral and unified being, not splitting into "body" and "soul". The key concepts in describing such a person are the concepts of "action", "community", "culture". A person must win the conditions of his existence from the world and at the same time comprehend himself. Social institutions and norms appear in Gehlen's concept as forms that make up for a person's biological insufficiency and realize his life aspirations. Helmut Plesner (1892 - 1985) interpreted man in the unity of his biophysical and spiritual aspects. According to Plesner, the ability of a living organism to interact with the environment is realized in different ways: in plants, by simple "membership" in the environment; in animals it is a manifestation of a certain independence in relation to the environment; in humans - eccentricity. The latter manifests itself in the intellectual-moral and emotional-behavioral spheres. Plesner formulated some norms of internal development and external relation of man to being. First, a person must make himself what he is. He manages his life on the basis of culture. Secondly, a person not only dissolves in the world, but also has a distance in relation to it. Thirdly, man is out of balance. Having achieved something, he cannot find peace, but strives for endless self-change, always remaining a mystery to himself. Man, according to Plesner, is tormented by doubts about the existence of God, he does not doubt only his own existence.
Modern foreign theorists are concerned about the meaning of life and value orientations of a person, ways of his self-realization. A. Peccei in his book "Human qualities", analyzing the total technization of life, noted the need for a "human revolution" through the development of intellectual, sensual and bodily abilities of a person. According to a number of philosophers, the task is to make work healthier with the help of physiology, medicine and psychotechnics, to adapt the machine to man. To control technical progress, both "external measures" are necessary - a change in the mode of production, and an "internal effort of a person", in which he proceeds from his mind, will, love and other movements of the soul. Thus, the "integrity" of a person is achieved.
D. Otten, G. Wobrub, G. Glaser, JI. Brown believe that the transformation of society with the help of advanced technology involves high qualifications, a developed general culture of a person, an increase in leisure, a change in an individual lifestyle. F. Gross emphasizes that the main condition for the existence of complex societies is pluralism. It requires not only tolerance for the values of various groups and the presence of some common norms, but also "economic democracy" (the coexistence of various forms of economic activity), social justice (overcoming large differences in income).
IN historical process increasing humanization of society. In the narrow sense of the word, humanism is an ideological movement that was formed during the Renaissance, the content of which is the study and dissemination of ancient languages, literature, art, etc. Humanism in the general sense of the word means the desire for humanity, for the creation of conditions for a life worthy of a person. Humanism begins when a person begins to realize his role in the universe, his destiny, the meaning and purpose of his being. At present, there is a growing focus on practical humanism - purposeful, real activity to create conditions for the elevation of human life in accordance with the norms of humanistic consciousness. Modern humanism considers man not only as the highest goal, as was the case with Kant, but also as a means for solving various practical problems, provides for a moral way of life on a material basis worthy of man, and is carried out in harmony with the development of living and inanimate nature. The affirmation of humanism is an alternative to such undesirable possibilities in the further evolution of society as:
a) the formation of a one-dimensional person who directs his energy to the realization of any particular moment of his being;
b) the transformation of a person in the conditions of an electronic civilization into a "virtual" being, followed by its replacement with a cyborg, a biocomputer. We are skeptical about the opinion that "from the point of view of the general process of the evolution of life, the replacement of Homo sapiens by a new technogenic type of intelligent life fits into the overall picture as the next, higher stage in the development of living matter in the Universe." For example, in recent times, a person has increasingly begun to lose chess games to a machine. This does not mean that a supercomputer should come to replace a person as a new technogenic type of intelligent life, many times superior to a person in the number and speed of options calculated per second.
So, the history of philosophical thought has recorded: the discovery by a person of himself in his interaction with the cosmos, the world, society and himself, the sources of human activity; not only inclusion in the socio-natural whole, but also the self-development of a person relatively independent of the outside world; unity in man of cosmo-natural-biological, social and spiritual, harmony of body and spirit, physical and spiritual; humanity as the most characteristic manifestation of a person; the inconsistency of man, the unity in him of the object and subject of history.
1.2 Anthroposociogenesis
Religious philosophy associates the origin of man with acts of divine creation. In accordance with the theory of "general cosmological evolution", man is a consequence of cosmic development, an expression of the growth of freedom and purposefulness of objects. According to the theory of “synthetic evolution”, man is a product of natural selection and genetic mutations. Dialectical-materialist philosophy has developed a labor theory of anthroposociogenesis, which dominates.
The formation of a person (anthropogenesis) and the formation of society (sociogenesis) together constitute anthroposociogenesis. It lasted 4-6 million years. In accordance with the evolutionary labor theory, it is believed that man descended from a humanoid (a common ancestor of both man and great apes).
Humanoid behavior is characterized by:
a) limited individual behavioral variations based on instincts;
b) the decisive role of genetic heredity;
c) uniting in a herd with a dominant individual instinct for self-preservation;
d) biophysiological division of functions.
For a leap into the social mode of existence, human ancestors had the necessary biological prerequisites: a unique brain capable of not only conditioned reflex, but also constructive activity; upright posture, freeing the forelimbs; a developed hand capable of performing labor operations; a larynx that can make articulate sounds, etc. The concept of labor finds confirmation in the remains of proto-humans (hereinafter humans) and traces of their activities.
The process of separating man from the animal world was originally carried out through instinctive pre-labor activity. The characteristics of the latter are: the unconscious type of motivating motive for activity; predominantly biological nature of activity; inalienable and non-reproducible type of product of activity; the existence of the prehuman as an element of nature. The prehuman turned out to be prepared to take a stick or a stone in his hands, to lengthen his limbs in this way, to move on to strengthening his natural abilities by artificial means. From adaptation to nature, he moved on to its transformation, labor. "Labor created man himself"120. Instinctive pre-labor activity was replaced by labor, where the motive of activity became conscious, the activity itself acquired a goal - the satisfaction of requests for material goods, and the product of activity became alienable and reproducible, while man began to resist nature. Creative labor essentially distinguishes man and humanity from the rest of nature.
The beginning of the manufacture of tools is a historical milestone in the development of man and society. Presumably, the manufacture of the simplest tools began 1-1.5 million years before speech and thinking appeared. Initially, skills, abilities, and not intellect, played a decisive role in production and everyday life. The acting hand, as an organ directly in contact with objects, prepared the head for the ability to think, before it itself became an instrument for the execution of the plans and ideas of the head. At the same time, visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory and taste sensations were refined and enriched. This gives grounds to assert that a person in his development goes through the stages of a skilled and a reasonable person.
Being skeptical about the labor theory of the origin of man, a number of researchers paid special attention to the spiritual factor of the appearance of man. The "paradox of man", according to Teilhard de Chardin, is that the transition took place not through morphological changes, but through the development of consciousness, psyche, mind (abstraction, deliberate choice and ingenuity, calculated perception of space and duration, etc.) , only veiled by morphology. Lewis Mumford (1895-1990) believes that the production of new symbols is overtaking the production of tools. In his Technique and Human Nature, he emphasized that technology developed not so much through labor, but under the influence of myth, play, fantasy, various forms of ritual, song, and dance. The scientist gave priority to the emergence of language as a collective product and means of mental concentration of an ancient person.
Labor and spirituality (as well as language) as factors in the formation of a person should not be opposed, they are not torn apart, but united. This brings together the evolutionary-labor and so-called spiritual concepts of the origin of man. The logic of practical actions was fixed in the head and turned into the logic of thinking. In the physical and mental development of a person (i.e., in changing morphology and developing the mind), the labor factor is of decisive importance:
a) in prehuman history, the ancestor of man and nature interacted. Then the number of elements in the system increased: a person - a tool of labor - an object of labor - nature. The growth in the number of connections and their complication increased the possibilities of rational evaluation of connections and developed the ability to choose. And the very appearance of a tool (for example, a hand ax) and the need for its improvement (for example, making a knife, an ax from a hand ax, etc.) reveal the presence of consciousness in a person;
b) in the process of labor, a person learned not only external connections, but also the internal properties of things, their purpose, developing their analytical and synthetic abilities; c) the result of labor moved away from the direct labor act in time. For example, a person threw grain into the ground, and the result of these actions was expressed in a later harvest. Development of plots of land for gathering, farming, etc. went through movements in space. As a result, mediated, causal relationships, imagination, breadth of thinking were formed;
d) along with the formation of the hand, other organs of the body changed. The increase and complexity of labor operations, connections with natural objects and between individuals, the use of meat food processed on fire, increased and complicated the human brain;
e) in the process of transition from pre-labor to work, the instinctive basis of behavior weakened, becoming more and more meaningful, the will, constructive abilities of people, their intellect were formed, various human needs became more complicated.
With the constantly renewing labor process, a socio-cultural association of people is formed. Language became a means of organizing joint actions, storing and transferring knowledge, expressing the norms of communication. Through consciousness and practice, the structure of language ultimately expresses the structure of the world in a modified form. So, labor, thinking and language saved the prehuman in the problematic situation in which he found himself (inability to adapt to the changed conditions of life, poor protection from predators), and formed a person. It is characterized by the overcoming of innate and the development of normative successive, value, multivariate behavior. Social relations that developed in the process of labor activity formed social qualities in people, which were built on instincts and limited, significantly modified them.
Depending on the material and labor factor, Lewis Morgan (1818 - 1888) singled out three historical eras in the history of mankind - savagery, barbarism and civilization. The era of savagery is characterized by the use of fire, the emergence of hunting and the invention of the bow; barbarism - pottery, the domestication of animals and the cultivation of useful plants, the smelting of iron ore; the era of civilization opens with the invention of alphabetic writing, the creation of firearms. If Morgan put a purely material factor and its individual objects as the basis for the classification of history, then K. Marx and F. Engels - the nature of social relations in all its breadth and depth, highlighting the stages community development labor, the emergence of private property, social and political structures.
Modern philosophy makes adjustments and additions to the previously stated hypotheses about the origin of man. Mutations caused by natural factors are called as the main reason for the isolation of a person from the animal world: active volcanic activity; a strong radiation background in the alleged ancestral home of man - southern Africa; climate change on Earth; cosmic influences (cosmic radiation led to mutations in the DNA of living organisms and some primates experienced a qualitative "biological leap" that led to the appearance of man). At present, in philosophy, man is considered not only as the highest stage in the development of the world, but sometimes as a natural pathology, as a stage in the emergence of a new, post-social form of the movement of matter. This very dubious position is inspired by the increasing computerization of human activity, the displacement of the material-corporeal environment by the information-sign, which has ambiguous consequences.
As an expression of value behavior, moral and social norms arose: prohibitions on incest, on the murder of a fellow tribesman, the requirement to maintain the life of any member of the genus, which later spread to the human race as a whole and to animals. Morality is one of the factors of anthroposociogenesis. It underlies the human psyche and its primary social manifestations. The punitive measures by which the primitive community forced its members to comply with the simplest moral requirements erected barriers to the return of the first man to the animal state.
An important role in the formation of man and society was played by the production of people by people themselves (demographic factor). For a person, the presence of excessive (compared to animals) sexual activity is characteristic. The increased sexuality of a person is not a consequence of his "sinfulness", but a special mechanism for survival in conditions of severe environmental pressure. Sexual love was an important factor of peacefulness in relations between communities, clans, tribes.
The continuation of the human race as a biosocial process is in organic unity with the sphere of production of means of subsistence. The transition from gathering and hunting to productive life support - agriculture, cattle breeding, handicrafts - was the first discovery of population growth (30 - 40 thousand years ago). The Neolithic revolution (7-5 thousand years BC) led to the second demographic surge. The third population explosion is the brainchild of the 20th century, modern scientific and technological revolution, a consequence of the successes of medicine and hygiene.
It is difficult to intertwine economic processes and standards of demographic behavior. The latter are characterized by independence and duration of their formation, relative stability. In a favorable economic environment, there are prerequisites for population growth. At the same time, the enrichment of needs, the emerging high standards of living in conditions of economic prosperity slow down population growth. Indeed, with a larger number of people, each member of the community has less material wealth, and the family has less free time for comprehensive personal development. In addition, uncontrolled population growth increases the environmental burden, reduces the spatial parameters of life. From the point of view of the synergistic methodology, the population growth that is still ongoing on Earth contains the possibility of switching modes and slowing down demographic processes. The modern population explosion has already passed (in the 60s of the XX century) its apogee. Demographers express a hypothesis that establishes a "ceiling" of 9-10 billion inhabitants of the Earth.
Population growth is not an end in itself. It turned out to be expedient, by limiting the birth of children within reasonable limits, to pay more attention and resources to the preservation and restoration of health (biological and social), to increase life expectancy in order to achieve harmony between the quantity and quality of the population. Heraclitus also said: "For me, one is more important than 10,000, if he is the best." The quality of the population is expressed, in addition to human health, in the development of its various abilities, which make it possible to achieve high performance with a minimum of mental, physical, emotional and psychological energy.
In the course of anthroposociogenesis, people act as a product and at the same time creators of circumstances. From this follows a number of approaches to man.
1. The object-genetic approach reveals the factors of human formation:
a) space, environmental, demographic, socio-economic, political conditions of life, more broadly - the macro environment;
b) microenvironment, i.e. the immediate environment, primarily the family, the workforce;
c) social communities of people, interpersonal communication;
d) public and political organizations, parties that form public opinion, value orientations, moral and psychological climate;
e) system of education and upbringing;
f) mass media and cultural institutions.
2. Man is not only an object of the environment, but also its subject, the protagonist of history, creates the world and himself, but not arbitrarily, but in the objective conditions and circumstances developed by nature and history, in accordance with the logic of reality, evaluating it. The subject-functional analysis reveals the involvement of a person in the main spheres of activity, communication and cognition and characterizes him as a productive, social, political and spiritual force of society.
A person embodies the unity of the two named opposite principles: constant susceptibility to all impulses coming from the world, society, and personal giving these impulses a proper human meaning. Circumstances, impulses that determine behavior, cognition, human activity, and that result at the “output”, passed through and transformed through human subjectivity, are far from being the same thing. Man is connected with the world and at the same time distanced from it. A person as a whole perceives and implements some influences of the world, society, adapts to others, tries to dissociate himself from others and not perceive them. So, there is a correspondence and discrepancy between the circumstances of reality and the results of a person's response to these circumstances, impulses, therefore a person is a product of circumstances and at the same time their opponent. A.I. Herzen in his work "The Past and Thoughts" wrote that behind every person, as behind a wave, one feels the pressure of a whole ocean of world history, the thought of all ages. Of course, human life activity is not only programmed by the whole history, but is also self-programmed (reproductive-traditional and creative-innovative), relies on one's own choice, free will, and one's natural and social energy.
1.3 What is a person?
To answer this question, it is necessary to find out the nature (a meaningful variety of manifestations and expressions of a person) and the essence of a person (its deep foundation).
F. Fukuyama believes that human nature is the sum of behavior and typical species characteristics determined by genetic rather than environmental factors. Apparently, the approach to human nature should be broader and more complex.
Man by nature:
earthly creation (only indirectly it is a product of the Cosmos, for the planet Earth is an integral part of cosmic evolution);
entering nature, man rises above it, i.e. human being is social and natural;
like the higher animals, it has a psyche;
possesses reason and values, ethical and aesthetic qualities;
being sociable, communicative, symbolic, a combination of conscious and unconscious;
By changing the conditions of his existence, a person creates a world of culture and improves himself.
Since ancient times, the essence of man was supposed to be the unity of spirit, soul and body.
The essence of man is realized through existence and is created in him. Socio-creation and its components - creativity, freedom, morality, aesthetics, etc., semantic-value self-affirmation, striving for the ideal - act as universal forms of human existence. These modes interact with anti-moduses: social destruction, loss of personal properties in a person, dogmatic (standard) thinking and corresponding activity, transformation of ideals into idols, a free person only into a function, etc. Schelling noted that in the deep ontological dimension, a person contains all the power of the dark beginning and all the power of light, and the extreme depth of the abyss, and the highest limit of the sky. Indeed, if we recognize that a person, according to Protagoras (480 - 410 BC), is the measure of all things, then there are along with positive and negative things that determine the negative appearance and actions of the individual. The “light” and “shadow” sides in a person are due not only to contradictory circumstances (things), but are also contained in the innermost nature of a person. (A person is relatively self-sufficient, distanced from the environment.) Protagoras reasoned: “It is impossible to be always good, the same person can also become bad.” The presence in human nature of a predisposition to good and evil was noted by many philosophers: F. Bacon, I. Kant, G. Hegel, V. S. Solovyov, etc. different circumstances are relative. Belinsky emphasized: good for one people or century is evil for another people in another century.
The existence of the environment and man is always procedural. Thus, a man of the era of savagery and barbarism was already skillful, reasonable, speaking, operating with simple tools and symbols. A civilized person additionally acquires new properties. This is a person - a citizen based on law, technological, political, knowing scientifically, etc.
There are different points of view on the question of the essence of man. It is indicated, for example, that a person is a “bundle of habits” (Pierce), a being endowed with religiosity, unlike animals (Vercors), a being capable of evaluating, endowing personalities, objects, and phenomena with meaning.
The well-known point of view of K. Marx on the essence of man as an ensemble of all social relations is very logical. After all, although the biological factors of a person are important, they act through mediation and transformation from the factors of the social order as the leading ones. Man, remaining essentially social, changes depending on the epoch. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that a person is correlated not only with society, but with the Universe, the World, with the whole of History, with another person.
Neo-Freudians paid the main attention not to the social side of life, but to the experiences of loneliness in a society opposed to man. Representatives of the Frankfurt philosophical school(G. Marcuse, T. Adorno, J. Habermas and others) considered it necessary to direct Marxism from the analysis of social class relations towards the consideration of the psychology of the individual, the structure of his instincts and drives. Human activity is explicable, according to J. Habermas, only from the standpoint of psychoanalysis, with the help of which it is possible to reveal the connection between the unconscious and the conscious in human behavior. Frankfurters are trying to bring together Marx and Freud, materialist dialectics and psychoanalysis, which, according to A. Schmidt, “interpenetrate” and “reflect in each other.”
E. Fromm considered human nature to be historically determined, at the same time he did not discard the significance of biological factors. He defined man as an animal, in comparison with other animals, insufficiently equipped with instincts, therefore the survival of a person is possible when he produces the means that satisfy his material needs, if he develops his language and tools. The essence of man lies in the contradiction between two conflicting worlds in him: animal and spiritual, body and soul, angel and beast. A person resolves this conflict either by returning in his behavior to animal life, or by developing human forces in himself, mainly reason. So, Fromm, especially when he talked about the survival of man through the production of means that satisfy his material needs, implicitly approached the idea of the biosocial essence of man. In modern Russian literature, the point of view is also often expressed, according to which the human essence is socio-natural and personally embodied, personified.
Based on the integral approach to the characteristics of a person, we note that the natural in a person is not reduced to the biological, but also incorporates the physical and chemical. The social is not identical to existing social relations, but includes the infinity of cultural and historical memory and striving for the future. The spiritual (another component of human nature) is not just a function of external conditions, but a special independent reality.
One of the features of modern philosophy is its focus on uncertainty, which in relation to a person means a refusal to clarify the essence of a person. K. Jaspers defined a person as a being occupying an intermediate position between the vain external world and the realm of the absolute, eternal, divine - transcendence. We do not even know the final satisfactory answer to the question: what is a person? A person, Jaspers believed, is always more than what he knows about himself. It is not the same in all cases, it is the path. From the point of view of postmodernism, which refuses to reveal the nature and essence of man, only a “trace”, “quotation”, “archive”, “posthuman” remained from the latter.
Philosophy of the 20th century, starting with E. Husserl, considers a person in the “life”, “everyday” world, in which the individual relies on a set of evidence. M. Heidegger called the way of everyday human existence care. This being is characterized by concentration on the practical achievement of everyday goals, detachment from the universe, rejection of mysteriously abstract fictions. The space and time of everyday life are human-sized. The life world is formed in the constantly renewed contact of people, its components are objects and processes insofar as they are "passed" through human meanings, experiences, habits. Since all the realities of life are current, continuously recreated, philosophical ideas about the world and man in it are characterized by eternal doubt.
Along with uncertainty, being (including man) is inherent in certainty. From the standpoint of the latter, consider the basic characteristics of a person - naturalness, sociality and spirituality.
1.4 The unity of natural and social in man
In the history of philosophy, biologizing (naturalistic) concepts absolutized the role of natural principles in man, and in sociological theories, man was presented only as a mold from the social relations surrounding him. An alternative to these one-sided approaches is the position of the unity of natural and social in man, which is embodied, in particular, in the unity of body and soul. Ortega y Gaset noted: "A man, his soul, abilities, character and body are the sum of the devices with which he lives." The presence of a body entails the satisfaction of fundamental human needs: for food, protection from the cold, from other forces and creatures of nature, self-preservation, continuation of life, etc. The natural human organism is subject to all the laws of life, primarily genetic and population-species laws. Prenatal development, birth, the ability to assimilate certain types of food, the inheritance of certain inclinations, gender are naturally biologically determined. Initially, a child is a biological being, a bunch of instincts and reflexes, a kind of biological antenna tuned to the waves of the culture surrounding him. But already from the first moments after birth, assimilating social experience, he gradually acquires social properties and turns into a human personality, in which the soul charges the body with its emotional energy.
At the dawn of mankind, those individuals who had not only the best biological parameters, but also a socio-psychological predisposition to live in a team, had a better ability to analyze realities, showed comprehension and tolerance in relations with each other, were more likely to survive. In natural selection, the importance of the social factor increased. The biological in man, represented in the form of inclinations and abilities, inclinations, is the initial, although insufficient, beginning for explaining history and man himself. The social in a person is expressed in the fact that he embodies all the wealth of social development, is the product of a system of education and upbringing. Genetic and social differences act as a factor in human progress. On the material of the development of sex, as well as the emergence of genius, we will illustrate the relationship in man natural and social.
From a biological point of view, gender is obvious from the moment of birth. At the same time, not only biological, but also social sex (gender) is distinguished. The biological structure acts as a starting point, while the gender structure is the result of a person's socialization. At the socio-biological level, prehistoric man, as a hunter and warrior, was programmed to compete. For a successful hunt, he needed strength and dexterity, composure, prudence and a good eye. A man even now measures a lot, especially representatives of the opposite sex, with his eyesight. As a home builder, mother and caring friend, the ancient woman was programmed to cooperate and develop her feelings. As the keeper of the hearth, she had to have sensitive hearing in order to warn loved ones about an attack. She still evaluates her partner mainly through hearing, feeling the timbre of her voice, the rhythm of breathing. A woman perceives someone else's speech, as a rule, subjectively, sensually, passing through her desires and anxieties, ethical values, and a man - mainly through thinking, critically. Historically, men are characterized by such traits as “chivalry”, improvement of physical strength, the ability to overcome difficulties, skill in some business, readiness to help a woman, protect her, etc. Women predominantly have developed kindness, sensitivity, tolerance to the shortcomings of loved ones, the ability to forgive, caring for the weak, love for children, etc. Of course, these stereotypes should be treated with skepticism, but at the same time, the complete elimination of differences between men and women in terms of behavior patterns and social roles should not be rejected.
Gender determines the psychological qualities, abilities, activities, occupations and professions of men and women through the system of education, traditions and customs. Not only biological differences, features of the course of biochemical processes, but also culture as a social phenomenon acts as a factor in the construction of male and female nature (this also causes a sex change in some people). Gender inequality increased from hunter-gatherer to agrarian cultures (division of labor by sex) and decreased further in the industrial and especially in the information society. IN traditional cultures and especially with the Muslim religion, the behavior of a woman is strictly regulated, her status is far from equal. In states with developed economies and Protestantism, a woman actively participates in public life and the gender ideology develops in the direction of equality between men and women. So, sex acts not only as a biological, but also as a social characteristic of a person.
Genius (as well as the highest degree of talent) is a natural phenomenon and at the same time social. To the biological incentives of genius, some experts refer to an increased release of adrenaline, which stimulates intellectual and physical activity. The increased content of sex hormones - androgens leads to the fact that sexual energy is able to transform into creative energy. At the same time, the biological stimuli of genius do not work with poor upbringing and training, if society does not have a “social order” (demand) for a certain type of genius. For geniuses, the main thing is not to be born, but to be realized. Father Henry said in one of his short stories: when God was asked to point to the greatest commander of all times and peoples, he chose an old shoemaker who ruined a priceless gift in himself.
The biological is more conservative than the social. Uncontrolled and imperfect development of production threatens an ecological catastrophe for nature and anthropological man. Anthropological crisis leads to:
a) dangerous changes in the human genetic basis under the influence of environmental pollution, pathogenic microbes and viruses, military conflicts in which healthy young people die without leaving offspring;
b) stress loads, overvoltage, activating the growth of cardiovascular, oncological and mental diseases, depression;
c) redesigning the biological basis of a person (strengthening mental and physical abilities, improving the functioning of the nervous system, etc.), opening up a new risk zone.
After all, when some genes that program certain properties of the organism are rearranged, other properties may be distorted, the natural self-development of the organism will be disrupted.
In general, it is necessary to improve social conditions and biological capabilities of a person synchronously, ensuring their optimal interaction.
1.5 Spirituality and the problem of the meaning of life. Is there a meaning to death?
The functioning of the body is connected with the work of the brain and nervous system, and through them - with the psyche, with the spiritual life of the individual. At the same time, the work of the spirit to a certain extent depends on the health of the human body.
Everything experienced and created by a person contains the spiritual: a plan, a goal, a motive, an interest, or another motivation for action. Spirituality is expressed in the ability of a person to overcome himself "of yesterday" in the process of renewal and improvement. The spiritual world of man combines rationality and irrationality, innovations and stereotypes, information and disinformation, freedom and determination, cognitive motives and moral imperatives, purposeful aspirations and instinctive, as well as spontaneous impulses, situational moods and firm beliefs, doubt and faith, ideological attitudes and psychological archetypes, etc.
The spiritual world of man (its most important components are cognitive abilities, feeling abilities and needs) is dynamic. On initial stage of human existence, cognitive (cognitive) abilities are reduced to sensations and perceptions, sensory abilities are elementary (experiencing states of hunger, pain, fear, pleasure, etc.), needs are mainly aimed at preserving and continuing life. In the future, thinking, knowledge, language become more developed, complex emotions appear: love, responsibility, duty, the will is formed; needs are constantly enriched and complicated. Social memory, altruism, a consciousness of social duty, a humane attitude towards nature and other selves, a person's aspiration to culture, to the sphere of freedom, choice arise. Contemplation, thinking, feeling become interpenetrating, there is a closer integration of cognitive and sensory abilities, needs, the highest attributes of human spirituality are formed - limiting problems, the question of the meaning of being, etc. Needs are focused on the preservation, strengthening and improvement of civilization.
Spirituality is a commitment to kindness, love, mercy, compassion and tolerance, conscience, freedom and honor, fidelity to ideals, the desire to reveal the secrets of being and the meaning of life, etc. The antipode of spirituality - lack of spirituality is expressed in anger, ignorance, dependence on base motives and desires, the replacement of ideals by idols. At the same time, a person turns into a “one-dimensional” being, cynicism, nihilism, aggressiveness, destructive passions, cruelty, savagery and idiocy increase in him. One can speak of lack of spirituality, in a broad sense, in those cases when a person is incapable of reflection, loses his autonomy and uniqueness, i.e. becomes a "robot"; when the inner world of a person is reduced to the level of a biological system (animal state), for example, as a result of drug use, alcoholism, etc.
Spirituality of a person is manifested:
1) in the uniqueness of human individuality;
2) in participation in universality, in the integrity of nature and culture.
Man is correlated with the external world, conformed and at the same time isolated from it, he is aware of himself as a separate being. The metaphysical break of these opposites, the absolutization of one of them leads either to individualism, or to the dissolution of the individual in general (from religious to political).
The relation of man as a conscious being to his existence is expressed in the meaning of life. Meaning is an expression of the value-motivational sphere of a person’s spiritual life, an awareness of the values to which a person subordinates his life, for the sake of which he sets and fulfills life goals. The meaning of life reveals both the claims of the individual, his aspirations and interests, and the ability to express himself in multifaceted activities.
The loss of the meaning of life has always been regarded as one of the tragedies, as the loss of the main point of support. In the mythology of the ancient Greeks, the gods punished Sisyphus for criminal acts with meaningless, fruitless labor - they charged him with an "eternal duty" to roll a heavy stone up the mountain, which, reaching the top, rolls down.
Understanding the meaning is possible from the point of view of a single person and a person as a generic creature, a representative of humanity. Throughout an individual life, a person never achieves the “goal” of ancestral, historical life, and therefore experiences a certain dissatisfaction with the situation and with himself. This excites motives for creative activity and self-improvement of a person.
The abstract-universal meaning of life is expressed in religious philosophy, which connects the meaning of life with the desire for superhuman holiness, in communion with the highest good. In Marxist and psychoanalytic philosophy (E. Fromm and others), the meaning of life is seen in the self-realization of the essential forces of man in active transformative activity, in the development of humanity, reason, and freedom. Both aspects (individual and generic) of the solution to the question of the meaning of life complement each other.
Of course, not all people live a meaningful life, which was emphasized, for example, by C. JI. Franc. In search of the meaning of life, parodies of authenticity are possible, leading to surrogates, for example, when the meaning of life for certain people is reduced to some kind of one-sided orientations, to the cult of things, power, carnal pleasures, etc. The process of searching for comprehension and rethinking of the values for which a person lives goes in parallel with their implementation, reassessment of values, and reshaping of the original goals.
All multicellular organisms are mortal, but only a person realizes the inevitability of his death, thereby refusing the possibility of consolation. Epicurus said that when we are there is no death, when death comes we are not. In the pessimistic version of death, life becomes absurd. Nevertheless, death has a meaning - to create conditions for the enrichment of life. The inevitability of death makes life not absurd, but, on the contrary, meaningful and responsible. Death is present in life as its ordering element, given to a person the opportunity to clearly manifest himself in life. A person who realizes himself as a finite being ideally strives to apply to his finiteness the scale of the infinite, the maximum. Many people who took on the maximum tasks remained in human memory in relative eternity: Socrates, Bruno, Pushkin, etc.
Already in ancient Indian philosophy there was the concept of "fear of death." Subsequently, this problem was addressed by F. Bacon, I. Kant,
3. Freud, M. Heidegger, etc. The feeling of fear stemmed from the instinct of self-preservation, which is basic for higher animals and also characteristic of humans. Trying to get rid of fear, a person runs away from himself and "dissolves" in society, forgets himself in the hustle and bustle of social life.
As compensation for the inevitability of death, the dream of immortal soul, remaining after the decomposition of the body and moving into other beings or gaining eternal life in God (Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Dostoevsky, etc.). On the contrary, Epicurus, Lucretius, Spinoza, Hume, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx opposed the belief in personal immortality. J.I. H. Tolstoy and V. S. Solovyov wrote about the inevitability of biological death and the assertion of the moral, spiritual immortality of man. F.J. Curie talked about scientific immortality, about the existence of man through the life of the ideas remaining after him.
N.F. Fedorov (1828-1903) expressed the idea that it is possible for man and humanity to acquire a higher ontological status, including its immortality, up to the return (“immanent resurrection” based on “regulation of nature”) to the transformed life of all past generations.
In some views in the XX century. the idea of the formation of an incorruptible spiritual substance was renewed on a new basis. It is proclaimed that death does not mean complete disappearance with the destruction of the body, but implies the exit of an intellectual-emotional clot in the form of a biofield structure to a new level of being. The modern Russian Ph.D. K. Kedrov, through the idea of cloning, and the Belarusian author V. Tsepkalo, through the idea of the possible repetition of the genes of each person in the indefinite future, carry out the idea that people under certain conditions can acquire biological immortality. And according to some forecasts, by 2050 it will be possible to “download” all the content human brain into one supercomputer, which will allow consciousness to survive the death of the body. The future of human cybernetic immortality is exciting, but also frightening, says futurist Ian Pearson. In the position of biological and cybernetic immortality, a gap between the body and soul, biological and social is allowed, it is not taken into account that the external background, socio-cultural conditions that form the personality are always new for new generations of people.
From the point of view of science and realistic philosophy, one can talk about the types of relative human immortality in the following forms:
a) dissolution of the body and spirit of the deceased in the Universe, their entry into the eternal circulation of matter;
b) the result of a person's life creativity;
c) a significant increase in the average life expectancy of a person (scientists have discovered a mechanism that slows down the aging of human cells).
Advances in biology, medicine and other sciences can significantly prolong the life of people (according to forecasts, up to 120-150 years), enhance memory and other cognitive abilities. And traditional philosophy, based on the idea of natural development, assumed human nature, common to all people on the planet. However, the application of expensive biotechnologies will create a sharp difference between individuals in their biological basis, only rich people will be able to take advantage of the new achievements of science. A fair solution to the problem of prolonging people's lives is possible when (if) humane conditions are created for the mass use of new technologies.
Death is a natural phenomenon that plays a necessary and useful role in the course of long-term biological evolution, contributing to the survival of the fittest organisms and the progress of organic species. Without this progress, man would not have appeared.
In the social aspect, death makes us close to common concerns, unites us with deeply felt emotions and dramatically emphasizes the equality of our final destinies. Turning to the problem of death provides a person with the opportunity to project his own self, eliminating (reducing) the interference of everyday blurring, helps to concentrate in his worthy participation in the life stream.
List of sources used
1. Khavrak, A.P. Philosophy: textbook / A.P. Khavrak. — M.: Dashkov i K, 2007. — 376 p.
2. Alekseev P.V. Philosophy / Alekseev P.V., Panin A.V. 3rd ed., revised. and additional - M .: TK Velby, Prospekt, 2005. - 608 p.
3. Philosophy: Tutorial/ Vishnevsky M.I. - Minsk: Higher School, 2008. - 480 p.
4. Kalmykov V.N. Philosophy: Textbook / V.N. Kalmykov - Mn .: Vysh. school, 2008. - 431 p.
5. Spirkin A.G. Philosophy / Spirkin A. G. 2nd ed. - M .: Gardariki, 2006. - 736 p.
The problem of man in the history of philosophical thought. 2
The problem of anthroposociogenesis. 7
The relationship between the biological and the social in man. eleven
Space and the future of man. 14
Literature. 18
The problem of man in the history of philosophical thought
Since time immemorial, man has been the object of philosophical reflection. This is evidenced by the oldest sources of Indian and Chinese philosophy, especially the sources of the philosophy of ancient Greece. It was here that the well-known call was formulated: “Man, know yourself, and you will know the Universe and the Gods! ". It reflected the complexity and depth of the human problem. Knowing himself, man gains freedom; before him the secrets of the Universe are revealed, and he becomes on a par with the Gods.
But this has not happened yet, despite the fact that thousands of years of history have passed. Man was and remains a mystery to himself. There are grounds for asserting that the problem of man, like any truly philosophical problem, is an open and unfinished problem that we only need to solve, but do not need to solve completely. Kantian question: “What is a man? ” is still relevant.
In the history of philosophical thought, various human problems are known for research. Some philosophers tried (and are trying now) to discover some unchanging nature of man (his essence). At the same time, they proceed from the idea that such knowledge will make it possible to explain the origin of people's thoughts and actions and thereby indicate to them the "formula of happiness." But among these philosophers there is no unity, for each of them sees as an essence what the other does not see, and thus complete discord reigns here. Another approach to the study of human nature can be conditionally called historical. It is based on the study of the monuments of the material and spiritual culture of the distant past and allows us to imagine a person as a historically developing being from its lower forms to its higher ones, i.e. modern. The stimulus for such a vision of man was given by the theory of evolution of Ch. Darwin.
Another approach explains the nature of a person by the influence of cultural factors on him and is called culturological. It is, to one degree or another, characteristic of many philosophers.
A number of researchers note a very important side of human nature, namely, that in the course of historical development, a person carries out self-development, i.e. he "creates" himself. He is the creator not only of himself, but also of his own history.
Thus man is historical and transient in time; he is not born "reasonable", but becomes so throughout the life and history of the human race.
For thirty centuries of development of philosophical thought, it has not been possible to explain a person in an exhaustive way, starting from some one quality or property. The phenomenon of man, as it were, eluded analysis, always seemed more mysterious than it seemed at first.
For the classical philosophy of antiquity, man and nature were presented as a single whole. Man is an organic part of the world, space. It represents a kind of microcosm, merged with nature, is a copy of the Cosmos.
The greatest merit of Socrates (470-399 BC) is that he was the first among philosophers to raise the question of a qualitative, fundamental difference between man and nature, or, as a o Philosophers, the subject and the object, speak. Moreover, in the complexity of a person, his uniqueness, the fundamental difference from the surrounding world, he saw the basis for putting a person, and not nature, in the center philosophical research.
Medieval philosophy is Christian philosophy. In the context of a religious worldview, it affirms the exclusive role of man among God's creation. According to Christian teaching, God created man not together with all creatures, but separately, a special day of creation was allocated for him. Christian philosophers emphasize the special position of man in the world. If all other material systems are just creations, then man is the crown of creation. He is the center of the Universe and the ultimate goal of creation. Moreover, he is a being that dominates the earth.
The ratio of nature and grace is the central theme of Christian anthropology - the doctrine of man.
The philosophy of the Renaissance created its own anthropology, i.e. the doctrine of man, his role in the new picture of the world. If the center of the medieval worldview was God, then in the epoxy of the Renaissance, the center of attention of philosophical thought, as in the heyday of antiquity, turned out to be a man.
The meaning of human life began to be seen not in preparation for life beyond, but in the arrangement of today's, earthly life, which in the Middle Ages seemed sinful. The task of philosophy was not to substantiate the opposite of the spiritual and bodily principles in man, but to reveal the harmonious unity of all the physical and spirit inherent in him external qualities.
The man-creator, harmoniously embodying spiritual and bodily qualities, became the object of worship and deification.
In modern times, the first signs of a crisis appeared classical concept unity of man and nature, but, nevertheless, many thinkers continued to support it. The essence of the classical understanding of man, which dominated philosophy until the 19th century, was the recognition of his unity, harmony with nature, the rootedness of man in the universe.
However, since the 17th century, individual thinkers began to express ideas opposite to this concept. Although a person is connected with nature, his relationship with it is far from harmony, since he is isolated from it, alone in the vast universe.
According to French philosophers of the Enlightenment (XVIII century) in the material system of nature and man is no exception to the general rule. So, P. Golbach wrote that "... a person is a purely physical being; a spiritual person is the same physical being." Life, man, consciousness is the result of a long process of evolutionary development of nature.
Even more straightforward was another French thinker, J. Lametrie, who in his book with the characteristic title "Man-machine" (1747) stated: "The human body is the head of a self-propelling machine. Without food, the soul becomes exhausted... and, finally, , dies. She then resembles a candle, which flares up for a minute before finally going out. "
Philosophical anthropology as a unified science of man was created by the efforts of a number of German philosophers, in particular M. Scheler, A. Gehlen, H. Plesner, E. Cassirer. They proceeded from the premise that the “single idea” of man, that is, the science of man in the full sense of the word, is possible. They believed that such a science should be based on the data of particular sciences - psychology, morphology, physiology of feelings, etc., but it should go beyond them, that is, have a philosophical character.
Great German philosopher Immanuel Kant formulated at the end of the 18th century four basic questions that must be answered by any thinker who comprehends the essence of man and mankind:
What can I know?
What should I know?
What can I hope for?
What is a person?
The fourth question of Kant, as it were, sums up the first three, absorbing all the main questions of being and the existence of man. Let's try to summarize what philosophy has come to for almost 3 thousand years of its existence, answering the question: what is a person?
Marxist philosophy proceeds from the premise of the uniqueness of human existence. The rationale for this position is the concept of anthropogenesis developed within the framework of this philosophical school, the doctrine of the combination of the biological and social essence of man, theor and subject-practical activities as a defining form of human interaction with the environment.
From the point of view of Marxism, a person is an extremely general concept for designating the subject of historical activity, knowledge and communication. The concept of "man" is used to characterize the universal qualities and abilities inherent in all people. In this way, the concept of "man" expresses the integrity of the human being, the unity of its most diverse life functions and manifestations. Using the concept of "man", Marxist philosophy seeks to emphasize that there is such a special and historically developing community as the human race, which philosophy, which differs from all other material systems only in its inherent way of life.
A peculiar interpretation of the problem of human essence was made by the Russian philosopher N. Berdyaev (1874-1948). The philosophy of Berdyaev is a true hymn to man, a vivid expression of absolute worship of him.
According to the philosopher, man is the absolute center of not only this closed planetary system, but also the center of all being: "Everything external, objective, material ec be only a symbolization of what is happening in the depths of the spirit, in Man". The idea of personality, Berdyaev believes, should have a central place in the new religious consciousness.
Modern philosophy sees the essence of man in the unity of the natural and the social. In his life, not only natural, but also qualities developed in society, primarily such as the ability to work, using various tools, are of great importance. the ability to observe the norms of social behavior, the possession of a sense of beauty, a musical ear. In other words, the whole human existence is very peculiar, unique.
Therefore, the definition of the nature and essence of man is not the starting point for philosophy, but its ultimate goal. Moreover, both nature and the essence of man cannot be expressed in any one definition, even the widest one, because these concepts express a fundamental and intractable contradiction human being.
Its essence is in the duality of a person, in belonging to two murals at the same time - nature and society, body and spirit. One way or another, a person solves this problem, which can be called the problem of existence.
Man is immensely complex and inexhaustible. In this multiplicity of images lies the difficulty of deciphering the problem of man.
The problem of anthroposociogenesis
According to conventional evolution, the genus Homo appeared at the beginning of the Quaternary in several different forms of hominids, possibly succeeding each other, although perhaps sometimes coexisting. Like their supposed ancestor - Australopithecus, hominids were large predators, not alien to cannibalism, and, therefore, occupied the top ecological niche in biocenoses. By the end of the last glaciation, all branches of this genus died out, with the exception of only one species - Homo sapiens, i.e. modern man.
Over the past 17-20 millennia, climatic conditions have changed in different regions, but it remains a fact that the species Homo sapiens, unlike other vertebrate species, was not limited to a certain area, but managed to adapt to a variety of natural conditions, which rightfully places it in a special place in the ecology of vertebrates.
