What is mythology? The word “mythology” comes from “mythos” - legend, tale, but as a branch of culture there is a holistic view of the world, transmitted, as a rule, in the form of oral narratives. Mythology is associated with anthropomorphism (attributing to natural phenomena

What is philosophy? We have defined mythology as a system of two levels: figurative, inherited from art, and a deeper one, conceptual, which becomes more and more important as logical thinking evolves. At a certain time in a certain place this

What is religion? The word "religion" comes from the Latin. “religio” – piety, shrine, connection. “Religion is the way in which a person feels spiritually connected with the invisible world or with the non-world” (Carlyle T. Now and Before. M., 1994. P. 7). Reducing the concept of “religion” to

21. If the fetus is not yet a person, then what is it? Judaism and abortion And when people fight, and they hit a pregnant woman, and she miscarries, but there is no danger, then the one who hit her is punished with a ransom, which the husband of that woman will impose on him. And he pays through the judges. If it turns out

What is Tao? “Tao expressed in words is not the true Tao,” writes Lao Tzu, the legendary master of Taoism, at the beginning of his treatise. In Mindella's language, Tao is a process. In China, Taoism is not just the name of a school. Tao is the spirit of all Chinese

HUMAN

With the attributional approach, researchers try to go beyond a pure description of human characteristics and identify among them one that would be the main one, determining its difference from animals, and perhaps would ultimately determine all the others. The most famous and widely accepted of these attributes is “reasonableness”, as a thinking, rational person (homo sapiens). Another, no less well-known and popular attributive definition of a person is as a being primarily acting, producing. The third thing that deserves to be noted in this series is the understanding of man as a symbolic being (homo symbolicus), creating symbols, the most important of which is (E. Cassirer). With the help of words, he can communicate with other people and thereby make the processes of mental and practical mastery of reality much more effective. One can also note the definition of man as a social being, which Aristotle insisted on in his time. There are other definitions, all of them, of course, capture some very important, essential properties of man, but none of them turned out to be all-encompassing and, for this reason, were never established as the basis of a developed and generally accepted concept of human nature. The essential definition of a person is an attempt to create such a concept. The entire history of philosophical thought is, to a large extent, a search for such a definition of the nature of man and the meaning of his existence in the world, which, on the one hand, would be fully consistent with empirical data about the properties of man, and on the other, would highlight the prospects for his development in the future. One of the oldest intuitions is the interpretation of man as a kind of key to unraveling the mysteries of the universe. This idea was received in Eastern and Western mythology, in ancient philosophy. Man at the early stages of development did not separate himself from the rest of nature, feeling his inextricable connection with the entire organic world. This finds its expression in anthropomorphism - the unconscious perception of the cosmos and deity as living beings similar to man himself. In ancient mythology and philosophy, man acts as a small world - and the “big” world - as a macrocosm. The idea of ​​their parallelism and isomorphism is one of the oldest natural philosophical concepts (the cosmogonic mythology of the “universal man” in the Vedas, the Scandinavian Ymir in the Edda, the Chinese Pan-Gu). The philosophers of antiquity see the uniqueness of man in the fact that he has reason. In Christianity, the idea is born as being created in the image and likeness of God, possessing freedom to choose good and evil - as an individual. “Christianity freed man from the power of cosmic infinity” (N. A. Berdyaev). The Renaissance of man is associated with the search for his originality, with the affirmation of his original individuality. The idea of ​​humanism, the glorification of man as the highest value, arises in the European consciousness. The tragedy of human existence finds expression in the formula of the herald of the post-Renaissance era, B. Pascal, “man is a thinking reed.” In the Age of Enlightenment, ideas about the inexhaustible possibilities of an independent and reasonable individual prevailed. The cult of the autonomous person is the development of the personalist line of European consciousness. At the center of German classical philosophy is the problem of human freedom as a spiritual being; the 19th century entered the history of philosophy as an anthropological century. The idea of ​​creating philosophical anthropology was born in the works of Immanuel Kant. Criticism of panlogism was associated with the study of the biological nature of man. In romanticism, a keen attention arose to the subtlest nuances of human experiences, the inexhaustible richness of the world of the individual. A person is conceptualized not only as a thinking one, but also, first of all, as a leading and feeling being (A. Schopenhauer, S. Kierkegaard). F. Nietzsche calls man “an animal not yet established.” K. Marx connects the understanding of the essence of man with the socio-historical conditions of his functioning and development, with his conscious activity, during which man turns out to be both a prerequisite and a product of history. According to Marx’s definition, “the essence of man... in its reality is the totality of all social relations.” While emphasizing social connections and human characteristics, Marxists do not deny the specific qualities of the individual, endowed with character, will, abilities and passions, nor do they take into account the complex interactions of social and biological factors. Individual and historical human development is the process of appropriation and reproduction of the sociocultural experience of humanity. Marx's understanding of man was further developed in the 20th century. in the works of representatives of the Frankfurt School and domestic philosophers. They revealed the features of Marx’s philosophical and anthropological concept, showing that for him, human development is at the same time a process of growing alienation: man becomes a captive of the social institutions that he himself created.

Russian religious philosophy of the 19th-20th centuries. characterized by personalistic pathos in the understanding of man (see: Berdyaev N.A. On the purpose of man. M-, 1993). The neo-Kantian Cassirer interprets man as a “symbolic animal”. The works of M. Scheler, H. Plesner, A. Gehlen lay the foundation for philosophical anthropology as a special discipline. The concept of the unconscious defines the understanding of a person in the psychoanalysis of Z. Freud, analytical psychology of C. G. Jung. The focus of existentialism is on questions of the meaning of life (guilt and responsibility, decision and choice, a person’s vocation and death). In personalism, personality appears as a fundamental ontological personality, in structuralism - as a sediment in the deep structures of consciousness of past centuries. V. Bruening in his work “Philosophical Anthropology. Historical background and current state” (1960; see in the book: Western philosophy. Results of the millennium. Ekaterinburg-Bishkek, 1997) identified the main groups of philosophical and anthropological concepts created over 2.5 thousand years of the existence of philosophical thought: 1) concepts, placing a person (his essence, nature) in predetermined objective orders - be they “essences” or “norms” (as in traditional metaphysical and religious teachings) or laws of “reason” or “nature” (as in rationalism and naturalism); 2) the concept of man as an autonomous personality, divided subjects (in individualism, personalism and spiritualism, later - in the philosophy of existentialism); 3) irrationalistic teachings, which ultimately dissolve it in the unconscious stream of life (etc.); 4) restoration of forms and norms, at first - only as subjective and intersubjective (transcendental) institutions, then - again as objective structures (pragmatism, transcendentalism, objective idealism).

Actually scientific in the strict sense of the word of man begins in the 2nd half of the 19th century. In 1870 I. Ten wrote: “Science has finally reached man. Armed with precise and penetrating instruments that have proven their amazing power over three centuries, she directed her experience specifically at the human soul. Human thinking in the process of developing its structure and content, its roots endlessly deepened in history and its inner peaks rising above the fullness of being - this is what became its subject.” This process was unusually stimulated by the natural selection of Charles Darwin (1859), which had a great influence on the development of not only the doctrine of the origin of man (anthropogenesis), but also such branches of human science as ethnography, archeology, psychology, etc. Today there is no single side or properties of a person that characterize him as an autonomous individual (or autonomous personality) or arising from his relationship to the natural world and the world of culture, which would not be covered by special scientific research. A huge amount of knowledge has been accumulated concerning all aspects of human life, both as a biological and as a social being. Suffice it to say that everything related to human genetics is entirely a creation of the 20th century. Characteristic is the emergence of many sciences, the name of which contains the word “anthropology” itself - cultural anthropology, social anthropology, political anthropology, poetic anthropology, etc. All this made justified the posing of the question of creating a unified science of man, the subject of which would be man in all properties and relationships, in all its connections with the external (both natural and social) world. As a working definition of man, developed in Russian literature, such a unified one could proceed from the fact that man is a subject of the socio-historical process, the development of material and spiritual culture on Earth, a biosocial being, genetically related to other forms of life, but separated from them thanks to the ability to produce tools of labor that have articulate speech and consciousness, and moral qualities. In the process of creating a unified science of man, a huge amount of work remains not only in rethinking the rich experience of philosophical anthropology, but also in searching for the connection of these studies with the results of specific sciences in the 20th century. However, even in the long term of its development, science is forced to stop at a number of mysteries of the spiritual world of man, comprehended by other means, in particular with the help of art.

In view of the pressure of global problems threatening humanity and a real anthropological catastrophe, the creation of a unified science of man appears today not only as a theoretically relevant, but also a practically important task. It is this task that should reveal the possibility of realizing a truly humanistic ideal of the development of human society.

One ancient sage said: there is no more interesting object for a person than the person himself. D. Diderot considered man to be the highest value, the only creator of all cultural achievements on earth, the rational center of the universe, the point from which everything should come and to which everything should return.

What is a person? At first glance, this question seems ridiculously simple: indeed. who doesn’t know what a person is? But that’s the whole point: what is closest to us. The most familiar also turns out to be the most complex, as soon as we try to look into the depths of its essence. And here it turns out that the mystery of this phenomenon becomes greater the more we try to penetrate into it. However, the bottomlessness of this problem does not scare us away, but attracts us like a magnet.

Whatever sciences study man, their methods are always aimed at “dissecting” him. Philosophy has always strived to comprehend his integrity, knowing full well that a simple sum of private knowledge about a person will not give the desired image, and therefore has always tried to develop its own means of understanding the essence of man and with their help to reveal his place and significance in the world, his relationship to to the world, his opportunity to “make” himself, that is, to become the creator of his own destiny; The philosophical program can be briefly, concisely repeated after Socrates: “Know yourself,” this is the root and core of all other philosophical problems.

The history of philosophy is full of various concepts of the essence of man. In ancient philosophical thought, it was considered primarily as a part of the cosmos, as a kind of microcosm, and in its human manifestations subordinate to a higher principle - fate. In the system of the Christian worldview, man began to be perceived as a being in which two hypostases were initially inextricably and contradictorily connected: spirit and body. qualitatively opposite to each other as the sublime and the base. Therefore, Augustine, for example, presented the soul as independent of the body and identified it with man, and Thomas Aquinas considered man as the unity of body and soul, as an intermediate being between animals and angels. Human flesh, from the point of view of Christianity, is the arena of base passions and desires, the product of the devil. Hence man’s constant desire for liberation from the devil’s shackles, the desire to comprehend the divine light of truth. This circumstance determines the specificity of the human relationship to the world: here there is clearly a desire not only to know one’s own essence, but also to join the highest essence - God, and thereby gain salvation on the day of the Last Judgment. The thought of the finitude of human existence is alien to this consciousness: faith in the immortality of the soul often brightened up the harsh earthly existence.

The philosophy of modern times, being predominantly idealistic, saw in man (following Christianity) primarily his spiritual essence. We still draw from the best creations of this period diamond deposits of the finest observations on the inner life of the human spirit, on the meaning and form of the operations of the human mind, on the secret springs of the human psyche and activity hidden in the depths of personality. Natural science, freed from the ideological dictate of Christianity, was able to create unsurpassed examples of naturalistic studies of human nature. But an even greater merit of this time was the unconditional recognition of the autonomy of the human mind in the matter of knowing its own essence.

Idealistic philosophy of the 19th - early 20th centuries. hypertrophied the spiritual principle in a person, reducing in some cases his essence to a rational principle, in others, on the contrary, to an irrational one. Although the understanding of the real essence of man was often already visible in various theories, it was more or less adequately formulated by certain philosophers, for example Hegel, who considered the individual in the context of the socio-historical whole as a product of active interaction in which the objectification of human essence and the entire objective world around takes place man is nothing more than the result of this objectification; after all, there has not yet been a holistic teaching about man. This process as a whole resembled the state of a volcano, ready to erupt, but still slow, waiting for the last, decisive push of internal energy. Starting with Marxism, man becomes the center of philosophical knowledge, from which come threads connecting him through society with the entire vast Universe. The basic principles of the dialectical-materialistic concept of man were laid down, but the construction of a harmonious building of an integral philosophy of man in all respects is, in principle, an incomplete process in human self-knowledge, for the manifestations of human essence are extremely diverse - these are mind, will, character, and emotions, both work and communication... A person thinks, rejoices, suffers, loves and hates, constantly strives for something, achieves what he wants and, not being satisfied with it, strives for new goals and ideals.

The defining condition for the formation of man is labor, the emergence of which marked the transformation of the animal ancestor into man. In work, 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 man to the same extent that man himself is formed by culture. Labor is impossible in a single manifestation and from the very beginning acts as a collective, social one. The development of labor activity globally changed the natural essence of the human ancestor. Socially, work entailed the formation of new, social qualities of a person, such as: language, thinking, communication, beliefs, value orientations, worldview, etc. Psychologically, it resulted in the transformation of instincts on two levels: in terms of their suppression , inhibition (submission to the control of the mind) and in terms of their transformation into a new qualitative state of purely human cognitive activity - intuition.

All this meant the emergence of a new biological species, Homo sapiens, which from the very beginning acted in two interrelated guises - as a reasonable person and as a social person. (If you think deeply, this is essentially the same thing.) Emphasizing the universality of the social principle in man, K. Marx wrote: “. . . The essence of man is not an abstract characteristic of an individual; in its reality, it is the totality of all social relations.” Such an understanding of man was already prepared in German classical philosophy. I. G. Fichte believed, for example, that the concept of a person does not refer to an individual person, for one cannot be conceived, but only to the race. L. Feuerbach, who created the materialist concept of philosophical anthropology, which served as the starting point for Marx’s reasoning about man and his essence, also wrote that an isolated person does not exist. The concept of a person necessarily presupposes another person, or, more precisely, other people, and only in this respect is a person a person in the full sense of the word.

Everything that a person possesses, how he differs from animals, is the result of his life in society. And this applies not only to the experiences that an individual acquires during his life. A child is born with all the anatomical and physiological wealth accumulated by humanity over the past millennia. It is characteristic that a child who has not absorbed the culture of society turns out to be the most unadapted to life of all living beings. You cannot become a human being outside of society. There are known cases when, due to unfortunate circumstances, very young children ended up with animals. And what? They did not master either a straight gait or articulate speech, and the sounds they uttered imitated the sounds of the animals among which they lived. Their thinking turned out to be so primitive that one can speak about it only with a certain degree of convention. This is a vivid example of the fact that a person in the proper sense of the word is, as it were, a constantly operating receiver and transmitter of social information, understood in the broadest sense of the word as a way of activity. “The individual,” wrote K. Marx, “is a social being. Therefore, every manifestation of his life - even if it does not appear in the direct form of a collective manifestation of life, performed together with others. - is a manifestation and affirmation of social life." The essence of man is not abstract, as one might think, but concretely historical, that is, its content, while remaining in principle the same social, changes depending on the specific content of a particular era, formation , socio-cultural and cultural-everyday context, etc. However, at the first stage of considering personality, its individual aspects must fade into the background, but the main question remains the clarification of its universal properties, with the help of which it would be possible to define the concept of human personality as such The starting point of such an understanding is the interpretation of a person as a subject and product of labor activity, on the basis of which social relations are formed and developed.

Without claiming the status of a definition, we briefly summarize its (human) essential features. Then we can say that a person is a rational being, a subject of work, social relations and communication. At the same time, emphasizing in man his social nature does not have in Marxism that simplified meaning that only the social environment shapes the human personality. The social here is understood as an alternative to the idealistic-subjectivist approach to man, which absolutizes his individual psychological characteristics. This concept of sociality, being, on the one hand, an alternative to individualistic interpretations, on the other hand, does not deny the biological component in the human personality, which also has a universal character.

This or that hypertrophy of individual components in the structure of the human personality (in fact, in the understanding of man in general as such) takes place in some modern foreign philosophical concepts of man, in particular in Freudianism and existentialism. The understanding of man in existentialism is briefly discussed in Chapter. II. The essence of the Freudian interpretation of man is as follows.

Freud created his diagram of the structure of the psyche (personality), dividing it into three main layers.

The lowest layer and the most powerful, the so-called “It,” is located outside of consciousness. Past experiences, various kinds of biological impulsive drives and passions, and unconscious emotions are stored there. On this massive foundation of the unconscious a comparatively small ethane is erected; conscious - what a person actually deals with and constantly operates with. This is his “I”.

And finally, the third and last floor of the human spirit is the “super-ego,” something located above the “I,” developed by the history of mankind and existing in the system of science, morality, art, and culture. These are the ideals of society, social norms, a system of all kinds of prohibitions and rules, in other words, everything that a person learns and with which he is forced to reckon. The main guardian of the “I” is the moral sphere of the individual - the “super-ego”. In response to sinful unconscious impulses, it torments the “I” with reproaches and feelings of guilt.

In itself, Freud's diagram of the structure of the psyche is not without meaning, although its general interpretation and characterization of the relationship of its constituent spheres are scientifically untenable. This hierarchy of elements of the spiritual structure of personality is based on the idea of ​​the primacy and controlling role of the unconscious. It is from “It” that everything that is called psychic originates. It is this sphere, subordinate to the principle of pleasure, that has a decisive influence on human behavior, determining his thoughts and feelings, and through them, actions. Man, according to Freud, is a machine driven by a relatively constant complex of sexual energy (libido), a soul-mad eros, constantly piercing a person with its arrows. Libido is subject to painful tensions and releases. Freud called the dynamic mechanism leading from tension to release, from suffering to pleasure, the pleasure principle.

Freud's mistake is not in the formulation of problems, but in the method of solving them. The provisions of Freudianism are in clear contradiction with scientific data. Man is, first of all, a conscious being: not only thinking, but also his emotions are permeated with consciousness. Of course, at the moment when he rushes to the aid of another, saves a drowning man, pulls a child out of the fire, risking his own life, a person does not think about the significance of his action, does not calculate, does not generalize, does not reflect - he acts instantly, under the influence of emotions. But these emotions themselves were historically formed on the basis of collectivist skills, reasonable aspirations, and mutual labor assistance. Beneath the seemingly unaccountable emotional impulse lie deep layers of “filmed” conscious life.

Man as a biopsychosocial being

We approach man with three different dimensions of his existence: biological, mental and social. The biological is expressed in morphophysiological, genetic phenomena, as well as in neuro-brain, electrochemical and some other processes of the human body. The mental is understood as the inner spiritual world of a person - his conscious and unconscious processes, will, experiences, memory, character, temperament, etc. But not a single aspect separately reveals to us the phenomenon of a person in its integrity. Man, we say, is a rational being. What, then, is his thinking: does it obey only biological laws or only social ones? Any categorical answer would be a clear simplification: human thinking is a complexly organized biopsychosocial phenomenon, the material substrate of which, of course, is amenable to biological measurement (more precisely, physiological), but its content, its specific fullness is already an unconditional intertwining of the mental and the social, and such in which the social, mediated by the emotional-intellectual-volitional sphere, acts as the mental.

The social and biological, existing in an indivisible unity in man, in abstraction capture only the extreme poles in the diversity of human properties and actions. Thus, if we go to the biological pole in the analysis of a person, we will “descend” to the level of existence of his organismal (biophysical, physiological) laws, oriented towards the self-regulation of material-energy processes as a stable dynamic system striving to preserve its integrity. In this aspect, a person acts as a bearer of the biological form of movement of matter. But he is not just an organism, not just a biological species, but first of all a subject of social relations. If, therefore, we go in the analysis of a person to his social essence, starting from his morphological and physiological level and further to his psychophysiological and spiritual structure, then we will thereby move to the area of ​​​​social and psychological manifestations of a person as an individual. Organism and personality are two inseparable sides of a person. With his organismic level he is included in the natural connection of phenomena and is subject to natural necessity, and with his personal level he is turned to social existence, to society, to the history of mankind, to culture.

“The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Therefore, the first concrete fact that must be stated is the bodily organization of these individuals and their relationship to the rest of nature, conditioned by it." "When we consider the social nature of man or talk about man as an individual, we are not abstracted from the biological component in general, but only from its anthropological features, from the study of its bodily organization and some elementary mental processes and properties (for example, the simplest instincts) in their purely natural-scientific specificity. We abstract, for example, from the natural-scientific meaning of chemical reactions occurring in a functioning living organism - this is the task of special sciences. When considering a person’s personality, they mean such properties that can be described in social or socio-psychological terms, where the psychological is taken in its social conditioning and fullness. And the bodily organization of a person, considered no longer from the abstract scientific side, but as a material substrate of personality, of course, cannot but influence the psychological characteristics of a person. The bodily organization of a person, his biology, are therefore considered as a special type of material reality, which has a close connection with the social concept of human personality.

The transition from “corporality” as an object of natural sciences to “corporality” as a substrate of the socio-psychological properties of a person is carried out only at the personal level of its study. The measurement of a person from two sides - biological and social - in philosophy relates specifically to his personality. The biological side of a person is determined mainly by hereditary (genetic) mechanism. The social side of the human personality is determined by the process of a person’s entry into the cultural and historical context of society. Neither one nor the other separately, but only their functioning unity can bring us closer to understanding the mystery of man. This, of course, does not exclude the possibility that for various cognitive and practical purposes, the emphasis on the biological or socio-psychological in a person may shift somewhat in one direction or the other. But in the final comprehension there must certainly be a combination of these sides of a person. It is possible and necessary to study, for example, how the natural, biological essence of a socially developed person manifests itself or, on the contrary, the socio-psychological essence of the natural principle in a person, but the very concept of a person, his personality in both studies should be based on the concept of unity social, biological and mental. Otherwise, the consideration will leave the area of ​​the human sphere itself and will join either natural science and biological research, which has its own private scientific goal, or cultural studies, which is distracted from the directly acting person.

How does a person combine his biological and social principles? To answer this question, let us turn to the history of the emergence of man as a biological species.

Man appeared on Earth as a result of a long evolution, which led to a change in the actual animal morphology, the appearance of upright walking, the release of the upper limbs and the associated development of the articulatory-speech apparatus, which together led to the development of the brain. We can say that its morphology was, as it were, a material crystallization of its social, or more precisely, collective existence. Thus, at a certain level, anthropogenesis, driven by successful mutations, labor activity, communication and emerging spirituality, seemed to “turn the arrows” from biological development to the rails of the historical formation of social systems proper, as a result of which man was formed as a biosocial unity. Man is born as a biosocial unity. This means that he is born with incompletely formed anatomical and physiological systems, which are further formed in the conditions of society, that is, they are genetically laid down precisely as human. The mechanism of heredity, which determines the biological side of a person, also includes his social essence. A newborn is not a “tabula of times” on which the environment “draws” its bizarre patterns of the spirit. Heredity provides the child not only with purely biological properties and instincts. He initially turns out to have a special ability to imitate adults - their actions, sounds, etc. He is inherent in curiosity, and this is already a social quality. He is capable of being upset, experiencing fear and joy, his smile is innate. And 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 man. He cannot become one in isolation: he needs to learn to become a person. He is introduced into the world of people by society; it is society that regulates and fills his behavior with social content.

Every person has fingers obedient to his will; he can take a brush, paints and start painting. But this is not what will make him a real painter. It’s the same with consciousness, which is not our natural heritage. Conscious mental phenomena are formed during life as a result of upbringing, training, active mastery of language, and the world of culture. Thus, the social principle penetrates through the mental into the biology of the individual, which in such a transformed form acts as the basis (or material substrate) of his mental, conscious life activity. »

Man and his habitat: from Earth to space

Man, like any other living creature, has his own habitat, which is uniquely refracted in him in the interaction of all his components. Recently, in the human sciences, the fact of the influence of the environment on the state of the body and psyche, determining the feeling of its comfort or discomfort, is becoming increasingly recognized. A philosophical understanding of man would therefore be essentially incomplete without considering him in the “man-environment” system. It is absolutely clear that the “environment” in this case includes primarily the social environment, that is, society, but is not limited to it, but is actually broader. Because of this, it is heterogeneous; Since we will talk about the social environment below, here we will focus on the so-called natural environment.

Our life, to a greater extent than we think, depends on natural phenomena. We live on a planet, in the depths of which many still unknown processes are constantly seething, but influencing us, and the planet itself, like a kind of grain of sand, rushes in its circular movements in the cosmic abyss. The dependence of the state of the human body on natural processes - on various temperature changes, on fluctuations in geomagnetic fields, solar radiation, etc. - is most often expressed in his neuropsychic state and in the general state of the body.

Different places on earth turn out to be more or less favorable for humans. For example, exposure to underground radiation that is beneficial for the body can help relieve nervous stress or alleviate some ailments of the body. Most of the natural influences on the human body still remain unknown; science has recognized only a negligible part of them. Thus, it is known that if a person is placed in a magnetic-free environment, he will immediately die.

Man exists in the system of interaction of all the forces of nature and experiences a variety of influences from it. Mental balance is possible only under the condition of physiological and psychological adaptation of a person to the natural world, and since a person is, first of all, a social being, he can adapt to nature only through society. The social organism operates within the framework of nature, and oblivion of this severely punishes man. If the value orientations of society are not aimed at harmony with nature, but, on the contrary, isolate it from it, preaching an ugly overgrown urbanism, then the person who has adopted this value orientation sooner or later becomes a victim of his own value orientation. In addition, a kind of environmental vacuum is formed, as if there is a lack of sphere of activity, and no social conditions can compensate a person for the psychological losses associated with the “alienation” of nature. Being not only a social being, but also a biological being, man, just as he would die without the society of people, will die without communication with nature. Both social and natural forces act mercilessly in this sense.

The concept of environment is not limited only to the sphere of the Earth, but also includes space as a whole. The Earth is not a cosmic body isolated from the Universe. In modern science it is considered firmly established that life on Earth arose under the influence of cosmic processes. Therefore, it is quite natural that every living organism somehow interacts with space. Science has now established that solar storms and associated electromagnetic disturbances affect the cells, nervous and vascular systems of the body, a person’s well-being, and his psyche. We live in unison with the entire cosmic environment, and any change in it affects our condition.

The problem of “fitting” living organisms into the context of energy-informational interactions occurring in the Universe is currently being intensively developed. There is an assumption that not only the emergence of life on Earth, but also the every-second functioning of living systems cannot be separated from their constant interaction with various types of radiation (known and not yet known, but quite acceptable) coming from space.

We are brought up with a rather limited view of life as the result of the play of the elemental forces of earthly existence. But this is far from true. And that this is not so was already intuitively understood by thinkers of the distant past, who considered man in the context of the entire universe as a microcosm within the macrocosm. This “inclusion” of man and all living things in the context of the universe, his dependence on all events occurring in it has always been expressed in mythology, religion, astrology, philosophy, scientific views, and in general in all human wisdom. It is possible that life depends to a much greater extent on the influences of cosmic forces than we think. And the dynamics of these forces makes all the cells of a living organism, without exception, and not just the heart, beat in unison with the “cosmic heart” in endless harmony with celestial bodies and processes, and, of course, first of all with those that are closest to us - with planets and the Sun, the rhythms of space have a huge impact on the dynamics of changes in the biofields of plants, animals and humans. Our time is characterized by increased attention not only to space problems. but also to the same extent to the microcosm. An amazing rhythmic uniformity is revealed, suggesting the universality of rhythmic structures. Apparently, there is a relatively synchronous “pulse beat” in the macro- and microcosm, including in the energy systems of the human body.

In this regard, the ideas of K. E. Tsiolkovsky, V. I. Vernadsky and A. L. Chizhevsky seem relevant and insightful to us. Their ideas, which are gradually being recognized in modern science, were as follows. that we are surrounded on all sides by streams of cosmic energy that come to us across vast distances from the stars, planets and the Sun. According to Chizhevsky, solar energy is not the only creator of the sphere of life on Earth in all its lower and higher levels of structural organization and functioning. The energy of cosmic bodies and their associations immeasurably distant from us was of great importance in the origin and evolution of life on our planet. All cosmic bodies, their systems and all processes occurring in the boundless distances of the universe, in one way or another constantly influence all living and inorganic things on Earth, including humans. Vernadsky introduced the term “noosphere”, denoting the sphere of living and intelligent things on our planet. The noosphere is a person’s natural environment, which has a formative effect on him. The combination of two aspects in this concept - biological (living) and social (intelligent) - is the basis for an expanded understanding of the term “environment”. There is no reason to consider the noosphere a purely terrestrial phenomenon; it may also have a general cosmic distribution. Life and intelligence, apparently, exist in other worlds, so man, as a particle of the noosphere, is a social-planetary-cosmic being.

Since the environment has a decisive influence on a person, this concept itself must be subjected to a thorough analysis, without losing attention to its cosmic, natural, or social components.

Man as a personality

Man as a generic being is concretized in real individuals. The concept of an individual indicates, firstly, an individual as a representative of the higher biological species Homo sapiens and, secondly. into a single, separate “atom” of a social community. This concept describes a person in the aspect of his separateness and isolation. The individual, as a special individual integrity, is characterized by a number of properties: the integrity of the morphological and psychophysiological organization, stability in interaction with the environment, and activity. The concept of an individual is only the first condition for designating the subject area of ​​human research, containing the possibility of further specification indicating its qualitative specificity in the concepts of personality and individuality.

Currently, there are two main concepts of personality:

• personality as a functional (role) characteristic of a person and
• personality as its essential characteristic.

The first concept is based on the concept of a person’s social function, or more precisely, on the concept of a social role. Despite the importance of this aspect of understanding personality (it is of great importance in modern applied sociology), it does not allow us to reveal the inner, deep world of a person, recording only his external behavior, which in this case does not always and does not necessarily express the real essence of a person.

A deeper interpretation of the concept of personality reveals the latter no longer in a functional, but in an essential sense: it is here - a clot of its regulatory-spiritual potentials. the center of self-awareness, the source of will and the core of character, the subject of free action and supreme power in the inner life of a person. Personality is the individual focus and expression of social relations and functions of people, the subject of knowledge and transformation of the world, rights and responsibilities, ethical, aesthetic and all other social norms. The personal qualities of a person in this case are a derivative of his social way of life and self-conscious mind. Personality therefore is always a socially developed person.

Personality is formed in the process of activity and communication. In other words, its formation is essentially a process of socialization of the individual. This process occurs through the internal formation of its unique appearance. The process of socialization requires productive activity from the individual. expressed in constant adjustment of one’s actions, behavior, and actions. This. in turn, necessitates the development of the ability of self-esteem, which is associated with the development of self-awareness. In this process, the mechanism of reflection peculiar to the individual is worked out. Self-awareness and self-esteem together form the main core of personality, around which a personality “pattern”, unique in its richness and variety of subtle shades, is formed, its specificity inherent only to it.

Personality is a combination of its three main components: biogenetic inclinations, the influence of social factors (environment, conditions, norms, regulations) and its psychosocial core - “I”. It represents, as it were, an internal social personality that has become a phenomenon of the psyche, determining its character, the sphere of motivation, manifested in a certain direction, the way of correlating one’s interests with public ones, the level of aspirations, the basis for the formation of beliefs, value orientations, and worldviews. It is also the basis for the formation of a person’s social feelings: self-esteem, duty, responsibility, conscience, moral and aesthetic principles, etc. Thus, “I” is an essential element of the personality structure, it is the highest, regulative and predictive spiritual and semantic one. center. Subjectively, for the individual, the personality acts as an image of his “I” - it serves as the basis of internal self-esteem and represents how the individual sees himself in the present, future, what he would like to be, what he could be if he wanted . The process of correlating the image of “I” with real life circumstances, resulting in the motivation and orientation of the individual, serves as the basis for self-education, that is, for the constant process of improvement and development of one’s own personality. Man as a personality is not some complete given thing. It is a process that requires tireless mental work.

The main resulting property of a person is his worldview. It represents the privilege of a person who has risen to a high level of spirituality. A person asks himself: who am I? why did I come into this world? What is the meaning of my life, my purpose? Do I live according to the dictates of existence or not? Only by developing one or another worldview does a person, through self-determination in life, gain the opportunity to consciously, purposefully act, realizing his essence. Worldview is like a bridge connecting a person and the entire world around him.

Simultaneously with the formation of a worldview, the character of the individual is also formed - the psychological core of a person, stabilizing his social forms of activity. “It is only in character that the individual acquires his permanent certainty.”

The word “character,” used as a synonym for the word “personality,” usually means a measure of personal strength, that is, willpower, which is also a resulting indicator of personality. Willpower makes the worldview whole, stable and gives it effective force. People with a strong will also have a strong character. Such people are usually respected and fairly perceived as leaders, knowing what can be expected from such a person. It is recognized that great character is possessed by those who achieve great goals through their actions, meeting the requirements of objective, rationally based and socially significant ideals, serving as a beacon for others. He strives to achieve not only objectively but also subjectively justified goals, and the energy of the will has a content worthy of itself. If a person’s character loses its objectivity, becoming fragmented into random, petty, empty goals, then it turns into stubbornness and becomes deformedly subjective. Stubbornness is no longer a character, but a parody of it. By preventing a person from communicating with others, it has a repulsive force.

Without will, neither morality nor citizenship is possible, and social self-affirmation of the human individual as a person is generally impossible.

A special component of personality is its morality. The moral essence of a person is “tested” for many things. Social circumstances often lead to the fact that a person, faced with a choice, does not always follow himself, the ethical imperative of his personality. At such moments, he turns into a puppet of social forces, and this causes irreparable damage to the integrity of his personality. People react to trials differently: one personality may be “flattened” under the blows of the hammer of social violence, while another may be hardened. Only highly moral and deeply intellectual individuals experience an acute sense of tragedy from the consciousness of their “non-personality,” that is, their inability to do what the innermost meaning of the “I” dictates. Only a freely expressed personality can maintain self-esteem. The measure of subjective freedom of an individual is determined by its moral imperative and is an indicator of the degree of development of the individual himself.

It is important to see in a person not only the unified and common, but also the unique and original. An in-depth comprehension of the essence of personality involves considering it not only as a social, but also as an individually original being. The uniqueness of a person is already manifested at the biological level. Nature itself vigilantly protects in man not only his generic essence, but also what is unique and special about him, stored in his gene pool. All cells of the body contain genetically controlled specific molecules that make a given individual biologically unique: a child is born with the gift of uniqueness. The diversity of human individuality is amazing, and at this level, uniqueness is observed even in animals: anyone who has had any opportunity to observe the behavior of several animals of the same species in the same conditions could not help but notice the differences in their “characters.” The uniqueness of people is amazing even in its external manifestation. However, its true meaning is connected not so much with the external appearance of a person, but with his inner spiritual world, with his special way of being in the world, with his manner of behavior, communication with people and nature. The uniqueness of individuals has significant social meaning. What is personal uniqueness? A personality includes general traits characteristic of it as a representative of the human race: it is also characterized by special characteristics as a representative of a particular society with its specific socio-political and national characteristics. historical traditions, forms of culture. But at the same time, personality is something unique, which is connected, firstly, with its hereditary characteristics and, secondly, with the unique conditions of the microenvironment in which it is nurtured. But that is not all. Hereditary characteristics, unique conditions of the microenvironment and the individual’s activity unfolding in these conditions create a unique personal experience - all this together forms the socio-psychological uniqueness of the individual. But individuality is not a certain sum of these aspects, but their organic unity, an alloy that is in fact indecomposable into its components: a person cannot voluntarily tear away one thing from himself and replace it with another, he is always burdened with the baggage of his biography . “Individuality is indivisibility, unity, integrity, infinity; from head to toe, from the first to the last atom, through and through, everywhere I am an individual being.” Is it possible in this case to say about someone that he has nothing of his own at all? Of course not. A particular person always has something of his own, at least a unique stupidity that does not allow him to adequately assess the situation and himself in this situation.

Individuality is not, of course, some kind of absolute, it does not have complete and final completeness, which is the condition for its constant movement, change, development, but at the same time, individuality is the most stable invariant of a person’s personal structure, changing and at the same time unchanged throughout In a person’s life, hidden under many shells, the most tender part of him is the soul.

What is the significance of unique personality traits in the life of society? What would society be like if it suddenly happened that, for some reason, all the people in it would be alike, with stamped brains, thoughts, feelings, abilities? Let's imagine such a thought experiment: all the people of a given society were somehow artificially mixed into a homogeneous mass of the physical and spiritual, from which the hand of an omnipotent experimenter, dividing this mass exactly in half into female and male parts, made everyone of the same type and equal to each other in everything . Could this double sameness form a normal society?

Diversity of individuals is an essential condition and form of manifestation of the successful development of society. Individual uniqueness and originality of a person is not just the greatest social value, but an urgent need for the development of a healthy, reasonably organized society.

Man, team and society. Formation and development

The problem of personality cannot be solved seriously without a clear philosophical formulation of the question of the relationship between the individual and society. In what forms does it manifest itself?

The connection between the individual and society is mediated primarily by the primary collective: family, educational, and labor. Only through the collective does each member enter society. Hence, its decisive role is clear - the role of an extremely important “cell” of an integral social organism, where the personality develops spiritually and physically, where, through the acquisition of language and mastery of socially developed forms of activity, it absorbs into itself, to one degree or another, what was created by the works of its predecessors. Direct forms of communication that develop in a team form social connections, shaping the appearance of each person. Through the primary collective there is a “return” of the personal to society and the achievements of society to the individual. And just as each individual bears the mark of his collective, so each collective bears the mark of its constituent members: being a formative principle for individuals, it itself is formed by them. The collective is not something faceless, continuous and homogeneous. In this regard, it is a combination of different unique individuals. And in it the personality does not drown, does not dissolve, but comes to light and asserts itself. Performing one or another social function, each person plays his own individual and unique role, which has a single basis in the huge range of various types of activity. In a developed team, a person rises to realize the significance of his personality.

If a collective, absorbing an individual, is itself formed by its members, then the goals of this formation are given to it by society as a whole. Here it is necessary to distinguish between formal (official) and so-called informal (unofficial) groups. The latter are united, as a rule, by interests - these are clubs, societies, sections, here the connections between their members are characterized by greater freedom of personal manifestations, relationships of friendship, sympathy, in these groups, as a rule, there is a higher creative expression of strength.

Nowadays, with a fairly widely developed socio-psychological service at enterprises, a policy is being pursued of creating work collectives, where all their members would also be united along informal lines: in this case we are talking about the abilities of people, their own assessment of their capabilities and everyone’s understanding that he really in his place and that he is a necessary, equal, equally respected member of the team. But even in every formal group, a person’s functions are not limited to his socially assigned role; people are united not only by purely production relations, but also by other interests: political, moral, aesthetic, scientific views and thoughts, and most often by everyday problems that are especially close to them.

Since, as has already been said, each member of the team is a person, an individual with his own special understanding, experience, mindset and character, even in the most tightly knit group, disagreements and even contradictions are possible. In the presence of the latter, both the collective and each individual person are “tested for strength” - whether the contradiction will reach the point of antagonism, or whether it will be overcome by common efforts for the common good.

Specific historical understanding of personality

The relationship between man and society has changed significantly in the course of history. Along with this, the specific content, specific content and personalities themselves changed. A retrospective look at history reveals to us the richness and diversity of personality types characteristic of certain types of cultures and worldviews: antiquity. Middle Ages, Renaissance, modern times, etc.

The personality of the 20th century differs sharply, for example, from the personality of even the not so distant historical past, say. personalities of the 18th-19th centuries. This is due not only to cultural eras in human history, but also to changes in socio-economic formations.

Under the clan system, personal interests were suppressed by the interests of the survival of the clan as a whole (and therefore of each individual belonging to this clan), each adult fulfilled the role strictly prescribed to her by her clan and the force of traditions. Society as a whole was guided in its life by the rituals and customs of its ancestors. In human activity, it was organically realized in the primitive. in undeveloped forms its generic, social essence. This was the first historical stage in the development of the human personality, the inner spiritual world of which was filled with undifferentiated social-natural being, appearing in the animated form of the action of supernatural forces.

With the emergence of slaveholding and feudal formations, ancient and medieval cultures, a new type of relationship between the individual and society also emerged. In these societies, in which classes with different and opposing interests were formed, and as a result of this, a state was formed along with officially formalized legal relations of citizens in it, individuals (free citizens in a slave society and citizens of a feudal society) began to act as subjects of rights and responsibilities. This meant the recognition of a certain independence of action for the individual, and accordingly the ability of the individual to be responsible for his actions was provided for. Here there was already a rapid process of formation of personality, which bore the mark, on the one hand, of class collectivism, and on the other, class limitation, which ultimately determined its content, forms of social activity or passivity, way of life and its worldview. However, despite the common exploitative essence of both formations, the personality of the era of antiquity was sharply different from the personality of feudal society: they lived in conditions of different types of cultures. Ancient society is a pagan society. Man himself and the entire society in general were perceived in the image and likeness of the cosmos, hence the understanding of the predetermined destiny of man. A person could, of course, be independent in deciding his earthly affairs, but in the final instance he still recognized himself as an instrument of the cosmic world order, embodied in the idea of ​​fate. Each had his own destiny, and he was not free to change it at will. The worldview of the ancient personality remained mythological.

During the Middle Ages in the Christian religion, the individual was recognized as an integral autonomous entity. Her spiritual world became more complex and refined: she came into intimate contact with a personified god. The worldview of a Christianized person was colored by an eschatological motive - hence its focus on a closed spiritual life, improving the spirit - soul, cultivating a sense of humility and non-resistance. There was a kind of sublimation of the physical with the spiritual, associated with preparation for the afterlife. The religious principle permeated all the pores of human existence, which determined the corresponding way of life. The personality of the era of early Christianity is characterized by purely personal heroism - asceticism. The intense inner life of an individual, with a moral and ideological core that is the focus of the mental “I,” expanded to cover the entire sphere of his personality, leaving little room for biological and social components. In the life of a medieval person, moral values ​​themselves occupied a large place, in contrast to utilitarian-material values.

In the new cultural environment associated with the transition from feudalism to capitalist forms of economy, a new type of personality is emerging. During the Renaissance, human freedom was very acutely realized, autonomy for God was realized as autonomy for man himself: from now on, man is the manager of his own destiny, endowed with freedom of choice. The dignity of man lies in the fact that he is involved in everything earthly and heavenly - from the lowest to the highest. Freedom of choice means for him a kind of cosmic looseness, independence of creative self-determination; man tasted the rapture of the limitless possibilities of his essential powers and felt himself the master of the world.

During the Enlightenment, reason took a dominant position: everything was questioned and criticized that did not stand the test of the power of reason. This meant a significant rationalization of all aspects of social life, but, among other things, it meant mainly the rapid flowering of science. A kind of intermediary link, technology, has become wedged into interhuman connections. Rationalization of life meant a narrowing of the emotional and spiritual side of the inner world of the individual. Both value orientations and worldviews have changed. As capitalism established and developed, the highest value was assigned to such personal qualities as willpower, efficiency, talent, which, however, also had a downside - selfishness, individualism, ruthlessness, etc. The further development of capitalism led to the global alienation of the individual. A personality of an individualistic type with a pluralistic worldview and a material orientation has emerged. Its mental and spiritual values ​​are being replaced by rationalistic-pragmatic orientations. Characterizing the psychology of individualism, A. Schopenhauer stated that everyone wants to rule over everything and destroy everything that opposes him, everyone considers himself the center of the world, prefers his own existence and well-being to everything else, and is ready to destroy the world. just to support my own “I” a little longer. Everyone views himself as an end, while everyone else is only a means to him. This is how the principle of utilitarianism penetrates into human relations. The psychology of individualism inevitably leads to an acute feeling of loneliness and mutual alienation of people.

Bibliography

• A. G. Myslivchenko, A. P. Sheptulin. Dialectical and historical materialism, M., 1988.
• A. G. Spirkin. Fundamentals of Philosophy, M., 1988.

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Philosophy, its meaning, functions and role in society. Basic ideas of the history of world philosophy. Being as a central category in philosophy. Man as the main philosophical problem. Problems of consciousness, the doctrine of knowledge. Spiritual and social life of a person.

This is a philosophical concept that reflects the natural properties and essential characteristics that are inherent in all people to one degree or another, distinguishing them from other forms and types of being. You can find different views on this problem. This concept seems obvious to many, and often no one thinks about it. Some believe that there is no specific entity, or at least that it is incomprehensible. Others argue that it is knowable and put forward a variety of concepts. Another common point of view is that the essence of people is directly related to the personality, which is closely intertwined with the psyche, which means that by knowing the latter, one can understand the essence of a person.

Key Aspects

The main prerequisite for the existence of any human individual is the functioning of his body. It is part of the natural environment around us. From this point of view, man is a thing among other things and part of the evolutionary process of nature. But this definition is limited and underestimates the role of the active-conscious life of the individual, without going beyond the passive-contemplative view characteristic of the materialism of the 17th and 18th centuries.

In the modern view, man is not just a part of nature, but also the highest product of its development, the bearer of the social form of the evolution of matter. And not just a “product”, but also a creator. This is an active being, endowed with vital forces in the form of abilities and inclinations. Through conscious, purposeful actions, it actively changes the environment and, in the course of these changes, changes itself. transformed by labor, it becomes human reality, “second nature,” “the world of man.” Thus, this side of being represents the unity of nature and the spiritual knowledge of the producer, that is, it is of a socio-historical nature. The process of improving technology and industry is an open book of the essential forces of humanity. Reading it, one can come to understand the term “essence of people” in an objectified, realized form, and not just as an abstract concept. It can be found in the nature of objective activity, when there is a dialectical interaction of natural material, creative material with a certain socio-economic structure.

Category "existence"

This term denotes the existence of an individual in everyday life. It is then that the essence of human activity is revealed, the strong relationship between all types of personality behavior, its abilities and existence with the evolution of human culture. Existence is much richer than essence and, being a form of its manifestation, includes, in addition to the manifestation of human powers, also a variety of social, moral, biological and psychological qualities. Only the unity of both these concepts forms human reality.

Category "human nature"

In the last century, nature and the essence of man were identified, and the need for a separate concept was questioned. But the development of biology, the study of the neural organization of the brain and the genome makes us look at this relationship in a new way. The main question is whether there is an unchanging, structured human nature, independent of all influences, or whether it is plastic and changing in nature.



The US philosopher F. Fukuyama believes that there is one, and it ensures the continuity and stability of our existence as a species, and, together with religion, constitutes our most basic and fundamental values. Another American scientist, S. Pinker, defines human nature as a set of emotions, cognitive abilities and motives that are common to people with a normally functioning nervous system. From the above definitions it follows that the characteristics of the human individual are explained by biologically inherited properties. However, many scientists believe that the brain only predetermines the possibility of developing abilities, but does not condition them at all.

"The Essence in Itself"

Not everyone considers the concept of “the essence of people” to be legitimate. According to such a direction as existentialism, a person does not have a specific generic essence, since he is an “entity in himself.” K. Jaspers, its largest representative, believed that sciences such as sociology, physiology and others provide only knowledge about some individual aspects but cannot penetrate into its essence, which is existence (existence). This scientist believed that it is possible to study the individual in different aspects - in physiology as a body, in sociology as a social being, in psychology as a soul, and so on, but this does not answer the question of what is the nature and essence of man , because he always represents something more than he can know about himself. Neopositivists are also close to this point of view. They deny that anything common can be found in the individual.

Ideas about a person

In Western Europe, it is believed that the works of the German philosophers Scheller (“The Position of Man in the Universe”) and Plessner “Stages of the Organic and Man,” published in 1928, marked the beginning of philosophical anthropology. A number of philosophers: A. Gehlen (1904-1976), N. Henstenberg (1904), E. Rothacker (1888-1965), O. Bollnov (1913) - dealt exclusively with it. The thinkers of that time expressed many wise ideas about man, which have not yet lost their defining significance. For example, Socrates urged his contemporaries to know themselves. The philosophical essence of man, happiness and the meaning of life were associated with understanding the essence of man. Socrates' call was continued with the statement: "Know yourself - and you will be happy!" Protagoras argued that man is the measure of all things.



In Ancient Greece, the question of the origin of people first arose, but it was often resolved speculatively. The Syracusan philosopher Empedocles was the first to suggest the evolutionary, natural origin of man. He believed that everything in the world is driven by enmity and friendship (hatred and love). According to Plato's teachings, souls live in the empyrean world. He likened it to a chariot, the driver of which is the Will, and the Feelings and Mind are harnessed to it. Feelings pull her down - to rough, material pleasures, and Reason - upward, to the awareness of spiritual postulates. This is the essence of human life.

Aristotle saw 3 souls in people: rational, animal and vegetable. The plant soul is responsible for growth, maturity and aging of the body, the animal soul is responsible for independence in movements and the range of psychological feelings, the rational soul is responsible for self-awareness, spiritual life and thinking. Aristotle was the first to understand that the main essence of man is his life in society, defining him as a social animal.

The Stoics identified morality with spirituality, laying a strong foundation for the idea of ​​him as a moral being. One can recall Diogenes, who lived in a barrel, and with a lit lantern in the light of day, looked for a person in the crowd. In the Middle Ages, ancient views were criticized and completely forgotten. Representatives of the Renaissance updated ancient views, placed Man at the very center of the worldview, and laid the foundation for Humanism.

About the essence of man

According to Dostoevsky, the essence of man is a mystery that must be unraveled, and let the one who takes it up and spends his whole life on it not say that he spent his time in vain. Engels believed that the problems of our lives will be solved only when man is fully understood, suggesting ways to achieve this.



Frolov describes him as a subject as a biosocial being, genetically related to other forms, but distinguished due to the ability to produce tools, possessing speech and consciousness. The origin and essence of man are best traced against the backdrop of nature and the animal world. In contrast to the latter, people are seen as beings who have the following basic characteristics: consciousness, self-awareness, work and social life.

Linnaeus, classifying the animal world, included man in the animal kingdom, but classified him, along with apes, in the category of hominids. He placed Homo sapiens at the very top of his hierarchy. Man is the only creature that has consciousness. This is possible thanks to articulate speech. With the help of words, a person becomes aware of himself, as well as the surrounding reality. They are the primary cells, carriers of spiritual life, allowing people to exchange the content of their inner life with the help of sounds, images or signs. An integral place in the category of “the essence and existence of man” belongs to labor. The classic of political economy A. Smith, predecessor of K. Marx and student of D. Hume, wrote about this. He defined man as a “working animal.”

Work

In determining the specific nature of man, Marxism rightly attaches the main importance to labor. Engels said that it was he who accelerated the evolutionary development of biological nature. Man is completely free in his work, unlike animals, whose work is hard-coded. People can do completely different jobs and in different ways. We are so free to work that we can even... not work. The essence of human rights lies in the fact that in addition to the duties accepted in society, there are also rights that are granted to the individual and are an instrument of his social protection. The behavior of people in society is regulated by public opinion. We, like animals, feel pain, thirst, hunger, sexual desire, balance, etc., but all our instincts are controlled by society. So, work is a conscious activity acquired by a person in society. The content of consciousness was formed under his influence, and is consolidated in the process of participation in industrial relations.

Social essence of man

Socialization is the process of acquiring elements of social life. Only in society is behavior learned that is guided not by instincts, but by public opinion, animal instincts are curbed, language, traditions and customs are accepted. Here people learn the experience of industrial relations from previous generations. Since Aristotle, social nature has been considered central to the structure of personality. Marx, moreover, saw the essence of man only in social nature.



The personality does not choose the conditions of the external world, it simply always finds itself in them. Socialization occurs through the assimilation of social functions, roles, acquisition of social status, and adaptation to social norms. At the same time, the phenomena of social life are possible only through individual actions. An example is art, when artists, directors, poets and sculptors create it with their labor. Society sets the parameters for the social identity of the individual, approves the program of social inheritance, and maintains balance within this complex system.

Man in a religious worldview

A religious worldview is a worldview based on the belief in the existence of something supernatural (spirits, gods, miracles). Therefore, human problems are viewed here through the prism of the divine. According to the teachings of the Bible, which forms the basis of Christianity, God created man in his own image and likeness. Let's take a closer look at this teaching.



God created man from the dirt of the earth. Modern Catholic theologians argue that there were two acts in divine creation: the first was the creation of the entire world (Universe) and the second was the creation of the soul. The oldest biblical texts of the Jews state that the soul is the breath of a person, what he breathes. Therefore, God blows the soul through the nostrils. It is the same as that of an animal. After death, breathing stops, the body turns to dust, and the soul dissolves into air. After some time, Jews began to identify the soul with the blood of a person or animal.

The Bible assigns a large role to the spiritual essence of a person to the heart. According to the authors of the Old and New Testaments, thinking occurs not in the head, but in the heart. It also contains the wisdom given by God to man. And the head exists only for hair to grow on it. There is no hint in the Bible that people are capable of thinking with their heads. This idea had a great influence on European culture. The great scientist of the 18th century, researcher of the nervous system, Buffon, was sure that man thinks with his heart. The brain, in his opinion, is only the feeding organ of the nervous system. The New Testament writers recognize the existence of the soul as a substance independent of the body. But this concept itself is vague. Modern Jehovah's Witnesses interpret the texts in the spirit of the Old and do not recognize the immortality of the human soul, believing that after death existence ceases.

Spiritual nature of man. Concept of personality

Man is designed in such a way that in the conditions of social life he is able to transform into a spiritual person, into a personality. In the literature you can find many definitions of personality, its characteristics and characteristics. This is, first of all, a creature that consciously makes decisions and is responsible for all its behavior and actions.

The spiritual essence of a person is the content of personality. Worldview occupies a central place here. It is generated in the process of the activity of the psyche, in which three components are distinguished: these are Will, Feelings and Mind. In the spiritual world there is nothing else except intellectual, emotional activity and volitional motives. Their relationship is ambiguous; they are in a dialectical connection. There is some inconsistency between feelings, will and reason. Balancing between these parts of the psyche constitutes a person’s spiritual life.

Personality is always a product and subject of individual life. It is shaped not only by its own existence, but also by the influence of other people with whom it comes into contact. The problem of human essence cannot be considered one-sidedly. Educators and psychologists believe that it is possible to talk about personal individualization only from the time when an individual’s perception of his Self is manifested, personal self-awareness is formed, when he begins to separate himself from other people. A person “builds” his own line of life and social behavior. In philosophical language this process is called individualization.

Purpose and meaning of life

The concept of the meaning of life is individual, since this problem is solved not by classes, not by work collectives, not by science, but by individuals, individuals. Solving this problem means finding your place in the world, your personal self-determination. For a long time, thinkers and philosophers have been looking for the answer to the question of why a person lives, the essence of the concept of “meaning of life,” why he came into the world and what happens to us after death. The call to self-knowledge was the main fundamental tenet of Greek culture.



“Know yourself,” Socrates urged. For this thinker, it is about philosophizing, searching for oneself, overcoming trials and ignorance (the search for what good and evil, truth and error, beautiful and ugly mean). Plato argued that happiness is achievable only after death, in the afterlife, when the soul - the ideal essence of man - is free from the shackles of the body.

According to Plato, human nature is determined by his soul, or rather soul and body, but with the superiority of the divine, immortal principle over the corporeal, mortal. The human soul, according to this philosopher, consists of three parts: the first is ideally rational, the second is lustful-volitional, the third is instinctive-affective. Human destiny, the meaning of life, and the direction of activity depend on which of them prevails.

Christianity in Rus' adopted a different concept. The highest spiritual principle becomes the main measure of all things. By realizing one’s sinfulness, smallness, even insignificance before the ideal, in the pursuit of it, the prospect of spiritual growth is revealed to a person, consciousness becomes directed towards constant moral improvement. The desire to do good becomes the core of the personality, the guarantor of its social development.

During the Enlightenment, French materialists rejected the concept of human nature as a combination of material, bodily substance and an immortal soul. Voltaire denied the immortality of the soul, and when asked whether divine justice exists after death, he preferred to maintain “reverent silence.” He did not agree with Pascal that man is a weak and insignificant creature in nature, a “thinking reed.” The philosopher believed that people are not as pitiful and evil as Pascal thought. Voltaire defines man as a social being striving to form “cultural communities.”

Thus, philosophy considers the essence of people in the context of universal aspects of existence. These are social and individual, historical and natural, political and economic, religious and moral, spiritual and practical reasons. The essence of man in philosophy is considered in many ways, as an integral, unified system. If you miss any aspect of existence, the whole picture collapses. The task of this science is the self-knowledge of man, his always new and eternal comprehension of his essence, nature, his purpose and the meaning of existence. The essence of man in philosophy, thus, is a concept that modern scientists also turn to, discovering its new facets.