Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy

Dealing with the existence of organic beings from the perspective of the universal genus, the genus-process in Encyclopaedia can be considered a teleological explication given by Hegel. It can be further rightly qualified as an internal teleology since it understands the existence of this universal as an internal process of self-constitution. Nonetheless, it should be distinguished from Kantian internal teleology, which argues that the internal purposiveness should not be regarded as a constitutive principle of the organic being itself, but only a regulative principle of our reflective judgment. On the contrary, in Hegel’s understanding, the internal purposiveness of an organism, that is, the process of its self-organization is objective in itself. Supposing that Hegel’s consideration of this process of self-consideration on the biologically concrete level of species contributes to objectify the internal teleology, this paper attempts to make sense of the objectivity of his concept of genus-process. Meanwhile, it will be hopefully argued that both the sex-relation and sexual difference play important roles in this teleological reading of organism, and further, that the ontological interpretation of these themes leads this Hegelian teleology to the theme of death, and finally to the passage to the sphere of Spirit.

Philosophy is deeply rooted in human nature. On the one hand, thinking of an infinite essence of the universe may actualize an infinite essence of humans themselves and thus root them in the Cosmos infinity. On the other hand, to think of infinity is to acquire the power of infinity, i.e., an infinite power. In short, thinking in terms of infinity fills us with infinity. Philosophical reflection allows individuals to overstep the limits of the lived experience, transcends their Selves beyond daily occurrence. Obviously, just this human transcendence into metaphysical reality, into the world of essential relationships ensures a therapeutic effect of philosophical reflection.

This paper considers the specificity of the genre of philosophical biography as a special kind of philosophical work and brings to light its conceptual grounds. Philosophical biography is defined as an understanding of human life which has received not only a literary but also a philosophical expression. The most important features of philosophical biography are as follows: the demand of spiritual affinity as a condition of understanding; the focus on comprehension of life-drama, in which the contradictions of worldview are on the front plan, thoughts and senses act as personal events; the creation of the spiritual image as the main task of biography and the dependence of the unity of biographical content on the author’s philosophical worldview. It is significant that the idea of plasticity of man can’t be schematized or lined up. It can be conveyed by meanings such as the plastic philosophical narrative.

It is incredible how much information we have about humans and how little we know about ourselves. The high level of complexity and depth of knowledge brought forth by so many different perspectives of countless branches of science and the disciplines of human culture, results in an incredibly incoherent, equally colorful and arid, dynamic and fixed picture of the Human Being. The only being evolved enough to define itself seems stuck in a multiple-choice process of deciding its own definition. This choice is even more important as, at this level of cultural development as a species, it becomes a very part of its own future. The definition is equally the effect and the active cause of what humans will turn into - become. This self-referentiality conjugated with the peculiar nature of living life forms and the phenomenon of consciousness, render the accommodation of the understanding of human beings impossible within the epistemological framework of scientific discourse barred by some rigid fundamental assumptions such as: subject-object distinction, mono-causal linearity determination, or clear-cut categorical determinations. The understanding of the human being is a self-referential historical process which necessitates the transgression of oneself. But, in this very process of self-understanding lays the possibility of the further evolution of human beings.

The main regularity of the anthropological crisis is that the structural-functional basis of contemporary industrial society, including the division of the system world and the life world, has remained invariant. By this, the system world as an aggregate of the general senses, has acquired a hardness, and the life world that generates the individual meanings has started to decrease rapidly. The resource exhaustion of the life world to the reproduction of the human creatively innovative (reasonable) ability has really led modern culture to the bifurcation point, bringing out two possible perspectives for its further movement: either further loss of human reason and the human fixation as an automaton or robot, or the purposeful reconstruction of human reason in the frame of culture on new grounds. The first perspective means a movement on the line of “the anthropological reduction” in the direction of the liquidation of Homo sapiens. The second one means searching for new resources in humanity and culture, which are comparable as to their importance to the “neolithic revolution”.

This paper, focused on the Soviet philosopher of Georgian origins Merab Mamardashvili`s opinion, describes his understanding of the human being. This concept is one of the central notions of Mamardashvili`s philosophy, therefore its exploration is complementary to the acquaintance with the philosopher`s views in general and the understanding of it. The Georgian philosopher holds a belief that there are no mechanisms, no guarantees in Nature that could turn a human being into the human being, so humanity can be achieved and held on only by his own efforts. The paper sums up that, although on the background of the history of philosophy Mamardashvili`s project does not bring a special novelty or new theoretical system, his philosophy must be seen as a unique technique that connects philosophy with life, turning it into a work of art.

The present paper is devoted to the exploration of the life and work of Alice James (1848-1892) – the younger sister of the psychologist and philosopher William James and the famous novelist Henry James. The paper describes her inability to thrive intellectually and emotionally and express herself fully within the family and society environment of the times. Her only “career”, her only “profession” was to be a patient, an object of thorough scrutiny. The main part of the paper is devoted to her claiming back her life, taking full responsibility for it after she had received the news of her terminal disease – breast cancer. Paradoxically, this fact didn’t create her destruction, but, on the contrary, - served as the axial point, the lynchpin that structured her life experiences – in the past and in the future. It was the cause for introspection. The diary can be regarded as her dialogue with a future that would never come. It can be read as a philosophical work on the theme of death and memory as remembering and forth-membering (the identical phenomena differentiated by the direction – towards past or future).

In discussions concerning affectivity several points of view, often opposed, are admitted. However, the common point of current standpoints is a belief that affectivity is a homogeneous family of phenomena. This belief leads to problems because the collected data are determined by a kind of accepted approach. In order to achieve a better consideration of these data and to avoid an exclusion of this or that position, another perspective is proposed. Following Max Scheler, we can adopt a hierarchical view of feelings. The distinction between what seems to be different, opposed or even contradictory appears as the result of a distinction of levels of the same general phenomena: affectivity. Scheler is not the only philosopher to sustain a hierarchical conception of feelings. We can refer to Th. Ribot, Plato or R. Ingarden and N. Hartmann. In this, however, a hierarchical conception of feelings results from a more general perspective: a hierarchical conception of psychic reality. Besides a hierarchy of feelings, a second perspective should be added: all feelings (affectivity) are divided into genera (joy, fear, love, etc.) and, on the other hand, each genus is divided into species. Genera of feelings are to be understood as modi of experienced relatedness of the ego (or of the person) to the object of feeling, the levels of which are to be understood as units of functions similar in the degree to which a subject of feelings is involved in an act of feeling.

There is a widespread consensus that conceptions of human nature or, in a very specific German term, Menschenbilder, are fundamental to human self-understanding and the organization of society. “Ideas of human nature are the most potent ideas there are.” (Trigg 1988, 169). However, despite this fact, there are hardly any publications offering general, theoretical examinations about Menschenbilder, their functions and effects. In this paper, a first step towards formulating such a general concept of Menschenbilder will be made by elaborating Friedrich Nietzsche’s understanding of that term. According to him, Menschenbilder are commonly shared bundles of beliefs about core qualities of being human that exert a deep influence on individuals and society. Nietzsche not only gave this term its specific modern meaning but also laid ground for an important concept of which the analytical potential still has to be discovered.

Die Bestimmung des Herstellungsbegriffs setzt bei der aristotelischen Unterscheidung zwischen den Tätigkeitsformen der poiesis sowie praxis an. Anders als das selbstzweckliche Handeln ist das herstellende Hervorbringen immer zweckorientierte, auf etwas außerhalb ihrer selbst gerichtete Tätigkeit. Anthropologisch gewendet, lässt sich die entsprechende Fähigkeit zur instrumentellen Mittel erfindung und systematischen Mittelherstellung (etwa von Werkzeugen) als zentrales Wesensmerkmal des Menschen bestimmen. Nach Hannah Arendt sind veschiedene Aspekte des Herstellens als einzigartiger Fähigkeit des Menschen zu unterscheiden. Auf der Seite des Herstellungsprozesses sind die eindeutig bestimmbare Abgeschlossenheit und die Finalität das Herstellens charakteristisch; auf der Seite des hergestellten Produktes sind die Gegenständlichkeit des Hergestellten sowie die von diesem unabhängige Beständigkeit des Produktentwurfs bestimmend, in dem wiederum die grundsätzliche Anlage zur Vervielfältigung und Massenproduktion jeder Hervorbringung gründet. Hieraus ergibt sich die Haltbarkeit als inhärente Eigenheit des Hergestellten, das somit seinen Hersteller potenziell überdauert. Schließlich wird die anthopologische Bedeutung des Herstellungshandelns deutlich: der unstete Mensch, dessen Leben in Struktur und Verlauf dauerhaft anfällig und beständig unbeständig ist, benötigt zum Überleben verlässlich Dauerhaftes, Beständiges. Als Homo faber gelingt es ihm, seine eigene Unnatürlichkeit durch selbstgemachte Künstlichkeit zu ergänzen und sich so eine “Heimat” (H. Arendt) zu schaffen.

What is the difference between the individual who has become an independent subject of civil society, and the individual of a certain community that belongs in a social plan and what does his independence and autonomy mean? It becomes clarified, especially in comparison to the communal individual who is not acting only on his own, but acts on behalf of the community, as his representative. His significant acts are community acts, instead of his own. For this reason, when the communal individual is punished for certain offenses, he is punished as a particular organic part of a whole, established by the whole. If a person harms other community members, not only him punished but all the community, any other members of his community. In a word, each associate bears responsibility for the acts of each other member. But it also means that unity of the individual with the community isn’t absolute and the final decision is his own. Unlike the communal individual the independent subject is individually responsible for all his acts: he is both the starting and terminal point where the act is born. For this reason, when each person is considered as the unique reason of his acts and affairs, all demands following from such status return to him. Therefore, the person within his subjectivity can’t refer to any other reasons, on circumstances compelling him for acts harming to community, or to other people.

Irony is considered as a form of negative attitude of a man to-wards reality. Three evolutionary forms of irony have been distinguished – the antique, the romantic and the postmodern. It is shown that in the course of development of irony the scope of its criticism has expanded. The scope of antique irony is the erudite (scholar?), that of the romantic irony is the erudite and the aesthete and the scope of postmodern irony is the erudite, the aesthete and the user. Two philosophical anthropological senses of irony have been revealed. First, irony fixes (registers) dangerous existence as a stray one, sec-ondly, irony introduces the strategy of achieving a safe existence by a man, which is reduced to the actions of recovery.

The problem of the person is one of the main in all world philosophical thought and along with the problem of existence of the person is the key in the sphere of philosophical doctrine about the person. According to modern the science, at the heart of human development lies its labor activity, which the person carries out always within a social context. I analyze how philosophers of antiquity, the Middle Ages, and Renaissance consider the problem of human essence, and also in Modern Times what representatives of the German classical philosophy have said about it. Finally I consider the solution of this problem as is presented in works of the Russian philosophers.

By “reason” we define the ability for independent sustainable progressive development. Beings that possesses this ability, even if they have no knowledge or skill of something, can learn everything within some time. However, modern man, at least massively, does not possess this ability. That is why he is doomed to external control and permanent degradation, described in the myths about the Fall and the Yugas, that extend over whole centuries, from the golden age to the lean years. In our view, man is a being prone to various self-zonking (drug addictions) and senseless destructive activity, slavery and mechanistic behaviour according to prescribed programs (tradition, religion, laws, education, etc.). There are huge amounts of evidence supporting this. For instance, is it possible for a community of intelligent beings to have as the most profitable business, drug trafficking and arms trade for killing its own kind? A great abundance of similar questions can be raised. A pretentious definition of Homo sapiens appeared only in the New Times. Earlier, man was considered rational creature only potentially, which is proved by the phenomenon of Mowgli. Erasmus of Rotterdam considered insanity to be an attribute of man. In general, human insanity is one of the perennial themes of philosophy. The genealogy of man is also a dark question. Which really is? Who is the ancestor of man?

Virtualistics as a paradigmatic approach, as it is developed by the Soviet-Russian school of Nikolay Nosov (1952-2002), laid the ontological foundations for the understanding of the inner space of man: psychological, anthropological, subjective, subjective, spiritual, etc. The studies of the Research Group „Virtualistics“ of the Institute of Philosophy, RAS (in 1991-2004 – the Center of Virtualistics of the Institute of Human Sciences: www.virtua-listika.ru) show that the common categorical grid the current-potential, the essence-phenomenon, the abstract-concrete, the ideal-material, etc. is not adequate to describe the objects (virtuals) of the inner world of man. The results of researches, the process through which they are obtainined may be called „Experimental Philosophy“ (theoretical models were re-checked in the special experiment of generation of phenomenology and its falsification), allow us to speak about the philosophical-anthropological turn in the human sciences.

Anthropological finds such as “Lucy” and “Toumai” have finally destroyed the labour theory of F. Engels. The appearance of upright walking before the formation of labour created a problem of man’s origin in a new way, as upright walking is one of the ineffective ways of movement. A historic appearance of a powerful compensatory mechanism overcoming defects of upright walking was necessary. Such a compensatory mechanism was the emergence of a sign language, allowing the ancestors of humans to survive and then to take the dominant position in nature. It is possible to outline the solution of the problem only from philosophical positions. I believe that only one quality separates the evolutionary stages of life. And the possibility of its appearance is the interaction between two tendencies (by K. Lorenz): intra-specific and interspecific aggression. This is the peculiarity of a philosophical approach to anthropology. The origin of the language in the form of gestures was considered by Condillac E. and supported by academician N. Marr. But they were not able to define the reason for the appearance of the sign language. The process of man’s origin began 15 million years ago on the basis of sociality existing in the animal world in the form of herd or flock. Under the influence of intraspecific aggression (according to K. Lorenz) the group of similar phenomena such as a language (primarily in the form of a sign language), formation of labour (on the basis of a sign language), and the appearance of consciousness as a generalized reflection of reality sequentially appeared. It is after the appearance of consciousness that man appears.