Chapter 12. The philosophical anthropology and philosophy of culture

12.1. The philosophical anthropology

The philosophical anthropology is the philosophical teaching of a human and its life, i. e. what a human is from the philosophical point of view, what differs a human from animals etc. The problem what a human is, was raised still by ancient Greek philosophers. For example, Plato declared once that a human is an animal deprived of feathers. At that Diogenes, that who lived in a barrel, bought a plucked cock at market and went about showing him to anybody and saying ‘This is the human of Plato’. That’s why he was beaten with sticks by Plato’s disciples. The latter didn’t solve the problem, however.

From the viewpoint of the modern philosophy a human is defined as a subject of historic process, material and spiritual culture development, a biosocial creature connected with other living and non-living forms, standing out from them thanks to his ability of creating tools, possessing articulate speech, thinking and consciousness. Or, in short, it may be singled out that a human is: 1) a biologic species, 2) a social creature and 3) an individual being.

What concerns the first, all is clear: a human as well as any other species has his own characteristic features. The most important is the second, that a human is a social creature, for namely it conditions the main, radical difference between humans and animals ─ human’s capacity to thinking and using the articulate speech. The capacity to thinking means the ability to reflectivity and abstractness, i. e. to specifying and looking at situation from aside. Thanks to the latter the capacity to the articulate speech in more or less abstract terms is possible. Animals also can give out and receive some or other sound signals but these signals are indissolubly bound to situation and can’t be abstract from it. Animals can’t look at a situation from aside. Humans can and thanks to this ability they can also use certain things (sounds in particular) as marks for others. So the articulated speech emerges. Its emergence is a result of a long development which became possible thanks to that the sounds had been used as a means of communication. That is possible only in society; thus the developed language in frame of which human thinking occurs. That’s why the element of sociality is so important in the definition of a human. A human also can’t be regarded as human in its proper meaning without an element of individuality. I. e. every

human differs in something from any of others and thanks to that it becomes a human really. On the contrary in another case it wouldn’t be a human but a thinking mechanism deprived of humanity.

Such categories as personality and individuality should be explained in this connection. Individuality (the individual human being) is the uniqueness of every human creature, proper to every human. Personality is usually defined as the individual’s ability to resist to outer pressing for restoring the own individuality. The personality is stronger position than the simple individuality.

Date: 2014-12-21; view: 1298