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24Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 6 (2014 7) 930-941
УДК 316.6
Modern Trend of Changes in the Western Philosophy Anthropological Project -"Self-care": know the Self or Create the Self?
Galina I. Petrova*
Tomsk State University 36 Lenin, Tomsk, 634050, Russia
Received 06.11.2012, received in revised form 19.09.2013, accepted 28.12.2013
The article reviews the ancient practice of "self-care" with the aim ofpossible finding methodological approaches to the study of transformations that take place in contemporary philosophical and anthropological project. Directions of these transformations are considered in the light of changes in the style of philosophical thinking in the situation of deconstructionist processes in metaphysics, and under the influence of modern technological changes in the information society, which is being globalized. The conclusion is that both trends initiate a new paradigm of human socialization ("self-care"), which is characterized by the activity of personal self-determination, self-realization and self-presentation.
Keywords: information society, globalization, virtual culture, logic of virtuality, "self-care", "techniques of the self", individuation, self-determination.
One of the theses which justifies all the contents of the article is that social (political or economic) processes in the history of society, also including contemporary social processes, have always had not only philosophical and reflexive explanation and rationalization, but at the same time have been triggered by the philosophical style of thinking. Reasoning, explanation and causality are made possible by the fact that philosophy determines, first of all, the style of understanding of a human - an actor of all social processes; it the man, who sets the character of the processes, their nature and content. Philosophical anthropology and
all the historical changes in it justify luck and failures of political and economic situations, as the main question always remains the same: who is involved in these situations and who makes changes?
Having stated this thesis and keeping it in mind, we can say that the era that began in the 90s of the 20th century is an example of a completely new anthropological view - a new understanding of a human. Coming of this new human was to a large extent the cause of all the modifications and transformations that the world has undergone in the late 20th century and in the first decade of the 21st century.
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* Corresponding author E-mail address: [email protected]
What turns have occurred in the philosophical and anthropological thinking during this period? The answer to this question we will give on the basis of an example of transformation of the anthropological paradigm, born by philosophical classics and caused by the metaphysical, i.e., the classical style of philosophical thinking. Such a philosophical and anthropological paradigm has become "taking care of the self".
The focus of current research is drawn to this ancient practice of human socialization not randomly. Its actual meaning in contemporary cultural space is connected not only with the purely theoretical interest in ancient Greek culture, but with the intention to find there the methodological approaches to answering the question about the specifics of modern human socialization. What happened to the human during the last twenty years? Maybe an anthropological perspective of contemporary social processes will explain their specificity and substantiate the need in their occurrence?
Launched by Plato historical and philosophical tradition of "self-care" has been formed and presented by many authors of classic and modern - non-classical philosophical works. The idea of "self-care" has been maintained and developed in the works of F. Nietzsche, M. Scheler, M. Heidegger, M. Foucault, etc. The contribution of these authors in the development of socialization and education of human as a part of "self-care", "techniques of the self", or techniques of constructing human own uniqueness is connected with the attention the philosophers paid to the "authenticity" (Heidegger) of human existence, ethics of the Self (Foucault (P. 307)), or the ethics of subjectivity. In this form, seen by the ancient Greek philosophers for the first time ever, this problem of cultivating the Self or, in modern terminology, which is nurturing the subject within the self, seems extremely marketable today. The demand for this is explained by the change of
style of philosophical thinking, when after the realized (ongoing) process of deconstruction of metaphysics it (metaphysics) gives way to another - postmetaphysical style. This, in turn, leads to a change in the paradigm of personal socialization of education.
The methodological potential of "self-care" has been historically formed and has existed for a long time in relation to the classic eternal question, "what subject can reveal the truth?" "The care" was to see the self as belonging to the universal human nature. Essential definition of everything in the world, including human, has set this specificity of metaphysical style of thinking, marking the classical philosophy. Metaphysics has identified human through the concept of mind. Via the Mind, revealing the truth, the human nature has been understood.
Such definition had had its reflection in the tradition of Western classical philosophy, which had called for an indication of the limit ("archetype") as for the nature of any fragment of reality. "Arche" had been stated as metaphysical principle of power, which had ranked this fragment of reality in its rules and caused creating the truth about this fragment. As such, it had been relevant up to the post-industrial state of history. The previous industrial era with its reference to the economy and industrial relations as an essential (and therefore authoritative, initial and main) factor, or "archetype" of social life was quite consistent in its definition of the "arche" within the frameworks of classical metaphysics. Metaphysics included into the Western European philosophy also the essentialist definition of human that is the definition insisting on finding the human limit origin as the essence of human nature. In ancient Greece Logos or Mind were stated as such limits/essence (archetype). Of course, this was due to the cultural specificity, which then characterized ancient Greece and which was associated, firstly, with the crisis
of mythological world, when people stopped believing the gods, and they departed from Olympus, left people. Being without their help, one-on-one with the unknown, mysterious and terrifying nature, the man hurried to look for a new foothold, standing on that, they could once again feel comfortable in a relationship with nature. So philosophy, replacing the mythology, named the Mind as such quality. Secondly, an indication for the Mind was caused by the specific organization of social life: polis with its democratic forms of life on the one hand, demanded for justification of life through the generalization of it in laws, which made free life possible for all people (except for slaves obviously), and on the other hand polis itself was the consequence of rational reasoning.
Both in the first and in the second cases the Mind gave the human understanding of their specifics of existence in the world; this specificity was defined as the human uniqueness not only in the world of things, but also as the uniqueness of the particular and unique path that led the humankind to unite with the essence.
The Mind was seen as the part of human nature, and it found the greatness of Man. It found two kinds of the matter - greatness, but at the same time, weakness, too. Greatness was in the fact that man with the help of mind mastered reflexive thinking and got the opportunity in the end not only to understand the world, but to understand the self in the world - the position in space as the only one who knows about self, and who opposes in that knowledge the self against the world. The weakness of the Mind characterized the human in the inability to express the completeness and integrity of being, its soundfulness and beauty. The Mind dried the being and reduced it to its representations only in logic and law, in fact flattening the ontology and logic.
Both the greatness and weakness of the Mind were the legacy of classical philosophy, which it had carried up to the 20th century. In the
terms of the same philosophical anthropology it was evident in the fact that the Mind gained the dictating strength: humans created themselves and the world around them, governed by only reasonable (rational) features. In ancient Greece this tendency was present in the teaching of the single being, fate, and destiny, pressures over human, putting the problem of human alienation, loneliness, abandonment, and subordination to external forces. The fate conditioned the essential human characteristic and essence, which the people should regard as their own basis, center, top, and "archetype". In the Middle Ages, the essence of human was sought in God, in the Renaissance period - once again (as in ancient Greece) in the human mind, in modern times - in the motto of cogito (Descartes), in the monad (Leibniz), in the "pure reason", which has regulatory principles (Kant), in the Absolute Idea (Hegel), in the relations of production (Marx), etc. Whatever was the reference to the "arche", it maintained its determinative and governing functions, prevented freedom and free orientation, leaving the person in alienation from the way of life, relating to the human essence. Alienated nature was calling human to become someone. Socialization or education of a person were understood as climbing to this essence or construction of the own identity. The identification of a person began to be identified as self-identification with their essence. Education -Hegel wrote - is the ascent of a man to his essential basics "so that the universal spirit can get in a human its self-realization" 1 (P.39).
Thus, the alienation from the essence has become human characteristic and impetus for their socialization process, indicating the processes of identification. The anthropological consequence of the identity understood as such was the appearance of principles of universality, unity - totality (according to Hegel), who initiated the essential dictates in the formation
of a person. Education and personal socialization were understood then as shaping - creating a man according to the form of the united essence. Personal identity was dictated by the common human nature and, of course, did not admit the possibility of free self-construction of a man.
However, it should be noted that this was not required in the conditions of stable traditional cultures that needed rather human stability, than mobility, development, changes of both personal and professional character. Social and cultural development, traditionally realized as a social mechanism of movement, based on the transference (delivery) of some social conditions of the past into the present and future. The same can be said about the professional activities. A stable culture created the conditions for human sustainability. The Mind gave human stability, confidence and strength, supporting them as being on a unique path, which raises them to the same for all and stable essence. The Mind is the pride of the individual human, free in their sovereign rights. A person as a human being historically initiated the creation of democratic societies, as democracy is, first of all, rational, built according to the laws of reason, organization of life.
But today, the question of personal identity has acquired new connotations, because it was caused by an unprecedented type of cultural development and a new way of personal identification. Originally unprecedented character of the culture and connotative novelty of the issue were explained by the general process of getting rid of metaphors in philosophical way of thinking - a process that was especially topical in the last quarter of the 20th century, and which continues it story in the 21st century. Post-metaphysics allows new ways to see the specificity of human socialization, which, while remaining "taking care of the self", is constructed in a way, different from Greek thought, namely, without
the metaphysical power of the "archetypes" and "limits".
What is the specificity of the modern process of human socialization? What does the education of human mean in structures of culture, free of metaphors? How important is the issue of "self-care" in the modern organization of education and culture, when process of deconstruction of metaphysics is ascertained, that is, the process of the crisis of metaphysical style of philosophical thinking and creation of other forms and styles which philosophy offers for the organization of modern life and formation of a man?
The "crisis of personal identity", "personal collapse", "death of the subject" began to be actively spoken of in the Western philosophy back in the 90s of the last century. Philosophers and anthropologists marked this process as an anthropological resonance, firstly, due to the changes in the style of philosophical thinking and, secondly, due to the technological changes of this new stage in the post-industrial development -phase of the information society. With regard to changes in the style of philosophizing, they are characterized by the deconstruction of classical metaphysics, when the period of post-metaphysical philosophy sanctioned appropriate -postmodern - changes in the culture. Both updated and proposed a new principle of the human definition, in the basis of which was the human liberation from every kind of binding to any of the essential origins. It makes modern researchers tell that "when information systems increase human power in the organization and integration, they simultaneously undermine the traditional Western concept of a separate, independent subject" (Castells). Thus, the idea of the man's ascent to the common for all human essence, the idea of its unity as reasonable is undermined.
This is affected by the same (as in the time of the philosophy birth in ancient Greece)
circumstances: new - post-metaphysical style of philosophical thinking and new - informational organization of life, which came as a result of significant technical changes.
Indeed, the modern - post-metaphysical, non-classical - anthropological vision abandoned traditional notions of determination, powerfully active essential principles of human, sociality, or other fragments of the world. The information society has emerged as social and technological presentation of post-metaphysics; therefore it was a consequence of authorization within the post-metaphysical thinking to make up other philosophical structures concerning both sociality and human. Modern, by Castells, "architecture and direction of networks" are released from the rigid determinism, which allows their permanent, unlimited and free self-transformation. Deconstructionist processes in metaphysics and rejection of its power as a new phenomenon in the style of philosophical thinking had a response in the society as putting the leading (essential) factor of social knowledge on its place; this knowledge has transformed into information. Information, possessing characteristics such as mobility, persistence of changes, unpredictable development, cohesion, and intertwining information flows, denies the very existence of any mightful impetus: it is does not have time to take shape in the process of information spreading. When it escaped the power of "arche", the information society offered new technologies that have transformed the industrial sociality into the "society of networks" (Castells) and into "e-community" (McLuhan). Such an organization is fundamentally different from the previous organization of public industrial and pre-industrial structures. Whereas the rational organization of the policy once demanded Mind as essential "arche" of human, Its rigidity and logic do not manifest themselves and they are not representative in the modern global scale.
The modern globalizing world creates new "innovative environment". They do not know geographic boundaries and are created according to the new "spatial logic" (Castells), which "extends the coverage, creating a multiplicity of global industrial networks, the intersection of which transforms the very notion of industry allocation, which means now is not the location of the factories, but the production flow" (Castells). In these global production flows there are endlessly changing relationships of cooperation and competition between firms and places. There has come the logic of the new allocation of industry and new units of its organization. M. Castells names among the latter "work through telecommunications" - telecommuting when the work previously performed in the traditional production is replaced by the on-line work from home and the office work is complemented by the work at home. M. Castells says about such an organization of production as the "home centricity". All this fosters the emergence of virtual logic that is embedded in information technology, and creates a new kind of space - the space of flows. In this kind of process traditional classic Rational and traditional classical metaphysics can not exist: in this case there is no opportunity to speak about Rationale's diktat, people rather should speak about that culture, sociality and a human have got rid of the power of Rational and define themselves through self-determination and self-construction.
Post-metaphysical philosophy, considering the possibility of constructing ontologisms in their new features, legitimizes a possibility of subjective construction of reality: the subject itself is free from any kind of external authority and creates now an artificial, technical reality. In reality of culture this trend reveals in acquiring the technological subject characteristics, in the representation of their "transitions" escaping the boundaries of objects (Lehtsier) and transgressing
boundary "between" (Waldenfels). In such representations culture becomes dynamic, in the continuity of the movement, which has lost its present and always finding itself in the prefix of "post".
New logic and new, post-metaphysical style of philosophical thinking, which give growth to the information society, are relevant to describe the personality using similar characteristics. Self-construction, self-determination, self-presentation and self-realization are becoming the leading anthropological program that acquires urgency as a serious anthropological resonance of modern information changes. The resonance effect is visible in new cornering problems of personal identification when the information environment as a new identity resource attracts research interest to the crisis situation of "Self", and when unlimited possibilities of self-determination as self-construction of a separate personality are at the fore. In literature, which notes (M. Castells) anthropological consequences of disappearance of traditional and customary conditions of personality formation (i.e. the actual social conditions that have always been considered a determinant of personal identity); anthropological emphasis is evident in the emergence of the term "new individuality". Usage of this notion, according to Castells, is justified by the fact that the category of person in the information society no longer needs an alibi (A new post-industrial wave in the West P.27). All personal identifiers are removed, and the notion of "new individuality" comes as a substitute for these personal identifiers. The reason is a change in the production unit, such as when not even a person is a production unit, and not even manufacturing or social processes act as such, but only network. A member of the network society is an impersonal cosmopolitan, having no nationality, ethnicity, race, lost among other rootless individuals into united "e-community".
The absence of any previous social determinants is the reason, on the one hand, for crisis of personal identity, understood in its traditional sense, but on the other hand, this absence provides ample opportunity to find new ways and forms of identity. The main feature of these searches is a complete freedom for self-construction. While noticing it, E.P. Belinskaya writes about conditions that promote activity and identified comprehensiveness of manifestation of the desired self-representation. Self-determination and self-presentation are discussed in their compensatory meanings - as a response to the previous determinate dependence on the leading link ("arche") of sociality. Among these conditions, the researcher puts in the first place the ones that show not a direct personal dependence, governing essential human existence, but, on the contrary, she concentrates on those, which contribute to human freedom and free creation of the self. The researcher also speaks of anonymity in network structures, their distance from the subject and the lack of corporeality markers (Belinskaya).
M. Castells, explaining new possibilities of the anthropological vision and following the examples drawn from Max Weber's work "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism", refers to new approaches to the study of human and modern society that is an "information paradigm", which, in turn requires justification through the anthropological and ethical notion of "informational spirit". Commenting on the idea of M. Castells about "informationalism spirit" E.P. Belinskaya writes that modern culture is characterized by the integration of many cultures, different values, various projects; this mixture results in a "multi-faceted virtual structure". The ethical foundation of "informationalism spirit" is not a new culture in the traditional sense of system of values, as the multiplicity of subjects of any network and multiple networks themselves
refute the concept of a single "network culture". But "informationalism spirit" has a common cultural code in a variety of network structures. It consists of many cultures and many values that give information to develop strategies for different network members. It is also a culture, but a culture of the ephemeral, a culture of each strategic decision separately; this culture is rather a patchwork quilt stitched from the experience of interests than the charter of rights and responsibilities. This multi-faceted virtual culture has been created in visual experiences in cyberspace (A new post-industrial wave in the West).
In this sense "informationalism spirit" is characterized by a denial of the very possibility of personal identity, since in the characterization of M. Castells it is prone to undermine the Western conception of the individual subject. "The historical shift from mechanical to information technologies helps undermine the concepts of sovereignty and independence, the concepts that have provided ideological basis for individual identity since the Greek philosophers developed these concepts more than two thousand years ago. To put it short, technology helps destroy the very vision of the world, which it cherished in the past".
The new technological environment creates new opportunities of personal identification. The man assumes the cultural characteristics as anthropological a priori. In today's culture it stands as the same transgressing boundary, which erases all its essential and stable characteristics. It is no accident, therefore, that in modern philosophical literature we have the notion of "technological subjectivity". Thus, on introducing this notion, the authors of the work "University as a center of culture creating education" tell about freeing the modern philosophy of absolute obligation to have the need for rigid goal-setting and target aspiration of philosophy to metaphysical limits.
They write that the identified "crisis of teleological attitude to education generates, in turn, the crisis of educational subjectivity, or, more precisely, the ideological crisis of its focused creation in the form of a constant and autonomous entity" (University as a center of culture creating education). The subject is the shift of attention from the "Self" as the essence to the methods of self-construction. "Techniques of the self", allowing a self-change, are "educational subjectivity, if we understand it in this way, so it is born not as something requiring opening and substantializing, but as the product of a series of efforts during self-transformation" (University as a center of culture creating education). The statements of such kind mark a new orientation of the modern philosophers on a human self-change rather than on factors of external influence on a human (implemented by society, Transcendent subject, God, or any other alien structure). Socialization and identification are processes of "changing human potential", "a continuous process of self-transformation", reflection and understanding, techniques of actions and communication, possibilities of interpretation and thinking, self-determination ability in relation to the culture and society, goal-setting and socio-cultural personification, the ability to organize, self-organize and create systems of knowledge (Popov. P. 12 - 13).
Technologically constructed reality and "technological subjectivity" are a product of modern thought, which has allowed seeing people in the authenticity of their free existence. In other words, a culture, technologically created by post-metaphysical thinking (virtual culture, which exists in virtual logic), is the result of deconstructed power of common ideals and standards. This culture "questioned" traditional mind (P. Ricoeur), giving way to irrationality and uncertainty, chaos and disappearance of standards, which turned out, however, relevant according to the specifics of human existence -
their freedom. Actually the human plane of existence is to transcend all boundaries and borders. Individuation, as a consequence of human reflexive position in the world, does not sentence a person to the specific existential limits - it does not limit a human by definition - because it means the constant anxiety, movements, transcending, and endless search for the self.
Thus, the absence of a dominant structure in modern culture, its chaos and crisis, are not alien in anthropology, on the contrary, they are the evidence of the cultural and anthropological authenticity. A human can never find solid ground and objectivity, which could become the grounds. Objectivity in its very solid foundation-basis would create for people limits and borders, limit their freedom, give definitions, which reduce their essence. On the contrary, people always finds themselves without any backing - in the absence of basis and "transition", in the "post-self", not in a linear rational forecast of development, but rather in the rhizome and "non-project" acting as the opacity of the motion vector, constancy of crisis and chaos.
These ontological characteristics, suggesting the freedom of human existence, in today's chaotic culture are no longer deviations from the specific mode of its existence, but, on the contrary, they are becoming the expression of human ever-changing "essence without essence". These characteristics form certain specificity. Modern "chaos" is a cultural "order", which has established itself as equal to human freedom.
This conclusion about the relevance of contemporary society concernig the human freedom seems attractive. However, there is a series of intense cultural, historical and cultural-anthropological situations. On the one hand, the specificity of modern human existence suggests the need for instability, dynamics, "disorder" and "chaos", but on the other hand, a culture in its history has always tried to "harmonize"
people, teach them order and standards. On the one hand, the modern philosophical thinking has emancipated a human from the power of the essential, limiting principles, but on the other hand, in these culture practices with their objectivity have found a human inability to live without power of limits. This presents the modern process of socialization and education an anthropological problem: how not to master the essence and define or limit a human according to the developed concept of essence, but to search ways that would teach people to live in anarchy and "chaos" without waiting for the state of any "order", those ones, would allow people live in freedom?
Learning to live in "chaos" as in "order" means to show constant "self-care", look for the own self, to search for the own rod. Only after removal of external authority, individuation, which gives identity to a person, is visible even if in the relation to power, but not external power, this power is like self-power, the power as "self-care". This power acts as self-creation for the sake of complete realization of personal uniqueness. So it is possible, therefore, to say that only way of thinking, which is free form metaphysical paradigms, has emancipated a human, provided a possibility of rejection of the need to limit a human to a general eidos, and created a living environment in the form of "singularity".
In these circumstances, the motto of Socrates, indicating the form of the ancient Greek practice of "self-care" and sounding in the rational terms as "Know thyself", which calls to know their own essence and implement the process of self-identification within the set frames, is now becoming a call to action for self-creation - "Create yourself". Modern "self-care" is the mastery of practices of constant self-transformation, because only in this case it is possible to stay in a changing, dynamic, evolving in kaleidoscopic uncertainty world.
What, however, are the cultural-anthropological and educational consequences of this anthropological emancipation? Can this trend testify about the authenticity of human freedom? What is the reaction of education as a social institution on the changes that have taken place in education as a way of human existence? What place in these changes occupies education of the self in the form of "self-care"? While answering these questions we will meet again with the anthropological tension.
The Ancient Greece with its philosophical intuition as if foresaw specifics of modern culture, when it listed the possibility of the organization of education as "taking care of the self". And Plato himself, having expressed the idea of education as paideia, did not limit it as truth only, as it is discussed in the dialogue "State' in the "Myth of the Cave", that is the truth of raising and joining a human to the essence. The Greek philosopher foresaw the point of violence in education as a way of reaching the essence, and at this stage, upon noting contradictions; he developed his idea of Paideia. He gave the education an anthropological description , calling it "self-care", that is, the possibility and necessity of a student in the presence of a mentor (according to Plato - philosopher) feel free to create themselves, unleash their potential (Plato). However, for Plato, this practice was then invoked by politics (only in this sphere the Greeks could imagine free citizens), because to have power over others it was necessary to be able to rule over themselves. However, referring to the idea of Plato, Foucault (Foucault. P. 101), noted that the Greek philosopher, though speaking about politics as a preferred area of "self-care", however, did not impose his main point on specifying the particular area with a dominant human power, but on the duty to exercise this power over themselves first. Developing his idea M. Foucault says that the principle of "education of the self"
was borrowed as such from the field of politics and is now applicable in all other contexts. Here Foucault considers the activity physician Galen, whose technique was based on a human ability to ascend over the soul impulses and body mechanics (Foucault. P.101).
"Taking care of the self" - is in fact, not social, but anthropological institute as a way or "technology" of human existence, who due to the reflexive and free plane of existence resists technological methods as such. It is the prerogative of a human - to have freedom to choose the direction of their own self-development. Anthropology rebels against technology. "Self-care" is opposed to technology.
Only if we are aware of this transformation and make certain steps, have orientations and results, we will be able to search in the field of contemporary forms of formation and education for a human, whose specifics of life is adequate to freedom. In this sense, J. Vattimo says, paradoxically, the difficulties of the information society as the society of developed communications and "chaos" "bring about our hopes for emancipation" (Vattimo. P. 10). The complexity and difficulties, confusion, the concept of the rhizome, various interwoven communication links and their entanglement (like "pasta in a saucepan" or as "a ball of playing kittens" (Nordstrom et al. Pp. 10, 12, 81)) create this very situation, in which the idea of education as socialization is updated and activated.
What directions of such transformations can we now trace? These directions are also hinting towards the ancient Greeks, who, by introducing the practice of "self-care", guessed its anthropological value - focus on human freedom, independence of the human self-education and the tonality of a high degree of people's responsibility. The man carried out this process for the sake of the another man, for response to others, bearing the respons(e)ibility for them.
The new theoretical situation exposes a change in the settled in philosophy concept of the person as the integral and stable human plane of existence. On the contrary, personal marginality is now the norm of human existence on the boundaries of different cultures. The man now takes the form of a continuous crisis of personal identification, constant "self-death" as the "only one" and the continuous reproduction of the self as the other. "Plural subjectivity", "multifaceted Self", "elusive subjectivity", and finally, "the death of the subject" - are from the area of modern modes of existence of a human, who vanishes in the flow of traffic as a certainty. This is the anthropological reality of the 21st century. This reality states, first of all, "the death of metaphysics" and rejection of any mightful impetus in the organization of society and individual.
But here a lot of questions arise. First, the modern question of the human education arises from the fact that new personal characteristics have a claim to become an evidence of human emancipation and freedom as a rejection from all kinds of essential and core basics. Is this possible? What directions for search of personal core could offer modern philosophy? What about education? Pedagogy? Could a question about personal rod-core-essence be a possible object of pedagogical reflections? In response to these sorts of questions philosophy loses its classic mission that is to lead to an ideal, which is known in advance. The philosophy itself is in its constant search, because in the contextual complexities of the modern world the personal core is marginal, it "flashes" and "flickers", constantly changing its shape.
Secondly, freedom, understood outside the personal core of the existence, eliminates the need for any borders - cultural, social, moral, and
professional, etc. In its cultural absence of authority and chaos it seems to offer permissiveness and legitimizes desacralization of culture, justifies uncertain cultural borders, frames, and limits. In the pathos of deconstruction positive, creative horizons of meaning and the absence of them, their negation are hardly discernible. But do these facts give the right to doubt the existence of cultural borders? Traditional education puts up with the loss of one ideals and can take the other patterns of ideology to carry out routine work for reaching them. Present-day processes of socialization, with their purpose of "self-care", are looking for ideals. The people never, in any culture that took place in history, lost their own core and essential existence. Technological notions of the core and essence turned out to be so common that they were not seen contradictory to human freedom. No culture in the past, therefore, has put emphasis on identifying the degree of full freedom in the essential human existence, though the essence, "arche", and limit, a priori vested with metaphysical power, have had a functional purpose of deterring freedom.
Traditionally understood process of socialization has not touched these issues, because "arche" has been perceived as an essential form, which a person should have reached. Rethinking of the content of such an orientation began only in the late 20th century. In the re-evaluation of the metaphysical heritage of classics it is important to find the philosophical foundations of the current cultural state, strategies, techniques, and methods for their use in the study of the strategic patterns for the creation of a new anthropological project of human socialization. Regeneration of the cultural foundations is carried out today pushed by the maximum awareness of the crisis and the need to update all cultural practices on the anthropological level.
Hegel G.F. Entsiklopediia filosofskikh nauk [Encyclopedia of Philosophy]. Volume 3 - M: Mysl', 1977. - 642 p.
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Современные тенденции изменения западно-европейского философско-антропологического проекта как «заботы о себе»: познать себя или создать себя?
Г.И. Петрова
Томский государственный университет Россия, 634050, Томск, пр. Ленина, 36
В статье актуализируется античная практика «заботы о себе» с целью возможного обнаружения в ней методологических подходов к исследованию трансформаций, осуществляющихся в современном философско-антропологическом проекте. Направления указанных трансформаций рассматриваются в их связи с изменением стиля философского мышления в ситуации деконструктивистских процессов в метафизике и под влиянием современных технологических изменений глобализирующегося информационного общества. Делается вывод о том, что то и другое инициируют новую парадигму социализации («заботы о себе») человека, которая характеризуется активностью личностного самоопределения, самореализации и самопрезентации.
Ключевые слова: информационное общество, глобализация, виртуальная культура, логика виртуальности, «забота о себе», «техники себя», индивидуация, самоопределение.
