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9Personalism Approach as a Countermeasure against Ideological Instrumentalisation of Humanity
Galyna A. Bozhok, Reverend Father Eugene Legach1
Galyna A. Bozhok,
Dr habil (Biology), PhD (Biology),
Senior Scientific Researcher of
the Department of Cryoendocrinology,
Institute for Problems of Cryobiology
and Cryomedicine of the National Academy
of Sciences of Ukraine,
Ukraine
Rev Fr Eugene I. Legach,
Dr habil (Medicine), PhD (Medicine),
Chief Scientific Researcher of
the Department of Cryoendocrinology,
Institute for Problems of Cryobiology
and Cryomedicine of the National Academy
of Sciences of Ukraine,
Professor,
Ukraine
Галина Анатольевна Божокъ,
докторъ бюлогическихъ наукъ, старший научный сотрудникъ отдЪла крюэндокринолопи, Институтъ проблемъ крюбюлопи и крюмедицины
Нацюнальной академм наукъ Украины (Украина)
Его преподобiе отецъ iерей Евгенш Ивановичъ Легачъ,
докторъ медицинскихъ наук, профессоръ,
главный научный сотрудникъ отдЪла крюэндокринолопи, Институтъ проблемъ крюбюлопи и крюмедицины
Нацюнальной академм наукъ Украины (Украина)
The corresponding author. Please send the correspondence to e-mail: [email protected].
1
Article No: 020440005
For citation (Chicago style) / Для цитировашя (стиль «Чикаго»):
Bozhok, Galyna A., and Rev Fr Eugene I. Legach. 2019. "Personalism approach as a countermeas-ure against ideological instrumentalisation of humanity." The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions 2, 020440005.
Versions in different languages available online: English only.
Permanent URL links to the article:
http://thebeacon.ru/pdf/Vol.%202.%20Issue%202.%20020440005%20ENG.pdf
Received in the original form: 21 September 2019 Review cycles: 2
1st review cycle ready: 21 November 2019 Review outcome: 2 of 3 positive Decision: To publish with minor revisions 2nd review cycle ready: 19 December 2019 Accepted: 24 December 2019 Published online: 27 December 2019
ABSTRACT
Galyna A. Bozhok, Rev Fr Eugene I. Legach. Personalism Approach as a Countermeasure against Ideological Instrumentalisation of Humanity. Personalism understood as an anthropological theory and practice, may represent an ideologic means of anti-instrumentalisation of the person in the contemporary world, a means of returning his (her) internal value and external respect to him (her). Personalism, relying on the Christian idea of the personality and re-creating the ideal of conciliar communicating the person with his "Other", i.e. his neighbour is aimed at problematising the Enlightenment ideological apparatuses as well as Hegelianism and even Marxism, if Marxism is to be understood in its initial sense as the ideological base of the struggle of classes, i.e. the three primary ways of meta-ideological enslaving the humanity by political regimes in the nineteenth-twentieth centuries in a great majority of countries. In the paper, we outline the principal salience of de-ideologising the person in the European personalism.
Key words: personalism philosophy, anthropological practice, personality, individual, individuality, individualisation, phenomenon of neighbour, communication, ideology, conciliarism, Enlightenment, Hegelianism, Marxism
РЕЗЮМЕ
Галина Анатольевна Божокъ, отецъ iерей Евгент Ивановича Легачъ. Персоналистскй подходъ какъ противоядие противъ идеологической инструментализаци человечества. Персонализмъ, понятый какъ антропологическая теорiя и практика, можетъ выступать въ роли идеологическаго средства анти-инструментализацИ человека въ современномъ мр-Ь, являться способомъ возвращеыя ему его внутренней ценности и вн-Ьшняго уважеНя. Персонализмъ, опирающая на христианское пониманiе личности и возсоздающй идеалъ соборнаго общеыя человЬка съ Другимъ - идеалъ, въ кото-ромъ ни одна личность не можетъ быть объективирована, -нацЬленъ на проблематизацю идеологическихъ аппаратовъ ПросвЪщеНя, равно какъ на гегельянство и марксизмъ, понимаемый какъ идеологически базисъ классовой борьбы, то-есть трехъ великихъ мета-идеологическихъ нарративовъ въ философа, нац-Ьленныхъ на закрЬпощеНе личности политическими режимами большинства странъ въ Х1Х-ХХ вв. Въ стать- обсуждаются характерныя особенности деидеологи-зацiи человЬчества съ помощью философИ персонализма.
Ключевые слова: философiя персонализма, антропологическая практика, личность, индивидъ, индивидуальность, индивидуализаця, феноменъ соседа, коммуникаця, идеологiя, соборность, ПросвЪщеые, гегельянство, марксизмъ
AS THE EXPERIENCE OF HISTORY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES evidently demonstrated thus far, an anthropological practice can represent an instrument of translating ideological narratives, prescriptions, coinages and cliches (Althusser 1976, 68, 70-71; Zizek 2012, 7). In this case, a social practice and its imprescriptible satellite, world outlook - paradoxical it may be - receive definite traits of ideological apparatuses.
We can find a lot of examples of this sad observation. In ancient period, Plato transformed thinkers and sages into "supervising fathers," the chief authors and distributors of the systems of ideological control over the population. In Modern age Hegel discerned an incarnation of the Absolute Spirit of state machinery in the spirit of free thinking. Karl Marx descried that philosophy is nothing else but the only universal law of existence, accurately placing human beings to shelves of social classes and socioeconomic blocks (formations). The representatives of these blocks were prescribed to struggle with each other and be constantly in the state of mutual enmity. The enmity was the only condition, in which different classes may have found themselves. In his Eleven Theses on Feuerbach, Marx
clearly specified: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it" (Marx 1888, 71). In any case, Marxist philosophy in Marx's own interpretation gave rise to ideological forced stratifying human beings into quarrelling groups. What had to be a standard, under which liberating masses were meant by Marx to march to their happy prospects, in the twentieth century became an instrument of mass oppression and cause of murdering millions of people for political purposes. An irony? Hardly.
The roots of "positive" ideologising homo sapiens may be traced back to the Enlightenment ideological programme of the European civilisation (Brightmann 1951, 234). This programme contained a core task, to transform the human being into the master and sovereign of nature. Ere long this principle mutated to the one very closely connected with it, "an enlightened man should become a ruler and lord of unenlightened savages... should teach them how to live" (Horkheimer 1947, 28, 32; 1952, 4). Today the ideological prescriptions "subdue the nature" and "conquer the savages" altered to "subdue thyself to obtain the prize in ... years." Immanuel Kant rejoiced the Enlightenment programme, because "The Enlightenment is the way out for a man of the condition of minority... Minority is impossibility of a man to use his own mind without guidance of somebody else" (Kant 1784, 481). Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno are very ironic in their Dialektik der Aufklärung: "the reason that conquers superstitions, is deemed to rule the nature" (Horkheimer, Adorno 1969, 14). A more specific quote reads:
Es geht nicht um die Kultur als Wert, wie die Kritiker der Zivilisation, Huxley, Jaspers, Ortega y Gasset und andere, im Sinn haben, sondern die Aufklärung muß sich auf sich selbst besinnen, wenn die Menschen nicht vollends verraten werden sollen. Nicht um die Konservierung der Vergangenheit, sondern um die Einlösung der vergangenen Hoffnung ist es zu tun. Heute aber setzt die Vergangenheit sich fort als Zerstörung der Vergangenheit. War die respektable Bildung bis zum neunzehnten Jahrhundert ein Privileg, bezahlt mit gesteigerten Leiden der Bildungslosen, so ist im zwanzigsten der hygienische Fabrikraum durch Einschmelzen alles Kulturellen im gigantischen Tiegel erkauft. Das wäre vielleicht nicht einmal ein so hoher Preis, wie jene Verteidiger der Kultur glauben, trüge nicht der Ausverkauf der Kultur dazu bei, die ökonomischen Errungenschaften in ihr Gegenteil zu verkehren (Ibid, 5).
[The critics of civilization, Huxley, Jaspers, Ortega-y-Gasset and others did not criticise culture as a value. They had in mind that the Enlightenment programme must reflect about itself, if people do not wish to be completely betrayed. It is not about preserving the past, but about redeeming the past hope. However, today our past continues as the destruction of the past. Until the nineteenth century, respectable education was a privilege, paid for by the increased suffering of the uneducated. In the twentieth century the hygienic factory space was bought by melting down everything cultural in the gigantic crucible. That might not even be as high a price as those defenders of culture believe,
if the sale of culture does not help to reverse the economic achievements.]2
Fig. 1. Emmanuel Mounier (1905-1950) with Revue Esprit, the scientific journal founded and run by him for many years.
The severe truth is that in the age of his enlightened majority, the man began to use his own mind with the guidance of another man. That is the venomous fruit of the ideological programme of the Enlightenment that ripened to instrumental self-submission of the human population on Earth now-a-days. This "subdue thyself" is now governing the behaviour of an average citizen of not only European countries, but far beyond too. A typical man of today is repudiating himself (herself) in exchange of potential profits he or she can receive much later. The European societies seem to be especially and hopelessly obsessed with this idea (Sassin 2012; 2015; Sassin et al 2018, chap. 2)3.
To repudiate our childhood in exchange of a few extra pounds earned at a side work, to refuse our private life and marriage perspectives in exchange of our career, to renounce the birth of our potential children within our fertile age in exchange of the futile hope to acquire the future per cent of our embedding into the 'prosperous and liberal' social structure, finally to resign our civil rights in favour of the rights of the others destroying our culture, and in the utmost crescendo finale to reject our own personality in exchange of
2 The translation is ours. The authors.
3 See also: Sassin, Wolfgang. 2018. "Die Transformation des sozialen Bewusstseins." The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions 1, 010210201.
benevolence of the public system.
Is that not scorning our innermost human dignity, our own R And that self-disdain is a direct consequence of enlightening the human beings, the process started in the eighteenth century and continuing up to now.
However far Hegel or Marx may stand from the Enlighteners, they all come together in their vision of the human personality as an absolute zero, a nonentity that surprisingly acquires features of a transforming force, on unifying itself with the self-similar entities, another human personalities zero-valued in themselves. Should we be amazed after all, that the American and the first European constitutions of the eighteenth -early nineteenth centuries, involved a number of philosophical and ideological provisions of the Enlightenment? These provisions can be easily reduced under bottom line to the maxim "together we are strong and can do everything, but separately we are nothing." This strange panopticon of arithmetic, where a sum of zeroes gives an huge numerical value, is the final essence of the Enlightenment ideological programme. As Dr-Ing Wolfgang Sassin comments,
If we look back about two centuries the "evolution" triggered by the Declaration of Independence of the English Colonies in North America and a little bit later by the French Revolution has finally led to this conflict of eight billion homos with nature and with themselves. If there should be a climate catastrophe, if there is a global migration problem, if there are unjust distributions of wealth, they all can and must be traced back to the principles of "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité," implying the rule of the people (homo), not of the sapiens, would overcome all animal drives and instincts of a throng, the bigger the better.4
It is astonishing that the Enlightenment unifying tendency makes an human personality an instrument and for this reason is infinitely far from the Christian idea of the unity and
4 From the private scientific correspondence of Dr-Ing Sassin with Dr Sharov that was kindly provided by Dr Sharov on the terms of preserving full copyright of Dr-Ing Wolfgang Sassin, a member of the Editorial Board of The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions.
Fig. 2. Emmanuel Mounier with his spouse and constant aide Paulette.
conciliarism (Hart 1990, 53-55; Kohak 1988, 44; Loemker L. 1993, 22). In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries the Enlightenment ideological instrumentalising homo sapiens, as contemporary study of ideologies may suggest, even used the thesis opposite to its own basic initial principles, the thesis about the absolute primacy of the individual. However, several personalist thinkers convincingly demonstrated that individualism and personalism as a practice (i.e. realising a personality in the society) are quite different things, sometimes contradictory, and they cannot be reduced to each other.
We are witnessing an interesting negatively-dialectical landscape. The Enlightenment, Hegelianism and Marxism, postulating that the force is in unity, in their strange mutual mingling, became a basis of philosophical enslaving the personality. The opposite pole of unification of masses, the utmost individualism, turned out to be an embodiment of the same Enlightening ideological apparatus.
This notwithstanding, philosophy of the nineteenth-twenty first centuries offers us not
merely ideological apparatuses, but also the alternative means of liberating the humanity from the ideological serfdom. To name but a few examples, Romanticist philosophers of the late eighteenth -early nineteenth centuries, S0ren Kierkegaard (1986) and the existentialism that ensued, Schopenhauer's teaching about the irrational Will (Schopenhauer 1966), Nietzscheism (e.g. Nietzsche 1961), Nicolas Berdyaev's philosophy of freedom (Berdyaev 2009), and finally postmodern philosophy. They all tried to restore a person's liberty, whether by problematising the great philosophical ideologies or making them preposterous (Ferre 1986; McLachlan 1992). However, we can hardly find as effective "remedy" against enslaving the humanity by the machinery of ideology as philosophy of personalism, no matter if that machinery reveals itself as a call to the loyalty to the State as the utmost incarnation of the "Absolute Spirit," or as a curt refusal of our own I in exchange of receiving some future benefits and welfare, or as subjugation of the Others. Let us not forget that even Martin Luther King was a personalist social activist (Baldwin 2011, 5, 7).
Personalist approach continues to be popular in the late twenty - early twenty-first centuries, not only in social activities, but also in constructing economic ideological programmes as well as economic analysis of social processes (Burke 1997; Sandona 2013, 261, 265-266). Edgar Brightmann (1933) showed very clearly the possibility of a successful integration of personalism and economic programme of John Maynard Keynes already before the World War II. Very often it represents an ideological foundation of different
Fig. 3. Jean Lacroix (1900-1986), a notable representative of French personalist philosophy of the twentieth
century.
political and social programmes, both "left" and "right", the latter even oftener (Lavely 1991; Loemker E. 1993; Ryn 2008).
Sergey Avanesov (2018, 45) notes that
The establishment of personalism as a philosophic "school" is connected with the activities of the group of French Roman Catholic philosophers headed by Emmanuel Mounier (1999; 2003; 2016) (Fig. 1-2). This group was gathered round the journal Esprit (The Spirit), founded by him. Different thinkers belonged to this group (or collaborated with it) in different times: Jean Lacroix (Fig. 3), Paul-Louis Landsberg, Maurice Nédoncelle, Gabriel Madinier, Denis de Rougemont, Jean-Marie Domenach, Paul Ricreur, Mikel Du-frenne, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jacques Maritain. To the certain degree, we may call many religious philosophers of the twentieth century the "personalists," who worked independently of the school, but were guided by the same (or similar) religious and epistemic premises. In this group, we may place the Russian philosophers Lev Karsavin (1992), Lev Shestov, Vasiliy Zenkovsky (Lettsev 2003), Vladimir Lossky, and, somewhat conditionally, the father of the latter, Nikolay O. Lossky (1994). Max Scheler, Romano Guardini and Martin Buber (Lobkowicz 1998, 63) are also called personalists.
A literary harbinger of personalism can be Fyodor M. Dostoevsky. Direct premises of religious-philosophic personalism can be discovered in S0ren Kierkegaard's programme compositions (Kierkigaard 1986; Lacroix 1994, 56); and at the beginning of the twentieth century in the works of Charles Renouvier, Charles Péguy5 (Fig. 4) and Nikolay Berdyaev (Lacroix 1994, 101). [The quotation contains editorial insertions]6.
Emmanuel Mounier, one of the most prominent leaders of French personalism, argued:
The core statement of personalism is the existence of free and creative personalities... Personalism supposes the presence of indeterminacy principle in their structures, and that restricts them from the hard systematisation. We are expected to begin the exposition of the personalism philosophy with the definition of personality. However, it is possible to determine merely external objects in relation to a person, those that are available to our observation. Personality is not an object, it represents a something that is in every man, and that cannot be regarded as an object (Mounier 2016, 10, 12). My personality is not my self-apprehension (Mounier 1999, 306). not the consciousness I have of it" (Mounier 2003, 43). It always remains on the other side of its actual objectivation. remains super-conscious and super-temporal, wider in comparison with its images visible to me, more internal than the constructions with which I put it to a trial (Mounier 1999, 306).
Thus, we see that personalist approach in philosophy of the nineteenth-twenty-first centuries is quite obviously aimed at liberating the human from ideological yoke, Soviet or Western liberal. In
5 Charles Péguy (1873-1914) was a French poet who expressed his religious and social ideas in his works. In his poem "L'Espérance" ("The Hope") he expresses a Christian view on the hope (see
Appendix).
6 Here and after, in quoting this work, I am omitting originals of French phrases provided by the author.
Western liberal models of humanity development, they insist that a human being should be understood as an individual. This is not the case for personalism. Personality is not individuality and can be reduced to individuality in no way (Willibrand 1939). Thus, they provide a good vaccination against total and utmost individualisation of the Western world. Mounier emphasised:
Fig. 4. Charles Péguy, a French Christian poet-personalist. He voluntarily enrolled in military during World War I and was killed in action in 1914, before B attle of the Marne. He understood personalism as Christian conciliar spiritualism leading a human to God. In the Appendix, see his poem "The Hope." © L'Express: www.lexpress.fr
A person is a spiritual being constituted by the mode of its existence and independence in its being. He/she7 maintains this existence by accepting some hierarchy of freely applied and internally apprehended values; by the responsible inclusion in activities; and constant conversion. So, he/she carries out its activities in its freedom and, moreover, develops its vocation in all its originality through creative acts (Ibid, 301)... literally he/she develops the peculiarity (or even "singularity") of its vocation. Through the determinative experience offered to every person living in freedom, it [the personality - an author's comment] is not about a direct experience of substance, but about a consistently developing experience of life, personal life. In no theoretical concept you can reflect this (Mounier 2003, 38).
A personality is a living activity of self-creativity, communication and unity with other personalities, that gets realised and known in action, which is the experience of personalising. And nothing can impose this experience on a person or compel it to it. <...> If an individual does
7 The gender inclusiveness results from translating from French into English.
not pay heed to this call and does not enter the path of personal life, he loses the very meaning of his life, as an inactive organ loses its sensitivity. Then he looks for that meaning in <...> an escape from the reality (Mounier 2016, 12-13) (cit. by Avanesov 2018).
Personalism, relying on the Christian idea of human personality, of all philosophical foes of instrumentalising the humanity, reached the goal of de-instrumentalising the human beings in European societies and beyond, to the greatest extent. It is in philosophical and anthropological practices that personalist thinkers problematised the following major pillars of ideological dictatorship over the European civilisation:
1) egoism and limitless individualism;
2) freedom of bourgeois liberalism;
3) the myth about countless possibilities of human's 'the most positive arms', rational and atheist science;
4) absolute objectifying the personality, taking off all its coverings of miracle.
Personalst thinkers, such as Emmanuel Mounier and Jean Lacroix, re-created the programme of the Christian spiritual unity and conciliarism that is an alternative to the uttermost individualisation of the humanty. Their programme is also a remedy against total instrumentalising the human beings, against transforming them to nonentities. However, their understanding the conciliarism approaches the Roman Catholic one, not the Orthodox. The following quotation from Mounier given by Sergey Avanesov (2018, 52) in his article, helps to comprehend it in detail:
"We do not say that a man's personality is the Absolute (although for a believer the Absolute is the Person, and the exactness of the term causes us to say that the spiritual can only be personal). <...> We wish to say that the personality, as we denote it, is the absolute cause in comparison with any other, material or social, reality and any other human personality" (Ibid, 301-302). It means that "no other person, less so any group or organism, can use it as a means on a legitimate basis. According to the Christian teaching, even God respects its freedom by inspiring it inwardly: the theological mystery of liberty and original fault, rests on this dignity entrusted to the free choice of personality" (Ibid, 302). Therefore, personality, according to personalism, "does not tolerate any material or collective measurement, always remaining a measurement of the impersonal (une mesure impersonnelle)" (Ibid, 309).
They returned the value to the personality that is contained in itself, not somewhere outside, not in ideological schemes and stock slogans. In the end, the personalists' call "to be a man" undermined the strength of ideological instrumentation of the great philosophic systems, that calculated every human's place and fate in the completely enlightened world governed by the omnipotent and unconquerable man's reason as well as the Enlighteners' deities Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.
APPENDIX
Charles Péguy. L'Espérance (1912). Charles Péguy. The Hope (1912).
La foi que j'aime le mieux, dit Dieu, c'est l' Espérance.La Foi ça ne m'étonne pas. Ce n'est pas étonnant.
J'éclate tellement dans ma création.La Charité, dit Dieu, ça ne m'étonne pas. Ça n'est pas étonnant.
Ces pauvres créatures sont si malheureuses qu'à moins d'avoir un cœur de pierre, comment n'auraient-elles point charité les unes des autres.
Ce qui m'étonne, dit Dieu, c'est l' Espérance. Et je n'en reviens pas.
L' Espérance est une toute petite fille de rien du tout. Qui est venue au monde le jour de Noël de l'année dernière.
C'est cette petite fille de rien du tout.
Elle seule, portant les autres, qui traversa les mondes révolus.
La Foi va de soi.
La Charité va malheureusement de soi.
Mais l' Espérance ne va pas de soi. L' Espérance ne va pas toute seule. Pour espérer, mon enfant, il faut être bienheureux, il faut avoir obtenu, reçu une grande grâce.
La Foi voit ce qui est. La Charité aime ce qui est.
L' Espérance voit ce qui n'est pas encore et qui sera. Elle aime ce qui n'est pas encore et qui sera.
Sur le chemin montant, sablonneux, malaisé. Sur la route montante.
Traînée, pendue aux bras des grandes sœurs, qui la tiennent par la main, La petite espérance s'avance.
Et au milieu de ses deux grandes sœurs elle a l'air de se laisser traîner.
Comme une enfant qui n'aurait pas la force de marcher.
Et qu'on traînerait sur cette route malgré elle.
Et en réalité c'est elle qui fait marcher les deux autres.
Et qui les traîne, et qui fait marcher le monde.
Et qui le traîne.
Car on ne travaille jamais que pour les enfants.
Et les deux grandes ne marchent que pour la petite.
[The faith that I love best, says God, is Hope. Faith is not surprising to me. It is no wonder.
I gave so much to my creation. With charity, says God, I am not surprised. It is no wonder.
These poor creatures are so unhappy that unless they had a heart of stone, how could they not have charity for each other?
What surprises me, God says, is Hope. And I can't believe it.
Hope is a little girl with no possessions at all, Who was born on Christmas Day last year.
She's that tiny girl.
She alone is carrying the others, who crossed the bygone worlds.
Faith goes without saying.
Charity unfortunately goes without saying.
But Hope is not taken for granted. Hope does not go by itself.
To hope, my child, you must be blessed, you must have obtained,
received her great grace.
Faith sees what is around you. Charity loves what is around you. Hope sees what is not yet present. She loves what is not yet present.
On the uphill, sandy, awkward path, On the uphill road,
Dragged by the arms of her big sisters, who hold her by the hand, The little hope is advancing.
And between her two big sisters, she seems to be dragged
Like a child who doesn't have the strength to walk.
And we would drag her on this road in spite of anything.
And in reality it is she who drives the other two.
And it is she who drags them, and who makes the world work and go.
And it is she who drags the world on,
Because nobody ever works so hard except for his children.
And the two large ones only work for the small one (the translation is ours).]
Funding. This work was funded by Ukrainian Orthodox Church, without specific grant number. Conflicts of interest. None declared.
Acknowledgement. The authors thank Dr Konstantin S. Sharov for his help in provision illustrations for the article.
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EXTENDED SUMMARY
Bozhok, Galina A., and Rev Fr Eugene I. Legach. Personalism Approach as a Counter-measure against Ideological Instrumentalisation of Humanity. Today personalist approach as an anthropological practice offers means of de-ideologising homo sapiens, the population of European countries and far beyond. We can hardly find as effective modern "remedy" against enslaving the humanity by the machinery of ideology as social practice of personalism, no matter if that machinery reveals itself as a call to the loyalty to a state power as the utmost incarnation of the "Absolute Spirit," (according to Hegel) as a curt refusal of our own individual I in exchange of receiving some future benefits and welfare, or as subjugation of the Others.
Personalism approach as an anthropological practice is aimed at the liberation of human personality, the return of its dignity. It effectively undermines the ideological principles of three great philosophical narratives of the eighteenth-twentieth centuries: the Enlightenment, Hegelianism and Marxism (understood as the initial ideological foundation of struggle of classes reflected in Das Kapital, much less as neo-Marxism of the mid-war time of the twentieth century). The roots of philosophical ideologising the humanity may be traced back to the Enlightenment ideological programme of the European civilisation. This programme contained a core task, to transform the man into the master and sovereign of nature. With several consecutive stages of its mutation, the Enlightenment ideological programme changed to "subdue thyself."
However far Hegel or Marx might have stood from the Enlighteners, they all came together in their vision of the human personality as an absolute zero, a nonentity that surprisingly acquires features of a transforming force, on unifying itself with the self-similar entities, another human personalities zero-valued in themselves. We should not be amazed after all, therefore, that the American and the first European constitutions of the eighteenth - twentieth centuries, involved a number of philosophical and ideological provisions of the Enlightenment programme. Once formulated as "subdue the nature," then "subdue and teach the savages," this programme in our times transformed to the principle "subdue thyself in exchange of obtaining thy prize in ... years." This makes a personality a zero-valued nothingness, soulless instrument of the system.
Personalist thinkers outlined the philosophic, sociological and political steps that may lead to restoring the human's personality freedom from the system adminis-
trative dominance and returning its high value to it. They stressed that this liberation may be effectively done by relying on the Christian understanding of human and reviving the ideals of spiritual unity and conciliarism. That led to the close integration of personalism social practices with Roman Catholicism in the twentieth -twenty first centuries.
The personalist programme can be regarded as an anthropological remedy against total instrumentalising the human beings, against transforming them to nonentities equal to each other in every aspect of their life. In personalism, the notion of human being is converted into the practice of existence as an human being, turns into a reflexive experience of finding ourselves by dint of the truly communicative existence, i.e. recognising the distinctive features and value of our neighbours and ourselves.
Authors / Авторы
Galyna Bozhok graduated from the School of Biology of V. N. Karazin's Kharkov National University. She defended her PhD thesis in Biology "Features of the populational heterogeneity of rat erythrocytes under dehydration-rehydration" in 1996, specialty 03.00.13 "Human and Animal Physiology". She defended her habilitation dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Biological Science "Cryopreservation and induction of tolerance as factors of impact on the structural and functional preservation of endocrine tissues aftertransplantation" at the Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in 2013, specialty "cryobiology."
Galyna A. Bozhok,
Dr habil (Biology), PhD (Biology),
Senior Scientific Researcher of
the Department of Cryoendocrinology,
Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine
of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine,
Pereyaslavskaya 23,
Kharkov 61016, Ukraine
Reverend Fr Eugene Ivanovich Legach, Professor, is an Ukrainian Orthodox priest, clinical surgeon, medicine theoretician, biologist and theologian. He is the Dean of Temple of St Transfiguration in Kharkov. In 1998 Fr Eugene defended his PhD thesis in Medicine (Cryobiology and Cryomedicine) on the topic "The influence of cryopreservation on adrenocortical tissue." In 2009 he passed the
habilitation in Medical Sciences (specialties "Transplantology and artificial organs; Cryomedicine") on the topic "Combined transplantation of cryopreserved organotypic cultures of endocrine glands (experimental study)".
Rev Fr Eugene I. Legach,
Dr habil (Medicine), PhD (Medicine), Professor,
Chief Scientific Researcher of
the Department of Cryoendocrinology,
Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine
of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine,
Pereyaslavskaya 23,
Kharkov 61016, Ukraine
© Galyna A. Bozhok, Rev Fr Eugene I. Legach
Licensee The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions
Licensing the materials published is made according to Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence
