Čelovek
Founded in 1990, an academic journal Chelovek (The Human Being) publishes the results of scholarly studies in social, humanitarian, and scientific aspects of human existence in close connection with philosophical understanding of the human being, ultimately related to the question, ‘What is the human being?’ The journal is open to various theoretical traditions and addresses the broad multidisciplinary readership. The journal also publishes discussions, conferences overviews, critical essays, and book reviews.
Media Registration certificate: No. 018780 dated 11.05.1999
Current Issue



Vol 34, No 1 (2023)
The philosophy of the himan being
The Generic Essence of Man: toward a Methodology of Analysis
Abstract
The article considers methodological problems arising in the analysis of the generic essence of man. The author considers man as a substantive system, the essential properties of which are determined by the way of self-purpose existence in the environment, which is the activity of the social subject. The author identifies three dimensions of human essence — generic, historical and personal, considers the relationship and relationship between these taxonomic projections of anthropic reality. The article emphasizes the multidimensionality of man, existing in substantially different worlds, and elucidates the correlation and connection between the social and biological components of human life. The author links the fundamental ethological difference between the objects of living nature and man to the specifics of informational mechanisms of behavior, the presence of human abstract-logical, verbal-conceptual thinking, which changes the basic parameters of the human way of life ((including the mode of instrumental adaptation to the environment). The article criticizes the position of biological reductionism, which denies a qualitative difference between informational orientation of humans and highly developed animals. The point of view that reduces human thinking to the neural activity of the brain and denies the existence of free will in humans — the ability to motivational expertise and the free choice of behavioral reactions to non-alternative drives is criticized. The author considers the impact of biological factors on the procedures of goal setting and goal realization, which (factors) affect human behavior, but do not predetermine it.



The Temptation of Not Being or Ontological Roots of Technological Outsourcing
Abstract
This article gives an ontological interpretation of so-called technological outsourcing. It understands the latter as a trend of labour and role delegation from humans to machines. The author posits that the trend of techno outsourcing is not autonomous but a continuation of an earlier phenomenon, namely the ontological temptation or the temptation of not being. The article show cases a number of reasons, capable of compelling a person to chose not to be. Those serve as a basis for author’s next point, that the ontological temptation is exacerbated by recent technological developments. The author draws on Baudrillard and Heidegger for philosophical foundations. According to Baudrillard the temptation is rooted in an attraction, a human experiences towards pure but hollow form, they consider to be attainable as a commodity. According to Heidegger a human is bereft of essence and is supposed to occur as an event. They are given a chance to be. It is up to a human to seize this chance of pass on it. Being is a risky venture, and there are reasons not to undertake it. Those risks lead to humans reducing their state of being. The article describes such an attempt, traceable to Descartes, of reducing a human to a actor, substantiating themselves. The article claims that when a human is reduced to a function the fear of unfulfillment drives them to give in to a temptation of not being.



Understanding in the field of Social Communication as a Mental Technology
Abstract
Mental technologies (techniques, methods, skills) that consciousness (mind) uses for understanding in the field of social communication are the focus of this article. In accordance with the key provisions of the semio-sociopsychology concept, in line with which the article is made, the success of understanding in the field of social communication is associated with such technologies that allow you to “see” in any holistic, complete communicative act latent multi-level structures, the top of which is the author's intentionality, or constant meaning. A series of studies using the method of motive-targeted analysis allowed to designate the parameters of groups of people who differ in the quality of understanding of constant meanings in the perception of holistic, completed works. A relationship has also been found between the quality of understanding the intentionality of the author and the virtual forms through which consciousness “masters” the perceived work: from widespread linear to rarer multi-level, voluminous. The recorded fact of different quality of understanding in the field of social communication allowed to draw an analogy with the theory of the collective unconscious and the phenomenon of archetypes in the interpretation of C.G. Jung. Various mental technologies, which are used by large groups of people, really “live” in society, which affects the features of their socialization and social adaptation and, in general, the trends and vector of socially significant processes. However, thanks to the developments of Russian academic science, comprehension skills in the field of social communication can be improved; the experiments carried out show a positive trend.



Scientific research
Transgenderism: Bioethical Issues
Abstract
The article analyses bioethical problems related to the concept of transgenderism and its understanding in the framework of biomedical discourse. The concept of “transgenderism” is linked with medicine, and gender dysphoria (International Classification of Diseases, 11th Edition) in particular. At the same time, the concept of transgenderism interacts with the social context. The article shows that the perception of transgenderism and transgenders by society has an impact both on the medical discourse and the notion of transgenderism in its context, and on the perception of “ordinary” people, or cisgender people, which is due to the gradual normalization of transgenderism. Thus, the concept of transgenderism requires an interdisciplinary approach and ethical, philosophical and bioethical consideration. Since the analyzed concept is directly related to medical problems, this study is based not only on bioethical studies, but also on sources in the field of medicine and sociological studies related to medicine. The article also analyzes the problem of applying the biomedical principles nonmaleficence" and principle of autonomy by Beauchamp and Childress, that have specifics applied to transgender children. This is due to the connection of transgenderism with another problem that lies in the interdisciplinary field —suicide. A number of studies on the quality of life of transgender people, as well as encyclopedic literature, mention suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts of transgenders. The article shows how the reinterpretation of transgenderism and its normalization change the boundaries of medical discourse, deducing transgenderism and suicide from medicine. The author concludes that the normalization of transgenderism and the change of its place in the medical discourse entails not only a transformation of medical discourse, but also affects other concepts like suicide, changes the approach to the treatment of transgender children, making the therapy of such children questionable from bioethical viewpoint.



Social practices
Foragers: a Natural Way of Life
Abstract
Postindustrial society is similar to preindustrial in the sense that the economy of the former is based on the appropriation of products from robotic production, and the latter is based on the appropriation of products produced by nature. The vast majority of people throughout almost the entire history of mankind lived off hunting and gathering, so the appropriating economy can be considered a natural form of life support. Hunters and gatherers (foragers) fully met their needs with minimal labor costs through the use of fishing technologies that were so effective that many populations and species of animals were exterminated. Compared to farmers, foragers ate better and were in better health. The transition to a productive economy was not historically inevitable. The Neolithic Revolution was actually evolution - drawn out, intermittent, and incomplete. The foraging groups that have survived to this day in remote areas are characterized by a positive psychological well-being and consider their way of life to be normal and correct. Given the current trend towards a green economy, the historical experience of hunters and gatherers deserves to be studied and rethought.



Protest and Mass Media as varieties of communication: the problem of semantic interconnection
Abstract
The article contains an analysis of the phenomenon of protest based on the conceptual features of the system-communicative approach. The author makes an attempt to express the essential characteristics of protest as a form of social communication, which represents the mobilization of “society against society”, using the method of socio-philosophical analysis. This analysis raises the question of the potential of social networks and the Internet as a tool of protest activity, due to the close dependence of protest on the mass media as a special functional system. The author concludes that despite the wide reach of social media users, this resource is a weak mechanism for protest self-organization.



Education as a factor of life success in the representation of Russians
Abstract
In the article, based on the materials of surveys conducted within the framework of the International Program for Social Research, an attempt was made to identify the place of education in the hierarchy of life success factors in the assessments of Russians. The author states that in the public mind, getting a good education is one of the main ways to succeed in life, only slightly inferior in importance to hard work. At the same time, there is a stereotypical perception of education as a success factor, especially its high levels. The conducted comparative analysis showed that Russians' ideas about the role of education do not significantly stand out against the general background. The considered structure of frequently mentioned factors is typical for most other states. Three models (generalized groups) based on multivariate analysis of life success factors were identified. The model “education-work”, based on one's own efforts (getting a good education, hard work) and the education of parents, is considered in detail. It is noted that in Russia the model of “connection-bribes” is relatively strongly expressed, including ways to achieve success in life, based on informal practices of interaction. It is shown that the assessment of the importance of education as a condition for achieving success in Russia, unlike other countries participating in the program, is not associated either with the subjective status and self-assessment of belonging to a social stratum, or with such components of an integrative social status as the level of education and income level of the respondents. The author concludes that education in Russia does not provide preferences to the extent that they are provided in a number of other countries participating in the program.



Symbols. Values. Ideals.
V.I. Lamansky: Civilizations and the War of Languages
Abstract
The article deals with the problems of language and war in the civilizational concept of the Slavist Academician V.I. Lamansky. Lamansky's attitude to the Crimean War and Russian-Turkish War of 1877–1879 is traced on the basis of archival documents. His assessments of military and political events are given. It is pointed out that Lamansky's political-geographical doctrine formulated in his treatise «The Three Worlds of the Asian-European Continent» (1892) and in his earlier works, was a development of the Slavophile ideas and included the provisions later developed by Eurasianists. It is pointed out that he gave not only a geographical but also a linguistic definition of civilizations, in particular, he believed that civilizational worlds are held together by a common language (world-historical language). According to Lamansky, who formulated the doctrine of linguistic hegemony, the competition between peoples and states, including military, is replaced by the competition of world-historical languages. In Europe, he believed, three Romance languages (French, Italian and Spanish) and two Germanic languages (English and German) are struggling with each other. Of these, only Spanish and English, thanks to the vast colonies of Great Britain and the former colonies of Spain, could retain their world-historical significance. In time, he suggested, even Spain's former colonies in South America might come under Anglo-Saxon rule, and the center of the Western world would shift to the New World. In the Middle World or the Greco-Slavic world, Russian has no competitors, so it should be a common literary, scientific and diplomatic language, uniting the peoples of the Middle World in a civilizational unity. Language is the main geopolitical force through which cultural and, in the long term, political unity is first formed. Based on the philosophical and historical analysis of the contradictions between the Romano-Germanic and the Greek-Slavic worlds, Lamansky concluded that the coming world war was inevitable.



“Sovereign Personality”: Experience in Mainstreaming and Conceptualizing the Term
Abstract
The article presents theoretical experience in solving the socio-philosophical problem of actualization and conceptualization of the term of “sovereign personality”. The author addresses the work of theorists of individual autonomy, who dealt with the problem of the philosophy of freedom, from the age of Enlightenment to the end of the 20th century. These works reveal two different approaches to understanding the sovereignty of the individual: egalitarian, combining social ideas of freedom and equality, and elitist, which is a variant of the theory of exclusive sovereignty. The article substantiates and presents the socio-philosophical formula of sovereignty, based on the three-component composition of individual freedoms and enriched by the theory of self-determination of a person as an exclusive subject of decision. The author sees significant differences between the concepts of “overeign personality” and “autonomous personality” for this formula. On the example of the discourse on autonomy and the historical and philosophical solution to the problem of defining the concept of “liberty”, fundamentally subordinative relations between sovereignty and autonomy of the individual are revealed. As a theoretical and methodological tool, the concept of “anthropological type” is introduced, which is necessary for understanding the sovereign personality as a specific type, as a kind of anthropological ideal, which has the freedom of maneuver in the development of individual tasks with the aim of freely transforming the world (H. von Keiserling) and following a certain existential code (E. Junger). The development of the theoretical foundations of the principle of sovereignty of the individual is considered by the author as a necessary initial phase of socio-philosophical research relevant in the light of the threats posed to human freedom by the merger of power deprived of humanistic potential and the latest control technologies.



Reviews
Хрупкость жизни в условиях новой реальности



Татьяна Григорьева. Одинокий странник. Избранное. Москва – Санкт-Петербург: Центр гуманитарных инициатив, 2023. 511 с.



Цифровое искусство


