Гуманитарное знание в современном мире

Abstract

Determining the boundaries and degree of influence of the results of scholarly knowledge on a person is becoming even more relevant at the current stage of the development of scholarship. Humanitarian knowledge is ambivalent, which is manifested in the fact that the search for and improvement of ways to achieve humanistic ideals can form the basis for the formation of resources allowing us to produce or construct a certain type of personality. Particular attention is paid to situations in which the scientifically based striving for humanitarian ideals – preservation and improvement of the quality of human life – leads to the fact that even life and death of an individual can be the result of an agreement between scientists and politicians. This paper aimed to substantiate the need to identify boundaries in achieving humanitarian ideals. The research method applied here is the analysis of philosophical doctrines, which allow to explicate new approaches to determining the ways of finding meaning. In the context of a plural, multidirectional and risk-inducing development of the world, the traditional features of the humanities – desire for understanding, search for meaning, and contextuality – are undergoing essential changes. The unprecedented fragmentation of today’s world and the sporadic nature of people’s lives actualizes the search for resources to achieve understanding in the absence of integrity. Further, the paper shows the fundamental importance of human efforts aimed to find and be able to stay in such modes of consciousness as “participatory thinking” (M.M. Bakhtin), “thought-action” (M.K. Mamardashvili) and “consciousness not based on cognitive meanings” (Pope John Paul II). It is substantiated here that the idea of establishing meaning as a result of the efforts/perseverance of an individual has ontological and epistemological value. The search for and establishment of meaning is an accomplished event (G. Deleuze), which reflects the uniqueness of a person’s existence.