Философские основания медикализации культуры

Abstract

Introduction. The increasing mediation of human life by medicine necessarily raises the question of philosophical understanding the phenomenon of culture medicalization, since today the vector of growing powerful influence of medicine on forming sociocultural processes has clearly emerged. Along with the positive phenomena of the medicalization of life, the volume of “excessive” phenomena of its medicalization is growing. The purpose of the article is to clarify the philo- sophical foundations of the progressive medicaliza- tion of modern culture. Methods. The methodological basis of the study is presented by dialectical, epistemological, axiologi- cal, philosophical-anthropological, and socio-phil- osophical approaches. The study is based on E. Cassirer’s transcendental philosophy, the phenom- enological transcendentalism of E. Husserl; V.S. Stepin’s concept about the system of informational social codes; and P.D. Tishchenko’s concept on the transformation of bio-power in modern culture. Scientific novelty of the research. The author outlines fundamental foundations of modern cul- ture medicalization as a result of mutually similar processes of transforming bio-power and the progress of biomedical sciences. Results. Unfolding, culture compensated for the bodily weakness of a person with the power of his technical inventions, but today they have surpassed the intellectual capabilities of their creator - the individual has to permanently adapt to the grow- ing volume of mass technogenic innovations. The historically formed human need to master the world through its “humanization” is suppressed, and, as a result, the problem of a modern indi- vidual’s request for self-realization through the creative transformation of the social environment is actualized. In this regard, one of the philosophi- cal and anthropological foundations of modern culture can be recognized as a technogenically determined desire of a person to transform his own corporeality, aimed at expanding the capabili- ties of a natural person. Biomedical sciences, as a result of biotechnological progress, turned out to be exactly the social and scientific sphere, which, building up practical activities within the framework of healthcare, considers the person to be both the subject and the object of the biosocial transforma- tion demanded by cultural evolution. Conclusions. The process of medicalization of culture occurs on the basis of two reciprocal fundamental processes: first, the strengthening of the principles of bio-power as “care for all forms of life”; secondly, the progress and technologization of scientific medicine, which in practice provides a socio-cultural demand for a modern prosperous individual.