Anthropology of homo faber by P. Florensky

Abstract

In the article deconstruction of two texts ("Homo faber" and "Continuation of our Feelings") from the second part of the collection "At the Watersheds of Thought" (1917-22) by P.A. Florensky and their historical and philosophical analysis are made. It is shown that Florensky's late anthropology begins with criticism of the inability of classical science of knowledge of the XVII-XIX centuries to work productively with the antinomic reality in its essence. The article examines the way Florensky builds a paradigmatic scientific and philosophical concept of man as homo faber. The implicit ways of transition of his philosophical logic from the religious concept of the world and man to the concept of engineering-evolutionary are clarified. Both explicit and implicit sources of Florensky's scientific and philosophical intuitions are analyzed. The historical and philosophical assessment of the figurative-conceptual complex "term-organ-tool" proposed by him is also given, on the basis of which he manages the conceived anthropological reduction of the complex phenomenon of man to the activist model homo faber.