Existential Truth in Dialectical-symbolic Understanding

Abstract

The subject of research in this article is the phenomenon of existential truth. The author relies on the distinction between epistemic and existential truth proposed by D.V. Pivovarov. The latter is the correspondence of knowledge (or being in the case of ontological truth) to the subject-object unity, human being, which is the basis of cognitive activity. The ideas related to the existential understanding of truth in the works of B. Pascal, S. Kierkegaard, M. Unamuno, H. Ortega y Gasset, L. Shestov, N.A. Berdyaev, K. Jaspers, G. Marcel, A. Camus, J.-P. Sartre and M. Heidegger are presented. "Cordiality", subjectivity, vitality, perspectivism, irrationality, creative nature, communication, personality, "rebellion", freedom, "non-concealment" of existential truth are highlighted. With the help of A.F. Losev's dialectical methodology, an attempt is made to comprehend these signs as moments of symbolism of existential truth. The mainstay is the works of A.F. Losev, in which the symbol is understood as a communicative and interpretive expression of a transcendent essence ("the very self"). This expression is a "directly-intuitively" given generality, naturally decomposed into a number of separate singularities, which can be realized in reality and thereby become a "myth" in Losev's understanding. The myth, immanent to personal existence, is intensively experienced by a person, manifests itself in an irrational "miracle". The symbol and myth reveal the considered signs of existential truth and at the same time take into account the objective, functional sides of the truth. From the point of view of the dialectical-symbolic approach, existential truth is the correspondence of knowledge (or being) to a dialectically concrete symbolic reflection of reality, subject-object unity, which is a "directly intuitive" given in immanent personal being. The novelty of the work lies in the application of A.F. Losev's dialectical theory of the symbol to the study of the existential understanding of truth.