HISTORY AS MAN'S SEARCH FOR SELF-IDENTITY

Abstract

The article features the problem of the relationship of sense of history with the meaning of human life in general, with the life of every human being. It analyses the search for connection between the meaning of individual human existence and the sense of history, the fate of the individual and of human destiny in the Russian philosophical tradition. The meaning of history (phylogenesis) is associated with the search for self-identity. The determination occurs through realizing one’s self from the other: an animal, the dead, space, nature, God, an angel, a thing. The stages of one’s self-differentiation are the stages of one’s self-revealing. The historical deployment of self-identification process begins with reflection: man as a beast and not-beast at the same time. It forms a view of the man as a beasthuman, a human-beast, a man-not-beast. Later, one’s comparison to nature extends to infinity, beyond the Earth. The person begins to identify with outer space and the whole universe. One gets the notion of the universal man and the human universe. One begins to associate "oneself with oneself". The deployment of selfreflection allows one to differentiate "Me" from "not-Me". There develops a vision of the God-man, the man-God (the Superman). The meaning of ancestral human history is the actualization of the individual stories of each person. The purpose of world history is "my" birth.