UDC 1:572.028

Introduction

The world of life today is much more complex than it was a quarter of a century ago, when humanity met the third millennium with enthusiasm and great hopes. But everything that was perceived by the then generation as "post-" in the current historical dimension becomes "proto-" – not the end, but the first sketch of a new, neurospace era, the main drive of which is the information-digital environment. The cumulative influence of information technology has gained such power that it moved far beyond the "environment", becoming a large-scale infosphere. Its main content is the interaction of the brain and computer, technology and organics, creation of artificial intelligence, working atoms and quanta, bringing all domestic processes to the speed of thought, implemented in the projects of smart home, smart city, smart economy, etc. An important role in creating Scientist myths and predictions about the new reality was played by philosophical and popular science reflection, which pathetically proclaimed confidence in the possibilities of new technologies and man-made civilization. Its main drivers today are big data, the Internet of Things, virtual and augmented reality, 3D printing, cryptocurrency and a number of other achievements. However, in their space as an infosphere, it becomes less and less room for a human. After all, under the influence of modern information technology not only the value and meaning of their life is changing, but also the psychophysical data, forcing the brain to function in a different way, which ultimately leads to the identity change.

The stability of the identity was based on a balance between the depersonalization of the human in the masses and their need for self-determination. In the information-digital reality, which activates the aspirations and motivations of human, this delicate balance is destroyed and gradually becomes unpopular. This is a result of the "marginalization of the production processes 'to the margins' of public life, which give place to a more diverse set of roles that human performs today for a limited period. Accordingly, a human identity becomes changeable, uncertain and insignificant" (authors’ transl.) (Proleiev, 2021, p. 228).

A sign of today is the "exclusion" from the intense intellectual activity of the productive imagination as "imaginaire instituant", inseparable from the collective identity associated with "a certain form of imagination or image of things" (authors’ transl.) (Descombes, 2015, p. 74). Imagination is especially important for the formation of identity. "Thus Luther", says Fukuyama (2020), "is responsible for the notion, central to questions of identity, that the inner self is deep and possesses many layers that can be exposed only through private introspection" (p. 39). However, due to the widespread expansion of man-made activities, determining the influence of the infosphere, human loses not only the ability to productive imagination, but also to reflection, which is "an important mechanism for regulating human activity since the cognitive revolution as the first transformational step of civilization" (authors’ transl.) (Liubyvyi, 2021, p. 48).

As a result, human quite passively find their place in the community and do not seek to realize themselves through belonging to it. Now self-determination is performed not through the assertion of "I" in the context of sociality, but because of their willingness to play one or another role. The passionate work of the productive imagination is replaced by formal recognition, according to which the centre of gravity is not a social place reached due to professionalism, but a personal orientation to realize oneself in the plurality of the global world. In this situation, identity is not revoked and passed into the history, but rather "becomes something external and subordinate in the semantic horizon to self-determination and human life" (authors’ transl.) (Proleiev, 2021, p. 229).

An important means of overcoming the identity crisis, which may be exacerbated in a situation of tense social relations, is the use of reflected new philosophical-anthropological and socio-philosophical contexts. According to them, one needs to create and form one’s own identity in a new, information-digital reality. This is achieved by the development of reflexive abilities for self-construction based on self-determination of one’s own identity (Descombes, 2015).

In the face of uncertainty, growing challenges, threats to the important task of overcoming the identity crisis and confronting structuring of humanity like a tribal society (Türcke, 2019, pp. 7-8), it is important to oppose an alternative that in its intellectual-cognitive power can be a way to preserve and reproduce the real human existence. Such an alternative is human-centrism, whose reflections in the culture of self-sufficient infosphere, which human is completely subordinated to, require philosophical and anthropological comprehension.

Purpose

The review set the analysis of human-centrism, the intellectual reflections of which can simulate new strategies for preserving and developing human identity in the context of information-digital reality as a purpose. The radical transformation of the typical image of human performed under the influence of the infosphere, involves the solution of the following problems: 1) to make a conceptual explication of the content and semantic load of human-centrism in the modern social philosophy and philosophical anthropology; 2) to perform a theoretical and methodological analysis of the importance and role of human-centrism in preserving and developing of human integrity in terms of their subordination to the virtues of the infosphere; 3) to characterize the main parameters of the problematic field of human-centrism in overcoming the identity crisis and preserving and reproducing the system of universal human values.

Statement of basic materials

The term "human-centrism", despite its external identity with anthropocentrism, which was formed during the Renaissance, is qualitatively different from it. Anthropocentrism demonstrates a change in the cognition paradigm – from theocentricism, when the meaning of cognitive activity is God, to human. The birth of modern human occurs in a situation where they are surrounded by the private world with all its protective barriers, layered on each other. In contrast to this world, a human stands out from all the links of social life: the family, the traditional community, the whole mass of subjects obeying certain laws. Individual self-awareness, which focuses on participation in social life for the common good, comes from the resistance to collectivism (Ariés & Duby, 1999, p. 643).

In the future, the problem of human becomes the relevance of philosophical concepts, each of which defined its program of understanding the meaning of their existence and mission. The galaxy of thinkers tried to reproduce and continue the evolution of philosophical and anthropological thought in their own way. Some thinkers, in particular E. Cassirer, sees the actual anthropological subject in the origins and sources of philosophizing, and to some extent even in mythology. Along with this, philosophical anthropology is defined as a successor of the mystical-religious doctrine of human, considering it the main issue of philosophy. For E. Fromm, the philosophy of humanology emerged only in the 20th century. If for M. Scheler this subject starts to develop linearly and consistently in European philosophy, then for M. Buber the genesis of philosophical and anthropological views is dramatic, commensurate with the "existential well-being of man, and, thus, is debatable" (authors’ transl.) (Kremen, 2009, p. 9).

Discussions and disagreements in the theoretical field of philosophical anthropology will require a new statement of the problem of human. Which causes prioritizing the concept of human-centrism, full of deep philosophical meaning. Talent, cognition, corporeality, spirituality, morality, egoism, education, aggression, intelligence, narrow-mindedness – all these are fragments of constantly changing characteristics of human. They reveal various aspects of their socio-cultural, moral and psychological essence. Although in the process of realizing their potential, they do not exhaust the infinite content of human. In human-centrism, it is primarily multidimensional, pluralistic in its uniqueness and soleness. This testifies to its existential fullness, so necessary for the "reconstruction of human – unique, true, deep" (Shabanova, 2020).

Except the philosophical context, human-centrism focuses on the development of human self-consciousness, opens new perspectives on understanding its modern essence, which does not remain stable, but constantly changes under the influence of social, economic and technological processes. As the history of society shows, the dominant image of human, existing at different times, was asserted in the various national or regional modifications; it was the personification of a particular era, and played a significant role in self-determination of historical, social and cultural creativity, "becoming a marker on the path of development of human civilization" (authors’ transl.) (Kultaieva, 2020, p. 11). In this regard, M. Zichy (2017) proposes to consider the image of human not at the metatheoretical level of philosophical anthropology, but in the space of the living world. From our point of view, human-centrism corresponds to the parameters of the living world in its multidimensionality.

Human-centrism fits into the concept of "postmodernity", which Z. Bauman (2000), the author of many works on the sociology of postmodernism, introduced at the end of the last century. At the beginning of the zero years, the post-modern discourse fatigue resulted in the search for new terms to justify the socio-cultural reality of modernity. It was proposed to support the adequate for the modern era term "post-postmodernism" (Hutcheon, 2002), which J. Nealon (2012) identifies with the cultural logic of capitalism. In a wide range of socio-cultural realities in 2010, the leadership of metamodernism is asserted, which displaces the concept of "postmodernism" from the philosophical discourse (Shabanova, 2020). Postmodernism defines the problem of human in the era of digitalization as the main subject of its comprehension. Human-centrism conceptualizes this problem in the subject field of the philosophy of education, which offers the prospect for critical reflection in the context of the development of human identity. And human identity, in turn, is inextricably linked with humanism, which preserves the essential features of human: subjectivity, self-identity, activity, independence, freedom of choice.

However, as society enters the socio-technical stage of development, a deep crisis of humanism begins. Society ceases to be human and becomes human-machine. That is, technology starts replacing not only the physical but also the intellectual power of human. The initiative and the final solution of questions about their interaction with the external environment passes to technology. If at the beginning of their development the sciences of human interaction with technology were concerned with the adaptation of technology to human, now the vector is moving to the technology.

It is safe to say that man-made civilization puts an end to the era of traditional humanism. "Can we talk about humanism after Auschwitz?", J. F. Lyotard is asking. But the shock of Auschwitz was overcome by the existentialism of A. Camus, J.-P. Sartre, M. Merleau-Ponty and others. However, at the end of the 20th century there was a sharp gap between the generations, caused by the achieved material prosperity and scientific and technological revolution. Acceleration of the rhythm of life through the car and the plane provided the dynamics and mobility of human, but became an obstacle to their rooting in themselves. People have no time or desire to think about others, as well as about their own development. The new was mesmerizing, the spirit could not resist material temptations (Tison-Braun, 1968).

Information technology is even more tempting. Unlike the past, informational and material existence loses consistency in all parameters. This is actually all the threats of the virtual reality to the human being. The new artificial environment "scans", accepts only the information aspect of a human, introducing them as a holistic being into a state of crisis. Today, human existence in such a paradigm becomes trivial, it is manifested in a serial self-presentation on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), where the knowledge of values is reduced to the knowledge of one’s selfie. Within the framework of information-digital reality, the "philosophy of the selfie" is formed (Gumbrecht, 2019, p. 42). This is a philosophy of life far from humanism, which tries to be better than the meaningful dimensions of traditional culture, full of human values. The communicative space of the Internet, structuring the world of such a person, becomes a meeting place for semi-educated people, deprived of the "center", full of self-esteem and contempt for others. They practice active narcissism through various computer programs and platforms (Stettler, 2014).

A common feature of these "decentralized" characters, alienated from other people, is spontaneity, which is interpreted not as sincerity, but as the emergence of a real "I" opposed to the "I" generating metaphysical reflections that are perceived today as unnecessary and unnatural. M. Heidegger predicted the origins of such situation in Letter on Humanism, which criticizes a human capable of metaphysical reflection. Metaphysical human perceives existence as a sum of phenomena, forgetting about the ontological difference, considering the world around them as an object for scientific study and, moreover, for technical exploitation and practical use. Human themselves appear as one of the phenomena deprived of authenticity and mystery, brought to the illusory rank of master of Being, ruling over the world due to the technological progress. According to M. Heidegger, this is the basis of modern humanism. The philosopher believes that the true essence of human is their ability to be outside themselves, in the world of Being, and to perceive the relationship with Being as a dependence. Modern human, thinking human, renounce their true nature in favour of illusory sovereignty, this is the reason for its unreliability (Heidegger, 1972).

In The Archaeology of Knowledge, the poststructuralist M. Foucault criticizes the Logos (the Word of Reason), calling for the abandonment of any ideological and spiritual succession, presenting the history of philosophical humanism as an accumulation of contradictory and unrelated ideas. The structures of K. Lévi-Strauss and the difference between the symbolic and the imaginary of J. Lacan should be added to this. And although after the structuralism lost its intellectual domination, humanism could be reborn and rejuvenated, but this did not happen; nihilism and misanthropy continue dominating on the ruins of former beliefs and convictions. While physics, biology, medicine work wonders, knowledge about human is narrowing. People flew to the moon, but brought only stones from there. Instead of the human soul, only words remain (Tison-Braun, 1968).

From our point of view, human-centrism, whose philosophical intentions have a deep humanistic meaning, is capable of returning the "soul". In addition to the humanistic context, human-centrism emphasizes that different existential sensations can arise within the same epoch: thus, against the background of alienation an anxious intuition can appear. In contrast, soul disquiet and uncertainty during the transitional era may acquire the features of general calm, the desire not to lose optimism and courage. However, as the history of philosophical thought shows, such feelings can be typologized into different world-view attitudes, depending on what the priority is given: God, Logos, Sophia, Nature, Science, Economics, Technology, Human and so on. Therefore, the philosophical and world-view positions are conceptualized: logocentrism, anthropocentrism, economocentrism, theocentrism, technocentrism, digital centrism, etc. It is clear that these approaches and positions do not exist in perfect integrity, they productively interact, complementing each other (author’s transl.) (Kremen, 2009, pp. 10-11).

In fact, this necessitated the concept of human-centrism, in which one can develop a perspective on the position of human in the modern world, affirm the anthropo-humanistic principles of its further development, especially in the situation of homo digitalis’ coming into the arena of socio-cultural life. This abstract symbolization summarizes the main features of a human who has mastered and applies information technology in their activity, while acting as a creator of information and digital subculture. This makes them typical construct of a new passive human, who find their realization in different kinds of entertainment (Kultaieva, 2020, p. 14).

This circumstance is caused by the expansion of symbolic orders and virtual realities, as a result of which people do not act, but are defined, show themselves in one form or another. A self-sufficient information environment has emerged. Human is completely subordinated to and absorbed by it. The reality in this environment is eliminated by a set of various heterogeneous effects. They "are not a manifestation of something, but in one way or another are inspired by the information environment itself" (authors’ transl.) (Proleiev, 2021, p. 220). In practice, reality does not disappear at all, but turns into a socio-cultural relic, a remnant of past life forms, where there is no place for human.

The assertion of the phenomenon of "a world without reality" distinguishes the status of reality as a synonym for the existing, what is. In it, modern human loses the status of self-evident reality (Berger & Luckmann, 1995, p. 48). Analysing the process of transforming reality into a game of meanings, the competition of "likes" in cyberspace, which is an attempt to attract attention to oneself, J. Baudrillard wrote that it is not even about imitation and repetition, but

It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real, that is to say of an operation of deterring every real process via its operational double, a programmatic, metastable, perfectly descriptive machine that offers all the signs of the real and short-circuits all its vicissitudes. Never again will the real have the chance to produce itself… (Baudrillard, 2004, p. 7)

In such conditions, a human loses socio-cultural experience, becoming a nomad.

Different assessments and characteristics of human in philosophical anthropology (religious human, intelligent human, moral human, symbolic human, virtual human, digital human, etc.) do not exhaust their content. After all, due to the growth of the level of science and the entry of information and digital technologies into human existence, the demand for the development of the creative aspect of their activity is significantly increasing. At the same time, human become creative being when they have freedom. And is it possible to be free, being in an information environment that determines all aspects of their activity? The diversity and cumulative effect of information technology has become so powerful that it has transformed the infosphere in a number of dimensions into a decisive life-forming factor of modern human. The infosphere is "a constant vis-a-vis of all human aspirations, initiatives, and places of presence. It not only plays the role of an indirect link in any action, but also increasingly becomes a source of human meanings, choices, and ultimately, the motives of life" (authors’ transl.) (Proleiev, 2021, p. 242). In other words, today human as a socio-cultural actor exist due to their presence on the Internet, in the information-digital space.

Human-centrism, taking into account the creative inclinations and abilities of human – mind, imagination, cognition, intuition, will, etc., is based on their ability to generate their own personal sovereign image, which has the potential to resist destructive influences. This is, in particular, the fruitful activity of human-centrism in education, focusing on the upbringing and formation of a creative personality. In the context of such an approach, the preservation and development of the value sphere of existence is no less relevant. It allows comprehending its boundary bases, which is related with the knowledge of the mystery of human as a thinking being. Generalization of the value sphere in one or another implementation is a key regulator of life relations, combining its form, content, method, and functions.

In the paradigm of the value sphere, human-centrism reflects a high level of philosophical reflection primarily on human. This increases the importance of human-centrism in all spheres of social existence, focusing on adaptation to its innovative content. The main thing in this process is to take into account that each created model is always unattainable, because human is only a part of it. The way that will never be completed means that values will always be inappropriate to the requirements of the new reality defined as "metamodernism". On this way it is a tactic of accepting the fullness of reality by choosing between the possible extremes produced by previous epochs. "Premodernism is the golden age of humanity, striving for eternal values. Modernism is an attempt to transform the world through rationality. Postmodernism loses its meaning, hence deconstruction, criticism, nihilism" (Shabanova, 2020, p. 127). Given that metamodernism human in the conditions of "pressure" of information-digital reality "miss" the meaning, seek to reconstruct themselves, the task of human-centrism is to reproduce the semantic expediency of the world and human in it.

In terms of world-view, human-centrism is the main, most adequate way of understanding the essence of the individual in a situation where people seek "confirmation of the authenticity of their existence" (authors’ transl.) (Precht, 2020, p. 5). Reflection on human-centrism cultivates thought-reflective type of cognition that overcomes the euphoria of expecting "hypothetical autonomy" of artificial intelligence and "democratization of automation" (authors’ transl.) (Remmers, 2019, p. 37) of human existence today. The main methodological principles of this type of knowledge, along with epistemological, are moral, aesthetic, irrational, axiological ones. And in this aspect, human-centrism as a philosophy, as a sociocultural and heuristic phenomenon is not given, but pre-set: its essence is manifested through a metaphilosophical synthesis of different approaches in the study of prospects for human life (Kremen, 2009, p. 16). The result of such a synthesis is a systematic, deep, three-dimensional understanding of modern human as a combination of their various images for the purpose of essential reconstruction in the complementarity of spiritual-material, anthropo-existential, holistic-axiological, rational-irrational, individual and special in terms of a new qualitative level of meanings. The perspective of society depends on the extent to which its entire following way will be performed in the paradigm of human-centrism, which reproduces the position – Homo non vult ese nisi homo – "Human does not want to be anything but human" (authors’ transl.) (Nicholas of Cusa).

Originality

It is substantiated that human-centrism as a philosophical and anthropological strategy of modern thinking is a condition for overcoming the identity crisis. It is noted that the reflexive possibilities of human-centrism preserve and reconstruct the system of universal human values in the situation of information-digital reality. It was identified that human-centrism due to its depth and semantic self-sufficiency contributes to the construction and implementation of new dimensions of identity in correlation with the existential multidimensionality of human to preserve their integrity in the interaction with the objective logic of digital culture. It is proved that the main purpose of human-centrism is to maintain the tradition of human reproduction.

Conclusions

Modern philosophical studies of human focus on the peculiarities of their existence and activity in terms of information-digital reality, which asserts a new type of knowledge and content of the philosophical and anthropological paradigm. Its clear manifestation is the identity crisis, which is overcome by constructing a higher level of reflection. It is an important mechanism for regulating human activity from the time of the cognitive revolution as the first civilization transformational step to the present, where in its multiplicity it shall preserve the basic universal human values. The concept of human-centrism is a new strategy of human progress, based on the orientation towards the values of knowledge and creative activity, without which human life loses meaning and perspective. The concept of human-centrism is full of deep philosophical meaning, which contains various and at the same time conceptually oriented shades of intellectual thinking, the object of which is human. All of them are the fragments of the constantly changing picture of human existence, which reveal its new aspects, but do not exhaust the infinite meaning. The existential-axiological context of human-centrism is the most important condition for the development of human self-consciousness, which is determined today by the achievements of information-digital reality, which poses a threat of its destruction. The inclusion of human-centrism in modern anthropological discourse allows comprehending the features of our era, which manifests unfounded subjectivism through entering the mode of infosphere, which is increasingly becoming a source of human meanings, choices, intentions, and motivations. The expression of the cognitive-creative content of human-centrism is the complementarity of spiritual-cultural, anthropo-metaphysical, rational-irrational, general-specific at a new qualitative level of experience of the meanings of the holistic human.

REFERENCES

Ariés, P., & Duby, G. (Eds.). (1999). Histoire de la vie privée: De l’Europe féodale à la Renaissance (Vol. 2). Paris: Editions du Seuil. (in French)

Zichy M. Menschenbilder: Eine Grundlegung. Verlag Karl Alber, 2017. 464 s.

В. Г. КРЕМЕНЬ^1*, В. В. ІЛЬЇН^2*

^1*Національна академія педагогічних наук України (Київ, Україна), ел. пошта president@naps.gov.ua, ORCID 0000-0001-5459-1318

^2*Київський національний університет імені Тараса Шевченка (Київ, Україна), ел. пошта ilin_vv@ukr.net, ORCID 0000-0003-0503-8545

Філософія людиноцентризму в системі сучасних антропологічних досліджень

Мета. Основу представленого дослідження складає філософсько-методологічний аналіз концепту людиноцентризму як нової інтелектуальної стратегії осмислення й розуміння перспектив існування людини в ситуації інформаційно-цифрової реальності, що передбачає послідовне вирішення таких завдань: 1) здійснити експлікацію концептуального змісту і смислового навантаження людиноцентризму у дискурсах соціальної філософії та філософської антропології; 2) провести аналіз теоретичного значення й методологічної ролі людиноцентризму в умовах інформаційно-цифрової реальності; 3) охарактеризувати основні параметри проблемного поля людиноцентризму в подоланні кризи ідентичності та збереженні системи загальнолюдських цінностей. Теоретичний базис. Об’єктивна логіка розгортання сучасного інформаційно-цифрового світу перетворює філософську антропологію на новий рівень осмислення буття людини. Людиноцентризм взаємодіє з філософською антропологією й оцінює її з погляду свого метафілософського, аксіологічно-екзистенційного і методологічного змісту. Ствердження людиноцентризму обумовлено кризою ідентичності в контексті цивілізаційних трансформацій, які в результаті кумулятивного ефекту інформаційних технологій здійснюють потужний вплив на всі аспекти життя та мислення людини. Філософія людиноцентризму як життєстверджуючий чинник обумовлює розвиток і адаптацію людської самосвідомості до сучасного соціально-культурного середовища, детермінованого інформаційно-технологічними процесами. Наукова новизна. Обґрунтовано, що людиноцентризм як нова стратегія сучасних філософсько-антропологічних дискурсів відкриває нові перспективи пізнання сутності людини в умовах інформаційно-цифрової реальності та сприяє конструюванню й реалізації нових вимірів ідентичності у взаємодії з якісно іншим рівнем світовідношення. Висновки. Ствердження інформаційно-цифрової реальності породжує новий тип філософсько-антропологічної парадигми, якісним виявом якої є теорія та методологія людиноцентризму. Йому властивий сучасний рівень філософської рефлексії, що дозволяє зберігати і водночас поновлювати систему загальнолюдських цінностей. На цій підставі людиноцентризм постає способом взаємодоповнюваності всіх аспектів життя людини, яка реконструює себе в ситуації нових антропологічних вимірів.

Ключові слова: людиноцентризм; філософська антропологія; філософія; цінності; інформаційно-цифрова реальність

Received: 10.01.2022

Accepted: 03.06.2022