ANTHROPOLOGICAL COMPONENT OF DESCARTES’ ONTOLOGY

Anatolii M. Malivskyi

doi:10.15802/ampr2014/25222

Authors

Anatolii M. Malivskyi Dnipropetrovsk National University of Railway Transport named after Academician V. Lazaryan, Ukraine https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6923-5145

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15802/ampr2014/25222

Keywords:

Ontology’s anthropological component, reductionism, thinking thing, gnoseology, ethics, passions, presence

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to outline and comprehend the Descartes’ theory about anthropological component of ontology as the most important part of his philosophy. The accomplishment of this purpose covers the successive solution of the following tasks: 1) review of the research literature concerning the problem of human’s presence and the individual nature of truth; 2) emphasize the ambivalence of the basic intention of his legacy; 3) justify the thesis about constitutivity of human’s presence and comprehend passions as the form of disclosure of ontology’s anthropological component. Methodology. The use of the euristic potential of phenomenology, postpositivism and postmodernism makes it possible to emphasize the multiple-layer and multiple-meaning classical philosophy works, to comprehend the limitation and scarcity of the naïve-enlightening vision of human nature and to look for a new reception of European classics that provides the overcoming of established nihilism and pessimism concerning the interpretation of human nature. Scientific novelty. It is the first time that anthropological component of Descartes’ ontology became an object of particular attention. It previously lacked attention because of following main reasons: 1) traditional underestimating of the fact of Descartes’ legacy incompleteness as an unrealized anthropological project and 2) lack of proper attention to the individual nature of truth. The premise for its constructive overcoming is the attention to ambivalence of the basic intention and the significance of ethics in the philosopher’s legacy. His texts and research literature allow confirming the constitutive nature of human’s presence and passions as the key form of disclosure of the ontology anthropological component. Conclusions. The established tradition of interpretation the Descartes’ philosophizing nature as the filiation process of impersonal knowledge loses its cogency these days. The unprejudiced vision of the texts urges to revise (1) the interpretation of cognition process as reflection, (2) the vision of philosophizing process as the depersonalized one, and (3) reduced human image as a thinking thing as unacceptable.

Author Biography

Anatolii M. Malivskyi, Dnipropetrovsk National University of Railway Transport named after Academician V. Lazaryan

Candidate of Philosophical Sciences, Associate Professor of Philosophical Sciences, Department of Philosophy and Sociology of Dnipropetrovsk National University of Railway Transport named after Academician V. Lazaryan, was born in 1957 in Ukraine. The title of Candidate of Philosophical Sciences PhD thesis: "The Phenomenon of Representation in Classical and Modern Philosophy". It is devoted to the phenomenon of the ontological approach to the representation of the European classical philosophy and its modern interpretation. Associate Professor Malivskyі A. an author of over 30 scientific publications, including "The first and second" Critique’s "Kant" (1991), "The creation and the thing: a critique of consciousness in the doctrine represented by M.Heidegger " (1994), "The ambiguity of understanding the rationality of Rene Descartes' (1996) "Alternative theory of the nature by Arthur Schopenhauer" (1998), "The anthropological dimension of Cartesian metaphysics in the context of the crisis of technological civilization" (2006), "The anthropological dimension of metaphysics "the dialogue of" Heidegger and Descartes (2008)," "The philosophical doctrine of Kant as the search of the authentic forms of anthropological metaphysics "(2012). Associate Professor Malivskyі A. an expert on the history of philosophy, the problems of reception of European classic’s philosophy in the modern context, the anthropological dimension of metaphysics. Associate Professor Malivskyі A. was a member of the XX World Congress of Philosophy, Boston, 1998.

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