Review
Galyna A. Bozhok,
Dr habil (Biology), PhD (Biology), Senior Scientific Researcher of the Department of Cryoendocrinology, Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Ukraine
Address: Pereyaslavskaya 23, Kharkov 61016, Ukraine
Rev Fr Eugene I. Legach,
Dr habil (Medicine), PhD (Medicine), Professor, Chief Scientific Researcher of the Department of Cryoendocrinology, Institute of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Ukraine
Address: Pereyaslavskaya 23, Kharkov 61016, Ukraine
E-mail: evlegach@gmail.com
Article ID: 020440005
Published online: 27 December 2019
HANDLE: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12656/thebeacon.2.020440005
DOI: https://doi.org/10.55269/thebeacon.2.020440005
Quoting (Chicago style): Bozhok, Galyna A., and Rev Fr Eugene I. Legach. 2019. “Personalism approach as a countermeasure against ideological instrumentalisation of humanity.” Beacon J Stud Ideol Ment Dimens 2, 020440005. https://doi.org/10.55269/thebeacon.2.020440005
Language: English
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Personalism understood as an anthropological theory and practice, may represent an ideologic means of anti-instrumentalisation of the person in the contemporary world, a means of returning his (her) internal value and external respect to him (her). Personalism, relying on the Christian idea of the personality and re-creating the ideal of conciliar communicating the person with his “Other”, i.e. his neighbour is aimed at problematising the Enlightenment ideological apparatuses as well as Hegelianism and even Marxism, if Marxism is to be understood in its initial sense as the ideological base of the struggle of classes, i.e. the three primary ways of meta-ideological enslaving the humanity by political regimes in the nineteenth–twentieth centuries in a great majority of countries. In the paper, we outline the principal salience of de-ideologising the person in the European personalism. Key words: personalism philosophy, anthropological practice, personality, individual, individuality, individualisation, phenomenon of neighbour, communication, ideology, conciliarism, Enlightenment, Hegelianism, Marxism
Today personalist approach as an anthropological practice offers means of de-ideologising homo sapiens, the population of European countries and far beyond. We can hardly find as effective modern “remedy” against enslaving the humanity by the machinery of ideology as social practice of personalism, no matter if that machinery reveals itself as a call to the loyalty to a state power as the utmost incarnation of the “Absolute Spirit,” (according to Hegel) as a curt refusal of our own individual I in exchange of receiving some future benefits and welfare, or as subjugation of the Others.
Personalism approach as an anthropological practice is aimed at the liberation of human personality, the return of its dignity. It effectively undermines the ideological principles of three great philosophical narratives of the eighteenth–twentieth centuries: the Enlightenment, Hegelianism and Marxism (understood as the initial ideological foundation of struggle of classes reflected in Das Kapital, much less as neo-Marxism of the mid-war time of the twentieth century). The roots of philosophical ideologising the humanity may be traced back to the Enlightenment ideological programme of the European civilisation. This programme contained a core task, to transform the man into the master and sovereign of nature. With several consecutive stages of its mutation, the Enlightenment ideological programme changed to “subdue thyself.”
However far Hegel or Marx might have stood from the Enlighteners, they all came together in their vision of the human personality as an absolute zero, a nonentity that surprisingly acquires features of a transforming force, on unifying itself with the self-similar entities, another human personalities zero-valued in themselves. We should not be amazed after all, therefore, that the American and the first European constitutions of the eighteenth – twentieth centuries, involved a number of philosophical and ideological provisions of the Enlightenment programme. Once formulated as “subdue the nature,” then “subdue and teach the savages,” this programme in our times transformed to the principle “subdue thyself in exchange of obtaining thy prize in … years.” This makes a personality a zero-valued nothingness, soulless instrument of the system.
Personalist thinkers outlined the philosophic, sociological and political steps that may lead to restoring the human’s personality freedom from the system administrative dominance and returning its high value to it. They stressed that this liberation may be effectively done by relying on the Christian understanding of human and reviving the ideals of spiritual unity and conciliarism. That led to the close integration of personalism social practices with Roman Catholicism in the twentieth – twenty first centuries.
The personalist programme can be regarded as an anthropological remedy against total instrumentalising the human beings, against transforming them to nonentities equal to each other in every aspect of their life. In personalism, the notion of human being is converted into the practice of existence as an human being, turns into a reflexive experience of finding ourselves by dint of the truly communicative existence, i.e. recognising the distinctive features and value of our neighbours and ourselves.
© 2019 Galyna A. Bozhok; Eugene I. Legach. Licensee The Beacon: Journal for Studying Ideologies and Mental Dimensions.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) that permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
