Editorial. Human Identity

• Authors: Czarnocka Małgorzata , Brown Charles , Tajsin Emily
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

From antiquity till modernity the problem of man has frequently been re-duced to the problem of human nature, i.e., the quest to identify and clarify the fixed and innate essence or defining characteristic of human beings. Numerous schools of contemporary philosophy undermine this traditional reduction of human identity to a common nature (essence) either by neglecting essentialism or, more frequently, weakening it. By rejecting the conviction that human nature is the only source of human identity and thereby removing the earlier held specificity of human nature new approaches to the problem of human identity became open. In those conceptions viewing human identity as a personal or social construction human nature ceased to be regarded as the exclusive source of human identity, i.e. as the only base from which all that is human emerges. These images of human being see the traditional focus on human nature as radically incomplete. To be human is to be engaged with constructing a human, especially a human self, i.e., to become a human self, person, individual, and member of community. The sources and materials needed to construct and real-ize a human are found in the natural and social world surrounding any individu-al person. Human identity maintains itself in a dialectical tension with its surrounding worlds. Thus, weakened essentialism maintains that human identity is made possible and constrained by both human nature and the culturally constructed and inter-subjective worlds in which humans are thrown. The presupposition of this con-ception of man may lead to two different conclusions: 1) in becoming human, a person absorbs elements alien to his individual self in the course of his exist-ence, so in the process of becoming human one’s primitive I is changed and even alienated by the world; and 2) particular humans are only partially individ-ual and autonomous since all are shaped and constructed within the parameters of natural and cultural history. On this view human nature becomes a set of innate—biological or other—predispositions, abilities or powers in the Kantian sense that are open to differ-ent realizations. In consequence of adopting the above-sketched presuppositions, the contemporary ways of investigating the problem of human identity largely abandon or ignore the idea of an innate fixed non-changeable human essence. Instead they search for human identity—a non-separable union of hu-man possibilities and their realizations. They hope to reveal what had been con-cealed by the focus on human nature, i.e., the diversity and totality of human becoming—becoming human. The problem of human being is replaced with the problem of human becoming. Thus, in contemporary philosophy human identity is mainly revealed by investigating the manifold spheres of human ac-tivities—the worlds of cognition, morality, values, religion, society, culture, as well as humanity’s immersion in and engagement with the more-than-human world. The idea of this Dialogue and Universalism issue, devoted to the problem of human identity, follows the above-sketched attitude. The papers included in the issue investigate human identity by examining various spheres of human activi-ties that are its manifestations. We would like to mention three papers demonstrating how cognitive repre-sentation, i.e. a connection between human cognition and the world, can be a promising explanative tool (not committed into copy theory of knowledge) if treated in non-standard ways. Two of them (authored by Enidio Ilario, Alfredo Pereira Jr., Valdir Gonzalez Paixão Jr., and by Małgorzata Czarnocka) take an inspiration from Ernst Cassirer’s conception of symbolic forms. The papers authored by Charles Brown, Małgorzata Czarnocka, Stanisław Czerniak, Debamitra Dey Marie Pauline Eboh, Jean-François Gava, Manjulika Ghosh, Leepo Modise, Spyros P. Panagopoulos, and Vasil Penchev are an In-ternational Society for Universal Dialogue legacy. They were submitted to the 10th ISUD Congress (Craiova, Romania, 2014).

• Publisher: Instytut Filozofii i Socjologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk; Fundacja Filozofia Na Rzecz Dialogu
• Journal: Dialogue and Universalism
• Year: 2016
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 5-6

Contributors

author

Czarnocka Małgorzata

• Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, ul. Nowy Świat 72, 00–330 Warszawa, Poland

author

Brown Charles

• Emporia State University

author

Tajsin Emily

• Department of Philosophy, 420066, Krasnoselskaya, 51. Kazan, Tatarstan, Russia