Aesthetic-anthropological aspect of sensemaking in the genesis of human essence

Abstract

The article follows the aesthetic-anthropological line of anthropogenesis. The author combines both ontological and gnoseological aspects of analysis. On one hand, the subject of the research is itself the course of anthropogenesis which has fixed the development-becoming of the human phenomenon and the human essence under the influence of aesthetic factors in history. On the other hand, the term aesthetic anthropology defines the development-becoming of human and humankind's capability to know oneself through different forms of aesthetic experience. The author draws on the assumption that unlike the entire range of natural, biological and species diversity of the animal world that finds its temporary completeness in each case of certain species, the process of anthropogenesis is still taking place. Rather than by the natural factors, its infinity and its openness to the future are mainly provided by social and intellectual activity, which is embodied and depictured in creative achievements. The human phenomenon and the human essence still remain in the situation of highly dynamic and controversial development-becoming, wherein the factor of an inevitable final limit and its recognition is absent. The author establishes historic and philosophic grounds, philosophic scale and cognitive role of aesthetic anthropology. He suggests, studies and proves the defining impact and orientation which the aesthetic factors, mainly art, have on the shaping and development-becoming of the essential characteristics of human way of being. In history, as in the modern world, art is considered to be an irremovable element of the self-knowledge process; it is art that demonstrates the principle of “mirroring self-consciousness” and acts exactly as that mirror in which one recognizes and cognizes oneself, one's Self. It is by the means of art that we model, colour, sound, delineate, depicture, construct, embody, figurate, think up, contrive and invent the sought harmony of human existence, the spatial and temporal organization of human form of harmony as a whole. The article shows how art helps one to progress on the way of self-improvement without interruption and more or less successfully, using the means of self-creation.