In search of traces of the “man without essence”

Abstract

During the long period of its formation, philosophy in the face of great thinkers was developing the conceptual schemes to describe the realities of the world and to find in them the man. Lately in philosophy, there has been some tendency of separation from the main characters of this world pattern. First, we lost along with Nietzsche substance of God, then in the works of R. Bart died the author of the text, then M. Foucault announce the loss of the substance of man, and now we have to part with language.

In 2014 on the screens appeared film of French director J.-L. Godard "Goodbye to language", which found a broad response in the philosophical circles and resulted in publication of collected papers of contemporary Russian philosophers, discussing the theoretical concept of the "Goodbye to language". One of the main ideas of almost all the thinkers is this: we need the language to be among the others and to feel the reality, but not to be themselves. According to modern philosopher F.I. Girenok, this need is in reality associated with the lack of imagination that is the true essence of man, tracing his presence in the world. The philosopher emphasizes that the director managed to show a movie with no relation to reality, to what requires image, expression, instruction, and so frees us from language, from words, from symbolic nature in favor of imagination. Modern man is so sick of all constructs, which hung on him, he is already so removed from nature, stopped to hear it and now is ready to become like an animal that doesn't know the burden of the language and is not ashamed of his natural state.

However, will it be really the cure for modern man to return to nature, to leave the language and to refuse all bonuses of civilization? As the thinkers write, man cannot return to nature, for it is not dreaming, not imagining, but a movie is about it. All the authors emphasize that the film does not teach how to live, but encouraged to imagine and to think, for only philosophers can think in spite of reason, and only philosophers constantly need to say something new that hasn't been spoked, since thought is not a reflection of reality. Who lives in the world of things and of reality has no need to think, he has everything, because thought, especially philosophical thought, by its nature is always out of this world and in this sense it is crazy

Then how is it possible to find a person without a soul and essence? The person that abandoned the speech? How to detect the traces of man? Modern philosophical anthropology takes up this challenge – to find a human being, identify it and build a new anthropology, based on the current reality.

Such theoretical constructs have appeared today and began detecting traces of man. It is S. Horujy’s project of synergic anthropology "of human boundaries", with emphasis on the tradition of Hesychasm; V. Varava’s project "the man, inquiring God"; S. Smirnov’s "man of transition", where all around remain in the cultural pause, when there is nothing already and there is nothing yet; F. Girenok’s "autistic man" that frees my existence from the need to refer to another existence; V. Podoroga’s new "anthropology without man" where a person is detected only by the traces left in art, objects and texts; visual anthropology and other projects of the man without essence.

The analysis of these conceptions allows to say, that the reason of man is found in himself and not in the Other; this gives us opportunity to talk about non-linguistic human nature, because the language is to protect the inner world from the Other, and this is why the language loses its necessity. Therefore, if man does not need the Other to know himself, so goodbye for language, and we can find human traces only in the pre-literal.

An important merit of the philosophy of postmodernism is the ability to see the difference between homo pensantis and homo sapiens; a homo sapiens needs the language to articulate and organize the world, but the thought has completely different nature, some chaotic quality. However, the modern world needs order and significance, and therefore needs homo sapience, and not pensantis, so to find the man's trace is a challenging task.

If it is extremely difficult to find a new thought today, how else can we find human traces? By the opinion of the authors of the above-mentioned book, we can do it with the help of imagination and therefore all that it implies. It is the world of images and symbols, a world of literal and naive vision, of silence and pause.  These unmarked forms remind us of the presence of the human in man. Although in the modern world the culture dehumanizes man, creates the space of simulacra and of inner emptiness, naivety and literalness bring the human image and the human himself back.

Therefore, the speech, once emerged, on the one hand, have identified and named us, and on the other, gives us the ability to be hidden from the others, unspoken, hidden, because everything that happens to us is only an appearance of what we have inside. And the mission of philosophy now is not to be the final element of the world as Hegel taught, but to find traces of a homo pensantis in imagination, silence, symbol, thought and become a new spiritual and creative form of thinking and sense generating of man impossible in today's reality.