The child as an «archetype», «prototype» and «assemblage point»

Philosophy «Problematization of the human: an ongoing project» (special issue)

Abstract

A new stage in the development of the humanities is largely connected with the understanding of the consequences of the «anthropological turn», the beginning of which is attributed to the 1960s-70s. Numerous discussions of this period led to the formation of new trends associated with the change of scientific paradigms and the transition to a post-non-classical interpretation of the «human phenomenon». The purpose of this article is to study the possible theoretical and methodological prospects that open up to philosophical anthropology due to the emergence of new explication models and new scientific lexicons. To achieve this goal, we chose the image of the Child, accumulating the most essential features of a person and a human being and interpreted metaphorically, as the starting point of the analysis. The Child is presented as an «anthropological constant» denoting a person’s ability to innovate and operate with imaginary phenomena endowed with the status of real ones. As an «anthropological constant», the Child acquires archetypal features that are significant for understanding the nature and meaning of any human activity and interpreting the processes of patterning human states. The approach developed in the article allows us to make several assumptions. First, the Child should be considered in the context of the drama of human existence, which consists in the infinite variability and fundamental incompleteness of the «human project». In this case, what comes to the fore is not the task of studying the boundaries of the human but the definition of the actual capabilities of a person. Secondly, the image of the Child embodies a state of transience, randomness. This requires a wider use of the method of multiple interpretations and post-phenomenological approaches within the framework of modern philosophical anthropology. Thirdly, the image of the Child embodies an existential conflict, which makes it possible to identify the complex dynamics of human states and describe them contextually.