Alienated nature of human essence as the main content of the civilization crisis

Philosophy

Abstract

The crisis state of the modern capitalist, global, ‘liquid’, neoliberal, etc. society (i.e. modern civilization) can be expressed in various aspects: economic, geopolitical, ecological, social-class, etc. However, all these aspects are only external manifestations, phenomena of a more fundamental problem — the crisis of human essence or, more specifically, its alienated nature. There are various approaches to understanding the human and its essence in modern philosophical literature. In this article, the author considers one of the versions of the Marxist representation of this subject, according to which the essence of the human is manifested in the mode of its existence, i.e. self-development through the transformation of all forms of matter. This method of the human’s production of its own life can be expressed in the form of a hierarchical structure of its essential attributes or forces. Such a plan of human essence is an abstract scheme that is modified in accordance with the concrete historical conditions of human existence, filling it with new content each time. Since the emergence of private property, classes and the state, the model of social development has been such that society as a whole develops due to the degradation of its individual members. This reaches its climax today, when the alienation of human from its generic essence, from its actual mode of existence turns it into a partial and one-dimensional. This process is understood by the authors as a crisis one since, apparently, it reveals a certain limit beyond which there takes place either the transition to a new model, where the development of each is a condition for the development of all, or — stagnation and destruction of the entire system.