Economic theory, including political economy, to clarify the role of a person resorts to various characteristics: subject of productive forces and economic relations (production), labor force, personal factor of production, human capital, economic person, and the like. The searches of scientists last for several centuries; various theories have been created about the place of man in economic and social progress.
In Marxist political economy, despite the proclaimed thesis about man as the main productive force, political and economic problems, the laws of human development and his role in relations of economic property (except for the position, it is the subject of such relations) were practically not considered. Disclosure of the socio-economic essence of man, the role of man as a worker and man as an owner, the importance of economic thinking and the law of increasing needs makes it possible to understand that it is man who is the decisive driving force of socio-economic progress.
Socio-economic essence of man
The social essence of man.
Each person is a very complex system that combines earthly and cosmic forces, the natural and spiritual worlds, the genes of her ancestors and the gene pool of future generations, and the like. So, back in the 17th century. the Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens (1629-1696) connected human activity with the Cosmos; This idea was developed by the domestic scientist Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945) in the concept of the noosphere. Various aspects of man are studied by natural and social sciences and special scientific institutions. Philosophy offers the simplest generalized characteristic of a person, defining it as a biosocial and spiritual being, that is, a being in which the biological and social sides are contradictory, mutually conditioning, mutually exclusive, interpenetrating, etc., i.e. interact with each other. Therefore, the Ukrainian philosopher Grigory Skovoroda (1722-1794) distinguished between the internal (spiritual) and external (material) nature in man. Characterizing the essence of man, M. Tugan-Baranovsky called the human personality the supreme goal in himself.
Social essence of man- a complex of social activities based on preserving the positive aspects of modern economic man (a new type of worker and owner) in combination with his biological side.
Man as a biological being is a creation of God, which has been constantly affected by the influence of nature. It is endowed primarily with natural forces that are formed and reproduced in the labor process. Therefore, work from a physical point of view is the implementation of certain functions of the human body, each of which requires the brain, nerves, muscles, sensory organs, etc. Human reproduction involves the preservation and maintenance of the individual as a biological phenomenon.
People must also meet their environmental needs. Nature both produces and directly satisfies them. It is the fundamental basis for the physical, mental and emotional health of the individual and society as a whole. Ignoring the laws of nature worsens the ecological environment and deforms the personality. Thus, according to American scientists, in the United States, up to 9% of the population's mortality is associated with an increase in the content of harmful substances in the air. Loud noise (over 66 decibels) accelerates aging and shortens life expectancy by 8-12 years.
The scientific and technological revolution places increased demands on the natural side of man (his nervous system, sensory organs, psychology, etc.). In particular, the intensity of labor (primarily mental), emotional, nervous, and psychological stress on the human body are increasing. Since man is part of nature, it is necessary to take into account additional criteria for the humanization and greening of technology with anticipation of the immediate and long-term consequences of its impact on nature (surrounding forests, ground and surface waters, field productivity, air, possible changes in background radiation, thermal effect, chemical background, etc. .). When determining the living standard of the population, the state of the environment and the ecological situation should be taken into account. It is also necessary to develop an ecological culture and ecological thinking. Expenditures on environmental protection should become an integral part of the state's social expenditures, and broad sections of the population and political parties should be involved in the development of environmental policy.
Man as a social being is the totality of all social relations, the structure of which is determined by the structure of the socio-economic formation. This set includes economic (in the dialectical unity of technical-economic, organizational-economic relations and property relations), social, political, legal, national, cultural, spiritual and other relations.
With the expansion of the sphere of human activity, its essence is enriched and essential forces are more fully revealed. Therefore, in addition to a human worker, it must be a human owner, a human politician, a bearer of culture, spirituality, national spirit and energy of the people. These types of activities largely coincide with various aspects of determining the essence of property.
To implement progressive transformations in Ukraine, it is necessary to overcome the deep alienation of workers from economic property (including intellectual property), the labor process, its results, from the management of production and property (which generally means overcoming economic alienation), from class and human community (social alienation ), from political, legal power, from culture, appropriation of spiritual benefits, from the use of a comprehensive information support system. It is also necessary to overcome the alienation of a person from history (one’s country, people). Only under such conditions is it possible to expand the possibilities of a person’s self-realization, the full and free development of his physical, organizational and spiritual abilities.
Human nature can be considered as the totality of its needs and hobbies. The individual, satisfying his needs, reproduces himself as a social entity. The determining factor for a person is the satisfaction of the most basic economic needs: food, clothing, housing. On this basis, cultural, spiritual and other needs can be satisfied. In turn, social needs actively influence economic ones. Needs arise in the form of an objective goal, a specific human goal. Therefore, she sets a task for herself and strives to complete it. The socio-economic progress of society largely depends on the timely awareness by the majority of the population of new needs and their inclusion in practical activities. Thus, after the declaration of independence of Ukraine, the development of a powerful, economically independent state is a national necessity. Only on this basis can the living standards of the population be raised, national culture developed, and the like.
Historians Mikhail Grushevsky, Ivan Kripyakevich and others spoke about such features of the Ukrainian nation as common sense, the ability for introspection and self-criticism, optimism, spiritual, moral and cultural potential, intelligence, energy and enterprise, extreme love of freedom, etc. Without them, revival is impossible to mobilize the energy of the nation, the spirit of patriotism, etc., and therefore, build a powerful national economy and state. To achieve this, it is necessary to form a modern economic person, which combines the traits of a worker and the traits of an owner.
Social essence of man
Arisova Anastasia M-10-1
The definition of the essence of man is inseparable from disputes about his origin. The problem of man has been a subject of debate and a mystery that has worried the minds of sages, artists, thinkers, and scientists of all times. “What is a person?” was and still is one of the main questions of philosophy. Karl Marx, a German philosopher, considered the essence of man in the totality of social relations that form a person’s different attitude to the world in different historical periods.
Human nature is dual. Firstly, man is the result of biological evolution, and secondly, a product of the development of society. Man is a biological being, since he is part of living nature, his brain and body are the result of the activity of nature; a person has biological needs - to breathe, sleep, eat, etc., and also has instincts. Man is a social being, since he can suppress his instincts, he has articulate speech, the ability to think, abilities and skills that are formed in society. A person cannot live without society; he cannot imagine himself outside of it. That is, man is a biosocial being. It is physiological and psychological characteristics that influence the development of a person’s skills and abilities. However, every natural predisposition of a person is realized in social (public) circumstances. For the formation of a person as a member of society, the conditions in which it takes place are important.
Man as a personality. Social qualities and properties of a person are most often determined by the concept of “personality”. What is personality? Personality is an individual endowed with social qualities acquired in the process of socialization. A person is not born, but becomes one in society through interactions with other people through the receipt and acquisition of various social qualities.
In science, personality is considered from 2 sides: role expectations - what is expected from a particular role of an individual, and role behavior - what a person actually performs within the framework of his role. On the one hand, a person as an individual is considered by comparing him with the norms and rules established in society. On the other hand, personality is viewed through a set of roles. A person is capable and must perform different roles at the same time - for example, the role of an employee, a family man, a citizen, etc. A personality performs various actions, shows itself, and manifests itself in social actions. The set of roles (functions) and their implementation are associated with the social, social structure, and with the individual skills and qualities of the person himself. For example, under a clan system, relationships in a family require unconditional submission to elders and a strict delineation of economic functions associated with traditions and customs. And in modern society, family members are required to be ready for equal interaction, care, love, mutual understanding, etc.
In its role manifestations, the personality is formed, develops, improves, and changes. It is the person who has the personality, and not the personality itself, that loves, hates, gets angry, fights, is sad, acts, and yearns. Through the personality, only in his own way, forming his activities and relationships, the individual appears as a Man.
In addition to the external conditions of a person’s behavior in society, the implementation of his various social connections and the development of social qualities, a person’s self-awareness and self-realization are important.
Self-awareness is most often understood as a person’s complete understanding of himself as an individual, his meaning, his role in life and society. That is, a person is able to make his own decisions and enter into certain relationships with other people and nature. Self-realization is understood as the process of the most complete identification, development and implementation by a person of his personal capabilities and achievement of his goals. For example, Henry Ford, the legendary businessman of the 20th century, who was obsessed with the goal of creating a car accessible to everyone, and made his dream come true. Currently, the company he created is the fourth largest in the world in terms of car production over the entire period of its existence. Abraham Maslow, an American scientist, believed that the need for self-realization is one of the highest human needs.
This is a philosophical concept that reflects the natural properties and essential characteristics that are inherent in all people to one degree or another, distinguishing them from other forms and types of being. You can find different views on this problem. This concept seems obvious to many, and often no one thinks about it. Some believe that there is no specific entity, or at least that it is incomprehensible. Others argue that it is knowable and put forward a variety of concepts. Another common point of view is that the essence of people is directly related to the personality, which is closely intertwined with the psyche, which means that by knowing the latter, one can understand the essence of a person.
Key Aspects
The main prerequisite for the existence of any human individual is the functioning of his body. It is part of the natural environment around us. From this point of view, man is a thing among other things and part of the evolutionary process of nature. But this definition is limited and underestimates the role of the active-conscious life of the individual, without going beyond the passive-contemplative view characteristic of the materialism of the 17th and 18th centuries.
In the modern view, man is not just a part of nature, but also the highest product of its development, the bearer of the social form of the evolution of matter. And not just a “product”, but also a creator. This is an active being, endowed with vital forces in the form of abilities and inclinations. Through conscious, purposeful actions, it actively changes the environment and, in the course of these changes, changes itself. transformed by labor, it becomes human reality, “second nature,” “the world of man.” Thus, this side of being represents the unity of nature and the spiritual knowledge of the producer, that is, it is of a socio-historical nature. The process of improving technology and industry is an open book of the essential forces of humanity. Reading it, one can come to understand the term “essence of people” in an objectified, realized form, and not just as an abstract concept. It can be found in the nature of objective activity, when there is a dialectical interaction of natural material, creative material with a certain socio-economic structure.
Category "existence"
This term denotes the existence of an individual in everyday life. It is then that the essence of human activity is revealed, the strong relationship between all types of personality behavior, its abilities and existence with the evolution of human culture. Existence is much richer than essence and, being a form of its manifestation, includes, in addition to the manifestation of human powers, also a variety of social, moral, biological and psychological qualities. Only the unity of both these concepts forms human reality.
Category "human nature"
In the last century, nature and the essence of man were identified, and the need for a separate concept was questioned. But the development of biology, the study of the neural organization of the brain and the genome makes us look at this relationship in a new way. The main question is whether there is an unchanging, structured human nature, independent of all influences, or whether it is plastic and changing in nature.
The US philosopher F. Fukuyama believes that there is one, and it ensures the continuity and stability of our existence as a species, and, together with religion, constitutes our most basic and fundamental values. Another American scientist, S. Pinker, defines human nature as a set of emotions, cognitive abilities and motives that are common to people with a normally functioning nervous system. From the above definitions it follows that the characteristics of the human individual are explained by biologically inherited properties. However, many scientists believe that the brain only predetermines the possibility of developing abilities, but does not condition them at all.
"The Essence in Itself"
Not everyone considers the concept of “the essence of people” to be legitimate. According to such a direction as existentialism, a person does not have a specific generic essence, since he is an “entity in himself.” K. Jaspers, its largest representative, believed that sciences such as sociology, physiology and others provide only knowledge about some individual aspects but cannot penetrate into its essence, which is existence (existence). This scientist believed that it is possible to study the individual in different aspects - in physiology as a body, in sociology as a social being, in psychology as a soul, and so on, but this does not answer the question of what is the nature and essence of man , because he always represents something more than he can know about himself. Neopositivists are also close to this point of view. They deny that anything common can be found in the individual.
Ideas about a person
In Western Europe, it is believed that the works of the German philosophers Scheller (“The Position of Man in the Universe”) and Plessner “Stages of the Organic and Man,” published in 1928, marked the beginning of philosophical anthropology. A number of philosophers: A. Gehlen (1904-1976), N. Henstenberg (1904), E. Rothacker (1888-1965), O. Bollnov (1913) - dealt exclusively with it. The thinkers of that time expressed many wise ideas about man, which have not yet lost their defining significance. For example, Socrates urged his contemporaries to know themselves. The philosophical essence of man, happiness and the meaning of life were associated with understanding the essence of man. Socrates' call was continued with the statement: "Know yourself - and you will be happy!" Protagoras argued that man is the measure of all things.
In Ancient Greece, the question of the origin of people first arose, but it was often resolved speculatively. The Syracusan philosopher Empedocles was the first to suggest the evolutionary, natural origin of man. He believed that everything in the world is driven by enmity and friendship (hatred and love). According to Plato's teachings, souls live in the empyrean world. He likened it to a chariot, the driver of which is the Will, and the Feelings and Mind are harnessed to it. Feelings pull her down - to rough, material pleasures, and Reason - upward, to the awareness of spiritual postulates. This is the essence of human life.
Aristotle saw 3 souls in people: rational, animal and vegetable. The plant soul is responsible for growth, maturity and aging of the body, the animal soul is responsible for independence in movements and the range of psychological feelings, the rational soul is responsible for self-awareness, spiritual life and thinking. Aristotle was the first to understand that the main essence of man is his life in society, defining him as a social animal.
The Stoics identified morality with spirituality, laying a strong foundation for the idea of him as a moral being. One can recall Diogenes, who lived in a barrel, and with a lit lantern in the light of day, looked for a person in the crowd. In the Middle Ages, ancient views were criticized and completely forgotten. Representatives of the Renaissance updated ancient views, placed Man at the very center of the worldview, and laid the foundation for Humanism.
About the essence of man
According to Dostoevsky, the essence of man is a mystery that must be unraveled, and let the one who takes it up and spends his whole life on it not say that he spent his time in vain. Engels believed that the problems of our lives will be solved only when man is fully understood, suggesting ways to achieve this.
Frolov describes him as a subject as a biosocial being, genetically related to other forms, but distinguished due to the ability to produce tools, possessing speech and consciousness. The origin and essence of man are best traced against the backdrop of nature and the animal world. In contrast to the latter, people are seen as beings who have the following basic characteristics: consciousness, self-awareness, work and social life.
Linnaeus, classifying the animal world, included man in the animal kingdom, but classified him, along with apes, in the category of hominids. He placed Homo sapiens at the very top of his hierarchy. Man is the only creature that has consciousness. This is possible thanks to articulate speech. With the help of words, a person becomes aware of himself, as well as the surrounding reality. They are the primary cells, carriers of spiritual life, allowing people to exchange the content of their inner life with the help of sounds, images or signs. An integral place in the category of “the essence and existence of man” belongs to labor. The classic of political economy A. Smith, predecessor of K. Marx and student of D. Hume, wrote about this. He defined man as a “working animal.”
Work
In determining the specific nature of man, Marxism rightly attaches the main importance to labor. Engels said that it was he who accelerated the evolutionary development of biological nature. Man is completely free in his work, unlike animals, whose work is hard-coded. People can do completely different jobs and in different ways. We are so free to work that we can even... not work. The essence of human rights lies in the fact that in addition to the duties accepted in society, there are also rights that are granted to the individual and are an instrument of his social protection. The behavior of people in society is regulated by public opinion. We, like animals, feel pain, thirst, hunger, sexual desire, balance, etc., but all our instincts are controlled by society. So, work is a conscious activity acquired by a person in society. The content of consciousness was formed under his influence, and is consolidated in the process of participation in industrial relations.
Social essence of man
Socialization is the process of acquiring elements of social life. Only in society is behavior learned that is guided not by instincts, but by public opinion, animal instincts are curbed, language, traditions and customs are accepted. Here people learn the experience of industrial relations from previous generations. Since Aristotle, social nature has been considered central to the structure of personality. Marx, moreover, saw the essence of man only in social nature.
The personality does not choose the conditions of the external world, it simply always finds itself in them. Socialization occurs through the assimilation of social functions, roles, acquisition of social status, and adaptation to social norms. At the same time, the phenomena of social life are possible only through individual actions. An example is art, when artists, directors, poets and sculptors create it with their labor. Society sets the parameters for the social identity of the individual, approves the program of social inheritance, and maintains balance within this complex system.
Man in a religious worldview
A religious worldview is a worldview based on the belief in the existence of something supernatural (spirits, gods, miracles). Therefore, human problems are viewed here through the prism of the divine. According to the teachings of the Bible, which forms the basis of Christianity, God created man in his own image and likeness. Let's take a closer look at this teaching.
God created man from the dirt of the earth. Modern Catholic theologians argue that there were two acts in divine creation: the first was the creation of the entire world (Universe) and the second was the creation of the soul. The oldest biblical texts of the Jews state that the soul is the breath of a person, what he breathes. Therefore, God blows the soul through the nostrils. It is the same as that of an animal. After death, breathing stops, the body turns to dust, and the soul dissolves into air. After some time, Jews began to identify the soul with the blood of a person or animal.
The Bible assigns a large role to the spiritual essence of a person to the heart. According to the authors of the Old and New Testaments, thinking occurs not in the head, but in the heart. It also contains the wisdom given by God to man. And the head exists only for hair to grow on it. There is no hint in the Bible that people are capable of thinking with their heads. This idea had a great influence on European culture. The great scientist of the 18th century, researcher of the nervous system, Buffon, was sure that man thinks with his heart. The brain, in his opinion, is only the feeding organ of the nervous system. The New Testament writers recognize the existence of the soul as a substance independent of the body. But this concept itself is vague. Modern Jehovah's Witnesses interpret the texts in the spirit of the Old and do not recognize the immortality of the human soul, believing that after death existence ceases.
Spiritual nature of man. Concept of personality
Man is designed in such a way that in the conditions of social life he is able to transform into a spiritual person, into a personality. In the literature you can find many definitions of personality, its characteristics and attributes. This is, first of all, a creature that consciously makes decisions and is responsible for all its behavior and actions.
The spiritual essence of a person is the content of personality. Worldview occupies a central place here. It is generated in the process of the activity of the psyche, in which three components are distinguished: these are Will, Feelings and Mind. In the spiritual world there is nothing else except intellectual, emotional activity and volitional motives. Their relationship is ambiguous; they are in a dialectical connection. There is some inconsistency between feelings, will and reason. Balancing between these parts of the psyche constitutes a person’s spiritual life.
Personality is always a product and subject of individual life. It is shaped not only by its own existence, but also by the influence of other people with whom it comes into contact. The problem of human essence cannot be considered one-sidedly. Educators and psychologists believe that it is possible to talk about personal individualization only from the time when an individual’s perception of his Self is manifested, personal self-awareness is formed, when he begins to separate himself from other people. A person “builds” his own line of life and social behavior. In philosophical language this process is called individualization.
Purpose and meaning of life
The concept of the meaning of life is individual, since this problem is solved not by classes, not by work collectives, not by science, but by individuals, individuals. Solving this problem means finding your place in the world, your personal self-determination. For a long time, thinkers and philosophers have been looking for the answer to the question of why a person lives, the essence of the concept of “meaning of life,” why he came into the world and what happens to us after death. The call to self-knowledge was the main fundamental tenet of Greek culture.
“Know yourself,” Socrates urged. For this thinker, it is about philosophizing, searching for oneself, overcoming trials and ignorance (the search for what good and evil, truth and error, beautiful and ugly mean). Plato argued that happiness is achievable only after death, in the afterlife, when the soul - the ideal essence of man - is free from the shackles of the body.
According to Plato, human nature is determined by his soul, or rather soul and body, but with the superiority of the divine, immortal principle over the corporeal, mortal. The human soul, according to this philosopher, consists of three parts: the first is ideally rational, the second is lustful-volitional, the third is instinctive-affective. Human destiny, the meaning of life, and the direction of activity depend on which of them prevails.
Christianity in Rus' adopted a different concept. The highest spiritual principle becomes the main measure of all things. By realizing one’s sinfulness, smallness, even insignificance before the ideal, in the pursuit of it, the prospect of spiritual growth is revealed to a person, consciousness becomes directed towards constant moral improvement. The desire to do good becomes the core of the personality, the guarantor of its social development.
During the Enlightenment, French materialists rejected the concept of human nature as a combination of material, bodily substance and an immortal soul. Voltaire denied the immortality of the soul, and when asked whether divine justice exists after death, he preferred to maintain “reverent silence.” He did not agree with Pascal that man is a weak and insignificant creature in nature, a “thinking reed.” The philosopher believed that people are not as pitiful and evil as Pascal thought. Voltaire defines man as a social being striving to form “cultural communities.”
Thus, philosophy considers the essence of people in the context of universal aspects of existence. These are social and individual, historical and natural, political and economic, religious and moral, spiritual and practical reasons. The essence of man in philosophy is considered in many ways, as an integral, unified system. If you miss any aspect of existence, the whole picture collapses. The task of this science is the self-knowledge of man, his always new and eternal comprehension of his essence, nature, his purpose and the meaning of existence. The essence of man in philosophy, thus, is a concept that modern scientists also turn to, discovering its new facets.
Social essence of man
Determining the essence of man is inseparable from discussing the contradictions of his existence, his being. K. Marx saw the essence of man in the totality (ensemble) of social relations, forming one or another person’s attitude to the world in different historical eras. To understand how, when and why social relations arise, it is extremely important to once again turn to the genesis of the human race, to the problem of the emergence and consolidation of extrabiological forms of regulation of activity.
Played a huge role in this process language development as a specifically human channel of communication and the basis for successful subject-based practical activity. Without the names of objects and phenomena, without their designation, the development of production and communication and thereby the sociality of that “fabric” that united primitive people and separated “ours” and “strangers”, harmful and useful, sacred and ordinary, would have been impossible.
Natural development, which prepared the substrate for the emergence of a fundamentally new, supra-biological, supernatural method of human survival and improvement, which is called human culture. Its essence lies in the transmission through information channels of ways of communication between individuals, traditions, customs, rituals and everything that is expressed in words.
Sexual and food prohibitions (taboos) were probably the most ancient forms of regulation of human behavior, which acted as a kind of “guide to action” based on the experience of ancestors. Taboos were universal prohibitions that applied to all members of the clan - men and women, strong and weak, elders and children. It is important to note that for the development of man it was of great importance awareness of the fact of death, which can be seen from ritual burials already in the Paleolithic era. It is obvious that in the consciousness of primitive man, a division of the world into the real and otherworldly, earthly and supernatural world occurred very early.
In the formation of the social essence of man, he played a huge role labor as a purposeful human activity to transform nature in order to satisfy one’s needs. In a philosophical sense, the origin of labor and its initial evolution are interesting primarily because in this process the basis for the collective interaction of people and the socio-psychological stereotypes of their behavior were laid. It is clear that in the very early stages the natural appropriation of the fruits of the earth dominated, although nature was already acting as a condition for emerging production, as an arsenal of means of labor. The first type of relationship between our ancestors and nature can be described as use. It also brought to life the first primitive forms of awareness of such phenomena as property and power.
The beginnings of future property arose, apparently, as a certain form of relations between “we” and “they” (i.e., another tribe) regarding food sources. The next step, obviously, was associated with the development of ownership, i.e. long-term purposeful use, for example, of fire as the property of the entire clan community or food supplies, a “common cauldron”. Finally, with the development of production and the establishment of regular exchanges of labor products with neighboring communities, the phenomenon of managing the results of production appears, from which trade grows. This process especially accelerated during the so-called “Neolithic Revolution”, with the transition to agriculture, cattle breeding and crafts.
The essence of a person can also be seen not only in social relations, but also in the unique mental and spiritual organization of a person, which will be discussed further.
The social essence of man - concept and types. Classification and features of the category “Social Essence of Man” 2017, 2018.
Question 48. Anthroposociogenesis, its essence, main stages and development trends.
Anthroposociogenesis- the historical process of transformation of a person as an anthropos, a biological being, into a member of society, a bearer of its basic, primarily production, moral and aesthetic relations.
One of the aspects of interaction between society and nature is anthroposociogenesis - the origin of man and society. In the 19th century, the doctrine of anthropogenesis was firmly associated with the name of Charles Darwin. The main conclusion of Charles Darwin is the genetic relationship of man with animals, therefore, the natural origin of man in the process of evolution, the main mechanisms of which are heredity and natural selection carried out in the process of the struggle for existence.
The actual emergence of a person with thinking and speech, capable of working together with his own kind, was considered by F. Engels, a supporter of the labor hypothesis of the origin of man and society. In his works “Dialectics of Nature”, “The Role of Labor in the Process of Transformation of Ape into Man”, Engels suggested the existence of a complex pendulum-like movement from biological to qualitatively new, social patterns and back in the process of anthropogenesis. Due to changes in natural living conditions, future man began to more often use natural products in his activities - stones, sticks; he was forced to straighten up for better orientation in the changed terrain; forced to seek protection from the cold due to climate change. These prerequisites stimulate the development of simple work skills, which, in turn, lead to changes in the structure of the hand. Freed from participation in movement, the hand became an organ and at the same time a product of labor. With the help of improving the hand, it became possible to unprecedentedly expand the range of objects with which one can influence nature.
The “beginnings” and “ends” of the presented version of anthropogenesis are relatively clear. At the beginning of evolution is an animal whose biological adaptation mechanisms can no longer cope with changed environmental conditions. At the end - a person who has consciousness and speech, who experiences an irresistible need to live in a team, who makes tools.
From the point of view of Marxism, man is a subject of the historical process, the development of material and spiritual culture on Earth, a biosocial being (a representative of the species homosapiens), genetically related to other forms of life, separated from them thanks to the ability to produce tools, possessing articulate speech, thinking and consciousness , moral and ethical qualities. Marxism connects the understanding of the essence of man with the social conditions of his functioning and development, with conscious activity, during which man turns out to be both a prerequisite and a product of history. According to Marx’s definition, “the essence of man is not an abstraction inherent in the individual. In its reality, it [essence] is the totality of all social relations.” Emphasizing the importance of social connections and human characteristics, Marxism does not at all level individual individuals, does not belittle their specific qualities as individuals endowed with their inherent character, will, abilities and passions. On the contrary, he pays attention to general patterns in order to highlight and make these personal qualities of people more clearly visible and scientifically explainable. Addressing the social essence of man, Marxism at the same time takes into account the complex interactions of social and biological factors and establishes the primacy of the former. Man as a biosocial being does not have a “dual nature”. Biological factors are important, acting, however, in a “sublated form”, through mediation and transformation by factors of social order. Individual and historical development of a person is the process of appropriating and reproducing the sociocultural experience of humanity, the “absolute movement of becoming” (Marx) of the human in man. Marxism rejects biologizing concepts of man, which are generated, in particular, with references to genetics. He connects human development with social progress towards a reasonable and humane society, in which complete and comprehensive freedom. the development of each individual, all members of society becomes an “end in itself.”
Thus, a person is not just a rational living being, but a being that is formed only in social, socio-cultural conditions. Man is characterized by a dual, biosocial nature: he has characteristics that, on the one hand, are inherent to him as a biological species, and on the other, are born and change during the development of society. Moreover, its biological properties are only the initial prerequisites under which a specific way of life of a person unfolds as a member of society, creator and bearer of culture.