On the question of the topicality of gender studies in philosophy

This article is devoted to the study of the specificity of conceptualization of the categories "male" and "female" in modern philosophy. In the article, modernity is seen as a unique combination of profound changes in the sphere of social life, the mechanisms of the functioning of public institutions, on the one hand, and fundamental mental schemes, on the other. Social metamorphoses of sex are one of the most acute issues of our time, and their emergence and dissemination correlates in the Western European tradition with the transformation of the ways of conceptualizing reality, deep thought patterns. In general, this transformation of the fundamental mental structures is commonly referred to in modern philosophy as the term "post-metaphysical thinking". The main feature of this type of thinking is the development of various strategies to overcome the traditional philosophical style, based on essentialism and dualism, operating binary oppositions. Discursive mobility, associated with the "melting" of the binary principle of the description of the world, society and man, is consonant with the change of reality itself, the transformation of the social order. In a special way this unique combination is revealed regarding the problematic of sex, which is a definite focus of metamorphosis. Obvious and irreversible mutations in the sphere of family and sexual relations seem to be accidental only in isolation from the context of profound metamorphosis in the ways of conceptualizing the world, society and man, as well as the changes in the ways of thematization of categories "male" and "female" that are closely intertwined with them. The study of the fundamental transformations of the ontological status of these categories in the context of changing philosophical paradigms can clarify the fundamental importance and the main meaning of those changes in the field of sex and sexual relations that cause so many questions and concerns on the part of both enlightened critics and ordinary contemporaries.

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