Theoretical and Methodological Principles of Defining "Profession" and "Transfession" Concepts: A Comparative Analysis

The idea of a contributing role of philosophical thinking, which affects emergence, development, and change in the essence of a professional activity, is suggested as a methodological background for studying the concept of a profession in the article. A profession is a social construct undergoing historical transformations relevant to the transformations of a dominant way of rational thinking, which philosophy regards as a tool for creating the social world and all its components. Thus, the metaphysically oriented classical philosophy, which firmly determines a strong correlation between philosophical knowledge and the key term arche, is just as firmly arranged by a social structure. The first theoretical and methodological principles for shaping the concept of a profession appeared under the influence of the ancient Greek Logos. The final formation of a profession as a social institution and a concept specifying a particular community of people is associated with rationalism and cultural interests during the Renaissance and the early modern period. Among the well-established characteristics, by which this or that type of activity is now associated with the concept of a profession, the authors specify the recognition of the status of a profession as inaccessible to all other types of activity and the closeness of an institutional organization that requires specific education and training and assumes greater efficiency in achieving benefits than other types of occupations - a useful product. Modern philosophy and its way of rational thinking, which is different from the classical one, imposes different demands on the sociocultural structures of the world and on the concept of a profession. The social world is no longer based on a central metaphysical structure. In this regard, the characteristics that defined a profession earlier disappear or become transformed into completely different ones: multidimensionality, interdisciplinarity, openness, communicativeness, digitalization, etc. The characteristics of a transfessional include, first of all, tolerance to changes, the ability to communicate, trans-fessional competence, the ability to take on any role in temporary professional teams, etc. A transfes-sional is a person who is always ready and able to create and transform themselves with respect to new professional requirements. Thus, transfessions replace professions under the influence of a different way of thinking, which suggests the change in knowledge and education as constitutive factors of a profession that construct its new - transfessional - essence. A profession loses the transparency of its own structure and acquires the characteristics of continuous communicativeness, multiplicity of goals, intrinsic unity of competencies and knowledge in a wide range of sciences, both natural sciences and the humanities.

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