The Principle of Integrity as the Basis of Cultural and Personal Identity (A Bioethical Statement of the Problem)

The article considers the concept of integrity as a bioethical and, at the same time, cultural concept. Integrity is taken here not as an ontological or methodological principle, but as a cultural value, as a person’s prior belief that they are whole. The concept of integrity in Western societies is used to protect the personal identity not only of individuals, but also in relation to humanity as a species. Concurrently, modern culture, in addition to increasing humanization, is characterized by an anthropological crisis. Reality is significantly at variance with the system of principles and ideals officially declared by society. The article raises the problem of preserving integrity as an inherent characteristic of personal and cultural identity and the existential consequences associated with ignoring this problem. Modern Europeans meets all basic needs, while the level of existential anxiety is very high. Existential anxiety is directly related to the awareness of the finiteness of being and is experienced as a disintegration and loss of integrity. In this regard, it becomes clear that the twentieth-century philosophy is interested in psychiatry, and psychiatry is interested in philosophy, since the sick mind is a mode of existential disintegration of the mind itself. In this sense, the existential-phenomenological tradition can be of interest for both bioethics and cultural studies, bringing out the experience of integrity and loss of it in its theoretical and practical entirety. Using the example of oncological diseases and mental pathologies, the authors show that human psychophysiological health can be caused by factors of noogenic origin. It is concluded that today there is a need for interdisciplinary research that problematizes such concepts as integrity and self-identity based on the synthesis of cultural studies, bioethics, philosophy, on the one hand, and medicine and natural science, on the other.

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