The problem of human nature conservation as a new dimension of identity crisis

Philosophical anthropology traditionally understands human nature as persistent, unchanging features and properties inherent to man at all times, regardless of biological evolution and the historical process. Philosophers, focusing on the analysis of the social nature of man, its cultural conditioning, have developed a number of different interpretations of the concepts of the human essence. However, recent advances in science and technology allow directed transformation of what was seen as an invariant for millennia: the nature of man. In the context of industrial civilization society faces the problem of who man will be and whether man's inherent human nature will be an unchanged, unifluenced constant or it will transform. In connection with NBIC, technology and questioning about the prospects of a post-human future, the problem of human nature has acquired a moral and ethical, axiological aspect. In this case, an absolute duty is to preserve "the ontological idea of a human" (H. Jonas). It is important to understand the problem of human nature taking into account advances in technoscience and from the standpoint of the modern historical consciousness, including the idea of global evolutionism. NBIC technologies are not just another scientific and technical development, they "blow up" the world of human life, up to the transformation of the very nature of man, his identity. The article examines how to rethink the identity of man in connection with the problem of human nature conservation. Various interpretations of the concept "identity", its personal, social and cultural aspects are analyzed. The authors introduce an additional aspect: natural or ontological dimension of identity. It is the foundation of human self-identity allowing man to keep his "essence" in all transformations; it is the basis on which human evolution is built. The natural dimension of human identity is bound not to the substrate that determines the human, be it soul, mind or spirit, but to the function, to the form of activity man performs, to social practices built on the sense of dignity inherent to the individual. A qualitative change in the nature of man is not the way to improve his abilities, but a way to the destruction of the whole system "Man-Culture-Society".

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