A Philosophical Analysis of the Idea of the Duality of Human Existence

The article investigates the idea of the duality of human existence in philosophy. The relevance of the study is due to the emergence in the modern world of the phenomenon of artificial intelligence and the emergence, in this regard, of the problem of distinguishing between a human and an algorithm. The question arises: what indicates the phenomenon of a human? According to the author, if intelligence is a logical totality, then a human is spontaneity. The author investigates the specified idea of the duality of human existence on the material of the philosophies of F.M. Dostoevsky, R. Descartes, I. Kant, J. Derrida, M. Foucault, using a method based on the coincidence of the logical and the historical, as well as a comparative method. The author analyses Dostoevsky's The Double and concludes that duality for Dostoevsky occurs through the self of man, through their "I". To double is to go to oneself or to run away from oneself. The phenomenon of the double contains the key to Russian madness, the symbol of which is a holy fool: to be above and at the same time below oneself. Analysing Descartes's philosophy, the author comes to the conclusion that Descartes understands dualism of soul and body, sleep and wakefulness as duality. Turning to the dispute between Derrida and Foucault about the status of madness in philosophy, the author points out that these thinkers associate the phenomenon of duality with the difference between mind and madness. According to Foucault, if we question the integrity of the subject, recognise its duality, then philosophy should be concerned with a human. And this is a disaster for European philosophy, its fallling, according to Foucault, into an anthropological sleep. According to Derrida, if we do not accept the duality of the subject, that madness is part of the structure of thought, then philosophy will have to accept the presence of a human algorithm in the world. Analysing Kant's philosophy, the author draws attention to the difference between faceless reason and imagination. If faceless reason also refers to non-human forms of contemplation, then imagination is an exclusively human phenomenon. Kant speaks of the duality of the subject into the self that thinks and the self that contemplates itself. In conclusion, the author notes that, in Russian and European philosophy, the phenomenon of duality of human existence is understood differently. In the first case, we are talking about the self of man, in the second about the division into soul and body. When the sciences turn to the study of a human and their duality, a crisis of conceptual thinking is revealed. Conceptual thinking is possible about things, about objects. A human is not an object, but an attitude towards oneself.

Keywords

Authors

References