Orientation in Chronotope as an Element of Human Existence

The article aims to uncover the essence of orientation in chronotope (a subject's interaction with spatiotemporal surrounding environment). The concept of this phenomenon was introduced in philosophy by the Russian thinker of the first half of the twentieth century A.A. Ukhtomsky. The research is carried out on the basis of the chronotope theory of A.A. Ukhtomsky and M.M. Bakhtin. The theory expresses the interaction and unity of temporal and spatial characteristics of being, of the universe on the whole. The combination of analytical and hermeneutic methods became the methodological basis of the work. This combination made it possible to reveal and demonstrate the interrelation of chronotope and orientation in chronotope with fundamental ontological and epistemo-logical systems of categories. These systems were developed and substantiated in the European philosophical traditions, both classical (first of all, of the New Time) and post-classical (represented by K. Jaspers, M. Heidegger, J.-P. Sartre, the West European existentialists of the first and second half of the twentieth century, the contemporaries of Ukhtomsky and Bakhtin). The study resulted in revealing and describing the structure of orientation in chronotope, which is the most important component of human existence. Orientation in chronotope represents an ethically and existentially meaningful modus of anticipation, perception (reflection) and interaction of man with the surrounding reality and other individuals. The structure of the dialectic interrelation (orientation) of microchro-notope and macrochronotope includes horizontal and vertical levels where the former represents temporal (existential) stages of human self-formation. In these stages, it sequentially detects the surrounding spatiotemporal area as one's own living world (die Le-benswelt), the distant sphere of present being (das Dasein) and the existential sphere (die Existenz) which can appear in human existence. The second (vertical) level includes two constituent elements (negative anticipation and eventive chronotope) acting as the means of functional present orientation of man in the macrochronotope of surrounding reality. The concept of orientation in chrono-tope represents the dialectic interrelation of the internal sphere of man's existential self (das Selbstsein) and the external sphere of present being (macrochronotope, social chronotope). Their contrast cannot be removed and reveals the contradiction of an existential kind, determining the ethical problems of the chronotope concept.

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