2020/2, стр. 154 - 161

GENDER AND EXISTENTIAL DIMENSIONS OF MAN IN THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATION AND PHILOSOPHICAL EDUCATION

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Abstract. The article analyzes the gender and existential dimensions of man in the age of globalization and their reflection in philosophical education. Philosophical education aims to actualize criticality, creativity, humanism – a philosophical worldview that becomes a counteraction to any consciousness manipulation. It is proved that philosophical education in a democratic society is always a science – teaching and mastering philosophical knowledge is necessarily supplemented by philosophical creativity.

The answer to the challenges of gender innovation and transhumanism is, above all, teaching and research in the field of philosophical anthropology, which becomes a meta-anthropology and promotes the concepts of gender partnership and androgynism

Keywords: globalization; philosophical education; gender; gender partnership; androgynism; philosophical anthropology; meta-anthropology

Globalization is a complex and ambiguous process. At the same time, it is a deeply natural process, that with necessity changes the existence of the modern man. One can not but agree with Academician V.P. Andrushchenko, who writes: “Globalization forms a new era of interaction of nations, economic and political systems, and people. It alters the concept of “national borders”, significantly broadens cultural and informational contacts between peoples and states ... “ (Andrushchenko, 2009: 7).

It is obvious, that globalization affects the specifics of philosophical education and science. Especially it concerns existential and gender dimensions, because the specificity of these dimensions forms the worldview of personality, which in its turn influences his/ her behavior and communication between individuals, and affects social, cultural and political processes.

The existential dimensions of globalization are the dimensions of new senses of human being that arise during the meeting and synergy of people of different mentalities. Accordingly, the existential dimension of globalization is determined by its multicultural character. At the same time, this dimension is predetermined by the transhumanist and postanthropological processes of our time, when science promises a radical healing of the human body through the organ transplantation and the prolongation of life based on capabilities of artificial intelligence. A new ethics of attitude towards life and death appears (Mineva, 2009: 283 – 285).

As a result, man does not already perceive his/ her end of life as tragic – on the contrary, it opens up the possibility of acquiring a renewal of corporeality, or even acquiring it in new, artificial forms in which the nature of man as a carrier of sex is completely changing – the qualities of a man and a woman. This issue has been deeply comprehended in the works of Yu. Habermas and F. Fukuyama (Habermas, 2004; Fukuyama, 2004).

The gender dimension of globalization is, in fact, a dimension of gender innovation, when the primordial roles of men and women change in both social and sexual life. Under the influence of transnational corporations, strange changes are taking place: women masculinize, and men feminize, we see more and more strong, successful, aggressive women, and weak, sensual and sentimental men, oriented not to social success, but to privacy, shopping and consumption. So, men show soulfulness and compassion, and women show a desire for self-realization and leadership in those professions that have traditionally been considered masculine.

Let us dwell upon the gender context of philosophical science and education, which has recently become increasingly relevant. This is, firstly, due to the presence of men and women in the modern educational process, both at the level of teachers and at the level of students, that means practice of gender equality in education, and secondly, the process of gender innovation, which now sounds globally.

Indeed, the gender aspect of culture in general becomes extremely relevant, first of all, due to the woman’s appearance in the space of culture and civilization, who is seeking to be realized in all manifestations of social life. This raises fundamental meaningful questions for students, which the teacher must reasonably answer. They are the following: why so many socially successful men and women are internally lonely? Should the family and the birth of children be the main value in the life world of a woman? How should a man behave in the situation, when his wife has realized to a greater extent and accordingly earns more? How to be a woman if her husband interferes with her professional realization, demanding only to be a housewife, “the mother of his children”? At the same time, new questions have arisen recently: to what extent is it permissible to strive for relations with one's own sex (the same sex) – even till get married? What is the norm in contemporary culture, and what is the pathology in gender relations? These questions are most relevant to such philosophical discipline as philosophical anthropology, which studies human nature, its evolution, and its limits. Answering these questions, philosophical anthropology becomes a meta-anthropology as a philosophy of gender – goes beyond the patriarchal approach to man; however, it goes beyond the feminist approach, moving from the concept of gender equality to the concept of gender partnership. Let's try to analyze this in more detail.

In the field of philosophical anthropology, there are a number of researchers who believe that the achievement of gender equality is held back by gender stereotypes that restrain the realization of personality. And, above all, it concerns women. For example, there are stereotypes that women cannot serve in the military, be engaged in politics, be scientists, artists, and so on. But, if the woman is able to overcome gender stereotypes, she can realize the most intimate dreams of professional career. This is a positive aspect of the idea and practice of gender equality. Negative is the masculinization of women, they lose their femininity - the capacity for love and compassion. So, loneliness – is the result of over-zealous overcoming of gender stereotypes. Of course, gender stereotypes can inhibit the development of a man's personality, leading to play alien roles for them and the destruction of relations with a loved one, but in a patriarchal civilization, women suffer more from them.

Therefore, it is important to comprehend the marge we are no longer talking about stereotypes, but about the archetypes of male and female – the foundations on which human being is built, and “overcoming” of which destroys human nature. At the biological level, the archetypes of male and female reveal themselves in the male and female sexuality and the peculiar will manifestation to propagation, that define the images of a father and a mother, at the existential level, and they manifest themselves as spirituality and soulfulness – deep manifestations of manhood and femininity. Thus, soulfulness means the capacity for love and compassion, the experience of the self-worth of the present. Spirituality is correlated with the deep manifestations of the male principle – the orientation to the future, the desire for freedom, even in spite of love.

The main sense of gender equality is that each person must become holistic personality, harmoniously combining spirituality and soulfulness. Such a personality can be called androgynous. Androgynous personality strives for equality between men and women not for the sake of equality but for the unity of freedom and love. Equality is not a goal for him / her, but a means. Moreover, the androgynous personality does not deny his/her biological sex, on the contrary, enhances his /her fruitful manifestations.

But we can assume, that for many women it is more constructive to move from femininity-soulfulness to masculinity as spirituality But for most men, perhaps, is the most natural is the path from spirituality to soulfuness. In order not to pay by loneliness for success in the profession, both men and women need to move from gender equality to gender partnership and see the beauty of relationships in this.

Man is able to hear and listen, to see a person in the Other, and is ready for cooperation and co-creation in the gender partnership. Therefore, gender partnership is a life strategy of a man and a woman when relations with the opposite sex are based on understanding and tolerance. Gender partnership frees the individual from the endless struggle for power, revenge, and revenge against the opposite sex, opening fruitful interaction.

Achieving gender partnership requires a very dicult path to overcome selfcenteredness, self-pity, and ruthlessness for the Other.

Relations between a man and a woman need to be brought to partnership, because all the fruitful tendencies in the modern world are characterized by orientation of humanity to communicative openness, dialogue, tolerance as the most important human values, overcoming alienation and existential loneliness. It is only possible to solve the problem of the partnership interaction when we find out the question about the specifics of partnership interaction of a man and a woman, which is a specification of the question of the deep, ontological sense of sex. We can not but agree with M. Berdiaiev, who rightly states that "a man is only a sex, a half, he is the product of world lack of unity ... And a woman is a sex, a half" (Berdiaev, 1989: 159), and therefore, the meaning of sex in creating a new integrity. M. Berdiaiev sees the overcoming of sex through the armation of a new holistic personality, and afterwards – the connection with another holistic individuality through love-androgyny, which overcomes sexual division. Based on this M. Berdiaev’s approach, we can logically assumes that gender partnership in its highest forms is a co-creation of a man and a woman, which reveals and enhances the self-realization of each of them.

We find another position in O. Weininger’s views. The scientist thinks, that productive unity of sex is not necessary, moreover, it is not possible. In the book “Sex and Character” (Weininger, 1992), he attributes to the masculine principle everything positive and valuable, while the feminine is only a reflection and shadow of the masculine one. O. Weininger is one of the philosophers, who deliberately posits a position of contempt for women that impedes gender partnership. If this neglect exists on the subconscious and contextual level of most thinkers of the patriarchal age (for example, in Freud's and his school), but it is on the surface in O. Weininger's texts. This author consistently posits that other patriarchal thinkers had at the level of premonition – the feminine is secondary to the masculine.

Feminist views on gender correspond patriarchal ones. Feminist theories attempt to lift a woman from her knees and give her equal rights with her husband. Some authors do this rather neurotically, but a certain category of researchers conducts a well-considered and correct analysis of the state of women in society. So, we find interesting reflections on the gender and the difference in the psychological development of men and women in the work of the American anthropologist and psychologist C. Gilligan “In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development” (Gilligan, 1992: 352 – 371). The author is convinced that men have a special morality of justice, while women have a morality of love and care, which determines the specificity of being in society, both men and women.

In addition to the patriarchal and feminist approaches to gender, there is an androgynous approach (Khamitov, 2014: 12 – 13), which, while developing the approaches outlined above by M. Berdiaiev, offers a concept of gender that goes beyond both patriarchal and feminist attitudes. “The essence of the androgynousanalytical approach lies in recognizing not only the equality of men and women, but also in the postulation of the need for their partnership at the psychological, social and existential levels”.

In the androgynous analysis, the key concept is existential androgynism (Khamitov, 2014: 431 – 432), which describes the dynamic integrity of the human personality and the relationships between individuals through the harmonious growth of both male and female origins of human being. It is important to note, that androgynism, in contrast to gender partnership, means a man-woman interaction based on love, not just friendship and tolerance. However, the path to androgynism in the modern world is possible only through gender partnership that overcomes the negative psychological, social, and existential consequences of gender equality.

In order to be aware of the multi-level interaction in gender partnership, it is advisable to refer to the meta-anthropology, which has been distiguished within the framework of meta-anthropology as the philosophical basis of androgynous analysis – the philosophy of the ordinary, frontier and metafrontier dimensions of male and female being. Such an address will allow us to specify the strategy data, and therefore more specifically to see the versatility and collision of the ways of acquiring a gender partnership.

In the ordinary level of being, where man is governed by the will to selfpreservation and propagation, the gender relations are biult on the model “I – It” or “I – Object”. Therefore, ordinary being necessarily creates manipulation of one gender by another. Existentially, in the ordinary being of life every person feels his/ her dissociation, sexual alienation. In this dimension, the woman feels that she is a woman, not a personality, and the man focuses on his masculine role. Respectively, physical and social qualities of a person are actualized, but not personal, and interests of the generation, not persons are cultivated.

In the frontier being of man, the will to power causes the limit to the manipulation of one sex by another. And only on the path to power the existential enmity between a man and a woman becomes the most painful. The alternatively will to power – the will to cultural creation – in the frontier being directs the individual to produce artifacts. But, the culture artifacts , created by them, like a wall, separate them. Herewith, seclusion has positive dimension, that is – man’s private being is profoundly actualized.

In the meta-frontier level of being (Khamitov, 2019: 186 – 271), where human is directed by the will to love, freedom and tolerance, there is a truly existential, not instinctive or formal, union of male and female sexes in love. A woman and a man as biological beings, developing psychological and existential dimensions of sex, acquire holistic personality, and form an androgynous unity, which is not a symbiotic alliance, but a creative and personal union of two holistic personalities. This is the essence of the strategy of existential androgynism, or the strategy of gender actualization, which "implies two dimensions of it – personal androgynism, which means the inner integrity, the integrity of spirituality and soulfulness in man, and communicative androgynism – not only the inner integrity of each person, but also the integrity of the beauty of the relationship between men and women” (Krylova, 2011: 274).

The strategies of gender partnership and androgynism make it possible to actualize the negative effects of both gender equality, and the transformation of gender identity, that is why they are the most important subjects of philosophical anthropology nowadays.

A very important subject of modern philosophical education and philosophical anthropology are gender education strategies, that are capable of both humanizing and dehumanizing education in general, and philosophical education in particular.

In modern education archetypal strategy is the masculine or patriarchal one of the teacher's personality. So, the teacher in the educational process uses the subordination, that forms the basis of relationships in the male world. Therefore, it is advisable to call such a strategy masculine subordination. Such a strategy has its positive and negative features. Indeed, subordination in education is a prerequisite for effective learning, but firstly, it is insucient, and secondly, beyond a certain boundary, it leads to treat Other as an object.

Recently, a co-ordinating educational strategy, which in the context of our study, could be called feminine-co-ordinating, has become increasingly widespread. The given strategy of the teacher's personality also has its positive (flexibility, tolerance) and negative (lack of strategics, firmness) features, and is also a necessary but insucient condition for effective learning.

Is it possible to synthesize masculine subordination and feminine-co-ordinating education strategies, that combine all of their positive features? In the context of the above, it can be defined as androgynous (androgynous and holistic) or humanistic. Such a strategy involves going beyond the monologue of the educational process into a co-operative dialogue with students and postgraduates.

Accordingly, we are talking about an androgynous personality in the educational process, that is first of a holistic personality, and who harmoniously combined the spiritual and soulfulness principles – deep masculinity and femininity. The integrity of androgynous personality determines his/ her creative nature. Androgynous personality is a creative personality. But this personality is directed not to any creativity, but to androgynous creativity – the creation of wholeness in the human being as the beauty of actions and relationships (Krylova, 2009: 103), the creation of the unity of spiritual and soulfulness principles.

Such a personality, who is aimed at spiritual and soulfulness development, is an alternative to the posthuman – the main concept and image of transhumanism, a being, that overcomes a person through body metamorphoses, that go not from the inside, but from the outside. This can deeply automate and technologize not only the physicality of a person, but also his/her consciousness, causing alienation of consciousness from spirituality and soulfulness. On the other hand, the androgynous personality is the result of immanent development as self-actualization, which leads to the actualization of the beauty of relations with the Other – to co-creation with the Other. An important result of the study of philosophical anthropology at the university is the formation of such androgynous personality in the diversity of the beauty of actions and the beauty of relations with the world.

Conclusion

Drawing a conclusion, let us turn to philosophical education in general and ask the important question: what is the fundamental importance of philosophical education for students who are non-philosopher? There are at least three answers to this question.

– Philosophical education shapes the culture of thinking of any specialist.

If philosophy is not a compulsory subject at the universities of Ukraine, we can expect a decline in the intellectual level of students within a year. And this means, that students will lose the ability to truly master the current level of special disciplines. An important manifestation of a culture of thinking is critical thinking that is extremely relevant in the context of a permanent information war. Without critical thinking, the university graduate will become a puppet of domestic populist politicians and foreign propaganda machine.

– Philosophical education actualizes creativity – the ability to solve problematic issues by acting in a flexible and non-standard way.

Without creativity, which is actualized by philosophy, the graduate will only repeat the learned algorithms and skills, he / she will be incapable of taking innovative solutions, without which it is impossible to imagine a specialist in today's changing world with a very high level of competition.

– Philosophical education shapes moral culture.

Philosophical disciplines, on the one hand, and philosophy, on the other, are the sources of the students' spiritual values and moral consciousness. This means that in the process of philosophical education, non-philosopher students are aware of the depth of responsibility for their actions in the profession and beyond, gaining a spiritual experience of humanism, which later becomes a their practical experience.

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