2022/1, стр. 51 - 60

THE CHOICE OF LOVE AND THE NUMINOUS: EXISTENTIAL AND GENDER CONTEXTS

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We are accustomed to seeing love as a given or an element that bursts into ordinary life. For us, love can exist from birth as something unconditional (maternal love), be the result of socialization and upbringing (love for the Motherland, the people, humankind), or it can appear as an arrow piercing the heart (erotic love). Therefore, it seems that love comes to us from outside, and is not chosen. However, the analysis of human existence in any epoch shows that in love, a conscious choice of personality is also possible, which can be strengthened or inhibited by social, cultural and psychological factors.

The choice of love is quite obvious in the relationship between a man and a woman in erotic love. And here the numinous is manifested to the greatest extent – the element of individual and collective unconscious, which combines the horrible, the sacred and the sublime. Meeting with the numinous significantly affects the constructiveness or destructiveness of the choice of love as the choice of a partners. In a relationship with our partner, “loneliness together”, alienation or aggression is possible, and there can be co-creative interaction, when each of the partners takes responsibility for the life of a loved one and forms a common existential space.

The choice of love occurs differently in different existential states and dimensions, and therefore the analysis of such a choice requires the use of methodological capabilities of metaanthropology as a philosophy of ordinary, borderline and transcendent human existence (Khamitov 2019). The interaction of consciousness and unconsciousness in the process of choosing love leads us to psychoanalysis, especially to the psychoanalysis of C. Jung, who widely uses the concept of “numinous” (Jung 2018).

Love is the existential core of human being, because its presence affects almost all life aspects. We are talking about Love in general, including self-love, erotic and overerotic love. Nowadays for a person, the fundamental problem is the choice of love in a gender dimension, because the development of the personality, family and society as a whole depends on the fruitful or the fruitless choice of love. The key here is the awareness of the difference between the states of infatuationand love.

Many philosophers have studied the theme of love as the highest value of a man, and a significant number of authors have explored the theme of choice. However, practically no one combined these two concepts into one phrase “choice of love”. The results of the analysis of the use of the concepts of “choice” and “love” have already been published by one of the authors of this article.

Among the publications published in Western publications, the theme of love appears in the context of choice-love as a choice of partner and a form of love, mostly in a sexual context: heterosexual or homosexual. Brazilian researchers M. Pignataro, T. Feres-Carneiro, R. Mello emphasize the importance of choosing an object in a love relationship in the framework of intersubjectivity and “interpsychicity”, the latter of which is presented as the quality of the unconscious, which creates problems and problems: “Human relationships are a constant problem in a couple's life” (Pignataro & Feres-Carneiro & Mello 2019, 43).

G. Gul, S. Emre, Y. Cansu, H. Cindy (Gul & Emre & Cansu & Cindy, 2018) considered the choice of partner in the context of compromises. B. Kelly (Kelly 2018) analyzed the difference between love and delusion. J. Bandasak distinguishes love in the context of changes in oneself and perspectives in life that constitute narrative identity: "How a love story varies is dependent on changes of the self and perspectives in life, which comprise a narrative identity" (Bandasak 2021). U. Carlsson insists that modern philosophers do not take into account the fact that the psyche is based on “folk metaphysics”, and that it is from it that love originates, as a result of which the researcher rejects the rationalist point of view on this issue. “I argue against the intellectualist view of love according to which we (must) love for reasons so that love is rational” (Carlsson 2018).

The existential multidimensionality of love is explored in the works of V. Turenko and T. Kuchera. V. Turenko emphasizes the “two-vector” love and tenderness, which is expressed in the interaction of the pair “I – You” (Turenko 2019). T. Kuchera considers love as freedom and readiness to act (Kuchera 2019).

Despite a wide range of studies of love, almost none of the scholars combined the concepts of “choice” and “love” into a collocation. At the same time, the question of the choice of love, especially between a man and a woman, deserves a thorough study.

In our opinion, the lack of a complete and comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon of the choice of love in modern philosophical-anthropological and psychoanalytic discourse is largely due to the fact that researchers have not considered love and its choice in the context of such a phenomenon of the unconscious as the numinous. In the context of the analytical psychology of C. Jung the numinous means the state of encounter of the personality with the archetypal transcendent meanings of the collective unconscious, which are capable of changing our worldview in the existential space of admiration and horror. The numinous can be actualized by the encounter with love and even the very expectation of love. It has a profound effect on the formation of worldview when choosing love.

The purpose of this article is to study the influence of the numinous as an existential state and the dimension of the collective and the individual unconscious on the choice of love in the relationship between man and woman. Thus, we will carry out a philosophical analysis of the choice of love in philosophical-anthropological and psychoanalytic aspects, which reveals the influence of the unconscious and the numinous as its important component on the worldview transformations of personality that arise in the process of choosing love. On this basis, it becomes possible to explore the dynamics of the choice of love in its gender manifestations – in the being of man and woman.

By the choice of love in a gender context, we will understand, first of all, not the choice of orientation, but the choice of a partner. If this choice is not made instinctively or affectively, it is conscious and means taking responsibility for the partner, the relationship with him, for the family we can create with him and for the children who will be born in this family. Such a choice of a partner always presupposes a worldview choice, comprehension of common values and opposite. We have a deliberate worldview dialogue that makes the choice of love productive. The relevance of such a turn of the study is due to the fact that the devaluation of values at the turn of the epochs deeply influenced the spiritual and soulful sphere of man, which determines the productive choice of love. We have hypercriticism on the part of the intellectual part of society, which reprimands all that become obsolete, and with it the human, which with the increasing virtualization of life has found itself in a spiritual abyss. Scientific and technological progress, on the one hand, made life orderly, and on the other, brought chaos, which caused worldview confusion. Asking the question of the choice of love, our contemporaries increasingly interpret it more and more as a choice of sexual orientation, which emphasizes the bodily sphere and leads to a “comfortable life” in which there is no deep responsibility for the Other. This Other only becomes a sexual and/or business partner who can be easily left. The question of the choice of love loses its existential depth and is reduced to the legitimation of sexual orientation or economic interest – to the legitimation of egocentric enjoyment of life in the context of current trends.

The situation is complicated by the fact that recently more and more emphasis is placed on “practical” psychological education with the encouragement of esoterics, tarot readers and other “gurus” who push a person to know the secret depths of himself and the Other. But such knowledge basically destroys mental health, entrenches unfruitful stereotypes and causes chaos in a person's worldview. Because of this, there is a lack of a clearly defined position in the personality, there is no clarity regarding the value of choice and critical thinking is not actualized.

This deformity of worldview pushes a person into existence, which is characterized by the erosion of values. All this leads to the loss of true culture, including the culture of choice, leaving a person with stereotypical models of attitude towards himself and the Other, which revolve exclusively around the material aspect – earnings and the provision of needs imposed from outside. Such a cycle ultimately leads to existential crises, looseness of consciousness, the prosperity of narcissism and selfishness, which breeds loneliness, especially loneliness together. On this basis, the ideology of transhumanism arises in the modern world, which, in particular, proposes to satisfy unconscious narcissistic tendencies with the possibility of technologies for life extension and cloning – both biological and information, which provokes ethical collisions (Mineva & Khamitov 2009).

Now we will try to show how the numinous, which we defined above as an element of the collective and individual unconscious, is related to love and its choice, under what conditions this connection can be constructive and what worldview transformations are needed for this.

C. Jung's philosophical position on the worldview is that the collective unconscious in the form of archetypes has a decisive influence on the formation of views, ideas, beliefs in the both systems: “human – the world” and “man – woman”. With the actualization of the numinous, which in our context can be interpreted as an irrational-archetypal component of the process of choosing love, the unconscious becomes a driving force that sometimes blocks and complicates the decision on making a choice of love. However, does the actualization of the numinous always contradict the productive choice of love?

To answer this question, we turn to the concept of the numinous R. Otto (Otto 2008), in which it is largely interpreted as sacred, the personification of the religious worldview of human. In this concept, it appears in the consciousness and unconscious as God, punishing and merciful, causes a contradictory state in which there is horror, awe, admiration and worship. The numinous is interpreted as a certain quality of the unconscious that brings a person to the limits of understanding and being; it is, at the same time, the holy, a certain secret ideal that stands above the personality.

Because the numinous is “etymologically derived from the concept of divine will..., Otto argues that understanding the numinous in a satisfactory way requires a scholar to draw upon their own experience of religious sentiments, given its nondiscursive and direct nature” (Sarbacker 2016, 1). Therefore, comprehending its meaning in the process of choosing love, should be largely guided by one’s own observations, which contain both analytical nature and follow from life experience, because our subject requires comprehension of complex existential and worldview processes.

But before that, we turn again to C. Jung's theory, in which the collective unconscious helps to unravel the mystery of the human soul and human being in general. In this theory, the numinous is generated by an encounter with archetypes, which are the main projections of the unconscious. In the context of our study, the most relevant are the archetypes of Anima and Animus, which indicate the androgyny of human nature. They are also reflections of the prototypes of mother and father, above which are only the images of the Great Mother and the Great Maker.

The meaningful core of archetypes is largely created by the personality, just as each of us gives them a specific dynamic. At the same time, archetypes, according to C. Jung, exist independently of individual consciousness, the unconscious and human experience, go beyond the phenomena of human being. “God is designated as the archetypal light… it expresses the opinion that he is… higher than the phenomenon of “light”, it is the “prototype” of any light ... Somewhere, in the “heavenly place”, there is a prototype of the mother, … higher than any – what a phenomenon of “maternal” (Jung 2018, 107).

Archetypes, according to C. Jung, are the numinous in nature because they contain both exaltation and humiliation, moreover, a danger: "What we think of as our defense is fraught with a threat" (Jung 2003, 81). We assume that the content of all the archetypes of the collective unconscious, including Anima and Animus, is quite contradictory. This meaning expresses S. Kierkegaard's “fear and trembling” and R. Otto's “formidable God”.

Since the meaning of the archetypes of Anima and Animus is largely given by the personality, and the key figures from the child's birthday are the parents or those who fulfill their roles, we assume that the images of father and mother formed in childhood are largely the personification of masculinity and femininity of the future partner. These images are a kind of ancestral archetypes, which generate a kind of “mythological worldview” and reflect the attitude of the genus.

In this generic “mythological worldview” we can identify three most important archetypes that are very important for a child in during growing up and lay the foundation for the choice of love: the archetype of the mother as a prototype of femininity, the archetype of the father as a prototype of masculinity and the archetype of God (Evolution, Fate, etc.) a prototype of the highest reality, to which one can appeal in the most difficult periods, entrusting problematic situations that neither the mother nor the father wants to tell.

In our opinion that the relationship between mother and father (the key figures that lay the “existential codes” of love), arise for the individual as a defining image of love. This image can be quite productive if the parent relationship is productive and does not cause a negative impact. If there is a worldview unity between the child and the parents, then the image of love can be achievable and understandable.

If the relationship between father and mother has negatively affected the personality or there is no worldview unity with them, love will arise in the imagination as an unattainable image that will always appear as a mirage. In this case, both men and women will have a part throughout their lives that will always be dissatisfied. As a result, due to the impossibility of achieving a ghostly image between the consciousness and the unconscious personality there is a conflict. The prototype of love, which appears in the form of Fata Morgana, makes a person again and again generate fantasies, and then suffer from the inability to realize them.

The image of the mother has a significant influence on the constructive or destructive choice of love, because the mother in most cases is the person who interacts very closely with us in the first years of life. If, for example, a mother deeply wants to break up with her father and does not do so, she invests anxiety and distrust related to love (as well as hatred, irritation or disgust) in her child, especially the most sensitive in early childhood. Such “love source data” is transmitted through a peculiar image, which in C. Jung is interpreted as “a consequence of a combination of personal experience and archetypal images in the collective unconscious” (Jung 2010, 74), that is, it is a kind of “energy charge”, which is the basis to give meaning and connotation to the archetype of the mother as terrible and negative (in Freud's theory, such an influence has the libido of the mother).

Having received this from the mother, the person becomes a carrier of negative information about love, lives with this emotionally unpleasant part and can not realize the productive choice of love, drowning in existential disbelief and distrust. In this way, on an unconscious level, the dark side of parents is transmitted - their Shadow, which the child (even when he grows up) will carry in himself as his own fear and trembling, which will cause anxiety and block child’s free manifestations. Instead of actualizing the personal integrity of the Spirit (Animus) and the Soul (Anima), a person has their opposition, which can lead to confrontation with the chosen partner. Of course, this can and should be overcome, but such overcoming often requires considerable efforts and long-term work with a psychoanalyst.

One can discuss with C. Jung about the archetype of the mother, where the psychoanalyst claims that the child mostly projects on the mother fantastic archetypal images from fairy tales, stories, etc. (Jung 2018). Yes, it is possible, but the opposite is likely when the child, frightened by the incomprehensible, aggressive or depressed actions of the mother, hides in the world of fairy tales. In these tales, beautiful heroes coexist with the terrible ones and mostly defeat them; this leads the reader to relaxation and a sense of exit. However, this escape from life into the world of fairy-tale book plots and dreams inspired by them can occur not only in childhood but also in adulthood, distancing from the real choice of love and building a relationship with him.

C. Jung notes: “All… depicted in the literature influences on the child's psyche come not only from… the mother, but rather from the archetype projected onto the mother, which gives her a mythological background, and thus, authority, and even numinosity” (Jung 2018, 115). It is possible to argue with C. Jung how significant here is the maternal archetype, which goes beyond the specific personality, but we must agree that the mother has a unique authority for the child. Therefore, when her presence in the life of the baby is endowed with a numinous content, it means that any actions of the mother (even sharply negative ones) are perceived by the child as undisputed and not subject to resistance, condemnation or analysis, and therefore considered appropriate.

That’s way it can be assumed that if the child's mother was authoritarian or narcissistic, then the choice of this adult is made in favor of a partner prone to despotism or narcissism. This decision is made unconsciously, because the one who chooses, intuitively considers such a person a reliable protection for himself and gives him a sense of numinosity as “divinity” (inviolability, sacredness). In the coordinates of metaanthropology, relying on the existential typology of the ordinary, the ultimate and the transcendent being of a person and the corresponding the ordinary, the personal and the philosophical types of worldview, such a choice can be characterized as human choice of ordinary being with the ordinary worldview – non-independent, uncritical, uncreative. Such a “sacred” choice often leads to sadomasochistic symbiosis. Although, of course, a person can consciously wish for yourself the exact opposite. But the desired can remain at the level of a dream for years, something impossible.

What quality of worldview is capable of overcoming unproductive images of parents and actualizing a productive choice of love and a productive relationship?

The formation of worldview is a complex process of developing of attitudes, ideals, values, which can relate to the images of parents, love, the ideal partner. This process reflects both a person's own experience and the traditions of their people, including the experience of parents. It can be assumed that the worldview also contains archetypes, which are an individual transformation of the archetypes of the collective unconscious, including Anima and Animus.

Сonsider the interaction of man with the opposite sex in the coordinates of metaanthropology through the archetypes of male and female in the worldview of the personality. First of all, let us recall that according to C. Jung, a man interacts with a woman through his own Anima, in turn, a woman's behavior towards a man is carried out through the archetype of Animus. In this way there is a kind of compensation and addition: a man existentially experiences a woman's presence in the world through the choice of a beloved woman who is able to accept his projection of the Anima; in turn, the woman existentially experiences the male presence in the world through the choice of a beloved man who will accept the projection of her Animus.

Thus, we can conclude that at the time of choosing love, the ideal image of a woman already exists as the Anima of a man, as well as the image of a man formed in the Animus of a woman.

Partly the foundations for this were laid by parents, partly - the cultural achievements of all mankind. If a person combines this with his own spiritual and soulful needs and can perceive the chosen partner as a unique person, and not only as a projection of expectations, then, overcoming borderline and crisis states, goes into the dimension of being formed by the will to love and co-creation is defined as transcendent being. This is facilitated by the formation of a philosophical worldview. It is the presence of a philosophical worldview that is capable of freeing a person from the destructive influence of the numinous in the choice of love and affirmation in this choice.

Based on the metaanthropological typology of human being and worldview, we can conclude that a person of ordinary being with the ordinary worldview has a set of traditional habits that are rooted in this genus, environment and determine its life world. Such a person seeks to distance himself from the influences of the numinous and is unable to analyze the state of his own horror. Here we observe an unconscious dependence on the knowledge, skills and images provided by the “elders” of the genus (society). Therefore, the choice of love is influenced by instinctive impulses and stereotypes.

The person of the ultimate being meets the numinous and is completely immerses in such existentials as longing, horror, despair. One is embraced by the will to power together with the will to knowledge and creativity, this raises to self-isolation and the inability to get rid of loneliness. A person has anger at themself, as at the one who despaired and at himself, as at the one who was subjected to pity and despair.

The feeling of the mysterious is fascinating, the fear of loneliness and the power of anger frighten – how to get out of this closed numinous labyrinth? But it is precisely in this isolation that there is an indication of transcendence. In the ultimate being, the basic is the personal revelation and awareness of personal being as spiritual, and ordinary as material, which at best becomes professional, materialized.

In the coordinates of metaanthropology, the numinous appears as a harbinger, a call to go beyond; therefore, the solution to this range of problems is the awakening of hope and faith. They are the bridges leading to the space of love. The combination of aesthetic (romanticization, feelings of love pleasure and beauty) and ethical (choice and responsibility for it) means liberation from egocentrism, it means liberation from the horror of the numinous as a transcendent abyss of eternal loneliness.

Passage to the transcendent being in the choice of love is a transition to a philosophical worldview, in which there is a free maturation of ideals, values, destruction of outdated worldviews and the establishment of a new being, leading to the integrity of personality and unity of individuals in love and co-creation. Under the influence of this, the emphasis in the numinous changes from horrible to sacred. This leads to the free perspective in the choice of love, which becomes truly humanistic and constructive.

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