Imagine a steamer wheel. With this device, the steamer moves through the water. We can only see half of the running wheel. The other half are hidden underwater, but they are also involved in the work. At the same time, the wheel rotates, and each part of it alternately goes under the water and reappears in the field of view. In order for the steamer to sail and overcome the current, the wheel must constantly rotate. The image of this wheel can be compared to human being: a person exists in a way that reproduces his being. However, this is where the analogy ends, since the structure of human existence includes one unique condition for its implementation - consciousness. Since it refers to being, let's call it existential consciousness.
What is existential consciousness?
The concept of existential consciousness is not a designation of any special type of consciousness along with its other varieties. For example, scientific, political, artistic, religious or mythological consciousness. Consciousness as a whole is not only consciousness or cognition of something (psychological structure), but also an indication of the ontological characteristic of a person (existential structure). In other words, the existential consciousness of a person is not "consciousness about", but "consciousness as". Unlike empirical perceptual experience, existential experience is an experience of self-being. All thinkers of an existential orientation agreed in the recognition of this position, within which existence is defined as a unique way of human existence in the world. It always eludes understanding through abstraction. Existence cannot be known through conceptual analysis, but it can only be experienced. Attention focuses on what it means to be.
For a person, the main problem is the finiteness of his existence and the question of the prospects of his life. The idea of finitude introduces into the existential situation a special experience of the borderline of existence, which a person must “endure”. The German philosopher K. Jaspers called this feature of human existence "borderline situation", and his French colleague G. Marcel called embodied "being in a situation" to which human existence belongs. Thus, the borderline of existence indicates finiteness, which means that a person, in addition to his mortality, can relate to something else outside of his everyday experience. And this means that a person cannot withdraw into his self-sufficient existence, like animals or inanimate things, but fills in the insufficiency of his being. Therefore, a person goes beyond the limits of his present situation and does not coincide with himself. This is how it differs from the chair on which it can sit.
The condition of human consciousness is an internal gap in consciousness itself. Consciousness turns out to be detached from the situation "here and now". The existentialists called this gap "nothing", which isolates a person from what he is not. Thanks to "nothing" a person gets freedom. The consequence of freedom is the lack or lack of being in the very being of a person. As J.-P. Sartre in the work “Being and Nothingness”, the person “... makes himself existing as a project of himself beyond the present to what it is not yet”.
Sartre noted that human reality does not completely coincide with its projections. Therefore, the goal of the existential project cannot be achieved, not only because a person is finite, but also because its implementation is associated with objectifications that plunge him into an improper way of being and alienate him from himself. Man, creating the order of his world, simultaneously overcomes it in his orientation to the other. A person can neither be self-sufficient, since a constant lack deprives him of his integrity, nor can he become whole outside himself, since this deprives him of freedom. Freedom is the ability “not to coincide with oneself, but to be always at a distance from oneself” (Sartre).
I believe that there is a way out of the dead ends of human freedom, which Sartre outlined. The ontological meaning of freedom for a person is to overcome all forces compelling him, except for one force - power over himself, which becomes the subject of his concern. This is freedom not from coercion and control, but to think what is possible beyond all limitations. Do not follow the choice, but change the conditions of the choice.
There is a widespread belief that freedom lies in the ability to be yourself. According to this thought, to be free means to correspond to a certain original, after which its copy rushes. Such an original turns out to be ready-made norms and attitudes of human activity. They are established by society, or rather, they are formed spontaneously in the process of the historical life of society. However, human authenticity does not point to the authenticity of something, but to one's own way of being in accordance with one's own possibilities of being. Being yourself is not about becoming someone or living up to something. It means to stop trying to be something that a person is not, that is, to stop being a faceless Other. The latter does not indicate that a person closes in himself,
The Limits of Existential Consciousness
Before being any (willing, cognizing, acting), a person is always there. By the way of his being, man is a project of himself. Remember the steamer wheel with a hidden part underwater? Man is a projective circle of being and understanding. Existing, a person understands himself. Understanding himself, a person exists. Self-understanding is at the same time the self-creation of man: they are parts of a circle. Being and understanding of a person mutually condition each other. Therefore, a person is how he understands himself.
However, not all parts of this circle are simultaneously above the surface. Psychoanalysis divided the human psyche into two parts - the unconscious and the conscious. Cognitive psychology also highlights the unconscious processes in the human psyche that provide decision-making. Existential philosophy tries to find in the ontological structure of man such foundations that are involved in human self-understanding. In particular, M. Heidegger called the structure that reliably connects a person with the world and provides human understanding, being-in-the-world.
It is conditionally possible to distinguish the reflective and pre-reflective levels of the projective circle of a person. A person understands himself even on the pre-reflective level of consciousness, but begins to consciously relate to his life only on the reflective level. Consequently, a person has an unconscious project and a conscious project of his existence. The first is, as it were, the infrastructure for the structure of the second. The pre-reflective level creates the basis for human activity, the reflective level creates an opportunity for project activity. Together they complete the composition of our circle. The pre-reflective level of consciousness forms an identity, which at the level of reflexive practice becomes an object of preservation or transformation. As a result, human existence is filled with new qualitative content.
So, the project becomes a condition for human self-understanding. Man does not know himself, but his preliminary project as himself. Here the search for the "essence" of man ends and a new understanding of man as a process appears. From the point of identity with himself, a person cannot understand his existence, since there is no process dynamics in identity. In other words, only by changing can you understand yourself.
Thus, changing procedurally, a person is not assigned once and for all by any program. A person understands and transforms himself in the project (As we already know, at two levels of the project). To have a starting point for design, a person needs a limit. With respect to the limit, a person is self-determined. At the same time, the limit is the boundaries of experience that a person can change in the process of self-overcoming.
In the first case, a person finds a form of stable existence in time (self-identification). Let's call this form constancy. In the second case, a person opens himself up to meet possible life changes. Let's call this the constancy of shaping. Therefore, the anthropological limit in its form includes both a universal constant and a universal variable in human existence. The boundaries of possible experience include the condition for overcoming them (often crisis), without canceling the constancy of the limit itself. Human self-determination operates from the perspective of identity. On the other hand, a person's self-overcoming unfolds in the perspective of “otherness”. Both are involved in ensuring that human life remains constant in the flow of change.
With regard to human existence, such an understanding of the limit reveals two important social categories - the subject and the personality. The subject is a characteristic of the identity and stability of human life. A subject is one who is able to act and interact with others on his own behalf. This characteristic supports social relationships. On the contrary, personality becomes a characteristic of otherness. Personality is realized to the extent that a person is ready for changes, that is, ready to get out of the automatism of everyday experience.
Thus, the subject becomes the one who is able to be himself, to preserve the identity of his life. Whereas a personality is an opportunity to be different and overcome your random limitations. To establish and maintain a relationship with a person, you need a subject. For a person to be able to solve life's problems in unpredictable situations, a personality is needed.
Let's return to our question whether there are limits to human existence. According to the way of his being, a person sets limits in order to overcome them in the process of life of both an individual and a historical community. By setting boundaries, a person changes them and thereby changes the meanings of his existence. The limit becomes a condition of human existence and understanding.
