The work - Homo faber. Culture and the human activity

in #philosophy6 years ago (edited)

One of the characteristics of the human being, according to M. Heidegger, is that it is in - der - Welt - Sein. But we have to specify. The being of every being is a being in the world. It is important for us to answer above all the question "How do we reside in the world?" What is the specificity of the true human existence in the world? Erich From believes that man's most important specificity is that he is also a part of nature, but it seems to overcome it as if it were beyond. We can trace some of the moments of this dichotomy that is embedded in the human being. For example, our consciousness helps us to adapt to the environment, but it also takes us away from it, for example by setting our own goals for the future. In addition, unlike other living beings, we do not adapt to the world instinctively, but we also acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to live. In the relationship to nature, we do not consume it, as Marx writes, but we change it in our labor to make it fit to serve us.

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Furthermore. Natural sciences seek to discover the objective laws of nature. But the history of knowledge is also an illustration of the dependence of the achievement of truth on nature from the means of knowledge itself, starting with the ever-changing methods, the conceptual language of the sciences, and the technical tools that make discoveries possible. That is why the world we are talking about is not given to us in the consciousness. The images we have created in our knowledge, myths, religions, philosophy, or other sciences are not just a passive mirror image but also a consequence of consciousness as an active source of knowledge. So we are not just natural beings in which nature speaks for themselves, but active entities acting and transforming the environment of our lives according to our needs and cares. In this sense, the real world of man is the world created and created by him. This world we call culture. It is not accidental that the word culture originates etymologically from "colere" (process, care), initially used as an agro-culture, care and cultivation of the land. Although in the language of social knowledge the word "culture" is only enforced after the end of the 19th century and its meanings are too many, it is precisely this aspect. Man is bringing order in the world, in society and in his own behavior. In this sense, we seem to perfect nature, society and ourselves, we overcome in some sense its "chaotic" and that is exactly our being - in the world, our own world. The world of culture is a world of order, of knowledge, of skills, of actions that organize our existence and resist it as a meaningful reality of the world untouched by man. Let's first look at the main cultural activities of man.

Work - necessity and meaning

The ontological importance of labor

We should not look at labor only pragmatically, that is, as an activity whose function is to satisfy different human needs, for example, from food, clothes or shelter. Its fundamental ontological meaning is that it connects man and nature. When, for example, the potter shapes from the clay the beautiful vessel, it seems to combine the natural opportunity of this matter to change under the influence of the physical force of the hands with its goals and its ideals for beauty and functionality. Aristotle still sees this amazing form of synthesis of natural causes (fusion) and human purposes in work, he sees the unity of natural opportunities and the shaping of the world according to an external purpose. In the same vein, the Hungarian philosopher, Djord Lukac, is of the opinion that two fundamentally different types of causes are combined in labor - causal (the physical process of cause-effect induction) and teleological, purpose-causing. In labor the human goals are "inserted" into the natural laws and through them are realized. For this reason, labor is a connection of two radically different forms of being, a boundary of nature and culture.

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