Man is a biosocial being, which means. Man as a biosocial being: what does this mean? Communication and communication

" is a general concept denoting belonging to the human race, the nature of which, as noted above, combines biological and social qualities. In other words, a person appears in his essence as biosocial being.

Modern man from birth represents a biosocial unity. He is born with incompletely formed anatomical and physiological qualities, which further develop during his life in society. At the same time, heredity provides the child with not only purely biological properties and instincts. He initially turns out to be the owner of strictly human qualities: a developed ability to imitate adults, curiosity, the ability to be upset and happy. His smile (“privilege” of a person) has an innate character. But it is society that completely introduces a person into this world, which fills his behavior with social content.

Consciousness is not our natural heritage, although nature creates the physiological basis for it. Conscious mental phenomena are formed throughout life as a result of active mastery of language and culture. It is to society that man owes such qualities as transformative instrumental activity, communication through speech, and the ability for spiritual creativity.

The acquisition of social qualities by a person occurs in the process socialization: what is inherent in a particular person is the result of mastering the cultural values ​​that exist in a particular society. At the same time, it is an expression, the embodiment of the internal capabilities of the individual.

Natural and social interaction between man and society contradictory. Man is a subject of social life; he realizes himself only in society. However, it is also a product of the environment and reflects the peculiarities of the development of biological and social aspects of social life. Achieving biological and social harmony society and man at every historical stage acts as an ideal, the pursuit of which contributes to the development of both society and man.

Society and man are inseparable from each other both biologically and socially. Society is what the people who form it are; it acts as an expression, design, and consolidation of the inner essence of a person, his way of life. Man emerged from nature, but exists as a man only thanks to society, is formed in it and shapes it through his activities.

Society determines the conditions for not only social, but also biological improvement of man. That is why the focus of society should be on ensuring the health of people from birth to old age. A person’s biological health allows him to actively participate in the life of society, realize his creative potential, create a full-fledged family, raise and educate children. At the same time, a person deprived of the necessary social conditions for life loses his “biological form”, deteriorates not only morally, but also physically, which can cause antisocial behavior and crimes.

In society, a person realizes his nature, but he himself is forced to submit to the requirements and restrictions of society, to be responsible to it. After all, society is all people, including every person, and by submitting to society, he affirms in himself the demands of his own essence. By speaking out against society, a person not only undermines the foundations of general well-being, but also deforms his own nature, disrupts the harmony of biological and social principles in himself.

Biological and social factors

What allowed man to stand out from the animal world? The main factors of anthropogenesis can be divided as follows:

• biological factors- upright posture, hand development, large and developed brain, ability for articulate speech;

• main social factors- labor and collective activity, thinking, language and morality.

Of the factors listed above, played a leading role in the process of human development; His example demonstrates the interrelation of other biological and social factors. Thus, upright walking freed up the hands to use and make tools, and the structure of the hand (spaced thumb, flexibility) made it possible to effectively use these tools. In the process of joint work, close relationships developed between members of the team, which led to the establishment of group interaction, care for members of the tribe (morality), and the need for communication (the appearance of speech). Language contributed to expressing increasingly complex concepts; the development of thinking, in turn, enriched the language with new words. Language also made it possible to pass on experience from generation to generation, preserving and increasing the knowledge of mankind.

Thus, modern man is a product of the interaction of biological and social factors.

Under him biological features understand what brings a person closer to an animal (with the exception of the factors of anthropogenesis, which were the basis for separating man from the kingdom of nature) - hereditary characteristics; the presence of instincts (self-preservation, sexual, etc.); emotions; biological needs (breathe, eat, sleep, etc.); similar physiological characteristics to other mammals (presence of the same internal organs, hormones, constant body temperature); the ability to use natural objects; adaptation to the environment, procreation.

Social Features characteristic exclusively of humans - the ability to produce tools; articulate speech; language; social needs (communication, affection, friendship, love); spiritual needs (,); awareness of your needs; activity (labor, artistic, etc.) as the ability to transform the world; consciousness; ability to think; creation; creation; goal setting.

Man cannot be reduced solely to social qualities, since biological prerequisites are necessary for his development. But it cannot be reduced to biological characteristics, since one can only become a person in society. Biological and social are inseparably fused in a person, which makes him special biosocial being.

Biological and social in man and their unity

Ideas about the unity of the biological and social in the development of man were not formed immediately.

Without delving into distant antiquity, let us recall that during the Enlightenment, many thinkers, differentiating the natural and the social, considered the latter as “artificially” created by man, including almost all the attributes of social life - spiritual needs, social institutions, morality, traditions and customs. It was during this period that concepts such as "natural law", "natural equality", "natural morality".

The natural, or natural, was considered as the foundation, the basis for the correctness of the social order. There is no need to emphasize that the social played a secondary role and was directly dependent on the natural environment. In the second half of the 19th century. various theories of social Darwinism, the essence of which is attempts to extend to public life principles of natural selection and the struggle for existence in living nature, formulated by the English naturalist Charles Darwin. The emergence of society and its development were considered only within the framework of evolutionary changes occurring independently of the will of people. Naturally, they considered everything that happened in society, including social inequality and the strict laws of social struggle, as necessary and useful both for society as a whole and for its individuals.

In the 20th century attempts to biologize “explain” the essence of man and his social qualities do not stop. As an example, we can cite the phenomenology of man by the famous French thinker and natural scientist, by the way, the clergyman P. Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955). According to Teilhard, man embodies and concentrates in himself the entire development of the world. Nature, in the process of its historical development, receives its meaning in man. In it, she reaches, as it were, her highest biological development, and at the same time it acts as a kind of beginning of her conscious, and, consequently, social development.

Currently, science has established an opinion about the biosocial nature of man. At the same time, the social is not only not belittled, but its decisive role in separating Homo sapiens from the animal world and its transformation into a social being is noted. Now hardly anyone dares to deny biological prerequisites for the emergence of man. Even without turning to scientific evidence, but guided by the simplest observations and generalizations, it is not difficult to discover the enormous dependence of man on natural changes - magnetic storms in the atmosphere, solar activity, earthly elements and disasters.

In the formation and existence of a person, and this has already been said earlier, a huge role belongs to social factors, such as labor, relationships between people, their political and social institutions. None of them by itself, separately, could have led to the emergence of man, his separation from the animal world.

Each person is unique and this is also predetermined by his nature, in particular, by the unique set of genes inherited from his parents. It must also be said that the physical differences that exist between people are primarily predetermined by biological differences. These are, first of all, the differences between the two sexes - men and women, which can be considered among the most significant differences between people. There are other physical differences - skin color, eye color, body structure, which are mainly due to geographical and climatic factors. It is these factors, as well as the unequal conditions of historical development and the educational system, that largely explain the differences in everyday life, psychology, and social status of the peoples of different countries. And yet, despite these rather fundamental differences in their biology, physiology and mental potential, the people of our planet are generally equal. The achievements of modern science convincingly demonstrate that there is no reason to claim the superiority of any race over another.

Social in man- this is, first of all, instrumental production activity, collectivist forms of life with the division of responsibilities between individuals, language, thinking, social and political activity. It is known that Homo sapiens as a person and an individual cannot exist outside of human communities. Cases are described when small children, for various reasons, came under the care of animals, were “raised” by them, and when, after several years in the animal world, they returned to people, it took them years to adapt to the new social environment. Finally, it is impossible to imagine a person’s social life without his social and political activity. Strictly speaking, as noted earlier, a person’s life itself is social, since he constantly interacts with people - at home, at work, during leisure time. How do the biological and the social relate when determining the essence and nature of a person? Modern science clearly answers this - only in unity. Indeed, without biological prerequisites it would be difficult to imagine the emergence of hominids, but without social conditions the emergence of man was impossible. It is no longer a secret that pollution of the environment and human habitat poses a threat to the biological existence of Homo sapiens. To summarize, we can say that now, like many millions of years ago, the physical state of a person, his existence, to a determining extent, depend on the state of nature. In general, it can be argued that now, as with the emergence of Homo sapiens, its existence is ensured by the unity of the biological and social.

Philosophical debates about human nature have a long history. Most often, philosophers call human nature binary (double), and man himself is defined as a biosocial being with articulate speech, consciousness, higher mental functions (abstract logical thinking, logical memory, etc.), capable of creating tools and using them in process of social labor.

Being a part of nature, man belongs to the higher mammals and forms a special species - Homo sapiens. Like any biological species, Homo sapiens is characterized by a certain set of specific characteristics, each of which can vary in different representatives of the species within fairly large limits. Such a change can be influenced by both natural and social processes. Like other biological species, the species Homo sapiens has stable variations (varieties), which, when it comes to humans, are most often designated by the concept of race. The racial differentiation of people is predetermined by the fact that their groups, inhabiting different areas of the planet, have adapted to the specific features of their environment and have developed specific anatomical, physiological and biological characteristics. But, belonging to a single biological species, Homo sapiens, a representative of any race has biological parameters characteristic of this species that allow him to successfully participate in any sphere of life of the entire human society.

The biological nature of a person constitutes the basis on which the formation of actual human qualities occurs. Biologists and philosophers call the following anatomical, physiological and psychological features of the human body, which form the biological basis of human activity as a social being:

a) straight gait as an anatomical feature that allows a person to take a wider view of the surrounding environment, freeing the forelimbs even during movement and allowing them to be used for work better than four-legged animals can do;

b) tenacious hands with flexible fingers and opposable thumb, allowing complex and delicate functions to be performed;

c) gaze directed forward and not to the sides, allowing you to see in three dimensions and better navigate in space;

d) a large brain and a complex nervous system, allowing for high development of mental life and intelligence;

f) long-term dependence of children on their parents, and therefore a long period of adult guardianship, a slow rate of growth and biological maturation and therefore a long period of training and socialization;

g) the plasticity of innate impulses and needs, the absence of rigid mechanisms of instincts, such as those found in other species, the possibility of adapting needs to the means of satisfying them - all this contributes to the development of complex patterns of behavior and adaptation to various environmental conditions;

h) the stability of sexual attraction, affecting the form of the family and a number of other social phenomena.

Being, of course, a natural being, living according to the laws of the natural world, a person can fully live and develop only in the society of people like him. Such important factors of human life as consciousness and speech are not transmitted to people in the order of biological heredity, but are formed in them during their lifetime, in the process of socialization, i.e., the individual’s assimilation of the socio-historical experience of previous generations. From the moment of his birth, a person is an individual, i.e., a single natural being, a bearer of individually unique traits. An individual is usually called a single specific person, considered as a biosocial being. The concept “person” is usually used to show that a person belongs to the human race (Homo sapiens), as well as the fact that this person has universal traits and qualities characteristic of all people. The concept of “personality” must be distinguished from these two concepts. (See question No. 4 of this section.)

The problem of man is the central problem of social science.

There are different concepts of human origins. The earliest is religious, which endows a person with a soul - a manifestation of the divine, which makes a person human. The natural science concept put forward by Charles Darwin in his work “The Descent of Man and Sexual Selection” puts forward a hypothesis about the origin of man from animals in the process of evolution. This theory is developed by F. Engels in his work “The Role of Labor in the Transformation of Ape into Man.”

The research of Louis Pasteur, who proved the impossibility of the spontaneous generation of life, led to new searches. As a result, the paleovisit theory emerged.

At the moment, the main one is the natural science concept, on the basis of which the concept of the biosocial nature of man was born.

In the statements of thinkers about man, his essence, two main points of view stand out - pessimistic(without faith in the best in man) and optimistic(with faith in a person and his capabilities). “Pessimists”, first of all, note the animal side of man. “Optimists,” on the contrary, believe that man is a spiritual being, striving for divine heights of consciousness and behavior. Both good and evil are intertwined in a person.

Man by nature is biosocial being, since at the same time it is a part of nature and, at the same time, inextricably linked with society.

Biological nature of a person is manifested in his anatomy, physiology, gene pool, which is the carrier of hereditary information. The biological influences the processes of childbirth, the overall life expectancy of a person and also affects the development of some of his abilities - forms of reaction to the outside world.

Under social in a person they understand such properties as consciousness and reason, the ability to act practically, freedom and responsibility, citizenship, etc.

In resolving the issue of the relationship between the biological and the social in humans, two extreme positions have emerged: biologizing and sociologizing.

A common feature of biologizing concepts is the interpretation of the essence of man primarily from the standpoint of biology. Their representatives strive to explain human social actions by his biological and genetic characteristics and see the key to understanding humans in molecular genetics.

Sociologizing concepts absolutize the meaning of social relations. Representatives of this movement believe that all people are born with the same genetic inclinations, and society plays the main role in the development of their abilities. This understanding of man was widespread among supporters of Marxism.

Most scientists in solving the biosocial problem tend to avoid extremes and consider man as a complex synthesis, an interweaving of biological and social principles. They believe that a born child is a biological living system that does not yet possess thinking and speech. Its physiological organization only has the potential, under certain social conditions, to realize the ability to think and speak. However, it is emphasized that qualities such as the ability to think and act practically have a social origin.

To study human essence in philosophy, there is a variety of concepts, the most important of which are man, individual, individuality, personality. These concepts characterize an individual from various aspects.

Concept Human reflects common features (biological organization, consciousness, language, ability to work) inherent in the entire human race. This concept emphasizes the presence in the world of such a special historically developing community as the human race, humanity, which differs from all other material systems only in its inherent way of life.

Concept individual denotes a person as a single representative of the human race. This is a generalized image of a specific person. The concept of an individual does not capture any special properties of a person.

Concept individuality characterizes the originality, uniqueness, originality of the individual. Each person has a biological and socio-psychological individuality (temperament, abilities)

In concept personality has an even narrower meaning. Personality is an individual taken in the aspect of his social qualities (views, abilities, moral beliefs, etc.). The concept of “personality” reflects everything socially significant in a person.

Internal personality structure:

1. Temperament. Determined genetically. There are four types of temperament: phlegmatic (psychological stability, balance and perseverance in achieving goals); choleric (unbalanced, superficial person); sanguine (impressionable, fast, persistent, but only when he is interested); melancholic (impressionable, constantly analyzes and criticizes himself).

2. Character. Translated from Greek, “character” is “minting”, “sign”. Indeed, character is the special characteristics that a person acquires while living in society. Just as the individuality of a person is manifested in the peculiarities of mental processes (good memory, rich imagination, intelligence, etc.) and in temperamental traits, it also reveals itself in character traits.

Character is a set of stable individual characteristics of a person that develops and manifests itself in activity and communication, determining the individual’s typical modes of behavior.

Character is determined and formed throughout a person’s life. The way of life includes the way of thoughts, feelings, motives, actions in their unity. Therefore, as a certain way of life of a person is formed, the person himself is formed. A big role here is played by social conditions and specific life circumstances in which a person’s life path takes place.

Any character trait is some stable stereotype of behavior. However, character traits cannot be taken out of the typical situations in which they appear; in some situations, even a polite person can be rude. Therefore, any character trait is a stable form of behavior in connection with specific situations typical for a given type of behavior.

A character trait includes a certain way of thinking and understanding. When committing a characteristic act, volitional mechanisms are activated and feelings are involved.

The formation of character traits cannot be separated from the formation of behavioral motives. Motives of behavior, realized in action, consolidated in it, are fixed in character. The path to the formation of character traits lies, therefore, through the formation of appropriate motives of behavior and the organization of actions aimed at consolidating them.

The most common character traits are arranged along the axes:

strength - weakness;

hardness - softness;

integrity - inconsistency;

breadth - narrowness.

If strength of character is understood as the energy with which a person pursues his goals, his ability to become passionately carried away and develop great tension when encountering difficulties, the ability to overcome them, then weakness of character is associated with the manifestation of cowardice, indecisiveness in achieving goals, instability of views, etc. .d.

A person’s character is manifested in a system of relationships:

In relation to other people (in this case, one can highlight such character traits as sociability - isolation, truthfulness - deceit, tactfulness - rudeness, etc.);

In relation to business (responsibility - dishonesty, hard work - laziness, etc.);

In relation to oneself (modesty - narcissism, self-criticism - self-confidence, etc.);

In relation to property (generosity - greed, frugality - wastefulness, neatness - sloppiness, etc.).

A person’s attitude towards society and people plays a decisive role in the formation of character. The character of a person cannot be revealed and understood outside the team, without taking into account his attachments in the form of camaraderie, friendship, love, etc.

What is a person? How is he different from animals? People have been thinking about these questions for a long time, but to this day they have not found a final answer. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato answered them like this: “Man is a two-legged animal without feathers.” Two thousand years later, the famous French physicist and mathematician B. Pascal objected to Plato: “A man without legs still remains a man, but a rooster without feathers does not become a man.” What distinguishes people from animals? There is, for example, a sign that is unique to humans: of all living creatures, only humans have a soft earlobe. But is this fact the main thing that distinguishes humans from animals? Despite the fact that man descended from an animal and his body, blood, and brain belong to nature (he is a biological being), great thinkers came to the conclusion: the most important sign of a person is that he is a public or social being (the Latin word socialis means public). The determining condition for the transformation of an animal ancestor into a human being was labor. And work is possible only as a collective, i.e. social. Only in society, in communication between people, did work entail the formation of new, human qualities: language (speech) and the ability to think.

Man as a subject of natural science We consider man from different positions of his existence, but first of all, from biological and social ones. The biological is expressed in morphophysiological, genetic phenomena, as well as in the neuro-brain, electrochemical and some other processes of the human body. But not a single aspect separately reveals to us the phenomenon of man in its integrity. Man, we say, is a rational being. What, then, is his thinking: does it obey only biological laws or only social ones? The social and biological, existing in an indivisible unity in man, in abstraction capture only the extreme poles in the diversity of human properties and actions. In this aspect, a person acts as a bearer of the biological form of movement of matter. But he is not just an organism, not just a biological species, but first of all a subject of social relations. Organism and personality are two inseparable sides of a person. With his organismic level he is included in the natural connection of phenomena and is subject to natural necessity, and with his personal level he is turned to social existence, to society, to the history of mankind, to culture. The measurement of a person from the biological and social side relates specifically to his personality. The biological side of a person is determined mainly by hereditary (genetic) mechanism. The social side of the human personality is determined by the process of a person’s entry into the cultural and historical context of society. Neither one nor the other separately, but only their functioning unity can bring us closer to understanding the mystery of man. How does a person combine his biological and social principles? To answer this question, let us turn to the history of the emergence of man as a biological species.

Currently, science has established the idea that man is a biosocial being, combining biological and social components. Man as a subject of natural science can be considered in three aspects: - origin; - the relationship between the natural and the humanitarian; - study of human specificity using methods of natural science. The first direction, traditionally called anthropology, studies: when, from whom and how did man originate and how does he differ from animals; the second direction - sociobiology - studies the genetic basis of human activity and the relationship between the physiological and mental in humans; The third direction includes the study of the human brain, his consciousness, soul, etc. through natural science.

The similarity between humans and animals is determined: firstly, by the material composition, structure and behavior of organisms (a person consists of the same proteins and nucleic acids as animals, and many of the structures and functions of our body are the same as those of animals, the higher the An animal stands on the evolutionary scale, the closer its resemblance to a human being); secondly, the human embryo goes through in its development the stages that the evolution of living things went through; thirdly, humans have rudimentary organs that performed important functions in animals and are preserved in humans, although they are not needed by him (for example, the appendix).

However, the differences between humans and animals are fundamental. These include, first of all, the mind. The study of higher animals has shown that they possess many of the things that were previously thought only humans were capable of. Experiments with monkeys have found that they can understand words, communicate their desires using a computer, and thus can conduct a dialogue with them. But what the highest animals do not have is the ability for conceptual thinking, that is, for the formation abstract, abstract ideas about objects, in which the basic properties of specific things are generalized. Animal thinking, if we can talk about it, is always concrete; human thinking can be abstract, abstract, generalizing, conceptual, logical

The second main difference is that a person has speech. Again, animals may have developed a system of communication using signals (which, by the way, allowed us to talk about the “dolphin civilization”). But only humans have what I.P. Pavlov called the second signaling system (in contrast to the first - in animals) communication using words. This distinguishes human society from other social animals.

The ability to work is another fundamental difference between humans and animals. Of course, all animals do something, and higher animals are capable of complex activities. Monkeys, for example, use sticks as tools to reach fruits. But only man is capable of making and creating tools. Related to this are the statements that animals adapt to the environment, and man transforms it, and that, ultimately, labor created man. Two more distinctive features of a person are correlated with the ability to work: upright walking, which freed up his hands, and, as a consequence, the development of the hand, especially the thumb on it. Finally, two more characteristic features of man that influenced the development of culture are the use of fire and the burial of corpses.

Factors in the formation of a modern person The most characteristic feature of a modern person is a perfect hand, capable of a wide variety of labor operations. All other features of the morphology of modern humans have developed in connection with the transformation of the hand. One might think that the brain improved under the influence of numerous irritations coming from the hand, and the number of these irritations constantly increased in the process of labor and mastery of new labor operations. But this hypothesis encounters objections of both factual and theoretical nature. The hypothesis of factors in the formation of modern humans, developed by Ya. Ya. Roginsky, is more acceptable. He used numerous and well-known observations in the clinic of nervous diseases on subjects whose frontal lobes of the brain were damaged; In such subjects, social instincts are sharply inhibited or completely disappear; their violent disposition makes them dangerous to others. Thus, the frontal lobes of the brain are the concentration of not only higher mental, but also social functions. This conclusion was compared with the factor of the growth of the frontal lobes of the brain in modern humans compared to Pithecanthropus and, in turn, led to the conclusion that it was not the development of the brain or the development of the hand in general, but the growth of the frontal lobes of the brain that was the main morphological feature that distinguished people modern type from late Neanderthals.

Sociality, the greatest adaptation to life in a group, the creation of the most favorable morphophysiological and psychological type for it, which together determined the most dramatic difference between man and other representatives of the animal world, determined, one can assume, the next stage of human evolution - the emergence of modern man as the most perfect organism from the point of view of the requirements of social organization. By analogy with the labor theory of anthropogenesis, this hypothesis can be called social or public, thereby emphasizing the leading role of collective, public life in the formation of the modern species within the genus Homo.

Organism and personality are two inseparable aspects of a person. With his organismic level he is included in the natural connection of phenomena and is subject to natural necessity, and with his personal level he is turned to social existence, to society, to the history of mankind, to culture. The measurement of a person from the biological and social side relates specifically to his personality. The biological side of a person is determined mainly by hereditary (genetic) mechanism. The social side of the human personality is determined by the process of a person’s entry into the cultural and historical context of society. Neither one nor the other separately, but only their functioning unity can bring us closer to understanding the mystery of man. Therefore, this inextricable unity allows us to say: man is a biosocial being.

Chapter 2.

Human and society.

The essence of consciousness.

Understanding the essence of consciousness.

Mind, thinking, soul.

Conscious and unconscious.

Human existence.

Human needs.

The essence of human activity and its diversity.

Labor activity and communication between man and society.

The purpose of man and approaches to the interpretation of his essence.

The purpose and meaning of human life.

Communication and communications.

Man, individual, personality.

Personal abilities and character.

Socialization of personality.

Freedom and responsibility of the individual.

Characteristics of interpersonal relationships.

Conflict situations and ways to resolve them.

The spiritual world of man.

Human worldview.

Values.

The main types of life strategies in modern society.

Interests.

Man as a subject of biological and social evolution.

The relationship between the spiritual and physical, biological and social principles in man. The existence of man, his activities and creativity. The purpose and meaning of a person’s life, his life choices and lifestyle. Self-realization of a person and his self-knowledge. Personality, its self-realization and education. Human inner world. Conscious and unconscious. Behavior, freedom and responsibility of the individual. Human cognitive activity. Worldview as a system of views on the world and man’s place in it. Truth and its criteria. Scientific knowledge. Knowledge and faith. The variety of forms of human knowledge. Sciences about man and society. Social and humanitarian knowledge. All this was preceded by a long evolutionary development in man himself of the biological, social and spiritual principles.

Man as a biosocial being.

Man is essentially a being biosocial. It is part of nature and at the same time inextricably linked with society. The biological and social in man are united, and only in such unity does man exist. The biological nature of a person is his natural prerequisite, a condition of existence, and sociality is the essence of a person.

As a biological being, man belongs to the higher mammals, forming a special species, Homo sapiens. The biological nature of a person is manifested in his anatomy and physiology. As a biological species, humans have circulatory, muscular, nervous, skeletal and other systems. While inferior to animals in the development of individual organs, humans surpass them in their potential capabilities. Its biological properties are not strictly programmed, which makes it possible to adapt to various living conditions. The biological in humans does not exist in its pure form; it is socially conditioned. The influence of the social is experienced by human genetics and heredity. This is manifested, for example, in the acceleration of children, in the reduction of the birth rate, infant mortality, etc.

Man as a social being is inextricably linked with society. A person becomes a person only by entering into social relations, into communication with other people. An individual, for certain reasons, cut off from society from birth, remains an animal. Since human activity can only exist as a social activity, the essence of man appears as a set of social relations.

Man is not only a product of socio-historical development, but also a subject whose activity influences the environment.

The social essence of a person is manifested through such properties as the ability and readiness for socially useful work, consciousness and reason, freedom and responsibility, etc.

From the above, we point out the main differences between humans and animals:

1. Man is capable of making tools and use them as a means of producing material goods. Highly organized animals can use natural tools (sticks, stones) for certain purposes. But not a single species of animal is capable of making tools using previously made means.

2. A person is capable of conscious, purposeful creative activity. The animal's behavior is subordinated to instinct, its actions are initially programmed. Human activity is purposeful and has a conscious-volitional character. A person models his own behavior and can choose various social roles. A person has the ability to foresee the long-term consequences of his actions, the nature and direction of development of natural and social processes. Man is characterized by a value-based attitude to reality, but an animal does not separate itself from nature.

3. Animals cannot produce fundamental changes in the conditions of their existence. They adapt to the environment, which determines their lifestyle. Man transforms reality in accordance with his constantly developing needs, creates a world of material and spiritual culture.

3. In the process of his activity, a person transforms the surrounding reality, creates the material and spiritual benefits and values ​​he needs. Carrying out practically transformative activities, a person creates a “second nature” - culture.

4. A person has a highly organized brain, thinking and articulate speech.

The interaction of spiritual and physical, biological and social principles in a person.

With the development of man himself, as well as the sciences that study man, natural scientific (materialistic) ideas about the origin of man arise and develop. A great achievement in this direction was the appearance in the second half of the 19th century of the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin. His works, especially “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection”, “The Origin of Man and Sexual Selection”, laid the foundation for a deep scientific theory, which substantiated the idea of ​​​​the appearance of various species of animals, including humans, in the course of long evolutionary development. Charles Darwin laid the basis for evolution on natural selection. He and his followers saw the main reason for the variability of organisms in natural selection.

The variability of living things is associated with changes in the environment. In accordance with evolutionary theory, man, as a special biological species, also has a natural origin and is genetically related to higher mammals. The human psyche, his ability to think and work is the result of evolutionary processes. This theory, in a certain sense, dissolved man in the animal kingdom. Darwinism did not give a final answer to the question of what exactly was the reason for the separation of man from the animal world.

F. Engels tried to answer this question in his theory of human origin. He named labor as the main reason for the emergence of man. He believed that only labor activity is characteristic of man and serves as the basis for the existence of human society. Under the influence of labor, specific human qualities were formed: consciousness, language, creative abilities.

Despite existing scientific discoveries, many questions related to human development do not yet have a clear answer. The problem of human origins is still the focus of many sciences today.

The process of human formation and development - anthropogenesis– had a long evolutionary character and was inextricably linked with the formation of society – sociogenesis. The formation of man and the formation of society are two closely related aspects of a single process in nature - anthroposociogenesis, which lasted more than three million years. The modern type of person - Homo sapiens (Homo sapiens) appeared 50-40 thousand years ago.

Many scientists believe that human ancestry goes back to the great apes. Anthropologists have examined the remains of ancient apes. The most distant ancestors in this regard are Dryopithecus, who lived 14-20 million years ago, then go Ramapithecus (10-14 million years ago). They are followed Australopithecus. They, according to many scientists, have come close to the border separating animals from humans. Scientists associate the beginning of anthropogenesis with the appearance of Homo habilis (Homo habilis) 2.5-3 million years ago. He made primitive stone tools and hunted animals. From this moment, human society gradually begins to form. Further evolution led to the appearance Pithecanthropus (800 thousand years ago), and then Neanderthal (150-200 thousand years ago). During anthropogenesis, the transition from Neanderthal man to Homo sapiens (Homo sapiens) coincided with the formation of various human races that still exist today: Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid. The fossil remains found indicate that man is a product of the long evolution of life on Earth. An important milestone in evolution is, first of all, upright walking, which, by changing the center of gravity, entailed a change in the entire organism of the ape-like ancestor of man. The main thing is that it freed up the forelimbs for the systematic manipulation of objects as tools (man learned to process various objects and use them as tools). Another evolutionary leap is the appearance of a relatively large brain. For a modern person, it is on average 1450 cubic meters. see in Man skillful it was 650-680 cubic cm, Pithecanthropa- approximately 974, y Neanderthal– on average 1350. The increase in brain volume was associated with the expansion of the possibilities of interaction between human ancestors and the outside world. Gradually, the decisive difference between man and other animals, even from monkeys, is being established - this is work. Labor activity contributed to the development of communication between people, which led to the emergence and development of language and speech. The development of speech communication was one of the most important factors in anthropogenesis.

A significant milestone in anthropogenesis and sociogenesis was associated with changes in family and marital relations. The herd of anthropoid creatures was based on endogamy - closely related sexual relationships within the herd. Anthropogenesis led to the prohibition of closely related relationships and the transition to exogamy - the establishment of marriage relationships with members of other communities. These and other prohibitions (taboos) were the first simple social and moral prohibitions and marked the transition of humanity to moral guidelines for behavior, which was another important factor in the formation of man and his distance from the animal world.

The final stage of anthroposociogenesis was so-called " neolithic revolution”, which marked the transition from gathering and hunting to agriculture and cattle breeding, from an appropriating economy to a producing one. The development of human society was subsequently associated with various milestones in the division of labor: historically, the first major social division of labor was the separation of cattle breeding from agriculture, the second was the separation of crafts, and the third was the separation of trade into independent branches of activity. All these changes in economic activity could not but affect social processes - the transition to a sedentary lifestyle (formation of tribal associations), social stratification of society, differentiation of forms of consciousness, etc. - and created the prerequisites for the transition of human society from a primitive state to a civilized one.

In this movement towards civilization a large role culture played a role, which was on one side an accelerator transformations in the material sphere, and on the other hand it shaped the spiritual sphere of man and society Also accelerating the process of humanization of man.

The essence of consciousness.

Philosophy defines consciousness as a higher function of the brain, characteristic only of humans and associated with speech, which consisted in a generalized and purposeful reflection of reality (existence), in the preliminary mental construction of actions and anticipation of their results, in the reasonable regulation and self-control of human behavior.

Consciousness- not only the basic concept of philosophy, but also sociology, psychology, pedagogy and other human sciences. Many thinkers have spoken of consciousness as a miracle of miracles, a divine gift and the eternal curse of man, since, having consciousness, a person is aware of his finitude and mortality, which inevitably leaves an imprint of tragedy on his entire life. There are many positions and approaches to understanding the essence of consciousness.

Consciousness is understood as the highest human form of mental reflection of reality. Regardless of what level it is carried out - biological or social, sensory or rational.

Consciousness has a complex structure. In its structure, first of all, such moments stand out, as awareness (cognition) of things, as well as experience, i.e. a certain attitude towards what a person knows. The development of consciousness involves enriching it with new knowledge about the world around us and the person himself. The awareness of the acquired knowledge has different levels, depth of penetration, i.e., different degrees of clarity of understanding. From here, everyday, scientific, philosophical, aesthetic and religious awareness of the world, as well as sensory and rational levels of consciousness are often distinguished. Thus, in the structure of consciousness it is often its core is distinguished, consisting of sensation, perception, idea, concept and thinking as a whole, and this is nothing more than the human mind. In addition, the structure of consciousness often includes such components as the ability for irrational thinking (fiction, fantasies, illusions), emotional perception of the world and oneself, volitional processes, memory, intuition, etc.