The Concept of Sovereign Personality as a Topical, Historical-Philosophical and Humanitarian Problem

Abstract

The subject of this research is the problem of evolution of the concept of sovereign individual from the Age of Enlightenment to modernity. Historical-philosophical analysis identified the main trends of this concept development, revealed ideological connections with such areas of thought as utilitarianism, nihilism, anarchism, philosophical anthropology, Nietzscheanism, libertarianism. The main socio-philosophical and philosophical-anthropological definitions related to the concept of "sovereign individual" are defined, as well as the main strategies of the individual in the "struggle for individuality." The concept of sovereign individual is related to the principle of the complex (economic, social, political, moral) liberation of personality, it sums up the achievements of the European philosophy of freedom of the 19th-20th centuries. In the light of modern humanitarian problems, there is a danger of understanding "sovereign individual" as a nihilistic figure, freed from history and tradition, as a person of aesthetic game, located "on the other side of good and evil." At the same time, modern transhumanistic concepts of post-human imply a change in the nature of personality, that is, a fundamental metamorphosis of the basic configuration of human. The dominant trends of globalization, recognized as both negative and positive, can pose a threat to individual autonomy, as it was understood in Western European philosophy and is understood nowadays. Keywords—history of philosophy; social philosophy; sovereign inividual; nihilism; modern humanitarian challenges.