Philosophy in the (Post) Humanitarian Mission of the University

Abstract

Purpose. The current crisis situation is connected with the tendency to eliminate the philosophical basis of higher education, the classical university, whose mission is to form a certain type of state, culture, and person. Philosophy and humanities in general played an important role in forming the modern concept of man. In the context of the expansion of the information society and the development of the latest technologies (biotechnologies, artificial intelligence), which stimulates the world market, the problem of the fundamentals of the social and personal dimension of a person, his/her ability to consciously choose their own life, is becoming actualized. The main purpose of the article is in problematizing the development prospects for philosophy in a modern university, and its significance in the formation of a modern person with a certain level of self-awareness. To achieve this, the authors envisage providing a description of modern society, related trends in humanitarianism, determining the situation in university education, and characterizing the type of person or post-human that it mainly produces. Theoretical basis. The basis of the article is sociocultural anthropology. Originality. Trends in society and education, defined by the relationship between the state, education, and the market, reflect the situation of the post-human or trans-human, which is characterized by the creation of a nomadic subject with nomadic thinking. The crisis of the modern and classical university as an institution constituting a modern man is associated with the rapid development of technologies, the expansion of the information society, the orientation towards the knowledge economy, which subordinates the university to the market, requiring the formation of a person that corresponds to market feasibility. However, in today’s world, the realization of freedom priorities, the prevention of manifestations of unfreedom, the ability to critically interpret information, and distinguish between truth and falsehood are of great importance. The formation of this depends on the education system. But, the situation in higher education is determined by the dominance of techno-scientific understanding and development of the world, the priorities of the economy, economic viability, and profit. Under such conditions, the humanities and philosophy, in search of ways and means of their own survival, risk turning into a kind of techno-sophistry that produces various images. These images can be more or less successfully sold on the market, recreating a certain figure of a human-consumer and a human-transformer who obeys the post-truth situation, even appearing as an object of transformation by ideology or propaganda. Conclusions. It is, therefore, essential to form a person who is capable of critically comprehending the reasons for his/her choice, which can be provided by philosophy with the foundations of searching for truth. In the conditions of technological development, in view of the achievements of artificial intelligence, and the latest network resources, it is important in education not only to overcome the orientation towards professional fragmentation and to verify permanent knowledge but also direct live communication on the basis of critical thinking, which forms the basis in the process of cultivating a person by philosophy.