The dissertation work, for the first time in the Ukrainian socio-humanitarian science, has unfolded the methodological originality of the historical and philosophical study of the personality problem and has manifested that an actual and practically oriented historical and philosophical study of the personality problem requires a wide application of the phenomenological method. It makes it possible to consider the personality in his/her self-evidence and thereby lay the foundations for the organization and modernization of the conceptual and categorical apparatus of modern socio-humanitarian science. It would become a fruitful theoretical foundation for practical activity and self-determination of a person, expressing personality through his/her ability for dialogical communication with the Other.
Along with the above, the dissertation proposes a comprehensive historical and philosophical retrospection of the development of anthropological problems and outlines the originality of a person and independent self-determination in different historical periods. For example, in the process of substantiating the anthropological nature of the myth, the inner desire of man to co-create the world in unity with natural forces was revealed. This not only gave man a special status in the world and determined his further purpose – it was invariably associated with his separation from the natural whole (including the natural collective) and the creation of a unique human world. This intention found its development and conceptual design in ancient Greek philosophy. Here, the uniqueness and originality of a person were inextricably linked with his ability to use the mind – to think. In its perspective, this led to the literal separation of man from the natural world by the walls of the city, life in which was ordered by reason. Of course, the ancient Greek attempts to show the uniqueness of man were associated with fencing off from the external natural world, so here it was only about the difference between man and non-man, and the question of the uniqueness and freedom of each person was not yet on the agenda.
Significant changes in human self-determination did not occur in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Despite the apparent differences in life and thinking in these epochs, man's self-determination took place on the general conceptual basis of the doctrine of man as the image of God. Proceeding from this, a person, as before, remained involved in some higher instance, as a result of which he becomes a derivative, and therefore must and even is doomed to fulfill the purpose given to him.
Despite the irresistible inner desire of logocentric discourse to free man (subject) from the power of nature, God, religious tradition, the anthropological program proposed in modern times had a bright religious character. This program developed and affirmed the idea of a single human nature, which is realized in the process of ascent to its metaphysical essence – Ratio. In other words, the modern anthropological program, as well as the religious one in its time, required a person to realize his life vocation – the ascent to the Truth, which is revealed in the process of thinking. The explication of this representation into the concrete historical dimension of social existence necessarily predetermined the assertion of various forms of inequality that enslaved a person, not giving him the opportunity to reveal his inner potential.
The repressive nature of the modern program of self-determination of man as a person became the cause of its radical revision and depreciation of the basic standards and norms by the theorists of Postmodernity. In contrast to it, they propose to be from the repressive in its essential interpretation of a person who in a specific historical dimension is represented by a person with a certain value-motivational core, and assert absolute freedom of personal expression.
