Doichyk M. The Idea of Dignity: from Antiquity to Modernity (Historical-Philosophical Analysis)

The object of the research is the paradigmatic transformations of the content of the idea of dignity. The aim of the research is to reveal the dynamics of the interpretation of the content of the idea of dignity in the context of the historical-philosophical development from Antiquity to Modernity and to find out the role of the dominant paradigmatic premises of a person’s essential self-identification for the idea of dignity. The integration of multidisciplinary, cultural-historical and paradigmatic approaches in the research enables to reveal the peculiarities of the interpretation of dignity in different historical periods in various sociocultural settings. The principles of objectivity, historicism, integrity, systematicity, criticism, etc. play an important role in the analysis. In the course of the research the general and philosophical methods of scientific research are applied, namely: comparative, phenomenological, and hermeneutical methods, etc. The research traces the historical-philosophical dynamics of the form and content of the idea of dignity from Antiquity to Modernity and reveals the paradigmatic and sociocultural determination of dignity content. The universal character of dignity, being one of the fundamental constituent parts of anthropological paradigm in the history of philosophy, is grounded in the thesis with reference to its invariant linguistic form and content in different historical epochs from Antiquity to Modernity as well as in the context of contemporary intellectual discourse. The research proves that the social program ruling at the certain stage of social development and the corresponding anthropological ideal predetermining personal development “according to” the society’s system of values play the leading role in the process of shaping the content of the idea of dignity. It results in the inner conflict between the humanitarian-anthropological content of the idea of dignity, predominant in the contemporary intellectual discourse, dealing with the self-value of any personality, and the social-civilizational and/or ideological parameters coordinating the self-identification of a personality and laying down the ideological bases for the socially approved stereotypes of human behavior. In this context the research grounds the significance of the paradigmatic approach to the historical-philosophical research on the idea of dignity being one of the fundamental ideas in the development of Western civilization. The research deepens and broadens the scientifically proved knowledge in the anthropological and social-philosophical issues which are basic for understanding the world-view and axiological premises behind the development of Western civilization. The sphere of application is education.