How did philosophers define the" essence " of a person?
Did they judge by themselves, or did they arrange social surveys?
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As far as I know, nothing.
It depends on what “define” means to you, of course. If it is “give definition”, it is not required. It is enough to define the essence and the person separately.
And if you mean some kind of analytical procedure that will allow you to distinguish the essence from everything else, namely in a person, then in whom exactly?
Let's say you're talking about a person as a concept. Or the ” idea of man.” Then you have to understand the idea first, don't you? Decide for yourself what a person is.
That is, your question implies your knowledge of it, or at least an opinion about it. Is it there? Share it 🙂
Philosophers, of course, begin by learning to speak. Just like other people. And first they understand the word “person” in accordance with the surrounding culture and social environment. Then they just move on to strict logical thinking and reflection (the logic may be different). They communicate with other philosophers, read their works, and so on.
When the concepts are clarified, they build their own worldview system. In the process, they can introduce new concepts or redefine old ones in their own way.
Do they judge by themselves? Yes.
Many. A philosopher's worldview can change. However, if you “tie” philosophers to their systems and count one for two or more (usually they say “early and late” — that is, they are tied to age), all of them can be divided into two groups.
Some are more subjective, even fundamentally “subjective” (and, therefore, judge by themselves), others are the opposite. They distance themselves as much as possible from their subjectivity. In the limit of “erasing yourself” from the world (although this also requires self-reflection).
Do philosophers take opinion polls?.. Or something like that?”
Things happen. But only as a game. It can be called something else: a seminar, discussion, conference, educational debate or teleconference, philosophical club, laboratory, workshop, and so on. These are all games.
The fact is that for a philosopher, no one's opinion is necessary. it is not essential. Including your own.
But the reasoning can be significant. An isolated event. An individual. Or arising in the process of exchanging opinions, communication… games. How essential for the philosopher is this game itself:)
The opinion of the Authorities on this important political topic has always been a general fact and principle.
A little bit is taken into account both the scientific and practical moment, so as not to deviate much from the truth.
Sophistry-the science of “how to deceive an opponent with a verbal trick” – the native ugly daughter of my mother-philosophy-originated a long time ago and caused a lot of troubles and outrages….
Here we can only guess, but it seems to me that opinion polls are arranged when they are unable to understand people's thoughts. Philosophers, as a rule, are proficient in psychoanalysis and it is enough for them to listen to people to understand their thoughts about everything.
If you like, then it is “by myself”, since it is I who am given to myself in a fundamentally different way than others – those in whom I am (accustomed) to recognize a person and the (non -) understanding of the other will be exactly my (non -) understanding.
As for the other side of the question, it is useful, first, to recall that for many philosophical trends it is not a question of” defining”, but of” judging ” the essence. However, in any case, opinion polls or any other way of collecting existing opinions will not help here – since this is not about what most of us consider the essence of a person, but what is such. The fish will not be even a mediocre ichthyologist – and people's opinions about what makes them human can be very interesting and even, perhaps, tell us a lot about human nature-but at best it will serve as material for reflection.
Secondly, as Anastasia Smolina has already pointed out, the question of the “essence” of man is not an isolated one – in different philosophical concepts, the understanding of what man is can be either a starting point – from which the interpretation of reality will unfold (in turn clarifying and clarifying the basis), or a certain concept of reality will precede the question of the essence of man – and then the question will be reformulated into the question of man's place in the cosmos (for example: below angels, but above animals). Similarly, an entity can be thought of as something present or as a project, an opportunity – in the first case, we are all people, this is our nature, in the second-we more or less realize our own “humanity”, are able to be more or less people.
In any case, however, we are faced with a theoretical question-empirically, we can only collect data on who we consider to be human (and what these individuals have in common), the question ” what is a person?”,” what does it mean to be human? ” – precedes the first one in logical terms, because depending on the answer to this question, we will already decide whether to consider a representative of another tribe as a person
It's a good question and very few people can answer it. The philosophers of the East did not suit soc. surveys. Their methods of cognition are described by the sage Zhang Dai: “The sage knows intuitively, not trusting the senses. My ego and all the manifestations of the universe are identical!!! Definition of the” essence “of a person:” A person is neither earth, nor water, nor fire, nor wind, nor space, nor consciousness, nor all this together. What else is a human being? The person is not real!!! With respect.
In different ways. How many philosophers – so many definitions. I personally say this: man is a bio-socio-spiritual being. Its essence lies in the systemic unity of three principles: biological, social and spiritual. For more information, see my works.
There are thousands of philosophers, and they have even more opinions. Some people focused on religion, some on science, some on their teachers, some on their experience, some on their fantasies in general. There is almost nothing in common.
Of course, they conducted opinion polls. Philosophy, like any other exact science, uses a mathematical apparatus. It was the development of mathematical statistics by Pythagoras that allowed Socrates to make the famous anthropological turn and introduce such an object as” human essence ” into the orbit of philosophical research. As you know, Socrates conducted surveys using the semi-structured interview method, which was recorded by his graduate student Plato. Unfortunately, all the tables and graphs were burned along with the Library of Alexandria. However, we still have raw data on the basis of which we can reconstruct the study of Socrates (which once again testifies to the objectivity of philosophical knowledge). A close examination of these materials, now known as Plato's dialogues, is even more shocking than the experiments of Milgram and Zimbardo. None of the respondents (generalizing the results from the sample to the entire population, we can say: none of the people) does not understand the meaning of the words they use! In all likelihood, it was for such outrageous research that Socrates was poisoned with hemlock.
The” essence ” of a person through social networks. surveys and other empirical methods are not defined in principle. This is like looking for, for example, the “soul” by scanning each organ with the device. Philosophers, in principle, operate by other methods, and the specific philosophical concept of ” human essence “(or “human nature”) cannot be reduced to its individual characteristics or even their totality.�
Different philosophers have defined human nature in different ways-they “defined it”, and did not define it as some objectively given physical characteristic that simply lies and waits for people to come and measure it. The definition of the” nature “or” essence ” of a person depended on the philosopher's concept, goals and tasks that he considered to be the main ones. For example (greatly simplifying), Marx defines the essence of man through labor activity (objectification, subjugation of nature, etc.), and around this definition a holistic concept is built, the goal of which is the revolution of the “working man”, that is, the “working man”. of the proletariat, and the transition to the final phase of human development. But Nietzsche, for example, has a different task in his philosophy, a different vision of how the development of humanity should go, and his definition of man is correspondingly different.