Existential Dialectics as a Fundamental Element of the Culture of Thinking and Understanding

Abstract

The relevance of the work is determined by the need to overcome the crisis of modern culture, particularly the culture of thinking and understanding, which manifests itself, among other things, in the loss of worldview orientations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the key concepts of existential dialectics and to clarify their heuristic possibilities within the system of constructing the modern culture of thinking and understanding. Methods. The author proposes the thesis that a true culture of thinking and understanding is inextricably linked to the hierarchy of higher meanings, where Being-itself (Esse Ipsum) occupies a central ontological place as the ultimate value, the source, and simultaneously the goal of human existence. On this basis, through a multi-layered comparative analysis of the philosophical heritage of Søren Kierkegaard and Max Stirner, the specificity of the existential-dialectical method in the process of formation and authentic self-identification of the personality is revealed. Novelty. Stirner’s so-called “nihilistic egoism” is interpreted not merely as a call to escape the captivity of things and ideas toward an existence based on personal caprice (the established interpretation), but as a radical dialectic of liberating creative uniqueness from the power of alienated things and ideological spooks that paralyze the living existence of the subject, correlating with Kierkegaard’s thought. The conclusion emphasizes that existential dialectics should be a productive tool for clarifying consciousness and, consequently, a powerful impulse for the ontological self-assertion of the personality. Such an approach in the culture of thinking and understanding paves the way toward the organic unity of modern science and ontologically and axiologically oriented philosophy.