Liminality as a Concept of Philosophy (to the Rationale of Transformative Learning)

Abstract

Globalization and the deployment of information and communication revolution in the world create a situation of permanent changes at all levels of public life. «Fluidity» and the instability of hierarchical structures and institutions, which in the past were «hard», ubiquity of the processes of transition and transformation of cultural and scientific paradigms form a need for individuals of transformative adult education to be responsible subjects of social processes. A professional approach to the implementation of transformative learning objectives involves understanding its complexity and risk, and therefore requires a serious analysis of the conceptual and theoretical tools, with which it is possible to explore and model the processes of transformation and self-transformation.

The proposed article is devoted to the analysis of the concept of liminality and fundamental philosophical categories related with it: limits and boundlessness, boundary, transgression, being and becoming, order and chaos. Based on the analysis of finite and infinity dialectic, meaningful concept of liminality rooted in ancient philosophy is explicated. A comparison of the concept «limit» in Plato and Kant reveals contradictory interpretations of the border area in the metaphysical constructions of «two worlds» in the history of philosophy. The perspectives of liminal thinking as «becoming» within the «differential ontology» Nietzsche and philosophy of postmodernism are analyzed. The complementary nature of transcendence and transgression as an existentially-sense outlook and thinking strategies that are relevant in the global context of transformative adult education is expanded.