Rationality and Dimensions of Human Existence: Kyiv, Sphera, 1997, 290 p.

The author formulates a general concept of the study of human existence , which claims to be in full compliance with the requirements of rationalism and is close to the ideology of modern science. The book is based on logical, logical-mathematical and natural science material presented popularly. It is intended primarily for people with humanitarian interests.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter I. Structure and movement

• The Erlangen program and «mathematical structuralism»
• — Invariant. Ideology of the Erlangen Program. — Mathematical space
• Randomness, entropy and information
• Deterministic and probabilistic systems. — Entropy and information.
• Dissipative structures. Information and evolution.
• «Biological structuralism»
• «Humanitarian structuralism»
• Linguistic structuralism. — Structuralism in ethnology.
• Structuralist «phenomenology of the spirit»
• — Structuralism in psychology. — Philosophical phenomenology.

Chapter II. The multidimensional man

• Structure, space, information, psychic energy
• Space and field. — — «Psychic energy».
• Philosophical associations: the world as a projection of human «essential forces»
• Three dimensions of a man
• Three fundamental dimensions of communication
• The space of communication. — The cognitive dimension of communication. — The suggestive dimension of communication. — The expressive dimension of communication.
• Communication as action
• Being as order and chaos

Chapter III. Truth and Absurdity

• The Problem of Truth and the «Crisis of European Culture»
• Empirical studies of infinity
• Contradictions in the basis of accurate thinking
• Contradictory theories and «contradictory concepts». — Contradiction and incompleteness in deductive theories. — Extensional and intensional dimensions.
• The space of individual psyche and thinking
• Individual development of thinking
• Acceptance of truth
• Analysis and synthesis: two dimensions
• Sense and nonsense
• Breakthrough through the absurd: the mysticism of contradiction
• Rationalised contradiction: the German dialectic
• Closure of space — collapse

Chapter IV. Truth, good and beauty

• The space of culture
• Human features of cultures. Fromm's typology
• Parameters of cultures and parameters of the individual. — Autonomy of spaces. — Different starting points. — Discreteness of the cultural field of humanity.
• Historical examples: Scythian-Sarmatians
• Germans
• Greeks
• Tragedy and antistructure
• Culture of crying and culture of laughter
• Rethinking structures
• Philosophy of symbolism and structural semiotics
• «Eternal structures» — archetypes
• Model of the world. — Sacred and profane. — — Journey to the «other world». — Doppelgangers.
• Evolution and degradation
• Paradigm and meaning of tragedy
• A breakthrough through the absurd
• Cognition of truth as understanding: analysis and synthesis
• From the space of myth to the artistic space and vice versa
• In the force field of sugestion
• Structure and progress: freedom, equality, fraternity

Summary

Literature