Historical-anthropological disciplines system in the humanitarian horizon of modern philosophy of history

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to reconstruct and establish the theoretical features and significance of the system of historical-anthropological disciplines that were formed in the human-dimensional horizon of modern philosophy of history and their influence on the development of philosophical -historical studies. The methodology of this work includes the principles of complementarity, structurality, and dialogicity. In the course of analyzing the problem field of work, the following methods were applied: philosophical hermeneutics, system-structural, and interdisciplinary. Research results. The scientific development of historical anthropology as a sphere of modern philosophy of history led to the generation in its theoretical space of a system of disciplines that study individual issues of the mental-cultural plane of the past. This cognitive transformation is largely motivated by the philosophical and socio-cultural realities of postmodernism. The significant factors influencing the formation of historical-anthropological disciplines are postmodern theoretical approaches that refute logical thinking as the main element of knowledge of the world and the presence and determining value of major philosophical and scientific concepts and political ideological systems, metanarratives. Accordingly, the influence of the postmodern model on the formation and intellectual properties of the system of historical-anthropological disciplines lies in their cognitive focus on the analysis of emotional and psychological factors of historical processes and increasing the influence of understanding individual phenomena and factors, that unfold in the mental-cultural horizon of the past. The system of historical- anthropological disciplines, which was formed in the theoretical space of the humanitarian sphere of modern philosophy of history, forms a complex intellectual space that includes three cognitive levels: psychological-cultural, worldview and cultural and mental-demographic. The psychological-cultural level includes scientific studies in such historical-anthropological disciplines as “history of ideas” and “new cultural history”. “History of ideas” comprehends the content and significance of the plane of the imaginary, the psychic sphere of dreams, fantasies and dreams in the mental-cultural space of historical existence. “New cultural history” analyzes multifaceted cultural phenomena and their interaction with ideas about the world of society and its individual strata. The worldview-ideological level of the system of historical-anthropological disciplines includes studies in “history of readings” and “history of memory”. These sciences analyze the problems of the formation of a worldview and the formation of meanings of individual and social existence of the past. The mental-demographic level includes, in particular, studies in “history of women”. This historical-anthropological discipline is essential for understanding the specifics of worldviews, socially significant behavior, and socio-cultural practices of women in different historical times. The formation of the functioning of the cognitive-heuristic system of historical-anthropological disciplines led to a theoretical dialogue between the humanitarian sphere of modern philosophy of history and social-humanitarian sciences, which had not previously entered into scientific interaction of historical-anthropological concepts. Among these sciences, one can mention the «history of ideas», the «history of political ideas» and political science. The establishment of a corresponding intellectual dialogue took place thanks to the exploration by historical-anthropological disciplines of a new problem field for them, the mental-cultural prerequisites for the formation of socio-political ideas and processes. The formation of a system of historical and anthropological disciplines in the intellectual space of modern philosophy of history leads to a more relevant understanding of the mental-cultural causality of historical processes due to the integration into the problem field of philosophical and historical explorations of the analysis of the worldview and cultural phenomena new to historical and anthropological studies of the dimensions of the worldview and the ideological sphere of the functioning of socio-demographic groups and societies of the past.