Развитие образования (Aug 2024)

On the question of the life purpose of man as a psychological category

  • Mikhail V. Germanov

DOI
https://doi.org/10.31483/r-112782
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7, no. 3
pp. 76 – 83

Abstract

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The presented article is devoted to the problem of human purpose in life as a psychological category. The importance of addressing the study of this issue is associated with the transformations taking place in society, leading to a sharp increase in cases of escapism and the desire for hedonism, as fundamental life guidelines of a modern personality, preventing a person from finding his true purpose in life, its meaning. However, despite the fact that interest in this issue has been growing lately, it is difficult to consider it finally resolved. The objective of this study is to determine the content of some aspects of the issue of human purpose in life as a psychological category. The method of this study is a theoretical analysis and generalization of existing scientific studies that reveal the main content of the category "human purpose in life", as well as related concepts. It has been established that a person's life purpose is a characteristic of the basic level of personality (the core of personality) and represents the initially given natural orientations of a person, his general life direction, expressing a predisposition to a certain type of functioning, style of activity, type of relationship with oneself, people and the world as a whole; a person's purpose is to become oneself, to self-determine in being, freely realizing (or freely refusing to realize) the plan for oneself. All individual callings of a person are particular ways of realizing the universal calling. The purpose of life for people gives vector certainty and programmatic nature to a person's life intentions, his ideals, dreams, life goals, life results. Values act as universals of the meaning of life, which crystallize in situations typical for society, humanity as a whole; the desire to search for and realize the meaning of life by a person is a need of a person and characterizes him as a subject of life activity. The meaning of human life is a complexly organized system of meanings, including multi-level semantic structures and functioning as a single whole.

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