RUDN Journal of Philosophy (Dec 2013)
The Metaphysics of Human Existence: From Reflection to Reconstraction
Abstract
The author substantiates the idea of multiplicity of human worlds directly addressing the two dimensions: the “empirical” as such and the “metaphysical”. The empirical human world is characterized by substantivity, i. e. the immediacy and reality of being in the world. It is manifested at the externally observable levels of human being: semblance (a possible being, a being-as-it-seems) and pretense (conditional being or being as if, pseudo-essential in contrast with truly essential). The metaphysical dimension is detected already at the latent level of human existence as, on the one hand, objectively essential (what-ness) and, on the other, subjectively essential (who-ness). But the truly metaphysical essence of human being lies at the border of these worlds, in the sphere of transcendental as the truly essential which differentiates in itself on authenticity (self-being) and otherness (other being).
