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Publication Details

The Concreteness of Man in the Relation of Knowledge and Valuation

(Original title: Konkrétnosť človeka vo vzťahu poznania a hodnotenia)
Filozofia, 24 (1969), 3, 266-280.
Type of work: Papers and Discussions
Publication language: Slovak
Abstract
In the proces of the gnozeological and ontological analysis of the relation between subject and object reduction of these concepts takes place. The concept of subject is often reduced to the concept of consciousness, or even to the concept of pure theoretical consiousness and, accordingly, also the concept of object is reduced to „the pure given” as a moment of experience. These points of views, adequate and inevitable in the analytical procedure, are then transferred also into ontology and create insolvable problems in the attempts to form an ontological model of the relation between man and the world. An absolute differentiation of the ontological and gnozeological points of view at man is not possible, but an unreflected indentification of them leads to the illusions that it is possible perfectly to eliminate subjectivity from the process of knowledge and exactly to differentiate the increase in the importance of evaluating attitudes and their influence from the „entirely objective” content of knowledge. The concreteness of man as the subject of knowledge, his biological, social and psychological determination, his „insertion" into the world, is the cause of the fact that the processes of „reflection”, projection and direction of subject, of subjective valuation, mutually overlap at all stages of the process of knowledge. If we differentiate he concept „subjektiveness” from „subjectivism” in knowledge, a concrete, determined subjectiveness of the processes of knowledge may be admitted, and, at the same time, the consequently relativistic attitude towards the questions of gnoseology can be avoided.
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