PERSONAL SELF-GOVERNANCE AND SELF-PERFECTION
AS MEANS OF INDIVIDUALITY DEVELOPMENT Cover Image

САМОВИХОВАННЯ, САМОВДОСКОНАЛЕННЯ ОСОБИСТОСТІ ЯК ЗАСОБИ СТАНОВЛЕННЯ Й РОЗГОРТАННЯ ІНДИВІДУАЛЬНОСТІ
PERSONAL SELF-GOVERNANCE AND SELF-PERFECTION AS MEANS OF INDIVIDUALITY DEVELOPMENT

Author(s): V. O. LOZOVOY, Olga Yerakhtorina
Subject(s): Education, Philosophy of Law
Published by: Національний юридичний університет імені Ярослава Мудрого
Keywords: personality; individuality; self-improvement; self-education; self-bringing-up; universal (humanistic) values;

Summary/Abstract: Problem setting. Social and cultural processes taking place in Ukraine at the beginning of the 21-st century are associated not only with the growth of democracy and market economy emergence, but at the same time with searching for the spiritualfoundations of further social and cultural development. A new society construction is impossible with the orientation towards outdated rational-pragmatic principles, since such a direction of human activity will lead to the destruction of value-content and moral components of an individual spiritual world. In modern Ukrainian society new paradigms of consciousness, self-consciousness, and thinking are being formed and they should contribute to the fact that members of the society can acquire not only knowledge and skills in a certain sphere of activity, but also the ability to communicate and to exist together.Recent research and publications analysis. Modern philosophers, both domestic and foreign, comprehend differently the problems of individual conscious self-development, taking different sets of values into their mechanisms foundation. An individual self-perfection is defined by the majority of domestic researchers as the highest form of conscious self-development manifested in personal continuous inner work in order to achieve an appropriate level of own personal development in accordance with humanistic spiritual values, as a way to constant inner world formation in accordance with the universal (humanistic) ideal, while English-speaking researchers are concentrated mainly on the utilitarian-pragmatic approach to individual self-perfection and put the problems of spirituality to the background, considering only those self-improvement mechanisms which help to achieve a certain goal.Paper aim. The purpose of the article is studying the phenomena of personal self-education and self-improvement as individuality formation and deployment means.Paper results and discussion. A personality self-development is an individual creative activity determined by personal qualities and aimed at “building”; the way of person’s being, at the development of what is not inherited. It is understood as an individual history, a way of a person’s attitude to reality, the content of which defines an individual way of thinking (consciousness, self-consciousness), which manifests itself in the form of a real action of the subject able to build and create himself. Needs, values and interests within self-development can be both general and functional, when they express a person’s direction to the activity final result or its process. Activity to satisfy internal needs (biological, social, spiritual) is an internal impulse of self-development in general, self-education and self-improvement in particular, providing their activity essence, although the nature of this activity will obviously be different in relation to various conscious forms of self-development of the individual – self-education and self-improvement.The integrity of the individual can not be reduced to a simple joining of separate functions into a single system, we must speak about the spiritual and moral integrity, the main thing of which is the content connecting its components. The basis for self-improvement is spiritual and moral core, which fills all person’s functional activity manifestations with moral content.The individualization is the process of a person’s self-identification and personification, the allocation from the community, the design of the isolation and uniqueness. The personality that has become an individuality is an original person, active and creative. Different particles, different dimensions of spiritual essence are recorded in «personality» and “individuality” concepts. The very personality is able to self-improvement - as a person capable to self-knowledge, self-examination, self-control, self-regulation and self-education.Conclusion. It is necessary to create such a human cohabitation project, in which universal values or, rather, «every-human» values must undoubtedly remain their priority, and all others might be everyone’s respected private affair. The very life and accordingly the desire for its fullness, happiness are obviously and necessarily considered to be such universal values; a human being needs to be healthy, have a support and extend the life in descendants; it is important to maintain life-saving requirements of good-neighbourhood, where «a shaky peace is better than a good quarrel». It is individual’s freedom inseparable from the idea of full reasonable life, compatible with the same social life freedom of any other person, freedom to think in his or her own way, to confess his or her own values, freedom of conscience, the right to own some property.Such principle of human existence as love can be the answer to the question how this value system can be reconciled between many members of the human community.