Humanistic Dimension of Biological Rationality

Abstract

The concept of rationality is characterized by immanent uncertainty: is it a rationality of life or a rationality specifed by the concept “life”? For the philosophical discourse, the concept of rationality is most important. This paper aimed to demonstrate how the concept “life” specifes the concept “rationality”. There are two strategies used to determine rationality: absolutist and relativist; they are not mutually exclusive, but presuppose each other. Rationality is knowledge of a special kind and, like truth, is procedural. It is obvious that in Nietzsche’s philosophical aspect of life, which does not deny the ability of the human mind, the mind is just a servant of life. The Nietzschean will to power sounds like a hymn to human freedom. The essence of the Nietzschean concept of life is represented in his “Die at the right time!” manifest. Nietzsche’s position coincides with liberal humanism, but contradicts the ideas of socialist humanism. The scientifc study of life is multidisciplinary. In this context, life is analysed as the basis of human freedom: from the ability of chemical autocatalysts to mutate, through the “power of will” to human freedom. The “power of will” characterizes the range of an organism’s freedom in its movement towards death. At the stage of post-non-classical science, interdisciplinarity is replaced by transdisciplinarity, which means going beyond scientifc knowledge into the sphere of culture and everyday life. The scientifc and the philosophical understandings of life are drawn closer together.Biological rationality appears as a dilemma: life is rational because it is a prerequisite for freedom, while ending one’s own life to assert freedom is also rational. The realities of the digital society chart a course
for rationality to go beyond humanism. Biological rationality is a signifcant stage in the development of rationality, which is eliminated by its further development.