While the concept of “man” emphasizes its biosocial origin, “personality” is mainly associated with its social and psychological aspects. These include self-esteem, self-esteem, value orientations, beliefs, the principles by which a person lives, his moral, aesthetic, socio-political and other social positions, his beliefs and ideals. As well as the nature, characteristics of his intellect, the style and independence of his thinking, the specifics of his emotional composition, willpower, way of thinking and feelings, social status. The concept of "personality" in the history of philosophy was considered from a variety of points of view.
Definition
The concept of personality in philosophy, psychology and sociology is one of the key. The term itself comes from the Latin word persona meaning mask. A personality is a template set of habits, traits, views and ideas of an individual. Because they are organized externally in roles and statuses and are internally related to motivation, goals, and various aspects of the self.
If you briefly present the concept of personality in philosophy, we can say that this is its essence, meaning and purpose in the world.
According to Robert Park and Ernest Burgess, this is the sum and organization of those traits that determine its role in the group. For other psychologists, this concept covers an organized set of psychological processes and statuses related to a person. It is also all that a person has experienced and experienced, since all this can be understood as unity. In addition, this concept refers to habits, attitudes and other social traits that are characteristic of the behavior of a given person. According to Jung, a personality is a combination of an individual’s behavior with a given system of trends that interacts with a series of situations.
Different points of view
Based on these definitions, we can say that, in addition to philosophical, there are two more basic approaches to the study of personality:
psychological;
sociological.
The psychological approach considers the personality as a specific style characteristic of it. This style is determined by the characteristic organization of mental trends, complexes, emotions and moods. The psychological approach allows us to understand the phenomena of personality disorganization and the role of desires, mental conflict, repression and sublimation in its growth. The sociological approach considers the personality in terms of the status of the individual, her understanding of her role in the group of which she is a member. What others think of us plays a big role in shaping our personality.
Essence
Thus, a person is the sum of ideas, attitudes and values ​​of a person, which determine his role in society and form an integral part of his character. She is acquired as a result of his participation in group life. As a member of the group, he studies certain systems of behavior and symbolic skills that define his ideas, attitudes, and social values. These ideas, attitudes and values ​​are integral elements. Considering the basic definition, it should be borne in mind that the concepts of "man", "individual", "individuality" and "personality" in philosophy are single-order, but not identical.
Value
Considering briefly the concept of personality in philosophy, it should be noted that it is a product of social interaction in group life. In society, each person has different traits, such as skin, color, height and weight. People have different types of personalities because they are not alike. This applies to the habits, attitudes, as well as the physical qualities of a person, they are similar, but differ from group to group and from society to society. According to this approach, everyone has a personality that can be good or bad, impressive or not impressive. It develops in the process of socialization in the culture of a particular group or society. It is not possible to define it individually, because it varies from culture to culture and from time to time. For example, a killer is considered a criminal in peacetime and a hero in a war. Feeling and actions of a person during interaction form a personality. This is the sum of a person’s general behavior and covers both explicit and latent behavior, interests, psyche, and intelligence. This is the sum of physical and mental abilities and skills.
It is impossible to imagine a person as something separate from a person or even from his external and general physical appearance. This is the face we are facing. When people perform plastic surgery and facelift, they change their appearance, which, as shown by psychological observations, also changes something in their psyche. Everything in a person is interconnected and affects the personality as a whole. What a person looks like is an outward expression of his inner world.
Connection with philosophy
A person is considered a socially developed person, one who is part of a specific historical and natural context, of a particular social group, a person who has a relatively stable system of socially significant personal qualities and fulfills the corresponding social roles. The intellectual framework of a person is formed by his needs, interests, belief system, characteristics of temperament, emotions, willpower, motivation, value orientations, independence of thinking, consciousness and self-awareness. The central personality trait is worldview. A person cannot become a person without developing what is known as a worldview, which includes his philosophical view of the world.
Knowledge of philosophy is an integral attribute of higher education and human culture. Since worldview is the privilege of the modern individual, and its core is philosophy, everyone should know philosophy in order to understand themselves and those around them. Even those who deny and ridicule philosophy possess it. Only the animal has no worldview. It does not evaluate things in the world, the meaning of life and other problems. Worldview is a privilege of a person, that is, a person elevated by culture.
The social basis of personality
Both historically and ontogenetically, a person becomes a person to the extent that he assimilates culture and contributes to its creation. Our distant ancestor in the conditions of the primitive horde and the initial stages of the formation of society was not yet a person, although he was already a man. A child, especially in his early years, is, of course, a person, but not yet a person. He has yet to become her in the process of his development, education and upbringing.
Thus, the concept of “personality” in philosophy implies a principle that combines biological and social into a single whole. As well as all psychological processes, qualities and conditions that regulate behavior, giving it a certain consistency and stability in relation to the rest of the world, other people and yourself. A personality is a socio-historical, naturally conditioned and individually expressed being. A man is a person, because he consciously distinguishes himself from everything that surrounds him, and his attitude to the world exists in his mind as a certain point of view in life. A person is a person who has self-awareness and worldview and has reached an understanding of his social functions, his place in the world, which has realized itself as a subject of historical creativity, the creator of history.
Properties and mechanisms
Consideration of the concept of personality problems in philosophy and sociology necessitates a deeper study of its essence. It lies not in the physical nature, but in the socio-psychological properties and mechanism of mental life and behavior. In fact, this is an individual concentration or expression of social relations and functions, the subject of cognition and transformation of the world, rights and obligations, ethical, aesthetic and all other social standards. When we talk about the concept of personality in philosophy and other sciences, we mean its social, moral, psychological and aesthetic qualities, crystallized in the intellectual world of man.
Functions
In each of his basic relationships, a person acts in a special capacity. Here we are talking about a specific social function, as a subject of material or spiritual production, means of certain production relations, as a member of a certain social group, class, representative of a particular nation, as husband or wife, father or mother, as the creator of family relations.
The social functions that a person must perform in society are many and varied, but the individual cannot be reduced to these functions, even if we consider them as a whole. The fact is that a person is what belongs to a given person and distinguishes him from others. In a certain sense, one can agree with the opinion of those who find it difficult to distinguish between what a person calls himself and what is his own. Personality is the sum of all that a person can call his. This is not only his physical and intellectual qualities, but also his clothes, a roof over his head, spouses and children, ancestors and friends, social status and reputation, name and surname. The personality structure also includes what is given to it, as well as the forces that were embodied in it. This is a personal manifestation of embodied labor.
Borders
The concept of personality in philosophy defines its limits much wider than the limits of the human body and its inner intellectual world. These limits can be compared with circles spreading over water: the nearest ones are the result of creative activity, then the circles of family, personal property and friendship go. Far circles merge with the seas and oceans of all social life, its history and prospects. Here, the way the philosophy considers the concepts of "individual", "individuality" and "personality" comes to the fore.
The completeness of the latter is expressed in its uniqueness, in its uniqueness. That is what is called individuality. The personality as a whole is an abstraction that is concretized in real people, in separate, rational beings with all the unique properties of their psyche and physique, skin color, hair, eyes, and so on. She is a unique representative of the human race, always special and unlike any other person in all the fullness of spiritual and material, physical life: each “ego” is unique.
Individuality as a defining quality
In this case, some special characteristics are considered. In essence, personality is an individual rational being. What else can I add? Based on the concept of personality and individual in philosophy, it can be said that in a broader sense, the latter term is synonymous with a single concrete being. This also applies to the concept of "individuality." Which includes the spiritual characteristics of the personality, as well as its physical characteristics.
There is nothing more individual in the world than a person, nothing in creativity is so diverse as people. At the human level, diversity reaches its peak; there are as many personalities in the world as there are people. This is due solely to the complexity of human organization, the dynamics of which, it would seem, have no boundaries. Taken together, all this is based on the concepts of "man", "individual" and "personality" in philosophy. Characteristic features are determined by the presence of different opinions, abilities, level of knowledge, experience, degree of competence, temperament and character. A personality is individual to the extent that it is independent in its judgments, beliefs and views, that is, when the brain is not “stereotyped” and has unique “patterns”. Each person, regardless of the general structure of his personality, has his own characteristics of contemplation, observation, attention, various types of memory, orientation, and more. The level of thinking varies, for example, from the heights of genius to the worst cases of mental retardation.
Classification
Based on the concept of personality in philosophy and sociology, people can be divided into various types - depending on the prevalence of certain elements in the structure. A person may be inclined to practical or theoretical thinking, rational or intuitive understanding of reality, work with sensory images or possess an analytical mindset. There are people who are largely guided by their emotions. For example, sensory types have an exceptionally developed perception of reality. For them, sensation is a concrete expression of the fullness of their life.
Representatives of various types
Science, based on the concept of personality in philosophy and other disciplines, offers the following division. A person of an intellectually intuitive type is constantly striving for new opportunities. He cannot be satisfied with his adherence to universally recognized values; he is always looking for new ideas. People of this type are the driving force of culture, the initiators and inspirers of new enterprises. Personality types can also be classified according to their behavioral orientation. A person can be classified as an extrovert or introvert. Depending on whether he focuses on objective reality or on his inner world. Introverts are often silent and rarely or with difficulty open their hearts to others. As a rule, their temperament is melancholy, and they rarely stand out or come to the fore. Outwardly calm, even indifferent, they never try to force anyone else to do anything. Their true motives usually remain hidden.
Personal qualities
In psychology and sociology, a person is usually characterized by his individual characteristics. They distinguish qualities associated with a certain way of perception or judgment, as well as how a person affects the environment. Attention is focused on originality, on the features that distinguish an individual in society, on the functions that he performs, on the degree of influence that he exerts, or on the impression that he makes on other people: “aggressive”, “submissive”, “difficult” and further. Independence, willpower, determination, intelligence and wisdom are considered very important.