Spiritual Foundations of Consciousness in the Philosophy of S. L. Frank

Abstract

Introduction. The article examines the problem of consciousness interpretation in the philosophy of S. L. Frank in the context of the late XIX - early XX centuries philosophical tendency to deontologize consciousness. The philosopher studies the ideas of different thinkers in a timeless context, seeing their originality and uniqueness when comprehending the idea of unity. Content. Despite the popularity of psychoanalysis, S. L. Frank ignores Freud's structure of the soul concept and creates his own metaphysical understanding of the soul, which has the mystical property of being open in its depth to a reality other than nature. The description of the spiritual experience of comprehending the soul leads Frank's creative thought to the understanding of the soul as an individual spirituality, rooted initially in unity, thanks to which we have the experience of unconditional being. S. L. Frank gives a working definition of consciousness, which has such modes of being as “I”, or as a “soul”. In the first case, consciousness separates itself from other consciousnesses, considers itself as a separate person. In another case, consciousness is understood as a direct experience of being, which does not oppose consciousness as an object and is the unity of subject and object. The “I” as a psychic subject opposes the “I” as a spiritual subject. Consciousness rises through intuition, as the unity of life and knowledge. Our consciousness in its potential form is an absolute being, as an all-unity, or the fullness of being. Consciousness is the unity of experience and focus on an object, which resides in absolute being, or in self-consciousness. Feeling consciousness, or thinking feeling, is love, comprehended as the fullness of being, or goodness. Conclusions. The problem of consciousness has become marginal in the discourse of modern culture, which considers it as a simulacrum due to the pragmatization and utilitarization of spiritual values, which turns a person into a thing, an accident of nature, an instant of being. S. L. Frank shows that a person is a metaphysical reality and in this sense he turns into a condition of being itself, since he is a conductor of genuine and not the apparent reality. The philosopher's methodology is the idea of transrationality, which defines the boundaries of reason and reaches the level of mystical intuition in comprehending unconditional reality. The integrity of Frank's philosophy allows us to see a person in the system of natural, spiritual and social life, where at each level a system of dialogue between a person and an absolute beginning, or with a living reality, unfolds. The idea of unity allows the philosopher to see a person as a link between different levels of reality through the spiritual life of consciousness, which contains a hierarchy of being. The dichotomy of the spirit and the world is expressed in a person's awareness of the dualism of reality itself.