The need for being disinterested as a key characteristic of human nature
pp. 231-245
in: Jan Selmer Methi, Andrei Sergeev, Basia Nikiforova (eds), Borderology: cross-disciplinary insights from the border zone, Berlin, Springer, 2019Abstract
The article focuses on investigating the human need for performing fundamentally non-utilitarian actions and on people's orientation towards being disinterested whereby they are introduced to, and partake of, the whole. The actualization of our life is connected with the human ability to act and with our performing deeds, when we associate ourselves with a principle and thereby undertake the labour of collecting ourselves. In this context, it is essential to turn to the ultimate and the border, since they are connected with our need for expending ourselves and abandoning ourselves to the other, when an extended perception of life as a gift (an act of giving) is defined and the other turns out to be included into our understanding. The author discusses the meaning of the act of symbolization and analyses the symbol and the sign in the context of the human being's engagement with sense and reasoning. Special emphasis is given to the idea that the human need for performing disinterested acts becomes more acute with the weakening and disappearance of a presumption according to which any moment of life can, in principle, be consciously comprehended, whereas consciousness itself is perceived as an unlimited power enabling the human being to associate himself with anything whatsoever.