The role of the narrative approach in forming ecological culture, or on the question of human-sizedness

Abstract

Narrative both as a phenomenon and practice is constituted in philosophical methodology and the humanities due to non-classical philosophical projects in the 20th century. Ultimately, it is the fundamental theoretical and methodological problematics, in which the word is considered as the source of cognition (E. Husserl, M. Heidegger, P. Ricoeur, G. Shpet), that become essential for the following comprehension of history, culture and science through the prism of narrative. Today, the problematics of the narrative is gaining more and more attention from representatives of different scientific disciplines (methodologists of science, psychologists, philologists, sociologists, jurists, historians, culturologists) who comprehend the influence of cultural factors on a scientist’s motivation, on the ways of functioning and translation of knowledge in society and also on forming and saving the ecology of culture as an exceptional phenomenon, which emphasizes significance and diversity of the narrative approach in modern conditions. In this context, V. S. Stepin’s philosophical and methodological developments, in particular, the ideas of “human-sizedness” and “human-sized system” (“human sized complexes”) formulated by him take on a specific dimension. The article suggests that an appeal to narrative themes in a socio-cultural and ecological context makes it possible to fix the role and place of a person in human-sized systems, as well as to clarify the boundaries of these systems. It is precisely about the ecological culture of a technogenic civilization: civilization is impossible without culture, without value-based, aesthetic and humanitarian components. The narrative is included in the study of the human-sized system, since the person himself is immersed in the cultural situation of the narrative.