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ISSN 2227-7242 (Print), ISSN 2304-9685 (Online)
Антропологічні виміри філософських досліджень, 2017, Вип. 11.
АНТРОПОЛОГІЧНІ ШУКАННЯ
doi 10.15802/ampr.v0i11.105476 © V. V. Melnyk, 2017
UDC 141.32
V. V. MELNYK1*
1*Donbass State Pedagogical University (Sloviansk), e-mail melnik-filosof@mail.ru, ORCID 0000-0001-6028-4066
FEAR PHENOMENON IN EXISTENTIAL PHILOSOPHY
Introduction. The article describes the fear in the human consciousness as natural and constructive psychological
phenomenon indicating an objectless world. The author makes a conclusion as for empirical isolation of the fear deter-
mination in the applied psychology and its narrow phenomenological interpretation as well. Person`s attitude to fear is
still one of the urgent and key issues in psychoanalytic and philosophical science. Reflection on the fear term and mode
is the underlying foundation for existential and metaphysical understanding of the fundamentals of life. Motivational
human activity is governed by fear, which concerns new space and time, loneliness, God and transcendent. The feeling
of fear is presented in each living being, but in a great extent it is presented in a man with thin mental organization.
Purpose. The article analyzes the fear as the integral phenomenon. Methodology. The fear is described as emotion
which is important to avoid dangers, so the author used hermeneutical methodology and anthropological integrative
approach while doing the research. Originality. The fear is interpreted here as a result of direct physical stimulation of
biological reactions within the human body in response to external stimuli (real or imaginary). The fixation of the fact
that fear does not inhibit, but rather activates human activities is an important in socio-theosophical interpretations of
fear. The author emphasizes that the fear is objectified in the culture and is amenable to the mechanism of minimization.
Great attention is paid to the provocation of the depression by fear. The depression is also interpreted as adaptive form
of behavior which in its turn allows a weak person to save power and prevent possible conflicts. Conclusions. Thus fear
as the modus is considered to be the way of understanding the origin of entity indicating not its substantial meaning but
its peculiar «Ontological intensity».
Keywords: fear; freedom; nothing; existing; entity; consciousness; aggression; existence; ontology; myth; anthro-
pology; macrocosm
Introduction
In a continuous flow of content, where some
phenomena of consciousness change others, there
is a phenomenon that has a fundamental differ-
ence from others. It discloses itself on the border
of consciousness, where required integrity of enti-
ty discovers itself. It is unattainable for simple
phenomenological enumerations of its structural
elements and never appears to us in empirical
experience of internal world.
The relevance and the interpretation of fear by
contemporary forms of psychoanalytical tradition
and philosophizing is strong and deep enough and
requires its comprehension. That is why the exist-
ence of modern man is in dire need of understand-
ing and preservation of traditional existential val-
ues and terms, for what their psychoanalytic anal-
ysis is required. Thus the relevance of the study is
in identifying new forms of human existence
based on the fundamental rethinking of psycho-
logical and existential categories in the context of
the psychoanalytic tradition.
Such formulation of the question brings to the
problem of the relationship between psychology
of religion and existentialism, since in psychology
and Western philosophy of the XX century they
weren't always in the same semantic row. The
attitude of the person to the fear was and still re-
mains one of the key problems in psychoanalytic
and philosophical science. Reflection related on
the term and a mode of fear is the underlying base
for existential and metaphysical understanding of
human’s life bases. Motivational activity of the
person is guided by fear of new not studied space
and time, of loneliness, God and the transcendent.
The feeling of fear exists in each living being but
more real for the person with delicate psyche.
Theoretical basis and results
I. Yalom, S. Grof , E. Fromm, S. Freud, Sartre,
Plato, Pascal, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierke-
gaard, Heidegger and P. Gurevich studied phe-
nomenon of fear. The complexity of fear phenom-
enon of knowledge becomes apparent in its versa-
tility and in necessity of existential loneliness and
all forms of Homo Solus, the lonely person at
different levels of society. This person despite of
everything wants to explore the world but is afraid
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ISSN 2227-7242 (Print), ISSN 2304-9685 (Online)
Антропологічні виміри філософських досліджень, 2017, Вип. 11.
АНТРОПОЛОГІЧНІ ШУКАННЯ
doi 10.15802/ampr.v0i11.105476 © V. V. Melnyk, 2017
of it because he/she is lonely. The person, as the
personality begins with a reflection on his/her
own loneliness. Entity is wider than any existence,
but it is closer to people than existence. Fear
points to this endless ratio between of human ex-
istence and the objective reality and science; it
also points to continuous slipperiness of life and
to its search. According to I. Yalom the person
always feels fear of existence to discover the way
of entity discloser. Although by this discovery a
person is not able to provide it for himself/herself,
he/she can only seek to achieve it in each act and
choice. In this fear looks for consciousness and
here is its saving.
The personal aspect of the "meaning of life" is
intensively developed in modern psychology, but
the ontological and metaphysical aspects are over-
looked by scientists. Consideration of the "fear in
science and philosophy" as an ontological prob-
lem assumes, first of all, the ratio of meaning
concept and methodology of a particular person’s
life with the idea of "completeness of existence"
and self-creation. Modern studies showed that
people who have more religious ideas and fear of
self dying, have better general health. The fear of
other’s death has a significant direct connection
with inappropriate general health condition [9].
First of all V. Isaev gave the definition of fear
as "a category of human entity which acts as mo-
tivation to exist". Fear is one of the universal
properties of consciousness of an individual as a
biological, spiritual and intelligent being, en-
dowed with consciousness and will. The fear ap-
pears when existence becomes a problem for a
person, when person’s self-consciousness opens
to the person his/her transcendence, reveals him-
self/herself as an eternal wanderer, lonely and
filled with horror. This property of human soul
can be considered neither as local or peripheral
nor as superficial or instant phenomenon of per-
son’s perception of the world. And the problem is
that there is a certain approach to the construction
of a new existential concept of fear senses, in
which fear is revealed not only as the ancient to-
tality of individual’s consciousness, but also as a
process of ascent of consciousness to itself
through the modes-stages: melancholy, anxiety,
horror. At first glance, fear has no deep philo-
sophical value, but it is the existentialists, who
came to the conclusion that fear is something
much deeper than mere experience caused by
external irritants.
First of all existentialists divide notions of fear
and phobia, which are basis for other existentials.
Phobia always implies the existence of specific
threat. For example being afraid of people,
circumstances, conditions, events.etc. In other
words a source of the phobia is always
determined. Fear, as any object which arouses fear
is absent. A person cannot even say what he/she is
afraid of. Exactly in this uncertainty basic
property of the fear appears. This feeling arises
without any apparent and definite reason. Through
this a person cannot resist, because it is unknown
where the fear comes from. Then it seems that it
comes from all sides and you cannot hide from it
because you do not know the reason for running
[8, 904].
Fear builds a hierarchy, supporting the
existence of the whole and of each person
separately. Another source of existentials of fear,
death, freedom, love is the habit of carrying out
certain manipulations or fixed forms of behaviors.
Perhaps they are as frequently repeated and
rechecked perceived as safe. Their violation
causes even greater fear than real danger
(Lorenz’s observation of his tamed duck’s
behavior).
Fear is an important element of social life.
Fear performs the function of protecting human’s
life. Without adequate person’s capacity to be
afraid of something, he/she could not save his/her
life. So the result of fear is anxiety concerning the
world and entity itself. A person is able to ask
about entity as well as worry about
himself/herself.
Purpose
And we face a philosophical problem to
describe not only the physiological bases of the
existential of fear as an integral part of a person,
but as a metaphysical, anthropological problem of
experience that captures it. Existentialists explore
fear, not as an instinct or psychological
experience or social factor, but as individuals`
existence. Social psychology and psychoanalysis
explores fear as value principle and the process of
personal self-realization in the world. We want to
pay attention to an important point about
dialectical nature (fear itself which will never
disappear from society as functioning mechanism
or its inevitable consequence).
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АНТРОПОЛОГІЧНІ ШУКАННЯ
doi 10.15802/ampr.v0i11.105476 © V. V. Melnyk, 2017
Methodology
It is clear enough that without the existential
philosophy, which refers to mental prototype, we
cannot do the research.
Misunderstanding of rituals leads a person to
aggression because something unfamiliar is
automatically perceived as something dangerous.
Lorenz calls the companies of people that differ
from each other “pseudo kinds”, expecting them
to express less aggression than animals do. He
also means that aggression in animal world is
definitely "better" than the human one.
The total social fear consists of everyday
ordinary or trivial fears. At the unconscious level,
the state of fear is directly generated by power and
energy of the person’s mental world. The
appearance of fear is caused by an imbalance
between leading rules and principles of the world,
and between individual’s intimate desires. Fear is
one of the forms of mental fixation and of
demonstration of this discrepancy. It is a kind of
defense mechanism of unconscious personal life,
person’s inner “I”.
Fear feeling directs social consciousness. Most
of social scientists believe that modern society
culture can be defined as the culture of fear. Fear
has turned into a prism, determined with culture,
through which we look at the world. L. Wittgen-
stein notes that happy world is not the same as
miserable world. Having interpreted and para-
phrased an aphorism, one can say that the world
of a confident person and of the person, who is
not afraid, is not like the world of an uncertain
person who is afraid. We can say that life is fear-
ful. We are afraid of losing life, death, loneliness,
love, freedom, social status. According to M.
Montaigne man is more vulnerable and inclined to
feel fear and avoid something, rather than to strive
for something. So, something fundamental ap-
pears in fear. I venture to assert that the fear,
without any doubt, is one of the most important
tools in marketing of mass media. Moreover, our
fear is less and less based on personal experience.
Our own fear is a side effect of well-being. How-
ever, it does not make it less real.
In psychology fear is seen in the general doc-
trine about emotions. In psychology emotion is
understood as a "shock" or "excitement" or "re-
flection" during which there is a direct passionate
experience of the life sense of events and situa-
tions related to the individuals` needs implemen-
tation. Emotion is a direct response to the envi-
ronment stimulation. Leaning on emotions, an
individual takes necessary actions, achieves goals,
among which inevitability of dangers is the main
once. But to understand what emotion is one can
base on its biochemical element. However, it is
difficult to distinguish fear from many other emo-
tions based on a biochemical analysis; e. g. fear
and anger have the same biochemical composi-
tion. A person who is afraid of being subjected to
violence tends to have high level of adrenaline in
the blood, while a person who is afraid of getting
sick, does not have adrenaline level raised. The
human mind is unlikely to resist the attack of fear.
Originality
The fundamental direction in the fear interpre-
tation understands it as the result of the direct
effects of physical irritants on human nerves. Wil-
liam James believed that such a view is surely
confirms the existence of emotions when there is
no real irritant. Amotivational fear can occur
when there are no any external irritants. He ex-
plained this by saying that the nervous mechanism
can become so sensitive that any stimulus, "even
the most inappropriate," serves as enough reason
enough to cause some jitters and thus generate a
unique set of experiences, appropriate emotion.
But we cannot agree with this statement complete-
ly; so if anyone feels simultaneously inability to
breathe deeply, feels the heart beating, a kind of
change in the functions of pneumogastrical nerve,
called the heartfelt longing, the desire to lie and,
in addition, other unexplored processes inwards,
the overall combination of these phenomena gen-
erates fear in this person, and he/she becomes a
victim of familiar to someone deadly fear. The
suppression of somatic symptoms, as psychologist
said, may lead to the disappearance of fear [7, p.
46]. Fear cannot be ridded, it is not going away –
this is primarily an emotion, which in this case
appears as a purely physiological process that
provides knowledge about the world.
N. Rheinwald considers fear as a passive de-
fensive emotion that is the result of the instinct of
self-preservation. Fear always includes a projec-
tion of the future. The fear essence is in the expec-
tation of negative situations in the future. But not
each negative situation causes fear. Any fear is a
fear of uncertainty. Aristotle said that fear is al-
ways associated with hope. But this statement is
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doi 10.15802/ampr.v0i11.105476 © V. V. Melnyk, 2017
questionable when a person is travelling by plane
which is falling down, and there is no way to es-
cape, he/she will not probably stop to be afraid of
airplanes. So I say about the appropriateness of
reconstruction of kinds of fear in the established
ideological and basic foundation: metaphysical,
transcendental, occult and social fear, which to
some extent affected the development of the irra-
tional philosophy and philosophical anthropology.
Thus, the conceptual contradictions begin with the
varieties of fear as the transcendental, reflecting
mental phenomenon. It acquires the specific forms
of destructive fears only in a person. But they
should be analyzed as mental samples that form a
particular anthropological type.
Primitive man led a life full of "cruel, occult,
secret fear" in the meaning of continuous resi-
dence in danger (fear of punishment, evil taboo,
hardship, the existence and nature). On its own
occult fear is useful because the idea of judgment
after the death in most religions was to encourage
people doing good things and keeping from evil in
accordance with the concepts of good and evil,
which they produced. Primitive man did not know
the fear of punishment, but considered evil in
posthumous existence as the "transfer of habitual
living conditions in the new existence"; fear regu-
lates in this regard internal social hierarchy; and
he/she also tends to create spaces protected with
rituals. So schizoid fear is dominant, it is a func-
tion of the initial individualism. Fear as existential
in antiquity was etymologically connected with
the word threat, punishment, shock, flight, crime
due limits. Fear, this "domesticated" existential,
did not claim to transcendent being, and people
did not feel desire to move beyond the local reali-
ty, did not feel the pressure from the underworld.
In antiquity, there were a few basic types of fear:
"natural" fear, presocial fear – fear of future losses
and evil, which could be sent or "given" from the
kingdom of the dead, this is "the fear of the invis-
ible." Fear appeared as existential result of psy-
chological abuse of balance and the integrity of
the social and cultural characteristics.
Metaphysically and topologically fear became
a fundamental shaking of bases of life, and began
to hold phenomenological intentions, which are
directed primarily inward of a person. Paradoxi-
cally, the person feels the joy, focusing on objects
that evoke fear in us, so that we try to avoid.
There are such examples as horror movies or
computer games. In other words, we get the op-
portunity to experience an extreme situation, put-
ting ourselves in real danger. And social fear is
modified as transcendental, reflecting the mental
phenomenon that gains specific forms of destruc-
tive fears only in human mind. But they should be
analyzed as social intentions, which outline the
specific interpretation in terms of civilization.
Firstly it is important to provide a historical para-
digm of fear, because in Protestantism it is indi-
vidual’s psychological reaction, and it is not con-
sidered as a phenomenon. And sociocultural in-
tention of fear begins with the fear of violent
death and a curse. Before nihility and God the fear
of Luther is the experience of direct or specific
threat of God's judgment, and anxiety is a sense of
threat in itself as a phobia of psychological and
pathological factor in society. In psychoanalytic
fear concepts, conventionally referred to dynamic,
fear is seen as a movement or engine, forcing
people to self-contemplation and self realization
within. But there are some objections because fear
depresses and holds the man, giving him/her free-
dom and suppressing the threat generated by him-
self/herself. These threats are uncertain. A securi-
ty is provided with objects belonging to eternal
world that is identified with entity. Real fear, as a
form of objectification of self-preservation in-
stinct, performs adaptive function, so it is neces-
sary for the proper functioning of the psyche and
behavior. However stressful situations happen in
life not very often but a person experiences fear
constantly. Due to the recognition of the
Protestant voluntarism and the determination of a
person who has the will, the charismatic
Protestant philosophers paid much attention to the
fear as psychic reactions, in particular, shame and
fear. According to contemporary Protestantism,
which is based on the Christian tradition, fear
along with anxiety belongs to low, unexplained
feelings. Lower feelings are dangerous because
they can take precedence over the man. In
Protestant philosophy there is clear demarcation
of the fear of God and person’s fear. Person’s fear
is a strong sense of anxiety and expectation of
troubles because of shameful actions or thoughts.
As a kind of fear it is called the shame, seen as the
mean of strong indirect influence on people. This
shame is recommended to use "carefully" without
encouraging people to shameless acts. This fear
drives away evil passions and leads a man through
charity. For theology typical fear was the fear of
being caught by death suddenly, unexpectedly and
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being alone. So the fear of sudden death, mors
repentita, was won by preventive system of rituals
while fear of lonely death – by last sacrament and
extreme unction of a person who died.
Fear is one of the phenomena of social con-
sciousness, contradictory and rapidly changing. In
European society fear is a natural need, people
feel themselves as intelligent if they feel anxiety
and fear, covering virtually all aspects of human
life: cases of terrorism, the growth of extreme
situations and catastrophes, economic and politi-
cal cataclysms. A person depends on various
functional forms of fear, which in various ways
affect the processes of social transformation;
Thus, the fear of war existed not only with the
death (it was not the fear of death), not with the
act of physical death, but rather with posthumous
punishment, sin, hell torments and the possibility
(potency) of the second death, eternal dying, real-
ly endless death.
In other words, the fear of death was caused
by the "wrong" death. It is the death, which "was"
outside the rules, which threatened outside sacred
and religious inevitable death. Robert J. Kasten-
baum claims that the fear of death has occurred
because many people participated in the systemat-
ic avoidance of death. They paid the price to anxi-
ety and aggravation mechanisms of psychological
defense. Other people tormented themselves with
thoughts, connected with death. Others challenged
death using risky actions; these episodes turned
passive anxiety into active thrills but these feel-
ings resulted in serious injuries or death too often
[14, р. 15].
Nowadays fear plays the role of clearing tool
against sins. The fear of being cursed made people
do different actions: refuse from the property,
pilgrimage, take of monastic vows, torture flesh
etc. It provoked visions of frightful scenes and
suicide, if a person was in despair, lost the hope of
being saved. In these cases metaphysical fear ap-
pears. This is the fear of devil and suicide, the fear
of apocalypse that was primarily associated with
madness.
Modern research in social psychology has
identified the brain areas that are involved in fear
appearance, its disappearance, anxiety and defen-
sive behavior, related to it. Recently developed
genetic and viral tools, optogenetics and advanced
techniques of visualization have now made it pos-
sible to characterize the activity, connection and
function of specific cell types within complex
neuronal circuits. Recent findings that were made
using these tools and techniques have provided
mechanistic understanding of the scheme which is
the base of inner defensive states. It helped to
determine how the brain governs fear and anxiety
and how it orchestrates adaptive models of behav-
ior [12]. And we can completely agree with this.
Described strategies are the overcoming of death
fear and they have more constructive character
than the modern tradition of death removal from
everyday life. Death displacement leads to the
impoverishment of life, atrophy of sensitivity to
things which are happening. Thus displacement
deprives a person of the joy of life. According to
I. Yalom "the negation of the death at any level is
the negation of its own nature, which leads to
narrowing of the field of consciousness and expe-
rience."
In our opinion, there are primarily historical
and social modifications of fear. In philosophical
movement they are changed into the self-
preservation instinct (pathological) and into the
awakening of fear, anguish and loneliness (de-
pression) aimed to exist in society; in Ukrainian
society, which is developed economically and
spiritually, there are unhealthy, depressive fears,
while in those societies which were before the
crisis of individualistic societies schizoid fears
dominate.
Depressive fear is overcome by schizoid fear.
Living in fear is necessary to identify the best one.
Really terrible are those who impose individual
requirements which can spoil their vital power.
For example vital force of mass has been spoiled
because of carefree existence. Fears of "vitalism"
– schizoid in their nature – the highest positive
point in evolution of fears. They state the necessi-
ty to overcome values and strengthening a new
order in the world based on its power.
This is the fear of oppression of biological
foundations of human personality with social
norms, leading to mass neuroses and at the same
time, the fear of nothingness caused by separation
from the community. Opening the experiences of
an individual, psychoanalysis makes the outside
world of this person be more predictable, but it
does not lead to overcome the fears which are
necessary for the existence of human freedom. It
is necessary to eliminate excessive competition,
focus on ownership and on awareness of all
things, even on the meaning of suffering. The
choice is always the fear. It is treated as the basis
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of life. So psychoanalysis only reveals their
sources and can be interpreted as a symptom of
existential fears.
In fact, fear is the prediction of dangers, their
mention or the result of innate factors of fear –
phenomena repeatedly described in the literature.
Only in this case, fear can play a key for a man
prognostic feature.
Conclusions
In modern psychology this problem is
discussed continuously for such a reason: in order
to understand something we have to be afraid of
nothing, feel no trembling, and have own place in
the world which we are going to understand. The
only problem is to find this place in the world in
order to understand it. For example, to realize it as
the world which, according to the physical laws,
generates the being that is able to understand it.
We can and must learn how to live with fears not
in the world of complete senses, but in the world
where the senses appear during life. Fear indicates
initial uncertainty of the “I”. Being in fear we find
out the pure sphere of consciousness which is
opened to the immanently reflective view, like it
happens during the phenomenological reduction.
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18. Teasing, ridiculing and the relation to the fear of being laughed at in individuals with Asperger’s syndrome /
A. C. Samson, O. Huber, W. Ruch // Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. – 2011. – Vol. 41, № 4. –
P. 475–483. doi: 10.1007/s10803-010-1071-2
19. The Relationship Between Religious Attitudes, Fear of Death and Dying with General Health Condition:
A Survey in College Students / M. Nazarzadeh, M. Sarokhani, K. Sayehmiri // Journal of Religious and Health. –
2015. – Vol. 54, Iss. 5.– P. 1672 –1680. doi: 10.1007/s10943-014-9903-6
46
ISSN 2227-7242 (Print), ISSN 2304-9685 (Online)
Антропологічні виміри філософських досліджень, 2017, Вип. 11.
АНТРОПОЛОГІЧНІ ШУКАННЯ
doi 10.15802/ampr.v0i11.105476 © V. V. Melnyk, 2017
В. В. МЕЛЬНИК1*
1*Донбаський державний педагогічний університет (Слов’янськ), ел. пошта melnik-filosof@mail.ru,
ORCID 0000-0001-6028-4066
ФЕНОМЕН СТРАХУ В ЕКЗИСТЕНЦІАЛЬНІЙ ФІЛОСОФІЇ
Вступ. У статті розглядається страх в людській свідомості як природний і конструктивний психологічний
феномен, який вказує на безпредметний світ. Автор робить висновок про емпіричну замкненість визначення
страху в прикладній психології і його вузьке феноменологічне трактування. Відношення людської особистості
до страху була й залишається однією з актуальних та ключових проблем в психоаналітичній та філософській
науці. Рефлексія щодо терміну та модусу страха є глибинним фундаментом для екзистенціального та метафізи-
чного розуміння основ життя людини. Мотиваційна діяльність людини керується страхом перед новим не ви-
вченим простором та часом самотністю перед богом та трансцендентним. Почуття страху присутнє в кожній
живій істоті, але в більшій мірі реальне для людини з тонкою душевною організацією. Мета. У статті аналізу-
ється страх як інтегральне явище. Методология. Страх розглядається як емоція, необхідна для уникнення небе-
зпек, тому в статті використано герменевтичний та антропологічний підходи. Новизна. Він тлумачиться тут як
результат безпосереднього соматичного роздратування, біологічних реакцій усередині людського тіла у відпо-
відь на зовнішнє подразнення (реальне чи уявне). Важливою в соціально-теософських трактуваннях страху є
фіксація того, що страх не пригнічує, а навпаки, активізує діяльність людини. Зокрема, робиться акцент на те,
що страх об’єктивується в культурі і піддається механізму мінімізації. Звертається увага на страх, що викликає
депресію, яка теж тлумачиться як адаптивна форма поведінки, що дозволяє слабкій особі економити сили й
запобігти можливих конфліктів. Висновки. Так, страх, як модус, знаходять буття, є способом розуміння його
природи, вказуючи не на його субстанціональність, а на своєрідну «Онтологічну інтенсивність».
Ключові слова: страх; свобода; ніщо; суще; свідомість; агресія; буття; онтологія; міф; антропологія; екзисте-
нція; макрокосм
В. В. МЕЛЬНИК1*
1*Донбасский государственный педагогический университет (Словянск), эл. почта melnik-filosof@mail.ru,
ORCID 0000-0001-6028-4066
ФЕНОМЕН СТРАХА В ЭКЗИСТЕНЦИАЛЬНОЙ ФИЛОСОФИИ
Введение. В статье рассматривается страх в сознании как естественный и конструктивный психологический
феномен, который указывает на беспредметный мир. Автор делает вывод об эмпирической замкнутости опре-
деления страха в прикладной психологии и его узкой феноменологической трактовке. Отношение человеческой
личности к страху было и остается одной из актуальных и ключевых проблем в психоаналитической и фило-
софской науке. Рефлексия относительно срока и модуса страха является глубинным фундаментом для экзи-
стенциального и метафизического понимания основ жизни человека. Мотивационная деятельность человека
руководствуется страхом перед новым, не изученным пространством и временем, одиночеством, перед богом и
трансцендентным. Чувство страха присутствует в каждом живом существе, но в большей степени реально для
человека с тонкой душевной организацией. Цель. В статье анализируется страх как интегральное явление. Ме-
тодология. Страх рассматривается как эмоция, необходимая для избежания опасностей, поэтому в статье ис-
пользованы герменевтический и антропологический подходы. Новизна. Он толкуется здесь как результат
непосредственного соматического раздражение, биологических реакций внутри человеческого тела в ответ на
внешнее раздражение (реальные или мнимые). Важной в социально-теософских трактовках страха является
фиксация того, что страх не подавляет, а наоборот, активизирует деятельность человека. В частности, делается
акцент на то, что страх объективируется в культуре и подвергается механизма минимизации. Обращается вни-
мание на страх, вызывающий депрессию, которая тоже толкуется как адаптивная форма поведения, позволяет
слабой личности экономить силы и предотвращать возможные конфликты. Выводы. Так, страх, как модус,
определяющий бытие, является способом понимания его природы, указывая не на его субстанциональность, а
на своеобразную «Онтологическую интенсивность».
Ключевые слова: страх; свобода; ничто; сущее; сознание; агрессия; бытие; онтология; миф; антропология;
экзистенция; макрокосм
47
ISSN 2227-7242 (Print), ISSN 2304-9685 (Online)
Антропологічні виміри філософських досліджень, 2017, Вип. 11.
АНТРОПОЛОГІЧНІ ШУКАННЯ
doi 10.15802/ampr.v0i11.105476 © V. V. Melnyk, 2017
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Ph. D.; prof. V. V. Khmil (Ukraine) recommended this article to be published
Received: Feb. 20, 2017
Accepted: Apr. 28, 2017
48
