Energy and the problem of “ones own being” of a man

The article discusses the possibilities of the concept of “energy” and the concept of “one’s own being” for anthropological research. Having defined the meaning of “energy” in the ontology of Aristotle as the realization of the “first essence”, the author shows how in the doctrine of St. Gregory Palamas about divine energies, this concept received its anthropological dimension, becoming the designation of the action of a person. As the realization of the “first essence” (›πόστασις), the energy of motion is closely connected with another concept of Aristotle: the “own” (εξιζ) of a thing. The “own” in Aristotle philosophy does not mean the resting “essence” (what) of a thing, but an integral way (how) of the realization of a thing in the world. It is demonstrated that knowledge about the energy of something is possible only together with knowledge about the mode of one’s own being. Using the example of the division of historical epochs of Western civilization, the author illustrates the relationship between energy and interpretation of the nature of a person’s own existence in the world. The concept of “one’s own being” in the early philosophy of Martin Heidegger is considered as a reception of Aristotle’s thought and as a project of a philosophical answer to the main anthropological question about “one’s own”, and therefore about the energy of a person. The question of the “own way of being” of a person in the philosophy of “Being and Time” is posed on the way to the main task of discovering the horizon for questioning about being itself. Heidegger discovers the “own being” of a person in the mode of authentic being-towards-death, which has features of horror and resoluteness. As a result of the analysis of this concept by the early Heidegger, the author points to the problem of “worldlessness” of the described way of being-in-the-world. This problem becomes apparent when trying to apply the concept of energy to Heidegger’s concept of one’s own being. The conclusion is made about the limitations of Heidegger’s concept of “own being”, which naturally arises from the method of “existential analytics”. The current situation of refusal to search for the “own being” of a person both in Western culture in general and in Western philosophy is briefly considered.