Siegfried the Dragon slayer as a model of active being: unity of myth and philosophy on the issue of free will

The relevance and topicality of the study is determined by the crisis of personal existence, as well as the denoting sociocultural phenomenon of the category that has exhausted its epistemological significance at the historic moment of the “values shift” - the displacement of the classical paradigm by the paradigm of postmodernism and the transformation of traditional society into “open” one (or “consumption society", as one would say now). One of the results of such a global modification of communication strategies and tactics, cognitive practices and even certain stable constructs (such as national concepts, cultural meanings, and stereotypes of psychological and social behavior) was the restoration of the priority of myth (as a form of worldview and a way of transforming the world) and, accordingly, a revival of interest in mythology and the mythological picture of the world. The subject of the study is the syncretic unity of philosophical consciousness and mythological consciousness. The article analyzes the “existential” problem of modern man’s existence, which is solved differently by different philosophical currents, which, however, share one common idea that the “essential” nature of human activity is revealed in a communicative act; the cognitive meaning of the individual’s will is refined and corrected in public discourse. We should agree with an almost axiomatic statement that orientation towards “genuine existence” is conditioned by freedom and independence, as well as by “critical reason”. The paper proves that activity - not in the sense of production, political, creative cultural or other activity, but in the sense of internal readiness for the productive use of human potency for the benefit of both the individual and the collective - is fundamental for such a special (mythological heroic) state of mind. It is stated that the modus of being in modern “anthropological” philosophy is opposed to the modus of possession; in order to “be”, a person must give up self-centeredness and gain his or her independence. The modern man’s freedom of choice is determined by the logic of culture, the institutions of “open” society and the factors of globalization; however, the cultural heritage of the past retains its significance, the “primitive power” of myth fertilizes mass culture, and the typological image of a hero (as immaculate as Siegfried) becomes a temptation for the “alienated” subject of conceiving the world.