The Past as a Call: the Architectonics of a Philosophical Autobiography

Abstract

The text is devoted to the architectonics of philosophical autobiography as the author’s building the integrity and significance of his own history in the con­text of acquiring a professional vocation. Understanding the sources of per­sonal unity, linking the emotional impressions of childhood and adolescence and the subsequent vector of creative life, the search for the beginning of in­dividuality, the discovery of “tying acts” and their event unfolding are consid­ered as aesthetic facets of self-reflection. The concept of “architectonics” refers to the creation of the integrity of the work, its composition, which con­veys the author’s perception of life, sets its semantic structure, and deter­mines its main factors and lines. It is an attempt to connect life and vocation, to see the influence of one on the other, to consider the origins of one’s present and from these positions to recognize the past, which always remains alive, changing, flickering. It remains a call to understanding, it is never com­plete, and needs the author’s involvement. To ask questions about the past, to answer them from the position of what has been passed means to gain access to the versatility of your current state. Using G. Marcel’s existential autobio­graphical works the author shows the importance of self-history narrative for understanding personality and history. Appeal to the past acquires the charac­ter of revealing in it those “requirements” that largely determine the creativity of a person and his life path, and become available through personal work with his experience.