The anthropological practice as an impossible possibility

A contemporary man is now more and more recognizing the necessity of the anthropological practice of the art of being himself. The main sphere of the research conducted in social science and the humanities in the second half of the 20th – the beginning of the 21st centuries was dedicated to problematization, apology, assertion and exercises related to practices of the self. The topic of the anthropological practices (social, spiritual, psychological, somatic, and art practices) permeates the works by E. Fromm, L. Binswanger, P. Ricoeur, P. Hadot, M. de Certeau, M. Foucault, V. Bibikhin, Yu. Lotman, S. Averintsev, and S. Khoruzhy. Reaching the level of the anthropological practices is seen in this article as salvation from alienation, loneliness, and violence as a “second breath” for a better and more dignified life. However, together with the expansion of the topic of the anthropological practices, the comprehension of their multiplicity and multidimensionality we are faced with the arising problem of the impossibility of these practices, their fragility and excessiveness. The originality of this paper lies in the research of the problem of the impossible possibility of the anthropological practices, their fragility and excessiveness. Consequently, we can acknowledge that the problematics of the anthropological practices has an antinomic character and the “resolution” of the problems is possible within the bounds of an existential event on the edge between its possibility and impossibility. It’s also important to consider that the anthropological practices facilitate the self-renewal of the social, the transcendence of alienation, and the transformation of everything that is impersonal towards a man and fallen away from him. The social as the human can begin, be initiated, and realized but it cannot last forever, it is temporary, event-bound and situation-bound, and principally heteronomous.