Lyaskovets Oksana N. 

Certain aspects of artificial changing limiting conditions

Life and death – are issues settled by nature long ago (by a different power of prime creation – here every thinking human as a birth-giving potency decides in favour of that one, which seems right according to his world outlook). As phenomena of human being, life and death are polysemantic and never go beyond the field of philosophical reflection. By this they prove their vagueness in the search of objective truth. However these issues are pronounced to be “settled” from the point of view of unconditioned designation of facts of life and death to any phenomenon of earth existence; structure of the world is such that all living is doomed to die.

Death – is a “limiting” point of existence of any phenomenon, or more exactly, a finishing point of life process. Thus, death, which in fact once robed itself in the image of an enigmatic being, whose face was concealed by a hood, coming with a scythe in the hand, performs a part of breaking (“cutting”) line of life. With the help of phenomenon of death, a final life limit is marked. At the same time, life – is not only a phenomenon, marked by death. Life is characterized by the factor of time. At least a man, living his life in the material physical human body, cannot think about sense of his existence excluding a “variable” – temporality “from the problem situation”. Respectively, life has its reference point in any phenomenon. Birth is revealed as such by its meaning. Besides, existence of all living is sustained by reproduction of the kind, by the ability to create a similar creature.

Life is actually placed between birth and death, which are its limiting frames. Thus, feature of limitedness is objective and it characterizes a specific nature of earth existence by the necessity to be born and die. In the pointed out connection one should identify life and death as limiting philosophical issues.

Meanwhile, as to birth, it is important to note that process of birth is forestalled by germination (conception), without this stage life is also impossible. That’s why in such logic (and with personal position of the author) germination will be philosophically estimated in the frames of this publication as starting the course of life, and phenomena of germination and death – as limiting issues.

So, as it follows from the said above, germination/birth and death – are ontological laws. But together with everything else, they are laws with ontologically preset “mechanism of action”. Ability to continue oneself with the help of giving birth and necessity to die are provided by nature “technologically”. Birth of a man (as well as that of animals and birds) is provided by the process of conception (fertilization of a female cell by a male one, fusion of cells of different sexes).

In the meantime, in spite of the fact that all these issues seem to have been settled quite clearly, a man due to his “creative” nature tries to settle (and has already settled) issues of conception, birth and death by an unnatural, artificial way.

Nowadays life can be unnaturally germinated with the help of artificial fertilization, in vitro (extra-corporal fertilization) and cloning. A foetus can be grown by means of cloning and surrogacy. Life can be stopped artificially by means of death penalty, euthanasia and abortion. In the last case it is a matter of ceasing life of an unborn baby. But as soon as the baby has already been germinated in the womb, it is growing, developing and definitely living.

That is, a man starts settling these issues independently, in his own way. He doesn’t change the ontological law itself – he can’t cancel phenomena of birth and death. A man enters in the processes of germination/birth and death, delegating himself a leading authority. Because of it there occurs an evident loss of elemental (natural) character of the process. Germination and interruption of life become guaranteed because a new (artificial) participant is “added” to these processes, the one who provides the result (success) of the process (doctor, fertilizing the ovum by “placing” a spermatozoon to it; a woman, gestating a baby “by contract”; a person, executing the sentence; etc.). Here a man is “the leader” of the process. In this way a managerial/managing (which is of interest in the existential sense) role of a man is realized, by means of which pursuit of a man to rule the world (an attempt to assume God’s functions) is expressed.

In fact, management of these processes demonstrates a man’s ability to regulate life “limits” “from both sides” now. There is little “new” in the artificial interruption of life – death penalty is one of the most widespread and “oldest” ways of unnatural cessation of life; consequently, this limit has been subjected to artificial regulation long before.

“On the other hand” – artificial germination; it is of a much greater interest as it is closer in the contents to a divine creative function. A starting life point can also be “regulated” – a couple wishing to have children can plan the event of conception on a definite period of time (even outside a biological ability of child-bearing – the science has already worked out, and the society has already made a reality phenomena of freezing male and female cells, fusion of which after “thaw” “forms” a human foetus). At the same time nothing is changed in relation to “bearer” of life in its initial part, life just starts flowing at a definite moment of time.

Therefore, sense of artificial regulation in the described above examples is particularly in excluding a natural start (here start should be understood as a principle, a basis), implying also necessity of a sexual contact between a man and a woman (now it is not obligatory as well, single people and homosexual couples “can have” children – modern time knows a plenty of examples, as well as from realized experience of famous people).

On the bases of the given theses, the following conclusion is made: for the time present a man cannot cancel the ontological law, determining necessity of germination/birth and death. But in these processes a man delegated himself a new leading (executive) role (it especially concerns processes of germination) by having changed participants (their number), having changed the significance (importance) of their sexual characteristic (and, probably, having even canceled them at all), having changed the significance of age (of a biological reproductive ability), having changed the technology of the process. That is, a man has not just interfered in the natural process, a man has managed to change an ontologically organized process, which indisputably touches upon ontological essentials.

Reasoning in this vein will be the subject of further publications.

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