Individuality as Embodiment of Culture and the Problem of Inclusion: an Outsider’s Perspective

Abstract

Human Individuality as Embodiment of Culture and the Problem of Inclusion: an Outsider’s Perspective (by Leon Chernyak). The article considers the problem of inclusion from the point of view of a philosopher working in the area of ontological anthropology. Proceeding from this ontological perspective, it argues that the notion of a human being as the embodiment of culture (and, consequently, of the human individual as an embodied entity) constitutes the major obstacle for the development of a theoretically consistent conceptual framework for the intuitive notion of inclusion of people with disabilities. The notion of a human individual as a corporeal (or bodily) entity is proposed as an alternative to the notion of human individual as an embodied entity. On the basis of the notion of the human individual as a corporeal (bodily) entity, the concept of culture as the only form of objectification of the human mode of being is proposed, and, in its turn, on the basis of this concept of culture the following concepts are formulated: health (the integrity of the organism), medical norm, and disease.