A living person against the laws of space: Hebrew and Ancient Greek summands of European outlook
The article deals with the basic features of ancient Greek and ancient Jewish world outlook and analyzes their role in European history down to the 20th century. Attention is drawn to the fact that the fundamental difference of the ancient Greek worldview manifests itself in the absolute prevalence of spatial concepts, while time is understood by the model of "eternal return", the repetition of the same, rather than as a history that enriches man. In the center of the ancient Jewish worldview, on the contrary, is the idea of time as a historical process, which includes an endless dialogue between man and God, leading a person to maturity. Interpretations of the key Hebrew worldview concept of hā-ʻōlām as the Universe eternity and the Universe as duration are proposed and analyzed. The article shows that the idea inherited by Christian Europe from the ancient Greeks about the perfect arrangement of the Universe (Cosmos), conforming to the laws of nature, became the deepest reason for the domination of scientific rationality in modern civilization. At the same time the newest worldview tendencies connected with philosophy of life, intuitivism, existentialism, protecting the idea of irrational incomprehensibility of human life, can be recognized as originating from the Hebrew worldview. It was Henri Bergson who has clearly shown the opposite of these two trends within the European worldview. His concept of true time, understood as duration, memory and history, reveals striking coincidences with ancient Jewish conceptions of time and history. According to Bergson, duration is the essence of man and at the same time is the absolute being from which the Universe comes; this leads to radical anthropocentrism, which can be considered as a distant consequence of biblical anthropocentrism.