HEALTH PRESERVATION IN CONSUMER SOCIETY IN THE LIGHT OF DIALECTICAL CATEGORIES OF «FREEDOM» AND «NECESSITY»

Abstract

Introduction. Modern civilization both in a scientific-theoretical discourse and in an assessment by the persons not involved in science but with an active public position is endowed with such characteristics as crises, risks, dangers. At the same time, the cause of all the many crisis processes and phenomena in the modern consumer society as a product of the industrial era is bankrupting, first of all, in the field of value and motivational and volitional aspects of human activity. Now targets of all types of human activities, including health preservation, are permanently dependent on the imperatives of consumer profitability.

Purpose: to investigate the specifics of the individual's health-preservation activity in a light of the dialectical categories of "freedom" and "necessity".

Methods. Health is a complicated and multifaceted phenomenon the study of which requires a complex methodology that integrates the techniques of classical and non-classical philosophy. The methodological basis of this article is a comparative approach which made it possible to analyze the interaction of the dialectical categories "freedom" and "necessity" in health preservation in today's consumption society.

Results. In everyday life, freedom is likened to being able to make a choice. At the same time, it should be remembered that having a choice is only an outward sign of freedom. The qualitative characteristics of choice and therefore of the freedom of action in health preservation will always be determined by a number of existing opportunities and conventionalities that are grouped around knowledge about health, values, and money of a certain social entity. It is also important to take into account the important fact that in the space of consumption the freedom of choice in health-preserving activity often goes with stimulative practices on the part of manufacturers and suppliers and, as a consequence, formal health-preserving action on the part of a consumer.

Conclusions. It would be too naive to think about humankind's immediate awareness of the need to create a global health-preserving paradigm based on healthy consumption. For such an optimistic development of events, modern civilization is too divergent in its socio-economic, geographical, political components. Now in Ukraine, the health-preserving activity of average consumers is carried out in the illusory freedom format provided by a wide variety of goods and services. Incompetence, dishonesty, uncontrollability in the production and quality of goods and services demonstrate the imaginableness of freedom on all matters pertaining to human health. At the same time, an objective need arises to be healthy in order to live a dignified life with creative inspiration and to raise our children with dignity. Unfortunately, today the quality of health-preserving activity of Ukrainians is exclusively in the space of their own actions and their personal responsibility.