The Juche idea raised the position and role of man in the world as the fundamental question of philosophy and elucidated the philosophical principle that man is the master of everything and decides everything.

That man is the master of everything means that he holds the position of the master of the world and his own destiny, and that man decides everything means that he plays the decisive role in transforming the world and in shaping his destiny. This is precisely the view of the Juche idea on the position and role of man in the world.

Man is the master of everything. It means he is the master of nature and society and of his own destiny.

Man is the master of nature.

The natural world has various material beings. Among living things the kinds of plants number some 500 000 and those of animals about 1 500 000.

But it is only man who lives controlling the surrounding world. He makes planes, sound detectors and telescopes so as to fly in the sky at a supersonic speed, catch the sound which no animal can hear, and see a thing which is invisible to animals. People build dikes and control rivers to prevent floods and drought, and generate electricity by using water power.

Such instances are countless.

In the former days people who did not know the secrets of the universe considered the universe and heavenly bodies mysterious.

However, people have now set out to conquer the universe.

All these facts vividly prove that man is not a being blindly adapting itself to nature but the master that lives in control of it as he pleases.

Man is the master of not only nature but also society who makes social environment more serviceable to him. Unlike nature, society came into being with the appearance of human beings in the world. All the spiritual, cultural and material wealth in society is created and used by people. Social relations are also a product of people and dominated by them.

Next, man decides everything. It means he plays the decisive role in transforming nature and society. To remake nature, there should be material and technical means. If tideland is to be reclaimed there must be excavators, cranes, steel and cement. This shows that material and technical means are indispensable for transforming nature.

Thanks to the rapid development of science and technology robots assemble cars, fetch books from the stack rooms of libraries and perform other kinds of work, but they are all what people have made and work as people order. In other words, they are simply the extension of human brains and hands, and it is man that plays the decisive role in remaking nature.

Man performs the decisive role in transforming society as well.

Originally, society was born of the demand of man to live independently. Since man is the direct agency in social relations, social laws are laws of his activity. The requirement of social laws will be put into effect only by people's demand and the struggle to satisfy it.

True, objective conditions have an important bearing on social transformation, but man is always the decisive factor. After all, the decisive role in remodelling nature and society, that is, the world as a whole, belongs to man.

One thing must be made clear in this connection. It is that when we say man decides everything, this should not be taken for meaning that man brings about the movement and change of everything in this world. The decisive role of man in the world does not mean that all things move and change through human agency but that man plays a greater role in transforming the world than any other factors.

Like this, the philosophical principle of the Juche idea that man is the master of everything and decides everything provides a scientific answer to the question of man's destiny.