What is philosophy - the first philosophers, the subject of study and the functions of philosophy, as well as its main question. About philosophy Philosophy verbatim
About philosophy
Philosophy still does not have a generally accepted understanding of its own essence, which would be expressed in its definition - as a subject. The article shows the specific reason for this and such a definition is proposed :)
I will try to express my opinion as clearly as possible, but concisely, about what philosophy is, in the forms that it is common today, to show its role in the past and present, possible benefits and harms :) - with a certain validity of the comparisons and generalizations made.
Here are some descriptions from dictionaries:
Philosophy . Social Sciences:
Greek Phileo - love + Sophia - wisdom
form of social consciousness; a system of views on the world (worldview) and on the place of man in it.
Philosophy TSB:
(Greek philosophía, literally - love of wisdom, from philéo - I love and sophia - wisdom), form of social consciousness; the doctrine of the general principles of being and cognition, about the relationship between man and the world; the science of the universal laws of development of nature, society and thought. F. is aimed at developing a generalized system of views on the world and in place of man in it; it explores the cognitive, value, socio-political, moral and aesthetic attitude of man to the world. As the worldview of F. is inextricably linked with social class interests, with the political and ideological struggle. determined by social reality, it has an active influence on social life contributes to the formation of new ideals and cultural values. Philosophy, as a theoretical form of consciousness that rationally substantiates its principles, differs from the mythological and religious forms of the worldview, which are based on faith and reflect reality in a fantastic form.
Philosophy The latest philosophical dictionary:
(Greek phileo - love, sophia - wisdom; love of wisdom) is a special form of knowledge of the world, which develops a system of knowledge about the fundamental principles and foundations of human existence, about the most general essential characteristics of the human relationship to nature, society and spiritual life in all its main manifestations. F. strives by rational means to create an extremely generalized picture of the world and a person's place in it. Unlike the mythological and religious worldview, which are based on faith and fantastic ideas about the world, F. is based on theoretical methods of comprehending reality, using special logical and epistemological criteria to substantiate his provisions..
Philosophy Wikipedia:
(ancient Greek φιλοσοφία - “love of wisdom”, “love of wisdom”, from φιλέω - I love and σοφία - wisdom) - the most general theory, one of the forms of worldview, one of the sciences, one of the forms of human activity, a special way of knowing.
The generally accepted definition of philosophy, as well as generally accepted concept of the subject of philosophy, there is no. In history there was many different types of philosophy which differ both in their subject matter and in their methods. In its most general form, philosophy is understood as an activity aimed at posing and rationally resolving the most general questions concerning the essence of knowledge, man and the world.
It is generally accepted (at least in post-Soviet culture) to regard philosophy as a science. There were many discussions about this, and such a classification on Wikipedia is a tribute to this: " The relationship between science and philosophy is the subject of discussion. On the one hand, the history of philosophy is a human science, the main method of which is the interpretation and comparison of texts. On the other hand, philosophy claims to be something more than science, its beginning and end, the methodology of science and its generalization, a theory of a higher order, metascience (the science of science, the science that justifies science)."
So, let's begin to compare the most characteristic properties of philosophy and subject areas of science that strictly follow scientific methodology and that are carried by scientists.
There is in the world many, different to mutually contradictory, types of philosophy(philosophical schools, teachings), see Philosophical schools and trends. This has always been one of the serious questions in the comparison of philosophy and science. In science, it is possible and natural to differ in the views of its individual carriers - scientists at the level of unverified hypotheses, but not at the level of what the carriers of science have given the status of axioms.
Literally in all definitions there is an analogy of philosophy and worldview (for example, in the textbook by A.G. Spirkin: " Philosophy constitutes the theoretical basis of the worldview, or its theoretical core, around which a kind of spiritual cloud of generalized everyday views of worldly wisdom is formed, which constitutes a vital level of worldview.), sometimes directly and bluntly, philosophy is called a worldview. Therefore, it is necessary to clearly define what a worldview is and compare it with those properties that philosophy demonstrates.
outlook - manifestation of the most general part of the constantly developing hierarchical system of personal relations, aphilosophy formalizes only part of it (without an associated emotional context a) in the form of a formal retelling of life experience - information about general patterns and relationships in the world. This information accordingly differs from knowledge - the life experience of the individual - by the lack of binding to the system of significance of the individual, without which their use by the individual is impossible.
Traditionally, philosophy is defined as the study of the root causes and beginnings of everything conceivable - universal patterns - that part of the worldview that is always associated with a component of a personal attitude to this - in the memory organization system of the brain.
In this way, philosophy is a worldview expressed for others, presented in the form of forms for communication(formalization in the form of texts, oral or any other). That is why so many philosophies have arisen - each time, in case of inconsistency with other similar ideas, a different version arises. In some ways, worldviews differ in all people. How many people are willing to tell others about their own, so many variations of philosophies will arise.
Therefore, philosophy can in no way claim to be a science for an objective description of something in reality. As soon as she tries to do this, each time this attempt turns into a completely independent scientific subject area based on axioms. This is how the sciences were born. Including the methodology of science, both general and private subject areas - an independent science, not philosophy and not part of philosophy, because the methodology of science strictly follows, but philosophy does not, which will be shown below.
And, of course, this is used as an ideology when imposing this worldview system on others.
Difficulties with the definition of the very subject of philosophy are connected precisely with the fact that philosophers do not yet understand the essence of the personal worldview, as well as the mechanisms of the psyche in general.
No matter how it is sometimes declared (as if " philosophy formulates the rules of knowledge for all particular sciences"), the actual methodology and knowledge in philosophy does not exist, and the methodology of science should not be called philosophy, because, unlike philosophy, it just has all the signs of science. The science is what is strictly followed scientific methodology and knowledge. The methodology develops and improves itself, using methods already proven by experience, based on what has already been well studied.
Unlike science, which never explores what is not defined and reliably fixed, philosophy does just that:) thereby corresponding to the motivations of personal research interest, which is embodied in its original name: "love of wisdom".
The most important questions include:
- Questions concerning the concept of being
- "Does God exist?"
- Is knowledge possible? (and other problems of cognition)
- “Who is a person and why did he come into this world?”
- “What makes this or that action right or wrong?”
- Philosophy attempts to answer questions for which there is as yet no way of getting an answer, such as "For what?" (e.g., “Why does a person exist?” At the same time, science tries to answer questions for which there are tools for obtaining an answer, such as “How?”, “In what way?”, “Why?”, “What?” (e.g., “How did a person appear”, “Why can’t a person breathe nitrogen?”, “How did the Earth arise? “How is evolution directed?”, “What will happen to a person (under specific conditions)?”).
Of course, these questions concern everyone at certain times. personal development, and everyone necessarily develops his own system of ideas, the basis of his attitude to everything - his own worldview. Therefore, one has only to start showing someone some philosophical ideas, if only a person is able to listen to this at all, then he will definitely notice where his personal ideas differ, and this will definitely touch him to the quick, because the foundations of the relationship are important for the individual, they have high importance for him.
With its main question, philosophy (those philosophies that generally include consideration of this issue) directly contradicts the most important spirit of scientific methodology: to proceed from what is already known ( axioms) and advance into the unknown by the nearest hypothetical extrapolations. Philosophy sometimes does the opposite: from an indefinite basic question, it develops the consequences of its solution. In fact, there is a vote: if you postulate the main question like this, then you get such a philosophy. Therefore, there are so many philosophies that almost do not intersect with each other. In this case, a picture arises that formalizes the worldview that the philosopher initially shared when voting on the main issue.
So, philosophy is not a science at all, despite the fact that the roots of science originated from it. In fact, everything is tougher. Philosophy has a completely different role. Not knowledge of the world at all, since it is a derivative of the worldview. Philosophy is a formalized system of worldview relationships in the form of philosophical laws and patterns, but devoid of an individual system of significance (why is this so - in detail - at the link provided, pliz :). That is why in social use philosophy manifests a purely ideological character (ideology is a synonym for worldview, but has a social and communicative accent).
Philosophers themselves classify philosophy as a science, and not as a formalized system of worldview, simply because they are weak in the mechanisms of mental phenomena and do not really understand what a worldview is, although they like to talk about it (that’s why philosophy is in its original purpose). :).
It would be possible to complete the picture to try to somehow group the most common philosophical ideas and systems. You can swim in the ocean of philosophy and never cross paths with many ideas. After all, these are oceans of worldviews. And it can be very interesting and useful to dive into these spaces. Philosophy is inexhaustible, just as personal ideas are inexhaustible. Therefore, I did not detail anything so that the text is not mired in a multitude of meanings that do not concern the actual meaning and the role of philosophy for everyone :)
Some of the problems that arise with the question of philosophy as a rigorous science can be seen in the work of Josef Seifert Philosophy as a rigorous science:
Edmund Husserl defended the thesis of the need for philosophy to be a rigorous science and characterized this goal as an ideal of philosophy, which, on the one hand, "was never completely rejected", but, on the other hand, was never even partially realized. Husserl considers it tragic that until now philosophy has largely failed to meet the criteria of scientificity. Husserl argues that philosophy, in fact, has not yet begun, has not taken place as a science, since it has not developed essentially “any theoretical system”, since “every philosophical problem without exception becomes the subject of irresolvable disputes”, and any doctrine is based on individual conviction and corresponding installation.
In addition, Husserl emphasizes the inadmissibility for philosophy to be a kind of any " worldview”, distinguishing two significantly different interpretations of this term .... scientific philosophy, which Husserl opposes to worldview philosophy, must recognize the failure of attempts to resolve the basic issues of metaphysics ... philosophy is a science only if it is not an expression of someone subjective opinion, but an objective knowledge of the truth, reaching undeniable evidence and characterized by a strict systematic structure of its fundamental principles and an ideal internal logical order.
There is no reason to argue that for philosophy a broader or even universal consensus would be a condition for its being scientific.
Even before Husserl, the problem of the scientific character of philosophy was studied by Kant. He formulated the condition of the scientific nature of philosophy in the form of the thesis according to which philosophy, like metaphysics, can be considered a science only if they can substantiate synthetic judgments a priori.(i.e. if mystical true knowledge is possible before experience or the ability to form true knowledge according to the method of Aristotle).
Is a philosopher able to be useful to a scientist in his native subject area, in which he is a deep specialist?
We look in Philosophy and Methodology of Science:
The dominance of empiricism in natural science in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. led to the emergence of illusory hopes that the functions of theoretical generalization in science can be assumed by philosophers.
However, their implementation, especially in the grandiose natural-philosophical constructions of F.V.I. Sheinin and G.V.F. Hegel, caused scientists not only explicit skepticism, but even hostility.
“It is hardly surprising,” K. Gauss wrote to G. Schumacher, “that you do not trust the confusion in the concepts and definitions of professional philosophers. If you look at least at modern philosophers, your hair will stand on end from their definitions.
G. Helmholtz noted that in the first half of the XIX century. "Unpleasant relations have developed between philosophy and the natural sciences under the influence of the Schelling-Hegelian philosophy of identity." He believed that this kind of philosophy is absolutely useless for natural scientists, since it is meaningless.
We can say that only the scientist himself, using the full potential of the acquired knowledge, is able to perform this creative work, forming a vector further development science in the form of new hypotheses. Non-specialists, at best, having popular and philistine ideas, are not able to rise above a superficial understanding that is far from reality. All hopes that philosophy is able to make a discovery by comparing the data of other sciences, for example, to understand the essence and mechanisms of mental phenomena, are generated by naive ideas and have never been realized in anything for a long time with an incredible complication of the specifics of the sciences. Philosophy has no chance to do this, and this is obvious to anyone who is practically engaged in the generalization of scientific data.
Is it possible to say that the scientist himself in this case turns out to be in the hypostasis of a philosopher, performs the work of philosophy? No, because the worldview formed by the individual is used for generalization, and this is not philosophy at all, it is not formalized. But even if someone manages to formalize their worldview acceptably adequately, then no one else can immediately use it in the same way as it is impossible to use any information received from outside if there is no personal experience in applying them with corrections of errors that arise. And the worldview develops hierarchically, from the most general attitude to the more particular, while mutually influencing one on the other. It can be developed using information, but this is the process of knowing the personality, the process of adaptive learning.
There were many unsuccessful attempts to create logical systems for solving creative problems (for example, TRIZ, expert systems), there were picturesque legends about the Sherlock Holmes method, but no one really could successfully apply any method of "logical thinking", the method of induction or deduction. This is possible only later, after the task is solved, to reflect and dismember the "chain of thinking I" into some conditional methods. Scientific creativity, like any other, is an acquired skill, and no recipes can replace it, just as it is impossible to cook a delicious dish according to a recipe for someone who does not have the necessary skills (ultimately, automatisms) in cooking. But the philosopher of science is interested in the “algorithm of discovery” :) (see Philosophy of Science).
How many professional philosophers who are not specialists in those subject areas of science about which they argue (it should be noted, usually with complete conviction and snobbery - from the position of the bearer of the science of all sciences), there are so many vulgar, superficial and simply completely incorrect reasoning and statements. When trying to compare the understanding of the subject of discussion, it turns out that this is described in terms of science in a completely different way from the way a philosopher imagines, who develops his own original idea based on these concepts. But many are dizzy with the belief that philosophy is the basis for understanding everything and stands above the sciences, and the philosopher understands relationships better than scientists. The fact that he is not an expert in the sciences and therefore simply ignorant of the relevant issues somehow does not bother him :)
Yes, a personal worldview generalizes all areas of research interests of the individual, allows you to reason more generally, systematically, holistically and effectively. But in a formalized form - no (why it was shown above). Therefore, philosophy can have an impact only as a system of information in teaching, shaping a personal worldview, but not by itself. This is consonant with the question of the possibility of "collective creativity." No matter how they tried to organize it, in fact, everything came down to the creativity of individual leading personalities, under the influence of others, and not to some kind of "collective mind". This is also the question of "social reason", culture in general (see Personality and Society).
There was one such philosopher in the Kirghiz Academy, a doctor of sciences, and he liked to exclaim on every occasion: "Well, how can you write your dissertations, research something there, without understanding dialectics!??" :)
Ginzburg V.L. in his work "How the Universe Works and How It Evolves in Time" assessed the role of philosophers in the discussion of the fundamental problems of physics, astronomy and biology, which "serve as a laboratory of logic and theory of knowledge" as follows: " However, one cannot but admit that if we talk about the history of philosophy as a whole, such "laboratory studies" of philosophers in a significant number of cases did not benefit science, and sometimes did great harm. Looking back, we see that there is, perhaps, not a single great theory in the field of physics, astronomy and biology, which would not be proclaimed by representatives of certain philosophical trends or false, or even anti-scientific and seditious. The sphericity of the Earth, the Copernican system, the multiplicity of worlds, the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, the expanding universe, Darwin's evolutionary theory, Mendel's laws and ideas about genes - all this was declared "philosophically false", all this was fought from "philosophical positions", since "in the past, philosophers not only accumulated, but also absolutized the natural scientific views that had developed in the previous period". A similar trend, noted V.L. Ginzburg," at a certain stage, it is quite natural and also inherent in most natural scientists. "But if" the best of them managed and manage to go beyond the requirements imposed by habit and "common sense", then "for a person looking" from the outside "," attempts to deny new ideas, attempts that seem especially legitimate to those who consider themselves to have finally mastered the philosopher's stone".
When trying to use philosophy in cognition, two problems arise: 1. abstracted from the study of actual reality proper, philosophers produce subjective inadequacy of ideas (which will be explained in more detail below) and 2. personal knowledge cannot be formalized, including the personal knowledge of any scientist, although the information, when transferred to another, can serve to form knowledge in the process of testing it on personal experience. But it is the philosopher who is trying to formalize knowledge by introducing some abstract laws and regularities that only classify the manifestations of the subjective (moreover, vulgarly, without understanding the actual mechanisms of adaptive thought-I-behavior, for example, in the form of the development of the so-called dialectical triad: thesis, antithesis and synthesis.). Scientific subject areas, describing the objective, do not need this at all and do not use it. The three laws of dialectics of Marxism are a vivid example (see B. Russell's criticism of dialectics in general in the book Wisdom of the West - 640 kb archive). It would be possible to deepen and develop a more detailed statement about philosophical laws and regularities, but this will be beyond the scope of the article. Much begins to be clarified if you read the work of K. Popper What is dialectics?
Philosophy is often compared with mathematics, they say, here is also a science that does not proceed from what is in nature, but from subjective initial assumptions (various variations on this theme). But mathematics, like no other science, is based on strict definitions of literally everything (other sciences use the default logic of reality). And if in ancient times mathematical logic was also accepted by default from what nature demonstrates, then the freedom of any initial assumptions and relationships has long been generally accepted, provided that they are completely certain. Any logic that a mathematician is obliged to define is admissible. And already in the context of this logic, from the initial premise, the actual process being modeled receives meaning and development. Therefore, mathematics is always consistent, always ensures the adequacy of the expected and the result.
In philosophy, however, subjective constructions without verification by reality at the level of each statement turn out to be as inadequate to reality as subjective assumptions are generally erroneous in expectations due to a huge number of illusions and misunderstandings. With a strict reality check, philosophical statements can lead to a discrepancy between what is expected and what is received - turn out to be inadequate to reality. This applies in general to any transmitted information in comparison with personal knowledge, which, from the initial information, develops an adequate personal attitude, taking into account all the specific specifics of the conditions (see. Adequacy of behavior, definition and Adaptive recognition mechanisms). Therefore, the formalization of a personal worldview system in the form of philosophical texts loses the adaptive adequacy that was developed during its development in the form of general life experience, and again requires adaptation in the form of information.
As it happens with complex subjective formations that do not have a sufficiently strict definition both in premises and in the logic of development, bizarre formations arise - subjective fantasies, corresponding to varying degrees to manifestations of objective reality. With the high significance of these ideas, its bearer is able to deepen and expand inadequacy more and more, up to delusional phenomena in the form of neuroses and even psychoses. This is especially characteristic of mystical philosophy (see Mental Disorders with Religious-Mystical Experiences), but "materialistic" fixed ideas can just as well lead to mental pathology (see Faith and Madness). It must be said that I had to deal with a large number of crazy philosophers ... of the most diverse etiologies and (this cannot be said about specialists in scientific disciplines based on axioms and even about poets, musicians, artists, although I have no special statistics). It is not the subject of philosophy itself that contributes to this, in view of what has just been said, with unbridled enthusiasm for this subject in the absence of verification of reality. One has only to put philosophy above other sources of life experience, to increase its significance, and these conditions will arise.
Therefore, it is very forbidden to artificially develop the world of philosophy in your head, beyond what is determined by the existing adequate worldview :) To feed the love of reasoning out of reality, to make it self-sufficient - the path to insanity.
Often this love forces one to search for definitions for words even hopelessly indefinite in culture, with the justification (often openly expressed) that this is necessary for philosophy proper, for understanding. But what is "understanding"? The problem of understanding was covered in the article Understanding. The ability to understand. Communication. and its continuation Ethical symbols of communication, Understanding the beautiful:
Knowledge - or understanding of a more general causal relationship in which a given case turns out to be a particular phenomenon - is always the result of personal experience, the result of life testing many times. It may not be formalized in words capable of explaining, but it is in the form of more general and deeper than any words, personal ideas.
Any assessment of significance, and, accordingly, understanding always concerns the new in the previously understood and therefore requiring comprehension. The old, however, does not need such an assessment, and therefore the reactions in relation to it are autonomous, not conscious. This is the most important principle that explains the function of awareness and understanding.
If you understand what it is to "understand" :) it will become clear :) that it makes sense to give definitions only based on their direct practical use in the course of acquiring a de-directed life experience. Without this, the definitions are meaningless.
Even the founder of positivism, O. Comte believed that philosophy as metaphysics could have positive impact on the development of ideas about the world only during the childhood of science .... Various kinds of metaphysical systems, no matter how fantastic they may be, have provided an important service to mankind .... as O. Comte believed, the theological view of the world, the highest stage of development of which was classical philosophy, should be completely replaced by purely scientific positive theories built on direct observation and experience. Science, having stood on its own feet, no longer needs philosophical crutches. She herself is able to solve any reasonably posed problems.
... "Considering physical theory as a hypothetical explanation of material reality," wrote P. Duhem, "we make it dependent on metaphysics."
In fact, science should never be concerned with EXPLAINING, but only with describing what exists. One has only to pass on to an attempt at an explanation, which means to try to work out hypotheses y without sufficient reliance on the known and the definiteness of concepts, as it becomes indistinguishable in unreliability from any freely born fantasy, and philosophy is not at all needed for this :) It becomes possible to assume everything that anything, creating the illusion of validity and consistency with just some single unreasonable assumption.
“Nothing can be conceived so absurd or implausible as not to be proven by one philosopher or another” (Descartes)
Although the close connection between science and metaphysics is manifested with all obviousness in the works of outstanding scientists of the past, it contradicts truly scientific knowledge... frees theory from Metaphysics, leaving scientists to solve all scientific problems with the means available to him, specially developed in his field of science. The ideal of scientific theory from this point of view is thermodynamics, in which there are no concepts, the content of which goes beyond the limits of the observable, beyond the limits of experience.
Philosophers, neopositivists say, claim special knowledge about the world. But where can they get it from? Everything that a person knows about reality, he receives on the basis of certain contacts with the world, which in science become the subject of a special systematic study. The philosopher does not and cannot have any special ways of comprehending reality. Well, for example, what can a philosopher say about the behavior of micro-objects? On what basis will he base his judgments? Everything that can be said here reasonable, gives us physics. Thus, philosophy as a special science has no right to exist.
So, philosophy is fundamentally impossible as a special science. Any aspirations to build a system of proper philosophical statements about reality or the process of its cognition, in whatever form they are realized, are doomed to failure... But it does not follow from this that it is impossible and unnecessary.
There is no doubt that there is some use in philosophy (and where can one not find any use? :), but not at all as an instrument of cognition. In some universities they are inclined to eradicate philosophy, and even under tsarism winged aphorism released: "The benefits of philosophy are very doubtful, and the harm is obvious". But it would be so pitiful... Few things are capable of catching on to the living like comparing your basic worldview ideas with other philosophies. This brings a vivid aesthetic feeling. Philosophy is a special kind of creativity, the most generalized because it operates with the most generalized concepts. He is beyond the division into lyricists and physicists.Philosophizing is an expression of one's deepest essence:) and the attention of someone else's philosophy is the knowledge of others.
When the time came to study philosophy at the university and the first lecture arose, when the teacher started talking, I went nuts ... It was so unlike any of all the other subjects, where everything was so strict, conclusive, consistent, that it was impossible to stick out a crazy thought so simple, and all that was left was to listen. Literally the very first words at first aroused heightened attention and surprise (the greater the attention, the greater the product of novelty and the significance of what is perceived), they spoke about those most interesting things that had already been thought about more than once and were said in such a way that it caused an involuntary objection on many points. :) a lot of things seemed naive because they directly caused a contradiction in the strict areas that we were taught, but quite free justifications were allowed here. Not to mention such liberties that from the very beginning everyone was free to decide what philosophy to profess, taking this or that decision of the “basic question of philosophy”. All those who decided differently from us were simply wrong, and we are right and that's it! :)
Already imposed on this faith... We were given a ready-made system of representations without any strict justification. The laws were heuristic in nature - as a result of the insight of philosophers who noticed them, just thinking, philosophizing, and not conducting reliable studies of the manifestations of reality. Someone described their ideas, their abstractions, their beliefs, we just had to accept it as it is. It was impossible to understand how quality differs from quantity, when in any set of quantities it was possible to single out certain general qualities - properties - purely subjectively, it was impossible to understand, because in practice it was not used in any way precisely because of the subjectivity of such a selection, but was suitable only for descriptions of your feelings. Why did quantitative changes give a new property-quality with a clear claim to objectivity, only because this quality stood out, was abstracted in the philosopher's head? But if this quality had not been noticed by the philosopher, or rather it would not have been important to him for something, then the changes would not have taken place? Evolution-revolution would not have occurred if the philosopher had not noticed the opposites, which in fact did not exist in nature, if they were not arbitrarily abstracted by the attention of the philosopher? It turned out that it was not cause-and-effect chains of processes in which there were no quantity-quality and opposites highlighted by anyone's attention, but the philosopher's attention declared changes in the world.
It seemed that there was a deep meaning in all this, and only my understandable initial naivety did not allow me to understand it right away. But over time, digging deeper and deeper, especially productively - when the historical continuity of ideas was traced, it turned out that much was based only on individual delusions, illusions of perception and ignorance. So, not understanding the essence of mental processes, following the vicious practice of psychologists, but in their own specific way, philosophers made absurd assumptions, which acquired confidence, turning into Ideas. Lenin's "philosophical notebooks" were read with amazement, where frank ignorant nonsense was written, but with very great aplomb and ideological arrogance ...
Any philosophy appeals to faith and is incapable of demonstratively presenting itself as a strictly substantiated system. Simply because it's all a personal description of the most common relationship experience. Mystical philosophy, mysticism frankly requires faith, "dialectical" philosophy vaguely refers to "materialistic" science. But a person should not take such things on faith, and here's why: Reasonable skepticism, Faith and madness, Trust, confidence, faith. That's what philosophy can do harm - the development of the inadequacy of reality. It should be treated with reasonable skepticism, not believed. Do not accept someone else's mold of the worldview, but develop your own.
Although traveling in the endless world of other people's ideas can be very informative and interesting :)
In S. Weinberg's book Dreams of a Final Theory:
The value of philosophy to physics today reminds me of the value of the early nation-states to their peoples. It would not be a big exaggeration to say that before the introduction of postal services, the main task of every nation-state was to protect its people from the influence of other nation-states. In the same way, the views of philosophers have sometimes benefited physicists, but mostly in a negative way, by protecting them from the prejudices of other philosophers. ... My point is that philosophical principles, generally speaking, do not provide us with correct prejudices .... conviction is achieved in the process of scientific research, and not as a result of the study of philosophical works.
... All that has been said does not at all mean a denial of the value of philosophy, the main part of which has nothing to do with science125. Moreover, I am not going to deny the value of the philosophy of science, which, in its best examples, seems to me a pleasant commentary on history. scientific discoveries. But it should not be expected that the philosophy of science can give the hands of modern scientists any useful guidance on how to work or what it would be desirable to discover. I must admit that many philosophers also understand this. After spending three decades on professional research in the field of philosophy of science, the philosopher George Gale concludes that "all these discussions, almost inaccessible to mere mortals, involved in scholasticism, can only be of interest to a negligible number of practical scientists"126. Ludwig Wittgenstein remarks: "Nothing seems to me less likely than that the reading of my writings could seriously influence the work of some scientist or mathematician."
... I seek here to present the point of view not of a philosopher, but of an ordinary specialist, an uncorrupted working scientist who does not see any benefit in professional philosophy. ... The philosophy of quantum mechanics is so irrelevant to its real use that one begins to suspect that all deep questions about the meaning of measurement are in fact empty, generated by the imperfection of our language, which was created in a world practically governed by the laws of classical physics.
In the article Symbols, definitions, terms:
Philosophy, in the context of the correctness of definitions, is characterized by the following features:
1. Definitions that do not have a specific scope, making them, in fact, aimless.
2. Long chains of "logical" conclusions. Considering that logic is a kind of formalization of the laws of not necessarily objective reality, that there can be an infinite number of logicians, and in philosophy the origin and properties of logics of reasoning remain in the shadows, then as many philosophies arise as logicians are applied (and how many philosophers there are :).
3. In view of the first point, there is no verification of statements by reality, which alone can show their adequacy (truth). This multiplies the inadequacy of reality, which was considered on the example of Aristotle.
The scope of philosophy is pre-science. It always precedes what is being investigated reliably and has a completely unambiguous (axiomatic) description due to this certainty. In any science there is a hypothetical part of the most plausible assumptions closest to its axioms, and there is a more distant, free-fantasy part of the creativity of individuals - philosophy. The more a science has a creative, philosophical part, the more "humanitarian" it is, although this is a rather arbitrary distinction.
Creative theorizing always precedes the development of the axiomatics of a scientific field of study, but where it takes on the forms of philosophy, it is worth being very careful about it in terms of research. The skills of how justified a statement is, how many links that do not have a direct axiomatic justification are very important not only for research scientists, because any person, to one degree or another, is a life researcher and it is worth using the methodology that provides the greatest reliability and effectiveness, excluding self-deception, especially desirable. A good illustration is the work of A. Poincare Mathematical creativity.
To argue further than one conclusion, which is not objectively confirmed by life, is dangerous for the truth.
If someone woke up after long reflections (in a cave, on a mountain, in a desert, on a couch) "enlightened" by a Very Important Truth, then he is already quite pathologically inadequate = blissful.
So, to the question: is it possible only through "logical" thinking I can come to results that are impeccable for reality (in mathematics, physics, etc.), we can say that any thinking is e - this is an interruption of some current automatism on an important - a new phase for the creative development of a more adequate direction for the further development of this automatism (this is the real interrupt system that computer scientists borrowed). Those. any reflection is already to a large extent a deprivation of conscious attention (everything else works automatically). Creative skills can be developed to the most intricately complex and will be effective if both the reality check skill is timely and there are no artificial barriers to flexible adjustment as needed. Such an obstacle is giving the idea an unreasonably (not verified) high significance. Those. you do not need to love the idea that is being nurtured and everything will be in order for the psyche of the ki. The impossibility of error-free purely subjective reflections is very clearly experienced constantly by a programmer or a circuit engineer of electronic equipment (a programmer with the help of components). There is no person capable of writing a non-trivial program in such a way that the compiler does not give a series of errors or the program itself does not work quite as desired. Programming does not forgive the slightest inaccuracy, but subjective reflections I do :)
Discussion with a professor of philosophy of his philosophical poem and questions of philosophy: v.n.samchenko, Philosophy in verse. Didactic poem:
nan:
And according to poetry, the correct philosophy is one that applies a scientific approach, so what comes first, a scientific approach (scientific methodology) or dialectics?
v.n.samchenko:
...There is no unequivocal answer to your questions, and they themselves are ambiguous - precisely because philosophy itself sets the foundations of methodology. Private sciences only concretize methods according to their specifics.
...Dialectics is like higher algebra: it is difficult to use and often gives only probabilistic, though heuristically valuable conclusions. It is necessary in full measure only for a generalized and historical comprehension of broad phenomena. In philosophy, there is no scientific alternative to it.
nan:
You are right: "philosophy itself sets the foundations of methodology". And it has already set them in the preliminary development of an interconnected system of the most important principles of scientific methodology (and not methodology in general). This is where the role of philosophy as a way of preliminary understanding of the problem ends, just like any role in general: philosophy is needed when a system has not yet been discovered in a given area of research and one has to apply available reasoning (which requires a love of reasoning).
Once the system is discovered and verified, philosophy becomes irrelevant at this point, being replaced by concrete knowledge.
... The question of scientific character and its criteria is not ambiguous, but quite concrete and practical: if the most important principles of scientific methodology (SM) are not observed in some way, then this does not apply to science, i.e. to something that cannot be refuted by subsequent statements and that can be relied upon in the boundary conditions that have been defined.
V.n.samchenko:
...I will only note that the activity of philosophy is really inappropriate where the methodological foundation has already been poured, and walls and roofs are being built, houses are being settled, and so on. But the development of science does not stop at anything and, in particular, it acquires new qualities.
... A self-sufficient science without philosophy is an old positivist utopia.
...Unfortunately, the lack of understanding of such moments is now not accidental and widespread. Such is the current state of the ideological consciousness of the masses, including the majority of scientists. Therefore, in particular, the general spirit of this site is predominantly positivist, as it were, anti-philosophical.
Nan: I'd rather say it myself about this site... Philosophy is too vast and diverse an area to be able to say this about the attitude of the site's policy towards it. What concerns the properties of consciousness and thinking of the self in their manifestations, is described by the concept of "heuristic thinking of the self", briefly described in the article Consciousness and heuristics. This is the general thing that determines the result of thinking and that provides an approach to the knowledge of the new, and not the whole philosophy. The scientist needs to develop the skills of heuristic thinking, not philosophy.
As for the laws of dialectics, these are, for the most part, naive, preliminary outlines of the principles of scientific methodology, and otherwise they are simply useless philosophies for the practice of scientific knowledge.
Once, the chief philosopher of the Kyrgyz Academy of Sciences furiously brought up a group preparing for the candidate's minimum: "How can you at least research something there, experiment and reason if you don't know dialectics?! You are not scientists at all!". But the one who pushed himself and formulated the system of representations of dialectics could not rely on dialectics that had not yet been created, but used the mechanisms of arbitrariness. And so did all his predecessors.
V.n.samchenko:
I have no doubt that the positivists are also philosophers: where will they go? Let me remind you that the fundamental question of philosophy is the question of the relation of thought to being. If you think about being, for example. If you are engaged in science, then how to get around this question?.. No one came up with it, and neither did they, although they tried.
nan:
The "basic question of philosophy" does not apply to science, and it is not required to "bypass" it. Let me remind you that one of the main principles of scientific methodology is that science does not operate with indefinite concepts, and the concept of "thinking e" in philosophy is not defined in any way, moreover, in the formulation of the question, in fact, not "thinking e" is used, and the subjective or "ideal" (ie philosophers incorrectly ask the question), which in the question admits the divine form of the Idea, and therefore the question of primacy arises. When the philosopher correctly determines what it is, it will become possible to operate with it scientifically: is there such an entity in nature or is it just an abstract form of material processes. When you, as a philosopher, understand what thought is in its mechanisms, then the question of its (im)materiality and other related questions will no longer be philosophical, but quite even scientific.
V.n.samchenko:
You can be congratulated on the fact that you are walking along the chosen path as confidently as the great positivists of the past. I don't really believe that thinking is fully explicable without philosophy, but I welcome every kind of daring in science.
nan:
To believe or not to believe - this is truly the main question for philosophers :) they constantly solve it and remain on the ideas preferred by their faith, which become favorite fixed ideas. There is only one alternative: to find out for yourself, otherwise it remains only to believe or not to believe someone or your preferences.
It is especially strange when it is already quite possible to find out, but the philosopher remains on the positions of faith.
After all, you can, say, philosophize about programming, or you can simply master it and program.
So it turns out: I know what thought is and how it relates to being, and you continue to philosophize.
Fornit Philosophers
Here is a list of participants in the discussions who positioned themselves as philosophers and fully correspond with their statements to the specifics characteristic of people who have gone far into subjective ideas that are not comparable with reality:
There are many definitions philosophy. For example, philosophy is a discipline that studies the most general essential characteristics and fundamental principles reality and knowledge, human existence, the relationship of man and the world. Another option: philosophy is a form of social consciousness, which develops a system of knowledge about the fundamental principles of being and the place of man in the world.
Term"philosophy" consists of two Greek words "philia" ( love) and "sophia" ( wisdom), i.e. translated as love of wisdom. It is believed that this word was first used by the ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras in the 6th century BC.
The philosopher seeks to find answers to eternal questions of human existence that remain relevant in all historical eras: Who are we? Where are we going? What is the sense of life?
To make it easier to understand what philosophy is, let's start with stories its occurrence. Philosophy is believed to have originated in 6th-7th centuries BC in the territory India, China, Greece. It was at that time that human civilization made a powerful breakthrough in technological relation (development of metallurgy, Agriculture etc.), which led to a breakthrough in all activities. As a result, there was a change in the social structure - an elite layer of people arose who did not participate in material production, devoting themselves exclusively to managerial and spiritual activity. This time is characterized conflict between emerging scientific knowledge and an established mythological complex of ideas. This process is also facilitated by the intensification of external trade which led to the development of spiritual contacts between peoples. People saw that their way of life is not absolute - that there are alternative social and religious systems. Under these conditions, philosophy arises as a special sphere. spiritual culture, designed to give a holistic (as opposed to private scientific knowledge) and rationally substantiated (as opposed to myth) worldview.
Already in the distant time of the birth of philosophy, its western and eastern branches went on principle different ways that largely determined the differences characteristic of the worldview of Western and Eastern people. In the East, philosophy has never moved away from religious and mythological origins. Authority ancient sources of knowledge remained unshakable - Pentateuch in China, Veda and Bhagavad Gita in India. In addition, all the great philosophers of the East were also religious figures - Lao Tzu and Confucius in China; Nagarjuna and Shankaracharya, Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo are in India. The conflict between philosophy and religion, quite impossible in the conditions of China or India, occurred quite often in the West. Suffice it to recall the death sentence handed down Socrates for insulting the Greek gods. Thus, Western philosophy, starting from ancient Greece, followed its own special path, breaking ties with religion, as close as possible to science. In the West, most of the great philosophers were also outstanding scientists.
But there are, of course, are common features that unite the ancient philosophical traditions of East and West. This is an emphasis on the problematic of being, not knowledge; attention to the logical argumentation of their ideas; understanding of man as a part of the living Cosmos (cosmocentrism), etc.
To better understand what philosophy is, consider its similarities and differences from three other areas of human activity - science, religion and art.
Philosophy and Science
Science and philosophy have in common that they are spheres rational and evidence spiritual activity, focused on achieving the truth, which in its classical sense is "a form of coordinating thought with reality." But there are, of course, differences. First, each branch of science focuses on its narrow subject area. For example, physics studies physical laws, psychology studies psychological reality. The laws of psychology do not apply to physics. Philosophy, unlike science, endures universal judgment and seeks to discover the laws of the entire world whole. Secondly, science in its activity abstracts from the problem of values. She asks specific questions - "why?", "how?", "where?". But for philosophy value aspect is the cornerstone, thanks to which the vector of development is aimed at finding answers to questions " why?" and " for what?" .
Philosophy and religion
Religion, like philosophy, gives a person value system, in accordance with which he can build his life, perform acts of evaluation and self-esteem. Thus, the value and universal nature of the religious worldview bring it closer to philosophy. The main difference between religion and philosophy is a source knowledge. The philosopher, in his activity, like the scientist, relies on rational arguments, seeks to sum up the evidence base for his assertions. In contrast, religious knowledge is based on act of faith, personal, non-rational experience. You can use this metaphor: Religion is knowledge from the heart, philosophy is from the mind.
Philosophy and art
There is a lot in common between them. It suffices to recall many examples when fundamental philosophical ideas are expressed in artistic form (pictorial, verbal, musical, etc.), and many significant figures in literature and art are at the same time no less significant philosophers and thinkers. But there is one point that separates philosophy and art. Philosophers speak the language of philosophical categories, strict evidence and unambiguous interpretations. In contrast, the elements of art are personal experience and empathy, confession and passion, flight of fantasy and emotional catharsis (purification). Artistic images and metaphors often do not carry an unambiguous understanding and are subjective.
The following functions philosophy:
- worldview. It gives a person a whole and rational worldview, helps him to critically evaluate himself and his environment.
- Methodological. Gives a person knowledge and shows ways how to get new knowledge. One of the most important methods of philosophy is dialectical. Dialectics- this is the ability to comprehend an object in its integrity and development, in the unity of its basic opposite properties and tendencies, in diverse connections with other objects.
- predictive. Allows you to make predictions about the future. There are many examples where the ideas of philosophers were far ahead of their time. For example, the idea of ancient Chinese philosophy about the universal nature of the connections between the opposite forces of yin and yang was reflected in the famous " principle of complementarity Niels Bohr, who formed the basis of the quantum mechanical picture of the world.
- Synthetic. This function is to set interconnections between the spheres of human spiritual creativity.
Structure philosophical knowledge includes:
- ontology, which is aimed at identifying the universal patterns of being as such, no matter what specific variety of being we are talking about - natural, cultural-symbolic, spiritual or personal-existential.
- axiology, which is aimed at identifying the universal value bases of the existence of a person (subject), his practical activities and behavior.
- theory of knowledge, which forms a kind of intermediate link between ontology and axiology. She is interested in the interaction between the knowing subject and the known object.
There are many philosophical schools and currents, which can be classified in various ways. Some of them are associated with the names of the founders, for example, Kantianism, Hegelianism, Leibnizianism. Historically, the main directions of philosophy are materialism and idealism, which include many branches and intersections.
The term "philosophy" comes from the Greek words "philia" (love) and "sophia" (wisdom). According to legend, this word was first introduced into use by the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, who lived in the 6th century BC. There is a deep meaning in this understanding of philosophy as love of wisdom. The ideal of a sage (unlike a scientist, an intellectual) is an image of a morally perfect person who not only responsibly builds his own life, but also helps people around him to solve their problems and overcome everyday hardships. But what helps a wise man to live with dignity and reason, sometimes in spite of the cruelty and madness of his historical time? What does he know differently from other people?
This is where the actual philosophical sphere begins: the sage-philosopher knows about the eternal problems of human existence (significant for every person in all historical epochs) and seeks to find reasonable answers to them.
From these positions, philosophy can be defined as the search for answers to the eternal problems of human existence. Such eternal problems include the question of the origins of being, the possibility of reaching the truth in their knowledge, the essence of goodness, beauty and justice, the origin and purpose of man. "Who are we? Where? Where are we going?" - such a variant of the formulation of eternal problems was proposed by the Christian thinker Gregory the Theologian. "What can I know? What should I do? What can I hope for? - these are the cornerstone questions of philosophy according to the great German philosopher I. Kant. The central problem, around which all other eternal problems of philosophy are concentrated, is the question of the meaning of individual existence, for it is the knowledge of the meaning of one's own life that makes a person a sage - the master of his own destiny and a reasonable participant in the life of the world whole.
At the same time, a true sage understands that the eternal problems of being are eternal because they do not have exhaustive, once and for all, given solutions. The deeper and more subtle this answer is, the more new questions it poses to free and creative human thought. The desire for wisdom, love for the very process of gaining it - perhaps this is the main thing in the life of a sage-philosopher who, unlike a self-satisfied fool, knows about his ignorance, and therefore does not lose the will to endless improvement. “Scientific ignorance” is another possible definition of philosophy, to use the expression of the Renaissance thinker Nicholas of Cusa.
Consistently reflecting on eternal problems, the philosopher-sage forms a "worldview". A worldview is a system of views on the world, on a person and, most importantly, on a person's attitude to the world. From here it will not be a mistake to give another definition of philosophy, which was especially popular with Russian philosophers (S.L. Frank, P.A. Florensky, etc.): philosophy is the doctrine of an integral worldview.
Unlike science, religion and art, which also form a certain system of worldview, the philosophical worldview has a number of distinctive features.
The place of philosophy in the spiritual culture of society
The specificity of the philosophical worldview and the philosophical way of solving the eternal problems of human existence become apparent when comparing philosophy with science, religion and art.
Philosophy and Science
The links between science and philosophy are fundamental, and many of the greatest philosophers were also eminent scientists. Suffice it to recall the names of Pythagoras and Thales, Descartes and Leibniz, Florensky and Russell. Science and philosophy are related by the fact that they are areas of rational and evidence-based spiritual activity, focused on achieving truth, which in its classical sense is "a form of coordinating thought with reality." However, there are at least two major differences between them:
one). any science deals with a fixed subject area and never claims to formulate the universal laws of being. Thus, physics discovers the laws of physical reality; chemistry - chemical, psychology - psychological. At the same time, the laws of physics are very indirectly related to mental life, and the laws of mental life, in turn, do not work in the field of physical interactions. Philosophy, unlike science, makes universal judgments and seeks to discover the laws of the entire world. Moreover, if any philosophical school refuses such a task of constructing universal world-schematiks, it must give a universal justification for its unwillingness to deal with such problems;
2). science traditionally abstracts from the problem of values and from making value judgments. She seeks the truth - what is in the things themselves, without discussing whether what she found is good or bad, and whether there is any sense in all this. In other words, science primarily answers the questions “why?” "how?" and “from where?”, but prefers not to ask metaphysical questions like “why?” and for what?". Unlike science, the value component of knowledge cannot be removed from philosophy. It, claiming to solve the eternal problems of being, is focused not only on the search for truth, as a form of coordinating thought with being, but also on the knowledge and affirmation of values, as forms of coordinating being with human thought. In fact, having ideas about the good, we try to restructure both our own behavior and the surrounding circumstances of life in accordance with them. Knowing that there is something beautiful in the world and having formed a system of corresponding ideal ideas, we create a beautiful work of art in accordance with it, change material reality for the better, or eliminate ugly things.
In interpreting the relationship with science, philosophy has two dead-end extremes. This, on the one hand, is natural philosophy, as an attempt to build universal pictures of the world without relying on the data of science, and, on the other hand, it is positivism, which calls on philosophy to abandon the discussion of metaphysical (primarily value) issues and focus solely on generalizing the positive facts of science. The passage between the Scylla of natural philosophy and the Charybdis of positivism implies a constant creative and mutually enriching dialogue between science and philosophy: the attention of specific sciences to universal philosophical models and schemes of explanation and, conversely, the consideration by philosophical thought of theoretical and experimental results obtained in modern scientific research.
Philosophy and religion
Like philosophy, a religious worldview offers a person a system of values - norms, ideals and goals of activity, in accordance with which he can plan his behavior in the world, perform acts of evaluation and self-esteem. Like philosophy, religion offers its own universal picture of the world, which is based on an act of divine creativity. The value and universal nature of the religious worldview bring it closer to philosophy, however, there are fundamental differences between these two most important areas of spiritual culture. The fact is that religious ideas and values are accepted by an act of religious faith - by the heart, not by the mind; personal and non-rational experience, and not on the basis of rational arguments, as is characteristic of philosophy. The system of religious values is transcendent, i.e. superhuman and superrational, character, coming either from God (as in Christianity) or from his prophets (as in Judaism and Islam), or from holy ascetics who have achieved special heavenly wisdom and holiness, as is characteristic of many religious systems in India. At the same time, a believer may not rationally substantiate his worldview at all, while the procedure for logically substantiating his ideas is obligatory for a person who claims to have a philosophical nature of his worldview.
Religious philosophy proper is possible as a rational attempt to build a holistic religious worldview, free from dogmatic ecclesiastical blinders. Brilliant examples of such a philosophy, in particular, were given by the domestic philosophical tradition at the turn of the century ( cm. V.S. Soloviev, P.A. Florensky, N.O. Lossky, S.L. Frank, brothers S.N. and E.N. Trubetskoy). From religious philosophy theology (or theology) must be distinguished. The latter in a number of its sections can use the language, methods and results of philosophy, but always within the framework of recognized church authorities and verified dogmatic definitions. The branch of philosophy that studies the nature of religious experience, its place in culture and human existence, is called the philosophy of religion. It is clear that the philosophy of religion can be dealt with not only by a believer, but also by an atheist philosopher.
The relationship between philosophy and religion varies from era to era, from culture to culture, ranging from a state of peaceful coexistence and almost dissolving into each other (as in early Buddhism) to irreconcilable confrontation, as was characteristic of Europe in the 18th century. Currently, the trend towards a dialogue between philosophy, religion and science is gaining strength in order to form a synthetic worldview that harmoniously synthesizes modern scientific facts and theoretical generalizations with religious values tested for centuries and fundamental moves of systematic philosophical thought.
Philosophy and art
Art is organically integrated into this process of general cultural synthetic dialogue. It has a lot in common with philosophy. Fundamental philosophical ideas are often expressed in artistic form (pictorial, verbal, musical, etc.), and many significant figures in literature and art are at the same time no less significant philosophers and thinkers. It suffices to point to Parmenides and Titus Lucretius Kara, Nietzsche and Hermann Hesse. One of the most striking examples of artistic philosophizing in world culture is Legend of the Grand Inquisitor from the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky Brothers Karamazov.
However, despite all the closeness, there is still a deep boundary between philosophy and art. The fact is that the language of philosophy is the language of philosophical categories and, if possible, rigorous proofs. Emotions, appeals to personal experience, fantasies and imagination are the exception rather than the rule. But without this, true art cannot exist. His element is personal experience and empathy, confession and passion, flight of fantasy and emotional catharsis (purification). The language of art in literature and painting, theater and dance is the language of artistic images, metaphors and symbols that fundamentally exclude a strict and unambiguous understanding, which is so desirable for philosophy. Of course, even in philosophy there can exist the deepest symbols and images such as Plato's famous "cave", Condillac's "statue" or Solovyov's "Sophia". However, they are always only the initial object for subsequent rational interpretation; like a figurative-semantic “gene” for the subsequent unfolding of an integral philosophical worldview.
Thus, philosophy is somewhat similar, but somewhat different from all other major areas of spiritual culture (or areas of spiritual creativity) of a person. This determines its “central binding” position in the spiritual culture of mankind, which does not allow this culture to disintegrate into a bad multiplicity of ideas, values and worldviews that are at war with each other. Here we come to the problem of the diverse functions that philosophy performs in human cultural existence.
Functions of Philosophy
Worldview function
Philosophy not only equips a person with an integral and rational worldview. It is also a school of critical, systematic and synthetic thinking. It is philosophy that helps a person to soberly and critically evaluate both himself and his social environment. It teaches to think consistently and consistently. At the same time, the spirit of true philosophizing is the spirit of synthesis and harmony, the search for unity in diversity and diversity in unity. Its ideal is the ability to go between abstract and one-sided extremes, looking for a middle line that unites and mediates opposites.
At this point, the ideological function of philosophy is directly interfaced with its methodological function.
Methodological function
A method in its most general form is understood as such knowledge and a system of actions based on it, with the help of which new knowledge can be obtained. Philosophy has its own special methods and its own special language.
The language of philosophy is the language of categories, those extremely general concepts (spirit - matter; necessity - chance; good - evil; beautiful - ugly; truth - delusion, etc.), on which its eternal limiting questions are formulated and rational answers. Pairs of philosophical categories form the ultimate polar poles of thought, closing in their "logical space" all the possible richness of other rational concepts and proofs. Basic philosophical categories are filled with different content in different historical eras and act as an explicit or implicit semantic foundation for various scientific disciplines. Any science in any historical period uses the categories of quantity and quality, cause and effect, essence, law, etc., consciously or unconsciously borrowing their categorical meanings from philosophy. Thanks to the system of its general categories, philosophy helps the sciences to comprehend and, most importantly, purposefully form their own philosophical foundations that are adequate to their subject and tasks.
One of the most important and ancient methods of philosophy is dialectical. Dialectics is the ability to comprehend an object in its integrity and development, in the unity of its basic opposite properties and tendencies, in diverse connections with other objects. Dialectics is inseparable from philosophical dialogue, from the ability to listen and take into account the opinions of both colleagues and opponents. The most important methods of philosophy can also include the method of philosophical reflection, as the focus of thought on its own implicit grounds, hermeneutic methods of adequate interpretation of philosophical texts and other people's meanings, the phenomenological method of studying consciousness, as well as the systematic use of the entire arsenal of general logical methods of cognition - induction, deduction, analogy , formal-logical analysis of terms, logical schemes and reasoning contexts. Recall that many philosophical works are written in the dialogical form, in particular, most of the works of the great Plato.
The predictive function of philosophy
A special methodological function in culture is played by the key ideas of philosophers, sometimes far ahead of their time. Here the methodological function closely merges with the prognostic function of philosophy. Thus, Plato's ideas about the geometric structure of matter (dialogue Timaeus) anticipated the discovery of Kepler and Galileo, in the 20th century the echo of these ideas resounds in the work of the physicists Heisenberg and Pauli. The ideas of the non-Euclidean structure of space were first expressed by Nicholas of Cusa; intuition about the fundamental connection between electrical and magnetic phenomena - by the German philosopher Schelling, etc. The idea of ancient Chinese philosophy about the universal nature of the connections between the opposite forces of yin and yang was reflected in the famous "principle of complementarity" of Niels Bohr, which formed the basis of the quantum mechanical picture of the world. Tsiolkovsky's ideas about space exploration by rockets were largely stimulated by the space ideas of the Russian thinker N.F. Fedorov.
The ability to run ahead and generate bold hypotheses makes philosophy so attractive to science, especially when the latter finds itself in a situation of methodological and ideological crisis and feels a shortage of fresh ideas (this was exactly the situation at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries during the crisis of Newtonian classical mechanics).
Synthetic function
philosophy is to establish relationships between the spheres of human spiritual creativity. Perhaps it is this function that comes to the fore today in the historical situation, when, on the one hand, synthetic trends in modern science and culture are clearly revealed, and, on the other hand, there is a growing confrontation between various religious confessions and cultural worlds, between the rich North and the impoverished South, between East and West.
Origin and development of philosophy
Philosophy, as an attempt to acquire a rational and integral worldview, originates at approximately the same time (7-6 centuries BC) in China, India and Greece. It replaces the myth as a primary syncretic form of worldview in new historical conditions, when: metallurgy develops and, accordingly, the efficiency of all types of activities increases (from military operations to agriculture and hunting);
an elite layer of people appears in society, free from material production and devoting themselves exclusively to managerial and spiritual activities; during this period, trade relations between various countries and regions of the Earth are expanding and, accordingly, spiritual contacts between peoples. The world of closed tribal mythological complexes and magical cults devoid of rational justification ceases to satisfy the worldview needs of a person. He discovers other peoples and other belief systems. Development state formations, including those with a democratic political system (as was typical of ancient Greek policies), makes new demands both on the personal qualities of a person (the need to clearly state and publicly argue one's position), and on the nature of legislative activity, because the development of written law requires consistency, consistency and systematic thinking, as well as the rational organization of written sources of law. The evolution of scientific knowledge (astronomy, agricultural technology, mathematics, medicine, geography) comes into conflict with the mythological complex of ideas.
Under these conditions, philosophy arises as a special sphere of spiritual culture, designed to provide a holistic (unlike private scientific knowledge) and rationally justified (unlike myth) worldview.
True, it should be borne in mind that the emergence of philosophy in the West (in Greece) and in the East (China and India) had certain specifics. The break with the mythological worldview umbilical cord has never been so radical in the East as in Europe. Rather, we can talk about the natural crystallization of religious and philosophical systems (Confucianism and Taoism in China; Vedanta in India) within the traditional systems of Eastern beliefs, where there is a constant return (though rational and systematic, dressed in the categorical language of philosophy) to the classical mythological, "axial , as they sometimes say, texts and themes. Thus, in China for many centuries the authority of the ancient Pentacanony led by the famous i ching(Chinese classical Book of Changes). In India, such axial texts are still Veda and Bhagavad Gita .
Due to such deepest traditionalism, special attention to intuition and contemplation in philosophical creativity, as well as veneration of the Teacher, the conflict between philosophy and religion in the East was practically impossible. The death sentence for Socrates for insulting the Greek gods is something completely unthinkable for the Eastern cultural tradition. On the other hand, European philosophical thought, starting from ancient Greece, is characterized by a much greater connection with science and reliance on its positive results. If in the East the great philosophers are most often also the largest religious reformers (Lao Tzu and Confucius in China; Nagarjuna and Shankaracharya, Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo in India), then in the West, on the contrary, they are predominantly outstanding scientists.
At the same time, the nature of the first philosophical systems in the East and in the West is very similar (emphasis on the problems of being, not knowledge; attention to the logical argumentation of one's ideas; understanding of man as part of the living Cosmos - cosmocentrism), as well as the logic of their subsequent development.
First, there is a single direction in the development of philosophy: from an initially undifferentiated state to an ever greater specialization and differentiation of philosophical knowledge; from philosophy as the work of individual wise men to the formation of a professional philosophical community; from the sporadic and occasional study of philosophy "for the soul" - to its teaching in schools and universities as a compulsory academic discipline.
Secondly, philosophy historically develops and differentiates under the direct influence of the developing cultural environment. She is always the "daughter" of her era, reflecting her basic values, ideological trends and passions. Moreover, she is able to express the spirit of her time in the most condensed and clear form. Based on the texts of the great philosophers, we reconstruct the way of thinking and the "pictures of the world" of the ancient Greeks and medieval people, figures of the European Enlightenment or, for example, the Indian spiritual Renaissance of the last quarter of the 19th - early 20th centuries. No wonder the great representative of German classical idealism, Hegel, defined philosophy as the spiritual self-consciousness of his era.
Thirdly, despite the ever-increasing historical, national, professional and personal diversity of world philosophy, the emergence of more and more new worldview and methodological philosophical problems, which sometimes philosophers of previous eras could not even think about (it is clear that the problems of the philosophy of technology could not occupy a predominant position in the philosophy of Ancient Greece; and the concept of "virtual reality" could not be formulated even in the middle of the last century, because this required the emergence computer technology), - it always retains an unchanging problematic core, giving it both historical (diachronic) and cultural-spatial (synchronous) unity and continuity. It is precisely such a single core that forms the “eternal” problems of human existence, which are stable with respect to all historical changes and only receive a peculiar formulation and solution depending on the new socio-cultural context. From this it becomes clear the enormous role played by the history of philosophy for modern philosophical quests. In the writings of the great philosophers of the past, profound examples of posing and solving fundamental philosophical problems are given; a new vision and reading of these problems is impossible without referring to their works. The history of philosophy preserves the unity of philosophical knowledge and provides an overall high level of philosophical culture. Moreover, we cannot be sure that today we understand the world in its ultimate foundations and goals better and more adequately than Plato and Heraclitus, Seneca and Pico della Mirandola, Spinoza and Kant, V.S. Soloviev and S.N. Bulgakov. The thought of geniuses lives on top of worldly fuss, political and national sympathies, their lips "speak eternity and infinity."
The structure of philosophical knowledge
From its very inception in philosophy there has been a certain solid central core, as it were, the heart of philosophy, which, following the disciples of Aristotle, can be called metaphysics (literally, what “comes after physics”). Metaphysics in its traditional sense is the doctrine of the fundamental principles of existence. It is sometimes also called "theoretical" philosophy, thereby contrasting its practical sections, which will be discussed below. The composition of philosophical metaphysics is still debated. The most common point of view is the interpretation of metaphysics as consisting of three closely related parts: ontology (the doctrine of being), epistemology (theory of knowledge) and axiology (general theory of values). Unlike the traditional one, in the Marxist understanding, metaphysics (as the doctrine of the unchanging principles of being) was opposed to dialectics (as the doctrine of the universality of development processes).
Ontology
is a section of metaphysics aimed at identifying the universal patterns of being as such, no matter what kind of being we are talking about - natural, cultural-symbolic, spiritual or personal-existential. Any ontology - whether it recognizes material, ideal, or some other being as its source - always tries to reveal the general structures and patterns of development of things and processes as such (or objectivity itself of any kind), leaving aside questions about the patterns of their cognition and about value attitude towards them on the part of the cognizing subject.
Axiology
Axiology, on the contrary, is a section of metaphysics that is aimed at identifying the universal value bases of a person's (subject's) being, his practical activities and behavior. Axiology is not interested in being as such and not in the laws of its cognition (although this may be of interest to her), but, first of all, in the human attitude to being and in that system of value ideas (about beauty, goodness, justice, etc.), in accordance with which this relationship is formed and developed.
Theory of knowledge
forms a kind of intermediate link between ontology and axiology. She is interested in the interaction between the knowing subject and the known object. Unlike ontology, which seeks the laws of being itself, and general axiology, which is interested in its valuable human dimension, epistemology is concerned with the following questions: “how is knowledge about the being of any object acquired?” and “how does it relate to him?”.
If we try to express the relationship between the three sections of metaphysics in a more concise and figurative form, then ontology can be understood as a philosophical doctrine of the true foundations of being; epistemology - as the doctrine of the foundations of the existence of truth; and general axiology can be interpreted as the doctrine of the existence of true values.
Let us give the simplest example to illustrate the difference in these metaphysical perspectives of seeing an object. Suppose we contemplate a birch growing on the bank of a river. If we ask questions about the reasons for the emergence of a birch, about the ratio of the accidental and necessary in its being, about its constructive functions within the surrounding landscape, then in this case our vision of a birch will be ontological. We find ourselves here centered on the regularities of the existence of the birch as such. If we are interested in problems like: “What is the ratio of the sensual and the rational in our comprehension of birch?” or “Is the essence of the birch itself available to us in the acts of perception?”, then in this case our perspective on the study of the subject will be epistemological.
But, looking at a birch, one can treat it from an axiological (value) position, abstracting equally from the ontological and epistemological perspectives of its vision. A birch on the river bank can act as a symbol for us: purity, Russia, etc. However, one can treat the same birch purely aesthetically, simply enjoying its beauty. Finally, the human value attitude to birch can be completely utilitarian, if you prosaically estimate how much firewood can be made from it.
It is clear that rigid boundaries between the three sections of metaphysics can be drawn only in abstraction, all sections of metaphysics are present in philosophy from its very beginning. Nevertheless, ontology is initially formed (within the framework of the European tradition - already among the ancient Greeks); later, starting from the 16th–17th centuries, epistemology began to develop rapidly (the term itself appeared in the middle of the 19th century). In modern philosophy, axiology is perhaps the leading section of metaphysics, exerting an active influence on both ontological and epistemological issues.
Gradually, with the development of human culture, science and technology, other sections are formed within philosophy, most often in direct dependence on the subject areas to which it directs its attention. The orientation of philosophy to the sphere of social relations and the laws of the historical process leads to the emergence of social philosophy; legal relations and legal consciousness - to the emergence of the philosophy of law. The need for philosophical understanding of the patterns of religious experience leads to the creation of a philosophy of religion; scientific and technological progress led to the formation of such rapidly developing branches of philosophical knowledge today as the philosophy of science (or epistemology) and the philosophy of technology. Today we can also talk about such established sections of philosophy as the philosophy of language, philosophical anthropology (the philosophical doctrine of man), the philosophy of culture, the philosophy of economy, etc.
In general, the process of differentiation (separation) of philosophical knowledge so far clearly prevails over the processes of integration, given the general trend in the development of culture. However, throughout the 20th century, especially starting from its second half, the opposite - synthetic - trend began to be clearly manifested, associated with a return to fundamental metaphysical problems and fundamental moves of philosophical thought developed in history.
The main types of philosophical outlook. Personality in philosophy
Given the organic involvement of philosophy in various areas of spiritual creativity (religion, art, science), the historical variation of its theoretical themes and value preferences, as well as the exceptional breadth (almost infinity) of its subject interests (from the inner experiences of a person to the problem of divine being), it is not one should be amazed at the exceptional variety of types of philosophical worldviews, in different ways, sometimes in a diametrically opposite way, solving its eternal problems. It is possible to single out different types of philosophical systems based on different bases of classification.
In relation to scientific knowledge, one can single out natural-philosophical and positivist types of worldview ( see above). Maybe religious, and maybe secular, atheistic philosophy, depending on how the question of divine existence is solved in one or another philosophical system. Variants of artistic philosophizing are possible, sometimes with visible manifestations of irrationalism, as was typical, say, of F. Nietzsche, and, conversely, emphatically rationalistic doctrines of the type of the Hegelian philosophical system.
In line with ontological searches, idealistic and materialistic philosophical systems can be distinguished, depending on the nature of the beginning, which is assumed to be the foundation of being. Attempts to avoid a tough confrontation between materialism and idealism lead to dualistic, when the existence of two diametrically opposed principles is postulated at the basis of the world (R. Descartes), or pantheistic, when matter and spirit merge into a single substance (B. Spinoza), philosophical systems. Depending on the number of principles underlying the existing, there can be monistic (one principle), dualistic (two opposite principles), and pluralistic (multiple principles) varieties of philosophical systems. In Russian philosophy, an attempt was made to synthesize the positive elements of monistic, pantheistic and dualistic ontological approaches within the framework of the concept of monodualism (S.N. Bulgakov, S.L. Frank, S.Ya. Grot), when two opposite principles (dualism) form an indissoluble unity (monism) and need each other for their organic manifestation.
In views on the nature and nature of the connections of the world whole, determinism can be distinguished, recognizing the regular ordering of things and indeterminism different types, where this order is called into question.
Its varieties, as you know, exist among idealism and materialism. There is objective idealism, postulating the existence of an objective ideal principle of the world in the form of God, the Absolute Idea, the World Soul, the World Will (Neoplatonism, various types of religious philosophy, Hegel's absolute idealism, etc.). He is opposed by subjective idealism (or solipsism in other terminology), which recognizes the obvious reality of only one's own experiences and ideas (Berkeley, Fichte). In turn, materialism can be naive, characteristic of early Greek philosophy, mechanistic, dialectical, natural science, etc.
If we now turn to epistemological philosophical searches, then we can distinguish between empiricist and rationalistic lines in solving fundamental epistemological problems, depending on whether experience or, on the contrary, reason is recognized as the main source and verification instance of our knowledge. There may be a special - skeptical - version of views on the cognitive process and philosophy in general, when the very possibility of achieving any true knowledge about the world and man is denied.
In addition to the types of philosophical worldviews arising from one or another nature of the solution of philosophical problems and specific accents in its relationship with other areas of spiritual culture, there are also numerous currents that derive their genealogy from the ideas of one or another classic of philosophical thought or from the originality of the philosophical methodology used. These last two principles of classification are the most common and universal. So, there are still such influential currents in philosophy as Marxism, Freudianism and neo-Thomism, revering Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud and Thomas Aquinas as unconditional authorities. Some currents of this kind have become the property of history: neo-Platonism and neo-Pythagoreanism, neo-Kantianism and neo-Hegelianism, Cartesianism and Leibnizianism. As for the identification of one's philosophical ideas by the nature of the methods used, then dialectics, phenomenology, hermeneutics, structuralism and post-structuralism, analytical philosophy are very influential areas of modern philosophical thought.
Other grounds for the classification of existing and pre-existing types of philosophical worldviews are also possible. There are several attempts to give a universal classification of the types of philosophical worldviews, in particular, by the German thinker V. Dilthey and the Russian philosopher N. O. Lossky.
Philosophy is the best school of independent and creative thought, an invaluable help to a person who wants to intelligently, freely and responsibly form a worldview and pave his life path. The variety of philosophical systems corresponds to the variety of human characters, where everyone can find a spiritual tone close to him. At the same time, brilliant philosophical insights, as well as brilliant philosophical delusions, are only guiding milestones in comprehending the infinite Cosmos and immersing one's soul into the cosmos. Philosophy does not offer final solutions, but introduces one to the infinite and eternal; does not give peace, but always invites you to a new path.
At the same time, philosophy is not at all the realm of endless ideological pluralism, where you can say whatever you like. It has a deep unity of the diverse, absolutely necessary general results and postulates that can give a firm support in life and bring immediate practical benefits.
Andrey Ivanov
Literature:
Solovyov V.S. Historical Affairs of Philosophy. - M .: Questions of Philosophy, 1988. No. 8
Sorokin P.A. Long Road: An Autobiography. M., 1992
Origins of philosophy
Philosophical worldview
The problem of the scientific nature of the philosophical worldview
The Purpose of Philosophy
Philosophy is one of the oldest areas of knowledge, spiritual culture. Originating in the 7th-6th centuries BC. in India, China, Ancient Greece, it became a stable form of consciousness that interested people in all subsequent centuries. The vocation of philosophers became the search for answers to questions, and the very formulation of questions related to the worldview. Understanding such issues is vital for people. This is especially noticeable in times of change with their complex interweaving of problems - after all, it is then that the worldview itself is actively tested by deed and transformed. It has always been so in history. But, perhaps, time has never set so acute the tasks of philosophical understanding of everything that is happening, as in the period of history we are now experiencing, at the very beginning of the 3rd millennium.
1. Worldview
On the threshold of philosophy
Starting the study of philosophy, many already have some idea about this subject: they can, with more or less success, recall the names of famous philosophers, and perhaps even explain, as a first approximation, what philosophy is. In the list of questions - everyday, industrial, political, scientific and others - it is usually possible, even without special preparation, to single out questions of a philosophical nature, say, such: is the world finite or infinite, is there an absolute, final knowledge, what is human happiness and what is the nature of evil. Where does this foresight come from? From childhood, exploring the world, accumulating knowledge, we all from time to time think with excitement about the secrets of the universe, the fate of mankind, about life and death, grief and happiness of people. This is how a still not clear, not quite consistent understanding of those issues that have been pondered by more than one generation of philosophers is emerging.
How is the world? How are the material and spiritual related in it? Is it chaotic or ordered? What place in the world is occupied by regularity and chance, stability and change? What is rest and movement, development, progress, and is it possible to establish criteria for progress? What is truth and how to distinguish it from delusions or deliberate distortions, lies? What is meant by conscience, honor, duty, responsibility, justice, good and evil, beauty? What is a person and what is its place and role in society? What is the meaning of human life, is there a purpose of history? What do the words: God, faith, hope, love mean?
Today, new, serious and tense questions are being added to the old, "eternal" questions of this kind. What is the general picture and trends in the development of modern society, our country in the current historical situation? How to assess the modern era as a whole, the social, spiritual, ecological state of the planet Earth? How to prevent the deadly threats hanging over humanity? How to protect, defend the great humanistic ideals of humanity? Etc. Reflections on such topics are born of the need for a common orientation, self-determination of a person in the world. Hence the feeling of long-standing acquaintance with philosophy: from ancient times to the present day, philosophical thought seeks to understand those issues of worldview that excite people outside of philosophy.
Entering the "theoretical world" of philosophy, mastering it, a person starts from his previously formed ideas, from what he has thought through and experienced. The study of philosophy helps to align spontaneously formed views, to give them a more mature character. But we must also prepare for the fact that philosophical analysis will reveal the naivety, the fallacy of certain positions that seemed to be correct, and will push them to rethink. And is it important. A lot depends on a clear understanding of the world, life, and ourselves - both in the personal fate of a person and in the common fate of people.
Representatives of different professions may be interested in philosophy from at least two points of view. It is needed for better orientation in one's specialty, but most importantly, it is necessary for understanding life in all its fullness and complexity. In the first case, philosophical questions of physics, mathematics, biology, history, medical, engineering, pedagogical and other activities, artistic creativity and many others fall into the field of attention. But there are philosophical issues that concern us not only as specialists, but as citizens and people in general. And this is no less important than the first. In addition to erudition, which helps to solve professional problems, each of us needs something more - a broad outlook, the ability to understand the essence of what is happening in the world, to see the trends in its development. It is also important to realize the meaning and goals of one's own life: why do we do this or that, what are we striving for, what will it give people, will it not lead us ourselves to collapse and bitter disappointment. General ideas about the world and man, on the basis of which people live and act, are called worldview.
This phenomenon is multidimensional, it is formed in various areas of human life, practice, culture. Philosophy is also referred to the spiritual formations, ranked as a worldview. Its role in understanding the problems of worldview is great. That is why, in order to answer the question of what philosophy is, it is necessary, at least in a general way, to clarify what a worldview is.
The concept of worldview
Worldview - a set of views, assessments, principles that determine the most general vision, understanding of the world, a person's place in it, as well as - life positions, programs of behavior, actions of people. Worldview is a necessary component of human consciousness. This is not just one of its elements among many others, but their complex interaction. Diverse "blocks" of knowledge, beliefs, thoughts, feelings, moods, aspirations, hopes, united in a worldview, form a more or less holistic understanding of the world and themselves by people. In the worldview, the cognitive, value, behavioral spheres in their interrelation are generally represented.
The life of people in society has a historical character. Either slowly or rapidly, all its components change intensively over time: technical means and the nature of labor, people's relations and the people themselves, their feelings, thoughts, interests. People's views of the world are also changing, capturing and refracting the changes in their social existence. In the worldview of a particular time, its general intellectual, psychological mood, the "spirit" of the era, country, and certain social forces find expression. This allows (on the scale of history) sometimes conditionally speaking about the worldview in a summary, impersonal form. However, in reality, beliefs, norms of life, ideals are formed in the experience, consciousness of specific people. And this means that in addition to the typical views that determine the life of the whole society, the worldview of each era lives, acts in a variety of group and individual variants. And yet, in the diversity of worldviews, a fairly stable set of their main "components" can be traced. It is clear that we are not talking about their mechanical connection. The worldview is integral: the connection of components, their "alloy" is fundamentally important in it. And, as in an alloy, different combinations of elements, their proportions give different results, so something similar happens with the worldview. What are the components, "components" of the worldview?
Generalized knowledge - life-practical, professional, scientific - enters into the worldview and plays an important role in it. The degree of cognitive saturation, validity, thoughtfulness, internal consistency of worldviews is different. The more solid the stock of knowledge of this or that people or person in this or that era, the more serious support - in this respect - the worldview can receive. A naive, unenlightened consciousness does not have sufficient intellectual means to clearly substantiate its views, often turning to fantastic fictions, beliefs, and customs.
The need for world orientation makes its demands on knowledge. What is important here is not just a set of all kinds of information from different areas or "many learning", which, as the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus explained, "does not teach the mind." The English philosopher F. Bacon expressed the conviction that the painstaking extraction of ever new facts (reminiscent of the work of an ant) without summing them up, comprehension does not promise success in science. Even less effective is raw, fragmented material for the formation or justification of a worldview. This requires generalized ideas about the world, attempts to recreate its holistic picture, understanding the relationship of various areas, identifying common trends and patterns.
Knowledge - for all its importance - does not fill the entire field of worldview. In addition to a special kind of knowledge about the world (including the human world), the worldview also clarifies the semantic basis of human life. In other words, value systems are formed here (ideas about good, evil, beauty, and others), finally, "images" of the past and "projects" of the future are formed, certain ways of life, behavior are approved (condemned), programs of action are built. All three components of the worldview - knowledge, values, programs of action - are interconnected.
At the same time, knowledge and values are in many respects "polar": they are opposite in their essence. Cognition is driven by the desire for truth - an objective comprehension of the real world. Values characterize that special attitude of people to everything that happens, in which their goals, needs, interests, ideas about the meaning of life are combined. Value consciousness is responsible for moral, aesthetic and other norms and ideals. The most important concepts with which the value consciousness has long been associated were the concepts of good and evil, beautiful and ugly. Through correlation with norms, ideals, the assessment of what is happening is carried out. The system of values plays a very important role both in the individual and in the group, public outlook. For all their heterogeneity, the cognitive and value methods of mastering the world in human consciousness, action are somehow balanced, brought into harmony. The worldview also combines such opposites as intellect and emotions.
Attitude and worldview
In various forms of worldview, the emotional and intellectual experience of people - feelings and reason - are presented in different ways. The emotional-psychological basis of the worldview is called the worldview (or worldview, if visual representations are used), while its cognitive-intellectual side is characterized as the worldview.
The level of intelligence, and the degree of emotional saturation of worldviews are not the same. But one way or another, both of these "poles" are inherent in them. Even the most mature in thought forms of worldview cannot be reduced without a trace only to intellectual components. A worldview is not just a set of neutral knowledge, dispassionate assessments, and prudent actions. Its formation involves not only the cold-blooded work of the mind, but also human emotions. Hence the worldview - the interaction of both, the combination of worldview with worldview.
Life in the world of nature and society gives rise to a complex range of feelings and experiences in people. Curiosity, surprise, feelings of unity with nature, involvement in human history, reverence, admiration, awe, and many others are associated with the worldview. Among the emotions of this kind, there are those painted in "gloomy" tones: anxiety, tension, fear, despair. These include a feeling of insecurity, helplessness, loss, powerlessness, loneliness, sadness, grief, emotional anguish. You can fear for your loved ones, worry about your country, people, for life on Earth, the fate of culture, the future of mankind. At the same time, a range of "bright" emotions is also inherent in people: joy, happiness, harmony, fullness of bodily, mental, intellectual strength, satisfaction with life, with one's accomplishments.
Combinations of such feelings give variations in the types of human attitudes. The general emotional mood can be joyful, optimistic, or gloomy, pessimistic; full of spiritual generosity, caring for others or selfish, etc. The moods are affected by the circumstances of people's lives, differences in their social status, national characteristics, type of culture, individual destinies, temperaments, age, state of health. The worldview of a young person, full of strength, is different than that of an old or sick person. Critical, difficult situations in life require great courage and mental strength from people. One of the situations that cause intense experiences is the encounter with death. Powerful impulses to the worldview are given by moral feelings: shame, remorse, pangs of conscience, a sense of duty, moral satisfaction, compassion, mercy, as well as their antipodes.
The emotional world of a person is, as it were, summed up in his worldview, but it also finds expression in the worldview, including the philosophical worldview. For example, the famous words of the German philosopher I. Kant can serve as a vivid expression of lofty emotions of this type: “Two things always fill the soul with new and stronger surprise and reverence, the more often and longer we think about them, this is the starry sky above me and the moral law is in me" [Kant I. Soch.: V 6 vol. M., 1965. Vol. 4. Part 1. S. 499.].
In the fabric of the worldview, the mind and feelings are not isolated, intertwined and, moreover, connected with the will. This gives the entire composition of the worldview a special character. A worldview, at least its key points, its basis, tends to become a more or less integral set of beliefs. Beliefs are views actively adopted by people, corresponding to the whole warehouse of their consciousness, life aspirations. In the name of beliefs - their power is so great - people sometimes risk their lives and even go to death.
Thus, being included in the worldview, its various components acquire a new status: they absorb the attitude of people, are colored by emotions, combined with the will to act. Even knowledge in the context of worldview acquires a special tone. Merging with the totality of views, positions, feelings, they are confidently and actively accepted by people. And then - in a trend - they become more than just knowledge, turning into cognitive beliefs - into a holistic way of seeing, understanding the world, orienting in it. Moral, legal, political and other views - values, norms, ideals - also acquire the power of persuasion. In combination with volitional factors, they form the basis of life, behavior, actions of individuals, social groups, nations, peoples, and, in the limit, the entire world community.
With the "melting" of views into convictions, the degree of trust in their content and meaning increases. The range of human faith, confidence is wide. It extends from practical, vital cognitive certainty (or evidence), that is, completely rational faith, to religious beliefs or even the gullible acceptance of absurd fictions, which is also characteristic of human consciousness of a certain type and level.
The important role of beliefs in the composition of the worldview does not exclude positions that are accepted with less confidence or even mistrust. Doubt is an obligatory moment of an independent, meaningful position in the field of worldview. Fanatic, unconditional acceptance of this or that system of orientations, growing together with it - without internal criticism, without own analysis - is called dogmatism. Life shows that such a position is blind and flawed, does not correspond to the complex, developing reality. Moreover, ideological, political and other dogmas have often turned out to be the cause of serious troubles in history, including our national history. That is why a clear, open-minded, bold, creative, flexible understanding of real life in all its complexity is so important. Healthy doubt, thoughtfulness, criticality save from dogmas. But if the measure is violated, they can give rise to another extreme - disbelief in anything, loss of ideals, refusal to serve high goals. This mood is called cynicism (by similarity with the world orientation of one of the ancient schools, which bore this name).
So, the worldview is the unity of knowledge and values, mind and feelings, worldview and attitude, rational justification and faith, beliefs and doubts. It intertwines socially significant and personal experience, traditional ideas and creative thought. Comprehension and action, theories and practices of people, understanding of the past and vision of the future are connected together. The combination of all these "polarities" is an intense spiritual and practical work, designed to give a holistic character to the entire system of orientations.
Embracing different "layers" of experience, the worldview helps a person to push the limits of everyday life, a specific place and time, to relate himself to other people, including those who lived before, will live later. The wisdom of human life accumulates in the worldview, great-grandfathers, grandfathers, fathers, contemporaries are introduced to the spiritual world, something is strongly condemned, something is carefully preserved and continues. Depending on the depth of knowledge, intellectual strength and the logical sequence of arguments in the worldview, the vital-practical and intellectual-speculative (theoretical) levels of comprehension also differ.
Life-everyday and theoretical world outlook
In all historical epochs, a worldview based on common sense and diverse everyday experience has revealed itself and remains today. This spontaneously emerging form of worldview includes the worldview, mindset, and behavioral skills of the broad strata of society. It is often called "life or worldly philosophy." It plays an important role, because it is a mass and really "working", not "bookish" consciousness. And it is no coincidence that in times of change a new political, economic, religious, moral thinking is affirmed only when it is mastered by thousands, millions of people and begins to determine their lives and actions.
The life-practical outlook is heterogeneous, since there is a wide variation in the level of education and intellect of its bearers, in the nature of their spiritual culture, national, religious and other traditions. Hence the wide range of its possible variants from primitive, philistine forms of consciousness to enlightened "common sense". The life philosophy of educated people is often formed under the influence of their knowledge and experience in various fields of activity. So, they rightly talk about the worldview of scientists, engineers, politicians, officials. Analyzing and summarizing the diverse life experience, teachers, publicists, masters of artistic creativity form the consciousness of many people. Both history and the current situation testify to the fact that individuals who make up the mind and conscience of the people, the flower of culture, deeply and broadly reflecting on large, vital problems, have an impact on the views of individuals, on the public outlook as a whole and on thinking. philosophers.
The worldview in its mass manifestations has both strengths and weaknesses. It contains not only a rich "memory of the ages", convincing life experience, skills, traditions, faith and doubts, but also many prejudices. Even today such a worldview is not protected from mistakes, it is subject to the influence of unhealthy (nationalist and other) moods, modern myths (for example, about the panacea of the market and enrichment, or about vulgarly interpreted equality) and other not quite mature manifestations of mass consciousness, not to mention the purposeful influence on him by clans and social groups pursuing their narrowly selfish goals. Professionals engaged in scientific, literary, engineering and other work are not immune from such influences.
Everyday, everyday worldview, as a rule, develops spontaneously, does not differ in deep thoughtfulness, validity. That is why logic is not always maintained at this level, sometimes it does not "make ends meet", emotions in critical situations can overwhelm the mind, revealing a lack of common sense. Finally, everyday thinking succumbs to problems that require serious knowledge, a culture of thoughts and feelings, and an orientation towards high human values. The life-practical worldview copes with such problems only in its mature manifestations. But even here, the existing way of thinking and behavior becomes "second nature" and is rarely subjected to careful analysis and reflection.
Another thing is the critical work of the mind based on the comparison of different forms of experience. Such work, as a rule, is already carried out at another - enlightened, reflective level of consciousness. Philosophy also belongs to the mature intellectual-theoretical (or critical-reflexive) forms of worldview. However, this mission is performed not only by "thinking", "logical" people endowed with a clear mind. Those who have been endowed by nature with deep intuition also successfully participate in it - the geniuses of religion, music, literature, politics, and finally, journalists, who deeply and on a large scale grasp the essence of what is happening, the fate of people, their moral greatness and ugliness, and fall.
The concept of worldview covers a wider range of phenomena than the concept of philosophy. Their relationship can be schematically represented as two concentric circles, where the larger circle is the worldview, and the smaller one included in it is philosophy.
Unlike other forms of worldview, systems of philosophical views are subject to the requirement of substantiation. Previously established positions are again and again submitted to the court of philosophical reason (in this respect, the name of the three most important philosophical works of I. Kant is characteristic: "Critique of Pure Reason", "Critique of Practical Reason", "Critique of the Ability of Judgment"). A philosopher is a specialist in worldviews. For him, they are the subject of special analysis, clarification, and evaluation. With the help of such an analysis, the semantic and logical quality of principles, conclusions, and generalizations are carefully verified. The norms, ideals that determine the way of life, the aspirations of people are also thought out. But the matter is not limited to this. A philosopher in the highest sense of the word is not only a strict judge, but also a creator (or reformer) of a certain worldview. He sees his main task in building a system of worldview that would correspond to the worldview of his contemporaries (and himself) and at the same time, if possible, meet the exacting requirements of the intellect.
To understand the originality of philosophy, it is also necessary to determine its place among other historical types of worldview, to understand the meaning of the words "transition from myth to logos" - a short formula for the birth of philosophy.
2. Origins of philosophy
Myth
To understand the essence of this or that phenomenon, it is important to know how it arose, what it replaced, how its early stages differed from subsequent, more mature ones. People come to philosophical reflections, studies of philosophy in different ways. But there is a path along which humanity once came to philosophy. In order to understand the originality of philosophy, it is important to imagine this path at least in general terms, referring to the first steps, the origins of philosophical thinking, as well as to the mythological (and religious) worldview as a prerequisite, the forerunner of philosophy.
Mythology (from the Greek mythos - legend, legend and logos - word, concept, teaching) is a type of consciousness, a way of understanding the world, characteristic of the early stages of the development of society. Myths existed among all peoples of the world. In the spiritual life of primitive people, mythology acted as a universal form of their consciousness, as an integral worldview.
Myths - ancient tales about fantastic creatures, about the deeds of gods and heroes - are diverse. But a number of basic themes and motifs are repeated in them. Many myths are devoted to the origin and structure of the cosmos (cosmogonic and cosmological myths). They contain attempts to answer the question about the beginning, origin, structure of the surrounding world, about the emergence of the most important natural phenomena for a person, about world harmony, impersonal necessity, etc. The formation of the world was understood in mythology as its creation or as a gradual development from the primitive formless states, as ordering, that is, the transformation from chaos into space, as creation through overcoming destructive demonic forces. There were also myths (they are called eschatological) describing the coming death of the world, in some cases - with its subsequent revival.
Much attention in myths was paid to the origin of people, birth, stages of life, death of a person, various trials that stand in his way of life. The myths about cultural achievements people - the production of fire, the invention of crafts, agriculture, the origin of customs, rituals. Among developed peoples, myths were connected with each other, lined up in single narratives. (In a later literary presentation, they are presented in the ancient Greek "Iliad", the Indian "Ramayana", the Karelian-Finnish "Kalevala" and other folk epics.) The representations embodied in the myth were intertwined with rituals, served as an object of faith, ensured the preservation of traditions and the continuity of culture. For example, myths about dying and resurrecting gods, symbolically reproducing natural cycles, were associated with agricultural rites.
Myth, the earliest form of the spiritual culture of mankind, expressed the worldview, worldview, worldview of the people of the era in which it was created. He acted as a universal, undifferentiated (syncretic) form of consciousness, combining in itself the rudiments of knowledge, religious beliefs, political views, various types of arts, and philosophy. Only later did these elements receive independent life and development.
The originality of the myth was manifested in the fact that the thought was expressed in specific emotional, poetic images, metaphors. Here the phenomena of nature and culture converged, human features were transferred to the surrounding world. As a result, the cosmos and other natural forces were humanized (personified, animated). This makes the myth related to the thinking of children, artists, poets, and all people in whose minds the images of old fairy tales, legends, legends "live" in a transformed form. At the same time, the generalized work of thought was also contained in the bizarre fabric of mythological plots - analysis, classification, a special symbolic representation of the world as a whole.
In myth, the world and man, the ideal and the material, the objective and the subjective, were not differentiated in any way. Human thought will draw these distinctions later. Myth is a holistic understanding of the world, in which various ideas are linked into a single figurative picture of the world, a kind of "artistic religion" full of poetic images and metaphors. In the fabric of myth, reality and fantasy, the natural and the supernatural, thought and feeling, knowledge and faith are intricately woven.
Myth served a variety of functions. With its help, the connection of "times" - the past, present and future, was carried out, the collective ideas of this or that people were formed, the spiritual unity of generations was ensured. Mythological consciousness consolidated the system of values accepted in a given society, supported and encouraged certain forms of behavior. It also included the search for the unity of nature and society, the world and man, the desire to find a solution to contradictions and find harmony, the inner harmony of human life.
With the extinction of primitive forms of life, myth, as a special stage in the development of people's consciousness, leaves the historical stage, but does not die at all. Through the epic, fairy tales, legends, historical legends, mythological images, plots entered the humanitarian culture of various peoples - into literature, painting, music, sculpture. Thus, the themes of ancient Greek and many other mythologies are reflected in the works of world literature and art. Mythological subjects have entered many religions. In addition, some features of mythological thinking remain in the mass consciousness even when mythology as a whole loses its former role. A kind of social, political and other myth-making exists, actively manifesting itself, even today. The mass consciousness is most susceptible to its influence, which itself creates many "myths" and uncritically masters the mythologemes invented and propagated by the modern ideological industry. But these are already different times, different realities.
Myth in the true sense of the word - as an integral type of consciousness, a special form of life of primitive peoples - has become obsolete. However, the search for answers to questions about the origin of the world, man, cultural skills, social structure, and the mystery of birth and death, begun by the mythological consciousness, did not stop. Time has shown that these are the fundamental, key questions of any understanding of the world. They were inherited from the myth by the two most important forms of worldview coexisting for centuries - religion and philosophy.
In the search for answers to the questions of world outlook posed in mythology, the creators of religion and philosophy have chosen, in principle, different (although still sometimes closely converging) paths. In contrast to the religious worldview with its predominant attention to human anxieties, hopes, to the search for faith in philosophy, the intellectual aspects of the worldview were brought to the fore, which reflected the growing need in society to understand the world and man from the standpoint of knowledge, reason. Philosophical thought declared itself as a search for wisdom.
Love for Wisdom
Philosophy (from the Greek phileo - love and sophia - wisdom) literally means "love of wisdom." According to some historical evidence, the word "philosopher" was first used by the ancient Greek mathematician and thinker Pythagoras in relation to people striving for high wisdom and a decent lifestyle. The interpretation and consolidation of the term "philosophy" in European culture is associated with the name of the ancient Greek thinker Plato. In the teachings of Plato, sophia is the thoughts of a deity that determine the rational, harmonious structure of the world. Only a deity can merge with Sophia. People are capable of striving, love for wisdom. Those who embarked on this path began to be called philosophers, and the area of \u200b\u200btheir studies - philosophy.
In contrast to the mythological and religious worldview, philosophical thought brought with it a fundamentally new type of worldview, for which the arguments of the intellect became a solid foundation. Real observations, logical analysis, generalizations, conclusions, proofs are gradually replacing fantastic fiction, plots, images and the very spirit of mythological thinking, leaving them to the sphere of artistic creativity. On the other hand, the myths that exist among the people are rethought from the standpoint of reason, receive a new, rational interpretation. The very concept of wisdom carried a sublime, non-everyday meaning. Wisdom was opposed to more ordinary prudence and prudence. It was associated with the desire for intellectual comprehension of the world, based on selfless service to the truth. The development of philosophical thought thus meant a progressive dissociation from mythology, the rationalization of myth, as well as overcoming the narrow limits of everyday consciousness, its limitations.
So, love for truth and wisdom, careful selection, comparison of the most valuable achievements of the mind gradually becomes an independent kind of activity. In Europe, the birth of philosophy was one of the components of the great cultural upheaval in Ancient Greece in the 8th-5th centuries BC, in the context of which science arose (primarily Greek mathematics of the 6th-4th centuries BC). The word "philosophy" was synonymous with the emerging rational-theoretical worldview. Philosophical thought was inspired not by the accumulation of information, not by the development of individual things, but by the knowledge of "the one in everything." The ancient Greek philosophers, who valued just such knowledge, believed that the mind "governs everything with the help of everything" (Heraclitus).
In addition to knowing the world, love for wisdom also implied reflection on the nature of man, his fate, the goals of human life and its rational structure. The value of wisdom was also seen in the fact that it allows you to make thoughtful, balanced decisions, indicates the right path, serves as a guide to human behavior. It was believed that wisdom was designed to balance the complex relationship of a person with the world, to bring knowledge and action, a way of life into harmony. The importance of this vital and practical aspect of wisdom was deeply understood both by the first philosophers and by the great thinkers of later times.
Thus, the emergence of philosophy meant the emergence of a special spiritual attitude - the search for harmony of knowledge about the world with the life experience of people, with their beliefs, ideals. In ancient Greek philosophy, the insight was captured and passed on to subsequent centuries that knowledge in itself is not enough, that it acquires meaning only in combination with the values of human life. The ingenious conjecture of early philosophical thought was the understanding that wisdom is not something ready-made that can be discovered, solidified and used. It is an aspiration, a search that requires the tension of the mind and all the spiritual forces of a person. This is the path that each of us, even joining the wisdom of the great, the experience of centuries and our days, still must go himself.
Reflections of philosophers
Initially, the word "philosophy" was used in a broader sense than it was later assigned to it. In fact, it was a synonym for emerging science and theoretical thought in general. Philosophy was the cumulative knowledge of the ancients, not yet divided into special areas. Such knowledge covered specific information, practical observations and conclusions, and generalizations. In addition, knowledge, the rudiments of the sciences, were combined in it with those thoughts of people about the world and about themselves, which in the future will form the body of philosophical thought in a more special, proper sense of the word, which will be discussed further.
At different times, among different peoples, the question of what philosophy is received unequal answers. This happened for a number of reasons. With the development of human culture, practice, the subject of philosophy, the range of its problems, really changed. Correspondingly, the "images" of philosophy were rebuilt - ideas about it in the minds of philosophers. The appearance of philosophy, its status - ties with science, politics, social practice, and spiritual culture - changed especially noticeably during critical historical epochs. And within the same epoch, variants of the philosophical understanding of the world and life that differed markedly from each other were born, reflecting the special experience and destinies of countries, as well as the mindset and character of thinkers. The variability of decisions, the intellectual "playing" of possible answers to the same questions will generally become an important feature of philosophical thought. But with all the changes and variations, the connection between the past and new forms of thinking, the unity of that way of understanding the world, which characterizes precisely philosophical thought, in contrast to other reflections, still remained. The German philosopher Hegel rightly noted: no matter how different philosophical systems are, they agree that they are all philosophical systems.
What did those who are called philosophers think about and continue to think about? Nature has attracted their attention for centuries. This is evidenced by the very names of many philosophical works (for example: Lucretius "On the Nature of Things"; J. Bruno "On Infinity, the Universe and Worlds"; D. Diderot "Thoughts on the Interpretation of Nature"; P. Holbach "The System of Nature"; Hegel " Philosophy of nature"; A. I. Herzen "Letters on the study of nature" and others).
It was nature that the first Greek thinkers made the subject of study, in whose writings philosophy appeared primarily in the form of natural philosophy (philosophy of nature). Moreover, it was not particulars that aroused particular interest in them. They tried to attach each specific observation to the understanding of the fundamental questions that worried them. First of all, they were occupied with the emergence and structure of the world - the Earth, the Sun, the stars (that is, cosmogonic and cosmological issues). The core of philosophy early stages its development, and even later, was the doctrine of the fundamental principle of all things, from which everything arises and to which everything returns. It was believed that the rational understanding of this or that phenomenon essentially meant reducing it to a single fundamental principle. Regarding its specific understanding, the views of philosophers diverged. But in the variety of positions, the main task remained: to connect the fragments of human knowledge together. Thus, the problem of the fundamental principle, the first principle, was connected with another important problem: the one and the many. The search for unity in the diversity of the world expressed the task of synthesizing human experience, knowledge about nature, which is characteristic of philosophical thought. These functions were retained by philosophical thought for many centuries. Although at the mature stages of the development of science, especially with the advent of its theoretical sections, they changed significantly, the philosophical interest in nature has not died out and, as far as one can judge, cannot die out.
Gradually, questions of the social life of people, its political, legal structure, etc., entered the sphere of philosophy and became a constant subject of its interest.
This was also imprinted in the titles of works (for example: Plato "State", "Laws"; Aristotle "Politics"; T. Hobbes "On the Citizen", "Leviathan, or Matter, Form and Power of the Church and Civil State"; J. Locke " Two treatises on state government "; C. Montesquieu "On the Spirit of Laws"; Hegel "Philosophy of Law"). Like natural philosophy, a harbinger of the future natural science, socio-philosophical thought paved the way for concrete knowledge about society (civil history, jurisprudence, etc.).
Philosophers developed a picture of the social life of people, the theoretical principles of knowledge about society. The formation in the bosom of this knowledge of special socio-historical disciplines (similar to the birth of specific sciences of nature) will take place later on the basis of a philosophical study of this topic. Along with the study of society, philosophers thought a lot about its best organization. Great minds bequeathed to subsequent centuries, generations the humanistic ideals they found of reason, freedom, justice as principles of the social life of people.
What else worried philosophers? The subject of their thoughts was invariably the person himself, and therefore the mind, feelings, language, morality, knowledge, religion, art and all other manifestations of human nature were included in the field of attention. In Greek thought, the turn from the cosmos to man was made by the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates, who made the problem of man the focus of philosophy. Thus, the themes of knowledge and truth, justice, courage and other moral virtues, the meaning of human existence, life and death were brought to the fore. It was a new image of philosophy as life understanding.
Problematics, which received its impulse from Socrates, has taken a very important place in philosophy. This was reflected in the themes of philosophical works (for example: Aristotle "On the Soul", "Ethics", "Poetics", "Rhetoric"; Avicenna (Ibn Sina) "The Book of Knowledge"; R. Descartes "Rules for the Guidance of the Mind", "Reasoning about the method", "Treatise on the passions of the soul"; B. Spinoza "Treatise on the improvement of the mind", "Ethics"; T. Hobbes "On Man"; J. Locke "Experience on the Human Mind"; K. A. Helvetius "On Mind", "About Man"; A. N. Radishchev "About Man, His Mortality and Immortality"; Hegel "Philosophy of Religion", "Philosophy of Spirit", etc.).
Human problems are of fundamental importance for philosophy. And since philosophy has developed into an independent field of knowledge, culture with special tasks, these problems have been constantly present in it. The greatest attention is paid to them during periods of great historical transformations of society, when there is a deep reassessment of values. It is no coincidence that interest in the problem of man was so great, say, in the Renaissance (XIV-XVI centuries), the whole culture of which glorified man and human values: reason, creativity, originality, freedom, dignity.
So the subject philosophical reflections(and inextricably linked with them at first scientific research) became the natural and social world, as well as man in their complex interaction. But these are the main themes and any worldview. What is the peculiarity of philosophy? First of all, in the nature of thinking. Philosophers created not stories with fantastic plots, not sermons calling for faith, but mainly treatises addressed to knowledge, the mind of people.
At the same time, the close connection of early philosophical teachings with mythology, on the one hand, and elements of the emerging science, on the other, obscured the specifics of philosophical thought, did not always allow it to manifest itself clearly. The formation of philosophy as an independent field of knowledge, culture with its own specific tasks, not reducible to mythological, scientific, religious, or any other tasks, will last for centuries. Correspondingly, the understanding of the nature of philosophy will be extended in time and the understanding of the nature of philosophy will gradually increase.
The first attempt to single out philosophy as a special area of theoretical knowledge was made by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. Since then, many thinkers have pondered the question "what is philosophy?" and contributed to its clarification, gradually realizing that this may be one of the most difficult philosophical questions. Among the most mature and profound interpretations of the essence of the matter achieved in the history of philosophy, of course, is the teaching of the German thinker Immanuel Kant. Based primarily on his views, we will try to give an idea of a special area of knowledge, thoughts, problems, whose name is philosophy.
3. Philosophical worldview
Philosophy is a theoretically meaningful worldview. The word "theoretically" is used here broadly and implies the intellectual (logical, conceptual) elaboration of the entire complex of problems of world comprehension. Such understanding can be manifested not only in the wording, but also in the nature (method) of solving various problems. Philosophy is a system of the most general theoretical views on the world, a person's place in it, an understanding of the various forms of a person's relationship to the world. If we compare this definition with the definition of worldview given earlier, it becomes clear that they are similar. And this is not accidental: philosophy differs from other forms of worldview not so much in its subject matter, but in the way it is comprehended, the degree of intellectual development of problems and methods of approach to them. That is why, when defining philosophy, we used such concepts as a theoretical worldview, a system of views.
Against the background of spontaneously arising (everyday and other) forms of understanding of the world, philosophy appeared as a specially developed doctrine of wisdom. Philosophical thought has chosen as its guideline not myth-making or naive faith, not popular opinions or supernatural explanations, but free, critical thinking about the world and human life based on the principles of reason.
World and Man
In the worldview in general, and in its philosophical form in particular, there are always two opposite angles of view: the direction of consciousness "outside" - the formation of one or another picture of the world, the universe - and, on the other hand, its appeal "inside" - to the person himself, the desire to understand its essence, place, purpose in the natural and social world. Moreover, a person here appears not as a part of the world in a number of other things, but as a being of a special kind (by the definition of R. Descartes, a thing that thinks, suffers, etc.). It is distinguished from everything else by the ability to think, to know, to love and hate, to rejoice and be sad, to hope, to wish, to be happy or unhappy, to feel a sense of duty, pangs of conscience, etc. The "poles" that create the "field of tension" of philosophical thought are the "external" world in relation to human consciousness and the "inner" world - psychological, subjective, spiritual life. The various correlations of these "worlds" permeate the whole of philosophy.
Take, for example, characteristic philosophical questions. Is sweetness an objective property of sugar, or is it just a subjective human taste sensation? What about beauty? Does it belong to natural objects, skillful creations of masters, or is it dictated by the subjective sense of beauty, the human ability to create, perceive beauty? Another question: what is truth? Something objective, independent of people, or a cognitive achievement of man? Or, for example, the question of human freedom. At first glance, it concerns only a person, but at the same time it cannot be resolved without taking into account the realities that are not subject to his will, the realities that people cannot ignore. Finally, let us turn to the concept of social progress. Is it connected only with objective indicators of economic development and others, or does it also include "subjective", human aspects? All these questions touch on one common problem: the relationship between being and consciousness, objective and subjective, the world and man. And this is a common feature of philosophical reflections.
It is no coincidence that the same common core can be identified in the list of questions cited by the English philosopher Bertrand Russell: "Is the world divided into spirit and matter, and if so, what is spirit and what is matter? Is the spirit subordinate to matter, or does it have independent Does the universe have any unity or purpose?.. Do the laws of nature really exist, or do we simply believe in them due to our inherent propensity for order? water, powerlessly swarming on a small and secondary planet? Or is man what Hamlet imagined him to be? Or maybe he is both at the same time? Are there sublime and base ways of life, or are all ways of life only vanity? If there is a way of life which is sublime, what is it, and how can we achieve it? bru needs to strive, even if the universe is inevitably moving towards death? ... To investigate these questions, if not to answer them, is a matter of philosophy.
The philosophical outlook is, as it were, bipolar: its semantic "nodes", "points of tension" are the world and man. What is essential for philosophical thought is not a separate consideration of these poles, but their constant correlation. Unlike other forms of worldview in the philosophical worldview, such a polarity is theoretically pointed, it appears most prominently, and forms the basis of all reflections. Various problems of the philosophical worldview, located in the "field of force" between these poles, are "charged", aimed at understanding the forms of their interaction, at understanding the relationship of man to the world.
This brings us to the conclusion that the big multifaceted problem "world - man" (it has many guises: "subject - object", "material - spiritual" and others), in fact, acts as a universal one and can be considered as a general formula, abstract expression of almost any philosophical problem. That is why it can, in a certain sense, be called the fundamental question of philosophy.
The fundamental question of philosophy
It has long been noticed that philosophical thought is closely connected with this or that correlation of spirit and nature, thought and reality. Indeed, the attention of philosophers is constantly riveted to the diverse relationships of man as a being endowed with consciousness, to the objective, real world, associated with the understanding of the principles of practical, cognitive-theoretical, artistic and other ways of mastering the world. Depending on how philosophers understood this ratio, what they took as the initial, determining one, two opposite directions of thought developed. The explanation of the world, based on the spirit, consciousness, ideas, is called idealism. At some points, it echoes with religion. Philosophers, who took as a basis nature, matter, an objective reality that exists independently of human consciousness, adjoined various schools of materialism, in many respects akin in their attitudes to science, life practice, and common sense. The existence of these opposite directions is a fact of the history of philosophical thought.
However, students of philosophy, and sometimes even those who work professionally in this field, find it difficult to understand why and in what sense the question of the relationship between the material and the spiritual is the main one for philosophy, and whether this is really the case. Philosophy has existed for more than two and a half thousand years, and it often happened that for a long time this question was not clearly posed, not discussed by philosophers. The polarity "material - spiritual" either stood out distinctly, or receded into the shadows. Its "pivot" role for philosophy was not realized immediately, it took many centuries for this. In particular, it clearly emerged and occupied a fundamental place during the formation of philosophical thought itself (XVII-XVIII centuries), its active dissociation from religion, on the one hand, and from specific sciences, on the other. But even after that, philosophers by no means always characterized the relationship between being and consciousness as fundamental. It is no secret that the majority of philosophers did not consider in the past and do not consider now the solution of this particular issue as their most important task. The problems of ways to achieve true knowledge, the nature of moral duty, freedom, human happiness, practice, etc., were brought to the fore in various teachings. The French thinker of the 18th century C.A. According to our compatriot D. I. Pisarev (XIX century), the main business of philosophy is to solve the always urgent "question of hungry and naked people; outside this issue there is absolutely nothing worth worrying about, thinking about, bothering" [Pisarev D. I. Literary criticism: In 3 vols. L., 1981. T. 2. S. 125.]. The French philosopher of the XX century Albert Camus considers the most burning problem of the meaning of human life. "There is only one really serious philosophical problem, the problem of suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy. Everything else is whether the world has three dimensions, whether the mind is guided by nine or twelve categories - secondary" [Camus A. The myth of Sisyphus // Camus A. A rebellious man. M., 1990. S. 24.].
But can it be considered as a basic question that is not formulated at all by most philosophers? Perhaps it is introduced post factum (retroactively) in order to classify philosophical positions and trends? In a word, a special place in the philosophy of the question of the relationship between the spiritual and the material is not obvious, it needs to be explained, theoretically substantiated.
At least one thing is clear: the question of the relationship between consciousness and being is not on a par with numerous specific questions. It has a different character. Perhaps this is not so much a question as the semantic orientation of philosophical thought. It is important to understand that the polarity "material-spiritual", "objective-subjective" constitutes a certain "nerve" of any particular philosophical question or reflection, regardless of whether those who philosophize are aware of this. Moreover, this polarity does not always result in a question, but when translated into such a form, it grows into a multitude of interconnected questions.
The confrontation and at the same time the complex interaction of being and consciousness, material and spiritual grows out of all human practice, culture, permeates them. That is why these concepts, which are significant only in pairs, in their polar correlation, cover the entire field of worldview, constitute its extremely general (universal) basis. In fact, the most general prerequisites for human existence are the existence of the world (primarily nature), on the one hand, and people, on the other. Everything else turns out to be derivative, comprehended as a result of the practical and spiritual development by people of primary (natural) and secondary (social) forms of being and the interaction of people with each other on this basis.
From the variety of relations "the world - man" three main ones can be distinguished: cognitive, practical and value relations.
At one time, I. Kant formulated three questions that, in his opinion, are of fundamental importance for philosophy in its highest "worldwide-civil" sense: What can I know? What should I do? What can I hope for? [See: Kant I. Soch.: In 6 vols. M., 1964. Vol. 3. S. 661.]
These three questions just reflect the three indicated types of human relations to the world. Let us first of all turn to the first of them.
Philosophical knowledge
The first question from which philosophical knowledge began and which asserts itself again and again is the question: what is the world in which we live? In essence, it is equivalent to the question: what do we know about the world? Philosophy is not the only area of knowledge designed to answer this question. Over the centuries, its solution included more and more new areas of scientific knowledge and practice.
The formation of philosophy, along with the emergence of mathematics, marked the birth of a completely new phenomenon in ancient Greek culture - the first mature forms of theoretical thought. Some other areas of knowledge reached theoretical maturity much later, moreover, at different times, and this process continues to this day. The absence for centuries of scientific and theoretical knowledge about many phenomena of reality, sharp differences in the level of development of sciences, the constant existence of sections of science that do not have any mature theories - all this created a need for the cognitive efforts of philosophical minds.
At the same time, special cognitive tasks fell to the lot of philosophy. In different periods of history, they took on a different form, but still some of their stable features were preserved. Unlike other types of theoretical knowledge (in mathematics, natural science), philosophy acts as a universal theoretical knowledge. According to Aristotle, special sciences are engaged in the study of specific types of being, while philosophy takes upon itself the comprehension of the most general principles, the beginnings of everything that exists. I. Kant saw the main task of philosophical knowledge in the synthesis of various human knowledge, in the creation of their all-encompassing system. Hence, he considered two things to be the most important matter of philosophy: the mastery of a vast stock of rational (conceptual) knowledge and "combining them in the idea of the whole." Only philosophy is capable, in his opinion, to give "to all other sciences a systematic unity" [Kant I. Treatises and Letters. M., 1980. S. 332.].
True, this is not a specific task that needs to be completed in the foreseeable future, but an ideal landmark for the philosopher's cognitive claims: the horizon line, as it were, receding as it approaches it. It is inherent in philosophical thought to consider the world not only in a small "radius", near "horizon", but also in an ever wider scope with access to unknown, inaccessible to human experience areas of space and time. The curiosity characteristic of people develops here into an intellectual need for an unlimited expansion and deepening of knowledge about the world. This tendency is inherent to one degree or another in every person. Increasing knowledge in breadth and depth, the human intellect comprehends the world in its sections that are not given or even cannot be given in any experience. In fact, we are talking about the ability of the intellect to superexperiential knowledge. This was emphasized by I. Kant: "... the human mind ... uncontrollably reaches such questions that no experimental application of reason and principles borrowed from here can give an answer ..." [Kant I. Soch.: In 6 vol. T. 3. S. 118.] Indeed, no experience can comprehend the world as an integral, boundless in space and timeless, infinitely superior to human forces, independent of man (and mankind) objective reality, with which people must constantly be considered. Experience does not provide such knowledge, and philosophical thought, forming a common worldview, must somehow cope with this most difficult task, at least constantly apply its efforts to this.
In cognition of the world, philosophers of different eras turned to solving problems that, either temporarily or, in principle, forever, were outside the competence and field of attention of specific sciences.
Recall Kant's question "What can I know?" This question is not so much about what we know about the world, but about the very possibility of knowing. It could be expanded into a whole "tree" of derivative questions: "Is the world cognizable in principle?"; "Is human knowledge limitless in its possibilities, or does it have limits?"; "If the world is accessible to human knowledge, then what part of this task should science take upon itself, and what cognitive tasks fall to the lot of philosophy?" A number of new questions are also possible: "How is knowledge about the world obtained, on the basis of what cognitive abilities of people and using what methods of cognition?"; "How to make sure that the results obtained are sound, true knowledge, and not delusions?" All these are actually philosophical questions, which are noticeably different from those that are usually solved by scientists and practitioners. Moreover, in them - sometimes veiled, sometimes explicitly - there is invariably the correlation "world - man" that distinguishes philosophy.
In resolving the issue of the cognizability of the world, there are antipodes: the point of view of cognitive optimism is opposed by more pessimistic systems of views - skepticism and agnosticism (from the Greek a - negation and gnosis - knowledge; inaccessible to knowledge).
It is difficult to give a straightforward answer to questions related to the problem of the cognizability of the world - such is the nature of philosophy. Kant understood this. Highly appreciating science and the power of philosophical reason, he nevertheless came to the conclusion that there is a limit to knowledge. The rationale behind this often criticized conclusion is not always recognized. But today it is of particular relevance. Kant's position, in fact, was a wise warning: a person, knowing a lot, knowing how, you still don't know a lot, and you are always destined to live, act on the border of knowledge and ignorance, so be careful! Kant's warning about the dangers of omniscient moods becomes especially understandable in modern conditions. In addition, Kant had in mind the fundamental incompleteness, the limitedness of a purely cognitive assimilation of the world, which is also increasingly one has to think about today.
Cognition and Morality
The meaning of philosophizing is not limited to cognitive tasks. Great thinkers carried this conviction of antiquity through all subsequent centuries. Kant, again, was his brightest spokesman. Without knowledge, he explained, one cannot become a philosopher, but this cannot be achieved with the help of knowledge alone [Kant I. Treatises and Letters. S. 333.]. Highly appreciating the efforts of theoretical reason, he did not hesitate to bring practical reason to the fore - that which philosophy ultimately serves. The thinker emphasized the active, practical nature of the worldview: "...wisdom ... actually consists more in the manner of actions than in knowledge ..." [Kant I. Works: In 6 vols. Vol. 4. Part 1 P. 241.] A true philosopher, in his opinion, is a practical philosopher, a mentor of wisdom, educating by teaching and deed. However, Kant, in agreement with the ancient Greek philosophers, did not at all consider it appropriate to trust the world outlook, life understanding to the elements of everyday experience, sound human reason, unenlightened, naive human consciousness. He was convinced that for a serious substantiation and consolidation, wisdom needs science, the "narrow gates" of science lead to wisdom, and philosophy must always remain the guardian of science [See. there. S. 501.].
Philosophy in its highest meaning embodies, according to Kant, the idea of perfect wisdom. Kant characterized this idea as a world-civil, global or even cosmic one, meaning not the real teachings of philosophers, but the program towards which philosophical thought should strive. Ideally, it is intended to indicate the highest goals of the human mind, associated with the most important value orientations of people, primarily with moral values. The essence of philosophizing is seen in the substantiation of higher moral values. Philosophy is called upon to harmonize any goals, any knowledge, their application, according to Kant, with the highest moral goals of the human mind. Without this core, all aspirations, achievements of people depreciate, lose their meaning.
What is the highest goal, the main meaning of philosophical searches? Let us recall the three Kantian questions that reflected the main ways of human relation to the world. Continuing further his reflections on the purpose of philosophy, the German thinker came to the conclusion that, in essence, all three questions could be reduced to the fourth: what is a person? He wrote: "If there is a science that a person really needs, then this is the one that I teach - namely, to properly take the place indicated to a person in the world - and from which you can learn what you need to be in order to be a person" [Kant I. Cit.: V 6 t. M., 1964. T. 2. S. 206.]. In essence, this is a concise definition of the meaning and significance of the philosophical worldview.
So, Kant proclaimed man, human happiness (goodness, bliss) as the highest value and highest goal, and at the same time dignity, high moral duty. The philosopher put the eternal hopes for happiness in close connection with the moral right to it, with the extent to which a person made himself worthy of happiness, deserved it with his behavior. The concept of the highest goals of the human mind is focused in Kant on a person, moral ideals, imbued with humanism. At the same time, it contains strict moral requirements for a person, expressed in the formulas of the highest moral law and its consequences. According to Kant, the focus on the person and the highest moral values imparts dignity and intrinsic value to philosophy, and also gives value to all other knowledge. These thoughts are deep, serious, and in many ways have enduring significance.
Understanding the essence of philosophy in the teachings of I. Kant convinces us that the search for wisdom, the inextricable connection between the human mind and morality (remember Socrates), begun in antiquity, has not faded away. But reflections on the tasks of philosophy did not end there. Moreover, time has shown that they cannot be completely exhausted at all. But how to navigate in the diversity of views and positions? How to learn to distinguish true from false? Attempts to evaluate philosophical teachings by such a measure have been made more than once in the history of philosophy. Let us also try to consider the question of the cognitive value of the philosophical worldview and, in this connection, the relation of philosophy to science.
4. The problem of the scientific nature of the philosophical worldview
The dispute about the cognitive value of philosophy
The European tradition, dating back to antiquity, highly appreciating the unity of reason and morality, at the same time firmly connected philosophy with science. Even Greek thinkers attached great importance to genuine knowledge, competence, in contrast to a less reliable, or even just a lightweight opinion. This distinction is fundamental for many forms of human activity. Is it significant for philosophical generalizations, justifications, forecasts? Does philosophy have the right to claim the status of truth, or are such claims groundless?
Recall that true knowledge, science, like philosophy, was born in Ancient Greece (mathematics, early scientific and technical knowledge, the beginnings of scientific astronomy). The era of early capitalism (XVI-XVIII centuries), as well as antiquity, marked by a deep transformation and flourishing of culture, then became a time of rapid development of natural science, the emergence of ever new sciences about nature and society. In the 17th century, mechanics received the status of a mature scientific and theoretical field, which then formed the basis of all classical physics. The further development of sciences went at an increasing pace. Science has become the most important factor in scientific and technological progress, civilization. Its social prestige is high even in the modern world. What can be said about philosophy in this respect?
Comparison of the cognitive capabilities of philosophy and specific sciences, finding out the place of philosophy in the system of human knowledge has in European culture long tradition. Philosophy and science grew here from the same root, then separated from each other, acquired independence, but did not separate. An appeal to the history of knowledge allows us to establish their connection, mutual influence, of course, is also subject to historical changes. In the ratio of philosophy and special scientific knowledge, three main historical periods are conditionally distinguished:
the cumulative knowledge of the ancients, addressed to a variety of subjects and called "philosophy". Along with all sorts of concrete observations, conclusions from practice, the rudiments of science, it also embraced generalized reflections of people about the world and about themselves, which in the future were to develop into philosophy in the special sense of the word. Primary knowledge contained both pra-science and pra-philosophy. With the development of both, in the process of the formation of science and philosophy proper, their specificity was gradually refined, the relationship and difference of cognitive functions were more clearly defined; specialization of knowledge, the formation of ever new specific sciences, their separation from the total knowledge (the so-called "philosophy"). At the same time, philosophy was developing as a special field of knowledge, its demarcation from specific sciences. This process lasted for many centuries, but most intensively took place in the XVII-XVIII centuries. New divisions of knowledge are also emerging in our time and, presumably, will also be formed in subsequent periods of history. Moreover, the birth of each new discipline to some extent repeats the features of the historical transition from pre-scientific, proto-scientific, primary-philosophical study of the subject to concrete-scientific; formation of theoretical sections of a number of sciences; their growing integration, synthesis. Within the framework of the first two periods, concrete scientific knowledge, with the exception of a relatively small part of it, was of an experimental, descriptive nature. Material for subsequent generalizations was painstakingly accumulated, but at the same time there was a "deficiency" of theoretical thought, the ability to see the connections of various phenomena, their unity, general patterns, development trends. Such tasks largely fell to the lot of philosophers, who had to speculatively, often at random, "build" a general picture of nature (natural philosophy), society (philosophy of history), and even "the world as a whole." This matter, of course, is not simple, therefore it is not surprising that brilliant guesses were bizarrely combined with fantasy, fiction. With all that, philosophical thought carried out an important mission of formation and development of a common world outlook.The third period, which began in the 19th century, then passes into the 20th century. This is the time when many theoretical problems, hitherto solved in a speculative philosophical form, were confidently taken over by science. And the attempts of philosophers to solve these problems by the old methods turn out to be more and more naive, unsuccessful. It is becoming more and more clear that philosophy must build a universal theoretical picture of the world not purely speculatively, not instead of science, but together with it, on the basis of generalization of concrete scientific knowledge and other forms of experience.
The first attempt to outline the range of tasks of philosophy in the face of already emerging and newly emerging specific sciences was made by Aristotle in his time. Unlike private sciences, each of which is engaged in the study of its field of phenomena, he defined philosophy in the proper sense of the word ("first philosophy") as the doctrine of the first causes, first principles, the most general principles of being. Its theoretical power seemed to him incommensurable with the possibilities of private sciences. Philosophy aroused the admiration of Aristotle, who knew a lot about the special sciences. He called this field of knowledge "the lady of the sciences", believing that other sciences, like slaves, cannot say a word against it. Aristotle's reflections reflect the sharp lag of many special disciplines, characteristic of his era, from philosophical thought in terms of theoretical maturity. This situation continued for many centuries. The Aristotelian approach was firmly established in the minds of philosophers for a long time. Hegel, following the same tradition, endowed philosophy with the title "queen of sciences" or "science of sciences". Echoes of such ideas can still be heard today.
At the same time, in the 19th century, and even more sharply in the 20th century - at a new level of development of knowledge - opposite judgments sounded: about the greatness of science and the inferiority of philosophy. At this time, the philosophical current of positivism arose and gained influence (from the words "positive", "positive"). Its adherents exalted and recognized as scientific only concrete knowledge that brings practical benefits. The cognitive possibilities of philosophy, its truth, scientific nature were called into question. In a word, the "queen" was dethroned into a "servant". The conclusion was formulated that philosophy is a "surrogate" of science, which has some right to exist in those periods when mature scientific knowledge has not yet developed. At the stages of developed science, the cognitive claims of philosophy are declared untenable. It is proclaimed that a mature science is a philosophy in itself, that it is within its power to take upon itself and successfully solve the intricate philosophical questions that have tormented the minds for many centuries.
Among philosophers (in the serious and lofty sense of the word) such views are, as a rule, not popular. But they attract philosophy lovers from specific areas of knowledge and practitioners who are confident that intricate, insoluble philosophical problems are subject to special methods of science. At the same time, approximately the following reproaches are made against the “rival” philosophy: it does not have a single subject area of its own, all of them eventually fell into the jurisdiction of specific sciences; it does not have experimental means and, in general, reliable experimental data, facts, there are no clear ways to distinguish the true from the false, otherwise the disputes would not drag on for centuries. In addition, everything in philosophy is vague, non-specific, and finally, its impact on the solution of practical problems is not obvious. What kind of science can we talk about here ?!
However, these arguments are far from flawless. The study of the issue convinces us that such an approach, it is called scientism (from Latin scientia - science), is associated with an unjustified overestimation of the intellectual power and social mission of science (which is undoubtedly great), with a vision of only its positive aspects and functions, erroneous the idea of science as an allegedly universal spiritual factor in human life and history. This approach is also dictated by a lack of understanding of the specifics of philosophical knowledge - the special tasks of philosophy, not reducible only to scientific and cognitive ones. In addition, from the standpoint of philosophical intelligence, wisdom, protection of humanism, moral values, a sharp criticism of the cult of concrete scientific knowledge (its technical and economic effects, etc.), a soulless and dangerous for the fate of mankind, scientistic and technistic orientation is carried out. As we can see, the question of the cognitive value of philosophy - in comparison with science - was raised quite sharply: the queen of the sciences or their servant? But what about the scientific (non-scientific) nature of the philosophical worldview?
The history of philosophy acquaints us with the variety of philosophical teachings belonging to the past and the present. However, not all of them claim and can claim the status of science. There are many such philosophical teachings that do not associate themselves with science at all, but are oriented towards religion, art, common sense, etc. For example, such philosophers as Kierkegaard, Bergson, Heidegger, Sartre, Wittgenstein, Buber and others would hardly agree to be called scientists, to be considered people of science. The self-consciousness of philosophers in the 20th century has grown so much that most of them perfectly felt and understood the fundamental difference between the pursuit of science and philosophy.
A scientific and philosophical worldview, perhaps, can be called such a system of cognition of the world and a person’s place in it, which is focused specifically on science, relies on it, corrects and develops along with it, and sometimes itself has an active influence on its development. It is often believed that this concept is most consistent with the teachings of philosophical materialism, which is essentially akin to natural science and other types of knowledge that are based on experimental observation and experiment. From epoch to epoch, depending on the level of development and the nature of scientific knowledge, materialism changed its forms. After all, materialism is essentially nothing more than the desire to understand the world as it really exists, without fantastic distortions (this is, in principle, the installation of science). But the world as it is is not only a set of "things" (particles, cells, crystals, organisms, etc.), but also a set of "processes", complex relationships, changes, development. A certain contribution to the materialist worldview was its extension to social life, to human history (Marx). Naturally, the development of materialism and the influence of scientific knowledge on philosophical thought did not end there; it continues to this day. Changing its form with each major epoch in the development of science, the materialistic doctrines, for their part, exerted a noticeable influence on the development of science. One of the convincing examples of such an impact is the influence of the atomistic teachings of the ancient Greek philosophers (Democritus and others) on the formation of scientific atomism.
At the same time, science also experiences the productive influence of the creative insights of the great idealists. Thus, the ideas of development (the idea of striving for perfection) first entered natural science in an idealistic form. And only later they received a materialistic reinterpretation.
Idealism is focused on thought, on the idealized "world" of pure, abstract entities, that is, such objects, without which science is simply unthinkable - mathematics, theoretical natural science, etc. That is why the "transcendental idealism" of Descartes, Kant, Husserl, focused on mathematics and theoretical knowledge in general is no less scientific than the materialistic conceptions of nature by the same Descartes, the same Kant, Holbach, and others. After all, theories are the "brain" of science. Without theories, the empirical investigations of bodies, substances, beings, communities and any other "matter" are only just getting ready to become science. In order to act and think normally, a person needs two hands, two eyes, two hemispheres of the brain, feelings and reason, reason and emotions, knowledge and values, and a lot of "polar concepts" that need to be subtly mastered. In the same way, such a human matter as science, with its experience, theory and everything else, is arranged. Is it any wonder that in reality in science (and in the very life of people) materialism and idealism successfully operate, combine, complement each other - two seemingly incompatible world orientations.
Heated debate continues around the problem of the scientific nature of the philosophical worldview. Apparently, it is possible to correctly pose and solve it only on the basis of a cultural-historical approach to philosophy. What does such an approach reveal? It testifies that philosophy and science are born, live and develop in the bosom of already established, historically specific types of culture, being influenced by their various components. At the same time, both of them have a noticeable influence on each other and on the whole complex of culture. Moreover, the nature and forms of this influence are of a historical nature, changing their appearance in different eras. To understand the functions of philosophy and science, their relationship and difference is possible only on the basis of a generalization of their real status, role in different periods of history. The functions of philosophy in the system of culture make it possible to clarify those of its tasks that are related to science, as well as those that are of a different, special nature, defining an important socio-historical mission of philosophical wisdom, including its ability to influence the development and life of science.
Philosophy and Science: Relationship and Difference of Cognitive Functions
Philosophical worldview performs a number of cognitive functions related to the functions of science. Along with such important functions as generalization, integration, synthesis of all kinds of knowledge, the discovery of the most general patterns, connections, interactions of the main subsystems of being, which have already been discussed, the theoretical scale of the philosophical mind also allows it to carry out the heuristic functions of forecasting, forming hypotheses about general principles , development trends, as well as primary hypotheses about the nature of specific phenomena that have not yet been worked out by special scientific methods.
Based on the principles of rational worldview, philosophical thought groups everyday, practical observations of various phenomena, formulates general assumptions about their nature and possible ways of knowing. Using the experience of understanding accumulated in other areas of knowledge, practice (transfer of experience), it creates philosophical "sketches" of certain natural or social realities, preparing their subsequent concrete scientific study. At the same time, a speculative thinking through is carried out in principle admissible, logically, theoretically possible. The cognitive power of such "sketches" is the greater, the more mature the philosophical understanding is. As a result of "culling" of variants that are hardly plausible or completely contradict the experience of rational cognition, selection (selection) and substantiation of the most reasonable assumptions are possible.
The function of "intellectual intelligence" also serves to fill cognitive gaps that constantly arise due to incompleteness, varying degrees of knowledge of certain phenomena, the presence of "blank spots" in the cognitive picture of the world. Of course, in a concrete scientific sense, these gaps will have to be filled by specialist scientists, but their initial comprehension is carried out in one or another general system of world outlook. Philosophy fills them with the power of logical thinking. The scheme of experience must first be sketched out by thought, Kant explained.
Man is already so arranged that he is not satisfied with poorly interconnected fragments of knowledge; he has a strong need for a holistic, unbroken understanding of the world as coherent and unified. A separate, concrete thing is understood much better when its place in the whole picture is realized. For the private sciences, each occupied with its own field of research with its own methods, this is an impossible task. Philosophy makes a significant contribution to its solution, contributing to the correct formulation of problems.
Integration, the universal synthesis of knowledge is also associated with the resolution of specific difficulties, contradictions that arise at the boundaries of various areas, levels, sections of science when they are "joined", harmonized. We are talking about all kinds of paradoxes, aporias (logical difficulties), antinomies (contradictions in logically provable positions), cognitive dilemmas, crisis situations in science, in understanding and overcoming which philosophical thought plays a very significant role. Ultimately, such difficulties are associated with the problems of correlating thought (language) and reality, that is, they belong to eternal philosophical problems.
In addition to tasks related to science, philosophy also performs special functions inherent only to it: understanding the most general foundations of culture in general and science in particular. Sufficiently broadly, deeply and on a large scale, science itself does not clarify itself, does not substantiate.
Specialists who study all sorts of concrete phenomena need general, holistic ideas about the world, about the principles of its "arrangement", general patterns, etc. However, they themselves do not develop such ideas. In specific sciences, universal mental tools are used (categories, principles, various methods of cognition). But scientists are not specifically involved in the development, systematization, comprehension of cognitive techniques and means. The general ideological and epistemological foundations of science are studied and worked out in the field of philosophy.
Finally, science does not substantiate itself in terms of value either. Let us ask ourselves the question, can science be attributed to positive, useful or negative, harmful phenomena for people? It is difficult to give an unequivocal answer, because science is like a knife that does good in the hands of a surgeon-healer, and terrible evil in the hands of a murderer. Science is not self-sufficient: itself in need of value justification, it cannot serve as a universal spiritual guide of human history. The task of understanding the value foundations of science and the socio-historical life of people in general is solved in the broad context of history and culture in general and is of a philosophical nature. In addition to science, political, legal, moral and other ideas have the most important direct effect on philosophy. In turn, philosophy is called upon to comprehend the whole complex complex of the socio-historical existence of people or culture.
5. Purpose of philosophy
Socio-historical character of philosophical thought
The general "picture" of philosophical reflection that opens up to our mind's eye speaks of an intense search for answers to fundamental questions that concern people about the world and about themselves, and it also testifies to the diversity of points of view, approaches to solving the same problems. What is the result of these searches? Have the philosophers achieved what they were striving for? After all, the level of their claims has always been high. And the point is not at all in pride, but in the nature of the tasks that they were called upon to solve. Those who devoted themselves to philosophy were not occupied with one-day truths, suitable "here" and "now", some considerations for the needs of the day. They were worried about the eternal questions: "How does the natural world and society work?", "What does it mean to be human?", "What is the meaning of human life?" And what? Who was the winner in the long "competition" of minds? Have unconditional truths been found that remove all disagreements?
No doubt, I managed to understand a lot. What exactly became clear as a result of long (and now ongoing) searches? Gradually, the understanding matured that the most serious philosophical questions, in principle, cannot be resolved once and for all, to give exhaustive answers to them. No wonder great minds came to the conclusion that philosophizing is questioning. It was not only Socrates who thought so, asking (in the 5th century BC) endless questions to his interlocutors - questions that clarify the essence of the matter and bring them closer to the truth. In the 20th century, Ludwig Wittgenstein compared philosophy to an unquenchable thirst, to the question "why?" in the mouth of a child. Finally, he seriously expressed the idea that philosophical reflection could generally consist only of questions, that in philosophy it is always preferable to formulate a question than to give an answer. The answer may be wrong, but the exhaustion of one question by another is the way to understand the essence of the matter.
So, the search for a clear understanding and solution of philosophical problems is not complete. It will continue as long as people live. Significantly advance in understanding the nature of philosophical thought (expand the scope of its consideration, take close-up, moreover, in development, dynamics) allowed success in the study of society, the formation of a historical view of social life and the concept of culture. The possibilities of a new vision of philosophy were opened by the historical view of society and its spiritual culture, formed by Hegel [It was further developed by such thinkers as Marx, Rickert, Windelband, Jaspers, and others]. The essence of the change was to consider philosophy as a special form of socio-historical knowledge. This approach was fundamentally different from the previously established tradition of searching for "eternal truths", although it did not break with the legacy of the past.
What had to be rethought in the image of philosophy that has been developing for centuries? In the previous tradition, the idea of philosophical mind as the bearer of "higher wisdom", as the supreme intellectual instance, which allows one to deeply comprehend the eternal principles of the universe and human life, was firmly entrenched. In the light of the historical approach to society, the idea of a special, supra-historical, transtemporal character of philosophical reason also lost much of its force. Every consciousness, including the philosophical one, appeared in a new light. It was comprehended as an expression of a historically changing being, itself woven into the historical process and subject to its various influences. It followed from this that it is extremely difficult for thinkers living (and developing) in certain historical conditions to break out of them, overcome their influence and rise to the unconditional and eternal "pure reason" (Kant). In the perspective of history, philosophy is interpreted as "the spiritual quintessence of the era" (Hegel). But here a fundamental difficulty arises. Since epochs noticeably differ from one another, then philosophical thought (as an expression of a changing being) itself turns out to be subject to historical transformations. But then the very possibility of wisdom, rising above all perishable, transient, is called into question. The way out of this situation, however, seemed to be the search for a special - "pure", "absolute" position, not affected by the "winds" of change, such a culture of thinking that - with all historical upheavals - allows you to rise to the philosophical Absolute [Referring to a literary joke, this can be it would be likened to the trick of Baron Munchausen, who allegedly managed (in his words) to lift himself by the hair.]. (Note that traces of such an abstract, essentially ahistorical approach to philosophy are still preserved. This is manifested, in particular, in focusing attention, when defining philosophy, on the universal - on universal laws, principles, categorical schemes, abstract models of being, then how in the shadow remains the moment of its constant connection with concrete historical reality, with life, with the actual problems of time, era, day.)
Meanwhile, the inclusion of philosophy in the complex of socio-historical disciplines, that is, disciplines related to social life, considered as history, allows a deeper and more complete explanation of its specifics. In the light of the comprehension of philosophy as a socio-historical phenomenon, the previously proposed scheme of a person's relationship to the world can be specified as follows: a person is not taken out of the world, he is inside it; the closest being for people is the socio-historical being (labor, knowledge, spiritual experience), which mediates, refracts the attitude of people to nature, therefore the boundaries in the system "man - society - nature" are mobile. Philosophy is revealed as a generalized concept of the life of society as a whole and its various subsystems - practice, knowledge, politics, law, morality, art, science, including natural science, on the basis of which the scientific and philosophical picture of nature is largely recreated. The most capacious understanding of the socio-historical life of people in unity, interaction, development of all its components is carried out today within the framework of the cultural-historical approach. This approach made it possible to develop a broad view of philosophy as a phenomenon of culture, to understand its functions in the complex complex of the socio-historical life of people, to realize the real areas of application, procedures and results of philosophical worldview.
Philosophy in the system of culture
Philosophy is multifaceted. The field is vast, problematic layers, areas of philosophical research are diverse. Meanwhile, in various teachings, only certain aspects of this complex phenomenon are often one-sidedly emphasized. For example, attention is focused on the connection "philosophy - science" or "philosophy - religion" in abstraction from the rest of the complex of issues. In other cases, the inner world of a person or language, etc., is turned into a single and universal subject of philosophical interest. Absolutization, artificial narrowing of the subject gives rise to impoverished images of philosophy. Real philosophical interests, on the other hand, are in principle directed to the entire diversity of socio-historical experience. Thus, Hegel's system included the philosophy of nature, the philosophy of history, politics, law, art, religion, morality, that is, it embraced the world of human life and culture in its diversity. The structure of Hegelian philosophy largely reflects the problems of philosophical worldview in general. The richer the philosophical concept, the wider the field of culture is represented in it. Schematically, this can be depicted as a "chamomile", where the "petals" are areas of philosophical study of different spheres of culture. The number of "petals" can be small (highly specialized concepts) or large (rich, capacious concepts).
In such a scheme, one can take into account the open nature of the philosophical comprehension of culture: it allows unlimited addition of new sections of the philosophical worldview to it.
The culturological approach made it possible to explore philosophy as a complex, multidimensional phenomenon, taking into account the entire system of connections in which it manifests itself in the life of society. Such an approach corresponds to the real essence of philosophy and at the same time meets the urgent modern need for a broad, full-fledged understanding of the world, which is not achieved on the path of narrow specializations of philosophical thought.
The consideration of philosophy as a cultural-historical phenomenon also makes it possible to cover the whole dynamic complex of its problems and functions. After all, with this consideration, the social life of people appears as a single, integral process of formation, action, storage, transmission of cultural and historical values. The critical overcoming of obsolete and the approval of new forms of experience is also taken into account. In addition, it is possible to trace their complex interrelations and interdependencies in specific historical types of cultures.
The cultural approach is effective in historical research. At the same time, it opens up new possibilities in the development of a theory of certain social phenomena: such a theory should, in fact, be nothing more than a generalization of their real history. Having come to the conclusion that philosophy is based on the understanding of human history, Hegel, in particular, had in mind not the actual description of the historical process, but the identification of patterns, trends in history, the expression of the spirit of the era. Accordingly, the philosopher, in contrast to the historian, was presented as a theoretician who generalizes historical material in a special way and forms a philosophical worldview on this basis.
Indeed, from a historical point of view, philosophy is not the primary, simplest form of consciousness. By the time of its inception, mankind had already traveled a long way, accumulated various skills of action, accompanying knowledge and other experience. The emergence of philosophy is the birth of a special, secondary type of people's consciousness, aimed at comprehending the already established forms of practice and culture. It is no coincidence that philosophical thinking, addressed to the entire field of culture, is called critical-reflexive.
Functions of Philosophy
What are the functions of philosophy in the complex complex of culture? First of all, philosophical thought reveals the fundamental ideas, ideas, schemes of action, etc., on which the socio-historical life of people is based. They are characterized as the most general forms of human experience, or cultural universals. An important place among them is occupied by categories - concepts that reflect the most general gradations of things, the types of their properties, relationships. In their totality, they form a complex, branched system of interconnections (conceptual "grids") that define the possible forms and modes of action of the human mind. Such concepts (thing, phenomenon, process, property, relation, change, development, cause - effect, accidental - necessary, part - whole, element - structure, etc.) are applicable to any phenomena or, at least, to a wide range of phenomena. (nature, society, etc.). For example, neither in everyday life, nor in science, nor in various forms of practical activity can one do without the concept of cause. Such concepts are present in all thinking; human rationality rests on them. That is why they are referred to as ultimate foundations, universal forms (or "conditions of possibility" of culture). Classical thought from Aristotle to Hegel closely connected the concept of philosophy with the doctrine of categories. This topic has not lost its significance even now. In the "chamomile" scheme, the core corresponds to the general conceptual apparatus of philosophy - the system of categories. In fact, in action, this is a very mobile system of connections of basic concepts, the application of which is subject to its own logic, regulated by clear rules. The study and development of categories, perhaps, is rightly called in our time "philosophical grammar" (L. Wittgenstein).
For many centuries philosophers considered categories to be eternal forms of "pure" reason. The culturological approach revealed a different picture: categories are formed historically as human thinking develops and are embodied in the structures of speech, in the work of language. Turning to language as a cultural-historical formation, analyzing the forms of statements and actions of people, philosophers identify the most general (“ultimate”) foundations of speech thinking and practice and their originality in different types of languages and cultures.
In the complex of the most general foundations of culture, an important place is occupied by generalized images of being and its various parts (nature, society, man) in their interconnection and interaction. Having been subjected to theoretical study, such images are transformed into a philosophical doctrine of being - ontology (from the Greek on (ontos) - a being and logos - a word, concept, doctrine). In addition, various forms of relations between the world and man - practical, cognitive and value - are subject to theoretical understanding. Hence the name of the corresponding sections of philosophy: praxeology (from the Greek praktikos - active), epistemology (from the Greek episteme - knowledge) and axiology (from the Greek axios - valuable). Philosophical thought reveals not only intellectual, but also moral-emotional and other universals. They always refer to specific historical types of cultures, and at the same time belong to humanity, to world history as a whole.
In addition to the function of identifying and comprehending universals, philosophy (as a rational-theoretical form of worldview) also takes on the task of rationalization - translation into a logical, conceptual form, as well as systematization, theoretical expression of the total results of human experience.
The development of generalized ideas and concepts has been considered the task of philosophers from the very beginning. Where did they get the material for this work? The study of the history of culture testifies: from the whole variety of human experience. In the process of historical development, the basis of philosophical generalizations has changed. So, at first, philosophical thought turned to various non-scientific and pre-scientific, including everyday, forms of experience. For example, the doctrine of the atomistic structure of all things developed in ancient Greek philosophy, which for many centuries anticipated the corresponding specific scientific discoveries, was based on such practical observations and skills as dividing material things into parts (crushing stones, milling, etc.). In addition, inquisitive observations of the most diverse phenomena - dust particles in a light beam, dissolution of substances in liquids, etc., also provided certain food for generalizations. The methods of divisibility of segments in mathematics, mastered by that time, the language skill of combining words from letters, and sentences and texts from words, etc. were also involved. with the power of thought rising above the particulars - contributed to the formation of the general concept of "atomism".
The most ordinary, everyday observations, combined with a special philosophical way of thinking, often served as an impetus for the discovery of amazing features and patterns of the surrounding world (observations of "extremes converge", the principle of "measure", the transition of "quantity into quality" and many others). Everyday experience, life practice participate in all forms of philosophical exploration of the world by people constantly, and not only in the early stages of history. With the development of forms of work, moral, legal, political, artistic and other practices, with the growth and deepening of everyday and scientific knowledge, the base for philosophical generalizations was significantly expanded and enriched.
The formation of generalized philosophical ideas was promoted (and continues to be promoted) by criticism and rationalization of non-philosophical forms of worldview. So, taking from cosmogonic mythology many of its themes, conjectures, questions, early philosophers translated the poetic images of the myth into their own language, placing rational understanding of reality at the forefront. In subsequent eras, philosophical ideas were often drawn from religion. For example, in the ethical concepts of the German philosophical classics one can hear the motives of Christianity, transformed from their religious form into theoretical speculations. The fact is that philosophical thought, mainly oriented towards rationalization, is characterized by the desire to express in general terms the principles of all possible forms of human experience. Solving this problem, philosophers try to embrace (to the extent) the intellectual, spiritual, vital and practical achievements of mankind, and at the same time comprehend the negative experience of tragic miscalculations, mistakes, and failures.
In other words, philosophy also has an important critical function in culture. The search for solutions to complex philosophical issues, the formation of a new vision of the world is usually accompanied by the debunking of delusions and prejudices. The task of destroying outdated views, loosening dogmas was emphasized by F. Bacon, who was acutely aware that in all ages philosophy has met "pesky and painful opponents" in its path: superstition, blind, immoderate religious zeal and other kinds of interference. Bacon called them "ghosts" and emphasized that the most dangerous among them is the deep-seated habit of a dogmatic way of knowing and reasoning. Adherence to pre-given concepts, principles, the desire to "coordinate" everything else with them - this, according to the philosopher, is the eternal enemy of a living, inquisitive intellect and most of all paralyzes true knowledge and wise action.
In relation to the already accumulated experience of understanding the world, philosophy plays the role of a kind of "sieve" (or, rather, flails and winnowing machines), separating the "grain from the chaff." Advanced thinkers, as a rule, question, loosen, destroy outdated views, dogmas, stereotypes of thought and action, world outlook schemes. However, they try not to "throw the baby out with the water", they strive to preserve everything valuable, rational, true in the rejected forms of worldview, to support it, to substantiate and develop it further. This means that in the system of culture, philosophy takes on the role of critical selection (selection), accumulation (accumulation) of worldview experience and its transmission (transmission) to subsequent periods of history.
Philosophy addresses not only the past and present, but also the future. As a form of theoretical thought, it has powerful creative (constructive) possibilities for the formation of generalized pictures of the world, fundamentally new ideas and ideals. In philosophy, they line up, vary, mentally "lose" different ways understanding of the world ("possible worlds"). Thus, people are offered - as if to choose - a whole range of possible world orientations, lifestyles, moral positions. After all, historical times and circumstances are different, and the make-up of people of the same era, their fates and characters are not the same. Therefore, in principle, it is unthinkable that any one system of views is always suitable for everyone. The diversity of philosophical positions, points of view and approaches to solving the same problems is the value of culture. The formation of "trial" forms of worldview in philosophy is also important from the point of view of the future, which is full of surprises and is never completely clear for people living today.
Previously established forms of pre-philosophical, non-philosophical or philosophical worldview are constantly subjected to criticism, rational rethinking, and systematization. On this basis, philosophers form generalized theoretical images of the world in their correlation with human life, consciousness and corresponding to a given historical time. Ideas born in political, legal, moral, religious, artistic, technical and other forms of consciousness are also translated into a special theoretical language in philosophy. The efforts of the philosophical intellect also carry out a theoretical generalization, a synthesis of diverse systems of everyday, practical knowledge, and with the emergence and development of science - growing arrays of scientific knowledge. The most important function of philosophy in the cultural and historical life of people is the coordination, integration of all forms of human experience - practical, cognitive and value. Their holistic philosophical understanding is a necessary condition for a harmonious and balanced world orientation. Thus, a full-fledged policy must be coordinated with science and morality, with the experience of history. It is unthinkable without a legal justification, humanistic guidelines, without taking into account the national, religious and other uniqueness of countries and peoples, and finally, without relying on the values of common sense. Today we have to turn to them when discussing the most important political problems. A world orientation corresponding to the interests of a person, humanity as a whole, requires the integration of all the basic values of culture. Their coordination is impossible without universal thinking, which is capable of that complex spiritual work that philosophy has undertaken in human culture.
An analysis of the most important functions of philosophy in the system of culture (instead of trying to abstractly understand the essence of this concept) shows that the cultural-historical approach has made noticeable changes in the ideas about the subject, goals, methods and results of philosophical activity, and this could not but affect the understanding of the nature philosophical problems.
The nature of philosophical problems
The fundamental questions of the worldview have traditionally been presented to philosophers as eternal and unchanging. The disclosure of their historical nature meant a rethinking of these issues, a significant change in the procedures of philosophical research. Thus, the seemingly eternal relationship "man - nature" appeared as historically changeable, depending on the forms of labor and the level of knowledge, on the mindset and way of life of people in a particular period of history. It turned out that in different eras - depending on the methods of practical, cognitive, spiritual development of nature by people - the nature of this problem changes. Finally, it became clear that the relationship "man - nature" can develop into a tense global problem, as it happened today. In a historical vein, all other aspects of the philosophical problem "the world - man" are interpreted differently. Long-standing questions of philosophy (about the relationship "man - nature", "nature - history", "personality - society", "freedom - unfreedom"), even with a new approach, retain their enduring significance for the understanding of the world. These real interconnected "polarities" are irremovable from people's lives and therefore are fundamentally irremovable from philosophy as well.
But, passing through the whole of human history, acting in a certain sense as eternal problems, in different epochs, in different cultures, they acquire their specific, unique appearance. And this is not about two or three problems; the meaning, the purpose of philosophy is changing. In other words, if we approach philosophical problems from the position of historicism, then they are conceived as open, incomplete: after all, such are the features of history itself. That is why they cannot be solved once and for all. But does this mean that we never have a solution to philosophical problems, but always only strive for it? Not certainly in that way. It is important to emphasize that the philosophical teachings, which discussed serious problems, sooner or later become outdated and are replaced by other, often more mature teachings that offer a deeper analysis and solution of previously studied issues.
Thus, in the light of the cultural-historical approach to philosophy, its classical problems lose the appearance of unchanging and only speculatively solved problems. They act as an expression of the fundamental "contradictions" of living human history and acquire an open character. That is why their theoretical (and practical) solution is no longer conceived as the final solution that removes the problem. Dynamic, procedural, like history itself, the content of philosophical problems leaves a mark on the nature of their solution. It is designed to sum up the past, to capture the specific shape of the problem in modern conditions and to anticipate the future. With this approach, one of the most important problems of philosophy, in particular, changes its character - the problem of freedom, which was previously solved in a purely abstract form. Today, gaining freedom is understood as a long process, due to the natural development of society and acquiring in each period of history, along with the general ones, also special, non-standard features. The modern philosophical analysis of the problems of freedom presupposes the ability to distinguish between what specifically was and what seemed to be "freedom" (respectively, "non-freedom") to people of different epochs and formations.
Attention to the specific experience of history allowed thinkers of different eras to make a "breakthrough" to understanding philosophical problems not as "pure" problems of consciousness, but as problems that objectively arise and are resolved in human life, practice. It followed from this that philosophers, too, should comprehend such problems not only "purely" theoretically, but also in practical terms.
Thinkers of different eras have addressed and will continue to address fundamental philosophical problems. With all the difference in their approaches and the historical change in the nature of the problems themselves, a certain semantic unity and continuity will apparently be preserved in their content and understanding. The cultural-historical approach called into question not the problems themselves, but only the usefulness, the sufficiency of their purely abstract, speculative study. He led to the conclusion that the solution of philosophical problems requires not only a special conceptual apparatus, but also a deep positive knowledge of history, a specific study of trends and forms of historical development.
Even the most general relationship "world - man" ("being - consciousness", etc.) is also involved in history, although its abstract form hides this circumstance. One has only to imagine this problem more or less concretely, in its real guises, as it becomes clear that various human connections with the world are diverse and unfold in the course of history. They are realized in the changing forms of work, everyday life, in the change of beliefs, the development of knowledge, in political, moral, artistic and other experiences. In other words, having descended from the "abstract heights" to the "sinful earth", you realize that the main subject of philosophical reflection - the field of practical, cognitive, value-based relations of people to the world - is an entirely historical phenomenon.
Human history is a reality of a special kind. This is a complex complex of people's social life - the nature of labor, certain socio-economic, political structures and all kinds of forms of knowledge, spiritual experience. Moreover, "being" and "thought, consciousness" are intertwined, interact, inseparable. Hence the dual orientation of philosophical research - on the realities of human life, on the one hand, and on various, including theoretical, reflections of these realities in the minds of people - on the other. Understanding politics, law, etc. from a philosophical point of view. implies a distinction between the relevant realities and the views and teachings that reflect them.
However, it may seem that what has been said does not apply to nature as an object of philosophical interest, that the philosophical mind addresses nature in a direct way, without any connection with human history, practice, spiritual experience, knowledge. The tendency to think this way is rooted in our minds, but it is an illusion. Indeed, in fact, the question of what nature is - even in its most general terms - is essentially equivalent to the question of what our practical, scientific and other knowledge about nature is, which gives them a philosophical generalization. And this means that the philosophical concepts of nature are also formed on the basis of critical analysis, comparisons, selection, theoretical systematization of various historically emerging, replacing, complementing each other images of nature in the minds of people.
In the socio-historical life of people as a whole and in each of its specific "layers" the objective and the subjective, being and consciousness, material and spiritual are closely intertwined. After all, consciousness is included in all processes, and therefore, in the results of human activity. Any objects created by people (be it cars, architectural structures, canvases of artists or something else) are materialized human labor, thought, knowledge, creativity. That is why philosophical thinking, connected with the understanding of history, requires complex procedures for distinguishing between the conceivable and the real. This explains the "bipolar", subject-object nature of all typically philosophical reflections. It is no coincidence that an important task of philosophers, as well as other specialists studying the socio-historical life of people, has become an explanation of the mechanisms for the emergence and existence of not only true, but also distorted ideas about reality, overcoming all sorts of deformations in understanding the objective content of problems. Hence the need for a philosopher of a critical position, taking into account factors that distort the correct understanding. In a word, this part of the task is also connected with the understanding of the semantic field "world - man - human consciousness" characteristic of philosophy.
Today, in the context of drastic changes in the established forms of economic, political, and spiritual life in our country, established ways of thinking are being revised, and other views, assessments, and positions are being formed. It is clear that purely speculative philosophical thought closed in on itself is not capable of capturing such rapid changes in social reality. In such conditions, it is not so much the depths of "pure reason" that are relevant, but a living worldview - an understanding of today's realities, the solution of modern problems, which are very dramatic and complex. The truths of "pure reason" are clearly not enough for this. Understanding philosophy as a socio-historical knowledge (worldview) focuses on open thinking, ready to perceive and comprehend new situations of real life and its problems. It is important to face the truth, striving to clearly and unbiasedly reveal the essence of what is happening to us "here" and "now", what kind of world is prepared for us tomorrow. And yet "pure reason" should not be neglected. After all, historical situations tend to be reproduced in the most general terms. In addition, mistakes (including fatal ones) are often rooted in firmly entrenched (and seemingly indisputable, but in fact erroneous) states of mind, intellect schemes, and mental skills.
Below are general provisions about the science of "philosophy" - about its main parts, sections, directions. The data about the genius philosophers, about the Great Books are given, and in the form of summary and comparative materials - the main statistical information.
1. Definition of philosophy given by various philosophers
Philosopher | Definition |
| Plato | Knowledge of the existent or eternal. |
| Aristotle | An inquiry into the causes and principles of things. |
| Stoics | The desire for theoretical and practical thoroughness. |
| epicureans | The way to achieve happiness through the mind. |
| Bacon, Descartes | A holistic, unified science, clothed in a conceptual form. |
| Kant | The system of all philosophical knowledge. |
| Schelling | 1. Direct contemplation of the mind. All opposites are initially connected in it, everything is united and initially connected in it: nature and God, science and art, religion and poetry. Philosophy is a universal, not a special science, which underlies all other sciences. Only art can act as an "independent subject" in relation to philosophy. For philosophy and art express the same thing - the Absolute. Only the organ of art is the power of imagination, and the organ of philosophy is reason. |
| 2. Living science. If there are changes in philosophy, this proves only that it has not yet reached its final form and Absolute image. |
Philosopher | Definition |
| Hegel | Queen of Sciences. Science without philosophy is nothing. Everything that in any knowledge and in any science is considered true, can be worthy of this name only when it is generated by philosophy. Other sciences, no matter how much they try to reason without resorting to philosophy, cannot possess neither life, nor spirit, nor truth without it. The task of philosophy is to comprehend that which is, for that which is is reason. |
| Solovyov | Not just one aspect of existence, but all that exists, the entire universe. |
| Berdyaev | Art, not science, the art of knowledge. Art, because philosophy is creativity. It was already there when there was no science yet. She made science out of herself. |
| Husserl | It is not an art, but the highest and most rigorous of the sciences, satisfying the highest human needs. |
| Average | One of the forms of spiritual culture and human activity, which tries to understand the universe and man. The science of the universal. No other science does this. Global questions of philosophy do not have unambiguous answers. This is the eternal search for truth. |
2. On the benefits, specifics and significance of philosophy
1. Aristippus When asked what benefit philosophy had brought him, he replied: “It gave me the ability to boldly speak with anyone on any topic.”
2. Russell: "Philosophy can give an impartial and broad understanding of the goals of human life, a sense of proportion in understanding one's role in society, the role of modernity in relation to the past and future, the role of the entire history of mankind in relation to space."
3. Schmucker-Hartmann: "Science is a theory, philosophy is reflections, that is, they are antipodes."
4. Schopenhauer: “Since philosophy is not knowledge according to the law of reason, but is the knowledge of ideas, it must be classified as art. Since it expresses the idea abstractly, and not intuitively, it can be considered knowledge, science. But, strictly speaking, philosophy is a middle ground between science and art, or something that connects them.
5. Nietzsche: “One must not confuse philosophical workers and people of science in general. Genuine philosophers are rulers and legislators."
6. A number of philosophers: Plato, La Mettrie, Rousseau, Kant, Nietzsche believed that they should govern the state only philosophers. The Stoics believed that "only a wise man knows how to be a king."
7. Aristotle believed that the highest form of knowledge is philosophy, capable of knowing the highest forms and goals of all things, and that the highest happiness is achieved only when practicing philosophy.
3. Brief information about the Great Philosophers
Philosopher | The country | Year of birth | Philosophical views | Major writings |
The Age of Antiquity (600 BC - 500 AD) |
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579 BC e. | Dao Te Ching* |
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Dr. Greece | 570 BC e. | 1st idealist | About nature |
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Confucius* | 551 BC e. | Confucianism | Lun Yu |
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Dr. Greece | 469 BC e. | Founder of several schools | ||
Democritus | Dr. Greece | 460 BC e. | Great Domostroy |
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Plato | Dr. Greece | 429 BC e. | Objective idealism, rationalism, Platonism | Dialogues |
Aristotle | Dr. Greece | 384 BC e. | Encyclopedist, 1st historian of philosophy, founder of logic, dualism, perepatetism (walkers) | Metaphysics , |
Dr. Greece | 341 BC e. | Epicureanism | Main Thoughts |
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Lucretius | 99 BC e. | Epicureanism | On the nature of things |
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Augustine Aurelius | Patristics (Teachings of the Church Fathers) | Confession |
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Middle Ages (500 - middle XIV v.) |
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Conceptualism | History of my disasters |
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Aquinas | Thomism, monism | Compositions |
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Renaissance ( XIV – XVII centuries) |
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Rotterdam | Netherlands | Skepticism, humanism | Praise of stupidity |
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Machiavelli | Machiavellianism, political realism | Sovereign |
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Utopianism, humanism | Utopia |
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Montaigne | Agnosticism, Skepticism, Epicureanism, Humanism | |||
The era of the New Age ( XVII – XXI centuries) |
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Beginning of the New Age XVII v. – 1688) |
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Bacon Fr. | Founder of modern philosophy | New organon |
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Descartes | Dualism, deism, rationalism | Reasoning about method |
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Netherlands | Rationalism, pantheism, monism | Ethics |
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Enlighteners (1688 - 1789) |
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Deism, sensationalism | Candide |
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On the social contract, Confession |
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Materialism, monism, sensationalism, epicureanism, atheism | Selected philosophical works |
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German classical philosophy (1770 - 1850) |
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Kant | Germany | Dualism, subjective idealism, deism, agnosticism | Critique of pure reason , Metaphysics of morals |
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Germany | Objective idealism, pantheism, dialectic | Philosophy of art |
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Hegel | Germany | Monism, objective idealism, pantheism, dialectic | Phenomenology of Spirit , Philosophy of law |
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Feuerbach | Germany | Mechanical materialism, atheism | « Eudemonism» |
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Contemporary Western Philosophy ( XIX – XXI centuries) |
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Schopenhauer | Germany | The World as Will and Representation |
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Nietzsche | Germany | Irrationalism, subjective idealism | Thus spoke Zarathustra |
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Intuitionism | Two sources of morality and religion |
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Kierkegaard | Restoration of "authentic" Christianity, existentialism, subjective idealism | |||
Marx | Germany | Materialism, monism, dialectics; Young Hegelianism, Marxism (1850-1970) | Capital |
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Germany | The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State |
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Psychoanalytic philosophy, Freudianism | me and it , dreams |
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V.S. Solovyov | Philosophy of unity, pantheism, objective idealism, cosmism | The meaning of love |
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Berdyaev | Religious existentialism | Philosophy of freedom |
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* Bold type indicates Philosophers of genius and Great Books
4. Brilliant philosophers
Number of Geniuses | Creation of the Great Books |
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| Germany | (Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx) | |
| Ancient Greece | (Plato, Aristotle) | |
| France | (Montaigne, Descartes) | |
| China | (Confucius) | |
| Ancient Rome | (Augustine Aurelius) | |
| Russia | (Berdyaev) | |
| England | ||
| Netherlands | ||
| Italy | ||
| Spain, Morocco | ||
| Austria | ||
| Denmark | ||
| Switzerland | ||
| Sweden | ||
TOTAL |
5. Great books
| Tao Te Ching | |||
Confucius | Lun Yu | ||
Dr. Greece | Dialogues | ||
Aristotle | Metaphysics | ||
Lucretius | On the nature of things | ||
Machiavelli | Sovereign | ||
| Utopia | |||
Bacon Fr. | New organon | ||
| Leviathan | |||
| Reasoning about method | |||
Netherlands | Ethics | ||
| Candide | |||
Germany | Critique of pure reason | ||
| Phenomenology of Spirit | |||
Feuerbach | eudemonism | ||
| Thus spoke Zarathustra | |||
| Capital | |||
| me and it | |||
Solovyov | The meaning of love |
6. Brilliant philosophers who wrote the Great Books
Confucius | Lun Yu | ||
Dr. Greece | Dialogues | ||
Aristotle | Metaphysics | ||
| Reasoning about method | |||
Germany | Critique of pure reason | ||
| Phenomenology of Spirit | |||
| Thus spoke Zarathustra | |||
| Capital |
7. Three main parts of philosophy
8. The main sections of philosophy
9. General directions of philosophy
General directions of philosophy | Definition | Philosophers |
Objective idealism | A certain ideal entity that exists objectively, i.e., is recognized as the beginning of being. regardless of human consciousness (God, Absolute, Idea, World Mind, etc.). | Lao Tzu, Pythagoras, Confucius, Plato, Schelling, Hegel, Solovyov |
Subjective idealism | The human consciousness, the human "I" is recognized as the beginning of being. | Buddhists, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard |
God is recognized as the creator of the world, but, creating the world and having put certain laws into it, then does not interfere in the affairs of the world: the world exists according to its own laws (a kind of objective idealism and a transitional stage to materialism). Widely used in natural science to delimit the scope science and religion. | Descartes, Newton, Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, |
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Pantheism | Identification of God (ideal principle) and Nature (material principle). "There is no God outside of Nature, but there is no Nature outside of God." An intermediate place between materialism and objective idealism. | Spinoza, Schelling, Herder, Hegel, Solovyov |
Dialectics | The interconnection of all phenomena and the continuous development of the world. | Schelling and Hegel (development "in a vicious circle") Marx ("infinite forward movement") |
Metaphysics | The opposite of dialectic. | Most philosophers until the XIX century. |
Agnosticism | The world is recognized in principle as unknowable. | Buddhists, Skeptics, Subjective Idealists (different from materialists and objective idealists): Montaigne, Berkeley, Hume, Kant |
Relativism | The principle of relativity of all knowledge. Denial of the possibility of achieving objective truth. The world is cognizable only partially and always subjectively. | Sophists, Skeptics, Positivists, Pragmatists |
Fundamental cognizability of the world | Plato: "The highest essence of the world - ideas - are knowable thanks to their recollection." Aristotle The world is cognizable through sensual and rational cognition. Lenin: "There is nothing in the world that is not known, there is only that which is not yet known." | Plato, Aristotle, Diderot, Lenin |
10. The main directions of ancient philosophy
Schools, Destinations (founder) | Start-End | Basic views | Philosophers |
Miletus (Thales) | Thales is considered the most prominent of the seven sages. The unity underlying the infinite variety of phenomena is something material, bodily. The question was raised: “What is everything from?” Thales believed that it was water, Anaximander - apeiron, Anaximenes - air. Introduced the concept of "nature" into philosophy. | Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras |
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Pythagorism (Pythagoras of Samos) | VI-IV centuries. BC e. | Pythagoras enjoyed unquestioned authority. He owns the expression "He said it himself." He believed that "everything is a number." Numbers are the essence of things. Recognized the immortality of the soul, the transmigration of souls. Entered the name first "Philosophy" ("Lovely Wisdom").Pythagorism in the 4th century BC e. was absorbed Platonism(IV-II century BC). | Telavg, Akmeon, Archytas, Eudoxus, Diocles, Philolaus |
Neo-Pythagoreanism | 1st century BC e. - III century. n. e. | Neo-Pythagoreanism revived in the 1st century. BC e. and continued until the 3rd century. n. e. He was closely associated with Platonism. Many ideas of Neopythagoreanism were assimilated by Neoplatonism (III-VI centuries AD). | Nicomachus, Trassil |
Ephesian (Heraclitus) | Heraclitus came from a royal family. He renounced the throne in favor of his brother, but wore clothes with signs of royal power. The power of the clan was overthrown by democracy, so he was hostile to it and to the crowd. Great dialectician. "Everything flows, everything changes!" "Nothing is immovable." As the first principle, he recognized fire and logos - the mind that rules everything through everything. From the fire came the world as a whole, individual souls and even the soul. He opposed his views to the majority. He wrote in an incomprehensible language, for which he was nicknamed "Dark". | ||
Elea (Xenophanes of Colophon) | Feelings deceive a person. The world must be known through the mind. "Only that which can be explained rationally is true." Parmenides was the first to develop a metaphysical view of the world. Zeno is a master of eristics (the art of argument) and aporias (“insoluble situations” - “Achilles and the Tortoise”, etc. He was the first to compose dialogues and was the first author Dialectics. Opposite views of Heraclitus. | Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, Melissus of Samos |
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Atomism (Leucippus-Democritus) | 5th century BC e. | The world consists of uncreated and indestructible atoms moving in the void. Water, air, earth, fire consist of countless tiny indivisible particles - atoms. The immortality of the soul is denied, since the soul also consists of atoms. Democritus owns the first treatise on Logic which was directed against metaphysics eleians and Pythagoreans and further developed in epicurean school. The emergence of faith in God was explained by people's fear of the formidable forces of nature. Fought against religious superstitions. This is one of the greatest teachings. | Metrodorus of Chios, Hippocrates, Herophilus, Diagoras, Navzifan |
Sophistry | Sophistry is the ability to cunningly argue. This is not a single school. Their philosophical views were contradictory (some supported the views of Heraclitus, others the philosophy of the Eleatic school). Gorgias opposed the ideologists of the slave-owning aristocracy Socrates and Plato for slave-owning democracy. Rejection of religion, rationalistic explanation of nature. During the heyday of Athenian democracy, sophists were called professional teachers of "wisdom" and "eloquence." In the future, their main focus was the victory in the dispute, and for this they began to substitute concepts, violate the laws of logical thinking. According to Aristotle later sophists (4th century BC) became teachers of "sham wisdom". | Protagoras, Prodicus, Gorgias, Critias |
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There is a "second sophistry" (II century AD), associated with the literary movement, called the "Greek Renaissance". These include Caecilius, Apuleius, Polydeuces, Elias, and others. They used the themes of Greek literature, sophistry, and rhetoric in their works. | |||
Socratic: 1. Cyrene (Aristippus of Cyrene) 2. Elido-Eretrian (Phaedo from Elis, Menedemos of Eretria) | Socrates did not leave a single line of writings, considering the written word to be dead. Information about his teachings was left Xenophon,Plato, Aristotle. Did not consider himself a source of wisdom: "I only know that I know nothing". There is no objective truth, therefore, attempts to know nature and its laws should be abandoned. They combined subjectivism and skepticism with criticism of religion. They identified happiness with sensual pleasure. This - hedonism("gedone" - pleasure ( Greek.). | Areta-daughter, Efion, Antipater, Euhemerus, Theodore the Atheist |
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4th-3rd centuries BC e. | Phaedo - the favorite of Socrates - the founder of the Elis school. Menedemos is the founder of the Eretrian school. No original works have been preserved. Close to Megara School. | ||
3. Megara (Euclid from Megara) | 4th century BC e. | They supported the views of the Eleatic school and the sophists, widely used dialectics and eristics. Many called this school eristic; school of debaters. It was believed that the knowledge of being is possible only through concepts, and the source of the senses is the source of delusions. The later megarics (Stilpon) in their views were close to cynics. Student of Stilpon Zeno of China transformed the Megarian school, together with the cynical one, into stoic. | Stilpon, Eubulid, Diodor Kron |
Cynic (Antisthenes is a student of Socrates, Diogenes of Sinop is a student of Antisthenes) | 4th century BC e. | From the name of the hill in Athens, where the first cynics practiced (“kyunikos” - dog ( Greek.) - “dog philosophy”, “dog school”). In Latin, the followers of this school were called "cynics". Founder - Antisthenes studied with Socrates. The most famous cynic Diogenes. Criticized the doctrine of ideas Plato. He rejected religious cults and condemned people for praying. Plato called him "the dog" and "the mad Socrates". The philosophy of cynics is the philosophy of renegades who rejected generally accepted morality and norms of behavior. They rejected logic and physics, focusing only on ethics. General education was neglected. Rejected music, geometry and all that. There is much in common between them and the Stoics. They despised nobility and wealth, neglected education and upbringing. | Crates, Metrocles, Demetrius, Demonact |
They denied the state, the family. They began to promote cosmopolitanism, calling themselves "citizens of the world." They walked barefoot, wore a cloak of coarse fabric worn over their naked bodies, preached the rejection of shame. Diogenes at one time lived in a barrel. He committed suicide by holding and stopping his breath. This teaching influenced the teaching stoics and contributed to the development Christian ideals of asceticism. Crates declared a beggarly life the ideal of virtue. The inability of most people to such a way of life was interpreted as an unworthy human weakness. Thus, the Cynics preached an undemanding way of life, overcoming passions and reducing needs, rejected slavery, property, marriage, official religion, demanded the equality of people regardless of gender and tribal affiliation. | |||
Plato's Academy (Platonism) | Named after the mythical hero Academa. Plato taught at the Academy for 40 years. Student Socrates. Founder objective idealism. In the beginning, that which moves itself must arise. And this is nothing but Soul, Mind. The real entities are Ideas, which are outside the material world, subordinate to the world of ideas. True knowledge consists in the recollection by the immortal soul of ideas. | ||
He preached asceticism, renunciation of worldly pleasures, sensual pleasures, secular life. The highest good is outside the world. His students led a strict lifestyle. Three main periods in the history of the Academy: ancient, middle and new Academy. Ancient(IV-III century BC) - sholarch (head) Sneusipp, then Xenocrates, Polemon and Crates. She played an important role in the development of mathematics and astronomy. It has increased influence Pythagorism. Plato's views developed on the basis of the mystical theory of numbers. Medium(III century BC) - sholarch Arcesilaus. been influenced skepticism. New(II century BC) - sholarchs Lakid, Kornead. deepened Skepticism and opposed the doctrine stoics about truth. In subsequent periods (I century BC - IV century AD), the Academy eclectically unites Platonism, Stoicism,Aristotelianism and other directions. From the 3rd century develops Neoplatonism, on the position of which the Academy finally passes in the IV-V centuries. | Sneusipp, Xenocrates, Krantor, Polemon, Crates Arcesilaus Lakid, Carneades, Clytomachus |
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Lyceum (Perepatetic school) (Aristotle) | 4th-3rd centuries BC e. | The name Likey (Lyceum) comes from the temple of Apollo Lyceum, near which the school was located. Later, the followers of Aristotle were called "Perepatetics" because Aristotle liked to teach while walking (“perepatetics” - I walk ( Greek). Aristotle led the school for 12 years - from 335 to 323 BC. e. | Theophrastus, Eudemus of Rhodes, Aristoxenus, Menander, Dixarchus, Straton, Andronicus of Rhodes (I century BC) |
Despite the fact that Aristotle studied at Plato's Academy for 20 years, he criticized Plato's theory of ideas, which became important for the further development of philosophy. Ideas, according to Aristotle, do not exist by themselves - in nature they have their own "blood" and "flesh". He recognizes the causal dependence of ideas and things, while Plato does not. After him, the Lyceum was headed by his student Theophrastus. They showed interest in the development of special sciences. Theophrastus was considered the "father of botany". Eudemus of Rhodes is known as a historian of mathematics and astronomy. Basically, they remained faithful to the views of Aristotle, but, for example, Strato criticized the idealistic aspects of his teaching. The school fruitfully developed until the middle of the 3rd century. BC e. After that, until the middle of the 1st c. BC the school was in decline. After the publication of the works of Aristotle by Andronicus of Rhodes (70 BC), a period begins when commentary activity develops, in which Alexander of Aphrodisias gained the greatest fame. In the III century. n. e. the school has become eclectic. From the 4th century n. e. began to comment on the works of Aristotle neoplatonists. | Alexander of Aphrodisia (II-III centuries AD) |
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stoic (Zeno of China) | 3rd century BC e. - III century. n. e. | Founded in 300 BC. e. Zeno. He studied under the cynic Crates, then under the megaric Stilpon and transformed these two schools into Stoic. The name comes from a portico decorated with paintings (“Stand” - a colorful hall ( Greek.) in Athens, where the meetings took place. Ethics is the highest science, because teaches good behavior. The ultimate goal of human life is happiness, i.e. life must proceed in accordance with the laws of nature. Everything in life is predetermined fate. based on Aristotelian logic. These views were a transitional step towards Christianity. Stoicism is divided into three periods. Ancient Stoya(III - II centuries BC). Zeno's successor was Cleanthes, and then Chrysippus, who was distinguished by his great talent and sharpness of mind. He surpassed everyone in diligence - this is evident from his works, the number of which is over 705. However, he multiplied his works by processing the same thing several times, reinforcing himself with many extracts. Many believed that if everything that he had ordered from others were removed from his books, he would have left blank pages! (Unlike Epicurus who did not resort to extracts). In the end, he went to Arcesilaus and Lacid at the Academy. At that time standing occupied guiding position among the Athenian schools. Archidem founded Average cost in Babylon (II - I centuries BC). | Perseus of China, Ariston, Cleanthes, Chrysippus |
The disciples of Archedem - Boet, Panetius and Posidonius were the founders of the Middle Stoa, whose writers took the influence of the Pythagoreans, Plato and Aristotle. New or Roman Stoa(I-II centuries). The most prominent of the new Stoics were Seneca, Epictetus, M. Aurelius, Tacitus, Pliny ml. At this time, moral and religious ideas of teaching were developed. The soul was considered immortal. This period is sometimes called neostoicism. The ideal of a true sage is to live according to nature. Happiness is in freedom from passions, in peace of mind, in indifference (these views correspond Buddhism, Taoism, Cynicism, Platonism). Stoicism influenced the formation of the Christian religion ( Augustine), and then to Muslim philosophy, and also partially to the philosophy of the New Age ( Descartes and Spinoza). Stoicism supported L. Tolstoy. Main works - "Moral letters to Lucilius" Seneca; "Foundations of Stoicism" and "Aphorisms" Epictetus; “Reflections. Alone with myself" M.Aurelia. The main formulas of this teaching are Patience and Forbearance, i.e. renunciation of the joys of life and the subjugation of all human passions and feelings mind. One of the dogmas: "All sins are equal to each other: the one who strangled the rooster and the one who strangled the father are equally guilty." For the Stoics, parents and children are enemies, for they are not sages. They affirmed the community of wives. | Boet, Panetius, Posidonius Musonius Ruf, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Tacitus, Pliny Jr. |
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epicurean (Opposition to the Stoics) | Epicurus was a student of the Platonist Pamphilus and a supporter of Democritus and Nausifan. At 32, he became a teacher himself. He founded a school in Athens in a garden purchased for this (“Epicurus's Garden”). On the gate is inscribed: "Guest, you will feel good here, here pleasure is the highest good." The largest representative is Titus Lucretius Car, whose poem "On the Nature of Things" is the main source of information about Epicureanism. Motto: "Live unnoticed!" The main goal of philosophy is the achievement of happiness. Philosophy is based on the atomistic doctrine Democritus. The soul was considered as a collection of atoms. Cognition has not only an experienced, but also an inexperienced source (Philodemus - “only an experienced origin of knowledge”). They did not deny the existence of the gods, but argued that they enjoy bliss and do not interfere in the affairs of people, because. any interference would disturb their serene state. The principle of pleasure as happiness is at odds with hedonism. We do not mean the pleasures of libertines, but freedom from bodily pains and from mental anxieties. The highest good in life is Reasonable Delight. It was meant non-sensual pleasures but the absence of suffering. The best remedy to achieve this, one must withdraw oneself from all worries and anxieties, from public and state affairs, to renounce necessary desires. | Leonty, Metrodorus, Apollodorus, Phaedrus, Philodemus, Titus Lucretius Carus, Diogenes Laertes |
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These desires are divided into 3 categories: 1) simple food, drink, clothing, friendship, science - they must be satisfied; 2) sex life- satisfy moderately; 3) luxury items, gourmet food, honor, fame - a complete rejection. Interest in this doctrine reappeared during the Renaissance ( Montaigne). It is widely used among the French Enlightenment ( Diderot). | |||
Skepticism (Pyrrhonism) (Pyrrho of Elis) | IV-I centuries. BC e. (early) 1st century BC e. - III century. n. e. (late) | Pyrrho was not the first to open a skeptical school. Many call the founder of this school Homer, because he never gives definite dogmas in his statements. Both the 7 wise men and Euripides were skeptical. On various issues, Xenophanes, Zeno of Elea and Democritus turned out to be skeptics. Skepticism preaches doubt about the possibility of knowing objective reality (“skepticos” - I look around, I doubt ( Greek.). From their point of view, all other philosophical directions were dogmatic. Ancient skepticism, according to Hegel, sought the truth and differed from the subsequent one in a deeper character. Things must be treated with complete indifference, and from this it follows Ataraxia(equanimity of spirit). The main thing in this teaching is that happiness is a subjective phenomenon, and its source is within us. | Anaxarchus - teacher of Pyrrho, Timon, Numenius, Navsithan, Philo of Athens, Eurylochus Enisidemus, Sextus Empiricus (expounded this doctrine), Agrippa |
A person seeks happiness everywhere, but not where it is needed, and therefore does not find it. This source just needs to be discovered in yourself and always be happy. Having understood that no judgment is the final truth, there is no need to suffer and worry, but one must achieve bliss. The skeptics consider the ultimate goal to be abstinence from judgment, followed by anxietylessness as a shadow. Main principle: I don't even know that I don't know anything" (difference from Socrates). Philosopher's way of reasoning skeptic (Pascal): | |||
Eclecticism (Potamon) | 1st century BC e. - I century. n. e. | "Eclecticism" is "the ability to choose." The eclecticist does not put forward new provisions, but chooses the best from other teachings. Sometimes it combines opposing philosophical views. Eclecticism penetrated the doctrine stoics(Panetius, Posidonius), skeptics(early Carneades, Antioch) and partly peripatetics. Eclectic based Stoicism was Cicero, whose searches in the field of philosophy were not of an independent creative nature. | Cicero, Euripides, Virgil, Horace, Ptolemy, Pliny Sr., |
Neoplatonism (Sakkas Ammonius - teacher of Plotinus, Plotinus) | III-VI centuries. n. e. | The final stage in the development of Ancient Platonism, summarizing the main ideas Plato with ideas Aristotle. Key Ideas: 1. Reconciliation of Platonism and Aristotelianism. 2. Criticism of Stoicism about the corporality of the soul. 3. The doctrine of the unity of the spiritual principle, which is divided only by descending into mortal bodies, without diminishing at the same time from this division. Several stages: 1.Roman school(III century AD). Founder - Plotinus. Central to all Neoplatonism is Soul, which exists in the body and the body is the limit of its existence. The most important is the doctrine of Plotinus about United, as about the beginning, with which the idea of the ascent of the soul from the sensual state to the supersensible is connected. This state is called - Ecstasy. The One is inherent in everything that exists and everything conceivable. Everything that exists is different parts emanations(expirations) One. 2. Asia Minor stage whose task was practical mysticism. 3. Alexandria School(IV-V centuries). Focused more on Aristotle than on Plato. 4. Athenian school(V-VI centuries). Theoretical interests prevailed. | Amelius, Porfiry, Salonina Iamblichus, Dexippus, Edemius of Cappadocia Hypatia, Asclepius, Plutarch of Athens, Proclus, Zenodotus |
From Latin Neoplatonists (IV-VI centuries) known Chalcidia, Boethius, Chapel. Through his translations of Greek works into Latin and commentaries, the Latin Neoplatonists paved antique philosophy way to Medium century. Neoplatonist traditions can be traced in the Eastern Patristika. Christian Neoplatonism in Western European philosophy had as its source the works Augustine, Boethia and other Latin Neoplatonists. Its influence can be seen in Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley. In 529 the Byzantine emperor justinian closed philosophical schools in Athens, but even before that, the main ideas antique philosophies have completed their development. |
11. The main directions of the philosophy of the Middle Ages
Schools, Destinations | Basic views | Philosophers |
Recognized the real existence of general concepts ( Universal) that exist independently of individual things. The concept of universals arose on the basis of the doctrine Plato about ideas. Close to this is the doctrine Aristotle about forms. | Eriugena, Augustine, F. Aquinas, Anselm of Canterbury |
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Nominalism | It was believed that outside of specific things the general ( Universals) exists only in words (names), which are called things of a certain kind. For example, all specific horses, despite many individual differences, have some common “horseness”. Realists believed that in addition to specific horses and outside of them, there really is a “horseness” inherent in all horses as such. And the nominalists believed that outside of specific objects there is no "horseness". | Roscellin, Duns Scotus, Abelard (moderate nominalism-conceptualism), Hobbes |
12. The main directions of Western philosophy, since the New Age
Schools, Destinations (founder) | Basic views | Philosophers |
Empiricism (Sensationalism) | Bacon designed Inductive method as the main tool for understanding nature and subordinating it to the power of man. You can dominate nature only by obeying its laws. "Mighty is the one who can, and maybe the one who knows". Feelings (sensations) are recognized as the main source of knowledge, they are also considered the criterion of truth. Sensationalism seeks to show that all knowledge is derived from the given senses (“there is nothing in the mind that was not previously contained in the senses”). The foundations of sensationalism were laid Democritus and Epicurus, but as a special direction was formed in modern times. In the era Enlightenment confrontation with Rationalism played an important role in philosophy. | Materialistic sensationalism: Democritus, Epicurus, Gassendi, Hobbes, Locke, Diderot, Voltaire, Rousseau Idealistic sensationalism: Berkeley, Hume |
Rationalism | Recognition of reason as the basis of knowledge and the criterion of truth. The foundations are still laid Parmenides (Elean school) and Plato, but as a philosophical direction was formed in modern times. Descartes believed that experience and experiment are a necessary prerequisite for knowledge. In physics, he abandoned theology and developed a mechanical view of nature. Opposes both irrationalism and sensationalism (empiricism). | Plato, Spinoza, Leibniz |
Recognition of existence two the origins of being (most often material and ideal). Along with the recognition of the material substance, Descartes recognizes God as the primary infinite substance and the soul as a derived spiritual substance. | Aristotle, Kant |
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(Spinoza) | Recognition only one origin of life. Spinoza opposed the dualism of Descartes Monism. According to Spinoza, there is a single material substance, which is the cause of itself and does not need any other causes. | Democritus, F. Aquinas, Diderot, Fichte, Marx, Hegel |
Materialism (atheism) (Heraclitus, Democritus, Marx) | The question of the relation of thought to being, of the spirit to nature, is The fundamental question of philosophy. Depending on the answer to this question, philosophers are divided into two broad camps: idealists and materialists. The recognition of the primacy of matter and the secondary nature of consciousness means the recognition that matter was not created by anyone, but exists forever, that the world has neither beginning nor end, both in time and in space, that thinking is inseparable from matter. In contrast Idealism who denies the possibility of knowing the world, Materialism comes from the fact that the world is fully knowable. Already ancient thinkers raised the question of the material basis of natural phenomena, considering that water. Ancient Greek materialist thinkers developed these ideas. They developed atomistic theory. The teachings of Heraclitus, Democritus, Epicurus and the book of Lucretius "On the Nature of Things" are of the greatest value. Hobbes also argued that everything in the world is material. He created a system of mechanical materialism. Materialism reached its heyday in the era of the French Enlightenment (La Mettrie, Helvetius, Holbach, Diderot), but it began to exert its greatest influence on European philosophy only in the 19th century. (Marx, Engels, Feuerbach). Materialist positions were often combined with Deism(Descartes, Galileo, Locke, Newton, Lomonosov). Also compatible with atheism. | Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, Epicurus, Hobbes, Diderot, Feuerbach, Engels |
Irrationalism | limited or completely the cognitive power of the mind is denied. The essence of being is understood as inaccessible to reason (close to agnosticism). Modern philosophy relies heavily on Kant; on agnosticism (the unknowability of the "thing in itself"). Therefore, philosophy turns to the only world of phenomena accessible to it - human consciousness and experiences - Rationalism. But they are often declared inaccessible to rational knowledge and comprehensible only intuitively - Irrationalism which is inherent in: the philosophy of life, existentialism, intuitionism, etc. (negation of the entire philosophy of the New Age). The main type of knowledge is Intuition, The senses, Instinct. | "Philosophy of life": Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Dilthey Existentialism: Sartre, Camus, Jaspers, Heidegger, Intuitionism: Bergson |
scientism (different philosophers in different directions) | Communication with other sciences, first of all, with natural sciences, and from the humanities - with psychology, logic and linguistics. Absolutizes The role of science. All problems are scientifically solvable, especially in the field of sociology and culture. Relate: Phenomenology, Positivism, Pragmatism, Postpositivism, Critical rationalism. | Phenomenology: Husserl Positivism: Comte Pragmatism: Dewey, James, Schiller |
anti-scientism (different philosophers in different directions) | Based on Criticism of science in any of its manifestations. He insists on the limited possibilities of science in solving the problems of human existence. Philosophy is seen as something fundamentally different from science, which is purely utilitarian. Relate: Neo-Kantianism, "Philosophy of Life", Existentialism, Intuitionism, Personalism. | "Philosophy of life": Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Dilthey Philosophy of Kierkegaard Existentialism: Sartre, Camus, Jaspers, Heidegger, Berdyaev Intuitionism: Bergson |
13. Philosophers - Nobel Laureates in Literature
* The only one who was awarded the prize for writings in philosophy, the rest received it for works of art
14. The number of works created by a number of philosophers
15. Works of the Great Philosophers of Antiquity, preserved to the present day
Very few writings of the great philosophers of the ancient world have survived to this day. This is almost all essays. Plato, half of essays Aristotle, a very small number of essays Epicurus, neoplatonic book Dam and essays Sixth. Everything else is either the writings of students or the works of collectors, compilers, interpreters, or individual passages. Nothing has survived from the writings of the Socratic schools (except Xenophon), nothing - from the writings of the neo-Pythagoreans. All Epicurean literature has not survived, with the exception of the poem Lucrezia.
16. The lifespan of a number of philosophers
Minimum | Maximum |
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Philosophers | The country | Philosophers | The country | |||
Pico Mirandola | Germany | |||||
Kierkegaard | ||||||
Shaftesbury | ||||||
Duns Scott | Scotland | Dr. Greece | ||||
Titus Lucretius Kar | Germany | |||||
Netherlands | ||||||
Solovyov | ||||||
Democritus | Dr. Greece | |||||
Dr. Greece | ||||||
Dr. Greece | ||||||
List of sources used
1. Grinenko G. V. "History of Philosophy" - M .: "Yurait", 2007.
2. Anishkin V. G., Shmaneva L. V. “Great thinkers” - Rostov-on-Don: “Phoenix”, 2007.
3. "Encyclopedia of Wisdom" - Tver: "ROOSA", 2007.
4. Balandin R. K. "One Hundred Great Geniuses" - M .: "Veche", 2006.
5. Abramov Yu. A., Demin V.N. "One hundred great books" - M: "Veche", 2009.
6. Gasparov M. L. "Entertaining Greece" - M .: "The world of encyclopedias Avanta +, Astrel", 2008.