Social philosophical ideas of German idealism. German classical idealism. Philosophy of the 19th century. Brief description of German idealism

The ideas put forward by Kant received critical assessment and at the same time the greatest further development in the works of three outstanding representatives of German idealism - Fichte, Schelling and Hegel.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) was by nature an extremely active, practically active person, he ardently sympathized with the French Revolution, fought against Napoleonic aggression, and advocated the unification of the German nation. He stated: “The more I act, the happier I feel.” Fichte's practical activism also affected his philosophy. First of all, he considered that human freedom (as the basis of activity) is incompatible with the recognition of the objective existence of things in the surrounding world and therefore must be supplemented by a philosophical teaching that reveals the conditionality of this existence by human consciousness. On this basis, he abandoned Kant's understanding of “things in themselves” as objective reality.

Fichte made the beginning of his philosophy the thinking “I,” from which the entire content of thinking and sensibility is derived. Fichte's philosophy is based on three principles.

The first is a statement about the absolute independence and self-determination of the thinking “I”. In the absolute Self, the self-positing of the thinking “I” is inseparable from its self-knowledge, therefore the Self is characterized by two-pronged activity: creative (practical) and cognitive (theoretical). Thus, Fichte introduces the concept of practice into his very theoretical philosophy, posing an important epistemological problem of the unity of theory and practice in the process of cognition. Fichte affirms the original unity of subject and object in the absolute Self. This position as a fundamental one was subsequently included in other idealistic teachings of German classical philosophy.

The second is the statement “I posits non-I.” In contrast to the thinking “I,” Fichte characterized the “not-I” as sensually perceived. Thus, Fichte sought to explain the real fact that real objects appear initially in consciousness as sensually contemplated, giving this fact, in contrast to Kant, an idealistic interpretation. The I performs the position of not-I unconsciously, thanks to the power of imagination. Reason carries out the storage and consolidation of what is created by the power of imagination. Only in the mind do the fruits of the imagination become something real. In other words, only in the mind does the ideal first become real.

The third principle is defined as follows: the absolute, universal “I” posits the empirical “I” (of man, and through him, society). In fact, the absolute Self in Fichte’s philosophy appears as a supra-individual, superhuman, world spirit. And this objective-idealistic tendency came into conflict with the previous subjective-idealistic principles of Fichte’s philosophy. This was, in fact, the first unconscious and inconsistent step towards the subsequent decisive reorientation of German classical philosophy by Schelling and Hegel towards objective-idealistic system-building.

The most important achievement of Fichte's philosophy was the further development of the dialectical way of thinking. According to Fichte, the process of creation and cognition of the Self is characterized by a triadic rhythm: positing, negation and synthesis. Moreover, the latter appears as a new proposition (thesis), which is again necessarily followed by negation, opposition (antithesis), synthesis, etc. For Fichte, categories are not a present set of a priori forms of reason, as in Kant, but a system that develops in the course of activities of Ya.

Fichte came to the realization of the inconsistency of all things, the unity of opposites and contradictions as a source of development. Thus, the activity of the absolute I becomes the property of individual consciousness only at the moment when it encounters some obstacle, some “not-I,” that is, when a contradiction arises. The activity of the I rushes beyond this obstacle, overcomes it (thus resolving the contradiction), then again encounters a new obstacle, etc. This pulsation of activity, the emergence of obstacles and their overcoming constitute the very nature of the I. The individual and absolute I in Fichte coincide and become identified, they fall apart and differ. This is the content of the entire world process. The entire dialectical process aims to reach a point at which the contradiction between the absolute and individual “I” would be resolved and the opposite sides - “I” and “I” would coincide. However, complete achievement of this goal is impossible; all human history is only an endless approximation to this ideal.

Since Fichte paid the main attention in his philosophy to the active “I”, and spoke about the “not-I” only in the most general terms as a nature opposed to the “I”, the next outstanding representative of German classical philosophy was Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775- 1854) decided to give a detailed description of natural existence and develop natural philosophy. In addition, the problem of the development of nature, its ascent from lower to higher forms, became one of the most important in natural science at the end of the 18th century. And the difficulty of solving it, as well as the ideological significance, could not but arouse growing interest in it on the part of philosophers.

Schelling's natural philosophy is permeated by the statement about the ideal essence of nature. He was convinced that since his natural philosophy characterizes nature through its active forces, its “ideality” is revealed. When comprehending the activity of nature, Schelling went in depth to identify its inherent dialectics.

Reflecting on the connections felt by natural scientists between the various forces of nature, Schelling put forward the position of the essential unity of these forces and the unity of nature as a whole conditioned by it. The mechanism of this essential unity of nature is characterized by the unity of opposing active forces, which Schelling called polarity (by analogy with the unity of the opposite poles of a magnet). Polarity is the deepest source of activity in all things; this is the determining principle of the activity of nature both as a whole and in its parts. In essence, this meant understanding contradiction as the internal source of any movement. Opposite forces were thought of by Schelling as being in active interaction, in “struggle,” and the main types of natural formations were explained by the specificity of this struggle. In accordance with this, Schelling identified the main types of polarity: positive and negative charges of electricity, acid and alkali in chemistry, excitation and inhibition in organic processes, assimilation and dissimilation in the existence of organisms, subjective and objective in consciousness.

The spiritual, immaterial foundation of nature is life, the organism. “Universal organism” was what Schelling called an ideal form, which, in its desire for material embodiment, produces more and more new types of natural being - from the simplest mechanical formations to thinking living beings. Schelling showed that the dialectic discovered by Fichte in the activity of human consciousness is also characteristic of nature. In other words, Schelling naturalized dialectics.

The picture of the development of nature depicted by Schelling, in which thinking man appeared only at the highest level, naturally rejected Fichte's absolute Self as the beginning of being and knowledge. Nature in relation to the Self appears as a primary reality. Nature itself is preceded by a certain objective spirit, which represents the absolute identity of subject and object, the point of “indifference” of both. In absolute identity, all possible differences and opposites are so closely united that they are eliminated as such. Identity in the absolute of objective and subjective, being and thinking allows the development of nature to unfold all the wealth of contradictions. Schelling interpreted the absolute as God. This divine absolute creates the whole world from itself. His creative impulse is a “dark”, irrational “want”, which gives rise to the primary will to create. The separation of the primary will from the irrational depths of the absolute means at the same time, according to Schelling, the separation of evil from God. The individual wills of people are further separated from God, and this leads to the increase of evil in the world. Schelling considered the emergence of “first will” as a creative act that, being unknowable to the mind, is the subject of a special kind of irrational comprehension - intellectual intuition. It represents the unity of conscious and unconscious activity and is the province of geniuses who are able to penetrate where the minds of ordinary mortals cannot reach.

From the irrational will generated by the absolute identity of subject and object, Schelling derived such an essential feature of history as alienation. In his opinion, even the most reasonable activity of people is marked by insufficient awareness of its socio-historical meaning, as a result of which not only unexpected, but also undesirable results for them arise, leading to the suppression of their freedom. The desire to realize freedom thus turns into the generation of the opposite - enslavement, that is, something completely alien to human desires. The basis for this conclusion was given to Schelling in many respects by the real results of the Great French Revolution, which strikingly did not correspond to the high ideals of Enlightenment philosophy, under the banner of which it began. Schelling came to the conclusion that history is dominated by “blind necessity”, against which individuals with their subjective plans and goals are powerless.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) criticized Fichte's subjective idealism and supported Schelling's turn to objective idealism. At the same time, Hegel rejected Schelling's irrationalism. When starting to create his system of objective-idealistic views, he proceeded from the possibility of rational knowledge of the world, the tool of which is logical thinking, and the main form is the concept. At the same time, Hegel identified the “pure concept” with the very essence of things, distinguishing it from subjectively given concepts that exist in the human head. This essentially meant an objective-idealistic mystification of human knowledge, for purely human conceptual thinking was endowed with a supernatural spiritual power that commands nature and man himself, producing everything that exists from itself at its own discretion. Hegel interpreted the natural scientific discoveries of the laws and forces of nature as the identification of its supersensible essence, which is an immaterial, spiritual-intelligent being. It is true being; and was called by Hegel the absolute idea.

An absolute idea is a thinking that has overcome the opposition between subjective and objective inherent in individual thinking; this is the substance of all both material and spiritual formations, their true, identical existence; it is a universality developing according to its own laws.

The existence of an absolute idea (pure concept) is its self-development and at the same time self-knowledge. Since the absolute idea appears from the very beginning as the identity of opposites (subjective and objective), its development is carried out according to the laws of dialectics, which is based on the unity and struggle of opposites, their inconsistency. Hegel was so confident in the inconsistency of everything that exists and in the need to express this inconsistency in philosophical thinking that he formulated the first thesis of his dissertation as follows: “Contradiction is the criterion of truth, the absence of contradiction is the criterion of error.”

In its development, the absolute idea goes through three stages, which should be explored respectively by the three parts of philosophical science defined by Hegel:

1. Logic as the science of the idea in itself and for itself.

2. Philosophy of nature as a science about the idea in its otherness.

3. Philosophy of spirit as the science of an idea returning to itself from its otherness.

Hegel saw the task of logic as showing that vague thoughts, that is, not represented in a concept and, accordingly, not proven, form the stages of self-determining thinking; in this way these thoughts are comprehended and proven. The movement of the concept occurs through dialectical triadism, that is, from thesis to antithesis and their synthesis, which becomes the thesis of the new triad. Thanks to this movement from vague to clear, from simple to complex, from undeveloped to developed, the self-development of the absolute idea in its pure form occurs.

Hegel considered “pure being” to be the initial determination of the absolute idea, the form of its existence. “Pure” means devoid of any certainty. In terms of content, this is an abstract, poorest concept. Taking it as a starting point, Hegel emphasized that the development of the absolute idea turns out to be a movement from the abstract to the concrete. Thus, one of the fundamental principles of Hegelian philosophy was formulated. Secondary to “pure being” is “nothing” - the second concept of the Hegelian philosophical system, characterized as the antithesis of the first concept. Hegel interprets this antithesis as the result of the transition of the thesis into its opposite. The synthesis of “pure being” and “nothing” is “existing being,” that is, being that has certainty, expressed as quality. In the process of dialectical negation of the thesis (“pure being”) by antithesis (“nothing”), the concept passes into its opposite, in other words, into its other, and therefore does not disappear completely, but is preserved by changing the form of its existence. Thus, dialectical negation has the ability to preserve and synthesize. When the thesis and antithesis merge into unity (“existing existence”), a certain negation of them occurs. They lose their former independence and are included in the synthesizing concept (“existing being”) only as moments subordinate to its specific integrity. The new formation (“existing being”) is not reduced to the sum of the thesis (“pure being”) and antithesis (“nothing”). Hegel designated the unity of destruction and preservation in the process of dialectical negation and synthesis with the term “sublation.” Sublation as the unity of destruction and preservation is a necessary condition for the fact that the dialectical movement appears as a process in which something new constantly arises, and at the same time it includes the richness of the content of the previous stages, that is, as a process of development.

The first three concepts of the Hegelian doctrine of being - pure being, nothing and existence - characterize, in fact, the formation of quality and thereby the emergence of the main triad of concepts of the doctrine of being - quality, quantity and measure. Next, Hegel develops the doctrine of essence, in which the most important triad are the concepts of essence, appearance and reality. The science of logic ends with the doctrine of the concept, where the central triad is formed by: subjectivity, objectivity and idea.

In the science of logic, Hegel developed not only subjective dialectics, which characterizes the process of cognition and its categorical formulation, but also objective dialectics, which characterizes objective reality. True, Hegel idealistically interpreted objective dialectics as belonging only to the “objectivity of the concept,” but in fact this name denoted genuine objective reality.

Having reached its highest development at the first stage, the absolute idea, according to Hegel, passes into its opposite, into its otherness, acquiring a material form, and is embodied in nature. The main problem of Hegel's philosophy of nature is the nature of the development of nature. The view of the current state of nature as a result of its development and the understanding of man as the pinnacle of this development became widespread at the beginning of the 19th century both among natural scientists and philosophers. The task now was to reveal the dialectical nature of this development. And Hegel solves this problem. Although in an idealistically mystified form, he gives a picture of the ascending development of natural formations from simple to complex, from lower to higher. On the basis of the usual triadic division, Hegel distinguishes three stages of natural existence, studied by mechanics, physics and biology. Hegel considered the mechanical stage of the development of nature to be the embodiment of quantitative certainty, the physical stage to be the embodiment of qualitative certainty of material formations, and the biological (organic) stage to be their unity, which gives rise to living beings. Higher forms cannot be reduced to lower ones, although they arise on their basis and include their content. Hegel considered the animal organism to be the pinnacle of the development of nature, for in it all inorganic nature was united and idealized, giving rise to subjectivity.

“Spirit” is characterized by Hegel as the third, highest and final stage in the development of the absolute idea, when it “sublates” the previous stage of its natural “otherness.” Although Hegel declares ideality to be the most important feature of the spirit (as opposed to the materiality of the idea in its otherness), in fact, spirit is understood as a person in his socio-historical development. Therefore, Hegel’s philosophy of spirit is essentially his anthropo-social philosophy.

Hegel views the development of the “concept of spirit” as a process of “self-liberation of the spirit” from all forms of existence that do not correspond to its concept. In its development, the spirit goes through the following forms: 1) subjective spirit as a “relationship to oneself”; 2) objective spirit, existing as a world generated by the spirit; 3) absolute spirit as the self-generating unity of the objectivity of the spirit and its ideality. In fact, the “subjective spirit” covers the sphere of individual consciousness of people in its natural and social conditioning, the “objective spirit” – the sphere of social relations (legal, moral, economic, family, etc.), and the “absolute spirit” – the sphere of ideological forms of social consciousness (art, religion, philosophy).

Hegel takes a deeply dialectical approach to the historical development of man and society. For Hegel, history is the field of action of a law that differs from a natural law. The laws here are implemented through the conscious activity of people. If Schelling saw the “mysterious hand” of history behind the actions of people, then Hegel sought to eliminate the mystery of history. He argued that only at first glance history resembles a battlefield, but there is (and must be proven) meaning and intelligence that are hidden behind the first impression of confusion and collapse. History, according to Hegel, has its purpose. This goal is the development of freedom. Since the realization of freedom necessarily includes the fact that the spirit itself recognizes itself as free, history is also progress in the consciousness of freedom. From this point of view, Hegel distinguishes three main stages of world history: 1) in the Eastern world one is free (the ruling despot), 2) in the Greco-Roman world some are free, 3) in the Germanic world everyone is free.

History, according to Hegel, reaches its completion, reaching perfection in the socio-political state of contemporary Germany, the constitutional monarchy of Prussia. Having reached this highest point in the historical movement of mankind, development ceases. Thus, Hegel preached reconciliation with existing reality. He considered his philosophy to be the theoretical basis for this reconciliation, believing that in it the absolute spirit comprehends the absolute truth, that it can be considered an absolute philosophy, because it completely and adequately solves worldview problems for all times.

The development of the “world spirit” does not occur automatically; it cannot do without the practical participation of people, without human activity in general. Human activity is motivated by the isolated egoistic needs, interests, and passions of individuals. It acts as the only means for history to realize its natural goal. In pursuit of their private interests, people do much more than they intend. And thus, without realizing it, they push the course of history forward, realize the patterns and goals of history. In such coercion of people to carry out the will of others, Hegel saw the tricks of the world spirit (world mind).

Hegel was the creator of an all-encompassing objective-idealistic philosophical system, which included problems of being, knowledge, man and society. Hegel completed the development of the theory of dialectics. Thus, he brought to its logical conclusion the main lines of philosophical searches of his predecessors - Kant, Fichte and Schelling.

The end of German classical idealism

Thursday 15 November 1841. On this day, an unusual excitement reigned in Berlin's Unter den Linden near the Opera Square. Carriages, carriages, and pedestrians crowded together, heading not to the opera house building, but on the contrary, to the university, to auditorium No. 6, the largest university auditorium, which could not accommodate everyone, the number of which significantly exceeded the four hundred students who filled it.

“If you are here in Berlin now,” wrote Friedrich Engels, who was present there, “ask someone... where is the arena in which the struggle for dominance over German public opinion in politics and religion is being waged... they will answer you that this the arena is located at the university, precisely in auditorium No. 6, where Schelling gives his lectures on the philosophy of revelation” (1, 386). “Schelling’s inaugural lecture,” the newspapers of that time wrote, “was read in Germany with the same curiosity as a speech from the throne” (81, 782).

The same influx as at the introductory lecture was at the second lecture, to which Søren Kierkegaard arrived from Denmark. “Schelling began,” he writes on November 18 to P.I. Spang, “but with such noise and commotion, whistling, knocking on the windows of those who could not enter, in front of such a crowded audience...” “In appearance,” adds Kierkegaard “Schelling looks like the most ordinary person, he looks like some kind of captain...” (6, 35, 71).

But in the following days the audience thinned out noticeably. Interest in the lectures waned: “... Schelling left almost all of his listeners dissatisfied” (1, 395). He didn't live up to expectations. The expected triumph did not happen. “The great sensation turned out to be just a sensation and, as such, passed without a trace” (60, 286). The mountain gave birth to a mouse.

On August 1, 1840, Frederick William IV ascended the throne. The echo of the July Revolution of 1830 had not yet died out. The storms of 1848 were just around the corner.

Soon it will be ten years since Hegel's death. His chair was occupied by the right Hegelian epigone Gabler. But it was not he who inspired young minds, but still Hegel himself. “When Hegel died, his philosophy just began to live” (1, 396). “...It was the period from 1830 to 1840 that was the time of exceptional dominance of “Hegelianism” ...” (2, 21, 279). The Left Hegelians, the “Hegelings,” became the rulers of the thoughts of the advanced German youth of these years. While remaining faithful to Hegel's fundamental principles, the Young Hegelians rejected the conclusions of the Hegelian system that were not justified by these principles themselves. Their focus at the University of Berlin was the group of “Free”: Strauss, Bauer, young Feuerbach, young Engels. In its new form, the philosophy of the Prussian state philosopher became the spiritual weapon of rebellious minds.

Frederick William IV saw an urgent ideological need to strengthen the existing order to eradicate “the dragon seed of Hegelian pantheism, false know-it-all and the lawless destruction of domestic integrity in order to achieve a scientifically based revival of the nation,” as he wrote to von Bunsen (quoted in: 83, 782 ). War was declared on the “Hegeling gang” from above. To play the role of St. George, “who must slay the terrible dragon of Hegelianism” (1, 395), by royal order, sixty-six-year-old Schelling was invited from Munich. In 1841, the same year in which Strauss's The Christian Doctrine, Bruno Bauer's Critique of the Synoptics, and Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity were published, the same year in which Karl Marx defended his dissertation on Democritus and Epicurus, Schelling moved to Berlin and began his readings at the University of Berlin. He was given the title of senior government privy councilor and given a salary of 4,000 thalers. Schelling's readings of courses on the philosophy of mythology and philosophy of revelation continued until 1846, when Schelling was 71 years old. After 1841, Auditorium No. 6 was no longer required for his lectures. The number of listeners has decreased catastrophically. The mission of St. George the Victorious was not fulfilled by him. He died eight years later in the resort of Ragaz in Switzerland.

The ambassador of the Austrian monarchy in Berlin, Prince Metternich, probably did not occur to him that sitting with him in auditorium No. 6, listening to Schelling’s philosophies, was a frantic rebel who had fled the Russian monarchy, who a few years later would fight on the Viennese barricades.

Mikhail Ivanovich Bakunin was looking forward to the start of Schelling's lectures. “You cannot imagine,” he wrote to his family back home on November 3, 1841, “with what impatience I am looking forward to Schelling’s lectures. Over the course of the summer, I read him a lot and found in him such an immeasurable depth of life and creative thinking that I am sure that now he will reveal to us a lot of deep things. Thursday, that is, tomorrow, he begins” (14, 3, 67).

But already the first long-awaited, promising lecture clearly disappointed the twenty-seven-year-old revolutionary. “I am writing to you in the evening, after Schelling’s lecture,” he shares with his sister under direct impression (November 15, 1841). “Very interesting, but rather insignificant, and nothing that speaks to the heart, but I don’t want to draw any conclusions yet; I still want to listen to him without prejudice” (14, 3, 78).

And a year later, when the reactionary aspirations and theoretical misery of the “philosophy of revelation” were fully revealed, Bakunin made very definite conclusions, characterizing Schelling in a letter to his brother (November 7, 1842) as “a pathetic romantic who died alive...” ( 14, 3, 439). The restless rebel, overwhelmed by revolutionary quests, was disgusted by the theosophical teachings of the elderly philosopher, who betrayed his past from the pulpit.

On November 22, 1841, Kierkegaard wrote in his diary: “I am so glad, indescribably glad, that I listened to Schelling’s second lecture... From here, perhaps, clarification will come... Now I have placed all my hopes in Schelling...” (7, 148).

Alas, his hopes were not justified. With each lecture they faded away more and more. After patiently listening to thirty-six lectures, Kierkegaard could not wait until the end of the course. On February 27, 1842, he writes to his brother that “Schelling chatters absolutely unbearably... I believe that I will go completely crazy if I continue to listen to Schelling.”

Having proved more resilient than Bakunin, Kierkegaard, from his completely different positions, was just as decisively disillusioned with the Berlin prophet. “In Berlin,” we read in his diary, “therefore, I have nothing else to do... I am too old to listen to lectures, and Schelling is also too old to read them. His entire teaching about potencies reveals complete impotence” (7, 154).

Not having eaten too much, Kierkegaard leaves Berlin and returns home. The trip turned out to be completely fruitless for him.

It would be completely unfair to belittle, let alone deny, the positive significance of Schelling’s early works in the development of German classical philosophy, and thereby in the world-historical process of philosophical thought. From the immediate approaches to the new historical form of dialectics, from the negative dialectics of Kantian antinomies, the teachings of both Fichte and Schelling were ascending steps to the Hegelian pinnacle of idealist dialectics. The transition from Fichte's subjectivist and voluntaristic dialectic to the dialectic of absolute idealism was mediated by Schelling's objective dialectic in his natural philosophy and philosophy of identity. “But the fire went out, the courage disappeared, the grape must that was in the process of fermentation, without having time to become pure wine, turned into sour vinegar” (1, 442). From an active force in the development of philosophical thought, Schelling turned into a force opposing this development.

This happened long before the Berlin lectures. Friedrich Wilhelm IV had sufficient grounds to rely in the fight against progressive ideas on the Munich philosopher, “whose memory blooms without fading in the annals of German thought...” (18, 6, 134), for all of Schelling’s subsequent activities were directed to eradicate what was sown by his own hands.

With his usual wit, insight and mercilessness, Heinrich Heine told his French readers about Schelling of the Munich period: “There I saw him wandering in the form of a ghost, I saw his large colorless eyes and a sad face, devoid of expression - a pitiful spectacle of fallen splendor” (18 , 6, 134).

Heine sees, however, only subjective motives for Schelling’s hostility to the philosophical teachings of his former friend, who raised dialectical thought to previously unattainable heights. “Just as a shoemaker talks about another shoemaker, accusing him of stealing his leather and making boots out of it, so, having accidentally met Mr. Schelling, I heard him talk about Hegel - about Hegel who “took him ideas." “He took my ideas,” and again, “my ideas” - such was the constant refrain of this poor man. Truly, if once the shoemaker Jacob Boehme spoke like a philosopher, then the philosopher Schelling now speaks like a shoemaker” (18, 6, 212).

Like all progressive thinkers of that time, Heine could not forgive Schelling for “betraying philosophy for the sake of the Catholic religion” (18, 6, 213), replacing the logical clarity of thinking with the fog of “mystical intuition,” direct contemplation of the absolute. Heine, however, did not take into account the objective side of the matter: after what Hegel had done, it was not possible to further develop dialectical thought either along the line of idealism, which is immutable for German classical philosophy, or on the basis of the bourgeois worldview on which this philosophy grew. It was possible to surpass Hegel's philosophy only by leaving this soil and leaving the idealistic camp built on it. Schelling was incapable of this, preferring to turn away from the path of rational, logical knowledge. “Here Mr. Schelling’s philosophy ends and poetry begins, I want to say stupidity...” (18, 6, 131). This was said in 1834. Schelling's route from Munich to Berlin was laid long before 1841.

Schelling's apostasy from the path of German classical philosophy was criticized at the very beginning by Hegel himself, in The Science of Logic, who condemned the betrayal of both science and logic by those “who, as if firing from a pistol, directly begin with their inner revelation, with faith, intellectual contemplation, etc. and wants to get rid of method and logic" (17, 1, 124). These words capture the very essence of the turn made by Schelling - from rationalism to irrationalism, from philosophy to theosophy.

The great merit of German classical philosophy, which reached its utmost development in Hegel’s dialectical idealism, was the creation of a new, highest historical form of rationalism, which overcame the metaphysical and formalological limitations of the previous rationalism. Dialectical logic has mastered dynamic and contradictory forms of existence that were previously recognized as inaccessible to rational knowledge and logical thinking and unacceptable for it. She limitlessly expanded the sphere of logical competence, opening up the prospect of a boundless rationalism that knows no barriers.

For Hegel, “faith in the power of reason is the first condition of philosophical pursuits... The hidden essence of the Universe does not possess within itself a force that would be able to resist the daring of knowledge...” (16, 1, 16). Again and again Hegel repeats this deepest conviction of his, which is the Ariadne thread of his entire philosophy. The dialectical rearmament of logic precisely ensured this power of thought. Hegelian dialectics, so disfigured later by the neo-Hegelians, falsified by them as going beyond the limits of the rational, was in fact a new historical rise of rationalism. Already in the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel declared that what is not rational is devoid of all truth.

“Hegel’s faith in human reason and its rights” (3, 2, 7) was inseparably connected not with going beyond the limits of rationalism, but with overcoming metaphysical barriers to the path of rational knowledge. That is why for the idealist Hegel, as well as for his successors, Schelling’s irrationalistic tendency was “bad idealism.”

But the empty flower of the philosophy of revelation, grown in Munich, fully blossomed only in Berlin, transplanted into the greenhouse of the Prussian monarchy. And here he met violent resistance from everyone who had gone through the Hegelian school - both right-wing and left-wing Hegelians. Just two months after the start of Schelling’s lectures, Kierkegaard wrote to Pastor Spang (January 8, 1842): “The Hegelians are fanning the flames. Schelling looks so gloomy, as if pickled in vinegar” (6, 35, 86). We are talking about the attacks of the Old Hegelian Michelet against Schelling in the preface to the publication of the second volume of Hegel’s Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences. But at the forefront of the counter-offensive against the philosophy of revelation was a still unknown Young Hegelian named Friedrich Engels. This was the first Left Hegelian attack against neo-Schellingism.

In the autumn of 1841 - just in time for Schelling's lectures - Engels arrived in Berlin to serve his military service. “By the way,” he wrote to Arnold Ruge in response to a proposal to criticize Schelling’s speeches, “I am not a doctor at all and cannot become one; I’m just a merchant and a Royal Prussian artilleryman” (1, 513). But Engels’s negative attitude towards Schelling was formulated by him even before moving to Berlin. Already in 1840, in the article “Memoirs of Immermann,” Engels posed a rhetorical question that touched on the very essence of Schelling’s turn from classical philosophy: “Does not all philosophy cease where the coherence of thinking and empiricism “goes beyond the limits of the concept”? What logic can hold there..?” (1, 382).

Schelling's break with Hegel, his anti-Hegelianism, was a turning point in the history of German philosophical idealism and a foreshadowing of a similar turn in all bourgeois philosophy in general. Engels, listening to Schelling's lectures, could not yet see this emerging crisis of philosophical idealism, but he decisively opposed Schelling's dissociation from the rational way of thought. Here lies the gap between the idealism of Hegel and Schelling. “Two old friends from their youth, roommates at the Tübingen Theological Seminary, meet face to face again after forty years as opponents. One, who had already died ten years ago, but was more alive than ever in his disciples; the other... spiritually dead for three decades, now quite unexpectedly claims to be full of vitality and demands recognition” (1, 386). The essence of the disagreement is that Hegel was proud of reason (see 1, 451), while Schelling limits and belittles it.

Engels by no means adheres to orthodox Hegelianism. He draws attention to the fact that Hegel was attacked from two opposite sides - “from his predecessor Schelling and from his younger successor Feuerbach” (1, 443). Referring to Feuerbach, Engels does not hide his sympathies for atheistic anthropologism and his intolerance for “Schelling’s scholastic-mystical way of thinking” (1, 413). However, the critical attitude towards Hegel on the left, opposed to the criticism of Hegel on the right, had not yet matured in Engels at that time to a criticism of philosophical idealism from the position of the opposite camp in philosophy, to a break with the Young Hegelians. Engels's criticism of Schelling rather brings him closer than separates him from Left Hegelianism. But in the orientation towards Feuerbach a further - decisive - shift is already outlined.

A year after Ruge's appeal to Engels, Karl Marx made the same proposal to Feuerbach, seeing in him a true antipode to Schelling. Marx's attitude towards New Schellingism is clear and unambiguous - decisive condemnation and indignation. “Schelling’s philosophy is Prussian politics sub specie philosophiae” (2, 27, 377). Marx did not doubt Feuerbach's willingness to brand the retrograde teaching, which Feuerbach called in The Essence of Christianity "the philosophy of a bad conscience", the deepest secret of which is "groundless, childish fantasy." Its slogan is “the more absurd, the deeper” (24, 2; 28, 223). “Poor Germany! - Feuerbach exclaimed in the preface to his anti-religious masterpiece. “You have often been deceived in the field of philosophy, and most often you have been deceived by the just mentioned Cagliostro, who constantly fooled you...” (24, 2, 29). And although Feuerbach, absorbed at that time in other work, rejected the request

Marx, his reply letters give a vivid idea of ​​his contempt for Schelling's university sermons and his militant intransigence towards theosophical tricks.

The five-year Berlin courses were not published by Schelling, and his almost unstudied manuscript archive was lost in the basements of the Munich university library during the Second World War during the bombing in the summer of 1944. The main primary source for familiarization with the content of the Berlin lectures is the surviving recordings of these lectures by listeners. One such record is Eva Nordentoft-Schlechta's discovery of Kierkegaard's notes in the Danish National Library in Copenhagen, first published (in German translation) in 1962 (71). However, since Kierkegaard listened only to the mythological section of Schelling's course (forty-one lectures), its final part - “Philosophy of Revelation” - is not reflected in this summary. Nevertheless, of greatest interest to us are six lectures (9-15), in which, criticizing Hegel’s philosophy, in front of the most respectable public, German classical idealism committed suicide in the person of one of its founders.

A deep conviction in the rationality of reality was the leading principle of Hegel's entire philosophical structure. And this very principle was the main target of Schelling’s anti-Hegelian attacks. However, this principle contains two meanings: panlogical confidence in the rational essence of the movement and development of all things, obliging it to rationally comprehend it, and an apologetic assessment of being as it is, with the ensuing conservative conclusions of the Hegelian system. Moreover, the first of the meanings of the principle of rationality of everything real is interpreted by Hegel as the idealistic identity of being and concept, real and logical. “The logic of things” is understood not metaphorically, as an objective pattern that requires logical understanding and is accessible only to such understanding, but in the literal sense - as the ontological identity of being and development as the logic of the world mind, the absolute idea.

The object of Schelling's attacks on the principle of rationality of the real was not idealistic identity and not its apologetic subtext, but the rationalistic, logical dominant itself. The focus of his anti-Hegelian criticism was philosophical rationalism, which received from Hegel the radical form of panlogism. The gap between the real and the reasonable, the opposition of the logical to the real, the denial of the methodological accessibility of being to rational knowledge - these are the principles of his “philosophy of revelation” opposed by Schelling to Hegel.

Schelling throws Hegelianism out of the window. Hegel, in his opinion, was just a sad episode in the history of modern philosophy. In an effort to transform logic into a science that opens the way to the absolute, by identifying the logical with the real, Hegel, according to Schelling, put himself in a stupid position (sich zum Narren machte; lecture 10). His panlogism exalts philosophy above religion, for “purely rational knowledge can just as little be Christian as geometry” (lecture 13). Christianity in his teaching is so diluted that it can hardly be recognized (lecture 18). What kind of theism is this if the absolute idea loses all personal character? (Lecture 15). How can such a philosophy claim to be Christian? It must be rejected as an unsuitable product of a false method, “suffering a shameful wreck in the transition to real existence” (25, 7, 891).

The root of evil, Schelling assures, lies in the fact that logic does not take care of its own business and goes beyond the boundaries of what is accessible to it. She only has access to possible, but not at all real, claiming to know which, she inevitably fails, revealing her powerlessness. By excluding actual, existing, real being from the sphere of logical knowledge, Schelling thereby contrasts it with a different, non-logical kind of knowledge, which extends not to possibility, but to reality. The real, according to Schelling, becomes the subject of philosophy when it is guided not by what is given in thinking, and not by what is given in sensory experience. “Its principle cannot be either experience or pure thought” (Lecture 17). He means the highest experience - “intellectual intuition,” supersensible contemplation. In the earlier statement by Engels in the article “Memoirs of Immermann,” this irrationalistic, essentially mystical, orientation of the Schellingian postulate, according to which the consistency of thinking and empiricism “goes beyond the limits of the concept,” is noted.

“Schelling,” Kierkegaard wrote to Bösen on December 14, 1841, “defends his discovery that there are two philosophies: negative and positive.” At the same time, “Hegel does not belong to either one or the other - this is a refined Spinozism” (6, 35, 75). By negative philosophy, in contrast to Hegelianism, which has some right to exist within certain boundaries, Schelling means his former philosophy of identity. But negative philosophy in itself is not yet a genuine, full-fledged philosophy, but only its threshold. Negative philosophy is bound by reason, while positive philosophy reveals philosophy. And Hegel’s greatest misconception is that, by being uncritical of negative philosophy, according to Schelling, he absolutizes it, thereby turning it into something that it should not and cannot be, passing off the possible as the real and the real as the reasonable, logical.

In fact, according to Schelling, negative philosophy, correctly understood and properly assessed, requires its positive overcoming. This is the adequate self-knowledge of negative philosophy. “Negative philosophy ends up demanding positive...” “In positive philosophy, negative philosophy achieves its triumph” (lectures 14 and 20). The first, as a self-limitation of the mind that has comprehended its limits, serves as a bridge to the second.

What is the relationship of positive philosophy to reason? The answer to this decisive question for Schelling serves as a demarcation line between both philosophies. In negative philosophy, he says, reason relates only to itself, while in positive philosophy it comes into relationship with reality itself. The irrationality of being is thus opposed to the rationality of logical thinking.

Before us is a criticism from the right of the historical achievement of dialectical idealism, which created a logic capable of cognizing the rationality of what many before it (and by Schelling after it) recognized as irrational in being itself. Hegel's idealistic deformation of being and its identification with thinking are criticized here not for idealism, but for rationalism. Logic is rejected not because it claims primacy in relation to reality, but because it claims to comprehend reality, to adequately reflect it.

Engels already drew attention to the fact that Schelling, accusing reason of being “incapable of cognizing anything real,” means, first of all, the incomprehensibility for reason of “God and the secrets of Christianity” (1, 449). The main flaw of rational knowledge is, according to Schelling, that it “knows nothing about religion, about true religion, which it does not even contain as a possibility” (lecture 14). Schelling criticizes dialectical logic from the position of metaphysical irrationalism. Philosophy degenerates into theosophy.

Logical necessity is nothing more than a natural-historical pattern extracted from the nature of things and processed in the human head. Determinism is an integral integral element of dialectical logic, despite all the differences in its understanding in idealistic and materialistic dialectics. But determinism in dialectical logic with its principle of self-motion is qualitatively different from metaphysical and mechanistic determinism, which tends toward fatalism.

Rejecting, together with panlogism, the rationality of being, Schelling rejects both logical necessity and universal law, resurrecting the metaphysical antinomy of freedom and necessity. If negative philosophy as a doctrine of essence is a system of necessity and rationalism, then, in contrast to it, positive philosophy as a doctrine of existence is a system of freedom and revelation (see 71 and 74). In his 24th lecture, Schelling argued that such an understanding of the issue does not at all contradict dialectics; on the contrary, “dialectics belongs, strictly speaking, to freedom and thereby to positive philosophy.” But in such an interpretation, dialectics loses its character of dialectical logic and ceases to be what it really is - the highest form of rationalism. Dialectics degenerates into its own opposite (as later in neo-Hegelian irrationalism) - into alogism. The latter takes on Schelling the explicit form of mysticism, the miraculous divine arbitrariness that reigns in reality.

Where do Christian categories go in the purely logical world of necessity? Schelling poses the question point blank (see 71, 22). Freedom stands against necessity, like the Christian category against the logical category. In opposition to self-movement as the immanent logic of being, creation “based on the will of God” stands out. “The will is the beginning of being (Ursein)” (lecture 27).

Thus, breaking with dialectical logic and rationalism in general, Schelling thereby presents reality not as a sphere of objective law cognizable by reason, but as an arena of divine providence.

Having abandoned the great conquest of classical German philosophy, her prodigal son, however, clothed his philosophy of revelation in an ephemeral “dialectical” shell, which for him took on the character of an empty and dead triadic scheme. The dialectical triad, with all its strained schematism, concealing in Hegel the principle of double negation as a universal law of progressive development, acquires a decorative-mythological character in Schelling. If Hegel tried to dissolve the mythological images of Christian dogma in logical concepts, then Schelling makes a backward movement from logical categories to mythological phantasmagoria.

Schelling's triadic schemes are as far from heaven as from earth from Hegel's triadic structures, in which the contradictory unity of the negative and the positive pulsates. They are as far from each other as the dialectical negation from the divine trinity.

The doctrine of three potencies is Schelling's parody of the dialectical triad. He formulates a religious triad: mythology - Christian mysteries - philosophy of revelation - as three stages of religious consciousness. Schelling also constructs the history of the Christian church triadically: the Catholic - the Church of the Apostle Peter, the Protestant - the Apostle Paul and the Church of Universal Love - the Church of the Apostle John. Engels cites the final words of Schelling’s course, which Kierkegaard no longer heard: “... someday a church will be built for all three apostles, and this church will be the last, true Christian pantheon” (1, 459). And in his 36th lecture, Schelling achieves the nec plus ultra of parody, depicting the triad of the Fall, the thesis of which is the temptation of man, the antithesis - the pliability of a woman and the synthesis - the serpent as the principle of temptation. From the great to the ridiculous there is one step. This is what dialectics has degenerated into in the philosophy of revelation (philosophy, which, as Schelling believed, should be called “Christian philosophy”), which sets as its task not proof the truth of the Christian religion, which it does not need (lecture 32), but clarification, the disclosure of divine revelation taken on faith.

Kierkegaard's diary entries and letters leave no doubt that Schelling's lectures deeply disappointed him, but they do not in themselves explain why this happened, and this disappointment was so strong that it prompted him to leave Berlin and return without finishing the course. to Copenhagen. But Schelling’s irreconcilable criticism of Hegel’s logicism and his “Christian philosophy” should, it would seem, captivate such a zealous preacher of Christianity as Kierkegaard was. Does not the irrationalistic course taken by Kierkegaard coincide with the main tendency of departure from classical German idealism that characterizes the philosophy of revelation? Wasn't it to Kierkegaard's liking to push aside "negative philosophy"?

It is quite obvious that the irrationalistic hostility to Hegelianism is the point of contact between both philosophers. However, in their break with the classical tradition of German idealism, both quantitative and significant qualitative differences are revealed.

First of all, Schelling's break with his own philosophical past is not entirely consistent, not unconditional. “Negative philosophy” is limited, but not thrown overboard by philosophy; it retains a subordinate, auxiliary role. While curbing and condemning rationalism, “positive philosophy” does not yet break completely with it. Schelling contrasts it with “negative philosophy,” without wanting to completely eliminate the latter (see 32, 238). Engels already noted that “Schelling, with all his merits in relation to true Christianity, still cannot completely renounce his former false wisdom. ...Still cannot completely overcome the arrogance of his own mind...” (1, 448).

Kierkegaard was repulsed by the “remnants” of rationalism and logicism in Schelling, his persistent desire for “systematicity,” for which Kierkegaard later reproached Schelling along with Hegel. But this criticism of the system is carried out not from the left, not from the point of view of the consistent implementation of dialectical logic, but from the right, in the name of overcoming the very logic of the philosophical structure. For the Copenhagen preacher of “true Christianity” the very idea of ​​“theosophical theology." Ascending to religious heights, Schelling does not throw off all the burdensome “ballast” of logicisms and sophisms. He is not radical enough in his irrationalism. His “Philosophy of Revelation” ends with “Christ logic" and "Satan" logic."“...Due to pretentious speculative interpretation, all Christian terminology,” according to Kierkegaard, “is distorted beyond recognition.” Kierkegaard calls this “the prostitution of all mythology” (6, 11-12, 79).

Kierkegaard not only adhered to a more consistent irrationalism, but, in contrast to Schelling, directed his irrationalism not along an objective-idealistic, but along a subjective-idealistic path, which reflects a more decisive divergence from the final phase of German classical idealism. “Schelling led self-reflection to stagnation, understanding intellectual intuition not as a discovery within reflection, achieved through constant advancement, but as a new starting point” (6, 16, II, 38). Schelling's revelation is extroverted, directed outward, claims to reflect divine potentialities, to God cognition. Kierkegaard's philosophy, in contrast, excludes this possibility. Kierkegaard “although he was, like Schelling, an opponent of the rationalistic “clarification” (Ausklarung) of God in a conceptual scheme... but the identification of God, the possession of which, so to speak, Schelling claimed, seemed to him unacceptable and impossible” (70, 76) . The objectivist theocentrism of the “philosophy of revelation” is alien and intolerable for Kierkegaard. His religious faith rests on subjectivist egocentrism. The divine potentialities of Schellingism, as the passions of God, are opposed by human passions, which draw us into the otherworldly unknown.

Kierkegaard had already left Berlin when Schelling complained that scientists “who know by heart all types of ciliates and all the chapters of Roman law... because of this they forget about eternal salvation, in which lies the bliss of souls” (1, 460). This tirade of Schelling, consonant with Kierkegaard’s mentality, did not become the focus of the “philosophy of revelation” and is of a peripheral nature in relation to Schelling’s system as a whole. The antithesis contained in it became the axis of another Christian philosophy - Kierkegaard's existentialism.

Schelling's lectures did not touch Kierkegaard's heartstrings; they left him cold, indifferent, alien to the tortured theosophical constructs. Schelling's lectures convinced Kierkegaard that enlightenment philosophy, scientific knowledge, and logical thinking should be overcome not by Schelling's revelation, but by other spiritual weapons made from completely different, irrationalistic material. Kierkegaard's criticism of neo-Schellingism, in contrast to Schelling's criticism of Hegel, is not a criticism of rationalistic, objective idealism in its theosophical form, but a criticism of objective idealism from the standpoint of a complete subjectivist fideism.

Sophia along the inclined plane of irrationalism - from Hegel to the three “W”: Schelling, Schleiermacher, Schopenhauer.

The “philosophy of revelation,” proclaimed from the department of the University of Berlin, did not, however, become the general line of irrationalism. Having anathematized the precepts of classical German philosophy, Schelling put a limit to the progressive development of idealistic philosophy, but he did not become a guide for future generations of idealists into the darkness of the future, according to Holzwege, to nowhere. “The once greedily awaited philosophy of revelation, having finally appeared, passed by its era as completely as this era passed it by” (25, 768).

Through neo-Hegelianism, which distorted Hegel’s dialectic and turned it into its own, irrationalist, opposite, through “tragic dialectics” with its principle of the unreasonableness of the real, through the unviable “philosophy of life,” irrationalism rushed along the mainstream of existentialism. His idol was a disappointed listener of Schelling, ridiculed and forgotten for half a century. Criticism of the “philosophy of revelation” from the right, dissatisfaction with the degree and nature of its irrationality became the starting point of anti-scientific bourgeois philosophy, anti-philosophy of our century. Denmark, which a hundred years ago was a philosophical province of Germany, has become the Bethlehem of one of the dominant trends of modern idealism. Kierkegaardianism has “justified” itself as a more effective spiritual drug in the modern world.

But no matter how far Kierkegaard’s existentialism is from the “philosophy of revelation,” there is a blood, spiritual affinity, and ideological continuity between them. “In no other era has this genuine philosophy been so urgently needed as in the modern era of decay.” These words were written by none other than Karl Jaspers on the centenary of the death of Schelling and the “philosophy of revelation” (62, 31). The existentialist "philosophy of faith" and the perspective of the Umgreifende (all-encompassing) reveal the ideological continuity of Jaspers' worldview in relation to the "positive philosophy". But the closest and most durable consistency is revealed by existentialism in the most negative attitude towards what Schelling called “negative philosophy” - in the rejection of the path of rational, scientifically oriented, objective knowledge.

Schelling died only one year before Kierkegaard, but Kierkegaard outlived him by a century. However, in recent years there have been voices calling for a reconsideration of the traditional, firmly established place of the late Schelling in the history of philosophy and his role in the evolution of classical German idealism. Whatever the attitude of one or another historian of philosophy to the teachings of various representatives of this idealism, it is indisputably recognized that its apogee was the teaching of Hegel, and “Schelling’s philosophy, although it grew out of German idealism... signifies a break with the idealistic system of reason” (71 , 23). “One of the firmly established principles of the classification of the history of philosophy is that German idealism reached its completion in the system of Hegel” (92, 239). Stating this indisputable fact and referring to R. Kroner, the Heidelberg philosopher W. Schultz calls for questioning and revising this generally accepted establishment. “It is precisely this opinion,” he declares, “that we intend to question here by reflecting on the philosophy of the late Schelling...” (92, 239). “Of course,” adds Schultz, “we will have to revise our usual understanding of German idealism” (92, 241).

As a result of this revision, “philosophy of revelation” is portrayed by Schultz not as the agony of philosophical idealism, but as its natural crown. For the completion of the progress of reason, Schultz proclaims following Schelling, is its self-restraint, the establishment of the limits of its significance. Having proclaimed this, the prophet of positive philosophy did not change the philosophy of reason, but reached its pinnacle. Irrationalism thus appears to be the legitimate historical heir of rationalism and its only worthy successor. The contribution of German classical philosophy to the history of the development of philosophical thought lies, from this point of view, in the fact that Kant, Fichte, and Hegel brought thought step by step closer to self-knowledge of its limitations. The strength of their mind lies in nothing other than the gradual awareness of their folly.

The rational grain of this irrational concept of the history of philosophy is an involuntary and indirect recognition of the limited possibilities for the progress of full-fledged philosophical thought on the paths of idealism.

Schelling would have been right in his criticism of Hegel if he had asserted not the impracticability of the transition from a logically sublimated possibility to the illusory “reality” of the supersensible world, but the impossibility of exiting to real reality from the vicious circle of absolute idealism. He would be right if he revealed the inconsistency of considering the material world as an other being of spiritual substance, as incarnations logical Idea. But if Schelling had taken up arms against Hegel from such a position, then he would not have been Schelling, but anti-Schelling. That is why criticism of Hegelianism from the left, from a materialist position, not only did not exclude, but, on the contrary, contained and aggravated intolerance towards Schellingism.

“With Hegel,” according to Jaspers, “something came to an end...” (60, 309). But Hegel's idealist dialectic was both an end and a beginning. It led to a crossroads, from which two paths diverged in two diametrically opposite directions. German classical idealism has exhausted its possibilities. A revolutionary situation arose in the history of social thought, conditioned, of course, not only by the immanent development of philosophy, but rooted in the deep social changes of the middle of the last century.

Schelling's Berlin lectures heralded the end of classical German idealism. But this was only the beginning of the end of the movement of philosophical idealism along the rationalist path. The anti-Schellingian speeches of Feuerbach, Engels and Marx foreshadowed the beginning of a revolutionary upheaval in the history of philosophy. The great achievement of the classics of German philosophy - dialectical logic - was not discarded as unsuitable, but became for the creators of a new historical form of materialism, for the “materialist friends of Hegelian dialectics” (3, 45, 30), Ariadne’s thread of further philosophical progress.

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German classical philosophy in short is the doctrine of universal ways of knowing existence. It originated in the 17th century on the territory of feudal Germany, until the mid-19th century it had a large-scale influence on the culture and development of Western European society. We will try to figure out what its essence is in this post. This material will be extremely useful to you when preparing for social studies Olympiads.

Prerequisites for the formation of German classical philosophy

The knowledge of German thinkers of the era was formed in difficult economic and political conditions. Germany regularly participated in various military campaigns, which negatively affected the development of trade, agriculture, crafts and manufacturing. The formation of social institutions, science and the arts in the country on the threshold of the Age of Enlightenment occurred more slowly than in England and France, Sweden and Holland.

To understand the conditions for the origin of the doctrine, we present several facts characterizing the German state of that time.

Many years of convinced militarism of the rulers, a series of military campaigns over two centuries. The huge size of the army, disproportionate to state needs, slowed down the development of the economy as a whole.

There were more than 300 principalities. Having no internal connections, they were only formally subordinate to the central authorities. The feudal lords cared about their own prosperity and accumulation of capital. They exercised absolute power, imposing exorbitant taxes and oppressing peasants and damaging agriculture and farming.

Cities were in crisis. Military campaigns destroyed trade relations and the foreign sales market. Guild and manufacturing production fell into decline, unable to withstand the competition of the highly developed industries of other countries.

Destructive processes took place in society - class contradictions among disenfranchised peasants intensified. The bourgeoisie, strangled by taxes, was unable to promote the economic and cultural growth of society and ensure an adequate transition from guild to manufacturing production.
The active sale of soldiers to participate in military operations in the interests of other states reduced the percentage of the working population.

Many Germans left their homeland in search of a better life. To reduce the outflow of population, Frederick the Second had to create a passport system that discouraged migration.

By the beginning of the 18th century, there was no common German literary language in the country. Works on the natural sciences, jurisprudence and philosophy were written in Latin, and it was also taught in Latin. The upper classes of Germany used French in everyday life without studying Latin.

For a short time, Frederick II patronized writers, scientists, and philosophers. But he quickly returned to military doctrine. Having begun to persecute with the help of the police thinkers committed to democratic ideas for organizing society.

It was in such difficult conditions in Germany, as throughout Europe, that the cultural and educational movement gained momentum - a direct protest of the people against the destructive manifestations of feudalism.

People's views were changing—spiritual values ​​and traditions that had been cherished for centuries were being revised. Humanity was quickly growing up and no longer thirsted for the affirmation of the Divine principle of all things, but for scientific discoveries and new knowledge in natural fields. The possibility of practical application of knowledge for the benefit of society became paramount.

In construction, applied arts and literature, everyday and secular genres were gaining popularity. What was previously created in the name of religion began to be implemented in the name of the prosperity of mankind.

The main importance in scientific works began to be devoted not to the ordering of existing knowledge about God, as the root cause and basis of all things, but to the study of personality, its diverse manifestations, its place in the world and society.

Historians of science consider it most appropriate to distinguish two stages in the development of German classical philosophy:

1. 17-18 centuries. The forerunner of idealism is the philosophy of the Enlightenment (R. Descartes, B. Spinoza, T. Hobbes, C. Montesquieu, J. J. Rousseau, etc.) At this time, a shift in emphasis began from the analysis of the symbiosis of man and nature, to the analysis of the symbiosis of man and culture communities.

2. 18-19 centuries. German idealism (I. Kant, G. F. W. Hegel, etc.). Works are being created that are still recognized as the pinnacle of philosophical thought. A universal and general picture of the world is built, human basic knowledge about nature and the process of cognition is systematized.

Subject of study and goals

With the help of logical constructions, representatives of German classical philosophy set the goal of constructing an idea of ​​a perfect person, an ideal society and state.
Everything that exists around a person was subjected to rational control and analysis.

For the first time, the subject of study was the human mind, which contains spirit and nature, as the root cause and primary source of everything that exists in the world.

Refraining from judgment about divine reality, thinkers sought to build a unified system of being. To prove the organic and harmonious integrity of the world.

The subject of knowledge of German idealism *briefly* can be defined as the natural orderliness of the world and the individual in it. Man was placed above the world and existence, having the ability to rationally understand and change things according to his preferences. The absolute power of the mind was recognized.

Features and characteristic features of German classical philosophy:

The following features of German philosophical thought of the 18th-19th centuries are distinguished:

• Rational-theoretical consciousness.
• A systematic and comprehensive explanation of the world, which is based on the principle of its natural order and harmony.
• Understanding the historical and philosophical process as a set of factors, by analyzing which one can understand the present and, with a high degree of probability, predict the future (historical thinking).

From these features follow the characteristic features of the doctrine in question:
1. Understanding of philosophy as the core around which the culture of society is formed, a practical mechanism for developing the problems of humanism and understanding human life.
2. The priority of studying human essence over the study of nature, the history of the formation of humanity.
3. Systematization of knowledge. Not just science, but an ordered system of philosophical ideas.
4. Use of a holistic, generally accepted concept of dialectics.

Representatives of the exercise

Most historians briefly characterize this period as beginning with Kant (criticism), continuing with Fithe (self-philosophy) and Schelling (natural philosophy), and ending with Hegel (monumental system). Let's briefly consider the main

Immanuel Kant(life years 1724-1804, main work - “Critique of Pure Reason” (1781). He was the first to formulate the idea of ​​​​the origin of the Universe from a gas nebula, expressed the idea of ​​​​the integrity of the structure of the universe, the existence of laws of interconnection of celestial bodies, undiscovered planets in the Solar system.

I tried to build and present a complete picture of the constantly changing, developing world.
According to Kant, a person is not capable of fully cognizing things that go beyond the limits of his practical experience, but he is capable of understanding and comprehending phenomena. Knowledge is always ordered.

Science, according to the thinker, is only a constructive and creative creation of the human mind and its abilities are not limitless. The basis of the existence of personality is morality, it is this that makes a person human; it is impossible to study morality with the help of science.

Johann Gottlieb Ficht e (life years 1762 - 1814, main work - “The Purpose of Man” (1800). The founder of practical philosophy, which determines the direct goals and objectives of people in the world and society. He gave the concept of materialism as the passive position of man in the world. Criticism - as the position of active active natures. Developed a dialectical (logical) way of thinking, consisting of positing, negating and synthesizing.

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schellin g (life 1775 - 1854, main work “The System of Transcendental Idealism” (1800). Built a unified system of knowledge by considering the specifics of knowledge of truth in individual areas. Implemented the system in “natural philosophy”, which is considered the first attempt to systematically generalize all the discoveries of science by one thinker .

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel(years of life 1770-1831, all works are of a fundamental nature). Using a system of basic relationships and categories, I built a model of being in all its manifestations, levels and stages of development. He considered contradiction to be the basis of any development. He considered the stages of development of human culture as a process of formation of the spirit, the pinnacle of which he proclaimed to be the sphere of logic. He was one of the founders of social philosophy. He created doctrines on private property rights and human rights in civil society. Emphasized the importance of labor and its material evaluation.

The importance of German classical philosophy for modern science

An important achievement of the teaching is that it enabled enlightened humanity to think in universal categories.

For philosophical science itself, important acquisitions were the developed ideas of cognitive and creative activity, development through the creation of contradictions and activities to resolve them.

A comprehensive category-conceptual apparatus has been developed, adopted as a basis throughout the world. Actively used in scientific activities of our time.

The main legacy is the introduction into circulation of the historicity of thinking, exploring changes over time that occur both with people, individual objects and entire worlds of culture. The invaluable benefit of this method is the ability to design the future through reproducing the past and logical comprehension of the present. That is why German idealism is called classical philosophy.

Best regards, Andrey Puchkov

Philosophy of Enlightenment.

Philosophy of the French Enlightenment.

Enlightenment utilitarianism. F. Voltaire against theodicy and providentialism. Education as a way of personality formation; function of an enlightened monarch.

J.J. Rousseau about the natural and civilized state. The need to conclude a social contract according to Rousseau. Cognition as sensation and perception. Condillac: the “statue” concept. D. Diderot. The antinomic nature of the dialectic of Enlightenment; antinomy and paradox.

Philosophy of the English Enlightenment.

The focus of the English enlighteners on the “natural individual”, his reason and freedom. Materialistic line of the Enlightenment (recognition of the self-motion of matter). A.Collins. J. Toland.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). Hobbes about philosophy, its role in the system of human knowledge. Hobbes's doctrine of man. About freedom and necessity. The natural state of the human race: equality, mutual distrust. Hobbes' doctrine of the state.

Enlightenment ideas in the teachings of English moralists. F. Shaftesbury F. Hutcheson (1694-1746).

Philosophy of the German Enlightenment.

The main lines and directions of the philosophy of the German Enlightenment. Metaphysics of Chr. Wolf. Chr. Thomasius (1655-1728) as the founder of the empiric-psychological line in the philosophy of the German Enlightenment. I.G. Herder. Criticism of the mechanistic picture of the world; ideas of historicism and evolutionism. Aesthetic thought of the German Enlightenment (Lessing and others).

I. Kant- founder of German classical philosophy.

"Critique of Pure Reason". Apriorism as an attempt to substantiate the universal nature of scientific knowledge. Apriorism of space and time; apriorism of categories. Phenomena and noumena. Kant's Transcendental Dialectic; justification for the transition from theoretical to practical application of reason. Kant's moral and practical philosophy. Nature and freedom. The categorical imperative as a universal normative criterion. “Critique of the faculty of judgment” by Kant and the formation of the subject of aesthetic taste. Aesthetic judgment as a mediator between theoretical knowledge and moral decision.

German classical philosophy.

Philosophy I.G. Fichte.Transcendental idealism. I.G. Fichte. Philosophy as a science. The principle of spiritual and practical activity within the framework of knowledge; the relationship between the practical and creative self. The principle of connection between the object and the subject of cognition, the non-self and the self. The relationship between the conscious and the unconscious in Fichte’s philosophy.

Philosophy V.F.I. Schelling.French revolution of the 18th century. and Schelling's philosophy. Schelling's natural philosophy: the doctrine of the world soul; dialectics of natural progress. Transcendental idealism; the idea of ​​artistic creativity; problem of conscious and unconscious. Philosophy of identity Philosophy of mythology and revelation.

Philosophy G.W.F. Hegel.General characteristics of Hegelian philosophy.

Basic principles of Hegel's philosophy. The principle of development as the basic principle of the Hegelian system; “triple scheme” of development; the role of negativity. The essence of the speculative - dialectical concept of the Hegelian system. Substantialization and ontologization of thinking: their meaning and significance. The idea of ​​substance. The concept of “absolute idea” and its difference from the concept of “absolute spirit”; the movement of the “absolute idea” to the “absolute spirit”.

“The Science of Logic”: the creation of dialectical logic. Dialectics of self-motion of a concept. “Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences” (logic, philosophy of nature and philosophy of spirit). “Philosophy of Law” as a philosophy of human liberation. Freedom as the initial and central category of Hegelian social philosophy.

Formation of the main directions of modern Western philosophy 2nd. half 19 – beginning 20th centuries

Philosophy of L. Feuerbach.

The creative path of L. Feuerbach. “The Essence of Christianity” by L. Feuerbach and the formation of philosophical anthropology. Religion as a form of manifestation of human essence. Ethics of love. “I” and “You” in the philosophy of L. Feuerbach.

The teachings of K. Marx and his place in the history of philosophy.

Formation of the Hegelian school in Germany (20-30s of the 19th century). The main themes of the philosophy of Hegelianism: philosophical criticism, historicization of the absolute, alienated consciousness).

The philosophy of Karl Marx, its evolution and basic ideas. Marx and the problem of alienated forms of consciousness. Marx's philosophy of history. The idea of ​​progress has Hegelian origins and Marxian interpretation. Eurocentrism and the abstract “universality” of Marx’s philosophy of history. Marx’s philosophical anthropology. Conflict as the main characteristic of social praxis.

Neo-Kantianism.

Main schools and representatives of neo-Kantianism. Orientation towards mathematical natural science in the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism. The concepts of substance and function in the teachings of E. Cassirer. Baden school of neo-Kantianism. V. Windelband about history and natural science. Contrasting the sciences of nature with the sciences of culture in the philosophy of G. Rickert. Neo-Kantianism and sociology of M. Weber

Historical forms of positivism (19th-20th centuries).

Western civilization, periods of its development, differences from other world cultures, the problem of “modernization”.

"First" positivism. The relationship between philosophy and “positive science” in the positivism of O. Comte. “The fundamental law of the development of the human spirit” in Comte’s philosophy of history. Positivism in England. G. Spencer on the relationship between science and religion. The doctrine of evolution. D.S. Mill on the psychological foundations of logic.

Darwinism and “social Darwinism” of the second half of the 19th century. The development of positivism at the end of the 19th century. Empirio-criticism of E. Mach.

Analytical philosophy.

Development of mathematical logic and natural science. Logicism of Russell and Whitehead. Logical atomism. “Logical-Philosophical Treatise” by L. Wittgenstein. Logical positivism of the Vienna Circle.

Criticism of metaphysics, criteria for demarcation of scientific and non-scientific knowledge. Problems of verification, analytical and synthetic judgments. Discussion about "protocol proposals". Physicalism and conventionalism in the doctrine of basic judgments. Syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Linguistic philosophy. "Late" Wittgenstein on "family resemblances", "language games" and "forms of life".

Philosophy of Science.

Critical rationalism of K. Popper. Falsification as a criterion for the demarcation of scientific and metaphysical knowledge. . The concept of the "third world". Popper's socio-political views, criticism of historicism and relativism. The concept of “research programs” by I. Lakatos. T. Kuhn about “scientific revolutions”. "Paradigm" and "normal science". The problem of incommensurability of scientific theories. Methodological anarchism of P. Feyerabend.

Formation of anthropological direction. Philosophy of life.

Philosophy of F. Nietzsche. The evolution of the views of Fr. Nietzsche, his main works. “Apollonovsky” and “Dionysian” principles of culture in “The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music.” "The will to power." The doctrine of nihilism. "Eternal Return". Nietzsche on the "death of God".

"Philosophy of life".

The main features of the “philosophy of life”. Vitalism and psychologism in the interpretation of “life”. Descriptive psychology and hermeneutics by V. Dilthey. Contrasting the “sciences of the spirit” and the “sciences of nature.” Instinct, intelligence, intuition in “Creative Evolution” by A. Bergson. Criticism of intellectualism. Morphology of culture by O. Spengler. Apollonian, Faustian and magical soul in "The Decline of Europe".

Phenomenology.

Criticism of psychologism and historicism in the works of E. Husserl. Method of phenomenological reduction, its stages. The concept of intentionality of consciousness, noesis and noema. Transcendental idealism of Husserl. Intuitive perception of entities. Criticism of physicalism and objectivism of science in “The Crisis of European Sciences.” The doctrine of the “life world”. The main directions of development of phenomenology. Intuitive perception of entities and ethics of M. Scheler. Existential phenomenology M. Merleau-Ponty.

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