Philosophy (from the Greek phileo - love, sophia - wisdom) - love of wisdom.
Philosophy is the science of the universal; it is a free and universal area of human knowledge, a constant search for the new.
Philosophy can be defined as the doctrine of the general principles of knowledge, existence and relations between man and the world.
The subject of philosophy is everything that exists in the fullness of its meaning and content. Philosophy is aimed not at defining external interactions and precise boundaries between parts and particles of the world, but at understanding their internal connection and unity.
Main features: 1) synthesis of knowledge and creation of a unified picture of the world corresponding to a certain level of development of science, culture and historical experience; 2) justification, justification and analysis of worldview; 3) development of a general methodology for human cognition and activity in the surrounding world.
Functions of philosophy:
Worldview function (associated with a conceptual explanation of the world);
Methodological function (consists in the fact that philosophy acts as a general doctrine of method and as a set of the most general methods of cognition and mastery of reality by man);
Prognostic function (formulates hypotheses about general trends in the development of matter and consciousness, man and the world);
Critical function (applies not only to other disciplines, but also to philosophy itself; the principle of “questioning everything” indicates the importance of a critical approach to existing knowledge and sociocultural values);
Axiological function (from the Greek axios - valuable; any philosophical system contains the moment of evaluating the object under study from the point of view of the various values themselves: moral, social, aesthetic, etc.);
Social function (based on it, philosophy is called upon to perform a dual task - to explain social existence and contribute to its material and spiritual change).
The whole variety of philosophical problems can be reduced to five main groups:
Ontological; epistemological; axiological; praxeological; anthropological.
These five groups of problems form the structure of any philosophical knowledge. Ontology is a philosophical doctrine about being and existing things. Epistemology is the philosophical doctrine of knowledge. Axiology is a philosophical doctrine of values. Praxeology is the philosophical study of action. Anthropology is the philosophical study of man. All sections of philosophical knowledge exist in indissoluble unity. In addition to the main groups of philosophical problems that form the core of philosophy, in the structure of philosophical knowledge there are areas of research that are correlated with a specific fragment of spiritual culture or a form of social consciousness: philosophy of science, philosophy of history, philosophy of art, philosophy of religion, philosophy of mythology, philosophy of politics. Each of these elements is based on ideas and principles formulated in the “core” of philosophical knowledge - ontology, epistemology, axiology, praxeology and anthropology.
Main branches of philosophy
Main sections of philosophy:
1) ontology - the world as a whole, its origin and fundamental principles
2) epistemology - the science of means and methods of knowledge.
3) ethics - the science of morality, ethics and proper behavior.
4) aesthetics - the science of beauty and art.
5) anthropology - the science of development, origin, human nature:
Main branches of philosophy
Ontology as a branch of philosophy
Types of logics that determine the construction of an ontology:
1) formal logic
Tertium non datum - there is no third option
2) dialectical logic
Dialectical logic allows both A and non-A at the same time
Low ruble exchange rate: good or bad?
3) multi-valued (relativistic logic) - estimates the degree or probability from 0 to 1. Depends on the reference system.
4) negative logic - Eastern logic (Buddhism) - neither one nor the other.
Epoch - abstinence of judgment, non-duality.
Not (A and not A)
Car accident. Two strategies to explain to yourself how this happened. 1) blame circumstances 2) blame themselves
Metaphysics - believes that there is something absolute and unchanging in the world that does not depend on time, circumstances and the subject of perception. Uses formal logic, believes that there is absolute truth.
The laws of mathematics are universal. Moral principles are considered universal. God. Nirvana.
Causa sui - cause of oneself.
Ship of Theseus (paradox)
Relativism - everything changes, everything is relative, depends on time, place, subject of perception.
The concept of morality is relative.
Dialectics - the world consists of opposites, their struggle and unity.
Confucianism believed that man is neutral by nature - tabula rasa. Upbringing determines.
Lao Tzu, all people are naturally kind.
How are events happening in the world? What do they obey, how are they managed?
Determinism - everything is due to natural causes. Answers the questions Why.
Indeterminism - most processes occur randomly.
Inversion of the earth's magnetic field. Nonlinear equations describing nonlinear processes.
Teleology - teleos - goal, logos - teaching - all processes in the world are subordinated to a higher goal.
Arbitrium liberum - free will
1) closer to teleology: fatalism - the doctrine that everything is already predetermined
Stoics: Marcus Aurelius and Epipictetus, Amor fati - love of fate
Marx: being determines consciousness
2) voluntarism (Nietzsche, American philosophy of the 20th century) - everything is in our hands and we create our own destiny
3) Machiavelli, Fortune
Ethics as a branch of philosophy
Film Confucius
Golden rules of ethics:
2) morality
3) proper behavior
The golden rule of ethics: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Confucius
Thales: what irritates you in others, do not do it yourself
Bible: With the measure you use, it will be measured back.
The paradox of tolerance:
“our custom is not to impose our customs”
Rule of the golden mean:
Thales: Nothing in excess (Temple of Apollo at Delphi)
Confucius: have two extremes, but choose the middle: altruist and egoist, ascetic and hedonist, the parable is neither hard nor soft.
Ontology
Where did it come from and what does the world consist of?
Monism - everything consists of only one substance. Plurality is illusory.
Dualism - the world consists of two principles. Matter + form or idea.
Pluralism is more than two principles.
Epistemology as a branch of philosophy
The main question of epistemology: The relationship between reality and the perception and thinking of reality. Perception and the world coincide.
Agnostics - objective reality is not knowable
Relativists - knowledge regarding time and the subject of perception
Sources of knowledge
Empiricism - John Locke: the child's mind is a blank slate. All knowledge comes from experience.
Apriorism - all knowledge exists before experience. Kant.
Means of knowledge:
Sensualism - all knowledge from the senses. Induction.
Rationalism - reason is the main source of knowledge. Deduction.
Irrationalism - there are other sources of knowledge: intuition, revelation.
Ax saw log fork
Latural thinking
4) Basic questions of philosophy. Ways to solve them
The question of the relationship between consciousness and being, spirit and nature is the main question of philosophy. The interpretation of all other problems that determine the philosophical view of nature, society, and, therefore, of man himself ultimately depends on the solution of this question.
When considering the basic question of philosophy, it is very important to distinguish between its two sides. Firstly, what is primary – ideal or material? This or that answer to this question plays a very important role in philosophy, because to be primary means to exist before the secondary, to precede it, and ultimately to determine it. Secondly, can a person understand the world around him, the laws of development of nature and society? The essence of this aspect of the main question of philosophy comes down to clarifying the ability of human thinking to correctly reflect objective reality.
In solving the main question, philosophers were divided into two large camps depending on what they take as the starting point - material or ideal. Those philosophers who recognize matter, being, and nature as primary, and consciousness, thinking, and spirit as secondary, represent a philosophical direction called materialistic. In philosophy there is also an idealistic direction opposite to the materialist one. Idealist philosophers recognize consciousness, thinking, spirit as the beginning of everything that exists, i.e. perfect. There is another solution to the main question of philosophy - dualism, which believes that the material and spiritual sides exist separately from one another as independent entities.
Only Marxist philosophy provided a comprehensive materialist, scientifically based solution to the Basic Question. She sees the primacy of matter in the following:
matter is the source of consciousness, and consciousness is a reflection of matter;
consciousness is the result of a long process of development of the material world;
consciousness is a property, a function of highly organized matter of the brain;
the existence and development of human consciousness and thinking is impossible without a linguistic material shell, without speech;
consciousness arises, is formed and is improved as a result of human material labor activity;
consciousness is of a social nature and is determined by material social existence.
The subject of philosophy is the universal properties and connections (relations) of reality - nature, society, man, the relationship between objective reality and the subjective world, material and ideal, being and thinking. The universal is the properties, connections, relationships inherent in both objective reality and the subjective world of Man. Quantitative and qualitative certainty, structural and cause-and-effect relationships and other properties, connections relate to all spheres of reality: nature, society, consciousness. The subject of philosophy must be distinguished from the problems of philosophy. The problems of philosophy exist objectively, independently of philosophy itself.
The central ideological problem is the relationship of man to the world, consciousness to matter, spirit to nature, the difference between mental and physical, ideal and material, etc. In society, universal human values are formed - ideas of humanism, moral principles, aesthetic and other criteria that are common to all people . Thus, we can talk about the worldview of the entire society at a certain stage of historical development.
The expanded system of philosophical knowledge includes:
· the doctrine of the world as a whole, of the global forces driving it, of the universal laws of its organization - this is ontology (ontos - being);
· the doctrine of man, his nature and the organization of his activities is anthropology (anthropos - man);
· the doctrine of knowledge, its foundations, possibilities and boundaries - this is epistemology;
· the doctrine of society and human history, which considers humanity as a whole - this is social philosophy;
· the doctrine of the nature of values is axiology.
Specific philosophical sciences are adjacent to the complex of general philosophical knowledge:
· ethics - the doctrine of morality;
· aesthetics - the doctrine of beauty, of artistic creativity;
Logic - the study of the rules of thinking;
· religion.
A special area is the history of philosophy, since most philosophical problems are considered in the context of previous experience in solving them.
As a rule, in the works of specific philosophers, not all sections are presented equally fully. In addition, in certain periods of cultural history, different sections alternately come to the fore.
Understanding a person’s relationship to the world, the general laws of reality, and one’s own life position can be achieved in various ways. That is why they talk about levels of philosophical thinking that differ in degrees of abstraction and form of presentation. Ordinary philosophy at the level of practical thinking is an awareness of the principles of one’s life as a manifestation of fundamental values.
As a special type of spiritual activity, philosophy is directly related to the socio-historical practice of people, and therefore is focused on solving certain social problems and performs a variety of functions:
1. The most important of them is worldview, which determines a person’s ability to combine in a generalized form all knowledge about the world into an integral system, considering it in unity and diversity.
2. The methodological function of philosophy is the logical-theoretical analysis of the scientific and practical activities of people. Philosophical methodology determines the direction of scientific research and makes it possible to navigate the infinite variety of facts and processes occurring in the objective world.
3. The epistemological (cognitive) function of philosophy provides an increase in new knowledge about the world.
4. The socio-communicative function of philosophy allows it to be used in ideological, educational and managerial activities, forms the level of the subjective factor of the individual, social groups, and society as a whole.
Among the Stoics (IV century BC), philosophy included:
· logic;
· physics, or the study of nature;
· ethics, the doctrine of man.
The last one is the most important. The scheme has retained its significance to this day. In the 17th century In the bosom of general systems of philosophy, the theory of knowledge (epistemology) was developed and developed. She considered not only the abstract theoretical level, but also the sensory level of knowledge. What ancient philosophers called physics received a different name in the philosophy of later centuries - ontology.
A significant restructuring and rethinking of the structure of philosophical knowledge was carried out by I. Kant. The “Critique of Judgment” talks about three parts of philosophy, correlated with three “faculties of the soul,” which were understood as cognitive, practical (desire, will) and aesthetic abilities inherent in a person from birth. Kant understands philosophy as the doctrine of the unity of truth, goodness and beauty, which significantly expands its narrow rationalist understanding as just a theory or methodology of scientific knowledge, which was adhered to first by the Enlightenmentists and then by the positivists.
Hegel builds his system in the form of the “Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences”. Like the Stoics and Kant, Hegel also names three parts of philosophical knowledge, which he designates in strict sequence:
· logic;
· philosophy of nature;
· philosophy of spirit.
To the latter he includes a complex of philosophical sciences about state and law, world history, art, religion and philosophy itself.
Nowadays social philosophy (philosophy of history) and philosophy of science, ethics and aesthetics, philosophical cultural studies and history of philosophy are distinguished.
Philosophy poses two main questions to a person:
What comes first - thinking or being?
· whether we know the world.
From the solution of these questions, the main directions of philosophy begin to emerge - idealism and materialism, gnosticism and agnosticism.
The common values of humanity ultimately converge on three basic concepts: truth, goodness, beauty. Fundamental values are supported by society, and the main spheres of culture are formed and developed around them. Basic values in these areas are taken for granted. Philosophy addresses directly all fundamental values, making their essence the subject of analysis. For example, science uses the concept of truth by asking what is true in a given case.
Philosophy considers the following questions about truth:
What is truth?
· in what ways can one distinguish between truth and error;
· truth is universal or everyone has their own;
· can people comprehend the truth or just form opinions;
· what means of knowing the truth do we have, are they reliable, are they sufficient?
Questions about goodness:
What is the origin of good and evil?
· can it be said that one of them is stronger;
What kind of person should be?
· whether there is a sublime and base way of life, or is it all vanity;
· whether there is an ideal state of society, state.
Beauty Questions:
· whether beauty and ugliness are properties of things, or is it just our opinion;
· how and why ideas about beauty change.
As a result, philosophy turns out to be a necessary development of other spheres of culture. Philosophy brings together knowledge from various fields, and therefore many defined it as the science of the most general laws of nature, society and thinking (this is not a complete description of its subject).
In addition to the global values of humanity, philosophy explores the values of individual existence: freedom, personal self-realization, choice, boundaries of existence.
INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?
The contours of the 21st century are becoming more and more clearly visible. Undoubtedly, it will be different from the outgoing century - in the life of the world community and Russia. New principles of understanding the world and a new vision of eternal philosophical questions will be needed. The main, determining factor in all creative changes in modern society will be a person’s life values, his worldview, and philosophy.
Due to the complexity of the multifaceted nature of its subject, philosophy has historically developed pluralistically, that is, it has developed different, sometimes contradictory, ideas about itself and the world. Several alternative definitions of philosophy can be identified. 1) Philosophy is the doctrine of people, of what should be, of the ideal, of values or meanings (Plato, Platonism, neo-Kantianism, Husserl). Philosophy is the doctrine of everything that exists, and not just the spiritual sphere (French materialists, Hegel, Feuerbach). 2) Philosophy is the doctrine of existence as such, primarily human existence (ancient Indian and ancient Chinese schools of philosophy, medieval philosophy, neo-Thomism, personalism, existentialism). Philosophy is the doctrine of knowledge or morality, or happiness, or man in general (Hume, Kant, positivism, ancient Greek and ancient Chinese schools, Muslim philosophy, anthropological philosophy). 3) Philosophy is a science or should be a science (Aristotle, Descartes, Fichte, Hegel). Philosophy is the science of the most general laws of development of nature, society and thinking (Marxism, dialectical materialism). Philosophy is not a science, should not and cannot be (irrationalism, intuitionism, existentialism, K. Popper). 4) Philosophy is a specific worldview. Philosophy is not a worldview, but a special intellectual activity associated with the analysis of language, in particular, the language of science and culture (neopositivism, linguistic philosophy, structuralism, hermeneutics).
The abundance of conflicting definitions of philosophy has given rise to the widespread belief that philosophers do not know what philosophy is, what philosophy is and why it is needed. But actually it is not. Philosophy, developing historically, moved from one definition to another, negating or enriching its previous content. Different understandings of philosophy reflect only different aspects, levels of comprehension of reality, being, stages of development of philosophy itself, self-knowledge of humanity and man himself. But in all the diversity of philosophical trends and teachings, the contours of a single, universal philosophy are visible, based on everything that is true in various concepts (materialistic, idealistic, etc.).
Philosophy arose simultaneously in three cultures - ancient Chinese, ancient Indian and ancient Greek in the 7th - 6th centuries. BC. The word “philosophy” translated from Greek means “love of wisdom” (“phileo” - love, “sophia” - wisdom). Even then, rationally posed philosophical questions were raised about the structure of the Cosmos, society, human existence, good and evil, human happiness, etc. The main prerequisites for the emergence of philosophy were the needs and abilities of society and the individual for a general, holistic and rational understanding of reality, the need to discover, establish general principles of relations between man and the world, man and man, consciousness and self-awareness. Philosophy was born from the human desire to comprehend the “ultimate” foundations of the existence of things and processes, the unity and opposition of nature and society, the world and man. Philosophy is the highest form of a person’s conscious relationship to nature, society, culture and himself, which has replaced such limited forms of worldview as myth, religion, science or ideology. Philosophy is a complete revelation of a person’s free self-awareness; it is a thinking, theoretical worldview.
Philosophy is driven not simply by the love of knowledge, but by an indomitable desire for truth as an adequate comprehension of the world and meaning as the identification of the holistic meaning of a thing, phenomenon, or one or another content in the system of being. Philosophy is focused on holistic knowledge and understanding of the world. It covers all knowledge about things, sums up the development of human experience, culture and man himself. Only on the basis of synthesis and integration of knowledge about reality can one accurately solve worldview problems and correctly orient a person in the complexities of the existence of nature and society, and human knowledge.
The question “what is philosophy” can be answered as follows. Philosophy – it is a set or system of theoretically meaningful ideas about the essence and general laws of development of nature, society and human cognition, about the place and capabilities of man in the world.
Since culture has existed, a person has a worldview, that is, a set of views on the world with a certain awareness of his place in the world, his relationship to the world and the world to him. The worldview most fully reveals a person’s need to comprehend reality, to interpret all phenomena on the basis of a holistic picture of the world. In clarifying the understanding of philosophy as a worldview, it is necessary to distinguish two levels of worldview. First level– figurative-representational, symbolic. It includes mythology, religion and non-religious: ideological, artistic, practical forms of knowledge. Second level– conceptual-categorical, logical-rational, reflexive. Philosophy is a worldview of the second, indirect level. Philosophy is formed and functions in the course of ongoing interaction with the worldview of the first level. We must understand the fundamental difference between philosophy and mythology and religion. The latter accept provisions about the source and structure of the world, about connections with the Whole on faith, while philosophy seeks to resolve these ideological issues through reason, i.e. thinking based on concepts and evidence.
Philosophy is not just knowledge (albeit diverse), but an understanding of reality that goes beyond scientific, ideological and other approaches. Philosophy appears and exists not as a private, concrete science, like physics, chemistry, biology, history, etc., but as a metascience. Concrete sciences, striving to understand the phenomena of nature and society, are limited to a certain final content, its givenness. They obtain objective knowledge about parts, “pieces” of reality. Philosophy is not limited to knowledge of parts, but paves the way to the Whole. It is distinguished from specific sciences by a high degree of generalization and concentration of knowledge about reality.
Subject of philosophy associated with the comprehension of the world as natural, orderly, valuable the whole in the system of categories and ideas, on the one hand, and with clarification of the presentability of these categories and ideas in the fluid diversity of reality itself, on the other. It was with the highlighting of universal categorical knowledge, the ability to “see intelligently” ideas, values and meanings in reality itself that philosophy acquired its subject and status as an independent science.
Talking about structure of philosophy It should be noted that philosophical knowledge is hierarchical and complex in its composition. There is still debate about the structure of philosophy. The most common point of view is its interpretation as consisting of three closely related parts (levels): ontologies(the doctrine of being), epistemology(the doctrine of knowledge) and axiology(general theory of values).
In addition, there are also praxeological the level associated with the analysis of human practical activity in mastering real life, the objective world; anthropology– the doctrine of human nature, his origin, the laws of his existence and development; social philosophy– the doctrine of the laws, theories and meanings of social life, i.e. a comprehensive doctrine of society. According to other approaches, the structure of philosophy distinguishes such sections as: philosophy of language ,philosophy of culture, philosophy of creativity, philosophy of scientific reason, philosophy of religion, philosophy of science, philosophy of law, political philosophy and etc.
Based on the identified problems of philosophy, one can get an idea of the main functions of philosophy:
ontological function– formation in the individual of a holistic idea of the world, the universe and its structure;
epistemological function– in the system of philosophy, a person will find knowledge about the sensory and logical, intuitive and heuristic exploration of the world, about methods of knowledge, about the criteria of true and false knowledge;
axiological function– the value orientation of a person in the world with the historical confrontation between culture and anti-culture, values and anti-values, good and evil, beautiful and ugly;
social function– the formation of civic consciousness, civic culture of the individual, his ability to understand complex social processes (political, economic, legal, moral, environmental, etc.) for adequate inclusion in the system of society with all its organizations, relationships and functions;
anthropological function– instilling in a person a sense of self-esteem, an idea of one’s capabilities and ways of realizing them, the need for self-development and the establishment of harmonious relationships in the system of interpersonal contacts;
methodological function– these are methods of cognition, methods of theoretical and practical activity.
The history of philosophy as the history of large concepts can be represented as a sequence of main philosophical trends (within the boundaries of which there are numerous schools and movements).
Materialism(Democritus, Heraclitus, Bacon, Hobbes, Diderot, Feuerbach, Marx, Engels, Lenin) considers the material principle (nature, air, water, fire, atom, matter) to be the basis of the universe. Man is derived from the natural development of this material principle. He is the highest color of matter, possessing consciousness. Not spiritual, but material principles lie at the basis of everything. Being determines consciousness. A person's lifestyle determines the way he thinks.
Idealism(Plato, Thomas Aquinas, Hume, Berkeley, Fichte, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Solovyov, Florensky) considers the spiritual principle (God, idea, world will, spirit, idea) to be the basis of the universe. Man is derived from the spiritual principle. The objective world is derived from the objective (God, world spirit) or subjective (man) spirit, consciousness, reason, feelings. Consciousness determines existence. The way a person thinks determines the way he lives.
Dualism(Descartes, Ribot, Wundt, Lipps) believes that the basis of the universe is made up of two principles: spiritual and material, consciousness and matter. They exist simultaneously, in parallel, independently of each other. The body does not depend on the spirit, the spirit does not depend on the body; the psyche does not depend on the nervous processes of the brain; the brain is not the substrate of consciousness.
Dialectics(Plato, Heraclitus, Hegel, Marx), a position that believes that in the universe and in man everything develops according to the laws of interaction of opposites, with a progressive movement towards the highest.
Metaphysics(Holbach, Feuerbach, Hobbes) - an approach to the world from the position that in the universe and man, either everything is static, stable, constant (dogmatists) or everything flows, everything is changeable, nothing is permanent, nothing is absolute (relativists).
Eclecticism(Bukharin, James) - a worldview that believes that in the universe and in man there is both constant and changeable, both relative and absolute, so that something definite cannot be said about the state of an object.
Agnosticism(Hume, Kant, Mach, etc.) - a direction in philosophy that denies the possibility of human knowledge of the world, casting doubt on the possibility of adequate reflection of the world in human consciousness (either the world is not knowable, or the world is not knowable in its causes, or the world is not knowable in its essence).
Skepticism(Sextus-Empiricist, Hume) denies the possibility of an unambiguous answer to the question “is the world knowable”, because there are known and unknown phenomena, there are mysterious, mysterious phenomena, there are “world riddles”. This means that the world is both knowable and unknowable - the skeptic concludes, although he doubts both.
Monism(Hegel, Plato, Marx, Feuerbach) is a philosophy that explains the universe and man on the basis of a single principle: material or ideal; the entire system of philosophy must be built on a common unified foundation.
Pluralism(James, Dewey, Hook, Peirce, etc.) asserts the need for a pluralistic understanding of the world, taking into account the multiplicity of factors that determine its development, and therefore the multiplicity of points of view.
Control questions
1. What problems are called philosophical?
2. What is philosophy?
3. What is a worldview and what are the specifics of its main types?
4. What is the subject of philosophy?
5. What are the main functions of philosophical knowledge?
6. What is philosophy for you, for your life?
Abstract topics
1. Worldview and its historical forms.
2. Subject of philosophy.
3. Philosophy as a way of understanding the world.
4. The main functions of philosophy.
5. The role of philosophy in solving pressing problems of humanity.
1 The subject of philosophy, its structure and functionsPhilosophy is a worldview because Any philosophical teaching contains a system of ideological generalizations.
Philosophy is a special form of knowledge of the world, developing a system of knowledge about fundamental features, the most essential features.
Philosophy includes the doctrine of the general principles of the existence of the universe (ontology or metaphysics), the essence and development of human society (social philosophy and philosophy of history), the doctrine of man and his existence in the world (philosophical anthropology), the theory of knowledge (epistemology), problems theories of knowledge and creativity, ethics, aesthetics, cultural theory and, finally, their own history, i.e. the history of philosophy, which is an essential component of the subject of philosophy: the history of philosophy is part of the content of philosophy itself. This is how the subject of philosophy developed historically, i.e. the range of its specific sections and problems, both theoretically and practically, i.e. organizationally and pedagogically, its sections were differentiated. The subject of philosophy is not just one aspect of existence, but everything that exists in the fullness of its content and meaning. Philosophy is aimed not at defining the exact boundaries and external interactions between parts and particles of the world, but at understanding their internal connection and unity.
Philosophical knowledge has a certain structure. Traditionally, philosophy includes ontology—the study of being, epistemology—the study of knowledge, and axiology—the study of values. They also distinguish social philosophy and philosophy of history, as well as philosophical anthropology - the study of man, the history of philosophy, ethics, aesthetics.
Contents of the functions of philosophy:
The worldview function contributes to the formation of the integrity of the picture of the world, ideas about its structure, the place of man in it, and the principles of interaction with the outside world.
The methodological function is that philosophy develops the basic methods of understanding the surrounding reality.
The mental-theoretical function is expressed in the fact that philosophy teaches conceptual thinking and theorizing - to extremely generalize the surrounding reality, to create mental-logical schemes, systems of the surrounding world.
Epistemological - one of the fundamental functions of philosophy - has the goal of correct and reliable knowledge of the surrounding reality (that is, the mechanism of knowledge).
The role of the critical function is to question the surrounding world and existing meaning, look for their new features, qualities, and reveal contradictions. The ultimate goal of this function is to expand the boundaries of knowledge, destroy dogmas, ossify knowledge, modernize it, and increase the reliability of knowledge.
-The axiological function of philosophy (translated from Greek axios - valuable) is to evaluate things, phenomena of the surrounding world from the point of view of various values - moral, ethical, social, ideological, etc. The purpose of the axiological function is to be a “sieve” through which skip everything that is necessary, valuable and useful and discard what is slow and obsolete. The axiological function is especially strengthened during critical periods of history (the beginning of the Middle Ages - the search for new (theological) values after the collapse of Rome; the Renaissance; the Reformation; the crisis of capitalism at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries, etc.).
The social function is to explain society, the reasons for its emergence, the evolution of the current state, its structure, elements, driving forces; reveal contradictions, indicate ways to eliminate or mitigate them, and improve society.
The educational and humanitarian function of philosophy is to cultivate humanistic values and ideals, instill them in people and society, help strengthen morality, help a person adapt to the world around him and find the meaning of life.
The prognostic function is to predict development trends, the future of matter, consciousness, cognitive processes, man, nature and society, based on existing philosophical knowledge about the surrounding world and man, achievements of knowledge.
Question 2 Positivism as an alternative to philosophical metaphysics. Its stages of development. Main representatives.
In the 19th-20th century. Philosophy develops according to a non-classical scenario because a crisis of its metaphysical foundations is felt.
Positivism is a philosophy of science. Founder O. Comte in the 30s of the 19th century. Main work: course of positive philosophy. Positivism is a direction of philosophy that originated in the 30s and 40s of the 19th century. and advocating that philosophy be freed from scientific features and based only on reliable scientific knowledge. According to positivists, philosophy should examine only facts (and not their inner essence), free itself from any evaluative role, be guided in research precisely by the scientific arsenal of means (like any other science), and rely on the scientific method.
The main ideas of positivism:
1 Science is the only effective means of solving the problems of mankind. Thus, positivism formed scientism - a doctrine that is based on science and sees in it the main driving force of the development of society.
2optimism regarding social progress, confidence in its immutability.
3 the fight against philosophy as metaphysical abstract knowledge; philosophy should not include unverifiable speculative propositions.
4 philosophy is the same science as any specific science, its place among other scientific disciplines.
Stage 1: 30s of the 19th century – First positivism (Spencer, Mill)
Stage 2: Empirio-criticism (Mach, Avenarius), late 19th – early 20th centuries. The main idea of empirio-criticism is that philosophy should be based on critical experience. Empirio-criticism comes from a subjective-idealistic position: all objects and phenomena of the surrounding world are presented to a person in the form of a “complex of sensations.” Consequently, the study of the surrounding world is possible only as an experimental study of human sensations.
Stage 3: neopositivism (Russell, Wittgenstein), from the 20th century. Until the middle of the 20th century. The main idea of neopositivism is that philosophy should engage in logical analysis of the language of science, since language, like the language of science, is the main means through which a person positively (reliably, scientifically) perceives the world around him.
Stage 4: postpositivism (Popper, Kuhn, Feyerabend, Lakatos) Postpositivism moves away from the priority of the logical study of symbols (language, scientific apparatus) and turns to the history of science. The main goal of postpositivism is to study not the structure (like neopositivists) of scientific knowledge (language, concepts), but the development of scientific knowledge.
Question 3 Philosophy of life as a movement of irrationalism. Nietzsche's teaching.
In the first half of the 19th century, criticism of rationalism intensified, which led to the emergence of philosophical movements asserting superiority
the irrational principle over the rational, who consider the irrational to be the main characteristic of the world is called irrationalism.
Life is the primary reality that precedes the division of the world into material and ideal. It is the directly experienced essence of the world. Life is a universal principle of the world that connects both the problems of existence and the problems of value.
Representatives: Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Simmel, Deltey.
Nietzsche (1844-1900) – “the will to power”, “beyond good and evil”, “thus spoke Zarathustra”.
Nietzsche's main ideas:
Positive idea: affirmation of a cultural and ethical ideal in the form of the concept of a superman.
Negative idea: revaluation of all values.
The main positive task of philosophy: the affirmation of the highest value of the cultural improvement of man, as a result of which a new type of man should appear, which Nietzsche calls a superman.
Superman is a new zoological type superior to homosapiens in moral and intellectual qualities. It can be achieved through improvement, strict selection and conscious education of a new breed of people. The superman is the creator of himself as a free and autonomous individual. He has the following qualities: heroism, fearlessness, honesty, thirst for active love, generosity, firmness.
Nietzsche then reinterpreted this image by highlighting the cult of the strong personality.
The negative part: Nietzsche’s war for the liberation of people from the power of spirits and social authorities.
Nietzsche claims that the main principle of existence is the will to power. Life is a special type of world energy, one of the manifestations of the will to power.
4 Existentialism: its problems, ideas and representatives.
Existentialism is a direction of philosophy, the main subject of study of which was man, his problems, difficulties, existence in the world around him.
Predecessors of existentialism: Dostoevsky, Nietzsche. Soren, Kierkegaard criticizes classical irrationalism and panlogism. Works: “Either or.” The author notes the irony of human life; a person is always in a situation of choice. A person defines himself at the moment of choice. “The choice between good and evil is clear.” But what about the choice between good and good, happiness and happiness?
Existentialism is divided into religious and secular (atheistic)
Existentialism is based on the opposition between the phenomena of life: faith, hope, love, pain, suffering and the phenomena of the cognitive series: a person directly experiences his abandonment in this world. This experience is the initial unit of the existential description of a person’s existential relations with the world.
One of the irrationalistic schools of the 20th century is existentialism (from the beginning of the 20th century to the 60-70s of the 20th century)
Representatives:
In Russia: Lev Shestov, Nikolai Berdyaev
In Germany: Heidegger, Jaspers, Bubber.
In France: G. Marcel, Sartre, Camus
In Spain: Ortega y Gasset
The main problems of existentialism were: man as a unique being, the philosophy of being, humanism, the history of Western European civilization, the problem of freedom and responsibility, death as the secret essence of human existence, the problem of time as a characteristic of human existence. Our theory, J.-P. Sartre emphasized, is a single theory that provides a person with dignity, a single theory that does not make an object out of him.
Question 5 Philosophical postmodernism as an understanding of information and computer reality.
Postmodernity is a society that corresponds to the era of information and computer reality. Liotor first used this concept. The main representatives are Derrida, Deleuze, Baudrillard, Guattari, Zizek. Postmodernism denies being as the being of things and accordingly denies the metaphysics of being. The predecessor can be called such a phenomenon as a linguistic turn, which replaced the existence of things with the existence of relationships, knowledge and meanings.
M. Foucault introduced the concept of discourse - a text, a statement, together with the social practice to which it belongs and which it carries within itself. Millions of people in modern society speak and write, that is, they produce discourse. Subjective work gives way to language, thinking and speaking.
Basic concepts of postmodernism:
1.Deconstruction – destruction of the metaphysical doctrine of being. Goal: denial of any presence. Presence is replaced by absence.
2. Simulacrum is what we have in language in the form of the “as if” form
Question 6 Philosophical meaning of the category of being. Ontology.
Ontology as a doctrine of being – the metaphysics of being.
In antiquity, two opposing concepts of existence arose:
1 The concept of Heraclitus - he believed that the world is and will be fire. According to Heraclitus, there is an endless process of transition from one to another, i.e. becoming. He formulated the law of self-transition, self-return, confrontation and renewal of substance.
It is one and the same in us - living and dead, awake and sleeping, young and old. After all, this having changed is this and that having changed is this.
2 The concept of Parmenides is homogeneous, unchanging, motionless, indivisible, unified being. On the one hand there is an unchanging and non-becoming basis, on the other there is a mobile empirical appearance. Parmenides believes that it is impossible to prove that something that does not exist exists. According to Parmenides, the law of identity: being and thinking are identical.
Develops the ideas of Parmenides - Plato: he separates the world of knowledge and the world of opinion.
Existence is eternal, unchangeable, that which is cognizable by reason.
Aristotle: rejects the doctrine of ideas as supernatural entities. He calls essence being) individuals. Secondary entities – species and genera. This is how the idea of an intelligible object appears.
Forms of existence:
1 The existence of nature - all materialized forms of nature that existed in the past and will exist. The main point of this form of being is its primacy and objectivity. There is a distinction between first nature and second nature (the objective-material world created by people to satisfy their needs).
2 The existence of man is the existence of his physicality as a part of nature, the existence of his spirituality, as a rational substance with consciousness.
3 The existence of society as a system of social relations and connections.
4 The existence of the spiritual.
Ontology is a branch of philosophy, the philosophical doctrine of Being, of existence as such in its most general characteristics, regardless of its particular forms and in abstraction from issues related to its comprehension (cognition).
Classical ontology operates with such categories as substance (the basis of everything), essence, universality, integrity, etc. it implies, as a rule, the construction of an integral ontological system built on the principle “from the general to the particular.”
Modern ontology implies the presence of “regional” private ontologies, which are perceived not as a concept, but as an event, as an “ontology of the present” (Deleuze). Here the categories of life, creativity, freedom may come first, or, in other cases, the category of “simulacra” - as a means of replacing previous concepts, like a fake, an imitation that retains the same form, but has completely lost content (examples of actions - simulacra - words that have lost their former meaning; dinners that have replaced previous ritual actions, advertising, production of disposable household items, etc.)
Question 7 Philosophical understanding of matter. Movement, space and time as attributes of matter.
Matter (from Latin materia - substance) is a philosophical category to designate objective reality, which is reflected by our sensations, existing independently of them (objectively).
Matter is a generalization of the concepts of material and ideal, due to their relativity. While the term “reality” has an epistemological connotation, the term “matter” has an ontological connotation.
The concept of matter is one of the fundamental concepts of materialism and, in particular, of such a direction in philosophy as dialectical materialism.
MOVEMENT. When applied to matter, this is a change in general. Movement is an attribute, an integral part of matter. There is no immovable matter that remains invariably in a state of absolute rest. Matter and motion are inseparable. Movement is the only way for matter to exist. The idea of matter devoid of motion has one of its sources in the metaphysical understanding of the relationship between rest and motion.
Space and time, as well as movement, are attributes of matter. There is nothing in the world except moving matter, and moving matter cannot move except in space and time. Space is a set of relations expressing the coordination of material objects, their location relative to each other and relative size.
Time is a set of relations expressing the coordination of successive states (phenomena), their sequence and duration.
Question 8 Dialectics is the doctrine of the universal connection of development. Basic principles, laws and categories of dialectics.
Dialectics is a theory and method of knowing reality, the doctrine of universal connection and development. Ideas about the variability and interconnectedness of all things arose in ancient times. The first classical form of dialectics arose in the depths of German idealistic philosophy (XVIII-XIX centuries). In its completed form (Hegel’s philosophy) it represented a system of interconnected concepts, categories, laws, reflecting the world-historical march of the absolute idea.
Basic principles of dialectics: 1. Everything in the world is in motion, everything has changes, and the movement goes from lower to higher, from simple to complex. The main line of these changes is development 2. Everything in the world is interconnected, there is no such phenomenon 3. Movement is determined by the internal inconsistency of things and objects. The main source of movement is internal contradiction.
"Three laws of dialectics."
The law of transition of quantitative changes into qualitative ones.
The law of unity and struggle of opposites.
The law of negation of negation.
essence and phenomenon; form and content; cause and investigation; individual, special, universal; possibility and reality; necessity and chance.
Question 9 Essence, structure and functions of consciousness. The problem of the ideal.
Consciousness is the highest function of the brain, characteristic only of humans and associated with speech, which consists in a generalized and purposeful reflection of reality, in the preliminary mental construction of actions and anticipation of their results, in the reasonable regulation and self-control of human behavior.
Functions of consciousness:
1 Worldview 2 Cognitive 3 Creative 4 Regulatory and managerial 5 Evaluative 6 Coordinating.
Structure of consciousness.
1 Knowledge 2 Memory 3 Emotions 4 Will 5 Self-awareness.
Consciousness is the core of the human psyche.
The formation and development of consciousness in the process of evolution occurred through human labor and language, and the consciousness of, for example, a child can be formed and developed under the influence of society, in the process of learning, socialization, etc.
The ideal is a subjective image of objective reality.
The problem of the ideal: the essence and content of our consciousness are determined not by the cells of the cerebral cortex, but by the social reality external to them. This is ideality, i.e. a relation of representation in which a certain object, while remaining itself, nevertheless represents something completely different, in no way connected with the nature of the representing object.
Question 10 Conscious and unconscious in the human psyche. The theory of psychoanalysis about the unconscious.
“Conscious” and “unconscious” are correlative concepts,
expressing the peculiarities of the human psyche. A person thinks about situations and makes decisions. Such actions are called conscious. However, often a person acts thoughtlessly, and sometimes he himself cannot understand why he did this. Unconscious actions assume that a person acts on an internal impulse, but without any analysis of the situation, without clarifying the possible consequences.
The unconscious reflects such mental images that are hidden from introspection and indistinguishable from their objects. Unconscious mental images: dreams, unconscious instincts, complexes, slips of the tongue, hypnosis, automatisms.
Psychoanalysis by S. Freud (1856 – 1939)
Austrian psychiatrist. Main works: “Interpretation of dreams”, “Psychology of the human masses and analysis of the interpretation of the self”...
Freud believed there were three levels of the psyche:
1 Super - ego (Super - I); 2 ego – I (consciousness); 3 id, it (unconscious)
It is the most primitive authority that embraces everything genetically primary, subordinate to the principle of pleasure and knowing nothing about society. It is a set of instincts of repressed experiences, complexes; Freud devoted significant space to sexual desire and aggression.
The ego follows the principle of reality and develops mechanisms that allow it to adapt to the environment. It is an intermediary between stimuli coming from the external environment and from the depths of the body and motor responses. Functions of the ego: self-preservation of the body, imprinting the experience of external influences in memory...
The superego is the source of moral and religious feelings, a controlling and directing agent. There is a contradiction between the superego and the id. A mentally healthy person emerges through sublimation.
Sublimation is a mechanism through which the forbidden energy of instincts moves to other objects and is discharged in the form of acceptable activity. The best way of sublimation is creativity.
11. Sensual and logical as human cognitive abilities. Their main forms.
Sensory cognition and its elements.
Sensation is a mental reflection of the properties and states of the external environment, arising from direct influence on the sense organs.
Perception - cognitive process, forming a subjective picture of the world. Reflection of an object or phenomenon as a whole with its direct impact on the senses. The result of the perception process is a constructed image. Image- subjective vision of the real world, perceived through the senses.
Representation - an image of a previously perceived object, reproduced by memory and evoked in consciousness sensation or perception. In a broader sense, the word performance means any state of consciousness reproduced by memory.
Emotion is a subjective evaluative attitude towards existing or possible situations. Emotions are distinguished from affects, feelings and moods.
Intuition is the ability to sense existing logical chains of related information related to the desired question, and thus instantly find the answer to any question.
Logical cognition
Unlike sensory forms, logical means of cognition do not necessarily have to be accompanied by sensory images. Forms of logical reflection inherent in all people are concepts, judgments and inferences.
A concept is a unity of essential properties, connections and relationships of objects or phenomena reflected in thinking; thought or system of thoughts that identifies and generalizing subjects of a certain class according to certain general and generally specific characteristics for them.
A person expresses his every thought with the help of judgments.
“Judgment is one of the highest forms of reflection of objective objects in human consciousness. Judgments reflect objects, qualities, relationships between objects, their content
In inference from several correct judgments, new knowledge about objects is derived.
“Inference is a means of knowing the hidden, internal aspects and connections of objects. A person, with the help of inference, cognizes processes and their patterns in objects that cannot be perceived with the help of the senses.”
Logical cognition also uses hypotheses and theories as forms that record the results of human cognitive activity.
12. The relationship between speech, thinking and language.
The thinking of an adult, normal person is inextricably linked with speech. Thought cannot arise, flow, or exist outside of language, outside of speech. We think in words that we pronounce out loud or say to ourselves, that is, thinking occurs in speech form. People who are equally fluent in several languages are quite clearly aware of which language they are thinking in at any given moment. In speech, a thought is not only formulated, but also formed and developed.
Special devices can be used to record hidden speech (articulatory) micromovements of the lips, tongue, and larynx, which always accompany human mental activity, for example, when solving various kinds of problems. Only people who are deaf and mute from birth, who do not even speak kinetic (“manual”) speech, think on the basis of images.
Sometimes it may seem that a thought exists outside the verbal shell, that another thought is difficult to express in words. But this means that the thought is still unclear to itself, that it is rather not a thought, but a vague general idea. A clear thought is always associated with a clear verbal formulation.
The opposite opinion that thought and speech are essentially the same thing, that thinking is speech without sound, and speech is “voiced thinking,” is also incorrect. This opinion is erroneous, if only because the same thought can be expressed in different languages by hundreds of different sound combinations. It is also known that there are homonym words (words with the same sound but different meanings, i.e. the same word can express different thoughts, different concepts.
13. The concept of truth, its forms and criteria. Epistemological concepts of truth.
Truth is the reflection of an object by a cognizing subject, its reproduction as it supposedly exists on its own, as if outside and independently of the cognizing subject and his consciousness. Truth can be called knowledge itself (the content of knowledge) or known reality itself.
Types of truth
Absolute truth is the complete knowledge or source of everything, from which everything came. Absolute truth contains all the qualities and characteristics we perceive, a complete understanding of the subject.
Relative truth is a philosophical concept that reflects the statement that absolute truth difficult to achieve. According to this theory, one can only approach the absolute truth, and as one approaches, new ideas are created and old ones are discarded. Theories that assert the existence of absolute truth are often called metaphysics, and relative truth - relativism. A type of relative truth is truth. Relative truth always reflects the current level of our knowledge about the nature of phenomena
Objective truth is the content of our knowledge that does not depend on the subject in content
14. Levels and forms of scientific knowledge. The concept of scientific revolution and scientific paradigm.
Empirical (experiential) knowledge
Empirical knowledge is obtained as a result of the application of empirical methods of cognition - observation, measurement, experiment. This is knowledge about visible relationships between individual events and facts in the subject area. As a rule, it states the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of objects and phenomena. Empirical laws are often probabilistic and not strict.
Theoretical knowledge
Theoretical ideas arise on the basis of generalization of empirical data. At the same time, they influence the enrichment and change of empirical knowledge.
The theoretical level of scientific knowledge presupposes the establishment of laws that make it possible to idealize the perception, description and explanation of empirical situations, that is, knowledge of the essence of phenomena. Theoretical laws are more strict and formal in nature compared to empirical ones.
A revolution in science is a period of development of science, during which old scientific ideas are replaced partially or completely by new ones, incompatible with old ideas.
Paradigm in scientific methodology- a set of values, methods, approaches, technical skills and tools adopted in the scientific community within the framework of an established scientific tradition in a certain period of time.
15.Science and its role in the development of civilization. Scientism and anti-scientism.
Science is a special type of human cognitive activity aimed at obtaining, clarifying and producing objective, systemically organized and substantiated knowledge about nature, society and thinking. The basis of this activity is the collection of scientific facts, their constant updating and systematization, critical analysis and, on this basis, the synthesis of new scientific knowledge or generalizations that not only describe observed natural or social phenomena, but also make it possible to construct cause-and-effect relationships, and, as a result, , - to predict.
Science in a broad sense includes all conditions and components of cognitive activity
* division and cooperation of scientific work
* scientific institutions, experimental and laboratory equipment
* research methods
* scientific information system
* as well as the entire amount of previously accumulated scientific knowledge.
Functions of science:
1. Primitive communal system; 2. Slaveholding; 3. Feudal; 4. Captalistic; 5. Communist. They differ, each in their own way of producing material goods and forms of class struggle. Formations follow one after another in a linear plan as stages of development of society, from lower to higher. Based on the Marxist theory of formations, a formational approach in historical science has developed.
Civilization approach in historical science.
The essence of the civilizational approach is that the study and coverage of history is based on ideas about society as a civilization. And it is based on the theory of civilizations and its ideas. The civilizational approach denies a single history of humanity and presents history as the existence of closed, separate entities.
The theory of civilization received scientific development in the works of its founders -
Danilevsky, Spengler, Toynbee.
20. Man as a subject of philosophy. Modern anthropological theories.
In philosophy, man has always been considered in the unity of 3 modes of his existence - body, soul and spirit. Body- This is the physical substance of human life, acting as an element of nature. In Antiquity, the body was a microcosm, in modern times it was a mechanism, and then the body was understood as an organism. The soul in Antiquity is the mind, conscience, and moral principle in man. For modern philosophy, the soul is the vital center of the body, which is the force that, being itself immortal, outlines the period of bodily existence and the individualizing property of a person in society, described in philosophy through the problems of free will, creativity, fate and fate.
In the religious interpretation, spirit is a connection with God.
A philosophical approach to man involves identifying his essence, determining the forms of his activity, and revealing various historically existing forms of his existence. Philosophy reveals a person’s place in the world and his relationship to the world, analyzes the question of what a person can become by developing his capabilities, what is the relationship between biological and social in him, what is a person as a person, what is the structure of personality, what is the essence of socio-psychological personality types, etc.
Anthropological theories:
1. Ernst Kassirer. Man is a symbolic animal, because... only he builds a symbolic environment between himself and nature. History, language, science, religion - all this is a symbolic environment. Only thanks to this environment we can get to know each other.
2.Max Scheler. Man is a free, open being; as a person, man is open to the world and this is his strength; as a biological organism, man is vulnerable. Unlike an animal, which always says yes to the world, man is capable of saying no. Man is an eternal Protestant, an eternal Faust.
3. Eric Fromm. "Escape from Freedom"; "To have or to be." The spontaneity of human existence, as it were, recreates man himself, not only spiritually and existentially, but also as a human species. Everything in a person changes - both his physicality and his inherent subjectivity. A person is not what he is, he is what he can become.
21. Biopsychosocial nature of man.
Biological is expressed in physiological, genetic phenomena, as well as in neuro-brain, electrochemical and some other processes of the human body. Under mental understands the inner mental and spiritual world of a person - his conscious and unconscious processes, will, experiences, memory, character, temperament, etc.
Man is a social being: in society, a person masters a straight gait, articulate speech, and thinking.
Man is an embodied spirit and spiritualized corporeality, a spiritual-material being with intelligence. And at the same time, it is a subject of labor, social relations and communication through articulate speech. With his organismic level he is included in the natural connection of phenomena and is subject to natural necessity, and with his personal level he is turned to social existence, to society, to the history of mankind, to culture.
A person is born as a biosocial unity. But he is born with incompletely formed anatomical and physiological systems, which are further formed in the conditions of society. The mechanism of heredity, which determines the biological side of a person, also includes his social essence.
Heredity provides the child not only with purely biological properties and instincts. He initially turns out to have the ability to imitate and learn. Thus, the child is born precisely as a human being. And yet, at the moment of birth, he still needs to learn to become a person. He is introduced into the world of people by communication with them; it is this that shapes his psyche, morality, culture, and social behavior.
Conscious mental phenomena are formed during life as a result of upbringing, training, active mastery of language, and the world of culture.
So, a person is an integral unity of biological (organismal), mental and social levels, which are formed from two sources - natural and social, hereditary and acquired during life. At the same time, the human individual is a unity of the biological, mental and social, leading to the emergence of a new qualitative stage - the human personality .
22. The essence of man and the meaning of his existence.
The meaning of life, the meaning of being is a philosophical and spiritual problem related to determining the ultimate goal of existence, the purpose of humanity, man as a biological species, one of the basic ideological concepts that is of great importance for the formation of the spiritual and moral image of an individual.
The question of the meaning of life can also be understood as a subjective assessment of the life lived and the correspondence of the achieved results to the original intentions, as a person’s understanding of the content and direction of his life, his place in the world, as the problem of a person’s influence on the surrounding reality and a person’s setting goals that go beyond the scope of his life . In this case, it is necessary to find an answer to the questions:
“What are life values?”
“What is the purpose of (someone’s) life?” (or the most general goal of life for a person as such, for a person in general),
“Why (Why) should I live?”
Ideas about the meaning of life are formed in the process of people’s activities and depend on their social status, the content of the problems being solved, lifestyle, worldview, and the specific historical situation. In favorable conditions, a person can see the meaning of his life in achieving happiness and prosperity; in a hostile environment of existence, life may lose its value and meaning for him.
23. Man as a person. The relationship between freedom, responsibility and creativity.
Personality is a stable system of socially significant traits that characterize an individual as a member of a particular society or community.
The essential characteristics of personality and its main features are determined by:
the content of a person’s worldview, his psychological essence;
the degree of integrity of worldview and beliefs, the absence or presence of contradictions in them, reflecting the opposing interests of different layers of society;
the degree of awareness of a person’s place in society;
the content and nature of needs and interests, the stability and ease of their switchability, their narrowness and versatility;
the specificity of the relationship and manifestation of various personal qualities.
Freedom is the ability to choose an option and implement (ensure) the outcome of an event. The absence of such a choice and implementation of choice is tantamount to a lack of freedom - unfreedom.
In ethics, “freedom” is associated with the presence of human free will. Free will imposes on a person responsibility and credits his words and actions. An act is considered moral only if it is committed by free will and is a free expression of the subject’s will. In this sense, ethics is aimed at making a person aware of his freedom and the responsibility associated with it.
Will is the ability and ability to choose the goal of an activity and the internal efforts that are necessary for its implementation. Will is not physical activity, Not emotional activity and not always conscious human activity; but an activity that always reflects the principles of morality and norms of the individual and indicates the value characteristics of the goal of the chosen action. A person, carrying out volitional actions, resists impulsive desires, forming a strong personality in yourself.
Reason is the ability of a material system to realize its existence in the environment and display, transmit in the form of signs and sign systems; this is the ability to measure the interdependencies and interactions of material systems, identifying patterns; This is the ability, using certain patterns, to act and change the environment in accordance with one’s needs.
24.The problem of anthroposociogenesis. Modern versions of the origin of man and society.
Anthroposociogenesis is the process of the emergence of man as a biological species and the emergence of society.
Anthropologists are preoccupied with finding the “missing link” in biological evolution from the ape-like ancestor of humans to Homo sapiens. Philosophers strive to identify and describe the “interruption of gradualism” itself - the revolutionary leap that took place in the process of human development.
Approaches to the problem:
1.Evolutionary. Since the 19th century, science has been dominated by the concept of human origin from the highly developed ancestors of modern apes, derived from Darwin’s theory of evolution. Man and apes share a common ancestor. Scientists named it Dryopithecus (Latin for “tree monkey”). Then Australopithecus (in Latin - “southern monkeys”) appeared, living in the steppes of Africa, and took two more steps from animal to human. Their achievements were upright walking and the gradual loss of thick hair. The next on the evolutionary ladder is already the “first man,” the first representative of the Homo genus. This is a skilled person (Homo habilis). Another branch of the evolution of the Homo genus, which, according to biologists, is higher than the “skillful man”, is the erect man (Homo erectus). The species to which people living today belong is Homo sapiens.
2.Creationism. Views based on the fact that man was created by God or gods arose much earlier than the materialistic theories of the spontaneous generation of life and the evolution of apes into humans. In various philosophical and theological teachings of antiquity, the act of human creation was attributed to various deities.
25.Axiology. Concept of value. Classification of values. Basic value orientations.
Axiology is a philosophical doctrine about values and their nature.
Value is a concept that indicates the cultural, social or personal significance (significance) of phenomena and facts of reality. All the diversity of the world can act as objective values, i.e. evaluate from the point of view of good and evil, truth and lies, beautiful and ugly, fair and unfair, etc. Such values include objects of material and spiritual activity of people, social relations and natural phenomena included in their circle that have a positive meaning for humans and are capable of satisfying their diverse needs. Another type of values are subjective values, which include attitudes, assessments, requirements, prohibitions, etc., expressed in the form of norms. They act as guidelines and criteria for people’s activities. At the center of the understanding of values is a person’s value attitude to the world, the sides of which are objective values and subjective values.
The values of a person form her value orientations, by which we mean the totality of the most important qualities of the internal structure of a person, which are especially significant for her. A specific system of value orientations and their hierarchy act as regulators of personality development. They serve as a criterion for the norms and rules of behavior of an individual, as they are mastered and socialized.
Classification of values. 1. Values-goals, or highest (absolute) values. 2.Values-means (instrumental values).3. Positive and negative values (social meaning and consequences of their implementation). 4. Material and spiritual values.
The highest and absolute value is the person himself, his life, as well as the ultimate and most common values for people, such as the meaning of life, goodness, justice, beauty, truth, freedom, etc.
26.Philosophical understanding of culture. Types and forms of culture.
27.Global problems of humanity and ways to solve them.
1. Threat of thermonuclear fire.
The simplest way to resolve all conflicts is the use of force. In light of the approaching environmental problems, solving problems with the help of weapons is the easiest. But when using weapons you need to be very careful, since the stock of weapons is enough to destroy life on earth dozens of times. One of the main methods of influence is the use of nuclear weapons.
Now there is information that the danger of a direct nuclear collision has decreased, but has not disappeared, and the threat of a blind technological “accident” has even increased, as was the case in Chernobyl. In addition, nuclear technology is spreading in third world countries.
Any conflict is fraught with the danger of a chain reaction. Therefore, the conflict must be resolved only peacefully.
2. The proximity of an environmental disaster.
The reserves of resources, especially energy resources, are rapidly declining on earth, and at the rate at which human development is accelerating, their reserves will last for no more than 50 years. Now we need to look for and introduce qualitatively new energy sources while there is still a supply of energy resources. The other side of the energy crisis is that electricity consumption doubles approximately every
15 years. And soon there may come a time when artificial energy will begin to influence the structure of the planet’s heat balance. There will be an irreversible melting of glaciers, a rise in sea level by many tens of meters and, consequently, flooding of the most fruitful places on the planet. As a result of warming, the planet's climate will change, and most of the planet will become an arid semi-desert. A decrease in the average temperature of the planet by 3-4 degrees will lead to a new ice age. Another environmental problem is the rapid decrease in soil cover.
3. The danger looming over human corporeality.
We are facing the danger of the destruction of man as a species, the deformation of his bodily organs. The loosening of the gene pool, the dashing steps of genetic engineering. The genetic burden of the human population is increasing. A sharp weakening of the human immune system under the influence of xenobiotics and numerous stresses is being recorded everywhere. Another problem is AIDS. Drug addiction and alcoholism are also a big problem.
4. The crisis of human spirituality.
A large flow of information has led to the fact that a person knows more than he can invent or fantasize. There is no need for a person to think or speculate, because the media has already done it for him.
To overcome this problem you need to be vigilant and warn other people about the danger; we must absorb information about life; it is necessary to properly organize planning for the use of natural resources; it is necessary to consciously regulate the growth of our planet; it is necessary to reduce military expenditures and invest more to eradicate poverty, hunger, disease, etc.; mutual understanding is necessary; to put the main production forces and resources under strict control; to develop new orientations regarding ourselves.
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philosophy thinking conscious science
The structure of philosophy as a science
When studying philosophy, there are usually 4 main sections:
- 1. Ontology (from Greek ontos - that which exists and logos - word, speech) is the doctrine of being, the foundations of existence. Its task is to explore the most general and fundamental problems of existence.
- 2. Epistemology (from Greek gnosis - knowledge, cognition and logos - word, speech) or another name epistemology (from Greek episteme - scientific knowledge, science, reliable knowledge, logos - word, speech) is the doctrine of methods and possibilities knowledge of the world. This section examines the mechanisms by which a person understands the world around him.
- 3. Social philosophy is the doctrine of society. Its task is to study social life. Since the life of any individual depends on social conditions, social philosophy studies, first of all, those social structures and mechanisms that determine these conditions. The ultimate goal of social cognition is to improve society, the order in it, and create the most favorable conditions for the self-realization of the individual. In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary to identify the driving forces of social development, i.e. laws of the functioning of society, the causes of certain social phenomena we observe. The more deeply we understand the relationships and laws existing in society, the more subtly we are able to improve social structures and mechanisms that contribute to the prosperity of society.
- 4. History of philosophy is a section devoted to the history of philosophical teachings, the evolution of philosophical thought, as well as science with the corresponding subject of study. The history of philosophy is important because it shows not only the final result of modern knowledge, but also the thorny path that humanity has overcome in search of truth, and therefore all the difficulties and obstacles that arose along this path. Only by following this path can one understand the full depth of modern truths and avoid repeating typical mistakes of the past.
Each philosophical teaching is valuable because it carries a grain, a piece of truth of greater or lesser significance. As a rule, each subsequent teaching is based on the knowledge and thoughts contained in the previous ones, is their analysis and generalization, and sometimes works on their mistakes. And even if it is erroneous, the teaching makes its valuable contribution on the path to the truth and allows one to realize this error. Therefore, without tracing the development of thought from its very origins, it can be difficult to understand the final result of knowledge, the full value and depth of modern truths. Perhaps this is also why disdain for philosophical truths is growing in modern life. Some of us do not understand their value, do not understand why they are exactly what they are, whereas it would be more convenient for them to understand and perceive differently. Before we are convinced of the truth of this or that knowledge, we sometimes need to hit a lot of “bumps” in life. The history of philosophy is the experience of mistakes, the experience of the ups and downs of thought from the most outstanding thinkers. Their experience is invaluable to us. In the history of philosophy we can trace the evolution of a solution to almost any problem. Philosophy courses taught in universities discuss the most important of them. However, the history of philosophical thought is not limited to the set of topics that textbooks can accommodate. That is why when studying it it is so important to turn to primary sources. A course on the history of philosophy is only a brief description of actual teachings, the full depth and diversity of which is hardly possible to convey in this course.
Philosophical disciplines The names of most branches of philosophy (social philosophy, history of philosophy and epistemology) coincide with the names of the corresponding philosophical disciplines that study them. Therefore, they are not mentioned again here.
Since philosophy studies almost all areas of knowledge, within the framework of philosophy there was a specialization in certain disciplines, limited to the study of these areas:
- 1. Ethics is the philosophical study of morality and ethics.
- 2. Aesthetics is a philosophical doctrine about the essence and forms of beauty in artistic creativity, in nature and in life, about art as a special form of social consciousness.
- 3. Logic is the science of the forms of correct reasoning.
- 4. Axiology - the doctrine of values. Studies issues related to the nature of values, their place in reality and the structure of the value world, i.e., the connection of various values with each other, with social and cultural factors and the structure of personality.
- 5. Praxeology - the doctrine of human activity, the implementation of human values in real life. Praxeology considers various actions from the point of view of their effectiveness.
- 6. Philosophy of religion - the doctrine of the essence of religion, its origin, forms and meaning. It contains attempts at philosophical justifications for the existence of God, as well as discussions about his nature and relationship to the world and man.
- 7. Philosophical anthropology - the doctrine of man, his essence and ways of interacting with the outside world. This teaching seeks to integrate all areas of knowledge about man. First of all, it is based on material from psychology, social biology, sociology and ethology (studies the genetically determined behavior of animals, including humans).
- 8. Philosophy of science - studies the general laws and trends of scientific knowledge. Separately, there are also such disciplines as the philosophy of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, economics, history, law, culture, technology, language, etc.
Main directions of modern world philosophical thought (XX-XXI centuries)
- 1. Neopositivism, analytical philosophy and postpositivism (T. Kuhn, K. Popper, I. Lokatos, S. Toulmin, P. Feyerabend, etc.) - these teachings are the result of the consistent development of positivism. They analyze the problems faced by private (other than philosophy) sciences. These are problems of physics, mathematics, history, political science, ethics, linguistics, as well as problems of the development of scientific knowledge in general.
- 2. Existentialism (K. Jaspers, J.P. Sartre, A. Camus, G. Marcel, N. Berdyaev, etc.) - the philosophy of human existence. Human existence in this teaching is understood as the flow of experiences of an individual, which is always unique and inimitable. Existentialists place emphasis on individual human existence, on the conscious life of the individual, the uniqueness of his life situations, while neglecting the study of the objective universal processes and laws underlying this existence. Nevertheless, existentialists strive to create a direction of philosophy that would be closest to the current problems of an individual’s life and analyze the most typical life situations. Their main themes are: true freedom, responsibility and creativity.
- 3. Neo-Thomism (E. Gilson, J. Maritain, K. Wojtyla, etc.) - a modern form of religious philosophy that deals with understanding the world and solving universal human problems from the position of Catholicism. His main task is to introduce the highest spiritual values into people's lives.
- 4. Pragmatism (C. Pierce, W. James, D. Dewey, etc.) - associated with a pragmatic position on solving all problems. Considers the appropriateness of certain actions and decisions from the point of view of their practical usefulness or personal benefit. For example, if a person is terminally ill and no benefit is calculated in his further existence, then, from the position of pragmatism, he has the right to euthanasia (assisted death for a seriously and terminally ill person). The criterion of truth, from the point of view of this doctrine, is also utility. At the same time, the denial by representatives of pragmatism of the existence of objective, universally valid truths and the understanding that the goal justifies any means of achieving it casts a shadow on humanistic ideals and moral values. Thus, Dewey writes: “I myself - and no one else can decide for me what I should do, what is right, true, useful and profitable for me.” If everyone in society takes such a position, then ultimately it will turn into only a field of collision of various selfish motives and interests, where there will be no rules and norms, no responsibility.
- 5. Marxism (K. Marx, F. Engels, V.I. Lenin, E.V. Ilyenkov, V.V. Orlov, etc.) is a materialist philosophy that claims to have scientific status. In his analysis of reality he relies on the material of special sciences. Strives to identify the most general laws and patterns of development of nature, society and thinking. The main method of cognition is dialectical. Dialectics (ancient Greek dialektike - the art of arguing, reasoning) is a way of thinking that seeks to comprehend an object in its integrity and development, in the unity of its opposing properties and tendencies, in diverse connections with other objects and processes. The original meaning of this concept was associated with philosophical dialogue, the ability to conduct a discussion, listen and take into account the opinions of opponents, striving to find the path to the truth. The social philosophy of Marxism is based on the idea of creating a communist society built on the ideals of equality, justice, freedom, responsibility and mutual assistance. The ultimate goal of building such a society is to create conditions for the free self-realization of any individual, the fullest disclosure of his potential, where it would be possible to implement the principle: “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” However, to realize these ideals, the problem of the individual, unique existence of the individual, the richness of his inner world and needs has not been sufficiently worked out.
- 6. Phenomenology (E. Husserl, M. Merleau-Ponty, etc.) - a teaching that proceeds from the fact that it is necessary to cleanse our thinking of all superficial, artificial logical constructions, but at the same time it neglects the study of the essential world, independent of the human perception and comprehension. Phenomenologists believe that knowledge of the objective world is impossible, therefore they study only the world of meanings (calling them essences), the patterns in the formation of semantic reality. They believe that our idea of the world is not a reflection of the objective world itself, but is an artificial logical construction. To restore the true picture of the world, we must proceed only from our practical attitude towards things and processes. Our understanding of things should develop depending on how we use them, how they manifest themselves in relation to us, and not what their actual essence is that can explain cause-and-effect relationships. For example, for them it does not matter what physical or chemical properties the material from which the thing is created has, what bacteria live in it and what microscopic processes occur in it, for them its form and the functions that it performs are of greater importance. From their position, when talking about things, we should put into them only the practical meaning of their possible use. Speaking about natural and social processes, we must mean, first of all, their possible influence on us or the meaning that they carry for us. Thus, the phenomenological approach separates a person from reality, removes the focus on understanding the relationships and laws of the world, discredits the desire for wisdom and objective truth, and loses sight of the value of the experimental knowledge accumulated by humanity.
- 7. Hermeneutics (W. Dilthey, F. Schleiermacher, H.G. Gadamer, etc.) - a philosophical direction that develops methods for correctly understanding texts, avoiding one’s own bias, “pre-understanding” and, trying to penetrate not only the author’s intention, but also into his state during the writing process, into the atmosphere in which this text was created. At the same time, a very broad meaning is put into the concept of text; in their understanding, the entire reality we understand is a special type of text, since we comprehend it through linguistic structures, all our thoughts are expressed in language.
- 8. Psychoanalytic philosophy (Z. Freud, K. Jung, A. Adler, E. Fromm) - explores the patterns of functioning and development of the human psyche, the mechanisms of interaction between the conscious and unconscious. Analyzes various mental phenomena, the most typical human experiences, seeks to identify their nature and causes, and find ways to treat mental disorders.
- 9. Postmodernism (J. Deleuze, F. Guattari, J.-F. Lyotard, J. Derrida, etc.) is a philosophy that, on the one hand, is an expression of the self-perception of a person of the modern era, and on the other, seeks to destroy the classical a philosophical tradition that strives for knowledge of wisdom and truth. All classical philosophical truths and eternal values in it begin to be revised and discredited. If the modern era, the modern cultural situation (postmodernity) can be called a revolt of feelings against reason, emotions and worldviews against rationality, then the philosophy of postmodernism rebels against any form that can claim to limit individual freedom. However, on the path to such absolute freedom there are objectivity, truth, correctness, regularity, universality, responsibility, any norms, rules and forms of obligation. All this is declared to be a tool of the authorities and elites to manipulate public opinion. The highest values are freedom, novelty, spontaneity, unpredictability and pleasure. Life, from their point of view, is a kind of game that should not be taken seriously and responsibly. However, the destruction of those norms, ideals and values that were developed through trial and error based on the generalization of the experience of many generations of people is dangerous for the further existence of humanity, since this is the path to society creating unbearable conditions for life (the struggle of selfish motives, the constant use of each other, endless wars, growing environmental crisis, exacerbation of personal problems, etc.).
Indeed, as a result of such a postmodern trend, a simplified understanding of life begins to be valued in society; a person begins to understand the world in the way it is convenient for him to think about it. And therefore people begin to face many problems only because of their short-sightedness, only because they imagine life differently than it really is. Their expectations about life turn out to be deceived, their dreams and goals turn out to be unattainable or achievable, but lead to a different result than they expected, bringing them only disappointment. It is no coincidence that the origins of the modern global economic crisis come from the short-sightedness of state rulers, heads of financial institutions and ordinary people who, without calculating the consequences, accumulated loans and debts that far exceeded reasonable limits.