Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below

Students, graduate students, young scientists who use the knowledge base in their studies and work will be very grateful to you.

Posted on http://www.allbest.ru/

Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Tatarstan

Almetyevsk State Oil Institute

Department of Humanitarian Education and Sociology

Essay

in philosophy

on the topic “The problem of life and death”

Introduction
1. The concept of “life”
2. Definition of death from a scientific point of view
3. Life - death, immortality: philosophical and religious aspect
Conclusion
Bibliography

Introduction

In the modern world, medicine is undergoing a process of profound transformation. It becomes qualitatively different, not only more technologically equipped, but also more sensitive to the ethical aspects of healing. The ethical principles of new medicine (biomedicine) radically transform the basic provisions of the “Hippocratic Oath,” which for many centuries was the standard of medical moral consciousness. Traditional values of mercy, not harming the patient, and attitudes towards life and death take on a new meaning in the new cultural situation.

The severity of modern ethical problems in the study of life and death in medicine and philosophy is determined by many factors. Thus, biomedicine begins to recognize itself as a technological science, which opens up opportunities for manipulating the processes of life and dying. At the same time, new medicine comes into conflict with traditional values. A change in the spiritual situation in society towards the democratization of public consciousness, in which the idea of human rights begins to occupy a central place, leads to a change in the awareness of the degree of human responsibility for life. New criteria for human death have emerged - “Brain Death”, new approaches to individual death - “the right to die”.

The mysteries of life and death, the problems of the immortality of the soul - this worries everyone. This problem is relevant for all times. But the whole significance of the problem of death, its definition, its understanding is to solve the problems associated with life: to understand what the meaning of life is, how to live here on Earth, why to live, how to live your life in such a way, so that there is no feeling of dissatisfaction with the life lived, a feeling of its uselessness, failure. Addressing the problem of death has moral value when death is considered as the result of life, its overall summary assessment, as comprehension of the deep foundations of human existence. Man is the only creature who is aware of his mortality and can make it a subject of reflection. But the inevitability of one’s own death is not perceived by a person as an abstract truth, but causes severe emotional shocks and affects the very depths of his inner world.

Therefore, the task of philosophy and ethics is not to study “other worlds”, but to create a concept of life and death. And there is no doubt that, ultimately, this concept will be developed in the near future.

Life and death are the eternal problem of human existence. And it is the eternal dispute between a person’s desire for a morally worthy life and the frailty of his physical existence.

The problem of life and death is global, and personal, and world-historical, and purely individual. This is how every philosophical problem should be. And today it is increasingly being discussed in philosophy and ethics, moving to its rightfully central place in philosophy, and constitutes one of the signs of the renewal of spiritual life in our country. The problem is complex and multi-faceted. It can be divided into several levels - philosophical, psychological, ethical, medical, legal, sociological.

1. The concept of “life”

There are many definitions of life, as ideas about it have changed, the scientific picture of the world and its philosophical understanding have improved. Let's consider several well-known definitions. For natural science of the 19th century. The most successful can be considered the definition of F. Engels, according to which life is a way of existence of protein bodies, and this way of existence consists essentially in the constant self-renewal of the chemical components of these bodies. This definition was the foundation of dialectical materialism and many branches of natural science that developed on its basis, until the middle of the 20th century.

In the 20th century the concept of life deepened significantly. A qualitative structural difference between life at all its stages is that the structure of living things is dynamic and labile. Living things are not limited to protein as a substrate and metabolism as a function. Modern science has fully proven that the qualitative difference between living and nonliving things lies in the structure of their compounds, in structure and connections, in the features of functions, in the characteristics and organization of interacting processes. Aries A. F. Man in the face of death / A. F. Aries. - M.: Progress-“Progress-Academy”, 2005 - p. 42

In the second half of the 20th century. the following definition was proposed: life is a way of existence of matter that naturally arises at the level of high-molecular compounds and is characterized by dynamic, labile structures, a self-exchange function, as well as processes of self-regulation, self-healing and accumulation of hereditary information. In this definition, life is a dialectical unity of three features - form, functions, processes, while F. Engels' definition is a dialectical unity of two features - form and functions.

Among other definitions, we note the definitions of modern scientists: the Russian Chelikov and the Canadian Selye. According to the first, life is a way of existence of a specifically heterogeneous material substrate, the universality and uniqueness of which determine the expedient self-reproduction of all forms organic world in their unity and diversity. According to the definition of the famous Canadian biologist G. Selye (1907-1982), life is a process of continuous adaptation of organisms to constantly changing conditions of the external and internal environment. Adaptations consist in maintaining the structure and functions of all key systems of the body when exposed to environmental factors of various nature. Adaptations are the basis for the stability and productivity of all organisms.

In research into the problem of the origin of life, several main approaches can be distinguished. First of all, the substance approach should be mentioned. It was developed by A.I. Oparin, J. Haldane. The key significance for the origin of life, according to this approach, is the presence of a certain substance and its certain structures. One of the prominent representatives of this trend, V.A. Engelhardt believed that a genuine study of the problem of life should be based on the data of chemistry, and not mathematics. As for Oparin, he emphasized the irreducibility of biology to physics and chemistry. Alekseev P.V. History of philosophy / P.V. Alekseev. - M.: TK Welby, Prospekt Publishing House, 2009 - p.102

The next important approach is the functional approach, the main authors of which were A. N. Kolmogorov and A. A. Lyapunov. Proponents of this approach considered a living organism as a thermodynamic “black box”, i.e. they were only interested in the signals at the entrance to the system and at the exit from it. They considered the presence of “controlled processes” of information transfer to be a distinctive feature of living organisms. They did not attach much importance to the connection of life with certain chemical elements and even accepted the possibility of non-protein forms of life. One of the representatives of this trend, V. N. Veselovsky, recognized “dynamic self-preservation” as the defining feature of living things.

The emergence of life is associated with a number of important principles development: dissymmetry, historicism, etc. Great value to understand life has a life cycle. Life could only arise in an environment of peculiar dissymmetry, different from the usual environment of the biosphere. This process, according to L. Pasteur, is regulated by P. Curie’s principle, according to which dissymmetry can only be formed under the influence of a cause that has the same dissymmetry.

A. Einstein said well about the principle of historicism: “Life has one more element, although logically different from the elements of physics, but by no means mystical - this is the “element of history”.” The life cycle includes the totality of all phases of the development of an organism. In animals, there are simple and complex cycles. The latter includes metamorphoses, such as the transition from larva to pupa and then to butterfly. In higher plants, annual, biennial, and perennial life cycles can be distinguished.

2. Definition of death from a scientific point of view

Definition of death from a scientific point of view. Death, cessation of the vital activity of the organism and, as a result, the death of the individual as a separate living system, accompanied by the decomposition of proteins and other biopolymers, which are the main material substrate of life. The basis of modern dialectical-materialist ideas about death is the idea expressed by F. Engels: “Even now, that physiology that does not consider death as an essential moment of life is not considered scientific..., which does not understand that the negation of life is essentially contained in life itself, so that life is always thought of in relation to its necessary result, which is always contained within it in embryo—death.”

Sometimes the concept of partial death is distinguished, i.e. death of a group of cells, part or whole organ. In unicellular organisms - protozoa - the natural death of an individual manifests itself in the form of division, since it is associated with the cessation of the existence of a given individual and the emergence of two new ones in its place. The death of an individual is usually accompanied by the formation of a corpse. Depending on the causes of death, higher animals and humans are distinguished: natural death, which occurs as a result of a long, consistently developing extinction of the main vital functions of the body as a result of aging, and premature (pathological) death, caused by painful conditions of the body, damage to vital functions. organs (brain, heart, lungs, liver, etc.). Premature death can be sudden, i.e. occur within a few minutes or even seconds. Violent death can be the result of an accident, suicide, or murder.

The death of warm-blooded animals and humans is associated primarily with the cessation of breathing and blood circulation. Therefore, there are 2 main stages of death: the so-called clinical death and the so-called biological, or true, death that follows it. After the period clinical death When a full restoration of vital functions is still possible, biological death occurs - the irreversible cessation of physiological processes in cells and tissues. All processes associated with death are studied by thanatology.

3. Life - death, immortality: philosophical and religious aspect

problem life death immortality

It is obvious that the problem of the meaning and purpose of human existence, the problem of life and death, is the central problem of philosophy.

Naturally, when each person is a separate link in the endless chain of all humanity, it is quite easy to determine the meaning of the existence of this separate link - because without it the chain will break. But those same materialists claim that it is not only the individual who dies, but all of humanity. In general, nothing is eternal under the sun. And the sun will sooner or later go out, and even a space flight to another galaxy will not save humanity, because sooner or later the other galaxy will explode, and in the end the entire Universe will shrink back into an infinitesimal size. It is known that, in accordance with the concept of universal evolutionism, 15-20 million years ago all the matter of our Universe was concentrated in a “singularity” - a certain physical state that did not obey the usual laws of physics. All matter was concentrated in an unusually small volume with gigantic density and monstrous temperature. The latest research shows that this "singularity" was created out of nothing. And from this “nothing” everything arose, so that after a certain time it could turn into this “nothing” again.

Life is the opposite of lifelessness, and death is the opposite of birth, for death and birth are the poles and boundaries of human life, its limits. Demichev A.V. Discourses of death / A.V. Demichev. - St. Petersburg: Inapress, 2007 - p. 56 Death is even more necessary than birth, since this or that person might not have been born, since his birth depended on many accidents. But once he was born, nothing can save him from death.

Life and death are eternal themes in the spiritual culture of humanity in all its divisions. Prophets and founders of religions, philosophers and moralists, figures of art and literature, teachers and doctors thought about them. There is hardly an adult who, sooner or later, would not think about the meaning of his existence, his impending death and the achievement of immortality. These thoughts come to the minds of children and completely young people what poems and prose, dramas and tragedies, letters and diaries say. Only early childhood or senile insanity relieves a person of the need to solve these problems. A.P. Chekhov wrote in one of his letters: “Philosophize and your mind will spin,” meaning one or another way of solving the problems of life and death. However, true philosophizing is impossible without addressing these eternal themes. In fact, we are talking about a triad: life - death - immortality, since all the spiritual systems of humanity proceeded from the idea of the contradictory unity of these phenomena. The greatest attention here was paid to death and the acquisition of immortality in another life, and human life itself was interpreted as a moment allotted to a person so that he could adequately prepare for death and immortality. With a few exceptions, all times and peoples have spoken quite negatively about life. Life is suffering (Buddha, Schopenhauer, etc.); life is a dream (Vedas, Plato, La Bruyère, Pascal); life is an abyss of evil.

Proverbs and sayings of different nations like “Life is a penny” speak about this. Ortega y Gasset defined man neither as a body nor as a spirit, but as a specifically human drama. Indeed, in this sense, the life of every person is dramatic and tragic: no matter how successfully life turns out, no matter how long it is, its end is inevitable. Sokolov S.V. Social philosophy-textbook. manual for universities. / S.V. Sokolov. - M.: UNITY-DANA, 2003 - p. 122.

Death and potential immortality are the most powerful lure for the philosophizing mind, for all our life's affairs must, in one way or another, be measured against the eternal. A person is doomed to think about death and this is his difference from an animal, which is mortal, but does not know about it. True, animals sense the approach of death, especially domestic ones, and their dying behavior most often resembles a painful search for solitude and calm. Death in general is the price to pay for the complication of a biological system. Single-celled organisms are practically immortal and the amoeba is a happy creature in this sense. When an organism becomes multicellular, a mechanism of self-destruction, as it were, is built into it at a certain stage of development, associated with the genome.

For centuries, the best minds of humanity have been trying to at least theoretically refute this thesis, prove, and then bring real immortality to life. However, the ideal of such immortality is not the existence of an amoeba and not an angelic life in a better world. From this point of view, a person should live forever, being in the constant prime of life, reminiscent of Goethe's Faust.

A person cannot come to terms with the fact that he will have to leave this magnificent world where life is in full swing. To be an eternal spectator of this grandiose picture of the Universe, not to experience the “saturation of days” like the biblical prophets - could anything be more tempting? But, thinking about this, you begin to understand that death is perhaps the only thing before which everyone is equal: poor and rich, dirty and clean, loved and unloved. Although both in ancient times and in our days, attempts have been and are constantly being made to convince the world that there are people who have been “there” and returned back, but common sense refuses to believe this. Faith is required, a miracle is required, such as the Gospel Christ performed, “trampling down death by death.” It has been noticed that a person’s wisdom is often expressed in a calm attitude towards life and death. At the same time, many great people realized this problem in tragic tones. Oparin A.I. Life as a form of movement of matter. / A.I. Oparin. - M., 2009 - p. 99 Outstanding Russian biologist I.I. Mechnikov, who reflected on the possibility of “cultivating the instinct of natural death,” wrote about L.N. Tolstoy: “When Tolstoy, tormented by the impossibility of solving this problem and haunted by the fear of death, asked himself whether it was possible family love to calm his soul, he immediately saw that this was a vain hope. Why, he asked himself, raise children who would soon find themselves in the same critical condition as their father? Why should they live? Why should I love them, raise them and take care of them? For the same despair that is in me, or for stupidity? Loving them, I cannot hide the truth from them - every step leads them to the knowledge of this truth. And truth is death."

So, we can highlight the first dimension of the problem of life, death and immortality - biological, for these states are essentially different sides one phenomenon. The hypothesis of panspermia, the constant presence of life and death in the Universe, and their constant reproduction in suitable conditions, has long been put forward. Stars, nebulae, planets, comets and other cosmic bodies are born, live and die, and in this sense, no one and nothing disappears. This aspect is most developed in Eastern philosophy and mystical teachings, based on the fundamental impossibility of understanding the meaning of this universal circuit only with reason.

Awareness of the unity of human life and humanity with all life on the planet, with its biosphere, as well as potentially possible forms of life in the Universe, has enormous ideological significance. This idea of the sanctity of life, the right to life for any living being, by virtue of the very fact of birth, belongs to the eternal ideals of humanity. In the limit, the entire Universe and the Earth are considered as living beings, and interference in the still poorly understood laws of their life is fraught with an ecological crisis. Man appears as a small particle of this living Universe, a microcosm that has absorbed all the richness of the macrocosm. The feeling of “reverence for life” (A. Schweitzer), the feeling of one’s involvement in amazing world living things are, to one degree or another, inherent in any ideological system. Even if biological, bodily life is considered an inauthentic, transitive form of human existence, then in these cases (for example, in Christianity) human flesh can and should acquire a different, flourishing state.

The second dimension of the problem of life, death and immortality is associated with understanding the specifics of human life and its difference from the life of all living things. For more than thirty centuries, sages, prophets and philosophers different countries and peoples are trying to find this watershed. Most often it is believed that the whole point is in the awareness of the fact of impending death: we know that we will die and are feverishly looking for the path to immortality. All other living things quietly and peacefully complete their journey, having managed to reproduce new life or serve as fertilizer for another life. A person is doomed to a lifetime of painful thoughts about the meaning of life or its meaninglessness, tormenting himself, and often others, with this, and is forced to drown these damned questions in wine or drugs. This is partly true, but the question arises: what to do with the fact of the death of a newborn child who has not yet had time to understand anything, or a mentally retarded person who is not able to understand anything? Should we consider the beginning of a person’s life to be the moment of conception (which cannot be accurately determined in most cases) or the moment of birth?

It is known that the dying L.N. Tolstoy, addressing those around him, told them to turn their gaze to millions of other people, and not look at one lion. Unknown, and not touching anyone except the mother, the death of a small creature from starvation somewhere in Africa and the magnificent funeral of world famous leaders in the face of eternity have no differences. In this sense, the English poet D. Donne is deeply right when he said that the death of each person diminishes all of humanity and therefore “never ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for you.”

It is obvious that the specifics of human life, death and immortality are not directly related to the mind and its manifestations, to the successes and achievements of a person during his life, to his assessment by his contemporaries and descendants. The death of many geniuses at a young age is undoubtedly tragic, but there is no reason to believe that their subsequent life, if it had taken place, would have given the world something even more brilliant. There is some kind of not entirely clear, but empirically obvious pattern at work here, expressed by the Christian thesis: “God chooses the best first.”

In this sense, life and death are not covered by the categories of rational knowledge and do not fit into the framework of a rigid deterministic model of the world and man. It is possible to discuss these concepts in cold blood up to a certain limit. It is determined by the personal interest of each person and his ability to intuitively comprehend the ultimate foundations of human existence. In this respect, everyone is like a swimmer who has jumped into the waves in the middle of the open sea. You need to rely only on yourself, despite human solidarity, faith in God, the Supreme Mind, etc. The uniqueness of man, the uniqueness of the individual, is manifested here to the highest degree. Genetics have calculated that the probability of this particular person being born from these parents is one chance in one hundred trillion cases. If this has already happened, then what an amazing, imaginative diversity human meanings existence appears before a person when he thinks about life and death?

The third dimension of this problem is associated with the idea of achieving immortality, which sooner or later becomes the focus of a person’s attention, especially if he has reached adulthood. There are several types of immortality associated with the fact that a person leaves behind his business, children, grandchildren, etc. (of course, not everyone), the products of his activity, personal belongings, as well as fruits spiritual production(ideas, images, etc.).

The first type of immortality is in the genes of the offspring, and is close to most people. In addition to the principled opponents of marriage and family and misogynists, many seek to perpetuate themselves in this very way. One of the powerful drives of a person is the desire to see his own traits in his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The transmission has been traced in the royal dynasties of Europe certain signs(for example, the nose of the Habsburgs) for several generations. This is associated with the inheritance of not only physical characteristics, but also the moral principles of a family occupation or craft, etc. Historians have established that many outstanding figures of Russian culture of the 19th century. were related (albeit distantly) to each other. One century includes four generations.

The second type of immortality is mummification of the body with the expectation of its eternal preservation. The experience of the Egyptian pharaohs, the practice of modern embalming (V.I. Lenin, Mao Zedong, etc.) indicate that in a number of civilizations this is considered accepted. Achievements of technology at the end of the 20th century. made it possible to deep freeze the bodies of the dead with the expectation that doctors of the future would revive them and cure now incurable diseases. This fetishization of human corporeality is characteristic mainly of totalitarian societies, where the power of the elderly becomes the basis of the stability of the state. Karmin A. S. Philosophy: textbook. for universities / A. S. Karmin, G. G. Bernatsky. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2009. - p. 101

The third type of immortality is the hope for the dissolution of the body and spirit of the deceased in the Universe, their entry into the cosmic “body”, into the eternal circulation of matter. This is typical for a number of eastern civilizations, especially Japanese. The Islamic model of attitude towards life and death and various materialistic or, more precisely, naturalistic concepts are close to this solution. Here we are talking about the loss of personal qualities and the preservation of particles of the former body that can become part of other organisms. This highly abstract type of immortality is unacceptable to most people and is emotionally rejected.

The fourth path to immortality is related to results life creativity person. It is not for nothing that members of various academies are awarded the title “immortals”. A scientific discovery, the creation of a brilliant work of literature and art, showing the path to humanity in a new faith, the creation of a philosophical text, an outstanding military victory and a demonstration of statesmanship - all this leaves a person’s name in the memory of grateful descendants. Heroes and prophets, passion-bearers and saints, architects and inventors are immortalized. The names of the cruelest tyrants and the greatest criminals are forever preserved in the memory of mankind. This raises the question of the ambiguity of assessing the scale of a person’s personality. It seems that the more human lives and broken human destinies lie on the conscience of this or that historical character, the greater his chances of getting into history and gaining immortality there. The ability to influence the lives of hundreds of millions of people, the “charisma” of power evokes in many a state of mystical horror mixed with reverence. There are legends and stories about such people that are passed down from generation to generation.

The fifth path to immortality is associated with the achievement of various states that science calls “altered states of consciousness.” They are mainly a product of the system of psychotraining and meditation adopted in Eastern religions and civilizations. Here, a “breakthrough” into other dimensions of space and time, travel to the past and future, ecstasy and enlightenment, a mystical feeling of belonging to Eternity are possible. We can say that the meaning of death and immortality, as well as the ways to achieve it, are reverse side problems of the meaning of life. It is obvious that these issues are resolved differently, depending on the leading spiritual orientation of a particular civilization.

In the history of the spiritual life of mankind there have been many concepts of life, death and immortality, based on a non-religious and atheistic approach to the world and man. Irreligious people and atheists are often reproached for the fact that for them earthly life is everything, and death is an insurmountable tragedy, which, in essence, makes life meaningless. L.N. Tolstoy, in his famous confession, painfully tried to find the meaning in life that would not be destroyed by the death that inevitably awaits every person. For a believer, everything is clear here, but for an unbeliever, an alternative of three possible ways to solve this problem arises.

The first way is to accept the idea, which is confirmed by science and simply common sense, that in the world it is impossible to completely destroy even an elementary particle, but conservation laws apply. Matter, energy and, it is believed, information and organization are conserved complex systems. Consequently, particles of our “I” after death will enter into the eternal cycle of existence and in this sense will be immortal. True, they will not have consciousness, the soul with which our “I” is connected. Moreover, this type of immortality is acquired by a person throughout his life. You can even say in the form of a paradox: we are alive only because we die every second. Every day, red blood cells die off in the blood, epithelial cells on our mucous membranes die, hair falls out, etc. Therefore, it is in principle impossible to fix life and death as absolute opposites, either in reality or in thought. These are two sides of the same coin.

In the face of death, people are in the full sense of the word equal to each other, like any living creature, which erases the inequality on which earthly life is based. Therefore, a calm perception of the thought of the absence of eternal life of my “I” and an understanding of the inevitability of merging with “indifferent” nature is one of the ways of a non-religious approach to the problem of immortality. True, in this case the problem of the Absolute arises, on which you can base your moral decisions. A.P. Chekhov wrote: “You need to believe in God, and if you don’t have faith, then don’t take its place with hype, but search, search, search alone, alone with your conscience.”

The second way is to gain immortality in human affairs, in the fruits of material and spiritual production, which are included in the treasury of humanity. To do this, first of all, we need confidence that humanity is immortal and is pursuing a cosmic destiny in the spirit of the ideas of K. E. Tsiolkovsky and other cosmists. If self-destruction in a thermonuclear environmental catastrophe, as well as as a result of some kind of cosmic cataclysm, is realistic for humanity, then in this case the question remains open. Among the ideals and driving forces of this type of immortality, the struggle for the liberation of humanity from class and social oppression, the struggle for national independence and statehood, the struggle for peace and justice, etc. most often appeared. This gives the life of such fighters a higher meaning, which merges with immortality.

The third path to immortality is, as a rule, chosen by people whose scale of activity does not extend beyond the boundaries of their home and immediate environment. Here we can talk about a movement “in depth”, about what is expressed in the words of Goethe’s Mephistopheles: “Theory, my friend, is dry, but the tree of life turns green.” Without expecting eternal bliss or eternal torment, without going into the “tricks” of the mind that connects the microcosm (i.e., man) with the macrocosm, millions of people simply float in the stream of life, feeling themselves to be a part of it. Immortality for them is not in the eternal memory of blessed humanity, but in everyday affairs and concerns. “Believing in God is not difficult... No, you believe in man!” - Chekhov wrote this without at all expecting that he himself would become an example of this type of attitude towards life and death. To characterize it, L.L. Kogan proposed the term “twisted” as a criterion characterizing all possible signs of vital activity necessary for the normal functioning of a human being.

Modern thanatology (the study of death) is one of the “hot” points of natural science and humanities. Interest in the problem of death is due to several reasons. Firstly, this is a situation of a global civilized crisis, which, in principle, can lead to the self-destruction of humanity. Secondly, the value attitude towards human life and death has changed significantly in connection with the general situation on Earth.

In recent years, euthanasia (literally “happy death”) has attracted particular attention as a new phenomenon in the life of society, requiring deep philosophical reflection. The term itself has appeared since the time of F. Bacon, who proposed to call this an easy death in order to stop suffering from incurable diseases. Obviously, this phenomenon is based on the concept of a person’s right not only to life, but also to death, which also applies to the phenomenon of suicide. Aries F. Man in the face of death / A.F. Aries. - M.: Progress-“Progress-Academy”, 2005 - p.82

Distinguish the following types euthanasia: active, voluntary; active, involuntary; passive, voluntary; passive, involuntary.

When deciding the legality and moral validity of euthanasia, doctors have to solve a dilemma that has been known since the time of Hippocrates: on the one hand, the doctor should not be a murderer, even at the request of the patient, and on the other hand, he must alleviate the fate of the sufferer. In the modern world, euthanasia is legally permitted in the Netherlands, but in other countries, including Russia, it is prohibited. However, the problem also exists in a number of countries (USA, etc.); even devices for painless death have been invented, which the patient himself can activate. In the history of philosophical thought there have been many statements regarding the right of a person to make such a decision.

In a number of Western countries, a “living wake” is becoming a tradition, when a terminally ill person, sensing the approach of death, asks for a gathering of family and friends. For several decades now, “hospices” have been operating - hospitals for hopelessly ill patients, where you can die “humanly.”

If a person has something like a death instinct (as Freud wrote about), then everyone has a natural, innate right not only to live as he was born, but also to die in human conditions. One of the features of modernity is that humanism and humane relations between people are the basis and guarantee of survival for humanity. If earlier any social and natural disasters left hope that the majority of people would survive and restore what was destroyed, now vitality can be considered a concept derived from humanism.

Conclusion

Realizing the finitude of his earthly existence and wondering about the meaning of life, a person begins to develop his own attitude towards life and death. And it is quite clear that this topic, perhaps the most important for every person, occupies a central place in the entire culture of mankind. The history of world culture reveals the eternal connection between the search for the meaning of human life and attempts to unravel the mystery of non-existence, as well as with the desire to live forever and, if not materially, then at least spiritually and morally, defeat death.

Life and death... Aren't these stages of the same process? Isn't dying part of life? Philosophers and scientists try to ask difficult questions. It’s just unclear to what extent we know how to answer them today. Have you completely forgotten how?.. How can you be useful to a living, competent meeting when discussing such an abandoned topic? Perhaps the experience of one’s own life—everyone has their own. The experience of your own death?.. This is already more interesting. But here complex games usually begin: “No one has returned from there yet,” “those returning have no proof that they really went there,” “halfway is not yet,” etc.

Reflecting on the problem of life and death, you inevitably come to the need to answer the question: what can a person be responsible for and what cannot he? After all, the level of a person’s responsibility for his fulfilled or failed life depends on the degree of freedom to choose alternatives to his life.

Problems of life and death have been developed by philosophers and ethicists over the centuries. Why are we turning to them again? Because these are eternal problems that people will always think about as long as humanity exists. New social and moral experience is constantly accumulating and the need arises to raise questions again and give them a new solution. And the social and moral experience of the 20th century provided especially a lot of material for generalization. Therefore, questions of life and death have arisen in our time with great urgency.

But still, the search for and finding the meaning of life and the actions of each person is of a purely individual, personal nature. We can say that the meaning of death and immortality, as well as the ways to achieve it, are the other side of the problem of the meaning of life. It is obvious that these issues are resolved differently, depending on the leading spiritual orientation of a particular civilization. The solution to the problems of life, death and immortality is strongly influenced by the existing economic, political and social state of society. Sooner or later a person thinks about such eternal problems as life, its meaning, death and possible ways gaining immortality. Every person has some concept of life, death and immortality, which accumulate from various sources.

This work makes an attempt to systematize and generalize the main criteria for the meaning of life and attempts to achieve immortality. If a person has something like a death instinct, then everyone has a natural, innate right not only to live as he was born, but also to die in human conditions. One of the features of the 20th century is that humanism and humane relations between people are the basis and guarantee of survival for humanity. If earlier any social and natural disasters left hope that the majority of people would survive and restore what was destroyed, now vitality can be considered a concept derived from humanism.

Thus, philosophical reflection on life and death turns out to be necessary for solving specific problems associated with the process of dying, determining the moment of death and overcoming the fear of death. Philosophy as a need of the human spirit allows a person to remain an individual in the face of death.

Bibliography

1. Alekseev P.V. History of philosophy / P.V. Alekseev. - M.: TK Welby, Prospekt Publishing House, 2009 - 240 p.

2. Aries A.F. Man in the face of death / A.F. Aries. - M.: Progress-“Progress-Academy”, 2005 - 328 p.

3. Weber M. Sociology of religion. / M. Weber. Favorites, Image of Society. M.: 2009. - 132 p.

4. Demichev A.V. Discourses of death / A.V. Demichev. - St. Petersburg: Inapress, 2007 - 144 p.

5. Karmin A. S. Philosophy: textbook. for universities / A. S. Karmin, G. G. Bernatsky. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2009. - 169 p.

6. Oparin A.I. Life as a form of movement of matter. / A.I. Oparin. - M., 2009 - 124 p.

7. Sokolov S.V. Social philosophy-textbook. manual for universities. / S.V. Sokolov. - M.: UNITY-DANA, 2003 - 440 p.

Posted on Allbest.ru

...

Introduction

The relevance of the topic is due to the fact that in modern conditions the range of various possibilities of life activity that arises before a person and is carried out by him is constantly expanding. Under such conditions of real multiversion of life styles, behavior patterns, and ways of life, the problem of a person’s self-determination regarding their choice becomes extremely aggravated. To make such a choice, a modern person must have a high degree of life competence, an integral part of which is a responsible attitude towards life - both his own and life in general. The responsible attitude of the individual to life is a guarantee not only of his personal productivity, but also the emergence of such dialogic social forms in which the subject of discussion and organization would be the possibilities for the further existence and development of humanity, life in general.

The specificity of the modern understanding of the phenomenon of responsibility lies in the fact that it is no longer considered as a characteristic that is essential for the performance of a certain type of activity, but rather as a necessary characteristic of human life as a whole, as the most important life principle of a modern person, without which nothing would be possible. self-preservation of humanity (G. Jonas), impossible universal macroethics as an ethics of responsibility (K.-O. Apel), impossible human communication (J. Gabermas, E. Levinas, M. Riedel, P. Ricoeur), etc. Analytical intelligence in the modern problem field of responsibility shows that it is the communicative paradigm that is probably the most fruitful for understanding the phenomenon of responsibility, since it allows us to manifest and synthetically combine its most important dimensions - personal (existential), socio-political (institutional), global (perspective).

1. Problems of the value of life and responsibility for life in philosophy

Within the framework of communicative philosophy, an ontological in nature “double regulatory principle of responsibility” arises, which consists in the fact that people in modern conditions must act in such a way as to ensure the survival of the human race.

Philosophizing about life and death is, of course, nothing new. Moreover, it is difficult to find a philosopher in history who would ignore this problem. Heraclitus, as we know, stated that life and death are actually the same thing. Plato's thesis that philosophy itself is only a preparation for death and the ability to die, in various variations and countless times, was reproduced by other authors.

The theme of death is leading in any religion, since it is from the standpoint of its inevitability that the meaning and values of human earthly existence are revealed. It is enough to recall reincarnation, the wheel of death-life and karma in many Eastern religious and philosophical systems. In the Christian understanding, death itself is a transition to a new eternal life (“trampling on death by death”). In the materialist tradition, death was represented as complete (Charvaka Lokayata, Epicureanism, Marxism) or partial (Spinozaism, Russian cosmism) dissolution in nature. But the fact that earthly conscious life is only a short moment against the backdrop of something infinite and unknown (“a priceless gift, a random gift, life, why were you given to me?”), and that death ultimately equalizes everyone people were generally accepted.

The ontologically oriented principle of responsibility, according to Apel, should also act as a form of application of final comprehension moral standards in life practice and can be the basis of metaethics - i.e. ethics of responsibility, which considers its main problem to be the human situation in its general form, taken as a collective, global, existential situation. Only on this path, according to Apel, can we look for an answer to the question of whether such an ethical norm is possible, which would be mandatory for every individual and would serve the consent and agreement of people in their decisions practical problems. In this ontological perspective, the principle of responsibility no longer acquires so much metaphysical as operational significance. In turn, for the effective implementation of an operational analysis of the principle of responsibility, it should, in our opinion, be considered in the problem field of the art of living, as a component of the life competence of an individual, and subjected to structuring, which represents the goal of this work.

In the problematic field of the art of living, the principle of responsibility can be considered as a responsible attitude of an individual towards his life. An important theoretical and methodological basis for the structural and functional analysis of this relationship can be the answer to the question, which, according to Apel, can be formulated as follows: “For what?”, “Before whom?”, “In relation to whom?” I am responsible. Since we are talking about a responsible attitude towards life, it is advisable to begin thinking about these issues by revealing the purpose in itself and the intrinsic value of life as such.

The purpose of life in itself has several dimensions; they can be conditionally designated as cosmic, socio-historical and individual-personal integrity of life. The cosmic integrity of life means that life is a cosmic phenomenon, all forms of life are inextricably interconnected and each of them has its own structural Value within the single life process of nature. Human life is one of the forms (it is believed to be the highest form known to us) of the development of nature. According to modern ideas about life on planet Earth, it unfolds within a single system of geobiocenosis, and in the last few centuries, when the human mind has transformed into a new planetary force, within the boundaries of noogeobiocenosis.

The socio-historical integrity of life means that the life of mankind is a single, gradual natural-historical process, within which each new generation “stands on the shoulders of the previous one” and “paves the way” for the next. The integrity of human life is determined by the presence of certain generic characteristics of the species Homo sapiens, the sociocultural integrity of society, the mutual influence of different cultures and the heredity of civilizations. As for the latter characteristics, they are of a specific historical nature and vary in the Range from almost imperceptible connections in the early stages of human history (which became the basis of the theory of “local cultures”) to the formation in modern conditions of humanity as a single subject of historical development.

Individual-personal integrity of life means both the presence and unity within the life of an individual of certain individual (natural) and personal (sociocultural) prerequisites and traits, and the unity of all stages of a person’s life path, all forms of its life activity, the presence within a person’s life of a feature that can be described as follows: “action gives birth to habit, habit gives birth to character, character gives birth to destiny.”

The identified features of life’s self-purposefulness also determine the qualities of its self-worth. There is an idea that the intrinsic value of life, in particular human life, can only be substantiated by theological and religious means. While respecting the “divine” justification for the intrinsic value of life, we, however, do not consider it the only possible one. Just as they say that since life is a gift from God, it has unconditional value for man, so we can deduce this value from the fact that it is a gift from Nature. Life is a cosmic phenomenon - a cosmic given and assigned to a person - therefore it has intrinsic value for it. Self-valuable and all forms of life of nature, since they act as necessary elements of a single life process, and human life unfolds within the noogeobiosphere. From here it follows certain forms responsible attitude of a person to life:

- “cosmic” responsibility, i.e. responsibility for preserving life on planet Earth;

- “ecological” responsibility, as responsibility for the preservation of different forms of life;

- “universal” responsibility, as responsibility for preserving the life of the human race.

The socio-historical integrity of life indicates the intrinsic value of socio-historical, national-cultural and civilizational forms of life and life, the intrinsic value of family ties, within which the primary entry into the sociocultural environment occurs and the primary connection of generations is realized. This gives rise to certain forms of responsibility, such as:

A responsible attitude towards history, which provides not only for the preservation of historical monuments or historical forms of experience, but also such an attitude towards history that does not allow it to be “redrawn” to suit the needs of the day, to willfully repaint “white spots” into “black” or vice versa;

A responsible attitude towards national culture, its assets, which involves the study, preservation, enhancement of national culture and a responsible attitude towards other cultures, which consists of both the assimilation of the assets of other national cultures and their critical perception, which takes into account the characteristics of the “mother” culture , compatibility of forms of cultural experience of different nations, as well as awareness of oneself as a bearer of a certain cultural tradition and as its representative in the process of communication with other cultures;

Responsible attitude towards civilizational assets, their assimilation, preservation and enhancement; taking into account the fact that the “benefits” of civilization are not always favorable for the development of culture and the preservation of life (both its various biological forms and the human race), preventing this as far as possible;

Responsible attitude towards your family, i.e. a feeling of unity with your family, knowledge of the history of your family and awareness of yourself as its successor; respect and care for your loved ones - parents, children, spouses and others.

The intrinsic value of individual personal life is determined by the fact that it is a certain gift (of God or Nature). And a person from the moment of birth, regardless of his desire, accepts this gift. But, at the same time, this is a “gift” that a person disposes of independently, i.e. she is free in her attitude to life. Life is a gift that is like a “puzzle” that a person is forced to solve on his own throughout his existence. After all, his life is not a specific assignment, but a process of individual life-creation. Therefore, the life of each person is unique and inimitable, which also provides it with intrinsic value. The intrinsic value of a person’s life can be defined, following I. Kant, as follows: a person (like his life) cannot be a means to achieve any revenge, even the best, but only a goal.

From this follow the following forms of a person’s responsible attitude towards his own life, which constitute its structure:

Responsibility for finding your calling and purpose, your own originality and uniqueness; this is the so-called transcendental responsibility - responsibility for the necessity and opportunity to be free, i.e. be yourself;

Responsibility for organizing your own life, the process of living; this is the so-called existential responsibility for building one’s life path and relating to it as a whole - a way of realizing transcendental freedom - possibility;

Responsibility for organizing communicative relationships in the process of “coexistence” with others; This is the so-called communicative responsibility, which is determined by the tasks that follow from the general existence of a person as a “person” (in full meaning this word) with other people - in families and in enterprises, in unions and trade unions, in school and university, in the city and state, in the party and church" (5, 82);

Responsibility for one's own decisions, actions and actions is the so-called situational responsibility, which determines the specific relationship of an individual to the components of his life world - the natural, social, cultural, social environment, his own microcosm - in specific life situations.

The types and forms of a person’s responsible attitude to life, which we have identified above, form the horizontal-spatial structure of this attitude. But it also has a vertical time slice. This means that responsibility can be previous and subsequent.

The characteristic of previous responsibility given by I. O. Ilyin is worthy of attention: “Previous responsibility is a living sense of impending and at the same time a living will to perfection. Not yet realized, it (the person) already knows about his responsibility. And this feeling responsibility - immediately disciplines it, concentrates it and breathes it in." To understand the fundamental significance of this form of responsibility, it is enough to imagine a person who takes on some business and has no previous responsibility: “Who would want to be treated by an irresponsible doctor? Who would entrust their children to an irresponsible educator? Who would want to receive prayers and sacraments from an irresponsible priest "What kind of commander will win a battle if he commands irresponsible officers who lead irresponsible soldiers into battle?" .

Previous responsibility includes:

The direction of life-creativity towards perfection, towards the “best” solution, so that it is life-creating both for the individual herself and for her environment - other people and her life world;

Determining your capabilities, your role and responsibilities in preserving and enriching life;

Foreseeing the results and consequences of one’s intervention in other life processes and actively influencing these processes in order to maintain and develop positive trends and prevent possible negative consequences;

Willingness to accept sanctions (legal, moral, socio-psychological) for causing harm to one or another form of life, as well as willingness to endure reproaches for what he could have done and did not do, for what he could have done differently, but did not did, the ability to use previous similar consciences when making subsequent decisions.

The next responsibility lies in the fact that a person recognizes his own action as such, behind a “premeditated intention”, supports its underlying grounds, motives and consequences, i.e. takes responsibility. This means recognizing that I myself am responsible for the consequences of my activities, and the guilt and merit of my actions belongs to me. Therefore, I am ready to bear the “payback” under the law on responsibility, and I perceive the assessment (self-assessment) of my own activities and its consequences precisely as such a “payback”.

In modern conditions, the next responsibility, as shown by G. Popas, first of all means ensuring the requirements for the existence of humanity in the future. The principle of responsibility formulated in this way is further developed in the ethics of the discourse of K.-O. Apel, from whom he acquires something new, a communicative dimension. Very important, in our opinion, is Apel’s idea that “from the very beginning, in the subsoil of the main requirement of the ethics of discourse - the discursively organized joint responsibility of people for their collective actions - lies the postulate of a necessary connection between the imperative of protecting the existence and dignity of man and the social the emancipative imperative of progress in the realization of humanity." Completely in the spirit of Kant’s “Critique of Utopian Mind,” Apel states: “every community of arguers inevitably, at least in the form of a counterfactual provision of an ideal communicative community, appeals to what constitutes the moment of utopian progress - to the constitutive existence in the future of man as an intelligent being.” .

Abstracting from the assessment of the means of substantiating Apel's indicated idea, we consider his very principle of discursively organized joint responsibility of people for their collective actions to be a fundamental imperative for self-preservation and the further existence of humanity. Moreover, in our opinion, language can be about not only the future of a person as an intelligent person, but also as a spiritual being. This possibility can already be seen in Apel’s criticism of the understanding of rationality as a value-neutral logical conclusion or a mathematical apparatus of a certain instrumental application. In addition, Apel believes that “both forms of rationality are forms of interaction of communication between people as subjects of actions and deeds. But only consensual-communicative rationality is conveyed by rules or norms that are a priori in nature, in contrast to the taken into account interests of an individual; strategic rationality is based exclusively on the application of instrumental-technical rationality in relationships between people. And therefore it cannot (at least on its own) be a sufficient basis for ethics."

And, in the end, one more question, the clarification of which is very important for determining the ways and means of forming a responsible attitude of the individual towards life - the question, however, is to whom/what we are responsible.

Traditionally, the authorities to which a person “gives” an answer include society, which is fixed in its moral and legal system; family, yourself, your conscience. Within the religious worldview, another, supreme authority is added - God. There are a number of other authorities, ideas about which are found in various reflections on this problem and are gradually being established in the theory of responsibility in modern conditions. But before we single them out, let’s find out the reasons for talking specifically about such authorities.

In our opinion, the authorities to which a person “gives an answer” are determined by the subject of a responsible attitude, in other words, we answer to what (whom) we treat responsibly. Based on this, we can identify the following instances of our “response”.

First of all, it's nature. Nature as the Universe (the contours of this authority are only beginning to emerge in the consciousness of modern man) and nature as the natural environment in which human life takes place. Regardless of whether a person perceives nature as an authority to which she is responsible or not, in practice, a person is responsible to nature for his life activity. Moreover, humanity finds itself on the verge of a global environmental catastrophe and sees that there are very few chances and time left to avoid the death penalty for its irresponsible attitude towards the natural environment, the life of nature. Not only man as a generic being, but also the individual perceives nature as an authority to which he is responsible, in the case when he feels his involvement in it, loves it as something dear and close, necessary for his life.

Secondly, this is humanity. Here we need to pay attention not only to the fact that the consequences of the activities of each individual can have a global scale in modern conditions, but also to the fact that, as Jean-Paul Sartre said, “When we choose ourselves, we choose all people.” In other words, if I consider it possible for myself to act one way and not another, if I consider certain character traits possible and valuable for myself, i.e. I choose a certain personal image of myself and my life activity, then by this I assume that all others can be like me, or act like me. So, by choosing my own image, my own way of life, I choose all people. From here it follows that I am responsible for the process of my life-creativity not only to myself, but also to all humanity.

Thirdly, this is society. Considering society as an authority to which a person is responsible, one should not identify society as a civil society with the state. In certain areas of personal life, a person is also responsible to the state. But a sign of a developed democratic society is a fairly definite regulation of control by the State over the life of a person, especially a person as an individual. The identification of society and the state as an authority to which a person gives an answer is not a direct path to totalitarianism. On the other hand, the elimination of the state from the horizon of the individual’s responsible attitude towards life is a direct path to the decline of the collapse of the state, and therefore the decline public life, the life of its citizens. Civil responsibility is one of the important forms of a person’s responsible attitude to life, since the latter takes place in a specific society, one of the main forms of ensuring the existence of which in modern conditions is the state. But the individual bears responsibility to society primarily in the sphere of civil, public life - socio-economic, socio-political, practical-spiritual, etc.

In the sphere of his own individual, personal, private life, a person is primarily responsible to his family, immediate environment, and himself.

Fourthly, this is family. The family as the authority to which the answer is given, the first and most influential in the life of an individual. This is manifested because the process of kinship education is based on the authority of parents, who evaluate the child’s behavior as worthy or unsuitable. Moreover, within our cultural tradition, parents are responsible for their care of their children, just as children are then responsible for their care of their parents. Such mutual responsibility is supported not only by the strength of moral and legal norms, but also by the strength of internal family ties, without which any external installations may not be effective. At the same time, one cannot exaggerate the importance of the kinship authority, family ties. Otherwise, a person may remain infantile for the rest of his life, completely dependent on the will of his parents, or choose a path in life that does not at all correspond to his talents and inclinations, or suffer from the fact that he did not live up to the expectations of his family, etc.

Fifthly, a person is also responsible to his environment, the people with whom he is connected in the process of his own life, so he acts not as a “Robinson”, but as a “doer,” and his life unfolds as “coexistence” with others.

Sixthly, the person himself acts as his own authority of responsibility. Only the individual’s awareness of himself as the initial and final authority to which the answer is provided turns all previous authorities into instances of responsibility, and not those to which responsibility is transferred. After all, it also happens that a person justifies his inability to act or his unsuitable actions by the laws of nature, the laws of social life, state expediency or the fallacy of related attitudes. But these excuses are worthless before the eyes of our own court. Since the actual subject of his life-creation is the personality itself, and finally, it is she who is responsible for whether her life was realized or not, how exactly it was realized, she gives this answer to herself, even if this happens in the face of death.

Only the presence of this initial and final authority provides a person with freedom of choice, freedom to make decisions, freedom to act. Only its presence allows a person to rise above the circumstances of his own life and do as he considers necessary, even if this contradicts social, state, them or related attitudes. Even in the most unfavorable conditions, a person still has the opportunity to remain inactive, for example, not to carry out a criminal order, if he considers it to be just that. The presence of this last possibility and the existence of its own instance of responsibility allowed, for example, to put Nazi criminals on trial for their crimes against humanity.

So, we see that a responsible attitude towards life (both in general and in all its manifestations) is not a multidimensional and multifaceted phenomenon, the foundation of which is the requirement for the continuation of human existence both as an intelligent and as a spiritual being. In the structure of a person’s responsible attitude to life, one can distinguish horizontal-spatial (transcendental, existential, communicative, situational responsibility) and vertical-temporal (previous and next responsibility) sections. The content and instances of a person’s responsible attitude to life are determined by the tasks that arise from the common existence of a person as a person with other people and, finally, by the imperative to protect existence and preserve human dignity, both one’s own and the dignity of everyone.

2. The problem of human life and death

The problem of the meaning of life arises before a specific person either when, rejecting everyday affairs, he realizes his end, or when, for various reasons, he loses faith in the goals and ideals by which he lived. As a result, the fundamental question comes to the fore: “Should we live and why should we live?” The concept of the meaning of life reflects the essential characteristics of human existence and is therefore associated with such concepts as love, faith, hope, freedom, beauty, work, consciousness, death, etc. The meaning of a person’s life lies in the search for this meaning, but the search itself is precisely the life of a person. If the search stops, human life will be snatched away. The philosophical aspect of this problem involves consideration of the following issues:

· The meaning of a person’s life is contained in every single life situation or is it realized at the end of human life?· Is it expressed in higher (God, biblical commandments) or in everyday earthly values?· Is it associated with universal or individual values of an individual?

Man is, first of all, a living being. In order to demonstrate the specificity of human life among other organisms, it is necessary to determine what life is, what its essence and qualitative originality are.

People have been trying to understand the secret of life for a long time. Already ancient thinkers saw something important in the phenomena of life that distinguishes them from the phenomena of lifeless nature. Thus, the great ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, understanding a living being as a unity of matter and form, body and soul, considered the ability to move independently as the main sign of life. But due to the fact that matter itself, in his opinion, is incapable of movement, the vital force that moves and directs the body in its development, as he thought, is soul and form.

Every person, sooner or later, wonders about the end of his individual existence. Man is a being who is aware of his mortality and can make it the subject of consideration. The inevitability of one’s own death is not perceived by a person as an averted truth, but causes a strong emotional shock and affects the very depths of her inner world. A person's first reaction after realizing his mortality is a feeling of hopelessness and confusion (sometimes even panic). A person, overcoming this feeling, exists throughout his life, burdened by the knowledge of his own impending death; This knowledge nevertheless becomes fundamental in the next spiritual development of man. The presence of such knowledge largely understands the urgency with which a person faces the question of the meaning of life (the content of death) and the purpose of life (the purpose of death).

Reflection on this issue turns out to be the starting point in developing the main “line” of life, which subordinates the behavior and actions of a person at different levels: society as a whole, the work collective, family, close friends, etc.

Deviation from this “line” leads to painful moral suffering in one’s life, and the loss of the “line” leads to the moral (sometimes physical) death of a person. The purpose and content of the individual life of each person is closely related to social ideas and actions that determine the purpose and content of all human history, society, humanity as a whole, its purpose, responsibility on Earth and in the Universe. This responsibility sets the boundaries of what man and humanity can and cannot do. This also determines the means by which they can or cannot achieve their goals.

Even if a person is guided in life by certain moral goals and uses adequate means to achieve them, she knows that she cannot always and not in all cases achieve the desired result, which in moral categories has always been designated as good, truth, justice. ..

A well-known researcher of this problem, V. Frankl, asserts the relativity of the meaning of human life. In the most general form, the meaning of life is defined by him as the attitude of a particular person to the situation in which he finds himself at any given moment. Behind Frankl's mind's eye, there are a number of fundamental values, focusing on which a person searches for the meaning of life:

· values of creation (creative work activity); · values of experience (the beauty of nature, art); · values of communication (love, friendship, sympathy); · values of a person overcoming himself, seeking power over himself (his instincts, trains, passions).

While a person is alive, he has the opportunity to realize certain values. The meaning of life can be expressed by other parameters: the right to life, death, immortality. The right to life, the “sanctity of life” is determined by its primary purpose. Death is the criterion of the highest value for which a person is able to give his life and which she defines for herself intuitively: God, Fatherland, love, children, etc. B, in the end, the search for immortality in the form of the memory of humanity, descendants, the desire for merging souls with God, etc. The search and study of the meaning of life by a person is always of an individual, personal nature.

Where does the problem of the meaning of human life come from? An essential feature of human existence is its ability to become a problem for itself. Only about a person is it truly known that he is capable, firstly, of asking himself the question of his own place and purpose in the world and, secondly, depending on the answer to this question, choosing from possible options the method of his own realization, his own life path. Then the traditional philosophical problem of the meaning of human existence, as well as the related problem of free will, inherent, one might say, in the very specifics of human existence in the world.

“At the same time, a number of prominent philosophers of the 20th century. develops the idea of the possibility of permanent improvement of the processes of human mutual understanding (for example, through rational interpretation, like Paul Ricoeur). This, in turn, is based on a deeper premise about the appropriateness of this procedure, behind which there is a fundamental attitude regarding the absolute value of human life, both in medical and other aspects.

In other words, behind individual discourses there is a system of certain oppositions, which can, in our opinion, be conditionally presented in the form of two interdependent clusters: ideological and methodological.

Worldview cluster. Within the framework of the “should-be” opposition, discussions took place on issues of regulatory codes (decrees, decrees, laws, the Hippocratic Oath) and real biomedical practice (forced treatment, experiments, forms of real medical liability). The problem is that in modern conditions the likelihood of artificial intervention in the course of a person’s life cycle increases significantly. We are talking not only about lethal military technologies “put on stream,” but also about the possibilities of third-party intervention in the very process of human conception (artificial insemination), his birth (artificial birth or termination of pregnancy), his support in extreme situations (organ transplantation ). In many such situations, life and death are determined not so much by natural as by artificial causes and, thus, increasingly become artifacts of culture, which requires a new approach to such traditional personality characteristics as consciousness, self-awareness, criticality, rationality, responsibility, etc. . Legal protection of individual rights is possible only with a clear operational-functional definition (it will be, in a sense, conventional medical) of the states of death, life, norm and pathology. If existentialists insisted on freedom of choice as an integral attribute of the individual, then in modern life there are increasingly situations where it is necessary to make a competent decision for another person, while at the same time preserving all individual rights.

At the macro level, similar situations are possible in relation to certain nations, peoples, and races. Thus, the desire of the National Socialists to create a socially and biologically “pure” society was supported at one time by a significant part of the academic community, which proceeded from seemingly quite progressive ideas of strengthening the role of the natural sciences, primarily biology, in the development of society.

The “elaboration” of the scientific hypothesis about the possible reduction of social policy methods to eugenics methods cost humanity dearly. A precedent for such anonymous scientific rationality, which freed the researcher from personal moral responsibility for the research conducted. Based on scientific ideas about weak and strong organisms in nature, scientists and doctors purely rationally, without any emotions, made selection among the Germans themselves, declared entire nations racially inferior, and built theories of scientifically based depopulation and relocation of the peoples of Europe. Thus, the genocide carried out by the Nazis, which violated all the norms of Christian morality, was not the result of imposing the will of the half-mad leaders who seized power on the German people, as they often try to imagine, but a deeply thought-out political strategy based on the authority of science, which proposed viewing society primarily as biological a structured, organic system governed by objective natural laws."

Ways of understanding human existence:

1. Life as the production of meaning. The first of the mentioned ways of understanding life is well known in our country, since it is on it that the Marxist interpretation of problems is based. In society, the belief that only public person contributes to the world the beginnings of meaning, goodness, beauty, which outside of his practical activity, nature and being are generally meaningless and empty. Everything that exists in the world, all reality, is subject to human comprehension and has exactly the meaning that people objectively (that is, based on the structure of their needs and their activities) put into them.

2. Life as the embodiment of meaning. Another, alternative way for a person to comprehend his own existence involves searching in the external world or in the spiritual sphere for some ready-made ideals, plans, recipes, schemes that would predetermine human life, thereby providing it with a certain meaning. Often people believe that living their life “not in vain”, “correctly” means devoting it to the steady implementation of one or another previous plan; the absence of such ideal guidelines, as well as any deviations from them, are perceived as a life disaster.

3. Communication as receiving meaning in life. Both the first and second directions of establishing the meaning of human existence that we have considered are fundamentally, as they say in modern philosophy, monological. This means that they provide only one single “logos”, a single source of comprehension - in the first case, the activity of the person himself, in the second - certain ideals or value patterns separated from the integrity of being, which are closed, as if “blind” to any other possible influences. A certain semantic center is fixed, in relation to which a person formulates his life task, which boils down to the affirmation of what comes from this center - in the first case, to self-affirmation through one’s own activity, in the second - to the affirmation of some selected ideals, values, etc. .

These guidelines do not guarantee the correct, uniquely possible decision in each specific case, but, by forming a range of values such as trust, respect, the desire for mutual understanding and cooperation among the participants in the discussion, they rationalize the decision-making procedure as a whole and minimize the risk of errors. The development of humanistically significant samples and options for biomedical practice and their coverage in the media make it possible to influence public opinion in a certain direction and create the necessary reservoir for the adoption of the most proven options at the legislative level. At the same time, inevitable errors and miscalculations in each specific case can be “extinguished” by introducing, as is done in many Scandinavian countries, a public insurance system in cases of negative effects of biomedical actions on the patient. The danger of ossification of the institution of experts, turning them into certain priests of science, at least theoretically, can be significantly reduced by creating various equal centers of biomedical ethics, democratic procedures for forming their personnel, establishing mechanisms of cooperation and competition between them, and their openness to public control . Thus, the scientific community associates the solution to the dilemma “codification of biomedical practice - personal moral principles” primarily with the rationalization and activation of communication connections of all subjects of this practice.

conclusions

Philosophical views on death differ from mythological ones in the way they are formed and transmitted. If myths are simply taken into account by people - without attempting to question them, then philosophical teachings are the result of a special understanding of the state of affairs, analysis, search for arguments for and against, i.e. the result of a meaningful choice of judgments among possible alternatives. This kind of understanding and justification of views is called reflection. Thus, philosophical views differ from mythological ones in that they are based on reflection (this is not the only, but an essential difference). However, in terms of content, the ideas of philosophers can be very similar to mythological ideas. Thus, many ancient Greek philosophers supported the idea of the immortality of the soul, characteristic of ancient myths.

The revival of philosophical interest in the problem of death occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries, when European science “grew out of the swaddling clothes”, acquired unprecedented power and tried to apply it to those issues that had previously been left to religion. Here, however, boundaries emerged beyond which the use of scientific methods is impossible. “Soul” turned out to be inaccessible to scientific instruments and observations. The mystery of the posthumous destiny of the soul, rescued from the dogmas of the church, but rejected by science, fell back into the possession of philosophy.

The work of the German thinker Arthur Schopenhauer (Schopenhauer, 1788-1860) “The World as Will and Idea” had a noticeable influence on the further development of philosophical views on death.

List of used literature

1. Apel K.-O. Grounding ethics of diversity // Sitnichsnko L. A. Pershodzherela of communicative philosophy. - K.: Libid, 1996. - P. 46-60.2. Apel K.-O. The problem of ethical rationality // Sitnichenko L. A. Pershodzherela of communicative philosophy. - K.: Libid, 1996. - P. 60-67.3. Borzenkov V.G. From philosophy of life to biophilosophy / V.G. Borzenkov // Man. - 1998. - No. 5. - P. 15-214. Zhulay V. Philosophy is a mantra of life / V. Zhulay // Philosophical thought. - 2002. - No. 1. - P. 7-85. Ilyin I. A. The path to evidence // Ilyin I. A. The path to evidence. - M.: Republic, 1993. - P. 290-403.6. Imanitov V.S. Objective meanings of life and existence / V.S. Imanitov //Questions of Philosophy. - 2006. - No. 7. - P. 84-94.7. Jonas G. The principle of reliability. There are rumors of ethics for technological civilization. Per. with whom. - K.: Libra, 2001. - 400 p.8. Ignatenko M. Philosophy of life and death as a construct of artistic culture of the 20th century // Philosophical Thought. - 2000. - No. 1. - pp. 42-639. Karpova N. Psychological, philosophical and axiological problems of the meaning of life // Questions of psychology. - 1998. - No. 4. - P. 148-15010. Knabe G.S. The rigor of science and the vastness of life / G.S. Knabe // Issues of philosophy. - 2001. - No. 8. - P. 113-124.11. Riedel M. Freedom and diversity // Sitnychsnko L. A. Pershodzherela of communicative philosophy. - K.: Libid, 1996. - P. 68-83.12. Riker P. The Other One / Transl. From fr. - K.: Dukh i Litera, 2000. - 458 p.13. Salakhov E.K. “Philosophy of Life” and Plutarch’s geological concept // Bulletin of Moscow University. - 2000. - No. 3: Ser. 7. Philosophy. - C. 70-7714. Sartre J.-P. Existentialism is humanism // Twilight of the Gods / Comp. and general ed. A. A. Yakovleva: Translation. - M.: Politizdat, 1989. - P. 319-325.15. Sitnichenko L. A. Pershogerela of communicative philosophy. - K.: Libid, 1996. - 176 p.16. Sudakov K.V. Subjective side of life / K. V. Sudakov // Questions of philosophy. - 2008. - No. 3. - P. 115-127.17. Surmava A.V. Towards a theoretical understanding of life and psyche / A.V. Surmava //Questions of Philosophy. - 2003. - No. 4. - P. 119-132.18. Frankl V. Man in Search of Meaning: Collection: Trans. from English and German /General ed. L. Ya. Tozman and D. A. Leontyev; up Art. D. A. Leontieva. - M.: Progress, 1990. - 367 p.19. Shinkarenko Yu. Identity and world of life in the context of current civilizational changes // Philosophical Thought. - 2002. - No. 1. - P. 68-8320. Yakovlev V.A. Philosophy of life on the threshold of the 21st century: new meanings / V.A. Yakovlev // Bulletin of Moscow University. - 2000. - No. 6: Ser.7 Philosophy. - pp. 101-117

Philosophy of Rebirth

The basic laws of dialectics, their methodological and clear meanings. Philosophy of Rebirth. The problem of human specialness...

Man is the only living creature aware of his mortality. Therefore, the problem of life and death occupies a very important place in public consciousness, primarily in philosophy and religion. Interest in this problem arose in ancient times. In the history of philosophy, various approaches to its understanding have developed.

For early ancient philosophy characterized by a cosmocentric approach to understanding the problem of life and death. Death here is perceived not as the end of existence, but only as a metamorphosis of things and living beings within the eternal, harmonious and unchanging Cosmos.

At later stages of the development of ancient philosophy, interest moved from the problems of space to the problems of man, his place and role in the world. During this period, two main lines in ideas about life and death emerged: materialistic and religious-idealistic.

Ancient Greek atomists Democritus And Epicurus expressed materialistic views to this problem. They did not recognize any other reality other than the world in which man lives. And this world consists of atoms and emptiness. In their opinion, after death the soul, just like the body, disintegrates into atoms and ceases to exist. At the same time, Democritus argued that atoms have properties such as heat and sensitivity. These properties are indestructible, which means that atoms are also indestructible; therefore, after the cessation of the existence of a specific individual soul, the atoms are not destroyed and can become part of a new soul. Epicurus, also denying the immortality of the soul, considers it necessary for a happy life to overcome the fear of death. “...the most terrible of evils, death, has nothing to do with us. When we exist, it is not yet there, and when death comes, then we no longer exist,” said the philosopher.

The religious-idealistic line in understanding the problem of life and death goes back to philosophy Socrates And Plato . Socrates believed that earthly life is a preparation for eternal life after death, but this eternal bliss must be earned by worthy behavior. Plato, in his dialogues Timaeus, Phaedrus, and Phaedo, develops the doctrine of the immortal soul, which is contained in a mortal body. He argued that through the soul death passes into life, just as all opposites pass into one another, and he proved this as follows. Firstly, if the soul perished, then everything would have died long ago and death would have reigned on earth. Secondly, the soul, freed from the body, cognizes the ideas of goodness, beauty, justice in the unearthly world, and therefore can recognize them in earthly things (after all, in the earthly world beauty, etc. do not exist in material manifestation, and on the basis of only earthly experience the soul would not be able to know it). Certain ethical conclusions follow from Plato's teaching on the immortality of the soul. If the existence of the soul ceased with the death of the body, then people would be freed from retribution for their vices. Only a virtuous soul can count on eternal bliss in unearthly life, therefore a person must strive for temperance and virtue during his lifetime. Ancient authors testify that Plato’s teaching was so influential that some people, having read his dialogues (“Phaedo”), rushed to die, wanting to quickly contemplate the wondrous world of ideas. The views of Socrates and Plato anticipated Christian ideas about the immortality of the soul.

Theocentrism Middle Ages devalues the natural joys of earthly existence, considering them sinful. Asceticism was considered the highest virtue in human life. Religion views the death of a person as the end of his earthly, carnal, sinful life and the transition to eternal, spiritual life. With the establishment of Christianity, the topic of life and death moves for a long time from philosophy to the field of religion.

Anthropocentrism of the era Renaissance and Modern times proclaimed that the meaning of human life is not the desire for immortality, but the possibility of achieving happiness in the earthly world on the basis of rational knowledge and the transformation of reality. Philosophers of modern times did not pay close attention to the topic of death, believing that the posthumous destiny of the soul is a subject not of science, but of religion.

The revival of interest in the problem of life and death occurred in the second half of XIX– XX centuries

IN Russian religious philosophy late XIX – early XX centuries. a unique approach to the problem of life, death and immortality of man has developed. He found a vivid expression in philosophy Russian cosmism . Founder of cosmism N.F. Fedorov considered death the main evil on Earth, therefore the goal of humanity, the “common cause” of all people, according to the philosopher, should be to overcome death and resurrect dead ancestors. In the views of N.F. Fedorov intertwined religious and natural scientific ideas. From a religious point of view, he viewed the resurrection of Christ as an example that all people should follow, but in achieving this goal one must count not on a miracle, but on the progress of science and reason. Ideas N.F. Fedorov influenced the views of the founder philosophy of unity V.S. Solovyova. The problem of death and immortality occupies a significant place in his work “The Meaning of Love.” Attitude of V.S. Solovyov’s approach to this problem can only be understood from the standpoint of the idea of unity. According to V.S. Solovyov, death puts a person on the same level with animals standing at a lower stage of evolution. At the same time he sees positive side human mortality. For the “empty and immoral” life of “some society lady, or some athlete, or card player,” death is “not only inevitable, but also extremely desirable.” But he sees the same incompatibility with immortality in the lives of great people, geniuses: the immortality of their works would lose all meaning with the endless continuation of the existence of their authors: “Can one imagine Shakespeare endlessly composing his dramas, or Newton endlessly continuing to study celestial mechanics? , not to mention the absurdity of the endless continuation of the activities of ... Alexander the Great or Napoleon.” According to Solovyov, only true love needs immortality. And true love, from the standpoint of the concept of unity, not only presupposes the union of one person with another and “replenishment” of each other, but also thereby brings us closer to the unification of all humanity, because the good of one person is inseparable “from the true good of all living.” But for the complete “perpetuation” of all individuals, it is necessary for humanity to absorb the divine idea and, on its basis, establish unity with nature, establish universal world harmony.

Views on the problem of life, death and immortality in the works of Russian thinkers are deeply original and fundamentally different from the ideas of representatives Western philosophy. This problem occupied a special place in the works of representatives of the “philosophy of life” and existentialism.

Founder " philosophy of life » A. Schopenhauer argued that it only seems to a person that his life is a true existence; in fact, only the world will has true and eternal existence - the beginning and end of fleeting individual existences. The meaning of life for each individual will is the pursuit of happiness, but life never gives complete satisfaction of desires, which forms a negative attitude towards life itself. In moments of suffering, a person feels more acutely that he is alive, and the feeling of satisfaction, on the contrary, lulls the feeling of life. Therefore, “our existence is happiest when we do not notice it, hence it follows that it would be better not to exist at all.” According to Schopenhauer, our fear of death is exaggerated; he explains this from the standpoint of subjective idealism. The fear of death is generated by the idea that the “I” will disappear, but the world will remain. In fact, according to Schopenhauer, it’s the other way around: the world that exists only in our imagination disappears, but the will - the basis of human life - remains. Death is not identical to complete disappearance, because the will is indestructible. Death ends the existence of an individual, but the existence of a genus or species does not cease. Nature cares about preserving the race, not the individual - and this is the solution to the problem of immortality.

Representative existentialism M. Heidegger believed that the peculiarity of human existence lies in the fact that it understanding existence. A person realizes what he is only due to the fact that he is aware of his mortality, i.e. that he may not be. Death gives shape to life, defines it. Life is existence To of death. One’s own mortality is revealed to a person through a state of fear. A person strives for a calm, indifferent idea of death, and thereby dooms himself to an “inauthentic existence,” i.e. to the inability to free and conscious self-determination in the world.

The problem of death is central to “The Myth of Sisyphus” by another representative of existentialism, A. Camus . Camus wrote: “There is only one truly serious philosophical problem - the problem of suicide. To decide whether life is worth living or not is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy.” Camus connects the question of suicide with the problem of the meaning of human life, the value of existence. In his opinion, the world is alien to man, indifferent to his aspirations. When a person begins to realize this, he comes to the conclusion about the absurdity of existence. The human mind is unable to understand why the world exists. If the world could be understood, if it were not indifferent to man, then there would be no place for thoughts of suicide. Suicide is evidence of the absurdity of the world, the confrontation between the world and man, which can only be eliminated with the elimination of one of the parties. But, according to Camus, suicide is a false path, it only confirms the meaninglessness of existence. The solution to the problem is not to escape life, but to rebel against it. The greatness of a person is manifested in the courage to live in this meaningless world.

The theme of life and death is one of the main ones in philosophy. In addition to the above-mentioned thinkers, it found its deep understanding and original solution in the works of Hegel, F. Nietzsche, K. Jaspers, Z. Freud, E. Fromm, F.M. Dostoevsky, L.N. Tolstoy and others.

Solving the problem of life and death is closely related to understanding problems of the meaning of human existence. In addressing the question of the meaning of life, several main approaches can be distinguished:

The meaning of life is in life itself;

The meaning of life lies beyond its boundaries, earthly existence is only a preparation for true, eternal life;

The meaning of life is created by the person himself and is manifested in the activities, achievements of an individual, and in the progress of society as a whole.

Death as a philosophical problem. Problems of life and death in philosophy

Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below

Introduction

Therefore, the task of philosophy and ethics is not to study “other worlds”, but to create a concept of life and death. And there is no doubt that, ultimately, this concept will be developed in the near future.

Life and death are the eternal problem of human existence. And it is the eternal dispute between a person’s desire for a morally worthy life and the frailty of his physical existence.

1. The concept of “life”

2. Definition of death from a scientific point of view

3. Life - death, immortality: philosophical and religious aspect

problem life death immortality

It is obvious that the problem of the meaning and purpose of human existence, the problem of life and death, is the central problem of philosophy.

Distinguish the following types euthanasia: active, voluntary; active, involuntary; passive, voluntary; passive, involuntary.

Conclusion

Bibliography

1. Alekseev P.V. History of philosophy / P.V. Alekseev. - M.: TK Welby, Prospekt Publishing House, 2009 - 240 p.

2. Aries A.F. Man in the face of death / A.F. Aries. - M.: Progress-“Progress-Academy”, 2005 - 328 p.

3. Weber M. Sociology of religion. / M. Weber. Favorites, Image of Society. M.: 2009. - 132 p.

4. Demichev A.V. Discourses of death / A.V. Demichev. - St. Petersburg: Inapress, 2007 - 144 p.

5. Karmin A. S. Philosophy: textbook. for universities / A. S. Karmin, G. G. Bernatsky. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2009. - 169 p.

6. Oparin A.I. Life as a form of movement of matter. / A.I. Oparin. - M., 2009 - 124 p.

Similar documents

Introduction

1. Problems of the value of life and responsibility for life in philosophy

2. The problem of human life and death

conclusions

List of used literature