Lecture 8 classical philosophy XIX century.
General foundations of non-classics.Irrationalism.Positivism.Materialistic philosophy of K. Marx.Nihilism F. Nietzsche.Traditions of classical philosophy in the era of non-classical.
General foundations of non-classics . It is impossible to determine the period of non-classical philosophy by any priority. Its departure to the “not” begins through the denial of idealization and abstraction in that highest manifestation, which is achieved in the philosophy of I. Kant and G. Hegel. Universal schematicity was overcome by a real movement of the spirit - the philosophy of life. The assertion of the entire previous philosophy of understanding being and thinking through essence began to clearly limit both thought itself and reality as a whole. “An essence that does not act does not exist” (St. Gr. Palamas) - through this thesis, expressing the essence of the patristic philosophical tradition, one can designate the aspirations of non-classics. Her main priorities are impulse, movement, creation up to self-destruction. And, at the same time, it is an ontological impulse that turns the spiritual essence of a person who understands and defines himself differently: in the existential duration of residence, in the intuition of grasping, in vague desires, in social freedom.
However, it is impossible to assert the unambiguous priority of "life" in the non-classical works of the 19th century. R. Tarnas remarks quite rightly, identifying "two cultures" non-classical philosophy- enlightening and romantic. “Unlike the spirit of enlightenment, the romantic spirit perceived the world not as an atomistic machine, but as a single organism, extolled not the enlightenment of the mind, but the inexpressibility of inspiration, and raised to the shield not the clear predictability of static abstractions, but the inexhaustible theme of human life” 1. Scientism or scientism with its apodictic foundation and method, relying on objectivity and rationality, was the core of the classical era (J. Locke, D. Hume, I. Kant, etc.), and as an unconditional foundation “nurtured” the thought of non-classics. The spirit of the reformation hovered over both romanticism and positivism. But in the first, having shaken the traditions, he encroached on the "empty" place of God to put a new absolute - man, and in the second, he clothed the material, empirical, material principle with superiority. In philosophy, these trends were expressed by two major trends that developed during the 19th - early 19th century. XX centuries: irrationalism And positivism . Through them, in the end, it will become possible to comprehend all the contradictions, all the nuances, the emerging meanings of non-classics.
Irrationalism . The current of irrationalism arises at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, defending the primacy of feelings, imagination, intuition over reason and perception. Interest in the spirit was associated not only with the light ideal sides of a single human nature, but also with the unconscious, dark, demonic sides. Irrationalism considers ratio as its basis, overcoming it through an attempt to discover deeper roots that determine the possibility of true knowledge, being in general, human essence, etc. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) became a prominent representative of this phenomenon. His main works: "The World as Will and Representation" (1819), "On the Will in Nature" (1836), "Two Basic Problems of Ethics" (1841), "Aphorisms of Worldly Wisdom" (1851) and others. the real is, - notes Schopenhauer in the work "The World as Will and Representation", - that there is neither sun nor earth, but only "an eye that sees a hand that touches the earth" 2 . The world exists only in the view, i.e. always and only in connection with another being – the perceiver. Its (the world's) presence is structured by a priori forms of consciousness - space, time and causality (lat. causa - cause). The derivation of the objective laws of reality is, according to Schopenhauer, the sphere of activity of reason, the sphere of phenomena. However, “things in themselves” (I. Kant) are also accessible to comprehension, the essence of which is will. “Will is an internal substance, the core of any particular thing and everything together, a blind force in nature, it is also manifested in the rational behavior of a person – there is a huge difference in manifestations, but the essence remains unchanged” 1 . Will is that irrational element that governs the world, presenting itself to man in a direct way. The body is the will made tangible and visible. Through the body, a person feels the inner essence of his own phenomenon. The essence of the world is irrational, boundless will, the essence of will is conflict, pain and suffering. “Man is the only animal capable of torturing others for the very purpose of making them suffer” 2 . Rationalism and progress in history are fiction. From Schopenhauer's point of view, history is destiny. But it is possible to get rid of the domination and pressure of the will, and the way of deliverance lies through art and asceticism. A genius in aesthetic contemplation sees eternal ideas and thereby crosses out will, desires, fear. The essence of asceticism is liberation from fatal suffering, which is achieved through free and complete chastity; poverty, humility and sacrifice. As a result, will becomes unwillingness.
The theme of irrationalism in the form of an existential philosophy of personality is developed by Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), who still remains an unsurpassed exponent of the philosophical mood of pessimism. His main works: "Fear and Trembling" (1843), "Philosophical crumbs" (1844), "Diary" (1833-1855), etc. "Life in pleasure, protected from suffering, humiliation, fear and despair ... does not give testify in the name of truth… The one who is poor, humiliated and does not grumble, who is showered with curses and slander, who was persecuted for their daily bread, who was treated like an outcast, bears the truth” 3 - this saying reflects the strategy of Kierkegaard’s philosophy and life. All his work contains a central idea - the idea of protecting the individual as a single, separate. “Faith is precisely that paradox that the individual individual stands above the universal… stands in absolute relation to the absolute…” 4 Only in faith is found the true final existence, seen by the philosopher as a meeting of the individual personality and the unique one God. Like Schopenhauer, he builds his philosophical system through criticism of G. Hegel and his system of universalism. Kierkegaard sees an alternative to it precisely in the person and declares the essence of the Christian faith precisely through the person. Fundamental for philosophical reflection is the moment of the initial definition of one's attitude to God, and only then to another.
The essence of a person's relationship with the world is determined by fear, while a person's relationship with himself and misunderstanding of his essence gives rise to despair. “Despair is an internal inconsistency in the synthesis when the relation refers to itself” 5 and not to the real. This continues until we turn to ourselves, wish to be ourselves. Kierkegaard's philosophy opens the limits of the existential world of man in its foundations of the fall, freedom, fear, rebirth, his personal tragedy of loneliness. “In endless self-denial, peace and tranquility are laid ... reconciling with existing existence ...” 1
The ideas of irrationalism are not lost in the boundless stream of emerging non-classical trends, but are developed in the theories of creative evolution and intuition by A. Bergson, M. Buber's "dialogical principle", currents of existentialism, the philosophy of psychoanalysis, etc. It is irrationalism that ultimately turns philosophy to the essence of life and its manifestations in pure acts of movement of will, suffering, freedom ...
Positivism . Positivism is the "wing" that realizes other philosophical attitude in the period of non-classical philosophy. This complex movement dominated European culture from about the 1840s until World War I. It clearly marked the primacy of science in the pursuit of true knowledge. This statement, of course, grew out of the classical rationalism of Descartes and Kant, but at the same time, achievements in practical knowledge of individual sciences also played an important role in this process. In the 19th century physics entered the threshold of new discoveries thanks to M. Faraday, J. Maxwell, H. Hertz, G. Helmholtz, J. Joule, R. Clausius and J. Thompson. Mathematics was updated by L. Cauchy, K. Weierstrass, G. Kantor. D. Mendeleev, J. von Liebig advanced chemical science. At the beginning of the 20th century, M. Planck singled out quantum phenomena, E. Rutherford and N. Bohr discovered the structure of the atom, A. Einstein proposed a new physical understanding of reality within the framework of special and general relativity. All this predetermined the rooting of the only method of cognition - natural science, its mechanisms became generally significant; faith in the fact and infinity of the human ratio was strengthened; progress has become a defining force in the understanding of reality.
Auguste Comte (1798 - 1857) - the founder of the current of positivism and a representative of the French school. His main works are The Course of Positive Philosophy (1830-1842), The System of Positive Politics (1851-1854) and others. The cornerstone of Comte's philosophy was the law of three stages. According to this law, humanity (like the soul of an individual) passes through the theological, metaphysical and positive stages. 1. Theological (childhood). On it, phenomena are considered as creations of the direct action of supernatural forces. 2. Metaphysical (youth). Phenomena are explained by the action of abstract entities, ideas. 3. Positive. The essence of phenomena is revealed through a combination of reasoning with observations, laws are formulated, the basis of which is the essence of mind 2 . The present development of history and mankind is at a positive stage. “It is precisely in the laws of phenomena that science really lies…” 3, for only their knowledge will make it possible to foresee events, to direct activity towards changing the course of life's development along the path of progress. The most important is the theoretical foundation of scientific knowledge. And if in nature it is established by physics, then in social life it is established by sociology, to which Comte assigns a very special role - the role of the pinnacle in the development of sciences. When studying sociology, he singles out the following points: 1. Its division into social statics and social dynamics, investigating, respectively, the order and progress of society. 2. The history of mankind is the history of the development of human nature, which is essentially progressive. 3. Only knowledge of tradition, as well as social patterns, suggests the possibility of changing the conditions for the development of society. As a result of Comte's philosophy, one can reveal a special attitude to ratio and humanity, which he erects in the place of the Absolute. Science and its theoretical knowledge become universal dogma. In England, the course of positivism was headed by J. Mill and G. Spencer. The latter claims that science and religion are compatible, because they recognize the absolute and the unconditional. However, "if the task of religion is to maintain the meaning of the mystery, then the task of science is to further expand the knowledge of the relative" 1 . It was Spencer who first used the term "evolution" in 1857 in relation to the Universe, which was later used by Charles Darwin in relation to living beings. Evolution has metaphysical foundations, accumulating hereditarily transmitted experience of behavior, setting a priori moral standards. Philosophy is realized as the science of universal principles and ultimate generalizations.
Two grandiose personalities, K. Marx and F. Nietzsche, stand as completely separate figures in the non-classical period. Perhaps their philosophical ideas were, at the same time, the most popular socio-historical strategies in the entire history of thought. The “translation” of these teachings into practice once again proves how important it is to distinguish between knowledge by truth (episteme) and knowledge by opinion (doxa) and how freely it is possible to interpret, interpret and use philosophical meanings.
Materialistic philosophy of K. Marx . Karl Marx (1818 - 1883), main works: "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts" (1844), "Manifesto of the Communist Party" together with F. Engels (1848), "Capital" (1867-1894), "Critique of Political Economy" ( 1859) and others. Marx proceeds from a critique of the Hegelian system, arguing that legal and political institutions cannot be explained either from themselves or from the development of the Absolute Spirit, for they are the consequences of the material conditions of life. He places the metaphysical basis of being and thought within the boundaries of a particular human mind, the objective essence of which is rooted in sociality, and he sees sociality itself in the manifestation of self-moving self-justifying eternal matter, which is constituted in dialectical development. “Consciousness can never be anything other than conscious being, and the being of people is the real process of their life” 2 .
For Marx, it is obvious that private property cannot be absolutized, that it is a phenomenon produced from appropriation. Capital, at a certain stage in the development of social relations, takes ownership of the product of the labor of others. In the process of production, labor becomes the object of the transaction, and man no longer belongs to himself. “Labor produces not only commodities: it produces itself and the worker as commodities, moreover, in the same proportion in which it produces commodities in general” 1 .
In explaining the meaning of religion and religious faith, Marx uses the position of L. Feuerbach: “Theology is anthropology”, thereby deducing the idea of the Absolute from the essence of the human mind. It is the state and society, creating negative conditions for the existence of the individual, that give rise to religion and the type of consciousness that affirms it; that is why the struggle against religion is a struggle against the society that supports it. The history of any society is the history of class struggle - the oppressors and the enslaved. The former are owners of private property, the latter are forced to sell their labor power. The resolution of the constantly arising conflict between classes is possible only through a social revolution, in which private property is abolished, equality of rights, freedoms, etc. is established. Marx substantiates the inevitability of the victory of the proletariat in Capital. The worker's labor, as an object of sale and purchase, forms the surplus value that the bourgeois disposes of. D - C - D", where D - money for the purchase of means of production and labor; T - goods produced as a result of labor; D" - initial capital plus surplus value. Thus, the accumulation of capital in the same hands creates a material and social imbalance in society. Political power is nothing but the organized violence of one class over another. In the process of production, people enter into the necessary relationships, often independent of their will, which form the economic and material structure of society. Political, legal, ideological structures are built on top of it. The main conclusion of Marx is this: the mode of production determines socio-political institutions, which entails a change in socio-economic formations (primitive communal, slave-owning, feudal, capitalist and communist). The concentration of power in the hands of the proletariat should become an intermediate link on the path from bourgeois society to a model of free development for everyone. The challenge is to change the world, not to explain.
Speaking about the assessment and legacy of Marxism, it should be noted that the special view given by Marx to the world and history was so unusual and deep that there could be no question of returning to the old categories of social sciences. We must not forget that Marx introduced precisely the philosophical theory, therefore its criticism by economists (not the state of explaining the price formation mechanism), politicians (solution of class conflicts in a social way), theologians is often one-sided and unfounded.
Nihilism F. Nietzsche . Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), the great overthrower of traditions and conventions, a nihilist, an opponent of historicism and idealism, of Christian and social morality, became the second iconic figure of non-classics. Nietzsche understands himself as a man of fate - one who opposes everything. “I love those who do not look behind the stars for a reason to perish and become a victim - but sacrifice themselves to the earth so that the earth will one day become the earth of the overman” 1 . In the work of Nietzsche, several central works can be distinguished, each of which expresses a special message and a landmark idea: “The Birth of Tragedy” (1872), “Untimely Reflections” (1873-1876), “Merry Science” (1882), “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” (1883-1885), "Beyond Good and Evil" (1886), "The Genealogy of Morals" (1887), "The Will to Power" (1888) is not finished, etc. The development of his work is associated with the movement of thought from ancient sources to ascents to their own unique philosophical ideas - the essence of morality, the doctrine of the superman, the will to power, etc. At the same time, Nietzsche was constantly arguing with the "real" classics in the person of Hegel, Schopenhauer, positivists, theologians, etc. A special place in his life is occupied by friendship with R. Wagner, who influenced his understanding and appreciation of art. The result of their relationship was the work "The Birth of Tragedy". In it, he reverses the romantic image of Greek culture, referring to the main mover of a healthy vital spirit - the pre-Socratics (6th century BC). He connects their creative potential with the so-called "Dionysian spirit" - reflecting and absorbing sensual passion, the power of health, a riot of energy, based on harmony with nature. The spirit of Apollo was the opposite principle, expressing proportion, form, logic, which were reflected in Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. The opposition of these two principles became the source of the contrast between plastic art (Apollo) and non-plastic art - music (Dionysus), until they were united in Greek tragedy. “Untimely Reflections” became a kind of response to criticism that fell upon an unconventional view of ancient philosophy. In them, he protests against the illusions of historicism, built on facts, the meaning of which is given only by theory or interpretation. Nietzsche denies blind faith in history, science and lays everything on man, his faith in himself.
The Dionysian instinct, affirming the earthly, moves Nietzsche to announce the "death of God." "God turned out to be the longest lie" 2 . In addition, in traditional morality, he sees "the morality of slaves and the vanquished." The “death of God”, in which people themselves are guilty, is not just the death of an idea, but a metaphysical event, freeing from the absolute, secret, sweeping away all boundaries and limits of the unknowable. Christianity has declared sinful all earthly values, but it is they that determine the essence of man. Compassion is the core Christian culture, leads to impotence, denial of the will, life, nature, and at the same time, Christ is recognized as the bearer of the highest manifestation of the spirit. Morality is a mechanism for influencing and enslaving one's own kind. It is needed only by the weak and those in need of an excuse for their weakness and ineptitude. “All the sick, the sick, trying to shake off the dull discontent and the feeling of weakness, instinctively strive for a herd organization” 1 - writes Nietzsche. The world has always been dominated by will, imbued with power - both in the desire of the weak to each other, and the strong from each other (there is always a "tyrannical whim"). In Nietzsche's philosophy, it is the will that acts as the highest manifestation of the need for reconciliation with oneself, self-realization, repetition. The will carries an ontological meaning and this is a new cosmology of "return" (which expresses the new European interpretation of the myth). Ideal in this world the superman appears, namely the man who loves earthly things, whose values are health, will, Dionysian creativity. Man is a tightrope over the abyss between the animal and the superman (the path is terrible, but the passage is even more terrible). "New Protagoras" again remembered that the measure of all things is a man filled with the will to win.
Nietzsche managed to see something special in the approaching 20th century, describing both “rising nihilism” and the era of monstrous wars and crashes, explosions: “... the era of barbarism begins; the sciences will be placed at its service”; “... the time will come for the struggle for dominance over the globe - it will be waged in the name of the main philosophical teachings”; "The crushing and leveling of European man is fraught with our greatest danger ...". Nietzsche managed not only to guess the future, he managed to discover something completely new in philosophical thinking: having crossed out traditions, breaking idols, he discovered "unknown paths" along which only a strong, courageous, "new man" can go.
Traditions of classical philosophy in the era of non-classical . Nevertheless, in the historical era of non-classical philosophy, the classical school also continued its development, promoting and transforming the ideas of I. Kant, D. Hume, G. Hegel, and others. The most famous was the direction of neo-criticism, headed by the Marburg and Baden schools, in which ratio and empirio were defended under the influence of positive philosophy. The Marburg school was represented by G. Cohen, who defended the absolute value of the fact, combined with a priori, the transcendent basis of reason. In Baden, a special role was assigned to the consideration of the categories of value, norms that determine and structure the essence of the cognitive activity of the subject (W. Windelband, R. Rickert). Empiriocriticism (R. Avenarius, E. Mach) returned in a new form to the concepts of experience, a complex of impressions, ideas, sensations, but already on the basis of scientific knowledge. Completely separate areas were developed by researchers of the socio-philosophical school, which during this period turned into a kind of pinnacle of the humanities: German historicism (W. Dilthey, G. Rickert, M. Weber, G. Simmel, etc.), pragmatism (C. Pierce, W. James) and others.
Thus, the era of non-classics opened up completely new horizons of human thought, which, on the one hand, clarified its own self-sufficiency, including truth and absoluteness, searching for universal grounds through the objectivity of judgments (positivism), or, on the contrary, unconscious, instinctive principles (irrationalism) , the social foundations of being and reason (Marxism), but on the other hand, it made a conceptual and theoretical revolution, rejecting the transcendental foundation (metaphysical, existential, divine) and proclaimed its presence in the superhuman (F. Nietzsche) as a new absolute idea. This period states the impossibility of staying within the former limits of classical thinking and philosophizing, and therefore, through a return to the origins of Greek metaphysics, the religious tradition, further brings philosophizing thought to a completely new round of “life”: the postmodern stage.
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In the middle of the 19th century, currents appeared that claimed to be a philosophical interpretation scientific knowledge. The most influential among them was positivism. Positivism is a fairly wide set of similar schools and approaches that have become widespread in the world. Some forms of positivism continue to be influential today. Most common feature positivism is an orientation towards science, towards the norms of scientific knowledge and, in connection with this, towards an experimental verification of knowledge. Positivism 1) affirms the primacy of science: our knowledge is the results of scientific knowledge; 2) believes that scientific knowledge is based on the unity of method, - the natural scientific method, based on the identification of general laws, extends to the knowledge of society (sociology); 3) replaces other forms of knowledge with science (hence the criticism of philosophy); 4) puts the basis of knowledge in a certain way understood experience, all forms of knowledge are reduced to experience; 5) exaggerates the role of science and scientific progress in solving human problems. Positivism is thus one of the forms scientism and empiricism in solving worldview issues. Criticizing metaphysics (philosophy), positivism itself is a form of philosophy. Despite the presence of common features, positivism is heterogeneous, in its development it goes through three stages: “first positivism” - 40-70s of the XIX century, “second positivism”, or empirio-criticism- 70s of the 19th century - the beginning of the 20th century, "third positivism", or neopositivism- 20-50s of the XX century.
Representatives of the "first positivism" - O. Comte, J.St. Mill, G. Spencer limited the role of philosophy to a methodological function; sought to replace it with a system of sciences based on experience. But this positivism was not consistent, since it allowed provisions that open up the possibility of both materialistic and idealistic interpretation. Such, for example, is the "unknowable", the unknown "power" of H. Spencer.
The founder of positivism is considered O. Comte (1798-1857), who outlined the main provisions of the new approach in the "Course of Positive Philosophy" (1830-1842). The central idea of Comte's philosophy is the "law of three stages". Both a separate individual and humanity as a whole go through three stages in their development: 1) theological, or fictitious; 2) metaphysical, or abstract; 3) scientific, or positive. The explanation of phenomena by supernatural and abstract entities in the first two stages is replaced in the positive stage (beginning from 1800) by the rejection of theology and metaphysics, the dominance of positive sciences, scientific explanation all phenomena. The main means of knowledge is science. Comte pays great attention classification of sciences. In his classification, he also includes the new science he created - sociology, which reveals the laws of the functioning of society. Philosophy is given the role of the methodology of sciences. Comte creates a project for a society in which the religion of love for Humanity plays a significant role.
J. St. Mill develops the problem of experimental knowledge: he criticizes the theory of syllogism and develops the theory of induction outlined by F. Bacon. He gave the final formulation of the methods of scientific induction: similarities, differences, concomitant changes and residues based on the causal uniformity of nature. G. Spencer considered philosophy as the end product of the generalization of these sciences. Based on Darwin's theory, Spencer developed the theory of evolution, understood in a simplified way as the unity of differentiation and integration. Spencer traces the desire to biologize the understanding of the world and the process of cognition.
In the last third of the 19th century, a new form of positivism was formed - empirio-criticism, or the philosophy of critical experience. Its largest representatives sought to critically rethink the concept of experience, giving it, in fact, a subjective-idealistic interpretation. From the point of view of empirio-critics, everything is only experience. In experience, there are no differences between the physical and mental; when they are separated, according to Avenarius, experience is destroyed ("introjection"). E. Mach, like Avenarius, considered knowledge, including science, as a form of adaptation to the environment. Adaptation requires adherence to the principle of "economy of thinking", that is, the rejection of metaphysical (non-experimental) statements. A clear and precise description of phenomena is necessary, language is a means of economy. The world is formed from elements of experience grouped into events. The elements of experience are understood as Feel, that is, the world is reduced to a collection of sensations. Sensation is the most important form of adaptation of the organism to the environment. Mach, on the one hand, biologizes the understanding of cognition, on the other hand, subjectifies it as a process of combining sensations.
Neopositivism- the third stage in the development of positivism in the 20s of the twentieth century. It is based on the conviction that it is possible to solve the philosophical and methodological issues of science, abstracting from philosophy as metaphysics (here we mean the philosophical and idealistic doctrine of the supersensible principles of being) and relying only on positive knowledge. He gained particular popularity among the scientific intelligentsia in the 1930s and 1940s.
Neopositivism inherited the fundamental position of positivism, which consisted in the denial of metaphysical problems in general and in the study of cognition in particular.
Logical positivism- the original form of neopositivism - proceeded from the rejection of philosophical categories in solving the problem of formalization and correlation of empirical and theoretical levels of scientific knowledge. The neopositivists considered the problem of the development of scientific knowledge as a formal logical one and reduced the analysis of science to the analysis of the language of science, the interpretation of mathematics and logic as formal transformations in scientific knowledge and its language. However, already in the 1950s it became clear that abstraction from so-called metaphysical problems had its limits. Classical philosophical concepts turned out to be very significant for the methodology and theory of knowledge, and especially for understanding the anthropological problems associated with the problem of man, with his destiny in the world, with questions of life and death. Even in the most fundamental scientific theories, metaphysical constructions have been found. All this led neopositivism to turn to the analysis of linguistic formations, to distinguish between the correct and incorrect use of language, which, according to representatives of linguistic philosophy, leads to the appearance of unverifiable metaphysical constructions.
In general, neopositivism, exploring a whole range of methodological problems, contributed to the formation of adequate ideas about scientific knowledge.
A prominent representative of the Vienna Circle was Rudolf Carnap, an Austrian logician and philosopher. Together with other members of the circle, he created a specific model of scientific knowledge, according to which the basis scientific texts constitute absolutely true protocol sentences that express the sensory experiences of the subject. All other assertions can be reduced to them and are thus verifiable. If a certain statement cannot be verified, then it must be excluded. Carnap also worked out a number of models of a formalized language capable of expressing the content of scientific theories, and a method of logical analysis of the language of science.
founder linguistic positivism was the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. He abandoned the outdated method of analyzing sentences in terms of the subject-predicate form and followed the path of delimiting the meaning and meaning of linguistic expressions and the logical analysis of language. According to Wittgenstein, meaning is inherent only in sentences that reflect actual situations. "Names" are only signs of "objects". The world is only a collection of combinations of "objects" and "facts". Logical forms are not expressed in language, so rational ways cannot look into the world. Philosophy, according to Wittgenstein, does not solve the question of truth. It only analyzes, clarifies the logical structure of the language and eliminates meaningless sentences.
As a result of a critical revision of the methodological principles of neo-positivism and the rejection of the radical empiricism of the entire positivist trend, post-positivism as a whole arises. Its main ideas were formulated at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s by K. Popper and T. Kuhn and developed in the works of I. Lakatos and S. Toulmin.
Despite some differences in the views of representatives of postpositivism, they are united by a critical attitude to the exaggeration of the role of abstract logical constructions, which is so characteristic of neopositivist doctrines, and a shift in emphasis to the sociocultural and value aspects of scientific knowledge. They are concerned not so much with the formal rigor of their theories as with the consistency of their real history development of science.
In contrast to the neo-positivist concepts, which focused exclusively on the problems of language, i.e., on the problems of exact expression of already existing knowledge, the post-positivists propose a new program, the essence of which is to highlight the historical analysis of science, i.e., the study of the "growth" of the scientific knowledge. Postpositivists are primarily interested in the following questions: How does new theory? How is it spreading in the scientific community? Why are some theories accepted and others rejected? Formed within the framework of the positivist tradition, the image of a scientist as a dispassionate computing device of the highest accuracy in the works of postpositivists acquires the personality traits of a living person belonging to a certain culture, defending its values and ideals, bearing moral responsibility for his decisions and actions. As a result, the sharp former opposition of empirical experience to theoretical reasoning is softened.
Postpositivists are convinced that theoretical thinking is directly involved in the process of cognition, often even ahead of empirical experience. After all, even in order to fix a phenomenon as a “purely empirical (i.e., sensually perceived) fact,” a person must pay attention to it, single it out from countless other phenomena, prefer it to all others, in other words, treat it as more important, more significant, more valuable than all the others. Therefore, post-positivists reject the positivist ideal of "without preconditions for knowledge", speaking not of opposition, but, on the contrary, of the interpenetration of the empirical and the theoretical, of the "theoretical load" of empirical facts.
In general, post-positivism, focusing on the criticism of the common fundamental foundations of all forms and stages of the positivist tradition, strongly rejects the claims of positivism to become the only scientific philosophy and philosophy of science.
Along with teachings oriented towards science and rational methods of cognition, the irrationalist tendency is noticeably intensifying in the philosophy of modern times. Already in the first half of the 19th century, the irrationalist metaphysics of A. Schopenhauer appeared, then the early pre-existentialism of S. Kierkegaard, the "philosophy of life" of F. Nietzsche, A. Bergson, the pragmatism of C. Pierce and W. James. The focus of these philosophers is on issues that are outside the competence of science - the life-everyday experience of a person, questions of the moral choice of a person. anti-scientism irrationalist philosophers in a number of cases was fruitful, contributed to the development of the methodology of the social sciences and the humanities (F. Nietzsche, W. Dilthey).
Danish philosopher S. Kierkegaard (1813-1855)- one of the first critics of modern rationalism. In the works “Either-Or”, “Fear and Trembling”, “Sickness to Death”, he puts the problem of individual being at the center of philosophy. human personality. Criticizing Hegel for his desire to understand the individual in the historically concrete aspect of the objective spirit, Kierkegaard makes a significant turn from the philosophical tradition of modern times: an interest in individual existence is necessary, and not only in general entities, in logic.
The knowledge of individual, unique existence reveals the insufficiency of rational means, for man is a mystery. ("Intelligence ... is something that must be refuted"). Kierkegaard notes the importance of the subjective experience of being a person. The interest is not the cognizing subject, but the personality as the subject of moral choice. The ability to freely choose, being the most important characteristic man, determines the possibility of salvation. Only in an act of free choice, obeying his inner voice, does a person become himself. Considering the case of the biblical Abraham, who received an internal call to sacrifice his son Isaac, Kierkegaard shows the conflict between the voice of faith in the divine character of the call and the general principles of morality. Truth is on the side of faith. Faith is paradoxical, but for Kierkegaard it is higher than morality. Truth is subjective, connected with the purity and sincerity of experience. An individual goes through three stages in his development: aesthetic - attachment to sensual pleasures; moral - following moral law, duty and the highest, religious stage of achieving true freedom, liberation from "sickness to death" - despair, the stage of salvation. On the way to the highest stage, one has to go through a feeling of fear of non-existence. Kierkegaard's philosophical essays anticipate the work of the existentialists and religious philosophers XX century.
One of the earliest irrationalist philosophers is German philosopher A. Schopenhauer (1788-1860). His major work, The World as Will and Representation, was published as early as 1819, but did not receive recognition until late in his life. Schopenhauer relies on the philosophy of Kant, but noticeably irrationalizes his doctrine of the “thing in itself”, absolutizes the irrational nature of the productive power of the imagination. He is also influenced by Indian philosophy.
Schopenhauer considers the world in two aspects: as representation and as will. The whole world “existing for cognition” is an object in relation to the subject, my representation, which does not exist without a subject (“There is no object without a subject”). Considering representation as a unity of subject and object, Schopenhauer anticipates the idea widespread in modern philosophy. The representation of the world is carried out in the forms of space and time, causality, multiplicity. The world as representation is the world of phenomena, the world of science. Scientific knowledge explores the relationship between things, but the essence of things, the reality is hidden. The world of phenomena is an illusion, a veil of Maya. Already the human body shows the insufficiency of understanding a person only in the aspect of the world as a representation. The body is not just a body among other objects, but also a manifestation of the will. ("A volitional act and bodily movements are one and the same"). The body is the visible will, the essence of practical actions is in the will. Schopenhauer concludes that will is the essence of not only an individual, but the world as a whole. Will is free and irrational, it is outside of time, space of multiplicity - a thing-in-itself. The will is one, but it is possible to distinguish the "stages of objectification" of the will - the ideas of Plato. Will manifests itself in different ways - from the unconscious stages of objectification to the formation of ideas about the world. Knowledge, reason are secondary, derivative in relation to the will.
The will as the will to live is the basis of suffering, it is a continuous tension. A person's life passes between suffering from an unsatisfied need and boredom. The world is the abode of suffering, optimism is unscrupulous. Schopenhauer's ethics - ethics pessimism. This is a new phenomenon in Western European philosophy. It is possible to reduce suffering through art, contemplating unchanging ideas. But suffering can be completely eliminated only through asceticism, taming the will. Together with the extinction of the will to live, the world of appearance is also abolished, the dissolution into nothingness and the calming of the spirit take place. The philosophy of Schopenhauer as the doctrine of the irrational beginning of the world influenced the subsequent development of philosophy: the doctrine of the unconscious by E. von Hartmann, the doctrine of F. Nietzsche, indirectly on the formation of the theory of psychoanalysis by Z. Freud.
The development of irrationalist philosophy in the last third of the 19th century is associated with the emergence of a "philosophy of life". Its main category is "life" as an irrational principle, as a special form of human experience in its unity and integrity. Some aspects of the understanding of "life" are associated with the biologization of reality, with the struggle for existence, others - with an emphasis on the primacy of life as a form of practical experience in relation to the scientific mind. Practical, vital activity appears in the "philosophy of life" as the basis of being. This broad unformed current includes the German philosophers W. Dilthey, G. Simmel, F. Nietzsche, the French thinker A. Bergson.
Philosophical doctrine F. Nietzsche (1844-1900) inconsistent and contradictory, but it is united in spirit, tendency and purpose. It is not limited to the philosophy of life. His main works are "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" (1885), "Beyond Good and Evil" (1886) and others. The early Nietzsche was influenced by Schopenhauer, but unlike the latter, he paid much less attention to the questions of being and knowledge. His work is mainly devoted to criticism of European culture and moral problems. Non-rational will, "life" in its opposition to scientific reason, constitutes the original reality. The world is the world of our life. A world independent of us does not exist. The world is considered in the process of continuous formation, it is a world of constant struggle for existence, a clash of wills. Nietzsche, like other contemporary philosophers, biologizes the world, which for him is based on the “organic world”. Its formation is a manifestation of the will to power, which gives rise to a relatively stable order of reality, since a greater will defeats a smaller one. Unlike Schopenhauer, Nietzsche proceeds from a pluralism of wills, their struggle shapes reality. "Will" is understood more specifically - as the will to power. Finally, he defends the need to strengthen the will, criticizing Schopenhauer for his desire to appease the latter. It is necessary to strive not for non-existence, but for the fullness of life - this is the principle of the philosophy of F. Nietzsche. He is critical of the idea of development: there is only becoming and "eternal return" Periodically comes an era nihilism, chaos reigns, there is no meaning. The need for will arises, reconciliation with oneself appears, and the world repeats itself again. Eternal return is the fate of the world, on its basis the “love of rock” is formed. Cognition of the world is inaccessible to logic, a generalizing science, knowledge is a means of mastering the world, and not of obtaining knowledge about the world. Truth is just a "useful delusion". In the process of cognition, we do not penetrate into the essence of the world, but only give an interpretation of the world, the will to power is manifested in the creation of its “world” by the human subject.
Criticizing contemporary culture, Nietzsche notes a special historical place of his era. This is the era when "God is dead" and Nietzsche proclaims new era parish superman. His Zarathustra is the prophet of this idea. Modern man weak, he is "something to be overcome." christian religion as the religion of compassion is the religion of the weak, it weakens the will to power. Hence the anti-Christianity of Nietzsche (with a high assessment of the personality of Jesus). Christian church, he believes, turned everything upside down (“turned any truth into a lie”). Required "change of world view". Traditional morality is also subject to reassessment. Modern morality is the morality of the weak, the "slaves", it is an instrument of their domination over the strong. One of the culprits of the moral upheaval is Socrates, and therefore Nietzsche idealizes the pre-Socratics, whose morality was not yet perverted. Nietzsche extols aristocratic morality, which is characterized by courage, generosity, individualism. It is based on the connection of man with the earth, the joy of love, common sense. This is the morality of the superman, a strong, free person who is freed from illusions and realizes a high level of "will to power", returning "to the innocent conscience of a predatory beast." The “immoralism” declared by Nietzsche is connected with the replacement of the “morality of slaves” with the “morality of masters”. The new morality is essentially a new interpretation of the world. The philosophy of Nietzsche often received ambiguous assessments: the ideologists of fascism tried to use it, they saw it as the ideology of the imperialist bourgeoisie. At the same time, she influenced a number of trends in modern philosophy and culture.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the tradition of irrational criticism of scientific reason was continued by the French philosopher A. Bergson in "Creative Evolution". Bergson focuses on the world of consciousness. The philosopher psychologizes reality, in connection with which he notes the limitations of natural scientific methods knowledge. In the spirit of a number of directions the latest philosophy Bergson proceeds from the unity of the subject and object of cognition, reality for him is a single stream of experiences - “images”. Matter is also a sequence of images taken in relation to the action of "one specific image - my body." French philosopher distinguishes two series of "images" (two types of experience) as two sides of reality: matter and life. The differences between them are in the direction of the processes. Matter is a process of falling down, life is directed upwards, as life impulse, the process of creative evolution, a single stream of psychic energies. Bergson criticizes G. Spencer's positivist theory of evolution. The impulse of life is conceived as a bundle of actions that give rise to things. Material things are extinct remnants, sparks of the energy "sheaf" of actions. Life does not depend on matter, as a special experience it is based on memory linking past and present. Memory allows us to consider time not as a sequence of events, mechanically, but as a holistic experience of a single form - duration. Bergson believes that it is only in relation to life that one can speak of time proper. His concept of time is original and occupies a prominent place among modern theories.
In the process of evolution, two alternative ways of knowing are formed: intelligence and instinct. The first cognizes matter, life in its integrity is not available to him, the intellect is mechanistic, it puts together a picture of the world from separate fragments like a movie from frames. Intelligence is connected with human practice; science is based on it. Bergson, in essence, prefers instinct as the highest form of knowledge, the highest form of instinct is intuition. Intuition is opposed to the intellect, it pushes the intellect “outside of itself”. She cognizes the world as life, as "superconsciousness". On the experience of reality as independent of matter vital activity, as a bundle of actions, human freedom is based, a kind philosophy of action. Practical activity and freedom can be realized in open society, based on free communication . Bergson's philosophy in form and content is opposed to the scientific worldview, it is sometimes characterized as evolutionary spiritualism. The irrational tradition in philosophy XIX– beginning of the 20th century contributed to the formation of the theoretical foundations of modern anti-scientism.
occupies a special place in non-classical philosophy. pragmatism considered the original American philosophy. This is a fairly broad and influential trend in philosophy, which originated in the last third of the 19th century. Its founder is C. Pierce (1839-1914), logician and founder semiotics(the science of signs). This doctrine was further developed by W. James (1842-1910) and J. Dewey (1859-1952). Pragmatism is considered by its representatives as a special method of cognition. This is a kind of empiricism, refusing, like positivism, from metaphysical (philosophical) generalizations. But if Peirce saw in pragmatism a special method, above all scientific thinking, then James gave it ideological significance, and instrumentalism Dewey as a kind of pragmatism appears to be a universal logic for solving problem situations that arise in human experience.
Pragmatism has a number of features that show its relationship with other currents of Western philosophy. Pragmatism is based on a certain concept of “experience”, in which the subject and object of knowledge, material and spiritual, are not distinguished. Pragmatism bypasses the question of the objectively real existence of the world, experience is the only reality. Forming his concept of experience, C. Pierce rethinks the foundations of the philosophy of the New Age, the classical concept of truth as the correspondence of thought to an object. Peirce criticizes Descartes' criteria for "clarity" and "distinctness" of thought, denying the existence of self-evident, immediate, initial knowledge of reality. Knowledge can be substantiated through a connection with other knowledge as an interpretation of signs with some meanings through signs with other meanings. Peirce formulated the main provisions of pragmatism: the theory of doubt-faith, the theory of meaning, the theory of truth. Thinking is considered by him as a kind of adaptation of the organism to the environment, habits (or beliefs) are adopted that contribute to the preservation of a sense of satisfaction, such beliefs, in fact, are knowledge. Beliefs persist until they are refuted by experience. Experience periodically gives rise to doubt as a feeling of dissatisfaction. The process of cognition is associated with the creation of beliefs that allow you to get rid of doubt. Such faith is true knowledge.
The meaning of our concepts is not connected with objective reality, but only with the reality of experience. Meaning is a set of practical consequences of accepting any idea (faith) for the subject. In this understanding of meaning is the "Peirce principle". Meaning is thus a meaning for us, and therefore truth is understood as a belief that is useful, that brings success in practice. Pragmatism explores human experience, but psychologizes it, basing the logic of knowledge on habits and the subjective choice of beliefs.
W. James develops these principles of the pragmatist approach. The world for him is a “stream of consciousness”, a “stream of experience”, and the categories of knowledge are tools for constructing a world in which a person acts from this “chaos of sensations”. Thus, everyone has his own "world", in the stream of experience there are many "unstable worlds". The chosen world is true if it is more favorable for us. (“Everything that turns out to be good in the field of beliefs turns out to be true.”) The truth of belief is revealed in the process of experience, that is, not in the present, but in the future, potentially. This approach also addresses issues religious faith. We have no grounds for asserting the real existence of God, but accepting a world in which God provides order is more favorable and beneficial than choosing a world without God. The “right to believe” is justified by the right to freely choose to believe “in any hypothesis”. (“Religion is a living hypothesis that may turn out to be true”).
Pragmatism is a form of subjectivism in philosophy, the starting points of which allow us to consider it as a kind of irrationalism. In the 20th century, pragmatism, combined with positivism, gives rise to neopragmatism, which is influential in philosophy and logic (W. Quine, R. Rorty).
Phenomenology plays an important role in the criticism of scientism in the 20th century. Phenomenology is understood, first of all, as a method based on the intuitive perception of the essence of things (to return "to the things themselves"), through the purification of consciousness from empirical details and verbal layers. Founder of phenomenology E. Husserl, author of works - Logical Investigations (1901), Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (1936). Already in his early works, he tries to identify the obvious foundations of scientific knowledge (mathematics). In the process of analysis, Husserl comes to the need to eliminate psychological aspects from the cognitive process and revealing its absolute origins, pure logic. To purify the consciousness of the subject, to reveal its absolute foundations, Husserl offers a rather complicated method - phenomenological reduction, during which the object, the subject, the very act of comprehension are eliminated from consciousness. All that remains is the non-subjective structure of relations (or "transcendental consciousness").
An important aspect of the reduction procedure is "epoch"(refraining from judgments about the existence of objects). To characterize the structure of purified consciousness, Husserl uses the scholastic term "intentionality"(direction to the subject). The unnaturalness of the reduction procedure is the main difficulty of the phenomenological method. After the elimination of thoughts and feelings about the subject and the object of cognition from consciousness, only the meanings of possible objects remain ( "noema") and the relationship to these meanings ("noesis"). This structure of absolute meanings and relations is studied by phenomenology. In fact, this is the structure of the "transcendental Self", the structure of the world of culture, universal, independent of specific experience characteristics of human experience (not only scientific, but also everyday life). There is a connection with Kantianism, but Husserl singles out the subjectless structures of any vision of the world, independent of the subject of experience. In later works, he explores the relationship of various perceptions, the relationship of "I" and the other "I". Husserl criticizes the science of modern times as being torn off from its foundations, from lifeworld(the world of life meanings). In this he sees the cause of the crisis of European science and the culture based on it. The phenomenological approach is designed to overcome the one-sidedness of science, to reach new horizons.
Phenomenology has had and is having a significant impact on the development of the methodology of the social and human sciences in the 20th century. It gave immediate impetus to existentialism.
Existentialism(philosophy of existence: from lat. existentia - existence) - philosophy, in the center of which is the problem of the uniqueness, the uniqueness of human existence, manifested in the ability of a person to experience the most acute emotional experiences.
The subject of existentialism is not the fundamental principles of being, not the universal laws of the implementation of natural and social processes, and not even the highest values and ideals of universal morality, but the unique being of an individual, his existence - a direct experience by him of his own life, which is the most important and most important for him. close reality.
As an independent trend, it arose at the beginning of the 20th century in Germany (M. Heidegger, K. Jaspers) and in Russia (L. I. Shestov, N. A. Berdyaev), but it reached its greatest popularity in post-war France (J.P. Sartre, G. Marcel, A. Camus).
The existence of man in the world, according to existentialists, is absurd. "The absurdity that we were born, the absurdity that we die." Man constantly feels a threat to his being. The world goes its own way, and it has nothing to do with man. Every minute, thousands of acting forces, beyond the control of man, can destroy him, interrupt his existence. Human "existence" (existence, life) is fragile - such is its property. Man is forced all the time to confront the threats of annihilation, to defend his existence, to constantly do something, to take care of something. Life is filled with anxiety and fear. This fear is not only of the dangers that the world is fraught with, but also of being itself. It immerses a person in care, but at the same time encourages him to seek the path to salvation.
In order to awaken to true existence, a person must be in a "marginal" situation. Existentialists put different content into it: a person’s fear of not finding his destiny for which he can sacrifice his life (M. Heidegger), mortal danger (K. Jaspers), experiencing the groundlessness of his expectations (J.-P. Sartre). In any case, the borderline situation is the experience of the absurdity of life, the discovery of the "yawning emptiness of nothingness." At the same time, this is the only way for a person to escape from everyday life and try to find himself, which means, in the understanding of existentialists, to look into the eyes of death. This is the "authentic being", which is much more difficult to endure than to thoughtlessly live life within the framework of the established order of things.
Man knows perfectly well that he is mortal. Its very existence is directed towards death, is the "being of death." And death is not a transition to another being, it is an inevitable completion, the end of all human existence. Indeed, apart from being with its worries, fear and threatening, in the end, death, there is nothing. Thought strives to go beyond the limits of being, seeks to find support in the Absolute: in God, in the idea, in essence, etc. But all these are fantasies, in fact, beyond the limits of existence there is only one great nothingness. Therefore, a person has nothing to find support. He cannot count not only on help, but also on a hint. He is always on his own. He is free, absolutely free, he is doomed to be free, and this is his greatest tragedy.
All philosophies have regarded freedom as a lofty and desirable goal. Existentialism, on the other hand, sees in it a heavy burden that a person must bear if he wants to remain a person. He can give up his freedom, stop being himself. Become "like everyone else", but only at the cost of abandoning yourself. The world in which a person is immersed in this is a world of inauthentic being, a world in which a person waives his right to make decisions independently, and therefore does not bear any responsibility.
The feeling of a free person is a feeling of guilt for everything that happens around, and for oneself. A person himself gives value and meaning to his life. He must choose, although he does not have any external grounds for choosing, and he is thrown into life, into a certain situation, and it is this situation that is the only reality given to him - there will be no other. It is absurd to try to get out of it: after all, there is nothing behind it, but it would be absurd to completely succumb to it, limply submit to it - after all, our freedom is given to us for something! A person can always go beyond himself, become something more than he is. This is the only task he can set for himself. And, although everything in this world, of course, collapses and dies due to the finiteness of existence itself, a person can learn to live and love with a constant awareness of the fragility and finiteness of everything that he loves, the insecurity of love itself.
Existentialism had a huge impact not only on philosophy, but also on the development of literature and art. Many representatives of this trend were major artists and writers. In the 60s, existentialism acted as the theoretical basis of mass youth movements in Europe. At present, as a philosophical concept, he has largely lost popularity, but many of his ideas have entered the spiritual content of European culture.
In the late 1930s, arose neo-Freudianism- a generalized name for a group of teachings that use the modified ideas and provisions of psychoanalysis by Z. Freud and one of his closest followers A. Adler. The founders of the direction are K. Horney, G. Sullivan, E. Fromm. Preserving the most important provisions of Freudianism and the general methodology of the psychoanalytic study of individual and social behavior of a person, neo-Freudians abandon the excessive desire of orthodox psychoanalysis to consider a person as an absolutely individualized biological being, whose entire life is only diverse transformations of fundamental sexual drives.
Based on the fact that the social and cultural environment has a more significant influence on the formation of personality and the motivation of human behavior than natural biological instincts, the followers of this direction seek to preserve the Freudian concept of unconscious motivation in order to provide deeper insight into inner world person.
The principle of social and cultural determinism underlying neo-Freudianism, in contrast to Freud's biologism, proceeds from the decisive role of the sociocultural environment in the formation of the human psyche. Neo-Freudians shift the focus of their research from intrapsychic processes to interpersonal relationships, interpreting the mental norm as a person's adaptability to the social environment and considering any violation of "social identity" as a pathology. They reject psychoanalytic ideas about the intrapsychic structure, replacing them with the doctrine of protective forms of social behavior, or generally reject the specifics of the unconscious, considering it as a link between social and mental structures. With a general orientation towards the development of a "sociocultural" direction of psychoanalysis, some differences are noticeable in the positions of the neo-Freudians. So, K. Horney considers the contradiction between the needs of an individual and the possibilities of their satisfaction in the existing system of culture to be the main cause of intrapersonal conflicts. G. Sullivan sees the source of neuroses no longer in the conflict between individual and the whole system as a whole, but in the "tension" generated by the violation of interpersonal connections and relationships.
E. Fromm, criticizing Z. Freud for separating psychology from ethics and not touching on questions about the meaning of human existence, about moral values and ideals, offers the concept of "humanistic psychoanalysis", in which psychology would be organically connected not only with sociology, but also with ethics.
In general, neo-Freudianism resolutely rejects biological determinism in explaining the mental life of a person and opens up prospects for the development of a humanistically oriented psychoanalysis.
One of the influential trends in social thought of the twentieth century is philosophical Anthropology, designed to answer the question of the nature and essence of man. It opposes the speculative-speculative approach to this issue and sees its task in comprehending new scientific knowledge about the various aspects of human existence in their holistic comprehension. Philosophical anthropology also develops its ideas in polemics with positivist and neo-Kantian epistemology.
The main problem of this trend, formulated by its founder M. Scheler, is the theme of significant differences between man and animal. M. Scheler sees them in a person's ability to relate objectively and objectively to the environment; A. Gelen - in the underdevelopment of a person who compensates for it in activity; E. Rothamer - in the ability to create and be the fruit of culture. However, they are all convinced that human nature remains unchanged and depends on God.
In addition to representatives of philosophical anthropology (M. Scheler, A. Gelen, G. Plesner, E. Rothamer, M. Landman and others), its main provisions in a broad sense are developed by K. Levi-Strauss, as well as P. Teilhard de Chardin and H. Ortega y Gasset.
Personalism is closer to philosophical anthropology. It is a religious-idealistic trend that arose at the beginning of our century. The subject of philosophical research in personalism is the creative subjectivity of a person, which is ultimately comprehended in his involvement in divine reality. Personalism, in contrast to existentialism, considers it possible to apply scientific methods to the study of man, while at the same time objecting to scientistic views of man only as a thinking object of research. A person in the scientist's vision, according to personalists, is not the creator of the world, but a contemplator of it as a given.
The meaning of human existence, according to personalists, consists in an active creative personal consciousness, rich in fantasy and imagination, carrying positive ideas, plans and goals that are embodied in actual reality in various forms of spiritual activity.
The most authoritative direction of modern religious (Catholic) philosophy is neo-Thomism- a modern version of the teachings of Thomas Aquinas. Neo-Thomism combines the ideas of medieval Thomistic teaching with the philosophy of Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger. Prominent representatives of this trend are J. Maritain, E. Gilson, Y. Bohensky. They do not deny scientific knowledge about nature and society, their reality, but insist on the dependence of knowledge on God. human mind cognizes the ideas laid down in the world by God. Religious philosophy develops the rationale for theism, the existence of God, his nature and relationship to the world and man.
In the modern Western socio-cultural situation, the problem of substantiating the truth of Christian theology has become more acute. Under these conditions, new variants and currents of Thomistic metaphysics arise, which see the solution to the problem in the analysis of the specifics of human existence, the use of the achievements of existentialism, hermeneutics, and anthropology. This is what gives rise to modernist ideas and currents in Christian theology and philosophy.
Thus, two trends can be traced in the latest philosophy: the continuation of the line associated with an orientation towards classical science (primarily positivism); the development of an alternative path, on which the criticism of the one-sided orientation towards classical science and the justification of the methodology of social and humanitarian research is carried out.
Key concepts:
Irrationalism, S. Kierkegaard's doctrine of existence, A. Schopenhauer's voluntarism, F. Nietzsche's philosophy of life
Philosophy of any historical period represents the self-consciousness of the era. The content of philosophical currents and concepts, the very method of philosophizing often reflects phenomena and processes that largely determine the prospects for the development of mankind as a whole. Thus, the largest thinkers of the second half of the 19th century tried to comprehend the essence and causes of the onset of the crisis of Western civilization in order to find new meaningful life guidelines and new ways of “inclusion” of a person in the world, both natural and social. In the development of European thought, this period is the beginning of the formation of a new type of philosophy - non-classical philosophy, which arose as an opposition to the previous philosophy with its cult of reason and objectivist, rational values and essences. Therefore, the non-classical philosophy of the second half of the 19th century - the beginning of the 20th century is largely irrational. Irrationalism is a direction in philosophy that claims that the mind is not able to cover the entire diversity of spiritual and material reality, for example, such non-rational forms of manifestation of the human spirit as intuition, will, fear, suffering, etc.
Philosophy of S. Kierkegaard
Soren Kierkegaard(1813-1855) Danish philosopher and writer. He is one of the founders of existential philosophy. Kierkegaard's main works: "Sickness to Death", "Fear and Trembling", "On Fear", "Either - or". Kierkegaard said that the disadvantage of classical philosophy is that it solves the question of man too abstractly, i.e. it is not interested in a specific living person with his problems, experiences, suffering, but “in general”. Philosophy must turn to man and help him to exist in this complex and absurd world. It was he who introduced the concept of "existence" into philosophical circulation, defining it as "being - between". This emphasized the intermediate, dependent nature of human reality, its dependence on something else that is no longer a person. “Life is a zero point between something and nothing, a simple “maybe” ... Man is a student of the “school of possibilities”.
According to Kierkegaard, man is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, the temporal and the eternal. He introduced new concepts into the categorical apparatus of philosophy, such as: absurdity, fear, despair, melancholy, boredom, reflecting the dramatic richness of human existence and subjective attitude. “Longing is a person’s attitude to the world of his existence, and despair is associated with an attitude towards oneself”, with the awareness of one’s own finiteness - mortality.
According to Kierkegaard, a person in his development and search for the meaning of life goes through three stages:
aesthetic;
ethical;
religious.
At the aesthetic stage, a person is obsessed with passions; this is the ethics of the majority, based on the principle: “break the day”, i.e. "burn life". The extreme expression of aesthetic being is eroticism. The desire to seek sensual pleasures everywhere corrupts the aesthetic person from within, he becomes a prisoner of his own aspirations. Inevitably, satiety and a sense of the meaninglessness of existence sets in, accompanied by despair. This despair is connected with the desire to get rid of one's "I", to become "like everyone else." “Round like a pebble, such a person rolls everywhere like a bargaining chip, while the misfortune of a person is that he is not aware of himself. The life of such a person is an incarnation of monkeying. The symbol of the aesthetic man is Don Juan.
At the ethical stage, responsibility and a sense of duty come to the fore: "The ethical is that by which a person becomes." At this stage, self-determination of a person occurs in a purely rational way, according to the prescription of the moral law. An ethical way of life that is not based on higher values is also vulnerable. An example of this is the behavior of Ahasuerus, who, formally fulfilling his duty, refused to rest for Christ.
Only at the religious stage does a “break through” into a new sphere of being take place, the main principle of the third stage is “not what is chosen, but how it is chosen”. The “knight of faith” renounces the general in order to become individual, he accepts suffering as a principle of existence and, thereby, joins the share of the crucified Christ. “Suffering is an inevitable, proper existence.” The symbol of this stage is Abraham.
Philosophy of A. Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer(1788-1860) - German philosopher, founder of a system imbued with voluntarism, irrationalism. Voluntarism is a doctrine that highlights the will. The main work is “The World as Will and Representation”. At the center of his philosophy is the "World Will", as an impersonal super - an object that coincides with freedom. The will of the world is a powerful creative principle that generates all things. The will is also found in man, in the form of various desires, likes, likes and dislikes. The mode of existence of the will is action, therefore, through our own actions and experiences, we comprehend the essence of phenomena. Before man, the world is only will in various modifications; with the advent of man, it also becomes a representation. For man, the world turns out to be both will and representation. Will is a blind attraction, a dark dull urge, expressed in the need for survival. The blindly acting will needs a "guide", and the mind becomes a "lantern", illuminating its path.
In the animal and human world, the struggle for existence and the will to live are forms of realization of the world will. Embodied in a person, the world will determines his character and essence. Initially, a person is given an unchanging, intelligible character. Connecting with motives and desires, refracting through consciousness, it determines the individual variation of behavior, its attitude towards people and gives rise to an empirical character. A third character is added to it - acquired, the essence of which is knowledge of oneself, one's individuality and the unchanging foundations of an empirical character generated by an intelligible character.
Schopenhauer denies free will in human behavior, it is predetermined by his character, more precisely, by the dominant variety of his empirical character. He distinguishes three types of empirical character:
compassionate.
egoistic;
The most dangerous of all is a malicious character, for which the suffering and sorrow of others in themselves serve as an end, and their infliction is a pleasure. A truly moral character is a compassionate character, which ensures merging with other people and the manifestation of the generic essence of a person. Compassion turns our existence into co-existence with nature and other people. Life is full of need, grief and suffering, and the task of man is aesthetic contemplation and moral self-improvement. This helps him in the fight against death and suffering.
Human morality is expressed in three phenomena: compassion, justice and philanthropy. Compassion, as a feeling of suffering that does not comprehend me, arises from the ability of a person to identify himself with others. The only worthy way out for a person is an attempt to "jump" out of the meaningless cycle of life and find peace in the rejection of desires - this is the movement from being into "nothing". Schopenhauer's moral imperative: "forcing yourself to do nothing of what you want, you should do everything that you don't want." From here it follows - obedient acceptance of torment; asceticism in relation to oneself; altruism towards others. And as a consequence of these requirements - the complete elimination of egoism, because. earthly goods and pleasures are just as hostile to morality as hatred, envy and malice.
All happiness is negative, not positive. It releases from some suffering and deprivation, which will be followed by new suffering, or pointless longing and boredom. Optimism is a mockery of the unthinkable suffering of mankind. A fool pursues pleasure and comes to disappointment. A wise man tries to avoid trouble. A wisely living person realizes the inevitability of troubles (suffering), keeps his passions in check and puts a limit to his desires.
Philosophy of life F. Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche(Nietzsche) (1844-1900) - German philosopher, one of the founders of the philosophy of life, based on the idea that the mind alone, previously considered the universal body of philosophy, is not enough to develop a holistic worldview. Its place must be taken by philosophizing, arising from the fullness of life, the fullness of experiencing life. One of the representatives of this school (V. Dilthey) proclaimed: "Life is an experience."
Nietzsche's teaching is divided into two parts:
1) positive (the idea of "superman", "love for the distant", etc.);
2) negative (the idea of "will to power", "eternal return", etc.).
Nietzsche's first book was The Birth of Tragedy, or Hellenism and Pessimism. It contains the idea of two principles of culture:
"Dionysian" (life, elemental, tragic),
"Apollo" (contemplative, logical, beautiful).
Only art, which in the early stages of mankind played a paramount role in comparison with science in the life of society, is a full-blooded embodiment and manifestation of true life. As for modern culture, with its orientation towards science, it turned out to be alien to life, because relied on an artificial, schematizing mind.
"The Birth of Tragedy" is the key to deciphering all of Nietzsche's subsequent work. Here he formulates the main task of his life and philosophy - the creation of a culture in which a person could ennoble his inner world, educate himself. Nietzsche wants to return to people clarity of spirit, simplicity and grandeur. Nietzsche's task is to affirm the supreme value of the cultural improvement of man, as a result of which a new type of man should appear, surpassing modern people in their moral and intellectual qualities. Such a cultural and ethical ideal of man is the superman. “Superman is a person who is able to surpass himself”, i.e. constantly improving himself, overcoming his shortcomings ("defeating dragons"). According to Nietzsche, man is only a path, "a cable car over the abyss from the beast to the overman."
Man (human spirit) in his development goes through three stages: a camel, a lion and a child. The historical superman is a personality of a higher type that existed in history as an exception, for example, Alexander the Great, Caesar, Napoleon. Superman is harmony, a synthesis of two principles: "Dionysian", with his thirst for life, and "Apollonian", i.e. logical and beautiful. Superman is a creator with a strong, impetuous, "long will", the creator of himself as an autonomous, free personality. It is distinguished by: the ability to sacrifice, giving virtue, generosity and endless thirst for active love, honesty, fearlessness, firmness and heroism. All this will allow the superman to give a truly human meaning to everything on Earth. "He is that lightning, he is that madness."
Life is a special kind of world energy, the will to power. The will to power is power over yourself and your life. Thinking is an instrument of power. “Love for the far” is a demanding love for a person, not for who he is, but for such as he can and should be, and he can be better. Thus, she does not deny "love of one's neighbor." "Love for the far" is also characterized as love for "things" and "ghosts". “Ghosts” (“things”) are the highest spiritual values, such as justice, beauty, truth, honor. In his work Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche speaks of the morality of slaves and the morality of masters. He divides people into these two categories not according to socio-political, but according to moral and spiritual criteria, i.e. a person can occupy a high place in society, but be a slave to his place, position, a puppet in the hands of others. And in any place he can be master, master of himself, his word.
Non-classical philosophy laid the foundations of modern (post-non-classical) philosophy and rationality, reflected the crisis of purely rational values of Western European culture.
Non-classical philosophy is commonly understood as a set of disparate philosophical currents that arose in Western Europe in the 19th century. outside the boundaries of German classical philosophy. The latter, however, is most directly related to the emergence of these currents, because by the very fact of its presence and influence on the minds of contemporaries, it stimulated a critical attitude towards itself and the desire to overcome it.
Starting from the Renaissance and the New Age and up to the middle of the 19th century. in Western Europe, the tradition of rational philosophy was formed and consolidated, which found its final form in the philosophical systems of the representatives of German classical philosophy, primarily I. Kant and G. Hegel.
The real history of the 18th and 19th centuries, however, did not claim this philosophy: raised to the top human values reason proved powerless both to explain and to prevent disharmony and chaos, which became the content of social life. Together with the collapse of Napoleonic France at the beginning of the 19th century. the high ideals of the Age of Enlightenment (reason) were put to shame; in the 1930s and 1940s, the class struggle sharply intensified in Germany and France, denoting irreconcilable positions in society. This split deepened towards the end of the 19th century. and resulted in an attempt to radically reorganize the very foundations of economic and social life (the Paris Commune in 1871). Franco-Prussian War 1870-1871 Mrs. passed her verdict on the spiritual values of the age of reason. Progressive illusions about a future golden age were dispelled.
Another factor that pushed aside German classical philosophy was the revolution in natural science and industrial Revolution. The triumph of chemistry, the creation of the theory of conservation of energy, the discovery of electromagnetic induction by Faraday, the theory of magnetism by Ampère; by the end of the 19th century. the discovery of radioactivity, X-rays, etc. could not go unnoticed by the public consciousness. All this happened against the backdrop of intensive application of knowledge for the modernization of production and technical innovations. The world was changing before our eyes: the first Railway, the first automobile, the first experiments in aeronautics, the electric telegraph and the electric light bulb, then the telephone, radio communications, and much more. Technique aggressively invaded spiritual life, gaining leading positions in it. The European became involved in this process; science and technology became more valuable "philosophy" because their use promised new benefits.
Attention is also drawn to such a circumstance as the population explosion that occurred on the European continent. If in the period from 6 to 1800 the population of Europe could not exceed 180 million. people, since 1800. to 1914 it reached 460 million, that is, it increased by more than 2.5 times. The arrival of the masses on the arena of history marked at the same time a shift in emphasis in culture. Classical philosophy could no longer enjoy success outside the university departments.
The dynamic 19th century, as we see, broke many of the usual ideas of people. Along with bright hopes, there were disturbing forebodings, and fears, and fear of the unknown. All this sharpened the interest in purely human forms of life, about which rational philosophy kept silent. The currents that made up the content of non-classical philosophy, namely, existentialism, the ideas of A. Schopenhauer, the “philosophy of life”, pragmatism and positivism, despite its commitment to science, experience, usefulness,. etc. are essentially irrationalistic. Departure from reason, its denial as a spiritual value is an essential feature of non-classical philosophy.
Another common feature pluralism(plurality) of concepts, ideas, approaches, currents, a kind of “discordance” among philosophers. The meaning of what is happening can be understood only if you hear all at once, and not individually each of them.
Non-classical philosophy marked a greater attention to man, an attempt to see him in all the complexity of his many-sided nature. This is its humanistic content.
NON-CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHY (second half of the 19th-20th centuries)
Conventionally, in non-classical philosophy, there are several programs aimed at rethinking the classical type of philosophizing:
1) irrationalistic tradition in non-classical philosophy ( S. Kierkegaard, A. Schopenhauer, F. Nietzsche);
2) socio-critical program (Marxism, neo-Marxism, post-Marxism);
3) critical-analytical program (neopositivism, postpositivism, analytical philosophy, structuralism);
4) existential-anthropological-psychological program (phenomenology, hermeneutics, existentialism, psychoanalysis).
The main features of the classical type of philosophizing
1. Classical philosophical systems were distinguished by their claim to integrity, completeness, monologue-instructive style of presentation, and the desire to explain the laws of objective and subjective reality.
2. Classical rationalism described the objective world in terms of an active worldview, activity. There was an identification of activity and consciousness.
3. Rational knowledge, boundless faith in science, in progress, in the ability of an extra-individual and individual mind, in the possibility of reorganizing the world on the basis of Reason.
4. Within the framework of classical philosophy the highest absolute value is the mind. Freedom is understood as freedom that has no boundaries, as the absolute freedom of the individual, as a necessity known by reason.
5. The style of philosophizing is characterized as rule, rigor, consistency, evidence, rational reasoning scheme. The classics are characterized by deep confidence in the natural orderliness of the world order, in which there is reasonable order and harmony.
Features of non-classical philosophy
1. The status of the mind itself, the cognizing subject, the structure of the cognitive process is being revised, which leads to actualization irrationalism(lat. irrationalis - unreasonable, unconscious), who believes that the mind is not able to capture all the diversity of the real world and pays attention to non-rational forms of a person’s spiritual manifestation (will, intuition, the unconscious, etc.)
2. Within the framework of non-classical philosophy, the central one becomes anthropological problem, a person is considered here as a being experiencing, doubting, feeling, self-creating, practically transforming nature and society.
3. Non-classical philosophy moves from a monologic edifying style of thinking to dialogic, subject-subject style.
4. Non-classical philosophy moves from the search for universal principles, ultimate essences, universals to self-value of individual, unique, peculiar, single.
5. Within the framework of non-classical philosophy, a change of paradigms is carried out, which is expressed in a linguistic turn - the transition from the philosophy of consciousness to the philosophy of language.
Marxism and Neo-Marxism. Arises in the mid-40s of the XIX century. Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels.
Marxism tried to solve the following questions: patterns of development of society, materialistic understanding of history, anthroposociogenesis, causes of social stratification, the phenomenon of social consciousness.
Materialistic understanding of history proceeds from the fact that the conditions of human life (social being) determine the views of people, their goals, values, theories (social consciousness). The basis (basis) of social life is way of producing wealth..
The mode of production is the unity of productive forces and production relations. The productive forces are the instruments of labor, the means of production and the people employed in it. Industrial relations are relations between people.
rises above the base superstructure, which includes: public institutions and organizations, political, legal relations, public consciousness (morality, religion, science, philosophy, art, etc.)
Certain production relations correspond to a certain level and character of the development of the productive forces. The source of social development is the contradiction between the productive forces.
The stage of development of society with the corresponding mode of production of material goods, the basis and superstructure is called socio-economic formation. Marx and Engels distinguish five socio-economic formations: primitive communal, slaveholding, feudal, capitalist and communist.
Methodology of Marxism: dialectical materialism. The central concept of the philosophy of Marxism as a doctrine of the dialectical process is concept of universality of development.
The purpose of cognitive efforts is to reach the truth. Truth is defined in Marxist philosophy as the correspondence of thought, our knowledge of the world to the world itself, objective reality. Practice is the criterion of truth. It connects and correlates the object and the action performed in accordance with the thought of it.
Capitalism alienates people from the product of labor, from labor itself, from their own human nature, and from each other.
Philosophicalirrationalism
Arthur Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer's main work "The World as Will and Representation"(1819), according to which the world is not at all based on the principles of expediency, reasonableness. According to Schopenhauer, there are no rational forces in the world at all, but there are will, the will to live, the desire for self-affirmation. Will- this is a blind impulse to life, an irrational desire that permeates everything. The world is only a mirror of this volition, acting as a representation.
Nietzsche Friedrich (1844 - 1900) - a German thinker who became the founder of the " philosophy of life." Romanticism the young Nietzsche, when he is entirely under the influence of the ideas of Schopenhauer and G. Wagner;
Stage positivism associated with disappointment in Wagner and a sharp break with the ideal of the artist: Nietzsche turns his gaze to the "positive" sciences - natural science, mathematics, chemistry, history, economics;
Period mature Nietzsche or actually Nietzschean, imbued with the pathos idea of "will to power". In turn, the work of the mature Nietzsche, in terms of the order of the problems he considers, can be represented as follows:
a) creation affirmative part of the doctrine by developing a cultural and ethical ideal in the form ideas about the "superman" and the "eternal return";
b) negative part of teaching expressed in idea of "revaluation of all values".
Nietzsche's central concepts are: superman, will to power, sublimation, master morality, slave morality and eternal return. His superman- is, first of all, a creator with a strong, impetuous, "long will", the creator of himself as an autonomous and free person.
Philosophy of positivism, neo-positivism and post-positivism
Positivism. As an independent trend, positivism took shape in the 30s of the 19th century. ( O. Comte and G. Spencer). The focus of positivists has always been on the question on the relationship between philosophy and science. Comte declares a decisive break with the philosophical (“metaphysical”) tradition, believing that science does not need any philosophy standing above it.
Arises second historical form of positivism Machism, empirio-criticism, i.e. critique of experience. (E. Mach, R. Avenarius and others). The Machists believed that the task of philosophy is not to build a "synthetic" system embodying the general conclusions of all sciences, but to create theories of scientific knowledge.
Neopositivism, analytical philosophy ( 20s of XX century) Logical positivism accepts the thesis about the dominant nature of the provisions of logic and mathematics. Logical positivism is closely related to the so-called linguistic turn in philosophy. The problem is at the center of his interests. values language expressions. It pursues two goals: 1) to exclude from science all meaningless reasoning arising from the misuse of language; 2) to ensure the construction of ideal logical models of meaningful reasoning.
Postpositivism . The principle of verification (verification by experience) is replaced by the principle of falsification (refutation) proposed by K. Popper. Postpositivism insists on the importance of a historical approach to the study of science. In the process of development of science, as a result of scientific revolutions, there is a change of paradigms (from the Greek. paradeigma example, example). A paradigm means a set of theoretical, methodological and other guidelines adopted by the scientific community at each stage of the development of science, which are guided as a model (model, standard) in solving problems. So in physics at the turn of the XIX - XX centuries. there was a transition from Newton's paradigm to Einstein's theory.
Philosophy of existentialism
50 - 60s of the XX century. Existentialism reflected the contradictions and illnesses of the society of the 20th century, presented a description of situations of a spiritual crisis, when an impersonal being manifests a sense of meaninglessness, insufficiency, and the incorrectness of his being. Moreover, many representatives of existentialism with amazing ease and skill used the pen of a writer, an artist, describing real "boundary" situations in which abstract "existentials" are filled with flesh, the life world.
Distinguish religious(Berdyaev, Shestov, Jaspers, Marcel, Buber) and atheistic(Sartre, Camus, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty) existentialism. The fundamental principle of existentialism can be expressed in words: existence precedes essence, that is, initially a person simply exists, but he still has to acquire essence, he is only a project. The constant search for oneself, concern for gaining the essence is a difficult lot for a person, his constant choice, the creation of himself and others.
As the original and genuine human existence, self-experience, the existence of being, which is single, personal, finite and comprehended directly, stands out. The description of the structure of human existence is reduced in existentialism to the description a number of its modes - fear, guilt, anxiety, suffering, conscience. It is at the moments of the deepest personal upheavals - in "border situations" – man experiences existence as the basis of his being.
The true essence of man is revealed only in existence,which reveals itself in borderline situations. These are situations of a special kind that “sober up” a person, encourage him to understand his true calling, distract him from the monotonous and fleeting bustle of everyday life. To comprehension of existence encourages, for example, encounter with death.Document
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