The idealism of German classical philosophy. From signal to image Cognition in German classical philosophy

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3. Language in the light of German classical philosophy 3.1. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). Dialectics of the relationship of language, consciousness and reality German philosopher, the creator of the theory of dialectics, the essence of which is determined by the principle: “Contradiction is a criterion

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The philosophy of the Enlightenment managed to be realized practically - in the slogans and ideals of the Great French Revolution of 1789-1794. A fundamentally new stage in its development was the work of the German classics of the late 18th - early 19th centuries. - Immanuel Kant, Johann Fichte, Georg Hegel, Ludwig Feuerbach. With them, the themes of history, development, activity of the cognizing subject came to philosophy.

An important stage and development of world philosophical thought has become. It became especially widespread at the end of the 18th - the first half of the 19th centuries.

Representatives and founder of German philosophy

The basis of German classical philosophy was the work of the five most prominent German philosophers of that time:

• Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804);
• Johann Fichte (1762 - 1814);
• Friedrich Schelling (1775 - 1854);
• Georg Hegel (1770 - 1831);
• Ludwig Feuerbach (1804 - 1872).

Each of these philosophers created his own philosophical system, filled with a wealth of ideas and concepts.

Founder of German classical philosophy the vast majority of researchers consider the brightest thinker of the second half of the 18th century. Immanuel Kant.

German classical philosophy became a kind of outcome of the development of all previous European philosophy and at the same time was the most important basis and source for the further development of philosophical thought.

Features of German philosophy of the XIX century

German philosophy of the 19th century is a unique phenomenon in world philosophy.

Feature of German philosophy in the fact that in just over 100 years she has succeeded in:

• deeply explore the problems that have tormented mankind for centuries, and come to conclusions that determined the entire future development of philosophy;
• combine almost all known at that time philosophical directions— from subjective idealism to vulgar materialism and irrationalism;
• to discover dozens of names of outstanding philosophers who entered the "golden fund" of world philosophy (Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Engels, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, etc.).

German classical philosophy developed several general problems, which allows us to speak of it as a holistic phenomenon: it turned the attention of philosophy from traditional problems (being, thinking, cognition, etc.) to the study of human essence, paid special attention to the problem of development, significantly enriched the logical and theoretical apparatus of philosophy and looked at history as a holistic process.

Directions and stages of classical German philosophy

In general, in German philosophy of the XIX century. the following can be distinguished four main steps:

• German classical philosophy(first half of the 19th century);
• materialism(middle and second half of the 19th century);
• irrationalism(second half and end of the 19th century);
• "philosophy of life"(second half and end of the 19th century).

In German classical philosophy were presented three leading philosophies:

• objective idealism(Kant, Schelling, Hegel);
• subjective idealism(Fichte);
• materialism(Feuerbach).

It became a reaction to the changes taking place in European society. There are three main directions in which these changes took place.

Firstly, with the advent of the Age of Enlightenment, a spiritual revolution took place, the very way of thinking of man changed. The consequence of this was the Great French Revolution (1789-1794), which had a huge worldwide resonance. It affected neighboring states not only ideologically, but also in reality, in the form of wars waged from 1792 to 1815 first by revolutionary and then Napoleonic France against coalitions of opposing states. The period of relative calm that followed, when the feudal-monarchist regimes were able to restore their strength, was only a temporary "calm before the storm" - a whole series of bourgeois-democratic revolutions, which in 1848-1849. swept through several European countries. Moreover, in some countries the first actions of the revolutionary proletariat took place. The French Revolution created the illusion of putting the ideas of the Enlightenment into practice. However, this was precisely an illusion, since progressive ideas unexpectedly turned into the most severe terror. Naturally, philosophers could not fail to notice this and not to reconsider the foundations on which they built their systems.

Secondly, in the 18th century the fight between freethinking and religion intensified, which, in the period after the French Revolution, tried to win back the positions lost during the Enlightenment, and then again was forced to retreat in the conditions of a new upsurge in the liberation struggle.

Finally, thirdly, cardinal changes took place in the understanding of the world, science arose and developed dynamically, primarily in the form of natural science. Mechanics, which had dominated physics since the beginning of the New Age, gradually lost its former dominant role. It was replaced by chemistry as a science of qualitative transformations of natural substances, as well as new branches of physics (the doctrine of magnetism and electricity, which soon merged into one scientific discipline that studies electromagnetic phenomena). Finally, biological disciplines progressed rapidly, moving more and more towards creating conditions for the development of a scientifically based theory of evolution as a generalizing theoretical construction.

Characteristic features of German classical philosophy

An important feature of German classical philosophy is the revival of the dialectics created by the philosophers of antiquity as a special method of cognition. This is its essential difference from the philosophy of the Enlightenment, which was generally based on metaphysics. Enlightenment philosophers proceeded from the assumption that all phenomena of the world are static and unchanging. Dialectics, as a new method for European philosophy, assumed the consideration of a phenomenon in all its complex relationships, was not content with random observations and was guided by a holistic view of phenomena. The main merit in the development of the new method belongs to Hegel, although his predecessor I. Kant prepared all the possibilities for this.

Classical German philosophy defines a holistic concept of dialectics:

• Kant's dialectic is the dialectic of the limits and possibilities of human cognition: feelings, reason and human reason;
• Fichte's dialectic is reduced to the development of the creative activity of the I, to the interaction of the I and the non-I as opposites, on the basis of the struggle of which the development of human self-consciousness takes place;
• Schelling transfers to nature the principles of dialectical development proposed by Fichte, nature for him is a developing spirit;
• Hegel presented a detailed, comprehensive theory of idealistic dialectics. He explored the entire natural, historical and spiritual world as a process, i.e. in its continuous movement, change, transformation and development, contradictions, breaks in gradualness, the struggle of the new with the old, directed movement;
• Feuerbach in his dialectic considers connections phenomena, their interactions and changes the unity of opposites in the development of phenomena (spirit and body, human consciousness and material nature).

Human nature was explored, not just human history:

• for Kant, man is a moral being;
• Fichte emphasizes the effectiveness, activity of consciousness and self-consciousness of a person, considers the structure of human life according to the requirements of reason;
• Schelling shows the relationship between the objective and the subjective;
• Hegel more broadly considers the boundaries of the activity of self-consciousness and individual consciousness: the self-consciousness of the individual in him correlates not only with external objects, but also with other self-consciousness, from which various social forms arise;
• Feuerbach defines a new form of materialism - anthropological materialism, in the center of which stands a real man, which is a subject for itself and an object for another person.

All representatives of classical German philosophy defined it as a special system of philosophical disciplines, categories, ideas:

• Kant singles out epistemology and ethics as the main philosophical disciplines;
• Schelling - natural philosophy, ontology;
• Fichte saw in philosophy such sections as ontological, epistemological, socio-political;
• Hegel defined the broad system philosophical knowledge which included the philosophy of nature, logic, philosophy of history, history of philosophy, philosophy of law, philosophy of state, philosophy of morality, philosophy of religion, philosophy of development of individual consciousness, etc.;
• Feuerbach considered the philosophical problems of history, religion, ontology, epistemology and ethics.

Philosophy of Immanuel Kant

The German philosophy of the second half of the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries, which entered the history of world philosophy under the name of classical philosophy, begins with Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). His philosophical work is traditionally divided into two periods: subcritical and critical.

In the most significant work of the pre-critical period, "The General Natural History and Theory of the Sky" (1775), Kant formulated an idea that later in Western European science took shape in a kind of "collective" theory - the Kant-Laplace hypothesis. It was the thought of the natural origin of the universe under the influence of dynamic forces from the original gaseous nebula. In the same theory, he developed the idea of ​​the integrity of the structure of the universe, the presence in it of the laws of the relationship of celestial bodies, which together form a single system. This assumption allowed Kant to make a scientific prediction about the presence of still undiscovered planets in the solar system. In the age of domination of mechanism, Kant was one of the first among philosophers who tried to build a picture of a mobile, dynamic, evolutionary world.

The pre-critical period was, as it were, a preparatory stage for the critical period - already at that time Kant hatched immortal ideas that later became the classics of world philosophy and, according to Kant himself, constituted the “Copernican revolution” in philosophy. The main ideas of the critical period, in addition to the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), are set forth in such works as the Critique of Practical Reason (1786), The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), The Critique of Judgment (1790) and a number of others.

Kant showed that if a person with his mind begins to reason about the universal, which goes beyond the limits of his finite experience, then he inevitably falls into contradictions.

The antinomy of reason means that statements that contradict each other can be equally well either both provable or both unprovable. Kant formulated universal statements about the world as a whole, about God, about freedom in the antinomic form of theses and antitheses in his Critique of Pure Reason.

Formulating and solving these antinomies of reason, Kant revealed a special category of universal concepts. Pure, or theoretical, reason develops such concepts as “God”, “the world as a whole”, “freedom”, etc.

The antinomies of reason are resolved by Kant by distinguishing between the world of appearances and the world of things in themselves. Kant proposes a method of dual consideration, which he called the experimental method in philosophy. Each object must be considered dually - as an element of the world of cause-and-effect relationships, or the world of phenomena, as an element of the world of freedom, or the world of things in themselves.

According to Kant, the thing-in-itself, or the absolute, the spontaneous force acting in man, cannot be a direct object of cognition, since human cognition is not connected with the task of cognizing the absolute. Man cognizes not things in themselves, but phenomena. It was this assertion of Kant that gave rise to his accusation of agnosticism, i.e., of denying the cognizability of the world.

Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, formulated his famous question, "What can I know?" and took upon himself the labor of substantiating by means of reason the very conditions and possibilities of human cognition.

In his theory of knowledge, he solves the problem: how, starting from subjectivity, from human consciousness, one can come to objective knowledge. Kant makes the assumption that there is some kind of proportionality between consciousness and the world. He connects the dimension of cosmic processes with human existence.

Before cognizing something, it is necessary to identify the conditions of cognition. Kant's conditions of cognition are a priori forms of cognition, i.e., not dependent on any experience, pre-experimental, or, more precisely, super-experimental forms that make it possible to understand the world. The comprehensibility of the world is ensured by the conformity of the mental structures that the subject has with the connections of the world.

Knowledge is a synthesis of sensibility and reason. Kant defines sensibility as the ability of the soul to contemplate objects, while the ability to think the object of sensuous contemplation is reason. “These two abilities,” writes Kant, “cannot perform the functions of each other. The understanding cannot contemplate anything, and the senses cannot think anything. Only from their combination can knowledge arise.”

Knowledge is never chaotic, human experience is structured on the basis of a priori forms of sensibility and a priori forms of reason. The universal and necessary forms of sensibility for Kant are space and time, which serve as a form of organization and systematization of countless sensory impressions. Without these forms of sensory perception of the world, a person would not be able to navigate in it.

The a priori forms of reason are the most general concepts - categories (unity, plurality, wholeness, reality, causality, etc.), which represent a universal and necessary form of conceivability of any objects, their properties and relations. Thus, a person, cognizing the world, constructs it, builds order from the chaos of his sensory impressions, brings them under general concepts, creates his own picture of the world. Kant for the first time in the history of philosophy revealed the specificity of science and scientific knowledge as a constructive and creative creation of the human mind.

It should be borne in mind that Kant interpreted the perception of nature on the basis of theoretical reason. Therefore, his theory of knowledge is divided into three parts: feelings, reason, mind.

Kant's doctrine of the limits of knowledge was directed not against science, but against blind faith in its limitless possibilities, in the ability to solve any problem by scientific methods. “Therefore,” writes Kant, “I had to limit my knowledge in order to make room for faith.” Critical philosophy required an awareness of the limitations of human knowledge, which is limited to scientifically reliable knowledge, in order to make room for a purely moral orientation in the world. Not science and not religious faith, but “the moral law within us” serve for Kant as the basis of morality.

The Critique of Practical Reason answered Kant's second fundamental question: "What should I do?" Kant introduces a distinction between theoretical and practical reason. This difference is as follows. If pure or theoretical reason “determines” the object of thought, then practical reason is called upon to “implement”, i.e., produce a moral object and its concept (it must be borne in mind that Kant’s term “practical” has a special meaning and means not some kind of productive activity, but simply an act). The sphere of activity of practical reason is the sphere of morality.

As a philosopher, Kant realized that morality cannot be derived from experience, empiricism. The history of mankind demonstrates a great variety of norms of behavior, often incompatible with each other: actions considered as a norm in one society are subject to sanctions in another. Therefore, Kant took a different path: he substantiates the absolute nature of morality by philosophical means.

Moral action, as Kant showed, does not apply to the world of appearances. Kant revealed the timeless, i.e., independent of knowledge, of the development of society, the nature of morality. Morality, according to Kant, is the most existential basis of human existence, that which makes a man a man. In the realm of morality, the thing-in-itself, or free causality, operates. Morality, according to Kant, is not derived from anywhere, is not substantiated by anything, but, on the contrary, is the only justification for the rational structure of the world. The world is arranged rationally, since there is moral evidence. Conscience, for example, possesses such moral evidence, which cannot be further decomposed. It acts in a person, prompting to certain actions, although it is impossible to answer the question why this or that action is performed, since the act is performed not for one reason or another, but according to conscience. The same can be said about debt. A person acts according to a sense of duty, not because something forces him, but because some kind of self-coercive force operates in him.

Unlike theoretical reason, which deals with what is, practical reason deals with what should be. Morality, according to Kant, has the character of imperativeness. The concept of imperativeness means the universality and obligatory nature of the requirements of morality: “the categorical imperative,” he writes, “is the idea of ​​the will of every being, as the will that establishes universal laws.”

Kant wants to find the highest principle of morality, i.e., the principle of revealing the moral content itself, and gives a formulation of how a person should act, striving to join the truly moral. “Act only according to such a maxim, guided by which you can at the same time wish that it become a universal law.”

Kant distinguished between socially approved norms of behavior and norms of morality. Socially approved norms of behavior are historical in nature, but far from always being the realization of the requirements of morality. Kant's teaching was just aimed at revealing in it the historical and timeless characteristics of morality and was addressed to all mankind.

Philosophy of Johann Fichte

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) accepted Kant's ethical philosophy, which made the evaluation of human activity dependent on its consistency with a priori duty. Therefore, for him, philosophy appears primarily as a practical philosophy, in which "the goals and objectives of the practical action of people in the world, in society" were directly determined. However, Fichte pointed out the weakness of Kant's philosophy, which, in his opinion, was insufficiently substantiated precisely at the moment of combining the theoretical and practical parts of philosophy. This task is put by the philosopher at the forefront of his own activity. Fichte's main work is The Appointment of Man (1800).

Fichte singles out the principle of freedom as a fundamental principle that allows the unification of the theory and practice of a philosophical approach to the world. Moreover, in the theoretical part, he concludes that “the recognition of the objective existence of things in the surrounding world is incompatible with human freedom, and therefore the revolutionary transformation of social relations must be supplemented by a philosophical doctrine that reveals the conditionality of this existence by human consciousness.” He designated this philosophical doctrine as "scientific teaching", acting as a holistic substantiation of practical philosophy.

As a result, in his philosophy there is a rejection of the possibility of interpreting the Kantian concept of “thing in itself” as an objective reality and the conclusion is made that “a thing is that which is posited in the Self”, i.e., its subjective-idealistic interpretation is given.

Fichte draws a clear dividing line between materialism and idealism on the principle of solving the problem of the relationship between being and thinking. In this sense, dogmatism (materialism) proceeds from the primacy of being in relation to thinking, and criticism (idealism) from the derivativeness of being from thinking. On the basis of this, according to the philosopher, materialism determines the passive position of a person in the world, and criticism, on the contrary, is inherent in active, active natures.

Fichte's great merit is the development of his doctrine of the dialectical way of thinking, which he calls antithetical. The latter is "such a process of creation and cognition, which is inherent in the triadic rhythm of positing, negating and synthesizing."

Philosophy of Friedrich Schelling

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775 - 1854) turned out to be a kind of link between Kant's philosophy, Fichte's ideas and the formation of the Hegelian system. It is known that he had a great influence on the formation of Hegel as a philosopher, with whom he maintained friendly relations for many years.

At the center of his philosophical reflections is the task of building a unified system of knowledge by considering the specifics of cognition of truth in private areas. All this is realized in his “natural philosophy”, which acts as, perhaps, the very first attempt in the history of philosophy to systematically generalize the discoveries of science from the point of view of a single philosophical principle.

This system is based on the idea of ​​“the ideal essence of nature”, based on the idealistic dogma about the spiritual, immaterial nature of the activity manifested in nature.” A huge achievement of the German philosopher was the construction of a natural philosophical system, which is permeated with dialectics as a kind of link in explaining the unity of the world. As a result, he was able to capture the fundamental dialectical idea that “the essence of all reality is characterized by the unity of opposing active forces. Schelling called this dialectical unity "polarity". As a result, he managed to give a dialectical explanation of such complex processes as “life”, “organism”, etc.

Schelling's main work is The System of Transcendental Idealism (1800). Schelling, within his classical tradition, separates the practical and theoretical parts of philosophy. Theoretical philosophy is interpreted as a substantiation of the "highest principles of knowledge". At the same time, the history of philosophy acts as a confrontation between the subjective and the objective, which allows him to single out the corresponding historical stages or philosophical eras. The essence of the first stage is from initial sensation to creative contemplation; the second - from creative contemplation to reflection; the third, from reflection to an absolute act of will. Practical philosophy explores the problem human freedom. Freedom is realized through the creation of a legal state, and this is the general principle of the development of mankind. At the same time, the specificity of the development of history lies in the fact that living people act in it, therefore special meaning here it acquires a combination of freedom and necessity. Necessity becomes freedom, says Schelling, when it begins to be known. Solving the question of the necessary nature of historical laws, Schelling comes to the idea of ​​the realm of "blind necessity" in history.

Philosophy of Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), based on the principle of development, gives an impressive model of being in all its manifestations, levels and stages of development. It is he who constructs dialectics as a system of basic relationships and categories in relation to the development of the absolute idea. At the same time, Hegel is well aware of the fact that the description of the development of the absolute idea is not an end in itself of philosophical research.

Considering the relationship between idea and reality, Hegel poses the problem of the very essence of the transition from the ideal (logical) to the real, from the absolute idea to nature. The absolute idea must “escape” from absoluteness, i.e., “get out of itself and step into other spheres.” Nature turns out to be just one of these spheres and, accordingly, a stage in the internal development of an idea, its other being or its other incarnation.

Thus, nature is fundamentally explained from the idea that initially underlies it. Undoubtedly, this thought is deeply idealistic, but this does not deprive it of its semantic significance in solving, among other things (and perhaps in the first place) the problems of studying real life. Philosophical analysis problems from the standpoint of dialectics is one of the most effective forms of reflection on the world, which allows us to consider the latter as a special integral system that develops according to universal laws.

According to Hegel, dialectics is a special model of the philosophical approach to the world. In this case, dialectics is understood as the theory of development, which is based on the unity and struggle of opposites, i.e., the formation and resolution of contradictions. Hegel wrote: “Contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality: only insofar as something has a contradiction in itself, it moves, has an impulse and activity.”

Any object, phenomenon, is a certain quality, the unity of its aspects, which, as a result of the quantitative accumulation of contradictory tendencies and properties within this quality, come into conflict, and the development of the object is carried out through the negation of this quality, but with the preservation of some properties in the resulting new quality. The dependencies found by Hegel, being aspects of the development process, characterize it from different angles.

The categories of dialectics that express these dependencies form a kind of conceptual framework that allows us to look at the world dialectically, describing it with their help, not allowing the absolutization of any processes or phenomena of the world, to consider the latter as a developing object. As a result, Hegel manages to create a grandiose philosophical system of the entire spiritual culture of mankind, considering its individual stages as a process of the formation of the spirit. This is a kind of ladder, along the steps of which humanity walked and along which every person can go, joining the global culture and passing through all stages of the development of the world spirit. At the top of this ladder, the absolute identity of thinking and being is reached, after which pure thinking begins, that is, the sphere of logic.

The merit of Hegel in the development of social philosophy is enormous. He developed the doctrine of civil society, human rights, and private property. In his works Phenomenology of the Spirit (1807) and Fundamentals of the Philosophy of Law (1821), he showed the dialectics of man and society, the universal significance of labor. great attention devoted to elucidating the mechanism of commodity fetishism, the nature of value, price and money.

Philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach

Despite the fact that classical German philosophy received its most complete expression in idealistic philosophical systems, it was in its depths and on its foundation that one of the most powerful materialistic concepts of Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) arose.

Feuerbach builds his philosophy on the basis of opposing philosophy and religion as forms of worldview that are incompatible and oppose each other. In this regard, he tries in a materialistic spirit to rethink the essence of Christianity as one of the forms of religion. As a result, the Christian God is interpreted by him not as a special kind of being or divine essence, but as an image that reflects in the minds of people their own, human essence. He writes that “the divine essence is nothing but the human essence, purified, freed from individual boundaries, i.e. from the real, bodily man, objectified, i.e. considered and revered, as an extraneous, separate entity.”

The source of religion, notes Feuerbach, lies in the fear and impotence of man before nature, which gives rise to fantastic religious images in his mind. As a result, God, as a creation of the human spirit, turns in the minds of people into a creator on whom a person depends. All this gives religion an anti-human character, since it “paralyzes a person’s desire for a better life in the real world and for the transformation of this world, replaces it with a humble and patient expectation of the coming supernatural reward.”

Defending the last thesis, Feuerbach takes a clearly atheistic position, although he himself denies this, putting forward a religious interpretation of his own concept, which was realized in the well-known slogan that no supernatural God is needed, namely: “man is God to man.” As a result, Feuerbach creates a bizarre concept that actually denies God (in the religious sense), and does not act as some kind of higher religion.

Criticism of religion necessarily led the thinker to the criticism of the idealistic worldview as a whole. It is here that the well-known thesis about the possibility of “reversing” idealistic philosophy and placing it on materialistic soil appears, which is later applied by K. Marx, distinguishing his own dialectical-materialistic method from the Hegelian one. Thinking is secondary to being, says Feuerbach, and proceeds from this. Thus, the entire concept of the philosopher, even in form, appears as a consistent opposition of materialistic theses to the Hegelian system, or their “reversal”. The question of being in his system is not just another formulation of a philosophical problem. It has practical significance for a person, therefore, "philosophy should not be in conflict with the actual being, but, on the contrary, it should comprehend precisely this vitally important being."

Philosophical opposition to Hegel is also realized in Feuerbach's theory of knowledge, when he replaces the concept of thinking with sensibility.

In the ontological aspect, this means that material being (sensory being) is primary in relation to consciousness. This enables a person as a material being the ability to feel and feel. Therefore, the basis of philosophy should not be the concept of God or the absolute principle, which gives it an unconditional character, - "the beginning of philosophy is the finite, definite, real." And since man is the highest creation of nature, he must be at the center of the construction of a philosophical system and philosophical reflections. This is what allows Feuerbach's philosophy to be defined as anthropological materialism.

In epistemological terms, this is realized as materialistic sensationalism. The process of “cognition of objective reality, actual being has as its basis sensory perceptions, sensations, contemplations caused by the influence of cognizable objects on the senses”.

In the praxeological aspect, the concept of the philosopher is complemented by sensory-emotional characteristics. Since the world is sensually perceived by a person, the perception of the world is enriched with such an emotional characteristic as love. It is she who determines all other relations to being.

In social terms, Feuerbach's concept consistently acts from anti-religious positions in relation to the role of religion in society. A person's beliefs must be inside, not outside. Religions, according to the philosopher, should be abolished in order for a person to lead a more active life in society, to increase his political activity. This, in turn, is a condition for the real freedom of man. And here Feuerbach's philosophy turns out to be the most contradictory. On the one hand, he denies religion, and on the other hand, he strongly emphasizes the role of sensuality and emotional experiences that affect a person. Therefore, the impact on the consciousness of a person in order to change his worldview attitudes should be based on “sensory arguments”. As a result, he comes to the conclusion that it is necessary to create “ new religion”, which will replace the old ones, and in this capacity the “new philosophy” proposed by him should act.

Regarding the transformation of public life, there have always been two opinions: some said that the moral improvement of everyone, the correction of our nature (as a rule, a religious or idealistic position), while others proposed to radically change the conditions of human life, considering their imperfection as the main cause of all misfortunes (mainly materialistic views). Feuerbach shared the second point of view, and his philosophical views in many ways became the ideological basis of what appeared in the middle of the 19th century. Marxism - the theory of the revolutionary transformation of reality.

Historical Significance of German Classical Philosophy

The main result and historical significance of German classical philosophy, represented by the names of five luminaries, can be expressed simply: this philosophy has changed the way of thinking in European, and hence world culture. The novelty of the style approved by her consisted in the extreme breadth of thinking, its universality.

Philosophical acquisitions turned out to be very weighty as well. The ideas of the cognitive activity of the subject, the universality of development through the formation and resolution of contradictions, the universal nature of the spirit, consciousness fairly “shaken up” philosophy. Development philosophical concepts, categories was held at a high level.

And yet, probably, the main merit of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Feuerbach was that they made our thinking historical. This alone is enough to call them classics of philosophy.

The main representatives of German classical philosophy: I. Kant, I. Fichte, G. Hegel, F. Schelling, L. Feuerbach.

Their philosophy got its name, firstly, due to national identity, and secondly, for classical understanding philosophy, going back to the ideas about the philosophy of its creators Plato and Aristotle. All those united by this school strove to build complete philosophical systems, including all parts: ontology, epistemology, the doctrine of man and society. They believed that the completeness of the system is a sign of its perfection. At the same time, some began with a criticism of the previous views on consciousness as a cognitive activity, others directly from ontology - the doctrine of being. Common to all was the understanding of the fundamental role categories– the most general concepts – in construction philosophical outlook. Categories allow you to link knowledge in various areas into a common system.

German classical philosophy begins with research I. Kant(1724-1804). In the work of this philosopher and scientist, two periods are distinguished: “pre-critical” (until 1770) and “critical”. Kant always treated the process of cognition critically, otherwise he would not have been an outstanding scientist. (Get to know scientific discoveries I. Kant.) But until the second half of the 1770s, his criticism was of a traditional nature - to doubt until there is sufficient evidence of the truth.

Subsequently, the venerable scientist came to the conclusion: before thinking about whether or not I can cognize a phenomenon, I need to examine my ability to cognize. Is it unlimited, or are there limits of knowledge that a person cannot go beyond? Pushed Kant to such an unusual step for the Enlightenment scientific activity and the concepts of some predecessors - philosophers, in particular, D. Hume.

The "judgment" of the cognitive faculty of consciousness found expression in the classic works of Kant: "Critique of Pure Reason", "Critique of Practical Reason", "Critique of the Power of Judgment". Kant's verdict is categorical: knowledge has limits. Reliable knowledge of entities is impossible.

In ontology, I. Kant takes a materialistic position. He recognizes the existence of things outside of consciousness. But it was this recognition that became the starting point for determining the boundaries of knowledge of the objective world. Kant distinguished between "things in themselves", i.e. forms of their existence in themselves, independently of us, and "things for us". The former are not truly known to us. Knowledge is limited to the knowledge of "things for us", i.e. what is given in our senses. The world of "things in themselves" - entities - is outside the zone of human cognitive ability, it is on the other side - transcendent.

I. Kant's doctrine of morality is widely known. It shows the German philosopher as a convinced humanist. First of all, pay attention to the content of the reference moral principle I. Kant - "the categorical imperative". Specify also how I. Kant interpreted the connection between morality and religion.

I. Fichte(1762-1814) - an idealist who evolved from subjective idealism (before 1800) to an objective one. At first, he absolutized the subject - "I", introducing the formula of being - "I - not I", in which "not I" was determined by "I". He finished with an interpretation of the identity of being with God.

In Fichte's teaching, one can positively evaluate his idea that contemplation, theoretical understanding is preceded by a person's practical-active attitude to the objective world. The idea of ​​an active subject was not just new, but timely for the establishment of bourgeois society. Reality, according to Fichte, is the product of the subject's activity.

Fichte's idealism is often called ethical.

G. Hegel(1770-1831) - an idealist, created the most perfect system of objective-idealistic philosophy thanks to the development of the dialectical method. Dialectical ideas were expressed even before Hegel. Hegel's merit lies in the fact that he gave dialectics a systemic character. Hegel formulated the principles of dialectical thinking, laws and basic concepts. From fragments, dialectical conjectures, Hegel's dialectic was built into a holistic method. True, the idealist philosopher could not extend dialectics to nature, limiting it to the sphere of the spirit, knowledge, therefore Hegelian dialectics remained local.

In ontology, Hegel proposed a closed system for the development of being. The initial state of being is an objective Idea, an objective Spirit, which is in a state of need for development. The Spirit does not realize itself at the initial stage. Nature is the otherness of the Spirit, its opposite. Human consciousness becomes a means of self-knowledge of the Spirit. Developing, the Spirit cognizes itself, it turns into the Absolute idea, or the Absolute Spirit. The following is important here: Hegel understands movement as self-movement (the source, the force is inside the phenomenon); the reason for the movement is in contradiction (the unity of opposites); movement is progressive; development is a natural process. Any development presupposes the presence of 3 universal generators - causes; directions; content and design. Accordingly, Hegel discovered three main dialectical laws:

The law of the unity of opposites;

· Law of mutual transition of quantitative and qualitative changes;

· The law of negation of negation.

These laws will be considered in more detail in the chapter "Dialectics".

Hegel first presented human history as an objective progressive development determined by the logic of the World Spirit. People do not create history, they realize the creative nature of the Spirit. History is incompatible with arbitrariness and extremism; in all its manifestations, they are anti-historical and impede development. However, Hegel was aware that real history too much nonsense. Hence his remarkable explanation: reality is of two kinds. There is a necessary reality, it is reasonable, but in parallel there is a reality that has lost its former necessity, such a reality is not reasonable. Reasonable (necessary) reality Hegel called reality, arguing that "everything that is reasonable is real, and the real is reasonable."

F. Schelling (1775-1854)- representative of transcendental idealism. Considerable attention, unlike Fichte and even Hegel, was given to natural philosophical problems. He considered natural philosophy as "an organic part of transcendental idealism."

L. Feuerbach(1804-1872) - according to F. Engels, the last representative of German classical philosophy. It is symptomatic that its history began with the materialist I. Kant and ended with the materialism of L. Feuerbach. Feuerbach defined his materialism as "anthropological", emphasizing the special place of man for philosophy. Religion is theocentric, while philosophy must be anthropocentric. Feuerbach criticized Christianity, rejected it, but was not in principle against religion. According to the philosopher's understanding, religion must be reoriented from love of God to love of man. He said: to know a person, you need to love him.

The philosophy of the Enlightenment reflected the social upsurge associated with the destruction of the feudal system and the hopes for bourgeois revolutions and reforms. The 17th and 18th centuries were followed by the 19th - the time of the dominance of capitalism. It turned out that in real life contradictions remained, social tension moved to other areas of relations. The social dynamics have changed, the human spirit has experienced new problems. German classical philosophy made an attempt to understand the changed reality, following the general course of the Enlightenment towards the reasonableness of human activity. Humanism, the power of the Spirit, morality; further forward movement formed the core of her interest.

Central problems of German classical philosophy:

· Stages of development of the world;

· Driving forces of development of the world;

Place and role in the development of the human world;

· Knowledge of the world;

Improvement of the person and human relations;

Morality, its reality and ideals;

· Contradictions, their nature and ways of resolution.

Key Ideas:

· Substantiation of movement as self-movement;

· Recognition and development of various types of movement: within the initial state; progression of changes, return to the original state; turning into the opposite;

· Discovery of the basic laws of the development of thinking;

· Construction of dialectics as a method of cognition based on the recognition of the unity of opposites;

· Analysis of contradictions in the development of bourgeois society;

· Development of the humanistic teachings of the Enlightenment;

Developing the problem of creativity, A New Look on the activity of the subject as a way of his active being.

Questions for self-examination.

2. What is a priori and a posteriori knowledge? Is the knowledge that you receive in lectures on special disciplines a priori or a posteriori?

3. Fix in the glossary the key terms of German classical philosophy.

4. Define dialectics.

Theory of knowledge in German classical philosophy

Only in the system of the German philosopher of the eighteenth century. I. Kant, for the first time, an attempt is made to construct a theory of knowledge that would be completely independent of any assumptions about reality. In this regard, Kant puts forward the postulate that reality itself depends on the cognition of the subject: the object and subject of cognition exist not as objective phenomena, but only as forms of cognitive activity. Kant argues that there is no subject outside of knowable objects. The subject is understood by Kant not as a “thinking thing” of Descartes, but as an internal activity that reveals itself only when it forms sensations through the creation of mental categories. Behind Kant's thesis about the creation of the world by the subject lies a deep dialectical idea of ​​the activity of the subject: the subject does not simply perceive given world sensations or rational concepts, but creatively processes them, builds new knowledge in content. In this regard, Kant sharply criticizes the method of the empiricists, the rationalists, and the whole of the old philosophy, which proceeded from the concept of pure real being taken outside of relation to the subject.

In this regard, the theory of knowledge in Kant's philosophy receives a new look. Criticizing the old philosophy, Kant believes that it cannot be a doctrine of being at all, but must explore the boundaries and possibilities of cognition. The question of how the subject manages to find the "path" to the object seems to Kant to be false.

But at the same time, the subject is interpreted by Kant not as a biological individual or psychological-empirical consciousness. By subject Kant means the "transcendental subject" as a kind of pure, pre-experimental and ahistorical consciousness. In the structure of the transcendental subject, a priori, i.e., forms of organization of cognitive activity preceding the real, single act of cognition, are distinguished. These include: a priori forms of sensibility; a priori forms of reason; a priori forms of pure reason. It is thanks to the presence of these forms of cognition and the a priori conditions for its real implementation that cognitive activity becomes possible as a creative process of generating new knowledge in mathematics, natural science, and metaphysics.

Kant, having studied the nature of knowledge, came to the conclusion that the subject cannot exist outside of objects. On the other hand, the object is revealed only in the course of the subject-practical development of the world of people, in the forms of cognitive activity. The world of things and objects is not some kind of reality outside the subject, which does not depend in its existence on the will and consciousness of the subject. On the contrary, objects of cognition exist as a result of their active construction in the creative activity of the subject.

In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant defends the idea agnosticism- the impossibility of knowing the surrounding reality.

Most philosophers before Kant saw the quality main reason difficulties of cognition, it is the object of cognitive activity - being, the world, which contains many secrets unsolved for thousands of years. Kant, on the other hand, puts forward a hypothesis according to which the cause of difficulties in cognition is not the surrounding reality - the object, but the subject of cognitive activity - a person, or rather, his mind.

The cognitive capabilities (abilities) of the human mind are limited, i.e. the mind cannot do everything). As soon as the human mind with its arsenal of cognitive means tries to go beyond its own framework (possibility) of cognition, it encounters insoluble contradictions. These insoluble contradictions, of which Kant discovered four, Kant called antinomies.

The first antinomy limited space:

• The world has a beginning in time and is limited in space.
• The world has no beginning in time and is boundless.

The second antinomy simple and complex:

• There are only simple elements and what consists of simple ones.
• There is nothing simple in the world.

The third antinomy freedom and causation:

• There is not only causality according to the laws of nature, but also freedom.
• Freedom does not exist. Everything in the world takes place due to strict causality according to the laws of nature.

The fourth antinomy presence of god:

• There is God - an unconditionally necessary being, the cause of all that exists.
• There is no god. There is no absolutely necessary being - the cause of everything that exists.

With the help of reason, it is possible to logically prove both opposite positions of antinomies at the same time - reason comes to a standstill. The presence of antinomies, according to Kant, is proof of the existence of the limits of the cognitive abilities of the mind.

There is a system of concepts without which it is simply impossible to understand the Critique of Pure Reason. Therefore, first of all, it is necessary to characterize them:

• A priori from a priori (lat.) - inexperienced, pre-experienced. Knowledge prior to experience and independent of it.
• A posteriori from a posteriory (lat.) - experienced, based on experience. Knowledge gained from experience.
• Transcendental (trascendo - to cross, to cross) - referring to the possibility of a universal, necessary content of our thought; to the realm of the a priori.
• Transcendental - outside the realm of the Transcendental; that which is beyond the bounds of possible experience.

One of the central concepts - the concept of a priori - needs to be considered in more detail. There is a certain body of human knowledge that is universal and necessary. They form laws, principles and postulates. Such knowledge is the goal and the main task of human knowledge. At the same time, the universal and necessary postulates differ from the knowledge that can also be formulated in the form of universal judgments (beginning with the words “all” or “all”), but in fact only claim to be universal and are empirical knowledge.

Consider two examples:

1) All swans are white;
2) All bodies are extended.

The way they are formed is different. How did the proposition “All swans are white” come about? We saw one white swan, another, third, tenth, hundredth, etc. – and concluded that all swans are white. This knowledge was universal in outward form, but in principle it was neither universal nor necessary. Then, when the existence of black swans was discovered, the judgment turned out to be false. Such is a lot of knowledge based on experience, Kant believes.

Otherwise, truly universal and necessary knowledge is formed. It is absolutely impossible - neither practically nor theoretically - to see all the bodies of the Universe, much less to measure. This means that when forming the proposition “All bodies are extended”, one must go not empirically, but in some other way. Consequently, we obtain universal knowledge not through experience, but in a different way. According to Kant, this is a priori, inexperienced knowledge. It is not derived from experience, because experience never ends. Drawing such conclusions, we think in a completely different way, without generalizing the data of experience, “thought makes a transition to that sphere that is not directly conditioned by experience”

Thus, Kant believes that any universal and necessary theoretical knowledge, true knowledge, is a priori - pre-experimental and non-experimental by its very principle. But Kant begins the introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason with the statement: "Undoubtedly, all our knowledge begins with experience ...". Further, the philosopher argues: “... how would cognitive ability be awakened to activity, if not by objects that act on our feelings ... Therefore, no knowledge precedes experience in time, it always begins with experience .. But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not at all follow that it entirely comes from experience. " This, according to Kant, is the initial contradiction of knowledge.

Kant's apriorism differs from the idealist doctrine of innate ideas. Firstly, by the fact that only forms of knowledge are pre-experimented, the content of which comes entirely from experience. Secondly, the pre-experimental forms themselves are not innate, but have their own history. The real meaning of Kant's apriorism is that the individual who begins cognition has at his disposal certain forms of cognition that have developed before him.

We are surrounded by a world of things, processes, states, in relation to which and from which experience is born. How does knowledge begin? Kant asks. He begins to think materialistically. It proceeds from the existence of an independent world of nature, the totality of things. Things, objects act on our senses, and therefore we see, hear, touch, that is, we get a variety of sensations. The human ability to receive impressions from objects, Kant calls sensibility. But sensations are already the result of not only the impact of objects on the senses, human sensuality begins to act here, that is, according to Kant, there is an awakening of the inner activity of human cognition. And the manifestation of the activity of cognition is the human ability to perform not only experimental, but also non-experimental cognition.

By introducing the term "a priori", Kant makes it clear that it is not yet sufficiently defined. Sometimes it is interpreted as knowledge before any particular experience. For example, a person who clumsily undermines the foundation of his house is said to have "a priori" known that the house would collapse. However, according to Kant, this is not a priori knowledge, since it was previously acquired in the process of experience. “Therefore, in further research, we will call a priori knowledge that is unconditionally independent of any experience, but independent of this or that experience.”

The signs by which Kant defines pure a priori cognitions have already been indicated. "...necessity and strict universality are the true signs of a priori knowledge and are inextricably linked with each other." An example of a priori knowledge and knowledge, according to Kant, are all the provisions of mathematics, those knowledge that include philosophical categories: cause, substance, etc. There are many a priori knowledge, knowledge, problems that are extremely important for human life. "These inevitable problems of the purest mind are God, freedom and immortality." The science that seeks to solve such problems is metaphysics, and the problem of a priori knowledge is very important for it. Kant draws the following conclusion: "Philosophy requires a science that determines the possibility, principles and scope of all a priori knowledge."

A priori knowledge, like any theoretical knowledge, is expressed in judgments. A judgment is a connection of concepts in relation to which truth or falsity can be determined. All propositions link the subject and the predicate of the proposition.

Kant distinguishes two types of judgments:

1) analytical judgments - only explaining and not adding anything to the content, when the predicate does not add new knowledge about the subject. Kant's example: "All bodies are extended", that is, the concept of a body already includes the property of extension.

2) synthetic judgments - expanding our knowledge, when the predicate complements our knowledge about the subject and cannot be derived from the subject. For example, "some bodies have gravity", because. the concept of gravity is not included in the concept of a body. Therefore, in order to make a synthetic judgment, it is necessary to realize new knowledge, turn again to experience, expand, renew knowledge.

All analytic judgments, according to Kant, are a priori. They have as their source the very mind of man and do not require recourse to experience, and therefore do not, in principle, give new knowledge. For example: “everything has a reason”. The knowledge that everything and every phenomenon has its cause, according to Kant, cannot arise from experience, since in experience we are not given all phenomena, but only some of them, and, therefore, if the conclusion is made as a result of experience, then it has a probabilistic character. Either generalization is based on universal structures that are outside of sensory experience, that is, in the mind itself, and thus unambiguously has the characteristics of truth and universality.

As for synthetic judgments, they can be both empirical (a posteriori) and a priori "All empirical judgments, as such, are synthetic." They always give new knowledge.

An example of an analytic a priori judgment is "all bachelors are unmarried"; its correctness is guaranteed by the meaning of the terms by which it is expressed, and is revealed by their analysis. A synthetic judgment is not so easily deducible, but its predicate, as Kant presents it, asserts something that is not originally contained in the subject. An example of such a judgment is "All bachelors are not satisfied"; this proposition (let us assume that it is true) says something significant about bachelors, and does not simply repeat the meaning of the very words that make it up.

It was clear to Kant that empiricism rejects the very possibility of metaphysics. Meanwhile, metaphysics is necessary to substantiate objective knowledge. Consequently, the question came to the fore: "How is a synthetic a priori judgment possible?" Or, in other words: "How can one know the world by pure reflection, without recourse to experience?" Kant understood that it was impossible to define a priori knowledge in such a way that the object of knowledge would be separated from the subject. And so he did not believe that a person is able to obtain a priori knowledge about some “thing in itself” existing outside of time and space (that is, an object described without reference to the “possible experience” of the observer). I can have a priori knowledge only about the world that is given to me in experience. A priori knowledge not only confirms the empirical discovery, but also derives its content from it. A significant part of Kant's Critique is directed against the assumption that "pure reason" is capable of filling knowledge with content without reliance on experience.

All a priori truths are universal and necessary: ​​these are two signs by which we can distinguish among other knowledge those that, if true, are true a priori. It is clear that experience imparts neither regularity nor universality to anything. Any experience is necessarily limited and of a particular nature, so the universal law (covering an infinite number of objects) cannot be confirmed by experience. No one really doubts the existence of synthetic a priori knowledge: as the most striking example, Kant gives mathematics, which we comprehend purely speculatively, but not at all by analyzing the meaning of mathematical terms. Therefore, there must be a philosophical explanation of the a priori nature of mathematics, and to this Kant dedicated the introductory part of his Critique. He also draws the reader's attention to other examples that are much more confusing to the mind. In particular, such statements seem to be a priori truths: “every event has a cause”, “the world consists of solid bodies that exist independently of me”, “we find all objects in space and time”. It is impossible to substantiate them in experience, since their truth is based on the interpretation of experience. Moreover, they are not true in this or that situation, but universal and necessary. Finally, it is with the help of such truths that the possibility of objective knowledge is proved. This means that the problem of objective knowledge is closely connected with the problem of synthetic a priori knowledge. But that's not all. That truths of this kind play a vital role in any scientific theory, led Kant to the idea that the theory of objective knowledge would also give an explanation of natural laws.

A priori synthetic judgments are of particular interest to Kant. They embody the amazing ability of a person to obtain universal and necessary, and at the same time new knowledge, based on special cognitive abilities, actions, methods of cognition. Kant does not doubt that they exist, otherwise scientific knowledge would not be obligatory for everyone. The truths of science, constantly obtained, are, according to Kant, a priori synthetic judgments. According to his deep conviction, all mathematical judgments are a priori and synthetic. How does Kant prove this? “At first glance, it may seem that the proposition 7 + 5 = 12 is a purely analytic judgment, which follows, according to the law of contradiction, from the concept of the sum of seven and five. However, looking closer, we find that the concept of the sum of seven and five contains only a sign of combining these two numbers into one, and it is not at all conceivable what the number that the terms encompass ... it is necessary to go beyond these concepts, taking to the aid of a visual representation corresponding to one of them, for example, your five fingers or five points, and gradually add units of the number 5 ... to the concept of seven ... thus ... twelve arises. The fact that 5 should have been added to seven, I really thought in terms of the sum = 7 + 5, but then I did not know yet that this sum was equal to twelve. Therefore, the arithmetic judgment has in any case a synthetic character ... "

And math and whatever scientific knowledge from pure reason presupposes the presence of synthetic a priori judgments. Kant directly formulates the basic problem of his philosophy: “So, the real problem, on which everything depends with school precision, is this: How is the proposition a priori synthetically possible?” The first section of the "Critique of Pure Reason" - "Transcendental Aesthetics" - is at the same time the answer to the question: how are a priori synthetic judgments possible in mathematics.

Kant calls mathematics an intuitive science, but this does not mean that the activity of the understanding is completely eliminated from it. The formation of concepts, judgments and inferences belong to its apparatus just as much as to the apparatus of other sciences. Kant believes that the foundations for the concepts and axioms that mathematics uses should not be sought in purely logical processes, but rather at the level of intuition. Judgments that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points and that the sum of five and seven is equal to twelve cannot be obtained by logical analysis of concepts; the concept of straightness does not contain a sign of the magnitude of the distance, just as in the concept of the sum of two numbers - a sign of another number. Thus, these propositions must be synthetic, and the synthesis cannot be based on random experience, otherwise it would be impossible to explain the general validity and necessity of these judgments. Repeated measurement or calculation cannot prove these claims, but they become apparent when we construct them intuitively. It is in intuition that we discover the evidence and truth of these propositions. Based on his conclusion about the intuitive nature of mathematical thinking, Kant argued that the laws established by mathematics (generally valid necessary) are of a synthetic nature.

Kant calls space and time a priori forms of sensibility, and in their study he sees the main interest of transcendental aesthetics.

Universal forms of sensibility: space and time. The main theme and basic concepts of the doctrine of sensibility are space and time. Kant writes: “Thus, in transcendental aesthetics, we first of all isolate sensibility, diverting everything that the understanding thinks through its concepts, so that nothing remains but empirical visual representation. Then we will separate from this representation everything that belongs to sensation, so that only pure visual representation and only the form of appearances remain, the only thing that can be given a priori by sensibility. In this investigation it will turn out that there are two pure forms of sensible visual representation as principles of a priori knowledge, namely space and time, which we will now consider. Kant's approach to the topic, the problem of space and time, is very specific. Firstly, this approach is philosophical, and not natural science: space and time are considered not as properties of things in themselves, but as forms of our sensibility. Consequently, secondly, the “subjective” human time is investigated, in contrast to the “objective” time of the world. But, thirdly, this very subjective is objective for man and humanity.

Further in his reasoning, Kant gives two interpretations of space and time. The first - "metaphysical" - consists in the provisions that "space is a necessary a priori representation underlying all external intuitions", and "time is a necessary representation underlying all intuitions". Consequently, space and time are not empirical concepts, they are not derived from external experience.

The essence of the second study - "transcendental" is, firstly, that space is "only the form of all phenomena of external senses", and time is "the direct condition of internal phenomena (our soul) and thus also indirect condition of external phenomena." Secondly, space and time are not objective definitions of things and have no reality in terms of “subjective conditions of contemplation”. Kant speaks of the "transcendental ideality" of space and time, argued "that space is nothing as soon as we discard the conditions of the possibility of any experience and accept it as something underlying things in themselves", and that time "if we abstract from the subjective conditions of sensual contemplation, means exactly nothing and cannot be reckoned among objects in themselves."

Kant criticizes two traditional approaches to the interpretation of space and time. The first approach is the designation of space and time as a thing among things. That is, these are independent realities “along with” things, “around” them and “outside” them. Kant, rejecting this approach, believed that "... Those who recognize the absolute reality of space and time, whether they consider them to be substances or only properties, inevitably diverge from the principle of experience itself ...".

The opposite approach is to transform space and time into "abstracted from experience, although vaguely represented in this abstraction, relations (of coexistence or succession) between phenomena ...". The disadvantage of this interpretation, according to Kant, is in an attempt to completely tear off spatio-temporal relations from the things themselves.

The conclusion reached by Kant is as follows: space is neither a thing among things, nor matter, nor substance, and therefore should not be identified with them; but they should not be completely detached from things, more precisely, from our relationship to things.

Why, according to Kant, space and time are not empirical concepts derived from external experience? “Kant proceeds from the fact that the givenness of objects to consciousness in itself does not yet contain, does not guarantee the givenness of space and time. According to Kant, when we contemplate separate objects (as well as arbitrarily large groups of objects), we thereby and immediately - along with experience - still do not acquire such a representation and time that would be universal and necessary in nature, would be apodictic ... "But on the other hand, Kant writes, we always perceive objects as given in space and time:" When we deal with phenomena in general, we cannot eliminate time itself ... ". Kant concludes that our consciousness initially (before any experience) has universal criteria that allow us to establish the position of objects, relations of sequence, simultaneity.

In his teaching, Kant seeks to prove that space and time are still contemplations, but special, or rather “pure forms of sensual contemplation”. The main argument in favor of "contemplative nature": time (space) is one. “Different times are only parts of one and the same time.” Likewise with space. Another property: "... the initial idea of ​​time should be given as unlimited."

It is due to the fact that space (like time) is one and infinite that Kant proves, firstly, their sensuous nature (therefore, space and time are forms of sensuous contemplation), and secondly, their non-empirical (non-experimental) nature (therefore they are “pure forms” of sensual contemplation).

The specificity of each of the "pure forms" consists, as has already been noted a lot, in the fact that space is correlated with the "external", and time - with the "internal" feeling. Kant defines the functions of the "external" sense as follows: "we imagine objects as being outside of us, and, moreover, always in space. It defines or defines their appearance, size and relationship to each other.

Internal feeling, according to Kant, is the contemplation of the "soul" of itself or as our "contemplation" of our internal states: "Outside of us, we cannot contemplate time, just as we cannot contemplate space within us."

So, space "works" when we contemplate objects outside of us, i.e. external bodies, while time organizes the "internal phenomena" of the soul, and through them (indirectly) external phenomena. Therefore, according to Kant, the form is more universal than the form of space in relation to the world of phenomena.

Kant defines time as “a kind of sensual and intellectual “pure grasp” of the relations of sequence and simultaneity in our ideas, and their contemplation as a “one and only” (non-objective, but not separate material) infinite formation. Only on this basis, Kant believes, is it possible to "attach" the form of time to the phenomena of external objects. Therefore, the definition of the temporal relations of things depends on the preliminary "temporal orientation" in inner world(“spiritual life” of a person), (on the other hand, from further texts of the “Critique ...” it turns out that the understanding of spatial relationships can be of fundamental importance for establishing temporal relationships)”.

According to Kant, neither space nor time is an absolute reality, they are just our specific way of perceiving the world. Kant says that space and time are "empirically real" only in the sense that they have validity "for all things that can ever be given to our senses...". Kant called the universality and necessity of the existence of phenomena in space and time "objective significance", thereby subjectively-ideally interpreting objectivity itself.

Kant believed that the conclusions about space and time as necessary a priori representations underlying contemplation provide philosophical justifications for the ability of mathematics to put forward universal and necessary propositions.
Thus, according to Kant, geometry as a science relies on such a priori form of sensibility as space, and arithmetic - on time. That is, it is on space and time that the mind “relies” when creating such a science as mathematics.

I would like to say a little about the general cultural significance of the theory of space and time, Kant believes that only in the contact of a person, a subject with objects, forms of space and time arise. Out of this context, they don't make sense. We simply cannot look at objects differently than "under the forms" of space and time. The sensibility with which we are endowed is a kind of "prism" through which we only see objects. If there are some other "reasonable" beings that are not endowed with sense organs (Kant admits this), then they could probably perceive objects not in space and time. From this we can assume that the world is not what it seems to us because of endowment with sensuality. And perhaps when we find a way to change the potency of our sensuality, we will see this world in a completely different way.

In the Critique of Pure Reason, I. Kant classifies knowledge itself as the result of cognitive activity and identifies three concepts that characterize knowledge:

• a posteriori knowledge
• a priori knowledge
• "thing in itself".

A posteriori knowledge- the knowledge that a person receives as a result of experience. This knowledge can only be conjectural, but not reliable, since every statement taken from this type of knowledge must be verified in practice, and such knowledge is not always true. For example, a person knows from experience that all metals melt, but theoretically there may be metals that are not subject to melting; or “all swans are white”, but sometimes black ones can also be found in nature, therefore, experimental (empirical, a posteriori) knowledge can misfire, does not have complete reliability and cannot claim to be universal.

A priori knowledge- pre-experimental, that is, that which exists in the mind from the very beginning and does not require any experimental proof. For example: “All bodies are extended”, “ Human life flows in time”, “All bodies have mass”. Any of these provisions is obvious and absolutely reliable both with and without experimental verification. It is impossible, for example, to meet a body that does not have dimensions or without mass, the life of a living person, flowing outside of time. Only a priori (experimental) knowledge is absolutely reliable and reliable, possesses the qualities of universality and necessity.

"Thing in Itself"- one of the central concepts of the whole philosophy of Kant. "Thing in itself" is the inner essence of a thing, which will never be known by the mind. For Kant, "thing in itself" also means supernatural, unknowable, inaccessible to experience entities: God, freedom, etc.

Kant believes that the subject cognizes only what he himself creates. Kant divides the world into cognizable "phenomena" and unknowable "things in themselves", that is, the boundary is recognizability. Necessity reigns in the world of appearances, everything here is conditioned by others and explained through others. No matter how much we penetrate into the depths of phenomena, our knowledge will still differ from things as they really are. Any thing is perceived by us in sensory experience through the prism of a priori forms of sensibility - space and time, and not as it is in itself. The world of experience is relative, since it exists due to its reference to the Transcendental Subject. Between "things in themselves" and phenomena, a causal relationship is preserved: without "things in themselves" there can be no phenomena. Distinguishing all objects into "phenomena and noumena", Kant interprets the problem on a new level, the solution of which had previously led him to distinguish objects into phenomena and "things in themselves". The concept of “phenomenon” in Kant denotes a sensible object, “an object of possible experience”, conceivable by reason, and it is similar to the concept of “phenomenon”.

The noumenon is an object accessible only to thought, and it is meaningless to describe it as an object of experience. It is logical to link these definitions and assume that Kant considered appearances, or phenomena, to be known through experience, and "things in themselves", or noumena, unknowable in general, because nothing is known only through thought. Kant says, for example, that the concept of "noumenon" can only be used in a negative sense, to show the limits of our knowledge, and not to describe positively "things in themselves." Thus, "the division of objects into phenomena and noumena, and the world - into sensually perceived and intelligible cannot be applied in a positive sense." In this case, the "thing in itself" is not an entity, but a term authorized for the unrealizable ideal of limitless knowledge. Kant emphasized that the concept of "noumenon" - an "intelligible" object, is necessary only in order to "not extend sensory intuitions to the sphere of" things in themselves "...".

In a 1770 dissertation, Kant argued that the world of "things in themselves" is comprehended directly by the mind, but now he considers it inaccessible to any knowledge - Transcendent.

The division of the world into phenomena and "things in themselves" is a tendency of agnosticism. Therefore this position Kantian teaching was subjected to sharp criticism both from materialism, which reproached Kant for the unknowability of the “thing in itself” as such and for underestimating the “revealing” power of phenomena, and from subjective idealism, which saw in Kant’s “thing in itself” a concession to materialism. Others generally believed that Kant had no reason to even assume the existence of objects, things, outside of us, since phenomena do not give grounds for such conclusions. Kant's position on this issue is very consistent, reasoned, arising from the very logic of Kant's reflections, and not the result of a simple "certainty" in the existence of objects of the external world: "... one cannot but recognize as a scandal for philosophy and the universal mind the need to take on faith the existence of things outside of us (from which we receive all the material of knowledge even for our inner feeling) and the impossibility of opposing any kind of satisfactory proof of this existence, if anyone would take it into his head to question it."

Kant from the very beginning thinks to investigate the knowledge carried out with the help of sensory ability. That in phenomena that corresponds to sensations, he calls the "matter of the phenomenon", representing all its diversity. But there must be something that orders the world of sensations. Since it could not be the sensations themselves, the material elements of the phenomenon are ordered due to its forms. That is why we get not a chaotic variety of sensations, but a phenomenon as an organized whole. Therefore, sensibility is not only the ability to perceive impressions, which would make this ability passive. It must contain certain moments that make it an active human faculty. Man is able to perceive, according to the laws common to all human beings, forms of sensibility, that is, space and time.

In a strict sense, a thing-in-itself means a thing in terms of those of its properties that do not depend on human perception and its specific conditions (despite the fact that they may well depend on the conditions of divine contemplation). The thing-in-itself is opposed to the phenomenon, as to that which, from the formal point of view, is wholly determined by the subjective conditions of sensibility. Kant believes that the concept of a thing-in-itself arises as a correlate of the concept of appearance: having proved that the objects of sensibility in their spatio-temporal form exist only in human perception, we simultaneously think something that retains its being and besides perception. This is the concept of a thing in itself, or in itself.

"Thing in itself" philosophical term denoting intelligible phenomena and objects, in contrast to sensually comprehended (given to us in objective reality) phenomena; the thing as such (“in itself”), regardless of our perception. According to another interpretation, a “thing in itself” is something whose essence and meaning are known only to the intellect.

Kant believed that the thing-in-itself is inaccessible to knowledge through experience, being a pure intelligible category. “... if we destroy our subjective properties, it turns out that the represented object with the qualities attributed to it in a sensual visual representation is not found anywhere, and cannot be found anywhere, since it is our subjective properties that determine its form as a phenomenon.”

The essence of the Kantian problem things-in-themselves lies in the fact that in cognition we have no guarantees that the characteristics attributed to things are their real predicates, not "our own way of representing [them]". After all, all perceived objects “are only a phenomenon [which] always has two sides - one, when the object is considered in itself (regardless of the way in which it is contemplated, and precisely because of this, its properties always remain problematic), and the other, when the form of contemplation of the object is taken into account, which ... should be sought not in the object, but in the subject to which the object appears. For example, we have no guarantees that the visible blue is a property of the sky itself, and not of the “blue glasses” put on us from birth, through and through which we perceive the world around us. This is where the question of interest to us arises: primary a thing that exists in natural conditions before any interaction with the cognizing subject, i.e. thing-in-itself, but not secondary the result of her observation, i.e. thing-for-us.

The thing-in-itself, according to Kant, is the objective world, closed in itself, inaccessible and unknowable to us. We can say nothing about the thing-in-itself, except that it exists outside of us.

Hegel called the thing-in-itself an abstraction, torn off from any content by a shadow. This is “... something alien and external to thinking, although it is not difficult to see that this kind of abstraction, like a thing-in-itself, is itself only a product of thinking and, moreover, only abstracting thinking” . The concept of a thing-in-itself thus turns out to be a nonsense, a completely meaningless concept in which the world is reduced only to existence, which in fact turns it into nothing.

Kant considers the thing-for-us as the result of the action of the thing-in-itself on our “sensibility, that is, we are not given the objective world as such, but only a way of changing our sensibility. In other words, the thing-for-us is only an appearance, a phenomenon that cannot arise without the influence of the thing-in-itself, but, moreover, has nothing in common with the latter in content. The position that the properties of a thing cannot “pass into my idea” is left unproven by Kant, for it is even meaningless to assert that, for example, “the sensation of red has a similarity with the property of cinnabar, which arouses this sensation in me.” This statement about the meaninglessness of the opinion about the similarity of sensations to an object is Kant's first fundamental assertion, which he does not need to prove.

Kant's concept of a thing-in-itself is based on the abstraction of Newton's absolutely rigid body. Thing-in-itself and sensibility are thus presented as two "absolutely solid bodies" that do not mix and do not interact with each other. It is possible to single out two deep levels of the foundations of Kant's philosophy, which boil down to the following. Firstly, Kant is based on a preconceived, out of nowhere postulate, according to which the change of sensibility under the influence of the thing-in-itself does not carry any other content than sensibility itself, its own way of changing, that is, Kant proceeds from the conviction that sensibility is completely “impenetrable” for external influence. But in this case, knowledge in general would be impossible in principle. Practice, however, convinces us otherwise.

Secondly, Kant, proceeding from the conviction of the fundamental incompleteness of human experience, deprives the intellect of the dignity of certainty, strict universality and necessity. Here, in an implicit form, Kant poses a serious problem of human knowledge - the problem of the finiteness of human experience and the infinity of the world, the knowledge of the essence of which he (man) claims. This is the root problem of all philosophy.

Kant's theory of experimental knowledge (science) and transcendental reality. The essential intention of Kantian transcendentalism is that it is a theory of experience. Thus, the first in the history of thought conception of the philosophy of science appears (in modern sense words), although it is more accurate to say that any theory of science is transcendental in its essence, if by transcendental we mean [philosophical] research, "dealing not so much with objects, but with our way of knowing objects as possible a priori."

Accordingly, the term "transcendental" is the central concept of Kant's transcendental philosophy. Moreover, if this term is not found in Kant's pre-critical works, then in the Critique of Pure Reason we see a powerful breakthrough in its use, and in a variety of phrases. The variety of Kantian word usage and the inevitable fluctuation of the meaning of the term in the absence of a clear definition of the transcendental by Kant himself makes it difficult to understand both the term itself and the entire Kantian concept. Therefore, an important task is to reveal the deep Kantian intuition of the term transcendental, its general semantic core.

Primary textual analysis allows us to formulate the following list of the use of this term by Kant. For him transcendental:

• there is not any a priori knowledge, but only a certain part of it, concerning the possibility and application of a priori knowledge; explains the possibility of the existence of a priori representations. This point corresponds to the “final” Kantian definition of the transcendental: “transcendental (that is, concerning the possibility or application of a priori knowledge) should not be called any a priori knowledge, but only that thanks to which we learn that certain representations (intuitions or concepts) are applied and can exist exclusively a priori, and also how this is possible ...”;
• is concerned not with the cognition of objects, but with the method of our a priori cognition. This is the formulation from Kant's definition of transcendental philosophy, which we quoted above;
• denotes not the relation of our knowledge to things, but the relation of our knowledge to the cognitive faculty;
• precedes experience and makes it possible, but does not go beyond experience;
• different from the empirical
• not identical with the transcendent. “The word transcendental, which I have repeatedly indicated, ... does not mean that which goes beyond the limits of all experience, but that which, although it precedes experience (a priori), is intended only to make experimental knowledge possible. When these concepts go beyond experience, then their application is called transcendent and differs from immanent application, i.e. limited by experience” (cf. item 4 of the list).

The starting point here is the opposition of the transcendental to the empirical (see paragraph 5). At the same time, it seems that within the framework of this opposition, the transcendental coincides with the a priori, or at least is a “part” of it (item 1 of the list), but this is not entirely true, since the Kantian characterization of the transcendental from paragraphs. 2 and 3 of the above list. The transcendental is opposed to the empirical, but in a different way than the a priori. If we consider the cognitive act of a person as a ratio of empirical subject and object, more precisely, our experience of cognition of objects, then transcendentalism (as Kant says in paragraphs 2, 3) shifts the focus of analysis from the object of cognition to cognition itself, to the ratio of cognition to consciousness as a cognitive ability. Thus, transcendentalism appears as knowledge of knowledge as a study of "our way of knowing [objects]." Schematically, this relationship, if experienced knowledge is considered as a mediating subject and object term, can be represented as follows:

thing– (empirical) – experiential knowledge- (transcendental) - consciousness

At the same time, the transcendental rather than opposes the empirical, but complements it, as Kant says in his final definition of the transcendental: “the difference between the transcendental and the empirical is involved only in the criticism of knowledge and does not concern their relationship to the subject.” More precisely, if we use Kantian terminology and try to expand what Kant said, then the original subject/object[cognition] under the name thing-itself-in-itself for transcendentalism and naive realism (empiricism) will be one and the same, but empiricism takes this subject uncritically and refers it to the field thing on the diagram, and transcendentalism clarifies that under subject of knowledge one should already understand the thing-itself-in-itself, and the thing-for-us, i.e. considers the subject of knowledge as belonging to the field of experimental knowledge on the diagram. Accordingly, all statements regarding the subject of our knowledge should already be attributed to this area, and this area itself can be called transcendental reality, thus emphasizing the fact that the transcendental belongs neither to the area of ​​the empirical-objective, nor to the area of ​​the empirical-subjective, occupying the boundary between the objective (transcendental) and subjective (immanent) location.

Thus, the specificity of transcendentalism as a general philosophical concept is as follows. Ancient philosophy (up to the Renaissance) makes the object/subject the subject of its study. The new time in the face of Descartes significantly reorients philosophical research, making consciousness/subject (Cartesian cogito) the subject of its research. Kant, on the other hand, shifts philosophical research to the border area between subject and object, making the subject of his research knowledge or experience. That is why we have defined transcendentalism as a theory of knowledge (experience).

The second most important provision specifying Kant's transcendentalism as a theory of knowledge is that any (cognition) contains both experimental and a priori components. Kant begins his Critique with the proposition that "all our knowledge begins with experience", although it is not limited to it, containing in itself "what our own cognitive ability gives from itself", which is a priori component of knowledge. The essence of Kant's argument for the existence of the a priori is this: "Indeed, if experience is to teach me the laws to which the existence of things is subject, then these laws, insofar as they concern things in themselves, would have to necessary be inherent in these things outside of my experience. Meanwhile, although experience teaches me what exists and how it exists, it never teaches me that it must necessarily be so and not otherwise. In other words, any knowledge, by definition, must contain laws, but these laws cannot be of empirical origin and cannot be explained empirically. The reason for this is that, according to Kant, empirical deduction (i.e. abstraction) is impossible. formal a priori representations, which are the a priori forms of sensibility and reason, from the empirical (experimental) content.

At the same time, what N. Hartmann called the main apriorism, which can be formulated through the following question: how is it possible to use in experience that which does not depend on experience and precedes it, i.e. a priori forms of (po)knowledge? Actually, it is precisely to solve this problem that Kant offers his metaphysical and transcendental deductions of categories, the task of which is to substantiate the completeness and consistency of metaphysical constructs, their compatibility with the “physical” component of knowledge, i.e. their ability to be used in experimental cognition.

It is noteworthy that the modern – post-positivist – development of the philosophy of science is moving in the direction set by Kant, when it is said that there is a “linguistic framework” (R. Carnap), irremovable “ontological assumptions” (W. Quine) or a “conceptual scheme” (D. Davidson) in the structure of knowledge, although initially the positivist philosophy of science advocated the complete elimination of the metaphysical (a priori) component from the composition of scientific knowledge by reducing it to protocol sentences, i.e. . experience data.

The a priori component of (cognition) singled out by Kant, although it is connected with our cognitive ability, or consciousness as an "organ of cognition", however, is not subjective in the exact sense of the word, i.e. psychic given of our empirical consciousness. Transcendentalism involves overcoming the empirical point of view not only on the object of cognition, but also on the subject of cognition: transcendental cognition transcendental subject. In this sense, the transcendental occupies a borderline position between the objective (transcendental) and the subjective (immanent) position, forming a special transcendental area. Accordingly, our knowledge, claiming to be "objective significance" (Kant) unfolds in this transcendental area, or symbolic space. Its borderline ontological status is well illustrated by the following analogy, which goes back to G. Frege. Let's imagine that we observe some star through a telescope. The Kantian thing-in-itself will correspond to the star itself, its subjective (sensory) representation (phenomenon, thing-for-us) - the image of our consciousness, and the transcendental can be correlated with the image of the star on the telescope lens, which has objective significance, since it is not a given of our consciousness, but corresponds to the star itself, having a borderline status between objective and subjective. (It is necessary to distinguish Kantian objective significance from objective existence: a star on a telescope lens (= its "image") is objectively significant, but it does not objectively exist as a star in itself.) Thus, one can speak of a special transcendental reality, which conceptually corresponds to third world K. Popper and/or intentional reality E. Husserl.

This is based on the Kantian concept transcendental subject 1st ed. Critics, as well as the development of this concept in his doctrine of an indirect phenomenon from Opus postumum. Kant introduces his concept of a transcendental object (object) as opposed to a transcendental subject, more precisely transcendental unity apperceptions. In the exact sense of the word, in the act of perception, it is not the object itself that enters the input of our sensory organs, but some sensory diversity, which substantiates the corresponding sensory representation, "which in themselves [are] not to be regarded as subjects". However, our consciousness (due to the transcendental unity of apperception) is one and therefore "all the diversity given in contemplation is united in the concept of an object." Accordingly, one can speak of subject[sensual] representations, which is "the correlate of the unity of apperception" and which "must be thought only as something in general = x". At the same time, it “cannot be contemplated by us, and therefore [is] non-empirical, i.e. transcendental, object = x”, i.e. in its epistemological status is not a sensual, but a rational representation, a certain mental thing, through which we recognize / recognize in the sensory variety (= phenomenon) one or another concept. Thereby transcendental subject represents an objectified set of transcendental conditions, "seeing through" through an empirical object. In ontological terms, the transcendental object occupies the boundary between Kantian thing-in-itself And thing-for-us position. Schematically, this can be represented as follows:

How can the understanding bring sensible judgments under uniform categories? The condition for the possibility of this summing up is the transcendental unity of apperception. That is, a necessary condition for this summing up is the presence of the whole variety of sensual intuitions in the unity of the self-consciousness of the subject, in which these sensual intuitions are present. This unity of self-consciousness is the rationale for subsuming sensory diversity under categories. In the future, it is possible to arrange the sensory diversity, for example, in space and time. (Belonging of sensory diversity to the unified self-consciousness of the subject to whom this sensory diversity belongs.)

It must be borne in mind that Kant does not explain, but postulates the transcendental unity of apperception.

According to Kant, it is not our knowledge that should conform to objects, but, on the contrary, objects must conform to human consciousness. It is not the specificity and characteristic features of substances that determine the methods of cognition, but, on the contrary, the cognizer himself and his specificity determine the methods.

Not satisfied with this justification, Kant finds yet another explanation. Kant believes that there must be another, intermediate a priori form of consciousness, which is homogeneous with categories and homogeneous with phenomena at the same time. This transcendental scheme(He also calls it schematism of the mind). In Kant's philosophy, a scheme is a method necessary to make an abstract concept visible with the help of visual representations that replace it. In particular, categories, according to Kant, need a transcendental schema that mediates between categories and sensibility. It gives categories their "meaning" and contemplation its categorical structure. Kant, therefore, needed a transcendental scheme in order to connect the universal described with the help of concepts with the particular contained in the content of the concept. Kant determines the possibility of the formation of these schemes through time. Moreover, Kant identifies time with transcendental temporal definitions. Transcendental temporal definitions (that is, time) are related to categories, because they are of a general nature, and homogeneous with phenomena, since they are present in all their diversity, in every sensory representation.

“Whenever an object is subsumed under a concept, the representation of the object must be homogeneous with the concept, i.e. the concept must contain in itself that which is represented in the object subsumed under it, since it is precisely this meaning that the expression has, the object is subordinate to the concept. Thus, the empirical concept of a plate is homogeneous with the pure geometric concept of a circle, since roundness, which is conceived in the concept of a plate, is contemplated in the pure geometric concept.

But pure concepts of the understanding are completely heterogeneous with empirical (and in general sensible) intuitions, and they can never be found in any intuition. This raises the question of how intuitions can be subsumed under pure concepts of the understanding, i.e. application of categories to phenomena; for no one will assert that categories, for example, causality, can also be intuited through the senses and are contained in the appearance. This question, so natural and important, is the reason why the transcendental doctrine of the faculty of judgment is necessary, which should show how it is possible that pure concepts of the understanding can be applied to phenomena in general. In all other sciences, where the concepts by which an object is conceived in a general form are not so different from, and not so heterogeneous with, the concepts that represent it in concrete, there is no need for a special study of the application of the first concepts to the second.

It is clear that there must be something third, homogeneous, on the one hand, with categories, and on the other hand, with phenomena and making it possible to apply categories to phenomena. This mediating representation must be pure (containing nothing empirical) and yet, on the one hand, intellectual, and on the other, sensual. That is the transcendental schema."

However, not satisfied with this either, Kant goes further and introduces one more human cognitive ability - imagination. Transcendental schemes are the result of the productive imagination.

“The scheme in itself is always only a product of the imagination, but since the synthesis of the imagination does not mean a single intuition, but only unity in the determination of sensibility, the scheme must still be distinguished from the image. So, if I put five dots one after the other... then this is the image of the number five. If, on the other hand, I think only a number in general, whether it be five or a hundred, then such thinking is rather a representation of a method (as a multitude is represented in one image, for example, a thousand) in accordance with a certain concept, than this image itself, which in the last case, when I think a thousand, I can hardly survey and compare with the concept. This notion of the general way in which the imagination supplies an image to a concept, I call the schema of that concept.

In reality, our pure sensory concepts are based not on images of objects, but on schemes. No image of a triangle would correspond to the concept of a triangle at all. In fact, the image would always be limited to only a part of the scope of this concept and would never reach the generality of the concept, thanks to which the concept is applicable to all triangles - right-angled, acute-angled, etc. The scheme of the triangle cannot exist anywhere except in thought, and signifies the rule of synthesis of the imagination in relation to pure figures in space. To an even lesser extent, the object of experience or the image of such an object can be adequate to the empirical concept; the empirical concept is always directly related to the scheme of the imagination as the rule for determining our intuition according to some general concept. The concept of a dog signifies the rule that my imagination can draw a four-legged animal in a general form, without being limited by any single particular appearance given to me in experience, or in any way possible in concrete. This schematization of our understanding in relation to phenomena and their pure form is an art hidden in the depths of the human soul, the real methods of which we will hardly ever be able to guess from nature and discover. We can only say that the image is the product of the empirical faculty of productive imagination, while the schema of sensible concepts (as figures in space) is the product and, as it were, the monogram of the pure faculty of imagination a priori; first of all, thanks to the scheme and in accordance with it, images become possible, but they must always be associated with concepts only through the schemes they designate, and in themselves they do not completely coincide with concepts. But the schema of a pure concept of the understanding is something that cannot be reduced to any image; it is only a pure, category-expressing synthesis according to the rule of unity on the basis of concepts in general, and it is a transcendental product of the imagination concerning the determination of inner feeling in general, according to the conditions of its form (time) in relation to all representations, insofar as they must a priori be combined in one concept according to the unity of apperception.

Let us consider schematically reflection in Kant's theory of apperception.

Commentary on the scheme. The first part of the schema in the interpretative ontological position is the schema of Kant's theory of apperception. The thing-in-itself is a "house", on the left - pure apperception, on the right - empirical apperception, the lower arrow - we get a variety of sensory sensations, the upper left arrow - we anticipate them into integrity in pure apperception, the upper right arrow - we compare it with the integrity in empirical apperception and we get the object as a transcendental unity of pure and empirical apperception ("two houses and a double arrow in a rectangle").

The second part of the scheme is ontologization in the constructive position of reflection of the theory of apperception: 1) normalization of pure apperception in the reality of thinking, and empirical apperception - in empirical reality, 2) comparison of reflected contents in different realities - as interpositional reflection.

So, Kant extends the thesis about the unknowability of things in themselves even to the sphere of the human ego, to self-consciousness. Even our Self, as it is given to us in the act of self-consciousness, is not, according to Kant, a thing in itself, i.e. a monad, for it reveals itself to us through inner sense, and therefore is again mediated by sensibility and is thus only an appearance.

In self-consciousness, Kant distinguishes two layers: the subjective unity of self-consciousness, which is the definition of an inner feeling and in which the subject is given to itself as a phenomenon, as a psychological, empirical subject. The second layer is the objective unity of self-consciousness, which Kant calls transcendental unity of apperception(perception and awareness) and which is the highest principle of all human knowledge, because it alone determines the unity of knowledge due to its reference to a certain “I think”, which must accompany all representations, otherwise they crumble and lose all connection with each other.

But the transcendental unity of apperception, according to Kant, is not the unity of substance. Sharply criticizing Descartes for his understanding of the subject as a “thinking thing”, criticizing the previous rationalism for the unjustified substantiation of “I think”, which is only a unity of function, Kant writes: rational psychology puts at the basis of the science of the soul “a representation completely devoid of content: I, which cannot even be called a concept, since it is only consciousness accompanying all concepts. Through this I, or He, or It (the thing) that thinks, nothing else appears than the transcendental subject of thought = X, which is known only through the thoughts that constitute its predicates, and of which, if we isolate it, we cannot have the slightest idea ... "

Man is given to himself, according to Kant, only as a phenomenon, and thus, all the laws of the world of phenomena fully apply to him, i.e. a world in which there is nothing simple, indivisible, which would be an end in itself, the cause of itself, that is, everything that, according to Leibniz, characterizes substances.

Thus, the "I" of transcendental apperception is not a thing in itself. “Analysis of myself in thinking does not give any knowledge of myself as an object at all. The logical interpretation of thinking is generally mistaken for a metaphysical definition of "object". An object of pure thought, not given to contemplation, i.e. "noumenon", as Kant explains, is not a thing in itself, but an illusion of reason. The thing-in-itself therefore turns out to be outside the bounds of theoretical knowledge, because it cannot be an object of contemplation, but could only be an object of speculation, but Kant does not recognize purely intelligible knowledge.

The subject, in Kant's understanding, does not simply perceive the given world in sensations or in rational concepts, but creatively processes the “givenness”, builds a new building out of it. Thus Kant removes the external opposition of subject and object formulated by Descartes. True, in the dialectics of the relationship between subject and object, the leading place is occupied by the subject, if one takes the position of Kant. He introduces the concept of a "transcendental subject", not an individual subject, but a "subject in general". Kant sought to analyze consciousness as consciousness in general, and not as an empirical phenomenon; he tried to isolate the principles of the activity of consciousness as such. This consciousness (as opposed to empirical) has been called transcendental.

The subject, as it were, splits into two different layers that make it up: individual and transcendental subjects. With regard to the former, it is considered fair to say that the objective structure of experience is independent of it. At the same time, this structure, norms and criteria used in the cognitive process are rooted in the characteristics of the transcendental subject.

The transcendental subject underlies every individual "I", and at the same time it goes beyond it. It is, as it were, a superconsciousness that controls the individual consciousness. And if the individual consciousness cognizes the surrounding reality, then the superconsciousness creates the construction of nature, and it is incomprehensible to the individual consciousness.

The theme of transcendental reality receives its further development in the concept of an indirect phenomenon (phenomenon of the second order) in Kant's last work Opus postum-mum (Convolut X). Here are a few key quotes from this work, revealing its essence:

• “The appearance of an appearance is that by means of which the subjective becomes objective, since it is presented a priori”;
• “However, the appearance of things in space (and in time) is of two kinds: 1. the appearance of objects that we ourselves put into it (a priori) is metaphysical; 2. a phenomenon that is given to us empirically (a posteriori) - physical. The latter is a direct phenomenon, the former is an indirect one, i.e. the phenomenon of some phenomenon”;
• “The object of an indirect phenomenon is the thing itself, i.e. such an object that we extract from contemplation only in so far as we ourselves put it [the thing itself], i.e. for it is the product of our own cognitive faculty.... Namely, we could not have an idea of ​​hard or soft, warm or cold, and so on. the body as such, if we had not previously made up the concept of these driving forces of matter (attraction or repulsion ...) and now we could say that one or the other of these forces belongs to this concept. – Therefore, a priori concepts are given as [necessary] for empirical knowledge, which, however, because of this are not empirical concepts ... ”.

To clarify the Kantian concept indirect phenomenon Let us use the classical distinction between primary and secondary qualities. In a direct subjective-empirical phenomenon, we have a sensation solid or white. It is clear that this is only secondary- subjective - the qualities of a thing; only how we feel this thing, but not the thing in itself, not its primary - objective - qualities. Phenomena of the second order are introduced by us as an answer to the question about the foundations of empirical contemplation: if we perceive it as white (warm), then there must be something objective (“thing-in-itself”) that causes this sensation of whiteness (warmth). This is the one mental thing(= transcendental object), which is the objective basis of our subjective sensations.

Modern science cannot do without theoretical constructs of a high degree of abstraction such as "strings" (physics), "genes" (biology), "fractals" (mathematics) ... and scientific models based on them, which are analogues of Kant's indirect phenomena. Transcendentalism protects us in this case from the naive attribution of the status of objectively real to such theoretical constructs. For example, the symbols P (pressure), V (volume), T (temperature) from the Boyle-Mariotte law describing the behavior of gases (PV = rT) do not really (in nature) exist by themselves. They are only our theoretical constructs within the framework of representation(= an indirect phenomenon) about a gas as a collection of chaotically moving balls (molecules), which, through mass collision, exert pressure on the walls of the vessel. At the same time, such constructs, if they satisfy the transcendental criterion, have objective significance, i.e. correspond to real processes and can be used in experimental knowledge. The status of such theoretical constructs and the scientific models founded by them is transcendental, and the totality of such constructs (= transcendental objects) constitutes the transcendental reality, or Popper's "third world".

Thus, having come close to showing the interaction of subject and object, Kant was unable to completely overcome the elements of alienation between them. Kant failed to build a "pure" theory of knowledge, as he tore apart being and consciousness. Hegel was able to overcome the alienation of being and consciousness. He showed the relationship of these two categories, their transition into each other, reveals the failure of the separation of being from consciousness.

Transcendence and the transcendent. Speaking as clearly as possible, "transcendence" means overcoming the border, and "transcendence" means connecting two different parts of the content - on one side and on the other side of this border. After Kant, “transcendental” began to denote any content that goes beyond certain limits understandable in a particular text, and “transcendental” began to denote any content that connects different realities in which this content exists. In post-Kantian philosophy, the term "transcendental" also began to be used, which means a general concept that connects two reality contexts. In modern social philosophy, for example, transcendental institutionalism means the ability of institutions to work in different real contexts.

Transcendental (from Latin transcendens - going beyond) - connecting parts of the content that are on opposite sides of a certain limit. This concept has a long history and did not immediately acquire the meaning that is the most common and which is given in the definition.

In Kant's philosophy transcendental called a priori forms of cognition, which determine and determine the possibility of any experience and organize (shape) empirical cognition. The transcendental forms of sensibility are space and time, the transcendental forms of reason are categories (substance, causality, etc.). The transcendental (a priori) is opposed, on the one hand, to the empirical (experimental, a posteriori), which it forms, and on the other hand, to the transcendental, to things in themselves that go beyond experience.

For Kant, the transcendental unity of apperception is the object. That is, the object is a transcendental unity (the connection of two parts of the content through the limit of the immanent and transcendent) - the empirical apperception of the perceived content of some thing-in-itself and the pure apperception of the conceivable content of the same thing-in-itself. Immanent in this conjunction is experience (the content of empirical apperception), while thought is transcendent (the content of pure apperception).

Transcendental knowledge, according to Kant, is the knowledge of the a priori conditions of possible experience. This is precisely the task of transcendental philosophy:

Kant's transcendental apperception is the activity of pure intellect, by means of which, with the help of the forms of thinking existing in it, from the perceived material of impressions, he can create the entire volume of his concepts and ideas.

Apperception(from Latin ad - to and perceptio - perception), one of the fundamental properties of the human psyche, expressed in the conditionality of the perception of objects and phenomena of the external world and the awareness of this perception by the features of the general content of mental life as a whole, the stock of knowledge and the specific state of the individual. Apperception: the transition of the sensual, the unconscious (sensations, impressions) into the rational, conscious (perception, representation, thought). I. Kant drew attention to the fact that the activity of the mind synthesizes the atomic elements of sensibility, due to which perception always has some integrity. To denote the connection and unity of representations in the mind, Kant introduced the concept of "synthetic unity of apperception", i.e., the unity of the process of awareness. At the level of sensibility, such unity is ensured by the understanding, which is "... the ability a priori to connect and bring the diverse [content] of representational data under the unity of apperception." Kant called the synthesis from existing representations transcendental apperception.

In modern psychology, the concept of "apperception" expresses the undoubted fact that different people(and even one person at different times) can perceive the same object in different ways and, conversely, perceive different objects as the same. This is explained by the fact that the perception of an object is not a simple copying, but the construction of an image, carried out under the influence of the sensorimotor and categorical schemes available to the individual, the stock of knowledge, etc. In this regard, a distinction is made between stable apperception (due to the worldview and general orientation of the individual) and temporary apperception (determined by mood, situational attitude to the perceived, etc.), which are closely intertwined in a particular act of perception. Varieties of the idea of ​​apperception are the concepts of gestalt, attitudes that express various aspects of activity.

Transcendental unity of apperception - this is the concept of Kant's philosophy, which plays an important role both in the theory of cognitive abilities and in the system of Kant's transcendental philosophy as a whole. The transcendental unity of apperception can be equated with the Self, but in a very definite aspect. In general, Kant calls self-consciousness apperception, separating empirical and original (pure) apperception. Empirical apperception is temporary, it is a look at oneself through the eyes of an inner feeling. The object of empirical apperception is the soul as a phenomenon, a stream of experiences in which there is nothing stable. Therefore, empirical apperception turns out to be rather not self-consciousness, but temporally colored consciousness of specific states of the subject, among which there are perceptions of external objects (not a single representation, including external, can bypass the internal feeling). However, the condition for any empirical consciousness of representations is the assignment of these representations to the identical Self. Thus, being conscious of representations (empirical apperception), we are simultaneously aware of ourselves as conscious of these representations (original apperception). Realizing ourselves, we at the same time realize that numerical identity is inseparable from the idea of ​​ourselves. This means that the Self is conceived by us as being preserved in the stream of perceptions (it itself is outside of time), therefore, single, and, consequently, defining the unity of the entire diversity of our states. This unity Kant calls the transcendental unity of apperception. The word "transcendental" indicates that the revealed structure of the Self can be used to explain the possibility of a priori synthetic knowledge. The unification of representations in the I presupposes a synthesis (which is why Kant calls the transcendental unity of apperception also the original-synthetic unity), which, like the pure I itself, must have an a priori character. Knowing the pure forms of this synthesis (Kant is convinced that they are categories), we will be able to anticipate the laws that phenomena must inevitably obey as objects of possible experience, since otherwise they simply will not reach empirical consciousness, i.e. will not be accepted. This highest foundation of synthetic knowledge is itself analytical in nature, since the concept of the Self already includes the idea of ​​the synthesis in it of all possible ideas. However, the analytic unity of apperception itself is possible only because of its original synthetic nature. Since the transcendental unity of apperception is associated with objective categorical syntheses (categories are concepts due to which representations are related to a transcendental object), Kant also calls it the objective unity of self-consciousness and distinguishes it from the subjective unity of consciousness, based on random associative connections. Self-consciousness is interpreted by Kant as an act of pure spontaneity, indicating that pure apperception belongs to the highest cognitive abilities. It is not surprising, therefore, that Kant sometimes identifies the original unity of apperception and understanding. The transcendental unity of apperception must not be confused with its bearer, the transcendental subject, about which we know almost nothing. A whole science is based on the erroneous identification of these two instances - rational psychology, refuted by Kant in the section "Critiques" on the paralogisms of pure reason. In itself, the transcendental unity of apperception is only a form of thought that differs from the transcendental subject in the same way that a thought differs from a thing.

As part of the understanding of transcendentalism as a study in order to identify the transcendental conditions for the cognition of objects in modern analytical literature, a stable phrase has developed "transcendental argument"(“transcendental argument” - from the English transcendental argument (s), which is understood, first of all, as the type of reasoning used by Kant in the transcendental deduction of categories and the analogies of experience adjoining it from the Critique of Pure Reason.

The general formal structure of the transcendental argument is as follows:

1. E (where E is some experimental fact).
2. P there is a necessary condition E (Where P - non-experimental "hypothesis").
3. Hence, P .

In essence, transcendental argumentation, in its essence, acts as a general (basic) method of philosophizing. So, for example, in his "Metaphysics" Aristotle defines the tasks of the first philosophy as the identification of "the first causes of being", which can be interpreted as a search for a priori P in the given diagram. And its origins are contained in the works of Plato, Aristotle, although it receives its decisive development from the Neoplatonists Plotinus and Proclus, who managed to synthesize the approaches of their great predecessors into a single philosophical method. At the same time, the transcendental argument can be defined as a method of ideal understanding of things, seeking to identify the conditions for the conceivability of certain empirical data. For example, in order to “think of a spatio-temporal thing, one must already have an idea of ​​space in general and time in general,” and the condition for the conceivability of green is the concept of color in general.

The Science of Consciousness Hegel. In 1807, Hegel published his first major work, The Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel's premise is that the subject and object are identical to each other, since the basis of reality is the self-development of the Absolute Spirit. He is both the subject of knowledge and the real reality. Therefore, the basis of knowledge is, in fact, self-knowledge, that is, the grounds for opposing subject and object, consciousness and being are lost.

If in ancient philosophy theory of knowledge and being (ontology and epistemology) are not yet separated from each other, but in the philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. are interconnected as relatively independent parts of unified philosophical systems, then in the Hegelian concept they are consciously conceived as completely coinciding with each other.

Another feature of the Hegelian theory of cognition is that cognition is conceived historically by him - it is the steps of the development of the Absolute Spirit and, at the same time, the steps of the cognition of the external world and society itself by man.

The World Absolute Spirit chooses reality as an object, but it is reality itself as eternal being. Therefore, knowledge appears as self-knowledge and loses the meaning of the opposition of being and consciousness. The object becomes in Hegelian philosophy the product of the subject's creativity. The mistake of many philosophers, Hegel believed, is that they leave only a contemplative role for the subject, while a person and society must be considered both from the point of view of thought and from the point of view of subject-practical activity. The process of increasing knowledge is always associated with specific historical conditions, and this, and not the capabilities of the subject, determine the boundaries of knowledge.

One part of the two-sided scheme of classical philosophy "subject-object" looks completely chimerical. A subject that occupies a metaposition in relation to the whole world, inheriting in some sense divine powers christian god, thereby paradoxicalizes the entire dual scheme. In the case when all being is declared as something different from the subject and presented to him as an objectified given, the simplest question "does the subject belong to being?" or, what is the same, "does the subject exist?" can confuse us. If the subject exists, then it is a part of being, but then the requirement of objectivity (externality) of being to the subject is not fulfilled. After all, the object, by definition, must be independent of the subject. If being, as an object, is outside the subject, then the subject turns out to be floating in some kind of ontological void or ontological vacuum. In other words, such a subject simply does not exist. Turning the world into an object turns the subject into a ghost.
Consider also the second problem.

Classical philosophy firmly adheres to the semantic opposition - something is either a "subject" or an "object", the world, taken as a whole, in its entirety, cannot be an object. But why is the world-being not an object? Because if he were an object, he would need external infliction. If the whole world is an object, then something external to it must ensure its dynamics. In this case, the “whole world” is not the whole world, but only a part, because there is something else somewhere. To understand the meaning of this justification, one should pay close attention to the definition of "the whole" when it comes to the world (being). "All" peace or "All" being is that beyond which there is nothing. It is difficult to disagree with this, because. this assertion follows from the very definition of being. But if this is true, then the world must limit itself to itself - only in this case it will retain the inclusiveness indicated by its definition. If the world needs an external reason for its own existence, then its totality is violated - it lacks its own parts, in other words, there is something else somewhere that affects our failed "world". More simply, what has been said can be demonstrated as follows: the cause of being either exists or does not exist. If it does not exist, there is no existence, and if it exists, it belongs to it. What follows now from what has been said? It is clear that the world is one, but it is still not clear whether it is subjective or objective? But since the traditional definition of the subject includes self-causing (the subject is one who can affect himself), the answer suggests itself - the world taken as a whole cannot be an object, but it can and must be a subject.

This answer could satisfy everyone if the subject, at least purely logically, did not require the object. What is left for us in this case? Identify the subject with the object and declare them as one. The result of such reasoning is that with the help of a seemingly very clear and convincing subject-object model, where the subject is a thinking consciousness, and the object is some kind of inert data that should be thought, it is not possible to describe the world in its entirety. In order to speak of the world, and not of its shadow, one must forever abandon the arrogant assumption of being as an object, and the philosopher-researcher as a subject.

Criticism of the subject-object dualism is the first step on the way to the extended procedure of detranscending the world. If the subject does not occupy a privileged metaposition in relation to the world, i.e., in fact, does not transcend the world, as it was implicitly meant in some versions of the classical New European epistemology, then the transcendental dimension dissolves, and the world becomes one-dimensional or detranscended (immanent).

The fallacies of the subject-object method, however, are not the only ones when it comes to the true causes of detranscending. Perhaps the most ambitious attack against such a conception of the world, where a transcendent dimension is assumed, was the anti-Kantian march of non-classics. In the Kantian project of ontology, being was split into two regions - the cognizable world of phenomena and the unknowable world of noumena. This splitting was the target that allowed the non-classical to sprout from the very depths of classical philosophy. "The illusion of the back worlds" as a programmatic thesis for the overthrow of the transcendent can be concretized in an effort to get rid of the model of the split Being, which discriminates the phenomenal in favor of the noumenal, arguing that the phenomena are not true, absolutely only noumena are true but they are not available.

In addition, the radical cutting off of the world of noumena, i.e., in fact, the truth itself, seemed non-classical philosophy too cruel sentence, and once again she demonstrated her hidden metaphysical intentions, not wanting to put up with this sentence. The enticing mystery of things-in-themselves seemed too precious to be so easily dismissed.

Moreover, with due diligence in Kant's transcendental approach, errors can be detected. Here is what they are. In the most general form, all of them can be reduced to the well-known statement of the philosopher Jacobi: "Without the thing-in-itself, it is impossible to enter Kant's philosophy, but with the thing-in-itself, it is impossible to remain in it." The meaning of this remark is that the “thing-in-itself” is an extremely paradoxical object, and contrary to the opinion that this is quite natural for a noumenal (transcendental) object, this paradoxicality is associated with the contradictions of the Kantian doubling itself, and not with anything else. What is the contradiction? It lies in the fact that one cannot even point to the transcendent world of the noumenal. The conditions for the conceivability of the transcendent are such that it is unthinkable. We simply do not know where the transcendental world begins and whether it exists at all - any even the most general knowledge about the sphere of the transcendental detranscends it, making it part of this worldly (phenomenal) world. Jacobi, of course, is not the only one who pays attention to this circumstance. A whole generation of philosophers of the post-Kantian period literally "made a name for themselves" on the criticism of this one and only idea. Among them, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel are perhaps the most eminent thinkers, although only Hegel extracted the maximum number of postclassical consequences from the criticism of Kant's division of the world into phenomena and noumena.

So, nothing can be known about the noumenal world, even that it exists, if only because existence is a category that forms the world of phenomena. If the thing-in-itself is isolated, then the isolation belongs to that which isolates, for this bond is difficult to break. Then between the immanent and the transcendent one cannot avoid at least semantic exchange. The absence of semantic boundaries, in turn, leads to the dispersal of all boundaries, and, therefore, from now on, ontology may not be burdened with differentiation into the areas of the immanent (phenomenal) and transcendental (noumenal). We can state with relief that "he who has seen this world has seen everything" (Marcus Aurelius).

The meaning of the Hegelian strategy of detranscending is based on the fundamental premise of the "phenomenology of the spirit" - the whole world is entirely given to itself as the identity of the object (substance) and the subject. This identity, if one resorts to Hegelian terminology, is the Absolute - subjective being. As we can see, the Absolute does not and cannot have any “beyond”, nothing external exists for it, and in this sense the Absolute is an embodied detranscendence. The transcendent in the Hegelian system is internalized through the proposition of identity of being and thinking. This is about thinking, knowing being, and being, knowing thinking. The well-known maxim “there is no object without a subject” is also read in reverse order: “there is no subject without an object”. If the first part of this formula is Kantianism, in which the object is constituted by the subject, then in Hegelian semantics the subject itself is constituted by the object, which coincides with the phenomenological approach founded intentionality principle , thanks to which the subject grasps himself and the world by the fact of focusing on objectivity, (re)creating the form and content of his consciousness. Hegel's main idea is that if we wanted to cognize the Absolute (the real as such) without being a part of this Absolute from the very beginning, then we would not only be doomed to failure, but we would never be able to formulate the idea of ​​the Absolute at all, and therefore could not separate ourselves from it, which, however, should not be done. Hegel writes: “Let us assume that a tool (of knowledge) is needed in general only in order to attract the absolute to itself with its help, without making any changes to it, in the manner in which a bird is attracted with a stick smeared with glue. In that case, if the absolute itself had not yet fallen into our hands and would not wish to fall, it would, of course, laugh at this cunning. All doublings known in philosophy (to ideas and things, noumena and phenomena, absolute and relative, divine and earthly - in a word, knowable and unknowable) are only the result of a cowardly and at the same time hypocritical fear of error. In this regard, Hegel wittily remarks: “But if, out of fear of being mistaken, they are imbued with distrust in science, which, without falling into this kind of suspiciousness, directly takes up work and really knows, then it is not clear why not, on the contrary, be imbued with distrust in this very distrust, and why not be afraid that the very fear of being mistaken is already a delusion.” Why shouldn't the possibility of error scare us? Everything is very simple - there is no world and consciousness taken separately (in this form they are given only as abstractions), but there is a real world and real consciousness, such that the world is always-already-grasped-by-consciousness, and consciousness-always-already-addressed-to-the-world of the Reality-that-is-spoken about), what exists in reality, I say, is the Subject knowing the Object, or the Object being known by the Subject. This doubled and nevertheless united in itself due to its indistinguishability of Reality, taken in its entirety or as a Totality, is called by Hegel "Spirit" ... or ... "Absolute Idea"". Hegel's basic argument is easy to understand. Since (1) only the Absolute is the truth (as well as the truth can only be the Absolute), and since (2) The Absolute is by nature subjective, then (3) our understanding from the very beginning is a part of reality, and the absolute reality, beyond which there is nothing. This means that the age-old concern of consciousness that reality has some otherworldly noumenal character should be decisively discarded; “the fear of delusion is already delusion,” since the whole world, taken as a whole, is a real concept or understood reality. With this approach, the matter of knowledge is radically simplified. From now on, the only thing to be concerned about is “to carry out verification in the true sense of the word, so that ... we are left with a simple observation, since consciousness checks itself. For consciousness is, on the one hand, the awareness of the object, and on the other hand, the awareness of oneself: the consciousness of what is true for him, and the consciousness of his knowledge of this. Then "knowledge does not need to go beyond itself where it finds itself and where the concept corresponds to the subject, and the subject to the concept." Consequently, the task of cognition will be to most accurately describe the observed, i.e. it will be reduced to passive, contemplative and descriptive work. This allows Kojève to assert that "the Hegelian method ... is purely contemplative and descriptive, or phenomenological in the Husserlian sense."

Indeed, the similarity between the Hegelian and Husserlian methodologies is obvious. Objectively, phenomenology is the science of "consciousness-contemplating-essence". Methodologically, however, it points to the need for a correctly performed contemplation, namely, a pure description (description) of the object being contemplated, since what we really see is what takes place in reality. In Husserl, the boundary between phenomena and noumena is erased due to the most important phenomenological principle intentionality. According to him, consciousness does not exist until it is captured by objects, and an object does not exist until it is captured by consciousness. Accordingly, those objects to which consciousness is initially directed and which equally constitute the integrity and reality of consciousness itself, Husserl will call phenomena. The phenomenon is at the same time an experience of consciousness, and an object that forms this experience; the object and the thought about the object are one and the same. In this sense, the distinction between subject and object is removed in favor of their phenomenological identity. This strategy invites us to cut off hypothetical "things-in-themselves" by limiting ourselves to "things-for-me", i.e. actually phenomena. Here it is important to take into account that the phenomenon fully reveals its essence in the act of perception, if only this act itself is performed according to certain rules. The rules do not imply active cognition, as is usually assumed in classical epistemology, but, on the contrary, passive contemplation and registration of what is seen. Precisely with such a procedure, which Husserl calls reduction, we will be able, by eliminating everything that is introduced by consciousness itself, is added to the phenomenon due to the errors of the work of consciousness, to clear the phenomena of everything superficial and fix their self-presentation. In turn, the errors of bringing in do not refer to the activity of the independent mind (the restoring transcending subject), but only indicate that one must be able to reach the point where consciousness coincides with the phenomenon. From the position of phenomenology, it would not be entirely correct to say that the source of obscuring the phenomenon is only in consciousness itself - it would be more correct to say that entities, in principle, require correct handling. Accordingly, consciousness then deals with pure phenomena when, firstly, it concentrates exclusively on their manifestation in experience (for example, when seeing a dark surface, we must state that we see a dark surface, and not a table top, because it can turn out to be the top of a piano, a chest of drawers, just a log cabin, or anything else), and secondly, it abstracts from what is not essential for this object (the spatial arrangement of this surface, color, circumstances of meeting with it - all this is just masks pure phenomena and should be discarded). Consciousness, which retains in its perception the pure phenomenon and is itself supported by it, must rely on self-evident experience. Evidence is defined as passive registration in consciousness of the self-presentation of objects-phenomena in the mode of their actual self-presence in the experience of awareness “for-me” and, if you like, “through-me”. “Every truly given contemplation is a legitimate source of knowledge; everything that reveals itself through "intuition" (so to speak, in its true reality) must be accepted as it reveals itself, and only within the limits in which it reveals itself.

With this approach, knowledge turns into contemplation or even express discretion essences, the guaranteed success of which is due to the fact that the subject is no longer separated from the object by an impenetrable wall of its own subjectivity, as it was supposed in a number of classical contexts and, first of all, in the philosophy of Kant.

In short, for the phenomenological version of detranscending, "it is not really a question of knowing whether we perceive reality as it is...because reality is exactly as we perceive it."

But exactly the same thing is said by Hegel. His program of detranscending is best conveyed by the following words: “The hidden essence of the Universe does not possess in itself the power that would be able to resist the boldness of knowledge, it must open before him, unfold the riches and depths of its nature before his eyes and let him enjoy them”3.

Then one can be convinced that Hegel, who is usually considered the pinnacle of religious philosophy, would be more correctly classified among the atheistic philosophers. Our point of view, however, has a few, but, it seems, authoritative supporters. First of all, Kojève himself: “There is, however, no doubt that Hegel himself rejects the idea of ​​an otherworldly God. According to Hegel, it is the idea that the Absolute is outside the spatio-temporal World, that it is on the other side of humanity and History, is hallmark Religions. It is this idea that prevents Theology (even Christian) from becoming the true Philosophy, or Science of Hegel, it is precisely this idea - in the existential plane - that means misfortune religious Man»; thus "dialectical" or anthropological philosophy Hegel is ultimately a philosophy of death (or, equivalently, atheism).

However, as often happens in philosophy, the concept of a detranscended world, which was finally identified with the image of the Hegelian Absolute, was rather quickly loaded with serious semantic connotations. What did the idea of ​​detranscending mean besides the formal purity of the achieved conceptualization? Philosophy was pleased to draw very far-reaching conclusions: the Absolute is a unity not only of the subjective and objective, immanent and transcendent, but also rational and irrational. And how is it possible to think the identity of the last two categories? The demarcation between reason and unreason served as the most important bulwark of the self-identification of classical philosophy. The classics gave very clear guidelines, where "one's own" - reasonable - ends and "alien" - insane begins. But in a detranscended world, such antitheses are forbidden. Then the very idea of ​​the Absolute can be subjected to two possible ways of interpretation.

The first way is to look at Hegelianism in such a way that it teaches us to see the triumph of panlogism in the Hegelian system. The essence of this reading is that if the immanent (identical, rational) undertakes the development of the transcendent (other, irrational) opposite to it, then, consequently, having appropriated this external to itself, it likens it to itself, standardizes and normalizes up to the disappearance of any similarity supported by the remaining difference, i.e. makes it identical to itself - makes him himself.

The second method proceeds from the fact that the immanent (identical, rational), incorporating the transcendent (other, irrational), must necessarily change, become an updated mind ( higher wisdom) or extended experience. It is this second way that indicates a radical change in the foundations of understanding rationality or a transformation of the rational itself. Of course, it also owes its existence to dialectics, which directly prescribed to erase the boundaries of any counter-oppositions. To suppose the rational to be fenced off from the non-rational means for dialectics a kind of intellectual falsification, since the rational (thesis) owes its very existence to the irrational (antithesis).

However, this second method contrasted itself with the first, which also directly referred to dialectics. What is their difference?

We will immediately see it if we once again pose the question itself - it consists in finding out whether, under the conditions of detranscendence, 1) the other will be reduced to the identical or, in order to simultaneously embrace the rational and the irrational, the identical and the other, 2) the mind will have to change, lose its original identity, cease to be the same mind and turn into the Other in relation to the other?

The proclamation of the program of studying one's own as alien, and that which seems alien to us as one's own, belongs precisely to non-classical philosophy, which at the beginning of the last century associated all the most progressive in philosophy with a correct reading of Hegel. It is she who draws attention to the fact that this task of expanding the rational can be understood in two ways. On the one hand, in this expansion one can see something more than a simple pushing of boundaries - a genuine transformation of the mind, when it is not about colonization and appropriation, but about the possibility of conversation and interaction, excluding the capture of someone else and its dissolution in one's own. This interpretation is supported by the non-classical. At the same time, she asserts in every way: the Hegelian version of detranscendence, for all its soundness of goal-setting (movement towards reunification), could not overcome the classical dualism - the distinction between "one's own" and "alien" mind, a distinction that ensured the self-identity of the analytical mind (as "one's own"). Hegelianism is guilty, because it implies the wrong version of the diversification of the mind - the mind expands its possessions and takes power over areas alien to it so far, while showing all shades of repressiveness.

Why were these very casuistic disputes important for non-classical philosophy? Is it the interest of an idle mind or a tribute to a fundamentally new genre of philosophizing? Both of these are incorrect. Beyond these most abstract discussions lies a very concrete and mundane motivation. It concerns the experience other cultures. Whose cultural heritage will have the right to become a universal heritage and who will be assigned the role of a teacher and mentor? Whose intellectual experience will be recognized as universal, and will someone get the right to dictate their terms to others? Since until the middle of the 20th century such a right existed by default and was assigned to European civilization, the time has come to reconsider the foundations of this domination. It was this initiative that belonged to non-classical philosophy, and this was always its secret motivation. The subversive activities of the non-classical may seem completely groundless, if we do not take into account the main thing - the arrogance of the Western Logos, which seemed to the non-classical more and more outrageous. And since the main weapon of the West has always been Reason, the pride of owning which nourished the missionary undertakings of European civilization, the fire of non-classical criticism is aimed precisely at this goal. At the same time, it is the model of the detranscended world that gives rise to worries - will the expansion of the mind mean its export or, on the contrary, its internal transformation under the influence of "unreason"?

As we can see, the elimination of double standards from the field of ontology comes back to us under the guise of ambiguity in the interpretation of what happened. After all, if the Absolute, in order to preserve its absoluteness, is forced to master the experience of otherness, then the very question “how is this possible?” bifurcates - should something else change, ceasing to be it, and go under the jurisdiction identical, or this identity itself changes, absorbing into itself other? In the end, the question of who will take on the burden of transformation and who should obey, surrendering to the mercy of the winner, is reborn as a problem of intercultural communication. Will everything be reasonable in that sense; in what way does Western civilization see it, or will everything be reasonable in the sense in which it is possible, in order to maintain a true synthesis? And here philosophical complacency ends and a tense confrontation between cultures begins.

I. G. Fichte; activity I as the beginning of all things. Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) took an important step in revising Kant's teaching, pointing out the contradictory nature of the concept of "things in themselves" and the need to eliminate it from critical philosophy as a relic of dogmatic thinking. According to Fichte, not only the form of knowledge, but also all of its content must be derived from the “pure I” of transcendental apperception. And this means that the Kantian transcendental subject thereby turns into the absolute beginning of all that exists - the “absolute Self”, from the activity of which the entire fullness of reality, the entire objective world, called by Fichte “not-Self”, must be explained. Thus understood, the subject, in essence, takes the place of the divine substance of classical rationalism (it is known that in his youth Fichte was fond of the philosophy of Spinoza).

To understand Fichte's concept, one should keep in mind that he proceeds from Kant's transcendentalism, that is, he discusses the problem of knowledge, not being. The main question of Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason": "how synthetic a priori judgments are possible", that is, how scientific knowledge is possible - remains central to Fichte as well. Therefore, Fichte calls his philosophy "the doctrine of science" (scientific teaching). Science, according to Fichte, differs from non-scientific notions because of its systematic form. However, systematicity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the scientific nature of knowledge: the truth of the entire system is based on the truth of its original foundation. This latter, says Fichte, must be directly certain, that is, obvious.

Just as in his time Descartes turned to our ego in search of the most reliable principle, so does Fichte. The most reliable thing in our consciousness, he says, is self-consciousness: "I am", "I am I". The act of self-consciousness is a unique phenomenon; according to Fichte, he is an action and at the same time a product of this action, that is, a coincidence of opposites - subject and object, because in this act the I generates itself, posits itself.

However, for all the similarity of Fichte's original principle with the Cartesian one, there is also an essential difference between them. The action by which the I gives birth to itself is, according to Fichte, an act of freedom. Therefore, the judgment "I am" is not just a statement of some existing fact, as, for example, the judgment "the rose is red." In reality, this is, as it were, a response to the call, to the demand - “be!”, be aware of your Self, create it as a kind of autonomous reality by an act of awareness-generation and thereby enter the world of free, and not just natural beings. This requirement appeals to the will, and therefore the judgment "I am I" expresses the very autonomy of the will that Kant put at the basis of ethics. The philosophy of Kant and Fichte is the idealism of freedom, ethically oriented idealism.

However, Fichte does not have the dividing line that Kant drew between the world of nature, where necessity reigns, the regularity studied by science, and the world of freedom, the basis of which is expediency. In Fichte's absolute I, the theoretical and practical principles coincide, and nature turns out to be only a means for the realization of human freedom, losing the remnant of independence that she had in Kant's philosophy. Activity, activity of the absolute subject becomes for Fichte the only source of all that exists. We accept the existence of natural objects as something independent only because the activity with the help of which these objects are generated is hidden from our consciousness: to reveal the subjective-active principle in everything objectively existing - such is the task of Fichte's philosophy. Nature, according to Fichte, does not exist by itself, but for the sake of something else: in order to fulfill itself, the activity of the I needs some obstacle, overcoming which it deploys all its definitions and, finally, is fully aware of itself, thereby achieving identity with itself. Such an identity, however, cannot be achieved over a finite time; it is the ideal towards which the human race aspires, never fully reaching it. Movement towards such an ideal is the meaning of the historical process.

In his teaching, Fichte, as we see, in an idealistic form, expressed the conviction that a practical-active attitude to an object lies at the basis of a theoretically contemplative attitude to it. Fichte argued that the human mind is active not only when it thinks, but also in the process of perception, when it is believed French materialists(and partly also Kant), is affected by something outside of him located. The German philosopher believed that in order to explain the process of sensation and perception, one should not refer to the action of “things in themselves”, but it is necessary to identify those acts of self-activity of the Self (lying beyond the border of consciousness) that form the invisible basis of the “passive” contemplation of the world.

Although the German idealists, including Fichte, did not go as far in practical political questions as the ideologists of the French Revolution, in terms of their own philosophy they turned out to be more revolutionary than the French Enlightenment.

Fichte's dialectic. Already in Kant, the concept of the transcendental subject does not coincide either with the individual human subject or with the divine mind of traditional rationalism. No less complex is the original concept of Fichte's teaching - the concept of "I". On the one hand, Fichte has in mind the Self, which each person discovers in an act of self-reflection, and therefore, the individual, or empirical Self. On the other hand, it is a kind of absolute reality that is never fully accessible to our consciousness, from which the entire universe is generated through its self-development-self-disclosure and which therefore is the divine, absolute Self. The Absolute Self is an endless activity that becomes the property of individual consciousness only at the moment when it encounters some obstacle and this limited to the latter. But at the same time, having come across a boundary, some non-I, activity rushes beyond this boundary, then again encounters a new obstacle, and so on. This pulsation of activity and its awareness (stop) constitutes the very nature of the I, which, therefore, is not infinite and not finite, but is the unity of opposites of the finite and the infinite, the human and the divine, the individual I and the absolute I. This is the initial contradiction of the I, the deployment of which, according to Fichte, constitutes the content of the entire world process and, accordingly, reflects this process of science. The individual I and the absolute I in Fichte sometimes coincide and are identified, sometimes they disintegrate and differ; this "pulsation" of coincidences-disintegrations is the core of Fichte's dialectic, the driving principle of his system. Along with self-consciousness ("I am"), its opposite is also supposed - not-I. The coexistence of these opposites in one I is possible, according to Fichte, only by limiting each other, that is, by partial mutual annihilation. But the partial mutual annihilation of opposites means that I and not-I are divisible, for only the divisible consists of parts. The whole dialectical process aims at reaching a point where the contradiction is resolved and the opposites - the individual I and the absolute I - coincide. However, the full achievement of this ideal is impossible: all human history is only an endless approximation to it. It was this point of Fichte's teaching - the unattainability of the identity of opposites - that became the subject of criticism of his younger contemporaries - Schelling and Hegel. This criticism was carried out by both from the positions of objective idealism, which, however, they substantiated in different ways.

Naturphilosophy F. V. J. Schelling. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854) makes the identity of the opposites of subject and object the starting point of his teaching. In doing so, he applies the principle of development developed by Fichte in relation to the subject and his activity, also to the analysis of nature. Criticizing Fichte for the fact that he considers nature as bare material for the subject, Schelling in the first period of his work focuses on the problems of natural philosophy. He sees the task of the latter in revealing the successive stages of the development of nature from lower forms to higher ones. At the same time, nature is interpreted as a manifestation of the unconscious life of the mind, which, as it were, goes through a number of stages from the lower - inorganic nature - to the higher, organic, and finds its completion in the appearance of consciousness. The problem of the relationship between unconscious and conscious forms of the life of the mind, already posed by Fichte, acquires paramount importance in Schelling. Schelling is trying to discover the parallelism that exists between the different levels of development of nature (mechanical, chemical, biological), on the one hand, and the stages of development of human consciousness, on the other. At the same time, along with interesting observations and witty conjectures, arbitrary analogies and even fantastic constructions often appear, for which Schelling's natural philosophy was criticized by contemporary naturalists.

Transferring to nature those patterns of development that were discovered by Fichte in the study of the subject, the absolute I, Schelling undertakes the construction of a dialectical picture of the development of natural processes and forms. He understands a natural body as a product of the interaction of oppositely directed forces - positive and negative charges of electricity, positive and negative poles of a magnet, etc. The immediate impetus for Schelling's constructions was new discoveries in physics, chemistry and biology, and above all the theory of electricity, which had been rapidly developing since the middle of the 18th century. Sh. O. Coulomb created the theory of positive and negative electric fluids; the ratio of electric and magnetic polarity, as well as the ratio of chemical and electrical interactions, was studied. Thanks to the discovery of "animal electricity" by L. Galvani, it became possible to establish a connection between inorganic and organic nature.

Based on these discoveries, Schelling criticized the mechanics of natural science, trying to show that all of nature as a whole can be explained using the principle of expediency underlying life. He tried to understand all inorganic processes as prerequisites for the development of the organism. In Schelling's natural philosophy, the Neoplatonic idea of ​​the world soul was revived, penetrating through all the cosmic elements and ensuring the unity and integrity of natural being, universal connection natural phenomena. However, unlike Neoplatonism, Schelling develops a dynamic view of nature. The essence of nature is considered by him as a confrontation of polar forces, a model of which is a magnet. In every natural phenomenon, Schelling sees the product of the struggle of multidirectional forces; this struggle constitutes the structure of all living things.

In Schelling's teaching, the opposition of nature as the world of sensory phenomena and freedom as the intelligible world, characteristic of Kant's transcendental idealism, and to a certain extent also of Fichte, is overcome. Both spheres are considered by Schelling as developing from a single beginning, which is the absolute identity of the subject and object, the point of "indifference" of both. Fichte's absolute subject, which never lost touch with individual consciousness, in Schelling turns into the divine principle of the world, approaching Spinoza's substance. The philosophy of nature and Schelling's philosophy of identity are objective idealism, the main task of which was to show how the whole diversity of the universe is born from a single beginning, which is neither subject nor object. The emergence of many from one is a problem, with an attempt to solve which the emergence of ancient Greek dialectics is associated. However, the representatives of German classical idealism, especially Schelling and Hegel, develop the dialectical method, relying not so much on ancient examples as on the principles that were put forward in the Renaissance in the teachings of Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno.

Marx. The problem of the subject and object of cognition was also solved by K. Marx, considering it in terms of the primacy of matter and the secondary nature of consciousness. The active, creative side of consciousness is manifested only in practice, Marx believed. And the result of the creative process is the acquired knowledge. It is by its nature directed at the object and has as its task to reflect the characteristics of the latter, regardless of the aspect under which the object appears for the subject. However, this task can be accomplished only if the knowledge about the object also includes an understanding of the “place” of the subject in the production of knowledge as a necessary component. A huge role in the production of knowledge is played by the development of categories, language forms, the correct perception of an object, the ability to compare the received data with operations to obtain this data with previous results, etc. It turns out that not only the object is constantly revealed to the subject with different facets, replenishing knowledge, but the subject is also improving in the methods of cognition and, therefore, in self-knowledge. The subject not only recreates an ideal picture of the surrounding world, but also cognizes himself, and the process of objectifying the world and self-knowledge is endless. The forms of cognition and self-knowledge are diverse, and the subject, as it were, constantly goes “beyond” himself, creating more and more new forms of spiritual and material activity to master the object. Comprehending and rethinking the world, the subject each time anew reveals, complements, “creates” himself. He sets himself new goals and objectives and achieves them.

The idealistic shift of emphasis in the analysis of the epistemological relationship "subject-object", as shown by K. Marx and F. Engels, leads to a paradoxical situation: the result of actual development is "bare" truth, while the real process of development, history exists, as it were, "in order to serve the goals of the consumer act of theoretical devouring, proof." According to such an interpretation of cognitive activity, “a person exists in order for history to exist, history in order for there to be a proof of truths,” and truth appears as “an automaton that proves itself.”

Based on such an abstract, extra-historical and even extra-social (or abstract-social) interpretation of the socio-historical conditionality of the subject, idealism finds itself in a difficult position in explaining the fact of the multiplicity of individual consciousnesses that determine the communicative nature of the cognitive process in general and truth in particular. The abstract subject turns out to be outside the real nature and history, a kind of single subject, “consciousness in general”. It seems to dissolve in itself all concreteness and socio-historical certainty. “The plurality of consciousnesses,” writes M. Bakhtin, analyzing the features of idealistic monism, “from the point of view of “consciousness in general” is accidental and, so to speak, superfluous. Everything that is essential, that is true in them, is included in a single context of "consciousness in general" and is devoid of individuality. From the point of view of truth, there are no individual consciousnesses.

From the point of view of the procedural nature of cognition, its formation in the course of a real exchange of activities between people, as well as from the point of view of the mechanism of its assimilation in the process of socio-cultural development, abstraction from subjectivity is impossible, because it allows us to understand the features of a wide cultural and historical background, the real interaction of subject and object. Here, therefore, the question immediately arises: to what extent is it possible and to what extent is it permissible to reduce knowledge to a set of definite results? The solution of this issue presupposes a dialectical-materialistic methodology for analyzing the specifics of the process of cognition.

Criticism of transcendental philosophy

The German thinker Friedrich-Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819) entered the history of philosophy as a representative of the philosophy of "feelings and faith" and the first critic of I. Kant. The most famous phrase of Jacobi, expressed by him regarding the illegitimacy of the assumption of the Kantian “thing in itself”, in his work “On Transcendental Idealism” (1787): “without this premise I cannot enter the system and with this premise I cannot remain in it.” Kant's "phenomena", according to Jacobi, are just human "representations", which do not correspond to any real objects that exist outside and independently of consciousness. He first formulated this idea in the same year 1787 in the "Appendix" to the work "David Hume on Faith or Idealism and Realism" and repeatedly repeated later, especially in 1801 in the works "On the enterprise of criticism to reduce reason to reason" and "On divine things and their revelation."

Numerous critical statements of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi on Kantian philosophy can be reduced to the following: Kant's teaching in its deepest foundation is idealism. This is the main defect of critical philosophy. Jacobi opposes Kantian idealism with his version of philosophical realism. Realism in general consists in recognizing that both external objects of sensory perception, and myself as a subject, and other subjects exist in reality, on their own, and we have quite reliable knowledge about them. Kant, on the other hand, claims that we have access to knowledge of only “phenomena”, and not real objects, i.e., in fact, we cannot go beyond our own “representations” and gain knowledge about objective reality, about things “themselves”, about the objects or subjects themselves, sensually perceived or supersensible. That is why his teaching is idealism.

According to Jacobi, the object of cognition, according to Jacobi, turns in Kant into a “ghost”, some kind of “ghost”, behind which there is nothing and which in itself is pure “nothing”, which only “imagines” us in a double “witch fog” - in space and time. Therefore, knowledge ceases to be knowledge in the proper sense of the word - it itself turns into nothing, since it cannot grasp anything truly real. If there is no true object, then there is no true knowledge. Cognition takes place only where there is being, something different from the knower. For Kant, the highest faculty of knowledge, reason, is based on reason, reason is based on the ability of productive imagination, the ability of imagination is based on sensibility, and sensibility is based ... again on the ability of imagination! Kant, it is true, recognizes a certain X underlying the object of sensory perception, and a certain X underlying the cognitive ability, as well as a certain general and final X, uniting both previous ones, but all of them have absolutely no significance for the theory of knowledge, since, starting from them, we can learn nothing.

The situation is similar with supersensible objects, which, in principle, cannot be given in any "experience", if by the latter we mean the sensory perception of material objects. Kant's "ideas of reason" are simple "inventions", "fictions", the creations of the thinking subject himself. In his teaching, higher being - in itself good, true and beautiful - turns into just "ideas", or rather, into "categories of despair". And in this respect his philosophy is idealism.

Kant essentially denies the possibility of objective cognition, i.e. knowledge of objects independent of us. In all our perceptions, we perceive only ourselves. We feel only our own sensations. The basic concepts of thinking are already laid down ready-made in the mind itself, and, therefore, do not depend on any external objects. The mode of operation of our reason is merely applied mechanically to our own sensations. The limits and laws of our own imagination are at the same time the limits and laws of so-called "experience." Reason "knows" only what it constructs, what it itself "invests" in our sensations. All "nature" turns out to be just a mind game of hide-and-seek with itself.

Idealism, therefore, does not recognize any true object, and is therefore absolute subjectivism. And since wakefulness, in fact, consists in the consciousness of the objects of the external world, reality, then subjectivism plunges us all into sleep, into dreams, into a state of hallucination. Idealism is real somnambulism, and the peculiarity of philosophical somnambulism lies in the ability to plunge more and more deeply and with conviction into this kind of state. Subjectivism recognizes only one "I", refers everything to the "I" and explains everything by the abilities and activities of this "I". Therefore, subjectivism and idealism, according to Jacobi, are also speculative egoism. The other extreme is Spinozism, which dissolves everything in one absolute object. And since the extremes converge, Kantian idealism is Spinozism inside out. The destruction of the true object also destroys the true subject. The very subject of knowledge becomes in Kant an appearance, an illusion, a delusion.

Another essential point of the Jacobian critique is the inconsistency of the Kantian system. According to Jacobi, its main contradiction, from which all the rest follow, is that without the assumption of the real existence of objects outside the subject, it is impossible to “enter” the Kantian system, but, keeping this premise, it is impossible to “remain” in this system. The concept of "appearance", as Kant himself wrote, loses all meaning without the assumption of the existence of the appearing thing. However, this assumption is based on the concept of causality, which is applied to the phenomenon as a consequence of the action of the thing in itself on the soul. The application of the concept of causality, according to the entire Kantian analysis, must be limited by the relationship between phenomena and cannot go beyond the boundaries of experience, i.e. this concept cannot be applied to the relation between the thing-in-itself and the phenomenon. Therefore, the way in which Kant obtains the concept of "thing in itself" is in irreconcilable contradiction with his teaching about categories, their meaning and application. Jacobi calls the relationship between the thing-in-itself and the phenomenon, the subject and the object in Kant, "cryptogamy", i.e. secret marriage.

Kant also cannot reconcile empiricism with apriorism. The features of empiricism in the Kantian system appear quite clearly. Kant not only accepts the existence of things in themselves and their effect on the sensuousness of the subject, but essentially borrows from experience the forms of sensibility and the categories of the understanding. Therefore, he cannot explain why we have only two forms of sensory perception (space and time) and only twelve primary concepts. The "apriorism" in the system, which constitutes its entire "scientific nature", forms, according to Jacobi, only a "halo" around the empirical foundation, the radiance of which overshadows the empirical content, so that an insufficiently attentive look may not notice it. However, Kant's "empiricism" goes so far that it is not satisfied even with a "natural belief" in the reality of the external world, but gives a "refutation of idealism" and "proof of the existence of objects in space outside of me." Jacobi believes that here, too, Kant's position is self-contradictory, since he is trying to prove what, on the basis of his own premises, he would have to consider unprovable.

The attempt to combine empiricism with apriorism is the fundamental mistake of Kant's system. This system tries to sit on two chairs, serve two masters and is a double-edged sword, which leads to its radical ambiguity, which is found in all the details of the system and even in the Kantian way of expression.

Thus, “sensibility” by its very concept points to the presence of a real object outside of us, about which, however, as Kant believes, it tells us absolutely nothing (the same applies to “appearance” and to “contemplation”). "Reason" acts simultaneously synthetically and analytically, although it should be capable only of analysis. It is both the faculty of judging and the faculty of understanding, the former preceding the latter, although judgment is the binding of concepts. Kant wants to deduce the definite from the indefinite, the particular from the universal, although at the same time, for him, the initial is “diversity”, the particular and the individual, the existing, which the mind only “brings” under an ever wider unity. Kant's "reason", on the one hand, is only "generalized reason", and his "ideas" are only categories of reason, generalized to infinity; on the other hand, reason is an independent ability, the basis of the most necessary and reliable knowledge. Kant's "capacity of imagination" is both productive and reproductive. The "unity of apperception" is independent of everything sensuously given, but is revealed and realized only in contemplation.

Not only is Kant's idea of ​​these basic abilities of the subject internally contradictory and indefinite, no less contradictory and unclear is his doctrine of their relationship with each other - the doctrine of the relationship between reason and sensibility, reason and reason. Jacobi repeatedly says that in Kant implicitly reason is subordinate to reason, but explicitly the situation is the opposite: reason is subordinate to reason.

In most detail, Jacobi analyzes the contradictions of Kant's doctrine of "pure diversity" and "pure synthesis". Neither in space and time in themselves, as primary unities and mere "forms," ​​nor in pure thought, he says, is there any "diversity." It is impossible to get "much" out of them. And if Kant nevertheless finds such a "diversity" in space and time, it is only because he recalls empiricism, which, however, he would have to forget about in a purely "a priori" study. But without "pure diversity" no "pure synthesis" is possible. Even if a certain variety were given in space and time, then thinking would give him only the unity of the synthesis, but not the synthesis itself. Kant deceives himself by speaking of a certain "givenness" of pure manifoldness in the form of "pure" space and "pure" time. As a means of this self-deception, he uses the concept of "pure movement", in which, as it were, this diversity is "generated". But this concept only brings new contradictions. After all, the concept of motion, according to Kant himself, is purely empirical. Kant gives it an aura of "apriority" in order to smuggle it into the system and solve the difficulties with "diversity".

Jacobi criticizes mainly the theoretical part of Kant's philosophy. Their kinship and closeness practical views were so great and so pleasing to Jacobi that he criticizes Kant's ethics only once, in The Enterprise of Criticism, very briefly and only with respect to details. And if we ignore statements about the categorical imperative, which, according to Jacobi, cannot “plug up” the holes left by theoretical reason, then the objections to Kant’s practical philosophy are grouped around two main points already familiar to us from the criticism of theoretical philosophy.

First, the ideas of reason (in this case, the idea of ​​freedom) cannot receive true reality from Kant. The objects of practical reason receive a somewhat different position than the objects of theoretical reason only because of subjective personal need. But the will that does not want anything definite, this "empty nut" of independence and freedom, can in no way satisfy the true realist. Secondly, Kant's practical philosophy is internally contradictory, which can be demonstrated by the two leading concepts of his ethics - the concepts of freedom and happiness (bliss). In addition, the concept of freedom is not only defined by Kant in different places in different ways, and in such a way that these definitions do not agree with each other, but, more importantly, in essence, Kant means nothing but blind arbitrariness.

A necessary consequence of idealism, according to Jacobi, should also be a confusion of the causal relationship of being with logical connection thoughts - a mixture of reason and conclusion. Jacobi elaborates this argument in David Hume and later in the third appendix to Divine Things. Kant, in his opinion, instead of showing the fallacy of such an identification, only justifies it. Spinoza arrived at this identification quite consciously and consistently, and Jacobi's criticism was initially directed against Spinoza's monism, against Spinoza's way of identifying thought and being. “The order and connection of ideas are the same as the order and connection of things,” since “thing” and “idea” are one and the same, although considered under different attributes. Jacobi points out that fundamental difference the real causal relationship from the logical one is that the first relationship always takes place in time. With regard to logical consequence, time is not conceived, therefore any philosophy that recognizes the reality of time will inevitably find itself in a difficult position if it identifies a causal relationship with a logical one. And since this identification is somehow necessary for science, Spinoza actually denies the reality of time, considering the world "in the aspect of eternity." Jacobi correctly points out that Kant's identification of sequence in being with a sequence of representations follows from the foundations of transcendental idealism, according to which "things must necessarily conform to our ability to represent", which forces us to deny the "transcendental" reality of time.

Objecting to Kant, Jacobi defends the reality of space and time. Our consciousness, like the consciousness of any finite being, he writes, necessarily includes both the consciousness of the “sensing thing” and the consciousness of the presence of the “sensible thing”. We must distinguish ourselves from something outside of ourselves. Therefore, there are two different things outside of each other. But where there are two finite things that are outside each other and act on each other, there is an "extended essence." Together with the consciousness of a finite being, a certain extended essence is already “posited”, and not “ideally”, but “realistically”. We are aware of the diversity of our spiritual life, bound into a certain unity, which we call "I". This "I" is my indivisible "individuality". Similarly, any indivisible unity of some outer manifold is also called an "individual". We perceive this individuality in external bodies, since in them the unity of diversity is preserved and we distinguish them from each other. These individuals not only exist outside each other, but are also capable of influencing each other. This impact presupposes impenetrability. A thing that is absolutely permeable, of course, cannot interact with anything, but "an absolutely permeable entity is nonsense." The immediate consequence of impenetrability is resistance. Action, resistance, reaction is the source of sequence, and thus of time. So, where there are individual entities that reveal themselves to us and are in communion with each other, there must also be extension, cause, effect, action, reaction, succession and time. Concepts about them are necessarily inherent in any finite thinking being.

All these contradictions, Jacobi believes, should not be regarded as accidental for the Kantian system, as removable and caused only by some personal mistakes of Kant. They are necessarily generated by the very original idea, the very idea of ​​a priori knowledge, inherent in any a priori system. Or rather, no purely a priori system of knowledge is possible. Kant cannot solve the problem he has set himself because it is generally unsolvable. A priori knowledge, a priori synthesis would be a creation out of nothing. An a priori system of cognition would be possible only if, like God, we ourselves would create the whole and completely cognizable world in this way.

With all the numerous points of contact and consonant motives for both thinkers, the fundamental opposition between Kant's idealism and Jacobi's realism remains fundamental, the main one for characterizing their relationship.