The first fundamental problem that philosophy faces is to explain the world as it appears as nature to the contemplative spirit. From this follow the first ultimate metaphysical questions:

What is the world made of?

What is the basic substance, the matter that creates it and underlies it?

But the world is not only matter, matter; at the same time it is also a form, order, cosmos.

This raises another initial limiting question:

What is the main form, what is the reason for the order?

The resolution of the first question, namely the definition of the basic substance, matter, is taken over by Ionian natural philosophy; the resolution of the second - the definition of the basic form - Pythagorean philosophy.

If we combine both these questions, then we can present the main problem of all ancient philosophy:

How are matter and form connected? How does matter become form, and how does form affect matter? How is the world created? How do things come about?

The very question associated with the formation of the world, the emergence of things, leads to the concept of becoming, change, transition from one quality to another - from spirit to matter and from matter to spirit; from one quantity to another - from the one to the many and from the many to the one, etc. This is how another fundamental problem of ancient philosophy is born: the problem of the world process. Each philosophical doctrine tries in its own way to solve these problems.

To the question of what is the main substance, the material substrate underlying the world, Thales answers that it is water, Anaximenes - that air, Heraclitus - that is fire, Anaximander - that apeiron (some kind of boundless qualityless beginning, possibly meaning a mixture of four elements: earth, water, air and fire).

Subsequent answers to this question take on an increasingly abstract character, abstracted from the material quality, until, finally, Plato and Aristotle come to understand the “primary substance”, matter, as an absolutely qualityless substrate, determined only by its passivity, ability and ability to accept and accommodate any shape. To the question of what is the main form, the cause of order, the Pythagoreans answer that this is the harmony of numbers underlying the sensual cosmos, Anaxagoras - that it is Nus, i.e. Mind - the creator of the cosmos from primitive chaos, who brought the initial mixture of matter in a circular motion.

The connection of two principles (matter and form) becomes the subject of consideration by Plato and Aristotle. Plato believes that reality and being are not homogeneous, that in addition to the sensual, material, material world, there is a world of ideas torn off from it, the world of the supersensible and spiritual. The thing itself is only a pale, imperfect copy of the idea.

Aristotle, on the other hand, believes that matter and form are given in a direct real unity, which is the being of a single thing. Along with these metaphysical problems, problems of a different kind arise in ancient philosophy. The Sophists, and with them Socrates, put metaphysics and cosmology into the background and focus their attention on man, his ethical and political qualities.

Thus, a new series of limiting questions arises:

What is a person?

What is his good?

What is the nature of good and evil? Can a person become good or evil at will?

How to cultivate virtues in yourself and get rid of vices?

What is the best government system?

Finally, in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle, we find another circle of fundamental problems, perceived by subsequent philosophical thought. These are the problems of the origin and nature of knowledge: epistemology (the doctrine of knowledge), logic and philosophy of language.

Which way to follow to reach the truth? What is the contribution

feelings and reason into knowledge?

What are the logical forms by which a person thinks, judges, reasons?

What are the rules for valid thinking? What is the criterion for a true judgment in its difference from a false one?

Is language an expression of the name of a thing, i.e., its natural essence, or is a word just a conventional sign of a thing, an obstacle on the way to knowing its true essence?

All these main problems of ancient philosophy were grouped into three main sections, expressing the limiting range of ancient knowledge:

1) physics (from the Greek physis - nature), which includes ontology (the doctrine of being), cosmology (the doctrine of the harmony and order of the world) and theology (the doctrine of the divine, spiritual beginning of the world);

2) ethics (Latin ethica, from Greek ethos - custom, character), which includes anthropology (the doctrine of man), moral philosophy(the doctrine of the good of man, virtues and vices) and the philosophy of state and law (the doctrine of the best state structure and natural law);

3) logic (Greek logike, from logos - word, reasoning), which includes epistemology (the doctrine of the nature of knowledge), analytics (the doctrine of the rules of evidentiary judgments) and the philosophy of language and dialectics (the art of concepts, verbal expression of thoughts).

Philosophy essay

subject:

"ANTIQUE PHILOSOPHY: main problems, concepts and schools"

Introduction

1 Milesian school and the school of Pythagoras. Heraclitus and the Eleatics. Atomists

2 Schools of Socrates, Sophists and Plato

3 Aristotle

4 Philosophy of early Hellenism (Stoicism, Epicureanism, Skepticism)

5 Neoplatonism

Conclusion

List of used literature

Introduction

Most researchers are unanimous that philosophy as an integral cultural phenomenon is the creation of the genius of the ancient Greeks (VII-VI centuries BC). Already in the poems of Homer and Hesiod impressive attempts are being made to represent the world and man's place in it. The desired goal is achieved mainly by means characteristic of art ( artistic images) and religion (belief in gods).

Philosophy supplemented myths and religions with the strengthening of rational motivations, the development of interest in systematic rational thinking based on concepts. Initially, the formation of philosophy in the Greek world was also facilitated by the political freedoms achieved by the Greeks in the city-states. Philosophers, whose number increased, and the activity became more and more professional, could resist political and religious authorities. It was in the ancient Greek world that philosophy was first constituted as an independent cultural entity that existed alongside art and religion, and not as a component of them.

Ancient philosophy developed over the course of the 12th-13th centuries, from the 7th century. BC. according to the VI century. AD Historically, ancient philosophy can be divided into five periods:

1) the naturalistic period, where the main attention was paid to the problems of nature (fusis) and the Cosmos (Miletians, Pythagoreans, Eleatics, in short, pre-Socratics);

2) the humanistic period with its attention to human problems, primarily to ethical problems (Socrates, sophists);

3) the classical period with its grandiose philosophical systems of Plato and Aristotle;

4) the period of the Hellenistic schools (Stoics, Epicurians, skeptics), engaged in the moral arrangement of people;

5) Neoplatonism, with its universal synthesis, brought to the idea of ​​the One Good.

The presented work discusses the basic concepts and schools of ancient philosophy.

1 Milesian school of philosophy and the school of Pythagoras. Heraclitus and the Eleatics. Atomists.

One of the oldest philosophical schools is Miletus (7th-5th centuries BC). Thinkers from the city of Miletus (Ancient Greece) - Thales, Anaximenes and Anaximander.

All three thinkers took decisive steps towards the demythologization of the ancient worldview. "What is everything from?" - this is the question that interested the Milesians in the first place. The very formulation of the question is in its own way brilliant, because it has as its premise the conviction that everything can be explained, but for this it is necessary to find a single source for everything. Thales considered water to be such a source, Anaximenes - air, Anaximander - some infinite and eternal beginning, apeiron (the term "apeiron" literally means "infinite"). Things arise as a result of those transformations that occur with primary matter - condensation, discharge, evaporation. According to the Milesians, everything is based on the primary substance. Substance, by definition, is that which needs no other explanation for its explanation. The water of Thales, the air of Anaximenes are substances.

To appreciate the views of the Milesians, let us turn to science. Postulated by the Milesians The Milesians did not manage to go beyond the limits of the world of events and phenomena, but they made such attempts, and in the right direction. They were looking for something natural, but imagined it as an event.

School of Pythagoras. Pythagoras is also occupied with the problem of substances, but fire, earth, water as such no longer suit him. He comes to the conclusion that "everything is a number." The Pythagoreans saw in numbers the properties and relationships inherent in harmonic combinations. The Pythagoreans did not pass by the fact that if the lengths of the strings in a musical instrument (monochord) are related to each other as 1:2, 2:3, 3:4, then the resulting musical intervals will correspond to what is called an octave, fifth and fourth . Simple numerical relations began to be sought in geometry and astronomy. Pythagoras, and Thales before him, apparently used the simplest mathematical proofs, which, quite possibly, were borrowed in the East (in Babylonia). The invention of mathematical proof was of decisive importance for the emergence of the type of rationality characteristic of modern civilized man.

In assessing the philosophical significance of the views of Pythagoras, one should pay tribute to his insight. From a philosophical point of view, special meaning had an appeal to the phenomenon of numbers. The Pythagoreans explained events on the basis of numbers and their ratios and thus surpassed the Milesians, for they almost reached the level of the laws of science. Any absolutization of numbers, as well as their regularities, is a revival of the historical limitations of Pythagoreanism. This fully applies to the magic of numbers, which, it must be said, the Pythagoreans paid tribute to with all the generosity of an enthusiastic soul.

Finally, we should especially note the search by the Pythagoreans for harmony in everything, for beautiful quantitative consistency. Such a search is actually aimed at discovering laws, and this is one of the most difficult scientific tasks. The ancient Greeks were very fond of harmony, admired it and knew how to create it in their lives.

Heraclitus and the Eleatics. Further development philosophical thought most convincingly presented in the well-known opposition of the teachings of Heraclitus of Ephesus and Parmenides and Zeno of Elea.

Both sides agree that the external senses are not capable of giving true knowledge by themselves, the truth is reached by reflection. Heraclitus believes that the logos rules the world. The concept of logos can be regarded as a naive understanding of regularity. Specifically, he meant that everything in the world consists of opposites, opposing, everything happens through strife, struggle. As a result, everything changes, flows; figuratively speaking, you cannot step into the same river twice. In the struggle of opposites, their inner identity is revealed. For example, "the life of some is the death of others", and in general - life is death. Since everything is interconnected, then any property is relative: "donkeys would prefer straw to gold." Heraclitus still overly trusts the world of events, which determines both the weak and strong sides of his views. On the one hand, he notices, albeit in a naive form, the most important properties of the world of events - their interaction, connectedness, relativity. On the other hand, he still does not know how to analyze the world of events from positions characteristic of a scientist, i.e. with proofs, concepts. The world for Heraclitus is fire, and fire is an image of eternal movement and change.

The Heraclitean philosophy of the identity of opposites, contradictions, was sharply criticized by the Eleatics. So, Parmenides considered those people for whom "to be" and "not to be" are considered one and the same and not one and the same, and for everything there is a way back (this is a clear allusion to Heraclitus), "two-headed."

Special attention The Eleatics paid attention to the problem of multiplicity, in this regard they came up with a number of paradoxes (aporias), which still cause headaches among philosophers, physicists and mathematicians. A paradox is an unexpected statement, an aporia is a difficulty, bewilderment, an intractable task.

According to the Eleatics, in spite of sensory impressions, plurality cannot be conceived. If things can be infinitely small, then their sum will in no way give something finite, a finite thing. But if things are finite, then between finite two things there is always a third thing; we again come to a contradiction, for a finite thing consists of an infinite number of finite things, which is impossible. Not only multiplicity is impossible, but also movement. In the argument "dichotomy" (dividing into two) it is proved: in order to go through a certain path, one must first go through half of it, and in order to go through it, one must go through a quarter of the way, and then one eighth of the way, and so on ad infinitum. It turns out that it is impossible to get from a given point to the one closest to it, because it actually does not exist. If movement is impossible, then swift-footed Achilles cannot catch up with the tortoise and it will be necessary to admit that the flying arrow does not fly.

So, Heraclitus is interested, first of all, in change and movement, their origins, the reasons that he sees in the struggle of opposites. Eleatics are primarily concerned with how to understand, how to interpret what everyone considers change and movement. According to the reflections of the Eleatics, the absence of a consistent explanation of the nature of the movement casts doubt on its reality.

Atomists. The crisis caused by the aporias of Zeno was very deep; in order to overcome it at least partially, some special, unusual ideas were required. This was done by the ancient atomists, the most prominent among whom were Leucippus and Democritus.

To get rid of the difficulty of understanding change once and for all, it was assumed that atoms are unchanging, indivisible and homogeneous. The atomists, as it were, "reduced" change to the immutable, to atoms.

According to Democritus, there are atoms and emptiness. Atoms differ in shape, location, weight. Atoms move in different directions. Earth, water, air, fire are the primary groupings of atoms. Combinations of atoms form whole worlds: in infinite space there are an infinite number of worlds. Of course, man is also a collection of atoms. The human soul is made up of special atoms. Everything happens according to necessity, there is no accident.

The philosophical achievement of the atomists consists in discovering the atomic, the elementary. Whatever you deal with - with a physical phenomenon, with a theory - there is always an elementary element: an atom (in chemistry), a gene (in biology), a material point (in mechanics), etc. The elementary appears as unchanging, not in need of explanation.

The naivety in the ideas of the atomists is explained by the underdevelopment of their views. Having discovered atomicity in the world of events and phenomena, they were not yet able to give it a theoretical description. Therefore, it is not surprising that very soon the ancient atomism met with difficulties that it was not destined to overcome.

2 Schools of Socrates, Sophists and Plato

The views of Socrates have come down to us mainly thanks to the works of Plato, a student of Socrates, beautiful both philosophically and artistically. In this regard, it is appropriate to combine the names of Socrates and Plato. First about Socrates. Socrates differs in many ways from the philosophers already mentioned, who mainly dealt with nature, and therefore they are called natural philosophers. Natural philosophers sought to build a hierarchy in the world of events, to understand, for example, how the sky, earth, and stars were formed. Socrates also wants to understand the world, but in a fundamentally different manner, moving not from events to events, but from the general to events. In this respect, his discussion of beauty is typical.

Socrates says that he knows many beautiful things: a sword, and a spear, and a girl, and a pot, and a mare. But each thing is beautiful in its own way, so it is impossible to associate beauty with one of the things. In that case, the other thing would no longer be beautiful. But all beautiful things have something in common - beautiful as such, this is their common idea, eidos, or meaning.

Since the general can be discovered not by feelings, but by the mind, Socrates attributed the general to the world of the mind and thereby laid the foundations for some reason hated by many idealism. Socrates, like no one else, caught that there is a generic, common. Beginning with Socrates, mankind confidently began to master not only the world of events, but also the world of the generic, common. He comes to the conclusion that the most important idea is the idea of ​​the good, it determines the suitability and usefulness of everything else, including justice. For Socrates, there is nothing higher than the ethical. Such an idea will later occupy a worthy place in the reflections of philosophers.

But what is ethically justified, virtuous? Socrates answers: virtue consists in the knowledge of good and in action in accordance with this knowledge. He connects morality with reason, which gives reason to consider his ethics rationalistic.

But how to acquire knowledge? On this account, Socrates developed a certain method - dialectics, consisting of irony and the birth of a thought, a concept. The irony is that the exchange of opinions initially gives a negative result: "I know that I don't know anything." However, this is not the end of the matter, the enumeration of opinions, their discussion allows you to reach new thoughts. Surprisingly, the dialectic of Socrates has fully retained its significance to the present day. Exchange of opinions, dialogue, discussion are the most important means of obtaining new knowledge, understanding the degree of one's own limitations.

Finally, Socrates' principles should be noted. For allegedly taking place on the part of Socrates, the corruption of youth and the introduction of new deities, he was condemned. Having many opportunities to avoid execution, Socrates, nevertheless, proceeding from the conviction that it is necessary to observe the laws of the country, that death refers to the mortal body, but by no means to the eternal soul (the soul is eternal, like everything common), took hemlock poison.

Sophists. Socrates argued a lot and from a position of principle with the sophists (V-IV centuries BC; the sophist is a teacher of wisdom). The Sophists and Socrates lived in a turbulent era: wars, the destruction of states, the transition from tyranny to slave-owning democracy and vice versa. Under these conditions, I want to understand a person in contrast to nature. Nature, the natural, the sophists opposed the artificial. In society there is no natural, including traditions, customs, religion. Here the right to exist is given only to what is justified, proven, in which it was possible to convince fellow tribesmen. Proceeding from this, the sophists, these enlighteners of ancient Greek society, paid close attention to the problems of language and logic. In their speeches, the sophists strove to be both eloquent and logical. They perfectly understood that correct and convincing speech is the work of the "master of names" and logic.

The original interest of the sophists in society, in man, was reflected in the position of Protagoras: "Man is the measure of all things: existing, that they exist, non-existent, that they do not exist." If there were no words after the colon and the sentence was limited to the statement that "man is the measure of all things", then we would be dealing with the principle of humanism: a person in his actions proceeds from his own interests. But Protagoras insists on more: man is even the measure of the very existence of things. We are talking about the relativity of everything that exists, including the relativity of knowledge. The thought of Protagoras is complex, but it has often been understood in a simplified way: as each thing seems to me, it is so. Naturally, in terms of modern science such reasoning is naive, the arbitrariness of subjective evaluation is not recognized in science; to avoid it, there are many ways, such as measurement. One is cold, the other is hot, and a thermometer is in place here to determine the true temperature of the air. However, Protagoras's thought is rather unusual: sensation really cannot be mistaken - but in what sense? The fact that the cold must be warmed, the sick must be cured. Protagoras translates the problem into a practical sphere. This shows the dignity of his philosophical attitude, it protects from oblivion of real life, which, as you know, is by no means a rarity.

But is it possible to agree that all judgments and sensations are equally true? Hardly. It becomes obvious that Protagoras did not escape the extremes of relativism - the doctrine of the conventionality and relativity of human knowledge.

Of course, not all sophists were equally sophisticated in polemic masters, some of them gave reason to understand sophistry in the bad sense of the word, as a way of constructing false conclusions and not without a selfish goal. Here is the ancient sophism "Horned": "What you have not lost, you have; you have not lost the horns, therefore, you have them."

Plato. On the ideas of Plato. Anyone who even knows very little about philosophy, however, must have heard the name of Plato, the outstanding thinker of antiquity. Plato seeks to develop Socratic ideas. Things are not considered only in their apparently so habitual empirical existence. For every thing, its meaning is fixed, the idea, which, as it turns out, is the same for every thing of a given class of things and is denoted by one name. There are many horses, dwarf and normal, piebald and black, but they all have the same meaning - horsepower. Accordingly, we can talk about the beautiful in general, the good in general, the green in general, the house in general. Plato is convinced that one cannot do without turning to ideas, because this is the only way to overcome the diversity, the inexhaustibility of the sensory-empirical world.

But if, along with separate things, there are also ideas, each of which belongs to some particular class of things, then, naturally, the question arises about the relationship of the one (the idea) with the many. How are things and ideas related to each other? Plato considers this connection in two ways: as a transition from things to an idea and as a transition from an idea to things. He understands that the idea and the thing are somehow involved in each other. But, says Plato, the degree of their involvement can reach different levels of perfection. Among many horses, we can easily find both more and less perfect. The closest thing to the idea of ​​horseness is the most perfect horse. Then it turns out that within the framework of the correlation thing - idea - idea is the limit of the formation of a thing; within the framework of the idea-thing relationship, the idea is the generative model of the class of things to which it participates.

Thought, word - these are the prerogatives of man. Ideas exist even without man. Ideas are objective. Plato is an objective idealist, the most prominent representative of objective idealism. The general exists, and in the person of Plato objective idealism has a great service to humanity. Meanwhile, the general (the idea) and the particular (the thing) are so closely involved in each other that there is no real mechanism for the transition from one to the other.

Cosmology of Plato. Plato dreamed of creating a comprehensive concept of the world. Fully aware of the power of the apparatus of ideas he created, he strove to develop an idea of ​​both the Cosmos and society. It is highly significant how Plato uses his conception of ideas in this connection, modestly remarking that he claims only a "plausible opinion." Plato gives a cosmic picture of the world in the Timaeus dialogue.

The world soul in its initial state is divided into elements - fire, air, earth. According to the harmonic mathematical relations, God gave the Cosmos the most perfect form - the form of a sphere. In the center of the Cosmos is the Earth. The orbits of planets and stars obey harmonic mathematical relationships. God the demiurge also creates living beings.

So, the Cosmos is a living being endowed with reason. The structure of the world is as follows: the divine mind (demiurge), the world soul and the world body. Everything that happens, temporal, as well as time itself, is an image of the eternal, ideas.

Plato's picture of the Cosmos summed up the natural philosophy of nature in the 4th century. BC. For many centuries, at least until the Renaissance, this picture of the world stimulated philosophical and private scientific research.

In a number of respects, the Platonic picture of the world does not stand up to criticism. It is speculative, invented, does not correspond to modern scientific data. But what is surprising is that even taking into account all this, it would be very reckless to hand it over to the archive. The fact is that not everyone has access to scientific data, especially in some generalized, systematized form. Plato was a great systematist, his picture of the Cosmos is simple, in its own way understandable to many. It is unusually figurative: the Cosmos is animated, harmonious, in it at every step there is a divine mind. For these and other reasons, the Platonic picture of the Cosmos has its supporters to this day. We also see the justification for this situation in the fact that, in a hidden, undeveloped form, it contains a potential that can be used productively even today. Plato's Timaeus is a myth, but a special myth, built with logical and aesthetic elegance. This is not only a significant philosophical, but also a work of art.

Plato's doctrine of society. Thinking about society, Plato again seeks to use the concept of ideas. The diversity of human needs and the impossibility of satisfying them alone is an incentive to create a state. According to Plato, justice is the greatest good. Injustice is evil. The latter he refers to the following types of government: timocracy (the power of the ambitious), oligarchy (the power of the rich), tyranny and democracy, accompanied by arbitrariness and anarchy.

Plato "deduces" a just state system from three parts of the soul: rational, affective and lustful. Some are reasonable, wise, they are capable and, therefore, they must govern the state. Others are affective, courageous, they are destined to be strategists, commanders, warriors. Still others, who predominantly have a lustful soul, are restrained, they need to be artisans, farmers. So, there are three estates: rulers; strategists; farmers and artisans. Further, Plato gives a lot of specific recipes, for example, what should be taught and how to educate, suggests depriving the guards of their property, establishing a community of wives and children for them, and introducing various kinds of regulations (sometimes petty). Literature is subjected to strict censorship, everything that can discredit the idea of ​​virtue. In the afterlife - and the soul of a person as an idea continues to exist even after his death - bliss awaits the virtuous, and terrible torment awaits the vicious.

Plato starts with an idea, then he proceeds from an ideal. All the smartest authors do the same, using ideas about the idea and the ideal. Plato's ideal is justice. The ideological basis of Plato's reflections deserves the highest appreciation, without it it is impossible to imagine a modern person.

Ethics of Plato. Plato was able to identify many of the most acute philosophical problems. One of them concerns the relationship between the concept of ideas and ethics. At the top of the hierarchy of Socratic and Platonic ideas is the idea of ​​the good. But why exactly the idea of ​​the good, and not the idea, for example, of beauty or truth? Plato argues as follows: "... that which gives truth to knowable things, and endows a person with the ability to know, then you consider the idea of ​​good, the cause of knowledge and the knowability of truth. No matter how beautiful both are knowledge and truth, but if you will regard the idea of ​​the good as something even more beautiful, you will be right." The good manifests itself in various ideas: both in the idea of ​​beauty and in the idea of ​​truth. In other words, Plato puts the ethical (i.e., the idea of ​​the good) above the aesthetic (the idea of ​​beauty) and scientific-cognitive (the idea of ​​truth). Plato is well aware that the ethical, the aesthetic, the cognitive, the political somehow correlate with each other, one determines the other. He, being consistent in his reasoning, "loads" each idea with moral content.

3 Aristotle

Aristotle, along with Plato, his teacher, is the greatest ancient Greek philosopher. In a number of respects, Aristotle seems to act as a decisive opponent of Plato. In fact, he continues the work of his teacher. Aristotle enters into the subtleties of various kinds of situations in more detail than Plato. He is more concrete, more empirical than Plato, he is truly interested in the individual, vital given.

Original individual being Aristotle calls substance. This is a being that is not capable of being in another, being, it exists in itself. According to Aristotle, a single being is a combination of matter and eidos (form). Matter is the possibility of being and, at the same time, a certain substratum. From copper you can make a ball, a statue, i.e. as the matter of copper there is the possibility of a ball and a statue. In relation to a separate object, the essence is always a form (globularity in relation to a copper ball). The form is expressed by the concept. So, the concept of a ball is also valid when a ball has not yet been made of copper. When matter is formed, then there is no matter without form, just as there is no form without matter. It turns out that eidos - a form - is both the essence of a separate, single object, and what is covered by this concept. Aristotle stands at the foundations of modern scientific style thinking. Incidentally, when modern man speaks and thinks about essence, he owes his rationalistic attitude precisely to Aristotle.

Every thing has four causes: essence (form), matter (substrate), action (the beginning of movement) and purpose ("what for"). But both the effective cause and the final cause are determined by the eidos, the form. Eidos determines the transition from matter-thingness to reality, this is the main dynamic and semantic content of a thing. Here we are dealing, perhaps, with the main content aspect of Aristotelianism, the central principle of which is the formation and manifestation of essence, paramount attention to the dynamics of processes, movement, change and what is connected with this, in particular to the problem of time.

There is a whole hierarchy of things (thing = matter + form), from inorganic objects to plants, living organisms and humans (human eidos is his soul). In this hierarchical chain, the extreme links are of particular interest. By the way, the beginning and the end of any process usually have a special meaning.

The concept of the mind-prime mover was the logical final link in the ideas developed by Aristotle about the unity of matter and eidos. The mind-prime mover Aristotle calls God. But, of course, this is not personalized. christian god. Subsequently, through the centuries, Christian theologians will react with interest to Aristotelian views. Possibility-dynamic understanding of everything that exists by Aristotle led to a number of very fruitful approaches to solving certain problems, in particular to the problem of space and time. Aristotle considered them following the movement, and not just as independent substances. Space acts as a collection of places, each place belongs to some thing. Time is the number of motion; like a number, it is the same for different movements.

Logic and methodology. In the works of Aristotle, logic and categorical in general, i.e. conceptual, analysis. Many modern researchers believe that the most important thing in logic was done by Aristotle.

Aristotle examines in great detail a number of categories, each of which appears in his threefold form: 1) as a kind of being; 2) as a form of thought; 3) as a statement. The categories that Aristotle uses especially skillfully are the following: essence, property, relation, quantity and quality, movement (action), space and time. But Aristotle operates not only with separate categories, he analyzes statements, the relationship between which is determined by the three famous laws of formal logic.

The first law of logic is the law of identity (A is A), i.e. the concept must be used in the same sense. The second law of logic is the law of excluded contradiction (A is not not-A). The third law of logic is the law of the excluded middle (A or not-A is true, "there is no third").

Based on the laws of logic, Aristotle builds the doctrine of syllogism. Syllogism cannot be identified with proof in general.

Aristotle very clearly reveals the content of the famous Socratic dialogical method. The dialogue contains: 1) statement of the question; 2) a strategy for asking questions and getting answers to them; 3) the correct construction of the inference.

Society. Ethics. In his teaching about society, Aristotle is more specific and far-sighted than Plato, together with the latter, he believes that the meaning of life is not in pleasures, as hedonists believed, but in the most perfect goals and happiness, in the implementation of virtues. But contrary to Plato, the good should be achievable, and not an otherworldly ideal. Man's goal is to become a virtuous being, not a vicious one. Virtues are acquired qualities, among them the most important are wisdom, prudence, courage, generosity, generosity. The harmonious combination of all virtues is justice. Virtue can and should be learned. They act as a middle ground, a compromise of a prudent Man: "nothing too much ...". Generosity is the mean between vanity and cowardice, courage is the mean between reckless courage and cowardice, generosity is the mean between wastefulness and avarice. Aristotle defines ethics in general as a practical philosophy.

Aristotle divides the forms of government into correct (common benefit is achieved) and incorrect (meaning only benefit for some).

Correct forms: monarchy, aristocracy, polity

Irregular forms, taking into account the number of rulers: one - tyranny; a wealthy minority is an oligarchy; the majority is a democracy

Aristotle associates a certain state structure with principles. The principle of aristocracy is virtue, the principle of oligarchy is wealth, the principle of democracy is freedom and poverty, including spiritual.

Aristotle actually summed up the development of classical ancient Greek philosophy. He created a highly differentiated system of knowledge, the development of which continues to this day.

4 Philosophy of early Hellenism (Stoicism, Epicureanism, Skepticism)

Consider the three main philosophical currents of early Hellenism: Stoicism, Epicureanism, Skepticism. On their occasion, a brilliant connoisseur of ancient philosophy. A.F. Losev argued that they were nothing more than a subjective variety, respectively, of the pre-Socratic theory of material elements (fire first of all), the philosophy of Democritus and the philosophy of Heraclitus: the theory of fire - stoicism, ancient atomism - epicureanism, the philosophy of fluidity of Heraclitus - skepticism.

Stoicism. How philosophical direction Stoicism has existed since the 3rd century. BC. until the 3rd century AD The main representatives of early Stoicism were Zeno of Kita, Cleanthes and Chrysippus. Later, Plutarch, Cicero, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius became famous as Stoics.

The Stoics believed that the body of the world was composed of fire, air, earth and water. The soul of the world is a fiery and airy pneuma, a kind of all-penetrating breath. According to a long ancient tradition, fire was considered by the Stoics to be the main element, of all the elements it is the most pervasive, vital. Thanks to this, the entire Cosmos, including man, is a single fiery organism with its own laws (logos) and fluidity. Main question for the Stoics is to determine the place of man in the cosmos.

After carefully considering the situation, the Stoics come to the conclusion that the laws of being are not subject to man, man is subject to fate, fate. There is nowhere to escape from fate, reality must be accepted as it is, with all its fluidity of bodily properties, which ensures the diversity of human life. Fate, fate can be hated, but the stoic is rather inclined to love it, getting rest within the limits of what is available.

The Stoics seek to discover the meaning of life. They considered the Word, its semantic meaning (lekton), to be the essence of the subjective. Lekton - meaning - is above all positive and negative judgments, we are talking about judgment in general. Lekton is also realized in the inner life of a person, creating a state of ataraxia, i.e. peace of mind, equanimity. The Stoic is by no means indifferent to everything that happens, on the contrary, he treats everything with maximum attention and interest. But he still understands the world in a certain way, its logos, law, and, in full accordance with it, retains peace of mind. So, the main points of the Stoic picture of the world are as follows:

1) Cosmos is a fiery organism;

2) a person exists within the framework of cosmic laws, hence his fatalism, fatefulness, a kind of love for both;

3) the meaning of the world and man - lekton, the significance of the word, which is neutral both to the mental and to the physical;

4) understanding the world inevitably leads to a state of ataraxia, dispassion;

5) not only individual person, but people as a whole constitute an inseparable unity with the Cosmos; The cosmos can and should be considered both as a god and as a world state (thus, the idea of ​​pantheism (nature is God) and the idea of ​​human equality are developed).

Already the early Stoics identified a number of profound philosophical problems. If a person is subject to various kinds of laws, physical, biological, social, then to what extent is he free? How should he deal with everything that limits him? In order to somehow cope with these questions, it is necessary and useful to go through the school of Stoic thought.

Epicureanism. The largest representatives of Epicureanism are Epicurus himself and Lucretius Carus. Epicureanism as a philosophical trend existed at the same historical time as Stoicism - this is the period of the 5th-6th centuries at the turn of the old and new era. Like the Stoics, the Epicureans put, first of all, questions of dispensation, comfort of the individual. Firelike soul - general idea among the Stoics and Epicureans, but the Stoics see some meaning behind it, and the Epicureans see the basis of sensations. For the Stoics, in the foreground is the mind, consistent with nature, and for the Epicureans, the feeling, consistent with nature. The sensible world is what is of primary interest to the Epicureans. Hence the basic ethical principle of the Epicureans is pleasure. The doctrine that puts pleasure at the forefront is called hedonism. The Epicureans did not understand the content of the feeling of pleasure in a simplistic way, and certainly not in a vulgar spirit. Epicurus speaks of noble calm, if you like, balanced pleasure.

For the Epicureans, the sensible world is the real reality. The world of sensuality is extraordinarily changeable, multiple. There are extreme forms of feelings, sensible atoms, or, in other words, atoms not in themselves, but in the world of feelings. Epicurus endows atoms with spontaneity, "free will". Atoms move along curves, intertwine and unwind. The idea of ​​stoic rock is coming to an end.

The Epicurean does not have any master over him, there is no need, he has free will. He can retire, indulge in his own pleasures, immerse himself in himself. The Epicurean is not afraid of death: "As long as we exist, there is no death; when death is, we are no more." Life is the main pleasure with its beginning and even end. (Dying, Epicurus took a warm bath and asked for wine to be brought to him.)

A person consists of atoms, which provide him with the richness of the world of sensations, where he can always find a comfortable home for himself, refusing to be active, striving to rebuild the world. The Epicurean attitude towards the life world is completely unselfish and at the same time strives to merge with it. If we bring the qualities of the Epicurean sage to the absolute limit, then we will get an idea of ​​​​the gods. They also consist of atoms, but not decaying atoms, and therefore the gods are immortal. The gods are blessed, they have no need to interfere in the affairs of people and the universe. Yes, this would not give any positive result, because in a world where there is free will, there is not and cannot be sustainable purposeful actions. Therefore, the gods on Earth have nothing to do, Epicurus places them in the interworld space, where they rush about. But Epicurus does not deny the worship of God (he himself visited the temple). By honoring the gods, man himself strengthens himself in the correctness of his own self-elimination from active practical life on the paths of epicurean ideas. We list the main ones:

1) everything consists of atoms, which can spontaneously deviate from rectilinear trajectories;

2) a person consists of atoms, which provides him with a wealth of feelings and pleasures;

3) the world of feelings is not illusory, it is the main content of the human, everything else, including the ideal-thinking, "closes" to sensory life;

4) the gods are indifferent to human affairs (this, they say, is evidenced by the presence of evil in the world).

5) for happy life a person needs three main components: the absence of bodily suffering (aponia), equanimity of the soul (ataraxia), friendship (as an alternative to political and other confrontations).

Skepticism. Skepticism is a characteristic feature of all ancient philosophy; as an independent philosophical direction, it functions during the period of relevance of Stoicism and Epicureanism. The largest representatives are Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus.

The ancient skeptic rejected the intelligibility of life. To maintain inner peace, a person needs to know a lot from philosophy, but not in order to deny something or, conversely, to affirm (every affirmation is a negation, and, conversely, every negation is an affirmation). The ancient skeptic is by no means a nihilist; he lives as he wants, avoiding in principle the need to evaluate anything. The skeptic is in constant philosophical search, but he is convinced that true knowledge is, in principle, unattainable. Being appears in all the diversity of its fluidity (remember Heraclitus): it seems that there is something definite, but it immediately disappears. In this regard, the skeptic points to time itself, it is, but it is not there, it is impossible to "grab" it. There is no stable meaning at all, everything is fluid, so live the way you want, take life in its immediate reality. He who knows a lot cannot adhere to strictly unambiguous opinions. A skeptic can neither be a judge nor a lawyer. The skeptic Carneades, sent to Rome to petition for the abolition of the tax, spoke before the public one day in favor of the tax, and the next day against the tax. It is better for the skeptical sage to be silent. His silence is the philosophical answer to the questions put to him. We list the main provisions of ancient skepticism:

1) the world is fluid, it has no meaning and clear definition;

2) every affirmation is at the same time a negation, every "yes" is at the same time a "no"; the true philosophy of skepticism is silence;

3) follow the "world of phenomena", keep inner peace.

5. Neoplatonism

The main provisions of Neoplatonism were developed by Plotinus, who lived in Rome in adulthood. Below, when presenting the content of Neoplatonism, the ideas of Plotinus are mainly used.

Neoplatonists sought to give a philosophical picture of everything that exists, including the Cosmos as a whole. It is impossible to understand the life of a subject outside the Cosmos, just as the life of the Cosmos without a subject. Existing is arranged hierarchically: One - Good, Mind, Soul, Matter. The highest place in the hierarchy belongs to the One Good.

The soul produces all living beings. Everything that moves forms the Cosmos. Matter is the lowest form of being. By itself, it is not active, inert, it is the recipient of possible forms and meaning.

The main task of a person is to think deeply, to feel his place in the structural hierarchy of being. Good (Good) comes from above, from the One, evil - from below, from matter. Evil is not a being, it has nothing to do with the Good. A person can avoid evil to the extent that he manages to climb the ladder of the immaterial: Soul-Mind-One. The Soul-Mind-United staircase corresponds to the sequence feeling - thought - ecstasy. Here, of course, attention is drawn to ecstasy, which stands above thought. But ecstasy, it should be noted, includes all the richness of the mental and sensual.

Neoplatonists see harmony and beauty everywhere, and the One Good is actually responsible for them. As for the life of people, it also, in principle, cannot contradict universal harmony. People are actors, they only carry out, each in their own way, the scenario that is laid down in the World Mind. Neoplatonism was able to give a rather synthetic philosophical picture of its contemporary ancient society. This was the last flowering of ancient philosophy.

Conclusion

The field of problematic issues in the philosophy of antiquity was constantly expanding. Their development has become more and more detailed and in-depth. It can be concluded that the characteristic features of ancient philosophy are as follows.

1. Ancient philosophy is syncretic, which means that it is characterized by greater fusion, inseparability of the most important problems than for subsequent types of philosophizing. The ancient philosopher, as a rule, extended ethical categories to the entire Cosmos.

2. Ancient philosophy is cosmocentric: its horizons always embrace the entire Cosmos, including the human world. This means that it was the ancient philosophers who developed the most universal categories.

3. Ancient philosophy proceeds from the Cosmos, sensual and intelligible. Unlike medieval philosophy, it does not prioritize the idea of ​​God. However, the Cosmos in ancient philosophy is often considered an absolute deity (not a person); this means that ancient philosophy is pantheistic.

4. Ancient philosophy achieved a lot at the conceptual level - the concept of Plato's ideas, the concept of form (eidos) of Aristotle, the concept of the meaning of the word (lecton) among the Stoics. However, she hardly knows the laws. The logic of antiquity is predominantly the logic of common names and concepts. However, in the logic of Aristotle, the logic of sentences is also considered very meaningfully, but again at the level characteristic of the era of antiquity.

5. The ethics of antiquity is primarily the ethics of virtues, and not the ethics of duty and values. Ancient philosophers characterized man mainly as endowed with virtues and vices. In developing the ethics of the virtues, they reached extraordinary heights.

6. Attention is drawn to the amazing ability of ancient philosophers to find answers to the cardinal questions of being. Ancient philosophy is truly functional, it is designed to help people in their lives. Ancient philosophers sought to find the path to happiness for their contemporaries. Ancient philosophy has not sunk into history, it has retained its significance to this day and is waiting for new researchers.

List of used literature.

1. Aristotle. Works in four volumes. Volume 1-4. USSR Academy of Sciences. Institute of Philosophy. Publishing house "Thought", Moscow, 1976-1984.

2. V.A. Kanke. Philosophy. Historical and systematic course. "Logos", M., 2001.

3. Plato. Theaetetus. State socio-economic publishing house. Moscow-Leningrad, 1936.

4. Plato. Feast. Publishing house "Thought", Moscow, 1975.

5. V. Asmus. Plato. Publishing house "Thought", Moscow, 1975.

6. T. Goncharova. Euripides. Series "Life of Remarkable People". Publishing house "Young Guard", M., 1984.

7. Life of wonderful people. Biographical library of F. Pavlenkov. "Lio Editor", St. Petersburg 1995.

8. History of philosophy. Textbook for universities, edited by V.M. Mapelman and E.M. Penkov. PRIOR publishing house Moscow 1997.

9. Soviet encyclopedic Dictionary. Editor-in-Chief A.M. Prokhorov. Fourth edition. " Soviet Encyclopedia". M., 1989.

10. Philosophical Dictionary. Edited by I.T. Frolov. Fifth edition. Moscow, Publishing house of political literature, 1987.

The main problems of ancient philosophy

Section II. The emergence and development of philosophy

Literature

Evolution philosophical outlook

Varieties of worldview

-) Ordinary (worldly) - is generated by the conditions of life and experience of people and exists in the form of common sense, spontaneous, unsystematized, traditional ideas about the world;

-) religious - is associated with the recognition of the supernatural world principle, is expressed in an emotional-figurative form and in appropriate behavior;

-) scientific - systematically completed views on the structure of the world around, based on scientifically substantiated data;

-) philosophical - acts in a conceptual, categorical form, relying to some extent on the achievements of the sciences of nature and society and has a certain degree of logical evidence.

At the root of the historical philosophical systems the following worldview types :

-) Cosmocentrism – (philosophy of antiquity) - the search for a single essence behind the infinite variety of bodies and natural phenomena. The support of the universe is the harmony of the cosmos, which means that the social and moral world should be reasonable.

-) Theocentrism – (medieval philosophy ) - in the center of the universe - Boᴦ.

-) anthropocentrism – (philosophy of the Renaissance and modern times) - a person and his interests are put at the forefront.

-) science-centrism – (modern philosophy) - the transformation of science into an engine of social change, not only determining the level of material and technical equipment, but also dictating ideas about the norms, principles and prospects for the development of human civilization.

-) Primary sources Abbagnano N. The wisdom of life. SPb., 1996. Berdyaev N.A. Philosophy of creativity, culture and art. M., 1964. Berlin I. Appointment of Philosophy // Questions of Philosophy. 1999. No. 5. Hegel G.W.F. Preliminary remarks on the history of philosophy. Introduction to the history of philosophy // Hegel G.W.F. Lectures on the history of philosophy. Book. 1. M., 1932. James W. Introduction to Philosophy; B. Russell Problems of Philosophy. M., 2000. Gentile J. Introduction to philosophy. SPb., 2000. Delez G., Guattari F. What is philosophy? M.; SPb., 1998. Dilthey V. The essence of philosophy. M., 2001. Ilyin I.A. What is philosophy? // Ilyin I.A. The path to clarity. M., 1993. Maritain J. philosopher in the world. M., 1994.

Ortega y Gasset H. What is philosophy? M., 1991.

Russell b. The art of thinking. M., 1999.

Russell b. Problems of Philosophy. SPb., 1915. Sartre J.-P. Existentialism - ϶ᴛᴏ humanism // Twilight of the gods. M., 1989. Heidegger M. Basic concepts of metaphysics // Heidegger M. Time and being. M., 1993. Heidegger M. What is philosophy? // Questions of Philosophy. 1993. No. 7. Reader in Philosophy: textbook for universities / Comp. P.V. Alekseev, A.V. Panin. M., 2004. Jaspers K. World History of Philosophy. Introduction. SPb., 2000. -) Additional literature Bogomolov A.S., Oizerman T.I.. Fundamentals of the theory of the historical and philosophical process. M., 1983. Introduction to philosophy. Textbook for higher educational institutions. In 2 parts. M., 1990. Wolf Robert P. About philosophy. M., 1996. Hildebrand D. background What is philosophy? M., 1997. Golosovker Ya.E. myth logic. M., 1987. Losev A.F. Philosophy. Mythology. Culture. M., 1991. Loseva I.N. Myth and religion in relation to rational knowledge // Questions of Philosophy. 1992. No. 7. Oizerman T.I. Philosophy as the history of philosophy. M., 1999. Ortega-i-Gasset X. What is philosophy? M., 1991. Paulsen F. Introduction to philosophy. M., 1914. Sokuler Z.A. Wittgenstein on nature philosophical knowledge// Philosophy and its place in culture. Novosibirsk, 1990.

Philosophy, its purpose, meaning and functions // Introduction to Philosophy. T. 1. M., 1989.

What is philosophy and why is it? // World of Philosophy. T. 1. M., 1991.

Shreiler Yu.A. Mysterious attraction of philosophy // Questions of Philosophy. 1996. No. 7.

ancient philosophy is a complex of ideas and teachings produced by ancient Greek and Roman thinkers in the period from the 7th century. BC. according to the VI century. AD Ancient philosophy is characterized by a certain problem-content and style unity. The ancient type of culture is characterized by the presence of a special type of worldview, focused on rethinking the deep philosophical foundations and canons. traditional culture associated with overcoming mythological stereotypes of thinking and developing new ways of seeing the world. Ancient philosophy is the first European historical type philosophizing and the first form of conceptual thinking in general. Because of this, it contains such subject areas that in the future will turn into independent theoretical disciplines (philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, physics, medicine, linguistics). The philosophy of antiquity laid the foundation for the development of independent traditions of ontology, epistemology, logic, ethics, aesthetics, psychology, and the philosophy of history.

The emergence of philosophy is connected with the surprise of people, with their curiosity in their attempts to know the structure of the universe and answer the question about the ultimate causes of the existence of everything that exists. Philosophy has the character of disinterested spiritual contemplation. The idea of ​​practical use of knowledge is absent. In the process of development of ancient philosophy, for the first time, the formation of almost all areas of philosophizing takes place, subsequently characteristic of the European philosophical tradition.

Cosmocentrism- the cosmos is perceived as a sensual, living, intelligent being, endowed with anthropomorphic characteristics, while the personification of the forces of nature took place. The cosmos is one and whole, which means that the task of man is not to subjugate cosmic existence to himself, but to harmonize with the Universe in order not to disturb the original harmony of the universe, in which some higher, superhuman and superdivine principles dominate (the idea of ​​fate, cosmic fate, fate) .

The concept of time linked to religious beliefs people in antiquity. Being pagans, the Greeks and Romans perceived the flow of time by analogy with the development of natural processes, that is, time for them was cyclical.
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Instead of the idea of ​​time as linearly developing (this idea will bring Christianity with it), it was perceived from the standpoint of eternal return.

Natural philosophy gravitated towards subject-positive knowledge and tried to answer the question about the single origin of the world (arche), some kind of primary essence. The principle of the unity of the world was seen in something natural-material, such a basis for the existence of the world was: water ( Thales), air ( Anaximenes), an infinite, qualityless beginning (apeiron), which is affected by forces, giving rise to a qualitative variety of things ( Anaximander).

Speculative metaphysics- rejecting the assumption of the existence of non-existence as unthinkable and inexpressible ( Parmenides), established that ʼʼsomething can never come out of nothingʼʼ ( Meliss), which means that only being exists, ĸᴏᴛᴏᴩᴏᴇ is eternal, united and motionless, since the emergence, change, movement presupposes the existence of non-being, which is impossible. The principle of immobility and unity of being proved Zeno: when trying to think of a multitude and movement (aporias ʼʼDichotomyʼʼ, ʼʼAchilles and the turtleʼʼ, ʼʼArrowʼʼ, ʼʼStadiumʼʼ), thought comes to a standstill.

The origin of the elements of dialectics- postulating the presence in the world of the idea of ​​logos (law) as an internal, deep regularity. The development of the world is cyclical, and its initial principle is fire, the existence of which brings coexisting opposites into the world (war - peace, good - evil, etc.), and all things and phenomena have fluidity and variability (ʼʼyou cannot enter the same river twiceʼʼ) ( Heraclitus).

mystical philosophizing- the foundation of the monastic order was called upon to achieve sacred knowledge for the purification of the soul in the name of reunion with God. The number was proclaimed the basis of the universe, and the structure of the Cosmos was seen as mathematically ordered, rhythmic and harmonious (purification of the soul with the help of sound was practiced). The soul was declared eternal and capable of inhabiting other bodies ( Pythagoras).

Justification attempts materialistic-atomistic worldview from the standpoint of the causation of the world and total fatalism. Randomness was perceived as a way to cover up ignorance. At the root of the universe

-) lie the smallest indivisible particles - atoms that exist in the void and combinations of which give rise to all the objective diversity of the world ( Democritus, Leucippus) ;

-) things arise from the elements according to the divine ʼʼspermatic logosʼʼ, and the world is perfect, determined and expedient ( stoicism) ;

-) the world arose from a mixture of atoms without external interference, which are able to spontaneously deviate from a straight line, which means that there is no determinism and extreme importance in the world ( epicureanism).

Relativism- questioned all principles and declared all truths relative, and if ʼʼman is the measure of all thingsʼʼ, then everyone has his own special truth ( Protagoras).

Skepticism- claims to absolute truth are unjustified, which is caused by the uncertainty, meaninglessness and fluidity of the world itself, respectively:

-) the truth of all knowledge is relative ( Pyrrho) ;

-) the principle of refraining from judgments for peace of mind (ataraxia) was affirmed ( Arcesilaus) ;

-) all knowledge is unreliable (sensually there are dreams, hallucinations, illusions, speculatively - aporias), therefore, they have the right to exist only in varying degrees plausible or probabilistic statements ( Carneades).

The birth of a tradition philosophical anthropologism- based on the idea that the truth is hidden in a person (ʼʼknow thyselfʼʼ), the thesis was defended about the extreme importance of helping a person to generate it from oneself (maieutics), using:

-) reception of dialectics- finding the truth through conversation through the removal of imaginary knowledge;

-) ironic provocation- feigned ignorance, avoiding direct answers, the ability to talk about serious things jokingly and about frivolous things - seriously;

-) ethical rationalism, which boils down to the fact that virtue is knowledge, while evil is an error of judgment, it should not be conscious;

-) erotica, understood as love for the object of knowledge ( Socrates).

Radically interpreting the priority of individual values, they staked on a person who sees spiritual support in himself and who realizes the extreme importance of spewing himself out of society, declaring himself a ʼʼcitizen of the worldʼʼ (ʼʼcosmopolitanʼʼ), living according to his own laws and proclaiming the slogan: ʼʼWithout a community, without a home, without a fatherlandʼʼ ( Diogenes).

System idealistic intellectualism, within which the true reality has:

-) world of ideas(eidos, forms) - an invisible and intelligible supracelestial locality (hyperurania), a non-spatial world in which ideas exist - not thoughts, but what a thought thinks about when it is free from the sensual. The demiurge (God the creator, thinking and willing), for goodness and out of love for the good, taking the world of ideas as a model, blinded the so-called. ʼʼhoruʼʼ (spatiality) and spawned

-) the world of things- visible, sensual, physical cosmos, in which things exist as a physical projection of extraphysical reality.

-) Cognition is likened to anemnesis as a form of remembering those ideas that the soul contemplated in the world of ideas before entering the body.

Two ways -

--) metempsychosis- the soul is immortal and is born many times, everything is accessible to it and it owns the truth as its essence, the proof of which is

--) maieutic experiment(■ the ability to bring a slave using the Socratic method to solve one of the theorems Pythagoras) (Plato).

The tendency to increase the number of steps between God and bodily objects - being is concentrated in the One, from which all things pour out (emanate) as from their luminous source in irradiating circles, representing the descent of entities through the consistent disclosure of the One from the highest and perfect ontological level of the universe to less perfect and lower levels:

-) Superexistent one-good(comprehended only in superintelligent ecstasy);

-)being-mind- contains ideas;

-)Soul- addressed to the mind and to the sensual cosmos;

-)Matter- exhausted in exhaustion, deprived of the Good, the general weakening of the potency of the One ( Neoplatonism).

Creation attempt universal knowledge system- physics, logic, medicine, biology, astronomy, metaphysics. Within the framework of the latter, the substance was declared, incl. and material reality as a symbiosis of matter and form, acting as the generative principles of being (in their extreme forms - the two poles of the universe):

-) matter(primary matter, nothing) - the pure possibility of being, the potency of a thing, not yet formed in a certain way (copper as the possibility of a ball);

-) form(eidos of all eidos, the actual origin, God as an immobile prime mover, self-thinking mind, beyond the cosmos and existing not in time, but in eternity) - manifests itself as an essence - properties of an object that cannot be lost without ceasing to be oneself (■ nodularity with respect to the copper ball) ( Aristotle).

The main problems of ancient philosophy are the concept and types. Classification and features of the category "Main problems of ancient philosophy" 2017, 2018.

Question 1. Ancient philosophy.

The beginning of the development of European philosophy was laid in Ancient Greece in the V-IV centuries. BC e. The specificity of ancient Greek philosophy in its initial period is the desire to understand the essence of nature, the world as a whole, and the cosmos. The first philosophers were called "physicists" (from the Greek phisis - nature). The main question of ancient Greek philosophy was the question of the origin of the world. But if mythology seeks to resolve this issue according to the principle - who gave birth to things, then philosophers are looking for a substantial beginning - from which everything happened. Thus, the founder of Greek philosophy Thales, considered all the existing variety of things and natural phenomena as a manifestation of a single, eternal beginning - water. Outlining the teachings of Thales about water as the beginning.

At Anaximenes- air. At Anaximander-apeiron("infinite") - indefinite, eternal and endless, constantly in motion, the beginning. One of the largest philosophical teachings is the doctrine Heraclitus of Ephesus. The main work of Heraclitus is "On Nature". Heraclitus as the beginning of the universe considers fire. In the teachings of Heraclitus, he acted as the substance of being, since he always remains equal to himself, unchanged in all transformations and, as originally, a specific element. According to Heraclitus, the world is an ordered Cosmos. He is eternal and infinite. It was not created by either gods or people, but has always been, is and will be an ever-living fire, naturally igniting and naturally extinguishing. based on transformations.

All changes in the universe according to Heraclitus occur in a certain pattern, obeying fate, which is identical to necessity. Necessity is a universal law - Logos. "Logos" literally translated from Greek means "word", but at the same time Logos means reason, law. Everything always happens according to this Logos. The world in the teachings of Heraclitus is an ordered system - Cosmos. The formation of this Cosmos takes place on the basis of the universal variability of phenomena, the general fluidity of things. "Everything flows, everything changes, nothing is static." Truth is comprehended by the mind, which cognizes the essence (logos) of the world, being beyond the threshold of feelings. Cognition begins with feelings, but they must be processed by the mind.

Schools: 1. Milesian school(Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes) - natural philosophers. Thales called God the universal intellect: God is the mind of the world. 2 . Pythagoras and his school. He was also preoccupied with the problem: "What is everything from." "Everything is a number" - this is his starting position. The harmony of the Universe is conditioned by measure and number, mathematical proportionality. Pythagoras taught that the soul is immortal. He owns the idea of ​​the reincarnation of souls. He believed that everything that happens in the world is repeated again and again after certain periods of time, and the souls of the dead, after some time, inhabit others.

3. Eleian school. 1. Socrates-Plato developed the concept of ideas, on the basis of which it was possible to explain not only nature, but also man and society. Socrates poses the problem of the soul as a source of goodness. It solves the question of the structure of the soul: the human soul, expressed through goodness, consists of 3 principles: wisdom, courage, justice. Socrates also creates a social doctrine, the essence of which is the doctrine of the state. The state is considered the most important conquest, the acquisition of mankind. It is through the state that it is possible to solve the problem of goodness, therefore the state should be run by wise men or aristocrats, and courageous people should protect the state. 2. Aristotle - developed the doctrine of form, which made it possible to better understand the essence of a separate thing.3. Cynics, Stoics, Epicureans, skeptics were busy looking for a lot, the meaning of life for people. Their common call: be wise.

Question 2. Medieval philosophy.

The main feature of medieval F. is that it is predominantly religious. This period is the longest in the history of F. Within the framework of this period, there was a f-comprehension of the main human idea. The establishment of Christianity as dominant religion. During this period, the dominance of religious philosophy expressed a desire to overcome the fragmentation of human society. The main ideas of medieval philosophy were created on the basis of philosophy and the dialectical understanding of such a source as the Bible and, above all, the New Testament. The fundamental idea is the idea of ​​a single god in his trinity structure. 1) the divine essence is not outside the universe, but in the center of it. 2) The divine essence extends to all reality, including both nature and man. This is pantheism, i.e. nature is spiritualized. The next idea that was generated is the idea of ​​creativity: 1) there is a creative beginning in the world, i.e. source of creativity. The world itself is the result of creativity. 2) creativity is characteristic of all reality, it is a universal property of all reality, in particular such a being as a person. 3) Within the framework of the concept of creativity, it is justified as a universal number - the number 7, which expresses a complete closed cycle of creativity.

The idea of ​​truth (revelation). In reality, there is a single source of all knowledge, i.e. there is a divine truth (Logos). Logos is the direct word of God. There is a link between the Logos and people. This link is called a god-man (in fact, it is the son of God). This idea states that there are always chosen ones among people.

1) Augustine (blessed) the founder of medieval philosophy (4th century). His philosophy comes from, is based on the doctrine of beauty, where he, following Plato, on the basis of the Bible, tries to prove the objectivity of the idea of ​​beauty. The main thing is that beauty is based on creativity, the result of which is harmony. Will is the source of creativity. In the will, and first of all, the freedom of man is manifested. Augustine is the first of the philosophers to pose the problem of human freedom (one of the first). Freedom is about choice. Choice is will. A person is not limited in terms of choice. He constantly chooses, therefore he is constantly free, and the main problem of freedom lies in the choice between good and evil. He puts forward the idea of ​​absoluteness (everything) and the relativity of time. (subject to the present)

The problem of human time is removed, resolved by love. Love is the main criterion of time. It dissolves time into infinity. Thomas Aquinas completes the development of medieval philosophy. He is a systematizer of the entire medieval f-fi (13th century). He is also the founder of a new thought system, which arises at the intersection of philosophy, science and religion. This system is called theology, which in its scope is much higher than f-fi. The leading principle in this system is religion. Later, a new concept arises - theosophy. Theology is a universal doctrine expressing the logic of comprehension of divine truths. Theological logic consists of: - reading two original books: 1) the book of nature, also written by the divine essence, but not revealed to man. Those. the idea of ​​a comprehensive study of nature and the development of natural science. 2) A book created by the man himself, this is the whole history of f-fii, i.e. a person must know the whole f-fiyu. The final point of this logic is the human will, expressed in the fact that a person must complete all the things that he starts. Those. faith, ethics, the whole complex scientific knowledge, including religious f-fi.

Question 3. Philosophy of the Renaissance.

XV-XVI centuries The motherland of this f-fii is Italy, the Netherlands and other countries of the West. F. Renaissance is an attempt to revive the Greek f. And science as the basis of secular culture, in particular, attention is paid to f. Aristotle. Because he systematized all sciences, laid the foundations for many sciences, such that are relevant in our time (for example, economics and politics). The reasons for the appearance of f. Renaissance - towards the end of the 15th century. significant shortcomings of the Middle Ages accumulated in Europe. There was a mass of people limited as in material well-being , and socially passive people, deprived of human dignity, and at the same time, prerequisites for the transition to new forms of civilization arose in society. Key Ideas: New ideas emerge from new F-coy. anthology (the doctrine of being, the world and its structure). If in the medieval f. the center or basis of reality is the divine essence, then f. Revival by the center of reality defines a really living concrete person. How many, so many people and the centers of the world, although the divine essence is not rejected, but is taken out of reality, becomes above reality, i.e. the idea of ​​theocentrism is replaced by the ideas of anthropocentrism. Man becomes the main object of all sciences. Beauty and creativity, first of all, are associated with a person. Reality itself appears as a discrete, infinite beginning, since the basis of reality is each person, which is defined by the concept of a discrete minimum, i.e. this is the main point of discreteness of reality. Faith in God is shifting into faith in man, into faith in secular education. Man is defined as a limitless being in his perfection. This f. defined by the concept of humanism, i.e. directed at a person and therefore this f. sought to express itself in forms accessible to the widest sections of the population. F. Vozrozhdeniya was expressed in unusual forms, not sufficiently diverse, like no other f. - Literary and artistic form of Dante's "Classical Divine Comedy". The form of paintings, the deep foundation of the inner human world (Leonardo Da Vinci's "Sistine Madonna"). There is also a traditional f-kaya form f.: - theoretical f-th works. N. Kuzansky. - form f-th natural science. When f. expressed in the works of natural scientists (Galileo, Kepler, J. Bruno, and others). The significance of these works: there is a substantiation of the need to develop general scientific methods of cognition, such as the theory of experience, the theory of experiment. Mathematics has once again become the reigning science. Mathematics was supposed to unite all natural science into one system. The pinnacle of nature f. was f-fiia J. Bruno. He substantiated the following f-tions. 1) The world is infinite in its physical reality. 2) Dynamism is a general pattern of reality. At the same time, the material world has root causes, i.e. forms in which the concept of promatter is expressed. Those. there is a binding principle of all material phenomena. 3) The world and its unity are at the same time due to the fact that within this world there is a universal mind, i.e. J. Bruno is trying to replace the idea of ​​God with the idea of ​​universal reason. 4) The world is connected, the truth is connected with human mind with evidence. 5) The meaning of religion is defined in two ways. On the one hand, religion as a whole is not rejected and the idea of ​​God is not rejected as a whole, only the emphasis is shifted. Religion must solve the first ethical problems.