The idealistic direction in understanding man. What is the difference between an idealist philosopher and a materialist philosopher?
The philosophical doctrine of materialism appeared in the era of antiquity. Philosophers Ancient Greece And Ancient East considered everything in the surrounding world regardless of consciousness - everything consists of material formations and elements, Thales, Democritus and others argued. In the modern era, materialism acquired a metaphysical orientation. Galileo and Newton said that everything in the world comes down to the mechanistic form of the movement of matter. Metaphysical materialism replaced dialectical one. Consistent materialism appeared in the theory of Marxism, when the basic principle of materialism extended not only to the material world, but also to nature. Feuerbach identified inconsistent materialism, which recognized the spirit, but reduced all its functions to the creation of matter.
Materialist philosophers argue that the only substance that exists is matter, all entities are formed by it, and phenomena, including consciousness, are formed in the process of interaction of various matters. The world exists independently of our consciousness. For example, a stone exists regardless of a person’s idea of it, and what a person knows about it is the effect that the stone has on human senses. A person can imagine that there is no stone, but this will not make the stone disappear from the world. This means, say materialist philosophers, first there is the physical, and then the mental. Materialism does not deny the spiritual, it just asserts that consciousness is secondary to matter.
The essence of the philosophy of idealism
The theory of idealism was also born during antiquity. Idealism ascribes to the spirit a dominant role in the world. The classic of idealism is Plato. His teaching was called objective idealism and proclaimed an ideal principle in general, independent not only of matter, but also of human consciousness. There is some essence, some spirit that gave birth to everything and determines everything, say idealists.
Subjective idealism appeared in the philosophy of modern times. Idealist philosophers of modern times argued that the external world completely depends on human consciousness. Everything that surrounds people is just a combination of some sensations, and a person attributes material meaning to these combinations. The combination of some sensations gives rise to a stone and all ideas about it, others - a tree, etc.
In general, idealistic philosophy boils down to the fact that a person receives all information about the outside world only through sensations, with the help of the senses. All that a person knows for certain is knowledge obtained from the senses. And if the senses are arranged differently, then the sensations will be different. This means that a person talks not about the world, but about his feelings.
IDEALISM(from Greek ιδέα - idea) - category philosophical discourse, characterizing a worldview that either identifies the world as a whole with the content of the consciousness of the knowing subject (subjective idealism), or asserts the existence of an ideal, spiritual principle outside and independently of human consciousness(objective idealism), and considers the external world to be a manifestation of spiritual being, universal consciousness, the absolute. Consistent objective idealism sees this beginning as primary in relation to the world and things. The term “Idealism” was introduced by G.V. Leibniz (Works in 4 volumes, vol. 1. M., 1982, p. 332).
Objective idealism coincides with spiritualism and is represented in such forms of philosophy as platonism, panlogism, monadology, voluntarism. Subjective idealism is associated with the development of the theory of knowledge and is presented in such forms as the empiricism of D. Berkeley, the critical idealism of I. Kant, for which experience is conditioned by the forms of pure consciousness, and positivist idealism.
Objective idealism originated in myths and religion, but received a reflective form in philosophy. At the first stages, matter was understood not as a product of the spirit, but as a formless and spiritless substance co-eternal with it, from which the spirit (nous, logos) creates real objects. The spirit was thus considered not as the creator of the world, but only as its shaper, the demiurge. This is precisely Plato's idealism. His character is connected with the problem that he tried to solve: to understand nature human cognition and practices based on monistic principles still recognized today. According to the first of them, “not a single thing arises from non-existence, but everything comes from being” ( Aristotle. Metaphysics. M.–L., 1934, 1062b). Another inevitably followed from it: from what “being” do such “things” arise as, on the one hand, images of real objects, and, on the other, forms of objects created by human practice? The answer to it was: every thing does not arise from any being, but only from one that is “the same” as the thing itself (ibid.). Guided by these principles, Empedocles, for example, argued that the image of earth is itself earth, the image of water is water, etc. This concept was later called vulgar materialism. Aristotle objected to Empedocles: “The soul must be either these objects or their forms; but the objects themselves fall away - after all, the stone is not in the soul.” ( Aristotle. About the soul. M., 1937, p. 102). Consequently, it is not the object that passes from reality to the soul, but only the “form of the object” (ibid., p. 7). But the image of the object is ideal. Consequently, the form of the object “similar” to it is ideal. Reflections on human practice also led to the conclusion about the ideality of the form of things: the form that a person gives to a thing is his idea, transferred to the thing and transformed in it. Original objective idealism is the projection of the characteristics of human practice onto the entire cosmos. This form of idealism must be distinguished from the developed forms of objective idealism that arose after the task of removing matter from consciousness was explicitly formulated.
Having explained two opposing processes - cognition and practice - from a single monistic principle, objective idealism created the basis for answering the question of whether human consciousness is capable of adequately cognizing the world? For objective idealism, the affirmative answer is almost tautological: of course, consciousness is capable of comprehending itself. And this tautology is its fatal weakness.
The internal logic of self-development led objective idealism to a new question: if no thing arises from non-existence, then from what existence do such “things” as matter and consciousness arise? Do they have independent origins or does one of them give rise to the other? In the latter case, which of them is primary and which is secondary? It was explicitly formulated and resolved by Neoplatonism in the 3rd century. AD He understood the real world as the result of the emanation of the spiritual, divine unity, and matter as the product of the complete extinction of this emanation. Only after this a consistent objective idealism arose, and the spirit-demiurge turned into the spirit-God, who does not form the world, but creates it entirely.
Objective idealism used the theory of emanation until the 17th century. Leibniz also interpreted the world as a product of emanations (fulgurations) of the Divine, understood as the primary Unity ( Leibniz G.V. Op. in 4 vols., vol. 1, p. 421). A major step in the development of objective idealism was made by Hegel. He interpreted the real world as the result not of emanation, but of the self-development of the absolute spirit. He considered the source of this self-development to be a contradiction internal to him. But if the world is a product of the self-development of an idea, then where does the idea itself arise from? The threat of bad infinity was faced by Schelling and Hegel, who tried to avoid it by deriving the idea from pure being - identical nothingness. For the latter, the question “from what?” already meaningless. An alternative to both concepts is a theory that interprets the world as initially having a spiritual nature and thereby eliminating the question of deriving it from something else.
Initially, objective idealism (like materialism) proceeded from the existence of a world outside and independent of human consciousness as something self-evident. Only by the 17th century. the culture of philosophical thinking has grown so much that this postulate has been questioned. It was then that subjective idealism arose - a philosophical trend, the germ of which can be found already in antiquity (Protagoras’ thesis about man as the measure of all things), but which received a classical formulation only in modern times - in the philosophy of D. Berkeley. A consistent subjective idealist-solipsist recognizes only his consciousness as existing. Despite the fact that such a point of view is theoretically irrefutable, it does not occur in the history of philosophy. Even D. Berkeley does not pursue it consistently, admitting, in addition to his own consciousness, the consciousness of other subjects, as well as God, which actually makes him an objective idealist. Here is the argument on which his concept is based: “For me sufficient reason not to believe in the existence of something if I see no reason to believe in it" ( Berkeley D. Op. M., 1978, p. 309). Here, of course, there is a mistake: the lack of grounds to recognize the reality of matter is not a reason to deny its reality. More consistent is the position of D. Hume, who left the question theoretically open: whether there are material objects that evoke impressions in us. It was in the disputes of modern philosophers that the characteristic of the view, according to which we are given only ideas as an object, as idealism, began to be widely used. T. Reed described the views of D. Locke and D. Berkeley in exactly this way. H. Wolf called those who ascribed only an ideal existence to bodies as idealists (Psychol, rat., § 36). I. Kant noted: “Idealism consists in the assertion that only thinking beings exist, and the rest of the things that we think to perceive in contemplation are only representations in thinking beings, representations to which in fact no object located outside them corresponds” ( Kant I. Prolegomena. – Soch., vol. 4, part I. M., 1964, p. 105). Kant makes a distinction between dogmatic and critical idealism, which he calls transcendental idealism. Fichte initiated the revival of objective idealism in Germany, combining epistemological, ethical and metaphysical idealism. Representatives of absolute idealism, Schelling and Hegel, tried to present nature as the potential and expression of the world spirit. A. Schopenhauer saw absolute reality in the will, E. Hartmann - in the unconscious, R.-Eiken - in the spirit, B. Croce - in the eternal, infinite mind, which is also realized in the personality. New versions of idealism developed in connection with the doctrine of values, which were opposed to the empirical world as ideal being, embodying the absolute spirit (A. Münsterberg, G. Rickert). For positivism, values and ideals are fictions that have theoretical and practical significance (D.S. Mill, D. Bain, T. Tan, E. Mach, F. Adler). In phenomenology, idealism is interpreted as a form of theory of knowledge, which sees in the ideal a condition for the possibility of objective knowledge, and all reality is interpreted as meaning-making ( Husserl E. Logische Untersuchungen, Bd. 2. Halle, 1901, S. 107 ff). Phenomenology itself, having emerged as a variant of transcendental idealism, gradually transformed, along with the principles of constitution and egology, into objective idealism.
Criticism of idealism in its different forms expanded (of course, with different positions) in the works of L. Feuerbach, K. Marx, F. Engels, F. Jodl, W. Kraft, M. Schlick, P. A. Florensky and others.
However, the question of how to justify the existence of a world outside of us remains open in modern philosophy. Many ways have been developed to both solve and work around it. The most curious is the assertion that the same object, depending on the point of view, can be represented as existing both outside consciousness and inside it; the most common assertion is that the choice is between subjective idealism and realism (by which we mean objective idealism and materialism), is similar to the choice between religion and atheism, i.e. determined by personal faith, not scientific proof.
Literature:
1. Marks K.,Engels F. German ideology. – They are the same. Soch., vol. 3;
2. Engels F. Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of the German classical philosophy. – Ibid., vol. 21;
3. Florensky P.A. The meaning of idealism. Sergiev Posad, 1914;
4. Willmann O. Geschichte des Idealismus, 3 Bde. Braunschweig, 1894;
5. Jodl F. Vom wahren und falschen Idealismus. Münch., 1914;
6. Kraft V. Wfeltbegriff und Erkenntnisbegriff. W., 1912;
7. Schlick M. Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre. W., 1918;
8. Kronenberg M. Geschichte des deutschen Idealismus. Bd. 1–2. Münch., 1909;
9. Liebert A. Die Krise des Idealismus. Z.–Lpz., 1936;
10. Ewing A.S. Idealist tradition from Berkeley to Blanchard. Chi., 1957.
IDEALISM (from the Greek idea - concept, idea) is a philosophical direction opposite to materialism in solving the main question of philosophy - the question of the relationship of consciousness (thinking) to being (matter). Idealism, contrary to science, recognizes consciousness and spirit as primary and considers matter and nature to be secondary, derivative. In this respect, idealism coincides with religious worldview, from the point of view of which nature and matter are generated by some supernatural, spiritual principle (god).
Absolute idealism (SZF.ES, 2009)
ABSOLUTE IDEALISM is a movement of Anglo-American philosophy of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The concept of absolute reality, or the absolute, was formed in classical German. philosophy. According to F.V.Y. Schelling And G.V.F. Hegel, the attribute of the absolute is the harmonious reconciliation of opposites. However, in their systems the concept of the absolute contained an implicit contradiction, which was not slow to reveal itself during further evolution. philosophical ideas. This is the contradiction between the principle of historicism, according to which the “spirit” becomes absolute in the process historical development, and the very concept of the absolute as the timeless fullness of being and perfection. Adherents of absolute idealism abandoned historicism in the name of a consistent concept of the absolute. At the same time, they did not have unanimity in their understanding of absolute reality. The differences between them can be reduced to three positions. The first is represented by the British neo-Hegelians ( ) F.G. Bradley and B. Bosanquet, the second - by the supporter of personalism J. E. McTaggart, the third - by J. Royce...
Transcendental idealism
TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. Based on Kant's explanations of the concept of “transcendental,” Husserl gave it a broader and more radical meaning. In the book “The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology” he wrote: “The word “transcendental philosophy” has become widespread since the time of Kant as a universal designation for universal philosophizing, which is oriented towards his Kantian type.
Transcendental idealism
TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM (transzendentaler Idealismus) - philosophical doctrine I. Kant, epistemologically substantiating his system of metaphysics, which he opposed to all other metaphysical systems (see Transcendental). According to Kant, “transcendental philosophy must first resolve the question of the possibility of metaphysics and, therefore, must precede it” (Prolegomena to any future metaphysics that may appear as a science. Works in 6 vols., vol. 4, part 1, M. , 1965, p. 54).
Materialism and idealism
MATERIALISM AND IDEALISM (French materialisme; idealisme) - from the point of view of materialism, two main philosophical directions. the struggle between which affects the development of psychological thought throughout its history. Materialism proceeds from the principle of the primacy of material existence, the secondary nature of the spiritual, mental, which is considered as arbitrary from outside world, independent of the subject and his consciousness.
Absolute Idealism (NFE, 2010)
ABSOLUTE IDEALISM is a trend in British philosophy that arose in the second half of the 19th century, sometimes also called, although not entirely accurately, British neo-Hegelianism. Absolute idealism also had supporters in American philosophy. The immediate predecessors of absolute idealism were the English romantics (primarily S.T. Coleridge), as well as T. Carlyle, who stimulated interest in speculative objective-idealistic metaphysics among professional philosophers. German idealism (and not only in the Hegelian version) first of all became popular in Scotland, where in the mid-19th century. Positivism and utilitarianism were not as influential as in England. IN North America the spread of German idealism was first associated with the activities of a group of transcendentalists, and then was continued by the St. Louis Philosophical Society led by W. Harris...
Idealism (Gritsanov)
IDEALISM (French idealisme from rp. idea - idea) is a term introduced in the 18th century. for the integral designation of philosophical concepts, oriented in the interpretation of the world order and world knowledge towards the semantic and axiological dominance of the spiritual. The first use of the term I. was in 1702 by Leibniz when assessing the philosophy of Plato (in comparison with the philosophy of Epicurus as materialism). It became widespread at the end of the 18th century. after explicit statement within French materialism the so-called “fundamental question of philosophy” as a question about the relationship between being and consciousness.
Idealism (Kirilenko, Shevtsov)
IDEALISM (from the Greek idea - idea) is one of the main trends in philosophy, whose supporters recognize the spirit, idea, consciousness as the original, primary, substance. The term I. was introduced by the German philosopher Leibniz at the beginning of the 19th century. For Leibniz, Plato was the model and founder of the idealistic trend in philosophy. Pythagoreanism is considered to be the predecessor of Plato's I. The ideal origin was called differently: it was called the idea, consciousness, God, the Absolute, world will, absolute idea, One, Good.
The essence of philosophy. The categories of materialism and idealism are historical categories in all eras. When using them, one must always take into account their historical coloring and, in particular, the aesthetic significance that they receive in connection with different periods historical development, in connection with individual philosophers and culturologists and in connection with the infinitely diverse diversity of results and works of philosophers and culturologists. Abstract idealism in its pure form and abstract materialism in its pure form are extreme opposites philosophical worldview, not rejecting, but suggesting countless combinations of them with infinitely varied dosages.
Idealism asserts the primacy in the sphere of existence of the ideal spiritual in relation to the material. The term “idealism” appeared only in the 18th century. It was first used by Leibniz, speaking about the philosophy of Plato.
There are two main branches of idealism: objective idealism and subjective idealism.
Encyclopedic YouTube
-
1 / 5
They seem to have something like a struggle between giants because of a dispute with each other about existence. ... Some pull everything from heaven and from the region of the invisible to earth, as if hugging oaks and rocks with their hands ... and recognize bodies and being as one and the same ... That is why those who enter into a dispute with them prudently defend themselves, as if from above, from somewhere invisible, resolutely insisting that true being is certain intelligible and incorporeal ideas; But the bodies that the former speak of, and what they call truth, they, breaking down into small parts in their reasoning, do not call being, but something mobile, becoming. Regarding this, there is always a strong struggle between both sides, Theaetetus.
It is believed that the term was first used in Leibniz’s 1702 article “Reply to Bayle’s Meditations.” The philosopher wrote: “Everything that is good in the hypotheses of Epicurus and Plato - the greatest materialists and the greatest idealists - is united here,” that is, in Leibniz’s doctrine of pre-established harmony.
Philosophers of the second half of the 20th century rarely used the term “idealism” not only for self-identification, but as a criterion for study. But the term “ideology” has become widespread.
Meanings of the term (according to ESBE)
Idealism has different but interconnected meanings, which can be arranged in a sequential series as the concept deepens. In the most ordinary and superficial sense, idealism is understood as an inclination towards a higher than necessary assessment of persons and life phenomena, that is, towards the idealization of reality; This is how an idealist is called, for example, a person who believes in the kindness and honesty of all his neighbors and tries to explain all their actions by worthy or at least innocent motives; in this sense, idealism is almost synonymous with optimism. Further, idealism is the predominance of someone’s general interests over private ones, mental and moral interests over material ones. Idealism receives a similar but deeper meaning when it denotes a conscious disregard for the real practical conditions of life due to belief in the power and triumph of higher principles of a moral or spiritual order. These three types belong to psychological idealism, which expresses a certain mental mood and subjective attitude in practical reality. This is followed by various types of idealism proper, philosophical, representing a certain theoretical attitude of the mind to reality as conceivable.
Philosophical idealism
Idealism in Plato's understanding
Idealism of the Platonic or dualistic type is based on the sharp opposition of two areas of existence: the world of intelligible ideas, as eternal and true essences, and the world of sensory phenomena, as a current elusive existence, only apparent, devoid of inner strength and dignity; Despite all the illusory nature of visible existence, it has, however, in this system an independent basis, independent of the world of ideas, namely matter, which represents something in between being and non-being.
Idealism in the understanding of J. Berkeley
This residue of realism is finally destroyed in idealism of the Berkeley type; here the only basis of everything is recognized as spiritual being, represented by deity on the one hand and a multitude of created minds on the other; through the action of the former on the latter, rows and groups of representations or ideas arise in them (in the English-French sense of the word; see below), of which some, more vivid, definite and complex, are what are called bodies or material objects; thus all physical world exists only in the ideas of the mind or minds, and matter is only an empty abstraction, to which independent reality is attributed only through a misunderstanding of philosophers. These two types of idealism (Plato and Berkeley) are sometimes referred to as dogmatic idealism, since it is based on known propositions about the essence of things, and not on criticism of our cognitive abilities.
Idealism of the English School
The idealism of the English school, uniquely combined with empiricism and sensationalism. This point of view differs from Berkeley's in that it does not recognize any spiritual substances and no independent subject or bearer of mental phenomena; everything that exists is reduced here to a series of associated ideas or states of consciousness without special subjects, as well as without real objects. This view, fully developed only in the 19th century. (Millem), already in the 18th century. (in Hume) revealed its incompatibility with any reliable knowledge.
German school
To prevent Hume's skepticism, which was fatal for science, Kant undertook his critique of reason and founded Transcendental Idealism, according to which the world of phenomena accessible to us, in addition to its dependence on the empirical material of sensations, is determined, in its quality of knowability, by the internal a priori conditions of all knowledge, namely by the forms of sensibility ( space and time), categories of reason and ideas of reason; Thus, all objects are accessible to us only by their ideal essence, determined by the functions of our knowing subject, while the independent, real basis of phenomena lies beyond the limits of knowledge (the world of the thing in itself, Ding an sich). This actual Kantian idealism is called critical; its further development gave rise to three new species transcendental idealism.
Currently, philosophy is also the science of universal laws development of nature, society, thinking, cognition and special form public consciousness, the theoretical basis of the worldview, a system of philosophical disciplines that contribute to the formation spiritual world person.
Philosophy has always included consideration of so-called worldview questions: how does the world work? Does it have a beginning and an end? What place does a person occupy in the world? The purpose of man. What is truth? Is it achievable? Is there a God? What is the meaning and purpose of life? What are the relationships between people, society and nature, good and evil, truth and error? What does the future hold for us? Not a single person can ignore these and similar questions. Philosophy has always helped people seek answers to these questions, while performing an ideological function.
1. Materialism.
Matter has always been there. On at a certain stage its development, highly organized matter acquires the ability to feel and think, i.e., the ideal arises (F. Bacon, L. Feuerbach. K. Marx. F. Engels, V. I. Lenin).
Vulgar materialism: “The ideal does not exist, the brain produces thoughts like the liver produces bile.” (Late 18th century, Buchner, Vocht, Milichott).
Materialism- scientific philosophical direction, opposite idealism. Philosophical materialism asserts the primacy of the material and the secondary nature of the spiritual, ideal, which means the eternity, uncreatedness of the world, its infinity in time and space. Considering consciousness to be a product of matter, materialism views it as a reflection of the external world, thus asserting the knowability of nature. In the history of philosophy, materialism, as a rule, was the worldview of advanced classes and strata of society interested in correct knowledge of the world, in strengthening human power over nature. Summarizing the achievements of science, materialism contributed to the growth of scientific knowledge, improvement scientific methods, which in turn had a beneficial effect on the success of human practice and on the development of productive forces.
In the process of interaction of materialism and special sciences, the appearance and forms of materialism itself changed. The first teachings of materialism appear along with the emergence of philosophy in slave-holding societies ancient india, China and Greece - for several centuries. BC e. - in connection with progress in the field of astronomy, mathematics and other sciences. General feature ancient, in many ways still naive, materialism (Laozi, Yang Zhd, Wang Chong, the Lokayata school, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Democritus, Epicurus, etc.) consists in recognizing the materiality of the world, its existence independent of the consciousness of people. Its representatives sought to find in the diversity of nature the common origin of everything that exists and happens (Element). The merit of ancient materialism was the creation of a hypothesis about the atomic structure of matter (Leucippus, Democritus). Many ancient materialists were spontaneous dialecticians.
However, most of them have not yet made a clear distinction between the physical and the mental, endowing the properties of the latter with all of nature ( Hylozoism). The development of materialist and dialectical positions was combined in ancient materialism with the influence of mythological ideology. In the Middle Ages materialistic tendencies manifested themselves in the form of nominalism, doctrines of the “eternity of nature and God” and early pantheistic heresies. During the Renaissance, materialism (Telesio, Vruna, etc.) was often clothed in the form of pantheism and hylozoism, viewed nature in its integrity and was in many ways reminiscent of the materialism of antiquity. Materialism (materialism) received its further development in the 17th and 18th centuries. in European countries (Bacon, Galileo, Hobbes, Gassendi, Spinoza, Locke).
This form of materialism arose on the basis of emerging capitalism and the associated growth of production, technology, and science. Acting as ideologists of the then progressive bourgeoisie, the materialists fought against medieval scholasticism and church authorities, turned to experience as a teacher and to nature as an object of philosophy. M. 17-18 centuries. It is connected with the rapidly progressing mechanics and mathematics at that time, which determined its mechanistic character. Unlike the natural philosophers-materialists of the Renaissance, the materialists of the 17th century. began to regard the last elements of nature as inanimate and qualityless. Another feature of mathematics of this era was the desire for analysis, for the division of nature into more or less isolated, not related friend with each other, the areas and objects of research and consideration of them outside of development, among the representatives of materialist philosophy of this period, a special place is occupied by the French. materialists of the 18th century (La Mettrie, Diderot, Helvetius and Holbach).
Remaining in general positions mechanistic understanding of movement, they, following Tolaend, considered it as a universal and integral property of nature, and completely abandoned the deistic inconsistency inherent in most 17th-century materialists. Many elements of dialectics are characteristic of Diderot's materialism. The organic connection that exists between any materialism and atheism is found among the French materialists of the 18th century. came out especially brightly. The pinnacle in the development of this form of mathematics in the West was “anthropological” M. Feuerbach. At the same time, Feuerbach most clearly manifested the contemplative nature inherent in all pre-Marxian M.
In Russia and other countries of Eastern Europe in the second half of the 19th century. A further step in the development of mathematics was the philosophy of revolutionary democrats (Belinsky, Herzen, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov, Markovich, Votev, etc.), which was based on the traditions of Lomonosov, Radishchev, and others, and in a number of respects rose above the narrow horizon of anthropology and metaphysical method. The highest and most consistent form of mathematics was created by Marx and Engels by the mid-19th century. dialectical M. He not only overcame the above-mentioned shortcomings of the old M., but also the idealistic understanding of the human society inherent in all its representatives.
IN further history M. (materialism), two fundamentally different lines have already sharply emerged: the development of dialectical and historical materialism, on the one hand, and a number of simplified and vulgarized varieties of materialism. Among the latter, the most typical was vulgar materialism, which approached positivism; Those varieties of M. that arose at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries also gravitate towards the latter. as a distortion of dialectical materialism (mechanistic revision of Marxism, etc.), as well as so-called “scientific materialism” (J. Smart, M. Bunge, etc.). In the second half of the 19th century. M. in its mature forms turned out to be incompatible with the narrow class interests of the bourgeoisie.
Bourgeois philosophers accuse M. of immoralism, misunderstanding of the nature of consciousness and identify M. with its primitive varieties. Rejecting the atheism and epistemological optimism of M., some of them were nevertheless forced, in the interests of the development of production and natural science, to accept certain elements of the materialist worldview. Sometimes idealists portray their teachings as "authentic" and "most modern." M. (Carnap, Bachelard, Sartre). By obscuring in a number of cases the opposition between materialism and idealism, bourgeois philosophers resort not only to positivism and neorealism, but also to such amorphous and ambiguous constructions as the modern. American naturalism.
On the other hand, among scientists in the past there were many who, declaratively recognizing idealism or positivistly shunning “all philosophy”, in special scientific research actually occupied the positions of mathematics (natural history M. Haeckel, Boltzmann, etc.). For modern advanced scientists are characterized by an evolution from natural science to conscious, and ultimately to dialectical m. (Langevin, Joliot-Curie, etc.).
One of the features of the development of dialectical mathematics is its enrichment with new ideas. Modern the advancement of science requires that natural scientists become conscious advocates dialectical materialism. At the same time, the development of socio-historical practice and science requires the constant development and concretization of the philosophy of mathematics itself. The latter occurs in the constant struggle of mathematics with the latest varieties of idealistic philosophy.
2. Idealism.
a) Objective idealism: “The idea was primary. Everything came from it, including through evolution” (Plato, Hegel).
Modern French philosopher Teilhard de Chardin:
“There was a psychic principle in everything, but in the inanimate it did not develop.”
b) Subjective idealism (Berkeley, Hume). “There are only me and my consciousness. It gives birth to the surrounding world. The phenomena of the world are complexes of our sensations.”
Idealism - philosophical direction opposite to materialism in the solution of the main. question of philosophy. I. proceeds from the primacy of the spiritual, immaterial, and the secondary nature of the material, which brings him closer to the dogmas of religion about the finitude of the world in time and space and its creation God. I. considers consciousness in isolation from nature, due to which he inevitably mystifies it and the process of cognition and often comes to skepticism and agnosticism. Consistent I. opposes the teleological viewpoint to materialistic determinism. (Teleology). Bourgeois philosophers used the term “I.” is used in many senses, and this direction itself is sometimes considered as truly philosophical. Marxism-Leninism proves the inconsistency of this view, however, in contrast to metaphysical and vulgar materialism, which views idealism only as absurdity and nonsense, it emphasizes the presence of epistemological roots in any specific form of idealism (Lenin V.I., vol. 29, p. 322).
Development of theoretical thinking leads to the fact that the possibility of idealism - the separation of concepts from their objects - is given already in the most elementary abstraction. This possibility becomes a reality only in the conditions of a class society, where mythology arises as a scientific continuation of mythological, religious and fantastic ideas. According to its social roots, philosophy, in contrast to materialism, acts, as a rule, as a worldview of conservative and reactionary strata and classes that are not interested in the correct reflection of existence or in a radical restructuring of social relations. At the same time, I. absolutizes the inevitable difficulties in the development of human knowledge and thereby hinders scientific progress. At the same time, individual representatives of philosophy, posing new epistemological questions and exploring the forms of the process of cognition, seriously stimulated the development of a number of important philosophical problems.
In contrast to bourgeois philosophers, which includes many independent forms of information, Marxism-Leninism divides all its varieties into two groups: objective information, which takes the personal or impersonal universal spirit, a kind of super-individual consciousness, as the basis of reality, and subjective information, which reduces knowledge about the world to content individual consciousness. However, the difference between subjective and objective information is not absolute. Many objective-idealistic systems contain elements of subjective information; on the other hand, subjective idealists, trying to get away from solipsism, often switch to the position of objective I. In the history of philosophy, objective idealistic teachings initially appeared in the East ( Vedanta , Confucianism).
The classical form of objective philosophy was the philosophy of Plato. The feature of objective I. Plato, characteristic of the ancients. I. in general, - close connection with religious and mythological ideas. This connection intensifies at the beginning of the century. e., in an era of crisis ancient society, when Neoplatonism develops, fused not only with mythology, but also with extreme mysticism. This feature of objective philosophy was even more pronounced in the Middle Ages, when philosophy was completely subordinated to theology (Augustine, Thomas Aquinas). The restructuring of objective history, carried out primarily by Thomas Aquinas, was based on distorted Aristotelianism. The main concept of objective-idealistic scholastic philosophy after Thomas Aquinas became the concept of immaterial form, interpreted as a goal principle that fulfills the will of an extranatural God, who wisely planned the world, finite in time and space.
Since Descartes in bourgeois philosophy In modern times, as individualistic motives strengthened, subjective information developed more and more. The epistemological part of the system of Verily and Hume’s philosophy became the classic manifestation of subjective information. IN Kant's philosophy with the materialist assertion about the independence of “things in themselves” from the consciousness of the subject is combined, on the one hand, a subjective-idealistic position about the a priori forms of this consciousness, which substantiates agnosticism, and on the other, an objective-idealistic recognition of the super-individual nature of these forms. The subjective-idealistic tendency subsequently prevailed in the philosophy of Fichte, and the objective-idealistic tendency in the philosophy of Schelling and especially Hegel, who created a comprehensive system of dialectical philosophy. The evolution of history after the collapse of the Hegelian school was determined by the loss of the bourgeoisie’s progressive social role and its struggle against dialectical materialism.
From the bourgeois philosophers themselves concept "I." became identified only with its most overt, spiritualistic form. An opinion has emerged regarding supposedly “intermediate” and even supposedly “rising” doctrines above humanism and materialism (positivism, neorealism, etc.). Agnostic and irrationalistic trends have intensified, the mythologization of philosophy as “necessary self-deception,” disbelief in the human mind, in the future of humanity, etc. Reactionary pseudo-atheism has developed (Nietzscheanism, fascist philosophical concepts, some types of positivism, etc.). During the period of the general crisis of capitalism, such forms of philosophy as existentialism and neopositivism, as well as a number of schools of Catholic philosophy, primarily neo-Thomism, spread. The three named movements are the main variety of I. of the mid-20th century, but along with them and within them in the second half of the century the process of splitting I. into small epigonic schools continued.
Main social reasons"diversity" forms of modern history (phenomenology, critical realism, personalism, pragmatism, philosophy of life, philosophical anthropology, the concepts of the Frankfurt school, etc.) are the deepening process of the disintegration of bourgeois consciousness and the desire to consolidate the illusion of “independence” of idealistic philosophy from the political forces of imperialism. On the other hand, a partly opposite process is taking place - rapprochement and even “hybridization” of various currents of ideology based on the general anti-communist orientation of bourgeois ideology of the 20th century. Scientific foundations of modern criticism. The forms of philosophy were laid down by Lenin in his book “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism,” where a Marxist analysis was given not only of the Machian variety of positivism, but also of the basic content of all bourgeois philosophy of the era of imperialism.
Basic concepts of the theory of knowledge and history of philosophy (empiricism, rationalism, irrationalism) In the cognitive process, the goal of which is truth, achievement passes through a number of stages:
1. Empiricism(founders Beccon, Locke, Hobbes). Such a philosophy is a methodological orientation of knowledge that recognizes sensory experience as the main source and criteria, integrated into materialist empiricism as a result of the influence of connections and objects of the external world on human feelings, as a result of which they act as images of this world. And in ideological empiricism, this is the property of a person’s inner world, his unconditional experiences.
2. Rationalism- this is an ideological, theoretical and methodological orientation, whose supporters recognize reason as the main source of true knowledge and the basis of human behavior, absolutizing its meaning and underestimating or ignoring the role sensory experience And practical activities person. Representatives: Deckard, Leibniz, Spinoza (XVI century).
3. Irrationalism- this is a direction of philosophical thought that recognizes the basis of the process of cognition and transformation of the world - non-rational aspects of human spiritual life: intuition, faith, will, limiting or denying the possibilities of reason in this process.
4. Sensationalism- a diverse philosophical position, whose representatives fully recognized feelings as the only source and factor in achieving truth with all its content and the only essential reality, absolutizing their meaning, underestimating or ignoring other cognitive characteristics of a person. The problem of knowing the world and the main ways to solve it The problem of obtaining true knowledge about the world, i.e. the question of the knowability of the world is the central problem of epistemology.
In the history of philosophy, three main approaches have emerged that answer the question of the knowability of reality in different ways:
1) cognitive optimism;
2) skepticism;
3) agnosticism (cognitive pessimism).
Cognitive optimists (these include mainly materialists and objective idealists) believe that the phenomena of reality are essentially knowable, although the world - due to its infinity - is not completely knowable.
Skeptics(from the Greek “skepticos” - seeking, examining, exploring) doubt the possibility of obtaining reliable knowledge about the world, absolutizing the moment of relativity in true knowledge, indicating its formal unprovability. Representatives of agnosticism (these are mainly subjective idealists) deny the possibility of knowing the essence of phenomena. Absolutizing imperfection sensory perception In fact, agnostics, in their extreme conclusions, even deny the existence of objective reality. All these approaches have a certain theoretical basis.
But the decisive arguments in favor of cognitive optimism are: the development of social practice and material production, the successes of experimental natural science, confirming the truth of knowledge. The theoretical-cognitive situation has its own structure, including the subject and object of cognition, as well as a “mediator” that connects them into a single process. Dialectics of the process of cognition. The unity of the sensual, rational and intuitive in cognition Cognition is a socio-historical process of creative activity of people, forming their knowledge. And knowledge is ideal images(ideas, concepts, theories) enshrined in the signs of natural and artificial languages, on the basis of which the goals and motives of human actions arise.
There are different levels of cognition- everyday, theoretical, artistic - as a sensory-figurative reflection of reality. The branch of philosophy where knowledge is studied is called epistemology. Is the world knowable, is a person capable of creating a correct picture of the world? Most philosophers address this problem positively. This position is called epistemological optimism. For materialists, the world is knowable - knowledge is a subjective image of the objective world. U subjective idealism(Berkeley) knowledge of the inner world of man is possible, etc. But there are philosophers who deny the possibility of reliable knowledge - agnosticism (not accessible to knowledge).
In scientific philosophy cognition is considered as a process of interaction between object and subject in material and sensory human activity. Subject and object act as sides of a practical relationship. The subject is the bearer of a material, purposeful action that connects him with the object. Object - the subject to which the action is directed. The initial characteristic of the subject is activity, the object is the application of activity. Activity is conscious in nature, it is mediated by goal setting and self-awareness.
Into the structure of cognitive activity such levels as sensual and rational are included. Sensory cognition: sensation is a subjective image of an object, primary information about the world, perception is a holistic sensory image of objects given through observation, reflected in it various properties things as one whole, representation is an indirect holistic image, stored and reproduced with the help of memory. It is based on past perceptions, imagination, dream, fantasy, etc. Rational cognition- this is, first of all, thinking, which is based on sensory knowledge and provides generalized knowledge. It is carried out in 3 forms: concepts, judgments, inferences. All three forms of logical thinking are characterized by a connection with language. Levels of cognition exist in unbreakable connection and form a dialectical path of knowledge: from living contemplation to abstract thinking - from it to practice. The result of knowledge is the achievement of true knowledge.
The subject of philosophy is the range of issues that philosophy studies.
General structure subject of philosophy, philosophical knowledge consists of 4 main sections:
1. Ontology (the doctrine of being);
2. Epistemology (the study of knowledge);
3. Man;
4. Society.
Main sections of philosophical knowledge:
1). Ontology (Metaphysics). Ontology deals with the whole complex of issues related to the existence of Being and its basic principles. We can say that it includes such subsections as cosmogony, philosophical cosmology, natural philosophy, metaphysics, etc. It deals with issues of randomness and probability, discreteness and continuity, stationarity and variability, in the end, the materiality or ideality of what is happening in the environment us in the world.
2). Epistemology. She studies issues of knowledge, the possibility of knowledge, the nature of knowledge and its possibilities, the relationship of knowledge to reality, the prerequisites of knowledge, the conditions of its reliability and truth. It is from epistemology that such philosophical directions, such as skepticism, optimism, agnosticism. One more important issue, which epistemology deals with, is the question of the relationship between experience, the work of the Mind and the sensations we receive through the senses. In addition to other sections, epistemology also includes epistemology, which studies the philosophy of scientific knowledge. The theory of knowledge as a philosophical discipline analyzes the universal foundations that make it possible to consider the cognitive result as knowledge expressing the real, true position things.
3). Axiology is a philosophy of values. “What is good?” - main question general philosophy values. Axiology studies values, their place in reality, the structure of the value world, i.e. the connection of various values with each other, with social and cultural factors and personality structure. She deals with some personal and public life individuals and organized groups of people. We can say that it includes, as components, ethics, aesthetics, sociophilosophy and philosophy of history. This also includes philosophical anthropology.
4). Praxeology- a branch of philosophy that studies the immediate practical life of a person. By and large, it includes, in fact, the same subsections as the previous paragraph, but in a somewhat arbitrary interpretation. We can say that praxeology deals with the utilitarian problems of axiology.
Main branches of philosophy
Within the framework of philosophical knowledge proper, already in the early stages of its formation, its differentiation began, as a result of which such philosophical disciplines as ethics, logic, aesthetics were identified and the following sections of philosophical knowledge gradually took shape:
- ontology- the doctrine of being, about the origins of all things, about the criteria of existence, general principles and laws of existence;
- epistemology- a section of philosophy in which the problems of the nature of knowledge and its capabilities, the relationship of knowledge to reality are studied, the conditions for the reliability and truth of knowledge are identified;
- axiology- the doctrine of the nature and structure of values, their place in reality, the connection between values;
- praxeology- the doctrine of the practical relationship between man and the world, the activity of our spirit, goal-setting and human effectiveness;
- anthropology- philosophical doctrine about man;
- social philosophy - a section of philosophy that describes the specific features of society, its dynamics and prospects, the logic of social processes, the meaning and purpose of human history.
These sections are not reducible to each other, but are closely related to each other.
