Philosophy: The educational-methodical manual 9786010440258

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Al-Farabi Kazakh National university

Saniya Edelbay Aliya Nigmetova Kurmanay Nauanova

PHILOSOPHY The educational-methodical manual

Almaty “Kazakh University” 2019

UDC 1/14 (075) LBC 87я73

E 21 Recommended for publication by the Academic Council of the Faculty of Philosophy and Political Science of al-Farabi Kazakh National University (Protocol №3 dated 06 .02.2019)

Reviewer: Doctor of Philosophy, Professor Z.N. Ismagambetova Doctor of Philosophy, Professor A.G. Karabaeva Doctor of Philosophy Sh.Sh. Aliyev

E 21

Edelbay S. Philosophy: The educational-methodical manual / S. Edelbay, A. Nigmetova, K. Nauanova. – Almaty: 2019. – 150 p. ISBN 978-601-04-4025-8 The educational-methodical manual was developed on the basis of the standard curriculum on the course of “Philosophy” approved by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan according to the curriculum in compliance with the requirements of the State Educational Establishment. The manual is intended for students, teachers and anyone who is interested in philosophy.

UDC 1/14 (075) LBC 87я73 ISBN 978-601-04-4025-8

© Edelbay S., Nigmetova A., Nauanova K., 2019 © Al-Farabi KazNU, 2019

Introduction

Philosophy is quite unlike any other field. It is unique both in its methods and in the nature and breadth of its subject matter. Philosophy pursues questions in every dimension of human life, and its techniques are applicable to problems in any field of study or endeavour. No brief definition expresses the richness and variety of philosophy. It may be described in many ways. It is a reasoned pursuit of fundamental truths, a quest for understanding, a study of principles of conduct. It seeks to establish standards of evidence, to provide rational methods of resolving conflicts, and to create techniques for evaluating ideas and arguments. Philosophy develops the capacity to see the world from the perspective of other individuals and other cultures; it enhances one’s ability to perceive the relationships among the various fields of study; and it deepens one’s sense of the meaning and variety of human experience. This short description of philosophy could be greatly expanded, but let us instead illustrate some of the points. As the systematic study of ideas and issues, philosophy may examine concepts and views drawn from science, art, religion, politics, or any other realm. Philosophical appraisal of ideas and issues takes many forms, but philosophical studies often focus on the meaning of an idea and on its basis, coherence, and relations to other ideas. Consider, for instance, democracy. What is it? What justifies it as a system of government? Can a democracy allow people to vote away their own rights? And how is it related to political liberty? Consider human knowledge. What is its nature and extent? Must we always have evidence in order to know? What can we know about the thoughts and feelings of others or about the future? What kind of knowledge, if any, is fundamental? Similar kinds of questions arise concerning art, morality, religion, science, and each of the major areas of human activity. Philosophy explores all of them. It views them both microscopically and from the wide perspective of the larger concerns of human existence. 3

Introduction

The History of Philosophy is the exposition of philosophical opinions and of systems and schools of philosophy. It includes the study of the lives of philosophers, the inquiry into the mutual connection of schools and systems of thought, and the attempt to trace the course of philosophical progress or retrogression. The nature and scope of philosophy furnish reasons for the study of its history. Philosophy does not confine its investigation to one or to several departments of knowledge; it is concerned with the ultimate principles and laws of all things. Every science aims to find the causes of phenomena; philosophy seeks to discover ultimate causes, thus carrying to a higher level the unifying process begun in the lower sciences. The vastness of the field of inquiry, the difficulty of synthesizing the results of scientific investigation, and the constantly increasing complexity of these results necessitated the gradual development of philosophy. To each generation and to each individual the problems of philosophy are presented as something new, and the influences, personal, racial, climatic, social, and religious, which are reflected on the generation or on the individual must be studied so that the meaning and value of each doctrine and system could be understood and appreciated. Such influences are more than a matter of mere erudition; they have their place for the solution of every important question in philosophy; as Coleridge says, «the very fact that any doctrine has been believed by thoughtful men is part of the problem to be solved, is one of the phenomena to be accounted for». Moreover, philosophical doctrines, while they are to be regarded primarily as contributions to truth, are also to be studied as vital forces which have determined to a large extent the literary, artistic, political, and industrial life of the world. Today, more than ever, it is clearly understood that without knowledge of these forces it is impossible to comprehend the inner movements of thought which alone explain the outer actions of men and nations. The dangers to be avoided in the study of the history of philosophy are Eclecticism, which teaches that all systems are equally true, and Scepticism, which teaches that all systems are equally false. A careful study of the course of philosophical speculation will result in the conviction that, while no single school can lay claim to the entire truth, certain schools of thought have adopted that world-concept which can be most consistently applied to every department of knowledge. False systems of phi4

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losophy may stumble on many important truths, but a right concept of the ultimate meaning of reality and a correct notion of philosophic method are the essentials for which we must look in every system; these constitute a legitimate standard of valuation studied by the students dealing with the history of philosophy who may judge each successive contribution to philosophical science. The method to be followed in this study is the empirical or aposteriori method, which is used in all historical research. The speculative, or apriori method consists in laying down a principle, such as the Hegelian principle that the succession of schools and systems corresponds to the succession of logical categories, and deducing from such a principle the actual succession of schools and systems. But, apart from the danger of misstating facts for the sake of methodic symmetry, such a procedure must be judged to be philosophically unsound; for systems of philosophy, like facts of general history are contingent events. There are, indeed, laws of historical development; but such laws are to be established subsequently, not interiorly, to the study of the facts of history. The historian of philosophy, therefore, has for his task: (1) To study the lives and doctrines of philosophers and systems and schools of philosophy in their historical relation. This recitative or narrative portion of the historian’s task includes the critical examination of sources. (2) To trace the genetic connection between systems, schools, and doctrines and to estimate the value of each successive contribution to philosophy. The philosophical portion of the historian’s task is by far the most important of his duties.  The sources of the history of philosophy are: (1) Primary sources, namely, the works of philosophers, complete or fragmentary. It is a part of the historian’s task to establish, whenever necessary, the authenticity and integrity of these works. (2) Secondary sources, that is, the narration or testimony of other persons concerning the lives, opinions, and doctrines of philosophers. In dealing with secondary sources the rules of historical criticism must be applied in order to determine the reliability of witnesses. The division of the history of philosophy will always be more or less arbitrary in matters of detail. This is owing to the continuity of historical development: the stream of human 5

Introduction

thought flows continuously from one generation to another; like all human institutions, systems and schools of philosophy never break entirely with the past; they arise and succeed one another without abrupt transition and merge into one another so imperceptibly that it is rarely possible to decide where one ends and another begins. The more general divisions, however, are determined by great historical events and by obvious national and geographical distinctions.

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Theme 1 Philosophy, its subject and function. Philosophy in the cultural and historical context 1. Object and subject of philosophy, its structure and features. 2. Main types of interpretation of the essence of philosophy. Fundamental question of philosophy and its solution. The variety of philosophical trends and systems. 3. Sense of philosophy and purpose in the world of culture.

The word «philosophy» comes from a Greek word which means «love of wisdom». The word «philio» means «love». The word «sophy» means «wisdom». The word «philosopher» was first used by the ancient Greek thinker Pythagoras (about 600 B.C.), who compared philosophers with spectators of ancient games: when Leon the tyrant of Philius asked him who he was, he said, «I am a philosopher» and he compared life with the Great Games, where some went to compete for the prize, and others went to observe and judge, similarly in life, some grow up with servile natures, greedy for fame and gain, but the philosopher seeks for the truth». From the time immemorial philosophy in the true sense has been understood as a desire for the highest knowledge and wisdom, as distinct from routine and other forms of applied knowledge, and also from religious or mythological forms of thinking. The thinkers of ancient times sought the understanding of the world that would replace the obsolete picture produced by myth and legend. Philosophical thought has traditionally been distinguished by its orientation on understanding the foundations of existence at the limits of our mental powers, the mechanisms of human cognitive activity, the essence not only of the phenomena of nature but also of social life, man and culture. 7

Theme 1. Philosophy, its subject and function. Philosophy in the cultural and historical context

Philosophy is a science about the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality and existence. From the ancient times (in Europe from VII-VI c. BC) philosophy as the theory about existence and conditions of its cognition becomes one of the professional activities and comprehensive system of knowledge. Philosophers search for answers to «eternal» questions. What do I live for? What shall I do? What can I hope to? Is there a fate? Am I free in my deeds and decisions? What will happen to my ‘I’ after my physical death? These are the questions of philosophy. Philosophy is the study of humans and the world by thinking and asking questions. It is a science and an art. Philosophy tries to answer important questions by coming up with answers about real things and asking «why? » Sometimes, philosophy tries to answer the same questions as religion and science. Not all philosophers give the same answers to the questions. Some people think there are no right answers in philosophy, only better answers and worse answers. In the work «Critique of Pure Reason», Immanuel Kant asked the following questions: 1. What do I know? 2. What should I do? 3. What can I hope for? 4. What is man? The answers to these questions are given by different concepts and theories or categories of philosophy. Philosophy is a theoretical form of outlook. Outlook is a way of spiritually-practical person’s attitude towards world (and himself). It can be represented in the form of such scheme «man ↔ world», which shows mutual influence and dependence. There are three main components of philosophy: ontology, epistemology, methodology. Ontology is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of existence. The basic ontological problem is whether this world is created by the God or the world exists by itself according to its internal laws. Hence there are two main philosophical schools: materialism and idealism. Materialism is the theory, which claims, that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications, the belief that consciousness is a property of material substance. According to materialism this world exists by itself, it is eternal, infinite in space and time. What is man? Subjective idealism is the system of thought, in which the objects of knowledge are held to be in some way dependent on the activity of mind. Material8

Philosophy

ism as well as idealism can be regarded as monism – a theory that denies the existence of distinction or duality in a particular sphere, such as that between matter and mind, or God and the world, the doctrine that only one supreme being exists. In the history of philosophy there were also attempts to conciliate these two conflicting theories. The doctrine which admits two independent substance (idea and matter) as equivalent (equal in rights) refers to dualism. Dualists consider that this material world and world of ideas exists in parallel, absolutely independently from each other. Other component of philosophy is epistemology (from Greek «episteme» = «knowledge» and «logos» = «explanation») – the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, scope and the distinction between justified belief and opinion. The epistemology touches the following questions. 1. What is knowledge? 2. How can we know anything? 3. What is science? 4. What is the truth? There are two main epistemological directions: rationalism and sensualism. Rationalism is the theory that reason rather than experience is the foundation of certainty in knowledge. Sensualism is the belief that cognition should be based on senses rather than reason and logic. There are also agnostics, who believe that total cognition of the universe is impossible. The third component of philosophy is methodology. There are three forms of methodology as the theory of development: relativism, metaphysics and dialectics. Relativism is the belief that the truth is not always the same but varies according to circumstances. So, development is a continuous and irrational stream of events, way from nowhere to nowhere. Chaos is the only one absolute law in this world. According to metaphysics, development is a cyclic repetition of events. Dialectics consider that development looks like spiral motion. Each new coil of history repeats the previous one, but introduces new things and changes. Philosophy is the queen of sciences and includes a lot of disciplines: philosophical anthropology, axiology, ethics, aesthetics, logic, philosophy of religion, social philosophy, philosophy of history, philosophy of science, philosophy of technique, philosophy of culture etc. Value theory or axiology is the study of 9

Theme 1. Philosophy, its subject and function. Philosophy in the cultural and historical context

value. Ethics is concerned with a particular sort of value, namely, with moral value. This value applies to personal actions, decisions, and relations. Ethics studies the nature of the good and how humans should live based on moral value. Aesthetics is also the study of a particular sort of value, namely, the values which are the basis of art and our understanding of beauty. It should be noted that ethics, which studies moral value, and aesthetics, which studies aesthetic values, are properly sub-fields of value theory, which raises the question of value. Logic is a tool which philosophers use for making their decision. Aristotle was the first to formulate in a systematic way the principles of right thinking, he made them cognitive tools and called them «Organon», which in Greek means «instrument» or «tool». Logic studies arguments and the connection between ideas. So, philosophy is the form of accumulation and sorting of world knowledge (world outlook function) which discovers and proves most general forms of the organization of knowledge process (methodological function). Philosophical teachings as well as religion ones have one and the same aim: to take a man away from everyday life, to carry him to higher ideals, to open him the way of the most perfect values. The question of the meaning of life each person must solve himself. Answer the questions: 1. Where, why and how does the philosophy originate? 2. What does this science investigate? 3. What is outlook, its historical forms and structures? 4. What are the differences and intersection between philosophy, religion, mythology and science? 5. What are the functions, place and role of philosophy in culture?

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Theme 2 The phenomenon of philosophy in Eastern culture 1. Origin of philosophical thought. Eastern and western types of cultural development. 2. Status of religion in ancient Indian culture and its influence on the formation and development of philosophy. The orthodox schools search for ways to a man deliverance from the eternal cycle of reincarnation. 3. Buddhism as a philosophical and ethical teaching and its influence on the mentality of the Eastern man. 3. Social – ethical and practical orientation of the ancient Chinese philosophy. Confucianism. 4. Philosophy of Daoism and its picture of the universe.

Philosophy originated in controversy with religious – mythological ideas which existed many centuries ago. Mythological thinking was based on reflection of nature and man in the light of the tribal relations. On the contrary, philosophy introduces the system of knowledge that is based on reason. It appeals not to instructing and retelling, but to thinking, logical reasoning and critical comprehension of the conventional ideas. Philosophy originated in the following three centers of the ancient civilization: in ancient Greece, India and China, it happened almost simultaneously in the middle of the 1st millennium BC. Breaking its ties with mythology, philosophy as the «self-consciousness of culture» doesn’t lose its deep connection with the cultural tradition. Thus, up till nowadays, philosophy is a manifestation of either eastern or western type of culture. The first aspect discloses specific features of attitude to nature. Development of the west civilization implies active transformation and mastering nature by the man. Achievements in techniques, technologies and science are its typical features. On the contrary, the eastern cultural tradition emphasized careful and religious attitude to nature and everything alive. It is ori11

Theme 2. The phenomenon of philosophy in Eastern culture

ented not to the change of the external conditions of the human existence but to the development of the very nature of the man – to the moral– spiritual improvement of a personality, its physical and psychological abilities and at harmony and integrity of its inner world. The second distinctive feature reflects peculiarities of the social life and the system of the social values. On the one hand, the western cultural tradition stands for the idea of historical progress, development of society in the line of ascent. In this connection, the values of democracy, legal state, freedom and sovereignty of an individual are its main achievements. On the other hand, it is not typical for the societies of the eastern cultural tradition to have an intention of progress. On the contrary, they try to preserve their culture as it is. What is more, the conservative character of the social relations is connected with orientation towards the values of a community and limitation of the individual freedom in the name of the interests of society. The third aspect discloses spiritual – psychological features of the man of this or that type of culture. A man of the western type is characterized by the rational – logical style of thinking, definiteness, consecutiveness, cold mind, sober pragmatism and practicalism. The determining principle of European thinking is «divide and rule» that originated in the time of the Roman Empire. The division of the world into the natural and human ones is caused by the intention to master and rule nature. Consequently, such notions as good and evil, science and religion, emotions and thoughts are clearly differentiated as well. It is typical for the eastern culture to realize the relative character of these opposites. A deep feeling of unity and indivisibility of everything substitute the western cult of individuality. For the people of the East, the development of science and knowledge was not the end in itself, for they never believed in power of science to make the man happier. The eastern thinking is rather intuitive and mystical than a rational one. It is filled with feelings, emotions, and elements of the religious and artistic world – perception. Unlike the West, the development of which is grounded on the scientific knowledge and science, the East stands for eternal truths and mankind spirituality. Philosophy, as the reflection of culture, bears some distinctive features of a definite cultural tradition. Thus, the western philosophy is oriented mostly at the ideal of the rational knowledge, that 12

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makes it stand close to scientific cognition. The western philosophical text is represented in the form of a treatise, which has clear, logical and consequent structure and presentation system. The western philosophy is characterized by well-developed logic, the notional apparatus, the theory of cognition and methodology. The eastern philosophical tradition is based on the outlook-oriented knowledge, on such forms of spiritual culture as religion, art and morality. The eastern philosophical texts are represented by parables, aphorisms, and instructions. The humanistic, moral – ethic and religious problems field dominates. Hindu society was traditionally based on a caste system. There were four varnas (classes): 1. Brahmins are government administrators and priests. They are representatives of the highest caste. Brahmins were unique in their own right to learn Vedas. Therefore, they were named the guru or spiritual teacher. 2. Kshatriya is a military caste. The traditional function of the Kshatriyas is to protect society by fighting in wartime and governing in peacetime. 3. Vaishya is a member of the third caste, comprising merchants and farmers. 4. Shudra is a member of the worker caste, the lowest of the four varnas. Their only function in a society is a submission to other classes. They are considered the native population of India. The first three castes are alien tribes who came to India from the Iranian plateau and gained homeland here. The idea of the caste division of society is one of those that are inseparable from the Indian outlook. Indian philosophy is considered to be one of the foremost Eastern traditions of abstract inquiry. Classical Indian philosophy extends from 100 BC to 1800 AD. The first collection of Indian philosophy was the Vedas. The Vedas are «sacred knowledge». They are believed to be one of the oldest books ever made by mankind. The Vedas were passed down orally from one generation to the next, perhaps over thousands of years. They were written down around 1,500 BC in an earlier Indian language called Sanskrit. The Vedas contain stories about the Hindu gods, instructions for rituals, hymns, poetry, and prayers. The Vedas consists of four Samhitas: 13

Theme 2. The phenomenon of philosophy in Eastern culture

1. The Rigveda is the first of the four Vedas. Rigveda means a Veda of praise. This Veda has several verses (hymns). These hymns praise a number of gods. This Veda is also the oldest Hindu holy book. 2. The Samaveda is the second Veda of the four Vedas. Samaveda means the Veda of sacred songs. This Veda also has many hymns. They were sung by the Hindu priests and other Hindus during religious activities. 3. The Yajurveda is the third of the four Vedas. Yajurveda means the Veda of the Yajus. Yajus were mantras sung during religious activities. 4. The Atharvaveda is the fourth of the four Vedas. Atharvaveda means the Veda of knowledge. The Atharvaveda holds the key for the massive Vedic knowledge on the sciences like medicine, sorcery and has many facts that the present generation is still trying to crack. Vedas include knowledge concerning the nature of ultimate reality and the proper human ways of relating thereto. Hindus belief in reincarnation involves the worship of one or more gods of a large pantheon of gods and goddesses, including Shiva and Vishnu (incarnate as Rama and Krishna), Kali, Durga, Parvati and Ganesh. So Brahma is the creator god, who has to do with objective reality, who forms a triad with Vishnu and Shiva. Vishnu was originally a minor Vedic god, now regarded by his worshippers as the supreme deity and savior, by others – as the preserver of the cosmos. Vishnu is considered by Hindus to have had nine earthly incarnations or avatars, including Rama, Krishna and the historical Buddha; the tenth avatar will herald the end of the world. Shiva is worshiped in many aspects: as a destroyer, ascetic, lord of the cosmic dance and lord of beasts. The basis of most of the Indian teachings is that ultimate reality is one-eternal and impersonal Absolute, and that the variety of apprehensions, which comes to us through the senses is illusory and is called Maya (from Sanskrit – illusion). According to Hinduism this material world is only illusion (Maya). Man must rid himself of his illusion and ignorance if he is to become aware of and partake of reality (brahma). He must come to know that his own individualized self is only a manifestation of the one self (atman), and he must then come to know that the one self is reality. Real existence refers to Atman or unchanging 14

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individual self, a person’s soul. Atman is a Sanskrit word, literally translated as «essence, breath». The understanding of this infinite self-essence is the way to stop transmigrations of the soul (samsara) and achieve the transcendent state of blessedness and spiritual unity with Brahma (moksha). This «knowing» is not a mere intellectual knowledge, but an enlightenment of one’s whole being. If one fails to find this «release» (moksha), one is bound by the law of punishment and reward (karma) to return to this world in a further incarnation, still tied to the wheel of rebirths (samsara). Ancient Indian philosophy also includes the mystical treatises known as Upanishads (700 – 100 BC), early Buddhist writings (300 BC – 500 AD) and the Sanskrit poem Bhagavad – Gita (Song of God, about 200 BC). Reincarnation, the view that after death human beings live again in other forms, was held by Plato and is a tenet in Hinduism and Buddhism. In the Hindu Scripture Bhagavad – Gita (500 BC), the Supreme God, Lord Krishna, comforts the unenlightened Arjuna, who is engaged in warfare with his evil cousins, by telling him that there is no reason to grieve over the death of someone we love, for the «eternal in man cannot die. «We have all been for all time: I, and thou, and that king of men. And we shall be for all time, we all for ever and ever». He continues that for the soul there is neither birth nor death at any time. It has not come into being, does not come into being and will not come into being. A person’s body is different in every reincarnation, but the same mind inhabits each body: «As a man leaves an old garment and puts on the one that is new, the Spirit leaves his mortal body and then puts on one that is new». Gita says that the goal of existence is to end the cycle of rebirths, but the Advaitian (monist) interpretation holds that the goal is to be absorbed into God (or Nirvana), whereas the Vaisnavan (dualist, worshiping Vishnu) interpretation holds that the person retains his spiritual or personal identity in a relationship with God. Reincarnation is typically linked with karma, one more essential constituent element of the Indian philosophy. Hinduism considers karma to be the sum total of the acts done in one stage of person’s existence, which determines his destiny in the next stage. The main schools of Indian philosophy were formalized chiefly between 1000 BCE to the early centuries of the Common Era. The schools of Indian philosophical thought are clas15

Theme 2. The phenomenon of philosophy in Eastern culture

sified as either orthodox and heterodox or āstika and nāstika – depending on how they respond to the questions: whether it believes the Vedas are a valid source of knowledge; whether the school believes in the premises of Brahman and Atman; and whether the school believes in afterlife. Philosophical teachings following or conforming to the Vedas were named orthodox (astika). Orthodox schools that remained philosophies of «Veda» are treated as right – such as Vedanta, Sankhya, Nyaya, Mimamsa, Ioga and Vaisheshika. Those who believe in life after leaving the world are considered as adherents of these currents. Indian philosophies share many concepts such as dharma, karma, samsara, reincarnation, meditation, with almost all of them focusing on the ultimate goal of liberation of the individual through diverse range of spiritual practices (moksha, nirvana). They differ in their assumptions about the nature of existence as well as the specifics of the path to the ultimate liberation Their ancient doctrines span the diverse range of philosophies found in other ancient cultures. The philosophical sense of the Vedanta (or end of the Veda) does not present anything, except god, all the rest is only illusion and – preaches three realities of which the world consists – this is god, soul and matter. The word vedanta means the end of the Veda. Originally this name belonged to the treatises of the philosophical and mystical contents which were located at the end of the Veda. The most part of these theosophic treatises was designated also as the secret doctrine – upanishad. The word «Upanishad» means either «something that approaches the person to god», or «that approaches the person to the teacher». Upanishada were considered as internal, secret values (rakhasye) of the Veda and therefore their manuals were called sometimes vedopanishady – a secret of the Veda. Vaisheshika bases its principles on the knowledge that all people around the person, as well as the person himself, consist of indivisible particles which have eternal existence and cope the world soul, i.e. god. It was started by Kanada Kashyapa. Being in general materialistic according to the contents, this direction in the Indian philosophy recognizes that there are continuous changes, eminences and declines having the nature of eternal recurrence. But there is also something steady – it is an atom (Ana). Atoms are eternal, are created by nobody, indestructible. All animated and inanimate objects are formed of connections of atoms. 16

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Sankhya is the most ancient of philosophical systems in Hinduism, its views are met in all works of ancient India. Samkhya is the rationalism school with dualism and atheistic themes. This school teaches recognition of material and spiritual beginnings. Material values are in continuous development, the spiritual beginning is eternal. Material leaves together with death of the person, the spiritual beginning continues life. The word Sankhya comes from the word dignity, or truth. Khya means understanding or knowledge. Sankhya investigates mainly a structure of various objects of a material world and recognizes primary reality only of two types: spirit and matter (a purusha and prakrit), and considers the nature as the huge, constantly changing complex of elements. Purusha can be identified with consciousness, and prakrit – with a body. Kapila recognized that the world is material. The matter (prakrit) is a fundamental principle of everything real, it is ubiquitous, eternal and uniform. Nyaya is the school, which highest spiritual mentor is god Ishvara. In the center of Nyaya there are problems of the theory of knowledge and logic. It proceeds from the principles formulated in the Veda. The Nyaya considered the world, as the existence of infinite «I», embodied in deities: Brahma – god creator, Shiva – god destroyer and Vishnu – god – the keeper. The meaning of life of the person consists in overcoming by the person of his dependence on the world, his involvement into circulation of births and deaths, reached on the condition of knowledge of identity «I», one’s own soul (atman) and reality of life (brahman). The people who reached freedom lose desire, completely comprehend not only a body, but also, I smother (atman)) and «get into everything». «I» am inseparable from god and the subject from object. The person who comprehended all this knowledge and was able to apply it in practice of own life was considered wise. The Mimamsa is based on the principles of logic, a reasonable explanation, it recognizes spiritual and material existence. This doctrine developed the system of understanding directed on the most exact and deep understanding of sacred texts. The Veda are considered by supporters of this school not as creation of specific people, but as divine revelation, for this reason the possibility of any mistakes is excluded. The Mimamsa represents the dualistic doctrine. Representatives of this school believe that both the soul, and the body are real. 17

Theme 2. The phenomenon of philosophy in Eastern culture

Yoga is the most known direction of all schools. Yoga is the school similar to Samkhya but accepts personally defined theistic themes. It is based on the principles of impassivity, contemplation and detachment from the material to achieve a harmonious release from sufferings and reunite good luck, conduct meditations. Yoga loyally belongs to all existing schools and to their doctrines. Yoga in Sanskrit means participation, connection, order, deep reflection, contemplation. As considered, the author and the founder of this doctrine is Patandzhali. This doctrine was stated in the book «Yoga-Sutra». As well as in other philosophical and religious systems of Ancient India, the problem of yoga is the release of the person from suffering. Yoga is a doctrine and method of management of mentality and human physiology. The eight steps of yoga fall into three main g roups: 1. Moral discipline – against killing, lying, stealing, sexual impurity and possessiveness, but towards purity, contentment, austerity, study and God – centeredness. 2. Physical discipline – control over bodily posture, breathing and excitation of the senses. 3. Stages of meditation – concentration, contemplation and ecstasy (unity). Those schools which did not accept authority of sacred books were called unorthodox (nastika). The most known of them are Buddhism, Charvaka-Lokayata, Jainism. Jainism treats karma as a form of matter, which can contaminate a soul and postpone its attaining Nirvana. In general, it is the doctrine that whatsoever a man sows, whether in action or thought, the fruits will eventually be reaped by him – if not in this life, then in the next one. Thus, a person who led an evil existence might be reborn as a lower animal (e.g., a reptile or insect). One of the most significant unorthodox teachings of Ancient India was Buddhism. This philosophy was founded by Siddhartha Gautama (c. 563–483 BC). «Buddha» was a pseudonym which meant «enlightened», «pure in spirit». Buddhism has no god and gives a central role to the doctrine of karma as the sum of a person’s actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences. Buddhism is a religious and philosophical system springing from the life and teaching of Gautama Buddha (the Sanskrit word Buddha means awakened), who in the 6th century BC rejected certain 18

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features of his native Hinduism, particularly the caste system, animal sacrifice and undue asceticism. He founded an order of mendicant preachers, that included both sexes, and his first sermon to his disciples at Benares is the root of all later developments. In this first sermon he preached the Four Noble Truths: 1) Any existence is suffering. Life is suffering. This is more than a mere recognition of the presence of suffering in existence. It is a statement that, in its very nature, human existence is essentially painful from the moment of birth to the moment of death. Even death brings no relief, for Buddha accepted the Hindu idea of life as a cyclical one, with death leading to further rebirth. 2)������������������������������������������������������������ ����������������������������������������������������������� All suffering is caused by ignorance of the nature of reality and by craving, attachment, and grasping������������������� .������������������ ����������������� The cause of suffering is desire. 3) Suffering can be ended by overcoming ignorance and attachment. Freedom from suffering is nirvana. 4) This is attained through the ‘eightfold path’ of ethical conduct, wisdom and mental discipline (including meditation). The path to suppression of suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path, which consists of right views, right intentions, right speech, right actions, right livelihood, right efforts, rightmindedness, and right contemplation. This ������������������������ «eightfold path»�������� is usually divided into three categories that form the cornerstone of Buddhist faith: morality, wisdom, and samadhi, or concentration. The eight steps are not fully consecutive stages, but fall into three main groups: a) Right understanding (of Buddha’s basic teaching) and right aspirations (toward benevolence and renunciation). b) Right speech (i.e. no lying or abuse), right conduct (i.e. no killing, no stealing and no overindulgence) and right means of livelihood (i.e. nothing predisposing to the use or encouragement of wrong speech or conduct). c) Right striving (toward building up good and eradication of evil within oneself), right self-possession (involving selfknowledge and control of thought), and right contemplation (according to the traditional stages of meditation). At the core of the Buddha’s enlightenment was the realization of the Four Noble Truths. The final goal of Buddhism is nirvana. Nirvana is a transcendent, highest spiritual state in 19

Theme 2. The phenomenon of philosophy in Eastern culture

which there is neither suffering, desire, nor sense of self and the subject is released from the effects of karma. Philosophy of ancient China, as that of ancient India, was tightly connected with the mythological world – perception of the past, which is preserved in the ancient Chinese tutorial books. They disclose ideas about the world and man, and contain the first attempts of the philosophical comprehension of their interrelation. Three background principles that are the initial ones for the whole Chinese culture, and are recognized by all philosophical schools of the ancient China are «Yin» – a symbol of the shadow or the passive, feminine principle of life and «Yang» – the symbol of the sun or the active, masculine principle of life; «Dao (Tao)» – that means the way or the universal force harmonizing nature. The world, according to the Chinese philosophical conception, is perceived as eternal fight of two opposite forces, which do not negate but complete each other. One force potentially includes the other one and on a higher level of its development can be transformed into the opposite one. These forces are combined to create a perfect harmonious whole – the decline of one is counterbalanced by the rise of the other. Interdependence and interconnection of Yin and Yang is called Dao, which is the only universal law and spiritual basis of all things. To follow the Dao or to attain harmony with the world means to find the perfect equilibrium between these two extremes, which are most commonly interpreted as intuition versus rationality. The following schools represent the ancient China philosophy: «Yin –Yang», «Moism», «Legalism», «School of Names», «Confucianism», and «Daoism», the most important of which are the last two ones. Confucianism and Daoism reflect two opposite poles of the Chinese world-perception. Nevertheless, these two traditions are closely connected with each other. On the one hand, Confucianism, which became the official religion and ideology of China, dominated in the sphere of the socialfamily relations. The first prominent philosopher who lived in China was Lao Tzu, about 600 BC. Lao Tzu founded the philosophy of Taoism. The school derives its name from the word «Tao» («Dao») which literally means the «way» or the «path». There are two main meanings of the Tao: 1) the source and reason of all that exist; 2) the universal law governing the world. The meaning of 20

Philosophy

Tao Lao Tzu described in his work «Tao –Te ching» («The Book of the Way and Its Power») (the word «Te» means incarnation of Tao in material objects). Dao is the main notion of Daoism that gives answers to all the questions about the origin of the world and the way it exists. It is the initial cause and the only law of the universe to which nature, society and man are subordinated. Dao is the process of reality itself, the way things come together, while still transforming. It reflects the deep-seated Chinese belief that change is the most basic character of things. Lao Tzu also thought that everything alive in the universe (plants, animals, people) shared in a universal life-force. There were two sides to the life-force, which were called yin and yang. This picture is often used to show how yin and yang are intertwined with each other: yin (the dark side) is the side of women, the moon, things that are still like ponds, and is completion and death. Yang (the light side) is the side of men, the sun, things that move like rivers, and is creation and birth. While the yang energy rises to from heaven, yin solidifies to become earth. All people have some yin and some yang in them, and Taoism says that it is important to keep them balanced. So, these two principles are mutually complementary. Taoism emphasizes inner contemplation and mystical union with nature; wisdom, learning and purposive action should be abandoned in favour of simplicity and idea of «wu – wei» («non – action»), «doing by not doing» or letting things take their natural course). Lao Tzu believed that the way to happiness for people was to learn to «go with the flow». Daoism is not a philosophy of «doing nothing». «Wu wei» means something like «act naturally», «effortless action», or «non-willful action». Confucianism originated in the 6th century BC. It was founded by Confucius (551 – 479 BC), who was born in the small state of Lu on the Shandong peninsula in northeastern China. His book The Analects (Chinese: Lunyu) is the basic literary source of this philosophic system. Confucianism is the ethical – political teaching, where the problems of the art of management and upbringing in the spirit of respect to predecessors, state and other people are considered. Confucianism (as opposed to legalism) stresses the importance of education for moral development of the individual so that the state can be governed by moral virtue rather than by the use of coercive laws. 21

Theme 2. The phenomenon of philosophy in Eastern culture

The ethics of Confucius is based on differentiation of two social types of people and two styles of behavior in society. These are the «junzi» (literally – «lord’s son», «gentleman» or «profound person») and the «xiaoren» («small person»): «The profound person understands what is moral. The small person understands what is profitable» Confucius taught that each human being must cultivate such personal virtues as honesty, love, and filial piety through the study of the models provided in the ancient literature. This would bring harmony to the graded hierarchy of the family, society, and state. The most important individuals were the ruler and his advisers, because their standards of virtuous conduct would set an example for the realm. Answer the questions: 1. Why was Siddhartha Gautama called Buddha? 2. What are the essential features of the doctrine of Buddhism? 3. Name the «Four Noble Truths» you can understand – the so called «Noble Eightfold Path». 4. What have you learned about Confucius’ «Golden rule»? 5. How can you interpret the words «jen» (or ren) «chung» and «chu»? 6. How do you understand Confucius’ idea that names should be correctly applied? 7. What does the notion of non–action (wu–wei) mean according to Lao Tzu?

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Theme 3 Philosophy in the ancient culture 1. Genesis of ancient Greek philosophy, the stages of its development, problems and features. Ancient Greek natural philosophy: issues, concepts, principles. 2. The role of Sophists and Socrates in the further development of Greek philosophy. 3. Plato’s and Aristotle’s philosophy as the search for priorities of Mind.

Ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome were based on slave production mode. Mild climate, a warm sea, abundance of fresh water and adoption of many achievements of the ancient Eastern civilizations contributed to the development of seaborne trade, fishing, farming and crafts. The ancient Greeks were talented people with vivid imagination prone to competition. They have created wonderful myths, built white marble cities, invented democracy, theater, Olympic games, painting, murals, sculptures, etc. They laid the foundation of the European civilization and culture. One of the outstanding achievements was philosophy, that searched for answers to the questions of the already changed life. Sophist – this term, being positive, meaning «wise», sophisticated, expert knowledge, began to be used as a negative one, especially in the context of the controversy of Plato and Aristotle. Some, like Socrates, believed the sophists’ knowledge to be superficial and ineffective, for they lacked the unselfish purpose of seeking truth, instead of which the purpose of profit was indicated. Plato stressed a special danger of the sophists’ ideas from the moral point of view, in addition to their theoretical insolvency. For a long time, historians of philosophy unconditionally accepted the assessment of Plato and Aristotle, criticizing in general the movements of the Sophists, defining their ideas as a decline of the Greek thought. Only our time has made it possible to reassess the historical role of the Sophists on the basis of 23

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a systematic revision of all prejudices, and we can agree with V. Jager that «sophists are a phenomenon as necessary as Socrates and Plato, the latter without the first are not thinkers». In the V century BC. in many cities of Greece, the power of slave–owning democracy had replaced the political power of the ancient aristocracy and tyranny. The development of new elected institutions, the people’s assembly and the court, which played a big role in the struggle of the classes and parties of the free population, created by its domination, gave rise to the need to train people who possessed the art of judicial and political eloquence, who could convince by force words and prove those who could freely orient themselves in various questions and tasks of law, political life and diplomatic practice. Some of the most prominent people in this field – masters of eloquence, lawyers, diplomats – became teachers of political knowledge and rhetoric. However, the undivided nature of knowledge in the philosophical and especially scientific fields had the same importance for educated people of the Greek West in the Vth century BC. Appearance of philosophy with her questions about the beginnings of things, about the world and its origin, led to the fact that these new teachers usually not only taught the techniques of political and legal activity, but also connected this technique with general questions of philosophy and worldview. The first schools of eloquence arose in the cities of Sicily, where even Empedocles became famous as an exemplary orator and where Paul was already a true sophist. The philosophy of sophist Gorgias was developed in the Vth century BC. Democracy in Athens and especially the development of ties with other cities of the Greek world made Athens the arena for speeches and teaching of a number of sophists – Protagoras from Abder, Grippia of Elis, Prodikos of Keos and Gorgias of Leontin. Although Athenian statesmen of the most diverse beliefs belonged to the Sophists, in general their attitude was hostile. Sophist Protagoras of Abder was even convicted of exile for his questioning about the existence of the gods. As a philosophical trend, the sophists did not represent a completely homogeneous phenomenon. The most characteristic feature, common to all sophistry, is the affirmation of the relativity of all human concepts, ethical norms and evaluations. It is expressed by Protagoras and his famous position: «Man is the measure of all things». 24

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In the development of sophistry there were two groups: senior and younger. The oldest include Protagoras (481– 413), Gorgias, Grippias and Prodicus. The teachings of Protagoras were formed on the basis of the doctrines of Democritus, Heraclitus, Parmenides and Empedocles, reworked in the spirit of relativism. According to the characterization of Sextus Empiricus, Protagoras was a materialist and taught about the fluidity of matter and the relativity of all perceptions. Developing the position of atomists about the equal reality of existence and non – existence, Protagoras argued that every assertion can be contrasted with an assertion contradictory to it. The younger group of Sophists. In the teachings of the younger Sophists (4th century BC), of which very meager data have been preserved, their aesthetic and social ideas are particularly prominent. Thus, Lycophron and Alcidamant were against the division between social classes: Lycophron argued that nobility is fiction, and Alcidamant – that nature did not create slaves and that people were born free. Antiphon not only developed a materialistic explanation of the origins of nature and the origin of its bodies and elements, but also tried to criticize cultural phenomena, defending the advantages of nature over the institutions of culture and over art. Frazimah extended the doctrine of relativity to social and ethical norms and brought justice to the level useful for the strong, asserting that each authority establishes laws useful to itself: democracy – democratic laws, and tyranny – tyrannical, etc. In the philosophy of the Vth century BC there was a crisis: – At the same time, there were several physical theories explaining the world. They often contradicted each other. – In philosophy, a new topic «a man» was opened, which was no less interesting than the philosophy of nature – The social conditions also contributed to the change in the emphasis of philosophy. Sophists were paid teachers. For this reason, they had to give the knowledge which the students needed. At that time, it was heuristics – the art of argument. The purpose of heuristics is not a search for truth, but the desire to prove one’s rightness to the others. Sophists denied the absoluteness of good and evil. Everything is relative, good and evil. Features of the doctrine of the Sophists. Sophists were not a single school, but some provisions were common for all schools: 25

Theme 3. Philosophy in the ancient culture

– Subjectivity. «Man is the measure of all things existing in what they exist and do not exist in what they do not exist» (Protagoras). From this point of view, what is true for man is the truth. – Relativism. There is no absolute good for the Sophists. Good and Evil are relative, but in this case Good can easily be expressed as Evil and vice versa. It is not by chance that the sophist Gorgius undertook to praise or overthrow anything, regardless of its objective qualities. – Criticism of social laws. Sophists were among the first to criticize slavery as a social phenomenon, affirming the equality of people. They criticized the laws of the state on the grounds that they allow the minority to seize power over the majority, what is unfair. The Sophists offered to live by nature, affirming the right of the strong. – Cosmopolitanism. Traveling in search of students throughout Greece, the Sophists could choose which state is more attractive for them (note: in Greece each city was considered a separate state with its own laws and power), and therefore were not patriots of one city. They declared themselves cosmopolitans – citizens of the world. For their students training sophists used the method of formal logics. Gorgius formulated three paradoxes: – Nothing exists – If something exists, it cannot be known. The world knows when thinking and being are identical concepts, but there are false thoughts. Hence being and thinking are not identical. – If something is known, it cannot be communicated. Thought is expressed by signs, but the sign is not equal to thought. So, the sign does not convey the very thought. Socrates (469–399 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher. He was the son of a stonemason and a midwife. He received a comprehensive education. He took an active part in public life in Athens. In 399 BC he was charged with the claim «that he does not honor the gods who are honored by the city, but introduces new gods, and is guilty of moral corrupting the youth». He was sentenced to death and drank poison – hemlock. Socrates is characterized by a diverse and intensive philosophical activity, expressed mainly in the presentation of his teachings in the form of a conversation. Therefore, the views 26

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of Socrates can be judged only by three sources: Aristophanes, Xenophon and Plato. Aristophanes in the «Clouds» drew the ironic image of Socrates, having described him in the form of a sophist, an astrologer and a «physicist», the owner of the «thinker». Xenophon in «Memoirs of Socrates» paints Socrates as a virtuous teacher of virtue which is completely loyal to the state. Xenophon painted a depreciated image of Socrates as a deep thinker, on whose behalf Plato’s own thoughts were presented. Socrates is characterized by the fact that he, speaking against the Sophists, at the same time in his work and views expressed those features of philosophical activity which were specific to the Sophists. Socrates did not recognize the problems characterizing philosophers of those times: concerning the nature, its origin, the universe, etc. According to Socrates, philosophy should not be concerned with the consideration of nature, but with the man, with his moral qualities and the essence of knowledge. Ethical issues are the main thing that philosophy should deal with, and this was the main subject of Socrates’ conversations. For Socrates, knowledge and morality are inseparable. «A man who has known the good and the bad, will never act badly, and the mind is strong enough to help a person». Through the definition of concepts, according to Socrates, «people become highly moral, capable of power and skillful in dialectics». Thus, in the ethics of Socrates, a rationalist line is clearly revealed: virtue is knowledge, bad is ignorance. The main virtues for Socrates are restraint, courage, justice. Like for the other Sophists, the main theme for Socrates is the man. In contrast to the Sophists, Socrates defended the absoluteness of good and evil. Evil does not have an anthological status. Evil is the absence of good. Opinion is a subjective attitude to objective truth. We can recognize or not recognize the truth, but it exists independently of us. True knowledge is knowledge of what is good and evil. Knowledge = virtue. A knowledgeable person does not do evil. Socrates is called the father of dialectics. Dialectics is understood as the conduct of a conversation in the form of questions and answers. In fact, this method was known even before Socrates (Zenon, Sophists). Socrates introduced two new approaches in this method: – Irony – Maieutics 27

Theme 3. Philosophy in the ancient culture

Starting a conversation with another visiting sage, Socrates deliberately denoted his incompetence in the subject of the conversation offering him to teach him wisdom, thereby disposing himself of the sage. During the conversation, Socrates began to ask questions. It often turned out that the wise man began to contradict himself. In addition, the very task of asking involves the knowledge of the topic. Many people were annoyed by such a habit, but Socrates did not want to offend anyone, Socrates just introduced one of the definitions of truth (truth must not contradict itself). As soon as a logical contradiction is revealed, the irony receded into the background and maieutics entered its own rights (midwifery, childbirth acceptance). The sage and Socrates «gave birth» to a new truth, already logically not contradictory. And the truth is born by the sage himself, Socrates is only present. It is also important for us that Socrates began to philosophize, using abstract concepts, which later became a tradition of science. Sophists, or wise men, Socrates’s contemporaries were professional rhetoricians, philosophers, who sought to know the basics of the universe and expound the knowledge that was discovered in the vast teachings. The main theme of these exercises was the study of the root causes of being, its constituent parts and driving principles. A sign of the untruth in this kind of philosophy, Socrates considered the fundamental, insoluble contradiction of its individual teachings. «Speaking of the absolute and eternal ... philosophers not only do not converge with one another, but «like mad ones» completely contradict each other with regard to the same thing – the nature of things». Seeing these vain attempts, Socrates concluded about the fundamental unknown ability of absolute truths. But for an external human this knowledge is closed: «if we knew the laws of nature, the secrets of the universe, we ourselves would be gods, for absolute knowledge is peculiar only to God, and not to people». The limited human mind is incapable of incorporating in itself all universal secrets, and this knowledge can only be given to it by revelation. That is why Socrates rebelled against the sterile sophistry of the Sophists. From the point of view of Socrates, the weight of philosophical thought must be transferred from inaccessible «deeds of the divine» to «human affairs», which depend on the free will of the man and are in his power. The fact that the virtuous forces of the Soul can be fully applied to 28

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the theoretical and practical knowledge of the meanings of such concepts as law, justice, state, piety and wisdom by the sophists and speakers is left aside. Socrates, on the contrary, tries to encourage his listeners to search for the true norms of human relations through self-testing and self-knowledge. According to Socrates, only that knowledge that can be applied in practice is true, and the only way to philosophically do it can be only personal piety. «Therefore, Socrates, reducing virtue to knowledge of the good, denied that this knowledge could be taught so that it could be taught for a known bribe, as the sophists did ». One of the main disagreements between Socrates and the Sophists was the question of the existence of objective truth. The Sophists were convinced of the absence of truth outside of the man and considered that every person had the right to accept for truth what is appropriate for a particular individual in a particular case, depending on personal inclinations, situations, benefits, etc. In the question of the truth of this or that situation is arbitrariness of a man, the «measures of all things». Thus, in the arguments of the Sophists «about the affairs of men», Socrates finds nothing but the putative imaginary wisdom. In his opinion, without the immutable true principles, the true norms of human activity – theoretical and practical, the rational and creative activity of the man and any positive development of personality are impossible. The task of each is to find general and objective theoretical and practical, logical and ethical norms. To this, Socrates was called, as a «gadfly to the horse» attached to the citizens of Athens, not giving full satisfaction to take over, destroying all imaginary knowledge and «obeying» the birth of truth. Moreover, such a process is possible only if specific efforts are applied by each individual person – finding universal truth applicable to each of us is placed in direct dependence on personal piety. «Aren’t you ashamed that you care about money ... about glory and honor, but not about reason, about truth and about your soul, that it should be as good as possible, you do not care and you do not think? » – Socrates turns to his fellow citizens. Instead of multiple-mindedness and absent-mindedness of human powers Socrates offers «one thing to the need» – caring for himself, for «the most expensive», for his soul. And in addition to asserting his own ignorance, Socrates entered the history with the preaching of self-test: «Know yourself». 29

Theme 3. Philosophy in the ancient culture

According to Socrates, virtue is knowledge, and vice is ignorance. In order to distinguish between what is good and what is evil, a person must have a conceptual, logical knowledge (knowledge of the essence of the object of thought). If you have a logical knowledge of the nature of virtue, then you will not commit evil deeds. If you do them, then you do not have this knowledge. The position of Socrates was called ethical intellectualism. One of its weaknesses is the simplification of the motivational sphere of human behavior, the underestimation of such strong psychological motives as feelings, passions, volitional aspirations or lack thereof, finally, instincts, ignorance of irrational motives. When assessing the views of the Sophists, we encounter considerable difficulties. Practically nothing has been preserved from their works and the study, the use of direct information is complicated by the fact that they did not seek to create a definite whole system of knowledge. When teaching, they did not attach much importance to the systematic acquisition of knowledge by students, their goal was to teach students to use the acquired knowledge in discussions and polemic. Therefore, they placed considerable emphasis on rhetoric. Plato was born in 428 or 427 BC, in the early years of the Peloponnesian War. He was a wealthy aristocrat, related to different people and events pertaining to the rule of «thirty tyrants». The name given to him at birth – Aristoklis. Nickname Plato (Broad) was given to him as a young man of a powerful physique. First, he studied with Cratylus, a follower of Heraclitus. Then, at the age of twenty years, he became a pupil of Socrates. It is significant that Socrates is a constant participant of almost all Plato’s works, written in the form of dialogues between historical and fictional characters sometimes. The 399 BC, he retired for a while to Megara, and then returned to Athens. A few years later, he embarked on a great journey, first to Egypt, then to Italy, Cyrene, Sicily, etc. Plato returned to Athens, and at the age of forty years, he founded his school, the Academy, where he taught until his death, had been functioning for 1.000 years. Only twice he left Athens for two new journeys to Sicily. According to ancient legends Plato died on his birthday in the year 347. Plato created 34 works that the philosopher wrote in the form of dialogues, the main role in the majority of which belongs to Socrates. Here are some of them: «Apology of Socrates», «Dia30

Philosophy

logues», «Cratylus», «The State», «Feast». A follower of the philosopher is considered his student – Aristotle, who was the tutor of Alexander the Great. He is the founder of scientific philosophy teaching the basic principles of life. Aristotle was born in 384 BC in the Macedonian region of northeastern Greece in the small city of Stagira (whence the moniker «the Stagirite»). Aristotle was sent to Athens at about seventeen to study in Plato’s Academy, at that time – a preeminent place of learning in the Greek world. Once in Athens, Aristotle remained associated with the Academy until Plato’s death in 347, at that time he left for Assos, in Asia Minor, on the northwest coast of the present-day Turkey. There he continued the philosophical activity he had begun in the Academy, but in all likelihood, he also began to expand his researches in marine biology. He remained at Assos for approximately three years, when, evidently upon the death of his host Hermeias, a friend and former Academic who had been the ruler of Assos, Aristotle moved to the nearby coastal island of Lesbos. There he continued his philosophical and empirical researches for two more years, working together with Theophrastus, a native of Lesbos who was also reported in antiquity to have been associated with Plato’s Academy. While being in Lesbos, Aristotle married Pythias, the niece of Hermeias, with whom he had a daughter, also named Pythias. Aristotle (384–322 BC) is considered the greatest philosopher of all time. Judged solely in terms of his philosophical influence, only Plato is his peer: Aristotle’s works shaped centuries of philosophy from Late Antiquity through the Renaissance, and even today continue to be studied with keen, non-antiquarian interest. A prodigious researcher and writer, Aristotle left a great number of works, perhaps numbering as many as two-hundred treatises, from which approximately thirty – one have survived. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato’s teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. Aristotle’s writings were the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality, aesthetics, logic, science, politics, and metaphysics. Aristotle’s views on the physical sciences profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, and their 31

Theme 3. Philosophy in the ancient culture

influence extended well into the Renaissance, although they were ultimately replaced by Newtonian physics. In the zoological sciences, some of his observations were confirmed to be accurate only in the XIXth century. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, which was incorporated in the late 19th century into modern formal logic. In Aristotle’s terminology, «natural philosophy» is a branch of philosophy examining the phenomena of the natural world, and includes fields which would be regarded today as physics, biology and other natural sciences. In modern times, the scope of philosophy has become limited to more generic or abstract inquiries, such as ethics and metaphysics, in which logic plays a major role. Today’s philosophy tends to exclude empirical study of the natural world by means of the scientific method. In contrast, Aristotle’s philosophical endeavors encompassed virtually all facts of intellectual inquiry. He believed the world was made up of individuals (substances) occurring in fixed natural kinds (species). Each individual has built – in patterns of development, which help it grow toward becoming a fully developed individual of its kind. Nature has built into each individual patterns for growth, purpose, and direction. To organize these patterns, Aristotle introduced the philosophic idea of causality. He believed that each thing or event has more than one «reason» that helps to explain what, why, and where it is. To Aristotle the four causes are: the material cause, what a thing is made of; the efficient cause, the source of motion; the formal cause, the species, kind, or type; and the final cause, the full development of an individual or the intended function of an invention. For example, a young lion is made up of tissue and organs (material cause) by its parents who generated it (efficient cause). The formal cause is its species, lion; and its final cause is its instinct and drive to become a mature lion. Aristotle believed that all things could be better understood when their causes were stated in specific terms. He used his causal pattern to organize all knowledge. Answer the questions: 1. Can we, according to Plato, obtain ultimate knowledge about the visible world? 2. What should we do to understand the real world? 32

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3. Why does Socrates think that we cannot acquire knowledge through learning? 4. What does Plato mean by «imitation» in his book «Republic»? 5. What was Aristotle’s understanding of the purpose of art? 6. What poetical works seemed particularly influential for Aristotle?

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Theme 4 The phenomenon of philosophy in medieval culture of Western Europe and the Arabian East 1. Social, cultural and spiritual context of the creation of the medieval Western and Arab-Islamic philosophy: general, differences. Theocentrism, creationism, providentially, a revelation as the basis of medieval philosophy. 2. Main stages and directions of medieval philosophy in Western Europe. Apologetics and patristics: Origen, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Augustine. 3. Philosophy of scholasticism, problems and trends. Thomas Aquinas as systematizer of medieval scholasticism. 4. Main directions of the Arab-Islamic philosophy of the Middle Ages

The Middle Ages is the period of dominance of religious outlook, that had left its reflection in theology. Philosophy becomes the handmaiden of theology. Its main function is the interpretation of the Scripture, the wording of the dogmas of the Church and the proof of the existence of God. The logic of this course led to the development of the concept of personality and a dispute about the priority of the unit or the whole. Medieval philosophy in its development passed three stages: 1.Apologetics (II c.) (apologiya – from Greek – defense) stated that higher knowledge is contained in the Christian Bible. One can understand, a man cannot know, he can only believe. «I believe because it is absurd» (Tertullian). The doctrine according to which God is a recognized center of the universe, and everything that exists depends on him. The formulation and clarification of the Christian worldview required a theoretical defense from its numerous enemies. 2. Patristics (III – IVth centuries) (pater – from Greek – father) is presented by St. Augustine. St. Augustine formed a 34

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new type of philosophy – theology. Theology (from the Greek Τheos – god.) Theology is a set of religious doctrines about the nature and actions of God, built in the form of evidences on the basis of idealistic texts perceived as divine revelation. The main goal of Patristics was defense and theoretical foundation of the Christian religion, the formation of the philosophical and theological – dogmatic standard of medieval thought. Creationism is the doctrine of the creation of the world by God out of nothing. Augustine believed in supernatural act of creation of the world from «nothing» – the ontological proof of the existence of God and his highest power. God embodies perfect human qualities: god is eternal, almighty, all – seeing, fairest, etc. Patristics is an early direction of medieval philosophy, it starts in the II century BC as a set of theological, philosophical, political and sociological doctrines of Christian thinkers of the I – XV centuries, the so – called. «Fathers of the Church». Patristic periods: 1. Early patristic period – Ist–IIIth centuries. (Apostolic Fathers, the apologists –Irenaeus, Tatian, Tertullian, and others.) 2. Late patristic is period the era of the ecumenical councils of the IVth–IXth centuries. (Aurelius Augustine, Pseudo – Dionysius Areopagite, John Damascene, and others.) 3. Middle Byzantine patristic period – IXth – XIIIth centuries. 4. Late Byzantine patristic period – XIIIth – the beginning of the XVth century. (Gregory Palamas, and others.). Scholastica (Vth – XVth centuries) (from Greek – School) is the education system, in which theology is subordinated to philosophy and the ways of proving the existence of God are characterized by dogmatic presuppositions connected with the rationalistic method. Thomas Aquinas believed that God’s own being is absolute. This being is incomprehensible to the human mind, and we cannot know what God is, but you can bring proof of the existence of God. Periods of scholasticism: 1. Early Xth – XIIth centuries. (Eriugena, Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Abelard, I. Rostselin, Bernard of Clairvaux); 2. The golden age of scholasticism falls on the XIIIth century. (Albertus Magnus, Bonaventure, Foma Aquinas); 3. Late scholasticism (V.Okkam et al.). 35

Theme 4. The phenomenon of philosophy in medieval culture of Western Europe and the Arabian East

Medieval philosophy is the philosophy of Western Europe of the period of about 400 to 1400, i.e. roughly the period between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance. Medieval philosophers are the historical successors of the philosophers of antiquity, but they are in fact only tenuously connected with them. Until about 1125, medieval thinkers had access to only a few texts of ancient Greek philosophy, where the most important portion was Aristotle’s logic. It was used for interpretation of the Scripture and philosophical proving of the Christian worldview. They gained some acquaintance with other Greek philosophical forms (particularly those of later Platonism) indirectly through the writings of Latin authors such as Augustine and Boethius. These Christian thinkers left an enduring legacy of Platonistic metaphysical and theological speculation. At the beginning of the XII century, the influx of the first Latin translations of the remaining works of Aristotle into Western Europe transformed medieval thought dramatically. The philosophical discussions and disputes (XIII – XIV centuries) of later medieval thinkers’ record the sustained efforts to understand the new Aristotelian material and assimilate it into a unified philosophical system. The most significant extra – philosophical influence on medieval philosophy throughout its thousand-year history was exerted by Christianity. Christian institutions sustained medieval intellectual life, and Christianity’s texts and ideas provide rich subject matter for philosophical reflection. Although most of the greatest thinkers of the period were highly trained theologians, their works were directed to solving philosophical issues and determined a genuinely philosophical approach to understanding the world. Even their discussion of specifically theological issues is typically philosophical, connected with philosophical ideas, rigorous argument and sophisticated logical and conceptual analysis. Philosophical theology is one of greatest achievements of medieval philosophy. The way in which medieval philosophy developed in dialogue with the texts of ancient philosophy and the early Christian tradition (including patristic philosophy) was displayed in its two distinctive pedagogical and literary forms, the textual commentary and the disputation. In explicit commentaries on the texts such as the works of Aristotle, Boethius’ theological treatises and Peter Lombard’s classic theological textbook, medieval thinkers struggled a new against the traditions that had 36

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come down to them. By contrast, the disputation – the form of discourse characteristic of the university environment of the later Middle Ages – focused not on particular texts but on specific philosophical or theological issues. It thereby allowed medieval philosophers to collect together relevant passages and arguments scattered throughout the authoritative literature and to adjudicate their competing claims in a systematic way. These dialectical forms of thought and interchange encouraged the development of powerful tools of interpretation, analysis and argument ideally suited to philosophical inquiry. It is a highly technical nature of these academic (or scholastic) modes of thought, however, that provoked the hostilities of the Renaissance humanists whose attacks brought the period of medieval philosophy to the end. Throughout the middle ages, four specific issues attracted the attention of its greatest philosophers from the Christian, Muslim and Jewish faith traditions. The first one was the relation between faith and reason, which involved the issue whether important philosophical and religious beliefs were grounded in the authority of faith, or in reason, or in some combination of the two. One of the most extreme proponents of the faith-only position was the early Church theologian Tertullian (155–230), whose views were encapsulated in two vivid statements. First, he asks the rhetorical question «What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem? » Athens here symbolized the reason and the tradition of Greek thinking; Jerusalem represents faith, and the doctrines of Christianity that were held by faith. So, what, then, does reason have to do with faith? His implied answer is «nothing at all! » His second famous statement is «I believe because it is absurd», which he wrote when discussing a Christian doctrine about the nature of Christ that went contrary to logic. His point is that reason obstructs our discovery of truth so much that we should expect truths of faith to run contrary to it. Thus, reason is not just a dead end in the pursuit of truth, but it is dangerously misleading. While Tertullian might be content with the faith – only position, other philosophers kept to the opinion that reason could be an important asset in demonstrating some religious truths that we also know through faith. The second issue of interest for medieval philosophers was the proof of the existence of God. Many medieval philosophers argued that, while we could certainly believe in God on the 37

Theme 4. The phenomenon of philosophy in medieval culture of Western Europe and the Arabian East

grounds of only faith, there were rational proofs that we could also give to show God’s existence. The main among these is a causal argument:  motion and change on earth trace back to the first cause, which is God. Several versions of this argument were put forward, some with a particularly high level of sophistication. The third one was the problem of religious language. Even if we know that God exists, can we say anything meaningful about him in the human language? We commonly describe God using words like «powerful» and «good», but all of these seem tainted by our limited human experience. Should we give up describing God altogether? Should we reinterpret our descriptions of God in special ways? The solutions that philosophers offered to this problem were both varied and original. The fourth issue was the problem of universals, namely whether concepts such as «a man» and «a tree» exist independently of human thought. The particular tree in front of me is green and large. But there are lots of other particular things that are also green or large, and thus in some sense share the more universal attribute of greenness or largeness. The question, then, is whether universals such as greenness and largeness exist independently of human thought in some external reality, or whether they are just products of the human mind. Medieval philosophers held every possible view on the subject, and in many ways the problem of universals represents medieval philosophy at its best. The first major medieval philosopher was Augustine (354 – 430), who emphasized attaining knowledge through divine illumination and achieving moral goodness by loving God. The details of his life are openly laid out in his autobiography, titled Confessions, which even today is considered a classic of world literature. He was born in the North African region of Tagaste to a devout Christian mother and pagan father. In the period of his youth, his middle – class parents’ greatest concern was affording a university education for him. Once having attained this difficult goal, learning rhetoric at Carthage, Augustine realized that a zeal for studying theology became his driving force. But first a period of trying out life’s alternatives came. To his mother’s great displeasure, he became entrenched in a new Persian religion called Manichaeism and then joined a group of Neoplatonists. In both cases he sought to understand how evil 38

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could exist in the world that was created by a good God. The Manichaean explanation was that the material world is inherently evil, but through special knowledge from God we can rise above it. Neoplatonists argued that evil results from the physical world being so far removed from God, and thus absent from his goodness. While teaching rhetoric in the city of Milan, he attended sermons of the Bishop of that region, that gradually led to his Christian conversion. Returning to North Africa, he was drafted into the priesthood by the locals for his popular preaching, and later became their bishop, devoting the rest of his life to writing and preaching in that region. Augustine died at 75, when invading barbarian armies were tearing down the city walls of Hippo. Augustine’s literary output was enormous, and he may be the most prolific writer of the ancient world. His most famous writings are his Confessions and The City of God. While only a couple of his shorter works are devoted exclusively to philosophy, most notably to the problem of Free Choice, many of his compositions are interspersed with philosophical content, and from these a complex system emerges. The starting point for Augustine’s philosophy is his stance on the relation between faith and reason. We’ve seen that there are two ways of approaching the relation between faith and reason: first, Tertullian’s faith-only position, and, second, the view that reason by itself can go a long way in establishing religious truths independently of faith. Augustine struck a middle ground between the two, advocating a position that he called «faith seeking understanding». His inspiration for this was a passage from the Old Testament book of Isaiah «Unless you believe, you will not understand». On this view, reason by itself is not good enough to give us proper religious knowledge; instead, we have to begin with faith to set us in the right direction and, once we believe in God through faith, we can seek to understand the foundations of our belief through reason. A running theme throughout Augustine’s writings is that knowledge is indeed attainable, and we should reject the efforts of philosophical skeptics. By the time Augustine came on the scene, different Greek schools of skepticism were well established, and for centuries had been producing arguments to show that we can know nothing at all for certain. “Every belief I have can be brought into question; even my belief that the tree 39

Theme 4. The phenomenon of philosophy in medieval culture of Western Europe and the Arabian East

in front of me exists is uncertain since I might just be having a hallucination.” In opposition to the skeptics, Augustine argues that there are four main areas in which we have genuine knowledge that even the skeptics cannot question. Right off, each of us has indisputable knowledge of our own existence. He writes, «On none of these points do I fear the arguments of the skeptics of the Academy who say: what if you are deceived? For if I am deceived, I am. For he who does not exist cannot be deceived. And if I am deceived, by this same token I am». His point here is simple: “No matter how deceived I am – through hallucinations or flawed sensory perception – I still have to exist in order to be deceived. This knowledge is so obvious and self – evident that it enables me to go one step further and say that I know that I know. Thus, knowledge is an indisputable fact.” In addition to knowledge of one’s own existence, we also have certainty in three key areas: math, logic and immediate sense experience. Mathematical truths, such as «three times three is nine», are so compelling that it is impossible to doubt them. The same is with logical truths: «I have learned through dialectic [logic] that many other things are true. Count, if you can, how many there are: If there are four elements in the world, there are not five; if there is one sun, there are not two; one and the same soul cannot die and still be immortal; the man cannot at the same time be happy and unhappy; if the sun is shining here, it cannot be night; we are now either awake or asleep; either there is a body which I seem to see or there is not a body». While Augustine recognizes that sense perceptions themselves are not always trustworthy, he nonetheless maintains that reports of immediate experiences are indisputable, such as «the snow appears white to me». Even if in reality the snow happens to be a different color, what remains true is that I perceive it as white. He writes: «I do not know how the [skeptical] Academician can refute him who says «I know that this appears white to me, I know that my hearing is delighted with this, I know that this has an agreeable odor, I know that this tastes sweet to me, I know that this feels cold to me». These areas of knowledge, then, seem to be completely indisputable because of the self – evident nature of their specific truths. There are other areas of knowledge, though, that lack this self – evidence and may indeed be fallible, such as the truths themselves of what our senses report, and also the knowledge 40

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that we gain through the testimony of other people. Nevertheless, he argues, in view of how much important information they provide us, we can have reasonable confidence in them as reliable sources of knowledge. Regarding our senses, he argues, «Far be it from us to doubt the truth of what we have learned by the bodily senses, since by them we have learned to know the heaven and the earth, and those things in them which are known to us». The same relates to the knowledge that we gain through the testimony of other people. While the reports of some people cannot be trusted, testimony is nonetheless an indispensable source of knowledge. He writes, «Far be it from us too to deny that we know what we have learned by the testimony of others: otherwise we would not know that there is an ocean, or that the lands and cities exist which numerous reports mention to us». Granted, then, according to Augustine we can know many things indisputably and other things with at least a high degree of certainty. While certainty in these areas seems to be a natural part of human thinking, knowledge of other types of truth require special help from God before we can grasp them. God illuminates our minds to enable us to see these truths, and Augustine succinctly describes this theory of divine illumination here: «The mind needs to be enlightened by light from outside itself, so that it can participate in truth, because it is not itself the nature of truth. You will light my lamp, Lord». Human nature is limited, Augustine believes, and thus we’re not in a position by ourselves to comprehend the most important things. Truths regarding virtuous living and religious faithfulness are cases in point: «Among the objects of the intellect, there are some that are seen in the soul itself, for example, virtues which will endure, such as piety, or virtues that are useful for this life and not destined to remain in the next, as faith». For us to grasp these truths, God illuminates our soul, which triggers a special intellectual vision by which we can see them. While Augustine is quite clear that humans stand in need of divine illumination, he is less clear about how this process takes place. Does divine intuition unleash a flood of specific innate ideas in our minds? Is it more like a capacity that allows us to detect and zoom in on the truth? One recent interpretation is that we first develop beliefs on our own, and then God illuminates our minds so that we can see if they are true or false; God provides the justification for our beliefs. 41

Theme 4. The phenomenon of philosophy in medieval culture of Western Europe and the Arabian East

Augustine is one of the first philosophers to have speculated about the nature of time. Time, he says, is something that everyone has experienced and is intimately familiar with. We feel how time flies throughout the day, we note the lengths of time that it takes for things to happen, we can distinguish between short and long amounts of time. However, once we try to explain exactly what time is, we are at a loss. «What then is time? If no one asks me, I know. If I wish to explain it to someone that asks, I do not know». There are two main ways that we can view the nature of time. First, we might think that it is objective, and part of the external nature of the world itself. Past, present and future are realities. Second, we might think of time as merely subjective, existing only as a product of our minds. While it is tempting to go with the first interpretation, Augustine goes with the second: time has no meaning apart from our minds. The reason is that the past no longer exists, and the future is not yet here. He writes: «These two times then, past and future, how can they exist since the past is gone and the future is not yet here? But if the present stayed present, and never passed into time past, then, truly, it would not be time, but eternity. Suppose that time present (if it is to be time) only comes into existence because it passes into time – past. How, then, can we say that it exists, since its existence is caused by the fact that it will not exist? We can’t truly say that time is, then, except because it tends towards non – being». It is as though everything that occurs will instantly evaporate with the passing of the present moment.  The extent to which the past and future are real at all, they must be embedded in the present moment – since the present is all that really exists: «It is now plain and evident that neither future nor past things exist. Nor can we properly say, «there are three times: past, present, and future». Instead, it we might properly say «there are three times: a present-of-things-past, a present-of-things-present, and a present-of-things-future. When we speak about the past, present and future, we need to connect them all to the present moment. The past involves only memories that we have in the present, and, thus, we should call this the present-of-things-past. The future involves only mental anticipations of what might come, and we should call this the present-of-things-future». Medieval philosophers developed very precise notions of God and his attributes, many of which are even now well – 42

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known among believers. For example, God is all – powerful (i.e., omnipotent), all – knowing (i.e., omniscient), and all – good (i.e., omni – benevolent). Other commonly discussed attributes of God are that he is eternal, that he is present everywhere (i.e., omnipresent) and that he has foreknowledge of future events. While these traditional attributes of God offer a clear picture of the kind of being that he is, many of them present special conceptual problems, particularly when we try to make them compatible with potentially conflicting facts about the world. One of these is the famous problem of evil: how are we to understand God’s goodness in the face of all the suffering that we experience?  It’s clear that suffering is abundant throughout the world, and such suffering is a type of evil. It’s also clear for religious philosophers that God is in control of things, which seems to imply that God is the source of that suffering and evil. But if God is good, then it seems that he can’t be the source of evil. Thus, there is a conflict between God’s power and goodness on the one hand, and the presence of suffering on the other. How can we resolve this conflict? The first step, for Augustine, is to recognize that God has only an indirect role in the cause of some suffering, as he explains here: «You ask whether God is the cause of evil. In response, if you know or believe that God is good (and it is not right to believe otherwise) then he does no evil. Further, if we recognize that God is just (and it is impious to deny it) then he rewards the good and punishes the wicked. Such punishments are indeed evils for those who suffer them. Therefore, if no one is punished unjustly (this we must believe since we believe that this universe is governed by divine providence) it follows that God is a cause of the suffering of some evil, but in no way causes the doing of evil». For Augustine, God’s goodness means that he does no evil. Yet, God’s justness means that he rewards good and punishes evil. Thus, God indeed causes some suffering through punishment, but he is not the cause of evil actions themselves. The cause of evil itself, according to Augustine, is the human will, and thus all blame for it rests on our shoulders, not on God’s. We willfully turn our souls away from God when we perform evil deeds:  «look for the source of this movement and be sure that it does not come from God». Even the punishment that God imposes on us for our evil is something that we brought on ourselves, since «punishment is used in such a 43

Theme 4. The phenomenon of philosophy in medieval culture of Western Europe and the Arabian East

way that it places natures in their right order». Thus, the first solution that Augustine offers to the problem of evil is that human will is the cause of evil and reason for divine punishment. The second and related solution is that the evil we willfully create within our souls is only a deprivation of goodness. Think of God’s goodness like a bright white light; the evil that we humans create is like an act of dimming that light, or shielding ourselves from it to create an area of darkness. It is not like we’ve created a competing light source of our own, such as a bright red light that we shine around to combat God’s bright white light. Accordingly, the evil that we create through our wills is the absence of good, and not a substantive evil in itself. Augustine writes, «That movement of the soul’s turning away, which we admitted was sinful, is a defective movement, and every defect arises from non – being». Drawing from Plotinus, «non – being» is Augustine’s term for the complete absence of God. The tension between God and evil is just one of the problems surrounding God’s attributes. Another one that Augustine considers is a possible conflict between God’s foreknowledge and human free will. If God knows ahead of time what I will do at midnight tonight, then when the time comes I must do that, and thus have no free choice. The problem can be laid out more precisely as follows: 1. If God foreknows all events, then all events happen according to a fixed, causal order. 2. If all events happen according to a fixed, causal order, then nothing depends on us and there is no such thing as free will. 3. God foreknows all events, hence there is no such thing as free will. Augustine’s solution is to distinguish between two distinct things about my future decisions that God might focus on. On the one hand, God might focus on and foresee my actions, in which case it looks as though my actions are already causally fixed on the timeline. On the other hand, however, God might focus on and foresee what my choice will be, what mental decision I make. By foreseeing my choice, God is focusing on a free will decision that will be left to me in the future. Thus, God’s foreknowledge of my actions is dependent upon what my choice will be, and not on my action itself. He explains this here: «Since God foreknows our will, the very will that he foreknows will be what comes about. 44

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Therefore, it will be a will, since it is a will that he foreknows. And it could not be a will unless it were in our power. Therefore, he also foreknows this power. It follows, then, that his foreknowledge does not take away my power; in fact, it is all the more certain that I will have that power, since he whose foreknowledge never errs foreknows that I will have it». For Augustine, the issue comes down to this. Suppose that I somehow foreknew what choice you would make tomorrow at noontime. Would that necessitate you doing it? Clearly not. Thus, God’s foreknowledge of your choice does not interfere with your freedom any more than my foreknowledge of your choice would. Augustine’s moral philosophy rests on a single theme: desiring all things in their appropriate manner, and reserving our most supreme desire for God. Humans have the capacity to desire things with a wide range of intensity, from very low to very high. According to Augustine, our human psyches are designed in such a way that the highest intensity of desire should be our ultimate love for God. The intensity of our desires for other things – wealth, fame, material goods – should be far less. Our principal moral task is to make sure that all of our desires are properly ordered, that we desire things in the right way. When we fail to do this, our desires become disordered; that is, we desire a lowly thing such as a coat with the intensity that we should otherwise devote to something much higher, even God himself. It is this disordered desire that motivates us to do evil: He writes: «When the miser prefers his gold to justice, it is through no fault of the gold, but of the man; and so with every created thing. For though it is good, it may be loved with an evil as well as with a good love: it is loved rightly when it is loved with proper order; evilly, when disordered». Augustine’s political views are mapped out in his book The City of God, which he initially wrote against Roman pagans who blamed the fall of Rome in 410 on the domination of Christianity within the society and their abolition of polytheistic worship. According to Augustine, we need to see society as consisting of two «cities» or cultures: an earthly one and a heavenly one. The defining difference between the two is that citizens of the earthly city are motivated by disordered desires, while those of the heavenly city have properly ordered desires. He wrote: «Two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the 45

Theme 4. The phenomenon of philosophy in medieval culture of Western Europe and the Arabian East

contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God, «You are my glory, and you lift up my head». In the one, the princes and the nations it subdues are ruled by the love of ruling; in the other, the princes and the subjects serve one another in love, the latter obeying, while the former takes thought for all. The one delights in its own strength, represented in the persons of its rulers; the other says to its God, «I will love you, Lord, my strength». The Roman Empire itself, he argues, is a perfect example of an earthly city overindulged in disordered desires. This led to immorality, vice, crime, and its ultimate downfall. Citizens of the heavenly city, who have properly ordered desires, realize that the only eternal good is found in God. They live by faith and «look for those eternal blessings which are promised». People of the heavenly city are obviously forced to live here on earth among rival members of the earthly city. However, they consider themselves as resident aliens and follow the laws and customs of the society which they live in, but do not settle down to enjoy them. He writes: «So long as the heavenly city lives like a captive and a stranger in the earthly city ... it does not hesitate to obey the laws of the earthly city, whereby the things necessary for the maintenance of this mortal life are governed». The earthly city at its best seeks peace in this life, a necessary condition for happiness. Accordingly, «the earthly city, which does not live by faith, seeks an earthly peace, and the end it proposes... is the combination of men’s wills to attain the things which are helpful to this life». The heavenly city makes use of this peace only because it must. Scholasticism – the systematic European medieval philosophy was concentrated round universities and representing synthesis of Christian (Catholic) divinity and Aristotle’s logic. Scholasticism is characterized by connection of the theological dogmatic prerequisites and a rationalistic technique and interest in formal and logical problems. In daily communication scholasticism is often called idealistic representations, based on the abstract reasonings which aren’t checked by experience. Scholasticism (from Greek «school» – quiet occupation, study) is a medieval teaching. It is closely connected with the system of education developing in VIII–IX centuries in the West. 46

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The following periodization of scholasticism is accepted. The first stage – from the VIth to IXth century – preliminary. The second stage – from the IXth to XIIth century – the period of intensive formation. The third stage – the XIIIth century – «the Golden Age of scholasticism». The fourth stage – the XIVth–XVth centuries – fading of scholasticism. The scholastic teaching in practice represented a number of steps, rising on which the pupil could reach the highest. At monastic and church schools «seven free arts» were studied. These were divided into «trivium» (from number «3») and «quadrivium» (from number «4»). At first the pupil had to master trivium, i.e. grammar (Latin), dialectics, rhetoric. Quadrivium was a higher step, it included arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. Universities were the educational institutions providing a higher level of training. The first universities appeared in the XII century in Paris and Bologna. In the XIIIth – XVth centuries Europe was covered by the whole network of universities. The need for them was caused first of all by the needs and tasks of church. In most cases universities directly relied on the support of the church authorities and included in their structure two faculties – faculty of free arts and faculty of theology (divinity). The first one was a necessary preparatory step to the second. The faculty of theology was aimed at thorough studying of the Bible by its interpretation and a systematic statement of the Christian doctrine. Training terms were impressive: at the faculty of free arts – six years, at the faculty of theology – not less than eight years. So that to become the master of divinity, it was necessary to spend for training not less than fourteen years Scholasticism represents a type of philosophizing at which the means of human reason try to prove the ideas taken on the basis of trust and formulas. In medieval philosophy the dispute between spirit and matter that caused the dispute between realists and nominalists was particularly acute. The dispute went about the nature of the general concepts, whether the general concepts are secondary, that is a product of thinking activity or they represent primary, real ones and exist independently. Scholasticism claimed that the general concepts really didn’t exist and they were secondary, representing only names of certain groups of subjects and natural phenomena, these were only names, and this direction began to be called nominal47

Theme 4. The phenomenon of philosophy in medieval culture of Western Europe and the Arabian East

ism. Nominalists taught that as there were no material, real-life subjects and natural phenomena, there should be also no general concepts in which thinking of a person reflected the most essential common features specific to this or that set of material things. A counterbalance to nominalists was represented by realists (Latin realis – material) who claimed that the general concepts in relation to the individual concepts characterizing the nature were primary and really existed. Realists stated that general concepts exist irrespective of the isolated individual things of the material world and irrespective of thoughts of the person. These concepts, according to their doctrine, possess independent life, and being primary, exist eternally. Subjects of the nature are secondary, represent only forms of manifestation of the general concepts. Aquinas is the largest representative of the Western scholasticism. Scholastica is a type of religious philosophy that seeks to give a rational theoretical justification of the religious world through the application of logical methods and evidence. It is characterized by an appeal to the Bible as the primary source of knowledge. Thomas Aquinas (Tommaso d`Akvino) (1225– 1274). Major works: «On Controversial Issues of Truth», «On the Trinity», «Summa contra Gentiles» and the unfinished «Summa Theologica». An aristocrat, a relative of the German emperor, he became an ordinary miserable member of the order of Dominicans = «dogs of the Lord». In 1323 by the decision of the Roman Curia Aquinas was canonized. The founder of the modern Roman Catholic Church and its official philosophy – Neo-Thomism (the end of the XIX century.). In contrast to Augustine, Thomas believes that a man is a unity of the body and soul. And because the body cannot exist without the soul, on the contrary, their connection is good for the soul. The body is the basis for it (the soul), individuality and immortality. Thus, it stressed the value of a human corporeality and earthly purposes, as opposed to the ideals of asceticism. There is a problem of freedom in the form of a dilemma: to have freedom or to be free? According to Thomas, it is possible to speak of two freedoms – the value-oriented freedom and freedom indifferent to the values (sinful freedom). For the theologian, of course, the concept of freedom is matched with value orientation. Like other medieval philosophies, Aquinas’ philosophy starts with a view of the relation between faith and reason. For a 48

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religious believer, faith in God and the Scripture are of course fundamental. However, he argues, many basic religious truths such as God’s existence can be proven without faith and through the reason alone. Accordingly, he proposes a view on faith and reason which he calls a twofold truth: while reason can give us some truth, other truths can only be attained through faith. He writes: «The truths that we confess concerning the God fall into two categories. Some things concerning the God that are true, are beyond all the competence of human reason, e.g. that God is triune. There are other things to which even human reason can attain, such as the existence and unity of God, which philosophers have proved by a demonstration under the guidance of the light of natural reason». The first class of truths which is accessible through reason alone he calls presuppositions of faith, which include the truths that God exists and God is one. The second class of truths, called mysteries of faith, is accessible only through faith and involve doctrines like the Trinity, which we learn about in scripture and that are central to the Christian faith in particular. Human reason alone cannot access these truths, he argues – «knowledge and understanding begins with the senses». While this prevents us from knowing God’s inner nature, our senses can still give us information about creation which allows us to infer that there is a powerful and designing creator to all that we see. Again, one of the things that we can know through reason alone is that God exists. Aquinas offers five ways of proving God. Briefly, these are his proofs: 1. There must be the first mover of things that are in the process of change and motion. 2. There must be the first efficient cause of the events that we see around us. 3. There must be a necessary being to explain the contingent beings in the world around us. 4. There must be an ultimately good thing to explain the good that we see in lesser things. 5. There must be an intelligent being who guides natural objects to their ends or purposes. The first three of his proofs share a similar strategy, which was inspired by Aristotle’s notion of the unmoved mover: there is a first cause of all the motion that takes place throughout the 49

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cosmos. In more recent times this argument strategy has been dubbed the cosmological argument. Here we will look specifically at Aquinas’s second argument concerning the efficient cause as he presented it: «The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. In the world of sense, we find that there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be the only one or several ones. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no the first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of these are plainly false. Therefore, it is necessary to admit the first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God». According to Aquinas, we experience various kinds of effects in the world around us, and in every case, we assign an efficient cause to each effect. The efficient cause of the statue is the work of the sculptor. If we took away the activity of the sculptor, we would not have the effect, namely, the statue. But there is an order of efficient causes: the hammer strikes the chisel which in turn strikes the marble. But it is impossible to have an infinitely long sequence of efficient causes, and so we arrive at the first efficient cause. Aquinas’s argument based on the efficient cause is deceptively brief, and he appears to be offering the same argument that early Muslim philosophers did in the so–called Kalam argument for God’s existence. That is, it seems as though he is saying that it is impossible to trace such causal connections back through time and, ultimately, we must arrive at the first cause, namely, God. However, other writings by Aquinas make it clear that he is doing something different. Why, at least in theory, couldn’t this causal sequence trace back through time, to infinity of the past, and never have a starting point? Although this may be a strange contention, there is nothing logically contradictory about it. He writes that «It is by faith alone that we 50

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hold, and by no demonstration can it be proved, that the world did not always exist». Aquinas suggests that we should view the causal sequence somewhat differently. Some causal sequences do indeed take place over time, such as when Abraham gives birth to his son Isaac, who later gives birth to his own son Jacob. But in addition to these time-based sequences, there are also simultaneous causal sequences, which do not trace back through time. Imagine, for example, that I hold a stick in my hand and use it to move a stone. According to Aquinas, my hand, the stick, and the stone all move at the same time. He makes this point using the terminology of «essential» causes that are simultaneous and «accidental» causes that are time – based: in efficient causes it is impossible to proceed to infinity essentially [i.e., simultaneously]. Thus, there cannot be an infinite number of [simultaneous] causes that are essentially required for a certain effect – for instance, for a stone to be moved by a stick, the stick by the hand, and so on to infinity. But it is not impossible to proceed to infinity accidentally [i.e., over time] as regards efficient causes. Aquinas’s causal proof, then, proceeds like this: 1. Some things exist and their existence is caused. 2. Whatever is caused to exist is caused to exist by something else. 3. An infinite series of simultaneous causes resulting in the existence of a particular thing is impossible. 4. Therefore, there is the first cause of whatever exists. Aquinas did not give us an example of the sort of simultaneous causes in the natural world that traces immediately back to God, but here is a likely instance of what he is talking about. Consider the motion of the winds. At the very moment that the winds are moving, there are larger physical forces at work that create this motion. In medieval science, the motion of the moon is responsible for the motion of the winds. But the moon itself moves because it is also simultaneously moved by other celestial bodies, such as the planets, the sun, and the stars. According to Aquinas, simultaneous causal sequences of motion cannot go on forever, and we must eventually find the first cause of this motion, which «everyone understands to be God».  So much for Aquinas’s second way to prove God’s existence. As noted, the first and third ways follow similar strategies, insofar as they claim that causal sequences of change and contingency cannot go on forever. The fourth way is like Anselm’s argument from 51

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absolute goodness: there must be an absolute standard of goodness which is the cause of the good that we see in lesser things. His fifth way, though, is unique and is a version of what in later times is called the design argument. He writes, «The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end in the same way, so as to obtain the best result, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always. Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore, some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God». More formally, his argument is this: 1. Objects without intelligence act towards some end (for example, a tree grows and reproduces its own kind). 2. Moving towards an end exhibits a natural design that requires intelligence. 3. If a thing is unintelligent, yet acts for some end, then it must be guided to this end by something which is intelligent. 4. Therefore, an intelligent being exists that moves natural things toward their ends, and this is God. The central notion behind this argument is that natural objects such as plants and animals have their own purposes. Here Aquinas draws directly on Aristotle’s concept of a «natural object» which has an innate impulse towards the change in specific ways. According to Aquinas, when natural objects move towards their end, this reveals a natural design that could not have come about by chance, but requires intelligence. Since plants and animals lack intelligence to do this, some other intelligence, namely God, is responsible for this. We can prove not only the existence of God through reason unaided by faith, but there are some features of God’s existence that reason by itself can also reveal to us. Religious philosophers often describe God as having a cluster of attributes, such as being all – powerful, all -knowing, all – good; Aquinas certainly agrees that God is these. However, he maintains that God in fact has a single attribute: divine simplicity. Several philosophers prior to Aquinas, including Parmenides and Plotinus, held that God is best described as «the One», namely, a simple, indivisi52

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ble entity. Aquinas agrees as we see here: «There is neither composition of quantitative parts in God, since He is not a body; nor composition of matter and form; nor does His nature differ from His person; nor His essence from His existence; neither is there in Him a composition of genus and difference, nor of subject and accident. Therefore, it is clear that God is nowise composite, but is altogether simple». While God has a true simple nature, Aquinas concedes that to finite human minds he appears to have distinct parts. The reason for this seems to be that our minds are designed to understand things in the world around us, virtually all of which have parts – parts of trees, parts of chairs, parts of languages. When we then attempt to understand God in his simplicity, we then very naturally view him as a thing that is composed of parts, and attempt to understand him by one element at a time. He wrote: “We can speak of simple things only as though they were like the composite things from which we derive our knowledge. Therefore, in speaking of God, we use concrete nouns to signify His subsistence, because with us only those things subsist which are composite; and we use abstract nouns to signify His simplicity”. To satisfy our tendency to view God as a composite thing, we can deduce some sub-attributes of God from his main attribute of simplicity. For example, we can say that God is eternal since if a thing is simple, then it has no «before» or «after» and thus is eternal. Similarly, we can say that God is perfect since if a thing is simple then it is completely actualized, with no remaining potentiality, and a complete actualization is perfection. The whole issue of God’s attributes raises an even more fundamental question of the adequacy of religious language: can any of our descriptions of God satisfactorily represent him? For example, if we say that «God loves us», what sort of «love» are we talking about, and is the notion of divine love something that can even be put into words? We have already seen a variety of answers to this question of religious language: Pseudo – Dionysius said we can only describe God negatively; Maimonides said that we can only describe God allegorically. Aquinas approaches the issue by noting three ways that our words might, at least in theory, be applied to God. The first is univocal: the religious and non-religious uses of the word like «love» are completely 53

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the same, whether we are talking about human love or divine love. Aquinas rejects this approach: «Univocal predication is impossible between God and creatures… [The] term «wise» is not applied in the same way to God and to man. The same rule applies to other terms. Hence no name is predicated univocally of God and of creatures». The problem with the univocal approach is that the gulf between God’s nature and human nature is so vast that the term «love» cannot possibly mean exactly the same thing when we are talking about divine love versus human love. The next way is equivocal: the religious and non-religious uses of the word like «love» are completely different. Aquinas rejects this approach as well:  Neither, on the other hand, are names applied to God and creatures in a purely equivocal sense, as some have said. Because if that were so, it follows that from creatures nothing could be known or demonstrated about God at all. The problem here is that if religious language and human language have nothing in common, then we can say nothing at all about God. Rejecting both the univocal and equivocal approach, Aquinas recommends a middle ground between the two: an analogical approach whereby the religious use of a word bears some analogy to the non-religious use. For example, we can say that for God a divine love is just the same as parental love is for a parent. He wrote: «In analogies the idea is not, as it is in univocal, one and the same, yet it is not totally diverse as in equivocal. Rather a term which is thus used in a multiple sense signifies various proportions to some one thing. Thus «healthy» applied to urine signifies the sign of animal health, and applied to medicine signifies the cause of the same health».  The point is that there is something in common to both religious language and human language, but it can only be understood as a comparison of two relations. For example, to grasp the notion of divine love, we must first examine the relation between human parents and parental love: we have a special attachment to our offspring that overrides every other human interest. In some parallel way, this is what God’s love towards humans involves. In the arena of moral philosophy, Aquinas developed a view called natural law theory, which for centuries was perhaps the dominant view regarding the source of moral principles. In a nutshell, natural law theory holds that God endorses specific moral standards and fixes them in human nature, which we dis54

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cover through rational intuition. According to Aquinas, there are four kinds of law: eternal law, natural law, human law and divine law. Eternal law, the broadest type of law, is the unchanging divine governance over the universe. This includes both the general moral rules of conduct, such as «stealing is wrong», and particular rules such as «people should not intentionally write bad checks». Natural law is a subset of eternal law, which God implants in human nature and we discover through reflection. However, it includes only general rules of conduct, such as «stealing is wrong», not specific cases. Next, human law is a derivation of natural law that extends to particular cases, such as «people should not write bad checks». Finally, divine law, as contained in the Bible, is a specially revealed subset of the eternal law that is meant to safeguard against possible errors in our attempts to both obtain natural law through reflection, and derive more particular human laws. In this way we see that the Bible condemns stealing in general, as well as various forms of theft through fraud. All moral laws – whether general ones discovered through reflection, or specific ones derived by legislators, or ones found in the scriptures – are ultimately grounded in an objective, universal, and unchanging eternal law. What, specifically, are the principles of natural law that God has embedded into human nature? First, there is one highest principle: «Good is to be done and evil is to be avoided». Aquinas wrote: «This is the first precept of law, that «good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided». All other precepts of the natural law are based upon this: “so that whatever the practical reason naturally apprehends as man’s good (or evil), belongs to the precepts of the natural law as something to be done or avoided”. From this, we determine what is «good» for us by looking at our human inclinations; he notes six in particular that are connected with our human good: self – preservation, heterosexual activity, educating our offsprings, rationality, gaining knowledge of God, and living in society. He writes: «Because in man there is first of all an inclination to good in accordance with the nature which he has in common with all substances: inasmuch as every substance seeks the preservation of its own being, according to its nature: and by reason of this inclination, whatever is a means of preserving human life, and of warding off its obstacles, belongs to the natural law. Secondly, there is in man an inclination to things that pertain to him 55

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more specially, according to that nature which he has in common with other animals: and in virtue of this inclination, those things are said to belong to the natural law, «which nature has taught to all animals», such as sexual intercourse, education of offsprings and so forth. Thirdly, there is in the man an inclination to good, according to the nature of his reason, which nature is proper to him: thus man has a natural inclination to know the truth about God, and to live in society: and in this respect, whatever pertains to this inclination belongs to the natural law; for instance, to shun ignorance, to avoid harming or offending those among whom one has to live, and other such things regarding the above inclination». For Aquinas, these six inclinations comprise what is most proper for humans, and provide the basis for the primary precepts of morality. This gives us six primary principles of natural law: (1) preserve human life, (2) have heterosexual intercourse, (3) educate your children, (4) shun ignorance, (5) worship God, and (6) avoid harming others. Each of these primary principles encompasses more specific or secondary principles. For example, the primary principle «avoid harming others» implies the secondary principles «don’t steal» and «don’t assault». These, in turn, imply even more specific or tertiary principles, such as «don’t write bad checks». As the principles become more specific, they leave the domain of natural law and enter that of human law. When considering whether natural law is the same in all people, he argues that the primary principles are common to everyone, such as «do not harm others». However, more particular tertiary derivations of human law are not necessarily common to all societies. Still, he argues, human law will carry the force of natural law if the tertiary principles are derived correctly. But, «if in any point it deflects from the law of nature, it is no longer a law but a perversion of law». Islamic philosophy is the systematic investigation of problems connected with life, the universe, ethics, society, and so on as conducted in the Muslim world. Early Islamic philosophy began in the IInd century of the Islamic calendar (early IXth century) and lasted until the VIth century (late XIIth century). The period is known as the Islamic Golden Age, and the achievements of this period had a crucial influence on the development of modern philosophy and science; philosophy per56

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sisted for much longer in the Eastern countries, in particular Persia and India where several schools of philosophy continued to flourish: Avicennism, Illuminationist philosophy, Mystical philosophy, and Transcendent theosophy. Ibn Khaldun, in his Muqaddimah, made important contributions to the philosophy of history. The interest in Islamic philosophy revived during the Nahda (awakening) movement in the late XIXth and early XXth centuries, and continues to the present day. Islamic philosophy as the name implies refers to philosophical activity within the Islamic milieu. The main sources of classical or early Islamic philosophy are the religion of Islam itself (especially ideas derived and interpreted from the Quran). Two main currents of Islamic philosophy: 1. Kalam, which mainly dealt with Islamic theological questions. 2. Falsafa which was founded on interpretations of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism. Logic in Islamic law and theology. In early Islamic philosophy, logic played an important role. Islamic law placed importance on formulating standards of argument, which gave rise to a novel approach to logic in Kalam, but this approach was later displaced by ideas from Greek philosophy and Hellenistic philosophy with the rise of the Mu’tazili philosophers, who highly valued Aristotle’s Organon. The first original Arabic writings on logic were produced by al-Kindi (Alkindus) (805 – 873), who produced a summary on earlier logic up to his time. The first writings on logic with nonAristotelian elements were produced by al-Farabi (Alfarabi) (873 – 950), who discussed the topics of future contingents, the number and relation of the categories, the relation between logic and grammar, and non-Aristotelian forms of inference. He is also credited for categorizing logic into two separate groups, the first being «idea» and the second being «proof». Averroes (1126 – 1198), the author of the most elaborate commentaries on Aristotelian logic, was the last major logician from al-Andalus. In Arabic philosophical tradition, Al Pharabi is known with the honorific «the Second Master», after Aristotle. Al-Farabi was one of the world’s great philosophers and much more original than many of his Islamic successors. A philosopher, logician and musician, he was also a major political scientist. He is cred57

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ited with preserving the original Greek texts during the Middle Ages because of his commentaries and treatises, and influencing many prominent philosophers, like Avicenna and Maimonides. Through his works, he became well-known in the East as well as the West. The main influence on al-Farabi’s philosophy was the neo-Aristotelian tradition of Alexandria. A prolific writer, he is credited with over one hundred works. Amongst these are a number of prolegomena to philosophy, commentaries on important Aristotelian works as well as his own works. His ideas are marked by their coherency, despite drawing together of many different philosophical disciplines and traditions. As a philosopher, Al-Farabi was a founder of his own school of early Islamic philosophy known as «Farabism» or «Alfarabism». AlFarabi also wrote a commentary on Aristotle’s work, and one of his most notable works is Al-Madina al-Fadila where he theorized an ideal state as in Plato’s «The Republic». Al-Farabi represented religion as a symbolic rendering of truth, and, like Plato, saw it as the duty of the philosopher to provide guidance to the state. Farabian epistemology has both a Neoplatonic and an Aristotelian dimension. Avicenna (980 –1037) developed his own system of logic known as «Avicennian logic» as an alternative to Aristotelian logic. By the XIIth century, Avicennian logic had replaced Aristotelian logic as the dominant system of logic in the Islamic world. The first criticisms of Aristotelian logic were written by Avicenna (980–1037), who produced independent treatises on logic rather than commentaries. He criticized the logical school of Baghdad for their devotion to Aristotle at the time. He investigated the theory of definition and classification and the quantification of the predicates of categorical propositions, and developed an original theory on «temporal modal» syllogism. Its premises included modifiers such as «at all times», «at most times», and «at some time». While Avicenna often relied on deductive reasoning in philosophy, he used a different approach in medicine. Ibn Sina contributed inventively to the development of inductive logic, which he used to pioneer the idea of a syndrome. In his medical writings, Avicenna was the first to describe the methods of agreement, difference and concomitant variation which are critical to inductive logic and the scientific method. Ibn Hazm 58

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(994–1064) wrote the Scope of Logic, in which he stressed on the importance of sense perception as a source of knowledge. Al-Ghazali (Algazel) (1058–1111) had an important influence on the use of logic in theology, making use of Avicennian logic in Kalam Despite the logical sophistication of al-Ghazali, the rise of the Ash’ari school in the XIIth century slowly suffocated original work on logic in much of the Islamic world, though logic continued to be studied in some Islamic regions such as Persia and the Levant. The philosophy of medicine is a branch of philosophy that includes the epistemology, ontology, metaphysics, ontology/metaphysics, and ethics of medicine. Perhaps the most well-known area is medical ethics, which overlaps with bioethics. It can be distinguished from the philosophy of healthcare, which concerned with ethical and political issue arising from healthcare research and practice. Answer the questions: 1. What are the characteristics of the Philosophy of the Middle Ages? 2. What philosophical movements arose in the Middle Ages? 3. What is the essence of the scholastic dispute about universals between realists and nominalists? 4. Name the logical proofs of God, given by Aquinas. 5. What are the three periods of apologetics? Describe each of them. 6. Give the definition of creationism and monotheism.

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Theme 5 Philosophy of the New Age 1. Philosophy in the culture of the Renaissance and Reformation 2. Emergence of experimental science and modern philosophy of New Age. Science as a «subject» of philosophical reflection. 3. Philosophy of Enlightenment, the basic ideas and specificity.

The founder of the empirical (experimental) trends in philosophy is considered Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626) – English philosopher and politician (1620 – 1621 – Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, the second official in the country after the king). The essence of the main philosophical ideas of Francis Bacon – empiricism – is that the basis of knowledge is an exceptional experience. The more experience (both theoretical and practical) the mankind has accumulated, the closer it is to the true knowledge. True knowledge, according to Bacon, cannot be an end in itself. The main objectives of knowledge and experience are to help people to achieve practical results in their activities to promote new inventions, economic development, the rule of man over nature. In this regard, Bacon nominated the aphorism that succinctly expressed all his philosophical credo: «Knowledge is force». Bacon proposed an innovative idea, according to which the main method of knowledge should be induction. Under the induction of synthesis, the philosopher understood many private events and received on the basis of summarizing the overall findings (for example, if many individual metals may be melted, it means that all metals have the property of melting). The method of induction Bacon contrasted to the deduction method proposed by Descartes, according to which true knowledge can be obtained on the basis of reliable information with clear logic devices. The advantage of induction before deduction, given by Bacon and Descartes, consists in empower60

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ment and intensification of the process of cognition. Lack of induction is it unreliable probabilistic nature (because if a few things or phenomena have common characteristics, it does not mean that these signs belong to all things and phenomena of the present in their class and in each case there is a need for experimental verification, confirmation of induction). The way to overcome the major drawback of induction (its incompleteness, probabilistic nature), according to Bacon, is the accumulation by humanity a maximum experience in all areas of knowledge. Identifying the main method of knowledge – induction, a philosopher identifies concrete ways through which cognitive activity can pass. These ways are as follows: «Spider path»; «Ant path»; «Bee path». «Spider path» is the acquisition of knowledge by «pure reason», i.e. the rationalistic way. This is the way of ignoring or greatly diminishing the role of specific facts of experience. Rationalists are detached from reality, they are dogmatic, and according to Bacon, «weave a web of thoughts out of your mind». «Ant path» is the way to gain knowledge when only experience is dogmatic empiricism (the opposite of rationalism divorced from life). This method is also imperfect. «The pure empiricists» focus on practical experience, the collection of disparate facts, evidence. Thus, they get a picture of the external knowledge, see the problem «from outside», but cannot understand the inner essence of things and phenomena under study, see the problem from inside. «Bee path», according to Bacon, is the perfect way to knowledge. Using it, the philosopher a scholar takes all the advantages of «Spider path» and «Ant path» and at the same time relieves their shortcomings. Following the «Bee path» you need to collect the entire set of facts, generalize them (look at the problem «outside»), and using the power of mind, to look «inside» the problem, understand its essence. Thus, the best way to knowledge, according to Bacon, is empiricism, based on induction (collection and compilation of facts, experience), using rationalist methods of understanding the inner essence of things and phenomena of the mind. Francis Bacon not only shows the ways which lead to a process of knowledge, but also highlights the reasons that prevent the person (humanity) from gaining true knowledge. These reasons the philosopher euphemistically calls «Idols» («ghosts») and defines four varieties: 61

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– Idols of the gender; – Idols of the cave; – Idols of the market; – Idols of the theater. Idols of the gender and Idols of the cave are birth misconceptions of people who are in the mixed nature of knowledge with its own nature. In the first case (Idols of the gender) we are talking about breaking through the culture of human cognition that is, the person carries out knowledge within the human culture, and he tries to reach the final result, reduces the truth of knowledge. In the second case (Idols of the cave) we are talking about the influence of the personality, of a particular person (knowledge of the subject) in the learning process. As a result, the identity of the person (his prejudices, misconceptions – «cave») is reflected in the final result of knowledge. Idols of the market and Idols of the theater – the acquired delusion. Idols of the market is a wrong, inaccurate use of the voice, the conceptual apparatus: words, definitions, expressions. Idols of the theater are the impact on the existing knowledge of philosophy. Often, when the knowledge of the old philosophy interferes the innovative one, direct knowledge is not always in the right direction (for example: the impact on scholastic knowledge in the Middle Ages). Based on the presence of four major obstacles of knowledge, Bacon advises to maximally abstract from the existing «Idols» and get free from the influence of «pure knowledge». Bacon belongs to one of the attempts to classify the available science. Ground classification is the ability of the human mind: Memory, Imagination, Mind. Memory corresponds to the history of science, imagination – poetry, intellect – the philosophy that forms the basis of all sciences. The philosophy of Bacon is defined as the science of: God; Nature; Man. Each of the three subjects of philosophy the person learns in different ways: Nature – directly through sense perception and experience; God – through nature; Himself – through reflection. The philosophy of Bacon had a tremendous influence on modern philosophy, English philosophers, philosophy of subsequent periods. The philosophy of Bacon was the beginning of empirical (experimental) direction in philosophy. Epistemology (the science of knowledge) became one of the two main sections of any philosophical system. Empirical (experimental) direction in philosophy set a new goal of philosophy – to help the man 62

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achieve practical results in his activities (thus indirectly Bacon laid the foundations for the future of the American philosophy of pragmatism). Bacon made the first attempt to classify the science. The Philosophy of Rene Descartes, a French rationalist. Rene Descartes is the most famous French philosopher. Indeed, Descartes got nice charts of works to his credit … among the best known are: – Rules for directions of the mind (1628) – Discourse on Method, Preface to the Dioptric, the Meteors, and Geometry (1637) – Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) – Principles of Philosophy (1644) – The Passions of the Soul (1649) Descartes founded the modern rationalism, he pressed it to the forces of reason and evidence in order to achieve the real safely, the purpose of knowledge is to «make us like the masters and possessors of nature». The Cartesian method: Philosophy and Reason. We owe to Descartes for the method based on reason. The next question is the origin of this method as, in effect, access to the truth. The issue was crucial from the seventeenth century when science was developing in spite of scholastic philosophy. Descartes operated from a philosophical revolution in common sense/reason: – The reason, ability to distinguish right from wrong, expired allotted to all. – The reason is the best thing in the world allowing reaching the truth. The method is rational, in these conditions, consisting of a set of rules, the application of which leads with certainty to the result. To discover the truth, leave aside the chance to proceed only in an orderly fashion. While this approach may appear to us for granted, it is a new element at the time of Descartes, but also important and effective. – Any method is to follow an order, that is to say to bring proposals to the most obscure singles and raising us then, by degrees, from simple to more complex, relying always on intuition and deduction. – Intuition, or look for specific and unmistakable design of a pure and attentive mind, direct or immediate knowledge, 63

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makes it possible to receive anything as true, to seize an idea in its clarity and distinction – which represent for Descartes, the real criteria of truth. 1. A clear idea (a spiritual content, any object of thought as thought) is manifested as mind ability. 2. The distinct idea is absolutely accurate and different from all others. Thus, the approach of Descartes is based on evidence, namely the nature of what is needed immediately to mind and drives his assent. In addition to intuition, the rational inference is necessary: – It is a discursive operation assuming a journey, a demonstration, a logical sequence, or anything that involves a succession. – Intuition is one piece, but capital is an orderly movement, ranging from proposals for proposals, a link established between intuitive truths. The method based on rational intuition and deduction would be nothing without doubt: – The Cartesian doubt is not skeptical, but methodical. Necessary to scan and send false opinions clearly, it is to suspend all that is not certain. – Unlike the skeptics, who doubt the mind ability to achieve the truth, Descartes made the concept of doubt as the foundation of science. – Descartes, regarding it as absolutely false what is doubtful, because the hypothesis of an evil genius, evil or an evil god who could fool us all the time – methodological hypothesis intended to universalize the doubt. The Philosophical Metaphysics of Descartes: a) The cogito, God and innate ideas. The cogito. Within the doubt, Descartes encounters a first certainty, the cogito («I think» in Latin). The cogito is the self – consciousness of the thinking subject. Indeed, so universal is the doubt, since it deals with the totality of knowledge, there is something he cannot reach: it is its own condition, because doubting, I think, and thinking, I am. In the Discourse on Method, the statement seems deductively cogito (cogito ergo sum). But this proposal is in fact the result of direct induction: the first truth that is intuitively in mind when questioned. 64

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– But what am I, who am I? I am basically thinking, the latter referring to everything that is in us so that we immediately perceive for ourselves – And the activity of the mind and consciousness characterize me: consciousness is the essence of thought. The second truth is discovered by Descartes existence of God. It demonstrates the existence of several ways. – The Cartesian evidence specifically proves the idea of​​ perfect, in fact, among the ideas which are inside of a person are the ideas of ​​God, number, space, time. – Therefore, God exists. He meant by God, a supremely perfect substance, and in which we conceive nothing which encloses some defect or limitation of perfection. – This perfect being can only be truthful: I guarantee, in fact, that the ideas I see it as clear and distinct is true. – The «divine truth» derives from the nature of God, which cannot mislead me, since it is perfect. The idea of ​​God is part of innate ideas. Innate ideas. They are the ones not coming through the senses and experience. They are true and immutable natures, constitute the treasure of my mind. There are three kinds of ideas (an idea that everything is pointing in our mind when we design a thing): – Those born with me (innate). – Those coming from outside (these are sensible ideas, like the idea of an ​​ external thing, earth, sky …). – Those made and invented by me (these are fake ideas, like the idea of chimera). ​​ b) The dynamic spiritual and human freedom by Descartes. In his quest for metaphysics, Descartes deepens the essence of spiritual dynamism of a man: he emphasizes the superiority of understanding (faculty by which we perceive ideas) on the imagination (power to represent things in ways sensitive). Imagination is not necessary to the essence of my mind and request a special effort. The work of the understanding is much simpler. – For example, to imagine a thousand polygon side is extremely difficult, unlike the design. – «I need a special application of mind to imagine, which I am using to design point». 65

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This explanation of the spiritual dynamism of a man is inseparable from a meditation on freedom. Descartes considers the freedom of indifference (a condition in which the will is when it is not brought by the knowledge of what is true or, to follow one party over another) as the lowest degree of freedom. – True freedom of indifference is excluded. It is characterized by the absence of external constraint. – It means a choice by the knowledge of truth. It is this human freedom that allows us to understand the mechanism of error, which arises from the disproportion between the possibilities necessarily finite and limited. The error occurs when the will (infinite) assent to an idea (confused) of the understanding. The Enlightenment is the period in the history of western thought and culture, stretching roughly from the mid-decades of the seventeenth century through the eighteenth century, characterized by dramatic revolutions in science, philosophy, society and politics; these revolutions swept away the medieval world – view and ushered in our modern western world. Enlightenment thought culminates historically in the political upheaval of the French Revolution, in which the traditional hierarchical political and social orders (the French monarchy, the privileges of the French nobility, the political power and authority of the Catholic Church) were violently destroyed and replaced by a political and social order informed by the Enlightenment ideals of freedom and equality for all, founded, ostensibly, upon principles of human reason. The Enlightenment begins with the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The rise of the new science progressively undermines not only the ancient geocentric conception of the cosmos, but, with it, the entire set of presuppositions that had served to constrain and guide philosophical inquiry. The dramatic success of the new science in explaining the natural world, in accounting for a wide variety of phenomena by appeal to a relatively small number of elegant mathematical formulae, promotes philosophy (in the broad sense of the time, which includes natural science) from a handmaiden of theology, constrained by its purposes and methods, to an independent force with the power and authority to challenge the old and construct the new, in the realms both of theory and practice, on the basis of its own 66

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principles. D’Alembert, a leading figure of the French Enlightenment, characterizes his eighteenth century, in the midst of it, as «the century of philosophy par excellence», because of the tremendous intellectual progress of the age, the advance of the sciences, and the enthusiasm for that progress, but also because of the characteristic expectation of the age that philosophy (in this broad sense) would dramatically improve human life. The task of characterizing philosophy in (or of) the Enlightenment confronts the obstacle of the wide diversity of Enlightenment thought. The Enlightenment is associated with the French thinkers of the mid – decades of the eighteenth century, the so – called «philosophers», (Voltaire, Diderot, D’Alembert, Montesquieu, et cetera). The philosophes constitute an informal society of men of letters who collaborate on a loosely defined project of Enlightenment centered around the project of the Encyclopedia. But the Enlightenment has broader boundaries, both geographical and temporal, than this suggests. In addition to the French, there was a very significant Scottish Enlightenment (key figures were Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Adam Smith, and Thomas Reid) and a very significant German Enlightenment (die Aufklärung, key figures of which include Christian Wolff, Moses Mendelssohn, G.E. Lessing and Immanuel Kant). But all these Enlightenments were but particular nodes or centers in a far-flung and varied intellectual development. Given the variety, Enlightenment philosophy is characterized here in terms of general tendencies of thought, not in terms of specific doctrines or theories. Only late in the development of the German Enlightenment, when the Enlightenment was near its end, the movement became self – reflective; the question of «What is Enlightenment? » is debated in pamphlets and journals. In his famous definition of «enlightenment» in his essay «An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? » (1784), which is his contribution to this debate, Immanuel Kant expresses many of the tendencies shared among Enlightenment philosophies of divergent doctrines. Kant defines «enlightenment» as humankind’s release from its self-incurred immaturity; «immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another». Enlightenment is the process of undertaking to think for oneself, to employ and rely on one’s own intellectual capacities in determining what to believe and how to act. Enlighten67

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ment philosophers from across the geographical and temporal spectrum tend to have a great deal of confidence in humanity’s intellectual powers, both to achieve systematic knowledge of nature and to serve as an authoritative guide in practical life. This confidence is generally paired with suspicion or hostility toward other forms or carriers of authority (such as tradition, superstition, prejudice, myth and miracles), insofar as these are seen to compete with the authority of reason. Enlightenment philosophy tends to stand in tension with established religion, insofar as the release from self-incurred immaturity in this age, daring to think for oneself, awakening one’s intellectual powers, generally requires opposing the role of established religion in directing thought and action. The faith of the Enlightenment – if one may call it so – is that the process of enlightenment, of becoming progressively self – directed in thought and action through the awakening of one’s intellectual powers, leads ultimately to a better, more fulfilled human existence. The commitment to careful observation and description of phenomena as the starting point of science, and then the success at explaining and accounting for observed phenomena through the method of induction, naturally leads to the development of new sciences for new domains in the Enlightenment. Many of the human and social sciences have their origins in the eighteenth century, in the context of the Enlightenment (e.g., history, anthropology, aesthetics, psychology, economics, even sociology), though most are only formally established as autonomous disciplines in universities later. The emergence of new sciences is aided by the development of new scientific tools, such as models for probabilistic reasoning, a kind of reasoning that gains new respect and application in the period. Despite the multiplication of sciences in the period, the ideal remains to comprehend the diversity of our scientific knowledge as a unified system of science; however, this ideal of unity is generally taken as regulative, as an ideal to emerge in the ever-receding end–state of science, rather than as enforced from the beginning by regimenting science under a priori principles. As exemplifying these and other tendencies of the Enlightenment, one work deserves special mention: Encyclopedia, edited by Denis Diderot and Jean La Rond d’Alembert. The Encyclopedia (subtitled: «systematic dictionary of the sciences, arts and crafts») had been published in 28 volumes (17 of text, 68

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11 of plates) for over 21 years (1751–1772). It consists of over 70,000 articles, contributed by over 140 authors, many of the luminaries of the French Enlightenment among them. The work aims to provide a compendium of existing human knowledge, a compendium to be transmitted to subsequent generations, a transmission intended to contribute to the progress and dissemination of human knowledge and to a positive transformation of human society. The orientation of the Encyclopedia is decidedly secular and implicitly anti-authoritarian. Naturally, the French state of the old régime subjected the project to censorship, and it was completed only through the persistence of Diderot. The collaborative nature of the project, especially in the context of the political opposition, contributes significantly to the formation of a shared sense of purpose among the wide variety of intellectuals who belong to the French Enlightenment. The knowledge contained in the Encyclopedia is self – consciously social both in its production – insofar as it was immediately the product of what the title page calls «a society of men of letters» – and in its address – insofar as it was primarily meant as an instrument for the education and improvement of society. It is a striking feature of the Encyclopedia, and one by virtue of which it exemplifies the Baconian conception of science characteristic of the period, that its entries cover the whole range and scope of knowledge, from the most abstract theoretical to the most practical, mechanical and technical. The Enlightenment is mostly identified with its political accomplishments. The era is marked by three political revolutions, which together lay the basis for modern, republican, constitutional democracies: The English Revolution (1688), the American Revolution (1775 –1783), and the French Revolution (1789–1799). The success at explaining and understanding the natural world encourages the Enlightenment project of re-making the social/political world, in accord with the true models we allegedly find in our reason. Enlightenment philosophers find that the existing social and political orders do not withstand critical scrutiny; they find that existing political and social authority is shrouded in religious myth and mystery and founded on obscure traditions. The negative work of criticizing existing institutions is supplemented with the positive work of constructing in theory the model of institutions as they ought to be. We owe to this period the basic model of government 69

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founded upon the consent of the governed; the articulation of the political ideals of freedom and equality and the theory of their institutional realization; the articulation of a list of basic individual human rights to be respected and realized by any legitimate political system; the articulation and promotion of toleration of religious diversity as a virtue to be respected in a well ordered society; the conception of the basic political powers as organized in a system of checks and balances; and other now-familiar features of western democracies. However, for all the enduring accomplishments of Enlightenment political philosophy, it is not clear that human reason proves powerful enough to put a concrete, positive authoritative ideal in place of the ideals negated by rational criticism. As in the epistemological domain, reason shows its power more convincingly in criticizing authorities than in establishing them. Here too the question of the limits of reason is one of the main philosophical legacies of the period. These limits are arguably vividly illustrated by the course of the French Revolution. The explicit ideals of the French Revolution are the Enlightenment ideals of individual freedom and equality; but, as the revolutionaries attempt to devise rational, secular institutions to put in place of those they have violently overthrown, eventually they have recourse to violence and terror in order to control and govern the people. The devolution of the French Revolution into the Reign of Terror is perceived by many as proving the emptiness and hypocrisy of Enlightenment reason, and is one of the main factors which accounts for the end of the Enlightenment as a historical period. The political revolutions of the Enlightenment, especially the French and the American, were informed and guided to a significant extent by prior political philosophy in the period. Though Thomas Hobbes, in his Leviathan (1651), defends the absolute power of the political sovereign, and is to that extent opposed to the revolutionaries and reformers in England, this work is a founding work of Enlightenment political theory. Hobbes’ work originates the modern social contract theory, which incorporates Enlightenment conceptions of the relation of the individual to the state. According to the general social contract model, political authority is grounded in an agreement (often understood as ideal, rather than real) among individuals, each of whom aims in this agreement to advance his rational 70

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self-interest by establishing a common political authority over all. Thus, according to the general contract model (though this is clearer in later contract theorists such as Locke and Rousseau than in Hobbes himself), political authority is grounded not in conquest, natural or divinely instituted hierarchy, or in obscure myths and traditions, but rather in the rational consent of the governed. In initiating this model, Hobbes takes a naturalistic, scientific approach to the question of how political society ought to be organized (against the background of a clear-eyed, unsentimental conception of human nature), and thus decisively influences the Enlightenment process of secularization and rationalization in political and social philosophy. However, John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government (1690) is the classical source of modern liberal political theory. In his First Treatise of Government, Locke attacks Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha (1680), which epitomizes the sort of political theory the Enlightenment opposes. Filmer defends the right of kings to exercise absolute authority over their subjects on the basis of the claim that they inherit the authority God vested in Adam at creation. Though Locke’s assertion of the natural freedom and equality of human beings in the Second Treatise is starkly and explicitly opposed to such a view, it is striking that the cosmology underlying Locke’s assertions is closer to Filmer’s than to Spinoza’s. According to Locke, in order to understand the nature and source of legitimate political authority, we have to understand our relations in the state of nature. Drawing upon the natural law tradition, Locke argues that it is evident to our natural reason that we are all absolutely subject to our Lord and Creator, but that, in relation to each other, we exist naturally in a state of equality «wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another». We also exist naturally in a condition of freedom, insofar as we may do with ourselves and our possessions as we please, within the constraints of the fundamental law of nature. The law of nature «teaches all mankind … that, being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions». That we are governed in our natural condition by such a substantive moral law, legislated by God and known to us through our natural reason, implies that the state of nature is not the war of all against all that Hobbes claims it is. However, since there is a lack of any human authority over all to judge of 71

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disputes and enforce the law, it is a condition marred by «inconveniencies», in which possession of natural freedom, equality and possessions is insecure. According to Locke, we rationally quit this natural condition by contracting together to set over ourselves a political authority, charged with promulgating and enforcing a single, clear set of laws, for the sake of guaranteeing our natural rights, liberties and possessions. The civil, political law, founded ultimately upon the consent of the governed, does not cancel the natural law, according to Locke, but merely serves to draw that law closer. «The law of nature stands as an eternal rule to all men». Consequently, when established political power violates that law, the people are justified in overthrowing it. Locke’s support for the right to revolt against a government that opposes the purposes for which legitimate government is founded is significant both within the context of the political revolution in the conditions of which he writes (the English revolution) and through the influence of his writings on the revolutionaries in the American colonies almost a hundred years later. Though Locke’s liberalism has been tremendously influential, his political theory is founded on doctrines of natural law and religion that are not nearly as evident as Locke assumes. Locke’s reliance on the natural law tradition is typical of Enlightenment political and moral theory. According to the natural law tradition, as the Enlightenment makes use of it, we can know through the use of our unaided reason that we all – all human beings, universally – stand in particular moral relations to each other. The claim that we can apprehend through our unaided reason a universal moral order exactly because moral qualities and relations (in particular human freedom and equality) belong to the nature of things, is attractive in the Enlightenment for obvious reasons. However, as noted above, the scientific apprehension of nature in the period does not support, and in fact opposes, the claim that the alleged moral qualities and relations (or, indeed, that any moral qualities and relations) are natural. According to a common Enlightenment assumption, as the humankind clarifies the laws of nature through the advance of natural science and philosophy, the true moral and political order will be revealed with it. This view is expressed explicitly by the philosopher Marquis de Condorcet, in his Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (published 72

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posthumously in 1795 and which, perhaps better than any other work, lays out the paradigmatically Enlightenment view of history of the human race as a continual progress to perfection). But, in fact, advance in knowledge of the laws of nature in the science of the period does not help with discernment of a natural political or moral order. This asserted relationship between natural scientific knowledge and the political and moral order is under great stress already in the Enlightenment. With respect to Lockean liberalism, though his assertion of the moral and political claims (natural freedom, equality, et cetera) continues to have considerable force for us, the grounding of these claims in a religious cosmology does not. The question of how to ground our claims to natural freedom and equality is one of the main philosophical legacies of the Enlightenment. The rise and development of liberalism in the Enlightenment political thought has many relations with the rise of the mercantile class (the bourgeoisie) and the development of what comes to be called «civil society», the society characterized by work and trade in pursuit of private property. Locke’s Second Treatise contributes greatly to the project of articulating a political philosophy to serve the interests and values of this ascending class. Locke claims that the end or purpose of political society is the preservation and protection of property (though he defines property broadly to include not only external property but life and liberties as well). According to Locke’s famous account, persons acquire rightful ownership in external things that are originally given to us all by God as a common inheritance, independently of the state and prior to its involvement, insofar as we «mix our labor with them». The civil freedom that Locke defines, as something protected by the force of political laws, comes increasingly to be interpreted as the freedom to trade, to exchange without the interference of governmental regulation. Within the context of the Enlightenment, economic freedom is a salient interpretation of the individual freedom highly valued in the period. Adam Smith, a prominent member of the Scottish Enlightenment, describes in his An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) some of the laws of civil society, as a sphere distinct from political society as such, and thus contributes significantly to the foundation of political economy (later called merely «economics»). His is one of many voices in the Enlightenment advocating for free trade and for 73

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minimal government regulation of markets. The trading house floor, in which people of various nationalities, languages, cultures, religions come together and trade, each in pursuit of his own self-interest, but, through this pursuit, supplying the wants of their respective nations and increasing their wealth, represents for some Enlightenment thinkers the benign, peaceful, universal rational order that they wish to see replace the violent, confessional strife that characterized the then-recent past of Europe. However, the liberal conception of the government as properly protecting economic freedom of citizens and private property comes into conflict in the Enlightenment with the valuing of democracy. James Madison confronts this tension in the context of arguing for the adoption of the U.S. Constitution (in his Federalist #10). Madison argues that popular government (pure democracy) is subject to the evil of factions; in a pure democracy, a majority bound together by a private interest, relative to the whole, has the capacity to impose its particular will on the whole. The example most on Madison’s mind is that those without property (the many) may seek to bring about governmental re – distribution of the property of the propertied class (the few), perhaps in the name of that other Enlightenment ideal, equality. If, as in Locke’s theory, the government’s protection of an individual’s freedom is encompassed within the general end of protecting a person’s property, then, as Madison argues, the proper form of the government cannot be pure democracy, and the will of the people must be officially determined in some other way than by directly polling the people. Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s political theory, as presented in his On the Social Contract (1762), presents a contrast to the Lockean liberal model. Though commitment to the political ideals of freedom and equality constitutes a common ground for Enlightenment political philosophy, it is not clear not only how these values have a home in nature as Enlightenment science re–conceives it, but also how concretely to interpret each of these ideals and how properly to balance them against each other. Contrary to Madison, Rousseau argues that direct (pure) democracy is the only form of government in which human freedom can be realized. Human freedom, according to Rousseau’s interpretation, is possible only through governance according to what he calls «the general will», which is the will of the politi74

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cal body, formed through the original contract, concretely determined as an assembly in which all citizens participate. Rousseau’s account intends to avert the evils of factions by structural elements of the original contract. The contract consists in the self-alienation by each associate of all rights and possessions to the political body. The emergence of factions is avoided insofar as the good of each citizen is, and is understood to be, equally (because wholly) dependent on the general will. Legislation supports this identification with the general will by preserving the original equality established in the contract, prominently through maintaining a measure of economic equality. The (ideal) relation of the individual citizen to the state is quite different on Rousseau’s account than on Locke’s; in Rousseau’s account, the individual must be actively engaged in political life in order to maintain the identification of his supremely authoritative will with the general will, whereas in Locke the emphasis is on the limits of governmental authority with respect to the expressions of the individual will. Though Locke’s liberal model is more representative of the Enlightenment in general, Rousseau’s political theory, which in some respects presents a revived classical model modified within the context of Enlightenment values, in effect poses many of the enduring questions regarding the meaning and interpretation of political freedom and equality within the modern state. Both Madison and Rousseau, like most political thinkers of the period, are influenced by Baron de Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws (1748), which is one of the founding texts of modern political theory. Though Montesquieu’s treatise belongs to the tradition of liberalism in political theory, considering his scientific approach to social, legal and political systems, his influence extends beyond this tradition. Montesquieu argues that the system of legislation for people varies appropriately with the particular circumstances of the people. He provides specific analysis of how climate, fertility of the soil, population size, et cetera, affect legislation. He famously distinguishes three main forms of governments: republics (which can either be democratic or aristocratic), monarchies and despotisms. He describes leading characteristics of each. His argument that functional democracies require the population to possess civic virtue in high measure, a virtue that consists in valuing public good above private interest, influences later Enlightenment 75

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theorists, including both Rousseau and Madison. He describes the threat of factions to which Madison and Rousseau respond in different (indeed opposite) ways. He provides the basic structure and justification for the balance of political powers that Madison later incorporates into the U.S. Constitution. French philosophy of the XVIII century is called philosophy of the Enlightenment. The name it received in connection with the fact that its members destroyed the established notions about God, the world and man, openly advocated the idea of the emerging bourgeoisie and, ultimately, ideologically prepared the great French Revolution of 1789 – 1794. Main directions: 1. Deism (Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Condillac) – criticized the pantheism (the identification of God and nature), rejected the possibility of God’s intervention in the processes of nature and human affairs – only God creates the world and more in his life is not involved. 2. Atheistic materialism (Meslier, La Mettrie, Diderot, Helvetius, Holbach.) – rejected the idea of God’s existence in all its forms, explained the origin of the world and man from a materialist position, in matters of knowledge favored empiricism. 3. Utopian socialism (communism) (Mably, Morelli, Babeuf, Owen, Saint-Simon) – spoke for engagement in the challenge of developing and building an ideal society based on equality and social justice. For all the philosophers of the Enlightenment are characterized by the idea of rebuilding life on a reasonable basis, they were hoping for a positive spread of knowledge among educated people, especially among the rulers, which must implement reasonable principles into everyday life of their countries. Man, according to educators, is part of nature, wholly corporeal material being. The reason they are identified with the feelings (Helvetius), or viewed as a kind of general feeling (Diderot). Living in harmony with nature and reason means to live, avoiding suffering and enjoying as much as possible. The man is not evil by nature. So, it makes society through the imperfection of public relations and improper upbringing. One conclusion: it is necessary to change society and the system of education! Properly raised, i.e. enlightened, rational egoism in man takes a position, the principle of which – «live and let live». Corresponding to this principle the system must ensure 76

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the legal equality of all citizens irrespective of class, national, religious differences between them. This system makes it possible for each benefit (minimum of suffering, maximum pleasure), without prejudice to the personal interests of all others. If Helvetius believed that by nature man is morally neutral and becomes reasonable egoist only through education, by Diderot, man is good by nature, and proper upbringing develops and strengthens the natural moral tendency. Jean- Jacques Rousseau’s views on God’s will and the mind of the world, thought, matter, and uncreatable objective are always there, and a man consists of a mortal body and an immortal soul. He was against religion in general and against Christianity, but because of fear, in the case of the disappearance of religion, fall in manners and disappearance of material limitations, he proposed to create a substitute for religion, proposed to create a substitute for religion – «civil religion», «cult of the great creatures of God) », «the cult of the world will» etc. As the main reason for the contradictions in society he considered private property. He substantiated the right of people to revolt (in conditions of depression, deprivation of the right of ownership the majority has the right to overthrow the ruler and the parasitizing minority and to create a society in their own discretion). In the fair, the ideal society everyone should have equal rights and private property should be distributed equally among all citizens in the amounts necessary for life, but not enrichment. The power must be carried out not through the parliament, but by the citizens directly – through meetings and gatherings. In future, the state should use principally new system of parenting: children must be isolated from the outside world in special schools, where they will be educated as the people of the new society – on the ideas of individual freedom, mutual respect, tolerance in religion, professionalism and knowledgeable science. F.Babef is considered to be the first communist – theorist and practitioner. He strongly rejected all philosophical theories, which were partial and did not intend to bring people happiness ... he criticized the existing society and the state. The main social evil, according to him, was private property and the division of society into opposing classes – the rich and the poor. The ideal society is the society in which there are no class divisions, private property, the whole land is divided equally 77

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between those who work on it; there is a complete economic and political equality, joint work and universal, uniform, state distribution of products manufactured by the whole society among all its members. Such a society (communist) can be built only through a violent revolution against the rich and establishment of hard revolutionary order. Babeuf became the first philosopher – communist, who tried to implement their ideas in practice. He created a revolutionary organization Conspiracy in the Name of Equality to prepare for an armed uprising, it was a manifesto and program of the future revolutionary government. However, in 1797 the plot was uncovered and Babeuf and some of his associates were executed. Answer the questions: 1. What society does Bacon describe in his book «The New Atlantis»? 2. What, according to Francis Bacon, is the first problem of logic? 3. What errors are indicated by Bacon when he speaks of «Idols of the Cave», «Idols of the Marketplace» and «Idols of the Theatre»? 4. What developments in science encouraged philosophers to begin to investigate new methods? 5. What, according to Descartes, is the first task for the philosopher? 6. What conclusion did Descartes arrive at by applying his method? 7. Why is Descartes’s method still useful to all students of the subject? 8. Descartes’s views about the nature, source and basis of our knowledge in many ways resemble those of Plato, don’t they? Why?

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Theme 6 German classical philosophy 1. Kant’s transcendental philosophy as a theory of knowledge. 2. Philosophy of Hegel as dialectical conception of development. 3. Antropological teaching of L.Feyerbah and his criticism of religion.

German classical philosophy – the philosophy of the late XVIIIth and the first third of the 19th century is represented by such prominent German philosophers as Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, who speculated about the meaning of life. German classical philosophy is a milestone in the development of philosophical thought and philosophy in general. This philosophy continued and developed the ideas of ​​the New Age, that proclaimed humanism, faith, unlimited power of human reason and individual rights. The most important finding of this philosophy is the Hegel’s dialectics, which justified the eternal development of the world. German classical philosophy reflects both the formation and development of capitalist society and the reality of the historical features of Germany at that time. The German bourgeoisie, whose ideology was represented by classical German philosophy, lagged far behind the European countries in socio – economic and political development. This was due to the fact that Germany until the end of the 18th century was not the whole state, but was divided into 300 different sovereign units, and some were very small. The capitalist market there was in its infancy. The welfare of German bourgeoisie totally depended on the orders of the nobility and the Crown, the needs of the army. Dutifully trail behind the policy, it was weak and melancholic. That is quite clearly reflected in the German philosophy. The representatives of classical philosophy in their writings speak directly about the dual nature of the bourgeoisie in Germany, striving to compromise and rather contradictory. 79

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German classical philosophy was significantly different from the philosophy of the rest of Europe. For instance, in France, the works of the philosophers were burned, and philosophers themselves imprisoned in the Bastille. While in Germany, despite its criticality of the ruling authorities and the hostility of philosophical reasoning, philosophers calmly published their works and that was not forbidden, taught in universities and were recognized mentors of the youth in Germany. Although, in spite of their hostility to the government, they did not fight with the authorities and their institutions. The philosophers – idealists were well aware that Germany was hopelessly lagging behind other developed countries remaining medieval. German philosophy of the XIXth century was a unique phenomenon of the world philosophy. The uniqueness of German philosophy is that it had succeeded for more than 100 years: – to deeply investigate the problems that had tormented humanity for centuries, and come to the conclusions that determined the entire future development of philosophy; – to combine in itself almost all the philosophical trends known at that time – from subjective idealism to vulgar materialism and irrationalism; – to open dozens of names of outstanding philosophers who entered the «golden fund» of the world philosophy (Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Engels, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, etc.). In German classical philosophy, three leading philosophical trends were presented: – objective idealism (Kant, Schelling, Hegel); – subjective idealism (Fichte); – materialism (Feuerbach). German classical philosophy developed several common problems, and that allows us to speak of it as a holistic phenomenon. This philosophy: – turned the attention from traditional problems (being, thinking, cognition, etc.) to the study of the human essence; – paid special attention to the problem of development; – greatly enriched the logical-theoretical apparatus of philosophy; – looked at history as a holistic process. Each of these philosophers created their own philosophical systems, filled with a wealth of ideas and concepts. 1. The role of philosophy in the history of mankind and the development of world culture is what is called upon to be a 80

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critical conscience of culture, a consciousness contending with reality, the soul of culture. 2. The human essence, and not only human history was investigated: – by Kant: “Man is a moral being”; – by Fichte, who emphasized the effectiveness, activity of consciousness and self-consciousness of man, considered the structure of human life according to the requirements of reason; – by Schelling, who showed the relationship between the objective and the subjective; – by Hegel, who more broadly examined the boundaries of the activity of self-consciousness and individual consciousness: according to him, the individual’s self-consciousness corresponds not only to external objects, but also to other identities, from which various social forms arise; – by Feuerbach who defined a new form of materialism – anthropological materialism, in the center of which there was a real person who is a subject for himself and an object for another person. 3. All representatives of classical German philosophy defined it as a special system of philosophical disciplines, categories, ideas: – Kant identifies gnosseology and ethics as the main philosophical disciplines; – Schelling – as natural philosophy, ontology; – Fichte saw in philosophy ontological, epistemological, socio-political sections; – Hegel defined a broad system of philosophical knowledge, which included the philosophy of nature, logic, philosophy of history, history of philosophy, philosophy of law, state philosophy, morality philosophy, philosophy of religion, philosophy of development of individual consciousness, etc.; – Feuerbach considered the philosophical problems of history, religion, ontology, epistemology and ethics. 4. Classical German philosophy defines a holistic concept of dialectics: – Kant’s dialectic is the dialectic of the boundaries and possibilities of human cognition: senses, reason and human reason; – the dialectics of Fichte is reduced to the development of the creative activity of the ego, to the interaction of the ego and 81

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the non-ego as the opposite, on the basis of whose struggle the development of man’s self-consciousness takes place; – Schelling shifts the principles of dialectical development proposed by Fichte to nature, nature, according to him, has a developing spirit; – Hegel presented a detailed, comprehensive theory of idealistic dialectics. He explored the whole natural, historical and spiritual world as a process, that is, in its continuous movement, change, transformation and development, contradictions, breaks in gradualness, the struggle of the new with the old, directed movement; – Feuerbach, in his dialectic, examines the links between phenomena, their interactions and changes, the unity of opposites in the development of phenomena (spirit and body, human consciousness and material nature). Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) is one of the most influential philosophers in the history of Western philosophy. His contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics had a profound impact on almost every later philosophical movement. Immanuel Kant, German philosopher, wrote a very abundant philosophical works, among these: – Critique of Pure Reason (first edition 1781, 2-nd edition, 1787) – Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783) – Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) – Critique of Practical Reason (1788) – Critique of Judgement (1790) – Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view (1798) Kant ‘s philosophical project can be summarized as follows: taking man out his wild nature. – His metaphysical nature: Kant has restored limits to reason, but at the same time ennobled human reason. – His moral nature: the man bears his primary passions (selfishness and special interest). – His aesthetic nature: by freeing the senses, man must acquire the ability to judge beauty. – His political nature: exit of the states from their state of nature that leads them to mutual annihilation in order to build a project of perpetual peace. Kant asked three questions, which he attempted to answer for all his life: 82

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– What do I know? – What should I do? – What am I allowed to hope for? What do I know? To answer this question, Kant conducts a critical examination of reason, determining what it can do and what it is incapable of doing. Reason, in the broadest sense, according to Kant, is all that is in mind, is a priori and not from experience. – It is theoretical (pure reason) or related to speculative knowledge. – It is practical (practical reason) when considered as containing the rule of morality (this reason, in the broadest sense, is distinguished, by Kant, reason, in the narrow sense, as the human faculty to higher unit). Kant here makes a critique of speculative reason: it is not a skeptical criticism, but a review of the use, scope and limits of reason. Practicing this approach, Kant notes that mathematics and physics went into the safe route of science on the day they ceased to be empirical to recognize the primacy of rational demonstration. – Metaphysics should build on this so fruitful method. – Here the famous notion of Copernican revolution takes place: just as Copernicus assumed that the Earth revolved around the sun and not vice versa, so Kant admits that it is our right to know who holds the knowledge, not objects that determine it. A large part of Kant’s work «The Critique of Pure Reason» addresses the question «What can we know? » The answer is that our knowledge is constrained to mathematics and the science of the natural, empirical world. It is impossible, Kant argues, to extend knowledge to the supersensible realm of speculative metaphysics. The reason that knowledge has these constraints, Kant argues, that the mind plays an active role in constituting the features of experience and limiting the mind’s access only to the empirical realm of space and time. Kant responded to his predecessors by arguing against the Empiricists that the mind is not a blank slate that is written upon by the empirical world, and by rejecting the Rationalists’ notion that pure, a priori knowledge of a mind-independent world was possible. Reason itself is structured with forms of experience and categories that give a phenomenal and logical structure to any possible object of empirical experience. These categories can83

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not be circumvented to get at a mind – independent world, but they are necessary for experience of spatio – temporal objects with their causal behavior and logical properties. These two theses constitute Kant’s famous transcendental idealism and empirical realism. This means that we can apprehend the world through the a priori elements. – The term «a priori» means, here, everything that is independent of experience. – Thus, space and time are the past experience: they are a priori forming of sensibility, that is to say structures from the subject and intuitive for ordering objects out of us and in us. But this is not all and, to a second level of organization, concept this time, the objects must be designed, organized by intellectual understanding, linking faculty sensations through the categories or pure concepts, instruments to unify the material: – Unity, Plurality, Totality (categories of quantity) – Reality, Negation, Limitation (categories of quality) – Substance and accident, Causality and Dependence, Community (Relationship types) – Possibility, Impossibility, Existence, Non-existence, Necessity and Contingency (categories of modality). This analysis is conducted from a transcendental point of view: it is not on the objects themselves, but on how to find and seize them, on a priori elements and concepts that constitute the experience. Time, space and categories are in fact the a priori conditions of knowledge and understanding of the user objects. Without them, no knowledge is possible. Distinguish here the transcendental aesthetic, which means, by Kant, the study of a priori forms of sensibility that are space and time, and transcendental logic, study of the forms of the understanding, as they are a priori. – The logic itself is divided into a summary, which sets the table of pure concepts and principles, and a dialectic. The consequences of these tests are decisive: if the only possible point of view is transcendental, it deals with the a priori conditions of knowledge, it follows that the way things are in themselves, i.e. independent of the knowledge that we have, cannot be apprehended. What can I, indeed, seize? – What awaits my perceptual field in the pure forms of sensibility (space and time) and under the categories: the field of phenomena. 84

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– The concept of phenomenon means, in effect, for Kant, all objects of possible experience, that is to say that stupid things for us, regarding our mode of knowledge, as opposed to the noumenon, the thing so that the mind can certainly think of, but not know. – So, God is a noumenon, a possible reality, that we cannot achieve. The man, far from being satisfied with the access to the phenomena to the categories of understanding, develops the ideas of reason (understood here in the narrow sense, as requiring the highest power unit). These ideas of reason are concepts which have no corresponding object given by the senses as the Idea of the Soul or God. – If the idea of reason has a regulative use, and to unify our experience, however, it is unknowable and can only be grasped intuitively. Kant explores the ideas of reason (soul, God, freedom) in a large part of the Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Dialectic named party: it means a critical revealing the misleading appearance of the pretensions of reason when it tries to leave the field experience to address the realm of pure thought, wrongly believing domain independent phenomenal and empirical. We must now answer the question: «What should I do? » – The answer to Kant is here unequivocal: the only duty is duty. – What is meant by this term, the duty? – To understand the meaning, let us turn first to the concept of goodwill. – In the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant performs, in fact, an analysis of the common conscience and notes that, of all that is conceivable in this world there is nothing that can be viewed without restriction, as absolutely correct, except goodwill, that is to say an intention absolutely pure and good without restriction. – What is it and what exactly is it back? – A pure will, good in itself, means willingness to do good, not tilt sensitively, but by duty. The goodwill we refer to the idea of ​​duty, the categorical imperative, not hypothetical. – A hypothetical imperative is a command statement that is subject to an assumption or a condition (e.g. if you want success, work!) 85

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– It is categorical when it orders unconditionally in itself, independently of any assumptions and any condition (e.g. work!). – In the first case, the action is the way for the result. In the second, the action is good in itself: this is duty. What is the fundamental formula of duty? – It sets the universality of the law. – It simply asserts a universal law, a precept of obligatory character and commanding to everybody without restriction. – «Act only according to the maxim that you might want and at the same time this becomes a universal law». – The second formula relates the duty, in turn, to respect the person, to be reasonable, having an end in the absolute itself. – While things are means, people are ends in themselves. – In its second aspect, the practical imperative is defined by respect for the person, the human subject, which shall in no case be treated as means. Obeying the will of the duty is, finally, an autonomous will, finding itself in its law. – That is, by Kant, the principle of autonomy, the latter characteristic has to give itself its own law. – While heteronomy means obedience to the law not emanating from the will, autonomy is the fact of obeying its own law. We can now give a more complete and synthetic duty: it means the autonomous moral obligation, the necessity to perform an action out of respect for universal law, without ordering the imperative condition – This is the concept of duty, central in the philosophy of Kant. It remains now to answer the third question: «What can I expect? » – And this issue concerns the religious hope. – However, Kant said that God, freedom and immortality, far from being demonstrable are postulates, assumptions required by practical reason. – For Kant, the hope for another life after death and the God’s judge, relates, in fact, to a practical requirement. I postulate God, freedom and immortality: These are beliefs rationally based, asked by an act of faith. – I need these assumptions to act morally. The first criticism of Kant concerns knowledge, the second one – morality, the third one – aesthetics. 86

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Beauty is here analyzed in its relationship to the human subject. What is taste? – The ability to judge an object or a representation by a clear appreciation of any interest («that is beautiful, what pleases universally without a concept») – While we please charm, beauty takes us away from empirical inclination. – The universality of beauty can distinguish basically what pleases the senses in the sense of beauty as such. – Kant also distinguished the beautiful from the sublime: beauty can be apprehended, while the sublime refers to what is beyond us, which is infinite. In all areas, Kant refers to the autonomy and human freedom. The man, basing on knowledge, is also autonomous moral agent and author of a Judgement of Taste disinterested and universal. Kant’s contributions to ethics have been just as substantial, if not more, as his work in metaphysics and epistemology. He is the most important proponent in philosophical history of deontological, or duty based, ethics. In Kant’s view, the sole feature that gives an action a moral worth is not the outcome that is achieved by the action, but the motive that is behind the action. And the only motive that can endow an act with moral value, he argues, is one that arises from universal principles discovered by reason. The categorical imperative is Kant’s famous statement of this duty: «Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time it should become a universal law». Hegel is a German philosopher who built a vast system ordering all knowledge of his time, after Kant’s attempt to do it. Among his main works are the following ones: – The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) – Philosophical Propaedeutics (1809–1816) – Science of Logic (1812–1816) – Handbook of the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences (1817) – Principles of the Philosophy of Law (1821) – Lectures on the Philosophy of History – Lectures on Aesthetics and Philosophy of Religion Hegel emerges in human history and culture, in the gradual genesis of the Absolute, which has, in itself, its foundation. 87

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The universal idea, the superior form of the Spirit, is at the end of the process, the absolute term. Hegel’s philosophy, System and Absolute: Hegel’s philosophy must embrace everything, to understand reality in its totality, think over history and things, «Insight and understanding what is what». This is the task assigned to philosophy. Philosophy is a system, that is to say an organized and closed system all of whose elements are independent, and forming a unity embracing all elements of thought and life. – This project to totalize and synthesize basic content for the idea, is understood not as a subjective representation, but as spiritual principle of dynamic, eternal creation, eternal life, rolling in its sparkling waters all finite things determined. – The essence of this idea deepens and grows at different levels. It exists primarily as thought identical with itself (first moment). Then it goes out of itself and externalized (second time). Finally, during the third time, the Idea returns to itself and as Spirit unfolds, that is to say as Thought is gradually clarified reaching finally the Absolute. – Logic, Science and Idea of ​​logical categories, Philosophy of Nature, the science of the Idea of Nature ​​ in the developing external and the Philosophy of Spirit, the return of the idea to itself, from its external existence, corresponding to the three spiritual moments. Consider, first, the logic and the laws of dialectics. The idea spreads, indeed dialectically, according to some determinations and laws as the analysis of Hegel in the Logic. The fundamental principle of Hegel is the idea of a deployment and a dialectical progression. What means, by this thinker, dialectics? – Essentially the way of thinking by overcoming contradictions, ranging from thesis to antithesis and synthesis – It’s overrun by successive contradictions (this term refers to passing precisely, by Hegel, the act of removing and retaining deny, destroying) that takes place, in fact, in the movement of everything . – At each step, a determination is denied and, at the same time preserved. – Thus, the button disappears in the collapse of the bloom: the flower denies the button and at the same time, keeps it. 88

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– Also, it is the appearance of the fruit, and conservation negation of the flower. Such is the march in which each term is denied, at the same time, being integrated. – It occurs as a uniting and unifying synthesis of antithetical moments. – In this development, a major role is played by contradiction, that is to say the set of terms where one is the negation of the other: and «dead» and «alive» they are not in isolation but in continuous exchange with each other. – Similarly, «being» and «nil», «hot» and «cold», such contradictory terms call each other. In this perspective, the negative plays, of course, an essential role. – The negative is to say the timing of the development process where affirmative determinations are removed, it embodies a true creative «work». – It destroys, maintains and preserves a single movement. The negative moment and positive moment are two sides of the Hegelian dialectic. The negative is the man who makes us understand. The man is, indeed, fundamentally, a desire denier: he tends toward a goal or object and he tries to assimilate, to deny them, as their own (for example, food is absorbed by the subject). But the real object of desire is the other: the conscience is engendered and formed only in heading the other, it tends to dominate in being recognized as «Master of consciousness». Hegel shows, that only desire is the desire of my generator. In a fight to the death for pure prestige, human consciousness confronts another consciousness and tries to be «recognized» in his superiority. Beyond the training the individual self is in Work and in History as the negation is expressed with full edifying power. – Work is, in effect, a denying nature to overcome in order to build tools to refer the world outside the human form. – Thus, the man he humanizes things and he tames nature. – It has a practical activity, which refers to a transformation of external things, marked, therefore, with the seal of human interiority and negativity. History, too (understood as the development of the Idea and spiritual process in total), fully reveals man who is part of 89

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negativity in it: it appears where the man denies the world and externalizes freedom. – Nevertheless, do not misunderstand the nature of historical development. – Certainly, an individual mark in history it is his own project, but it is only the charge d’affaires of the World Spirit. – Indeed, history, spiritual movement which is engendered by the total absolute Idea, is a manifestation of reason, conceived as divine principle immanent in the world. – Reason governs things, and for the successful completion of its designs, it uses wishes, and passions of individuals. Are the men what they really want? – Actually, this is Reason’s «trick»: we just call it «cunning of reason» that it does not act by itself, but allowed to act in its place the human passions. – As men they wear out and they run out to update a project that goes far beyond that of «Reason» divine. In the eyes of Hegel, the historical process is becoming, through these «tricks» variety, increasingly perfect with intelligibility and transparency. – In particular, the state is a realization of absolute reason. Far from designating an organization relative and contingent, it is the social substance came to full consciousness of itself. – In him, the man asserts and finds himself: far from being delivered to the arbitrary, he experimented in the state organization, an authentic self. History does not, in Hegel, a narrow sense, but it means a comprehensive and universal process. The Universal History is nothing but the manifestation of the divine process of absolute Spirit, the gradual progress by which it becomes aware of itself. The final stages of total spiritual process correspond to those of Art, Religion and Philosophy: the movement of the Spirit acquires a greater and greater transparency. – Art, in fact manifest the Absolute in a tangible form. – It means striving to Spirit, speaking through a form or a concrete representation. – As for Beauty, it is defined, in this perspective, as the sensible manifestation of the Idea. The idea, conceived as a higher form of the Spirit, fully actualized in the artwork and the Beautiful. – However, it is still in the form sensitive works of art, and does not yet reach the pure concept, as it will in philosophy. 90

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Art is for us now, is something from the past: it has lost, says Hegel, in our civilization, its truth and life – This decline makes possible the coming of the Aesthetic, philosophical reflection on Art and Philosophy of Fine Arts. In Religion (training where the individual stands at the thought of God and in union with him), and Philosophy (Intelligence and thought of this and the real, system design and what is conceptual grasp of the world in his unit), the Spirit progressively divest himself of its matrix material. Thus, the Absolute Spirit, freed from its merits, has reached full equality with himself. – It means the idea came to transparency, its being for itself and knowledge of self, through the mediation of the final Art, Religion and the Philosophy. Our time is particularly severe in relation to Hegel. In the eyes of Hegel, all that has happened marks, indeed, a step toward the realization of the Spirit. Any historical phenomenon can be found in this context in its full legitimacy, as it is called by the same requirement of Reason. If rationalism is not always a full satisfaction of our culture, the teachings of the Hegelian dialectic are by no means obsolete. Negativity, contradiction, as many rich Hegelian elements must be considered remaining analytical instruments. Answer the questions: 1. Explain what Kant means by «phenomena» and «noumena». 2. Is absolute knowledge possible or impossible, ac­cording to Kant? 3. Can we have knowledge that is independent of our sense experience? 4. What, according to Kant, is the entire problem of metaphysics? 5. What role did Greek literature play in Hegel’s life? 6. What does Hegel say about «development»? 7. What is «history» according to Hegel?

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Theme 7 Western philosophy in the culture of the nineteenth century 1. Social – political philosophy of Karl Marx. The Marxist conception of human rights. 2. Development of social sciences. Positivism. Neo-Kantianism. 3. Philosophy of «life»: A. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche 4. Genesis of philosophy of existentialism: S. Kierkegaard

Karl Marx was a prominent German economist, philosopher, politician and a public figure. He was a founder of the theory of scientific socialism and the basics of Marxism. He was born in Prussia on May the 5th, 1818. His ancestors were of Jewish decent. Particularly, one of his grandfathers was a Dutch rabbi. His father was a relatively wealthy lawyer, who converted from Judaism to Protestant Christian prior to anti-Semitic craze. Little is known about the future philosopher’s childhood. When he was 17, he entered the University of Bonn. Later on, he transferred to the University of Berlin to study law. Starting from 1837, he was a devoted follower of Hegel’s philosophy. In 1841, he received a degree and became a Doctor of Philosophy. A year later his works appeared in «Rhineland News». In October 1842 he became the editor of this newspaper. However, a year later the newspaper was banned as it supported the opposition of Prussian bourgeoisie. In June 1843 he married the daughter of his father’s friend, who was an advisor. In autumn of the same year Marx moved to Paris, where he planned to lead a political journal. The only issue of his «German–French Annals» was released in February 1844. It marked the final transition of the philosopher from idealism to materialism and from revolutionary democracy to communism. Residing in Paris, Marx took up the studies of political economy 92

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and French revolution. In 1844 he met Engels, who became his lifelong friend. Together they published «The Holy Family» – a criticizing book on Young Hegelians. In 1845, the Prussian authorities insisted on the closing the newspaper where they worked in France. After that, Karl had to move to Brussels. Engels joined him there a little later. In 1849, Marx moved to London, where he stayed till the end of his life. There, he began the reorganization of the Communist League and the re-establishment of the Central Committee. In 1850, Marx and Engels started publishing the political – economical revue. In September 1864 he became a member of the International Workingmen’s Association. At the same time, he was the unofficial head of the governing body. During his life in London he collaborated with a number of proletarian and bourgeois newspapers, including the «New York Daily Tribune». Apart from that he was working on the 2nd and 3rd volumes of the «Capital» and the translation of the 1st one. He helped to prepare the Russian edition of the book, which was published in 1872. In the 1980s, his health began to deteriorate. He lost his wife in 1881 and his eldest daughter in 1883. The politician died on March 14th, 1883 and was buried in London. During his life he had seven children, but only three daughters survived. The youngest daughter, Eleanor, continued her father’s work and lead the British and international labor movement. The French philosopher Auguste Comte was the first who assumed positivism as philosophical concept and science of sociology. It then developed through several stages known by various names, such as Empiriocriticism, Logical Positivism and Logical Empiricism and finally in the middle 20-th century flowed into the movement known as Analytic and Linguistic philosophy. In its basic ideological posture, positivism is worldly, secular, anti-theological and anti-meta-physical. Auguste Comte placed at the fundamental level the science that does not presuppose any other sciences; such as arithmetic, geometry and mechanics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology and sociology. Each higher-level science, in turn adds to the knowledge content of the science or sciences on the levels below, thus enriching this content by successive specialization. Positivism is a term which designates a philosophical tendency oriented around natural science and striving for a unit93

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ed view of the world of phenomena both physical and human, through the applications of the methods and the extension of the results whereby the natural sciences have attained their unrivaled position in the modern world. From the point of view of methodology, the term «positive» is conceived in polemical opposition to the metaphysical abstractions of traditional philosophy. Philosophy of science is positivism. Positivism is more a philosophical method rather than a theory. The basis of interpretation is human experience. It insists on the application of scientific method of natural sciences to the study of social world. It deals with the application of scientific method by natural scientists and by the sociologists in understanding human behaviour. The idea of positivism can be traced back to Bacon, Berkeley, Locke and Hume. Before Comte, Saint Simon also advocated positivism. He proposed scientific reorganization of society and promotion of science, since he believed that progress depended on it. The idea of positivism was present in an embryonic form in the mind of Saint Simon and Comte expanded this idea. Positivism brought a revolution or renaissance in the field of social science. It combined a belief in progress and a passion for serving humanity. It is based on the belief that a scientific analysis of history would show the way to cure for the ills of society. The characteristics of positivism are: (a) Science is the only valid knowledge. (b) Fact is the object of knowledge. (c) Philosophy does not possess a method different from science. (d) The task of philosophy is to find the general principles common to all sciences and to use these principles as guides to human conduct and as the basis of social organization. (e) Positivism denies intuition, prior reasoning, theological and metaphysical knowledge. Comte used positivism as a weapon against the negative philosophy prevalent before the French Revolution. That negative philosophy was more concerned with emotional than practical questions. Comte regarded such speculations as negative, since it was neither constructive nor practical. As an alternative, Comte invented ‘positivism’ which remains concerned with the questions about how things are in reality. 94

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Comte’s positivism is described in several ways. One salient point is that it is scientific. Science should not be confused with empiricisms or mere collection of facts. Comte believed that the whole universe is governed by natural laws and these laws could be learned through the method of science. Positive knowledge is based on experience and considers only real phenomena. Comte did not deny the existence of unknown, but positivism was no way concerned with the supernatural. Chambliss has presented the essence of Comtean positivism in the following words, «positivism is not fatalistic, or optimistic or materialistic. It is concerned with the real, rather than fanciful, useful rather than all knowledge». Apart from the above, there are also some other characteristics: 1. All scientific knowledge must be based on direct experience of reality or direct observation. It is the reliable method to acquire scientific knowledge. 2. The direct experience of reality could be understood by la certitute, i.e. the unity of scientific methods. This implies that different branches of study are distinguished by their object of study not by their method. 3. The concept of unity of scientific method requires la precise, i.e. a common scientific goal of formulating testable theories. It also implies that there are no value judgments in scientific enquiry. 4. The positivist views science as containing the principle of la utilize, i.e. all scientific knowledge must serve some useful purpose. It should be used as a tool for social engineering. 5. Positive knowledge is la relative, which means that scientific knowledge is unfinished because there is no absolute knowledge in science. Lastly, science gives prediction and from prediction action comes. Up to the positive method Comte was highly praised as the founder of science. “Auguste Comte was a philosopher among the sociologists and a sociologist among the philosophers,” – says Raymond Aron. He had a scientific bent of mind. But unfortunately, Comte’s reformative zeal overpowered his scientism. He had to reform the French Society. He thought that with the help of science, reformation can be brought to the society. He wanted to describe religion and science. He turned towards religion because he was a philosopher and a social re95

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formist. In the normative aspect we may include the concept of positive religion, positive society. Scientific religion was between science and religion. He founded a new religion called the «religion of humanity». This religion of humanity is a scientific interpretation of religion. Comte’s positivism was posited on the assentation of a so– called law of three stages of intellectual development. There is a parallel, as Comte saw it, between the evolution of thought patterns in the entire history of man; on the one hand and in the history of an individual’s development from infancy to adulthood on the other. In the first, or the so-called theological stage, natural phenomena are explained as the result of supernatural or divine powers. It does not matter whether the religion is polytheistic or monotheistic; in either case miraculous powers or wills are believed to produce the observed events. This stage was criticized by Comte as anthropomorphic, i.e. as resting on all too human analogies. At theological stage, super natural forces were the objects of worship and God was everything. But in scientific religion, God was replaced by humanity. Humanity will be worshipped. Humanity consists of all those who are dead and who are living and who would be born in future. Comte put emphasis on those who are dead and those who had sacrificed their lives for the welfare of mankind. He told to «love mankind». In religion of humanity selfishness is a sin; sacrifice is a way of salvation. He puts emphasis on altruism. You must live for others and not for yourself. Comte got the idea of religion of humanity from Feuerbach. Comte believed that society which was built in scientific principles needed very badly a religion called religion of humanity. The egoistic tendencies of mankind as evinced in previous history would be replaced by altruism and by the command «Live for others». Men would be imbued with love for their fellowmen. Comte at this stage made «Love and affection» the central points of human life, Comte not only considered himself a social scientist, but a prophet and a founder of a new religion that promised salvation for all ailments of mankind. He made a purely social religion. Mankind was an end in itself. Comte was not a strict religionist as such, but he considered the atheist «the most irrational of all theologians». Hux96

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ley called Comte’s religion «Catholicism minus Christianity». Some others criticized it as highly «egoistic religion». A few others considered it as Utopian in character. Comte disregarded violent procedure and gave emphasis to persuasion and compassion. Universal brotherhood is the end of positive politics. According to Comte, politicians are important for the society. But the sociologists should be allowed to form the government. The Second stage called metaphysical is in some cases merely a depersonalized theology. The observable processes of nature are assumed to arise from impersonal powers. The fruitfulness of cognition can be achieved only at the third stage, the scientific or positive stage. Hence the title of Comte’s magnum opus: Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte 1853 because it claims to be concerned only with positive facts. The task of the sciences and of knowledge in general is to study the facts and regularities as laws, explanations of phenomena can consist in no more than the subsuming of special cases under general laws. Mankind reached full maturity of thought only after abandoning the pseudo-explanations of the theological and metaphysical stages and substituting an unrestricted adherence to scientific method. In his three stages Comte combined what he considered to be an account of the historical order of development with a logical analysis of the leveled structure of the sciences. Though, Comte is claimed to be the father of positivism or scientific approach, he himself was not committed to it. Comte’s sociological theories represent a premature jump from the level of observation and inferences to the level of theory. According to John Stuart Mill, Comte’s religion does not stand the test of rationalism because that can never be put into practice. Comte’s religion was born out of his «moral intoxication». According to Rollin Chambliss, Comte wanted to build a science of social phenomena. But instead of doing that he struggled to provide his projects of social reorganization. He built Utopia instead of science. Auguste Comte gave maximum importance to the scientific method. In spite of criticisms, his insistence on positive approach, objectivity and scientific attitude contributed to the progress of social sciences in general. By arranging the six basic and pure sciences one upon the other in a pyramid, Comte 97

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prepared the way for Logical positivism to ‘reduce’ each level to the one below. Nietzsche is considered the founder of the direction “philosophy of life,” reality is understood as a form of life, the essence of which can be understood intuitively. Life is declared an absolute value. The development of life is determined by two principles: Appolonistic (after the god of harmony) and Dionistic (after the god of wine, elements, chaotic life force). The future of mankind is not for the weak, but for the strong, but in history there is a fall in the life force and the chopping of man. Just as there are predators and lambs in the animal kingdom, there are strong and weak people in human society, but weak have a strong will to power (vindictiveness, greed, envy are shopkeepers). People turn into shopkeepers – small people, evil, envious and vindictive. Strength in the modern world is associated with negative consequences (evil, aggression), while weakness, on the contrary, (good). The distortion of values ​​is associated with the development of Christianity. But modern Christianity is the barbarization of the true teachings of Christ. Christ, as the embodiment of the gospel of love, wanted to give people an example of moral practice of behavior, but the disciples distorted his teaching and Christianity became that life, the deliverance from which Christ preached. Instead of saying Yes to life, Christianity says No, there is no power, no beauty. The doctrine of equality is the error of the great Christ. «Not in the inequality of rights, lack of rights, but in claims of equality of rights». The distortion of genuine values ​​means that God is dead, «The Death of God» is the path to unbelief and nihilism. The only way out is from the formed nothing, to form something. «God is dead, now we want that there was a superman». The superman is the embodied image of a man of harmony, strong man. The harbinger of the superman should be the strongest (supreme) – these are the knowing and the creating. In order to change and re-evaluate values, the human spirit must go through 3 stages: – Camel (take it all on yourself) – Leo (freedom) – Child (new beginning, pure canvas) Søren Kierkegaard was a XIXth century Danish philosopher who is considered both the father of the philosophical school of thought called Existentialism and one of the great Christian theological thinkers of the past two hundred years. 98

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Kierkegaard’s philosophy broke free of the ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas, who tried to balance faith and reason, instead of insisting that faith and reason were completely independent of each other. Kierkegaard’s philosophy was also a direct reaction to G. W. F. Hegel, whose German idealism dominated the majority of European philosophical thought at the time. Unlike the vast majority of philosophers, Kierkegaard did not place the emphasis of his philosophy on the idea of obtaining objective truths about reality but instead was asking the subjective questions about what human beings value and how they should live their lives. Kierkegaard, along with the atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, would be the main inspiration for many twentieth century philosophers like Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. In order to explore viewpoints that were not his own, Kierkegaard wrote many of his works using pseudonyms. This approach, similar to the Socratic Method, and what was employed by Plato in his dialogues, allowed Kierkegaard to communicate with the reader indirectly. It often was not Kierkegaard’s goal to convince or to put together a particular argument but to present ideas and to ask the reader to evaluate the value of such ideas and what kind of person might benefit from such ideas. While Kierkegaard had definite values that he believed, he did not think that truths about the world were a very effective way to divine values. While Kierkegaard was a Christian, he did not believe that Christianity was meant for everybody to follow and was harshly critical of many Christians who he did not consider to be ideal followers of the faith. Kierkegaard thought certain life choices and ways of living were unquestionably superior to others but he also thought that this amounted to a subjective choice or an «Either/Or» on the part of the individual based on that individuals own values. While Nietzsche never read Kierkegaard, the two came to startlingly similar conclusions while having totally different ideas about Christianity and Ethics. As well as ideas of faith and value, Kierkegaard also explored the ideas of alienation and anxiety. This would form the basis for much of what Heidegger and Sartre would call Angst and use as a concept in exploring the idea of human freedom. Many scholars have broken Kierkegaard’s concepts into three ideas about how a person could lead his life. In much of Kierkegaard’s writing, we see pseudonyms that advocate one 99

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of these three viewpoints and a debate ensues on the merits of each of them. The first sphere is the Aesthetic Sphere. This is a way of living one’s life chiefly concerned with the way things look. Somebody who lives within the Aesthetic sphere is chiefly concerned with pleasure and is called a hedonist. Kierkegaard seems to view this as a modern reaction to what existentialists refer to as «the problem of nihilism». Somebody in the Aesthetic Sphere, simply goes about the tasks of their day to day life without any concerns for the higher values of existence or interest in a higher power or purpose. The second sphere is the Ethical Sphere. For Kierkegaard, this is where an individual begins to take responsibility for himself and gains a consistent viewpoint. The Ethical sphere is where the concept of «Good and Evil» begins to take hold and the idea of responsibility for its own existence. The final sphere is the Religious Sphere, and this is the one that Kierkegaard holds in the highest esteem. Kierkegaard considers that ethical sphere is an important part of human development but he feels that it is through a personal relationship with God that human beings achieve their highest purpose. The Ethical sphere gives human beings the idea of «the moral absolute» but human reason alone does not seem to be enough in Kierkegaard’s view. He believes that an awareness of human sinfulness and transcendence is a step to a higher power. «The Knight of Faith» is perhaps the most discussed concept in Kierkegaard’s philosophy. It is best expressed in his book Fear and Trembling. In this work, written under the pseudonym Johannes de Silentio, the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac is examined. The point of the author, who is a non-believer in Christianity, is that under any number of normal ethical standards, Abraham’s killing of Isaac to appease God would be a monstrous act. He goes on to say that although this is true there is also something admirable about Abraham’s actions and he is confused by choice between faith and moral duty. Kierkegaard’s point is that if we are to be true believers then we must see the word of God as being beyond our rational concept of ethics. To refuse a request from God, who is supposed to represent the highest power in the universe, for ethical reasons is paradoxical. We view ethics as being universal but in this case, Abraham has thrown off the idea of universal ethics in favor of his duty to God and has become a Knight of Faith. 100

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This work also puts a wedge between the concepts of faith and reason. Kierkegaard seems to think that if one needs proof or reason to believe in God then this is a paradox. To be a true Christian is to proceed through faith alone and this means that while one makes the choice in faith, they are never free from doubt. To be a true Christian, in Kierkegaard’s view, is to constantly be weighing the ideas on reason against a personal relationship with God. While ethics can be determined by the universal, God transcends the ethical and the personal choices of the individual cannot be dictated by universal concepts when they are applied in regard to a higher power. This idea of Kierkegaard’s seems to be a fundamentally radical idea and a fundamentally practical idea all at the same time. He is urging readers away from «hard agnosticism» which would probably ultimately lead to a life in the Aesthetic Sphere and encouraging them to choose either dedication to God or the life of a rational non-believer in the Ethical Sphere. While Kierkegaard believes that the choice to follow God is the better one, he knows he has no real proof of this claim. Answer the questions: 1. Call the philosophical schools of the post������������������������� -������������������������ classical European philosophy. 2. What is the difference between non������������������������������� -������������������������������ classical philosophy and classical philosophy? 3. What is the difference between «Dionysian basis» and «Apollo basis» in culture according to Nietzsche’s philosophy? 4. What was the attitude of Nietzsche to the fact in history? Why? 5. Tell us the problem of the «superman». 6. Why Nietzsche’s philosophy cannot be called immoral?

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Theme 8 Russian philosophy in the context of Russian culture in the XIX – early XX centuries 1. Social- culturаl context and ideological background of Russian philosophy, its features and stages of development. 2. Philosophy of Slavophiles 3. Russian religious philosophy: S. Solovyov, N. Lossky, S. Frank, N. Berdyaev.

Philosophical thought in Russia is born in the XI century under the influence of the process of Christianization. Kyiv Metropolitan Hilarion creates the «Word of Law and Grace», in which he welcomes the inclusion of the «Russian land» in the worldwide process of the triumph of the divine Christian light. The further development of Russian philosophy took place in justifying the special purpose of Orthodox Russia for the development of the world civilization. During the reign of Basil III, the doctrine of the Abbot of the Elizarovsky Monastery Philotheus about «Moscow as the Third Rome» appeared. Russian philosophy during the XVI–XIX centuries developed in the confrontation of the two tendencies. The first stressed the originality of Russian thought and linked this identity with the uniqueness of Russian spiritual life. The second tendency sought to inscribe Russia in the development of European culture and invite it to follow the same historical path. The first trend was represented by the Slavophils, and the second one by the Westernizers. The idea of the ​​ Westernizers was supported in the XIX century by V.G. Belinsky, N.G. Chernyshevsky, A.I. Herzen. The works of « Westernizers », to a greater extent, reproduce ideas of Chernyshevsky – Feuerbach, Belinsky – Hegel, Herzen – the French materialists, etc. The 102

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Slavophils were represented by I.V. Kireevsky, A.S. Khomyakov, the Aksakovs brothers – original Russian philosophers. Features of the Russian philosophy: 1. Did not deal with the processes of cognition of the world. These questions are only in relation to man. 2. Anthropocentrism. The problems of God’s proof boiled down to the question «why does a man need this? » 3. Address to the problems of morality. 4. Appeal to the social problem «How to make a person better? » 5. Practical orientation. 6. Relationship with the domestic culture. Problems of Russian philosophical thought: 1. Problems of freedom. 2. Religious cosmology. 3. Problems of humanism. 4. Problems of life and death (The death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy). 5. Problems of creativity. 6. Problems of good and evil. 7. Problems of power and revolution. In the broad sense the words «Russian philosophy» refer to all schools of philosophical thought pursued in Russia, regardless of differences among them. In the narrower sense the term describes the religious-philosophical trend that flourished in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Both uses have value: The first embraces the variety of interests among Russian philosophers, whereas the second one points to their most distinctive contribution to philosophy in general. Philosophy in Russia developed in a variety of forms. Philosophical ideas permeated religious, political, and literary debates throughout the country’s history. For a long time they were not articulated in what counted as philosophical parlance in the West, largely because of unfavorable historical conditions. But when these conditions changed, as they did, for example, in the late nineteenth and especially in the early twentieth centuries, there emerged a vibrant philosophical scene. This flourishing had been prepared within Russian culture, among other things, by its religious, literary, and scientific thought. Thus, it should not be surprising that some theologians, novelists, and scientists are relevant to the history of Russian philosophy. 103

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For various reasons Russian philosophy has been dominated by pragmatic concerns. It is not an accident that Marxism, for which social practice is the criterion of theoretical truth, has had such a firm grip on the Russian polity. Even when Russian philosophy did reach the heights of speculation – as in the thought of Vladimir Solovyov (1853–1900) –it still bore the mark of «theurgic restlessness», in Vasily Zen’kovsky’s (1881–1962) words – that is, the desire to transfigure life. Still, when conditions were right, and sometimes despite harshly adverse conditions, Russian thinkers have achieved reflexive insights of uncommon depth. Closely related to this is Russian philosophy’s realist ontologism; that is, the tendency to value the reality of being over and above the truths of abstract understanding. Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948) noted that the Russian mind strongly doubts whether the creation of culture is justified in the face of life’s problems. This doubt was typical of Lev Tolstoy (1828–1910) who disparaged art in contrast with the peasant’s work. Russian philosophy is also inherently religious and personalistic. The themes of religion and personhood have occupied and continue to occupy a prominent place in Russian philosophical discourse. Russian thought has a marked predilection for viewing things holistically. Russian philosophers have often been preoccupied with global, wide – ranging problems and visions of all existence as an integral whole. In metaphysics this trait is responsible for Solovyov’s doctrine of all-unity. The evolution of philosophical ideas in Russia has been shaped by the persistent Slavophile – Westernize dichotomy; that is, tension between the impulses, on the one hand, toward national uniqueness and, on the other, toward closer affiliation with the West. However, from the earliest time these tendencies were so closely intertwined with each other that any attempt at a simple delineation is misleading. And, finally, there is in Russian thought what Berdyaev called the «eschatological» orientation that can also be described as striving toward limits – in particular, the limits of thinking and of intelligibility of things. Like all the other features, this one also has had two opposite consequences. On the one hand, it makes Russian thought philosophically inclined in general, for it pushes rational enquiry to dwell persistently on ultimate questions. On the other hand, such a passion for limits could encourage, as it did in Berdyaev’s own case, impatience with careful argumentation. 104

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Although rooted in a long – standing cultural and spiritual tradition, Russian philosophy was born in the nineteenth century. As it matured, it underwent several waves of foreign influence: idealist (especially German) in the 1830s and 1840s, positivist in the 1860s, Marxist in the 1880s and 1890s – to mention only the most poignant ones. Once it appeared, each strand remained an active factor in the continuing philosophical debate. Russian mentality has been described as inclined toward extremes, and the reception of Western ideas in Russia bears out this observation: their assimilation often meant radicalization. This was true of the «Nihilists» of the 1860s who developed a cult of natural science, and later of Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924), who stripped Marxism down to its bare essentials and ruthlessly pursued his vision. Solovyov, by contrast, strove to synthesize diverse strands into a holistic idealist vision. The famous phenomenon of the intelligentsia arose in this century. Recruited mostly from the middle class, the new educated elite developed a degree of self-consciousness one rarely finds in its Western counterparts. The idea of its «debt to the people», articulated in Petr Lavrov’s (1823–1900) Istoricheskie pis’ma (Historical letters, 1868–69), shaped the ethos of this group. From the very beginning, though, the intelligentsia was torn by internal conflict and contradictions. Its admirers saw in it the «conscience of the nation», its critics an intolerant «monastic order» of political radicalism, and many of its members were convinced that the two were synonymous. In the meantime, such major thinkers as Solovyov, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy resisted being included among its ranks. In the early twentieth century philosophers of religious orientation subjected the intelligentsia’s atheist outlook to an unflattering critique. They were noisily rebuked both by radicals and liberals. Left – wing intelligentsia played a crucial part in bringing about the revolutionary turmoil of the early twentieth century – the turmoil that led to its own dispersal in the thin air of history. Originally the flag-bearer for social progress and against despotism, in the Soviet period it became an evanescent specter. Its relation to the so – called «Soviet intelligentsia» was too problematic to warrant a continuum between them. Early developments in philosophical education were not auspicious. Organized on Wolffian principles, academic philosophy had enjoyed steady growth since the middle of the 105

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eighteenth century. From 1817 and until the mid-nineteenth century, however, it suffered from a crisis precipitated by a conservative turn in the policy of Alexander I and then exacerbated by the oppressive rule of Nicolas I (reigned 1825–1855). The teaching of philosophy was abolished for long periods in gymnasia and universities. A senior official summed up the government’s view of it: «Utility is doubtful, whereas harm is obvious». To circumvent restrictions some professors taught philosophy under the guise of other disciplines, such as history or geology. Philosophical instruction continued uninterrupted, however, in religious seminaries and academies but it was not until the second half of the century that the situation of academic philosophy began to be more or less normalized. Yet even as conditions improved, Russian thought retained much of its nonacademic character. For various, mostly political, reasons prominent thinkers – be it Aleksandr Herzen (1812–1870), Solovyov, or Nikolai Chernyshevsky (1828–1889) –worked outside universities. In the 1820s the first philosophical circle appeared; its members called themselves by the Russian equivalent of philosophes –liubomudry – «lovers of wisdom». The group’s leader, Prince Vladimir Odoyevsky (1804–1869), presented a Schellingian view of Russia’s future in his utopian dialogue-novel Russian Nights (1844) in which he gave a modern version of Russian messianism. History moved, he rhapsodized, toward «a holy triunity of faith, science, and art». Anticipating Dostoyevsky, he claimed that Russia was destined to accomplish this universal synthesis because of her «all-embracing multifaceted spirit». Such optimism, however, was in sharp contrast to the somber skepticism of Petr Chaadayev’s (1794–1856) Philosophical Letters. Chaadayev saw the West as the ideal of civilization; all other societies were, in his opinion, mere approximations to it, with Russia falling outside the category altogether. Chaadayev’s bitterness was cast against the background of two recent events: Russia’s victory over Napoleon in 1812 that encouraged hopes for the nation’s greatness, and the crushing defeat of the 1825 Decembrists’ uprising that extinguished hopes for reform and liberty. He was inspired in large part by Joseph de Maistre and Friedrich Schelling. He later fine-tuned his position to argue that Russia was called upon to resolve the contradictions that still plagued the West. The evolution of Chaadayev’s views be106

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came typical for Westernizes: from adulation of the West to disillusionment to seeing Russia’s potential in her backwardness. The conviction that Russia was a «virgin soil» whose lagging behind could be turned to advantage as «the possibility of choice» became the cornerstone of western-inspired constructions from Herzen to Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924). Chaadayev’s caustic but profound outburst brought into existence two opposite trends, the Westernizes and Slavophiles, whose mutual rivalry has since shaped, and continues to shape, the evolution of Russian thought. Both groups were deeply dissatisfied with the current conditions in Russia. Many Slavophiles respected European learning and culture and kept abreast of recent Western philosophical thought. For their critique of the West they often borrowed ammunition from the West itself. Conversely, the Westernizes’ professed cause was to save Russia, and many of them including Herzen, even believed, that Russia held the key to saving the West from the West’s own woes. For both, the goal of «enlightening» Russia was of paramount importance, although they were divided on the possibility of «national science». Slavophiles defended the idea (without defining it clearly), whereas Westernizes rejected it in favor of universal rationality. And yet their differences were not trivial. Slavophiles believed that, enviably advanced as it was, Europe had come to an impasse and Russia had to avoid a similar fate. The West’s original sin, according to Slavophilism, consisted in the rationalistic tendency of Roman Catholicism that was codified in the filioque; that is, the dogma that the Holy Spirit proceeded from both the Father and the Son. Both early Slavophiles, such as Aleksei Khomyakov (1804–1860) or Ivan Kireyevksy (1806–1856), and their later followers, such as Sergei Bulgakov (1871–1944) or Nikolai Lossky (1870–1965), accused Catholic theology of replacing the mystery of the Holy Trinity with a hierarchical scheme in which the Holy Ghost was subordinated to the other two persons. This eventually led, via scholasticism, to Protestantism and thence to modern secularism. The decline of the authority of the Church in turn weakened, Slavophiles believed, the foundations of communal life and created the West’s atomistic individualism. Russia, they claimed, could offer an alternative because its culture still contained the original wholesome elements, unspoiled by the westernization of the previous two centuries. 107

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Against rationalism in epistemology the Russian mind could offer, Kireyevksy argued, the ideal of integral knowledge in which rational thinking and divine revelation would be properly balanced. Against individualism in social philosophy it could offer sobornost’ – the concept that amalgamates «togetherness» with «conciliarism» (from «church council») and projects the ideal of the humanity united by love and faith, where the freedom of the individual is in harmony with the common cause. Khomyakov found its manifestation in the Orthodox Church and Konstantin Aksakov (1817–1860) – in the Russian village commune. Russia’s historical task was understood as universal, although it remained unclear how other nations, who had their own traditions, were supposed to accept Eastern Orthodoxy. Slavophiles’ concern, however, was to outline Russia’s potential place in the «family of nations» rather than to develop a specific strategy for attaining it. The mankind of the future was perceived, in Aksakov’s terms, as a «choral person» – the notion that in the twentieth century was assimilated by Lev Karsavin (1882–1952) into his doctrine of humanity as a «symphonic person». Westernizes, on the contrary, insisted that Russia needed to join advanced European nations in pursuing economic, social, and political progress. Where Slavophiles envisioned sobornost’, Westernizes insisted on the legal rights of the individual. If Slavophiles found pristine purity in pre-Petrine Russia, Westernizes blamed the country’s slow progress on xenophobic medieval Russian tsardom. Their sharpest difference from Slavophiles, however, consisted in their hostility toward religion. In Herzen’s words, there was an «ecclesiastic wall» between him and his opponents. The common limitation of both was their utopianism: One idealized Russia’s past and the other, the West’s present. Furthermore, for neither of them philosophy had independent value but was merely an instrument for achieving goals other than knowledge and understanding. The reception of Schelling and Hegel casts a helpful light on the manner in which philosophy’s tasks were conceived. Schelling’s philosophy enjoyed a warmer reception – at least in the religious segment of Russian thought. In fact, there is some truth to Arseny Gulyga’s (1921–1996) remark that “Russian philosophy is a Schellingian.” With Hegel Russians tended to distance themselves, even as they respectfully learned from 108

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him; in Schelling they found a kindred spirit. The view of the world as an organic whole has had more followers and fewer detractors in Russia than in the West; it retains importance there to this day. Schelling’s doctrine of intellectual intuition proved particularly attractive to Russian thinkers. From Odoyevsky to Solovyov they embraced the notion of an immediate meeting of consciousness with both inner and outer reality; in the twentieth century it inspired a whole intuitivist school. Chaadayev was deeply affected by Schelling’s philosophy of revelation; Kireyevsky and Solovyov, by his epistemology; Odoyevsky and Bulgakov, by his Naturphilosophie ; and Aleksei Losev (1893– 1988), by his aesthetics and philosophy of myth. Many of them found in Schelling’s thought inspiration for viewing art and religion as (extrarational) sources of rational thinking. Russian liberal thought was, by contrast, at its inception primarily Hegelian. Vissarion Belinsky’s (1811–1848) and especially Herzen’s engagement with Hegel’s philosophy were typical. Both embraced Hegelianism in the beginning but then rejected what they perceived as its abstract universalism. Belinsky, on the one hand, got most of his Hegel via Mikhail Bakunin (1820–1900) who at the time was an overenthusiastic Hegelian. Herzen, on the other hand, attentively studied Hegel’s writings firsthand. The result was, however, more or less similar. «(Hegelian) reason does not know», Herzen impugned, «this person but only the necessity of a person in general …». The main point of Herzen’s dissatisfaction was the same as Karl Marx’s: life is not merely about thinking, he insisted, but chiefly about acting in the world. Virtually all Russian philosophers turned away from Hegel upon initial acquaintance. Those consumed by revolutionary causes, such as Bakunin, blamed him for excessive contemplativeness, whereas Slavophiles and religious philosophers rejected his doctrine of a rationally cognizable absolute. Various parts of Hegel’s system were adopted but only the rarest exceptions, such as Boris Chicherin (1828–1904), accepted its essential core, the doctrine of the absolute concept. Characteristically, Herzen found in Hegel’s dialectic «the algebra of revolution» – a description that was later eagerly endorsed by Lenin. This appropriation epitomized the political pragmatism that was imposed on the German philosopher’s speculative method. Philosophers’ concerns for «the concrete person» were nourished by the burgeoning Russian realist literature that pa109

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raded, in an intensely empathetic light, a series of characters whose suffering was a condemnation of a social order in which human dignity was out of place. Conversely, Russian thinkers frequently offered their insights in literary form. In fact, the most burning of the “cursed questions” that preoccupied the intelligentsia throughout its existence were articulated as titles of literary works: Herzen’s 1847 novel «Who Is to Blame? »  and Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s (1828–1889) 1863 socialist utopia “What Is to Be Done?”. The latter query proved particularly haunting: Leo Tolstoy in 1883 and Lenin in 1902 each wrote a work bearing similar titles. Hegel and Schelling were soon replaced by Ludwig Feuerbach and left Hegelians as socialist ideas were spreading among educated Russians. In the 1860s materialism propounded by Ludwig Büchner and others was added to the mix; it was embraced by the so-called «Nihilists» whose leading figures were Dmitry Pisarev (1840–1868), Nikolai Dobrolyubov (1836–1861), and Chernyshevsky. Pisarev’s crude materialism, however, was not so much a philosophical position as a propagandistic means of destabilizing old religious and social values. Calculated to outrage, his maxim that «boots are more valuable than Shakespeare» was, in fact, a call to social activism as opposed to the aesthetic hedonism of the leisure classes. It was also a message about the utility of science and technology; that is, the business of the newly emerging class of physicians and engineers, contrasted with the aristocratic art of the previous era. The most articulate thinker of the «Nihilist» camp, Chernyshevsky, by contrast, argued for genuine art that would be a life – transforming praxis rather than idle entertainment. The rise of Nihilism marked the radicalization of Herzen’s intellectually broad and humane liberalism, and the beginning of the latter’s transmogrification into fanatical revolutionism. In the late 1860s and 1870s the earlier materialism was absorbed into the broad social, cultural, and ideological movement called «Populism» (narodnichestvo). Its intellectual leaders, Lavrov and Nikolai Mikhailovsky (1842–1904), combined positivist epistemology and materialist metaphysics with an evolutionist view of history. The Populists’ goal was socialism in Russia, on the basis of the village commune. Their views about both the goal and the ways of achieving it, however, varied from the anarchism of Bakunin and Petr Kropotkin (1842–1921) to the 110

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conspiratorial terrorism (with a Marxist tinge) of Petr Tkachev (1844–1886). The Populists’ main philosophical difficulty consisted in reconciling the individual’s agency with positivist determinism. Like their materialist predecessors, however, these thinkers did not embrace a particular philosophy of nature or history for its intellectual merits but were interested primarily in using it for social change. It was Mikhailovsky who pointed out, memorably, the conflation of «truth» and «justice» in the Russian word pravda that has since come to signify one of the most pervasive features of the Russian philosophical mindset. It was also Mikhailovsky whose “subjective method” in sociology was intended to enhance the ability of «critically thinking individuals», as Lavrov called them, to influence the course of history. Populism later evolved into the political party of Socialist Revolutionaries, the Bolsheviks’ most powerful left – wing rival, and its ideas continued to exercise their influence well beyond its final collapse in the 1920s. Less influential was the moderate liberal thought of such thinkers as Konstantin Kavelin (1818–1885) and Boris Chicherin (1828–1904) who defended, from the Hegelian position, the ideals of the law-governed state in political theory and the universal «higher synthesis» of religion and philosophy in epistemology. As the earlier Westernism was radicalized, so too the original, rather moderate Slavophilism was producing its own increasingly radical offshoots. Konstantin Leontyev (1831–1891) offered a scathing critique, on aesthetic grounds, of contemporary Western society. Unlike Friedrich Nietzsche with whom he is frequently compared, Leontyev ended not with a call for a proud Overman, but with a return to an ascetic Orthodoxy. Nikolai Danilevsky’s (1822–1885) theory of «culturalhistorical types» advanced a cyclical model of history in which the tired Romano-Germanic civilization was about to yield its place to a younger Pan-Slavic one. Danilevsky’s ideas had an impact on the «back–to–the soil» group of authors (pochvenniki from pochva, the Russian for «soil»), whom Dostoevsky lent his not insignificant authority. Dostoevsky was one of the first Russian thinkers who had a marked influence on Western philosophy. His explorations of the religious, moral, and psychological dimensions of the human condition made a deep impression on both contemporaries such as Nietzsche and later figures such as Albert Camus. 111

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Inside Russia Dostoevsky’s ideas reverberated in the religious – philosophical school of the early twentieth century. A prominent place among writers is held by F.M. Dostoevsky who is rightfully called the spiritual father of existential philosophy. He both opened new tendency of philosophic research, revealed the opportunities of literature in philosophic understanding of the man and put forward such an interpretation of him which corresponded to the cultural and historic situation of the second half of the XIX century and remains impressive and up– to–date even now. Dostoevsky writes: «The man is a mystery and it is necessary to get to the bottom of him. And if you are going to do it all your life, don’t say that you have lost your time. I am busy doing it because I want to be a man». The thinker emphasizes that the man is an interminable phenomenon. Neither science nor religion and philosophy can get to the bottom of the man and solve the problem of his existence. New people will be born and the problem of the man will loom above them again and again. Getting to the bottom of the man will mean the end to everything: to its history, culture and philosophy. Dostoevsky thinks that science can help us to investigate the man but it is still difficult to understand the man through scientific research procedures. The core of the problem of the man is understanding of him. N.F. Berdyaev writes the following words drawing attention to the main question of Dostoevsky’s creative activity: «The man is in the center of his creative work and the man’s fate is an exceptional subject of his interest». Dostoevsky’s unquestionable merit is that he drew attention to the problems of a «little» man, a man, who stumbled, lost faith, transgressed the bounds of morals and broke the law. Dostoevsky followed and depicted the transformation of this man, his regaining of lost dignity and of a human status. His works «Poor Folk», «Crime and Punishment», «The Brothers Karamazov», «The Possessed», «The Insulted and Humiliated» and others develop the drama of the ideas of «a superman» and «a clandestine man» who found themselves in a border situation, the situation of choice, guilt and responsibility, sufferings and despair, anguish and spiritual illness. Dostoevsky’s creative activity marks such a period of human history when the man and his society are ruined and destroyed under the influence of scientific and technical industrial progress, when alarm and doubts grow easily, when the little man’s adversity becomes in112

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terminable. Dostoevsky’s creative activity not only demonstrates the attractiveness of the world of beauty but also shows the most attractive for a writer thing – the degradation of the man’s soul and its sufferings. He looks into the depths of the man’s soul and strives to understand why sufferings and tragic sensation of life are born in it. His creative activity displays the feelings of ardent love, sorry for a ruined man and at the same time those of indignation with the man who puts up with this state of things, accepts it as a must-be thing and leaves life as it is. Such things must not take place. Dostoevsky tells the man to take heart and stand up from his knees and in many of his works demonstrates how a man fought himself and is fighting now to restore the name of a man. These are manifestations of Dostoevsky’s humanism and everlasting value of his philosophical research and creative activity. Dostoevsky is considered to be a deepest and subtle analyst of a human soul which he thought to be a concentration of all the riddles of the man and the clue to solve them. Only the human soul exists for him, he is only interested in the man and his fate. He displays all the subtleties, nuances and turns of the man’s spiritual life, discloses the inmost recesses of his heart and brings to light the man’s sufferings, that knot which is now called an irrational man’s nature. The works of the great thinker invite us into the unsightly world of daily routine, into the world of distortion, of humiliated and insulted, of poverty, clandestine men, into this both frightening and attracting spiritual world of people. Their life is cheerless and hopeless, it is full of troubles and adversities, monotony and routine, evil and poverty. This world is gloomy and it gives no hopes to get rid of it. F.M. Dostoevsky’s thoughts about a man and his clandestine world sound tragically. With unprecedented keenness Dostoevsky raises the question of the tragedy of a human individuality. In one of his articles N. Mikhailovsky calls him «a cruel talent». This is a very neat and apt characteristics of the main point of Dostoevsky’s creative work because in his works we observe people irrevocably lost for life, feeling keenly hopelessness, powerlessness of all moral standards and values and high ideals, having realized pettiness and senselessness of everyday life, having lost faith, people for whom «the God has died». Unprecedented loneliness and detachment from the whole world have developed in the underground. In 113

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the underground the man realizes and lives through the bifurcation of his spiritual world and his life’s good-for-nothingness and uselessness. At the same time Dostoevsky not only shows the birth of bitterness and despair in the soul of a clandestine man, but also the man’s desire to raise over that world and to surmount it. Such scrutiny of the man gives birth to a great hope of his revival, belief into the ability of a man to obtain a human face again. He draws a picture of the birth and cultivation of a «superman» in the images of Raskolnikov and Ivan Karamazov who made a feeble attempt to change this world, to overcome clandestine. As a religious thinker and a brilliant writer Dostoevsky found out another side of a human being: presence of something superior in him. Having acknowledged divinity in a man Dostoevsky considers it as something very precious and to be protected. In his works God appears in a man’s image and that is why the man is inviolable. An idea of absolute importance of a personality including that of a fallen man is disclosed in the novel «Crime and punishment». The sole of the protagonist of the novel constantly thinking «To kill or not to kill» lives among endless mischief and sufferings, among those perishing and the miserable, in the endless routine. He has made up his mind to break the divine law guaranteeing personal immunity, doubting the absolute value of a human individuality. Having broken this law Raskolnikov realized that the God’s image in him had grown dark, that his soul had changed completely, that his inner ties with the outer world and the people had been broken. He understood that his life would never be the same, that his soul was at the other side of the objective reality, that he had fallen there where there was no return from and where the old woman whom he had killed was. The novel with doubtless credibility shows that Raskolnikov starts to realize and understand the significance and value of a human being only after killing the old woman. The novel with reliability causing no doubt shows that only having killed the person Raskolnikov starts to understand and realize her value. Dostoevsky reveals the complexity of the tormenting human soul and shows us that there is quite a lot that we are not aware of and that we have never thought of and that it manifests itself only at the turning points of life when a man has to make a global choice, when his fate is being decided. And in most cases the man does not suspect the true content of his spiritual world until he dies, until 114

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he is not involved into the existential situation of choice. Crime discloses a dark side of a human soul. The knowledge of it is hidden from the eyes of other people and it also elevates a criminal above other people as he begins to realize not only laws of life and death but his estrangement from the world of people after breaking the law. «I haven’t killed the old woman, I have killed myself» – says Raskolnikov. Dostoevsky depicts the man which gives way to despair after realizing his crime. His attempt to become «a superman » and decide a person’s fate and judge whether the person is worthy of life or not came to grief. The course which was taken by both Raskolnikov and Ivan Karamazov cannot be taken by other people because such a way to escape the clandestine destroys the absolute value of the individual, of the personality. And consequently V.V.Rosanov notes: «Having made similar experience unnecessary and having depicted with all persuasiveness in the genius portrayal the state of criminal conscience, Dostoevsky rendered us a great historical service». Deep understanding of man’s nature and essence distinguishes Dostoevsky from other writers. He manages to show us everything we observe in a person, his actions and words, everything that he himself and others know about him but still the man remains mysterious because his essence is hidden and doesn’t lay on the surface. There is something enigmatic in him which nobody is aware of. Dostoevsky shows that layer of the man’s spiritual world which is hidden from a direct observation. For the sake of this he analyzes all nuances and turns of the spiritual life in their originality and multiplicity and presents this latent essence in the image of a «clandestine man». The «clandestine man» is a person immersed in the inmost recesses of his heart. This man is an embodiment of that dynamic and inconsistent world of subjective experiences and moods which are invisible to an external observer. This man does not disclose himself in the daily routine. The essence of the «clandestine man» divulges itself in the situation of choice between life and death, good and evil, while searching for the purport of life and trying to understand his own life, ideas, feelings, moods, emotions and sufferings. The «clandestine man» is depicted by Dostoevsky as an extremely dual and inconsistent creature. For him the man’s inner world is a vault, an underground. Dostoevsky sets himself the task to unmask the man having pulled him out from the underground. 115

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And what should happen to the person, what should he endure to unmask himself? What made the man to declare fairly and openly his underground life? Dostoevsky’s characters think about their own lives, the lives of others, they are in search of purport of life and their predestination. They experience deep emotional shocks because they try to understand the causes of their difficult and gloomy life and also the reasons why the man is neglected and why his life is unbearable. The antinomy constantly arises here: either their life with its foundations is arranged incorrectly, or they understand it incorrectly, and as a result of it their life and actions are improper. In search of answers to these existential questions the man has to do the intense spiritual work directed on judgment of the bases of human life and revision, reassessment of existing values. V.V.Rozanov emphasizes that Dostoevsky describes the man as an irrational creature and consequently rational comprehending of him is impossible. Dostoevsky’s works uncover the clandestine man’s psychology who addresses to our souls, to our ability to understand him and sympathize with the trouble and adversities of poor people. Thus, Dostoevsky briefly determines the purpose of his creative work: «To search the man in a man». He designates the clandestine man as «the man in a man». The clandestine man is shown as the man who looks intensely into the depths of his soul and who understands his position and aspires to leave the underground and make his intensions clear to everyone. He starts to realize his thoughts and feelings experiencing them while being alone. A new person grows invisibly in the underground overwhelmed by doubts, grief, doomed to sufferings and loneliness. The underground with unprecedented severity raised the problem of individuality and individual human destiny. «The underground has developed an unprecedented loneliness, isolation from the world and opposed a man to the world» – describes the underground N.A. Berdyaev. Dostoevsky examines the mental state of the clandestine man which is characterized as being miserable and full of suffering. Mental «anguish and suffering bring the clandestine man sweet delight and at the same time strike him into terror. The clandestine man does not just openly and honestly express his views and feelings, realizing the lies and hypocrisy of life; he demands that his rights and beliefs be considered». Morbid state of mind is not an obstacle for 116

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this. On the contrary, it acts as a reaction to the underground. Leaving the underground becomes a means to do away with this state of spiritual sickness, a way to express himself as an absolutely important person. Having faced up to life realities, its difficulties, worries, tensions and troubles, to everyday routine, desperate poverty, the bleak existence the clandestine man begins to doubt the established ideals, values, traditions and the purport of life itself. «He is the man immersed in the inmost recesses of his heart who came to hate life and criticize fiercely the ideal of the rational utopians on the basis of the accurate knowledge of human nature which he came to know in the underground and after his own prolonged observation of himself and history» – writes Rozanov. The clandestine man rejects his own hypocrisy and then declares: «I am a sick man… I am an angry man. I am unattractive... I have always been aware of the presence of multiple parts in myself. I am swarming with them. I knew that I was swarming with them and they wanted me to let them out but I did not let them go» and «all my life I kept them as secret». «None of the philosophical systems of idealism or positivism, no aesthetic doctrine of good can now comfort the man and give him hope and grounds for his living. Thus, begins the reassessment of traditional values. The clandestine man came to realize that everything he had appreciated, he had considered to be beautiful and high in his life lost its meaning and value. It is the underground which makes the man to reconsider and reassess his set of values. But he is still alive and he will be living in such terrible circumstances yet. Dostoevsky’s ideas are continued in the philosophical works of Friedrich Nietzsche. But the Nietzschean «superman» goes further than the characters of the clandestine world depicted by the great Russian writer. He begins to create a new world. But to realize this both universal and historic task he needs freedom. And that is why Dostoevsky and also Nietzsche pose the problem of freedom in the center of consideration of the man. Dostoevsky considers the man as being affranchised and explores the fate of the man in the conditions of freedom. In his works he depicts two possible life paths: the path of freedom and the path of wellbeing which in its turn means arranged and guaranteed happiness, happiness without freedom. Dostoevsky makes his characters choose between the life options, experi117

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ments with them: how the man is going to behave himself under conditions of freedom and under conditions of boundless freedom «...Dostoevsky reveals his positive doctrine of the man’s infinite dignity and infinite freedom in the negative form» – such is the definition of the purpose of the great Russian writer’s philosophical pursuit says Nikolai Berdyaev, a Russian representative of existentialism. In the legend of the Grand Inquisitor Dostoevsky raises the question of what freedom is and why the man needs it, if the man could make use of it in the name of goodness and favor, if there is any sense in it, if it would help the man to find himself. Thus, the question of freedom is the question of what the man and his nature mean and what the purport of life is. Dostoevsky defines freedom as the ability to make decisions independently and without coercion, «to be a true master of oneself» means to be able to determine the objective and the purport of life. Freedom according to Dostoevsky is not permissiveness, self – will and arbitrariness. Dostoevsky emphasizes that an invincible need for freedom lives in the man. Freedom is the superior favor and the man will never give it up until he ceases to be a man. The man will prefer to suffer and be unhappy but to be free. Freedom is above reason and pragmatism, prosperity and happiness, it is irrational and it pushes the man beyond the limits which restrict human existence and the man’s possibilities. This freedom makes the man worry and tortures him, it leads him along the path of sufferings and it can regenerate itself into selfwill and rebellion. Dostoevsky reveals the destructiveness of that path of freedom which is considered as self-will on the analysis of thoughts and deeds of his heroes. Having led his characters along the way of willfulness and rebellion, he shows that self – will leads to the destruction of the man’s freedom and personality and the divine spark in him. Considering freedom Dostoevsky opposes the position of The Inquisitor with that of Jesus Christ who wants to make the man free, i.e. «man must hereafter with free heart decide for himself what is good and what is evil, having only Thy image before him as his guide». The Grand Inquisitor doubts the ability of the man to be free and is confident that the man will not be able to enjoy freedom because «he is weak and low». Freedom always turns out to be self-will, arbitrariness, violence and slavery because the man is still unable to perceive it spiritually 118

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and morally. The priest is convinced that if a person has the choice between freedom on the one hand and bread, prosperity, happiness on the other hand he will choose the latter. The man will readily give up his freedom for the sake of a prosperous life, if he is depressed by «such a terrible burden as freedom of choice». The Inquisitor believes that the man does not want freedom because it requires him spiritual maturity and moral responsibility for his choice and his decision. There was never anything worse than “unbearable freedom” for the man says the Father of the church. He values «bread» and «calmness more than free choice», and even death is dearer then free choice. Referring to the historical experience of mankind The Inquisitor believes that freedom is also dangerous to the man since it leads to demolition, death and self – destruction. Therefore, he needs the sword of Caesar, its power, so as by means of violence and coercion to adopt the order and saturate everybody with «bread». The Inquisitor likens human beings to an ant – heap, to a herd, yearning for someone to take the heavy burden of their freedom and responsibility off them, to set them free from the temptation of choice and to lead them along the path of life, even using fraud and violence. In an intellectual debate with the Inquisitor and other negative characters of his own works who transgressed the human and the divine laws of personal immunity Dostoevsky claims that only a free man can become a personality and can realize his potential, achieve his goals, attain genuine existence and become a man. Freedom serves as a means of the man’s existence, namely, it gives him dignity and greatness. It is the freedom that decides the fate of man, his present and future. In the legend of the Grand Inquisitor Dostoevsky constantly emphasizes that only freedom can give meaning and content to the man’s life: «the mystery of human existence is not just to live, but what to live for. Without a stable representation of himself, what he lives for, a man will not agree to live and would rather destroy himself than remain on the earth, while all around him were all the loaves». N. Mikhailovsky named Dostoevsky a «cruel talent» but Berdyaev characterizes the creative work of Dostoevsky as humanism. But Dostoevsky’s humanism is a peculiar one because it does not remove the burden of freedom from the man, it does not relieve him from sufferings but rather entrusts huge responsibility to the man which is only proper for the dignity 119

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of free people. Of course, you can relieve the man’s sufferings depriving him of his freedom. But Dostoevsky does not do this, he knows what a price the man has to pay for it and how much effort it requires of him. The more liberal patrimony of Slavophilism, however, was cultivated by Russia’s first truly great philosopher Solovyov. Solovyov’s philosophy was an impressive attempt to fuse together positivism, idealism, and mysticism. His early critique of positivism evolved into the assimilation of Auguste Comte’s ideas into his own view of history as divine will unfolding toward «free theocracy». Comte’s Grand Être was likewise absorbed, along with Gnostic, Cabalistic, Eastern Orthodox, and German Romantic ideas, into Solovyov ‘s Neoplatonist metaphysics of Sophia Divine Wisdom. Later Solovyov performed a similar operation on Chernyshevsky’s positivist aesthetics by interpreting it in the light of his own doctrine of art as theurgy: that is, humanity’s continuation of divine creation. Yet his syntheses were not eclectic but rested on a broad conceptual foundation and formed a more or less coherent system – the first created by a Russian philosopher. With his more eager, ecumenical acceptance of the West Solovyov modified earlier Slavophilism and worked to reconcile it with Westernism. Above all, however, his most lasting contribution consisted in the apologia of philosophical idealism. Solovyov and Dostoevsky remained lonely voices among the intelligentsia during their lifetime but by the time of Solovyov ‘s death a reaction had already begun among a new generation of philosophers against secular ideologies and in favor of a serious engagement with religion. While the rebirth of philosophical idealism was only dawning, however, its antipode was vigorously gaining ground. Marxism was known in Russia since the late 1840s but in its early stages it was only one among several currents of socialist thought. Nevertheless, it soon attracted significant interest: In 1869 Bakunin published (abroad) his translation of the Communist Manifesto, and three years later Russian became the first foreign language in which the first volume of Das Kapital appeared. By the end of the century Marxism became the most influential political doctrine among the intelligentsia. It established itself in competition with earlier socialist theories, primarily Populism. In contrast to Populists who wished Russia to avoid capitalism and leap, via village commune, directly 120

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into socialism, Marxists viewed capitalism as a stepping stone to socialist revolution. The abolition of serfdom in 1861 by Alexander II gave a strong impetus for the development of capitalist enterprise and, as the number of factory workers grew, socialist theorists began to pin their hopes on the new class. The key figure in the transition from Populism to Marxism was Georgy Plekhanov (1856–1918). His main concern seems to have been to elaborate a philosophical system based on Marxist precepts, while guarding the original doctrine against misinterpretation and revisions. A significant feature of Plekhanov’s reception of Marx’s ideas was their refraction through Frederic Engels’s work. Russian Marxists did not always take care to distinguish Marx from Engels and often argued—in fact, often they simply assumed—the unity of the two founders’ respective positions. In the last quarter of the century Russian academic philosophy finally became the key factor on the philosophical scene. The generation of Communist Manifesto v and Mikhailovsky was receding into the past and most leading thinkers now taught at universities. Chicherin gradually developed his own system with an emphasis on the philosophy of right and of history. A Leibnizian revival was evident in the trend started by Aleksei Kozlov (1831–1931) that stimulated the development of personalism in Russian thought. The latter had an exceptionally farreaching impact on such thinkers as Berdyaev, Lossky, and Lev Shestov (1866–1938). This was also the time when Kant’s presence in Russian thought finally came to match that of Schelling and Hegel. The leading neo–Kantian Aleksandr Vvedensky (1856–1925) concentrated on logic and philosophical psychology. Advocated by a number of scientists and philosophers, such as Vladimir Vernadsky (1863–1945) and especially Vladimir Lesevich (1837–1905), neo-positivistic thought was another major current in academic philosophy. It was concerned almost exclusively with the philosophy of science and empirical epistemology. Vernadsky’s ideas later played an important part in what became known as Russian cosmism. The original tenets of this loosely defined trend were formulated by the (nonacademic) Nikolai Fedorov (1828–1903) whose eccentric hybrid of positivism and Christian eschatology aimed at the physical resurrection of all past generations. With the emigration after the 1917 Revolution and the expulsion of a large group of thinkers in 1922 Russian philosophy split 121

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into two strikingly unequal branches: the one inside and the other outside the country. The Bolshevik government’s intolerance proved to be a blessing in disguise. While all independent philosophical thought was brutally suppressed in the Soviet Union, many of Russian philosophers abroad created the largest and the best part of their oeuvres. This was true of Berdyaev, Frank, Bulgakov, Shestov, and Ilyin, as well as of the younger generation of philosophers among whom Georgy Florovsky (1893–1979) and Karsavin deserve a special note. Russian thinkers in exile collectively created a body of literature that fulfilled the promise of the Silver Age as the Russian «religious – philosophical renaissance». A comprehensive evaluation of this literature remains a task for the future. Among the diverse trends that existed in Russian philosophy abroad two seem particularly notable from today’s point of view: religious-philosophical and Eurasianistic. The first one was the continuation of the prerevolutionary religious idealism, whereas the second became yet another refraction of the old theme of Russia’s destiny in a new situation created by the Bolshevik revolution. Berlin and then Paris were the centers of the first trend and Prague (as well as, briefly, Sofia), of the second. Russian religious philosophy continued its antecedent themes: critique of (Western) rationalism and the quest for integral knowledge, metaphysics of all-unity and sophiology, Russia’s historical destiny cast in religious-idealist terms and religious foundations of personhood. The study of the history of Russian philosophy by this group became the culmination of the work begun in Russia. Zen­ kovsky’s two-volume «History of Russian Philosophy» (1948– 1950), Lossky’s book of the same title (1951), Berdyaev’s aforementioned essay on «the Russian Idea», and Florovsky’s «Ways of Russian Theology» (1939) were towering achievements supplemented by numerous articles and essays by other authors. Their work was, collectively, the most important philosophical attempt to make sense of the Russian experience and especially of its last, vastly tragic phase. It is surprising how little would need to be changed, for example, in Frank’s essay «The Collapse of Idols» (1923), created before Stalin’s repressions and World War II, if it were to be rewritten today. Eurasianism began as a distinct movement with the publication of a collection titled Iskhod k Vostoku (Exodus to the East; Prague, 1921). It viewed Russia as straddling Europe and Asia in 122

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the geographic, geopolitical, and cultural-historical sense and enhanced the traditional Slavophile critique of the West by the Spenglerian sense of the «twilight» of Europe. Post-colonialist critique of Europe was prefigured in Eurasianism’s claim that the western view of history merely promoted the West’s ulterior interests under the guise of objective truth. The mistrust of the West was supplemented by the affirmation of the positive significance of the Asian element in Russian history and culture. Eurasianism had both a religious and a secular branch. The former was represented by such authors as Petr Savitsky (1894–1968) and Petr Suvchinsky (1892–1985), the latter by Florovsky and Karsavin. In Karsavin’s case Eurasianism had a close affinity with the Solovyovian school. Nevertheless, for most Eurasianists religion was important only as a cultural-historical factor that contributed to the formation of Russia as a Eurasian entity. The religious theme in Eurasianism weakened especially after Florovsky left the movement. Some of his secular opponents went so far as collaborating with the Bolshevik government that they saw as the heir to the cause of great Russian statehood. Those who returned to Russia, however, perished eventually in Stalin’s concentration camps. Eurasianism as a political movement declined in the mid-1930s with the rise of National Socialism in Germany. Many of its members made significant contributions to the social and human sciences: George Vernadsky (1887–1973) in history, Nikolai Trubetskoi (1890–1938) and Roman Jakobson (1896–1982) in linguistics. Suvchinsky was a prominent musical critic. The political influence of Eurasianistic ideas was restored to life in the post-Soviet period when they became a source of inspiration for a widely divergent spectrum of ideological schools of thought, ranging from nationalists dreaming of a new Russian Empire to Soviet-style Communists. Answer the questions: 1. What are the main features of Russian philosophy? 2. What is the meaning of the theory of «Moscow-the Third Rome»? 3. What are the origins of the philosophy of Westerners? 4. What are the main ideas of the Slavophiles? 5. How did Soviet Marxist critics recognize Dostoevsky’s philosophical influence? 6. How did Russian philosophers influence modern Western philosophy?

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Theme 9 Western philosophy in the context of culture of the XXth century – early XXIth century 1. Philosophical reflection of problems of culture development in postmodernism, poststructuralism. 2. Critical redefining the status of philosophy and science in neopositivism and postpositivism. 3. Philosophical search of existentialists of the twentieth century. (Heidegger, Zh.P.Sartr, Camus, Karl Jaspers).

The modern western philosophy differs from classical philosophy. The main objective of a person’s activity classical philosophy considered knowledge of nature and society for the purpose of their reasonable transformation. It considered that the history in general moves in the progressive direction. The classical philosophy was optimistical. However, the French revolution, Napoleonic wars in Europe have brought doubts in the importance of education for mitigation of public customs. Events of World War I have shown «not humanity» of science, and possibility of its use for production of new types of weapon. The subsequent events in the history of the XX century (bloody revolutions, civil wars, the totalitarian modes, World War II, creation of the nuclear weapon) have forced to doubt humanity of history. The history cult, belief in progress have lost the importance. The break of classical philosophy has occurred already in A. Schopenhauer, F.Nietzsche, S. Kierkegaard’s doctrines. The evil and destructive beginning in the person was opened by the Russian writer F.M.Dostoyevsky. Emergence of equipment became the second important prerequisite which has defined the character of philosophy of the XX century. The technical civilization leads to rationalization of life. Many phi124

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losophers of the XX century saw discrepancy of scientific and technical progress, estimated its ambivalence. N.A. Berdyaev, for example, considered that the technical civilization enslaved the person. From life contemplation, which gave to the person metaphysics, disappears. Many philosophers and cultural figures have supported these ideas. So, O. Spengler in work «The Decline of Europe» divided and opposed culture and civilization and wrote that skepticism can be the only philosophy of civilization. New conditions defined also new subjects. In the XXth century there is a number of ideas competing with old classical philosophy. Firstly, it is the idea of priority of life studying of a certain person in relation to researches of big human communities (classes, people, nations, etc.). Secondly, this movement from absolutization of ideas of freedom and rationality of a person capable to remake the nature, and society. Society is moved by blind, irrational forces when a man and culture in general are defined by these unclear forces. Thirdly, the idea of two not crossed lines of human knowledge – scientific and valuable is actively carried out. From many philosophers of the XXth century, in this regard, great importance is got by ideas of antihumanistic consequences of scientific and technical progress which can lead to death of the world on fire of nuclear explosion or to its degradation by washing of brains by means of modern electronic equipment and total control over the huge mass of people. In development of philosophy of the XX century a special role was played by positivism. Positivism claimed that the «positive» and true knowledge can be received only by concrete sciences. O. Comte became the creator of positivism. Comte’s followers were G. Spencer and D. S. Mill. They considered that all philosophical problems connected with knowledge of things essence lead to agnosticism or to philosophical speculation. Abstract entities are questions of religion and metaphysics. The science deals with concrete objects. All human knowledge is divided into positive, connected with concrete sciences, and ideological, focused on duty (norms, values, ideals, rules of conduct). Neopositivism has continued the line of positivism, having concentrated the attention on the analysis of language forms of knowledge. The main ideas of neopositivism were formed with125

Theme 9. Western philosophy in the context of culture of the XXth century – early XXIth century

in activity of the Vienna circle. It appeared at Vienna university in 1923 and united the famous philosophers of the XX century: M. Shlik, R. Karnap, L. Vitginstein, D. Moore, A. Ayer. Neopositivism tried to solve theoretical, epistemological and methodological problems of philosophy by means of logic, semiotics, on the basis of the principle of a conventionalism (i.e. agreement). This principle claims that agreements between scientists make a basis of scientific theories. They are caused by convenience and simplicity. The French mathematician, physicist, philosopher of the 19-th century A. Poincare became a founder of neopositivism. The law is the chosen agreement for the most convenient description of the phenomena. Science language as a way of expression of knowledge is a subject of philosophy. Other questions of philosophy are deprived of sense from the point of view of logic and language. The majority of philosophical problems have logic-linguistic character. They result from a polysemy and incorrect understanding and use of the «ideologized» language. Therefore, a problem of knowledge and reality first of all is a language problem. Therefore, for the solution of scientific and philosophical problems it is necessary to use artificial languages of science. These languages are unambiguous, accurate and consistent, unlike the natural and «ideologized» languages. The principle of check of scientific judgments validity is verification. The validity can be proved by means of experience or the logical proof. Using the principle of verification, it is better to refuse definition of objects in which existence we doubt (duty, substance, freedom, etc.). Applying such approach, it is possible to clear science of false problems and concepts. Verification of offers is checked for the validity by the experience facts. Those which don’t correspond to such check are deprived of scientific sense. In the 50-th years there was a new direction in neopositivism, analytical philosophy. In the works «Research of value and truth», «Human knowledge, his sphere and borders», «History of the western philosophy» B. Russell considered analytical philosophy as a style of philosophical thinking in which there are inherent severity, terminology accuracy, careful relation to sweeping philosophical generalization. The main ideas were formulated by Popper, who put forward the concept of critical rationalism. Among the studied problems is false and true. Using your logic, you must prove 126

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that the matter is true, otherwise it should not study at all (rejection induction, treatment of deduction). Popper pays much attention to the social issues, a fierce opponent of totalitarian regimes and studies the problem of violence. At Popper doubts in scientific character of Marxism and psychoanalysis began to arise. These theories had obvious explanatory force and could explain everything that occurred in that area which they described (Freud – the person, Marx – society). All empirical facts can be explained bringing them to the theories. These theories corresponded to the principle of verification. The validity seems obvious (Freud in the person explains everything with the Oedipus complex, Marx – class fight). The original theory, according to Popper, has to undergo more serious testing. Criterion of scientific character and demarcation of science and not – sciences are the principle of falsification, i.e. a rejection of any situation. If the theory can’t be refuted, then it costs out of science, she turns into dogma. The real science shouldn’t be afraid of denials. The essence of scientific knowledge consists of rational criticism, correction by the facts. His followers are Lakatos, Kun. In the 60-70s under the influence of Karl Popper’s ideas there was another direction of neopositivism, post-positivism. Postpositivism refused the principle of verification. A variety of methodological concepts and their mutual criticism is a characteristic of post-positivism. Popper has formulated a demarcation problem – a problem of differentiation of science and not – sciences. The problem of demarcation has been delivered to them as opposed to aspiration of logical positivism to resolve an issue of differentiation of scientific and unscientific knowledge only by means of the principle of verification. The science holds authority, and people trust knowledge, including its scientific, i.e. proved. But it is possible to call not all knowledge science (early hypotheses, ideological doctrines, astrology). Postpositivism is a common name for several schools of the philosophy of science united by a critical attitude to the epistemological doctrines which were developed within the framework of neopositivism and justified the obtaining of objective knowledge from experience. The postpositivism is a set of concepts which replaced neopositivism. Supporters of various postpositivist concepts largely disagree with each other, criticize the obsolete views of neopositivism, but retain in relation to it con127

Theme 9. Western philosophy in the context of culture of the XXth century – early XXIth century

tinuity. The postpositivism close the school of neorationalism, especially Ballara G. and M. Foucault. Postpositivist focus on rational methods of cognition. Features of postpositivism: 1. The weakening of attention to the problems of formal logic. 2. Recourse to the history of science, focusing on the dynamics of the development of science, its contradictions. 3. The rejection of rigid constraints between the empirics and the theory, science and philosophy. 4. Analysis of socio-cultural factors of scientific activity. 5. Replacing verification with falsification. 6. Recognition of the role of philosophy. Key representatives: Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, Paul Feyerabend, Michael Polanyi, Stephen Toulmin. The largest representative of post-positivism is an American scientist Thomas Kuhn. By science he understands a social institution that unites the scientific community, which recognizes certain theories, methodological principles, ideological positions, specific scientific standards and ethical values. All these forms a kind of paradigm of science. In this work «The Structure of Scientific Revolutions» by paradigm he understands developed scientific research samples which are accepted by the scientific community at particular historical time. Kuhn wrote the book about the structure of scientific revolutions and discovered the mechanism of the development of science as the unity of «normal science» and non-cumulative jumps of the scientific revolution. Paradigm equips scientist with methods, indicates a research path forming the inner care of this or another situation in science within a certain time. A scientific theory is much narrower than paradigm because it appears inside it. This theory does not work in a different paradigm. In this case it should be reconsidered. Later Kuhn replaces the notion of paradigm from «disciplinary (thing) matrix (base)» to symbolic generalizations, conceptual models, scientific solutions of certain problems, adopted by a scientific value. Normal science is a paradigm. Paradigm is the separation of a particular scientific community scientific achievements. Scientific achievements are an example of statement of scientific problems and their solutions. 128

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Lakatos introduced the concept of research programmes. Science by Lakatos is the field of struggle, which leads to a change of research programs. In sociology of management change is a positive program on culture-centric program. «Hard core and protective belt» are a solid core of the program concept. The protective zone is designed to protect the hard core from erosion. Feyerabend developed methodological anarchism, not theory, to rank and compare comparable theories. Science is a process of accumulation of knowledge. Science is the struggle of immeasurable theories. Polanyi’s tacit knowledge ideas, which are antecedent knowledge of science feeds on different types of knowledge, but not common. They are implicit and antecedent. The concept of personal and tacit knowledge is developed by Polanyi M. Personal knowledge is a term introduced in the methodology of science by the American philosopher M. Polanyi. He indicates the amount of tacit knowledge, which is used in research activities by individual scientist. Implicit knowledge is information which is used in practical and cognitive (including scientific) activities, with no clear discursive and operational design. A repository of tacit knowledge is the sphere of sensual and intellectual intuition, and the use of them is like art and craftsmanship, which are passed from teacher to student, from hand to hand. According to the modern philosophy of science, any scientific theory (including formal) substantially relies on specific reservoir of tacit knowledge, which is a kind of manifestation in science, its cognitive unconscious. According to post-positivists new hypotheses and theories have to pass strict selection, like the mechanism of natural selection in biology. «The strongest theories» have to survive, but also, they can’t be considered as absolute truth. All knowledge has presumable character. Any knowledge has to be open for criticism. Popper and his pupils became founders of the new direction in philosophy of science of critical rationalism. However not all agreed with such dynamic picture of science development of science as there was no moment of stability in it which the scientist has to feel. Hermeneutics is understanding of philosophy. A founder of hermeneutical philosophy is the German philosopher 129

Theme 9. Western philosophy in the context of culture of the XXth century – early XXIth century

G.G. Ga­ damer. («Truth and method»). Hermeneutics as a method appeared in antiquity. Antique hermeneutics explained sense of the Homeric epos, was engaged in allegorical interpretations. In the Middle Ages hermeneutics was interpretation of the Scripture. Gadamer developed hermeneutics as a philosophical concept. He gave it philosophical status, considering it not only as a method of the humanities, but also the doctrine about human life in general. Life, according to Gadamer, is language, substance, independent from the person. The person creates the world and defines a way of human existence. Direct life is inaccessible to the person as he lives in the world imprinted in language. Things don’t exist until they do not get names by means of language means. From here the linguistic nature of philosophy is found in its dialogical character. Dialogue isn’t limited to communication of two persons in which there is a mutual understanding, it «is built also in» the relations between the interpreter and the text. The interpreter has to be able to ask questions to the historical and literary text, but not their authors. At the same time, texts have to be available to understanding and to be a set of interpretations. The interpreter seeks to understanding of a text. According to Gadamer, interpretation of texts is made in a context of the certain traditions caused by historical and sociocultural factors. It means that the interpreter approaches the subject with prejudice (preunderstanding) which borders can’t be passed. Thus, only being available and valuable hermeneutics recognizes the world of human communication. In it the world of culture, values, meanings are based on the language samples. All making cultures, all cultural property has to be understood and interpreted. The existentialism is a philosophical current of the XX century which puts in the forefront the absolute uniqueness of human life which cannot be expressed in the language of concepts. The existentialism appeared in the 20-th years. Representatives of existentialism are the Russian philosophers N.A. Berdyaev and L.I. Shestov, the German philosophers M. Heidegger and K. Jaspers, the French philosophers and writers Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre. The main subjects of existentialism are human existence, destiny of the personality in the modern world, the decision and the choice, freedom, loss of belief and disbelief, death and immortality. The appeal to such questions and 130

Philosophy

their inexpressibleness induced philosophers of this direction to address in the language of «scientific» concepts to art language. Therefore, the existentialism is not only academic philosophy, and the whole spiritual direction of an era which ideas have found reflection in fiction, cinema, theater. Sources of existentialism are in philosophy of the Danish thinker of the XIX century, S. Kierkegaard. Existentialism presents categorical structure in the form of anthological triad: the world per se – an existence– a transcendence. The world per se is built on the alienation relations. Alienation is one of the central problems of existentialism. Alienation is the relation between the subject and any of its functions developing as a result of a rupture of their initial unity leading to impoverishment of the nature of the subject and change, a perversion, regeneration of the nature of aloof function. In sensually concrete form alienation is endured as a state of dependence from the external, alien forces dominating over it i.e. as a condition of unfreedom. The aloof person is the unfortunate person. Existentialists allocate such signs of alienation: – feeling of powerlessness, feeling that the destiny has got out of hand and is under the determining influence of external forces; – idea of senselessness of existence; – impossibility to receive in any way rationally expected result; – feeling of loneliness, an exclusion of the person from social communications; – loss of the original «I» by the individual. Е��������������������������������������������������������� estrangement of a man from an object is expressed in preoccupation of unique and individual, personal and general, impersonal and universal, domination, suppression of freedom, adaptation to the average person, socialization of the person, destruction of the original «I». The main sign of alienation is impersonality. The person is dissolved in the world of public, loses the own world, loses himself, the egoism. This is the person, identical with others, similar to others, the same as everyone. The public opinion demands to behave as all the others. In the depersonalized world everything original becomes ordinary, vulgar. Conscience helps to realize the fault of existence and a debt of the person respon131

Theme 9. Western philosophy in the context of culture of the XXth century – early XXIth century

sible to himself. But the person can’t constantly stay in the depersonalized world. The way to overcoming of alienation lies in «a boundary situation», i.e. there is something that forces out the person from the world of alienation and allows to come to contact with original life – existence. Something is determined by a miscellaneous. Jaspers considers that it is an illness, wine, danger of death. Sartre considers that it is nausea; Camus considers that it is boredom and absurdity of life; Heidegger considers that it is an existential fear, alarm. The fear is not a bodily fear, but metaphysical horror – the enlightenment shaking the person. To the person the gaping life chasm which he didn’t know earlier opens, quietly vegetating in turmoil of daily affairs. Existence is an intermediate condition of life of the person – «life between». Intermediate character of an existence admits all existentialists. Existence – life between the aloof world and the world of a transcendence. The existence orientation on the world means «abandonment», and aspiration to transcendental – «life». The person can’t overcome the world and can’t reach completely a transcendence as he is initially burdened with «factuality». One of important subjects which concerned existentialists is freedom. They understood it as «the choice », independence of external. To be free – means to be oneself, despite difficult circumstances. Therefore, it isn’t casual, Sartre in the article «The Existentialism is a Humanity» criticizes determinism – definiteness of the person by the environment. The existentialism proceeds from a personal responsibility. It is the only philosophy which gives destiny of the person in his own charge therefore it is humanity. One more important aspect of freedom has been opened by existentialists: freedom is a burden, and not everyone can bear this burden: the person can refuse freedom and give it. This question was investigated by F.M. Dostoyevsky in «A legend of the Great inquisitor» in the novel «Brothers Karamazov». Answer the questions: 1. What are the main features of modern Western philosophy? 2. What is the essence of the verification principle? 3. What is the essence of the principle of falsification? 4. What is the subject of neopositivism and postpositivism? 5. What does existentialism study? 6. What does Camus see the sources of absurdity in?

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Glossary

Alienation: for Hegel (an Idealist), the process whereby the products of mind (for example, Nature as emanating from the Absolute Idea of «God», or physical objects, ide­as and so on as created by finite mind, that is, man) be­come «set off» against their originator as a consequence of their « objectification ». According to Marx (a materialist), man also alienates himself in so far as he fails to realize himself as an «agent» and allows himself to be dependent on or exploited by his environment, even though it may in some respects be his own product. Analytic: (as applied to statements or propositions) true by virtue of meaning alone and without reference to empirical content. a posteriori: what is known through inductive procedures, or knowledge which is grounded in empiri­cal data for its validation. a priori: what is known to be true by logical deduction from general principles, or independently on our experience of it and not requiring empirical validation. Atman: is the subjective spiritual reality that gives the world the individual being. Brahma: is the ultimate and impersonal divine reality from which all things originate and to which they return. Brahma is a single, eternal unchanging essence. He is a spiritual beginning and objective reality. Brahma is the foundation of the universe. Behaviorism: (in philosophy) the thesis that «men­tal» states are neither «internal» nor «private»; whatever there is to know about the «mind» can be fully understood and explained in terms of publicly observable overt physical behaviour. Categorical imperative: for Kant, an unconditional … moral principle that lays down that duty or obligation must be the only criterion for assessing human actions. Actions performed for the sake of some other end («hypothetical» imperatives), although they may be deemed to bring about «good» consequences, they cannot for that reason be accord­ed the status of «moral» or «right». Categories: for Aristotle «classes» or «modes of being» in terms of which Aristotle claimed particular things (for example, man, horse) could be specified (thus: substance, quantity, place and so on – he distinguished ten such categories); for Kant formal a priori concepts of the under­ standing through which «representations» (that is, raw data of sense «intuited» under the «forms» of space and time) are organized and unified in 133

Glossary

judgement (for example, cause, unity, reality – Kant claimed to be able to deduce twelve). Ryle introduced the notion of a category–mistake: this oc­ curs when a term belonging to one kind of category is used in the context to which a different kind of category is appro­priate, and this is the cause of philosophical errors. Causal theory: theory of perception according to which there are «real» objects in the world which are the cause of our perceptions, though it does not follow that we can necessarily say anything about those objects. Conceptualism: in metaphysics, there is the theory of «universals» or of what is common to objects denoted by a gen­eral term but exists only as concepts, thoughts, or on some accounts, images («resemblance» theory). (Supported, for example, by Locke, Berkeley and, to some extent, Hume). Conceptualism admits the reality of the general concepts in the mind of the knowing subject. Cosmology: subdivision of metaphysics dealing with the nature and origin of the universe. Cosmological argu­ment, or «the first cause» argument: argument purporting to establish the existence of God on the grounds that there cannot be an infinite regress of causes, and that the First Cause, an «uncaused causer» or a «cause-of–itself» is therefore required to underpin the contingency of the world. (Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes et al). Critical theory: a social and political philosophy associated particularly with Habermas. Utilizing a neo– Marxist framework and drawing on the theory of speech-acts, he developed a critique of repressive ideology and the theory of communicative action underpinned by a new concept of rationality, truth, freedom and justice being regarded as regulative norms. Deduction: a process of reasoning involving logically necessary inferences from a general premise or a set of premises to a conclusion. Dharma: the cosmic law, the rules that created the universe from chaos, as well as rituals. In later Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas and the Epics, the meaning became richer, more complex and the word dharma was applied to diverse contexts. In certain contexts, dharma designates human behaviour considered necessary for the order of things in the universe, principles that prevent chaos, behaviour and action necessary for all kinds of life in nature, society, family as well as at the individual level. Dharma encompasses ideas such as duty, rights, character, vocation, religion, customs and all kinds of behaviour considered appropriate, correct or morally upright. The concept of dharma is used in three senses: a universal law, which gives the world the order; the moral law, the law of caste. De – virtue, moral force. Deontology: a subdivision of ethics concerning moral obligation or duty. Deontological theories of ethics define the Tightness of actions in terms of duty (for example, Kant). Determinism: the view that whatever we think or do is not only caused but is also an inevitable consequence of antecedent circumstances or 134

Philosophy

causes beyond our con­trol (for example, the movement of atoms, the behaviour of genes, social pressures). Dialectics consider that development looks like spiral motion. Each new coil of history repeats the previous one, but introduces new things and changes Dialectic(s): for Plato a process of argument or dis­putation by means of which truth is alleged to be elicited; for Hegel a process of reasoning and a historical process which involves the progressive «negation» of one state­ment or event (the thesis) by another one (the antithesis), both being subsequently subsumed into a «higher» synthesis. Dialectical materialism: the theory of Marx and Engels that «mind», man, society and nature are ultimately de­pendent on and explicable in terms of a material infra­structure and are subject to a dialectical process of change. Dualism: the view that the world, including man, is constituted out of two different kinds of «stuff» or sub­stances, for example, mind and matter. (Especially Des­cartes). Dualism is the doctrine which admits two independent substances (idea and matter) as equivalent ones (equal in rights) Empiricism: the thesis that all knowledge is derived from sense-experience (and that logically necessary truths can provide no information about the world). (For example, Mill and Russell, Ayer); most «empiricists» usually combine in their philosophies the elements of rationalism (Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke) or idealism (Berkeley). Epistemology: a branch of philosophy concerned with the nature, scope and justification of knowledge. ���������������������������������� Е��������������������������������� pistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies the origin, nature, methods, validity, and limits of human knowledge, it is the theory of knowledge Empiricism is a philosophical trend that claims that experience is the source of a true knowledge. Ethics: a branch of philosophy concerned with ques­tions about the value of human conduct, for example, the tightness or wrongness of actions, the nature of «good­ness», the justification of moral rules or principles. Existentialism: nineteenth/twentieth century philo­sophical movement that stresses the priority of «existence» over «essence» and emphasizes the absolute freedom and responsibility of the individual for making himself, his values and his world-view (for example Kierkegaard), often combined with phenomenological analysis (Sartre, Heidegger). Fatalism: the view that the future is predetermined and that whatever «choices» we make cannot affect an inevitable outcome. Hermeneutics: the systematic investigation of inter­pretation of texts, culture modes in general; the debate centers on such issues as whether «pre-judgements» can be eliminated and an «objective truth» attained through «understanding» (Verstehen). Especially Gadamer). I - the principle of justice and health. Idealism: the view that reality is mental and that external objects exist only in thought – as ideas in the mind (for example, Hegel, Bradley). Idealism 135

Glossary

is a system or theory that maintains that the real is of the nature of thought or that the object of external perception consists of ideas. An idealist standpoint is compatible with both rationalism (Plato, Leibniz, Hegel) and empiricism (Berkeley). According to Transcendental idealism (Kant), the world can be experienced not «in itself» but only as an appearance structured by our cog­ nitive faculties (through forms of intuition and understand­ing– the «categories»). Ideas: one of the most ambiguous terms in the philo­sophical vocabulary. For Plato, Ideas are immutable and eternal self-subsistent realities apprehended through rea­son or intelligence. For Aquinas, they are archetypal pat­terns in the mind of God. In the seventeenth century the term was variously used to refer to all mental images without regard to their origin (Descartes, Leibniz). Locke, Berkeley and Hume subsequently distinguished between «abstract» ideas (concepts) and «concrete» ideas (percepts). The latter were later subdivided by Hume into impressions and ideas, and by Berkeley into ideas of sense and ideas of imagination. Note also Kant’s use of the term «Idea» to refer to the concepts of Reason (God, Freedom, Immortality) which may be used «regulatively» but cannot be applied to experience. Induction: a reasoning process usually from empiri­ cally testable premise to a general conclusion which may in some respects contain more information than was to be found in the premise, or makes that in­ formation more explicit. Instrumentalism: in the philosophy of science, the view that the function of theories and ideas is analogous to that of tools, where they are used to relate sets of observation statements to each other without considera­ tion of whether the theories are «true». Intentionality: in the philosophy of mind, this term refers to the alleged capacity of «minds» or «mental states» to direct themselves towards objects whether they exist or not. (Husserl, Sartre et al.). Intuitionism: in ethics, the theory stating that we can have direct insight into what is good or bad, either through a «moral sense» (for example, Shaftesbury) or through the reason (for example, Moore). Karma («action»): in Hindu and Buddhist philosophies, the term refers to a causal «law» or «force» which deter­mines a person’s moral condition in present and future reincarnations according to the nature of his past deeds. Karma is retribution and it causes the subsequent rebirth. Hinduism considers karma to be the total sum of the acts done in one stage of person s existence, which determines his destiny in the next stage. Lee – order rate of specific relations. Logical positivism: movement associated with a group of philosophers in Vienna in the 1930s who argued that meaningful propositions must either be analytic or empiri­cally verifiable (the «verifiability principle»); most members also claimed that the meaning of a proposition is its method of verification («verification theory»). The «Vienna Circle» was to some extent influenced by Wittgenstein. (Ayer was a member; Popper 136

Philosophy

also attended meetings though did not subscribe to the positivist view of meaning). Materialism: theory that denies the existence of mind or mental states, or claims that «consciousness» can be fully accounted for in terms of material laws and process­es. (Hobbes, Marx, for example). Materialism is the theory, which claims, that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications, the belief that consciousness is a property of material substance and that without matter it does not exist. According to materialism this world exists by itself, it is eternal, infinite in space and time. Maya: it is the veil that hides the true essence of Brahma. Metaphysics: a branch of philosophy concerned with the most general questions about «ultimate» reality and what kinds of things exist, for example, substances, universals; and the nature of mind, matter, time causation and so on. (Throughout the history of philosophy, it has usually been difficult to separate metaphysical issues from the problems of epistemology). Metaphysics is the theory that development is a cyclic repetition of events. Moksha: in Hindu thought the state of «enlightenment» in which one achieves «release» or freedom from the cycle of rebirth, achieved variously through ritual, good deeds, or contemplative meditation. (In Buddhism it is termed «Nirvana»). Moksha is a central concept in Hinduism and included as one of the four aspects and goals of human life. Moksha is a concept that means liberation from rebirth or samsāra. Monism: the view that the world, including man, is constituted of one kind of «stuff», perhaps mental (Berke­ley, Hegel) or material (Hobbes). Naturalism: in ethics, the theory that moral judge­ments are judgements about facts or qualities in the world, for example, pleasure or happiness. The Naturalistic Fallacy (Moore) is alleged to be committed when attempts are made to define, for example, «goodness» in terms of a natural property, or indeed any property («goodness» for Moore being an essentially indefinable, simple non-natural property). In the philosophy of mind (biological) naturalism is a theory in which the mind is considered to bе part of the world of nature, a product of biological evolution. (Searle). Nominalism: in metaphysics the theory that «universals» have no real existence even as concepts; everything that ob­jects denoted by a general term have in common is the name. (William of Ockham and Hobbes; compare also Quine).����������������������������������������������������� Nominalism admitted that there are actually only objects and general concepts – there are the names created by the knowing subject. Noumenon (pi. noumena): (Kant) the thing-in-itself, the real nature of a thing essentially unperceivable and unknowable. Objective idealism is the belief that an absolute idea (in religious idealism – God) is a primary (determinant) reality, for it causes of existence and development of the objective (nature) and subjective (consciousness) reality. 137

Glossary

Ontological argument (Anselm, Descartes): argument purporting to establish the existence of God on the grounds that God as «the most perfect being» must contain all perfections and could not therefore be the most perfect being if it lacked existence. Alternatively: to conceive of something as existing is to conceive of something greater than if it did not exist; the thought of a being than which nothing greater can be conceived therefore entails that such a being exists in reality. Ontology: a subdivision of metaphysics, concerned with the nature of being or with a consideration of what kinds of things actually exist. The other subdivisions are usually taken to be cosmology and psychology (Heidegger, Quine). Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence or reality as well as the basic categories of being and their relations Phenomenalism: the view that so-called «material» objects are in fact nothing other than collections of phenom­ena (ideas, sense, impressions) (Berkeley, Hume), actual or possible (Mill). According to linguistic phenomenalism (Ayer), statements about material objects can be translated into statements about «sense–contents» or «sense–date». Phenomenology: philosophical movement that stress­es the analysis and interpretation of the structure of con­scious experience and human relationships, without con­ sideration of any scientific or metaphysical presupposi­tions about the nature and existence of the mind and external reality. (Especially Husserl). Phenomenon (pl. phenomena): that which is perceived or experienced; for Kant that which appears to the con­sciousness as opposed to the «real» thing-in-itself. Pragmatism: a theory of meaning, truth, knowledge, or value which takes as its criterion the success of prac­tical consequences. (Especially Peirce and James). Praxis: particularly in Sartre’s modified Marxism (Cri­tique of Dialectical Reason), purposeful human activity. The concept brings together the Marxian dialectic and Sartre’s notion of «project» (Being and Nothingness), that is, a programme for action whereby the «for-itself» choos­es and makes its own being or condition. Psychology: originally a subdivision of metaphysics dealing with the nature of the mind, but now either an experimental science or a legitimate field of study for philosophy («philosophical psychology» and «philosophy of mind»). Qi - material substance. Rationalism: the view that it is through the exercise of pure reason (by direct insight or by means of logically necessary deductive arguments), and not from the sense ex­perience, that knowledge of first principles or truths about the world is to be acquired (Descartes, Spinoza), often combined with idealist tendencies (Plato, Leibniz). Rationalism is the theory that reason rather than experience is the foundation of certainty in knowledge. It is the doctrine that knowledge is gained only through the reason, 138

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a faculty independent of experience. Rationalism is a philosophical trend that claims that the source of true knowledge is the mind. Realism: in epistemology, the view that the world exists exactly as we perceive it («naive» realism); or that the fundamental particles of modern physics are real and that it is out of them that objects we perceive in the world are constructed («scientific» realism»). A realist theory of perception is compatible with phenomenalism, analysis of material objects in terms of «sensa» (compare Berke­ley). Realism ��������������������������������� acknowledged that universals exist objectively, independently of the knowing mind.������������� In metaphysics, «realism» refers to the theory that «universals» have a real existence: «before things» (Pla­to), «in things» (Aristotle). Antirealism is the view that we make our own realities: any philosophy which claims to «mir­ror» the actual world and that we can know such «pres­ences» as ideas, essences, substances, Being and the like is untenable. (Derrida, Diimmett, Feyerabend, Rorty). Relativism is the belief that the truth is not always the same but varies according to circumstances. It is the theory stating that criteria of judgment vary with individuals and their environments. Representative theory: the theory of perception according to which at least some of the qualities of material objects are «re-presented» or copied in our sensory experience but are not identical with it. Thus, for Locke, our «ideas» of «primary» qualities resemble those qualities themselves, but our ideas of «secondary» qualities, while produced by material objects, do not resemble any quality possessed by them. (Perhaps also later Russel, for exam­ple Human Knowledge). Samsara is a process of transition from one life to another life. Samsara is a process of rebirth of the soul. Scepticism: in a narrow sense this refers to a general critical attitude towards accepted beliefs. In a broad sense of the term a sceptic is a person who denies that knowl­edge is possible (though this position is held by different philosophers with various degrees of commitment). Orig­inally a philosophical movement in ancient Greece. (Pyrrho; also, Descartes – for his method– and Hume). Sensualism is the belief that cognition should be based on senses rather than reason and logic. It is the doctrine that all ideas are derived from and essentially reducible to sense perceptions. Sensualism is a philosophical trend that claims that the source of true knowledge is in feelings. Sense datum (pl. data): what is immediately and di­rectly given to us through the senses (for example, patch­es of colour, smells) without reference to possible causes (such as «material objects»). (Compare especially Moore and Russell; Berkeley’s «ideas» and Hume’s «impres­sions»). Shang-di – the highest ruler, personified principle. Sheng – life. Scholasticism is a “school philosophy” of the medieval universities, uniting the Christian dogma with logical reasoning. 139

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Subjective idealism is the system of thought, in which the objects of knowledge are held to be in some way dependent on the activity of mind. Substance: this term has been used in different ways by various philosophers since Greek times, but in general it refers to the «essence» of a thing - what makes it what it is, in which its qualities, attributes, or «accidents» are intrinsic. Substance is that for its existence does not need anything, except itself. Syllogism: the standard form of deductive inference in «traditional» or Aristotelian logic whereby a conclu­sion is derived from two premises - a major and a minor one. Tao – the right way, the supreme law, which governs all things. Teleology: (in ethics and metaphysics) the study of final causes, ends, or purposes of func­tional activities. Teleological argument: an argument from the alleged presence of design or order in the world purporting to establish the existence of an intelligent designer, that is, God. (Aristotle, Aquinas). The measure of things – the principle enunciated in Taoism and related to human existence in society. The five elements – fire, water, wood, metal, earth as a single harmony. (In the philosophical school of the five elements). The era of the warring States - the era of I millennium BC. e., when China was represented by a set of separate countries, which were engaged in a struggle for the idea of the ​​ Celestial Empire, creating a specific model of the world. Tian – Heaven, the supreme ruler of all things. Tszhi – wisdom. Zhi – consciousness. Xiao minute – fraternal and filial virtue, reverence. Yin – a principle which is a dark, passive principle. Yang – the principle, which is a bright, active principle. «Wu-wei» – «non-action», «doing by not doing» or letting things take their natural course. Universals: what general terms (for example «cat», «whiteness») are alleged to stand for. There has been much disagreement among philosophers both about the ontological status of universals and the precise scope of the term application. Utilitarianism: the theory of ethics according to which the tightness or wrongness of actions is to be assessed in terms of the «goodness» or «badness» of their consequenc­es, as measured by, say, the amount, quality, or distribu­tion of happiness engendered. (Especially J.S.Mill), Vedanta: an Indian philosophy claiming to synthe­size previous «orthodox» Vedic philosophical systems and grounded in the sacred Hindu scriptures. There are three principal schools– Advaita (Samkara), Visistadvaita (Ramanuja) and Dviata (Madhva).

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Tests

Variant 1 1. The theory, which claims, that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications, belief that consciousness is a property of material substance and without matter it does not exist A) Idealism B) Dualism C) Materialism D) Objective idealism E) Subjective idealism 2. The branch of philosophy that studies the origin, nature, methods, validity, and limits of human knowledge, it is the theory of knowledge. A) Еpistemology B) Sensualism C) Rationalism D) Relativism 3. A philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence or reality as well as the basic categories of being and their relations. A) Metaphysics B) Dialectics C) Ontology 4. What is idealism? A) A belief that consciousness is a property of material substance and without matter it does not exist. B) A system or theory that maintains that the real is of the nature of thought or that the object of external perception consists of ideas. C) The theory that reason rather than experience is the foundation of certainty in knowledge. D) It considers that development looks like spiral motion. 5. What is Sensualism? A) The philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence or reality as well as the basic categories of being and their relations. B) The theory maintaining that criteria of judgment vary with individuals and their environments. C) It considers that development looks like spiral motion 141

Tests

D) The belief that cognition should be based on senses rather than reason and logic. It is the doctrine that all ideas are derived from and essentially reducible to sense perceptions. 6. Who first coined the term «philosopher»? A) Plato B) Socratos C) Pyphogoras D) Aristotel 7. A) B) C) D)

What does the word «philosophy» mean? «The love of knowledge». «The love of wisdom». «The love of art». «The love for God».

8. What is the logical result of an operation in which by one or more received statements a new statement – conclusion is obtained? A) reasoning B) matter C) substance D) space 9. The belief that cognition should be based on senses rather than reason and logic. It is the doctrine that all ideas are derived from and essentially reducible to sense perceptions. A) Subjective idealism B) Objective idealism C) Sensualism 10. The theory that development is a cyclic repetition of events. A) Sensualism B) Rationalism C) Relativism D) Metaphysics Variant 2 1. The system or theory that maintains that the real is of the nature of thought or that the object of external perception consists of ideas. A) Idealism B) Dualism C) Materialism D) Objective idealism E) Subjective idealism 142

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2. The theory that reason rather than experience is the foundation of certainty in knowledge. It is the doctrine that knowledge is gained only through the reason, a faculty independent of experience. A) Еpistemology B) Sensualism C) Rationalism D) Relativism 3. The theory that development is a cyclic repetition of events. A) Ontology B) Metaphysics C) Dialectics 4. What is the branch of philosophy that answers these questions: What is knowledge? What do I know? What is truth? Whether the world is knowable? A) The epistemology B) Materialism C) Ontology D) Metaphysics 5. What is materialism? A) The theory that reason rather than experience is the foundation of certainty in knowledge. B) The belief that cognition should be based on senses rather than reason and logic. It is the doctrine that all ideas are derived from and essentially reducible to sense perceptions. C) the theory, which claims, that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications, belief that consciousness is a property of material substance and without it matter does not exist. D) The theory that development is a cyclic repetition of events 6. What is Rationalism? A) The theory, which claims, that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications, belief that consciousness is a property of material substance and without it matter does not exist. B) Knowledge is gained only through the reason, a faculty independent of experience. C) The theory, which claims, that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications, the belief that consciousness is a property of material substance and without it matter does not exist. D) The philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence or reality as well as the basic categories of being and their relations. 7. Who formulated these questions: What do I know? What should I do? What can I hope for? What is man? A) Plato 143

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B) Socratos C) Pythagoras D) Kant 8. What is the feature of deduction? A) Reasoning allows the existing knowledge to obtain new truths by means of pure reasoning, without reference to the experience. B) The conclusion that is likely. C) The idea in this syllogism is moving from the particular to the general. D) Reasoning can produce false conclusions from true premises. 9. The belief that cognition should be based on senses rather than reason and logic. It is the doctrine that all ideas are derived from and essentially reducible to sense perceptions. A) Objective idealism B) Subjective idealism C) Sensualism D) Relativism 10. The theory that the development is a cyclic repetition of events. A) Sensualism B) Metaphysics C) Rationalism D) Relativism Variant 3 1. The doctrine which admits two independent substance (idea and matter) as equivalent (equal in rights) A) Dualism B) Idealism C) Materialism D) Objective idealism 2. The belief that cognition should be based on senses rather than reason and logic. It is the doctrine that all ideas are derived from and essentially reducible to sense perceptions. A) Objective idealism B) Subjective idealism C) Sensualism D) Relativism 3. The theory that development is a cyclic repetition of events. A) Sensualism 144

Philosophy

B) Rationalism C) Relativism D) Metaphysics 4. Who first coined the term «philosophy»? A) Plato B) Socrates C) Pythagoras D) Aristotle 5. A) B) C) D)

What does the word «philosophy» mean? «The love of knowledge» «The love of wisdom» «The love of art» «The love for God»

6. What is the logical result of an operation in which by one or more received statements a new statement - conclusion is obtained? A) reasoning B) matter C) substance D) space 7. What is the feature of the inductive? A) A distinctive feature of this reasoning is that true premises will always lead to a true conclusion. B) Reasoning allows the existing knowledge to obtain new truths by means of pure reasoning, without reference to the experience. C) Reasoning is the link between premises and conclusions based on logical law D) Thought moves in the inference from the particular to the general. 8. What is Rationalism? A) The theory, which claims that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications, the belief that consciousness is a property of material substance and without it matter does not exist. B) Knowledge is gained only through the reason, a faculty independent of experience. C) Thought moves in the inference from the particular to the general. D) the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence or reality as well as the basic categories of being and their relations 9. Who formulated these questions: What do I know? What should I do? What can I hope for? What is man? A) Plato 145

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B) Socrates C) Pythagoras D) Kant 10. The belief that cognition should be based on senses rather than reason and logic. It is the doctrine that all ideas are derived from and essentially reducible to sense perceptions. A) Sensualism B) Objective idealism C) Subjective idealism D) Rationalism

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Recommended literature

1. Bertrand Russell. History of Western Philosophy. – M.: Publisher Liters, 2018. – 1195 p. 2. Johnston D. A Brief History of Philosophy: From Socrates to Derrida. –A&C Black, 2006. – 211 p. 3. Kenny A. New History of Western Philosophy. Volume 1-4. – Oxford University Press, 2006-2010. 4. Humphreys P. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Science. – Oxford University Press, 2016. 5. Estlund D. The Oxford Handbook of Political Philosophy. – Oxford University Press, 2017. 2016) 6. Cappelen H., Gendler T., Hawthorne J. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology. – Oxford University Press, 2016. 7. Copleston F. History of Philosophy: Modern Philosophy. – Image Books, 2003. – 544 р. 8. Bertrand Russell. Why I Am Not a Christian. – M.: Politizdat 2011 (philosophy and theology of St. Augustine.). Pp 296-283). 9. Gilbert Chesterton. The eternal people. St. Foma Aquinas. – M.: Politizdat, 2017. 10. Giovanni Reale and Dario Antiseri. Western philosophy from the beginnings to the present day. The 6-Prince. Bk. 1. Middle Ages. – M.: Petropolis 2014. 11. Gaidenko PP Genesis and mind // Problems of Philosophy, 2007, number 7. 12. Human. The thinkers of the past and present about his life, death and no-death����������������������������������������� . The ��������������������������������������� ancient world – the era of Enlightmant. – М., 2011. 13. Introduction to Philosophy: Textbook for higher education. – М., 2016 14. �������������������������������������������������������������� Ilyin��������������������������������������������������������� V������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������� . The ����������������������������������������������������� history of Philosophy���������������������������� : Textbook �������������������������� for higher education. – St. Petersburg, 2015. 15. Philosophy: Textbook for higher education / edited by V.N. Lavrinenko, V.P. Ratnikov. – М., 2016. 16. Philosophical Dictionary / Edited by I.T. Frolov. – М., 2016. 17. Lossky, Nicholas O. History of Russian Philosophy, New York, 2015. 18. Zenkovsky V.V. A History of Russian Philosophy, trans. George L. Kline. – London, 2017. 147

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Content

INTRODUCTION......................................................................... 3 Theme 1. Philosophy, its subject and function. Philosophy in the cultural and historical context........................... 7 Theme 2. The phenomenon of philosophy in Eastern culture.................................................. 11 Theme 3. The philosophy in the ancient culture.................................................................... 23 Theme 4. The phenomenon of philosophy in the medieval culture of Western Europe and the Arabian East.................................................................... 34 Theme 5. Philosophy of the New Age.......................................... 60 Theme 6. German classical philosophy........................................ 79 Theme 7. Western philosophy in the culture of the XIXth century........................................................ 92 Theme 8. Russian philosophy in the context of Russian culture in the XIX – early XXth centuries........................................................................... 102

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Theme 9. Western philosophy in the contest of culture of the XXth century – early XXIth century............................................................................ 124 GLOSSARY............................................................................... 133 TESTS........................................................................................ 141 RECOMMENDED LITERATURE........................................... 147

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Еducational issue

Saniya Edelbay Aliya Nigmetova Kurmanay Nauanova

PHILOSOPHY The educational-methodical manual Editor V. Popova

Typesetting U. Moldasheva Cover design Ya. Gorbunov IB №128106

Signed for publishing 25.06.2019. Format 60x90 1/16. Offset paper. Digital printing. Volume 9,37 printer’s sheet. 80 copies. Order №4184. Publishing house «Qazaq University» Al-Farabi Kazakh National University KazNU, 71 Al-Farabi, 050040, Almaty Printed in the printing office of the «Qazaq University» publishing house.

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