Hilarion, XI V. (“Word of Law and Grace”) - explains the essence of Christian teaching; the idea of ​​the equality of peoples before "grace" is affirmed. The era of "law" (before Christianity) is symbolized by the images of the shadow, the moon, and the era of "grace" is symbolized by the sun. Glorified Rus' and Prince Vladimir . Philotheus, XVI V. creates a religious doctrine of Moscow as the "third Rome". "Old Rome", the former center of Christianity, was conquered by the barbarians. "New Rome" (Constantinople) perished under the blows of the Turkish conquerors. The "Third Rome" - Moscow - is destined to play the role of the successor of the Christian doctrine. Philotheus explains the fall of "old" and "new" Rome by the fact that they were punished for betraying Christianity as a true faith. Ivan the Terrible and Andrei Kurbsky (XVI century)- correspondence. Ivan the Terrible, referring to the history of Roman emperors, advocated an absolute, unlimited monarchy. Andrei Kurbsky, referring to enlightened European monarchism, defended the idea of ​​a state based on the observance of the rule of law, limiting the actions of the tsar by the Zemsky Sobor. The dispute was resolved in favor of Ivan the Terrible: an autocratic form of government was established in Russia . Philosophy of the Enlightenment. M. Lomonosov, XVIII V. - materialist and atomist: formulated the law of conservation of matter and motion, developed the corpuscular theory of the structure of matter and the mechanical theory of heat. He opposed the Norman theory of the formation of the Russian state. A.N. Radishchev, 18th century(“About a man, about his mortality and immortality”, “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow”) - the human soul is immortal and is reborn after the death of the body in other bodies, therefore the human race exists. He criticizes the despotism and arbitrariness of the landowners. Serfdom is not only contrary to natural human rights, but also economically inefficient. Autocracy is a brake on social progress in Russia.

Decembrists (P. Pestel, N. Muravyov, I. Yakushkin, M. Lunin, V. Kuchelbecker and others) set themselves the task of putting an end to serfdom, to destroy autocratic despotism and class privileges. Part of the Decembrists stood for the constitutional limitation of the autocracy, the other for the republic. Freedom of the individual, speech and press, freedom of religion, allotment of land to the peasants, inviolability of private property are the priority tasks that must be solved in the country. Most of the Decembrists saw a means to solve them in a military coup (without the participation of the masses); some considered it expedient to take the path of peaceful reforms carried out from above.

P. Chaadaev with his “Philosophical Letters"literally blew up public opinion and caused heated discussions for many years. In his assessment of Russia, they saw the overthrow of national shrines. Chaadaev says that Russia, instead of uniting the West and the East due to its geographical position, generally fell out of historical progress - “we belong to those nations that are not part of humanity ... we never went along with other peoples ... we stand as if out of time. There is no positive ideological tradition in Russia, since at one time it adopted Christianity in its Byzantine form (Orthodoxy) and was excluded from the unity of European peoples based on Catholicism. If there was any movement, it was in the growth of slavery: having freed themselves from the Tatar yoke, the Russians fell into a new slavery - serfdom. However, the barrenness of Russia's historical past is, according to Chaadaev, a boon. If in Catholicism there is a certain unifying principle that has shaped the Western world, created a certain political structure, philosophy, science and literature, improved morals, then Orthodoxy in Russia has preserved the essence of Christianity in its original purity. The vocation of Russia in the rapprochement of Orthodoxy and Catholicism. Russia will become the center of European intellectual life if it learns the values ​​of the West. After Chaadaev, the topic of Russia's self-determination and the search for its place in the "West-East" system became one of the most important in the socio-political and philosophical thought of Russia.

There were two main trends: Westernizers and Slavophiles. "Slavophiles" (A.S. Khomyakov, I.V. Kireevsky, Yu.F. Samarin, A.N. Ostrovsky, brothers K.S. and I.S. Aksakov) believed that Russia had its own way of development. The Russian people have their own vital values: Orthodoxy with its spirit of catholicity and holiness, and the "peasant community" based on collectivism and mutual assistance. European culture, in contrast to Russian culture, is characterized by individualism, selfishness, rationalism, "philistinism" and the cult of mediocrity. Slavophiles criticized Peter I for leading Russia down the wrong path and enslaving everyone in the name of the state. They insisted on the need to abolish serfdom and believed in the great mission of the Russian people - it was Russia that was called upon to save Western civilization from bourgeois decay and lack of spirituality. "Westerners" (V.G. Belinsky, V.P. Botkin, A.I. Herzen, T.G. Granovsky, N.P. Ogarev, K.D. Kavelin and others), on the contrary, they were convinced that Russia would have to follow the same path as the West. Russia lagged behind Western Europe, mothballed itself, and now must catch up. It has no special “unique” historical path. They approved of the signs of a bourgeois society that appeared then in Russia and positively assessed the activities of Peter the Great in Europeanizing the country. Western culture attracted them primarily with its humanism and liberalism: the idea of ​​freedom, the dignity of the individual, the thirst for justice. They criticized the despotic autocratic power and the ignorance of the people. Russia must master Western values ​​and become a normal civilized country. Common to these currents is an attempt to draw a path for Russia's development that would meet Russia's national interests, bring the country out of backwardness and raise it to the level of resolving not only its own. But also universal problems. Slavophiles and Westernizers solved a common problem, but they offered different ways and means. They had “one love for Russia, but not the same” (A.I. Herzen).

Soil science. F.M.Dostoevsky as an ideologist of pochvennichestvo spoke about the negative consequences of Peter the Great's reforms. The people did not accept European civilization. The task of the Russians is "to create for themselves a new form, their own, native, taken from the soil, from the principles of the people and the spirit." Dostoevsky notes the inconsistency of the Russian character. In which both humility and conceit, and passion, and conscientiousness coexist. The Russian people are “God-bearing people, they are destined for a universal mission – the spiritual healing of Europe and the creation of a new world civilization. Russian "collectivism" and "sobornost" are the great advantages of the Russian people. The main themes of Dostoevsky's works are man, freedom, the struggle between good and evil in man. Man is a microcosm, the center of being around which everything revolves. Human nature is contradictory and irrational, his soul is bifurcated and there is a constant struggle between good and evil in it. The main thing in a person is freedom. Man can come to goodness only through freedom. That is why Dostoevsky is categorically against the violent way of bringing people to happiness - "forced harmony" in society (the imposition of good!), whether it be Catholic or socialist, it doesn't matter (this is what the well-known parable about the "Grand Inquisitor" is about). A person must make a conscious free choice. However, freedom is also ambiguous: it can be the root of both good and evil, and it has its limits (the famous question - is everything allowed to a person?) No, not everything. Dostoevsky explores the case when freedom turns into self-will, self-will leads to evil, evil to crime, and crime to punishment. Freedom, turning into self-will, does not want to know any restrictions, any shrines. If there is no God, if there is a man himself - God, then everything is allowed. But whoever, in his willfulness, does not know the limits of his freedom, loses his freedom, becomes obsessed with his "idea." Suffering is the consequence of evil. But suffering also cleanses from evil: through repentance, the soul is transformed and a moral rebirth of the personality takes place. Dostoevsky leads the characters in his novels through this process: freedom-evil-redemption.

N.Ya.Danilevsky (“Russia and Europe”) to justify the special path of Russia, he creates an original philosophical and historical concept, which laid the foundation for a whole trend in this area. There is no single human civilization. Humanity is an abstract idea. In reality, there are only cultural-historical types that go through the same path of development: periods of birth, maturation, flourishing, decrepitude and death. Any talk about the superiority of this or that culture is pointless: they are no worse and no better than each other, only they are at different stages of development. Europe and Russia are two different, inseparable civilizations, with different cultural foundations. “Europe is not accidentally, but essentially hostile to us,” N.Ya. Danilevsky insists. European civilization has passed its heyday and is now on the way to decrepitude, it will be replaced by the emerging Slavic-Russian civilization.

Conservatism. K.N. Leontiev("Byzantism and Slavism") shared Danilevsky's teaching about the multitude of "cultural-historical types", but he significantly modified this teaching. First of all, Leontiev tried to establish the laws of the maturation and death of cultures. Every culture goes through three periods: "original simplicity", "blooming complexity" and "dying" (through "secondary simplification") in the process of "equalizing mixing". The second period - flourishing complexity - is characterized by a variety of parts, with the unity of the whole. This is a period of social inequality, the formation of an elite - tribal and cultural, a strong state with strict centralization. The period of mixed simplification is characterized by the desire for universal equality and democratization, the result of which is: the flourishing of technology, the dying of art, the vulgarization of life, the thirst for pleasure, not creativity, but mechanical work. By the beginning of the 19th century, Western Europe had completed the period of "blooming complexity" and is on the path of the "egalitarian process", that is, democratization and the dying of culture. Russia faces the main task - not to submit to Europe in the egalitarian progress "to stand in its separateness." To this end, he proposed to "freeze Russia so that it does not live," i.e. froze in its present form until better times. "It's time to learn how to react," said the ideologue of conservatism. The stronghold of the reaction is Byzantism, based on Orthodoxy and strong autocratic power.

L. Tolstoy - the theory of "non-resistance to evil by violence". Tolstoy believes that it is possible to solve existing social problems and create a harmonious society only with the help of a moral sermon addressed to every person. Violence must be excluded from social life, since it is not capable of generating anything but violence. Tolstoy equally condemns both the government and the revolutionaries for violence. Violence must be neutralized. For this:

1) stop committing direct violence yourself, as well as prepare for it,

2) not to take part in any kind of violence committed by other people (in particular, in order to neutralize the violence of state power, one must “not participate in this system, in what supports it: in the military, in the courts, taxes, false teaching, etc.”),

3) do not approve of any violence. Tolstoy doubts the progress of society. Progress has touched only a minority that enjoys the achievements of civilization at the expense of the vast majority. The writer and philosopher also has a negative attitude towards culture (!). He is entirely on the side of "nature" against "culture", and "nature" is the people. In the spirit of the Slavophiles, Tolstoy idealizes the people, calling them the bearers of the true faith and pure morality.

revolutionary democratic direction. A.I. Herzen- the concept of "Russian socialism". Russia has lagged far behind the West, but the Russian man has retained his soul and national character. The spirit of the Russian people is embodied in the rural community in the form of the foundations of direct democracy: secular gathering, joint work, joint existence. In this sense, the peasant community is, as it were, "instinctive communism", and this will help Russia to avoid the bourgeois stage of development with its sharp contradictions. But at the same time the individual is absorbed and repressed by the community. Therefore, Western science, political freedoms and legal norms are needed. Socialism must be a means of liberating the individual. Terror he strongly rejects terror.

N.G. Chernyshevsky ("What to do?") believed that the law of increasing progress operates in history, knowledge plays the role of the main engine, and revolution is a means of radically changing the entire social system. Chernyshevsky saw the only way to solve the most acute problems of Russia in the peasant revolution. Serfdom should be replaced by a system of industrial and agricultural associations.

M. Bakunin (“State and anarchy”) defended the idea of ​​stateless socialism, anarchism. The whole history of mankind is a steady movement from the "kingdom of animality" to the "kingdom of freedom". The main oppressor of the human race, the source of evil and misfortune is the state. It is an organized expression of the violence and selfishness of officials. Religion also helps to exercise dominance over people. In order to bring humanity to a state of freedom, it is necessary to “blow up” the state, to exclude the principle of power from the life of society. Bakunin was convinced that the Russian peasant is always ready for a revolution, since he is a rebel by nature. In this regard, the revolutionaries should go to the people and call them to revolt. In place of the state, a social structure must arise based on the principles of self-government, autonomy and free federation of individuals, communities, provinces, nations.

P.N. Tkachev advocated terror against autocracy - "the only means of the moral and social revival of Russia." The "minority party" should push the state towards a social revolution, the destruction of the existing state and the creation of a new one - a state of revolutionary dictatorship.

P.L. Lavrov (“Historical Letters”) believed that the main driving force of the historical process is critically thinking individuals, i.e. advanced intelligence. Only they are able to formulate a social ideal and convey it to the working people with the help of propaganda. He called on the intelligentsia to actively promote socialist ideas among the Russian people: in order to prepare a revolution, one must go to the people, merge with them and wake them up. At the same time, Lavrov was well aware that a revolution cannot be artificial - it must mature in the depths of society.

Russian cosmism- the doctrine of the inseparable unity of man, the Earth, the Cosmos, the cosmic nature of man and his limitless possibilities for space exploration. Representatives: N. Fedorov, Vl. Vernadsky, K. Tsiolkovsky, A. Chizhevsky. Two directions: natural science and religious.

The main idea of ​​N. Fedorov's "philosophy of the common cause" is the victory over death, the achievement of human immortality and the resurrection of all previous generations. The moral duty of descendants is to restore life to all previous generations. For the resurrection of the dead, it is necessary to stop all enmity between people, the moral unification of all people and the active regulation of nature through science and technology. The task of science is: 1) to extend the life of a person as much as possible, to make his body immortal, 2) to provide all the resurrected previous generations with a place for existence - through space exploration and resettlement to other planets.

K. Tsiolkovsky ("Dreams of the Earth and Sky") believed that life and mind on Earth are not the only ones in the Universe. The boundless outer space is inhabited by intelligent beings of various levels of development: more "perfect" and less "perfect". More "perfect" monitor the order in the universe. Over time, in the course of evolution, a union of all intelligent higher beings of the cosmos will be formed. First - in the form of a union of those inhabiting the nearest suns, then a union of unions, and so on, ad infinitum, since the Universe itself is infinite. Earth is a "late" planet, and it has been given the right to independent development. The moral, cosmic task of the Earth is to contribute to the improvement of the Cosmos. The earthlings will be able to justify their high destiny in the matter of improving the world only by leaving the Earth and going out into the Cosmos. The invention of the rocket for him as a scientist is not an end in itself, but "a method of penetrating into the depths of the Cosmos." The essence of his cosmic philosophy: "in migration from the Earth and in the settlement of the Cosmos."

A.L. Chizhevsky is the founder of heliobiology - the science of the Sun and its influence on terrestrial processes. The scientist proves the existence of natural and cosmic rhythms, the dependence of life on Earth on the pulse of the Cosmos. The sun affects not only human health, but also social processes on our planet. Social cataclysms (wars, riots, revolutions) are largely determined by the behavior of the Sun. According to Chizhevsky's calculations, during the minimum solar activity - a minimum of mass social movements - 5%, during the peak - 60%. The cycle of solar activity is 12 years. Fatal years for Russia - 1905, 1917, 1929, 1941, 1953, 1989 - the peak of solar activity.

Religious-idealistic direction. V.S. Soloviev(“The Crisis of Western Philosophy”, “Justification of the Good”, “Readings on God-Mankind”). Main ideas: unity, God-manhood, integral knowledge. No phenomenon can exist and be known outside of its relation to other phenomena. Any thing is known in its relation in its relation to the whole. And the whole is not just a multitude of things, but total unity. The All-One exists in all its elements, is the bearer of all its world properties. Unity includes the unconditional (absolute being - God) and the conditioned (matter). “Unity” is comprehended by “whole knowledge”, which is a synthesis of religion, philosophy and science, or, in other words, faith, thought and experience. Solovyov builds a metaphysical system of "whole knowledge", in which ontology should reveal the "unity", epistemology - to substantiate irrational knowledge, sociology - to find the highest ideal of society. The world created by God goes through three stages:

Cosmogonic process: at this stage, the nature of the world is transformed from chaos into space and the conditions necessary for the emergence of man are prepared.

Historical process: with the advent of man, the internal transformation of the cosmos begins, man is an intermediary in reuniting it with God, "a link between the divine and natural worlds." His task is to overcome all manifestations of evil and imperfection of the world. The moral meaning of human life is service to the Good. The ideal of the perfect man is Jesus Christ. Through man there is a path of elevation of being: dead matter becomes spiritualized, becomes alive.

God-human process: the history of mankind is moving towards the Kingdom of God - transfiguration and reunification with God. And this path is indicated by Jesus Christ, who unites the divine and human principles in himself. At the center of the story is the divine person of Christ. The God-man conquers death and joins the world to eternal life. The union of man and the world with God is possible only in Christ and through him - in the Church (the body of Christ). God is love, and reunion with him of man and the world is possible only through love - free, this is emphasized by V. Solovyov and all his followers. Love must bring about a triple reunion: to restore the individual man - the union of a man with a woman; to restore a social person, joining him to society; to restore the universal man, his inner living unity with the whole nature of the world. And the final reunion of man and the world with God is “in love, through love with love.”

L.Shestov criticizes the rationalism so characteristic of Western philosophy. The world is irrational and full of countless mysteries. We don't even know what's going on in the universe. The world around us is a world of chaos, the dominance of the elements and chance. Our mind is able to cognize only the necessary, regular, while the random and chaotic, that which constitutes the essence of the world, is hidden from it. Therefore, the claims of science and rational philosophy to the knowledge of reality are untenable. The real truth is on the other side of the mind.

Philosophy of the Russian Diaspora. N.A. Berdyaev(“Spirit and Reality”, “On the Appointment of Man. The Experience of Paradoxical Ethics”, “On Slavery and Human Freedom”) - went from a Marxist to a religious philosopher. Berdyaev speaks of the crisis of philosophy: being is rational, while Western philosophy tries to cognize it in a rational way. The main ideas of his philosophical concept:

1) spirit and nature are opposite. The spirit is the subject, life, freedom, fire, creative activity - differences are overcome by love; nature - object, thing, necessity, passive activity - everything that is plural and divisible. God is spirit. Nature is secondary and derivative. Only a person who has freedom and the ability to be creative is able to transform and spiritualize nature.

2) the primacy of freedom over being. God is not responsible for the evil done in the world - he did not create freedom, which led man to sin. There are three types of freedom: the primary irrational freedom, which existed before God and man and from which everything arose; rational freedom, i.e. performance of rational duty; and freedom, imbued with love. Man freely falls away from God, driven by irrational freedom, and is called to freely return to God of his own free will and bring the whole world, united by love, to him.

2) anthropodicy (justification) of a person. Man is the point of intersection of two worlds, he reflects in himself the higher world (God-likeness) and the lower world - this duality lies in the complexity of his existence. He is the crown of the universe and the microcosm. As the image and likeness of God, man is a person. Personality is a spiritual and religious category. As a person, he has a greater value than society, nation, state. Man is a co-creator of God, he is called to creative work, his destiny is to continue God's creation of the world. Man creates from nothing, proceeding from freedom as "the baseless basis of being." And it is in creativity that a person overcomes the bone matter and he breaks into the highest spiritual reality.

SECTION 2 . THEORETICAL COURSE OF PHILOSOPHY

Introduction

The history of Russian philosophy is one of the most important components of our culture. The long history of philosophical thought in Russia is an inseparable part of the general historical and philosophical process. It was formed much later than in other countries, and as a result, Russian philosophy experienced a significant influence, first of ancient and Byzantine, and later of Western philosophical thought. In turn, Russian thinkers made a significant contribution to the development of the global spiritual and intellectual tradition, were able to develop their own distinctive style of philosophizing, bringing philosophy, science, religion, and literature as close as possible.

Russian philosophy is universal in its content - a wide range of different topics and issues is considered in its field of vision. Speaking about its content sphere, one cannot fail to note the important role of social problems. At the same time, perhaps, we are unlikely to find in the world a national philosophy that would pay so much attention to the fate of its own country, like the Russian one. How to characterize the internal processes taking place in Russia, what awaits it in the future, and what measures should be taken in connection with this? Here are the key problems that thinkers of various directions have solved.

Along with this, the problems of man, his fate, his place in society have always been in the center of attention of Russian philosophy. Trying to understand, find the goals and meaning of the life of one person, Russian thinkers sought to understand the goals and meaning of the history of mankind. Naturally, the problems of the theory of knowledge and the problems of nature were also studied by our scientists, but the main core for Russian philosophy has always been man, the search for the unity of all facets of his life, all the impulses of his spirit. All of the above determines the undoubted relevance of our work.

The main directions of philosophical thought in Russia and their characteristic features

Russian philosophical thought is an organic part of world philosophy and culture. She addressed the same problems as the Western European, although the approach to them, the ways of their understanding were of a deeply national character. Russian philosophy has come a long way in its development, in which the following stages are distinguished:

l XI-XVII centuries. - the formulation of philosophical problems and the search for answers to them within the framework of religious consciousness (Illarion, Andrei Rublev, Maxim Grek, etc.);

l XVII century. - the first quarter of the nineteenth century. - the spread of philosophy in Russia in the form of a philosophical understanding of the science and culture of its time - the philosophy of the Russian Enlightenment (M. Lomonosov, V. Tatishchev, A. Radishchev, M. Shcherbatov, P. Chaadaev), the philosophy of the Decembrists (P. Pestel, M. Fonvizin , N. Muravyova, I. Yakushkina and others)

b Second quarter of the 19th - early 20th century. - the formation and development of an independent philosophy in Russia includes many areas: Western (A. Herzen, V. Belinsky, T. Granovsky, N. Stankevich) and Slavophile (A. Khomyakov, I. Kireevsky. K. Aksakov, Yu. Samarin), revolutionary democratic (N. Chernyshevsky, V. Belinsky; anarchists- M. Bakunin, P. Kropotkin; populists- N. Mikhailovsky, P. Lavrov, A. Tkachev; Marxists- G. Plekhanov, V. Lenin), pochvennichestvo (A. Grigoriev, N. Danilevsky, F. Dostoevsky; conservative (M.N. Katkov, K.N. Leontiev, K.P. Pobedonostsev); Russian cosmism (N. Fedorov, K. Tsiolkovsky. V. Vernadsky, A. Chizhevsky); religious-idealistic (Vl. Solovyov, N. Trubetskoy, G. Florovsky, P. Florensky, L. Shestov, V. Rozanov),

b Russian philosophy after 1922 - philosophy of Russian abroad (N. Berdyaev, S. Bulgakov, I. Ilyin. S. Frank, B. Vysheslavtsev, L. Karsavin)

Russian philosophy has a number of important features. Unlike representatives of German classical philosophy, Russian thinkers considered philosophy as a means of solving specific problems of human existence. In line with Russian philosophy (N.A. Berdyaev), original historiosophical concepts were created. In them, unlike the European tradition, history is interpreted not as the result of the action of absolute Reason, but as the historical action of the people and the individual. Social orientation in solving the problem of man manifested itself in representatives of materialistic and socialist thought. Russian philosophers put forward the ideal of the God-man as a moral absolute. Russian philosophy is characterized panmoralism : in morality they see the path of universal salvation, the creation of a new way of life, the spiritual renewal of man and society. Russian philosophical thought is distinguished by the substantiation of universal human norms and values, which have found expression in Christianity. Among these values, the central place is occupied by the ideal of catholicity, unity.

A characteristic feature of Russian philosophy is its genetic connection with Hellenism, the origins of which should be sought in Greek (Eastern) Christianity. Another main feature that stands out vividly in Russian philosophy is its deep interest in man: What am I myself? What is a person? It is typical for Russian philosophy and all Russian thinking that its prominent representatives considered the spiritual life of a person not as an area of ​​the subjective (especially not as the sphere of an abstract subject) - they saw in it a special world, a kind of reality, connected in its depths with cosmic and divine being. ; characteristic is the emphasis on the ability and predestination of a person to become like God, the inclusion of a person in the Cosmos.

In the development of Russian philosophical thought, a particularly important role was played by moral problems . An impressive example is the system of moral philosophy of Vl. Solovyov, where the Good as an ontological entity, "realized through everything," becomes the central component of the content. The Russian thinker always seeks the truth, seeks not only to understand the world and life, but to comprehend the moral principles of the universe in order to transform the world. This question is also the theme of Russian literature, Russian poetry (F.M. Dostoevsky, L.N. Tolstoy, F.I. Tyutchev and others).

One of the major problems of Russian thought is the attitude of the Russian world to the culture of Western Europe.

The peculiarities of Russian philosophy include epistemological realism . Man sees the world penetrating into himself and himself entering the world. Man is not opposed to the world, but belongs to it and has no doubts about the fundamental cognizability of the world. In addition to intellectual, rational, logical types of knowledge, a huge role is given to direct comprehension of reality, intuition, sensory experience. "Russian philosophers trust intellectual intuition, moral and aesthetic experiences... but above all they trust mystical religious experience," wrote N.O. Lossky.

The consideration of the human spirit in social and historical philosophy appeared here as the religious ethics of collective humanity. In contrast to the Western, the Russian worldview contains a pronounced philosophy of "We" or "We are philosophy." This finds its explanation, first of all, in a simple religious conviction that only together can we be saved. In addition, "We" is an organic whole, a unity in which its parts are connected with it and permeated with it, but at the same time the freedom and originality of the "I" is not denied.

In the philosophy of a number of Russian thinkers (A.S. Khomyakov and others) has found its development the notion of catholicity . The idea of ​​conciliarity was of great importance. Sobornost meant a combination of unity and freedom of many persons on the basis of their common love for God and all absolute values. It is easy to see that the principle of catholicity is important not only for church life, but also for resolving many issues in the spirit of the synthesis of individualism and universalism, for considering issues of spiritual and social life.

It could be attributed to the features (and at the same time to the shortcomings) of Russian philosophy of the 19th - early 20th centuries. her unsystematic, systematic underdevelopment, some underestimation of rationalistic constructions.

And finally, it should be noted religiosity Russian philosophy. After all, religion and theology itself were the first form of philosophizing, overflowing with philosophical reflections. In addition, as already noted, Russian philosophers especially trusted mystical religious experience, establishing a connection between man and God. Religious experience, stressed N.O. Lossky, gives the most important data for the main task of philosophy - the development of a theory about the world as a whole. A number of Russian thinkers - Vl. Solovyov, S.G. Bulgakov, P.A. Florensky and many others have dedicated their lives to developing a comprehensive Christian worldview.

Schematically, the main directions of Russian philosophy are presented in Figure 1 in the Appendix.

Unfortunately, the format of our work does not allow us to consider in detail and carefully all the above-mentioned areas of Russian philosophical thought, therefore we will focus on the most significant and major currents of the period under consideration.

ABSTRACT

By course "Philosophy"

on the topic: "The main directions of philosophical thought"

1. Objective idealism. "Plato's line"

At each historical stage, the main questions of philosophy acquired a special form and a specific solution. Without affecting the specifics of their formulation and solution throughout human history, let us consider the main options for answering them, which determined the content of the main philosophical trends.

Since philosophy historically grew out of the totality of religious and mythological ideas that dominated human consciousness at the dawn of civilization, idealism was an early version of the solution to the question of what comes first: matter or consciousness. Idealism, both in those ancient times and at the present time, is called the philosophical direction, which considers consciousness to be primary, and matter to be secondary. In philosophy, which grew out of a religious and mythological view of the world, the objective consciousness, or spirit, of divine origin was considered to be the first principle. Both in religion and in the first forms of philosophical thought, this first principle appeared in the form of God (or gods, if there were several of them).

This direction of philosophical thought received a classical expression in Plato, later in Hegel, and also in Russian philosophy X! X-XX centuries It also exists in various forms in modern philosophy. It is impossible to ignore the fact that the world of objective consciousness, independent of the subject, the personality of an individual person and even all of humanity, is part of reality. Ideas, theories, and other forms of spiritual culture are made up of the thoughts, aspirations, and emotions of individuals, of the diverse manifestations of a person's subjective consciousness. However, once they have arisen, they often become not just the property of all mankind, but also an independent spiritual force independent of the individual.

Knowledge, ideas, information surround a person in the same way as the natural environment. It is no coincidence that V.I. Vernadsky considered, along with the biosphere, the noosphere (the sphere of the mind), in which a person is “immersed” from birth to death. What can be said about the origin of the Universe, about the processes that take place outside it or outside the microcosm, inaccessible to human observation even with the help of the most powerful instruments and inexplicable even by the most daring theories? He can be content only with his guesses or shift the answer to these questions to God. But in this case, another question arises: how can a person confidently judge that matter exists as something objective, primary in relation to consciousness, or, conversely, that consciousness is primary in relation to matter? Nevertheless, over the centuries, quite definite answers to this question have been put forward and persistently defended.

Let us confine ourselves to some of the most pronounced polar points of view presented in the history of philosophy. One of these positions was put forward in his time by Plato, personifying with his philosophy a whole direction in the development of world philosophical thought, which has survived to our time, called objective idealism. It is no coincidence that this position in philosophy is defined as "Plato's line".

The essence of this position is the recognition of the primacy of "absolute" or objective, i.e. not dependent on the consciousness of an individual person (subject), an idea presented in the form of a certain “absolute”, objective spirit (God) or “universal”, giving rise to the rest of the diversity of the world. Is there any reason, you ask? If we approach this without prejudice, then even using the advantages of modern scientific knowledge, we can say that there are certain grounds for such a position. Let's try to look at the world through the eyes of Plato.

Like the ancient Greek materialists, he also proceeded from the atomic idea of ​​the structure of matter. How else could the diversity of the world be explained? Either recognize the correctness of the Eleatics, who claimed that the world is uniform, or accept the assumption of the atomists about the structural nature of matter. But then another question arose: how to avoid the impasse of the infinite divisibility of matter? Plato resolved this dilemma in his own way: representing bodies not as material formations, but as certain conceivable geometric forms, as correct mathematical formations. For him, these were rather ideas that underlie material structures and characterize the physical properties of those elements to which they correspond. These were, in essence, no longer atoms as indivisible primary particles of matter, but some bodies composed of triangles forming the surfaces of the corresponding elementary bodies. Rebuilding, these smallest particles could turn into each other. So, 2 atoms of air + 1 atom of fire make 1 atom of water.

Thus, Plato managed to circumvent the problem of the infinite divisibility of matter. Triangles and other two-dimensional figures are no longer matter. The concept of matter in the sphere of the smallest dimensions of space is transformed into the concept of a geometric form. It is of decisive importance not only for the characterization of the smallest particles, but also for nature as such. This is a very clearly expressed concept of objective idealism, which recognizes the idea as more fundamental than objects.

Stepping mentally through several centuries, let's now see how they transformed after the 19th century. and the problem of primacy itself, and its attempts to find its solution in the objective idea, the absolute, rising above the rest of the material world. The development of chemistry and the theory of heat during the nineteenth century would seem to have led exactly to the ideas first expounded by Leucippus and Democritus. The concept of the atom turned out to be extremely productive for explaining chemical compounds and the physical properties of gases. True, it turned out that those particles that chemists called atoms consist of even smaller units. But even these smaller units - electrons, protons and neutrons, and then elementary particles, which at first glance seem to be atomic in the same materialistic sense, required deepening into their structure.

The fact that individual elementary particles (for example, an electron) could be seen, at least indirectly (in a cloud chamber), confirmed the idea of ​​the smallest particles of matter as real physical objects that exist in the same sense as molecules and atoms. However, the difficulties inherent in the materialistic doctrine of atoms, which were already revealed in the teachings of the ancient Greek philosophers on the smallest particles of matter, manifested themselves with all certainty and were developed in the physics of the 20th century, and in the form of the same problem - the infinite divisibility of matter. Atoms are made up of a nucleus and electrons. The atomic nucleus, in turn, splits into protons and neutrons. Is it possible to further divide these particles? If the answer is “yes”, then elementary particles are not atoms in the Greek sense of the word, that they are the foundation of matter. If “no”, then it is necessary to prove that elementary particles are not amenable to further division. After all, until now it has always been possible to split even those particles that for a long time were considered the smallest units.

In the near future, perhaps, new features in the behavior of elementary particles will be discovered. But, apparently, such a solution to the problem of the structure of matter is not final. Who is right: Democritus or Plato? Leading physicist of the 20th century W. Heisenberg, for example, leaned towards Plato. “The smallest units of matter,” he wrote, “in fact, are not physical objects in the ordinary sense of the word, they are forms, structure or idea in the sense of Plato, which can be spoken unequivocally only in the language of mathematics. Both Democritus and Plato hoped, with the help of the smallest particles of matter, to approach the "single", unifying principle, to which the course of world events is subject. Plato was convinced that such a principle could only be expressed and understood in mathematical form. The central problem of modern theoretical physics is the mathematical formulation of the law of nature that determines the behavior of elementary particles.

The knowledge about elementary particles that we have today is certainly enough to say that the essence of modern theory should consist in describing a small number of fundamental properties of the symmetry of nature, discovered several decades ago, and, in addition to the properties of symmetry, this law should contain the principle of causality, interpreted in the sense of the theory of relativity.

This situation immediately reminds us of the symmetrical bodies introduced by Plato to depict the fundamental structures of matter. Platonic symmetries were not yet scientifically proven, but Plato may have been right when he believed that in the heart of nature, where the smallest units of matter are concerned, we eventually find mathematical symmetries and nothing more.

2. Subjective idealism

In resolving the dilemma "matter - consciousness" in the history of philosophy, up to our time, one more position is clearly visible - "subjective-idealistic". For the sake of greater clarity and argumentation of the presentation in this textbook, we will choose to begin with its “classical justification” in the philosophy of J. Berkeley (1685-1753). He sets out his position quite consistently, in any case, to the extent that it could be consistent at all.

When we sensually perceive any object, we are aware of nothing more than the existence in our minds of certain combinations of sensations. But then, asks Berkeley, what can be understood by the existence of a material object, external to the perceiving consciousness and corresponding to our sensations? If the table, continues Berkeley, on which I write, exists, it means that I see and feel it. If I am outside my office, I could also say that the table in question exists, meaning that if I were in the office, I would see it. Or another subject (spirit) would perceive it here. If there is a smell, then someone smells it. If there is color and form, then someone sees them.

It is strange, Berkeley reasoned, if one speaks of sensible objects, such as houses, mountains, rivers, as existing differently from being perceived by our mind. “For what are these aforementioned objects, if not things that we perceive through the senses? And what do we perceive if not our own ideas or sensations?.. And isn’t it downright absurd that any ideas or sensations, or combinations of them, can exist without being perceived?

There were at least three real factors in the field of action of which the concept of J. Berkeley developed, completely missed by the overly straightforward materialistic criticism of his views. The first is the obvious weaknesses and inconsistency of the materialistic positions, and above all of J. Locke, in the polemic with which the criticism of J. Berkeley was honed. Berkeley, having discovered the weaknesses of Locke's teaching, showed its contradictions without much difficulty. It was, in particular, about the interpretation by the latter of the nature of the so-called "primary" and "secondary" qualities.

Refuting Locke's opinion that ideas are copies of the qualities of external material objects, Berkeley writes that an idea can only be similar to an idea. A color or shape cannot be similar to anything but another color or another shape: “What can an idea be like but another idea. We cannot compare it with anything else; Sound is like sound, and color is like color. And if not, then this is tantamount to admitting that color is similar to something invisible, hardness to something intangible, and so on. Thus, Berkeley easily breaks Locke's highly controversial idea that there are "primary qualities" supposedly inherent in material objects, and "secondary" ones that are purely subjective. It is absurd, he remarks, to imagine bodies without any sensible qualities, such as extension. Extent, form and movement in abstraction from other qualities are unthinkable. Therefore, they, like everything sensible, are in consciousness.

The situation is exactly the same with the concepts of "substance" or "substrate". With material substance, philosophers associate something more than the idea of ​​being in general. But the idea of ​​being seems to Berkeley the most abstract and incomprehensible. Similarly, the concept of "matter" is nothing more than a meaningless abstraction. “... There is no other substance than the spirit or what it perceives,” writes Berkeley, “but for a more complete proof of this position, one must take into account that the perceived qualities: essence, color, form, movement, smell, taste, etc. while the obvious contradiction lies in the supposition that the idea is contained in an unperceivable thing, for to have an idea is the same as to perceive, hence that in which color, form, and etc., must perceive them: from this it is clear that there can be no unthinking substance or unthinking subject of these ideas.

At the same time, Berkeley stipulates that it does not in any way affect the reality of things. However, in his opinion, non-thinking things, perceived in sensations, have no existence, apart from the fact that they are not perceived. The purpose of these concepts is to contrast them with religion. Scientific results, Berkeley admits, are indeed reliable and useful, but only to the extent that they relate to sensations. Their definite order and combination create the laws and rules adopted by science. Therefore, no conclusions of science contradict the foundations of religion.

Having come to the conclusion that matter exists and that our sensations are not caused by the influence of external objects, Berkeley is forced to speculate about the real source of our sensations. It is necessary to distinguish, in his opinion, on the one hand, sensible objects, and on the other, the soul or spirit, i.e. "active being". The existence of the first consists in the fact that they are perceived, and the existence of the second, i.e. "active being" consists in the fact that it perceives ideas and thinks. It is quite obvious to Berkeley that an incomparably large part of the ideas or sensations we perceive are not created by the will of people and do not depend on it. Therefore, he concludes, there is some other spirit that causes them, for it is inconceivable that they should exist by themselves. Therefore, from his point of view, the existence of God or a spirit is quite obvious, causing in our minds that variety of ideas or sensations that constantly affects us, determines the observed order and combination of our sensations. The world is spiritual, but we know the spirit - whether we are talking about our own souls or about God - not through ideas caused by sensations, but through concepts.

Berkeley, accordingly, also opposes general concepts, drawing attention to a certain ambiguity in Locke's formulations. General concepts, in his opinion, are generally impossible, because they would have to contain at the same time the specific features of the particular concepts included in them, often incompatible with each other. Instead of general concepts, Berkeley proposes to use representative representations, i.e. sensual ideas of identical concrete objects, acting as "representatives" of any of the other objects of this class.

It should be noted that this concept reflects the real, although perhaps not the main aspects of the process of cognition and, in particular, artistic and figurative thinking. However, they cannot replace discursive-logical thinking, as well as philosophical abstractions, such as "matter", "time", etc.

E. Mach and R. Avenarius made a peculiar attempt to resolve the dilemma of the subjective and the objective in cognition in one way or another. Following to a certain extent in the footsteps of J. Berkeley, they abandoned such categorical statements that all bodies are nothing but our sensations. The emphasis was placed on the inseparable connection of objects of the external world with sensations, in fact, on their fusion in some allegedly neutral "elements of the world". “It is not bodies,” E. Mach wrote in “The Analysis of Sensations”, “that cause sensation, but complexes of elements (complexes of sensations) form bodies. If the physics of the body seems to be something permanent, real, and the "elements" - their fleeting, transient reflection, then he does not notice that all "bodies" are only logical symbols for complexes of elements (complexes of sensations).

However, this attempt to "resolve" the contradictions was, in fact, an attempt to "bypass" the question of the relation of cognition to reality by striving to limit the sphere of physical cognition only to sensually accessible objects. It is difficult to suspect a well-known scientist of malicious intent against materialism and Marxism, if we take into account the real scientific context of the time when the foundations of classical physics, based on the ideas of atomic physics, were so significantly shaken. And physics, under the pressure of the new scientific reality, had to take seriously the fact that it seemed very problematic to separate the object of cognition from the cognizing subject with its serious tools.

As a physicist, Mach could be understood in his desire to alleviate the logical dilemma by trying to abstract from the presence of electrons as such. He writes: “The world does not consist of mysterious beings for us, which, interacting with another, no less mysterious being, our Self, cause the only ‘sensations’ given to us. Colours, tones, spaces, times… are still the last elements for us, and it remains for us to explore the connection between them given to us. This is the study of reality."

By saying “as long as”, E. Mach thus emphasizes the boundaries of the scientific situation, the features of the period when there are no means and methods of looking into the “Through the Looking Glass” of the observed processes, a visual picture of the microworld, the objectivity of which remains very doubtful. This position corresponds to the situation when not so much the purely philosophical, ideological as the methodological aspect of the issues comes to the fore. It is not so important whether "matter" exists or does not exist beyond the threshold of sensations; the question is important: how to reflect in scientific concepts what is actually observed in the experiment? Therefore, the "elements" are declared philosophically "neutral", i.e. not material and not ideal, not viewed through philosophical prisms, left for “later”.

This trend in relation to the question of the source of knowledge, it should be said, was preserved in the methodology of science throughout the 20th century. and entered in a more improved form in the list of the most important areas of philosophical thought as positivist. There is nothing surprising in the fact that it was especially popular among scientists who sought to fence themselves off from speculative, in their opinion, philosophical problems.

3. Concepts of materialism. "Line of Democritus"

The most important position in resolving the issue of man's attitude to the surrounding reality since the emergence of philosophy has always been materialistic. Its essence lies in the fact that matter was recognized as primary in relation to consciousness. The world was considered cognizable to the extent that it was reflected in sensations, perceptions, concepts and other forms of social consciousness.

The content of the materialistic concept, the degree of its depth, consistency and argumentation were not always the same. It has gone through a significant evolution and even, one might say, its own revolutionary upheavals from the ideas of the material "originals" of the world in ancient Greek philosophy to dialectical and historical materialism in Marxist-Leninist theory. At each of its historical stages, materialism was formed in opposition to idealism.

At the same time, it cannot be said that materialistic philosophy was invulnerable to the criticism of its opponents. Moreover, whenever materialism triumphed, it would seem, an undeniable victory, either its miscalculations or problems that it did not solve convincingly enough were revealed. Dialectical materialism was formed on the wave of impressive achievements of the natural sciences and technology of the 19th century. And they undeniably tipped the scales in favor of materialism. Hence the confidence of the classics of Marxism in its truth. "... Nothing is eternal, except for the ever-changing, ever-moving matter - and the laws of its motion and change," writes F. Engels. The same idea was expressed by V.I. Lenin at the beginning of the 20th century: “The world is a regular movement of matter ...”, “... the world is a moving matter”.

The merit of V.I. Lenin also consisted in the fact that he defended the significance of the main question of philosophy, thus putting a barrier to the positivist trends of the 20th century. towards the drying up of philosophical thought. They began, as is known, with the statements of Mach and Avenarius about the meaninglessness of the question of the primacy and futility of philosophy itself, on the grounds that the scientists themselves, physicists, chemists do not think about this question, starting from the "neutral" elements of the world.

And now, after more than a century, we can say that it was not only a naive, but also a dangerous delusion that was not destined to be realized. As well as the attack of positivism on the foundations of materialism under the motto: “Matter has disappeared - only equations remain”, splashed out on the pages of scientific and philosophical publications in connection with the discovery of the electron, was not crowned with success.

In fact, the discovery of the electron, electromagnetic fields, as well as later of the neutron, proton, positron and other elementary particles, could not shake the foundations of materialistic philosophy. First of all, because the ideas about these particles fit perfectly within the framework of the atomistic theory. "The electron is as inexhaustible as the atom, nature is infinite" - these words of Lenin sounded yet another praise to materialism. In addition, it turned out to be possible to observe these particles, if not directly, then at least indirectly, using a cloud chamber, and later other, more accurate instruments.

The definition of matter formulated by Lenin, which does not connect it with the particular properties of physical bodies, but highlights the only property that characterizes precisely philosophical materialism, turned out to be extremely important: “Matter is a philosophical category for designating objective reality, which is given to a person in his sensations, which is copied, photographed , is displayed by our sensations, existing independently of them.

Having formulated this definition, Lenin gave a clear and definite criterion of materiality, understanding that from a philosophical point of view, everything that does not depend on human consciousness should be considered matter. At the same time, it also presupposes the cognizability of the world on the basis of its reflection in consciousness.

It would be unfair to identify Lenin's position with the understanding of matter by the French enlighteners and reproach him for sensationalism, just as it was done in the New Philosophical Encyclopedia: - as well as the sensationalist thesis, according to which objects are knowable insofar as they are perceived by our senses. After all, there are countless material phenomena that are inaccessible to sensations. Linking the concept of matter with sensory perceptions introduces an element of subjectivity into its definition. Thus, the task of creating a philosophical concept of matter has not been solved.” However, the meaning of Lenin's definition of matter was not to indicate the possible observability of the electron in the future. In contrast to the similar definition of matter by Holbach, Lenin emphasizes the independence of the existence of an electron from the sensory perception of the electron, i.e. independence from consciousness in general.

Thus, at the beginning of the 20th century, the so-called classical period in the development of natural science and philosophy was summed up and a step forward was made towards a new, non-classical science. Lenin's definition of matter was no less important for understanding social phenomena. The materialistic understanding of history and social processes received a weighty argument for upholding objective laws and determining the driving forces of social development.

Bibliography

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2. Krylov A.G. Anthology of world philosophy. M., 2008

3. Grekov A.M. Introduction to philosophy. M., 2006

4. Kuhn T. Structures of scientific revolutions. M., 2006

5. Nikiforov L.A. Philosophy of Science. Sbp., 2007

The most influential areas of modern philosophy include analytical philosophy, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism.

Analytical philosophy(varieties: positivism, logical positivism, semantic positivism, neopositivism, postpositivism) reflects the most complete and consistent development of scientific philosophy. Main representatives: B. Russell, A. Tarsky, K. Popper, I. Lakatos, T. Kuhn, L. Wittgenstein; received within the framework of neopositivism. From the point of view of representatives of this trend, philosophy is a clarification of linguistic activity, therefore philosophizing is a detailed analysis of logic and language. Within analytic philosophy, logical positivism is occupied with the structures of language with the structure of reality, showing great interest in artificial languages. Postpositivism explores scientific knowledge and the possibilities for its growth. Philosophers of the analytical school of the 90s. are no longer so much occupied with logic and language as with history, the mathematics of calculus and computers, artificial intelligence, literature, and even mysticism. But all of them are united by the conviction that philosophy in its classical form does not make sense, since its provisions are difficult to substantiate. Philosophy must become scientific knowledge, and for this it is necessary to substantiate rational reasoning.

Phenomenology(founder E. Husserl). Representatives of this direction explore consciousness. They are concerned that the rich life world in the process of cognition, passing through consciousness and reaching the level of scientific understanding, becomes poor and dry. The modern world, phenomenology believes, builds the ideals of lifeless knowledge, using the so-called natural attitude. It must be changed, they believe in the phenomenological setting. According to Husserl, phenomena (appearances of things) coincide with the noumenon (their essence) and are always given in the direct experience of consciousness. Human consciousness is integral, therefore it is impossible to oppose the subject and the object: the exaggeration of the subject leads to subjectivism and psychologism, the exaggeration of the object leads to naturalism, making consciousness passive.

Consciousness is always directed towards something (this feature of it is called intentionality) and the task of the researcher is to mentally see and isolate in the stream of consciousness those meanings that set this direction even before experience. These meanings are grasped with the help of intuition, but they can be expressed with the help of distinct concepts that make it possible to build a rigorous philosophical science. In order to explore a priori meanings, a phenomenological reduction is necessary: ​​in the process of knowing an object, one should refrain from judging about it, it is necessary to reduce it (put it in brackets), and enrich the study of the object with the dynamics of contemplation, experiencing meanings. That is, there must be a transition from pointing to an object (“poor sign”) to its eidos (semantic, full-fledged, rich comprehension through experience and intuition). Thus, every cognizable object must be interpreted on the basis of the received eidos. The ideas of phenomenology were further developed in hermeneutics and existentialism.

Philosophical hermeneutics- a direction that is defined as the art of understanding, the founder of G.-G. Gadamer, representative P. Ricoeur. The task that hermeneutics set for themselves is understanding, to solve it they turn to the text, to its interpretation, but the basis of any understanding is interpretation, since the text has no independent meaning, before interpretation there is only pre-understanding. What is understanding when a person really understands, and how do we understand? These are the tasks that the hermeneutics set themselves. In search of answers, they turn to the text, to its interpretation. The main concern of the hermeneutic about the modern world is that the modern world is mindless: less and less people think in it, a person can do without mind, that is, without independent understanding. In modern science there is no true understanding, but only an explanation, a summing up of the concept. The basis of all understanding is interpretation. The text has no independent meaning, before interpretation there is only pre-understanding. Hermeneutics are engaged in the interpretation of not only written texts, but also speech, hearing, that is, everything related to the use of language. Gadamer: "The possibility of understanding is the fundamental equipment of man, which bears the brunt of his life together with other people, especially on the path leading through language and the reciprocity of conversation."

Existentialism- philosophy of existence. Its representatives: M. Heidegger, K. Jaspers, J.-P. Sartre, A. Camus. Existentialism seeks to comprehend being as the immediate integrity of subject and object. Such being is understood by them as a directly given human existence (existence). An important concept of the philosophy of existentialism is freedom, which is existence. Representatives of religious existentialism (K. Jaspers) believed that freedom can only be found in God. According to Sartre (atheistic existentialism) to be free means to be oneself. Its representatives: M. Heidegger (1899-976), K. Jaspers (1883-1969), J.-P. Sartre (1905-1980) and others. Existentialism seeks to comprehend being as a direct integrity of the subject and object. Existentialists single out the subject's experience of his "being-in-the-world" as the original and true being. Such being is understood by them as a directly given human existence or existence. Another important concept of the philosophy of existentialism is freedom, which is existence. Representatives of religious existentialism (for example, Jaspers) believed that freedom can only be found in God. According to Sartre (atheistic existentialism) to be free means to be oneself. Moreover, "man is doomed to be free", which means that freedom is a heavy burden that a person must bear in order to preserve his personality. If a person renounces freedom, unable to endure its severity, he ceases to be himself, he becomes “like everyone else”, at the cost of losing his true self.

Communication between people from the point of view of existentialists is also not authentic, it only emphasizes the loneliness of each person. All forms of communication are distorted by falsehood and hypocrisy of religious and moral norms. Man's task is to courageously preserve his loneliness and freedom, since this is his true existence.

TO modern philosophy of the twentieth century. also include pragmatism, philosophical anthropology, neo-Thomism, neo-Freudianism, structuralism, post-structuralism, postmodernism. Pragmatism formulated a utilitarian approach to the world around us, people and things, raising the question of changing philosophical foundations from speculative (speculative) to practical ones, therefore philosophical rationality is practical expediency. Founders - C. Pierce, W. James, representatives - D. Dewey, R. Rorty. Philosophical anthropology. The object of philosophical consideration is a person in his integrity, neglect of human nature calls into question the prospects of a person as a generic being, the survival of a person depends on his dialogue with culture, which in many of its manifestations is dangerous for a person. Representatives M. Scheler, G. Plesner, A. Gelen, J. Mead. Neo-Thomism is a philosophical and theological trend that represents theological criticism of the contradictions of the scientific and technological revolution, the concept of the unity of science and religion, and the improvement of the evolutionary model of the universe. The most famous representatives are P. Teilhard de Chardin, E. Gilson, J. Maritain, J. Bochensky. Neo-Freudianism is a direction that arose on the basis of the teachings of Z. Freud. In the twentieth century independent areas of psychoanalysis took shape: individual psychology (A. Adler), analytical psychology (K. G. Jung), character analysis (W. Reich), psychoanalytic psychology of the Self (Anna Freud), humanistic psychoanalysis (K. Horney, E. Fromm), existential psychoanalysis (J.-P. Sartre, L. Binswanger), structural psychoanalysis (J. Lacan).

Structuralism arose on the basis of the concepts of Saussure's school of semiotics, Russian formalism (R. Barthes), structural anthropology of C. Levi-Strauss, structural psychoanalysis of J. Lacan and the structure of knowledge of M. Foucault. The consideration of text theory is based on the search for hidden connections between social institutions, expressed in the structures of language. Post-structuralism is the subsequent development of structuralism. It focuses on the unconscious structures of the language, considers the problems of symbolism, communicativeness of the structure, develops the idea of ​​binary opposition in various areas of humanity. Representatives - J. Lacan, J. Derrida, M. Foucault, R. Bart, J. Deleuze, J. Lyotard. Postmodernism is closely related to poststructuralism, a characteristic method of research in the process of cognition is deconstruction. Expresses distrust of the classical way of thinking (“metanarrative”), of the explanatory systems that organize bourgeois society and serve as a means of self-justification for any knowledge. Representatives - J. Habermas, J. Lyotard, M. Foucault, J. Derrida, R. Rorty, J. Deleuze, F. Guattari, J. Baudrillard.

on the course "Philosophy"

on the topic: "The main directions of philosophical thought"

1. Objective idealism. "Plato Line"

At each historical stage, the main questions of philosophy acquired a special form and a specific solution. Without affecting the specifics of their formulation and solution throughout human history, let us consider the main options for answering them, which determined the content of the main philosophical trends.

Since philosophy historically grew out of the totality of religious and mythological ideas that dominated human consciousness at the dawn of civilization, idealism was an early version of the solution to the question of what comes first: matter or consciousness. Idealism, both in those ancient times and at the present time, is called the philosophical direction, which considers consciousness to be primary, and matter to be secondary. In philosophy, which grew out of a religious and mythological view of the world, the objective consciousness, or spirit, of divine origin was considered to be the first principle. Both in religion and in the first forms of philosophical thought, this first principle appeared in the form of God (or gods, if there were several of them).

This direction of philosophical thought received a classical expression in Plato, later in Hegel, and also in Russian philosophy of the 10th-20th centuries. It also exists in various forms in modern philosophy. It is impossible to ignore the fact that the world of objective consciousness, independent of the subject, the personality of an individual person and even all of humanity, is part of reality. Ideas, theories, and other forms of spiritual culture are made up of the thoughts, aspirations, and emotions of individuals, of the diverse manifestations of a person's subjective consciousness. However, once they have arisen, they often become not just the property of all mankind, but also an independent spiritual force independent of the individual.

Knowledge, ideas, information surround a person in the same way as the natural environment. It is no coincidence that V.I. Vernadsky considered, along with the biosphere, the noosphere (the sphere of the mind), in which a person is "immersed" from birth to death. What can be said about the origin of the Universe, about the processes that take place outside it or outside the microcosm, inaccessible to human observation even with the help of the most powerful instruments and inexplicable even by the most daring theories? He can be content only with his guesses or shift the answer to these questions to God. But in this case, another question arises: how can a person confidently judge that matter exists as something objective, primary in relation to consciousness, or, conversely, that consciousness is primary in relation to matter? Nevertheless, over the centuries, quite definite answers to this question have been put forward and persistently defended.

Let us confine ourselves to some of the most pronounced polar points of view presented in the history of philosophy. One of these positions was put forward in his time by Plato, personifying with his philosophy a whole direction in the development of world philosophical thought, which has survived to our time, called objective idealism. It is no coincidence that this position in philosophy is defined as "Plato's line".

The essence of this position is the recognition of primacy as "absolute" or objective, i.e. not dependent on the consciousness of an individual person (subject), an idea presented in the form of a certain "absolute", objective spirit (God) or "universal", giving rise to the rest of the diversity of the world. Is there any reason, you ask? If we approach this without prejudice, then even using the advantages of modern scientific knowledge, we can say that there are certain grounds for such a position. Let's try to look at the world through the eyes of Plato.

Like the ancient Greek materialists, he also proceeded from the atomic idea of ​​the structure of matter. How else could the diversity of the world be explained? Either recognize the correctness of the Eleatics, who claimed that the world is uniform, or accept the assumption of the atomists about the structural nature of matter. But then another question arose: how to avoid the impasse of the infinite divisibility of matter? Plato resolved this dilemma in his own way: representing bodies not as material formations, but as certain conceivable geometric forms, as correct mathematical formations. For him, these were rather ideas that underlie material structures and characterize the physical properties of those elements to which they correspond. These were, in essence, no longer atoms as indivisible primary particles of matter, but some bodies composed of triangles forming the surfaces of the corresponding elementary bodies. Rebuilding, these smallest particles could turn into each other. So, 2 atoms of air + 1 atom of fire make 1 atom of water.

Thus, Plato managed to circumvent the problem of the infinite divisibility of matter. Triangles and other two-dimensional figures are no longer matter. The concept of matter in the sphere of the smallest dimensions of space is transformed into the concept of a geometric form. It is of decisive importance not only for the characterization of the smallest particles, but also for nature as such. This is a very clearly expressed concept of objective idealism, which recognizes the idea as more fundamental than objects.

Stepping mentally through several centuries, let's now see how they transformed after the 19th century. and the problem of primacy itself, and its attempts to find its solution in the objective idea, the absolute, rising above the rest of the material world. The development of chemistry and the theory of heat during the nineteenth century would seem to have led exactly to the ideas first expounded by Leucippus and Democritus. The concept of the atom turned out to be extremely productive for explaining chemical compounds and the physical properties of gases. True, it turned out that those particles that chemists called atoms consist of even smaller units. But even these smaller units - electrons, protons and neutrons, and then elementary particles, which at first glance seem to be atomic in the same materialistic sense, required deepening into their structure.

The fact that individual elementary particles (for example, an electron) could be seen, at least indirectly (in a cloud chamber), confirmed the idea of ​​the smallest particles of matter as real physical objects that exist in the same sense as molecules and atoms. However, the difficulties inherent in the materialistic doctrine of atoms, which were already revealed in the teachings of the ancient Greek philosophers on the smallest particles of matter, manifested themselves with all certainty and were developed in the physics of the 20th century, and in the form of the same problem - the infinite divisibility of matter. Atoms are made up of a nucleus and electrons. The atomic nucleus, in turn, splits into protons and neutrons. Is it possible to further divide these particles? If the answer is "yes", then elementary particles are not atoms in the Greek sense of the word, that they are the foundation of matter. If "no", then it is necessary to prove that elementary particles are not amenable to further division. After all, until now it has always been possible to split even those particles that for a long time were considered the smallest units.

In the near future, perhaps, new features in the behavior of elementary particles will be discovered. But, apparently, such a solution to the problem of the structure of matter is not final. Who is right: Democritus or Plato? Leading physicist of the 20th century W. Heisenberg, for example, leaned towards Plato. “The smallest units of matter,” he wrote, “in fact, are not physical objects in the usual sense of the word, they are forms, a structure or an idea in the sense of Plato, which can be spoken unambiguously only in the language of mathematics. Both Democritus and Plato hoped with the help of the smallest particles of matter to approach the "single", unifying principle, which is subject to the course of world events. Plato was convinced that such a principle can be expressed and understood only in mathematical form. The central problem of modern theoretical physics is the mathematical formulation of the law of nature that determines the behavior of elementary particles " .

The knowledge about elementary particles that we have today is certainly enough to say that the essence of modern theory should consist in describing a small number of fundamental properties of the symmetry of nature, discovered several decades ago, and, in addition to the properties of symmetry, this law should contain the principle of causality, interpreted in the sense of the theory of relativity.

This situation immediately reminds us of the symmetrical bodies introduced by Plato to depict the fundamental structures of matter. Platonic symmetries were not yet scientifically proven, but Plato may have been right when he believed that in the heart of nature, where the smallest units of matter are concerned, we eventually find mathematical symmetries and nothing more.

Another way is purely empirical research. From the same inner power of intuition arose the idea of ​​the infinity of worlds, which tradition attributes to Anaximander. Undoubtedly, the philosophical thought about the cosmos contains a break with the usual religious ideas. But this break is a breakthrough to a new majestic conception of the divinity of what exists amidst the horror of decay and...

Coordinated with his historical and riosophical reflections. Let us turn to a systematic analysis of Dostoevsky's ideas. 8. Dostoevsky's philosophical work has not one, but several starting points, but the most important and even decisive for him was the theme of man. Together with all Russian thought, Dostoevsky is anthropocentric, and his philosophical worldview is, first of all, personalism, OK ...