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PREFACE

The course of lectures is intended for technical specialities full time students studying in English.

It includes lectures on various periods of the history of European philosophy: Antiquity, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Modern Ages and Contemporary Philosophy. Ancient Eastern philosophies are also included as they contributed divergent themes to the sum of human thought. The issue of Ukrainian and Russian philosophies is very important for understanding the mode of cultural evolution and philosophical thinking on a regional basis, namely in our native country.

The main purpose of the course is to expose the evolution of philosophy in the widest possible way – to cover worldviews which are both collective and individual, traditional and critical, religious and ideological, affirmative and skeptical; to show the plural character of human thinking. It is necessary for young people to be conscious of the ancestors who have helped to shape human living and human ideas, who can be our critics and who can remain sources of ideas and new slants of things.

To understand better the process of the history of philosophy development each period is given on the grounds of its historical and cultural analysis, the continuity with the previous stage is preserved; the spectrum of philosophical views, schools, ideas, providing philosophers and modes of their philosophizing are represented.

The course is also intended to increase students’ cultural and educational level, to enrich their terminological and lexical base and to master their spoken language.

L ECTURE 1.

Historical forms of worldview.

1. Mythology.

It appeared at the earliest stages of human development. Myth is a legend of gods and heroes life in the invisible world. There were two types of myth:

1. Cosmological (structure of nature, its functions, origin and functioning);

2. Human life (mystery of birth and death, everyday life, experience).

Primeval myth was not a story which was told but the reality in which people lived. It was a kind of practical guidance for activity in primeval society. The aim and purport of ancient myth was not exactly to give people knowledge but rather to approve some social aims, models of behavior and beliefs. So, myth was not an initial form of knowledge, but rather it indicated a particular type of natural and social life. As the earliest form of human culture, myth combines primitive knowledge, religious beliefs, morals, aesthetic and emotional estimation of situations. In mythology man manifested himself as being completely identified with nature, as its inseparable part.

The main principle of mythology was a genetic method. Ancient myth usually included two aspects: diachronical and synchronical. Thus, the past was connected with the future and it provided spiritual succession of generations. The main importance and significance of myths was that they established harmony between man and the world, nature and society, society and individual and, thus, made certain stability and inner self-agreement possible.

Philisiphical worldview is characterized by its theoretical character. Image s and symbol s of mythological and religious worldview were being replaced by reason. P hilosophy tried to solve different worldview problems by means of reason , thinking, using logic and its elements: concepts, categories and laws .

In the  history of philosophy there formed two different approaches in explaining the surrounding world: materialism and idealism.

Materialism takes the world which exists objectively and independently of the consciousness of man and of mankind. Explanation of the world from the world itself such is the worldview and methodological principle of materialism. In its development materialism passed through several significant stages from the naïve form in antiquity through mechanical and metaphysical forms to dialectical materialism.

Idealism holds the opposite view, insisting that the development of the world is determined by the spiritual element. Idealism also has various forms. Thus, objective idealism recognizes the existence of a real world outside man, but it is believed that underlying it is reason. The irrationalist variety of objective idealism (Schopengauer and others) postulate an unconscious unreasonable element as the basis of being (blind will, representation and will).From the point of view of subjective idealism, the objective world independent of man does not exist, it is the product of man’s subjective cognitive abilities, sensations and perceptions. Hence, the fundamental idea of this philosophical system (Berkeley or Mach) is that: things are complexes of sensations and to exist means to be perceived by man’s sense organs. Subjective idealism insists that our attempts to go beyond consciousness are in vain and that the existence of an outside world independent of our mind is therefore impossible to prove. Indeed, we know the world as it is given to man but that does not mean that the perception of the world is the world itself. Even everyday experience demonstrate that the being of things does not depend on the act of their perception. A logical development of the ideas of subjective idealism leads to solipsism, to the assertion that nothing but the self exists. If subjective idealism locks itself within the sphere of the cognizing individual and the sensuous form of his cognition, objective idealism, on the contrary, lifts the results of human thoughts, of man’s entire culture to an absolute, ascribing to it absolutely independent suprapersonal being and active power. This logic of human thought is expanded to cover the whole world becoming the logic of being itself.

The other important philosophical problem that has been discussing through the ages is the question of  whether the world is knowable. Can man grasp its objective laws? Those who believe that the world is in principle unknowable are called agnostics. The most striking example of agnosticism is religious philosophy which rejects the knowability of the world in its desire to assert the primacy of faith over reason.

 

Methodology is a system of basic principles or elements of generalized modes of the organization and construction of theoretical and practical activity. It is a particular area of philosophical knowledge.

The main philosophical methods are dialectics, metaphysics, phenomenology, hermeneutics.

Dialectics is the method, by which we study development in its most complete deep-going and comprehensive form. Dialectics affords a reflection of the extremely complex and contradictory processes of the material and spiritual world.Dialectics is not a mere statement of that, which happens in the reality but an instrument of scientific cognition and transformation, an instrument for moving from the domain of non-knowledge into the realm of knowledge, a methodology of knowledge based on action and methodology of action based on knowledge. It is in this that the unity of dialectics as theory and method is manifested.

Metaphysics is characterized by the static mode of thinking, by the veering of thought from one extreme to the other by exaggeration of some aspect of an object, such as stability, repetition and relative independence. A characteristic feature of metaphysics has always been one-sidedness, abstractness and the lifting of certain elements to an absolute. 

 

Functions of Philosophy

The phenomenon of culture reveals the role and place of philosophy in the life of man and society. Considering the essence and structure of culture, it is possible to determine philosophy as one of the components of culture. The concept of culture (from Lat. “cultura" meaning tilling) \is basically connected with something that is done well —not only what is done but also how and what for. Activity is a mode of man’s master­ing the world. Culture is a kind of magic crystal that focuses all being. It is the creative principle of life of the individual and of society as a whole; it is not just an ability taken to the point of art but a morally sanctioned goal.

An ensemble of material and non-material values and of methods of creating them, and the ability to use them for the advancement of mankind and to transmit them from generation to generation, con­ stitute culture. The starting point and the source of the development of culture is human labor, the forms of its application, and its re­sults.

Material culture includes, above all, the means of production and the objects of labor drawn into the circle of social being. It is an indication of man's practical mastery over nature. Non-material culture incorporates science and the extent to which science is ap­plied in production and everyday life; the state of education, en­lightenment, health services, art; moral norms of members of society behavior; and the level of people's needs and in­terests. Culture is not simply a set, an aggregate of material and spiritual values. Culture is an integral system in which every element is closely related to others. The elements of culture are production, way of life, technique, politics, law, moral, science, philosophy, religion, art etc. They influence each other and everyday life of people. In the process of life being everybody is plunged in all types of culture to a certain extent. Society is an integral social-cultural organism in which the different types of activity of people – material and spiritual – provide the development of every element and connections between these elements in a historical process.

In their intercourse worldview categories of culture form an integral image of the human world, they accumulate historically acquired social experience. These categories help man to realize and estimate his being purport and his unique place in the world; to systematize and to structure his individual and social experience. There are such universal categories as “human”, “society”, “consciousness”, ‘knowledge”, “good”, “evil”, “belief”, “hope”, “duty”, “dignity”, “conscience”, “freedom”, “beauty” etc, which pierce all spheres of society’s life.

Philosophy as a component of culture simultaneously carries out reflection on the elements of culture and universal categories which represent them. Philosophy plays an integrative role in the system of culture that determines its basic functions, namely, worldview, gnosiological, methodological, axiological, logical, praxeological, critical etc.

Worldview function – philosophy helps man to find and ground his life orientation, to clear out the essence and significance of life values and priorities. Philosophy does not only influence the formation and development of an individual’s worldview, but it investigates worldview as a social phenomenon, defines fundamental characteristics of a definite historical epoch, definite nations and some definite groups of people.

Gnosiological function - philosophy answers the questions of knowability of the world, limits of cognition, essence of the truth, object and subject of cognition, stages, levels and forms of cognition, laws of cognitive process, ways and facilities of achievement of the truth, methods of verification of true knowledge, essence and role of practice in the process of cognition and others. Philosophy also works out universal principles of the cognitive process underlining specific character of man’s consciousness and the world relation.

Methodological function - philosophy correlates and coordinates application of philosophical, scientific and concrete-scientific cognitive facilities: methods, principles, approaches. Universal philosophical methodology in relation to concrete scientific methods serves as the means of generalization and grounds of scientific principles; it determines logical connections between separate groups of methods. Philosophy provides the boost of scientific knowledge. Philosophical method, used together with concrete sciences methods is capable to help these sciences to work out complex theoretical problems, to foresee scientific discoveries.

Axiological function – philosophy develops a theory of such values as Good, Justice, Truth, Beauty and others; studies their origin, classifies them into material and spiritual, social and individual, builds up a hierarchy of values and defines their role in human life.

Logical function – philosophy provides the formation of human thought culture, the development of critical unprejudiced position in individual and social-cultural dialogues.

Praxeological function consists in that the system of philosophical knowledge mastered by man grows into the instruments of active, transforming influence on the surrounding world (both natural and social) and on man himself. Really, transforming the world man changes himself. Philosophy plays an important role in man's determination of his own being purport and facilities of its implementation.

Critical function is manifested in opposition of philosophy to empirical reality, to everyday life, in destruction of various habitual stereotypes and prejudices and search for a more perfected human world.

Philosophical knowledge is called not only to help man to be oriented in the world, but it also serves as a means of making a theoretical model for man to carry out proper transformations. Philosophical knowledge summarizes all types of communication between people; through universal categories it shows the unity of various forms of their vital activity and their indissoluble connection with the world.

 

 

 

LECTURE 2.

LECTURE 3.

THE EASTERN PHILOSOPHY.

 

1. The Indian tradition

2. The Chinese tradition

3. The Near East philosophical thought.

The most common way of treating the history of Indian thought is to begin with Vedic literature, mainly Rig Veda, the ancient hymns, may go back to 1000 BCE, often seen as very early deliverance of the Aryan culture which came into India in the period from about 1500 onwards. It is of course the Vedas that served as the beginning of the holy tradition of the Brahmis, who in becoming the dominant priesthood of a whole civilization have laid their stamp upon the Hindu world. Vedic literature included 4 parts: Vedas - ancient hymns in verse that were used in the course of rituals. Brahmans was the explanation of sacrificial acts and techniques. Aranjaks were special books for anchorites, who preferred life of a hermit avoiding activity and gaining knowledge. Upanishads was the last part of Vedas, which included philosophical ideas. There was a voyage inwards into the soul as well as outwards into the Universe. It coincided with the revelation of a new doctrine - that is of reincarnation, the possibility of death and redeath over long cycles.

The philosophical traditions of India had their beginnings in reflection on the Vedas and especially in attempts to interpret the Upanishads. A wide variety of schools emerged including some that specifically rejected the authority of the Vedas. Thus the Indian philosophy is commonly divided into two traditions: the orthodox schools of Hinduism that accepted Vedic authority, and the nonorthodox schools that did not accept that authority. Within the first category there were six major schools: Samkhya, Yoga, Vaisheshika, Nyaya, Mimamsa, and Vedanta. The second category consisted of Charvaka, Jainism, and Buddhism. Samkhya, one of the oldest and most influential of the schools, is traditionally held to have been founded by Kapila, who may have lived as early as the 7th century BC and to whom the Samkhya-sutra (Principles of Samkhya) is attributed. Samkhya metaphysics was based on the distinction between prakriti and purusha, which may be rendered as the objective, or nature, and the subjective, or self. All objects in the world were essentially constituted by the combination of atoms, which emerged from the eternal and uncaused prakriti.

Even the individual ego, or mind, was a result of the constant atomic flux of prakrili. Purusha, on the other hand, was not to be identified with the ego, or mind. It was uncaused, eternal, and unchanging and underlied the perceived ego. There was a plurality of such selves, which were the loci of consciousness and in combination with which prakriti evolved. The bondage to suffering that was the common starting point of all Indian philosophical thought arose from the involvement of purusha with prakriti. Release came when ignorance was overcome; that the attachment of purusha to the changing empirical world which was illusory became apparent.

The means by which this ignorance was overcome were elaborated by the Yoga school. While accepting much of the Samkhya position Yoga, as developed by Patanjali (2d century BC), believed in a supreme self or purusha, identified with the god of Isvara. The method of Yoga was to bring the self to understanding by meditation designed to curb the constant changes brought on by involvement in the perceived world. The knowledge acquired through meditation was an intuitive, irrational, and direct cognition of the nature of things. This intuition was the cessation of individuality and the identity of the self with the eternal purusha. Some forms of Yoga were recognized as practical methods of enlightenment by most of the other Indian schools.

The Vaisheshika system is thought to have been developed by Kanada in the 3d century BC. The essential aspect of Vaisheshika was a complex pluralistic metaphysics that recognized nine substances: earth, water, fire, air, ether, space, time, self, and mind. The first four material substances were atomic and gave rise to material composite objects. Mind was also atomic but did not give rise to composite objects. Vaisheshika tended to be theistic and saw God as guiding the world in accordance with the law of Karma. Human action perpetuated the workings of karma, and thus liberation was achieved through the cessation of actions, and achievement of a state beyond pleasure, pain, and experience in general.

Nyaya was closely associated with Vaisheshika, and they were often grouped together. The emphasis in Nyaya was stressed on methods of argument, and particularly on the elaboration of logical theory, which was used to justify Vaisheshika metaphysics. Nyaya distinguished various forms and origins of knowledge, as originally put forward by the founder of the school Gautama (the 2-nd century BC). In the course of time Nyaya developed a variety of arguments for the existence of God, as conceived by Vaisheshika, some of which parallel the classic arguments in the Western traditions.

The Mimamsa was often divided into two main branches, the Purva Mimamsa and the Uttara Mimamsa. The Mimamsa sutra of Jainini dated perhaps from the 4^th century BC and began a tradition in which later the two most important figures were Kumarila Bhatta and Prabhakara, both the 7^th century AD. The Mimamsa in general was concerned with development of nature and demanded of religious law or duty (Dharma) as it was found in the Vedas. As such it tended to emphasize the practical, although Mimamsa thinkers had made important contributions into logic and theory of knowledge. The Mimamsa, particularly the Uttara Mimamsa, was closely associated with Vedanta and sometimes treated simply as a school within the Vedantic tradition. Vedanta means “the end of the Vedas” and in general suggested analysis and contemplation of the theory and vision of the Vedic material. The point of departure for Vedanta was Badarayana’s Brahma sutras, also known as the Vedanta sutras. This represented the earliest attempt to organize and explicate the Upnishads and was itself an extremely difficult text, which had served as the object of commentaries by the major figures of later Vedanta schools. Central to these schools was the interpretation of Brahman and its relation to atman (self). The best known of the schools was the nondualist, or advaita, Vedanta of Shankara (AD 788-820), for whom Brahman was undifferentiated, eternal, and unchanging and the world was illusion, or maya. The modified nondualism, or vishishtadvaita, of Ramanuja (1017-1137) argued for the reality of individual self (atman) and the world but claimed that they were dependent on Brahman. The dualist, or dvaita, Vedanta of Madhva (1197-1276) insisted on a sharp distinction between Brahman and atman, as well as between Brahman and the world.

Of the three nonorthodox schools, the first two can be dealt with briefly. Charvaka was known only from fragments in the works of its opponents. It seemed to have been an extreme materialist reaction to the Vedic teachings and to have argued for the primacy of life in the world, the extinction of the individual at death, and perhaps an ethic of personal gratification. The common feature of all materialistic schools seemed to have rejected the future life, the laws of karma and samsara. To their opinion man was composed of matter, in particular, earth, air, fire and water, they inferenced spiritual appearing from this basic. As far as there is nothing in man what could live after his death they called to live a real life having pleasure and sufferings, realizing their particular equilibrium. These materialistic views were developed side by side with natural science development. They are known to have done a lot in natural science and have had a considerable effect.

Jainism, on the other hand, was an ethical religion that arose in the 6^th century BC.

From Juna (Jana)-victor-conqueror Jainism did without God or an Absolute. It insisted on the distinction between matter and soul and argued for a realistic atomism in the context of an atheistic universe. It conceived of many souls involved in the round of rebirth. Their souls were more material, as entities, which filled up the bodies to which they belonged. Jainism believed man to be of dual character that is material body and spiritual soul. They were linked in individual with the help of karma. There were 8 types of karma both positive and negative that influenced an innocent soul. Negative karmas corrupted it, positive hold the soul in the succession of rebirth, only by throwing off little by little bad and good karmas man liberated himself from the chains of samsara.

Salvation was achieved through three jewels that is faith, knowledge, and practice of the virtues, which were nonviolence, saying truth, not stealing, chastity, and not being attached to worldly goods and concerns. As for the outer world they believed the Universe to be eternal, non-created and undestroyable.

Buddhism originated as a sectarian movement in India in the 6^th-5^th century BC, spread over much of China, Southeast Asia, and Japan. According to the traditional accounts Buddha was born in a small place near the modern Nepalese border. Perhaps he was born in 563 and died in 483 BCE in a king’s family. His mother died after his birth and he was foretold to become a hermit if he happened to see a sick man, an old man or a deceased. His father did his best to keep him from the outer world. The boy got married, he had a son, but at the age of 29 he changed the clothes with his servant and late at night he left his house. He was deeply impressed by the life outside. He met an old man, a sick man and a monk, he was impressed with their sufferings and decided to devote his life to searching the ultimate truth. For six years he had been changing various teachers, made his body suffer and at last he had achieved enlightenment and so became the Enlightened One or Buddha.

In one way the doctrines of Buddha are deceptively simple. These were summed up in one way through Four Noble Truth which he presented at his first cermon:

1. Life is permeated by illfare or suffering;

2. The cause of sufferring is craving or thirst;

3. There is a cure to avoid this thirst;

  4.    The cure lies in the Noble Eightfold Path.

This latter culminated in three stages that signified different kinds of meditation or contemplative practice. As a consequence the individual successfully cured of suffering, would no longer be reborn. At the end of his life he would become a saint, or in the other words he would attain nirvana.

Buddha underlined practical side of his ethics and four divine virtues: benevolence compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity were the most characteristic of Buddhism, (especially compassion).

The Buddhist cosmology did not seem to have been very different from Upanishads. The idea of a supreme Creator was rejected. The Universe existed over huge periods and then relapsed into a kind of sleep, to be stimulated once again and to develop into ifs large and manifest form.

The Buddha’s rejection of things or substances went with his theory of causes and effects. He saw their relation eternal: one set of conditions simply gave rise to another set and so on. His resistance to the idea of substances transforming themselves was a part of critique of the sacrificial religion of Brahmin. Buddha did not seem to have denied many gods and spirits pervading the cosmos. They were not important for liberation but they had a certain limited power.

In the course of its history Buddhism had developed diverse philosophical traditions. The central teaching of Buddhism was the dharma. This term could mean a variety of things, including “the nature of things”,”the law” and “the true view of reality”. Dharmas, in plural, were usually held to be the genuine constituents of reality as opposed to the mere appearance. Common to almost all schools of Buddhist philosophy was the view that all things in the world had their origin in other things, a doctrine known as “dependent coorigination”. This doctrine led in most cases to metaphysics of flux, usually joined to a pluralistic atomism. Another doctrine common to almost all schools was that of anatta, that is the denial of a metaphysical self. The doctrine of anatta was often seen as a consequence of dependent coorigination, and the perceived self was analyzed as a bundle of skandhas, the five components of personality.

 The Chinese Tradition.

The Philosophical thought in China was concentrated on social and political problems. This assertion does not mean that cosmological and metaphysical speculations were not taken. The I Ching reflected a complicated vision of the universe. The oracles of the I Ching began to assume a modern written form perhaps in the 7^th century BC, and the book in general played an important role in the subsequent development of Chinese philosophy.

The famous relics and monuments of Chinese intelligence were five books, five classics which contained ancient poetry, history, laws and philosophy:

1. Classics of Poetry, (the 11^th - 6^th centuries BC) explained the origination of tribes and professions.

2. Classics of history, (the II-nd millennium BC).

3. Record of Rites, (the 4^th - 1st centuries BC) described rituals, ceremonies, norms of religious and political actions.

4. Spring and autumn annals (the 7^th - 5th centuries BC) were the chronicles and the patterns for solving ethical and cultural problems.

5. Classics of Changes (the12th - 6th centuries) was the most important as it contained the first Chinese regards of the world and man’s place in it. It reflected the base of the developing philosophical thought in China.

The basics for texts were 64 hexagrams, the symbols which                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             were formed with a combination of six lines. With the help of them Chinese sage men made prophecy, which seemed to have the ontological character. Little by little these hexagrams had been transformed into 64 categories of the world. Chinese philosophers gave much consideration to those two forces, which were so prominent in their account of the cosmos: the yin and the yang. The yang was female, dark and passive; the yin was male, active and light. Their interchange was a way that all things occur. In traditional Chinese philosophies this way was called Tao. The Classics of change just reflected Tao as the way of the world’s development. Man was insisted to consider his own place in the world, in nature by combining his own forces with those of the nature. During the period of dynasties of Hsia and Shang which followed the Chou one there was a flourishing of Chinese philosophy. It was defined as the rival of a hundred of schoolls. Historians called this period the epoch of “warring states” (from 453 BC)

The first recognized philosopher in China, however, was Confucius (541-497 BC). Confucius taught that the goal of a philosopher was to become learned, but this concept meant more than merely knowing a large number of facts. Rather, on the basis of a broad learning in the classic texts, the canon of which he essentially formulated. Confucius held that a person regardless of his social status could become aware of the moral order of the cosmos and of his proper place in it. He taught the primacy of the family, and the duties incumbent upon its various members, stressing harmony and unity and the self-evident goodness of the ethical life. Kong’s originality laid in his critical yet positive view of institutions. He took traditional concepts and social norms and transformed them, in the service of education, humane life and good political rule. He was not, however, terribly successful in worldly terms. There were three attempts on his life from apprehensive rulers; he had to leave his native Lu for a long period; he never gained the unquestioned status of political adviser to a prince - and though he later on became a minister in Lu and a magistrate, he never reached the heights that his unquestioned abilities might have suggested. His chief accomplishments were as an educationist, and his disciples carried on a tradition, which helped to shape Chinese civilization. He had a vision, which was realized, but long after his death.

This vision turned on various key ideas. One was that of li, or ceremonious behavior. He saw education as training the young in formal patterns of acting, and he laid great store by traditional rites and music.

Now in taking li as a central phenomenon, Kong was building on something traditional which could easily be meaningless and arid. He saw in religious and other rituals more than repetitious behaviors: he transformed them into acts which had a deep inner meaning, in expressing the fabric of the ceremonial in a virtuous society. As we shall see, there were plenty of critics who thought that Kong overemphasized formality. But he saw with clarity the vital role which formal and educated behavior plays in the ongoing patterns of civilized society. Kong does not stress rights: but the emphasis on li towards others is a counterpart to the notion. One person's rights arc how others should perform towards her or him.

The danger, though, with a stress on li is that behavior might become insincere and mechanical. So Kong also talked a lot about human-heartedness or ren. The person of ren masters himself and returns to propriety or li. He is earnest, loyal to friends, truthful and generous. In fact ren sums up all the virtues. It is on the basis of Kong's praise of it that many scholars see in him a humanist. In the general sense that his ethic is one of concern for human welfare this is true. But together with humaneness there goes respect or awe in the face of Heaven.

In one important respect the idea of Heaven had to do with politics, in so far as the ruler stood in a special relationship to God. But for Kong the concept of heaven was much broader and more existential. It stood for the divine, moral presence. It seems to have been something always there in his consciousness, and he hoped that his disciples would stand in respect of it and its ethical pressures. While it does not seem to have represented a vivid personal God, but has a rather impersonal air in Kong’s words, it is given a strong ethical meaning. This was no doubt a transformation in traditional ideas, which Kong had wrought. So it was that rituals directed towards Heaven were not mere rituals, but helped to cement intentions to perform the good. On the other hand, he was not much interested in the lower forms of religion. He did not wish to discuss ghosts and spirits and the like, though he was committed to veneration of ancestors. He believed that he derived his virtue from Heaven, and there is therefore little doubt that he thought of ethics as grounded in a Transcendent Being, even if he did not talk much about such matters as the afterlife.

Though the idea of ren is so important other concepts were brought in to fill out the moral picture, notably the idea of shu. Kong once said that a single thread ran through all his teachings, and this was understood to refer to reciprocity, together with loyalty to one's own moral nature. Unless one had personal integrity, one might, despise oneself and in that case reciprocity would not have the desired quality. But given sell-respect, then reciprocity (not treating others in ways in which you would not like them to treat you) becomes foundational of moral attitudes. Moreover, the humane person exhibiting ren would want to raise the moral insight and stature of others as he would wish to raise his own. In all this Kong’s teaching was often a critique of the behavior of rulers and of the nobility. This is no doubt why he was not a great success in merely worldly terms. He sought by ethical teachings to put trammels on power. Not only this; his very passion for education, to which in a sense he devoted the whole of his life, involved a new conception of aristocracy. He lived in a feudal and hierarchically organized society, and there are elements of hierarchy in his thought (he emphasized the higher status of the ruler and of the male and so can be considered to agree with a kind of patriarchy). But he did not think of aristocracy in a simply hereditary way. On the contrary, his ideal was of the superior man or junzi as one who exhibits gentlemanly behavior. The junzi stands in awe of Heaven; is wise, benevolent and courageous; knows what the basic issues of life are; understands the Mandate of Heaven; follows what is right and does not concentrate on a high standard of living; helps to elevate his friends; is careful in speech and deed; and is not a mere 'utensil', being good for one sort of specialism and nothing else (he is thus in the broadest sense truly educated). There arc echoes of Kant in the last: you should never treat another human being merely as a means so you should not yourself be merely an instrument to others or to the State. We can sec in all this that the gentleman or junzi is defined, as has happened too in English, in a moral and behavioral way. So Kong did not see the aristocrat as someone just born into a certain position. We can draw a parallel with the Buddha’s treatment of the true Brahmin not as someone born a Brahmin but as someone who practices sell-restraint.

We may note that in his own life Kong rose to eminence largely by his own efforts in educating himself. He was the son of the third wife of a poor official. He married at 19, by which time he had already given himself a wide range of knowledge, so that in his early twenties his reputation for education was such that he began to take pupils. He was, concerned with teaching in line with his own upward mobility: it was through learning that a person elevated himself in spirit and in expertise and so gained gentlemanly or aristocratic status in the true sense. Whether or not he edited the Classics as traditionally has been held (he probably, however, himself wrote the Spring and Autumn Annals), he nevertheless upheld the idea that immersion in the values of the tradition was at the heart of learning; and through this ideal he stamped China with the most important idea of recruiting its chief officials through a Confucian examination system. Meritocracy was to be the pattern of imperial administration. Education became the central mode of Chinese commitment over more than two thousand years.

Kong came to be the main inspirer of Chinese culture with the vital flame of education. And this was in part because he held to a critical view of tradition and society, which was summed up in his idea of the true gentleman or junzi.

To sum up: Kong had a vision of the gentleman who displays benevolence or humaneness and has at heart the welfare of others, and of a society which was harmonious because it was morally ordered. A key value at the center of all this was li or appropriate performative behavior, under the moral pressures, however, of Heaven seen as the presiding moral presence in the universe All this was a vision which, of course, had had a profound effect on Chinese society down the ages. This vision has in many ways remained a dominant one in Confucianism. The recorded sayings of Confucius do not present a systematic vision.

The first figure in the Confucian tradition to move toward a philosophical system was Mencius (the 4^th -3d century BC). Mencius argued for the essential goodness of persons - that divergence in moral responsibility was a result of a bad upbringing or environment. The results of a poor moral training could be overcome by education, and society was, thus, essentially perfectible. The duty of government was to foster the well-being of the people and bring society to perfection, a goal with which the genuine ruler was in accord due to his inborn goodness and moral sense.

A strain in Confucianism diametrically opposed to the idealism of Mencius arose a generation later in the thought of Hsun-tzu (330-225 BC). Hsun-tzu argued that, far from good, the inborn nature of persons was evil, or uncivil. Rather than eliciting innate moral virtues through education, Hsun-tzu insisted on the need to impose them from without. This doctrine had been variously interpreted; such a position led to the nonabsoluteness of ethical norms and hence led as much in the direction of liberalism as authoritarianism. Yet another facet of Hsun-tzu's thought was an acute logical sense, and he left a penetrating essay on names and meaning. Until the advent of Neoconfucianism in the medieval period, Hsun-tzu was usually considered a superior thinker to Mencius. The Neoconfucians emphasized an essentialist moral striving based on Confucius, Mencius, and two texts, the Great Learning and Doctrine of the Mean. In its various forms, Neoconfucian thought dominated Chinese learning and social life until the beginning of the 20^th century      

The second important indigenous Chinese tradition was Taoism. The teaching of the Tao Te Ching, a work attributed to the semilegendary Lao-Tsu (6^th century BC), was elusive and complex and could perhaps best be characterized as teaching the eternal principle of reality and the way in which all things were governed by and found their true natures in it. It implied metaphysics of impermanence and change, and the philosopher who attained a clear vision of the eternal Tao and its relation to this flux acquired happiness and peace. The most important later Taoist philosopher was Chuang-tzu. In Chuang-Tzu the Taoist divergence from and rejection of, the Confucian ideals became pronounced. Whereas the Confucian tradition believed in the molding of the person through education, Chuang-tzu saw the classical teachings of the schools as tending to lead the person away from an understanding of the nature of things, the Tao, and thus away from a genuine awareness of his own nature and place in the world. This outlook sometimes led to Taoism could be seen as antisocial. Nevertheless, both Chuang-tzu and Mencius, who was perhaps his contemporary, saw the goal of philosophy as attaining awareness of the essential harmony of things, although they disagreed on the origin of this harmony and how awareness was to be attained.

Only the two main strands in Chinese thought have been mentioned. The Moists, who taught the existence of a Supreme Spirit that possessed equal and universal love for all people; the Legalists, who advocated a practical philosophy of political domination; and the Buddhists, who became important from the 4^th century AD on, also exercised wide influence in Chinese thought. Within the Neoconfucian tradition a variety of positions emerged.

The Near East philosophical thougth.

The origin of philosophical thought in Ancient Babylon and Egypt dates back to the end of the 4^th - the beginning of the 3 millennium BC, when the development of slave-owning relations in these countries achieved the top. This process was closely connected with the first steps of science. The economic development required practical knowledge of natural regularities and, of course, great experience.

Thus, Egyptians built channels, pools, water reservoirs and dams. Also they were occupied with shipbuilding, construction of roads, harbours and palaces.

Huge pyramids, temples, irrigation systems are the evidence of significant level of technical thought of that time.

Nyle’s banks were the earliest stage, where the basics of astronomy, geometry and algebra were founded. The land surveying, construction of pyramids, need to calculate the periods, when water rose and fell down, give evidence to this.

The Egyptians knew four arithmetic actions, fractions; they could put a number into degree, solved equations with two unknowns. Also they used number pi, which was known in European mathematics only in 14^th century.

But the solution of problems was found by the empirical method, because the Egyptians did not know logical reasoning and the deductive mathematics did not exist.

The significant successes in mathematics also were achieved in Ancient Babylon. The number system, which was applied throughout the world and preceded an Arab one, appeared there.

Both Ancient Egyptian and Babylonian natural science contributed to philosophical view about nature. The lists of more then 300 plants, birds, animals were made in Ancient Egypt. Also the veterinary book was written there. Medicine was of great importance for developing rational views on nature. For the first time a thought, that brain is a centre of mental activity, providing action of all organism was stated there.

The origin of philosophical thought in Ancient Babylon and Egypt was connected not only with the first steps of science. The worldview of Ancient Babylonians, Egyptians as well as other peoples of the Near East was unseparable from mythology - the first attempt to think over different natural phenomena. Myth was the only way to work out well regulated and meaningful for everybody world conceptions. It was just the mythology where the beginnings of philosophy were hidden. In Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt myth served as a universal explanation of the achieved knowledge. Myth integrated contradictory elements: things mastered and realized by man from one side and enemical natural world from the other one. To realize strange natural phenomena the cosmological myths were created, in which some stable order, which was used in social relations, was established. The theme of struggle of chaos and order was the characteristic feature of all Near East area at that time (Enuma Elish: Marduc God fought against Tiamat, who was solt fore fatherocean, and defeated him.)

In Ancient Egypt in a spontaneous form of myth man tried to solve a problem of material base of natural things.

In the epos about Gilgamesh, the most ancient one we know, one could see themes of worldview character, such as: the theme of life and death and the theme of tragedy of human being. Being shocked by his friend’s death Gilgamesh realized that deathlessness was possible only in man’s activity, good deals, which he could leave after his death.

In Mesopotamian literature we often could find the question "How can we leave?" which was answered by numerous proverbs, advice and instructions. In the "Dialogue of Master with his slave" the contradiction of being was reflected. In real life everything may be comprehended only with regard to something. There is no absolute good or truth.

In the "Harpist's song" the doubt of existence of afterdeath life was stated. So people should improve their earthly life. On the other side reality did not prove the possibility to get happiness during earthly life. The death was considered as liberation.

The short summary of the history of philosophical thought in Ancient Babylon and Egypt shows us the existence of beginnings of philosophical and social thought in Ancient East. In the monuments of this culture the material base of natural phenomena were stated in a spontaneous form. Also it was mentioned that cool water was a source of all leaving beings and air was the substance, which filled up entire space and existed in all things. But on these territories the philosophical thought did not aproach the level, which was achieved by more developed slave-owning countries. Nevertheless these views influenced the following development of science and material thought of Ancient World.

 

LECTURE 4.

Anaximander explained the particular features of the cosmos in terms of these forces. The ocean, for instance, was the moisture left after the congealing of the earth under the influence of the hot. As for men, they had come from animals, which first formed in the ocean before coming onto dry land. This was a primitive anticipation of evolutionary theory. We can see from all this that the bent of Anaximander was naturalistic. He stood at the dawn of human science.

If for Anaximander the primodial substance was the apeiron, for Anaximenes (flourished 545 BCE), the third of the great Milesians, it was air, which can rarefy into fire or condense into wind, water, earth and rock in successive stages. He did not like the idea of “separating off” which had been brought in by Anaximander to explain the transition from the apeiron to the polarity of hot and cold. He wanted to see all manifestations as due to the varying states of the one substance air. Quantitative change of this one mode of thing led to qualitative differences. But in some other ways Anaximenes’ account of the world was more simplistic than that of Anaximander.

Another Greek, for he came from the island of Samos, Pythagoras (c. 570-490 BCE) migrated to Croton in South Italy where he became leader of a community there. It is possible that it was he who invented the word philosophia. At any rate the notion of the love of wisdom was vital, for his community and its sisters in other cities in South Italy that were religious in character and aimed at cultivating the soul, partly through intellectual inquiry and partly through ascetic practices, like abstaining from the eating of meat and beans. The cosmos was seen as a harmony in which limit was imposed on the apeiron. Human beings and animals were thought of as being in the process of transmigration or rebirth from one life to the next. The cosmos was a vast system of things whose inner nature was numerical. The discovery that musical harmonies could be represented mathematically was considered to be of profound importance. The universe itself was seen therefore as a huge mathematical and musical harmony.

This model of numbers as forming the basis of things in part reflected the fact that already mathematics was beginning to develop in Greece and could be seen as the paradigm of knowledge, being certain and precise. This idea of the priority of numbers had a grip on Plato and was to have momentous consequences in the evolution of science in the West.

Heraclitus, who flourished about 501 BCE, was a mysterious and poetic writer. He considered the stuff of the cosmos to be fire in varying forms. But in order to explain change it was necessary to postulate strife, a force opposite to love, which stirs things up in the world. It tears things apart, as love brings them together. This dialectical interplay explained change. Change itself was continuous: as Heraclitus’s famous dictum had it, panta rhei, all things flow. You cannot step into the same river twice. In all this Heraclitus, clearly saw something - you could combine the notions of change and stability by postulating a law or formula according to which things regularly change. This principle he called Logos — a word of wide-ranging meaning in Greek, meaning reason, or formula, or definition or — most commonly — word. It is of course the term that was later in the New Testament used for the Word, or underlying principle of Creation. Heraclitus thus had a dialectical and formulaic notion of the way things operate in the world, which was more important than his identification of fire as the fundamental element underlying the cosmos.

The problem of change and permanence had already of course been posed in principle by the Pythagoreans. Numbers seemed unchanging, but the cosmos appeared to change. Pythagoras considered the world as self-sufficient entity. It was the members of the Eleatic school, and in particular its chief figure, Parmenides, who posed the question in the starkest form. If it is the case that there is something unchanging, and yet panta rhei, then what are we to make of this?

Parmenides (bc. 515 BCE) of Elea in southern Italy (hence the name “Eleatic” to pinpoint his school) produced his own cosmology though there were some reminiscences of Heraclitus’s schema. The importance of Parmenides is that he posed a severe question to those philosophers, who wished to affirm something eternal or unchanging. The very idea of a thing suggested something unchanging beneath changing appearances. It was partly because of him that Aristotle opted for a theory of substances which dictated the norm for Western philosophy. His principle was –“nothing can come from nothing”.

Empedocles dating from the first part of the fifth century BCE, was a political leader in his own city before being exiled; he practiced healing; had wide scientific interests; wrote two major poems; and claimed to be divine: he was an all-round sage. Probably his chief contribution to the later development of ideas was his notion of the four elements. He agreed with the principle which had been laid down by Parmenides, namely that nothing can come out of nothing. But he felt that anything which would explain the cosmos would have to be multiple. You could not get differentiation out of a single substance like fire or water. So he postulated a theory of four elements, the everlasting particles of which combined or uncombined under the influence of the two cosmic forces of love and hate. The four “roots of all things” were earth, air, fire and water. This theory of elements was taken up by, among others, Plato and Aristotle. Empedocles, as well as believing in the material roots of things also postulated a soul. Thus individuals also obey the law that nothing can come from nothing. Rather, they are continually being reborn.

On the side of cosmology the various schools of thought we have looked at point towards the atomic theory which was to be put forward primarily by Leucippus and Democritus. About the former we know little, but he probably lived in the second part of the fifth century, while Democritus’ life may have been from 460 to 370, in Abdera. He is supposed to have starved himself to death during a plague, but generally was known for his cheerfulness, being nicknamed ‘the laughing philosopher”. His writings were extensive and it was he who worked out the details of the atomistic worldview.

The fact is that the attempt to work out a cosmology by postulating one or more substances, such as fire or water, raised the issue of particles of such substances. Moreover, the Parmenidean principle that nothing comes from nothing, so what is must be everlasting, was highly persuasive. The Pythagorean notion of cosmos suggested a self-sufficient entity. If you put these thoughts together you may come to think that the universe is composed of a void with scattered in that void an infinite number of atomic, that is indivisible or uncuttable, entities. These, swirling about, form larger combinations and out of this we have the formation of the world as we know it. Since there is no reason why atoms should be one shape rather than another, they have an infinity of different shapes.

The Atomists, consistently, had a materialist view of the soul, which was composed, according to Democritus, of round atoms, good for smooth penetration; and an account was given of the engagement of the senses with images coming from outside. In general the Atomists rejected all notions of design in the cosmos. Everything was to be explained in terms of the necessities arising from the constitution and combination of atoms. As for the theory of knowledge, Democritus held a kind of modified empiricism. The data, which we have about the world come through the senses, but sense-experience, can be very mis­leading. We have to go beyond it in order to understand the world, for by and large the atoms themselves are invisible. And as the world is to be explained by atomic theory, so ethics does not have a supernatural sanction. Moral behavior should be moderate, and the pleasures of the soul are better than those of the body. Nevertheless Democritus did not deny the existence of gods, who seem to be refined denizens of the cosmos. There are, consistently with his theory, a large number of worlds, many without sun or moon or water.

The various Pre-Socratic philosophies have some general resemblance to the world of the Buddha and of the early Upanishads. The Greeks seem to have been more inclined towards physical science; in India medicine was best developed.

The Sophists, who might be described as a new class of critical educators, one of whose main interests was rhetoric, have been given a bad name by both Plato and Aristotle, who accused them of producing sham knowledge or wisdom in order to make money, and of using rhetoric in a cynical way. They could be thought to be destructive of received or traditional ideas (but so were Plato and Aristotle).

In some ways their nearest analogy elsewhere are ancient Chinese philosophers, especially in the tradition of Kong. Their interest too was educational. They thought that virtue could be enhanced or taught, and while they were less given to ritual, they never­theless had a strong concern with the performative. For it was above all by the “magical” use of words that we persuade one another. Moreover, some Sophists appealed to innate or natural tendencies as the basis of law and ethics: thus Protagoras (500-430 BCE) held that aidos or shame is imparted to all humans. He was the first who considered that man is the measure of the things. This idea was supported by Socrates.

Classical stage of Antiquity is characterized by the shift of philosophical investigations towards man. Philosophy of man becomes the key to the philosophy of nature.

Socrates (469-399 BC). Undoubtedly the most influential teacher of philosophy in ancient Greece, he lived in Athens prac­tically all his life. Besides serving in the Athenian army, he also held several minor public offices. Because he eventually attained a secure financial position, he was able to teach without asking for fees. This, along with his refusal to sub­mit to teaching official government doctrines when he felt they were contrary to good judgment, aroused the ire of both officialdom and his fellow teachers. He was accused of corrupting the youth of Athens, and was subsequently tried and sentenced to death. On several occasions he could have escaped from prison with the help of his many friends, but he insisted upon his obligation to respect the sentence, even though it was wrong. His justification for his own death, and his willing, philosophical acceptance of the poisonous hemlock that he felt it was his duty to drink, earned him the admiration of both his contemporaries and posterity. He is mainly known to history through the dialogues of Plato, who was his student. His philosophy was based on his famous characterization of himself as an ignorant person whose only virtue was that he was aware of his ignorance. Rather than possess superficial knowledge, he would prefer to remain ignorant. However, his very knowledge of his ignorance compelled him to seek true knowledge. The road to such knowledge was through reason, and the result was virtue. According to him, then, virtue, which is embodied in knowl­edge, is the highest end of man. He left no written works.

Yet he influenced on the development of philosophy greatly. He was greatly impressed by Sophists’ regarding man as the measure of all things. He followed that tradition and put man into the center of his philosophy. Thus he started the epoch of classical Antique Philosophy. He considered Reason to be the basics of all perceived things, Reason that controls and governs the universe. He meant not only the ultimate Reason or Mind, but man’s mind as well. The principle “aware yourself” which he found out on the wall of Appolo Temple in Delphas struck him so much that he made it the main principle of his philosophy. He combined ontological problems with moral ones, with the problem of human ego. Man possesses the sole that promotes consciousness, cognition, mental activity and moral virtues. The potential of man’s sole is realized in his cognitive activity, the lack of which leads to ignorance. Through cognition man consciously comes to main virtues: wisdom, justice, moderatioin and thus he acquires the harmony of the sole, that is freedom. Man’s happiness means to be virtual and free.

 He philosophized in a dialogical manner asking questions which made his partner contradictory to himself and then Socrates manifested his own position. His peculiarity was his irony, which gave him an impulse for further self-awareness and self-development, an example of which was his famous “I know that I know nothing”.

He contributed greatly into the development of philosophy by regarding the truth as a concept: both as being and as cognition. His universal notions preceded man’s activity they were a kind of patterns for man to follow. He questioned for the universal definitions of such attributes as courage or piety, but he failed to expose their origination. Later Plato, his best disciple named them the Ideas or Forms and manifested his own theory based on Socrates’ ideas.

Plato (427-347 BC). Born on the island of Aegina, a colony of Athens, he was one of the most enduring of the ancient Greek philosophers. He was given the best education available and spent eight years as a student of Socrates. He acquired a broad knowl­edge of pre-Socratic philosophies (e.g. Thales, Heraclitus, Parmenides etc.) and founded his own school in Athens in 387. He taught at the Platonic Academy until his death. His philosophy represents one of the great and lasting strains of thought in history, and still remains of major significance and influence. The entire construction of his thought is based upon his conception of true reality as a world of Ideas. These Ideas, or Forms (the terms are used inter­changeably), are universal, immaterial essences that con­tain the true and ultimate realities (being) of things, while the actual world of things perceivable by the senses is only a vague, transitory and untrustworthy copy. Thus, since the function of thought is to perceive reality, its function becomes precisely to perceive the world of Ideas. Only the cognition of Ideas, or of the Universal Forms, enables man to perfect himself and to act with wis­dom. In line with this view, Plato criticized reliance on knowledge gained through the senses because the objects of true senses exist only as imperfect manifestations of the Universal Forms (Ideas) that comprise their essences; such knowl­edge, therefore, is itself imperfect—in his words, opinion, not truth. Through the reasoned exercise of the mind, how­ever, man is able to arrive at true knowledge by the rational perception of the Universals (Forms, Ideas) that contain the essence of all sensible, material things. The mind is able to perceive the Universal Ideas by virtue of the fact that the mind has its own Universal Idea (i.e. there is a Universal Mind that contains the essence of all finite and individual minds).) Plato states further that within the world of Universal Ideas there is a certain hierarchy. The Idea of Good is at the top, and all other Ideas participate in it and derive from it, just as all material objects participate in and derive from their own Universal Ideas. The Idea of Good, being the ultimate Idea, permeates all things. The relation, then, of man to ultimate reality (The Universal Ideas) is basically an imitative one (i.e. man should mentally per­ceive and imitate the perfection of the Universal Idea of himself).) Although there are contradictions and unresolved conflicts in Plato's system, especially as it relates to the various subdivisions of philosophy (ethics, metaphysics, etc.), and although his system has never been able to be worked out to the total satisfaction of logic, it is a grand design that has had profound, lasting and valid significance. His method is best defined as dialectic, in that he demonstrated his arguments by opposition. He believed in the unity of opposites, and it is said by some that the dialectical style in which his works were written is the true reflection of his philosophy— that, reality consists in the unity of opposites and that the cognition of this unity constitutes knowledge of reality

In his own manner Plato had political ambitions. The main idea of society organization was justice. The major point which informed Plato’s thinking was that since virtue, to be deep, involved the higher knowledge, including geometry and the dialectical inquiry into the arrangement and hierarchy of the Forms, not excluding the ultimate and unspeakable vision of the Good, there was need of a ruling class of wise people. Philosophers thus shall be kings. There is in this way a solidarity between ethics and politics.

This is also brought out by Plato’s thinking of human psychology as a kind of microcosm of the polls. The human soul according to him has three aspects. The highest is rational aspect. Next there is that aspect which is full of spirit: we might call it the courageous aspect. Then there is the lowest aspect, which is the appetitive (self-control). Roughly these correspond to the three main classes which Plato envisages.

If the rich dialogues remained a monument to Plato’s thought, there was another that for many centuries was perhaps even more vital: the Academy. This community of inquirers lasted until 529 CE, when Justinian forbade the teaching of Platonism as such, though of course Plato had, through Neo-Platonism, an immense influence upon Christianity. The Academy was not a kind of university, but was devoted to knowledge and to mutual teaching through the joint practice of dialectic.

Aristotle (384-322 BC). Born in the Greek colony of Stagira in Macedonia, at 18 he became a student of Plato at Athens and remained for nearly 20 years as a member of the Platonic Academy. After Plato’s death, he left Athens and, among other things, became the tutor of young Alexander of Mace­donia, later known as Alexander the Great. Eventually he returned to Athens (335) where he spent 12 years as head of a school he set up in the Lyceum (known as the Peripa­tetic School). As the result of an outbreak of anti-Mace­donian feelings in Athens after the death of Alexander (323), he was forced to leave the city for Chalcis, where he died a year later.

Aristotle possessed one of the few truly encyclopedic minds in the history of western man. Those of his works which still exist cover all the sciences known to his time and are characterized by subtlety of analysis, sober and dispassionate judgment, and a superior mastery of facts and evidence — collectively, they constitute one of the most monumental achievements ever credited to a single mind.

He divided the sciences into the theoretical, the aim of which was objective knowledge; the practical, the aim of which was the guidance of conduct; and the productive, whose aim was the guidance of the arts. He put above and before these three divisions the science and art of logic — called by him analytics — its mastery the requisite to all other investigations, since its purpose was to set forth the conditions to be observed by all thinking that had truth as its aim. Beginning with this principle, he spent his life­time ferreting out the truths of all the sciences, from ethics to art, from physics to politics. He was the originator of the syllogism (that form of reasoning whereby, given two propositions, a third follows necessarily from them by nature of a term common to both premises — e.g. all men have brains; Jack is a man; therefore, Jack has a brain) which is the core of deductive logic.

At the heart of his complex philosophy is his concept of dualism — the duality of all things in the universe — a con­cept he initiated and which has had an unalterable influence on the course of philosophy ever since. Everything is made of a union of matter and form, he postulated, and the two are interdependent, one incapable of existing without the other. The matter of an object is what makes it an object; the form is what makes an object the particular thing it is (table, man, etc.). The two together constitute the being of an object (matter possessing the capacity for form, form requiring matter to define its being). Aristotle developed this philosophy primarily to refute Plato’s doctrine that being belongs only to the universal Ideas of things (the Forms) and cannot exist in the material manifestations of these Ideas (in other words, the being of a chair or tree is not in the particular chair or tree, but in the universal Idea of the chair or tree, for each object is but a single, imperfect manifestation of a singular, perfect Idea).

To support and complement his doctrine of the dualism of being, Aristotle also developed a corresponding dualism of potentiality and actuality: matter is the potentiality of any object, while form is that which gives the object its actuality. With these twin distinctions in hand, he claimed to have solved the difficulties that earlier thinkers had en­countered in attempting to explain the process of change, visible in everything about them. Change, according to Aristotle, is the process by which matter becomes form, by which potentiality becomes actuality (and not the passage from non-being to being,) as previous thinkers had considered change to be). He called this process, entelechy.

The system of nature as thus developed by Aristotle con­sists of a series of matter-and-form existences on many levels, in which the forms of simpler beings act as the matter for the next higher beings, and so on. Hence, at the base of nature is prime matter which, having no form is mere poten­tiality and not actual being. The simplest formed matters are the primary elements — earth, air, fire, and water. These, in their forms, constitute the matter for the next in the line of ascending forms; and these forms comprise the matter for the next higher, etc., until man is reached, the highest of the universe’s beings. Man’s reason is the highest of the forms, and is what gives him actuality as man and defines him; whereas God, existing, so to speak, at the opposite end of the spectrum from prime matter, is pure form. These basic principles, formulated by Aristotle in his Analitics, were carried into all the diverse studies he undertook and helped to solve the problems raised by each inquiry. He explained all questions in the light of his conclusions in logic and applied these conclusions with equal effectiveness to, among other things, problems about time and space, God, human good, the state, and the arts. Although modern science has rendered much of Aristotle’s thought obsolete, he is still a force in modern thought; further, a very large part of our technical vocabulary, both in science and philoso­phy, is rooted in the terms Aristotle used and defined.

Hellenism (from Greek Hellas) the name of that ancient Greeks gave to their motherland. This period is characterized by threadening Greek culture to the Mediterranian areas. The epoch of Hellinism began with the Alexander Macedonian invading the East. He founded a great empire which was broken up after his death. The culture of various realms manifested a synthesis of Greek and local cultures. Later when this area was invaded by Rome their culture had been enriched by the Rome one.

The late Hellenism may be defined as a cross-cultural process of Antiquity and Christianity.

The Main peculiarities of Hell e nis tic philosophy:

1. The key problem was man’s being in the universe (ontological aspect, the problem of man’s existence) to compare with social-ethical tendency in classic Antiquity.

2. Irrationalism.The prevailing of will, contemplation and intuition over reason. The picture of the world became more figurative, mythological, mystic.

3. Being was regarded as a unity of different spheres which were transformed in their approach to Devine being.

Philosophy of that period remained anthropological in its nature but the problem of the sense of life was set forth.

There are four main philosophical teachings of Hellinism: Scepticism, Stoicism, Epicureanism and Neo-Platonism.

Scepticism was founded by Pyrrho of Elis at the end of the 4th age BC. According to their opinion the world was flowing, changeable, relative and illusory. One can not have any account of it, as human perceptions of the world are wrong and human reason is contradictory. One should be very careful in making conclusions which only have probabilistic character. The sceptics did not suppose that man and the world were knowable, they rejected rational ground for moral norms. In their conceptions relativism reached its top. They rejected the existence of good and evil, logics in the being of the universe and society. They did not only consider the world unknowable, but even more they did not consider it to be worth awaring.There are three truths to their opinion:

1. Nothing exists.

2. If something exists it is unknowable.

3. If something is knowable it is unexpressible.

So their aim was getting an irony as for the world, avoiding any stable judgements and keeping self-control, equanimity, tranquility, wise silence aimed to achieve salvation.

Stoicism was founded by Zeno of Citium (c. 336— c. 264 BCE) at the Stoa in Athens. Stoicism had its own interest in logic and rhetoric, but as a worldview it was interested in removing dualism between forms and individual entities and between souls and bodies. For the Stoics there were only particulars, apprehended by sense-perception, and then classified through memory and through general ideas formed by reason. There are active and passive forces in the cosmos, but essentially the universe is a single entity, moved by fire, which is also identified with God, who is the dynamic soul of the cosmos. He sows in the world the seed principles, which unfold as individuals. Very often the world goes up in a universal conflagration and then is renewed in a new cycle of existence, when everything is repeated exactly as in the prior world-period. There is no radical human freedom, therefore: freedom is doing consciously and with agreement what would happen in any event. Fate rules all, or to put it more mildly, the Providence of God. All is ordered for the best, even if viewed by itself an act or happening may seem bad and or painful. In the wider scheme of things there is perfection.

Life should be lived in accord with nature, that is, the necessities of the universe. Virtue means being in consonance with reason, the ruling pattern of nature and identical with Zeus or Fire. Moral evil in essence consists in the attitudes brought to bear by human beings, while virtue is its own reward. The Stoics sought above all to cultivate equanimity in the pursuit of four chief virtues of Wisdom, Courage, Self-Control and Justice. Pleasure, sorrow, desire and fear are the feelings we possess and should be eliminated, for they are irrational. Humans therefore should aim at a heroic self-sufficiency.

An important side to Stoicism was its cosmopolitanism. All humans equally share in Reason, drawn from God, and so we should see ourselves above all as citizens of the cosmos as a whole. The attractions of this ethical outlook, especially its courageous self-control and equanimity, to late Republican Romans, wishing to restore the virtues of the older Roman State, gave Stoicism a certain influence in the Roman world. Some noble Romans followed its example of suicide as an honored way to go in the face of dishonor.

Epicurus, who opened his school at Athens in 306 BC, created a worldview at variance with Stoic values. He taught that pleasure and happiness are the natural ends of life. Contrary to later misinterpretations, he did not advocate the bold pursuit of pleasure for its own sake, but only those pleasures that are consistent with reason and moderation. Joys of the mind are superior to pleasures of the body. His con­cept of nature mainly followed the atomism of Democritus, though he disavowed determinism and established a doctrine of cosmic chance (i.e. an element of chance enters into the atoms’ motions and causes deviations, thus accounting for both natural and psychic disorders).

Epicurus saw the cosmos as composed of innumerable atoms of various weights, forms and sizes, existing in a vast empty void. Teeming downwards in oblique paths, they collide and form larger entities as they get stuck to one another. Vortices are formed out of which emerge various worlds separated from one another by huge empty spaces. Human souls are composed of atoms too, and dissolve at death. The Epicureans did not deny the gods, who (also material) lived a luxurious life in the interstices between worlds. They can be honored, but fear of them is ridiculous. They have neither interest in nor access to human worlds. Pleasure is the highest goal for humans, but to get the best out of it, it needs to be pursued in moderation.

Neo-Platonism is a philosophical strain, which completed the philosophy of Antiquity and met Christianity. Its name is stipulated for all representing philosophers followed the ideas of Plato attempting to make a synthesis with Aristotelian philosophy and Christian worldview.

The Main peculiarities of Neo-Platonism are:

1. A clear delimitation of spiritual and material start points in the world with the primacy of spiritual.

2. Universal is as emanation of Devine Principle into various kinds of being, but the Devine remains in otherworld.

3. Awareness of the Devine and the world is possible by means of mystic contemplation.

Plotinus, born in Egypt, he lived and taught in Rome for over 25 years, and died there. At first a pagan, he became an authority on and advocate of the philosophy of India, as well as the idealism of Plato. He based his thought on the theory that the material reality perceived by the senses is of a lower order and value than spiritual reality conceived by mind, which is the true reality. He maintained a hierarchy of reality, each less than the next in value and all emanating from the ultimate One. Mind (nous) and soul (psyche) emanate directly from the One, while further down the ladder is matter, then material objects. Since man participates in all these emanations, he is a composite of spirit and matter. Because of this, sense knowledge is virtually valueless in the quest for truth, since that which the senses are capable of knowing (material objects) are of a lower order and value than the sensory agent (man). Thus, very much like the Universals of Plato, his reality consists of Intelligible Ideas and is headed by the Idea of Beauty, which is the One. The climax of knowledge consists in an intuitive and mystical union with the One.

Proclus, a man of wide-ranging knowledge, tended to multiply the staged emanation, Proclus was more concerned with the life of contemplation saw the practice of virtue and the spiritual life as a kind of turning back, which is the mirror-image of the whole process of emanation. The soul turns back to its Source, through control, asceticism, higher knowledge and finally the intuitive vision of the One. He also held that everything in the world reflects every other.

There are those, of course, who see a large gap between Plotinus and Neo-Platonism on the one hand and Plato on the other. There are two or three points of some divergence. Thus the later Platonists were less Pythagorean than Plato himself. Their interests were less in science than in religion or salvation. Second, whereas the Forms were depicted by as if they hung loose from God, they are firmly anchored in the Nous in Neo-Platonism. Third, Plato may or may not have thought of his vision of the Good in mystical terms, that is, as a “vision” yielded by contemplative or yogic practice; but this is the main thrust of Neo-Platonism. It thus converged with the growing interest in mysticism exhibited in Christianity. The ascetic life was a way of affirming values which were likely to wither since Christianity became the official faith of the Empire.

 

 

LE CTURE 5.

The fruitful rise of capitalism and bourgeois relationship had changed the world by the 17th century. Europe was divided into national states. Some bourgeois revolutions in England and Netherlands took place.

 The development of experimental knowledge demanded the replacement of the scholastic method of thinking by a new one, directly addressed to the real world. The principles of materialism and elements of dialectics were revived and developed, in a new atmosphere. Increasing knowledge of nature confirmed the truth of materialism and rejected the basic propositions of idealism. Although human knowledge of geography (through the accounts of Marco Polo, the voyages of discovery and so on) and of medicine (through discoveries such as that of the circulation of the blood, and the new interests in anatomy both in art and in surgery, etc.) and some other areas expended greatly during this period, it was in the fields of astronomy and mechanics that the largest advances were being made. This had its effects on natural philosophy, where the dominant picture of the physical cosmos was that of the machine. All this raised the issue of the relation of the human soul or mind to the body. This in turn stimulated thinking about how our senses and thoughts can successfully understand what lies "out there". Mind-body dualism could create severe problems in the theory of knowledge. And so it was in the 17^th century that there was something of a sea change in the direction and emphasis in philosophical thinking.

The main pecul i arities of the Modern Ages philosophy are as following:

1. Philosophy was guided by science. It was inseparably linked with knowledge taken from experience, practice. The importance of scientific awareness was growing.

2. The problems of epistemology in the new philosophy became as important as onthology problems, even more.

3. The conflict between empiricism and rationalism - two main streams of the 17^th century.

4. The growing interest to the social organization. The social contract.

5. The dominant place of materialism (mechanical, metaphysical).                         

European philosophy manifested rationalism and English - empiricism. These two positions tended to the development of science, formed its character, defined main tendencies of Modern Ages thinking.

The Empiricism is the philosophical position, which absolutizes sensual cognition, and regards that all knowledge derives from sensation on one hand and reflection on the other.

There are two variants of Empiricism: materialistic (Bacon, Hobbes, Lock) and idealistic (Berkley, Hume).

In materialistic Empiricism an actual world is taken as the source of knowledge. In idealistic one experience is considered as a complex of sensations or impressions and the objective world as a base of experience is denied. Probably the greatest theorist of science of empiricism as it was beginning to emerge, was Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam (1561-1624). Much of his life was spent as a statesman, serving Elizabeth I and James I with some distinction and some duplicity. His greatest contributions were his various writings on philosophy and science, notably his “The Advancement of Learning”and the “Novum Organum”. He realized that a new age of scientific knowledge was dawning, with various discoveries and techniques, especially the work of Copernicus and Galileo, the use of the telescope, printing and so forth. He was highly critical of much of the procedures of the teamed world: philosophers were like spiders, spinning forth wonderful systems out of their own bodies with no contact with reality; other empirical inquirers were like ants, acquiring bits and pieces, but not within a systematic framework. Rather, humans should work together with system in order to create knowledge. Bacon ambitiously wished to create a complete classification of existing sciences, a whole new inductive logic, and a new philosophy of nature. He saw humanity as too much dominated by various idols, which could distort and undermine their knowledge. There are the idols of the tribe, that is to say views which seem to have a commonsense basis, but often represent wishful thinking, inherent in the human condition. There are the idols of the den (or cave: he drew the metaphor from Plato), in which we are fooled by our own individual quirks: we ought to be especially suspicious of views which we find congenial. There are the idols of the marketplace, arising from our talking language too seriously - often it creates the illusion of real entities out there when they are linguistic projections. And there are the idols of the theatre, in other words notions which are basically fictional but are given wide currency, because they arise from varying viewpoints, which may have little bearing on reality. Bacon wanted to see science separated from philosophy and both from religion. The inductive logic he sketched was rich. Several of his suggestions were taken up after his death through the foundation of the Royal Society, devoted to scientific research and development. Bacon’s thought breathes a new air. For all the glories of the Renaissance, it was also in part backward-looking. But Bacon pointed the way forward to the systematic and practical development of scientific knowledge. For him the bee, not the spider or the ant, was the right model. He also swung interest towards epistemology. The methods whereby we come to know things became one of the preoccupations of the modem period in philosophy in the West.

Bacon’s materialism was farther developed and defended by English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679).This English thinker was at one time tutor to Charles II of France and later secretary to Fransis Bacon. He professed materialism, seeking to explain everything on the basis of mechanistic principles. He rejected most traditional philosophical concepts as useless abstractions. He considered knowledge to be empirical (i.e. acquiring from observation and experience only) both in origin and results, and regarded the study of bodies and their movements as the only concern of philosophy. He divided philosophy into four sub-sciences:1) geometry (describing the movements of bodies in space); 2) physics (describing the effects of moving bodies on one another); 3) ethics (describing the movements of the nervous system); 4) politics (describing the effects of nervous systems on one another). Thus, his philosophy was devoted to ascertaining the laws of motion. The first law of motion appears in every organic body in its very tendency to movement; in man, the first law of motion becomes the first natural right (the right to self-preservation and self-assertion). This causes all bodies, whether organic or inorganic (men, animals, objects, ideas, etc.) to enter into the primary condition of life - collision and conflict (and war). The second law of motion is a kind of recoil from the condition of collision, and impels bodies (and men) to relinquish their natural right to self-assertion for a similar relinquishment on the part of fellow bodies (and men). Out of these two laws of natural motion there necessarily arise, on the human level, such things as social contracts, which are the basis for the state. Hobbes’ most influential writing was on political philosophy, but his general attitudes to philosophy itself are of interest. First, he wanted rigorously to exclude theology from its purview. Reasoning about God does him no honor. Thought he did not deny him, he asserted that God existed but nobody could say anything about him on the basic of reason.

He was much impressed with his discovery of geometry, both Euclidean and Cartesian. He considered therefore that a great part of philosophy had to do with behavior of bodies as extended things. Indeed for all practical purposes he was a materialist.

Hobbes was nominalist, and saw no merit in the idea of a universal concept or idea. Rather, we wield universal names for sets of individual things which resemble one another. He liked the rationalist idea of science and indeed more generally philosophy as a deductive system: such deductions begin with definitions, in which somewhat arbitrarily we assign precise meanings to basic names. But he was also an empiricist, of a sort - science he considered to be based on sense-experience, yet on the other hand he thought that secondary qualities, such as sounds, are caused in the head by motions of bodies and do not inhere in bodies themselves. But he was not unduly worried by the epistemological consequences of this position. For Hobbes the investigation of causation boiled down to that of motions of bodies. This applies even to psychology, so that pleasure is nothing but motion about the heart, as he said, as conception is nothing but motion in the head.

His materialism enabled Thomas Hobbes to take a dispassionate view of politics. This he considered from the perspective of human nature, as he understood it. Thus, roughly speaking, all humans are equal, in that a weakness can be compensated for by some strength elsewhere, so that humans do not back away from competition with others on the grounds that they are not equal to it. Each person struggles for his own conservation. But humans also worry about self-esteem, so conflict arises between them out of competition, mutual mistrust and the desire for glory. This leads to conflict, either actual or feared - the war of all against all. Unless something is done about it, the life of human is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. In this primordial state of war there is no law and without law no justice, and without that no morals. Though the basic passions for self-preservation and self-esteem incline humans to war, other passions have a countervailing effect - the fear of death, the desire for ample goods, and so forth. So reason inclines people to do something about the basic state of the war.

Enlightened egoism suggests the forming of a government which will regulate civil society. Various laws of nature impel humans: that they will seek peace; be willing to sacrifice a certain amount of liberty against others - each as much as he would allow against himself; and hold to contracts which are made (or contracts become worthless). In making convenants with one another people constitute themselves into a commonwealth in which their power is assigned to a sovereign. Or, alternatively, a sovereign simply takes over this power by acquisition. In either case the commonwealth is formed out of fear, a basic feeling in politics. Once formed it becomes, so to speak, a mortal god Leviathan. The sovereign would not have to be a monarch. Various options, clearly enough, are possible. But on the whole he considered monarchy the best option, because the sovereign is then undivided and is more likely to be strong and rule with sagacity. But the option is open, and the best system would be a matter for empirical determination.

Hobbes’ whole work was challenging to this contemporaries - on the State, on free will (which he denied), on language, the nature of science, on official religion, and so on. He was a major figure in the evolution of British philosophy and the empiricist outlook. But he also had his connection with the French, and especially the Cartesian movement.

 Another follower of the empiricism traditions was John Locke (1632-1704) who was educated at Oxford and taught there a while. He studied philosophy but also took a degree in medicine. He served as secretary to a diplomatic mission to the Elector of Brandenburg, and held posts under Lord Shaftesbury, the Lord Chancellor. He lived abroad for a while, and returned after William of Orange came to the throne in 1688. He held minor offices in London, and eventually died in 1704. His main writings were his “Essay Concerning Human Understanding” and “Two Treatises of Civil Government” (1690), “Some Thoughts Concerning Education” (1693), “The Reasonableness of Christianity” (1695) and from 1689 his various ”Letters on Toleration”.

British empirical philosopher, he developed a whole political philosophy based on empiricism. He began by denying the existence of eternal categories, principles or ideas from which, allegedly, all our thought is derived. He claimed instead that our knowledge is obtained purely from sense experience and is refined by reflection upon the things that affect the senses. Even seemingly abstract concepts (universals such as substance, cause and effect, etc.) have their causes directly from reflection upon experience - man merely intuits these things. Which is not to say that real knowledge of these universal ideas does not exist; rather, it does not exist for man. Thus, man’s knowledge is limited, and he must function exclusively within the limits of his senses, Locke employed this doctrine in formulating his long-lived political and economic views. He rejected the notion of the divine right of kings, as well as the authority of the Bible and the Church in temporal affairs.

Locke thought that we could know that God exists, not by some perceptual means, but on the basis of a demonstration, which in fact is a variation on the cosmological argument. In addition we can have faith in the truths of revelation, provided they do not run contrary to reason.

Locke advocated within certain bounds, toleration in matters of religion. Torture is no way for the Church to attempt to enforce conformity, and it is a mark of the true Church that it is tolerant. The only means of conversion should be by persuasion. However, Locke did not extend his tolerance as far as atheists, as he thought that they would not think that promises and contracts are binding. Similarly, it is impossible to tolerate those whose very religion puts them at the service of a foreign power.

These are in effect limitations upon his political theory. Like Hobbes he postulated a state of nature and a social contract. But his picture of the original human position is very different from that of Hobbes. In the state of nature human beings have an understanding of the moral law which arises quite independently of the State. Every person has certain rights and due to which are, so to speak, “presocial”. Thus every person has the right to defend herself, and to freedom. Moreover, in a broad sense a person has a right to property.

But though such rights may be in general recognized, it does not in fact follow that they will actually be respected. Inequalities and injustices are possible and typically actual in a presocial condition. And so it is that the social contract comes about. Humans freely give up their legislative and executive rights to one another, in order to create a sovereign power. But this is a very different situation from that envisaged by Hobbes. Sovereignty ultimately resides in the people, and issues in general are to be decided by majority vote. If a sovereign turns against the people and so becomes a tyrant, then the people have the right of rebellion. All this constitutes a scheme for the Justification of democratic forms of government.

Locke’s general political theory became a major basis for the justification of democratic government. In general he was a major figure in the development of British empiricism and equally in the evolution of democratic political theory.

The 17th and 18th centuries in England were marked by the development of idealist sensualism, of which the most prominent proponents were George Berkeley (1685-1753) and David Hume (1711-1776).

A convinced adherent of religion, Berkeley undertook a critique of the notion of matter. Relying, on the one hand, on extreme nominalism (and thus challenging the authority of Thomas Aquinas, who asserted moderale realism in Christianity), and on the other, on a one-sided interpretation of Locke’s sensualism, he considered the concept of matter to be general and therefore false, for underlying it is the assumption that we can ignore the particular properties of things constituting the content of our sensations, and form an abstract idea of matter in general as the substratum common to all of them. However, we perceive not matter as such but only the individual properties of things — taste, smell, colour, etc., of which the perceptions Berkeley called ideas. The things surrounding us exist as ideas in the mind of God, who is the cause and the source of earthly life, Berkeley’s subjective idealism is a logical confusion of religious idealist views and the one-sided elements of nominalism and sensualism. In order to avoid solipsist conclusions from these premisses, Berkeley introduced the concept of collective consciousness, which is determined by God. Here Berkeley relied on realism and even rationalism, but this concession to objective idealism did not change the essence of his doctrine, which remained subjective idealist.

Hume developed a system somewhat different from Berkeley’s but also essentially subjective idealist, directed primarily towards agnosticism. To the question whether the external world existed, Hume gave an evasive answer, "I do not know". He believed that man could not go beyond his own sensations and understand some­thing outside himself. For Hume, true knowledge could only be logical, while the objects of study concerning facts could not be proved logically, being derived from experience. Hume interpreted experience as a flow of impressions whose cause was unknown and unknowable. Inasmuch as experience cannot be logically substantiated, experiential knowledge is unreliable. Thus experience can produce first one impression of a certain phenomenon and then another. But the fact that one phenomenon precedes another in experience cannot logically prove that the former is the cause of the latter. In itself, this proposition is indubitably correct. From this, though, Hume drew the erroneous conclusion that the objective character of causality was unknowable. Rejecting objective causality, he recognized at the same time subjective causality in the form of generation of ideas (memory images) by sense impressions. Eventually Hume lost all criteria of the truth of knowledge and was forced to declare belief rather that theoretical knowledge to be the source of practical certainty. Thus we are practically certain that the sun rises every day. This certainty comes from the habit of seeing this phenomenon repeated every day. Hume applied Berkeleian critique of the idea of Substance not only to matter but also to ideal being, and this developed into critique of the church and religious faith.

The disadvantages of Empiricism are in the following:

1. The exuberation of the importance and role of sensation in epistemology.

2. The underestimation of the value of abstraction in the theory of    knowledge.

3. Rejection of the activeness and independence of thinking.

So, Empiricism failed to expose the origin of the universal ideas and came to the complete denial of the existence of the world in its extreme variants.

Another approach in epistemology is manifested by rationalism. Rationalism  (from Latin “ratio ”meaning reason - the philosophical position that reason (thought) is the source of knowledge and the criterion of its truth. The theory of rationalism assumed the existence of innate ideas in human mind largely determining the results of cognition. Most of the foundations of mathematics and logic were counted among innate ideas.

The philosopher who placed reason first, reducing the role of experience was French scientist Rene Descartes (1596- 1655). He was born at La Haye, France. After completing his formal education at the Jesuit College at Le Fleche, he spent nine years (1612-1621) in travel and military service. The remainder of his life was devoted to study and writing. He died in Sweden, where he had gone to tutor Queen Christiana. Regarded as one of the founders of modern epistemology, he was the first philosopher to bring mathematical methods to bear on speculative thought. He began by asserting that everything that could not immediately pass his criterion of truth (i.e. the clearness and distinctness of ideas) was worthy of doubt. Anything that could pass this test was to be considered self-evident. From self-evident truths, he was able to deduce other truths which logically followed from them. The first self-evident truth to be discovered, according to him, is that of the thinking self. Since the fact that he thought was the clearest and most distinct idea he could have, he could not doubt that he existed. (This intuition was enunciated in his famous Cogito, ergo sum;("I think, therefore I am")). The other truth that he recognized immediately according to his criterion was God, and he gave a mathematical proof for the existence of God. From these two clear and distinct ideas, he developed a highly elaborated system of thought that spread throughout all divisions of philosophy His impact on the subsequent history of philosophy was considerable. In line with his mathematical interests he wished to propound a cosmology which contained only matter and mathematics. The idea of matter is that of a plenum. Each part of matter excludes every other. Descartes denies the possibility of a void. But in addition to the basic physical matter there are thinking substances, that is to say minds or souls. Of these there are many. But the physical cosmos, as Descartes theory of matter implies, is one infinite and continuous body in three dimensions. Now because of his denial of the void, Descartes sees that motion has to involve the circular displacement of matter: in brief, it occurs in a whole series of vortices. This is the basis of his dynamics. He had a problem with mind, according to this cosmology. As we see, the mind plays a crucial part in the building up of the edifice, of certainty which Descartes wished to achieve. His method of doubt in his “Meditations Method” led inwards to the individual, trying to figure things put for himself. This became a pervasive feature of Western epistemology. But because it was reflective and inward-looking it gave a central part to the mind. He saw the mind as being immortal. As for animals, they do not have souls and are machines. In regard to humans the soul is mysteriously joined to the body.

The method of doubt was an analytic one. Descartes cannot be thought to be a real sceptic. Trying to prove the existence of the external world he found in his mind the idea of a Perfect Being. God, being perfect, cannot be a deceiver, so we can rely on the existence of the outside world. And we can be assured that provided we proceed deliberately and only accept clear and distinct ideas we can build up a sure system of knowledge.

There are three ways in which Descartes did not set modern philosophy and science on a sound path. First, he was not primarily interested in empirical investigations and had too abstract and mathematical vision of the outside world. Second, his method was unadventurous and solipsistic. Third, he hoped to avoid uncertainty while at the same time inviting philosophical debate, for instance on the ontological argument.

Descartes revolutionized philosophy in various ways. First in starting again freshly with reflection he was not highly dependent on tradition. His antiauthoritarianism was refreshing. Second, he was committed to discovering a method in philosophy, and so was the major progenitor of a systematic epistemology. Third, he set European philosophy along the path to introspection.

Spinoza Baruch (1632-1677). One of the relatively few titans of philosophy, he was born in Amsterdam in a Jewish family that had been forced by religious persecution to flee Portugal. His early education in Amsterdam’s Jewish community consisted principally of Biblical and Talmudic studies. Later he learned Latin, studied the natural sciences, and became particularly steeped in the philosophies of Hobbes and Descartes. While in his early twenties he began writing analytical treatises on the Bible that earned him the disapproval of the elders of the Jewish community. He was eventually banned and spent the rest of his life in relative isolation, for the most part studying and writing, while making his living as an optical lens grinder.

 Although his chief work is entitled “Ethics”, it could justifiably be called “Metaphysics”, for it is a masterly metaphysical exposition of knowledge and is much more important for its original metaphysical insights than for its ethical conclusions. Using the mathematical method or argument developed by Descartes, he developed his entire philosophy around a conception of nature in which one, eternal, infinite Substance is the ultimate and immediate cause of all things (identical with the religious notion of God). This Substance is the self-caused, self-existing cause pervades nature through and through. Thus, the only object of true knowledge is nature, for by knowing nature (in its cause), we know God. Arguing from this he proceeded to relate Substance to the realm of individual beings Although Substance is one and capable of no division, it is also infinite and therefore is capable of having an infinite number of attributes (these being quite different than divisions). Of these infinite attributes, there are two (thought and extension) that intelligible to man. It is by means of these two attributes that infinite Substance causes and penetrates nature and the finite world—although the two attributes themselves are infinite, they have an infinite number of finite modifications, of which man is one, and other things and beings in nature are others. Thus did Spinoza explain the cause of finite existence. Then through the study and knowledge, of the finite world (all nature), understood in all its ramifications as a manifestation of Substance (God), man is able to form an intellectual love of God which is the same as having a true knowledge of Him. In Fact, he reacted against dualism between mind and body, almost inevitable if you begin in a solipsistic position, leads to unattractive consequences and in particular the lack of intelligibility of the relation between minds and bodies. So Spinoza invented a radical monism.

Spinoza’s theory of knowledge is relevant to his conception of the good life. A human being is the subject to various causal processes which physiologically affect him in relation to his central drive for self-preservation. Those that contribute to it give him general pleasure; those that undermine him bring about pain. But as bodies interact, humans come to form more general ideas, which are what Spinoza called adequate ideas, which are necessary and clear.

Having clear ideas means also having greater control. It involved therefore an increase in human freedom. In so far as we come to understand the total infinite system we approach the condition of God. Moreover, not only does understanding give us greater control, it replaces the confused ideas which are, or produce in us, passions, and so we simply replace passions with rational desire which conform to the goals of all humans. In short, we are delivered both from the passions and from competitive struggles with others. True freedom resides then in knowledge, and the free person leaves behind her the confusions of ordinary moral discourse, with its illusions of freedom and its use of praise and blame. The free person ultimately will achieve the love of God and become united with God.

So though in some ways Spinoza came close to Hobbes in thinking that we should hand over our welfare through a social contract, he did not opt as Hobbes did for monarchy as the safest system, but rather for a bourgeois mercantile democracy, with its openness and tolerance that he himself experienced in Amsterdam. There is a thoroughly maverick aspect of Spinoza’s system. It is a system which hangs together. There is a pleasing logic to the whole network of notions that he presents. But it of course begins from that old idea of substance. The hand of Aristotle is visible. A monistic materialism is an obvious invitation. Still, it is a highly original construction. Spinoza’s influence was slight after his death, but he became fashionable in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) was a person of dazzling achievements, among them the discovery of the infinitesimal calculus in 1676. He studied philosophy at Leipzig, mathematics at Jena and law at Altdorf. He was for a while in Paris, and was in the service of the House of Hanover, for whom he compiled a history of the Brunswick family. In 1700 he became founding president of what was to become the Prussian Academy of Sciences. His systematic philosophy can be discovered in a wide variety of documents and correspondences, including his “Discourse on Metaphysics” (1686). the “New system of Nature” and of the Interaction of Substances” (1695) and the “Monadology” (1714), as well as in his one large book, the “Theodicy” (1710).

The picture which Leibniz painted of the cosmos is a startling one. The whole universe is a system of enclosed or, as Leibniz said, windowless monads, each of which reflected the state of every other, according to a pre-established harmony. This radical pluralism is highly different from the monism of Spinoza. He expressed certain profound ideas of dialectical nature. He insisted that the world consisted of tiny elements or monads-spiritual elements of being possessing activeness and independence, continually changing and capable of suffering, perception and consciousness. Leibniz thus added to the concept of substance that of active force, or the Aristotelian principle of the self-motion of matter. But Leibniz removed the pantheistically perceived God from Spinoza’s single substance. According to Leibniz, God towers above the corporeal world, being its “culprit and master”. The unity and agreement among the monads is the result of divinely pre-established harmony. Thus the lower monads have but the vaguest representations (that is the state which the inorganic world and the vegetable kingdom are in); in animals, the representations reach the stage of sensation, and in man, that of clear understanding, of reason. Attributing to monads active force as their principal property, establishing the energy links between them, and, on the other hand, defending the idea of God the Creator, Leibniz through theology arrived at the principle of the inseparable (and universal, absolute) connection of matter and motion. Rejecting the notion of space and time as self-contained principles of being existing apart from matter and independently of it, he regarded space as the order of mutual arrangement of a multitude of individual bodies existing outside one another, and time, as the order in which phenomena or states of bodies succeed one another. One of the major achievements of Leibniz’s philosophy was his theory of an individual monad as a concentrated world, as a mirror of the one infinite universe. The underlying motivation for Leibniz to have painted this picture, is to render, in effect, all truths as necessary. This is a paradox, since he set out by distinguishing necessary truths or truths of reason and truths of fact. The former are such that they cannot be denied without contradiction. For Leibniz every proposition is of subject-predicate form, so the predicate of a truth of reason is contained in its subject. But the truths of fact are not like this.You can deny them without contradiction. But still on a deeper analysis they have their own necessity. First of all all the truths of fact in a given universe are mutually reflective, and they together define this universe. But God must have a sufficient reason for creating this universe and not some other. Despite the idealist basis of Leibniz’s system, his dialectics of the general and the individual was highly appreciated in dialectical materialism. In his logical studies Leibniz worked out a rational logical symbolism, and revealed the structure and laws of proof as one of the fundamental devices used by rational cognition. He was one of the founders of modern symbolic and mathematical logic.

The disadvantages of rationalism are in the following:

1. The denial of the importance and role of experience in getting         

  universal, and truthful knowledge.

1. The refusal of dialectics in the process of gaining knowledge, that is, from incomplete knowledge to entire and then to absolute one.

The second half of the 18th century was an epoch of acute aggravation of the conflict between the feudal and bourgeois worldviews, particularly in France. This conflict came to a head in the bourgeois revolution. Ideologically, it was prepared in the works of the 18th-century French philosophers: Voltaire (1694-1778), Rousseau (1712-1778), Diderot (1713-1784), La Mettrie(1709-I751), Helvetius (1715-1771) and Holbach (1723-1789). They resolutely fought against religion and the socio-political order in contemporary France.

The creation of the French Encyclopedia in the middle of the eighteenth century was a major publishing event, and brought together a number of vital philosophers, primarily under the leadership of Denis Diderot and including Holbach, Rousseau and Voltaire among others. Because of its free thinking and challenging character the publication of the Encyclopedia was suspended in 1759 but eventually was finished in 1772, in seventeen volumes of letterpress and a further eleven of plates.

The main streams of the 18^th century French philosophy were deism, atheism, materialism and Utopian-socialism.

Deism (from Latin “dues” meaning God) the philosophical doctrine that reduces the role of God to a mere act of creation and held that after the original act God virtually withdrew and refrained from interfering in the process of nature and the ways of man. Francois-Marie Arquet Voltaire (1694-1778) was a passionate and gifted critic of intolerance and of the outmoded institutions of the ancient regime. But his plans for tolerance were not anti-religious. His awe before the Divine in a vast universe was tempered by the thought that God is not benevolent and indeed his theism was considerably out of accord with the Christian revelation and the Church. He was appalled by the cruelty of the Inquisition, the backwardness of the Church and the disaster of the close alliance between Church and State. He was a powerful campaigner for the reform of the law, the abolition of torture and so forth: many of these ideas were incorporated in the “Declaration of the Rights of Man” in 1789.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) gave eloquent expression to the idea of an idealized nature, partly as a means of criticizing existing society. Rousseau’s views on education, expressed in “Emile”, stressed the natural progress of the human heart, towards a moral life in society in union with fellow-humans, Rousseau in his Control social introduced the idea that in civil society humans achieve freedom through the total alienation of each associate with all his rights to the community. He will obey the general will, and will thereby achieve true freedom by obeying a law that he has laid upon himself. In this Rousseau prepared the way, unwittingly, for nationalism and totalitarianism. It would prove easy to manipulate the notion of the general will. Many of the ideas of the Encyclopedia were to explode refreshingly on the scene during the French Revolution. They had their influence too on the earlier American Revolution and the formation of the United States Constitution. They also influenced Germany.

The Encyclopedia was deliberately created in a manner designed to stir up the ancient regime. Diderot boldly proclaimed that sovereignty rests with the people, and in various ways stated principles upon which the revolution was to be based. Denis Diderot (1713-1784) was an editor with D'Alembert of the French Encyclopedia. Beginning as a deist (i.e. God exist, but has no relation to the world), he concluded his life as a pantheist (i.e. God is totally in nature). He advocated skepticism in opposition to dogmatism and held that noting could be taken as absolutely true for all time. Since change is the fundamental principle of life - or so our sense experience tells us - truth must, like everything else, be subject to change.

Diderot was a most interesting materialist. He saw the universe as matter in motion that was inherent in it. It was atomic in structure, and sensitive. He also considered higher organisms as acquiring properties, rather like a swarm of bees which functions like a single organism: the unity of the organism in effect derives from the life of the whole. Thought is a property of the brain. Diderot was stick to the conception of the development of organisms. According to that theory, nature, or matter, is the cause of everything; it exists by itself, and it will continue to exist and to act eternally; it is its own cause. All material bodies consist of atoms. In relation to man, matter is everything that acts in one way or another on the sense organs.

Paul-Henri Baron d ’ Holbach (l723-1789), German nobleman who settled in Paris and became a French citizen. A severe and outspoken atheist, he was highly critical of religion and the Church. He developed the doctrine of eternal change (nothing in nature is fixed; nature is capable of and is forever giving rise to new organisms, hitherto unknown; man is not exempt from this law of change; man cannot exist without nature, though nature can exist without man). By this doctrine, man has no special role in the universe; all things traditionally postulated about his uniqueness and worth are meaningless. His atheistic materialism was stated in his “The System of Nature” (1770). Though his position was cruder than Diderot’s he was nevertheless a staunch believer in freedom of thought and of the press, the separation of Church and State, and constutionalism. He described his own political outlook as ethocratic, in which the State nurtures the virtues through which people help one another. If the people are unhappy they have the right to overthrow the rulers, since the social contract is based on the mutual usefulness of individuals and the State, and the State is a means, not an end.

Materialism of those times was mechanistic and metaphysical. Since other sciences, such as chemistry and biology, were at the embryonic stage, the standpoint of the most advanced sciences of those times, mechanics and mathematics, naturally seemed universal. The thinkers of that period saw mechanics as the key to the mystery of the entire universe. The application of the mechanical method resulted in striking progress in the cognition of the physical world. The notion of the mechanical determinedness of natural phenomena was greatly consolidated by the powerful influence of Newton’s discoveries, as his views were based on a sound mathematical substantiation of mechanical causality. Mechanics, however, knows only motion—it does not know development. That was why the method of thinking used by philosophers was largely metaphysical in those times, too. Materialistic philosophy of the 17^th century had some common characteristics:

1. It manifested materialism in a crude atheistic form;

2. It was based on natural science and stick upon its deduces;

3. It was contradictory to metaphysics;

4. It had got mechanistic character;

5. It was contemplative in the theory of knowledge and idealistic as for the conception of the society.

18th-century French philosophers regarded religion as a spiritual weapon of enslaving people, and a tool in the hands of the tyranny. The path of liberation of the people from religion and prejudices lay through enlightenment. At this point they were close to the principles of atheism, and to understanding of the need for a revolutionary transformation of social life: man and the personal qualities of man depended on the environment, so his vices were also the result of the environment. To remould man, to free him from shortcomings, and to develop his positive aspects, it was necessary to transform the environment, in the first place social environment. This doctrine played a great role in the philosophical substantiation of the ideas of Utopian socialists. Utopian socialists such as Owen, Saint Simon and Charles Fourier were mostly concerned on the ideal society problem. They proclaimed the society founded on the basis of social justice and equality. They happened to be forerunners of socialism and hoped that after the 18^th century’s critical work in the Encyclopedia the 19^th century could make a new one which would prepare a new industrial and scientific system.

 

LECTURE 8.

CLASSICAL GERMAN PHILOSOPHY.

 

 1. I.Kant and his critical philosophy.     

 2. Idealism: Fichte and Schelling on the road to Hegel.

 3. Hegel, the giant of the XYШ-th century German philoso-

phy.

 4. Feuerbach as a necessary slepping stone for non-classic

philosophy of the XIX-XX-th centuries.

 

At the turn of the 19^th century, Germany, overcoming its economic and political backwardness, was nearing a bourgeois revolution; just as in France, the socioeconomic revolution was preceded by a philosophical one.

An important role in the formation of classical German philosophy was played by the achievements of natural science and the social sciences: chemistry and physics began to develop, and the study of organic nature made considerable advance. Discoveries in mathematics which afforded an understanding and precise quantitative expression of natural processes; Lamarck’s theory of the conditioning of the organism’s evolution by the environment; astronomical, geological, and embryological theories, as well as theories of human society – this pushed into the foreground, resolutely and inevitably, the idea of development as a theory and as a method of cognition of reality.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was one of the greatest minds mankind ever knew and the founder of classical German idealism. It was with Kant that the dawn of the philosophy of the Modern Times broke.

Born in Königsberg in what was then Prussia and he lived there all his life. From 1770 he occupied the Chair of Logic and metaphysics at the University of Königsberg. In 1794 he was forbidden to publish more on religion, as his book on the subject had caused turbulence; no controversy ensued, since he complied with the royal order. His metronomic and quiet life was punctuated by a series of major publications – the “Critique of Pure Reason” (1781), the “Critique of Practical Reason” (1790), the “Critic of Judgment” (1790), the “Religion Within the Bounds of Reason Alone” (1793) and the “Metaphysics of Morals” (1797), together with other important works.

 He was shrewd and profound thinker not only in philosophy. His theory of the origin of the solar system out of a giant gas nebula still remains one of the fundamental scientific ideas in astronomy. Kant’s natural scientific works broke down the wall of the metaphysical explanation of nature, as he made his attempt to apply the principles of contemporary natural science not only to the structure of the universe but also to the history of its origin and development. Apart from this, he put forward the idea of lining up animals in the order of their possible origin, and the idea of natural origin of the human races.

Kant believed that the solution of the problems of being, of morality and religion must be preceded by a study in the possibilities of human knowledge and the boundaries of human knowledge. According to Kant, the necessary conditions of knowledge are inherent in reason itself, forming the basis of knowledge. It is these conditions that lend knowledge the properties of necessity and universality. They are also the absolute boundaries of reliable knowledge Kant distinguished between the appearances of things as they were perceived by man and the things as they existed by themselves. We do not study the world as it is in reality but only as it appears to us. Only phenomena constituting the content of our experience are accessible to our knowledge. The impact of “things-in-themselves” on our sense organs results in a chaos of sensations, which is brought to unity and order by the power of reason. What we regard as the laws of nature are in actual fact the connection brought into the world of phenomena by reason; in other words, reason prescribes laws to nature. But corresponding to the word of phenomena is the essence of things independent of human consciousness, or “things-in-themselves”. Absolute knowledge of these is impossible. To us, they are only noumena, that is to say, intelligible essences not given in experience. Kant did not share the boundless belief in the power of human reason, referring to this belief as dogmatism. He believed there was a certain moral sense in the fundamental limitations of human knowledge: if man were endowed with absolute knowledge, he would face neither risk nor struggle in the performance of his moral duty.

Kant was convinced that the ideas of time and space are known to man before perception. Space and time are ideal, not real. Sense impressions are interconnected by means of judgments based on categories or general concepts which, according to Kant, are purely logical forms, characterizing pure thought and not its subject. The categories are given to man before all experience, that is to say, a priori. Dialectics figured prominently in Kant’s epistemology: contradiction was regarded as a necessary element of cognition. But dialectics was for Kant merely an epistemological principle it was subjective as it did not reflect the contradictions of the things themselves, merely the contradictions of intellectual activity.

Kant’s philosophy was not free from compromise with idealism. Endeavouring to recognize science and religion, Kant said he had to limit the domain of knowledge to give room to faith.

Kant had an original approach to questions of moral sense and the like. It was to consider whether the motive of an action or the principle on which I am acting on could be generalized without contradiction. If I think it is all right for me to lie under such-and-such circumstances, then we have to consider what would happen if everyone lied. Language would break down. So there is a contradiction in the universalization of the maxim of my action. This yields the notion of what Kant referred to as categorical imperative, which he formulated in different ways, such as “Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a Universal Law of Nature”. There are two points of notice. First, this imperative is categorical. The moral law has no hypothetical character, like “If you want to make money, go into the law”, which would be merely prudential advice. Morality is absolute, but prudence depends on prior inclinations. Second, morality is conceived by Kant as something categorically laid by the individual on himself. He is his own legislator. In other words morality is autonomous and not heteronomous or laid on us by others. From all this, a certain psychology of morals emerges: the individual, finding his inclinations liable to be overruled by the categorical imperative, develops for it a special reverence.

His third Critique dealt with esthetic judgment (including an analysis of the notions of both beauty and the sublime). He also there dealt with teleology. He was anxious to avoid the idea that esthetic judgments have any kind of objectivity in case speculative theology based on the teleological argument was to re-arise. But esthetic judgments do claim to be universal. How can this be? The universal side arises not from the application of some concept but in the delight arising from the free play of the understanding and sensibility, which we ascribe as occurring in all humans.

Altogether the edifice of Kant’s system is tremendous. His wide-ranging synthesis was greeted on the whole with admiration. At any rate he established himself as the leading German philosopher of his day, perhaps of all time. He towered above his predecessors, and he set in train many fruitful moves in the nineteenth century. He could appeal to philosophers of differing traditions, and could connect with English-speaking debates in particular.

After Kant, classical German philosophy was developed by such outstanding philosophers as Fichte and Schelling. Both of them tried to overcome the Kantian opposition of phenomenon and noumenon by grounding cognitive activeness in some unitary principle – the absolute ego, as in Fichte, or the absolute identity of being and thinking, as in Schelling.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) was of a poor family in Saxony but through a local nobleman obtained an education, and eventually became Professor of Philosophy at Jena (though he was driven from there in 1799 on suspicion of atheism). At his death he was Rector of the University of Berlin. His most important publication was his “Basis of the Entire Theory of Science” (1794). As well as developing an idealist philosophy he was an important proponent of pan-German nationalism, and a pioneer of socialist thinking. The heart of his interest was morals, but he set this in the context of a kind of absolute realism.

He was impressed with Kant, but saw that his own critique of the master had drastic consequences. He considered that there was some instability at the core of the Kantian worldview, which was the concept of “things in themselves”. If one wanted seriously to tread the path of things one would end up a materialist; if not, then one would end up an idealist. This path he himself took, and criticized Kant for the noumena which in no way, according to Kant’s own principles, could give rise to (that is cause) phenomena. They were superfluous, but their removal meant that the explanation of the world lies on the near side of the subject-object distinction. But to explain the world via an Ego it is impossible to identify this with the individual. So we call on the notion of an Absolute Ego (later he wrote of an Absolute Being). Such a Being is not God, in that the latter has to be a person and a person is finite. This is why Fichte was attracted to Spinoza, and why he was accused of atheism. But at the heart of the Absolute there lies ethical concern, and reverence for what could for Fichte substitute for God. The Absolute Ego creates the non-ego as the field for its moral activity: however, if both are unlimited they will tend to blot each other out. So there is a third proposition to be affirmed (a synthesis of the prior thesis and antithesis), namely the positing of a divisible non-ego as opposed to a divisible ego. In other words, the Absolute produces finite self-consciousness which arises through its perception of the resistance of the natural world.

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854) was raised in Württemburg and went to Tübingen University where he was close to Hegel and Hölderlin. At 23 he was appointed to a Chair at Jena. Eventually he taught at Berlin and among those who attended his lectures were an unlikely constellation – Kierkegaard, Burckhardt, Engels and Bakunin. In his earlies philosophy, published in 1800 as his ”System of Transcendental Idealism”, his ideas were a stepping stone between Fichte and Hegel. His absolute idealism, similar to Fichte’s, had a much warmer conclusion, since he saw the philosophy of art as the culmination of his metaphysics. In nature the Absolute partially manifests the fusion of the real and the ideal through the production of organisms, but it is in the free creative world of art that we can find the intuition of the infinite in the finite product of the intelligence. The artist is not, however, thereby a philosopher, since he may not have the self-understanding to appraise the significance of his achievement.

If Fichte and Schelling are a bit dry in the rather unwieldy maneuvering of absolutes and egos, they prepared the way for Hegel’s moving Absolute Idealism, which itself drew together strands from the criticism of Kant, the emergence of romanticism, the greater conclusioness of history and the flowering of the intellectual life as systematized in the German universities, the leaders in their day. His huge synthesis helped to stimulate intellectual development, especially in the humanities, and of course he was a powerful shaper of Marx, who in turn had a huge effect on the emerging social sciences.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was born at Stuttgart and educated at Tübingen. He co-operated with Schelling in publishing a critical journal of philosophy, taught at a school in Nüremberg, and in due course (1818) became a Professor of Philosophy in Berlin. His two most important works were the “Phenomenology of Mind” (1807) and “The Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences” (1817). Also important was “Philosophy of right” (1821); and after his death his writings were edited by a group of friends and came out in eighteen volumes (1832-1834).

If Fichte established the Absolute, Hegel gave it motion. The Absolute is the totality, which is a process, and this process tends towards self-understanding. Like Aristotle’s God it is self-thinking thought, but unlike Aristotle Hegel saw the totality as tending towards self-understanding. He wanted to set this process forth as a dialectical one. And he did this in three parts (Hegel was in love with triads), in regard to logic, nature and spirit (Geist). From a logical point of view we start with the judgment that the Absolute is Being. But pure Being has within itself a kind of instability. In being completely indeterminate it is equivalent to Nothing. In flickering from Being to Nothing and back again it exhibits something which can be understood by a third notion, which rises beyond the first two, but ‘takes them up’ in a synthesis, namely the notion of Becoming. This helps to illustrate Hegel’s dialectical method. He did not think of contradictions as sings of the breakdown of thinking. Rather he saw it as a stimulus to a higher stage, a synthesis, in which the contradiction is taken up and for the time being resolved. He considered that the limited nature of our concepts is bound to give rise to contradictions (there is a reflection here of Kant’s antinomies, or contradictory conclusions arrived at when concepts are used beyond the realm of phenomena).

The final and most important part of Hegel’s encyclopedic work dealt with the philosophy of Spirit or Mind. First of all we have the spirit as sensing and feeling subject, which is actual as embodied. It is sunk in a kind of slumber, for so far it has not gained consciousness. But now consider it as aware of outer objects: it has got, so to speak, something to push against. This inevitably leads to a third phase in which the duality between subject and object is overcome, namely self-consciousness. But the ballet of triads goes on, because the self-consciousness individual comes to recognize a universal self-consciousness in which he perceives other selves. Hegel went on to examine at a higher level the nature of finite spirit, and stressed the importance of free will seen as a combination of the theoretical and the practical spirit.

The Totality objectifies itself though nature, which as it were provides resistance for finite spirits and so self-consciousness and then a sort of universal consciousness. But this is not any regular doctrine of creation, though Hegel does have a role for religious language as expressing philosophical insights imaginatively. The Spirit objectifies itself through the ethical substance of human life, which Hegel characterized as the family, civil society and the State. Civil society is something of an abstraction since it is typically or always developed as a State, but it stands for the network of economic relationships and organizations through which individuals mesh with one another. But the State is the highest manifestation of the objective Spirit, in which human beings submit their wills to rules and their feelings to the control of reason. It incorporates individual freedom, but this is nevertheless subordinate to a higher freedom (there is a strong influence from Rousseau here).

It is through the history of States that the World Spirit comes to self-realization. Hegel did not seemingly look forward to a world government. The struggle of States was in its way good in maintaining competition and ethical health. War itself was natural and rational in keeping the dialectic of history in motion. Hegel saw freedom being most fully realized in the Germanic States in which the Reformation played a vital role. The supreme expression of the onward progress was the Prussian State.

Philosophy itself, properly understood, is the coming into full self-consciousness of the Absolute, so the philosopher has a spearhead role in the whole evolution of the universe as it thinks itself. This lofty view of the role or philosophy, combined with the huge sweep of Hegel’s interests and concerns, gave him a formidable inspirational role in the German culture of the period, and stimulated work in varied and manifold direction – in history, in esthetics, in the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of law, to name a few. It was not a lucid system but it was imposing.

However, there is a deep inner contradiction in Hegel’s philosophy. What contradiction is that? Hegel’s method is directed towards the infinity of cognition. Since the objective basis is absolute spirit, and the goal, the self-cognition of that spirit, cognition is finite and limited. In other words, passing through a system of cognitive stages, the system of cognition is crowned by the last stage that of self-cognition, of which the realization is Hegel’s system of philosophy itself. The contradiction between the finite Hegel’s method and system is a contradiction between the finite and the infinite. This contradiction in Hegel is by no means dialectical, for it does not become the source for further development.

Classics of Marxism-Leninism subjected Hegel’s idealism to acute and comprehensive critique, but at the same time they highly appreciated the positive elements contained in his work, above all his dialectics.

A different trend was represented in the system of Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872), the greatest materialist and the last representative of classical German philosophy. He studied at Erlangen and taught there for a while, but was sacked when his authorship of an anonymous work attacking Christianity became known. He lived off a small pension and royalties for much of his life. His most vital works were his “Essence of Christianity” (1841) and his “Essence of Religion” (1846). His critigue of Hegel was important for the group known as “left Hegelians”, of whom the most important product was Marx.

Feuerbach saw a contradiction nesting in Hegel’s thought. Secretly there lay a hidden religious spirit in a system that claimed to be rational. It was the culmination of modern rationalism and yet it quietly degraded the material world. Once this was exposed, the way could be prepared for a humanist ethics. The consciousness which was in effect deified by Hegel is nothing other then our consciousness. Idealism does have a contribution to make, namely its analyses of human consciousness, even if it is in the alienating mode of the analyses of absolute being. It is possible in the light of this thought to see that religion itself is a projection of humanity on to the cosmos. God is a disguise for ideal humanity. The Christian doctrine of the incarnation is nothing other than a projection of the desire to become divine by the ultimate love of our fellow human beings. Feuerbach altered the direction of Hegel. In no way is matter somehow the creation of the Absolute Spirit, but on the contrary, spirit arises out of the material world. If we wish to deify humanity, let us do it through a humanistic ethics.

Feuerbach’s materialism remained traditionally metaphysical. Its characteristic feature was anthropologism: the view of man as the highest product of nature, the tendency to consider man in an indivisible unity with nature. Nature is the basis of spirit. It must also be the basis of philosophy called upon to reveal the earthly essence of man, whom nature endowed with senses and reason and whose psyche depends on this physical constitution, possessing at the same time a qualitative specificity irreducible to the physiological processes. Feuerbach’s anthropologism also played a great role in the struggle against the idealist interpretations of man, against the dualistic opposition of man’s spiritual element to the corporeal one, and against vulgar matherialism. But the “natural” side of man was exaggerated, and the social one, underestimated.

In his critic of agnosticism Feuerbach assumed that human thought correctly reflects the reality existing outside consciousness. The senses played the most important part in his epistemology: only the sensuous is as clear as the sun. To think means to connect one sense organ datum with another. Feuerbach regarded all forms of cognition (sensations, representations, concepts, ideas) as images or copies of things, of their properties and relations. Feuerbach’s anthropological materialism was metaphysical in nature: it was passively contemplative, and did not take into account socio-historical practice; for this, Marx criticized him in his “Theses on Feuerbach”.

One of Feuerbach’s achievements was the fact that he showed up the links between idealism and religion, demonstrating that their root lay in divorcing thinking from being and transforming ideas into independent essences. Feuerbach subjected the origin and essence of religion to a profound and striking analysis, but he traced its roots only to man’s psychology, his consciousness and emotions, in the first place the feeling of love. A human being is God to another human being.

The main peculiarity of Feuerbach’s teaching is asserting anthropology instead of theology. On the contrary of Humanism of the Renaissance that raised the Man into the center of philosophies Feuerbach attempted to ruin the very idea of God. His God is a deified humanity. Exposing the idea of the man’s uniqueness he becomes actually not exactly classical philosopher but the founder of a new non-classical philosophy of Western Europe.

 As for Classical German philosophy it entirely elaborated gnoceologism. So the further development of European philosophy was possible only by means of overcoming gnoceologism. In absolutization of the process of cognitive activity they worked out the principle of historicism, dialectical logics, the way of solving contradictions and limitless abilities of a subject to aware the Universe.

 

 

LECTURE 9.

CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY.

1. General characteristics of the XIX-XX centuries’ philosophy.

2. The Romantic Movement as the grounds for Neo-Classical Philosophies.

3. Currents of thought in the XIX century and Non-Classical

Philosophies.

4. The variety of doctrines in XIX-XX centuries.

 

Having got the highest point in Hegel’s theory gnoceologicism could not stimulate the development of philosophy any longer. The only possible way to go forth seemed to overcome gnoceological problems of man’s essence and to come for researching the problems of his existence.

Philosophies that were in revolt against traditions were of two kinds, rationalistic and romantic. They gave the ground to two great philosophical streams, neo-classical and non-classical philosophy.

The standpoint of neo-classical philosophy was the idea of identity of divine and humane, providing the importance of personality. Instead of mere cognizing the Universe human tried to alter it but within his own change. The ideas of religious overcoming of gnoseologism became the basic for such philosophies as Personalism and Religious Existentialism.

Non-classical philosophy aimed to research man embodied in flesh, one who possessed plenty of passions and instincts, who was eager for love. This philosophy was pioneered by Feuerbach and opened such philosophical positions as Sociocentricism, Voluntarism and Psychoanalysis which appeared in the XX-th century.

Non-classical philosophy of the XIX-XX centuries attempted to reveal the basics of human life burdened with sufferings and pains in unconsciousness that they expressed as transcendent, first impersonal and later illusive and symbolic standpoint. With the time passing this tendency would come to the statement of absurdness of human life.

The difference between classical and non-classical philosophy lies mainly in philosophical approach to general and individual in human. Non-classical philosophy is oriented on individual dominating over general, the problems of human existence over theoretical awareness. The human being instead of Universe being was set into the focus of its interests. Another fundamental difference is concerned their understanding of transcendental (Transcendental everything that goes beyond the borders of experience. In Christian culture it was God and

immortal soul striving to him). In classical philosophy transcendental is a

peculiar being that gives rise to empirical reality, being either estranged or identified with it. Classical philosophy insisted on the ontological character of transcendent.

Non-classical philosophy replacing transcendental with a real being regards it as a symbol expressing realities of human mental and material life. It gives it the character of imaginations and illusions. That is why non-classical philosophy is oriented on the human existence in empirical world as the only valuable reality.

Historical and cultural grounds of contemporary philosophy are as following:

1. Scientific and cultural revolution of the XIX-XX centuries opened great perspectives in understanding nature, cosmos and humanity, but simultaneously it stimulated such global problems as ecological, demographical, economical, energy, raw materials etc.

2. Philosophy was faced the necessity to regard the basic philosophical problem of man’s relation to the world in a new historical atmosphere, to refresh main ideas of classical philosophy that is of ultimate belief in human reason as the basic principle of realizing world structure, his understanding social progress as the progress of human reason, and social organization of people as a reasonable organization.

3. Modern scientific and technical revolution ruined the classical Newtonian picture of the world. The crisis phenomena of social life, in particular two world wars of the XX century, the existence of totalitarian regimes in some countries undermined man’s faith into powerfulness of human reason, of progress.

4. The tendency against classical rationalism was being spread in philosophy. The accent was brought on irrationalistic aspect of reality. The essence of the Universe was not regarded in reason any longer but in extra reasonable World Will, which was primary as for reason and imagination (A.Schopenhauer).

LECTURE 10.

PREFACE

The course of lectures is intended for technical specialities full time students studying in English.

It includes lectures on various periods of the history of European philosophy: Antiquity, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Modern Ages and Contemporary Philosophy. Ancient Eastern philosophies are also included as they contributed divergent themes to the sum of human thought. The issue of Ukrainian and Russian philosophies is very important for understanding the mode of cultural evolution and philosophical thinking on a regional basis, namely in our native country.

The main purpose of the course is to expose the evolution of philosophy in the widest possible way – to cover worldviews which are both collective and individual, traditional and critical, religious and ideological, affirmative and skeptical; to show the plural character of human thinking. It is necessary for young people to be conscious of the ancestors who have helped to shape human living and human ideas, who can be our critics and who can remain sources of ideas and new slants of things.

To understand better the process of the history of philosophy development each period is given on the grounds of its historical and cultural analysis, the continuity with the previous stage is preserved; the spectrum of philosophical views, schools, ideas, providing philosophers and modes of their philosophizing are represented.

The course is also intended to increase students’ cultural and educational level, to enrich their terminological and lexical base and to master their spoken language.

L ECTURE 1.

THE SUBJECT OF PHILOSOPHY AND THE RANGE OF PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS.

 

1. Philosophy as a specific type of knowledge.

2. Philosophy as a theoretical basis of worldview.

3. Philosophy as a general methodology.

 

 

Man is a speculative being. He looks at the heavens and wonders whether they have an end. He ponders on the cause of the universe, puzzles over the fundamental constituents of things, searches for a meaning in the cycle of seasons and the distribution of good and evil fortune among men.

Man is also a reflective being. He acts, and then reflects on the principles of his actions. He reasons, and then reflects on the rules of correct reasoning. He judges a story to be true or a painting to be beautiful, and then reflects on the criteria of truth and beauty.

  From these two impulses, speculation and reflection, there has developed in our civilization an extensive tradition of precise, systematic, sophisticated thought which is called philosophy.

  Etymologically, the word philosophy means “love for sophia”, which is often translated as love for wisdom. In actual fact, the old Greek concept of “sophia” is much more complex and comprehensive than just wisdom. Plato who made the term of philosophy part of the European terminology did not see sophia as an acquired subjective human property, but a great objective quality becoming only a deity (God) inherent in a reasonable ordered and harmonious world. Man could not really merge with sophia because of his innate mortality and cognitive inadequacy, thought Plato, so man could only love it respectfully and at a distance. That is why it would be more correct to translate it as love for truth, although it is not quite exact either.

Philosophy is not conceived of as a mere collection of truths, but as a desire for the truth, as an ideal attitude of man’s soul and mind, that can lead to a harmonious equilibrium between both his inner physical life and his complex relationships with the world. Philosophy is, as it were, a guardian and indicator of the truth, one that is embedded in the soul of man himself and does not permit him to bow down before some partial of subjectively attractive knowledge, constantly reminding man of the need to correlate his actions and opinions with some deeper truth about himself and the world.

To clarify the essence of philosophy it is necessary to look through the typology of knowledge.

Each discipline is a certain system of knowledge, which applies both to practical realization, and to further production of new knowledge. The reason and purpose of any knowledge production is the need to understand the object of knowledge (things, processes and phenomena) within the limits of its subject for effective practical satisfaction of man’s vital needs. The subject of knowledge is a system of problems of the given discipline. Learnt understanding can be defined as the knowledge of essence, of the main in the subject. Only when we correlate essence that is learnt with man – his requirements, vital activity, desires, interests, purposes etc. – the essence gets meaning of sense.

The purpose of each sphere of cognition is the exposure of its subject essence, but not all of them take into account the vital activity of man’s existence as a whole as a source, content, purpose and sense of cognition.

This circumstance requires researching the general structure of cognition, as man’s activity in producing knowledge.

Schematically this structure can be represented as a unity of such elements:

       RELATION

            /    \

   MAN------WORLD

The consideration of any element of such system as the subject of cognition forms the base of the appropriate types of knowledge.

The concept of knowledge has various meanings.

Knowledge means:

· An ideal (from the Greek “idea” meaning image, similarity) product of man’s vital activity in space and time – in the world;

· An ideal image of the world – natural, social, personal;

· An ideal image of man’s vital activity in the world – being of man;

· A substantial base of all forms of man’s activity.

The process of cognition as production of new knowledge in gnoseology (in the Greek “gnosis” meaning knowledge and “logos” meaning theory – theory of cognition) is analized with the help of the concepts of “object” and “subject”. The object in gnoseology means at what the processes of cognition is directed and subject means who realizes the processes of cognition.

Coming back to the above mentioned general structure of cognition activity we can work out the typology of knowledge.

     (3) RELATION                     

(2) MAN------WORLD (1)

1. The WORLD as an object of cognition – is the basis of the first type of knowledge – SCIENCE – the system of knowledge about the world, its structure, properties and laws. The concept of the “world” applies in the wide sense as the universe, and in the narrow sense as nature, geosphere.

The modern interpretations of science are:

1. fundamental knowledge – mathematics and related disciplines;

2. natural knowledge – mechanics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, geography, biology and related disciplines;

3. technical knowledge - applied disciplines, derivatives of the first two.