The most famous philosophers. Philosophy

To the question: “Who is a philosopher?” The answer is given by a simple translation of the word from Latin - “lover of wisdom.” In other words, this is a professional thinker whose activities are aimed at solving issues of worldview. According to scientists, the word “philosopher” originally originated, which meant an educated person, a scientist. Then the word "philosophy" derived from it appeared.

The emergence of the word "philosopher"

The concept of the word “philosopher” is associated with Pythagoras, who introduced this term back in the 4th century BC. e. Those around him called him a sage, but he did not agree with this, he said: “I am not a sage, I love wisdom.” The meaning of the word “sage” should be understood here. This is a person who has learned the meaning of life, the essence of truth.

Then who is a philosopher? This is a person walking the path of knowledge. He seeks answers to the questions of existence, while the sage knows them. According to Pythagoras, only God can be a Sage.

The word “philosopher” is found for the first time in Heraclitus, who gives it a definition: “a person who studies the nature of things.” There are many movements (schools) of philosophy, which are based on different visions of the world and the order of things.

Who is a philosopher? This is a person who reflects on the essence of existence, strives to recognize the very essence of what is happening and belongs to a certain philosophical movement.

Philosophy and science

All modern sciences were formed and grew from philosophy. In the ancient Greek city of Miletus (an ancient Greek colony in Asia Minor) there was the first school of philosophers. It was founded by Thales, whose students later founded Ionian philosophy. It included the ancient philosophers Anaximander, Anaximenes, Archelaus (the teacher of Socrates), Anaxagoras.

It was from here that the origins of the ancient Greek, and, consequently, European sciences came: biology, geography, physics and, as many scientists believe, mathematics. The concepts of cosmology and cosmogony that existed before them in abstraction and symbolism, their ideas present in mythology and traditions, were directed into the area of ​​scientific and practical interest. I would like to emphasize one important fact: often outstanding scientists were philosophers. An example is the great Mikhailo Lomonosov, who can be considered one of the first Russian materialist philosophers.

Philosophy and religion

Philosophy has not bypassed religion, which, like a magnet, attracts the highest minds of a given science. This is not surprising, since questions of morality, consciousness, morality, the inexplicable belief of most of humanity in something that not a single person in the world has been able to see, are fundamental in any religion, exciting the minds of thinkers of different eras.

From the time of the first philosophers of ancient Greece to our times, philosophers have tried to comprehend and understand how to free themselves from earthly problems and merge with the divine. To the question: “Who is a philosopher?” in the Middle Ages the following definition was given: “A thinker who tries to understand the world with the help of Holy Scripture.” Such great minds as Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Thomas Aquinas, Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Vl. devoted their works to religion. Solovyov, N. Berdyaev, P. Florensky, S. Bulgakov and others.

Features of Russian philosophy

Features of a philosophical movement, school, however, as well as the views of an individual philosopher, may depend on different conditions. This is the place of residence, national characteristics, socio-political structure, history and development of the country, traditions, etc. Big differences between European and Eastern (Chinese, Indian) philosophy are observed in relation to religion.

Russian philosophers occupy a prominent place in the historical and philosophical process. It is believed that this science appeared in Russia much later than in Western countries. It was largely influenced by the Byzantine and ancient philosophy, subsequently Western European, in particular, German classical type of thinking. But one of the most important factors influence on the identity of the Russian form of consciousness became precisely national peculiarity, specifics, traditions and history of the country.

Philosopher as a profession

Graduates of modern universities with a philosophical education occupy positions in leading companies thanks to their ability to think outside the box and analyze. This gives them a great advantage over ordinary managers. Who is a philosopher in modern world? This is a person who predicts the future development of a particular process. His ability to think logically, critical analysis past and present, the ability to identify new problems, find forms and methods for solving them gives an advantage over other specialists.

The word “philosopher” and the very concept of philosophy, which has several definitions, are inseparable. The first fundamental description of the discipline is a science that studies the concept of existence, the meaning of life, and man’s place in the world. Second, defining main task philosophy - the definition of truth.

Are philosophers needed these days?

All the questions that ancient philosophers explored have long ago become separate sciences. Are philosophers needed in our time? After all, the world around us, human relations, society are studied by other scientists.

Today's philosopher is a person who explores questions that modern science does not give an answer. Consider, for example, the problem of consciousness. There is the Institute of the Human Brain of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which is engaged in research gray matter, provides information about the structure, composition, principle of operation. But the results obtained cannot even approximately answer what consciousness is. This question requires philosophical understanding. There are a lot of such problems. For example, the problem of survival.

Our world is structured on the principle of strength, where the stronger, more dexterous, and quick-witted survive. Natural disasters, man-made emergencies, how to survive, what qualities are dominant in the world - philosophers of survival deal with these problems.

Contemporary philosophical issues

Life does not stand still. A person, his views, society and relationships develop. A philosopher can comprehend and describe how modern society understands the eternal questions of existence, the essence of man, meaning and life itself in general. Relations between man and society - which philosopher avoided studying this problem?

Today there are many adjacent areas where philosophy interacts with other sciences, such as ecology, psychology, linguistics, neurophysiology, and bioethics. Issues of genetic engineering and cloning are relevant both for modern society, and for science, in particular for medicine.

In politics, issues of feminism, urbanism, migration, refugee rights, research are now relevant for philosophers everyday life. Modern aesthetics even studies anime - Japanese animation.

A seemingly frivolous, popular topic concerning children and youth is the subject of thorough research. Key Function modern philosophy- study the world around us, identify problems of humanity and propose ways to solve them.

Traditionally, philosophy is defined as the study of the root causes and beginnings of everything conceivable - universal patterns within which both being and thinking, both the comprehended Cosmos and the spirit that comprehends it, exist and change. The thinkable in traditional philosophy acts as being - one of the main philosophical categories (cf. the thesis of Parmenides: “to think and to be are one and the same”). Existence includes not only actually occurring processes, but also intelligible possibilities. Since the conceivable is vast in its particulars, philosophers mainly concentrate their attention on the root causes, extremely general concepts, categories. IN different eras and for different philosophical movements these categories are different (cf. Hegel defined philosophy as “the contemporary era, comprehended in thinking”).

Philosophy includes such various disciplines as logic, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, aesthetics, ethics, etc., which ask questions such as, “Does God exist?”, “Is objective knowledge possible?”, “ What makes an action right or wrong?” The fundamental method of philosophy is the construction of inferences that evaluate certain arguments regarding such issues. Meanwhile, there are no exact boundaries or unified methodology of philosophy. There are also disputes over what is considered philosophy, and the very definition of philosophy differs in numerous philosophical schools.

The term “philosophy” itself has always had the reputation of being difficult to define due to the sometimes fundamental gap between philosophical disciplines and the ideas used in philosophy.

Hegel defined philosophy as the science of thinking, which has as its goal the comprehension of truth through the development of concepts on the basis of developed “subjective thinking” and a method that is “able to curb thought, lead it to the subject and hold it in it.” In Marxism-Leninism, several interrelated definitions: philosophy is “a form of social consciousness; the doctrine of general principles being and knowledge, about the relationship between man and the world; the science of the universal laws of development of nature, society and thinking."

Modern Western sources give much more careful definitions, for example: “philosophy is the study of the most fundamental and general concepts and principles relating to thinking, action and reality.”

Philosophy is philosophy [philosophy], and Pythagoras first began to call himself a philosopher [philosophy] when he argued in Sicyon with Leontes, the tyrant of Sicyon or Phliunt.<…>; a sage, according to him, can only be God, not man. For it would be premature to call philosophy “wisdom,” and the one who practices it “sage,” as if he had already sharpened his spirit to the limit; and a philosopher [“wisely wise”] is simply one who is attracted to wisdom.

Pythagoras left no writings behind him, so the first author in whom the word “philosopher” appears is Heraclitus:

The term "philosophy" first appears in Plato's dialogues.

In Eastern traditions, philosophy was not distinguished as a separate area of ​​activity, and was dissolved in cultural, religious and political doctrines, so that in them there are only approximate analogues of the term “philosophy”.

Functions of philosophy and forms of philosophical activity

In relation to any area human life and activity, philosophy can occupy three positions.

1. Research position. Philosophy as the most general science explores this area.
2. Critical and methodological position. Criticizes the activities of this area and prescribes rules for it.
3. Position of active intervention. Claims to replace a given field of activity (for example, from time to time philosophy tries to replace science).

In general, philosophy claims to perform the following functions.

1. Worldview function: helps to form a holistic picture of the world.
2. Methodological function: formulates the rules of knowledge for all special sciences.
3. Heuristic (search) function: creates new areas of theoretical research.
4. Function social criticism: carries out criticism of the existing order of things in society.
5. Futurological function: answers the question of what the future should be like.
6. Ideological function: creates an idea of ​​the desired political and social system.
7. Educational and educational function: participates in the formation of personality.

Philosophy as a worldview

Philosophy is a worldview discipline (science), since its task is to review the world as a whole and search for answers to the most general questions.

Philosophy as a way of life

Philosophy and science

There are at least three questions regarding the relationship between philosophy and science:

• Is philosophy a science?
• How do philosophy and private (concrete) sciences relate to each other?
• How do philosophy and outsiders relate to each other? scientific knowledge?

When considering the first question about the scientific nature of philosophy, it is clear that throughout its history philosophy has been one of the sources of development human knowledge. Considering it historically, one can detect continuity in the development of philosophical knowledge, its problems, the commonality of the categorical apparatus and the logic of research. It is no coincidence that Hegel viewed philosophy primarily from the point of view of the “science of logic.”

At the same time, in the history of human thought there are entire layers unscientific philosophy, for example, religious. The close connection between philosophy and science is inherent mainly in the European way of understanding the processes of knowledge. The return of European thought to unscientific (and even anti-scientific) philosophizing often manifests itself in times of crisis (an example is Lev Shestov).

The relationship between science (special sciences) and philosophy is a subject of debate.

Philosophy often claims to be something more than science, its beginning and result, the methodology of science and its generalization, a theory of a higher order, metascience (the science of science, the science that substantiates science). Science exists as a process of putting forward and refuting hypotheses; the role of philosophy in this case is to study the criteria of scientificity and rationality. At the same time, philosophy comprehends scientific discoveries, including them in the context of generated knowledge and thereby determining their meaning. Connected with this is the ancient idea of ​​philosophy as the queen of sciences or the science of sciences.

However, even in the absence of the opportunity to claim the role of a science of sciences, philosophy can be considered as a science that deals with a higher, secondary level of generalization, reuniting the particular sciences. The primary level of generalization leads to the formulation of laws of specific sciences, then the task of the second is to identify more general patterns and trends. It must be borne in mind that new discoveries in the field of special sciences can lead to the approval of both scientific and philosophical conclusions and a philosophical branch representing irrationalistic speculation. Also, philosophy itself can influence private sciences, both positively and negatively.

It should also be noted that the history of philosophy is a humanities science, the main method of which is the interpretation and comparison of texts.

The answer to the question about the relationship between non-scientific knowledge and philosophy is connected with the question about the relationship between philosophy and “misguided reason.” This point is necessary from a historical point of view due to the very nature of the process of cognition. It is characteristic of any science. Philosophy also cannot be guaranteed against error.

Marxism-Leninism was one of the critical issues two:

• “What comes first: spirit or matter?” This question was considered one of the most important questions of philosophy, since it was argued that from the very beginning of the development of philosophy there was a division into idealism and materialism, that is, a judgment about the primacy spiritual world over the material, and material over the spiritual, respectively.
• The question of the knowability of the world, which was the main question of epistemology in it.

One of the fundamental questions of philosophy is the question itself: "What is philosophy?" Each philosophical system has a core, main question, the disclosure of which constitutes its main content and essence.

Philosophy answers questions

• “Who is this person and why did he come to this world?”
• “What makes an action right or wrong?”

Philosophy tries to answer questions for which there is no way to obtain an answer yet, such as “For what?” (e.g. “Why does man exist?” At the same time, science tries to answer questions for which there are tools for obtaining an answer, such as “How?”, “In what way?”, “Why?”, “What?” (e.g., “How did man appear?”, “Why can’t man breathe nitrogen?”, “How did the Earth arise?” “What is the direction of evolution?”, “What will happen to man (in specific conditions)?”).

Accordingly, the subject of philosophy, philosophical knowledge was divided into main sections: ontology (the study of being), epistemology (the study of knowledge), anthropology (the study of man), social philosophy (the study of society), etc.

Philosophy: pros and cons

The meaning and benefits of philosophy

The benefit of philosophy is the formation in people who engage in it of independent, logical, conceptual thinking skills, which reduces the possibility of ideological fooling and manipulation of these people and the society in which philosophy develops.

One explanation: the culture of European philosophical thinking and the culture of democracy - democracy were formed in Ancient Greece in parallel, conditioning each other. Many works of Aristotle, Plato and other Greek philosophers are devoted to issues of social order and politics. The philosophical thinking of the ancient Greeks is rational, that is, reasonable thinking free man living in a slave world, a person taking part in public life. The disciplines developed by Greek thought were ethics, politics, rhetoric. Free thought of the ancient Greeks and their civil life were interconnected. Ancient philosophers proclaimed their views with central streets Greek cities. Such a culture of thinking and social life did not arise in the eastern despotisms neighboring Greece, for example in Persia, where the unity of society was achieved by force. In Greece, both civil life and philosophy were means of finding mutual understanding between people without violence and coercion.

Criticism of philosophy

History of philosophy

American philosophy
Latin American philosophy
African philosophy
Australian philosophy

Contemporary philosophical problems

The structure of the brain according to the ideas of Rene Descartes (from his work About the person, 1664). Epiphysis, or pineal gland (in the diagram indicated by the letter H) - the organ in which, according to Descartes, the human soul is contained. In this way he tried to solve a psychophysical problem.

Sections of philosophy

There is no universal agreement on the question of which disciplines are considered to belong to philosophy (into which sections philosophy is divided). Traditionally, the main philosophical disciplines include logic, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics and metaphysics (ontology). However, there are no clear boundaries between these disciplines. There are philosophical questions that simultaneously relate to more than one of these disciplines, and there are those that do not belong to any one.

Outside these broad disciplines, there are other areas philosophical knowledge. Historically, the areas of interest of philosophers included, and now often include, politics (which was considered by Aristotle as an integral part of ethics), physics (in the case when it studies the essence of matter and energy) and religion. In addition, there are philosophical disciplines devoted to individual subject areas; almost always the subject area of ​​such a philosophical discipline coincides with the subject area of ​​the corresponding science. For example, the separation of physics from philosophy in modern times led to the emergence of natural philosophy, and the separation political theory- to the emergence of political philosophy.

In addition to the division of philosophy into disciplines, there is also a more general division into theoretical, practical and rational philosophy (philosophy that studies issues of reason and knowledge).

The following classification includes both general (basic) and special disciplines (philosophy of individual subject areas).

General philosophical disciplines

• Metaphilosophy- philosophy of philosophy.

Philosophy of means and ways of knowing

Philosophical disciplines that study ways of knowing (rational philosophy).

• Logics- philosophical discipline about the forms of correct reasoning. Answers the question: “How can we separate true from false propositions along their path from premises to conclusion?”
• Epistemology(epistemology, theory of knowledge), the science of knowledge and its foundations. Deals with the questions: “Is knowledge possible?”, “ How do we know what we know?
• Philosophy of science, including the philosophy of individual sciences
  • Philosophy of biology
  • Philosophy of psychology
  • Philosophy of social sciences and humanities
• Philosophy of consciousness (philosophy of mentality, philosophy of mind)

Theoretical philosophy

Theoretical philosophy- philosophical disciplines that study existence.

• Ontology- science of being (science of existence), philosophical theory of reality. Ontology asks: “What is reality?”, “What exists?”, “Do things exist independently of our perception?”
• Metaphysics has no generally accepted definition. Sometimes it is identified with ontology, sometimes it is considered as a more general discipline, sometimes as a more specific one - the science of the principles of being.
• Philosophical theology (natural theology, natural theology, natural theology,)

Practical philosophy

Practical philosophy- philosophical disciplines about human activity. Sometimes all practical philosophy is defined as axiology

• Ethics- moral philosophy. Ethics asks: “Is there a difference between morally correct and wrong actions, values, laws?”, “Are all values ​​absolute or relative?”, “How more correct live?”, “Is there a single normative the value on which all basic values ​​depend?” (see also Norm (natural sciences and humanities), " Material are values ​​(like a table or a chair) and, if not, how should we understand their ontological status?
  • Ethics of action
  • Social ethics
    • Professional ethics
      • Legal ethics (lawyer ethics)
  • Economic ethics
• Aesthetics- a philosophical discipline about the beautiful, the ugly, etc. In aesthetics, questions are asked: “What is beauty?”, “How do we comprehend beauty?”
  • Philosophy of art
• Praxeology (pragmatics, philosophy of activity)
• Philosophy of education
• Political philosophy (philosophy of politics)
• Philosophy of culture
• Philosophy of ecology

Philosophical disciplines or philosophical directions

There are philosophical theories that can be qualified both as philosophical disciplines and as philosophical directions, that is, their status is unclear. These include, firstly, philosophical theories that declare their religious, ethnic or other identity, and secondly, philosophical research projects, which are dealt with by certain philosophical schools.

Philosophical theories of identity

TO philosophical theories Identity includes any theory that is both a philosophical study of identity and the ideology of the bearers of this identity and a philosophical direction.

• Ethnophilosophy
• Philosophy of race (philosophy of racism)
• Philosophy of sex (philosophy of sexuality, gender philosophy)
• Philosophical theories related to religious identity
  • Secular philosophy (see also: philosophical criticism religions, atheism, deism, pantheism).
  • Religious philosophy (see also theological rationalism).
• Philosophy of traditionalism (philosophy of tradition)

Philosophical theories developed by individual schools

• Philosophy of mysticism (philosophy of mysticism, mystical philosophy, see also esotericism, mysticism).
• Hermeneutics (philosophy of understanding)
• Semiotics (theory of sign)
• Orientalism in philosophy (reception of Indian and Chinese philosophy).
• Philosophy of existence

Organization philosophy

• Philosophical organizations
• Philosophical education
• Philosophical writings
• Philosophical sites

Socrates is the first philosopher in the full sense of the word. History says so, but is it necessary to be famous to be a philosopher? A person ponders this question all his life. Some issues are global, others are important only for the individual and are temporary. But philosophizing shapes personality, even if a person is far from the ideas of ancient Greek thinkers.

What is philosophy

Philosophy is one of the forms of social consciousness. It is aimed at finding solutions to basic worldview issues and developing a holistic view of the structure of the world and man’s place in it. A system of views that shapes a person’s attitude towards the world and himself.

Is being a philosopher a profession or a state of mind?

To answer this question, you first need to understand who a philosopher is. This concept has a number of definitions, but let’s focus on the more understandable ones.

A philosopher is a person whose mental work is aimed at finding solutions to the issues of human life. A person who knows how to reason is able to form the concept of a new worldview. We cannot exclude the fact that a person dealing with issues of the universe must have a special mindset and feel somewhat differently than is customary in society. This is a state of mind and perception of the world, not a profession. The profession involves material rewards as equivalent to the effort expended. The philosopher's first priority is the improvement of human life, contribution to the development of society and the state, and not the receipt of material benefits.

The origin of philosophy and the first philosopher

Philosophy, like many other sciences, came out of ancient Greece. The term philosophy consists of two parts. The first part from the word “Philia” is translated as love “love”, and the other is “Sofia”. Philosophy is the love of wisdom. Books and treatises date back to antiquity. Jaspers introduced the concept of axial time, making an attempt to separate the mythological worldview and rational thinking. The time dated by Jaspers is 800-200 BC. All the teachings of that time are distinguished by rationality and the desire to understand the root cause and basis of existence. In the beginning, philosophy was a holistic science. But as it developed, other sciences began to emerge. The structure of philosophical knowledge includes:

• ontology – the science of existence;
• epistemology - theory of knowledge;
• ethics - the study of morality and rules of behavior;
• aesthetics - the science of beauty;
• logic, which studies the laws, principles and functions of thinking;
• axiology – the doctrine of values;
• philosophical anthropology, which studies human nature and essence;
• – the science of society and the place of man in it;
• history of philosophy - a science that describes the subject and essence of philosophy as a whole.

Chronological eras of philosophy:

• ancient eastern teachings;
• ancient philosophy;
• medieval;
• renaissance and new times;
• modern.

The most famous philosophers

Among all philosophers, there are thinkers whose contribution to science was the most important:

Among domestic thinkers, the following names can be noted: Tsiolkovsky, Vernadsky, writer Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Lossky, Vladimir Lenin, Grigory Zinoviev.

Philosophy is present in the life of every person. Anyone who is capable of thinking is, albeit unprofessional, but a philosopher. It’s enough just to think how many times in your life have you thought about why things happen this way or that way, how many times your thoughts went deep into the essence of a particular term, process, action. Countless, of course. So what is philosophy? Who are the famous philosophers who founded entire schools of thought?

What is philosophy?

Philosophy is a term that can be defined from different angles. But no matter how we think about it, we still come to the conclusion that this is certain knowledge or a sphere of human activity, in the process of which he learns wisdom. And in in this case the philosopher is a guide in the intricate structure of this science and its concepts.

Speaking in scientific language, the term “philosophy” can be defined as knowledge about what surrounds us and does not depend on us. It is enough to look at the etymology of the word “philosophy” - and it becomes clear what it means. This term comes from Greek language and consists of two others: “philia” (from the gr. φιλία - “love, desire”) and “sophia” (from the gr. σοφία - “wisdom”). We can conclude that philosophy is the love or pursuit of wisdom.

The same is true for the subject who deals with philosophy - the philosopher. We'll talk about who it is.

This term came to us, as is already clear, from Ancient Greece and appeared in the 5-6th century BC. Over the long centuries of its use, there have been no modifications, and the word has retained its original meaning in its original form.

Based on the concept of “philosophy,” a philosopher is a person who searches for truth, understanding the world and its structure.

IN explanatory dictionary You can find the following interpretation of the term: this is a thinker whose main activity is the study, development and presentation of basic worldview concepts.

Another interpretation of the term can be called the following: a philosopher is an individual who, in his way of thinking, belongs to one or another philosophical school, shares its ideas or lives according to them.

The origin of philosophy and the first philosopher

It is generally accepted that the first person to use the term “philosopher” was the ancient Greek thinker Pythagoras back in the 6th century BC. This is because it was necessary to divide people with knowledge into two categories: wise men and “non-wise men.” The first philosopher then defended the point of view that a philosopher cannot be called a sage, since the first only strives to know wisdom, and the second is the one who has already known it.

The works of Pythagoras have not survived, so for the first time on paper the term “philosopher” is found in the works of Heraclitus and Plato.

From Ancient Greece, the concept spread to the West and East, where initially a separate science did not exist at all. Philosophy here was dissolved in religion, culture and politics.

The most famous philosophers

Many philosophers are inclined to believe that the people who sought to understand how a person could become happy were precisely philosophers. This list can be very long, since throughout the world philosophy developed even independently of one movement from another. Despite this, there are also many common features, in which the philosophy of the West and the East is similar.

The first philosophers include such famous people from past centuries as Pythagoras, Buddha, Plato, Socrates and Seneca, Aristotle, Confucius and Lao Tzu, Plotinus, Giordano Bruno, Omar Khayyam and many others.

In the 17-18th century, the most famous were Pyotr Mogila and Grigory Skovoroda - these were philosophers who lived and learned the essence of life in Rus'. Thinkers are even more later years- Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Nikolai Konstantinovich Roerich.

As we see, the first philosophers were not only thinkers, but also mathematicians, doctors, emperors and universal experts. The list of modern philosophers is also quite extensive. There are many more of them today than there were in ancient times, and they are less known, nevertheless they exist and are actively developing and disseminating their thoughts.

Today, such people include Jorge Angel Livraga, Daniel Dennett, Peter Singer, (pictured), Alasdair MacIntyre, Jean Baudrillard, Slavoj Žižek, Pierre Klossowski, Karl Popper, Hans Georg Gadamer, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Susan Blackmore and many others.

Philosophy as a way of life and profession

Previously, the term “philosopher” referred a person to a certain school and its teachings, but now a philosopher is also a profession that can be obtained in many higher education institutions. educational institutions. Faculties and departments are specially opened for this purpose. Today you can get a philosophy degree.

The benefit of such education is not only that a person learns to think correctly and deeply, find non-standard solutions to situations, resolve conflicts and much more. Also, such a person can realize himself in many other areas of life, since he has received basic knowledge and understanding of the world (to a greater or lesser extent).

It is worth noting that many foreign companies today are happy to hire philosophers and young specialists in this field, in particular to work with people, for the reasons stated above.

Proving the existence of God is one of the main tasks of Christian theology. And the most interesting argument The Italian theologian Anselm of Canterbury argued in favor of the divine existence.

Its essence is as follows. God is defined as the totality of all perfections. He is absolute good, love, goodness and so on. Existence is one of perfection. If something exists in our mind, but does not exist outside it, then it is imperfect. Since God is perfect, it means that from the idea of ​​his existence his real existence must be deduced.

God exists in the mind, therefore he exists outside of it.

This is a rather interesting argument, illustrating what philosophy was like in the Middle Ages. Although it was refuted by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, try thinking about it for yourself.

Rene Descartes: “I think, therefore I am”

Can you say anything with absolute certainty? Is there at least one thought that you do not doubt at all? You will say, “Today I woke up. I am absolutely sure of this." Are you sure? What if your brain was damaged an hour ago and now they are sending electrical signals to it to artificially create memories in you? Yes, it looks implausible, but it is theoretically possible. And we are talking about absolute confidence. What then are you sure of?

Rene Descartes found such unquestionable knowledge. This knowledge is in man himself: I think, therefore I exist. This statement is beyond doubt. Think about it: even if your brain is in a flask, your very thinking, albeit incorrect, exists! Let everything you know be false. But one cannot deny existence to something that thinks falsely.

Now you know the most indisputable statement of all possible, which has become almost the slogan of the entire European philosophy: cogito ergo sum.

Plato: “It is the concepts of things that really exist, not the things themselves.”

The main problem of ancient Greek philosophers was the search for being. Don't be scared, this beast is not scary at all. Being is what is. That's it. “Then why look for it,” you say, “here it is, everywhere.” Everywhere, but as soon as you take some thing and think about it, existence disappears somewhere. For example, your phone. It seems to be there, but you understand that it will break and be disposed of.

In general, everything that has a beginning also has an end. But existence has neither beginning nor end by definition - it simply is. It turns out that since your phone has been around for some time and its existence depends on this time, its existence is somehow unreliable, unstable, relative.

Philosophers have solved this problem in different ways. Someone said that there is no existence at all, someone stubbornly continued to insist that there is existence, and someone said that man cannot say anything definite about the world at all.

Plato found and argued the strongest position, which had an incredibly strong influence on the development of the entire European culture, but which is intuitively difficult to agree with. He said that the concepts of things - ideas - have existence, but the things themselves belong to another world, the world of becoming. There is a piece of existence in your phone, but existence itself, as a material thing, is not inherent. But your idea of ​​a telephone, unlike the telephone itself, does not depend on time or anything else. It is eternal and unchanging.

Plato paid a lot of attention to proving this idea, and the fact that he is still considered by many greatest philosopher in history should make you restrain a little your willingness to unequivocally reject the reality position of ideas. Better read Plato's Dialogues - they're worth it.

Immanuel Kant: “Man constructs the world around himself”

Immanuel Kant is a giant philosophical thought. His teaching became a kind of waterline that separated philosophy “before Kant” from philosophy “after Kant.”

He was the first to express an idea that today may not sound like a bolt from the blue, but which we completely forget about in everyday life.

Kant showed that everything that a person deals with is the result of the creative powers of the person himself.

The monitor in front of your eyes does not exist “outside you”; you yourself created this monitor. The easiest way to explain the essence of the idea is physiology: the image of the monitor is formed by your brain, and it is with it that you are dealing, and not with the “real monitor”.

However, Kant thought in philosophical terminology, and physiology as a science did not yet exist. Moreover, if the world exists in the brain, where then does the brain exist? Therefore, instead of “brain,” Kant used the term “a priori knowledge,” that is, knowledge that exists in a person from the moment of birth and allows him to create a monitor from something inaccessible.

He identified various types of this knowledge, but its primary forms, which are responsible for the sensory world, are space and time. That is, there is neither time nor space without a person, it is a grid, glasses through which a person looks at the world, while simultaneously creating it.

Albert Camus: “Man is an absurdity”

Is life worth living?

Have you ever had this question? Probably not. And the life of Albert Camus was literally permeated with despair because this question could not be answered in the affirmative. A person in this world is like Sisyphus, endlessly doing the same meaningless work. There is no way out of this situation, no matter what a person does, he will always remain a slave to life.

Man is an absurd creature, wrong, illogical. Animals have needs, and there are things in the world that can satisfy them. A person has a need for meaning - for something that does not exist.

The human being is such that it requires meaning in everything.

However, its very existence is meaningless. Where there should be a sense of meaning, there turns out to be nothing, emptiness. Everything is deprived of its basis, not a single value has a foundation.

Camus' existential philosophy is very pessimistic. But you must admit, there are certain reasons for pessimism.

Karl Marx: “All human culture is ideology”

In accordance with the theory of Marx and Engels, the history of mankind is the history of the suppression of some classes by others. In order to maintain its power, the ruling class distorts knowledge about real public relations, creating the phenomenon of “false consciousness”. Exploited classes simply have no idea that they are being exploited.

All creations of bourgeois society are declared by philosophers to be an ideology, that is, a totality false values and ideas about the world. This includes religion, politics, and any human practices - we, in principle, live in a false, erroneous reality.

All our beliefs are a priori false, because they initially appeared as a way of hiding the truth from us in the interests of a certain class.

A person simply does not have the opportunity to look at the world objectively. After all, ideology is culture, an innate prism through which he sees things. Even such an institution as the family must be recognized as ideological.

What is real then? Economic relations, that is, those relations in which the method of distribution of life's goods is formed. In a communist society, all ideological mechanisms will collapse (this means there will be no states, no religions, no families), and true relationships will be established between people.

Karl Popper: “A good scientific theory can be falsified”

What do you think, if there are two scientific theories and one of them is easily refuted, and the other is generally impossible to undermine, which of them will be more scientific?

Popper, a methodologist of science, showed that the criterion of scientificity is falsifiability, that is, the possibility of refutation. Not only must a theory have a coherent proof, it must have the potential to be broken.

For example, the statement “the soul exists” cannot be considered scientific because it is impossible to imagine how to refute it. After all, if the soul is immaterial, then how can you be sure whether it exists? But the statement “all plants carry out photosynthesis” is quite scientific, since in order to refute it, it is enough to find at least one plant that does not convert light energy. It is quite possible that it will never be found, but the very possibility of disproving the theory should be obvious.

This is the fate of any scientific knowledge: it is never absolute and is always ready to resign.