Development of philosophy: stages, causes, directions, concept, history and modernity

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:41

To have an idea about the development of philosophy is necessary for all educated people. After all, this is the basis of a special form of cognition of the world, which develops a system of knowledge about the most general characteristics, fundamental principles of being, ultimate generalizing concepts, the relationship between man and the world. Throughout the existence of mankind, the task of philosophy was considered to be the study of the general laws of the development of society and the world, the very process of thinking and cognition, moral values and categories. In fact, philosophy exists in the form of a large number of diverse teachings, many of which oppose and complement each other.

The birth of philosophy

The development of philosophy began almost simultaneously in several parts of the globe. In the Greek Mediterranean colonies, India and China in the 7th-6th centuries BC, the formation of rational philosophical thinking began for the first time. It is possible that more ancient civilizations already practiced philosophical thinking, but there is no work or evidence that couldconfirm, not saved.

Some researchers consider aphorisms and proverbs preserved from the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt to be the oldest examples of philosophy. At the same time, the influence of these civilizations on Greek philosophy, on the worldview of the very first philosophers, is considered undoubted. Among the origins of philosophy, Arseniy Nikolaevich Chanyshev, who de alt with this problem, singles out the science of mythology and "generalization of ordinary consciousness."

The formation of philosophical schools has become a common element in the development and emergence of philosophy. According to a similar scheme, the formation of Indian and Greek philosophy took place, but the development of Chinese was held back due to the conservative socio-political structure of society. Initially, only the areas of political philosophy and ethics were well developed.

Reasons

The development of philosophy is a generalization of existing types of human thinking that reflect the existing reality. Until a certain point, there were no real reasons for its occurrence. They first begin to form in the first century BC. There is a whole range of reasons associated with epistemological and social.

Telling briefly about the development of philosophy, let's dwell on each group of reasons. Social manifest:

• in the formation of a mobile social class structure;
• in the emergence of the division of physical and mental labor, that is, for the first time a class of people is being formed who are constantly engaged in mental activity (an analogue of the modern intelligentsia);
• there is a territorial social division into two parts - the city and the countryside (human experience and culture accumulate in the city);
• politics appears, interstate and state relations develop.

There are three subtypes of epistemological causes:

• the emergence of science, namely: mathematics and geometry, which are based on the definition of a single and universal, generalization of reality;
• the emergence of religion - this leads to the presence in it of a single divine essence and spiritual consciousness, in which all the surrounding reality is reflected;
• contradictions are formed between religion and science. Philosophy becomes a kind of mediator between them, the spiritual triune complex serves the formation of humanity - this is religion, science and philosophy.

There are three features of the development of philosophy. Initially, it arises as a pluralistic, that is, idealism, materialism, religious philosophy.

Then it comes in two main types - rational and irrational. Rational is based on the theoretical form of presentation, science and social issues. As a result, Greek philosophy became the spiritual expression of all Western culture. Eastern irrational philosophy relies on a semi-artistic or artistic form of presentation and universal problems, defining a person as a cosmic being. But from the point of view of Greek philosophy, man is a social being.

Stages in the development of philosophical thought

There are several stages in the development of philosophy. Their briefwe will give a description in this article.

1. The first historical stage in the development of philosophy is the period of its formation, which fell on the 7th-5th centuries BC. During this period, scientists strive to understand the essence of the world, nature, the structure of the cosmos, the root causes of everything that surrounds them. Prominent representatives are Heraclitus, Anaximenes, Parmenides.
2. The classical period in the history of the development of philosophy is the 4th century BC. Socrates, Aristotle, Plato and the Sophists are making the transition to the study of human life and humanitarian issues.
3. Hellenistic period of development of philosophy - III century BC - VI century AD. At this time, the individual ethics of the Stoics and Epicureans come to the fore.
4. The philosophy of the Middle Ages covers a fairly large time layer - from the II to the XIV centuries. It is at this historical stage in the development of philosophy that two main sources appear. These are the installations of the monotheistic religion and the ideas of the ancient thinkers of the past. The principle of theocentrism is being formed. Scientists are mainly concerned with questions about the meaning of life, the soul, and death. The principle of revelation becomes the divine essence, which can be discovered only with the help of sincere faith. Philosophers massively interpret sacred books, in which they are looking for answers to most questions of the universe. At this stage, the development of philosophy consists of three stages: analysis of the word, patristics and scholasticism, that is, the most rational interpretation of various religious ideas.
5. XIV-XVI centuries - the philosophy of the Renaissance. During this period of the development of philosophy, thinkers return to the ideas of theirancient predecessors. Alchemy, astrology and magic are actively developing, which at that time few consider to be pseudosciences. Philosophy itself is firmly associated with the new cosmology and the development of natural science.
6. XVII century - the heyday of the newest European philosophy. Many sciences are formalized separately. A method of cognition based on sensory experience is being developed. The mind manages to clear itself of uncritical perception of the surrounding reality. This becomes a key condition for reliable knowledge.
7. The English philosophy of enlightenment of the 18th century occupies a special place in the periods of development of philosophy. Enlightenment appears in England parallel to the birth of capitalism. Several schools stand out at once: Humeism, Berkeleyism, the concept of common sense of the Scottish school, deistic materialism, which implies that God ceased to take part in its fate after the creation of the world.
8. The Age of Enlightenment in France. At this time, the formation and development of philosophy began, during which the ideas that became the ideological basis of the future Great French Revolution came to the fore. The two main slogans of this period were progress and reason, and its representatives were Montesquieu, Voltaire, Holbach, Diderot, La Mettrie, Helvetius, Rousseau.
9. German classical philosophy makes it possible to analyze the mind in cognition, to achieve freedom. In the view of Fichte, Kant, Feuerbach, Hegel, Schelling, knowledge turns into an active and independent creative process.
10. In the 40s of the XIX century, the formation and development of philosophy in the directionhistorical and dialectical materialism. Its founders are Marx and Engels. Their main merit lies in the discovery of the unconscious motivation of human actions, which is due to material and economic factors. In this situation, social processes are driven by economic necessity, and the struggle between classes is due to the desire to own specific material goods.
11. In the second half of the 19th century, non-classical philosophy develops. It manifests itself in two extreme orientations: the critical one manifests itself in nihilism in relation to classical philosophy (bright representatives are Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Bergson, Schopenhauer), and the traditionalist one promotes a return to the classical heritage. In particular, we are talking about neo-Kantianism, neo-Hegelianism, neo-Thomism.
12. In the process of development of the philosophy of modern times, value coloring and anthropologism become vivid manifestations. The main question that worries them is how to give meaning to human existence. They are in favor of moving away from rationalism, questioning the slogan of the victory of reason over the inertia of nature and the imperfection of the society around them.

In this form, one can imagine the historical development of philosophy.

Development

One of the first concepts that philosophers became interested in was development. The modern idea of it was preceded by two ideas of development in philosophy. One of them was Platonic, which defined this concept as a deployment that allows you to manifest the possibilities inherent in the embryo from the very beginning,proceeding from the implicit existence to the explicit one. The second idea was the mechanical concept of development as a quantitative increase and improvement of everything that exists.

Already in the idea of the social development of philosophy, Heraclitus initially formulated a position in which he meant that everything simultaneously exists and does not exist, since everything is constantly changing, is in a continuous process of disappearance and emergence.

To the same section can be attributed the ideas of the development of a risky adventure of the mind, which Kant expounded in the 18th century. Many areas were simply impossible to imagine as developing. These include organic nature, the heavenly world. Kant applied this idea to explain the origin of the solar system.

One of the main problems of the methodology of history and philosophy is historical development. It must be distinguished from the teleological idea of progress, as well as from the natural scientific concept of evolution.

The philosophy of human development has become one of the central themes.

Directions

As soon as a civilized person learned to be aware of himself in the world around him, he immediately had a need to theoretically determine the system of relations between the universe and man. In this regard, in the history of this science, there are several main directions in the development of philosophy. The two main ones are materialism and idealism. There are also several different movements and schools.

At the heart of such a direction in the development of philosophy as materialism lies the materialStart. This includes air, nature, fire, water, aleuron, atom, directly matter. In this regard, a person is understood as a product of matter, which develops as naturally as possible. It is attributive and substantial, has a unique consciousness of its own. It is based not on spiritual, but on material phenomena. At the same time, the existence of a person determines his consciousness, and the way of life directly affects his thinking.

Fuerbach, Heraclitus, Democritus, Hobbes, Bacon, Engels, Diderot are considered bright representatives of this trend.

Idealism is based on a spiritual principle. It includes God, an idea, a spirit, a certain world will. Idealists, among whom it is worth highlighting Kant, Hume, Fichte, Berkeley, Berdyaev, Solovyov, Florensky, define a person as a product of a spiritual principle, and not an objectively existing world. The entire objective world in this case is considered to be produced from the objective or subjective. Consciousness is definitely aware of being, and the way of life is determined by human thinking.

Philosophical currents

Now let's analyze the largest and most popular of the existing philosophical currents. Ribot, Descartes, Lipps, Wundt are dualists. This is a stable philosophical trend, which is based on two independent principles - both material and spiritual. It is believed that they exist in parallel, simultaneously and at the same time independently of each other. The spirit does not depend on the body and vice versa, the brain is not considered a substratum of consciousness, and the psyche does not depend on the nervous processes in the brain.

The basic principle of dialectics is that in man and the universe everything develops according to the laws of interaction of opposites, with the transition from qualitative to quantitative changes, with a progressive movement from lower to higher. In dialectics, the idealistic approach (its representatives Hegel and Plato), as well as the materialistic approach (Marx and Heraclitus) are singled out.

The meaning of the metaphysical flow lies in the fact that both in man and in the universe everything is either stable, static and constant, or everything is constantly changing and flowing. Feuerbach, Holbach, Hobbes adhered to this view of the surrounding reality.

Eclecticists assumed that in man and the universe there is something changeable and constant, but there is something absolute and relative. Therefore, it is simply impossible to say anything definite about the state of an object. James and Potamon thought so.

Gnostics recognized the possibility of knowing the objective world, as well as the ability of human consciousness to adequately reflect the world around him. These included Democritus, Plato, Diderot, Bacon, Marx, Hegel.

The agnostics Kant, Hume, Mach denied the possibility of man knowing the world. They even questioned the very possibility of adequately reflecting the world in human consciousness, as well as knowing the world as a whole or its causes.

Skeptics Hume and Sextus Empiricus argued that there is no unambiguous answer to the question of the knowability of the world, since there are unknown and known phenomena, many of them can be mysterious and enigmatic, there are also world riddles that a person simply cannotable to understand. Philosophers belonging to this group constantly doubted everything.

The monists Plato, Marx, Hegel and Feuerbach gave an explanation to the whole world around us solely on the basis of a single ideal or material principle. Their entire system of philosophy was built on a single common foundation.

The positivists Mach, Comte, Schlick, Avenarius, Carnap, Reichenbach, Moore, Wittgenstein, Russell defined empirio-criticism, positivism and neo-positivism as a whole era that reflected ideas that meant everything positive, genuine, that which can be obtained in in the course of synthetic unification of the results of particular sciences. At the same time, they considered philosophy itself as a special science capable of claiming independent studies of reality.

The phenomenologists Landgrebe, Husserl, Scheller, Fink and Merleau-Ponty took a subjectively idealistic position in the "man-universe" system. They built their philosophical system on the intentionality of consciousness, that is, its focus on the object.

Existentialists Marcel, Jaspers, Sartre, Heidegger, Camus and Berdyaev gave a dual assessment of the "man-universe" system. They defined it from an atheistic and religious point of view. Ultimately, they agreed that the comprehension of being is an undivided integrity of the object and the subject. Being in this sense is presented as a direct existence given to humanity, that is, an existence, the final point of reference of which is death. The time allotted for lifeman, determined by his fate, is associated with the essence of existence, that is, death and birth, despair and fate, repentance and action.

The Hermeneutics Schlegel, Dilthey, Heidegger, Schleiermacher and Gadamer had a special vision of the relationship between man and the universe. In hermeneutics, in their opinion, was the foundation of all sciences about the philosophical aspect of nature, spirit, the historicity of man and historical knowledge. Anyone who has devoted himself to hermeneutics has been able to give the most transparent description of the situation if he avoids narrowness and arbitrariness, as well as the unconscious mental habits that follow from it. If a person is looking not for self-affirmation, but for understanding the other, then he is ready to admit his own mistakes arising from unconfirmed assumptions and expectations.

Personalists represented German, Russian, American and French systems of philosophical views. In their system there was a priority in the philosophical understanding of reality by man. Particular attention was paid to the personality in its very specific manifestations - actions and judgments. The person, the personality itself in this case was the basic ontological category. The main manifestation of her being was volitional activity and activity, which were combined with the continuity of existence. The origins of personality were rooted not in itself, but in the infinite and single divine principle. This philosophical system was developed by Kozlov, Berdyaev, Jacobi, Shestov, Mounier, Scheler, Landsberg, Rougemont.

Structuralists perceived man and the universe in their own way. In particular, their perception of reality wasrevealing the totality of relations between the elements of a single whole, which are able to maintain their stability in any situation. They considered the science of man to be completely impossible, the exception being complete abstraction from consciousness.

Domestic school

Researchers have always emphasized that an important feature of the emergence and development of Russian philosophy has always been due to a list of cultural and historical factors.

Another important source of it was Orthodoxy, which formed the most important spiritual ties with the worldview systems of the rest of the world, at the same time, it allowed to show the specifics of the national mentality in comparison with the East and Western Europe.

In the formation and development of Russian philosophy, a large role belongs to the moral and ideological foundations of the ancient Russian peoples, which were expressed in the early epic monuments of the Slavs and mythological traditions.

Features

Among its features, it was emphasized that the issues of knowledge, as a rule, were relegated to the background. At the same time, ontologism was characteristic of Russian philosophy.

Another important feature of her is anthropocentrism, since most of the issues that she was called upon to solve were considered through the prism of the problems of a particular person. The researcher of the Russian philosophical school, Vasily Vasilyevich Zenkovsky, noted that this feature manifested itself in the corresponding moral attitude, which was observed and reproduced by almost all Russian thinkers.

Sother features of philosophy are also connected with anthropologism. Among them, it is worth highlighting the tendency to focus on the ethical side of the issues being addressed. Zenkovsky himself calls this panmoralism. Many researchers focus on unchanging social problems, calling Russian philosophy historiosophical in this regard.

Stages of development

Most researchers believe that domestic philosophy originated in the middle of the first millennium AD. As a rule, they start counting from the formation of religious pagan systems and the mythology of the Slavic peoples of that period.

Another approach connects the emergence of philosophical thought in Russia with the establishment of Christianity, some find reason to count the beginning of the Russian history of philosophy with the strengthening of the Moscow principality, when it became the main cultural and political center of the country.

The first stage in the development of Russian philosophical thought continued until the second half of the 18th century. At this time, the birth and development of the domestic philosophical worldview took place. Among its representatives are Sergius of Radonezh, Hilarion, Joseph Volotsky, Nil Sorsky, Philotheus.

The second stage in the formation and development of Russian philosophy took place in the 18th-19th centuries. It was then that Russian enlightenment appeared, its representatives Lomonosov, Novikov, Radishchev, Feofan Prokopovich.

Grigory Savvich Skovoroda formulated being, consisting of three worlds, to which he attributed: man (microcosm), the Universe (macrocosm) anda world of symbolic reality that held them together.

Finally, the ideas of the Decembrists, in particular, Muravyov-Apostol, Pestel, contributed to the development of Russian philosophy.

Modern period

The development of modern philosophy in Russia actually continues from the second half of the nineteenth century. In the beginning, everything developed in two opposing directions. First, there was a confrontation between the Slavophiles and the Westernizers. Some believed that the country had its own unique development path, while the latter were in favor of the country adopting foreign experience on the path of progress. Among the prominent representatives of the Slavophiles, one must remember Aksakov, Khomyakov, Kireevsky, Samarin, and among the Westerners - Stankevich, Granovsky, Herzen, Kavelin, Chaadaev.

Then the materialistic direction appeared. It highlighted the anthropological materialism of Chernyshevsky, the positivism of Lavrov, the natural-science materialism of Mechnikov and Mendeleev, the anarchism of Kropotkin and Bakunin, the Marxism of Lenin, Plekhanov, Bogdanov.

In fact, they were opposed by representatives of the idealistic direction, to which Solovyov, Fedorov, Berdyaev, Bulgakov considered themselves.

In conclusion of the topic, it should certainly be noted that Russian philosophy has always been distinguished by a variety of currents, directions and views, which often completely contradicted each other. But only in their totality do they today reflect the depth, complexity and originality of the ideas of the great Russian thinkers.