Problems of philosophy. Why do we need philosophy

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:43

"If you can't change the world, change your attitude towards this world," said Lucius Annaeus Seneca.

Unfortunately, in the modern world there is an opinion that philosophy is a second-class science, divorced from practice and life in general. This sad fact suggests that the development of philosophy requires its popularization. After all, philosophy is not abstract reasoning, not far from real life, not a mixture of various concepts expressed in abstruse phrases. The tasks of philosophy are, first of all, the transmission of information about the world at a certain point in time and the display of a person's attitude to the world around him.

The concept of philosophy

The philosophy of each era, as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said, is contained in the minds of each individual who fixed this era in his thinking, who managed to bring out the main trends of his era and present them to the public. Philosophy is always in fashion, because it reflects a modern view of people's lives. We always philosophize when we ask questions about the universe, our purpose, and so on. As Viktor Frankl wrote in his book "Man's Search for Meaning", a person is always in search of his own "I", his meaning of life, becausethe meaning of life is not something that can be conveyed like chewed gum. Having swallowed such information, you can remain without your own meaning of life. This, of course, is the work of everyone on themselves - the search for that very cherished meaning, because without it our life is not possible.

Why do we need philosophy?

In everyday life, having taken care of the problem of interpersonal relationships and self-knowledge, we come to the understanding that the tasks of philosophy are realized on our way every day. As Jean-Paul Sartre said, “the other person is always hell for me, because he evaluates me in a way that suits him.” In contrast to his pessimistic view, Erich Fromm suggested that only in relationships with others do we know what our "I" is in reality, and this is the greatest blessing.

Understanding

Very important for us is self-determination and understanding. Understanding not only yourself, but also other people. But “how can the heart express itself, how can another understand you?”. Even the ancient philosophy of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle says that only in the dialogue of two thinking people striving for the search for truth can some new knowledge be born. From the theories of modernity, one can cite as an example the "theory of idols" by Francis Bacon, who speaks quite extensively on the topic of idols, that is, prejudices that dominate our consciousness, which prevent us from developing, being ourselves.

Death theme

A taboo topic that stirs the hearts of many andremains the most mysterious, from ancient times to our present. Even Plato said that human life is a process of dying. In modern dialectics, one can find such a statement that the day of our birth is already the day of our death. Every awakening, action, breath brings us closer to the inevitable end. A person cannot be separated from philosophy, because it is philosophy that builds a person, it is impossible to conceive a person outside this system.

Problems and methods of philosophy: basic approaches

There are two approaches to understanding philosophy in modern society. According to the first approach, philosophy is an elitist discipline that should be taught only in the faculties of philosophy, which build the elite of an intellectual society, which professionally and scrupulously establish scientific philosophical research and the method of teaching philosophy. Adherents of this approach consider it impossible to independently study philosophy through literature and personal empirical experience. This approach involves the use of primary sources in the language of the authors who write them. Thus, for all other people belonging to some narrow specialization such as mathematics, jurisprudence, etc., it becomes unclear why philosophy is needed, because this knowledge is practically inaccessible to them. Philosophy, according to this approach, only burdens the worldview of representatives of these speci alties. Therefore, she should be excluded from their program.

The second approach tells us what a person needsto experience emotions, strong feelings, in order not to lose the feeling that we are alive, we are not robots, that we need to experience the whole gamut of emotions throughout our lives and, of course, think. And here, of course, philosophy is most welcome. No other science will teach a person to think, and at the same time think independently, will not help a person navigate in the boundless sea of those concepts and views that modern life generously abounds. Only she is able to discover the inner core of a person, teach him to make an independent choice and not be a victim of manipulation.

It is necessary, it is necessary to study philosophy for people of all speci alties, because only through philosophy can one find one's true "I" and remain oneself. It follows from this that in the teaching of philosophy it is necessary to avoid difficult-to-understand categorical turns, terms and definitions for other speci alties. Which brings us to the main idea of popularizing philosophy in society, which would significantly reduce its mentoring and instructive tone. After all, as Albert Einstein said, any theory passes only one test for viability - it must be understood by a child. All meaning, Einstein said, is lost if the kids don't understand your idea.

One of the tasks of philosophy is to explain complex things in simple terms. The ideas of philosophy should not remain a dry abstraction, a completely unnecessary theory that can be forgotten after a course of lectures.

Functions

"Philosophy is nothing but the logical clarification of thoughts," writesAustro-English philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in his largest and lifetime published work "Tractatus Logico-Philosophic". The main idea of philosophy is to cleanse the mind of all pretense. Nikola Tesla, radio engineer and great inventor of the 20th century, said that in order to think clearly, you need to have common sense. This is one of the most important philosophical functions - to bring clarity to our consciousness. That is, this function can still be called critical - a person learns to think critically, and before accepting someone else's position, he must check its reliability, expediency.

The second function of philosophy is historical and ideological, it always belongs to some period of time. This function helps a person to form one or another type of worldview, thereby creating a different "I" from others, offering a whole bunch of philosophical currents.

The next one is methodological, which considers the reason why the author of the concept comes to it. Philosophy cannot be memorized, it only needs to be understood.

Another function of philosophy is epistemological or cognitive. Philosophy is the relation of man to this world. It allows you to reveal unusual interesting things that have not yet been verified by any experience due to the lack of scientific knowledge up to a certain period. It has repeatedly happened that ideas outstripped development. Take, for example, the same Immanuel Kant, whose quotes are known to many. His concept that the universe was formed from a gaseous nebula, the concept is completelyspeculative, after 40 years it was confirmed conclusively and lasted for 150 years.

It is worth remembering Nicolaus Copernicus, the Polish philosopher and astronomer, who doubted what he saw. He managed to abandon the obvious - from the Ptolemaic system, in which the Sun revolved around the Earth, which was the motionless center of the universe. It was through his doubt that he brought about the great Copernican revolution. The history of philosophy is rich in such events. So far from practice, reasoning can become a classic of science.

The prognostic function of philosophy is also important - outside the forecast it is impossible today to build any more or less scientific knowledge, that is, in any work, research, we must initially predict the future. This is what philosophy is all about.

For centuries, people have always wondered about the future arrangement of human life, philosophy and society have always gone hand in hand, because the most important thing in a person's life is to realize himself creatively and socially. Philosophy is the quintessence of those questions that from generation to generation people ask themselves and others, a set of immortal questions that really arise in any person.

The founder of German classical philosophy, Immanuel Kant, whose quotes abound on social media, asked the very first important question - "What can I know?", Anticipating the question "What things people are most likely to say, what should remain in the field of view of science, and what things should be deprived of attentionscience, what things will always be a mystery?". Kant wanted to outline the boundaries of human knowledge: what is subject to people for knowledge, and what is not given to know. And the third Kantian question - "What should I do?". This is already a practical application of the knowledge gained earlier, direct experience, a reality created by each of us.

Kant's next question is "What can I hope for?". This question touches upon such philosophical problems as the freedom of the soul, its immortality or mortality. The philosopher says that such questions go rather into the sphere of morality and religion, because it is not possible to prove them. And even after years of teaching philosophical anthropology, the most difficult and insoluble question for Kant is the following: “What is a person?”

According to his views, people are the biggest mysteries of the universe. He said: "Only two things strike me - this is the starry sky above my head and the moral laws within me." Why are humans such amazing creatures? Because they belong simultaneously to two worlds - the physical (objective), the world of necessity with its absolutely specific laws, which cannot be circumvented (the law of gravity, the law of conservation of energy), and the world that Kant sometimes calls intelligible (the world of the inner "I", the inner state, in which we are all absolutely free, do not depend on anything and decide our own destiny).

Kantian questions, no doubt, have replenished the treasury of world philosophy. They remain relevant to this day - society and philosophyare inextricably in contact with each other, gradually creating new amazing worlds.

Subject, tasks and functions of philosophy

The very word "philosophy" means "love of wisdom". If you disassemble it, you can see two ancient Greek roots: filia (love), sufia (wisdom), which literally also means “wisdom”. Philosophy originated in the era of ancient Greece, and this term was coined by the poet, philosopher, mathematician Pythagoras, who went down in history with his original teaching. Ancient Greece shows us a completely unique experience: we can observe a departure from mythological thinking. We can observe how people begin to think independently, how they try to disagree with what they see in their lives here and now, do not concentrate their thinking on the philosophical and religious explanation of the universe, but try to be based on their own experience and intellect.

Now there are areas of modern philosophy like neotomy, analytical, integral, etc. They offer us the latest ways to transform information coming from outside. For example, the tasks set by the philosophy of neo-Thomism are to show the duality of being, that everything is dual, but the material world is lost in the grandeur of the triumph of the spiritual world. Yes, the world is material, but this matter is considered only a small fraction of the manifested spiritual world, where God is tested “for strength”. Like Thomas the unbeliever, neo-Thomists crave the material manifestation of the supernatural, which does not seem to them a mutually exclusive and paradoxical phenomenon.

Sections

Considering the main eras of philosophy, it can be noted that in ancient Greece, philosophy became the queen of sciences, which is completely justified, because, like a mother, she takes absolutely all sciences under her wing. Aristotle, being primarily a philosopher, in his famous four-volume collection of works described the tasks of philosophy and all the key sciences that existed at that time. All this makes up an incredible synthesis of ancient knowledge.

Over time, other disciplines spun off from philosophy and numerous branches of philosophical currents appeared. By itself, regardless of other sciences (law, psychology, mathematics, etc.), philosophy includes many of its own sections and disciplines that raise entire layers of philosophical problems that concern all of humanity as a whole.

The main sections of philosophy include ontology (the doctrine of being - such questions are raised as: the problem of substance, the problem of the substratum, the problem of being, matter, movement, space), epistemology (the doctrine of knowledge - the sources of knowledge, criteria are considered truths, concepts that reveal different facets of human knowledge).

The third section is philosophical anthropology, which studies a person in the unity of his socio-cultural and spiritual manifestations, where such questions and problems are considered: the meaning of life, loneliness, love, fate, "I" with a capital letter and many others.

The next section is social philosophy, which considers the problems of the relationship between the individual and society, the problems of power, the problem ofmanipulation of the human mind. This includes social contract theories.

Philosophy of history. A section that considers the tasks, the meaning of history, its movement, its purpose, pronouncing the main attitude to history, regressive history, progressive history.

There are a number of other sections: aesthetics, ethics, axiology (the doctrine of values), the history of philosophy and some others. In fact, the history of philosophy shows a rather thorny path of development of philosophical ideas, because philosophers were not always elevated to a pedestal, sometimes they were considered outcasts, sometimes they were sentenced to death, sometimes they were isolated from society, they were not allowed to spread ideas, which only shows us the significance of the ideas for which they fought. Of course, there were not so many such people who defended their position to their deathbed, because philosophers can change their attitude and worldview during their life.

At the moment, the relationship of philosophy to science is ambiguous. Quite controversial is the fact that philosophy has every reason to be called a science. And this was formed due to the fact that in the middle of the 19th century, one of the founders of Marxism, Friedrich Engels, formulated one of the most common concepts of philosophy. According to Engels, philosophy is the science of the most general laws of the development of thinking, the laws of nature and society. Thus, this status of philosophy as a science was not questioned for a long time. But over time, a new perception of philosophy has appeared, which already imposes a certain obligation onour contemporaries do not call philosophy a science.

The relationship of philosophy with science

Common for philosophy and science is the categorical apparatus, that is, key concepts such as substance, substratum, space, time, matter, movement. These fundamental cornerstone terms are at the disposal of both science and philosophy, that is, both of them operate with them in different contexts, facets. Another feature that characterizes the commonality of both philosophy and science is that such a phenomenon as truth is considered as an absolute cumulative total value in itself. That is, truth is not seen as a means to discover other knowledge. Philosophy and science elevate truth to incredible heights, making it the highest value as such.

One more point that makes philosophy related to science is theoretical knowledge. This means that formulas in mathematics and concepts in philosophy (good, evil, justice) cannot be found in our concrete empirical world. These speculative reflections put science and philosophy on the same level. As Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the Stoic Roman philosopher and teacher of Emperor Nero, said, it is much more useful to learn a few wise rules that can always serve you than to learn a lot of useful things that are useless to you.

Differences between philosophy and science

The essential difference is the strict factology inherent in the scientific approach. Any scientific research is guided by a strict foundation of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed and proven. Science, unlike philosophy,not unfounded, but evidence. Philosophical statements are very difficult to prove or disprove. No one has yet been able to invent a formula for happiness or an ideal person. The fundamental difference in these areas also lies in the philosophical pluralism of opinions at that time, as in science there were three milestones around which the general idea of science was twisted: Euclid's system, Newton's system, Einstein's system.

The tasks, methods and goals of philosophy, summarized in this article, show us that philosophy is filled with various currents, opinions, often contradicting each other. The third distinguishing feature is that science is interested in the objective world in itself, as it is, therefore there was an opinion that science is inhuman in the truest sense of the word (excludes a person, his emotions, addictions, etc. from the scope of his analysis). Philosophy is not an exact science, it is the doctrine of general fundamental principles, thinking and reality.