Historically, the range of questions that philosophy was interested in has changed: at one time or another in its history, new problems have come to the fore; those that have hitherto mainly interested philosophers have receded into the background. With the accumulation of human ideas about the world and man, some questions "moved" from philosophy to the framework of the emerging sciences - mathematics, mechanics, physics, chemistry, etc.
Most early period ancient philosophy (VII - VI centuries BC) was marked by an almost exclusive interest in the problems of the world order in general. Philosophy, dealing mainly with the world as a whole, the cosmos, is called cosmocentric. The very first philosophical school - Miletus - united a number of thinkers who considered it their task to find the "primary substance" - that from which all things arise and what they turn into when they cease to exist. Philosophy began to be interested in the problem of man systematically and in depth only from the 5th century. BC e. Such a philosophy, which believes that the main topic of philosophical reflection should not be the world as a whole, the cosmos, but man and his soul, the meaning and mode of his existence, is called anthropocentric. Beginning with Socrates and his predecessors, the Sophists, philosophy acquires an anthropocentric character. Questions about the world as a whole are for some time relegated to the background, but they do not cease to interest philosophers.
A few centuries later, at the beginning of the early Middle Ages, in connection with the spread of Christian ideology, a new turn takes place. Interest in man and the world is painted in new colors. The Christian consciousness sees the world and man only as creations of God, therefore, as something that can be understood not in itself, but in its relation to the creator. On the long time god becomes for the philosopher that which requires special, preferred attention. Philosophy, in the center of interests of which is God (Greek - teos), is called theocentric.
Changes in social material and spiritual life led over time to a change in the nature of philosophy. During the Renaissance (XIII-XVI centuries), a person, an individual, begins to play a more active, independent role in various fields of activity. Without denying the role of God as the creator of the world and man, the ideologists of the Renaissance see man as a co-creator, whose purpose is to rise to a higher level, to take part in the creation of a beautiful individuality together with God. The revival of interest in man, his existence and purpose testifies to the revival of the anthropocentric nature of philosophy.
In modern times (XVII-XVIII centuries), in connection with the development of a new formation - bourgeois society - there are significant changes in production that require intensive acquisition of knowledge. This explains the coming to the fore of questions of knowledge of the world, things, processes occurring in nature. One after another, new sciences arise and traditional sciences develop: celestial and terrestrial mechanics, hydraulics, thermodynamics, optics, chemistry, etc. Philosophers reflect on what knowledge is, in what ways it can be obtained, how knowledge is tested for truth, etc. All this refers to the philosophical discipline called epistemology, which in this period acquires a prominent place among the philosophical sciences. The character of philosophy changes again; it becomes gnoseocentric.
New time is the time of creation of grandiose philosophical systems covering the most diverse areas: nature, society, politics and law, morality and art, consciousness and knowledge, etc. In this respect, the works of representatives of classical German philosophy are most indicative.
Turn XIX- XX centuries. - a time of crisis in philosophy, when some of its representatives (positivists) spoke about the decline of the era of philosophy as a type of human activity and its displacement by positive science: science is philosophy itself; it also goes into the past, like mythology and religion
No matter how the subject of philosophy changes in connection with the changes taking place in social life and in our knowledge of the world and man, within the framework of the subject of philosophy there has always remained the question of the relationship between man and the world, being and consciousness, thinking and reality. For this reason, many philosophers considered this question to be the main question of philosophy.
Related information:
- AFTER-POSTMODERNISM - a modern (late) version of the development of postmodern philosophy - in contrast to the postmodern classics of deconstructivism 1 page
To understand the subject "philosophy of science" as academic discipline and the section of philosophical knowledge, it is necessary to answer the question, what is science. This issue is considered in detail in Chapter 2 of the first section, so here we will restrict ourselves to an analysis of the definitions of science, which are many, since their content depends both on the era and on the theorist who formulated one or another of its definitions. The definition of science by R. Descartes or F. Bacon will differ from the definition of science by Nietzsche or K: Popper. In addition, there are aphoristic statements of prominent figures of mankind about what science is. As a result, some experts fix up to two hundred definitions of science, including very exotic ones: “science is nervous system of our era” (M. Gorky); “science is a drama of ideas” (A. Einstein); “science is a circle of circles” (V.I. Lenin), etc.
The classical definition of science is genetically linked to the emergence of philosophical knowledge. Science is a special kind of theoretical knowledge, more precisely, a set of theoretical knowledge of a special nature, i.e. aimed at comprehending the laws of being (society, nature, people's thinking). These laws, necessary, universal, are comprehended by the human mind and
are objective (i.e., independent of man, God, the human race) character. Such a train of thought makes it possible to immediately distinguish theoretical scientific knowledge from theoretical, but non-scientific knowledge (theological, for example), from experimental, everyday knowledge, from figurative and artistic knowledge.
Since the 16th, and especially since the 17th century, science has acquired new essential, fundamentally important features. From now on, it is not only a special kind, a type of knowledge, but also a socio-practical force of society, i.e. a force that can change society for the "better" side, allowing a person to dominate the forces of nature and the spontaneous processes in society. Science determines the technological advances in society and influences production in general. The idea is ripening, formulated later by the American philosopher, systematizer of pragmatism J. Dewey (1859-1952), that science is not only a theory, it is a form of people's practice that determines the production force.
Thinkers of the 17th-18th centuries (F. Bacon, R. Descartes, T. Hobbes, F. Voltaire, D. Diderot and others) formulated the idea of science as a value of society - the highest manifestation of the mind of mankind, which ultimately determines morality , and politics, and history, and religion. The phrases “scientific history”, “science policy” and even “scientific nutrition”, “ scientific approach towards education”, “scientific economics”, etc. Science, as the “crown of development” of the mind, softens the morals of society, eliminates cruelty, fanaticism, injustice - the French enlighteners of the 18th century believed. Ultimately, the entire society can be built solely on the principles of reason and science.
In the 19th century, the French philosopher and sociologist, the founder of positivism O. Comte (1792-1857), the German philosophers, the founders of the ideology of "scientific communism" K. Marx (1818-1883), and F. Engels (1820-1895) formulated new approaches to the definition of science. It began to be understood as an integral and essential part of production: science does not exist outside of production, and production does not exist outside of science. Marx formulates the idea of science as a "universal social
driving force." And, finally, science acts as a social institution (for details, see Section I, Chapter 8). The status role of a scientist from an educated servant (who can be both flogged and given into soldiers) is being transformed into the most valuable and important profession in society. Created special organizations of scientists (academies, scientific institutes) play a huge role in the life of society, determining the technical, economic, political, social, military activities of states. Since the middle to the end of the 19th century, science has been understood as an essential part of the social structure of society.
The subject of the philosophy of science associated with the above understanding of the essence and characteristics of science. The term "philosophy of science" was first introduced by William Ewell in 1840 (England). What's happened philosophy of science! W. Sellars (an associate of the Catholic Notre Dame University, USA) believed that "this is a philosophy that takes science seriously," since science is an integral part of human existence. According to the Russian naturalist V.I. Vernadsky (1863-1945), the philosophy of science is “a close connection between philosophy and science in the discussion of general issues of natural science” due to the fact that “in our time, science has come close to the limits of its general obligatoriness and indisputability ... has collided with the limits of its modern methodology ”, and therefore “questions of philosophy and science merged, as it was in the era of Hellenic science.” If science demands recognition for itself, then, according to G. Hegel, "it must necessarily justify itself before reason and thought." The philosophy of science is what philosophers think about science, and these “thoughts” are diametrically opposed: from recognizing the value of science to asserting the destructive influence of science on European civilization.
Modern domestic philosopher of science V. S. Stepin believes that the subject of the philosophy of science are the general laws and trends of scientific knowledge as a special activity for the production scientific knowledge taken in their historical development and considered in the historically changing socio-cultural
nominal context. But this understanding of the subject of the philosophy of science should be expanded: it includes not only the problems of scientific knowledge, but also the place of science in our civilization, its relation to ethics, politics, religion, etc. Thus, the problem of “the emergence of a layer of plebeians from science”, which, as the German philosopher and psychiatrist, one of the founders of existentialism, wrote, should also be attributed to the field of philosophy of science. K. Jaspers(1883-1969), "create empty analogies in their works, posing as researchers, cite any establishments, calculations, descriptions and declare them to be empirical science." Everyone with “reason and diligence” “considers himself capable” of science, “everyone irresponsibly dares to express his opinion, which he has forced”, and as a result, an infinite number of points of view are born that make it difficult to understand the essence of the matter.
The philosophy of science includes the following main conceptual components: natural science theories; historical and philosophical knowledge; logical, methodological and linguistic concepts; historical and scientific research.
Does science need philosophical "thoughts" about it? First of all, it should be understood that the philosophy of science is “not a matter of streets or markets”, it is “far from the affairs of people in which they invest their practical interests, and from that knowledge in which their vanity lies” (Hegel). The problems of the philosophy of science are significant for philosophers and those scientists who are trying to realize what and how They study.
Justifying the need for a philosophical understanding of science, in particular mathematics and physics, Hegel repeatedly wrote that mathematical definitions (infinity, infinitesimal, factors, degrees, etc.) find their true concept only in philosophy, and therefore it would be completely “wrong”. borrow them" for philosophy from mathematics, "in which they are taken beyond concept and often even meaninglessly". Mathematics, he believed, “gets rid of the labor of defining concepts by resorting to formulas that are not even directly
natural expression of thought. Only philosophy can establish the meaning of the concepts with which mathematicians work. Philosophers also translate the "material of physics" "into the language of the concept as something in itself a necessary whole", i.e. "material produced by physics on the basis of experience", philosophy "transforms further". "The matter of philosophy" also belongs to "the solution of the question of how we, subjects, come to objects." Difficulties regarding the nature of cognition, Hegel believed, are that, on the one hand, mastering objects in cognition with the help of thought, we “turn them into something universal; things are really single, and the lion does not exist at all. We turn them into something subjective, into something produced by us, peculiar to us as human beings, for the objects of nature are not representations or thoughts. On the other hand, "we assume that the objects of nature as objects exist freely and independently." These contradictory attitudes of consciousness suggest the need to explain the very possibility of knowing the objects of the external world, which is possible only in philosophy. But the philosophical way of comprehending these problems, Hegel argued, "is not a matter of arbitrariness, a capricious desire to walk for a change once on the head, after having walked for a long time, or once to see one's everyday face painted." Philosophy "takes a further step because the mode of action with the concept used in physics is unsatisfactory." Hegel’s idea that only philosophy can clarify the meaning of the concepts used by science, “see” the movement of scientific thought in the historical change in the conceptual and categorical apparatus, was supported by V.I. Vernadsky: “Since the analysis of basic scientific concepts is done by philosophical work, the naturalist can and should (of course, being critical) use it for his conclusions. He has no time to get it himself.” He believed that in the history of scientific thought, no one takes into account the significance of the conceptual and categorical apparatus of science "and there is no history of its creation."
The need for a philosophy of science was also recognized by one of the greatest thinkers of our time, the German philosopher M. Heidegger(1889-1976). He justified this need by that science can say nothing about itself by its scientific means, cannot, for example, reasonably answer the main question: “what does it mean to know?”. This is explained by the fact that science “gives the first and last word only and exclusively to the object itself, to the things themselves”, scientific research is directed outward, to the object, and only in this direction remains scientific. Therefore, for example, the question "how is science possible?" cannot be solved within the framework of science itself and its means of cognition.
The fundamental difference between the questions that philosophers and scientists study, the German American philosopher and logician R. Carnap(4891-1970) illustrates this: questions like “how did lunar craters form?”, “Are there galaxies built from antimatter?” astronomers and physicists decide; questions about how scientists build concepts, what are the logical and epistemological properties of this construction, are solved by philosophers of science. In other words, if the question "is not about the nature of the world, but about the analysis of the fundamental concepts of science," then this is a question for the philosophy of science.
All outstanding physicists of the 20th century showed interest in the philosophical aspects of science: N. Bohr, M. Born, W. Heisenberg, M. Planck, A. Einstein and others. much more than physicists of previous generations had to do. They are forced to do this by the difficulties of their own science; ... the scientist must try to fully understand to what extent the concepts he uses are justified and necessary. According to the French philosopher and historian of science A. Koire(1882-1964), “without a doubt, it was philosophical reflections that inspired Einstein in his work, so that one can say about him, like about Newton, that he is as much a philosopher as he is a physicist. It is quite clear that in
new to his resolute and even passionate denial of absolute space, absolute time and absolute movement ... lies a certain metaphysical principle. Austrian physicist and philosopher, representative of neopositivism F. Frank(1884-1966) wrote that "anyone who wants to achieve a satisfactory understanding of the science of the 20th century must become well accustomed to philosophical thought."
The beginning of the philosophy of science is conditional. The origins of this discipline can be sought in the natural philosophy of R. Descartes, P. Gassendi, in the works of F. Bacon "The New Organon" and "The Great Restoration of the Sciences" (the first half of the 17th century), in the philosophy of I. Kant (1724-1804), who put in his main work, The Critique of Pure Reason (1788), questions about how science is possible, what are the limits of science, how science based on reason and faith are connected with its non-rational postulates, whether philosophy is a science and what philosophy should do in science ? Omitting the course of I. Kant's reasoning (Kant's teaching is expounded in textbooks on the history of philosophy), let us consider their conclusions. Outside the sphere of science are the problems of religion, the existence of God, life after death, religious dogmas, the origin and essence of the human soul, human freedom. Scientific knowledge has limits beyond which the realm of faith opens. The visible limit of scientific knowledge is the provisions that can be proved and refuted with the same logical persuasiveness by means of reason.
From the second half of XIX centuries, the problems of the structure, foundations and functions of scientific knowledge become the main ones in philosophy. Appears and is established in the scientific thesaurus the concept of a specific unit of scientific knowledge- scientific theory. At the same time, from the problems of sensory experience, which were considered by almost all philosophers of the 16th-18th centuries, problems specific to the philosophy of science stand out. empirical knowledge and related concepts visualization, analogy. Other specific problems of the philosophy of science are also being formed, such as "scientific law", "mathematics" etc.
The disciplinary philosophy of science took shape in the second half of the 19th century.(G. Helmholtz, E. Mach, C. Pierce, etc.). A number of circumstances contributed to this: (1) by that time, science had taken shape as an important and independent sphere of public life, reinforcing its significance with the development of applied developments and research; (2) mathematicians (French O. Cauchy and Czech B. Bolzano) posed the problem of logical substantiation and presentation mathematical analysis. The German philosopher, the founder of phenomenology E. Husserl (1859-1938) began to think in the same direction; (3) the crisis of the mechanistic worldview required a rethinking of the rationale for knowledge. E. Mach, G. Kirchhoff, E. Dühring, K. Pearson, G. Hertz, P. Duhem, A. Poincaré and others brought up the following questions for discussion: what is a scientific theory, what place do mechanical models and mathematical equations occupy in it how it relates to experiment, etc.; (4) the process of splitting culture into scientific and artistic-humanitarian, tragic for European civilization, began to be realized. This tragedy consisted in breeding knowledge and morality. If the ancient philosopher Parmenides was sure that the one who knows cannot but be of necessity good and just, since Truth, Goodness and Beauty are identical, then already in Kant's philosophy, science and morality were considered in different "Critiques": reason separated from morality, knowledge became above morality. This situation gave rise to serious ethical problems of science, especially at the end of the 20th century.
The institutionalization and socialization (these concepts are discussed in Section I, Chapter 8) of the philosophy of science as a scientific discipline began in the United States, where the journal Philosophy of Science began to appear even before the Second World War. In the former USSR, immediately after the war, a sector of the philosophy of natural sciences was created within the structure of the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences, later renamed the sector of philosophical questions of natural sciences. At the same time, corresponding subdivisions appear in the academic institutes of philosophy in Kiev, Minsk, and Alma-Ata.
1st stage (second half of the 19th century): psychological and inductive-logical procedures of empirical knowledge are studied.
2nd stage (the first two decades of the 20th century): the works of physicists A. Einstein and M. Planck gave rise to a crisis of classical physics: there was a need to rethink the most fundamental concepts of this science - “material body”, “particle”, “mass”, “ physical law” and others. The problems of the connection between physics and mathematics were actualized: is mathematics the structuring and meaning-forming basis of physics, or is it just a tool for physical research. Discussions on the interpretation of quantum mechanics have emerged as a special area of the philosophy of science.
Stage 3 (20-40s of the XX century): under the influence of the ideas of the Austrian philosopher L. Wittgenstein (1889-1951), classical neopositivism creates programs for analyzing the language of science, forms of judgments and types of logic that are used in it.
The subject of philosophy is the UNIVERSAL in the system "world - man". The specificity of the subject of philosophy lies in the fact that it is fundamentally not localized, as, for example, in the special sciences. The main feature of philosophy in terms of subject matter is the spiritual reproduction of the world as a holistic formation, based on what has been developed within the framework of other forms of social consciousness. The subject and structure of philosophy differs from the subject and structure of the private sciences that study empirical reality in that it represents the relationship of man to the world. Philosophy does not study the world in itself, not the objects themselves, but the attitude of man towards them. There is no philosophy where there are no human goals, no human presence.
What did those who are called philosophers think about and continue to think about? The range of philosophical problems has changed with the development of human culture, knowledge and practice.
The specificity of the problematic field of philosophy is determined by its desire to develop a holistic and generalized knowledge about the world and a person's place in it by rational-conceptual means. Therefore, four worldview problems can be identified as the main ones:
1. The problem of the universe, the world around, within which philosophy answers questions about what the world is in which we live, how it arose, what is the fundamental principle of the world, is the world finite or infinite, single or multiple, what are its past, the future, etc. Based on various sciences, synthesizing knowledge from different areas, philosophy reveals the essential principles of the world structure.
2. The problem of man, the meaning of human existence in the world, which is associated with the understanding of a complex of worldview questions about fundamental differences of human existence from other types of being, about the meaning of human life, about his freedom - these and many other questions constitute the content field of the problem of man in philosophy.
3. The problem of the relationship between man and the world, subjective and objective, ideal and material. With all the meaningful shades in the interpretation of the system of relations “world-man”, which prevails in, its formulation has become such that it has acquired the form of a question about the relationship to being, consciousness to matter. F. Engels called this question the fundamental question of philosophy. The main question of philosophy includes two sides: ontological and epistemological. The ontological side of the main question of philosophy is the question of the essence of the world, i.e. about what is determined by what in its existence, what depends on what; that exists as something independent, i.e. exists independently of the other (as a substance), and what is derived from this substance (material or spiritual, objective or subjective, nature or). Depending on the answer to the question of what is primary and what is secondary, philosophers are divided into materialists and idealists. There are various historical forms of materialism and two main varieties of idealism - objective and subjective.
Materialists are those philosophers who consider nature, matter, to be primary, existing independently of the spiritual, of consciousness. At the same time, consciousness (spirit) is not denied, but is understood as a property, a function of the material, i.e. consciousness is secondary to objective reality.
Idealists hold the opposite view. They believe that the world is based on a spiritual essence in various forms: Idea, World Mind,. Idealists believe that consciousness exists independently, and human consciousness is a manifestation of substance in a person.
The epistemological side of the main question of philosophy is the question of the cognizability of the world. This is a question of whether human thinking, consciousness is capable of cognizing nature, whether people can have a correct idea of the world, its patterns, whether they can, relying on these ideas, change the world around them in the direction they need. Depending on the solution of this issue, two main positions are distinguished: the position of epistemological optimism and agnosticism.
Supporters of epistemological optimism recognize the cognizability of the world, agnostics (from Greek - unknowable) - hold the opposite opinion. They believe that the question of the truth of knowledge cannot be finally resolved, and moreover, the world is fundamentally unknowable.
4. The problem of human existence in the "world of people" is associated with the solution of interpersonal, social relations. Here is a huge layer of questions related to the search for an ideal model of society, starting from the ideal state of Plato and Confucius, the city of the Sun in Campanella's "Utopia" and ending with the Marxist model of a harmonious communist society.
As part of solving a wide variety of problems of a person immersed in society, the topic of hermeneutics arose, understanding of a person by a person, understanding of texts, the dialogue of the author of a work with the reader, which are often separated by centuries, as a result of which the reader penetrates the meaning of works and “creates” his personal meanings.
The search for agreement, mutual understanding, flexibility, and communicative solutions to all that arise are becoming the leading philosophical themes in the functioning of modern philosophical thought.
None of the philosophical problems identified can be completely isolated from the other. All problems complement each other, and at the same time, in various philosophical teachings, priority is given to one or another direction, one or another philosophical topic.
It should be noted that throughout historical development Philosophy changed emphasis in solving basic philosophical problems. V modern philosophy there is a shift in emphasis to the development of individual philosophical disciplines (social philosophy, philosophy of technology, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, philosophy of culture, etc.). Today, much attention is paid to the problems of inconsistency social development in the conditions of technogenic civilization, the analysis of linguistic reality, the problem of human existence as the existence of "man-in-the-world". At the same time, no matter how the substantive accents in modern philosophy change, the constant component of philosophical problems has always been integrated around the main worldview themes: “world”, “man”, “being of a person in the world”. It is these problems or theoretical orientations of philosophical knowledge that define the contours of the subject of philosophy as a unique form of spiritual and theoretical reflection on the fundamental foundations of human culture.
We have outlined the individual contours of the problem field philosophical knowledge, which allows us to trace the dynamics and note the diversity of the subject and structure of philosophy. All this was reflected in the structure of philosophical knowledge, which includes the following sections:
- Ontology - the doctrine of being, of the fundamental principles of everything that exists, of the general principles and laws of the existence of nature, society and man.
- Epistemology - a branch of philosophical knowledge, which studies the features of the process of human cognition of the external world, the problems of the nature of the cognitive process and its capabilities, the problem of the relationship between knowledge and reality, the conditions for the reliability and truth of knowledge are revealed.
- Axiology is a philosophical discipline that studies the nature of values, their hierarchy, structure, interrelationships, as well as their place in human existence.
- Philosophical Anthropology - philosophy about man in the multidimensionality of his existence. Philosophy considers man as a special kind of being, different from all other beings. Philosophical anthropology proceeds from the fact that in addition to social characteristics generated by the peculiarity of the social environment and era, as well as biological and other natural qualities, a person contains something that can be called proper human. This means that a person and a person's life have the characteristics of a universal, applicable to any era, to human existence in various social and natural conditions regardless of their specific features.
- History of Philosophy. Considers the historical development of philosophy. She studies the philosophical heritage of thinkers of the past, as well as contemporary authors. The task of the history of philosophy also includes the comparison of various teachings, the identification of what in them can be of value for the present and the future.
- Ethics is a philosophical discipline, the object of study of which is morality. Ethics finds out the place of morality in the system of other social relations, explores its genesis, nature and internal structure. The main topics of reflection in ethical theory: what is good and evil, human freedom, happiness, justice, etc.
- Aesthetics is the doctrine of beauty (beautiful). The main subject of aesthetics thinking is the beautiful and the ugly. The aesthetic categories also include the sublime and the base, the comic, the tragic, the dramatic, and so on. Aesthetics comprehends the manifestation of the aesthetic in life and in art. It is closely connected with the philosophy of art and art history.
- Social philosophy - a section of philosophy that describes the specific features of society, its dynamics and prospects, the logic of social processes, the meaning and purpose human history, explores the problems of its driving forces.
- Logic - the science of forms, laws and methods of activity.
All sections of philosophical knowledge are closely related, although not reducible to each other.
Introduction ………………………………………………………………………..…3
1. The concept and structure of the worldview. Historical types of worldview: myth, religion, philosophy……………………………………………………..…5
2. The subject of philosophy. Historical changes in the subject of philosophy ...... 11
3. Social features philosophy…………………………………………...18
4. Philosophy and science. The specifics of philosophical knowledge……………………20
Conclusion …………………………………………………………………..….23
Introduction
Philosophy is a worldview, that is, a set of views on the world as a whole and on a person's attitude to this world. Philosophy differs from other forms of worldview in that it refers primarily to the scientific sphere of social consciousness (although not only to it), and within it there is a specific categorical apparatus, which in its development is based not on an ode to any scientific discipline, but on everything. science, to the whole unified cumulative experience of the development of mankind. The essence of philosophy is in reflection on universal problems, in the "World-Man" system. Philosophy acts in two guises: as information about the world as a whole and a person's attitude to this world, and as a set of principles of knowledge, as a general method of cognitive activity. The division of the functions of philosophy into ideological and methodological ones follows. The ratio of thinking to being, the relationship of man to the world. The problems of philosophy are universal, limiting - limiting for the existence of a person, for his general program of activity, for the entire human culture. The problems of the philosophical worldview cover the world as a whole, the life of a person as a whole, the attitude of a person to the world as a whole. There are no broader problems than worldview. The concept of matter, space, time, movement, reason, possibility, necessity, etc. - marginal. Since they are at the base of any kind of human activity. As ultimate concepts, philosophical categories and principles cannot be explained in their own terms. That is why they have historically been the ultimate, most universal foundations of a holistically connected set of diverse forms of human relations to the world. Hence the subject-object way of understanding them as the ultimate foundations of culture. The extreme breadth of philosophical problems and concepts is connected, as we see, with their fundamental nature for a general understanding of the world, life, and the relationship of man to the world. The main subject of existentialism is the existence of an individual human subject. The central problem of existentialism is the world of the human person. Existentialism does not simply “Restore” the problem of being in its rights, thereby returning to metaphysics (unlike positivism): it transforms the problem of being into the problem of the meaning of questions about being, that is, it finds the opportunity to “transfer the central gravity” of metaphysical problems from the object to the subject - since only the subject is the "Generator of meanings".
1. The concept and structure of the worldview. Historical types of worldview: myth, religion, philosophy.
outlook – it is a complex, synthetic, integral formation of social and individual consciousness. The proportional presence of various components - knowledge, beliefs, beliefs, moods, values, norms, aspirations, etc. - is essential for its characterization.
The structure of the worldview can be divided into four main components:
1) cognitive component. Based on generalized knowledge: everyday, professional, scientific, etc. It presents a universal picture of the world;
2) value-normative. Includes values, ideals, beliefs, beliefs, norms, etc. One of the main purposes of a worldview is not only to make a person rely on some social knowledge, but also to be guided by certain social regulators.
Value is a property of some object, phenomenon to satisfy the needs, desires of people. The human value system includes ideas about good and evil, happiness and unhappiness, the purpose and meaning of life. For example: life is the main value of a person; human security is also a great value, etc. A person’s value attitude to the world and to himself is formed into a certain hierarchy of values, at the top of which there are some kind of absolute values fixed in certain social ideals. The consequence of a person's stable assessment of his relations with other people are social norms: moral, religious, legal, etc., which regulate the daily life of both an individual and the whole society. Norms are the means that brings together the value-significant for a person with his practical behavior;
3) emotional-volitional component. In order for knowledge, values and norms to be realized in practical actions and actions, it is necessary to master them emotionally and volitionally, turning them into personal views, beliefs, beliefs. The formation of this attitude is carried out in the emotional-volitional component of the worldview component;
4) practical component. A worldview is not just a generalization of knowledge, values, beliefs, but a person's real readiness for a certain type of behavior in specific circumstances. Without a practical component, the worldview would be extremely abstract. Even if this worldview orients a person not to participation in life, not to an active, but to a contemplative position, it still projects, stimulates a certain type of behavior.
Based on the foregoing, one can define a worldview as a set of views, assessments, norms and attitudes that determine a person's attitude to the world and act as guidelines and regulators of his behavior.
According to the nature of formation and the way of functioning, it is possible to single out the vital-practical and theoretical levels of the worldview. The vital-practical level of outlook is deposited spontaneously and is based on common sense, everyday experience.
This level of worldview is often called life philosophy. The formation of this worldview is significantly influenced by national, religious traditions, levels of education, intellectual and spiritual culture, the nature of professional activity, etc.
The life-practical level of worldview is not distinguished by deep thoughtfulness, systematicity, or justification. It often contains internal contradictions and persistent prejudices.
These shortcomings are overcome at a different, higher level of outlook, which is theoretical in nature. Along with science, philosophy also belongs to this level of solving worldview problems. Unlike all other forms and types of worldview, philosophy claims the theoretical validity of both the content and methods of achieving generalized knowledge about activity, as well as norms, values and ideals that determine the goals, means and nature of people's activities. The philosopher is not only the creator of worldview systems. He sees his task in making the worldview an object theoretical analysis, special study.
The correlation of the vital-practical and theoretical levels of the worldview can to a certain extent be built in historical sequence. We can say that the life-practical worldview finds its generalized expression in mythology and religion. And this means that mythology and religion can be considered as the forerunners of philosophy.
Historically, the first form of worldview is mythology. It arises at the earliest stage of social development.
Then humanity in the form of myths, i.e. legends, legends, tried to answer such global questions as the origin and structure of the worldview in general, the emergence of the most important phenomena of nature, animals and people. A significant part of the mythology was cosmological myths dedicated to the structure of nature. At the same time, great attention in myths was paid to the various stages of people's lives, the secrets of birth and death, and all kinds of trials that lie in wait for a person on his life path.
A special place is occupied by myths about the achievements of people: making fire, the invention of crafts, the development of agriculture, the domestication of wild animals.
The purpose of a myth is not to give man some kind of knowledge or explanation. The myth serves to justify certain social attitudes, to sanction a certain type of belief and behavior. During the period of domination of mythological thinking, there was no need to obtain special knowledge.
Thus, myth is not the original form of knowledge, but a special kind of worldview, a specific figurative representation of natural phenomena and collective life. In myth, as the earliest form of human culture, the rudiments of knowledge, religious beliefs, moral, aesthetic and emotional assessment of the situation were combined.
Mythology played a huge role in the lives of people in the early stages of their development. Myths affirmed the system of values accepted in a given society, supported certain norms of behavior. And in this sense they were important stabilizers of social life. This does not exhaust the stabilizing role of mythology. The main significance of myths is that they established harmony between the world and man, nature and society and the individual, and thus ensured internal harmony. human life.
At an early stage of human history, mythology was not the only ideological form. Close to the mythological, although different from it, was the religious worldview, which developed from the depths of public consciousness. Like mythology, religion appeals to fantasy and feelings (these can be very high feelings - love, faith, hope, reverence for life, the universe). However, unlike myths, religion does not "mix" the earthly and the sacred, but separates them into two opposite poles. The creative almighty force - God - stands above nature and outside nature. The existence of God is experienced by man as a revelation. As a revelation, it is given to man to know that his soul is immortal, that they are waiting for him beyond the grave. immortal life and meeting with God.
Religion, religious attitude to the world did not remain unchanged. Throughout the history of mankind, they, like other cultural formations, developed, acquired diverse forms in the East and West, in different historical eras. But all of them were united by the fact that at the center of any religious worldview is the search for higher values, the true path of life. All deeds and deeds of a person and even his thoughts are evaluated, approved or condemned according to this highest, absolute criterion.
Religion is certainly closer to philosophy than mythology.
A look into eternity, a value perception of life, a search for higher goals and meanings are inherent in both forms of consciousness. However, there are also differences. Religion is a mass consciousness. Philosophy is theoretical consciousness. Religion does not require proof, rational substantiation of its provisions, it considers the truths of faith higher than the truths of reason. Philosophy is always theorizing, always the work of thought.
In relation to the philosophical worldview, pre-philosophical worldview forms both historically and logically turn out to be their necessary predecessor. Mythological consciousness was a deep consciousness, intimate relationship man and nature in the era of the tribal system. Religious consciousness (if we talk about its most valuable, humanistic side) was the first human look into eternity, the first awareness of the unity of the human race, a deep feeling of the integrity of being.
The relationship between philosophy and religion in the history of culture was not unambiguous. In the Middle Ages, when the spiritual power of religion over people was undivided, philosophy was assigned only the role of the "servant" of theology. In the 19th century the great idealist philosopher Hegel, being himself a man of moderate religious views, in the hierarchy of forms of the spirit, attributed religion and philosophy to its highest forms, but nevertheless put philosophy at the top of the pyramid, and “awarded” religion only the second place.
2. The subject of philosophy. Historical changes in the subject of philosophy.
In close connection with the change in the concept of philosophy was the evolution of ideas about its subject. In the history of philosophy, there have been three main approaches to the definition of the subject of philosophy: ancient, traditional, modern. The subject of “old antique philosophy, understood as “proto-knowledge” (it included philosophical and scientific knowledge), was the whole reality, the world as a whole. Within this “proto-knowledge”, Aristotle singled out the “first philosophy”, the subject of which was the being or the first principles. It was behind the "first philosophy" that the name of "metaphysics" was subsequently established as the doctrine of the first principles, of the universal.
The traditional understanding of the subject of philosophy is closely connected with the development of metaphysics in German classical philosophy. Its founder, I. Kant, believed that "metaphysics is the true, true philosophy, the subject of which is the universal." Understanding the subject of philosophy as universal, which is pure thought, is also characteristic of Hegel. In the future, the interpretation of the universal was different in different philosophical systems, both materialistic and idealistic directions.
In modern philosophy, the subject of philosophy is considered differently. For subjective-anthropological teachings, widespread in Western philosophy, the focus is on the problem of the individual, his consciousness, on the universal in the existence of the individual. The subject of philosophy here is the “whole man”. For ontological philosophical doctrines, the subject of philosophy is the world as a whole.
Philosophy is interested not only in one person, but in the whole world. The philosophical approach is characterized by the isolation of the general in everything particular and the study of it. Moreover, not every universal in being is the subject of philosophy, but only that which is associated with the attitude of man towards it. Therefore, the definition of the subject of philosophy through the universal in the system "world - man" seems to be quite legitimate. Philosophy acts as a system of views on the world as a whole and on the relation of man as an integral being to this integral world. Moreover, the relationship between the parties of this system is divided into the following aspects: ontological, cognitive, axiological, spiritual and practical.
The subject of philosophy is what it does, what it studies. Philosophy is primarily concerned with what is outside it, what exists outside of it. Of course, at a certain stage of development, philosophy itself can become the subject of special consideration, which belongs to the field of metaphilosophy. However, these are different aspects of philosophical research.
The definition of the main problems of philosophy that make up its content helps clarify the subject of philosophy. What is a problem? A problem in philosophy is understood as a logical form of cognition, which acts as a question that contributes to the organization of cognitive activity. In other words, the problems of philosophy are those organizational issues that philosophy solves as a specific field of knowledge. The difference between the subject of philosophy and the problems of philosophy lies primarily in the fact that the subject of philosophy is reflected in the problems of philosophy, but is not reflected completely and not immediately, but in stages in the form of questions, that is, in the problems of philosophy, its subject is always partially represented.
We can distinguish two groups of problems of philosophy, closely related, but not reducible to each other. The first includes questions related to the understanding of its subject: the world, man, the relationship between them and questions that specify them at other levels of research. To the second - questions of the emergence of philosophy and the forms of its being, the nature of philosophical knowledge and research methods, the features of the historical development of philosophy, etc.
Philosophical teachings differ from each other not only in how they solve certain questions, but also in what problems they pose. The selection of problems also characterizes the specifics of certain philosophical teachings. Such a representative of subjective idealism as I. Kant considered the main philosophical problems to be a priori, originally inherent in the human mind. The existentialist interpretation of the specifics of philosophical problems is that they are regarded as an incomprehensible mystery. Hence the specificity of philosophical knowledge is not in the answer to existing questions, but in the very method of questioning. As for positivism, its representatives, for example, O. Comte, generally reject the former metaphysics as dealing with pseudo-problems. Modern positivists believe that philosophical problems do not actually exist, that they are simply contrived questions that owe their origin to misuse of words.
All philosophical problems are not given simultaneously in any one particular era, but are formed in the course of history. The choice of certain new problems and their discussion depends on the needs of the time. Philosophical problems are initially formed on the basis of people's everyday experience, as was the case, for example, in the ancient period. In the Middle Ages, religion served as such a basis, and since modern times, science. All this led to a constant change in the range of philosophical problems, when some of them continued to function, others were transferred to the rank of scientific problems, and still others were just emerging.
In ancient philosophy, the problem of understanding the world as a whole, its origin and existence, came to the fore, and it became cosmocentric (Greek kosmos - the universe). In the Middle Ages, religious philosophy was characterized by theocentrism (Greek theos - god), according to which nature and man were considered as the creation of God. In the Renaissance, philosophy becomes anthropocentric (Greek anthropos - man) and attention is transferred to the problems of man, his morality and social problems. The formation and development of science in modern times contributes to the fact that the problem of cognition comes to the fore, scientific methods in particular, the problem of superexperiential knowledge. In modern world philosophy, for example, in postmodernism, there is a kind of decentration and the former opposition of center and periphery loses its meaning. In a decentered cultural space, there is a "polyphony" of various cultural worlds, in which their own philosophical problems play a leading role. So, if anthropological problems are actively developed in some philosophical currents, then in others philosophical problems are reduced either to ontological problems, or to the logical analysis of science, to the understanding and interpretation of texts.
Features of solving the main problems of philosophy are determined both by external, socio-cultural factors, and by internal, immanent laws of certain philosophical schools and teachings.
The main problems of philosophy run through its entire history, being universal and eternal. At the same time, their complete and final solution cannot be carried out and they arise in new historical conditions like a Phoenix bird from the ashes.
The universal problem of the philosophical worldview is the problem of the relationship "world - man". Philosophers have long sought to single out in this universal problem the main, so-called basic question of philosophy. So, for N.A. Berdyaev, the main problem is the freedom of man, his essence, nature and purpose. A. Camus, focusing on the problem of human essence, considers the main question of the meaning of life.
In Marxist philosophy, the question of the relationship between matter and consciousness is considered as the main one, where their ontological and epistemological relationship is fixed.
F. Engels, who formulated the main question of philosophy in a classical form, singles out two sides in it: 1) what is primary - spirit or nature, and 2) is the world cognizable? He believed that when solving the first side, philosophers were divided into two camps. Materialists recognize matter, nature as primary, and consider consciousness as secondary, derived from matter. Idealists believe that spirit, consciousness precede matter and create it. The following historical forms of materialism are usually distinguished: the spontaneous, naive materialism of the ancient Greeks (Heraclitus, Democritus), the metaphysical materialism of the 18th century. (La Mettrie, Diderot, Holbach, Helvetius), vulgar materialism (Buchner, Vogt, Moleschott), anthropological materialism (Feuerbach, Chernyshevsky), dialectical materialism (Marx, Engels, Lenin). There are two varieties of idealism: objective and subjective. Supporters of objective idealism (Plato, Hegel, N. Hartmann) proceed from the recognition that the basis of all things is an objective spiritual principle independent of man (world mind, absolute idea, world will). Subjective idealists consider the primary consciousness of man, the subject, which is recognized as the only reality, while reality is the result of the spiritual creativity of the subject (Berkeley, Hume, Kant).
The second side of the main question of philosophy - is the world cognizable? Most philosophers (materialists and idealists) recognize the cognizability of the world and they are called epistemological optimists. At the same time, there are philosophers who deny the cognizability of the world. They are called agnostics (Hume, Kant), and the doctrine that denies the reliability of knowledge is called agnosticism (Greek a - negation, gnosis - knowledge).
In every philosophical system, philosophical problems are concentrated around the main question, but are not exhausted by it. In modern philosophy, there are many problems that can be summarized in five groups: ontological, anthropological, axiological, epistemological, praxeological.
The specificity of philosophical problems lies primarily in their generality. There are no broader problems than ideological ones, since they are the limit for a person's being and his activity in relation to the world. The next feature of philosophical problems is their eternity, constancy for all times. This is the problem of the "world as a whole", the problem of man, the meaning of human life, etc. Philosophical problems are "eternal" because they retain their significance in every era. An important feature of philosophical problems is considered to be a specific study of the relationship between being and consciousness.
The specificity of philosophical problems does not exclude the connection with the problems of particular sciences. Comprehension of this connection contributes to the allocation of such a phenomenon as the philosophical problems of private sciences. The latter are such theoretical private scientific problems, the proposed solution of which requires a philosophical interpretation. These include, in particular, the problems of the origin of life, philosophical understanding of the phenomenon of technology, economy, law, etc.
In the course of solving many philosophical problems of science and technology, a special area of philosophical knowledge arose - the philosophy of global problems. Her area of interest includes understanding the worldview, methodological and axiological aspects of ecology, demography, the new world order, futurological forecasts, etc. In the philosophy of global problems, a synthesis of philosophical and religious values is carried out, new worldview guidelines are developed that are necessary both for the life of an individual and for humanity as a whole.
3. Social functions of philosophy.
In fact, we have already shown in part the role and significance of philosophy. This role is determined primarily by the fact that it acts as the theoretical basis of the worldview, and also by the fact that it solves the problem of the cognizability of the world, and finally, the questions of human orientation in the world of culture, in the world of spiritual values.
These are the most important tasks of philosophy, and at the same time, its functions - worldview, theoretical-cognitive and value-oriented. Among these functions lies the solution of philosophical questions of practical attitude to the world, and, accordingly, a praxeological function.
This is the basis of the functional purpose of philosophy. But the main functions themselves are specified. In particular, the cognitive one is refracted in the function of developing categories that reflect the most general connections and relations of things and constitute the conceptual basis of any development of the objective world, any thinking.
Through the system of categories and the content of philosophy as a whole, such a function as methodological is realized. The function of rational processing and systematization, the theoretical expression of the results of human experience, is closely connected with the named ones.
It should next be called critical function philosophy that performs the tasks of overcoming obsolete dogmas and views. This role of philosophy is especially clearly expressed in the works of Bacon, Descartes, Hegel, Marx. Philosophy also performs a prognostic function, implemented in building models of the future.
Finally, an essential place in the arsenal of the functions of philosophy is occupied by an integrative one, consisting in the generalization and systematization of all forms of human experience and knowledge - practical, cognitive, value. Only on the basis of such integration can the problems of harmonizing social life be successfully solved.
Considering the role of philosophy in society, one should see that this role itself is changing historically, and its “eternal problems” with the passage of time acquire a different sound than before. For example, the relationship between man and nature has always existed, but it had one meaning in the pre-machine period, another - in the era of machine production, and in the era of scientific and technological revolution - this relationship acquired the character of a global environmental problem.
The dialectical-materialist understanding of history as the most important acquisition of philosophy dramatically changed the approach to philosophical problems, revealed their interweaving in the fabric of social life, and also that the search for ways and means to solve them should be carried out not in the bosom of pure speculation, but in real life.
Summing up, we can conclude that philosophy is a socio-historical knowledge, closely related to life, constantly developing along with it.
4. Philosophy and science. Specificity of philosophical knowledge.
Philosophy has been associated with science throughout its development, although the very nature of this connection, or rather, the relationship between philosophy and science, has changed over time.
At the initial stage, philosophy was the only science and included the entire body of knowledge. So it was in philosophy ancient world and during the Middle Ages. In the future, the process of specialization and differentiation of scientific knowledge and their separation from philosophy unfolds. This process has been intensively going on since the 15th-16th centuries. And reaches the upper limit in the XVII - XVIII centuries. At this second stage, concrete scientific knowledge was predominantly empirical, experimental in nature, and philosophy made theoretical generalizations, moreover, in a purely speculative way. At the same time, positive results were often achieved, but many errors and misconceptions were also accumulated.
Finally, in the third period, the beginning of which dates back to the 19th century, science partially adopts from philosophy the theoretical generalization of its results. Philosophy can now build a universal philosophical picture of the world only together with science, on the basis of a generalization of concrete scientific knowledge.
It is necessary to emphasize once again that the types of worldview, including the philosophical one, are diverse. The latter can be both scientific and non-scientific.
The scientific philosophical outlook to a greater extent forms and represents the teachings of philosophical materialism, starting with the naive materialism of the ancients through the materialistic teachings of the 17th - 18th centuries. to dialectical materialism. An essential acquisition of materialism at this stage of its development was dialectics, which, unlike metaphysics, considers the world and the thinking that reflects it in interaction and development. Dialectics has already enriched materialism because materialism takes the world as it is, and the world develops, it is dialectical and therefore cannot be understood without dialectics.
Philosophy and science are closely related. With the development of science, as a rule, there is a progress in philosophy: with each discovery that makes an epoch in natural science, the philosophical vision of the world develops and enriches. But it is also impossible to see reverse currents from philosophy to science. Suffice it to point to the ideas of Democritus atomism, which left an indelible mark on the development of science.
Philosophy and science are born within the framework of specific types of culture, mutually influence each other, while each solving its own problems and interacting in the course of their solution.
Philosophy outlines ways to resolve contradictions at the intersections of sciences. It is also called upon to solve such a problem as understanding the most general foundations of culture in general and science in particular. Philosophy acts as a mental tool, it develops principles, categories, methods of cognition, which are actively used in specific sciences.
In philosophy, thus, the worldview and theoretical-cognitive foundations of science are worked out, its value aspects are substantiated. Is science useful or harmful? It is philosophy that helps to find the answer to this question and others like it today.
Concluding, let us dwell on one more question: philosophy and society. Philosophy is a product of its time, it is related to its problems and needs. In other words, the roots of the philosophy of any era should be seen not only in the views of philosophical predecessors, but also in the social climate of the era, in its connection with the interests of certain classes. Social interests, of course, influence the selection of material from the theoretical heritage, the philosophical orientation associated with social situations.
But all this should not be exaggerated, much less absolutized, as was done in the recent past. Moreover, it would be unacceptable simplification to evaluate philosophical positions as true or false as a mirror image of class divisions. And, of course, nothing but harm was brought to us and our philosophy by the installation: whoever is not with us is against us, whoever is not with us does not own the truth. Such an approach to the partisanship, class character of philosophy, such a vulgar interpretation of it, led to the self-isolation of our philosophy. Meanwhile, foreign philosophical thought was advancing and many of its "developments" could have enriched us.
Today, a free exchange of thoughts and opinions is necessary as a condition for the normal development of philosophical thought. Scientific philosophy must stand on the point of view of unbiased research, and the philosopher must not be an ideologue, but a man of science. Philosophy is scientific insofar as it is associated with reality through concrete scientific knowledge. Philosophy is scientific not in the sense that it solves their problems for scientists, but in that it acts as a theoretical generalization of human history, as scientific rationale present and future activities of people.
This is true for all spheres of life: for the analysis of cognitive problems, where the starting point is the study of the history of knowledge, the history of science; for the analysis of technology and technical activity - a generalization of the history of the development of technology. A similar approach is typical for philosophy and in the sphere of politics, morality, religion, etc. Philosophical analysis is thus built on the basis of a strictly scientific study of real historical connections.
Today, studies of world-historical contradictions are of particular importance - man and nature, nature and society, society and personality, the solution of human, humanitarian problems in conjunction with the problems of the fate of civilization, with the resolution of a whole range of global problems. All this requires everyone to master philosophy, philosophical competence, ideological maturity and culture.
Conclusion.
Philosophy is sometimes understood as some kind of abstract knowledge, extremely remote from reality. Everyday life. Nothing is further from the truth than such a judgment. On the contrary, it is in life that the most serious, deepest problems of philosophy originate, it is precisely here that the main field of its interests lies; everything else, down to the most abstract concepts and categories, down to the most cunning mental constructions, is ultimately nothing more than a means for comprehending life's realities in their interconnection, in all their fullness, depth and inconsistency. At the same time, it is important to keep in mind that from the point of view of scientific philosophy, understanding reality does not mean simply reconciling and agreeing with it in everything. Philosophy involves a critical attitude to reality, to what is becoming obsolete and obsolete, and at the same time - a search in the very reality, in its contradictions, and not in thinking about it, of the possibilities, means and directions for its change and development. The transformation of reality, practice, is the sphere where only philosophical problems can be resolved, where the reality and power of human thinking are revealed.
List of used literature:
1. Bobkov A.N. Modern approaches to understanding the worldview // Philosophical sciences. - 2005. - No. 3.
2. "Philosophical Dictionary of Cyril and Methodius" - disc 2005.
5. Grinenko G.V. History of Philosophy. Textbook for high schools. Vulture of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. Ed. Yurayt. M.; 2010
6. Gritsanov A. World Encyclopedia. Philosophy. AST Publishing Group. M.; 2008
Klemeniev D. History and philosophy of science. Ed. Moscow State University. M.; 2009
Klemeniev D. History and philosophy of science. Ed. Moscow State University. M.; 2009
Kirilov V.I. Chumakov A.N. Philosophy. Part 1: History of Philosophy: Textbook. Ed. Lawyer. M.; 2006
Grinenko G.V. History of Philosophy. Textbook for high schools. Vulture of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. Ed. Yurayt. M.; 2010
Gritsanov A. World Encyclopedia. Philosophy. AST Publishing Group. M.; 2008
Kirilov V.I. Chumakov A.N. Philosophy. Part 1: History of Philosophy: Textbook. Ed. Lawyer. M.; 2006
Kirilov V.I. Chumakov A.N. Philosophy. Part 1: History of Philosophy: Textbook. Ed. Lawyer. M.; 2006
The subject of philosophy. Changing the subject of philosophy in the course of historical development.
The subject of philosophy is the range of questions that it studies.
What exactly is the subject of philosophy depends on the era and the intellectual position of the thinker. The debate about what is the subject of philosophy continues. In the words of Windelband: “Only by understanding the history of the concept of philosophy, one can determine what in the future will be able to lay claim to it to a greater or lesser extent.”
Philosophy is the oldest field of knowledge. It arose in 1 thousand BC. simultaneously in China, India and Greece. The emergence of philosophy was prepared. First, the accumulation of knowledge. Secondly, dissatisfaction with the religious and mythological ideas about the world that prevail in society.
Philosophy (from the Greek “philo” - love, “sophia” - wisdom) - “love of wisdom”.
Philosophy is a set of key conclusions from the main content of culture, a certain era, that is, its quintessence (clot, result).
Philosophy is a form of social consciousness, it is the doctrine of the general principles of being and consciousness and the relationship of man to the world.
Philosophy-science, about the general laws of development of nature, society and thinking.
As a science, philosophy collects, generalizes and analyzes information in order to obtain new information. This knowledge is concentrated in the concepts of philosophical categories, general principles and laws that form an integral system.
Philosophy develops a generalized system of knowledge on the world and the place of man in it. It explores the cognitive, holistic, socio-political, moral and aesthetic relationship of man to the world.
So, the subject of philosophy is the relationship of man to the world.
Ontology is the study of being as such.
Gnoseology - theory of knowledge
Axiology - the science of values
The fundamental question of philosophy.
1. The main question in philosophy is traditionally considered the question of the relation of thinking to being, and being - to thinking (consciousness).
The importance of this issue lies in the fact that the construction of a holistic knowledge about the world around us and the place of man in it depends on its reliable resolution, and this is the main task of philosophy.
Matter and consciousness (spirit) are two inseparable and at the same time opposite characteristics of being. In this regard, there are two sides of the main question of philosophy - ontological and epistemological.
The ontological (existential) side of the main question of philosophy lies in the formulation and solution of the problem: what is primary - matter or consciousness?
The essence of the epistemological (cognitive) side of the main question: is the world cognizable or unknowable, what is primary in the process of cognition?
Depending on the ontological and epistemological aspects in philosophy, the main directions are distinguished - respectively, materialism and idealism, as well as empiricism and rationalism.
2. The ontological side of the main question of philosophy is represented by:
Materialism;
Idealism;
Dualism.
Materialism (the so-called "line of Democritus") is a direction in philosophy, whose supporters believed that matter is primary in the relationship between matter and consciousness.
Hence:
Matter really exists;
Matter exists independently of consciousness (that is, it exists independently of thinking beings and whether anyone thinks about it or not);
Matter is an independent substance - does not need its existence in anything other than itself;
Matter exists and develops according to its internal laws;
Consciousness (spirit) is a property (mode) of highly organized matter to reflect itself (matter);
Consciousness is not an independent substance existing along with matter;
Consciousness is determined by matter (being).
Such philosophers as Democritus belonged to the materialistic trend; philosophers of the Miletus school (Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes); Epicurus; Bacon; Locke; Spinoza; Diderot and other French materialists; Herzen; Chernyshevsky; Marx; Engels; Lenin.
The virtue of materialism is its reliance on science. especially on the exact and natural (physics, mathematics, chemistry, etc.), the logical provability of many positions of the materialists.
Weak side materialism - an insufficient explanation of the essence of consciousness, the presence of phenomena of the surrounding world, inexplicable from the point of view of materialists.
In materialism, a special direction stands out - vulgar materialism. Its representatives (Vocht, Moleschott) absolutize the role of matter, are overly carried away by the study of matter from the point of view of physics, mathematics and chemistry, its mechanical side, ignore consciousness itself as an entity and its ability to influence matter in response.
Materialism as the dominant trend in philosophy was widespread in democratic Greece, the Hellenistic states, England during the period of the bourgeois revolution (XVII century), France in the XVIII century, the USSR and socialist countries in the XX century.
Idealism ("Plato's line") is a direction in philosophy, whose supporters in the relationship of matter and consciousness considered consciousness (idea, spirit) to be primary.
In idealism, two independent directions are distinguished:
Objective idealism (Plato, Leibniz, Hegel, and others);
Subjective idealism (Berkeley, Hume).
Plato is considered the founder of objective idealism. According to the concept of objective idealism:
Only the idea really exists;
The idea is primary;
The whole surrounding reality is divided into "the world of ideas" and "the world of things";
the "world of ideas" (eidos) initially exists in the World Mind (Divine Plan, etc.);
"the world of things" - the material world does not have an independent existence and is the embodiment of the "world of ideas";
Each single thing is the embodiment of the idea (eidos) of this thing (for example, a horse is the embodiment common idea horses, house - house ideas, ship - ship ideas, etc.);
God the Creator plays a big role in transforming a "pure idea" into a concrete thing;
Separate ideas ("the world of ideas") objectively exist independently of our consciousness.
In contrast to objective idealists, subjective idealists (Berkeley, Hume, etc.) believed that:
Everything exists only in the consciousness of the cognizing subject (man);
Ideas exist in the human mind;
Images (ideas) of material things also exist only in the human mind through sensory sensations;
Outside the consciousness of an individual, neither matter nor spirit (ideas) exist.
A weak feature of idealism is the absence of a reliable (logical) explanation for the very existence of "pure ideas" and the transformation of a "pure idea" into a concrete thing (the mechanism for the emergence of matter and ideas).
Idealism as a philosophical trend dominated in Platonic Greece, the Middle Ages, and is currently widespread in the USA, Germany, and other countries of Western Europe.
Along with the polar (competing) main directions of philosophy - materialism and idealism - there are intermediate (compromising) currents - dualism, deism.
Dualism as a philosophical direction was founded by Descartes. The essence of dualism is that:
There are two independent substances - material (possessing the property of extension) and spiritual (possessing the property of thinking);
Everything in the world is derived (is a modus) either from one or another of the indicated substances (material things - from the material, ideas - from the spiritual);
In a person, two substances are combined at the same time - both material and spiritual;
Matter and consciousness (spirit) are two opposite and interconnected sides of a single being;
The main question of philosophy (which is primary - matter or consciousness) does not really exist, since matter and consciousness complement each other and always exist. Deism is a direction in philosophy, the supporters of which
(mainly French enlighteners of the 18th century) recognized the existence of God, who, in their opinion, having once created the world, no longer participates in its further development and does not affect the life and actions of people (that is, they recognized God, who practically does not have any "powers" , which should only serve as a moral symbol). Deists also considered matter to be spiritualized and did not oppose matter and spirit (consciousness).
3. The epistemological side of the main question of philosophy is represented by:
Empiricism (sensualism);
Rationalism.
The founder of empiricism is F. Bacon.
Empiricists believed that only experience and sensory sensations could be the basis of knowledge ("There is nothing in thoughts (in the mind) that would not have been before in experience and sensory sensations").
R. Descartes is considered the founder of rationalism (from the Latin ratio - reason).
The main idea of rationalism is that true (reliable) knowledge can only be derived directly from the mind and does not depend on sensory experience. (Firstly, only doubt in everything really exists, and doubt - thought - is the activity of the mind. Secondly, there are truths that are obvious to the mind (axioms) and do not need any experimental proof - "God exists", "At square equal angles", "The whole is greater than its part", etc.)
Irrationalism stands out as a special trend (Nietzsche, Schopenhauer). According to irrationalists, the world is chaotic, has no internal logic, and therefore will never be known by the mind.
The concepts of gnosticism and agnosticism are connected with the epistemological side of the main question of philosophy.
Representatives of Gnosticism (as a rule, materialists) believe that:
We know the world;
The possibilities of knowledge are unlimited. The opposite view is held by agnostics.
(usually idealists):
The world is unknowable;
The possibilities of cognition are limited by the cognitive possibilities of the human mind.
Among the prominent theoreticians of agnosticism was Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). According to Kant, the human mind has great possibilities, but these possibilities also have their limits. Based on the finiteness and limitations of the cognitive capabilities of the human mind, there are riddles (contradictions) that will never be solved by a person, for example:
God exists God does not exist
In total, Hunt singles out four such insoluble contradictions (antinomies) (see question 36 "The Philosophy of Immanuel Kant").
However, according to Kant, even what is included in the cognitive capabilities of the human mind will still never be known, since the mind can only know the reflection of a thing in sensory sensations, but will never know the inner essence of this thing - "thing in itself".
4. At present, despite thousands of years of searching for philosophers, the main question of philosophy has not been reliably resolved either from the ontological or epistemological side and, in fact, is an eternal (unresolved) philosophical problem.
In the twentieth century in Western philosophy there has been a tendency to pay less attention to the traditional basic question of philosophy, since it is difficult to resolve and is gradually losing its relevance.
Jaspers, Heidegger, Camus and others laid the foundations for the fact that another main question of philosophy may appear in the future - the problem of existentialism, that is, the problem of man, his existence, managing his own spiritual world, relationships within society and with society, his free choice, search the meaning of life and its place in life, happiness.
Philosophical doctrine of Plato.
1. Plato (427 - 347 BC) - the largest philosopher Ancient Greece, a student of Socrates, the founder of his own philosophical school - the Academy, the founder of the idealistic trend in philosophy.
Plato is the first ancient Greek philosopher, who left behind a number of fundamental philosophical works, the most important of which are the "Apology of Socrates", "Parmenides", "Gorgias", "Phaedo", "State", "Laws".
2. Plato is the founder of idealism. The main provisions of his idealistic teachings are as follows:
Material things are changeable, impermanent, and eventually cease to exist;
The surrounding world ("the world of things") is also temporary and changeable and does not really exist as an independent substance;
Really there are only pure (incorporeal) ideas (eidos);
Pure (incorporeal) ideas are true, eternal and permanent;
Any existing thing is just a material reflection of the original idea (eidos) of this thing (for example, horses are born and die, but they are only the embodiment of the idea of a horse, which is eternal and unchanging, etc.);
The whole world is a reflection of pure ideas (eidos).
3. Plato also puts forward the philosophical doctrine of the triad, according to which everything that exists consists of three substances:
"single";
"Single":
Is the basis of all being;
It has no signs (no beginning, no end, no parts, no integrity, no form, no content, etc.);
There is nothing;
Above all being, above all thinking, above all sensation;
The origin of everything - all ideas, all things, all phenomena, all properties (both everything good from the point of view of a person, and everything bad).
Derived from "one";
Divided from "single";
Opposite of "one";
Is the essence of all things;
There is a generalization of all life on Earth. "Soul ":
A mobile substance that unites and connects "one - nothing" and "mind - all living things", and also connects all things and all phenomena;
Also, according to Plato, the soul can be the world and the soul of an individual; with the hylozoic (animated) approach, things and inanimate nature can also have a soul;
The soul of a person (thing) is a part of the world soul;
The soul is immortal;
At the death of a person, only the body dies, while the soul, having answered in the underworld for its earthly deeds, acquires a new bodily shell;
The constancy of the soul and the change of bodily forms is a natural law of the Cosmos.
4. Concerning epistemology (the doctrine of knowledge), Plato proceeds from the idealistic picture of the world he created:
Since the material world is only a reflection of the "world of ideas", the subject of knowledge should be, first of all, "pure ideas";
"pure ideas" cannot be known with the help of sensory cognition (this type of cognition does not give reliable knowledge, but only an opinion - "doxa");
"pure ideas" can only be known by reason, thanks to higher spiritual activity (idealistic knowledge);
Only trained people can engage in higher spiritual activity - educated intellectuals, philosophers, therefore, only they are able to see and realize "pure ideas".
5. Plato paid a special role in his philosophy to the problem of the state (which was not typical for the predecessors - the "pre-Socratics" Thales, Heraclitus and others, who were engaged in the search for the origin of the world and the explanation of phenomena surrounding nature but not society).
Plato identifies seven types of state: the ideal "state of the future", which does not yet exist and in which there will be no need for state power and laws, and six types of currently existing states.
Among the six existing types, Plato indicates:
Monarchy is the just power of one person;
Tyranny is the unjust power of one person;
Aristocracy - the just power of the minority;
Oligarchy is the unjust power of a minority;
Democracy is the just rule of the majority;
Timocracy - the unjust power of the majority, the power of military leaders, the army.
Since tyranny, oligarchy and timocracy are unjust forms of the state, and democracy - the rule of the majority - is rarely fair and, as a rule, degenerates into tyranny, oligarchy or timocracy, only aristocracy and monarchy can be two stable and optimal forms of state.
8. Plato's Academy - a religious and philosophical school founded by Plato in 387 in a suburb of Athens and existed for about 1000 years (until 529 AD).
Most famous pupils The academies were: Aristotle (studied with Plato, founded his own philosophical school - Lyceum), Xenocrite, Crates, Arcesilaus, Clytomachus of Carthage, Philo of Larissa (teacher of Cicero).
The Academy was closed in 529 by the Byzantine emperor Justinian as a hotbed of paganism and "harmful" ideas, but over its history it managed to achieve that Platonism and Neoplatonism became the leading trends in European philosophy.
Philosophy of Aristotle.
1. Aristotle (384 - 322, BC) - an ancient Greek philosopher of the classical period, a student of Plato, educator of Alexander the Great.
In his philosophical work, Aristotle went through three main stages:
367 - 347 years. BC e. (20 years old) - worked, starting from the age of 17, at the Academy of Plato and was his student (until the death of Plato);
347 - 335 years. BC e. (12 years old) - lived and worked in Pella - the capital of the Macedonian state at the invitation of King Philip; raised Alexander the Great;
335 - 322 years. - founded his own philosophical school - Lycaeus (peripatetic school) and worked in it until his death. The most famous works of Aristotle are:
"Organon", "Physics", "Mechanics", "Metaphysics", "On the Soul", "History of Animals", "Nicomachean Ethics", "Rhetoric", "Politics", "Athenian Watered", "Poetics".
2. Aristotle divided philosophy into three types:
Theoretical, studying the problems of being, various spheres of being, the origin of everything that exists, the causes of various phenomena (it was called "primary philosophy");
Practical - about human activity, the structure of the state;
Poetic.
It is believed that in fact Aristotle singled out logic as the fourth part of philosophy.
3. Considering the problem of being, Aristotle criticized Plato's philosophy, according to which the surrounding world was divided into the "world of things" and the "world of pure (incorporeal) ideas", and the "world of things" as a whole, like each thing separately, was only material reflection of the corresponding "pure idea".
Plato's mistake, according to Aristotle, is that he tore the "world of ideas" from the real world and considered "pure ideas" without any connection with the surrounding reality, which also has its own characteristics - extension, rest, movement, etc.
Aristotle gives his interpretation of this problem:
There are no "pure ideas" that are not connected with the surrounding reality, the reflection of which is all things and objects of the material world;
There are only singular and specifically defined things;
These things are called individuals (in translation - "indivisible"), that is, there is only a specific horse in a specific place, and not the "idea of a horse", the embodiment of which this horse is, a specific chair located in a specific place and having its own signs, and not "idea of a chair", a specific house with precisely defined parameters, not an "idea of a house", etc.;
Individuals are the primary essence, and the species and genera of individuals (horses in general, houses in general, etc.) are secondary.
4. Since being is not "pure ideas" ("eidoses") and their material reflection ("things"), the question arises: what is being?
Aristotle tries to answer this question (what is being) through statements about being, that is, through categories (translated from ancient Greek - statements).
Aristotle identifies 10 categories that answer the question posed (about being), and one of the categories says what being is, and 9 others give its characteristics. These categories are:
Essence (substance);
Quantity;
Quality;
Attitude;
Position;
State;
Action;
Suffering.
In other words, according to Aristotle, being is an entity (substance) that has the properties of quantity, quality, place, time, relationship, position, state, action, suffering.
A person, as a rule, is able to perceive only the properties of being, but not its essence. Also according to Aristotle the categories are higher reflection and generalization of the surrounding reality, without which existence itself is unthinkable.
5. An important place in the philosophy of Aristotle is occupied by the problems of matter.
What is matter?
According to Aristotle, matter is a potency limited by form (for example, a copper ball is copper limited by sphericity, etc.).
Concerning this problem, the philosopher also comes to the conclusion that:
Everything that exists on Earth has a potency (actually matter) and a form;
A change in at least one of these qualities (either matter or form) leads to a change in the essence of the object itself;
Reality is a sequence of transition from matter to form and from form to matter;
Potency (material) is a passive principle, form is an active one;
The highest form of all that exists is God, who has an existence outside the world.
6. The bearer of consciousness, according to Aristotle, is the soul.
The philosopher identifies three levels of the soul:
vegetable soul;
animal soul;
Intelligent soul.
Being the carrier of consciousness, the soul also controls the functions of the body.
The vegetable soul is responsible for the functions of nutrition, growth and reproduction. The same functions (nutrition, growth, reproduction) are also handled by the animal soul, but thanks to it, the body is supplemented by the functions of sensation and desire. And only the reasonable (human) soul, covering all the above functions, also knows the functions of reasoning and thinking. This is what distinguishes a person from the whole world around him.
Aristotle takes a materialistic approach to the problem of man. He believes that a person:
According to its biological essence, it is one of the types of highly organized animals;
Differs from animals in the presence of thinking and reason;
Has an innate tendency to live together with his own kind (that is, live in a team).
It is the last quality - the need to live in a team - that leads to the emergence of a society - a large team of people engaged in the production of material goods and their distribution, living in the same territory and united by language, kinship and cultural ties.
The regulating mechanism of society (protection from enemies, maintenance of internal order, assistance to the economy, etc.) is the state.
7. Aristotle identifies six types of state:
Monarchy;
Tyranny;
Aristocracy;
Extreme oligarchy;
Ochlocracy (mob power, extreme democracy);
Politia (a mixture of moderate oligarchy and moderate democracy).
Like Plato, Aristotle separates the "bad" forms of the state (tyranny, extreme oligarchy and ochlocracy) and the "good" ones (monarchy, aristocracy and polity).
best shape state, according to Aristotle, is a polity - a combination of moderate oligarchy and moderate democracy, the state of the "middle class" (ideal of Aristotle).
8. The historical significance of Aristotle's philosophy is that he:
He made significant adjustments to a number of provisions of Plato's philosophy, criticizing the doctrine of "pure ideas";
He gave a materialistic interpretation of the origin of the world and man;
He singled out 10 philosophical categories;
He gave the definition of being through categories;
Determined the essence of matter;
He singled out six types of state and gave the concept of an ideal type - polity;
He made a significant contribution to the development of logic (he gave the concept of the deductive method - from the particular to the general, substantiated the system of syllogisms - the conclusion from two or more premises of the conclusion).
Hegel's system and method.
The philosophical system is divided by Hegel into three parts: 1) logic; 2) philosophy of nature; 3) philosophy of spirit.
The starting point of Hegel's philosophy is the identity of thinking (consciousness) and being, this identity is the substantial unity of the world. But the identity is not abstract, but concrete, that is, presupposing difference. Thinking and being are subject to the same laws, in this sense of the Hegelian position on concrete identity.
Objective absolute thinking is the driving force of everything that exists, and it acts as an absolute idea that is continuously developing. The ascent from the abstract to the concrete is the general principle of development.
Hegel's innovation is that his logic breaks through the narrow horizon of formal logic. Logical forms are not only meaningful, but also are in mutual connection and development. Hegel proclaims unity. identity of dialectics, logic and theory of knowledge.
Hegel considered nature to be the second stage in the development of the absolute idea. nature is the defeat of the absolute idea, its otherness. Struck by the spirit, nature has no existence independently of it.
The third stage of the Hegelian system is the philosophy of the spirit. Here, the absolute idea, as it were, awakens, frees itself from natural bonds and finds its expression in the absolute spirit.
3. Hegel's historical service to philosophy lies in the fact that he was the first to clearly formulate the concept of dialectics.
Dialectics, according to Hegel, is the fundamental law of the development and existence of the World Spirit and the surrounding world created by it. The meaning of dialectics is that:
Everything - the World spirit, the "final spirit" - a person, objects and phenomena of the surrounding world, processes - contains opposite principles (for example, day and night, heat and cold, youth and old age, wealth and poverty, black and white, war and world, etc.);
These beginnings (parts of a single being and the World Spirit) are in conflict with each other, but, at the same time, they are united in essence and interact;
The unity and struggle of opposites is the basis of the development and existence of everything in the world (that is, the basis of universal existence and development).
Development proceeds from the abstract to the concrete and has the following mechanism:
There is a certain thesis (statement, form of being);
To this thesis there is always an antithesis - its opposite;
As a result of the interaction of two opposing theses, a synthesis is obtained - a new statement, which, in turn, becomes a thesis, but at a higher level of development;
This process occurs again and again, and each time as a result of the synthesis of opposing theses, a thesis of an increasingly higher level is formed.
For instance:
As the very first thesis, from which universal development begins, Hegel singles out the thesis "being" (that is, that which exists). Its antithesis is "non-existence" ("absolute nothingness"). Existence and non-existence give a synthesis - "becoming", which is a new thesis. Further development continues along the ascending line according to the indicated scheme.
According to Hegel, contradiction is not evil, but good. It is the contradictions that are driving force progress. Without contradictions, their unity and struggle, development is impossible. 4. In his research, Hegel seeks to understand:
Philosophy of nature;
Philosophy of the spirit;
Philosophy of history;
And so is their essence.
Hegel understands nature (the world around him) as the otherness of the idea (that is, the antithesis of the idea, another form of existence of the idea). Spirit, according to Hegel, has three varieties:
subjective spirit;
Objective spirit;
Absolute spirit.
The subjective spirit is the soul, the consciousness of an individual person (the so-called "spirit for itself").
The objective spirit is the next step of the spirit, "the spirit of society as a whole." The expression of the objects of the new spirit is the right - given from above, originally existing as an idea (since freedom is inherent in the person himself) the order of relationships between people. Law is the realized idea of freedom. Another expression of the objective spirit, along with law, is morality, civil society, and the state.
The absolute spirit is the highest manifestation of the spirit, the eternally valid truth. The expression of the Absolute Spirit are:
Art;
Religion;
Philosophy.
Art is a direct reflection of an absolute idea by a person. Among people, according to Hegel, only talented and brilliant people can "see" and reflect the absolute idea, because of this they are the creators of art.
Religion is the antithesis of art. If art is an absolute idea, "seen" by brilliant people, then religion is an absolute idea, revealed to man by God in the form of revelation.
Philosophy is a synthesis of art and religion, the highest stage of development and understanding of the absolute idea. This is knowledge given by God and at the same time understood by brilliant people - philosophers. Philosophy is the complete disclosure of all truths, the knowledge of itself by the Absolute Spirit ("the world captured by thought" - according to Hegel), the connection of the beginning of the absolute idea with its end, the highest knowledge.
According to Hegel, the subject of philosophy should be broader than traditionally accepted, and should include:
Philosophy of nature;
Anthropology;
Psychology;
Philosophy of the state;
Philosophy of civil society;
Philosophy of law;
Philosophy of history;
Dialectics - as the truth of universal laws and principles. History, according to Hegel, is the process of self-realization of the Absolute spirit. Since the Absolute Spirit includes the idea of freedom, the whole of history is the process of man's conquest of more and more freedom. In this regard, Hegel divides the entire history of mankind into three great eras:
Eastern;
Antique-medieval;
German.
The Eastern era (the era of Ancient Egypt, China, etc.) is such a period of history when in society only one person is aware of himself, enjoys freedom and all the blessings of life - the pharaoh, the Chinese emperor, etc., and all the rest are his slaves and servants.
The ancient-medieval era is a period when a group of people (head of state, entourage, military leaders, aristocracy, feudal lords) began to realize themselves, however, the bulk is suppressed and not free, depends on the "top" and serves it.
The German era is the era contemporary to Hegel, when everyone is self-aware and free.
5. We can also highlight the following socio-political views of Hegel:
The state is a form of God's existence in the world (God incarnate in its strength and "capabilities");
Law is the existence (embodiment) of freedom;
General interests are higher than private ones, and the individual, his interests can be sacrificed for the common good;
Wealth and poverty are natural and inevitable, this is a reality given from above that must be put up with;
Contradictions, conflicts in society are not evil, but good, the engine of progress;
Contradictions and conflicts between states, wars are the engine of progress on a world-historical scale;
"eternal peace" will lead to decay and moral decay; regular wars, on the contrary, purify the spirit of the nation. One of the most important philosophical conclusions of Hegel about being and consciousness is that there is no contradiction between being (matter) and idea (consciousness, mind). Reason, consciousness, idea has being, and being has consciousness. Everything that is reasonable is real, and everything that is real is reasonable.
Evolution of forms of reflection.
1. In modern Russian philosophy (as well as in former Soviet philosophy), a materialistic explanation of the nature of consciousness, known as the theory of reflection, is widespread.
The essence of this theory is that consciousness is a property of highly organized matter to reflect matter.
Key concepts reflection theories are:
Reflection;
Irritability;
Sensitivity;
Psychic reflection;
Conscious form of reflection.
Matter in general has the property of reflection.
Reflection by its nature is the ability of material objects to leave traces of other material objects in themselves when interacting with them.
There are many examples of reflection: a scratch on the body (reflection of another material object after its interaction with the body), traces of a person on the ground (reflection of a person by the ground), traces of soil on a person’s shoes (reflection of the ground by a person), a change in the shape of an object upon collision with another object (car accident, projectile hitting a wall, etc.), reflection of the bones of ancient animals on a stone, fingerprints, echo in a cave, reflection of sunlight by the moon, reflection of the moon, trees, mountains in a pond...
Thus, to a greater or lesser extent, reflection is inherent in all material objects when interacting with others ("Every thing is an echo and a mirror of the Universe").