“If you cannot change the world, change your attitude to this world, ” said Lucius Anney Seneca.
Unfortunately, in the modern world there is an opinion that philosophy is a second-class science, divorced from practice and life in general. This sad fact suggests that the development of philosophy requires its popularization. After all, philosophy is not abstract reasoning, not far from real life, not a mixture of various concepts expressed by abstruse phrases. The tasks of philosophy are, first and foremost, the transmission of information about the world at a certain point in time and the mapping of a person’s attitude to the world around him.
Concept of philosophy
The philosophy of each era, as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said, is embodied in the minds of each individual individual who has fixed this era in his thinking, who has managed to bring out the main trends of his era and present them to the public. Philosophy is always in fashion, because it reflects a modern view of people's lives. We always philosophize when we ask questions about the universe, our mission, and so on. As Viktor Frankl wrote in his book “A Man in Search of Meaning, ” a person is always in search of his own “I”, his own meaning of life, because the meaning of life is not something that can be conveyed like chewed chewing gum. Having swallowed such information, one can remain without the personal meaning of life. This, of course, is everyone’s work on himself - the search for that cherished meaning, because without it our life would not be possible.
Why do we need a philosophy?
In everyday life, preoccupied with the problem of interpersonal relationships and self-knowledge, we come to understand that the tasks of philosophy are realized on our way daily. As Jean-Paul Sartre said, “the other person is always hell for me, because he evaluates me in a way that suits him.” In contrast to his pessimistic view, Erich Fromm expressed the opinion that only in relations with others we learn that our "I" is in reality, and this is the greatest good.
Understanding
Very important for us is self-determination and understanding. Understanding not only yourself, but also other people. But "how does the heart express itself, to another how to understand you?" Even the ancient philosophy of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle says that only in the dialogue of two thinking, seeking to search for the truth of people can some new knowledge be born. From the theories of modernity we can cite the example of the “theory of idols” by Francis Bacon, who speaks quite extensively on the topic of idols, that is, prejudices that dominate our consciousness, which prevent us from developing, to be ourselves.
Death theme
A taboo topic that excites the hearts of many and remains the most mysterious, from ancient times until our present. Even Plato said that human life is a process of dying. In modern dialectics, one can come across such a statement that the day of our birth is already the day of our death. Each awakening, action, sigh brings us to the inevitable end. A person cannot be separated from philosophy, because it is philosophy that builds a person, it is impossible to think of a person outside this system.
Tasks and methods of philosophy: basic approaches
There are two approaches to understanding philosophy in modern society. According to the first approach, philosophy is an elitist discipline, which should be taught only at the philosophical faculties that build the elite of an intellectual society that professionally and meticulously establish scientific philosophical research and the method of teaching philosophy. Adherents of this approach consider it impossible to independently study philosophy through literature and personal empirical experience. This approach involves the use of primary sources in the language of those authors who write them. Thus, it becomes unclear to all other people who belong to any narrow specialization such as mathematics, jurisprudence, etc., why philosophy is needed, because this knowledge is practically inaccessible to them. Philosophy, according to this approach, only aggravates the worldview of representatives of these specialties. Therefore, you need to exclude it from their program.
The second approach tells us that a person needs to experience emotions, strong feelings, so as not to lose the feeling that we are alive, we are not robots, that we need to experience the whole gamut of emotions throughout our lives and, of course, think. And here, of course, philosophy is very welcome. No other science will teach a person to think, and at the same time think independently, will not help a person navigate in the boundless sea of those concepts and views that modern life generously abounds in. Only she is able to detect the inner core of a person, teach him to make independent choices and not be a victim of manipulation.
It is necessary, it is necessary to study philosophy for people of all specialties, because only through philosophy can you find your true self and remain yourself. It follows that in the teaching of philosophy it is necessary to avoid categorical phrases, terms and definitions that are difficult to understand for other specialties. Which brings us to the main idea of the popularization of philosophy in society, which would significantly reduce its mentoring and mentoring tone. After all, as Albert Einstein said, any theory passes just one test of vitality - it must be understood by the child. All meaning, Einstein said, is lost if the children do not understand your idea.
One of the tasks of philosophy is to explain complex things in simple language. The ideas of philosophy should not remain a dry abstraction, a completely unnecessary theory that can be forgotten after a course of lectures.
Functions
"Philosophy is nothing more than a logical clarification of thoughts, " writes the Austro-English philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in his largest and most intravitally published work, Logico-Philosophical Treatise. The main idea of philosophy is to clear the mind of all that is frivolous. Nikola Tesla, a radio engineer and great inventor of the 20th century, said that in order to think clearly, you need to have common sense. This is one of the most important philosophical functions - to bring clarity to our consciousness. That is, this function can still be called critical - a person learns to think critically, and before accepting someone else’s position, he must check its authenticity, expediency.
The second function of philosophy is historical-worldview, it always belongs to a certain period of time. This function helps a person to form a particular type of worldview, thereby creating a different self, offering a whole bunch of philosophical movements.
The next is a methodological one, which considers the reason why the author of the concept reaches it. Philosophy cannot be memorized, it only needs to be understood.
Another function of philosophy is epistemological, or cognitive. Philosophy is a person’s attitude to this world. It allows you to reveal unusual interesting things that have not yet been verified by any experience due to lack of scientific knowledge up to a certain period. Repeatedly it happened that ideas were ahead of development. Take, for example, the same Immanuel Kant, whose quotes are known to many. His concept is that the Universe was formed from a gas nebula, the concept is completely speculative, after 40 years it was proved conclusively and lasted for 150 years.
It is worth recalling Nicholas Copernicus, the Polish philosopher and astronomer who doubted what he saw. He managed to abandon the obvious - from the Ptolemy system, in which the Sun revolved around the Earth, which was the motionless center of the universe. It was thanks to his doubt that he made the great Copernican coup. The history of philosophy is rich in such events. So reasoning, far from practice, can become a classic of science.
The prognostic function of philosophy is also important - it is impossible today to build any knowledge that claims to be scientific in the slightest degree, that is, in any work, study, we must initially predict the future. That is what is inherent in philosophy.
For centuries, people have always wondered about the future arrangement of the life of mankind, philosophy and society have always gone in step, because the most important thing in human life is to be realized creatively and socially. Philosophy is the quintessence of those questions that from generation to generation people ask themselves and others, a set of immortal questions that really arise in any person.
The founder of German classical philosophy, Immanuel Kant, who is full of quotes from social networks, asked the very first important question - “What can I know?”, Anticipating the question “What things can people most likely say what should remain in the field of view of science, and what things should be deprived of the attention of science, what things will always be a mystery? " Kant wanted to outline the boundaries of human knowledge: what is subject to people for knowledge, and what is not given to know. And the third Kantian question is “What should I do?” This is a practical application of previously acquired knowledge, directly experience, reality created by each of us.
The next question that excites Kant is "What can I hope for?" This question touches upon such philosophical problems as the freedom of the soul, its immortality or mortality. The philosopher says that such questions go rather into the sphere of morality and religion, because it is not possible to prove them. And even after years of teaching philosophical anthropology, the most difficult and insoluble question for Kant is the following: “What is a man?”
According to his views, people are the biggest mysteries of the universe. He said: “Only two things strike me — the starry sky above my head and the moral laws within me.” Why are humans such amazing creatures? Because they belong simultaneously to two worlds - the physical (objective), the world of necessity with their absolutely specific laws that cannot be circumvented (the law of gravity, the law of conservation of energy), and the world, which Kant sometimes calls intelligent (the world of the internal "I", internal state, in which we are all completely free, independent of anything and independently returning our fate).
Kant's questions, no doubt, replenished the treasury of world philosophy. To this day, they remain relevant - society and philosophy are inextricably in contact with each other, gradually creating new amazing worlds.
Subject, tasks and functions of philosophy
The very word "philosophy" means "love of wisdom." If you take it apart, you can see two ancient Greek roots: filia (love), sufia (wisdom), which literally means "any wisdom." Philosophy originated in the era of ancient Greece, and the term was coined by the poet, philosopher, mathematician Pythagoras, who went down in history with his original teaching. Ancient Greece shows us a completely unique experience: we can observe a departure from mythological thinking. We can observe how people begin to think independently, how they try to disagree with what they see here and now, do not concentrate their thinking on the philosophical and religious explanation of the universe, but try to be based on their own experience and intelligence.
Now there are areas of modern philosophy like neotomy, analytic, integral, etc. They offer us the latest ways to transform information coming from outside. For example, the tasks posed by the philosophy of neo-Thomism are to show the duality of being, that everything is dual, but the material world is lost with the greatness of the triumph of the spiritual world. Yes, the world is material, but this matter is considered only a small fraction of the manifested spiritual world, where God is checked "for strength." As Thomas is an unbeliever, the Neo-Thomists crave a material manifestation of the supernatural, which by no means seems to them a mutually exclusive and paradoxical phenomenon.
Sections
Considering the main epochs of philosophy, it can be noted that in ancient Greece, philosophy became the queen of sciences, which is completely justified, because she, as a mother, takes absolutely all sciences under her wing. Aristotle, being primarily a philosopher, in his famous four-volume collection of works described the tasks of philosophy and all the key sciences that existed at that time. All this constitutes an incredible synthesis of ancient knowledge.
Over time, other disciplines budged from philosophy and numerous branches of philosophical movements appeared. In itself, independently of other sciences (law, psychology, mathematics, etc.), philosophy includes many of its own sections and disciplines that raise entire layers of philosophical problems that concern humanity as a whole.
The main sections of philosophy include an anthology (the doctrine of being - such questions are posed as: the problem of substance, the problem of substrate, the problem of being, matter, motion, space), epistemology (doctrine of cognition - the sources of knowledge, criteria of truth, concepts revealing different facets of knowledge of mankind).
The third section is philosophical anthropology, which studies a person in the unity of his sociocultural and spiritual manifestations, where such questions and problems are considered: the meaning of life, loneliness, love, fate, “I” with a capital letter and many others.
The next section is social philosophy, which considers the problems of the relationship between the individual and society, the problems of power, the problem of manipulating the human consciousness as a fundamental question. These include theories of social contract.
The philosophy of history. A section that examines the tasks, the meaning of history, its movement, its purpose, pronouncing the main attitude to history, regressive history, progressive history.
There are a number of sections: aesthetics, ethics, axiology (the doctrine of values), the history of philosophy and some others. In fact, the history of philosophy shows a rather thorny path of development of philosophical ideas, because philosophers did not always ascend to the podium, sometimes they were considered outcasts, sometimes they were sentenced to death, sometimes they were isolated from society, they were not allowed to spread ideas, which only shows us the significance of the ideas for which they fought. Of course, there were not so many such people who defend their position to the deathbed, because philosophers can change their attitude and worldview throughout life.
At the moment, the attitude of philosophy towards science is ambiguous. It is considered quite controversial that philosophy has every reason to be called science. And this was formed due to the fact that in the middle of the 19th century one of the founders of Marxism, Friedrich Engels, formulated one of the concepts that came to the court most of the time. According to Engels, philosophy is the science of the most general laws of the development of thinking, the laws of nature, society. Thus, this status of philosophy as a science has not been questioned for a long time. But over time, a new perception of philosophy has emerged, which already imposes a certain obligation on our contemporaries not to call philosophy a science.
The affinity of philosophy with science
The common thing for philosophy and science is the categorical apparatus, that is, key concepts such as substance, substrate, space, time, matter, motion. These fundamental cornerstone terms are at the disposal of both science and philosophy, that is, both operate on them in different contexts, facets. Another feature that characterizes the commonality of both philosophy and science is that such a phenomenon as truth is considered as an absolute total total value in itself. That is, truth is not considered as a means to discover other knowledge. Philosophy and science elevate truth to incredible heights, making it the highest value as such.
Another point in common philosophy with science - theoretical knowledge. This means that we cannot find formulas in mathematics and concepts in philosophy (good, evil, justice) in our particular empirical world. These speculative reflections put science and philosophy on the same level. As Lucius Anney Seneca, Roman philosopher-stoic and educator of the emperor Nero, said, it’s much more useful to comprehend a few wise rules that can always serve you than to learn many useful things that are useless for you.
