Since ancient times, the question of what is the life of people has worried human society. People are creatures endowed with consciousness, so they cannot help but reflect on the meaning, purpose and conditions of their being.
Let’s try and we will consider this issue in more detail.
Statement of the problem of the meaning of life in ancient philosophy
According to scientists, the first scientific works that would comprehend people's lives as a philosophical problem began to appear in the era of Antiquity.
The Greek philosopher Parmenides believed that the knowledge of the meaning of life depends on an understanding of the question of human being. By being, the scientist understood the sensual world, which should be based on such values as Truth, Beauty and Good.
Thus, for the first time in science, the quality of life and its meaning were compared with the most important humanistic values.
The tradition of Parmenides was continued by other Greek philosophers: Socrates, his disciple Plato, a pupil of Plato Aristotle. The essence of human life was sufficiently deeply worked out in their writings. Her understanding was also based on the ideas of humanism and respect for the personality of each individual as a necessary component of the entire social structure.
Problem Solving in Medieval European Philosophy
The problems of life were also considered in European philosophy of the Middle Ages. However, they were presented in the vein of Christian anthropology, so the issues of life and death, immortal being, faith in God, the afterlife of man, which involved him either in paradise, in purgatory, or in hell, were put on the agenda etc.
Famous European philosophers of that time, St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, did much in this vein.
In fact, the life of people on earth was considered by them as a temporary stage of existence, and not the best. Earthly life is a kind of test, full of deprivation, suffering and injustice, which each of us must pass in order to find heavenly bliss. If a person will show due patience and hard work in this field, then his fate in the afterlife will be quite prosperous.
The problem of the essence of life in the tradition of the New Age
The era of modern times in European philosophy has made significant adjustments to the understanding of two issues: the first studied the quality of life, and the second addressed the problem of social injustice that pervaded society.
People were no longer satisfied with the prospect of eternal bliss in exchange for patience and work in the present tense. They longed to build paradise on earth, seeing it as a kingdom of truth, justice and fraternity. It was under these slogans that the Great French Revolution took place, which, however, did not bring what its creators dreamed of.
Europeans sought to ensure that the life of people on earth was both prosperous and dignified. These ideas gave rise to the socio-political transformations that the subsequent centuries were rich in.
Old Russian philosophy about the meaning of life
In Ancient Russia, the problem of the meaning of human being was considered from the point of view of the theocentricity of the universe. Man, being born on earth, was called by God to salvation, therefore he had to fulfill God's purpose throughout his life.
In our country, the Western European scholasticism did not take root, with its accurate calculations, according to which for a particular sin a person had to commit a certain amount of righteous acts or to give so much alms to the poor or church servants. In Russia, for a long time, the secret mercy was welcomed, which was done secretly for God from people, because Christ and the Mother of God, having seen the righteous behavior of the repentant sinner, will help him to go through all ordeals and gain the kingdom of heaven.
The problem of life in Russian philosophy
Famous Russian philosophers, starting with V. S. Solovyov, very carefully considered the problem of the meaning of human life on earth. And in their interpretation this meaning is associated with the embodiment of each person in his unique and inimitable being of the most important spiritual and ethical values.
Moreover, this philosophy, in contrast to its Western version, was religious in nature. Russian authors were interested not so much in the quality of life and social issues of the structure of society, as in problems of a different order: the moral aspects of the relationship between people, the problem of spirituality, faith and unbelief, the acceptance of the Creator's divine plan and the adoption of the idea of the initial harmonious structure of the human world.
The dialogue between Ivan and Alyosha Karamazov (the novel by F. M. Dostoevsky “The Brothers Karamazov”) is indicative in this vein, which just testifies to the solution of the question of the meaning of human life on earth.
If for Alyosha, who accepts the divine plan of the Creator and believes in his unconditional goodness, the world is a wonderful creature, and a person with an immortal soul carries an image of divine beauty, then for Ivan, whose soul is full of bitter unbelief, his brother’s faith becomes incomprehensible. He severely suffers from his own imperfection and the imperfection of the world around him, realizing that he is not in his power to change something.
Such bitter reflections on the meaning of life lead the eldest of the brothers to madness.
20th Century Transformations in the Light of Life's Challenges
The 20th century brought the world not only a lot of new knowledge in the field of technology and science, it also exacerbated humanitarian issues, and first of all, the question of the life of mankind on earth. What are you talking about?
Human living conditions have changed dramatically. Previously, most people lived in rural areas, doing subsistence farming and having virtually no access to large sources of information, but today the world's population has settled mostly in cities, using the Internet and other numerous communication sources.
Moreover, it was in the 20th century that weapons of mass destruction were invented. Using it in Japan and other countries has proved that it can destroy a huge number of people in the shortest possible time, and the affected area can occupy our entire planet.
Therefore, questions about life have become particularly relevant.
In the 20th century, humanity survived two of the largest world wars, which showed that the technology of death was greatly improved.
Bioethical problems of life
The development of new technologies has exacerbated the problem of bioethics.
Today you can get a living creature by cloning its cells, you can conceive a child "in vitro", picking him the genetic code that parents dream about. There is a problem of surrogate (donor) motherhood, when a foreign embryo is planted in a woman’s body for a fee, and she carries it, and then gives birth. And gives …
There is even the problem of euthanasia - voluntary and painless death of terminally ill people.
There are many more tasks of the same nature: everyday human life provides them in abundance. And all these tasks must be solved, because these are actually life problems that are understandable to every person and require him to make an informed choice of one or another side.
