1 concept of being. Concept of being

In order to live, a person must act. At the same time, his actions must be reasonable. Intelligent activity is impossible without interest in changing the world around us. This interest gives rise to questions that require answers. Sooner or later, a person’s interest in the world around him goes beyond the immediate sensory data. Its horizons become limitless, and its object is the world at large . An endless series of questions gives rise to an infinite number of answers. Nevertheless, by answering these questions, a person develops one or another “picture of the world”, one or another attitude towards the world and determines his place in it. Thus, an indispensable attribute of human existence – a worldview – arises and is built. The theoretical form of worldview, as is known, is philosophy. When she comprehends the world, she operates with concepts that have the character of high generalizations. These are usually the most general concepts. Such concepts are often called categories .

The initial category in the philosophical understanding of the world is the category “ being " This category records a person’s belief in the existence of the world around him and the person himself with his consciousness. Individual things, processes, phenomena arise and disappear, but the world as a whole exists and persists. The statement of existence is the initial premise for further reasoning about the world. The concept of “being” is similar, of the same order, to such concepts as “reality”, “reality”, “existence” and in some contexts they can be considered as synonyms. At the same time, being is an integral characteristic of the world, affirming its integrity through its existence. The concept of being is abstracted from all the specific differences between things, objects and processes, except for one of their features, namely: their existence, which gives the world its original integrity and makes it the object of philosophical reflection. And one of the first questions that arises on the path of philosophical understanding of the world is the question of the diversity of ways and forms of being.

According to the way of existence, being is divided into two worlds or two realities: the world of physical states, or the material world, and the world of mental states, the world of consciousness, the inner world of man. Both of these worlds world of consciousness And world of matter– can be characterized by the concept of being, but the ways of their existence are different. The physical, material world exists objectively, regardless of the will and consciousness of people. The mental world, the world of human consciousness, exists subjectively, since it is dependent on the will and consciousness of people, individuals. The question of how these two ways of being, these two types are really related to each other, is one of the main questions of philosophy.

The combination of these two main forms of being allows us to identify several more varieties of forms of being. Thus, this approach allows us to talk about the specificity of being itself person, since he simultaneously belongs to two worlds: to the material bodily world as its organic part and to the world of consciousness, the mental world, belonging to which makes him human.

It is the presence of consciousness in a person that allows him not only to be, to exist, but also to question and reason about the existence of the material world and his own existence. A person’s way of being in the physical world is determined by his belonging to the mental world and vice versa. In this regard, human existence is a kind of dialectical unity of the objective and subjective, body and spirit.

The existence of things created by man is also unique. The entire world of material culture belongs to the objective, physical world, but at the same time, all products of human activity in their origin, existence and mode of functioning are mediated by the human spirit, consciousness, and this would

The existence of the “second nature” created by man differs from the way of being of the “first” nature and largely determines the specificity nature in general as a form of being, of which man is a part.

The spiritual world of man is also characterized by a dual existence. It can be divided into subjective and objective spirit. The subjective spirit is the inner mental world of a person with all levels of its existence from the unconscious to self-consciousness. This world is the property of the individual. At the same time, the joint activity of individuals in society necessarily gives rise to objectified or intersubjective spirituality, i.e. such spiritual formations that are no longer just the property of individual individuals, but the property of a community of individuals, the property culture, cultural life of society. One example of the objectively spiritual is human language. The forms of objective spirit also include all forms of social consciousness: science, religion, morality, art, etc. Of course, there is an organic relationship between the objective and subjective spirit, both in the process of formation and in the processes of development and functioning.

Likewise, a peculiar mode of existence characterizes the human society. In those connections and relationships that underlie social systems, the material and the ideal, the first and second nature, the subjective and objective spirit are closely intertwined.

The following should be emphasized: the diverse forms of being do not exist separately, they are interconnected. World (the universe, the universe) is a single, integral collection of all possible forms of being. It contains all reality, without any exceptions. In the concept of “world” we think of both what we know and what we do not yet know. In this sense, the world is a subject only philosophical knowledge carried out within the framework of a certain philosophical system. From such an understanding of the world follows the thesis about its uniqueness and unity, the interpretation of which depends on one or another philosophical solution to the problem of substance.

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1. Philosophical meaning of the concept of being

Being is one of the most important categories of philosophy. It captures and expresses the problem of existence in its general form. The word "being" comes from the verb "to be." But how philosophical category being appeared only when philosophical thought posed the problem of existence and began to analyze this problem. Philosophy has as its subject the world as a whole, the relationship between the material and the ideal, the place of man in society and in the world. In other words, she seeks to clarify the question of the existence of the world and the existence of man. Therefore, philosophy needs a special category that captures the existence of the world, man, and consciousness.

In modern philosophical literature, two meanings of the word “being” are indicated. In the narrow sense of the word, this is an objective world that exists independently of consciousness; in the broad sense, it is everything that exists: not only matter, but also consciousness, ideas, feelings and fantasies of people. Being as an objective reality is designated by the term matter.”

So, being is everything that exists, be it a person or an animal, nature or society, a huge Galaxy or our planet Earth, the imagination of a poet or the strict theory of a mathematician, religion or laws issued by the state. Existence has its opposite concept - non-existence. And if being is everything that exists, then non-existence is everything that is not.

The word “being” receives a special meaning in philosophy, which can only be understood by turning to the consideration of the philosophical problems of being.

This term was first introduced into philosophy by the ancient philosopher Parmenides (V-IV centuries BC) to designate and at the same time solve one real problem. During the time of Parmenides, people began to lose faith in the traditional gods of Olympus, and mythology increasingly began to be viewed as fiction. Thus, the foundations and norms of the world, the main reality of which were gods and tradition, collapsed. The world, the Universe no longer seemed strong and reliable: everything became shaky and shapeless, unstable; the person has lost his life support. The modern Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset wrote that the anxiety and fear that people probably experienced when they lost the support of life, the reliable world of traditions, and faith in the gods were undoubtedly terrible.

In the depths of human consciousness, despair and doubt arose, seeing no way out. deadlock. It was necessary to find a way out to something strong and reliable. People needed faith in a new force. Philosophy, in the person of Parmenides, realized the current situation, which turned into a tragedy for human existence, reflected the emotional intensity and tried to calm the troubled soul of people, replacing the power of the gods with the power of reason, the power of thought. But not ordinary, otherworldly thoughts about things and objects of the world, about the needs and requirements of everyday existence, but absolute thought (later philosophers will call it “pure”, meaning the content of thought that is not associated with the empirical, sensory experience of people). Parmenides seemed to notify people of the discovery of a new power, the power of Absolute thought, which keeps the world from falling into chaos, provides the world with stability and reliability, and therefore, a person can again gain confidence that everything will necessarily be subordinated to some kind of order .

Parmenides called necessity Divinity, Truth, Providence, Fate, Eternal and Indestructible. “Everything is necessary” meant that the established course of things in the universe cannot suddenly, by chance, change; day will always come, replacing night, the sun will not suddenly go out, people will not all die out one day, etc. In other words, Parmenides postulated the presence behind the things of the objective-sensory world of something that would serve as a guarantor of the existence of this world and what the philosopher himself sometimes called the Divinity, that which really exists. And this meant that there was no reason for people to despair caused by the collapse of the stability of the old world.

To designate the described existential-life situation and ways to overcome it, Parmenides introduced the concept and problem of “being” into philosophy. The term itself was taken from the ordinary language of the Greeks, but its content received a new content that does not follow from the meaning of the verb “to be” in its everyday use: to be - to exist in existence. So, the problematic of being was a unique response of philosophy to the needs and demands of the era.

How does Parmenides himself characterize being? Being is what exists behind the world of sensory things, and this is thought. It is one and unchangeable, absolute, has no division within itself into subject and object, it is all possible completeness of perfections, among which Truth, Good, Good, Light are in the first place. Defining being as a true being, Parmenides taught that it did not arise, is indestructible, unique, motionless, endless in time. It needs nothing, is devoid of sensory qualities, and therefore can only be comprehended by thought, by the mind.

To facilitate the understanding of what being is for people who are not experienced in the art of philosophical thinking, Parmenides gives the following interpretation of being: being is a ball, a sphere that has no spatial boundaries. Comparing existence with a sphere, the philosopher used the belief that developed in antiquity that the sphere is the most perfect and beautiful form among other geometric figures.

Arguing that being is thought, he did not mean the subjective thought of a person, but the Logos - the cosmic Reason through which the content of the world is revealed to a person directly. In other words, it is not man who discovers the Truth of existence, but, on the contrary. The truth of existence is revealed to man directly.

Before the Romantics, man was viewed primarily as a natural or social being. Accordingly, his own existence was conceived in specific forms given by history. Therefore, human existence was identified with the social. It could only be perceived within the limits of existing history.

Romantics conjectured that human existence is immeasurably richer than its social dimension. The individual is generally cramped in the available historical space. He easily, with the help of his imagination, catapults himself into other cultural worlds, few of which he himself creates. By renouncing reality, the romantic enters into uncharted zones of his own existence. By transforming reality, he perceives in himself something unique, independent, belonging only to him as a living being. Here, essentially, space opens up for unexpected self-realization.

This mental attitude will undoubtedly gain recognition, say, in the philosophy of life. Nietzsche's mortal melancholy over man's fatal chaining to a specific earthly destiny, his desire to rise above own destiny, which R. Steiner points out in a critical analysis of his works, the actual anthroposophical interpretation of this problem, and finally, the premises of existential philosophy indicate that the romantic sense of the limitlessness of one’s own existence turned out to be theoretically productive.

Romantics assessed man as a special kind of being. No other living creature is capable of discovering boundless worlds within itself. That is why a person is unique and unrepeatable even before society arose. Hence the extremely keen attention to human well-being, to the subtlest nuances of human states, difficult to fix, fluid, unsteady... It is clear that the romantic consciousness not only reproduced the idea of original individuality. It created a fundamentally different idea of the richness and inexhaustibility of the personal world.

Behind the everyday vanity, a romantic sees a completely different reality. However, such an ability is not at all an immutable anthropological property. It is rather a special gift, a unique mood of the soul. Not everyone can live in a dream world. By drawing attention to unusual states of the soul, the romantics, as is understandable, deepened the understanding of the inner life of man in general. Extreme spiritual tension, ecstatic ascent, creative takeoff and contemplative insight - these are the signs of romantic consciousness.

“This is how the base strives upward,” S. Zweig characterizes Hölderlin’s romantic poetry, “the sublime strives for the base, the spirit strives for life, and life ascends to the spirit: all objects of immortal nature are meaningless until mortals know them and love them with earthly love. A rose only becomes a real rose when it absorbs a joyful gaze; the evening dawn only becomes beautiful when its radiance is perceived by the retina of the human eye. Just as man, in order not to perish, needs the divine, so the deity, in order to become real, needs man. Thus the deity creates witnesses of his power, lips that give him praise, a poet who makes him a true deity.”

Despite these attitudes, the romantic worldview was not at all extremely closed and hermetic. Within this type of feeling, a special responsiveness and responsiveness is formed. A romantic is ready to grasp a state of mind that is consonant with him, to penetrate its structure, to perceive the call of another person. The traditional idea of romance as an incorrigible individualist and egocentric needs to be corrected.

The image of man in romanticism is associated with a constant and acute longing for human incompleteness and incompleteness. Such a mismatch between a person and himself was a powerful spiritual impulse for the possible, sometimes realized only in the realm of dreams, elimination of one’s own one-sidedness. The affirmation of the intrinsic value of the spiritual and creative life of the individual, the depiction of strong passions among many romantics is adjacent to the motives of “worldly sorrow”, “the night side of the soul”.

An inquisitive look at other cultural and spiritual worlds undoubtedly contributed to the search for a personal ideal and created fascinating, exciting spiritual and anthropological perspectives. The Romantics focused attention on such important dimensions of human existence as love, creativity, and death. But at the same time, the romantics drew attention to the subversiveness of human existence. They presented such states human soul, like bitterness, melancholy, sadness and grief as no less significant than, say, joy, jubilation, optimism.

According to the American culturologist T. Roszak, the Renaissance was the first of the cultural eras that sought to expand the boundaries of the human personality, setting itself a goal no less than the godlikeness of man. The second was the romantic movement of the late 13th - early 19th centuries. The eras are extremely restless and, however, extremely ambitious and active. These eras are painfully torn and, however, thanks to this fragmentation, they acquired a taste for freedom. Tormented by self-doubt, but burning with a burning thirst for innovation and discovery.

The idea of the threatening exhaustion of the human spirit is ripening in the romantic consciousness. Such an idea of a person, according to which the traditional idealization of the individual is called into question and the insecurity of his high spirituality is revealed, understandably, initiates other questioning of the person himself. Is he able to develop his own potential, does he feel undermined? The idea of the possible and unexpected resurrection of a person who has lost his own life-giving powers is also developing in this direction.

The romantics' fascination with the originality of the East developed deeply and naturally after the Enlightenment. Romantics, in contrast to the Enlightenment, strive to comprehend the “spirit of culture” that has developed in one or another national basis. And here it turns out that the East is not only comparable to the West in terms of values, but that it is “more romantic”, richer, because the Oriental world has not yet wasted its internal spiritual resources.

2. Problems of existence in Western European philosophy of modern times

The philosophy of modern times put forward the problem of being in the form of the Cartesian thesis “I think, therefore I exist” (cogito, ergo sum). From the self-evidence of the thinking “I,” Descartes moves directly to absolute being with the help of the so-called. ontological argument. The main result of the “discovery” of being is the ontological guarantee of truth, the justification of the possibility of science. Being, therefore, is for Descartes and the entire rationalistic tradition of the 17th century. the point of intersection of the conceivable and the existing, and therefore the concept of being has objective significance, i.e. immanently contains its object. The systems of Malebranche and Spinoza are built on this principle, and Leibniz shares it. At the same time, empiricism of the 17th century. interprets being as a factual given.

Along with the theme of being as a substance (in the epistemological aspect - as the coincidence of concept and reality), criticism of the category of being is gradually developing. The indeterminacy of being noted by Pascal, the desire of essence for being by Leibniz, the boundary between being and will drawn by Descartes and Malebranche - all this indicates a narrowing of the scope of application of the category of being while maintaining the traditional identity of being and intelligibility. A similar narrowing is characteristic of Berkeley’s philosophy with its thesis: “to be is to be perceived” (esse est percipi), which allowed for a paradoxical transition from consistent empiricism to platonism. If in Berkeley being is a substantial subject and its ideal content, then in Hume’s philosophy being loses even the status of subjective substantial evidence, which denies the Cartesian intuition of the cogito, which at one time opened a number of ontological constructions of the 17th century. Hume interprets the difference between idea and fact as the fundamental irreducibility of one to the other, as the fundamental heterogeneity of being and intelligibility.

Under being in the broadest sense of the word we mean extremely general concept about existence, about existence in general. The antithesis of being is nothing.

Existence is not static. All concrete forms of the existence of matter, for example, the strongest crystals, giant star clusters, certain plants, animals and people, seem to float out of non-existence (after all, they were exactly like this once did not exist) and become cash existence. The existence of things, no matter how long it lasts, comes to an end and passes into non-existence as a given qualitative certainty, for example, this particular person. The transition into non-existence is thought of as the destruction of a given type of existence and its transformation into another form of existence. So non-existence is thought of as a relative concept, but in the absolute sense there is no non-existence. Absolute being is opposed to non-existence as that which was and which is no longer there or has not yet become, and perhaps never will become.

In philosophy being is a category denoting reality that exists objectively, regardless of human consciousness, will and emotions. The problem of the interpretation of being and its relationship with consciousness is at the center of the philosophical worldview.

Being something external and pre-found for a person, existence imposes certain restrictions on his activity and forces him to measure his actions against it. At the same time, being is the source and condition of all forms of human life. Being represents not only the framework, the boundaries of activity, but also the object of human creativity, constantly changing being, the sphere of possibilities, which man transforms into reality in his activity.

The concept of being is multifaceted and complex. The interpretation of being has undergone a complex development. Its common feature is confrontation materialistic And idealistic approaches. The first of them interprets the foundations of existence as material, the second - as ideal.

Can be isolated several periods in the interpretation of existence. The first period is the mythological interpretation of existence. The second stage is associated with the consideration of being “in itself” (naturalistic ontology). The third period begins with the philosophy of I. Kant; being is considered as something connected with the cognitive and practical activities of man.

In the history of philosophy, the first concept of being was given by the ancient Greek philosophers of the 6th - 4th centuries BC - the Desocrats. For them, existence coincides with the material, indestructible and perfect cosmos. Some of them considered being as unchangeable, united, motionless, identical to itself. These were the views ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides. He made a fundamental distinction between thinking and sensibility, and, accordingly, between imaginable world And world sensually cognizable. Thinking and the corresponding conceivable, intelligible world is, first of all, “one,” which Parmenides characterized as being, eternity and immobility, homogeneity, indivisibility and completeness, contrasting it with formation and apparent fluidity.

He gives one of the first formulations of the idea of the identity of being and thinking: “to think and to be is one and the same thing,” “thought and that to which thought is directed are one and the same.” Being, according to Parmenides, can never come from non-being, nor in any way contain it in itself.

Parmenides did not deny the sensory world, but argued that for its philosophical and scientific understanding, sensuality alone is not enough. Considering reason to be the criterion of truth, he rejected sensations because of their inaccuracy.

Other ancient philosophers considered being as something continually becoming. So, Heraclitus formulated a number of dialectical principles of being and knowledge. Dialectics for Heraclitus is the concept of continuous change, formation, which is conceived within the limits of the material cosmos and is mainly the cycle of material elements - fire, air, water and earth. Here the philosopher’s famous image appears of “a river that cannot be entered twice,” since at every moment it is new.

Becoming is possible only in the form of a continuous transition from one opposite to another, in the form unity of already formed opposites. Thus, for Heraclitus, life and death, day and night, good and evil are one. Opposites are in eternal struggle, so that “discord is the father of all, the king of all.” The understanding of dialectics also includes the moment of relativity (the relativity of the beauty of a deity, man and ape, human strengths and actions, etc.), although he did not lose sight of the one and whole within which the struggle of opposites takes place.

The views of others are based on the fact that being is fixed in relation to non-existence, and the opposition is between being in truth, which is revealed in philosophical reflection, and being according to opinion, which is only a false, distorted surface of things.

This was expressed most clearly Plato, which contrasts sensual things to pure ideas as “the world of true being.” The soul was once close to God and “rising, looked into true existence.” Now, burdened with worries, “he finds it difficult to contemplate what exists.”

The most important part of Plato's philosophical system is the doctrine of three main ontological substances (triad): “one”, “mind” and “soul”. The basis of all being is the “one”, which in itself is devoid of any characteristics, has no parts, that is, neither beginning nor end, does not occupy any space, cannot move, since movement requires change, that is, multiplicity . The signs of identity, difference, similarity, etc. are not applicable to being. Nothing can be said about it at all; it is above all sensation and thinking. The beauty of life and real existence for Plato is higher than the beauty of art. Being and life is an imitation of eternal ideas, and art is an imitation of being and life, that is, an imitation of an imitation.

The next step is taking Aristotle. He identifies types of being in accordance with the types of judgments: “it is.” Based on his principle of the relationship between form and matter, Aristotle overcomes the opposition of spheres of being inherent in previous philosophy, since form for him is an integral characteristic of being. However, Aristotle also recognizes the immaterial form of all forms (God).

Although Aristotle recognized matter as one of the first causes and considered it a certain essence, he saw in it only a passive principle (the ability to become something), but he attributed all activity to the other three causes, and essence of being - form- attributed eternity and immutability, and considered the source of all movement to be a motionless but moving principle - God. Aristotle's God is the “prime mover” of the world, the highest goal of all forms and formations developing according to their own laws.

Christianity makes a distinction between divine And created being, between God and the world, which he created out of nothing and is supported by the divine will. Man is given the opportunity to freely move towards a perfect, divine existence. Christianity develops the ancient idea of the identity of God and perfection (good, truth and beauty). Medieval Christian philosophy in the tradition of Aristotelianism distinguishes actual being(act) and possible existence(potency), essence and existence. Only the existence of God is entirely relevant.

A sharp departure from this position began during the Renaissance, when the cult gained general recognition. material existence, nature, bodily. This transformation, which expresses new type the relationship of man to nature - a relationship determined by the development of science, technology and material production, prepared the concept of being in the 17th-18th centuries. In them, being is considered as a reality opposing man, as a being mastered by man in his activity. This is where the interpretation arises being as an object opposing the subject as an inert reality, which is subject to blind, automatically operating laws (for example, the principle of inertia) and does not allow the intervention of any external forces.

The starting point in the interpretation of existence for all philosophy and science of this era is the concept body. This is due to the development of mechanics - the main science of the 17th-18th centuries. In turn, this understanding of existence served as the basis for the natural scientific understanding of the world at that time. Period classical science and philosophy can be characterized as a period of naturalistic-objectivist concepts of being, where nature is considered outside of man’s relationship to it, as a certain mechanism acting on its own.

Regarding the concept substances from the Dutch philosopher of existence B. Spinoza, one can notice that this is a metaphysically disguised nature in its isolation from man. These words characterize one of the features of the philosophy of this time - nature versus man, consideration of being and thinking is purely naturalistic.

Spinoza made the central point of his ontology identity of god and nature, which he understood as a single, eternal and infinite substance, excluding the existence of any other principle, and thereby as the cause of itself. Recognizing the reality of infinitely diverse individual things, he understood them as a set of modes - individual manifestations of a single substance.

With various modifications, all these features in the understanding of being are found in the philosophical systems of F. Bacon, T. Hobbes, J. Locke (Great Britain), B. Spinoza, among the French materialists, in the physics of R. Descartes.

But in the metaphysics of R. Descartes, a different way of interpreting being originates, in which being is determined on the path of a reflective analysis of consciousness, that is, an analysis of self-awareness, or on the path of understanding existence through the prism of human existence, the existence of culture, social existence.

Descartes' thesis - “cogito ergo sum” - “I think, therefore I exist” - means: the existence of the subject is comprehended in the act self-knowledge.

The main feature of Descartes' philosophical worldview is dualism of soul and body, “thinking” and “extended” substance. Human there is a real connection between the soulless and lifeless bodily mechanism and the soul, which has thinking and will. Of all the abilities of the human soul, he put in first place will. The main effect of affects, or passions, is that they dispose the soul to desire those things for which the body is prepared. God himself united the soul with the body, thereby distinguishing man from animals.

The starting point of Descartes' philosophical reasoning is doubt in the truth of generally accepted knowledge, covering all types of knowledge. However, doubt is not the conviction of an agnostic, but only a preliminary methodological device. One may doubt whether the outside world exists, or even whether my body exists. But my doubt itself, in any case, exists. Doubt is one of the acts of thinking. I doubt because I think. If, therefore, doubt is a reliable fact, then it exists only because thinking exists, since I myself exist as a thinker.

The same line is developed by the German philosopher G. Leibniz, who derives the concept being from the inner experience of man, and it reaches its extreme expression in the English philosopher J. Berkeley, who denies the existence material existence and putting forward the subjective idealistic position “to be means to be in perception.”

Without denying the existence of things in themselves, I. Kant considers being not as a property of things, but as a bundle of judgments. “...Being is not a real predicate, in other words, it is not a concept of something that could be added to the concept of a thing... In logical application it is only a connective in a judgment. By adding the characteristic of being to a concept, we are not adding anything new to its content.”

The dissertation “On the form and principles of the sensually perceived and intelligible world” was the beginning of the transition to the views "critical" period, whose main works were the Critique of Pure Reason, the Critique of Practical Reason, and the Critique of Judgment.

The basis of all three “Critiques” is Kant’s teaching about phenomena and things as they exist in themselves - "things in themselves". Our knowledge begins with the fact that “things in themselves” influence the external sense organs and cause in us Feel. In this premise of his teaching, Kant is a materialist. But in his doctrine of the forms and limits of knowledge, Kant is an idealist and an agnostic. He claims that neither the sensations of our sensuality, nor the concepts and judgments of our reason can provide any theoretical knowledge “about things in themselves.” These things are unknowable. True, empirical knowledge can expand and deepen indefinitely, but this will not bring us one iota closer to the knowledge of “things in themselves.”

For J. Fichte authentic being is the free, pure activity of the absolute Self, and material existence is the product of this activity. In Fichte, for the first time, the subject of philosophical analysis is existence of culture, being created by human activity.

The basis of Fichte's philosophy is the conviction that a practical-active attitude towards an object precedes a theoretical-contemplative attitude towards it. Consciousness is not given, but given, generating itself. Its evidence rests not on contemplation, but on action; it is not perceived by the intellect, but is affirmed by the will. Be aware of your I, create it by the act of this awareness- this is Fichte's demand. By this act the individual gives birth to his spirit, his freedom.

A similar thesis is developed by F. Schelling, according to which nature, being in itself there is only an undeveloped, dormant mind. He notes that “freedom is the only principle to which everything is reduced here, and in the objective world we do not see anything existing outside of us, but only the internal limitation of our own freedom of activity.”

In the system of G. Hegel being is considered as the first, immediate and very vague step in the ascent of the spirit to itself, from the abstract to the concrete: the absolute spirit materializes its energy only for a moment, and in its further movement and activity of self-knowledge it removes, overcomes the alienation of being from the idea and returns to itself to myself, because the essence of being is the ideal. For Hegel, true being, coinciding with the absolute spirit, is not an inert, inert reality, but an object of activity, full of restlessness, movement and fixed in the form of a subject, that is, actively.

Related to this is historicism in the understanding of being, which originates in German classical idealism. True, history and practice here turn out to be derived from spiritual activity.

Installation for review being as a product of the activity of the spirit characteristic of the philosophy of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At the same time, existence itself is interpreted in a new way. The main trend in the development of ideas about being coincides with the trend in the development of scientific knowledge, which overcomes both the naturalistic-objectivist interpretation of being and the substantial approach to it. This is expressed, in particular, in the widespread penetration into scientific thinking of such categories as function, relationship, system, etc. This movement of science was largely prepared by criticism of the ideas of being as a substance, carried out in epistemology, for example, in the works German philosopher- neo-Kantian E. Cassirer.

In a number of directions modern philosophy the approach to existence comes from the analysis of human existence. Man is increasingly aware of himself as the subject of all forms of his activity, as the creator of his social life and forms of culture. In the philosophy of the 20th century, not the world, not nature, but Human becomes a problematic reference point. Philosophers of the 20th century began to decisively reconsider the internal philosophical priorities of the past. They objected to those representatives of classical ontology who started from independent existence of the world and from it we moved towards understanding a person dependent on the world. In such cases, they said, philosophy turned into “the philosophy of things,” and a person was most often also considered as a thing. Representatives of the analyzed trends of the 20th century considered it necessary to truly make man the center of philosophy. After all man himself is, exists, is being, moreover, being a special one. Classical philosophers considered “being” as an extremely broad (human) concept of the world and at the same time considered being completely independent of man. The exception was the teaching of Kant. In it, philosophers of the 20th century especially appreciated the idea that we see the world exclusively through the prism of human consciousness. The things of the world, the world itself, exist in themselves, completely independent of consciousness, but “in themselves” they are not revealed to us, people. Since the world, things and processes of the world appear to people, the results of its awareness are already inseparable from man. The center is placed on man, his activity, the possibilities of freedom opened up by his very existence.

The concept of matter is inextricably linked with the concept of being in philosophy.

The first thing that strikes a person’s imagination when he observes the world around him is the amazing variety of objects, processes, properties and relationships. All objects and processes of the external world have this common feature: they exist outside and independently of consciousness, being reflected directly or indirectly in our sensations. In other words, they are objective. First of all, on this basis, philosophy unites and generalizes them in one concept matter. When it is said that matter is given to us through sensations, this means not only the direct perception of objects, but also the indirect one. Matter is not one of the things that exists along with others. All existing concrete material formations are matter in its various forms, types, properties and relationships. Matter- this is not the real possibility of all forms, but their actual existence. The only relatively different property from matter is consciousness, spirit.

Every somewhat consistent philosophical thinking can deduce the unity of the world either from matter or from the spiritual principle. In the first case we are dealing with materialistic, and in the second - with idealistic monism(from Greek " mono" - "the only one"). Exist philosophical teachings who stand in positions dualism(from Latin " duo" - "dual").

Some philosophers see the unity of objects and processes in their reality, in the fact that they exist. This is truly what unites everything in the world. But principle of material unity of the world does not mean the empirical similarity or identity of specific existing systems, elements and specific properties and patterns, but the community of matter as substances, as a bearer of diverse properties and relationships.

Materialistic monism rejects views that distinguish consciousness and reason into a special substance opposed to nature and society. Consciousness- this is both knowledge of reality and its component. Consciousness belongs to material world, although it opposes it as spirituality. It is a natural property of highly organized matter.

Matter in the physical sense has a variety of discontinuous structure. It consists of parts of various sizes, qualitative certainty: elementary particles, atoms, molecules, radicals, ions, complexes, macromolecules, colloidal particles, planets, stars and their systems, galaxies. Inseparable from “discontinuous” forms of matter are “continuous” forms - various types of fields (gravitational, electromagnetic, nuclear). They bind particles of matter, allowing them to interact and thereby exist and be.

The world and everything in the world is not chaos, but a naturally organized system, a hierarchy of systems. Under structure of matter is understood as an internally dissected integrity, a natural order of connection of elements within the whole. The existence and movement of matter is impossible outside of its structural organization. The concept of structure applies not only to the various levels of matter, but also to matter as a whole. The stability of the main structural forms of matter is due to the existence of its unified structural organization - hierarchy. In this sense, we can say that each element of matter, as it were, bears the stamp of the world as a whole. In particular, as science shows, the electron is directly related to the Cosmos, and understanding the Cosmos is impossible without considering the electron.

One of the attributes of matter is its indestructibility, which manifests itself in a set of specific laws for maintaining the stability of matter in the process of its change. In a continuous process of mutual transformations, matter is preserved as a substance, i.e. as the basis of all changes. Law of conservation and transformation of energy states: no matter what transformation processes occur in the world, the total amount of mass and energy remains unchanged. Any material object exists only in connection with others and through them it is connected with the whole world.

In the process of self-propulsion of matter, various complexities arise. forms its existence, expressing its inherent systemic organization:

inanimate systems(elementary particles, including antiparticles, fields, atoms, molecules, microscopic bodies, cosmic systems of various orders - the Earth and other planets, the Sun and other stars, the Galaxy, systems of galaxies);

biological systems(the entire biosphere from microorganisms to humans, including intraorganismal biosystems and supraorganismal systems);

socially organized systems(person, family, various groups, associations and organizations, parties, classes, nations, states, systems of states, society, humanity as a whole).

3. The problem of the attributes of being (movement, space, time, reflection, systematicity, development)

being matter philosophical space

Everything that a person knows about the world around him and about himself, he knows in the form of concepts, categories, attributes. Categories are the most general, fundamental concepts of a particular science. In philosophy, categories are forms of reflection in thought of the universal laws of the objective world.

Matter is a philosophical category to designate objective reality(being), which is given to a person in his sensations, but exists independently of them. The properties of matter, without which it cannot exist, are called attributes. Being is characterized by such attributes as movement, space, time, reflection, systematicity, development, which can be absolute and/or relative and are inextricably linked.

The world is in constant motion. Movement is a way of existence of things. The philosophical concept of movement denotes any interactions, as well as changes in the states of objects that occur during these interactions. Be on the move- means to change. There are no unchanging things, properties and relationships in the world. The world of real existence is composed and decomposed; it is never something complete.

Each structural level of matter has its own form of movement: mechanical, physical, chemical, biological, social, which are interconnected in the macro- and microworld.

Movement is uncreated and indestructible. It is not brought in from outside. The movement of beings is self-movement in the sense that the tendency, the impulse to change state, is inherent in reality itself: it is the cause of itself. Since movement is uncreated and indestructible, it absolutely, immutable and universal; since movement manifests itself in the form of concrete forms, it is also relatively. The forms and types of movement are diverse, each form of movement has a specific carrier - substance, or matter.

The movement of any thing occurs only in relation to some other thing. To study the movement of any object, you need to find reference system- another object in relation to which we can consider the movement of interest to us.

In the endless flow of the never-ending movement of existence, there are always moments of stability, manifested primarily in the preservation of the state of movement, as well as in the form of equilibrium of phenomena and relative peace. Peace- this is a state of movement that does not violate the qualitative specificity of the object, its stability. No matter how an object changes, as long as it exists, it retains its certainty. The absence of movement - peace - always has only a visible and relative character. To find absolute peace means to cease to exist.

All material bodies have a certain extent - length, width, height. They are located in different ways relative to each other and form parts of one or another system. Space- the form of existence of matter, expressing the extent of its constituent objects, their structure from elements and parts; this is a form of coordination of coexisting objects, states of matter. It lies in the fact that objects are located outside each other (next to each other, on the side, below, above, inside, behind, in front, etc.) and are in certain quantitative relationships. The order of coexistence of these objects and their states forms structure of space.

Phenomena are characterized by the duration of their existence and the sequence of development stages. Processes occur either simultaneously, or one earlier or later than the other; such, for example, are the relationships between day and night, winter and spring. All this means that bodies exist and move in time. Time- this is a form of existence of matter, expressing the duration of ongoing processes, the sequence of changes in states during the change and development of material systems; this is a form of coordination of changing objects and their states. It lies in the fact that each state represents a sequential link in the process and is in certain quantitative relationships with other states. The order in which these objects and states change forms time structure.

Space and time are universal forms of existence, coordination of material objects. The universality of these attributes of being lies in the fact that they are the forms of existence of all objects and processes that were, are and will be in the infinite world. Space and time have their own characteristics. Space has three dimensions: length, width and height, and time has only one - the direction from the past through the present to the future. Space and time exist objectively, their existence is independent of human consciousness. Each structural level of matter corresponds to a specific form of space and time, as well as movement.

A huge contribution to the development of scientific ideas about connections between space and time and moving matter contributed by N.I. Lobachevsky. He put forward the idea of non-Euclidean geometry and came to the conclusion: the properties of space are not always and everywhere the same and unchanged. And the theory of relativity, created in the twentieth century by A. Einstein, revealed specific connections between space and time with moving matter and with each other, expressing these connections strictly mathematically in the laws of the special and general theories of relativity. One of the expressions of the connection between space and time and the movement of matter is the fact, discovered by the theory of relativity, that the simultaneity of events is not absolute, but relative. To understand this fact, the concept of a reference system in relation to which the observation is being made is also used.

System- this is an integral set of elements in which all the elements are so closely related to each other that they act in relation to the surrounding conditions and other systems of the same level as a single whole. Element- this is the minimum unit within a given whole that performs a specific function in it. Systems can be complex or simple. A complex system- this is one whose elements are themselves considered as systems.

Any system is something whole, representing a unity of parts. The categories of whole and part are relative. For example, an atom is something whole and at the same time a part of another whole - a molecule. The molecule, in turn, is part of some larger whole - for example, an animal organism, which is part of an even larger whole - planet Earth, etc. Thus, one can imagine all bodies in nature as parts of one whole, one system - the Universe.

Based on the nature of connections, various systems are divided into three main types:

disorganized (summative) integrity, i.e. a simple accumulation of objects, a mechanical connection of something heterogeneous (for example, a rock of pebbles, sand, a herd of animals). The connection between the parts of such a system is mechanical in nature;

organized integrity, having different levels of order (for example, an atom, a molecule, a crystal). The parts of such a system are in a relatively stable relationship;

organic integrity- is an organized system capable of self-development and self-reproduction of its parts (for example, an organism, a biological species, a society). Parts of an organic whole outside their system not only lose a number of their significant properties, but may even cease to exist altogether.

No field of knowledge can do without the categories of part and whole. When examining a whole, we, through analysis, identify the corresponding parts in it and find out the nature of the connections between them.

There is nothing completely finished in the Universe. Everything is on the way to something else. Development- this is a certain directed, irreversible change in an object: either simply from old to new, or from simple to complex, from a lower level to an increasingly higher one.

Development is irreversible: everything passes through the same state only once. For example, the movement of an organism is impossible from old age to youth, from death to birth. Development is dual: in it the old is destroyed and in its place the new arises. Between the old and the new there is similarity (otherwise we would have only many unrelated states), and difference (without a transition to something else there is no development), and coexistence, and struggle, and mutual negation, and mutual transition.

Along with the processes of upward development, there is also degradation, the collapse of systems - a transition from higher to lower, from more perfect to less perfect, a decrease in the level of organization of the system, for example, the degradation of biological species that are becoming extinct due to the inability to adapt to new conditions. Regression is a contradictory process: the whole decomposes, but individual elements can progress. Or the system as a whole can progress, and some of its elements degrade, for example, the progressive development of biological forms as a whole is accompanied by the degradation of individual species.

The principle of development is of great importance: a correct understanding of the history of the development of a phenomenon, thing, object helps to understand its essence, to penetrate into its essence.

Reflection in relation to the attributes of being means that they are all closely interconnected and, under certain conditions, can even flow into each other. Without explaining the concept of time, it is difficult to explain the concept of movement in space, integral systems and their parts develop (including in time and space), etc. This is how other philosophical categories transform into each other: the accidental becomes necessary, the individual becomes general, quantitative changes entail changes in quality, the effect turns into a cause, etc. This fluid relationship categories are a generalized reflection of the relationship between the phenomena of reality. There is not and cannot exist any one fixed system of categories and attributes, given once and for all. Due to the development of thinking and philosophical science, from the reflection of old ones, new categories arise (for example, information), and old ones are filled with new content.

So, space and time, as attributes of the existence of matter, attributes of being are absolute. But since these are forms of moving matter, they are relative, they are conditioned by it, like a form by its content, and each level of movement of matter is characterized by its own spatio-temporal structure, constitutes a certain hierarchical system of being, quite complex in its development in spatio-temporal characteristics and reflected on the perception of the world as a whole.

What human problems does the category “being” describe and explain? The comfort of human existence presupposes reliance on some simple and natural premises that are self-explanatory and do not require special justification. Among such universal prerequisites, the very first is the confidence of people that with all the visible changes occurring in nature and the world as a whole, there are some guarantees of its preservation as a stable whole. The history of mankind demonstrates the eternal desire of people to find such supports for their existence that would block in their everyday consciousness the horror associated with thoughts about the possibility of the every minute destruction of the world. And every time doubt began to arise about the strength of this kind of support, the usual facts real life became the subject of special reflection, moving from the rank of something taken for granted to the rank of problems of finding new institutions - supports.

Thus, in the pre-philosophical, mythological period of life, the Greeks saw guarantees of the stability of the world as a single whole in the traditional religion associated with the gods of Olympus. But the first philosophers began to destroy the connection of the individual with legends and tradition, calling into question the unconditionality of the traditions themselves and faith in Olympus. Philosophy plunged the ancient Greek into the abyss of doubt regarding the possibility of seeing in Olympian gods guarantor of the stability of the world, thereby destroying the foundations and norms of traditional peaceful life. The world and the Universe no longer seemed as strong and reliably existing as before: everything became shaky, unreliable, and uncertain. The ancient Greeks lost their vital support. The modern Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset noted that the anxiety and fear experienced by people who had lost the support of life, the reliable world of traditions, and faith in the gods were undoubtedly terrible, especially since in ancient times fear was the most powerful experience. In this situation, it was necessary to search for new strong and reliable foundations for people’s lives. They needed faith in a new force. Philosophy began the search for new foundations of the world and man, introduced the problematic of being, and gave this term, taken from the Greek colloquial language, a categorical meaning.

Conclusion

The desire to penetrate the mystery of man accompanies the entire history of world philosophy - from ancient achievements to modern theoretical examinations. The personalist tradition either flourishes or gives way to other worldviews. At the end of the 19th century. In the West, for example, it was considered respectable to write about the mysteries of knowledge, the laws of logic, the nature of rationality, and phenomenological rules. Many authorities regarded thinking about man as a form of philosophical novelism, as a kind of general humanistic rhetoric. In conditions when it seemed logical to build philosophy according to the standards of science, only a philosopher who did not claim an academic vocation could talk about the “soul of man” or “the art of love.”

We stopped at the threshold of the 20th century. Before the anthropological turn, which marked the renaissance of the philosophical understanding of man. Russian religious thinkers spoke about the cosmic essence of man. German philosopher-anthropologists tried to find ways to understand man in the extensive historical, philosophical and natural science material. S. Freud sought to present in all his clarity the intense and often bizarre world of psychological motivation.

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Comments

To me - yes - for my religious purposes. For example, from being understood as Humanity, I can derive the interests (good) of humanity and consider the realization of these benefits as my meaning of life.

Do you have a meaning in life?

The meaning of life is to gain experience and knowledge for the subsequent acquisition of omnipotence (bliss and freedom). I don't think it's just my meaning in life. This general meaning life for all living beings.

What is good if it is derived from existence as the existence of Humanity?

At a minimum, the survival of humanity itself, and at a maximum, the expansion of His experience and knowledge to strengthen His power. But you can direct your will to power to the detriment of humanity, and besides, your life is limited and you are unlikely to get closer to your goal.

In general, to be more precise, a single Humanity simply does not exist today, and it has yet to be created. It may well be that the good for Humanity is the ban on the monopoly interpretation of this good (totalitarianism); then the meaning of my life will be the struggle against totalitarian claims to the formulation of the universal good.

The concept of the common good is a complex concept, so it is difficult for me to formulate it alone, so I am interested in involving others in developing this issue, or in other words, I am motivated as a missionary.

I do not want to go into details on this topic, I just showed the complexity and productivity of my way of postulating being.

You are a contradictory thinker.

Contradiction:

1. "That's why I am interested in involving other people in developing this issue"

2. "I Don't want

Choose what exactly you want.

Another:

1. You are talking about religion, but it implies a certain Higher principle - God. God .

2.“And you can direct your will to power to the detriment of humanity”.

Why don’t you think that God cannot “direct his power to harm humanity”?

Another:

1. "is a ban on the monopoly interpretation of this good (totalitarianism)"

2. “the meaning of my life will be the struggle against totalitarian claims to the formulation of the universal good”

The ban on a monopoly interpretation of a good is also a total monopoly interpretation of a good (in this case, a good is a non-monopoly interpretation of a good).

However, as you wish. Be a missionary. But it’s obvious that you yourself don’t know what needs to be preached, because you don’t know what good is.

"I Don't want go into more detail in this topic"

We are talking specifically about this topic, which is about being, and not about the philosophical foundations of sociology. Sociology is too big a topic and I don’t want to develop it here in vain, especially since I don’t even have the concept of a brief presentation of it.

God almighty, blissful and free.

Where have you seen such a god alive? Humanity can potentially possess all these qualities, but no one actually possesses them.

God cannot “direct his power to harm humanity”

Since, as I wrote above, there is no united humanity yet and its creation is yet to come, the ban on its suicide must be included in its design. If we take care of this today, we will create guarantees that God will not kill himself.

Prohibition on monopoly interpretation of a good

I expressed this thesis only as an assumption to show the complexity and non-obviousness of the issue. Comte, in addition to Humanity, came to the need to honor the Great Fetish (the Earth in the form of a ball); perhaps the preservation of the Great Fetish can be considered an absolute and totalitarian value as long as Humanity is tied to the Earth.

You yourself do not know what needs to be preached, because you do not know what good is.

At least I know that I know little about the good, and others do not know even that. Do you have a concept of good?

Being is not inherent in anything; we can attach this category to anything by our own will, and then decide whether it gives some kind of semantic addition. For example, we brought existence to the atom and look: does this give some kind of semantic addition to physics and chemistry? Will anyone pay us for such intellectual activity?

So, if we bring existence into existence for Humanity, then the science of sociology, the ideology of altruism and humanism arises, and Comte discovered many other interesting things there.

“For example, we brought existence to an atom and look: does this give some kind of semantic addition to physics and chemistry?”
And how it’s necessary, not just how it’s possible!

The essence of existence is the interaction of material objects that are studied by physicists and chemists.

And interaction is a change in the physical, chemical and nuclear state of interacting objects.

In conclusion I will say this. I respect believers. But their vision of the world, in our enlightened times, is very subjective and too irrefutable.

The main category of Philosophy is the category of Being.
Being is a general category for designating both one specific “that which is, that exists”, and any - each, every or all and everything - “that which is, that exists”.
That is, “Being” is understood in two different senses - in the senses of “abstract existence /existence in general/” and “concrete existence”.
And understanding the ambiguity of being helps to understand why in philosophy each individual “that which is, that exists” is designated simultaneously by categories of two different levels: as a certain specific, nominal, inherent only to this “that which is, that exists” category , and, at the same time, the universal, universal and abstract, inherent in general to any “that which is, that exists”, the category of “being”.
BEING
----------Abstract existence /any kind at all/
----------Existence specific /definite nominal/
That is, we first certainly need to understand and realize that each, everyone and everything “that is, that exists” is “being”, expressing both “existence in general” and, at the same time, “specific existence”.
And then it is necessary to understand and realize that “being” must have the inherent property of having its own “base”, “substance” - regardless of whether it expresses “existence in general” or “specific existence”.
But what can act as the basis, the substance of being?
“The basis of being” is a concept for designating such “that which is, that exists”, which acts as the basis for another “that which is, that exists”, but at the same time each of these “that” does not cease to act as in the role of "being".
Paradoxically, the basis, the substance of being, is, first of all, being itself.
That is, being, first of all, is the basis of itself.
Consequently, both every “that which is, that exists”, and in general any “that which is, that exists”, and even the entire set taken together of “that which is, that exists” - this is as “being ", and, at the same time, the "base", "substance" of this same "being".
Consequently, it is not advisable to begin constructing a diagram of a system of categories by placing on it the category of “being” or the category “substance of being.”
However. We usually designate the entire set taken together “that which is, that exists” not only by the category “being”, but also by the category “world”.
However, the entire set of “what is, what exists”, denoted by the category “world”, taken together, is an infinite, inexhaustible set of concrete “what is, what exists”.
And each concrete “that which is, that exists” of the infinite and inexhaustible set of “that which is, that exists” is, at the same time, such a specific concrete “substance of being”, which must be designated by a certain category.
Since there are countless specific “substances of being”, it is necessary to identify the main ones among them - universal, special and individual.
So. At the same time, what one universal category designates both the infinite set of all “that which is, that exists”, and each individual “that which is, that exists”?
It is designated, as we have already found out, by the category “Being”.
And what one category designates not every single concrete “that which is, that exists,” but only and only the entire infinite set of all concrete “that which is, that exists”?
It is designated, as we have already found out, by the category “World”.
Consequently, it is preferable to begin constructing a diagram of a system of categories by placing on it the category “world,” which acts, first of all, as one of the “substances of being,” rather than the category “being.”
But we are forced to designate the three extremely alternative “Universal Substances of Being”, which also act as “Universal Substances of the World”, by the categories “Subjective Reality”, “Objective Reality” and “Ideal Reality” or by the categories “Soul of the World”, “Body of the World” " and "Spirit of the World".
For me, as can be seen from the above: “Existence is a logical postulate necessary for the deductive method of cognition” of the surrounding reality and the method of constructing a philosophical picture of the world. Maybe I'm wrong about something?

I will try to answer everyone at once.

1. Unfortunately, I don’t see any practical benefit. An attempt to create my own picture of the world depended, first of all, on my understanding of the category of being.
2. Since philosophy deals with the study of categories, their study begins with the study of its main tools - the category “being”, and not with an appeal to the question “the existence of what?”
Since being and the thought about being, expressed by the category being, are identical, in philosophy thinking about the “category” is identical and equivalent to thinking about “that” that is denoted by this category. This is what distinguishes it from other sciences.
3. Since the word Genesis is formed from the words To be and Byvat, therefore - for me - “Being” should be understood, first of all, as “Being”, and not as “Existence”.
That is, Being is “that which Happens.” And there is no need to talk about “that which does not happen.”
That is, the category of Being means only “what is, what happens” and... nothing more.
Therefore, being is the most absolute, the most universal, the most abstract and the simplest “what is, what happens.”
Therefore, the concept of being is the most absolute, the most universal, the most abstract, the most general and the simplest concept among all concepts.
4. But the textbooks state that being is also understood as existence, that being is “that which is, that exists.”
When being is also understood as existence, then existence is understood by me as in the sense of “any, not yet designated by a specific name - general or individual, multiple or single, separately or all together, something concrete or something abstract - existence” , and, at the same time, in the sense of “concrete, already designated by a specific name - only something concrete, only something taken separately - existence.”
5. That is, it turns out that being, when understood also as existence, acquires a certain dual meaning, perceived not as a “separation”, but as a “unity” of the abstract and concrete meanings of existence.
6. About being in general and concrete being.
This means that I made a mistake in expressing my thoughts.
It seems to me that being is only “what happens”, “what is”, and... nothing more!!!
That is, I think that there is no such thing as “being in general”, “concrete being”, “real or non-real being”, “pure or impure being”, “being for oneself, in oneself or outside oneself” and so on.” being... something" - regardless of the height of the authority of their authors.
For being is only “what is, what happens” and... period!!!
This table or this chair as “that which is, that which happens” is only “being”.
Furniture in general as “what is, what happens” is only “being”.
Any reality as “what is, what happens” is only “being”.
The world as “what is, what happens” is only “being”.
Even being itself or the category of being as “that which is, that which happens” is only “being” and nothing more.
7. Subjective, objective and ideal realities are three such extremely alternative / trial / foundations of the World / reality in general or reality in general, as such/, which exist only eternally, interdependently and jointly.
8. There is no one of these trial foundations - there are no other two trial foundations, there is no World.
That is, the World is the trinity of these three Trial Foundations, acting as the Soul, Body and Spirit, which I also designate as Zooteria, Matter and Infoteria.
Tell me please. If the World, despite Its infinity, inexhaustibility and eternity, is characterized by the trinity of these three trial principles / hypostases /, then can He represent for a person only an “Object”, “Ideal” or “Subject”?

Human existence as a philosophical problem

The problem of defining human existence. Being as a gift, the revelation of human presence in the world. Man in the existence of the world reveals the multi-quality, multi-level and multi-dimensionality of his being. A person at the crossroads of nature, history, culture is a creator, witness and putter.

The system of categories of knowledge of the existence of the world in the “human dimension”: nature (emphasizes the natural generation of man, his kinship with all things); essence (emphasizes the difference between man and all other things);

Man and the world: the problem of man's place in space, nature, society, culture as a system of relations "man-space", "man-nature", "man-society", "man-culture".

Cosmism of human existence

The fundamental constitution of man as being-in-the-world. The world is a unique unity of objective, social and linguistic relations that form the cultural environment of the individual. Four stages of formation of the individual’s world: genetic, playful, internally normative, life.

The world as a non-totalized totality of everything that exists. The world as nature and the world as history. Being in nature as identity. Being in history as negativity, difference.

Forms of human existence in the world: object ("thing among things")-subject, bodily-spiritual, genus-individual, social-individual.

Human Origins

Two concepts of human origin: religious and scientific.

The religious concept states that man was created by God. The reason for the appearance of man seems to be a supernatural, supernatural force, in the role of which God acts.

In the scientific concept, the emergence of man is considered as a product of the evolutionary development of nature. Within the framework of the scientific concept, three hypotheses for the appearance of man on Earth can be distinguished.

Firstly, this is the hypothesis expressed by Charles Darwin and in which the monkey is considered as the ancestor of man.

Secondly, this is the version according to which man descended from an animal, but it remains unclear from which animal.

Thirdly, this is the cosmic hypothesis of the origin of man, according to which man was not born on Earth, he is an alien from another planet.

The fundamental lack of adaptation of man to nature. Man is a "miserable animal". Human life and human history as a process of constant birth. Myth, ritual, play, art are the most important moments in the formation of a person.

Foundations of human existence

Natural, social and personal (existential) foundations of human existence. The unity of the multifaceted essence of man. Sigmund Freud's interpretation of man as a biological being (instincts as the main mover human life), Karl Jaspers - as a historical being (due to this, a person cannot be fully known as being), Karl Marx - as a biosocial being.

The natural basis of human existence

Man is a part of nature, for he is subordinate to it physically and biologically. Nature in this sense is the only real basis on which man is born and exists. The concept of “human nature” in this sense denotes the biological (natural) foundations of his existence. Human nature is a set of persistent, unchanging traits, general inclinations and properties that express the characteristics of man as a living being and are inherent in homo sapiens, regardless of biological evolution and historical process. These include appearance, physical constitution of the body, genetic code, blood type, eye color, upright posture, nervous system, highly developed brain, instincts and conditioned reflexes, temperament, psyche, specificity of the senses.

Man has a natural deficiency. In morphological terms, a person is defined by a deficiency, which should be interpreted in a precise biological sense as lack of adaptation, primitivism, that is, underdevelopment, lack of specialization. A person has no hair, which means there is no natural protection from the cold; there are no natural organs of attack and bodily devices for escape; man is inferior to most animals in the acuity of his senses; he has no real instincts, which is deadly; finally, he needs protection during the entire period of feeding and childhood, which is incomparably longer than that of other living beings. It is precisely because a person is born as an imperfect and incomplete being that he needs to constantly resort to the practice of self-defense, self-determination and self-overcoming.

Such self-realization does not occur spontaneously, but as a result of the continuous effort of learning, reflection and free will. Human nature is an incomplete possibility, manifested in endless variations of existence. The problem of the openness of man as an evolutionary being. Assumptions about the purposeful and predetermined evolution of man and the universe. Man constructs his own nature: the internal instability of human existence forces him to ensure that man himself provides a stable environment for his behavior. These biological facts act as necessary prerequisites for the creation of the social.

Man is a part of nature, inseparable from the cosmos, and at the same time a huge cosmos, largely autonomous from the world. However, man and nature should not be opposed to each other, but considered in unity; man is an active natural factor, a certain function of the biosphere and a certain part of its structure. This fact presupposes the presence of another indisputable fact: human independence from the environment. Man is open to all existence.

Social foundations of human existence

Man's creation of himself is a social enterprise. The need for a social foundation arises from the biological nature of man. The social foundations of human existence define reality as a world in which humanity would be presented and understood. This means that the reality that we find is permeated through and through with human proportions built by us. The complexity of this world does not depend on itself, but on those types of proportionality that the humanity that preceded us built, and which we have already inherited.

The concept of “human essence” expresses the social foundations of human existence. Human nature is shaped and mediated by society. Sociality is a consequence of a person’s openness to the world.

Loneliness is a negative type of sociality, a longing for sociality.

The unity and inconsistency of social circumstances and individual human life. The feeling of being lost in this world - a person wandering here and there is monstrously out of place everywhere.

Personal foundations of human existence

The personal foundations of a person’s existence are determined by his ability to determine his dimension not in the physical sense, but in relation to himself. Philosophy as a tool for organizing the human helps a person to build such proportionality. Inner world a person is a completely independent, separate world of his images, thought forms, feelings, experiences and sensations; the world that forms an individual part of the essence of a given person.

Man as an I-subject is the only being capable of seeing himself as “I” and the world as “not-I”. My own “I” is the center of my world, and only from it do I see everything else and realize myself in practical activities. Freedom and creativity are a way to overcome the initial ambivalence of man: the personality and the individual. Only the liberation of a person from himself (“transcending”) leads a person to himself. Self-transcendence includes not only the ability to observe oneself, but also to change oneself in one’s activities. Man is the only creature that does not want to be what it is.

Man is a historical being, and as such he strives to organically insert himself into the future, where danger awaits him, the risk of finding himself in a crisis, even a hopeless situation. Historicity is an exclusive property of man.

Man is a symbolic being. We refer to man's ability to express many realities in symbolic form. Man lives not only in the physical world, like an animal, but also in the symbolic world. He realizes himself through symbols. The animal uses some signs, but they have no symbols. A sign is part of the physical world, a symbol is part of the human world. The purpose of a sign is instrumental, the purpose of a symbol is denoting.

The limits of human existence

Human existence acts as a measure of sociocultural existence. The limits of human existence are determined by two fundamental categories - death as the end of animal existence and madness as the end of rational existence.

The problem of the unequal significance of the two boundaries of human existence: death is the boundary with which a person faces as an animal, madness is the limit where a person is deprived of what is actually human (faces the limits of his species, his self-identity, his place in the general cosmic, historical order).

A person’s awareness of his physical and intellectual incompleteness. Self-improvement of a person as the task of overcoming the limits (imperfections) of one’s existence.

Being and Madness

The idea of the value of madness in ancient philosophy: human reason is not reducible to being, it is only a scheme of being. In Tradition there is a paradoxical definition of reason - “the wisdom of idiots”, “scientific ignorance”. Madness is placed above reason, above rational activity, and is loaded with positive ontological meaning. Madness is complete; reason partial; madness is everything in everything, reason is a part separated from everything. Madness is not just the absence of reason, it is precisely the overcoming of reason, going beyond its limits - there is a going beyond the scheme of reason, a breakthrough into pure being. Madness is being inside being.

Orthodoxy, based on the value of super-rational contemplation, places it above rational theology (Catholicism).

Catholicism, on the contrary, has always gravitated towards bringing the dogmas of the church under formal logic as much as possible.

With the secularization and desacralization of Western European society, the attitude towards madness and crazy people began to be equated with the attitude towards criminals, sinners, and villains. Beginning with the late Renaissance and especially during the Enlightenment, a stable identification of madness and stupidity with the root of all vices gradually developed in the Western consciousness. Madness in modern world, based on the affirmation of the absolute meaning of reason, describes not only a disorder of human consciousness, but also implies the “disappearance of being”, indicates the loss of being.

Epistemological strategies

regarding the problem of insanity

In modern culture, two epistemological strategies have emerged in relation to the problem of madness. The first (its representatives are Mircea Eliade and Carl Jung) substantiates the right to otherness, the right to a different civilizational and cultural way of life, and insists on the equivalence of modern and non-modern mentality.

The second (represented by the French philosopher Rene Guenon, the Italian philosopher Cesare Evola, radical revolutionaries) asserts the primacy of great madness over reason, supports the correctness of this madness in all cases and manifestations, insists that madness reign here and now, that there is a path for the triumph of reason unauthorized usurpation, evil, alienation.

1. One of the basic categories of philosophy is the concept being. Matter, movement, space, time, the laws of dialectics, personal and social life, God, consciousness, action - everything is defined through the concept of being, philosophical understanding which means existence at all. The world and its phenomena, man and his consciousness, the world as a whole, knowledge about the world and its components exist, therefore they can be united under the concept of being.

In structure philosophical knowledge being is the subject ontologies.

Ontology studies:

Origin and duration (boundaries) of existence;

The structure (types, forms, spheres and their relationships) of being;

Movement and development of being;

The substance of being;

Fundamental laws of existence.

This concept is considered as a basic category for any possible picture of the world and for all other categories. Philosophy sets the goal of finding genuine being and understanding it, follows the path of defining the concept of “being” and its place in the structure of knowledge, and also identifies types and forms of being as objective existence. Exist in physical in the sense of the word, it means to be a participant in interactions. To exist in the biological sense means to live, breathe, reproduce. Exist in social sense means to feel, think, speak, work, engage in politics, art, etc. Exist in philosophical sense means to have certainty expressed by philosophical categories.

In the history of philosophy, attempts to recognize being as the main category of philosophical thinking about the world were not always accepted unconditionally by all philosophers: consideration of being was encouraged only in terms of abstract or only natural scientific study of the category “matter”. The concepts of “matter” and “being” were not identified, since matter characterizes the substantial basis of the world, and in this sense it is entirely objective. It is an existing objectivity, within which the interaction of everything with everything gives rise to a cycle of movement in the sense that at the beginning and end of any cycle the same indestructible matter is given. But if, when considering the composition of existence, it is reduced to “objective reality,” then only things and only objects remain in existence, and man also appears to be a thing among things. Meanwhile, in the composition of what really exists there is nothing more important than man, the world and their relationships. At the same time, it is very important to note that the disclosure of the essence of man and the world, as well as their relationships, is carried out using a certain philosophical language (i.e. conceptual apparatus), which in historical development philosophical thought constantly developed and improved. In this regard, the category of “being” acquires special significance.

Human life in everyday life is based on simple and understandable premises, which we usually accept without much judgment or reflection. The very first and most universal among them is the natural belief of a person that the world is, exists, exists. Therefore, consideration of existence is impossible if we do not look for its starting point in the elementary facts of everyday human life. This means that the face of existence in which we find ourselves is its immediate givenness, evidence, its irreducibility, existence.

However, the specificity of existence is not revealed only by fixing the fact of existence. And not only because of a widespread objection: since being is initially defined through the concept of “existence” (i.e., the presence of something), then the category “being” is not needed, because it does not provide anything new in comparison with the category “existence”. However, the point is that the philosophical category of “being” not only includes an indication of existence, but also captures more complex content.

When considering the problem of existence, philosophy starts from the fact of the existence of the world and everything that exists in the world. But for her, the initial postulate is no longer the fact itself, but its meaning. Philosophical thinking about the world has always contained a certain position of the subject looking at the world, expressing one or another attitude of a person to existence. Philosophy has always raised the question of the relationship of the subject to the object, consciousness to being, man and the world. Thus, being as a philosophical category denotes the relationship “man and the world.”

Many metaphysical questions were raised already in early Greek natural philosophy. What is the origin and first cause of the world? Can it be considered one? What is the basis of the world (substance)? What does it consist of? Is there one substance or several? Is it eternal? Endless? These are all questions about being, however, being here has not yet been singled out as a concept.

The nature of ontological questions(as, indeed, all questions of philosophy in general) is such that it is impossible to give unambiguous true answers to them. Such questions therefore pose problems. Certainly, ontological problems There are a great many, however, among them stands out a group of problems that have attracted the attention of generations of philosophers for centuries.

The problem of non-existence. How to conceive non-existence? If this is impossible, it probably doesn’t exist at all? And if there is non-existence, then is it something?

The specificity of philosophical understanding of reality with the help of universal categories involves the use of the phenomenon of correlation of concepts. In this sense an alternative to being stands nothingness or nothingness. If being characterizes the qualitative fullness of the world, includes everything that exists without exception, then nothing means the complete absence of something.

Nothing, an ontological category meaning the absence of any qualities, certainties or being in general. Studying the issue of being and non-being shows that this problem is multifaceted and contradictory. The history of the language of categories that were used to describe it indicates that it is necessary to distinguish between being whole and parts. Being as a whole there is a reality that is indestructible, eternal and infinite. Being individual things- temporarily and of course. Things arise, exist and die.

In the Universe, nothing arises from nothing, nor does it disappear at all. Everything that is in her has received its due origin from any other type of material existence. This means that absolutely everything that exists in the world has the ability to become one or another type of matter. Moreover, the previous type of matter cannot be completely lost, but can only move from one state to another.

The Problem of Consciousness. How does consciousness arise? Is it unique to humans? If yes, then how does it arise in each human individual and how did it first arise among the human race, among the first people, in order to be transmitted from them later to all people? And if not, then perhaps other living beings and even inanimate objects? Or is there a higher consciousness - the World Spirit, which creates conscious souls and reveals itself in them?

Another aspect of the problem of consciousness opens with the question: where does consciousness exist? Does it have spatial characteristics? Is it even appropriate to associate consciousness with extension? If we accept that this is inappropriate, then we will have to look for answers to questions about how unextended consciousness is connected with a spatially localized person and how it is possible for extended objects to influence unextended consciousness.

Is there a special spiritual reality, and if it exists, how does it relate to the material, bodily reality, to material existence? This is the so-called fundamental question of philosophy, the question of what comes first, to which philosophers of different directions gave different answers. Materialists argued that the main and actual reality is material existence, objective idealists gave priority to spiritual existence, considered material derivative and dependent on it, dualists spoke about independence from each other, about the “parallel” existence of the material and spiritual, and subjective idealists and They completely declared this issue a pseudo-problem.

The problem of world unity. The motley variety of objects and phenomena, processes and states gives rise to a dilemma: should we consider all this to be one being and try to explain it from some one beginning or principle, to which diversity can be reduced as its essence, or are we dealing with an infinite variety of types of existence isolated from each other, each having its own essence.

The Problem of God. This problem is also multifaceted. The question is not so much whether God exists. Much more questions arise from recognizing that it exists. Most of these questions are related to the interpretation of the relationship between God and the world, nature. Is God present in nature or is he transcendental? Is nature adequate to God or is he incommensurate with it? Is God a special being? Does God create being, being, as it were, “above” it? Is God's creation of the world a one-time act or is it a continuous process, and then the world will exist as long as God continues creation? And creation itself is the creation of the entire multitude of things, or is it the creation of principles, laws and principles, which presupposes the further evolution of nature, which does not require additional Divine intervention?

Traffic problem. The question of whether a movement exists, posed by the Eleatics, who denied it, became de-actualized over time. But questions about whether motion is absolute and whether it is eternal have become more pressing. No less problematic is the question of the nature of the movement: spasmodic, intermittent, or smooth, evolutionary?

Exist three basic forms of being peace - inorganic,organic And social. As for the first two forms of existence, they represent the existence of objects. These objects are not born by cultural means, since they exist and objectively exist on their own. When we are talking about the existence of a person, then his birth presupposes not so much a natural as a cultural, moral effort, focused on becoming a person.

The personal moment in human existence must be emphasized because in philosophy, understanding its problems, including the problems of existence, presupposes personal effort, our constantly renewed participation in existence, which arises anew for each generation, for each person. In every era, in different civilizations, each time a person must again individually experience what people experienced before him, because we are talking about being. It is one if we perform actions, deeds, and it is different if we do not do this. But philosophy does not stop at a simple statement of the existence of man and the world around him, revealing various types and modes of existence. By defining the meaning of the relationship “being-non-existence”, it gives an understanding of the inconsistency, tension, diversity of existence, and provides an opportunity to overcome the limitations of knowledge through the prism of individual existence.

It is necessary to distinguish kinds being - objective and subjective reality. Objective reality embraces everything that exists outside and independently of consciousness. Stellar systems and elementary particles, atoms and macrobodies, microorganisms, birds, mammals, i.e. everything that makes up inanimate and living nature, and, finally, man himself, society form an objectively real being.

Consciousness, thinking, and the spiritual world of a person are nothing more than subjective reality, which finds its expression in feelings, images, fantasies, ideas, hypotheses, and theories. A person’s experiences and thoughts, moral and aesthetic ideals, idealized mental constructs (such as a material point or an ideal gas), and all spiritual life belong to the sphere of subjective reality.

These two kinds of being are not polar opposites. Subjective reality is a product of reflection of objective reality and, in turn, influences it. The relationship between objective and subjective reality is realized in the forms of human activity. The measure of the adequacy and truth of thinking is the mediation of its practice. In order to create an image of an object, a process, a person manipulates the conditions of existence of things. The choice of conditions is associated both with the value orientations of the subject and with his specific goals. The same materials can, for example, be the object of research by different specialists. On the other hand, empirically or theoretically obtained knowledge about objects becomes, in turn, a further starting point for determining the nature and capabilities of objectively and really existing things and processes.

It is necessary to distinguish levels being - current (valid) And potential (possible) existence.Actual existence– this is existing existence in a given space-time interval, everything that exists at a given moment. In actual existence, philosophy highlights, first of all, the existence of natural things and processes. This is the natural existence of individualized objects and their state, which is sometimes called first nature in contrast to the second (man-made) nature of artificial things and processes created by man. As humanity develops, second nature has an increasing influence on the functioning of society. The dominant role in it is occupied by technology, in which two series of phenomena merge and are embodied: rational, purposeful human activity and the laws of the external world, its substances and properties.

The actual existence of things and processes of nature, man and what is created by him contains a lot of unrealized possibilities. This potential being, which may or may not become relevant depending on the conditions. In nature, such a process is carried out thanks to natural laws. Society also has its own laws, but they are manifested only through the actions of people. Nature and man, the future and the present, the ideal and the material are one, and the prerequisite for this unity is existence, which has worried thinkers, philosophers, and scientists at all times of human existence.

Thus, being there is being and existing. This is an independent entity (substance), which for its existence does not need anything other than itself. It includes human existence(the existence of the individual as an independent reality in the form of the life activity of each individual person), material existence(the existence of material as an independent reality in the form of things and natural phenomena), ideal being(the existence of the ideal as an independent reality in the form of individualized spiritual existence and objectified spiritual existence), social being(the existence of the social as an independent reality in the form of all historically established forms of social activity).

Currently philosophical concepts are divided into monistic, dualistic and pluralistic.

Philosophers who in their constructions proceed from one beginning lay the foundation of the world only one substance, usually called monists, and their teachings are monistic. If a substance is some kind of material entity, then we are dealing with materialistic monism(materialism) (Marxism), if spiritual - with idealistic monism(idealism), in its objective (idealism of G. Hegel) or subjective (idealism of J. Berkeley) its forms.

In addition to monism, in the history of philosophy there were concepts that were based on the presence of two substances - material and spiritual. They got the name dualism. The classic representative of dualism is considered to be R. Descartes, who assumed the existence of “two directly opposite substances. One of them is material or bodily. The other substance is spiritual. Of course, only God, who can be called the highest substance, coordinates the actions of both substances. Consequently, the dualism of R. Descartes is very relative.

In addition to monism and dualism in philosophy there is also pluralism, i.e. concepts postulating multiplicity of substances. An example of such an approach is the teaching of the famous German philosopher and mathematician G. Leibniz about the so-called monads.

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1. Philosophical meaning of the concept of being

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