The originality of modern Western philosophy of the 20th century. The main directions of Western philosophy of the 20th century

1. Non-classical Western philosophy of the late 19th – 20th centuries. Philosophy of life. Existentialism. Psychoanalysis.

2. Phenomenology and hermeneutics - schools of Western philosophy of the 20th century.

3. Positivism, neopositivism and postpositivism as trends in Western philosophy.

4. Structuralism, postmodernism, pragmatism in modern Western philosophy.

1. Non-classical Western philosophy of the late 19th – 20th centuries. Philosophy of life. Existentialism. Psychoanalysis.

European rationalism (from Francis Bacon to Karl Marx) gave priority to the rational, social, i.e. public, while the internal problems of the individual remained in the shadows. But real life experience convinced us that reason is not the only force governing the behavior of man and society. On this basis, in contrast to the classical - rationalistic philosophy, a non-classical philosophy arises, which assigns the leading role in the life and destiny of a person not to reason, but to the irrational: passion, will, drives, instincts. That. Rationalism, which had prevailed for a long time, is being replaced by irrationalism, and therefore pessimism is gaining strength in philosophy. At the center of most philosophical teachings is not just man, humanity, but their problematic present and future, the tragedy of existence..

They began to represent life (philosophy of life) and human existence (existentialism) as the primary reality. A wide variety of philosophical schools, directions and concepts emerged. The most notable movements were: philosophy of life (Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche), pragmatism (Peirce, James, Dewey, Schiller), phenomenology (Husserl), hermeneutics (Gadamer), philosophical anthropology (Scheler, Teilhard de Chardin), existentialism (Heidegger, Jaspers, Sartre, Camus), positivism and neopositivism (Comte, Russell, Wittgenstein), structuralism (Levi-Strauss), critical rationalism (Popper).

Philosophy of life.

The beginning of a new type of philosophizing was laid by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860), whose philosophy is based on nirvana, i.e. detachment from life as unconditional evil. He understood everything that exists as the will to live; for him, will is a universal cosmic phenomenon, a self-sufficient beginning. If for Hegel the rational absolute idea acts as the beginning of everything, then for Schopenhauer it is the irrational first will - the first impulse. The human intellect functions according to the instructions of the will. The world is absurd, unreasonable, the entire history of the world is a meaningless fluctuation of will sparks - the will devours itself, it is cruel and constantly creates suffering. Life, according to Schopenhauer, is “mold” on one of the “balls”. Schopenhauer's ethics are pessimistic, even happiness is negative, because... it is a temporary release from suffering, followed by further suffering or tedious boredom. The world is an arena of tortured and frightened creatures who live only by exterminating each other. A person can resist such a world only in a state of complete absence of desires and asceticism. The main work of A. Schopenhauer is “The World as Will and Representation.”

The French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941) understood life cosmologically. At the heart of everything is a creative impulse, deployment life process, a stream of continuous qualitative changes. He considered intuition to be the basis of philosophy, so for him it is closer to art than to science.

The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855) demands that the highest truths are intimate experiences of fear and expectation of death. They cannot be expressed and are experienced by a person only alone. His merit is in posing problems of the personal aspect of existence, the individual suffering of people. (“Fear and Trembling”).

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900) affirms the will to power as the basis of everything, as the fullness of life. This refers to a person’s power over himself, over his life, and not in the socio-political sense. He is a supporter of strong personalities who have achieved victory over their own weaknesses, capable of leading the weak-willed masses, like the hero of his book “Thus Spoke Zarathustra.” He lived high in the mountains with his friends - a snake and an eagle. But this is a blind life, without any reasonable purpose. His call: “Live dangerously!” His views are characterized by pessimism, some immorality, and nihilism. He sharply revised existing ideals and criticized the established and traditional. For example, Nietzsche considers compassion to be the greatest evil, because... it kills the last strength in a person and deprives him of the desire for power. That’s why Nietzsche also denies Christianity, because it presupposes patience, obedience (“Antichristian”). Morality, according to Nietzsche, corrupts a person. He considers science only a means of striving for power and claims that it leads to delusions. Supports the morality and religion of instinct as the will to power. Nietzsche did not create a philosophical system; he was worried about one problem - life specific person. As they wrote about him later: Nietzsche was obsessed with “a crazy dream of growing wings behind his back, flying away himself, and carrying the soul of dying humanity.” In general, this is a bright, extraordinary, but vague and inconsistent philosophy, created in opposition to rationalism.

Existentialism.

By the 30s of the 20th century, the philosophy of life began to fade away; in its place, existentialism arose in Germany, or the philosophy of existence, the experience of being in the world, more organically describing the diverse aspects of human existence in the world. Representatives: German philosophers Karl Jaspers (1883 - 1969) and Martin Heidegger (1889 - 1976), French - Albert Camus (1913 - 1960) and Jean Paul Sartre (1905 - 1980).

Existence translated from Latin. existence. This is one of the main concepts of existentialism, meaning a way of being human personality. According to existentialists, existence is the central core of the human “I,” thanks to which the “I” appears not just as an individual and not as a “thinking mind,” but as a unique specific personality. Existence is not objectified, i.e. eludes understanding through abstraction. A person can objectify his abilities, knowledge, skills, analyze his own mental acts and thinking, but existence remains beyond the control of man.

Existentialism highlights the absolute uniqueness of human existence. Man is the first on earth who became aware of himself and, with his existence, therefore introduced a lot of problems. A person is forced to make a choice, he creates his own freedom and is responsible for his choice. In his existence, a person is “thrown” into the world, he is constantly facing the future and death, in a situation of constant responsibility for his actions. Existence acts as fear, anxiety. A person is scared, bored, he feels that everything is absurd. A person is free in his decisions. The highest form of freedom is to decide to live or not to live. For Camus, for example, the main philosophical question is the question of suicide. “There is only one truly philosophical problem - the problem of suicide. To decide whether life is worth living or not is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy. Everything else—whether the world has three dimensions, whether the mind is guided by nine or twelve categories—is secondary.” Camus comes to the conclusion that everything is absurd: reasoning, creativity, and man himself.

Martin Heidegger believed that “it is not true existence—Impersonal existence—that hides from man his doom. Man does not know death, for his world is an impersonal world. This illusory world is the flight of human existence from itself. Objective being expresses “not the true existence of a person,” the transition to oneself, the one and only, occurs through the acquisition of existence. A person breaks out of the limits of inauthentic existence, feeling existential fear. “Being toward death is essentially fear,” writes Heidegger. The only way to turn to yourself is to look death in the eyes, to realize the hopelessness of this situation.

Existentialists posed and resolved the problem of human freedom and the choice of a life path in a new way.

The modern moral crisis, the breaking of stereotypes and ideals, people’s feeling of the meaninglessness of the life that they have to lead in a situation where there is no real choice, generates fear and despair in people’s minds, and pushes towards an existential perception of the world.

Psychoanalysis- a direction that owes its origin to the Austrian psychologist and doctor Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939). This direction is based on the position about the role of the unconscious in human life. Human behavior is determined by reasons hidden from the mind. The sphere of the unconscious is a powerful energy source. It includes culturally prohibited desires and fears, experiences and mental traumas of childhood that give rise to neuroses and mental disorders of a person, therefore the unconscious should become the subject of scientific knowledge, which will make it possible to understand the meaning of unconscious processes.

Freud laid down a tradition in the study and treatment of the human psyche. By allowing the patient to speak out, Freud found hidden manifestations of the unconscious and eventually came to identify the causes of the disease, which usually lay in childhood. We all come from childhood. Often the causes of adult problems stem from trauma inflicted on the psyche in childhood.

In addition, Freud is the founder of the study of mass psychology. The problem of human mass arose in the 19th century. and is still relevant today. The mass man is frightening; he is devoid of individuality. Freud studied the psychology of mass man, the man of the crowd. When a person is in a crowd, the unconscious, hidden in the deep layers of the psyche, comes to the fore. Freud believes that social progress leads to the emergence of mass man. This frightened Freud, as well as Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.

Freud's life was difficult, he experienced both ups and downs. At the end of his life he ended up in a concentration camp, was ransomed and lived in freedom for another year.

2. Phenomenology and hermeneutics - schools of Western philosophy of the 20th century.

Phenomenology - or the study of phenomena - is one of the main directions of the 20th century. Its founder is considered to be the German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859 – 1938). In philosophy, a phenomenon is understood as a phenomenon comprehended in sensory experience. Husserl understands phenomenon as the meanings of objects arising in consciousness. The main question that phenomenology poses is: how does a person manage to comprehend the essence of things?

Husserl believes that the external world is given to man in the flow of phenomena. During the analysis, you need to temporarily refrain from making judgments about the outside world. Then phenomenological reduction is carried out, i.e. Only the flow of phenomena remains in the field of analysis; only then can true meanings be discovered.

The subject being studied causes a person to have a lot of experiences, which are synthesized in the person’s consciousness; something identical is highlighted in them, stably present in different experiences - an invariant; the idea of ​​a thing (eidos) is intuitively perceived. It turns out: if you want to discover the essence of things, construct a variety of experiences about them.

Hermeneutics was developed by German philosophers Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768 - 1834), Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900 - 2002), Jurgen Habermas (1929 alive, 83 in 2012), etc.

Hermeneutics is a way of philosophizing, the center of which is the process of understanding.

Since ancient times, philosophers have seen their task as explaining the deep meaning of what exists and what happens. Hermeneutics are those philosophers who consider understanding to be the first principle of philosophy. For them, a person is an understanding being, everything else is secondary.

I wonder what Russian word“understand”, contains “to have” at the base and the prefix po-.

Two main forms of hermeneutics: hermeneutics of consciousness (Schleiermacher) and hermeneutics of being (Gadamer). According to the hermeneutics of consciousness, understanding is getting used to the psychological world of another, empathy, and according to the hermeneutics of being, understanding is the meaning of human experience.

For example, when reading a book, the hermeneutics of consciousness will strive to penetrate into the consciousness of its creators: what was their plan, their opinion, their experiences, what they wanted to convey, etc., while the hermeneutics of being will leave the consciousness of the creators alone and will proceed from the book itself – for them it is a symbol, evidence of what experiences it evokes in them, etc.

Hermeneutics consider the hermeneutic circle to be the most important feature of understanding: to understand the whole, you need to understand its parts, but to understand the parts, you need to understand the whole.

3. Positivism, neopositivism and postpositivism as trends in Western philosophy.

Neopositivism is a modern form of positivism that originated in the 19th century, the founders of which are the French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798 - 1857) and the Austrian philosopher Ernst Mach (1838 - 1916). The main ideas of neopositivism were formed within the framework of the “Vienna Circle” (at the University of Vienna). The basic principles of positivism: the recognition of only physically experimental (positive) knowledge as reliable and the scientific researcher’s rejection of “unscientific”, “metaphysical” explanations as theoretically and practically impossible. They reduced philosophy to the analysis of natural and artificial languages ​​using mathematical logic. Each sphere is studied by a specific science; there is no field of application left for metaphysics.

Comte argued: “Knowledge must be built on specific facts,” there should be no descriptive nature of knowledge, since speculation, interpretation, doubt and departure from the fact arise. That's why humanities ideals are truly alien scientific knowledge, their terms are pseudo-concepts, and their definitions are not verifiable.

Postpositivism developed in the mid-20th century. based on criticism of neopositivism. They believe that any knowledge, any theory is subject to error and is hypothetical. Like the positivists, they focus on rational methods of cognition. The most prominent representative is the English philosopher Karl Popper (1902 - 1994). He calls his philosophy critical rationalism. Believes that the growth of knowledge is achieved through the process of rational discussion, which acts as a critique of existing knowledge. Scientists make discoveries by going not from facts to theories (induction), but by moving from hypotheses to individual statements (hypothetico-deductive method).

Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951), often called the most prominent philosopher of the 20th century, developed an analytical philosophy of language. He wrote a “Logical-Philosophical Treatise” related to neopositivism. He studied the philosophical problems of language as a form of life activity - a game whose rules are formed in society. It is with these rules that philosophy deals, according to this philosophical direction.

5. Structuralism, postmodernism, pragmatism in modern Western philosophy.

Structuralism.

In Germany in the 20th century. phenomenology and hermeneutics dominated, in England and the USA - analytical philosophy, and in France - structuralism, post-structuralism and postmodernism.

Structuralism is based on the idea of ​​structure. Structuralism sees its task in the search for stable logical structures, ways of organizing systems, and stable connections between objects. The merit of poststructuralism is the identification of the deep structures of culture. Representatives: French philosophers Claude Levi-Strauss (1908 - 2009) and Michel Foucault (1926 - 1984).

Founder postmodernism is Jean Lyotard (1924 - 1998), who wrote that in the second half of the 20th century. a new type of culture has emerged - postmodernity, which is characterized by the emergence of new language games (logical, cybernetic, mathematical; the criteria of efficiency and profitability have come to the fore. Connections between people have become pragmatic in nature and are carried out in conditions of confrontation. The general attitude in society towards freedom and imagination, disconsensus, instability, anarchy.

Pragmatism. From the Greek “pragma” - deed, action. The founders of the movement are American philosophers Charles Peirce (1839 – 1914), William James (1842 – 1910), John Dewey (1859 – 1952). Pragmatism is still common today. The central categories of pragmatism are success, usefulness, benefit for humans. It comes from the fact that what is more important for a person is not possibility, but reality. It is on the basis of reality, and not from possibility, that a person acts. The task of a person is to get the best job in life, in the world, and the task of philosophy is to help him in this, to suggest the path to success. Those theories and knowledge that bring practical benefit to a person are acceptable. James believed that when faced with any dilemma, the question should be posed as follows: “What practical difference will there be if we accept this opinion as true and not another?” Those. The question is not what the world around us is like in itself, but how best to settle in it so that, in the words of James, “to feel at home in the universe.” For example, religion is necessary for a person to feel more secure in an unreliable universe full of randomness, as a source of additional strength for the struggle of life. Faith in God is also necessary so that indignation at the evil existing in the world and compassion for the disadvantaged and unfortunate do not prevent a person from fulfilling his duties towards... himself. After all, I know: since God exists, there will be harmony and order in the world, “where there is God, tragedy is only temporary and partial.” Faith in God gives a person the necessary “moral vacation”, saves him from constant torment over the innumerable disasters of mankind, and allows him to enjoy life, James believes.

The philosophy of pragmatism had a significant influence on the general style of American thinking and politics.

Nietzsche's philosophy of life

Another major representative of philosophical irrationalism in the second half of the 19th century and the founder of a new direction in philosophy, the philosophy of life, was Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). With all the contradictory ideas and variability of Nietzsche’s views in his works, one can trace the development of one idea - this is the concept of the will to power as the basis of all life, the entire social and cultural process, and in connection with it the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe revaluation of all values, the idea of ​​​​a superman and the idea of ​​​​eternal return, however, the last two ideas are essentially just indicated.

Already in his first essay, “The Origin of Tragedy,” where Nietzsche was still under the influence of Schopenhauer, he considers art as a manifestation of the will or life in general and contrasts “vital” art, symbolized by Dionysus, with intellectual art, symbolized by Apollo. For Nietzsche it is clear that the intellectual attitude towards life corrupts and kills life in theory, the intellect paralyzes the will. And the idea of ​​the opposition between “life” and “mind” becomes the central point of all his subsequent philosophical activity, giving rise to irrationalism. Giving priority to the Dionysian, he does not completely reject the Apollonian, but demands their harmonious combination. And if he calls for Dionysism, he focuses more attention on it, it is only because the Dionysian principle in his contemporary world, as Nietzsche believes, has been lost, and without it creativity, creative being is impossible, and collapse and degradation of culture occurs.

The doctrine of will as the fundamental principle of all things was formulated by Schopenhauer, but Nietzsche is already talking about a multitude of wills competing with each other and colliding in a mortal struggle. The will to life is always the will to power, and the will to power is the inexhaustible, creative will to life, says Nietzsche. The will to power is the will to dominate, but this is domination, first of all, over oneself, this is constant overcoming of oneself, this is creativity and the desire for a higher self. There is no overcoming oneself, creativity and striving for the highest, there is no domination. The will to power is the alpha and omega of this world, for, according to Nietzsche, the will to power is an elementary fact from which only formation and action arise. A simple conclusion follows from this: life is the only absolute value, an unconditional value that exists before reason, and reason is only a means for life.

If Descartes declared “I think, therefore I exist,” then Nietzsche states otherwise: I live, therefore I think. Above reason, above consciousness, Nietzsche elevates life, instinct, intuition (as something unconscious). This is due, not least of all, to the fact that the rationalism of the theory of knowledge is degenerating into “pure” rationality, into commercialism and acquiring an increasingly utilitarian character. And Nietzsche was a poet, a romantic, a fan of sublime and “pure” art. Because of this, he is an ardent opponent of philistine, burgher complacency and indifference, which were largely formed on the basis of rationalism, rational methodology and dogmatics (belief in the power of science, in progress, in the inviolability of moral foundations, faith in reason as the basis of happiness and well-being), to which he contrasts voluntarist activism, i.e. overexertion of will and creative intuition as a means of breakthrough into the future.

Nietzsche overcomes Schopenhauer's contemplation and pessimism by ascribing to the will the meaning and value that it contains within itself. Thus, the will in itself has a basis that strives for exaltation and superiority, for power. With such a decision, everything essentially comes down to an act of subjective creativity. Knowledge is now nothing more than “creative positing,” as “the will to create.” To cognize means to create, and the whole world is now only a purposeful interpretation. The essence of a thing is only an opinion about a thing, and truth is always subjective and, ultimately, it is nothing more than a kind of delusion.

The previous philosophy, guided by the herd instinct of the masses, Nietzsche believes, created a world based on faith in the triumph of reason, naturally developing and orderly. This philosophy revealed truths that serve the masses today. But rationality, regularity, orderliness, etc. are very dangerous misconceptions. In order to save life, to fill it with strength and activity, it is necessary to create a new delusion favorable to life, and in this Nietzsche now sees the main task of philosophy. What is the criterion of truth? There is only one criterion: practical usefulness for preserving and prolonging the life of the family.

Nietzsche was not the only thinker who sensed the decline and degradation of his contemporary society. The premonition of decline in the form of cultural decadence, the collapse of morality, and a crisis of spirituality has already been reflected in fiction and philosophical literature. The prospects for the future were darkened by the “uprising of the masses,” on the one hand, and the strangulation of bourgeois-democratic freedoms by the military-bureaucratic state, on the other. It was necessary to save CULTURE from its massification and bureaucratization.

Nietzsche characterizes the spiritual state of his contemporary era as nihilism. Nihilism, according to Nietzsche, is a perverted understanding of the values ​​of existence. Nihilism also means that the values ​​that were hitherto considered supreme lose their significance. No goal, no faith, no truth - that’s what nihilism is. Nihilism in its extreme form expresses the transition to decay, to nothingness. The life instinct weakens and modern society becomes a victim of mediocrity, the “herd,” the “masses.” The foundation of existence is based on values ​​that, according to Nietzsche, are not such: the happiness of the majority, goodness, truth, justice and other chimerical ideas of the “herd” man.

The nihilistic movement also captures the upper strata of the class and the self-destruction of the ruling stratum occurs: it becomes infected with contempt for naturalness, for the exaltation of one’s power, liberalism and democracy, compassion for one’s neighbor. Nihilism, thus, dressed in the clothes of truth, goodness and humanism, stands at the threshold, ready to enter and destroy everything.

Was Nietzsche so wrong when he spoke about the collapse of values? The Age of Enlightenment proclaimed the future as the triumph of reason, truth, goodness, justice, freedom, harmony and order. These concepts were considered as the highest values ​​of existence, eternal and enduring ideals of humanity. The reality turned out to be completely different. These values ​​have become empty words. And a great darkening of the spirit set in, leading to flight from reality. The will and spirit are exhausted and strive for peace, for contemplation, for withdrawal into religion or, even worse, for self-denial (the philosophy of Schopenhauer, Buddhism). This is passive nihilism and it is a sign of weakness.

But there is another version of nihilism, active nihilism, which Nietzsche calls for. With this version of nihilism he associates the beginning of the elevation of the power of will and spirit. If previous values, ideals and goals have lost their validity and no longer meet the requirements of today, and even more so of tomorrow, then courage is required to step over this and move on. The experience of human history, the past practice of mankind, objective truth and moral standards are all chimeras. They must and should be neglected, Nietzsche declares, if we are talking about the triumph of life, about the exaltation of strength and courage, about the future.

In connection with all this, Nietzsche begins to reassess all values. He begins, first of all, with a critique of Christian morality (slave morality) and seeks to establish new values ​​(master morality). In his opinion, the need has arisen to move from one form of moral regulation of human relations to another, more appropriate to the conditions of social existence. Nietzsche does not recognize any objective criteria either for moral assessments or for morality in general, and approaches them from the point of view of the “life of the species.” By morality, he understands, first of all, a system of assessments that has roots in people’s living conditions, in life itself. “There are no moral phenomena at all, there is only a moral interpretation of phenomena,” 188 writes Nietzsche. Only the creative, willing and evaluating Self itself is the measure of the value of things and relationships, the measure for this entire world. And the world invisibly revolves around the inventors of new values, but people and glory, Zarathustra teaches, revolve around comedians who have little conscience and spirit. 189 Life is the basis for measurement, the starting point for determining the value of any thing, any phenomenon, and life itself is always an assessment and preference.

Christian morality, according to Nietzsche, is as immoral as any thing on earth. The victory of Christian ideals is achieved using the same immoral means as any victory: violence, lies, slander, injustice. And it would be fine only the masses, but also the ruling classes begin to decay under the influence of this morality.

Nietzsche does not hide the antagonism between social groups of society, which is based on the relationship of domination and subordination. This social groups There are two types of morality: the morality of masters and the morality of slaves. There is not and cannot be a single morality there, Nietzsche believes, where people are divided into castes or classes. And he sees his task, first of all, in substantiating a new, higher type of morality - the morality of masters. If Nietzsche speaks of annihilation and destruction, he necessarily connects them with creativity. Only the creator can destroy. And this is by no means a simple physical destruction of anything, but the destruction through the creation of new values. 190 Nietzsche clearly distinguishes destruction and annihilation as creativity and destruction and annihilation as the hatred of a loser. For Nietzsche, destruction is only a moment of creation. If Nietzsche speaks of freedom, then it is the freedom of creation, freedom for creation, creative freedom, but not for destruction.

Reflecting on life in nature and society, Nietzsche comes to the conclusion that society is just a collection of individuals who differ from animals only by a certain degree of intelligence, the ability to recognize and evaluate their actions. In its essence, life is alien to any altruism, because it is based on aggressive egoistic instincts, Nietzsche believes, and it must be accepted as it is - as appropriation, overcoming, subordination of the alien and weaker, the imposition of one’s own forms. All human history, according to Nietzsche (and is it only Nietzsche?) is a struggle between two types of will to power: the will to power of the strong (masters) and the will to power of the weak (slaves). But the world has nothing eternal and unchanging, neither good nor evil, neither truth nor error, therefore, it is necessary to destroy morality based on the recognition of eternal and unchanging virtues and establish a new morality, because in all the actions of the weak, pessimistic malice towards the position of a superior person, a gravitation towards leveling, towards equality and other base instincts that are included in the category of virtues of slave morality.

The world has no purpose or meaning, but a person’s whole life rests on faith in achieving some goal. “A thousand goals have existed until now, because a thousand peoples have existed. All that is missing is a chain for a thousand heads, a single goal is missing. Humanity still has no goal.” 191 Because of this, humanity is degrading further and further, Nietzsche claims. It seeks peace and will inevitably perish. However, destruction can be prevented by an act of creativity, but a goal is needed. And Nietzsche gives such a goal. Superman is the goal that must be followed. The superman is the highest value that can be created on earth; everything that exists must be assessed only in relation to it, in comparison and comparison with it. What is a superman?

Nietzsche himself never gave an exact answer to this question. Only from individual statements scattered throughout his works is it possible to draw an approximate portrait of a superman. A superman, first of all, cannot be a beast or a tamer of beasts. People who have only one choice: to become fierce beasts or fierce tamers, Zarathustra calls unhappy. A superman is one who knows how to command himself, but most importantly and above all, he is one who knows how to obey himself. A superman is one who does not want anything for free (only the mob wants to receive for free), does not seek or desire pleasures, and “the horror for us is the degenerating feeling that says “everything is for me,” 192 for “it is not strength, but the duration of the highest creates sensations top people", 193 and "the danger for the noble is not that he will become kind, but that he will become insolent, will be a mocker and a destroyer." 194 We can say that the superman is a moral image that signifies the highest stage of human development, moreover, spiritual development. This is the highest stage of flourishing of which those contained in modern man spiritual embryos.

What kind of person, or rather, what in a person is Nietzsche speaking against? What kind of compassion, or rather compassion, is Nietzsche speaking against? Nietzsche himself states clearly and unequivocally on this matter: “In man, the creature and the creator are united together: in man there is material, fragment, clay, dirt, nonsense, chaos; but in man there is also a creator, a sculptor, the hardness of a hammer, a divine spectator and seventh day - do you understand this contradiction? And do you understand that your compassion relates to the "creature in man", to that which must be molded, broken, forged, torn, burned, tempered, purified - that which "Suffers out of necessity and must suffer? And our compassion - don't you understand to whom our reverse compassion refers when it defends itself from your compassion as from the worst effeminacy and weakness?" 195 That is why Nietzsche repeatedly declares: “man is something that must be overcome,” because “the most dangerous enemy you can meet will always be yourself...”. 196

The most terrible thing for Nietzsche’s teaching was and is that it is the creatures, having read Nietzsche and not understanding anything, who imagine themselves to be supermen, although, in fact, they remained creatures or became even worse creatures. Nietzsche foresaw this too. Zarathustra declares: “my teaching is in danger, the weed wants to be called wheat! My enemies have become strong and have distorted the image of my teaching...”, 197 for “all this is not said for long ears. Not every word is suitable for every snout.” 198 Nietzsche's superman is, first of all, powerful and dominant over himself and the world around him. This domination itself cannot be understood only as political or legal domination, for the domination it preaches is spiritual domination and power over people acquired only by the power of outstanding spiritual qualities of the individual. The dominance of the best is a form of life that provides scope for spiritual development, for expanding the horizons of creative activity of this individual.

The least developed of all the ideas was the idea of ​​eternal recurrence, although Nietzsche considered it the main concept of his main work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. 199 There is absolutely no clarity about how to understand the essence of eternal recurrence. In The Origin of Tragedy, where Nietzsche is still under the influence of Schopenhauer, he speaks of eternal life beyond all appearance and in defiance of all annihilation. 200 Eternal life is the will in its omnipotence. This will is essentially creative and realizes itself through a constant change of phenomena. If creativity is understood here as the creation of a new phenomenon each time, and it is impossible to understand creativity otherwise, then the repetition of a phenomenon, the repetition of the same thing, is only an accident, a cost of creativity, and not the essence of will or life. Consequently, every time in phenomena the will reproduces itself, realizes, objectifies itself differently than before (different individualities). And then the eternal return is not a constant reproduction of the same thing, a return to the same thing. What is one and the same here is only life, will, eternally reproducing itself and returning to itself, a “self-rolling wheel,” an eternally triumphant life.

In The Gay Science, Nietzsche is already in fear and horror of eternal recurrence. “This life, as you live it now and have lived it, you will have to live again and countless more times; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every pleasure, every thought and every breath and everything unspeakably small and great in your life will have to return to you again, and everything in the same order and in the same sequence... The eternal hourglass of existence turns over and over again - and you along with it, a grain of sand! Wouldn't you throw yourself on your back, grinding teeth and cursing the demon who speaks like this?... If this thought had taken possession of you, it would have transformed you, and, perhaps, would have crushed you into powder... Or how well would you have to treat yourself and life in order not to thirst anymore nothing but this last certificate and seal?” 201 Here, the eternal return clearly appears as one and the same thing, the turning over of an hourglass, where you are just a grain of sand, and still the same grain of sand among the same grains of sand. Maybe this is now happening due to the fact that Nietzsche made the transition from the single and indivisible will of Schopenhauer to a multitude of independent wills, separate and competing with each other? There is only one way out: to treat yourself well (as opposed to Christianity) and to life, love it and accept it as it is. Here the transition to a heroic understanding of life is also outlined, which will fully unfold in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. “My Self taught me a new pride, which I teach people: to no longer hide your head in the sand of heavenly things, but to proudly hold it, the earthly head, which creates the meaning of the earth! I teach people a new will: to follow the road that man walked blindly, and praise it, and no longer shy away from it, like the sick and dying! ... Life is hard to bear; but don’t pretend to be so tender!” 202

Zarathustra speaks very clearly and unambiguously: “I will return again with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with this snake - not to a new life, not to a better life, not to a life similar to the previous one: - I will forever return to the same life, in big and small, to teach again about the eternal return of all things - to repeat the words about the eternal noon of earth and man, to again proclaim to people about the superman. I have said my word, I am breaking about my word: so my eternal destiny wants, - as a herald, I perish! 203 Eternally, again and again there will be little people, and forever, again and again Zarathustra will return and teach the superman. This is a tragic worldview. But here a heroic understanding of life is affirmed. You cannot escape fate and, nevertheless, the hero is actively acting. The hero challenges fate and the gods; this, in essence, is the content of all the tragic myths of Greece, this is the essence of tragedy: realizing the tragedy of life, accepting and loving it as it is and actively acting, for there is no other life. This is probably why Zarathustra says: “I call you not to work, but to struggle. I call you not to peace, but to victory. May your work be a struggle and your peace a victory!” 204 “Remain faithful to the earth, my brothers, with all the power of your virtue,” continues Zarathustra. “Let your giving love and your knowledge serve the meaning of the earth! ... Bring, like me, the departed virtue back to the earth - yes, back to the body of life : so that it gives its meaning to the earth, human meaning!... We are still fighting step by step with a gigantic chance, and nonsense has still reigned over all of humanity. May your spirit and your virtue, my brothers, serve the meaning of the earth: the value of all things may it be established by you! Therefore you must be fighters! Therefore you must be creators! " 205

This path, this life requires firmness and courage. “All who create are precisely solid,” Zarathustra repeatedly repeats. Courage and firmness, in essence, provide access to the tragic beauty of life and, probably, to something new in this life. But what further enhances the tragic beauty of life is the sacrifice of those who create and create, first of all, themselves, for “he who is the firstborn is always sacrificed. And we are now the firstborn,” 206 teaches Zarathustra. Courage and steadfastness are the seeds of great hope. Creativity and creation are the main means of returning to MAN. And “if you want to rise high, use your own legs! Do not allow yourself to be carried, do not sit on other people’s shoulders and heads!”, 207 - this is what Zarathustra said and taught.

So what is philosophy of life? Philosophy of life is, first of all, a turn from the objective to the subjective, or in other words, from thinking not bound by a subjective principle to thinking bound by it. The task of the philosophy of life is to understand human life, excluding all external attitudes, directly from it itself. Within the framework of the philosophy of life, various phenomena of existence, such as science, art, religion, etc. lose their essential independence and must be understood based on life. The philosophy of life can also be viewed as a protest against the exaggeration of the role of reason in the life of man and society. This is a protest against positivism and natural science methodology based on mechanistic materialism. This is a protest of the soul against the machine. Protest against the reification, alienation of a person and his reduction to only a certain means, a factor. The philosophy of life believes that the basis for knowledge and comprehension of various phenomena of existence is a certain completeness of the experience of life. You can understand living life only in experience, through experience, in intuition. Philosophy of life is, first of all, the problem of the value and meaning of life, it is the problem of life values ​​or values ​​of life.

The philosophy of the 20th century has a great variety of schools and directions. Let us list only the most general and fundamental directions (each of which, in turn, includes several schools): pragmatism, “philosophy of life”, neopositivism, linguistic analysis, neo-Thomism, personalism, psychoanalysis, existentialism, phenomenology, etc.

All the many philosophical movements can hardly be built into a single system or given a strict classification. The philosophy of the 20th century is a direct heir to the schools and traditions of the 19th century - positivism, "philosophy of life", Hegelianism, Marxism, neo-Kantianism, Thomism, as well as the entire previous European classical tradition, originating in the ancient era.

But the worldview of a person in the 20th century is radically changing compared to previous centuries. For the first time, the planet became a single comprehensive place of human settlement; technical dominance over space, time and matter is growing indefinitely.

At the same time, the 20th century is a century of continuous revolutions and upheavals: social, political, economic, cultural, demographic, etc. A person’s alienation from the world, from other people, from himself is growing. The situation of total alienation is recorded by almost all modern philosophical schools. That is why the problem of man comes to the fore in the philosophy of the 20th century.

From the philosophy of the previous century, modern philosophy adopted a “rebellion” against classical rationalism, the cult of omnipotent Reason, and against the dissolution of human individuality in abstract categories. The expression of this rebellion in the 19th century was the teachings of Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. Moreover, Nietzsche’s influence on the philosophy of the 20th century is so great that, despite the fact that he lived at the end of the 19th century, he can rightfully be considered a philosopher of our century.

Anthropological problems are becoming one of the dominant ones in the philosophy of the 20th century. It was studied by such philosophical schools as “philosophy of life”, phenomenology, existentialism, personalism, philosophical anthropology, etc.

In the philosophy of the 20th century, an orientation towards positive knowledge also remains, which is reflected in the concepts of logical positivism, linguistic analysis, structuralism, “philosophy of science”, etc.

However, it would not be entirely correct to oppose these directions to each other. Feature modern philosophical thought is that there is an invasion of some philosophical trends into those problematic fields of research that were previously the prerogative of other, often directly opposite, philosophical trends. The polar division of philosophy into its scientific and anthropological branches, into rationalistic and irrationalist schools is gradually beginning to lose its significance. The tendency to establish close ties and contacts between different philosophical directions is becoming increasingly clear.

Religious philosophy in the 20th century also merges with a variety of philosophical trends - existentialism, personalism, pragmatism, philosophical anthropology, etc. Completely non-traditional theological doctrines emerge - for example, “non-religious Christianity” by D. Bonhoeffer or “theology of the death of God” by T. Altitzer. Perhaps the only “classical” direction of theology remains the official philosophical doctrine catholic church- neo-Thomism.

We do not have the opportunity in this section to show the entire spectrum of philosophical movements of the 20th century, so we will limit ourselves to several directions that represent the main paths of modern philosophizing. We will consider the following philosophical schools of the 20th century: “philosophy of life”, existentialism, logical positivism, psychoanalysis, neo-Thomism.

§ 1. "PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE"

The philosophical system of G. Hegel was the pinnacle of European rationalism. Hegel claimed to create a comprehensive picture of the world, combining logic, epistemology and ontology, describing the world and man in extremely abstract philosophical categories.

If we look at the history of European philosophical thought, starting with Socrates and Plato and ending with Hegel, then this philosophy was predominantly rationalistic. Reason (lat. ratio) was considered the highest cognitive ability of man, subordinating all others. But irrationalism 1 has always accompanied the development of classical philosophical thought in Europe, occasionally coming to the fore (for example, with Augustine and the Neoplatonists), and for the most part remaining in the shadows as some minor current, usually of a mystical nature.

German classical philosophy was not without irrationalistic moments. Already in Kant, perception as a result of the affiliation of human sensuality with an unknowable “thing in itself” acted as something in itself inaccessible to any further knowledge and in this sense irrational. In Fichte, the irrationalistic character is inherent in the unconscious creative activity of the subject: the “I”, which generates nature as its object, the “not I”. Schelling, explaining the emergence of difference from the original identity of subject and object, referred to a certain rationally incomprehensible and inexpressible in logical concepts creative act - with it he laid an irrational principle in the very foundation of being. Irrationalism also underlay the German romanticism of Schlegel, Tieck and Novalis, with whom Fichte and Schelling were closely associated.

But the real revolt of philosophical thought against rationalism began only in the first half of the 19th century. This was a reaction both to the straightforward rationalism of the European Enlightenment of the 18th century, and to Hegel’s panlogism, to his exaggerated exaltation of logical, albeit dialectical, thinking. In the 19th century, irrationalism no longer hides in the shadows, but declares itself openly as a full-fledged style of philosophical thinking, consciously opposing itself to natural scientific knowledge with the rationalism that dominated it. Irrationalism did not unequivocally reject either science or its practical significance for human life, but it refused to see in science an adequate way of understanding the world and man himself.

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) is the founder of one of the main trends in Western philosophical thought of the 19th - 20th centuries - the “philosophy of life”. In the "philosophy of life" we see a rebellion against rationalistic thinking. Life, vitality, volitional tension - this is what came to the fore, pushing intellect, rationality and science into the background. There is no doubt that there is a certain touch of biologism captured in the concepts of “life” and “will” in Nietzsche. But the role here was played not so much by biological research of that time, but by ideas about life in the works of the romantics and Goethe himself (remember his words: “Theory, my friend, is dry, but the tree of life turns green”).

Nietzsche presented his views in a brilliant, aphoristic literary form, which greatly contributed to his popularity: he represented an image of a philosopher-prophet, as opposed to a philosopher-scientist, that was atypical for European culture. Nietzsche did not create (and did not strive to create) a complete philosophical system. In his teaching, several key themes can be identified, among which the main ones are “the will to power,” “nihilism,” and “superman.”

“The will to power” seemed to Nietzsche the basis of all life, all social and cultural progress. Nietzsche borrowed the very concept of will from Schopenhauer, but his interpretation differs from Schopenhauer’s. Nietzsche rejected Schopenhauer's most important idea - the doctrine of renunciation of the "will to live" and self-denial as a means of salvation.

Nietzsche contrasted Schopenhauer’s refusal of the “will to live” with the affirmation in life of the principle of “will to power.”

In his book " Anti-Christian" he wrote: "What's good? - Everything that strengthens the will to power in a person, power itself. What is wrong? - Everything that comes from weakness... "1.

Nietzsche graduated from the Faculty of Philology at the University of Leipzig. His specialty was classical philology, but his rebellious spirit could not be content with translations and commentaries of Greek and Latin tomes. Already in early work" Origin of the tragedy"Nietzsche contrasts (describing the culture of ancient Greece) the "vital" art, symbolized by the image of Dionysus, with the rational and intellectual attitude towards life, the "decomposition and mortification" of life in "theory", which was personified by the image of Apollo. Nietzsche considered Socrates to be the first representative of the "thinking theory" It was Socrates and Plato who created the first system of concepts and categories in the history of European philosophy.

The idea of ​​the fatal opposition between “life” and “mind” becomes the central point of Nietzsche’s entire subsequent criticism of scientific knowledge. Logic, he argues, averages individuality and brings it under a certain standard. It is associated with the assumption of the existence of absolutely identical cases, but such cases do not exist in nature, Nietzsche believes. Based on this, Nietzsche argues that the world is not at all adequate to logical laws, just as they are not adequate to the world.

However, logic as an “averaging” and “depersonalizing” thinking turns out to be very useful for the “average” person - a “herd animal”, according to Nietzsche. Being an expression of “standard utility,” logical thinking deprives our infinitely individual, personal, incomparable actions of their true value, which is only associated with this individuality. But such a value is not at all significant, according to Nietzsche, for a “herd” person.

Here we come to another very important issue Nietzsche's philosophy - the problem of revaluation of value, or nihilism. He argues that the dominance of rational "Apollonian" culture for more than two thousand years led Europe to complete degradation and decadence. It should be said that Nietzsche’s philosophical reflections in any period of his work are deeply “personal.” And in this regard, they are the diametric opposite of the “impersonality” of the result of scientific work.

Philosophical views Nietzsche is his own “portrait”, the “other being” of his personality. "Reassessment of values" was, so to speak, the natural state of his own consciousness. At the same time, the subject of Nietzsche's thought and the object of his critical attacks - European culture - existed objectively. And the moments of crisis of this culture found a kind of refraction in the work of Nietzsche.

Nietzsche believed that in his contemporary era, what could have had value lost it: morality, law, state, religion, family, love, art. The point here is that Nietzsche rejected values ​​that were valuable to him, but distorted beyond recognition. The hypocritical church, hypocritical and philistine morality, formal marriage, and corrupt love caused him to have fits of indignation.

The main reason for degradation, according to Nietzsche, is the oblivion by European (and, above all, Christian) culture of the ideal of a strong man, the master of his own destiny. Nietzsche recalls with pleasure the ancient heroes - Achilles, Hector, Odysseus - free and proud, not tormented by doubts and fears, not caring about the salvation of their souls. He blames, first of all, “Judeo-Christian morality” for the oblivion of the ideal of a strong personality. He writes: “The Jews risked, with terrifying consistency, to turn the aristocratic equation of values ​​inside out (good = noble = powerful = beautiful = happy = loved by God) - and sank into it with the teeth of bottomless hatred (the hatred of impotence), namely: only the outcasts are good; only the poor, the powerless, the ignorant are good; only the suffering, the deprived, the sick and the ugly are the only pious, the only devout, only to them does bliss belong; - you, the noble and powerful, you, forever and ever evil, cruel, lustful, insatiable and godless, and you “will be unfortunate, cursed and condemned until the end of time.”1 And further: “... in Christianity strong man became a worthless person, an “outcast”2.

Almost quoting Christ's Sermon on the Mount, Nietzsche seeks to condemn Christian morality as a “morality of slaves,” “poor in spirit.” However, he rather condemns the Christian Church as a social institution with its specific tools for suppressing human freedom. Nietzsche’s attitude towards the personality of Christ himself is rather positive; Christ for him is a “joyful messenger,” a rebel and anarchist, a man who had the courage to challenge the opinion of the crowd and voluntarily accept death.

Nietzsche grew up in the family of a Lutheran pastor, was deeply religious in childhood and youth, and the need to abandon his faith in God was very painful for him, according to his sister. But the Christian church could not satisfy Nietzsche’s spiritual needs, and he proclaimed the thesis: “God is dead.” Not new in the history of philosophy, this idea (it is found, for example, in Hegel and Feuerbach) means in its real content that religion has already exhausted itself and is not able to answer the pressing questions of the time. Nietzsche in in this case rejects the God of Christian morality only as the highest sanction of the latter.

In one of the sketches for his famous book " Thus spoke Zarathustra“Nietzsche wrote that the “death of God” is just his “molting,” “shedding his moral skin.” And soon God will appear again - on the other side of good and evil. We can say that the meaning of the thesis “God is dead” in Nietzsche is rather should be different: “God is dead - long live God!..” Nietzsche was, of course, an atheist in the traditional sense, but in place of the bygone Christian religion, he wanted to put a kind of myth, a kind of “religion of the superman.”

“The superman, a strong personality, appears in Nietzsche as a subject of new values ​​and new morality. An ordinary “herd” man, according to Nietzsche, needs God as a guarantor of the moral value of his actions. The “superman” only himself determines the moral value of his behavior and in this sense he is, so to speak, his own God. Nietzsche acts as a prophet and herald of the coming “era of the Superman,” however, he does not give any specific recipes for the transition to it.

He sees the ideal of the “superman” also in past eras and in a wide variety of cultures: these are Roman patricians, Japanese samurai, Homeric heroes, ancient Germans, Scandinavian Vikings, Bedouin warriors, as well as great historical figures - Alexander the Great, Borgia, Napoleon, etc. d. (this point of view, of course, refutes Nietzsche’s accusations of “pan-Germanism” and adherence to a purely “Germanic” myth of the “superman”).

As for the image of Napoleon, his image apparently did not allow ambitious young people to sleep peacefully throughout the last century. No wonder Pushkin wrote:

"We all look at Napoleons,

There are millions of two-legged creatures

For us there is only one weapon..."

The problem of the “superman” is also the painful torment of Raskolnikov: “Am I a trembling creature or do I have the right?” and the terrible discovery of Ivan Karamazov: “There is no God. Everything is permitted...”. Probably the most perfect embodiment of Nietzsche's idea of ​​the superman in fiction are the heroes of Jack London (who was a great admirer of Nietzsche's philosophy) - strong and courageous people who conquer the world looking for adventure and passion, not afraid of death...

Nietzsche writes about the “superman”: “... these people show such ingenuity in their relationships with each other in terms of restraint, tact, sensitivity, loyalty, pride and friendship - and these same people outside their environment, where it begins alien, foreign land, behave little better than wild beasts of prey released into the wild. Here they relish freedom from all social coercion, in the wild thickets they reward themselves for the stress caused by long confinement and isolation in the peaceful coexistence of the community. They return to the innocent conscience of the beast of prey as jubilant monsters..."1.

Nietzsche's poetic, emotionally rich images gave rise to all sorts of, sometimes diametrically opposed, interpretations. The main posthumous tragedy of Nietzsche is the declaration of him by the ideologists of the Third Reich as a prophet and forerunner of German National Socialism. This was the “Satanization” of Nietzscheanism in the ideology of National Socialism.

The romantic Nietzsche could never have become the singer of a totalitarian empire, the misanthropic dictatorship of the Third Reich. However, after World War II, there was a long-term moral ban on the philosophy of Nietzsche and not only in the USSR. But Rosenberg declared the music of Beethoven and Wagner, the philosophy of Schopenhauer and much, much more, the “German idea,” and all of this, just like Nietzsche’s philosophy, “worked” for the fascist regime...

But the image and teachings of the brilliant philosopher, having been cleared of the husks, return to us again, and his spiritual experience helps us survive all sorts of “revaluations of values” of our era.

In the second half of the 19th century, the transition to non-classical philosophy was gradually being prepared, a departure from the classics was taking place, and a change in principles, samples, and paradigms of philosophizing was taking place. Classical philosophy, from a modern point of view, is characterized as a certain general orientation, a general tendency or style of thinking, characteristic as a whole of approximately a three-hundred-year period of development of Western thought. The mental structure of the classics was permeated with an optimistic sense of the presence of a natural order, rationally understandable in knowledge. Classical philosophy believed that reason is the main and best tool for transforming human life. Knowledge and rational cognition were proclaimed as the decisive force that allows one to hope for the solution of all problems that face a person.

Classical philosophical constructions did not satisfy many philosophers due, as they believed, to the loss of man in them. The specificity, the diversity of human subjective manifestations, they believed, is not “captured” by the methods of reason and science. In contrast to rationalism, they began to develop a non-classical philosophy, in which they began to represent life (philosophy of life) and human existence (existentialism) as the primary reality. There was a “destruction” of the mind: instead of reason, will (A. Schopenhauer, F. Nietzsche), instincts (psychoanalysis of S. Freud), etc. came to the fore. In non-classical philosophy, the desire of philosophical classics to present society as an objective formation similar to natural objects was questioned. The new image of social reality, characteristic of the philosophy of the twentieth century, is associated with the concept of “intersubjectivity”. It is intended to overcome the division into subject and object characteristic of classical social philosophy. Intersubjectivity is based on the idea of ​​a special kind of reality that develops in the relationships between people. At its origins, this reality is the interaction of “I” and “Other”.

Western philosophy of the twentieth century. is distinguished by its exceptional diversity. In the 20s - 40s there was a flourishing of neorealism and pragmatism, and then their decline; Neo-Freudianism, neopositivism, existentialism, phenomenology, and Thomism are developing. The 40s - 60s are characterized by the self-determination of such schools as linguistic philosophy, critical rationalism, and the Frankfurt school; as well as structuralism, hermeneutics, analytical philosophy, philosophy of language - this is already happening in the 60s - 80s. In the 80s - 90s, poststructuralism, the philosophy of postmodernity, and deconstruction developed.

In modern philosophy, the desire to get closer to an individual living person is clearly expressed. The twentieth century passed under the sign of a kind of “anthropological boom” in philosophy.

The methods developed and applied by modern philosophy are much more sophisticated and complex compared to classical philosophy of the 19th century.

The role of philosophical work on the forms and structures of human culture (texts, sign-symbolic formations, meanings, etc.) is increasing.

Significant interest is noted in development problems, in dialectics with the emergence of such a direction as synergetics. The main ideas of I. Prigogine: a transition of science and philosophy to a new understanding of dynamic processes, a philosophical interpretation of the problems of irreversibility, emergence, formation, etc. is necessary.

In the twentieth century, the tonality and mood of philosophical works changed. They do not have that confident optimism that is generally inherent in classical philosophy.

One of the features of the philosophical evolution of the 20th century was that the orientation toward human domination over nature is gradually being replaced by an orientation toward the conscious preservation of nature.

Modern philosophy on the threshold of the third millennium has come close to developing a new paradigm of planetary worldview, world assessment, the world-dimension of man and the human-dimension of the world, which is directly related to the needs for a new type of rationality.

Western philosophy of the 20th century. differs significantly from the previous one. Its main and most general difference is due to the fact that at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. the transition from traditional classical philosophy to non-classical philosophy took place. This transition was largely due to the fact that during this period all western culture experienced profound changes, which were especially clearly manifested in science.

As a result, which began at the end of the 19th century. In the second scientific revolution, a new, non-classical science emerges, which differs significantly from the classical one. It no longer contains the previous claims to complete objectivity and adequacy of knowledge. The concept of truth is increasingly giving way to the concept of validity (validity), which is based on an internal, formal-logical criterion. A similar fate is shared by such concepts of classical science as causality and determinism, giving way to probability and indeterminism. Theories and models constructed mathematically by the cognizing scientist himself are becoming increasingly significant in knowledge. To paraphrase the famous expression of Pythagoras, we can say that the whole world is increasingly being reduced to a number. The main methodological principles in science are the principles of relativism and pluralism, due to which a pluralism of general pictures of the world is formed.

The social role of science is changing. Classical science is turning into technoscience. Science is increasingly becoming instrumental and pragmatic; Its main goals are now not so much knowledge and truth, but direct participation in the transformation and exploitation of nature, in increasing the efficiency of economic production. Science becomes a direct productive force.

No less important changes are taking place in art. Here at the end of the 19th century. modernism arises, to which at the beginning of the 20th century. the avant-garde joins. These directions are radically different from previous classical art. In them there is a sharp shift in emphasis from object to subject, from objectivity and truthfulness to subjective sensations and ideas. The principle of “infidelity to the subject” becomes one of the main principles of the aesthetics of modernism and the avant-garde, the principle of conscious deformation, distortion and decomposition of the subject, the principle of rejection of the subject, objectivity and figurativeness. Special attention also focuses on experimentation, the search for new means of expression, technical and artistic techniques, which in the avant-garde turns into a real passion for experiment, a pursuit of novelty.

Important changes are taking place in religion, especially in its social position, which is increasingly deteriorating. We can say that the first half of the 20th century. became the most irreligious in the history of the West. In the second half of the 20th century, in connection with the emergence of postmodernism, the position of religion improved somewhat, but remained very difficult.

Similar processes and changes occur in philosophy. Following science, it becomes non-classical. New trends arise in it, which are characteristic of the emerging cultural situation. Very remarkable in this regard is the appearance at the beginning of the 20th century. American pragmatism, which has become the philosophy and ideology of the modern businessman. An equally remarkable and characteristic phenomenon was the emergence in the last quarter of the 20th century. postmodern philosophy as a reflection of new trends in Western culture.

In general, during the 20th century. philosophy acquires many specific features and characteristics, the most important and significant of which can be reduced to three: new relations with science; tendency to overcome metaphysics; linguistic turn.

The relationship of philosophy with science in general and with natural science in particular has always been important and largely decisive. Over the course of a long history, this relationship has undergone a profound evolution. Before the modern era, science existed and developed within philosophy, and both of them were in close unity with religion and art. With the advent of modern times, the situation changes dramatically. Science is clearly separated from religion and art and begins to exist in its pure form. Scientists of the modern type are formed in it. If back in the 16th century. they were rare (N. Copernicus), then in the 17th century. their ranks are multiplying with acceleration. It is no coincidence that this century became the century of the first scientific revolution.

The situation with philosophy seemed more complicated. It also separated itself from religion and art, although to a lesser extent than science. Even in G. Bruno, philosophy is still intertwined with religion, poetry and mysticism.

As for the relationship between philosophy and science, they remain very close, but are changing significantly. Previously, the typical figure was the philosopher, who, along with his own philosophical research, was also engaged in scientific research, considering them as secondary and applied. Now science is equal in importance to philosophy. Moreover, some philosophers are beginning to perceive science as a model or model for constructing their writings. As an example, we can point to B. Spinoza, who called his main work very uniquely: “Ethics proven in geometric order.” In this work, ethical principles are actually presented and proven in the form of geometric theorems.

It is this tendency, according to which philosophy increasingly relies on science or correlates itself with it, and the role, influence and prestige of science increasingly strengthens, characterizes the entire subsequent evolution of the relationship between philosophy and science. The growing authority of science led to the fact that already in the 18th century. The first forms of scientism arose, which absolutized and deified the role and significance of science, actually putting it in the place previously occupied by religion.

In the 19th century This trend is intensifying, which was facilitated by the rapid growth of production, which served as a powerful incentive for the development of science. Under its growing influence, the position of religion is increasingly weakened, and the process of secularization of society accelerates and deepens. Not only religion, but also art feels uncomfortable next to science. The uniqueness of the current situation was expressed by F. Nietzsche: “We still have art so as not to die from science.” The position of philosophy is becoming more and more complicated.

In the first half of the 20th century. the role and influence of science reach its apogee. Her power and authority become undivided. In these circumstances, the originality of most philosophical movements is largely determined by the nature of their relationship to science.

By number philosophical schools and trends of the 20th century significantly exceeds the previous century, although some of them - neo-Kantianism, neo-Hegelianism, philosophy of life, personalism - arose in the 19th century. In the 20th century pragmatism, phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, Frankfurt school, analytical philosophy, neopositivism, philosophy of science, structuralism, postmodernism were added to them. For the predominant part of these movements, the attitude towards science manifests itself as scientism or anti-scientism, that is, either any exaltation of the role and significance of science, or, on the contrary, criticism and denial of its role and significance.

In this regard, pragmatism, analytical philosophy, neopositivism, philosophy of science, the Frankfurt school and structuralism belong to the scientistic direction; they are based on rationalism and continue the classical type of philosophy. The philosophy of life, existentialism, hermeneutics, personalism and postmodernism are in line with anti-scientism and criticize science and rationalism. They represent a non-classical type of philosophy. As for phenomenology, it occupies a special position. On the one hand, it opposes itself to science, arguing that the philosophical approach to reality is more fundamental and deeper. In this sense, it echoes the classical concept of Hegel, who believed that only philosophy gives us complete and true knowledge, while other sciences do not go beyond fragmentary information. At the same time, phenomenology claims to be a kind of “superscience”, a more “rigorous science” than the specific sciences that reduced reason to technoscience.

In the last quarter of the 20th century. Under the influence of postmodernism, there is a noticeable strengthening of the non-classical tendency. In this regard, postmodern movements are often defined as a post-non-classical type of philosophy.

The relationship between philosophy and metaphysics also has a long history. Before the modern era, metaphysics was perceived and assessed positively. In the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas combined it with Christian teaching, believing that metaphysics cognizes the supersensible and the divine (God, spirit, soul), but unlike theology, it is based on reason, and not on revelation.

Since modern times, a critical attitude towards metaphysics has arisen and increasingly intensified, a tendency to overcome it, a desire to replace metaphysics with science and a scientific vision of the world.

Metaphysics is considered as a doctrine of being, which has its own special object and its own way of cognition. Its object is the supernatural and supersensible, the Kantian thing in itself, the a priori conditions of knowledge. His way of knowing is direct intuition, which gives absolute knowledge. The product of metaphysics is a matter of pure reason, and not of experience or revelation. It discovers the fundamental laws of thinking, formulates the basic principles of other sciences, and develops a criterion for the reliability of our knowledge. Metaphysics claims to know reality as it is. It represents a priori, abstract, theoretical, unpremised knowledge. Metaphysics acts as knowledge or search for the absolute.

In the 20th century the tendency to overcome metaphysics reaches its highest point. Metaphysics is often identified with all previous traditional philosophy. Its radical criticism is often combined with an equally radical criticism of reason. Metaphysics is perceived, first of all, as ontology, which in explaining existence is based on supersensible principles and principles. The founder of existentialism, M. Heidegger, writes the work “Introduction to Metaphysics,” which in its content means a derivation from metaphysics. The scientistic trend in philosophy takes an even more irreconcilable position in relation to metaphysics.

Metaphysics is declared to be a completely false doctrine, based on empty, unfounded, speculative speculation. She is accused of engaging in hypostatization, that is, endowing real existence with any ideas, concepts or values ​​(“universals” in medieval scholasticism, “beauty” as such in Plato). Metaphysics is also accused of dogmatism, of rejecting all criticism.

At the same time, in modern philosophy the idea of ​​the impossibility of overcoming metaphysics arises and becomes stronger. This conclusion is reached by the pragmatist C. Peirce, the representative of the philosophy of science K. Popper and other supporters of the scientistic trend. M. Heidegger is inclined to the same conclusion. In his quest to overcome metaphysics, he comes to the conclusion that it is insurmountable. We cannot, he writes, get rid of metaphysics, just as we take off our coat and leave it in the wardrobe. A part of metaphysics always remains with us. Developing the same idea, the German philosopher K. Apel concludes that in traditional metaphysics only what is dogmatic and uncritical in it should be criticized.

The linguistic turn constitutes the most important and essential characteristic of modern Western philosophy. It occurred precisely in the 20th century, although some of its signs can be found in the nominalism of medieval philosophy and the empiricism of modern philosophy. At the same time, the linguistic turn was partly caused by the desire to overcome metaphysics, to make philosophy truly and scientifically modern. This turn had a deep, paradigmatic character: it meant a transition from the paradigm of thinking to the paradigm of language, from the philosophy of consciousness, thinking and the subject to the philosophy of language, meaning and significance. The linguistic turn equally characterizes both the scientistic and anti-scientist trends in philosophy, and it occurred almost simultaneously.

In neopositivism and movements close to it (analytical philosophy, philosophy of science), L. Wittgenstein played a key role in the implementation of the linguistic turn, who did this in the “Logical-Philosophical Treatise” (1921), which became a kind of bible of the entire scientistic movement. In his research, Wittgenstein comes to the idea that it is language that shapes our image of the world. Developing his thought, he concludes that the boundaries of language mean the boundaries of our world.

This approach radically changes the relationship between language, thought and reality. Previously, language played a secondary, instrumental role in these relations: it served as a way of expressing thinking that reflected reality. Now it comes to the fore: the structure of the statement, Wittgenstein argues, determines the structure of possible facts. The same applies to thinking: language is either equal to it or plays a determining role. Therefore philosophy must focus its attention on language.

The linguistic turn demarcates the spheres of competence between science and philosophy: the former speaks of facts, the latter of language. Thus, new relationships are established between them. Scientific discourse has a direct connection with reality. Philosophy is a secondary, metalinguistic activity associated with the analysis of language, which can be either the language of science or natural, ordinary language.

The linguistic turn also became in a real way overcoming metaphysics. By abandoning claims to knowledge of extra-linguistic reality, philosophy thereby abandons ontological and metaphysical ambitions. It ceases to be a philosophy of spirit, consciousness, thinking and subject. Its object is limited to language. Only in this case, as supporters of neopositivism and similar movements believe, philosophy becomes truly scientific. From a neopositivist perspective, metaphysics is the bad, imperfect, or dishonest use of language. The purpose of philosophy is to clear statements or texts of all kinds of ambiguity, confusion and nonsense. Philosophy needs to move from metaphysics to metalinguistics. Philosophy, Wittgenstein argues, is not a science or a theory, it is an activity, an analysis of language. Philosophy must become a critique of language.

In the anti-scientist direction, the central role in the implementation of the linguistic turn belongs to M. Heidegger, who makes it in his work “Being and Time” (1927).

Based on the representative of the philosophy of life W. Dilthey and the founder of phenomenology E. Husserl, Heidegger comes to the conclusion: “The world exists only where there is language.” In his research, he transforms the phenomenological method of describing perception into a hermeneutic method of understanding and interpreting texts. In his reflections, language acquires a fundamental attribute of human existence. He develops the idea that being, human life unfolds and flows in language.

Heidegger proclaims: “Language is the house of being.” Thanks to language, a person opens up to the world. In the speech process, the initiative belongs not to the person, but to the language: with the help of the human mouth, the language itself speaks. Therefore, speaking, as Heidegger believes, initially means listening. A person speaks only to the extent that he listens and responds to language. Then listening to a language acts as a dialogue with another person, with a text, and ultimately with the language itself. The purpose of philosophy, according to Heidegger, is to think, reflect on dialogue with language, and therefore with being, since language is the embodiment of being.

In the post-war period, structuralism, which arose in France, continued the line of linguistic turn in Western philosophy. Structuralism is based on the structural linguistics of F. de Saussure, in which language also has unconditional priority in relation to thinking and the external world.

In addition to the above, it should be noted that in the second half of the 20th century. there is a weakening of the scientistic direction, its convergence with the opposite direction. In postmodern movements, there is an increasing tendency towards the aestheticization of philosophy and its rapprochement with literature.

The twentieth century in world history is characterized by a number of features that determined the direction of development of philosophy.

Unprecedented scientific and technological progress, the results of which have significantly changed the face of the world and people. Science has transformed from a form of knowledge of the world into the main means of its transformation. Human capabilities have become comparable to the forces of nature. At the same time, the development of science and technology has given rise to many problems.

The rapidity, scale and radicality of changes taking place in the world and in the life of society.

Globalization of ongoing processes: scientific and technological achievements become the property of the whole world, emerging problems are also of a global nature. A manifestation of this was, on the one hand, world wars, and on the other, the creation of a large number of international organizations.

These and other factors determined the main trends in the development of philosophy. Western philosophy of the late nineteenth – early twentieth centuries. characterized by a variety of different trends, problems and methods, often opposing each other. The differences between philosophical directions are associated, first of all, with the assessment of the role of science and technology in the life of society. In this regard, there are 2 main directions:

scientism (technocratism), whose representatives attach leading importance to the development of science and technology in the development of human culture;

antiscientism , whose representatives focus on the problems and dangers generated by scientific and technological progress, and also express concern that the development of technology leads to the loss of spiritual and humanitarian values.

A negative assessment of the consequences of scientific and technological progress led to the emergence of irrationalism - a philosophical movement that developed in opposition to the rationalism of the New Age. Irrationalism asserts the limitations of the cognitive capabilities of the human mind and recognizes its non-rational forms as the main way of cognition: intuition, insight. Irrationalism considers reality to be chaotic, devoid of patterns, subject to the game of chance and attaches great importance to the analysis of human emotions, experiences, and will. Most trends in Western philosophy of the twentieth century. is irrational.

2. Positivism and pragmatism.

The rapid development of science and technology, the formation of scientism as a special mentality have become the reason for the formation of a number of philosophical trends, the focus of which is the problem of science as a cultural phenomenon, as well as questions of the methodology of scientific knowledge.

Positivism– went through several stages in its development.

1) from the middle of the nineteenth century. Its founder is a French philosopher Auguste Comte(1798 – 1857). He came up with the idea of ​​the inability of philosophy to answer the questions posed by the development of science. This idea was based on Comte’s teaching about the 3 stages of development of knowledge:

theological, on which knowledge is based on faith;

metaphysical - the world is explained using abstract concepts;

positive, characterized scientific explanation all phenomena.

All positive knowledge can be obtained only scientifically, empirically and does not need philosophy (“science is its own philosophy” is the slogan of the positivists). Scientific knowledge should not explain phenomena, but limit itself to their description.

2) end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries. (Austrian philosopher and physicist Ernst Mach, Swiss philosopher Richard Avenarius and etc.) - empirio-criticism (“criticism of experience”), or Machism. This direction developed as a reaction to the crisis in physics. This is a subjective-idealistic version of positivism, which argues that science does not reflect objective reality. Representatives of empirio-criticism believed that science should be descriptive in nature, and the explanatory part should be removed from science in order to “economize thinking.”

3) neopositivism - since the 20s. XX century (English) Bertrand Russell, Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rudolf Carnap and etc.). This is a school logical positivism.

In neopositivism, philosophy is understood as the activity of finding the meanings of linguistic expressions. Science is the field of empirical research, and philosophy is the field of logical analysis of concepts necessary for knowledge. These concepts are not a reflection of objective reality, but are created by the minds of scientists according to certain logical laws.

Within the framework of neopositivism, several of its varieties have developed:

logical positivism(Russell), who reduced all philosophical problems to logical ones;

linguistic positivism, explaining all philosophical and social problems to violation of the norms of language use.

4) post-positivism (60s - 70s) (English) Karl Popper, Americans Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, Imre Lakatos). Research by postpositivists moves from analyzing the language of science to problems of the history of the emergence, development and change of scientific theories. This is a historical school in the methodology of scientific knowledge.

One of the central concepts is paradigm(T. Kuhn) is a model of approach to a scientific problem accepted by the scientific community, a set of judgments and methods of scientific activity adopted by a certain group of scientists.

P. Feyerabend defends the idea that any theories are valuable for knowledge of reality, including extra-scientific ones: mythological, religious, astrological, etc. “There is no idea, no matter how absurd it may be, that is not capable of improving our knowledge.” .

Pragmatism(pragma - business, action) - “philosophy of action” - arose in the 70s. XIX century in America and was an American form of the development of positivism. Its founder is a philosopher and mathematician Charles Pierce, his ideas were developed in the works William James And John Dewey.

Pragmatism became a philosophical rationale utilitarianism – the principle that emerged as a result of the development of capitalist relations for assessing all phenomena from the point of view of utility, the ability to serve as a means to achieve any goal.

The purpose of human existence, from a pragmatic point of view, is individual well-being and well-being. The moral commandment is to “do what pays off.” All previous philosophy is accused by representatives of pragmatism of being divorced from life.

Pragmatism is a subjective idealistic direction. Each person is given only his individual direct experience. Experience is the content of consciousness, and not the result of interaction with the outside world. Cognition is an attempt to solve a specific problem in a specific situation, i.e. a person creates an object of knowledge for himself.

One of the main things in pragmatism is the problem of truth. Truth is identified with benefit, practical success. Only that which is beneficial is true and moral.

3. “Philosophy of life” and existentialism– irrationalist trends in philosophy of the late nineteenth – early. XX centuries, contrasting science and reason and intuition and instinct.

founder "philosophy of life"- German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860). The main concept of his philosophy is “the will to live” - the primary essence of the world, which has neither cause nor goal, inaccessible to knowledge. The single world will manifests itself in living and inanimate nature. Manifesting in a person, she subjugates him to herself, all his actions depend on her. The human mind is limited by the goals of self-preservation and the struggle for existence. The world is inaccessible to rational knowledge; it can only be comprehended by intuition. Schopenhauer's philosophy is pessimistic, expressing a negative attitude towards life in which there is no meaning and purpose. A person cannot change anything in the world, but he can “escape” from suffering into the area of ​​aesthetic contemplation and asceticism.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900). His main works: “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, “Beyond Good and Evil”. Nietzsche's works are written in the form of mythical allegories and aphorisms, which was the reason for their ambiguous understanding.

The central concepts of his philosophy are “ will to power" And " superman" The world in Nietzsche's teaching is an eternal formation, based on the struggle of many wills striving for superiority. A person can assert his freedom only in solitary opposition to the world, overcoming morality within himself as a collective way of survival for people who are not able to fight on their own. The increase in the will to power is promoted not by intelligence, but by force (“the rule of the strong”). The ideal personality for Nietzsche is a strong man, free from morality, with the maximum level of will to power - a superman.

The “philosophy of life” is being replaced by existentialism– “philosophy of existence” is a subjective-idealistic direction that was formed in the 20-30s. XX century Existentialism became most widespread in Germany ( Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger ) and in France ( Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus ). In Russia this direction was represented N. Berdyaev And L. Shestov . The ideas of existentialism had a great influence on literature, theater, cinema, and many of its representatives are people of art.

The central category of this direction is existence (existence). The main idea is that a person exists in a world alien to him. True reality is the existence of “my Self” - that is, the experience of my being in the world, of what I am for myself. The philosophy of existentialism is individualistic in nature. (In Sartre’s play “The Prohibitions”, after death, three criminals go to hell, which is a room in a cheap hotel where bright lights are on all the time, there is no mirror and it is impossible to be alone. Hell is others, says one of the sinners.)

In real life, a person is constantly in the face of fear, trouble - i.e. in “borderline situations”, therefore his natural states are anxiety, suffering, guilt, fear, pain.

Fear is the main principle of human life. “The object of fear is the world as such” (M. Heidegger). Fear divides people and, therefore, allows for the full expression of individuality.

The most important category of existentialism is “death”. Life is absurd, meaningless, and therefore awareness of one’s mortality gives a person a feeling of freedom and uniqueness. A. Camus wrote in “The Myth of Sisyphus”: “there is only one really serious question - this is the question of suicide.” He considers the possibility of suicide as proof of human freedom from external forces.

Camus formulates the main question of philosophy as follows: “Is life worth living?” In solving this issue, existentialism distinguishes 2 directions: 1) religious (Jaspers, Berdyaev), whose representatives see the possibility of gaining freedom through God, and 2) atheistic (Heidegger, Sartre) - they see the possibility of gaining freedom only in the sphere of their own consciousness, which is true being.

At the same time, the principles of existentialism also presuppose human responsibility for the world. A person is free to choose his opportunities and is responsible for this choice.

Representatives of this direction place philosophy above science, because it is the comprehension of existence. In Sartre’s article “Existentialism is Humanism,” he associates the hope of life in an absurd world with the philosophy of existentialism.

4. Religious philosophy of the twentieth century. also characterized by irrationalism. Its main feature is the desire to understand the problems of modern man from the perspective of the Christian religion.

In the western religious philosophy XX century Several directions stand out.

1) Neo-Thomism (Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain). At the end of the nineteenth century. by decision of the Vatican, the teaching of F. Aquinas ( Thomism) is recognized as the official doctrine of the Catholic Church. The purpose of this is the need to raise the prestige of the Church in the era of scientific and technological revolution. The main ideas of F. Aquinas: about the structure of the universe, about the relationship between faith and reason, about the place of man in the world - are the basis of neo-Thomism. The characteristic features of this direction, which distinguish it from Thomism, are attention to the problems of the modern world and to the inner world of man.

Neo-Thomism accepts 5 proofs of the existence of God given by F. Aquinas, but differs from him in understanding the relationship between God and man. Man has the immortality of the soul and freedom - this makes him involved in God and determines his creative possibilities. The focus of neo-Thomism is on issues of culture and human creativity. All human capabilities - his mind, moral principles, intuition - are realized in the sphere of creativity. By creating cultural values, a person embodies in them the fundamentals of Divine existence - Truth, beauty, goodness, and at the same time improves himself.

Neo-Thomists (Marittain) associate the future of European culture with “integral humanism,” the meaning of which is the combination of the values ​​of Christianity and modern humanity.

2) Personalism(E. Mounier, J. Lacroix etc.) is formed in the 20-30s.

The focus is on the problem of the individual and his freedom.

Personalism considers a person in his constant connection with the outside world. In the real world, in specific life situations, personality formation occurs - personalization. The main quality of personality is freedom, understood as freedom of choice.

Personality is manifested in interaction with the outside world and in focusing on one’s inner world, and these 2 aspects are closely interrelated. The basis of this relationship is creativity and human communication.

3) Religious evolutionism (Teilhardism)– philosophy of P. Teilhard de Chardin and his followers.

Teilhard de Chardin (1881 – 1955) – French natural scientist, priest. In his views, he combined the idea of ​​creation with the idea of ​​evolution. The idea of ​​the evolution of the Divine principle is central to his work “The Phenomenon of Man.”

The world (Universum) in his understanding is a living organism, permeated by the Divine and striving for perfection. The reason for this desire is internal spiritual energy, which leads to an increase in the level of organization of matter, to the complication of the material world. The pinnacle of evolution is man.

In the evolutionary process, Teilhard de Chardin distinguishes 4 stages (4 chapters of the book):

prelife – stage of geogenesis;

life is a stage of biogenesis;

thought is the stage of noogenesis, the emergence of the sphere of mind - the noosphere;

superlife is the achievement of the “Omega point”, the highest stage of evolution, where all elements are united in God - from the atom to rational humanity.

The term “noosphere” was introduced by him under the influence of the ideas of V.I. Vernadsky. The noosphere, in the understanding of T. de Chardin, is a shell around the Earth, the development of which goes in the direction of the “Omega point”. At the noosphere stage, the direction of evolution is controlled by the collective human consciousness. But for this, people need to overcome selfishness and consumerism towards nature and treat it wisely and creatively, participating in a great divine act.