GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF GERMAN CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHY

German classical philosophy is considered a separate topic in the philosophy course, because four giants appeared in a short period of time. Philosophers are theorists who have made theoretical discoveries of such a global scale that are studied and confirmed in modern science. The founders of German classical philosophy: I. Kant was born (1724-1804). All his life he lived in the city of Koenigsberg (Kaliningrad). Fichte (1762-1814), F. Schelling (1775-1854), G. Hegel (1770-1831). Philosophers were bound by bonds of friendship and teaching. Fichte considered himself a student of Kant, Schelling was a student of Fichte. In the process of life, they parted, friendship was interrupted, many of them blamed each other. Germany had a favorable environment for the development of science and research. By this time, a network of universities had formed in Germany. Philosophers were teachers. Universities were supported by the state in material terms. Scientific information was available to a wide range of people. 19th century considered the development of European philosophical thought. German philosophers turned philosophy into a professional occupation. They made an attempt to turn it into the highest form of theoretical knowledge. Philosophizing is inseparable from science. Theory is higher, more essential than any empirical contemplative being. A characteristic feature of German philosophy was the absolutization of conceptual knowledge on the basis of a special form of work with the concept. The main subject of science - the concept of German classical philosophy - appears in the ultimate form of rationalism laid down by the traditions of Plato and Aristotle. At the heart of the tradition are the thoughts: “not a person, but the world mind. The laws of reason underlie the world” (not proven not true). The proof of truth was carried to the extreme of German classical philosophy. All German classical philosophy is characterized by a special technique of philosophizing (working with a concept). The thinking force is able to foresee, working only with the concept. Hence the conclusion follows: the intellect has purely theoretical possibilities, which is capable of even thought experiments. German classical philosophy developed the dialectical method: the world is considered as a whole, not in parts. The world is considered in motion, development. The connection between the lower and the higher has been proved. The world develops from the lowest to the highest, changes occur quantitatively and pass into a new quality. Development has an internal purpose. Hegel made a special discovery in dialectics. He suggested that there is a threefold method of thinking. For example, the thesis-antithesis is a synthesis; being - non-being - becoming. Hegel thinks speculatively, i.e. speculatively, referring to the concept, and not to experience through the unity and opposition of these concepts. Hegel starts from the simple, through the movement towards synthesis, from the abstract to the concrete, from the one-sided to the many-sided. Until the whole “fabric” of reality is obtained. His thinking corresponds to the law of logic and is subject to the unity of the logical and the historical. German classical philosophy stands on the border with modern philosophy. She was able to synthesize the idea of ​​romanticism and enlightenment. The beginning of the Enlightenment in German philosophy is closely connected with the famous Christian Wolff (1679-1754), who systematized and popularized the teachings of G. Leibniz. Many philosophers not only in Germany, but also in Russia, for example, M.V. Lomonosov, studied with H. Wolf, who for the first time in Germany developed a system that covered the main areas of philosophical culture.

Philosophy developed in the intellectual atmosphere of progressive scientific and artistic thought. A significant role was played by the achievements of natural science and the social sciences. Physics and chemistry began to develop, and the study of organic nature advanced. Discoveries in the field of mathematics, which made it possible to understand the processes in their exact quantitative expression, the teachings of J.B. Lamarck, in fact the predecessor of Charles Darwin, about the conditionality of the development of the organism by the environment, astronomical, sharpness and inevitability brought to the fore the idea of ​​development as a theory and method of cognition of reality.

PHILOSOPHY OF KANT

One of the greatest minds of mankind, the founder of German classical philosophy is Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). There are two periods in Kant's philosophy. The first one is “subcritical”. At that time, he stood on the positions of natural-scientific materialism and put forward a hypothesis of the origin and development of the solar system from the original nebula on the basis of the internal mechanical laws of motion of matter. Later, this hypothesis was processed by the mathematician Laplace and received the name of the Kant-Laplace hypothesis.

In the second, “critical” period, i.e. starting from the 80s of the 18th century, Kant creates three “Critiques”: “critique of pure reason”, “critique of practical reason”, “critique of the faculty of judgment”. Kant calls his philosophy “transcendental”, i.e. beyond the realm of the empirical, beyond the realm of experience. He admits the existence of an objective reaction that is on the other side of phenomena (phenomenon). This reality is transcendent, it is a “thing in itself”, elusive (noumenon).

Kant's theory of knowledge is based on the recognition of the activity of human consciousness. In the depths of our consciousness, before experience and independently of it, there are basic categories, forms of understanding (for example, time and space). He called them a priori. The truth is not in reality, but in consciousness itself. It is precisely from itself that it creates its own forms, the method of cognition, and its object of cognition, i.e. creates the world of phenomena, nature, acts as the creator of all things. Essence is contained in “things in themselves”, it is inaccessible and objective, and phenomena are created by a priori consciousness, they are accessible, subjective.

Kant proves the impotence of the human mind by the doctrine of antinomies, i.e. opposite statements, equally true and false. To such he attributed the expressions: “the world is finite and infinite”, “freedom and necessity reign in the world”.

In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant shows how we should act in life. Here he makes arguments in favor of belief in God, but does not try to prove that God really exists.

Kant is the author of the categorical imperative in ethics: “act according to such a rule that you would like to have as a universal law, and in such a way that you always treat humanity and every person as an end and never treat him only as a means” . The categorical imperative, in his opinion, should be applied in relations between nations.

The philosophy of I. Kant was influenced by the French initiation of J. J. Rousseau. He was under the influence until the “critical” period. Until 1780, Kant was brought up on Newton's mechanics. In 1755, under the influence, the work “The General Natural History and Theory of the Sky” was written. Essence: the search for great links that connect the system into the world reality. Kant put forward the theory of transcendental idealism. The essence of the theory lies in the search for the cognitive power of man. Kant sets himself the task of cognizing the ability of the mind to cognize the surrounding world. Scientists believe that Kant made a theoretical journey into the human mind. Three works were devoted to the ability of the human mind: “critique of pure reason”, “critique of practical reason”, “critique of the faculty of judgment”. In these works, he gives an analysis of the intellect, considers the sphere of human emotions and human will. Considers the example of the ability of the human mind to evaluate a work of art. All three works have an anthropological focus. The main question that runs through his theoretical judgments is what is a person? What is its essence? Answer: man is a free being and realizes himself in moral activity. The next question relates to epistemology. What can I know? what are the abilities of the human mind to know the world around? But can the human mind, the surrounding world, fully know? The powers of the mind are vast, but there are limits to knowledge. Man cannot know whether God exists or not, only faith. The surrounding reality is cognized by the method of reflection of consciousness, therefore the human consciousness cannot fully cognize the surrounding world. Kant distinguished between the phenomena of things perceived by man and things as they exist in themselves. We cognize the world not as it really is, but only as it appears to us. Thus, a new theory of “thing in itself” was proposed.

Kant poses the following question: if the thing-in-itself cannot be known, can the inner world of man be known? If so, how does the learning process proceed? Answer: reason is the ability to think on the basis of sensitive impressions, reason is the ability to reason about what can be given in experience. For example, your own soul. Kant comes to the conclusion that one cannot rely on reason in everything. What cannot be known by reason can be relied upon by faith. Experience is nothing but a stream of sense-data which fit into a priori forms; are in space and time. The a priori forms of the understanding are the concepts that we fit into our experience. For Kant, consciousness appears in the form of a hierarchical ladder.

Practical reason considers moral problems, a person is understood as a dual being: a person as a bodily being and as a phenomenon.

PHILOSOPHY OF HEGEL

The most prominent representative of German idealist philosophy was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). The cornerstone of Hegelian idealism is the absolute idea, which Hegel considered as the subject of philosophy. From the point of view of the absolute idea, he considers all other sciences, considering his teaching to be the ultimate truth. Hegel's philosophical system consists of three main parts: logic (where the development of the absolute idea is seen as a movement from a simple thought to a concept), philosophy of nature (the development of the absolute idea in its "otherness"), philosophy of the spirit (where the development of the absolute idea goes from the world spirit to abstract). This whole system and each part of it develops according to a three-term division (triad) - thesis, antithesis, synthesis. So, in logic, the absolute idea acts as a synthesis, in the philosophy of nature it passes into the opposite, nature and becomes an antithesis, in the philosophy of the spirit it returns to its previous state, but already in the form of human consciousness, through which it cognizes itself. The same triadic development is observed in parts of the Hegelian system:

In logic: the doctrine of being (thesis), the doctrine of essence (antithesis), the doctrine of the concept (synthesis);

· in the philosophy of nature: mechanics, physics and chemistry, the doctrine of organic nature;

· in the philosophy of spirit: subjective spirit (anthropology, phenomenology and psychology), objective spirit (law, morality, morality), absolute spirit (aesthetics, philosophy of religion, history of philosophy).

Hegel's absolute idea is not an empty abstraction; it is the process of human thinking, taken in its objective laws, torn off from man and nature and presupposed by them. In this detachment lie the roots of Hegel's idealism.

In his logic, Hegel develops dialectics most fully. The rational grain of his dialectics is the idea of ​​development and its three main principles (law): the transition of quantity into quality and vice versa, contradiction as a source of development and negation of negation. Hegel's philosophy suffered from internal contradictions, in which "a comprehensive, once for all completed system of knowledge of nature and history contradicts the basic laws of dialectical thinking" (Lenin). He believes that the mind is a substance, a universal principle. There is a concept as a world mind. If Kant breaks the connection between object and subject, Hegel does not. Object and subject are self-directed. They are a single whole, outside of some kind of environment. The idea of ​​unity is relative, a characteristic feature of Hegel's philosophy is the fusion of anthology and epistemology. As the world develops, the cognitive process also develops. For Hegel, the development of the surrounding world is a way and a method. He considers general development in three areas:

1) everything develops logically and abstractly;

2) the development of the otherness of the idea (nature);

3)Specific spirit

1) the transition of quantitative changes into qualitative changes;

2) negation of negation;

3) the law of unity and struggle of opposites.

The materialist Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872), an outstanding classic of German philosophy, acted as a critic of Hegel's idealistic philosophy. He came out in defense of materialism, which, under the influence of Hegelian and French philosophy, was forgotten for a long time.

Like Hegel, he builds his philosophy from a single principle. Such a principle, the only and highest subject of philosophy, he declares a person, and philosophy itself - anthropology, i.e. doctrine of man. Feuerbach has an inseparable unity in them. In this unity, the soul depends on the body, and the body is primary in relation to the soul.

Feuerbach considered man only as a biological and physiological being, not seeing his social essence. This led the German philosopher to idealism in understanding society and social phenomena. He seeks to build ideas about society and relations between people, based on the properties of an individual, whose essence he considers as a natural phenomenon. Communication between people is formed on the basis of the mutual use of one person by another, which is considered by Feuerbach as a natural (natural) relationship.

He positively solved the question of the cognizability of the world. But the misunderstanding of the social essence of man determined the contemplative nature of his theory of knowledge, the role of practice was excluded from it.

Feuerbach criticizes idealism and religion, which, in his opinion, are ideologically related. In The Essence of Christianity, he showed that religion has an earthly basis. God is his own essence abstracted from man and placed above him.

(1775-1854), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach(1804-1872) and expressed the ideological views of the progressive bourgeoisie of the era of breaking feudal relations. German classical philosophy is a kind of generalization of the experience of bourgeois revolutions.

Hence the compromise tendencies and the desire to limit the solution of many life problems to the area of ​​either spiritual-theoretical or abstract-sensual. Each of the representatives of this stage created his own philosophical system, characterized by a wealth of ideas and concepts. At the same time, German classical philosophy is a single spiritual formation, which is also characterized by common features. The sources of German classical philosophy, which she synthesized and surpassed, making this synthesis the basis for her world-buildings, were the philosophy of the New Age, the philosophy of the Enlightenment and romanticism.

The characteristic features of German classical philosophy include the following:

1. Peculiar understanding the role of philosophy in the history of mankind, in the development of world culture. Classical German philosophers believed that philosophy was called upon to be the critical conscience of culture, the “confronting consciousness”, “grinning at reality”, the “soul” of culture.

2.Researched not only human history, but also human essence. Kant sees man as a moral being. Fichte emphasizes the activity, effectiveness of consciousness and self-consciousness of a person, considers the structure of human life according to the requirements of reason. Schelling sets the task of showing the relationship between the objective and the subjective. Hegel expands the boundaries of the activity of self-consciousness and individual consciousness: the self-consciousness of the individual in him correlates not only with external objects, but also with other self-consciousness, from which various social forms arise.

He deeply explores various forms of social consciousness. Feuerbach creates a new form of materialism - anthropological materialism, at the center of which is a really existing person who is a subject for himself and an object for another person. For Feuerbach, the only real things are nature and man as part of nature.

3. All representatives Classical German philosophy treated philosophy as a special system of philosophical disciplines, categories, ideas. I. Kant, for example, singles out as philosophical disciplines, first of all, epistemology and ethics. Schelling - natural philosophy, ontology. Fichte, considering philosophy a "scientific study", saw in it such sections as ontological, epistemological, socio-political.

Hegel created a broad system of philosophical knowledge, which included the philosophy of nature, logic, the philosophy of history, the history of philosophy, the philosophy of law, the philosophy of morality, the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of the state, the philosophy of the development of individual consciousness, etc. Feuerbach considered ontological, epistemological and ethical problems, and also philosophical problems of history and religion.

4. develops a holistic concept of dialectics. Kantian dialectics is the dialectics of the limits and possibilities of human knowledge: feelings, reason and human mind.

Fichte's dialectic is reduced to the study of the creative activity of the Self, to the interaction of the Self and the non-Self as opposites, on the basis of the struggle of which the development of human self-consciousness takes place. Schelling transfers the principles of dialectical development developed by Fichte to nature. His nature is a developing, developing spirit. The great dialectician is Hegel, who presented a detailed, comprehensive theory of idealistic dialectics. For the first time he presented the entire natural, historical and spiritual world as a process, i.e. studied it in continuous movement, change, transformation and development, contradictions, quantitative-qualitative and qualitative-quantitative changes, interruptions in gradualness, the struggle of the new with the old, directed movement.

In logic, in the philosophy of nature, in the history of philosophy, in aesthetics, and so on. - in each of these areas, Hegel sought to find a thread of development. All classical German philosophy breathes dialectics. Special mention must be made of Feuerbach. Until recently, in Soviet philosophy, this F. Engels the assessment of Feuerbach's attitude to Hegel's dialectic was interpreted as Feuerbach's rejection of any dialectic in general. However, this question should be divided into two parts: the first is Feuerbach's attitude not only to dialectics, but in general to Hegel's philosophy; second, Feuerbach really, in criticizing the Hegelian system of objective idealism, “throws out the baby with the water”, i.e. did not understand Hegel's dialectic, its cognitive significance and historical role.

However, Feuerbach himself does not avoid dialectics in his philosophical studies. He considers the connections of phenomena, their interactions and changes, the unity of opposites in the development of phenomena (spirit and body, human consciousness and material nature). He made an attempt to find the relationship between the individual and the social. Another thing is that anthropological materialism did not let him out of his "embraces", although the dialectical approach when considering phenomena was not completely alien to him.

5. Classical German philosophy emphasized the role of philosophy in developing the problems of humanism and made attempts to comprehend human life. This comprehension took place in different forms and in different ways, but the problem was posed by all representatives of this trend of philosophical thought.

Socially significant should include: Kant's study of the entire life of a person as a subject of moral consciousness, his civil freedom, the ideal state of society and real society with incessant antagonism between people, etc.; Fichte's ideas about the primacy of the people over the state, consideration of the role of moral consciousness in human life, the social world as a world of private property, which is protected by the state; Hegelian doctrine of civil society, the rule of law, private property; Schelling's reliance on reason as a means of realizing a moral goal; Feuerbach's desire to create a religion of love and humanistic ethics. Such is the peculiar unity of the humanistic aspirations of the representatives of classical German philosophy.

general characteristics

German classical philosophy is a significant stage in the development of philosophical thought and culture of mankind. It is represented by the philosophical work of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling (1775-1854), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach (1804-1872).

Each of these philosophers created his own philosophical system, characterized by a wealth of ideas and concepts. At the same time, German classical philosophy is a single spiritual formation, which is characterized by the following common features:

1. A peculiar understanding of the role of philosophy in the history of mankind, in the development of world culture. Classical German philosophers believed that philosophy was called upon to be the critical conscience of culture, the “confronting consciousness”, “grinning at reality”, the “soul” of culture.

2. Not only human history was investigated, but also human essence. Kant sees man as a moral being. Fichte emphasizes the activity, effectiveness of consciousness and self-consciousness of a person, considers the structure of human life according to the requirements of reason. Schelling sets the task of showing the relationship between the objective and the subjective. Hegel expands the boundaries of the activity of self-consciousness and individual consciousness: the self-consciousness of the individual in him correlates not only with external objects, but also with other self-consciousness, from which various social forms arise. He deeply explores various forms of social consciousness. Feuerbach creates a new form of materialism - anthropological materialism, at the center of which is a really existing person who is a subject for himself and an object for another person. For Feuerbach, the only real things are nature and man as part of nature.

3. All representatives of classical German philosophy treated philosophy as a special system of philosophical disciplines, categories, ideas. I. Kant, for example, singles out as philosophical disciplines, first of all, epistemology and ethics. Schelling - natural philosophy, ontology. Fichte, considering philosophy a "scientific study", saw in it such sections as ontological, epistemological, socio-political. Hegel created a broad system of philosophical knowledge, which included the philosophy of nature, logic, the philosophy of history, the history of philosophy, the philosophy of law, the philosophy of morality, the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of the state, the philosophy of the development of individual consciousness, etc. Feuerbach considered ontological, epistemological and ethical problems, and also philosophical problems of history and religion.

4. Classical German philosophy develops a holistic concept of dialectics.

Kantian dialectics is the dialectics of the limits and possibilities of human knowledge: feelings, reason and human reason.

Fichte's dialectic is reduced to the study of the creative activity of the Self, to the interaction of the Self and the non-Self as opposites, on the basis of the struggle of which the development of human self-consciousness takes place. Schelling transfers the principles of dialectical development developed by Fichte to nature. His nature is a developing, developing spirit.

The great dialectician is Hegel, who presented a detailed, comprehensive theory of idealistic dialectics. He was the first to present the entire natural, historical and spiritual world as a process, i.e., he studied it in continuous movement, change, transformation and development, contradictions, quantitative-qualitative and qualitative-quantitative changes, interruptions in gradualness, the struggle of the new with the old, directed movement. In logic, the philosophy of nature, in the history of philosophy, in aesthetics, etc. - in each of these areas, Hegel sought to find a thread of development.

All classical German philosophy breathes dialectics. Special mention must be made of Feuerbach. Until recently, in Soviet philosophy, the assessment given by F. Engels of Feuerbach's attitude to Hegel's dialectic was interpreted as Feuerbach's rejection of any dialectics in general. However, this question should be divided into two parts: the first is Feuerbach's attitude not only to dialectics, but in general to Hegel's philosophy; second, Feuerbach really, in criticizing the Hegelian system of objective idealism, “thrown the baby out with the water,” that is, he did not understand Hegel’s dialectic, its cognitive significance and historical role.

However, Feuerbach himself does not avoid dialectics in his philosophical studies. He considers the connections of phenomena, their interactions and changes, the unity of opposites in the development of phenomena (spirit and body, human consciousness and material nature). He made an attempt to find the relationship between the individual and the social. Another thing is that anthropological materialism did not let him out of his "embraces", although the dialectical approach when considering phenomena was not completely alien to him.

5. Classical German philosophy emphasized the role of philosophy in developing the problems of humanism and made attempts to comprehend human life. This comprehension took place in different forms and in different ways, but the problem was posed by all representatives of this trend of philosophical thought. Socially significant should include: Kant's study of the entire life of a person as a subject of moral consciousness, his civil freedom, the ideal state of society and real society with incessant antagonism between people, etc.; Fichte's ideas about the primacy of the people over the state, consideration of the role of moral consciousness in human life, the social world as a world of private property, which is protected by the state; Hegelian doctrine of civil society, the rule of law, private property; Schelling's reliance on reason as a means of realizing a moral goal; Feuerbach's desire to create a religion of love and humanistic ethics. Such is the peculiar unity of the humanistic aspirations of the representatives of classical German philosophy.

It can be definitely said that the representatives of classical German philosophy followed the enlighteners of the 18th century. and above all by the French enlighteners, proclaiming man the master of nature and spirit, asserting the power of the mind, turning to the idea of ​​the laws of the historical process. At the same time, they were also spokesmen for the socio-economic, political and spiritual atmosphere that surrounded them directly, acted as their own being: the feudal fragmentation of Germany, the lack of national unity, the orientation of the developing bourgeoisie towards various compromises, as it experienced after the Great French Revolution fear of any revolutionary movement; desire to have a strong monarchical power and military power.

It is this compromise that finds its philosophical justification in the works of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Feuerbach. And although the latter is a representative of a different worldview orientation - materialistic, but he also considers the solution of social problems on the path of reforms, promising civil peace and tranquility in society.

Classical German philosophy is one of the most important expressions of the spiritual culture of the 19th century.

Philosophy of Kant

"Precritical" period. This is a period in the creative activity of Immanuel Kant, starting from his graduation from the University of Koenigsberg and until 1770. This name does not mean that during this period Kant does not turn to criticism of some ideas and views. On the contrary, he always strove for a critical assimilation of the most diverse intellectual material.

He is characterized by a serious attitude towards any authority in science and philosophy, as evidenced by one of his first published works - "Thoughts on the true assessment of living forces", written by him in his student years, in which he raises the question: is it possible to criticize the great scientists, great philosophers? Is it possible to judge what was done by Descartes and Leibniz? And he comes to the conclusion that it is possible if the researcher has arguments worthy of the opponent's arguments.

Kant proposes to consider a new, previously unknown non-mechanical picture of the world. In 1755, in his work "The General Natural History and Theory of the Sky", he tries to solve this problem. All bodies in the universe consist of material particles - atoms, which have inherent forces of attraction and repulsion. This idea was put by Kant at the basis of his cosmogonic theory. In its original state, Kant believed. The Universe was a chaos of various material particles scattered in the world space. Under the influence of their inherent force of attraction, they move (without an external, divine push!) towards each other, and "scattered elements with greater density, due to attraction, gather around themselves all matter with a lower specific gravity." On the basis of attraction and repulsion, various forms of motion of matter, Kant builds his cosmogonic theory. He believed that his hypothesis of the origin of the universe and planets explains literally everything: their origin, and the position of the orbits, and the origin of movements. Recalling the words of Descartes: “Give me matter and motion, and I will build the world!”, Kant believed that he was better able to implement the plan: “Give me matter, and I will build a world out of it, that is, give me matter, and I I will show you how the world is to come from it.”

This cosmogonic hypothesis of Kant had a huge impact on the development of both philosophical thought and science. She punched, in the words of F. Engels, "a gap in the old metaphysical thinking", substantiated the doctrine of the relativity of rest and motion, developing further the ideas of Descartes and Galileo; asserted a bold idea for that time of the constant emergence and destruction of matter. The earth and the solar system appeared as evolving in time and space.

The materialistic ideas of his cosmogonic theory prompted Kant himself to take a critical attitude towards the then dominant formal logic, which did not allow contradictions, while the real world in all its manifestations was full of them. At the same time, even in his “pre-critical period” of activity, Kant faced the problem of the possibility of cognition, and above all scientific cognition. Therefore, I. Kant goes into the 70s. from natural philosophy mainly to questions of the theory of knowledge.

"Critical period". The second half of the philosophical work of I. Kant entered the history of philosophy under the name of the "critical period". Between the "subcritical" and "critical" periods lies the period of preparation of the second. This is the period between 1770 and the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. In 1770, Kant published On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World, which became a kind of prologue for his main works of the “critical period”: Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Critique of Practical Reason (1788), Critique of Judgment (1790). In the first of these books, Kant expounded the doctrine of knowledge, in the second - ethics, in the third - aesthetics and the doctrine of expediency in nature. The basis of all these works is the doctrine of "things in themselves" and "phenomena".

According to Kant, there is a world of things independent of human consciousness (from sensations, thinking), it affects the senses, causing sensations in them. Such an interpretation of the world indicates that Kant approaches its consideration as a materialist philosopher. But as soon as he proceeds to study the question of the limits and possibilities of human cognition, its forms, he declares that the world of essences is the world of “things in themselves”, that is, the world that is not known through reason, but is the subject of faith (God , soul, immortality). Thus, "things in themselves", according to Kant, are transcendent, that is, otherworldly, exist outside of time and space. Hence his idealism was called transcendental idealism.

Contemplate living. forms of sensibility. Kant divided all knowledge into experimental (pastorioi) and pre-experimental (apriori). The method of formation of this knowledge is different: the first is derived inductively, that is, on the basis of generalizations of the data of experience. It may contain misconceptions and errors. For example, the proposition - "All swans are white" seemed true until the black swan was seen in Australia. And although the nature of much knowledge is based on experience, this does not mean that all knowledge can be obtained only by experience. The very fact that experience never ends means that it does not provide universal knowledge. Kant believes that any universal and necessary knowledge is a priori, that is, pre-experimental and non-experimental in its principle.

In turn, Kant divides a priori judgments into two types: analytical (when the predicate only explains the subject) and synthetic (when the predicate adds new knowledge about the subject). In a word, synthetic judgments always yield new knowledge.

Kant raises the question: how are synthetic a priori judgments (knowledge) possible? This question, he believes, will help him answer the following questions: 1. How is mathematics possible? 2. How is natural science possible? 3. How is metaphysics (philosophy) possible?

The philosopher considers three spheres of knowledge: feelings, reason, mind. By means of feeling objects are given to us; by reason they think; the mind is directed to the mind and is not at all connected with experience.

Living contemplation with the help of feelings has its own forms of existence and cognition - space and time. They do not exist objectively, they do not act as objective characteristics of things, but are the ability to perceive objects. Mathematics, according to Kant, is possible because it is based on space and time as a priori forms of our sensibility. The unconditional universality and necessity of truths in mathematics does not refer to things themselves, it has significance only for our mind.

Forms of the mind. The second part of Kant's doctrine of the cognitive abilities of man is the doctrine of reason. Reason is the ability to think the object of sensual contemplation. This is knowledge through the concept, the ability to make judgments. Kant states that in order to understand what the state "I think" means, it is necessary to pose the problem of the unity of subject and object in cognition, and thus the problem of consciousness and cognition. He writes: "Reason is, generally speaking, the ability to know." Kant develops a system of categories of reason:

1) quantity: unity, plurality, wholeness; 2) quality: reality, negation, limitation; 3) relations: inherent, independent existence; 4) modality: possibility - impossibility, existence - non-existence, necessity - chance.

Along with operating with categories, the mind thinks objects and phenomena as subject to three laws: conservation of substance, causality, interaction of substance. Being universal and necessary, these laws do not belong to nature itself, but only to human reason. For the intellect, they are the highest a priori laws of connection of everything that the intellect can think. Human consciousness itself builds an object, not in the sense that it generates it, gives it being, but in the sense that it gives the object the form under which it can only be known - the form of universal and necessary knowledge.

Therefore, Kant turns out that nature as an object of necessary and universal knowledge is built by consciousness itself: reason dictates the laws of nature. Thus. Kant comes to the conclusion that consciousness itself creates the subject of science - general and necessary laws that allow "ordering" the world of phenomena, introducing causality, connection, substantiality, necessity, etc. into it. As we see, Kant creates a peculiar form of subjective idealism, not only when he claims that space and time are only forms of living contemplation, and not the objective properties of things, but also when he points to the derivativeness of all kinds of connections and laws from reason.

Natural science, according to Kant, combines living contemplation with rational activity that permeates experimental knowledge. It turns out that nature is real only in the "empirical sense", as the world of phenomena - phenomena. The concept of “noumenon” is that “it is not the object of our sensual contemplation”, but is “an intelligible object”. This concept was introduced by Kant to emphasize the impossibility of knowing the “thing in itself”, that the “thing in itself” is only an idea of ​​a thing about which we cannot say either that it is possible or that it is impossible.

The third part of Kant's teaching about the cognitive abilities of man is about reason and antinomies. It is the study of the abilities of the mind that allows us to answer the question of how metaphysics (philosophy) is possible. The subject of metaphysics, as well as the subject of reason, is God, the freedom and immortality of the soul. They are addressed respectively by theology, cosmology, psychology. However, when trying to give scientific meaningful knowledge about God, the soul, freedom, the mind falls into contradictions. These contradictions are different in their logical structure, and especially in content, from ordinary contradictions: a “two-sided appearance” arises, that is, not one illusory statement, but two opposite statements that correlate like a thesis and an antithesis. According to Kant, both thesis and antithesis look equally well argued. If only one of the parties is heard, then "victory" is awarded to her. Kant called such contradictions antinomies. Kant explores the following four antinomies:

I antinomy

Thesis / Antithesis

The world has a beginning in time and is limited in space / The world has no beginning in time and no boundaries in space; it is infinite in time and space

II antinomy

Any complex substance in the world consists of simple parts, and in general there is only simple and that which is composed of simple / Not a single complex thing in the world consists of simple parts, and in general there is nothing simple in the world

III antinomy

Causality according to the laws of nature is not the only causality from which all phenomena in the world can be deduced. To explain phenomena, it is also necessary to admit free causality (causality through freedom) / There is no freedom, everything happens in the world according to the laws of nature

IV antinomy

Belongs to the world, either as a part of it or as its cause / There is no absolutely necessary essence anywhere - neither in the world nor outside it - as its cause

These contradictions are insoluble for Kant. However, Kant refutes all existing "theoretical" proofs of the existence of God: his existence can be proved only by experience. Although it is necessary to believe in the existence of God, since this faith is required by "practical reason", that is, our moral consciousness.

Kant's doctrine of antinomies has played an enormous role in the history of dialectics. This doctrine confronted philosophical thought with many philosophical problems, and above all the problem of contradiction. The question arose of understanding the contradictory unity of the finite and the infinite, the simple and the complex, necessity and freedom, chance and necessity. The antinomies served as a strong impetus for the subsequent dialectical reflections of other representatives of classical German philosophy.

Ethics. Moral law. The Kantian concept of morality received a detailed development in such works as The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), The Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and The Metaphysics of Morals (1792). They are joined by Kant's works On Primordial Evil in Human Nature (1792) and Religion within the Limits of Reason Only (1793).

Understanding the foundations and essence of moral rules, Kant considered one of the most important tasks of philosophy. He said: “Two things always fill the soul with new and stronger surprise and reverence, the more often and longer we think about them - this is the starry sky above me and the moral law in me.” According to Kant, a person acts necessarily in one respect and freely in another: as a phenomenon among other phenomena of nature, a person is subject to necessity, and as a moral being, he belongs to the world of intelligible things - noumenons. And as such, he is free. As a moral being, man is subject only to moral duty.

Kant formulates moral duty in the form of a moral law, or a moral categorical imperative. This law requires that each person act in such a way that the rule of his personal conduct may become the rule of conduct for all. If a person is attracted to actions that coincide with the dictates of the moral law by a sensual inclination, then such behavior, Kant believes, cannot be called moral. An action will be moral only if it is done out of respect for the moral law. The core of morality is "good will", which expresses actions performed only in the name of moral duty, and not for some other purposes (for example, because of fear or to look good in the eyes of other people, for selfish purposes, for example, profit etc.). Therefore, the Kantian ethics of moral duty opposed utilitarian ethical concepts, as well as religious and theological ethical teachings.

In the Kantian doctrine of morality, one should distinguish between "maxims" and "law". The first means the subjective principles of the will of a given individual, and the law is an expression of universal validity, the principle of will, which is valid for each individual. Therefore, Kant calls such a law an imperative, that is, a rule that is characterized by an obligation, expressing the obligation of an action. Kant divides imperatives into hypothetical ones, the fulfillment of which is associated with the presence of certain conditions, and categorical ones, which are obligatory under all conditions. As for morality, it should have only one categorical imperative as its highest law.

Kant considered it necessary to study in detail the totality of man's moral duties. In the first place, he puts the duty of a person to take care of the preservation of his life and, accordingly, health. To vices he refers suicide, drunkenness, gluttony. Further, he names the virtues of truthfulness, honesty, sincerity, conscientiousness, self-esteem, which he contrasted with the vices of lies and servility.

Kant attached great importance to conscience as a "moral judgment seat". Kant considered the two main duties of people in relation to each other to be love and respect. He interpreted love as goodwill, defining "as pleasure from the happiness of others." He understood sympathy as compassion for other people in their misfortunes and as sharing their joys.

Kant condemned all the vices in which misanthropy is expressed: malevolence, ingratitude, malevolence. He considered philanthropy to be the main virtue.

Thus, the moral philosophy of I. Kant contains a rich palette of virtues, which testifies to the deep humanistic meaning of his ethics. The ethical teaching of Kant is of great theoretical and practical importance: it orients a person and society to the values ​​of moral norms and the inadmissibility of neglecting them for the sake of selfish interests.

Kant was convinced that the inevitable conflict of private property interests can be brought to a certain consistency through law, eliminating the need to resort to force to resolve contradictions. Kant interprets law as a manifestation of practical reason: a person gradually learns to be, if not a morally good person, then at least a good citizen.

It is impossible not to note such a current problem, which is considered in the social philosophy of I. Kant, as the problem of the primacy of morality in relation to politics. Kant opposes the following principles of immoral politics: 1) under favorable conditions, seize foreign territories, then looking for justifications for these seizures; 2) deny your guilt in the crime that you yourself committed; 3) divide and conquer.

Kant considers glasnost as a necessary means of combating this evil, considering politics from the point of view of its humanistic meaning, eliminating inhumanity from it. Kant argued: "The right of man must be considered sacred, no matter how much sacrifice it may cost the ruling power."

Philosophy Fichte

Fichte performed mainly with works of a socio-historical and ethical nature. In them, in his words, he set out a "practical philosophy", in which he tried to determine the goals and objectives of the practical action of people in the world, in society.

Fichte came to the conclusion that the genius of Kant reveals the truth to him without showing its foundations, and therefore he, Fichte, will create a philosophy like geometry, a kind of science, the starting point of which is the consciousness of the I. This, in essence, is the ordinary consciousness of a person, which Fichte has acts as self-sufficient, divorced from man and turned into an absolute. The whole external world - not-I - is a product of I. I am active, active. The I produces the not-I as its opposite in order to find a use for its activity. Through the struggle of these opposites, the development of human self-consciousness occurs.

In the philosophical work of Fichte, two periods are distinguished: the period of the philosophy of activity and the period of the philosophy of the Absolute. Under the activity of the I, Fichte understands, first of all, the moral behavior of the subject. To become free and through this to achieve one's activity, which removes all obstacles, is the moral duty of man. Fichte comes to the important conclusion that people come to the realization of freedom as the highest value in certain historical conditions, at a certain stage of social development. At the same time, Fichte considered freedom to be inseparable from knowledge and possible only with a sufficiently high level of development of a person's spiritual culture. Thus, culture and moral action make possible all the practical activities of the ego.

Considering the process of activity through the removal of intermediate goals with the help of various means is a very valuable idea of ​​Fichte. Practical contradictions arise constantly, and therefore the process of activity is the endless removal (overcoming, resolution) of these intra-practical contradictions. Of course, activity itself is understood as the activity of practical reason, that is, subjectively-ideally, but the problem of the activity of the subject makes contemporaries and subsequent philosophers think.

The most important achievement of Fichte's philosophy of this period is the development of a dialectical way of thinking. He writes about the inconsistency of everything that exists, the unity of opposites, suggests considering contradiction as a source of development. For Fichte, categories are not a set of a priori forms of reason, but a system of concepts that absorb knowledge that develops in the course of the activity of the I.

Fichte sought to understand the real interaction of subject and object in the process of cognition. He considered the interaction of Self and non-Self (environment, everything that opposes Self). In his opinion, to understand the division of the Self into "absolute" and "empirical" and their interaction with the non-Self allows "scientific teaching" (he assigned such a status to philosophy!). It is “scientific teaching” that allows one to penetrate into the supra-individual, superhuman, world spirit, which he calls “spiritual substance”.

Thus, Fichte, without realizing it, turns from the position of subjective idealism to the position of objective idealism. Such a transition was outlined in his work “Instructions to a Blessed Life”, in which the Self, as an absolute, merged with God, and his philosophy turns into theosophy.

Fichte's practical philosophy is primarily his doctrine of morality, law and the state. These views took shape in him under the direct impression of the events of the French Revolution of 1789-1794, the political and military defeat of Germany. The concept of freedom, addressed to law, the state and ethics, under the influence of I. Kant (as well as the social ideas of J. J. Rousseau) became central for Fichte when considering ethics, law and the state. Freedom consists in the subjection of man to laws through the realization of their necessity. Law is the voluntary submission of each person to the law established in society. The state is obliged to provide everyone with property, for the social world is, according to Fichte, the world of bourgeois private property. The state is an organization of owners. This position of Fichte contains a deep guess about the economic and social nature of the state.

Fichte's philosophy contains a number of ideas that influenced the development of classical German philosophy and subsequent philosophical thought - this is the doctrine of the development of consciousness, an attempt to systematically derive categories, the dialectical method of their analysis, the assertion of the right of reason to theoretical knowledge, the doctrine of freedom as voluntary submission historical necessity, based on the knowledge of this necessity, the study of the structure of human activity, etc.

Schelling's philosophy

Natural philosophy. The philosophical development of Schelling is characterized, on the one hand, by clearly defined stages, the change of which meant the rejection of some ideas and their replacement by others. But, on the other hand, his philosophical work is characterized by the unity of the main idea - to know the absolute, unconditional, the first principle of all being and thinking. Schelling critically reviews Fichte's subjective idealism. Nature cannot be encoded only by the formula of non-I, Schelling believes, but it is not the only substance, as Spinoza believes.

Nature, according to Schelling, is an absolute, and not an individual I. It is the eternal mind, the absolute identity of the subjective and the objective, their qualitatively identical spiritual essence.

Thus, from the active subjective idealism of Fichte Schelling passes to the contemplative objective idealism. The Schelling Center for Philosophical Research transfers from society to nature.

Schelling puts forward the idea of ​​the identity of the ideal and the material:

Matter is a free state of absolute spirit, mind. It is unacceptable to oppose spirit and matter; they are identical, since they represent only different states of the same absolute mind.

Schelling's natural philosophy arose as a response to the need for a philosophical generalization of new natural scientific results that were obtained by the end of the 18th century. and aroused wide public interest. These are studies of electrical phenomena by the Italian scientist Galvani in their connection with the processes occurring in organisms (the concept of "animal electricity"), and by the Italian scientist Volta in connection with chemical processes; research on the effects of magnetism on living organisms; the theory of the shaping of living nature, its ascent from lower forms to higher ones, etc.

Schelling made an attempt to find a common basis for all these discoveries: he put forward the idea of ​​the ideal essence of nature, the non-material nature of its activity.

The value of Schelling's natural philosophy lies in its dialectics. Reflecting on the connections that natural science has discovered. Schelling expressed the idea of ​​the essential unity of the forces that determine these connections, and the unity of nature as such. In addition, he comes to the conclusion that the essence of every thing is characterized by the unity of opposing active forces, which he called “polarity”. As an example of the unity of opposites, he cited a magnet, positive and negative charges of electricity, acids and alkalis in chemicals, excitation and inhibition in organic processes, subjective and objective in consciousness. Schelling considered “polarity” as the main source of the activity of things; he characterized by it the “genuine world soul” of nature.

All nature - both living and non-living - represented a kind of "organism" for the philosopher. He believed that dead nature is just "immature rationality." "Nature is always life," and even dead bodies are not dead in themselves. Schelling, as it were, is in line with the Hylozoist tradition of Bruno, Spinoza, Leibniz; he moves towards panpsychism, i.e., the point of view according to which all nature has animation.

The consequence of the appearance of Schelling's natural philosophy was the undermining of the foundations of Fichte's subjective idealism and the turn of classical German idealism towards objective idealism and its dialectics.

Practical Philosophy. Schelling considered the main problem of practical philosophy to be the problem of freedom, on the solution of which the creation of a “second nature” depends on the solution of which in the practical activity of people, by which he understood the legal system. Schelling agrees with Kant that the process of creating a legal system in each state should be accompanied by similar processes in other states and their unification into a federation, ending the war and establishing peace. Schelling believed that it was not easy to achieve a state of peace between peoples in this way, but one should strive for this.

Schelling poses the problem of alienation in history. As a result of the most rational human activity, not only unexpected and accidental, but also undesirable results often arise, leading to the suppression of freedom. The desire to realize freedom turns into enslavement. The real results of the French Revolution turned out to be inconsistent with its high ideals, in the name of which it began: instead of freedom, equality and fraternity, violence came, fratricidal war, enrichment of some and ruin of others. Schelling comes to the following conclusions: arbitrariness rules in history; theory and history are completely opposed to each other: blind necessity reigns in history, before which individuals with their goals are powerless. Schelling comes close to discovering the nature of historical regularity when he speaks of an objective historical necessity that cuts its way through the multitude of individual goals and subjective aspirations that directly motivate human activity. But Schelling presented this connection as an uninterrupted and gradual realization of the "revelation of the absolute." Thus, Schelling saturated his philosophy of the identity of being and thinking with theosophical meaning, an appeal to the absolute, that is, to God. From about 1815, Schelling's entire philosophical system takes on an irrational and mystical character, becoming, in his own words, “the philosophy of mythology and revelations.

Philosophy of Hegel

system of Hegelian philosophy. The culmination of classical German idealism was the philosophical system of Hegel. All his main works are devoted to its development: The Phenomenology of the Spirit (1807). "Science of Logic" (1812-1816), "Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences" (1817). An introduction to the Hegelian philosophical system is his "Phenomenology of Spirit", where Hegel considers a successive series of development of various stages of human consciousness - from the lowest form (direct sensory perception) to the highest level (absolute, or pure, knowledge), on which all external objects are completely overcome and the spirit thinks only of its own essence.

The result and conclusion of the "Phenomenology of Spirit" is "Logic" - the first and most important part of Hegel's system. This is the area of ​​"pure thought" that exists before the subject and object. There is no empirical content in logic, except for itself, except for its forms. Logic precedes history and nature, it creates them.

Logic is divided into three parts: the doctrine of being, of essence, and of the concept. Being and essence are considered as steps along which the concept "climbs" before it appears in all its universality and completeness. In the Logic, the development of the absolute idea takes place in the form of abstract logical categories. Its starting point is pure abstract thought about the existent in general, about “being”. This initially meaningless concept of "pure being" seeks to obtain its content through "something", which in turn is already "determined being". Thus begins, according to Hegel, the process of becoming an absolute idea. “Determined being” at the next stage appears as “something definitely existing”, or quality. The category of quality develops in unity with the category of quantity. Qualitative quantity or quantitative quality acts as a measure. In the doctrine of being, Hegel substantiates one of the laws of the dialectic of the transition of quantity into quality and vice versa, the spasmodic nature of the processes of development, development as an “interruption of gradualness”.

From being, understood as a phenomenon, Hegel proceeds to deeper, inner laws - to essence. The main content of this part is Hegel's consideration of the law of the interpenetration of opposites, their unity, identity and struggle. Hegel argues that a contradiction is a ratio of opposites that do not exist without each other, but which develop in different ways, which leads to an aggravation of the relationship between them. The contradiction needs to be resolved, or “removed”. Hegel saw a contradiction in the relationship between foundation and effect, form and content, phenomenon and essence, possibility and reality, chance and necessity, causality and interaction. Developing the doctrine of contradiction, Hegel made a conclusion about the internally necessary, spontaneous movement, about "self-movement" as the source of all change and development.

According to Hegel, knowledge of the relationship of identity and difference reveals the contradiction underlying them. The presence of contradictions indicates the development of the phenomenon. In the doctrine of essence, Hegel also defines reality as "the unity of essence and existence." Essence itself is the "ground of existence." From the very first paragraphs of the doctrine of essence, Hegel rejects the idea of ​​its unknowability.

The necessity with which development takes place in the realm of being and essence is realized in the concept. Such necessity turns into freedom, and “freedom is a conscious necessity”. Thus, "Logic" passes to the concept. At the same time, Hegel criticizes formal logic and metaphysics as a philosophical method and develops a dialectic of the general, particular and singular. At the same time, he considers the concept of truth as a process of coincidence of thought with an object. This is achieved in the idea. Only the idea is the unconditional unity of the concept and the subject.

From logic Hegel proceeds to the philosophy of nature. The creator of nature is his idea. It is she who generates her "otherness" - nature. Stages of development of nature: mechanism, chemistry, organism. Thanks to the depth and strength of his dialectical thought, Hegel in his "Philosophy of Nature" expressed a number of valuable conjectures about the mutual connection between the individual steps of inorganic and organic nature and the laws of all phenomena in the world.

The third stage in the development of the absolute idea is the spirit, which also passes through three stages in its development: subjective spirit, objective spirit, absolute spirit. Subjective spirit is "soul" or "spirit in itself", consciousness or "spirit for itself", and "spirit as such". The objective spirit forms the sphere of law. It is a free will, and the system of law is the realm of realized freedom. Ultimately, the objective spirit finds its expression in morality and is embodied in the family, civil society and the state. The absolute spirit is the eternally actual truth. He goes through three stages of development: art, religion and philosophy. Art, according to Hegel, is a direct form of knowledge of the absolute idea. Religion has God as its source of revelation. Philosophy is the highest stage in the development of the absolute spirit, the full disclosure of the truth contained in art and religion. In philosophy, the idea cognizes itself, it rises to its "pure principle", connects the end of the absolute idea with its beginning. If, according to Hegel, philosophy is the world grasped by thought, and the world itself is an absolute idea, then the “desired completeness” of the development of the absolute idea occurs.

Thus, the absolute idea lives a varied and complex life in the Hegelian philosophical system. His system is objective idealism: the absolute idea exists before nature and man as “pure thought”, generates nature and society. The system is built on the basis of the "triad" - thesis - antithesis and synthesis. This "triad" makes the Hegelian philosophical system strict, clear, on the one hand, and on the other hand, allows Hegel to show the progressive nature of the development of the world, to use the encyclopedic nature of knowledge.

His philosophical system incorporates the logic and philosophy of nature, anthropology and psychology, the philosophy of law and ethics, the philosophy of state and civil society, the philosophy of religion and aesthetics, the history of philosophy and the philosophy of history, etc. It incorporates dialectics as a system of principles of laws and categories . However, his philosophical system restrains dialectics, for it has, as it were, a complete character: in his philosophy, the absolute idea fully cognizes itself, thereby completing the process of cognition, and in the Prussian monarchy, the “crown of the whole building” is acquired as the most perfect embodiment of reason in the life of mankind.

Hegelian dialectic. The greatest role belongs to Hegel in the development of the problems of dialectics. He gave the most complete teaching on dialectical development as a qualitative change, the movement from lower forms to higher ones, the transition of the old into the new, the transformation of each phenomenon into its opposite. He emphasized the interconnection between all processes in the world.

True, Hegel developed an idealistic form of dialectics: he considers the dialectics of categories, their connections and overflows into each other, the development of "pure thought" - the absolute idea. He understands development as self-movement, as self-development occurring on the basis of the interpenetration of opposites: since the phenomenon is contradictory, it has movement and development. For him, each concept is in an internal necessary connection with all the others: concepts and categories mutually pass into each other. Thus, the possibility in the process of development turns into reality, quantity - into quality, cause - into effect and vice versa. He emphasizes the unity of opposite categories - form and content, essence and phenomenon, chance and necessity, cause and effect, etc.

He showed the internal inconsistency, interpenetration and transitions of such "paired categories". For him, categories, both in form and content, do not need sensually perceived material: they, as pure thoughts and stages in the development of an absolute idea, are in themselves meaningful and therefore constitute the essence of things. Revealing the dialectics of categories as pure thoughts, being convinced of the identity of being and thinking, Hegel believed that the dialectics of categories he expounded is manifested in all phenomena of the world: it is universal, exists not only for philosophical consciousness, for “what it is about, we already find it also in every ordinary consciousness and in universal experience. Everything that surrounds us can be regarded as a model of dialectics.

Hegel created a system of categories of dialectics, virtually unsurpassed until now. The category definitions are striking in their accuracy, conciseness and depth. He gives such definitions that we can use today: “the result is the removed contradiction”, “quality is definitely existing”, “measure is a qualitative quantity or quantitative quality”, “reality is the unity of essence and existence”, “chance is that which has no cause in itself, but has in something else, etc.

Hegel's categories flow seamlessly and organically into each other. He sees the connection of such categories as essence, content, general, necessary, law, or such as phenomenon, form, individual, random.

Hegel owns the discovery of the basic laws of dialectics: the law of quantitative and qualitative changes, the law of the interpenetration of opposites and the law of negation of negation. Through the dialectics of categories, he considers the mechanism of operation of the basic laws of dialectics. A thing is what it is due to its quality. Losing quality, a thing ceases to be itself, a given certainty. Quantity is a certainty external to being, characterizes being from the side of number. A house, Hegel said, remains what it is, no matter whether it is larger or smaller, just as red remains red, whether it is lighter or darker. Emphasizing the universal nature of the law of quantitative-qualitative and qualitative-quantitative changes, Hegel showed its peculiar manifestations in each individual case.

Another law - the interpenetration of opposites - allowed Hegel to substantiate the idea of ​​self-development, because he sees the main source of development in the unity and struggle of opposites. Hegel brilliantly divined in the contradictions of thought, in the dialectics of concepts, the contradictions of things and their dialectics.

Finally, the law of negation of negation. In it, Hegel saw not only the progressive development of the absolute idea, but also of each individual thing. According to Hegel, thought in the form of a thesis is first posited, and then, as an antithesis, is opposed to itself, and, finally, is replaced by a synthesizing higher thought. Hegel considers the nature of dialectical negation, the essence of which is not continuous, total negation, but the retention of the positive from the negated.

Hegel introduced dialectics into the process of cognition. For him, truth is a process, not a given, absolutely correct answer once and for all. Hegel's theory of knowledge coincides with the history of knowledge: each of the historical stages of knowledge, the development of science gives a "picture of the absolute", but still limited, incomplete. Each next step is richer and more specific than the previous one. It retains in itself all the richness of the previous content and denies the previous step, but in such a way that it does not lose anything of value from it, "enriches and thickens everything acquired in itself." Thus, Hegel develops the dialectic of absolute and relative truth.

Another aspect of dialectics is also interesting: the coincidence of dialectics, logic and the theory of knowledge. According to Hegel, the logic of categories is also their dialectics, which in turn makes it possible to discover the essence, law, necessity, etc. Before us is a real feast of dialectics! Appeal to the study of Hegel's dialectics enriches, promotes the development of theoretical creative thinking, promotes the generation of independent ideas.

Contradiction between method and system. The triumphal procession of Hegelian philosophy, which began during the life of the philosopher, did not stop after his death. The followers of Hegel formed two trends: Left Hegelianism and Right Hegelianism. The first drew attention to the Hegelian dialectical method and used it to criticize Christianity; the latter were more attracted by the philosophical system of objective idealism. F. Engels in his work “Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy” showed that the Left Hegelians and Right Hegelians did not fully understand the meaning of Hegel’s philosophy, they did not see the contradiction between his philosophical system and the dialectical method. The Left Hegelians, although they accepted Hegel's dialectic, nevertheless remained captive to his idealism.

Hegel's system was a kind of complete philosophical system. Already by these features it determined the limitations of dialectics. The idea of ​​universal and uninterrupted development proclaimed by Hegel was not fully realized in his system, because, as noted above, the development of the absolute idea ended with the Prussian state and Hegelian philosophy.

Hegel's philosophical system contains the idea of ​​the beginning and end of the development of an absolute idea, which contradicts the dialectical idea of ​​development as eternal and infinite. Moreover, when Hegel spoke about matter, he did not approach its development dialectically: he did not see its development in time, because he believed that everything that happens in nature is the result of the materialization of an idea or its alienation.

The Hegelian dialectical method turned out to be turned to the past, as it was subject to the requirements of a philosophical system that reflected the path already traveled by mankind: the present for Hegel turned out to be the final stage in the development of the absolute idea.

These contradictions were removed by K. Marx and F. Engels when they overcame Hegelian objective idealism and developed a new form of dialectics - materialist dialectics. However, in the future there was such a dogmatization of Marxism, which, as in the Hegelian philosophical system, led to the assertion of the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe "peak" of philosophical knowledge. But now in the form of the philosophy of Marxism, which alone was assigned the status of science, which allegedly distinguishes the philosophy of Marxism from all previous philosophical thought.

Socio-philosophical concepts. The socio-philosophical concepts of Hegel deserve the closest attention. Many of them sound very relevant today, they help, through the categorical apparatus of social philosophy, to understand the problems of civil society, the rule of law, private property, consciousness and self-consciousness of the individual and society, forms of public consciousness, etc.

In The Philosophy of History, Hegel expressed a number of valuable conjectures related to the understanding of historical patterns, the role of great people in history, and raised the question of the meaning of history. In his analysis of the social order, Hegel went further than his predecessors. He emphasized the great role of the instruments of production, economic and social relations, and the geographical environment in the development of mankind.

Hegel understood the history of mankind not as a chain of random events. For him, it had a natural character, in which the world mind is revealed. True, Hegel immediately explained that people, pursuing their goals, at the same time realize historical necessity, without themselves realizing it. Great people play a role in history insofar as they are the embodiment of the spirit of their time. The meaning of all world history is, according to Hegel, progress in the consciousness of freedom - progress, which we must recognize in its necessity.

Hegel distinguishes between civil society and the political state.

Civil society, in his understanding, is the sphere of realization of private goals and interests of an individual. Hegel identifies three main points of civil society: 1) the system of needs; 2) administration of justice; 3) police and cooperation. Civil society requires not only the functioning of private property, but also its protection by the law, the courts and the police. At the same time, the importance of publicity for civil society is based: public announcement of laws, public trial and trial by jury.

Civil society and the state, according to the Hegelian concept, are related as reason and reason. Civil society is the "external state", "the state of need and reason", and the true state is rational, it is the foundation of civil society. Hegel connects the formation of civil society with the development of the bourgeois system, while the philosopher speaks of the natural dialectical nature of the relationship between the socio-economic and political spheres of civil society. And although the state is "the march of God in the world", he recognizes the possibility of a bad state, which only exists, but becomes unreasonable.

Hegel gives various interpretations of the state: the state as the idea of ​​freedom; the state as a single organism; the state as a constitutional monarchy; the state as a "political state". For Hegel, freedom, law, justice are valid only in a state that corresponds to the "idea of ​​the state."

Hegel agrees with the ideas of Locke and Montesquieu about the separation of powers in a state where public freedom is guaranteed. However, he disagrees with them in understanding the nature and purpose of such a separation of powers. Hegel considers the point of view of the independence of the authorities and their mutual limitation false, since this approach assumes the hostility of each of the authorities to the others, their mutual fears and opposition. He believes that the ratio of these powers should express the relationship of the whole and its members. According to Hegel, the internal sovereignty of the state consists in the domination of the whole, in the dependence and subordination of various authorities to state unity. Hegel criticizes the democratic idea of ​​popular sovereignty and substantiates the sovereignty of a hereditary constitutional monarch.

Today, the socio-philosophical and philosophical-historical problems of Hegelian philosophy should be treated with all scientific scrupulousness, because they were studied in Soviet philosophy biasedly, not in a certain system, but in parts.

Feuerbach's philosophy

Feuerbach's assessment of Hegel's philosophy. L. Feuerbach was the first philosopher who criticized Hegel's philosophical system of objective idealism. Feuerbach had a Hegelian period of philosophical development, but in the bosom of Hegel's "absolute idealism" his antithesis, anthropological materialism, also matured. Already at the first acquaintance with Hegel's lectures, Feuerbach drew attention to the presence in them, along with "speculative constructions", of "ordinary ideas", including the formulation of the problem of the relationship between thinking and being, in the solution of which Hegel Feuerbach doubted. Feuerbach comes to the conclusion that the Hegelian thesis about the self-alienation of the logical idea into nature is not justified: the absolute idea, representing “pure thinking” (existing outside of human consciousness), cannot even know anything about thinking, and not just about something else. Feuerbach believed that Hegel derives nature from logic, violating all logical rules. According to Feuerbach: “Logic passes into nature only because the thinking subject, outside of logic, stumbles upon direct being, nature, and is forced to recognize it thanks to the direct, i.e., natural point of view.” And then he states in a very aphoristic form: "If there were no nature, logic, this immaculate virgin, would never produce it from itself."

At the same time, Feuerbach disagrees with Hegel on the issue of the relationship between philosophy and religion. He declared that whoever does not renounce Hegel's philosophy does not renounce theology either. He claims that Hegel's doctrine of the generation of nature by an absolute idea is only a rational expression of the theological doctrine of the creation of nature by God.

Feuerbach does not agree with Hegel that Hegelian philosophy is "absolute philosophy" in its status. He characterizes Hegel's philosophy as "the world of the past", and as such it cannot be a guide for the future.

Feuerbach focused his criticism on the idealism of the Hegelian philosophical system, but did not understand the importance of the dialectic developed by Hegel. He correctly assessed it as idealistic, but did not see the main thing in it - the doctrine of development, i.e., the self-movement and progressive development of the world, society and man. He saw in it more the art of building a philosophical system.

Anthropological materialism. According to Feuerbach, the only objective real things are nature and man. He calls to move from thinking about otherworldly entities, as idealists do, to the study of nature and man. The basis of philosophy, its starting point, must be a person, and not an absolute idea. Therefore, Feuerbach himself called his philosophy "anthropology".

Man is taken as the starting point for resolving the question of the relationship between being and thinking. Man, according to Feuerbach, is the unity of the material and the spiritual. However, for him, a person is an abstract biological, natural being, therefore Feuerbach could not answer the question why the consciousness of people of different social groups is not the same.

Feuerbach makes an attempt, starting from anthropological materialism, to consider various forms of social consciousness, and above all religion. God did not create man, but God's man. The divine essence, Feuerbach argues, is nothing but the human essence, freed from individual boundaries, objectified, and then deified, revered as an otherworldly essence, i.e. God.

Literally, Feuerbach considers all questions of being and cognition on the basis of human essence as natural, for he does not oppose man to nature, but considers man to be a part of nature.

Starting to characterize nature, Feuerbach points, first of all, to its material character. Nature is corporeal, material, sensual. Matter is eternal, has no beginning or end, i.e., is infinite; it was not created by anyone. The cause of nature is in nature itself. “Nature is the cause of itself,” he repeats after Spinoza. Nature is light, electricity, magnetism, air, water, “fire, earth, plants, man, etc. Quality is inseparable from the being of objects and constitutes their actual being. The forms of existence of matter are space and time. He argued that necessity, causality, regularity are natural forces.

Feuerbach spoke not only against idealism, but also against the vulgar materialism of Focht and Moleschott, who reduced mental phenomena to material physical, chemical and physiological processes. He constantly emphasized that truth is neither materialism (meaning vulgar materialism) nor idealism, but only anthropology.

Theory of knowledge. Feuerbach developed a theory of knowledge based on materialism. He waged a sharp struggle against the agnostic theory of knowledge of I. Kant, declaring that Kant misinterpreted the boundaries of reason, placing boundaries in front of him as certain restrictions. The history of knowledge, Feuerbach emphasized, testifies that the boundaries of knowledge are constantly expanding, that the human mind is capable of discovering the deepest secrets of nature in its development. Feuerbach does not agree with the statement of the agnostics that nature is so arranged that it cannot be known. Nature, he objects, is by no means hidden, on the contrary, it is imposed on man with all its force and, so to speak, shamelessness: what we have not yet known, our descendants will know.

According to Feuerbach, the starting point of knowledge is sensations, the source of which is the material world. “My feeling is subjective, but its basis, or cause, is objective,” writes the philosopher. On the basis of sensations arises thinking. In terms of content, thinking says nothing more than what the senses say. But thinking gives in connection what feelings give separately. He wrote: "With the senses we read the book of nature, but we do not understand it with the senses." However, the role of the mind is not to bring order and interconnection into the world of experience, but to establish relationships of cause and effect, cause and effect between phenomena because these relationships actually, sensually, objectively exist. Reason goes from the individual to the universal.

Feuerbach tries to remove the contradiction between empiricism and rationalism, tries to show the unity of the sensual and rational moments in cognition, arguing that human sensations are necessarily accompanied by thought. However, Feuerbach defended materialistic sensationalism, since he considered only sensations, and not practice, to be the basis of knowledge. However, it should be noted that Feuerbach did not deny the role of practice in general, but, on the contrary, attached great importance to it, but by practice he understood the direct satisfaction of sensory needs or, in the words of Engels, “merchant activity”, at best, an experiment.

Feuerbach accepted practice as an active interaction of the subject with the object, did not understand its socio-historical nature. In his philosophy, man acts as a dispassionate contemplator of nature. K. Marx in his "Theses on Feuerbach" emphasized the contemplative and explanatory nature of his philosophy. In addition, Feuerbach did not introduce practice into the theory of knowledge as a criterion of truth, seeing this criterion in the "human race." “That is true,” Feuerbach declared, “that corresponds to the essence of the genus; what is contrary to it is false. There is no other law for truth." In other words, he considered the criterion of truth to be the agreement of all people with this judgment: “If I think according to the measure of the genus, then I think in the way that a person can think in general and, therefore, each individual must think if he wants to think ... truly” .

It was noted above that in philosophical literature there is an opinion that Feuerbach completely excluded dialectics from his philosophy. Perhaps this position is very categorical. Feuerbach was rather an unconscious and inconsistent dialectician. Considering nature, he notes that everything is interconnected in it, everything is relative, being both a cause and an effect at the same time. He recognizes the eternity of movement, as well as the unity of movement, matter, space and time. In the theory of knowledge, one can see his understanding of truth (in relation to the history of mankind) as a process; he expresses ideas about the possibility of unlimited knowledge of nature; unity of sensory and rational knowledge.

However, the orientation of Feuerbach's materialism against idealism did not allow him to realize the danger of absolutization of metaphysics as a method and the true role in the knowledge of the dialectical method. The anthropologism and naturalism of Feuerbach's materialism did not allow him to see the cognitive value of dialectics. For him, dialectics remained a monologue of a "lonely thinker with himself" and a dialogue "between I and You", and the subject of knowledge turned out to be deprived of practical activity, a contemplator.

Socio-philosophical views, humanism. Feuerbach's anthropological materialism determined his socio-philosophical views. The fact is that when comprehending the problems of the essence of religion, morality, history, the German philosopher proceeded from his understanding of the essence of man as an abstract biological being. He characterized a person through the unity of his feelings, thoughts and will. Moreover, he saw the difference between man and animals in the presence of a special religious feeling in him, which a person seeks to satisfy. That is why, Feuerbach believed, all kinds of religions appear, including Christianity.

Feuerbach reveals the socio-psychological roots of religion: religion consoles, has an ennobling effect on people, serves as an inspiring ideal, encourages the development of the best human qualities. However, the religion where human fantasy acts as its "mother" is not capable of expressing the human essence. Religion robs a person of everything truly human. Giving it to God, religion undermines morality, because it encourages a person “for the glory of God” to actions that are incompatible with morality: “where morality is established on theology, and law on God’s decrees, the most immoral, unjust and shameful things can be justified and substantiated” Feuerbach wrote.

Considering the history of the religion of various peoples, Feuerbach emphasizes that it is nature, the religious feeling of man, that is the original source of religion. Feuerbach comes to the conclusion that a “true religion” is necessary for a person, in which God will be not fantasy, but real. For such a God, the “mother” is love. “God is what a person needs for his existence”, “God is the pursuit of happiness”; it is the love of man for man. In the relationship between a man and a woman, in sexual love, where the mutual desire of people for happiness is most fully realized, Feuerbach saw not only the essence of a new anthropological religion, but also the basis for moral relations.

Addressing the problem of human happiness is a great humanistic problem. And the fact that Feuerbach sees the cause of social development in people's striving for happiness is attractive in his philosophy. Another thing is that Feuerbach could not see the very origins of human ideals, he limited the understanding of human happiness only to the individual feelings of people in their abstract interpretation. While relations in the family are not purely biological relations, but the expression and implementation of social relations.

For Feuerbach, the basis of relations between people is religion (he pointed out that in Latin the verb religare means to connect, connect). Referring to this, Feuerbach declares that religion is a universal form of communication between people, that all relations are primarily religious relations. He explains human history by changing religions: every major turn is associated with the replacement of one religion by another. For example, Feuerbach explained the death of the Roman Empire not by the growth of socio-economic, political, moral contradictions that weakened it and allowed the barbarians to destroy it, but by the replacement of the former Greco-Roman religion by Christianity.

In conclusion, it should be noted that, although Feuerbach could not explain the social inequality that reigned in his contemporary society, the class struggle, he was great in his passionate defense of materialism, bold criticism of idealism and religion, the struggle against agnosticism, faith in the power, strength of the human mind, conversion to man as the basis of human existence and to humanistic means of realizing

The philosophy of the Enlightenment managed to be realized practically - in the slogans and ideals of the Great French Revolution of 1789-1794. A fundamentally new stage in its development was the work of the German classics of the late 18th - early 19th centuries. - Immanuel Kant, Johann Fichte, Friedrich Schelling, Georg Hegel, Ludwig Feuerbach. With them, the themes of history, development, activity of the cognizing subject came to philosophy.

An important stage and development of world philosophical thought has become. It became especially widespread at the end of the 18th - the first half of the 19th centuries.

Representatives and founder of German philosophy

The basis of German classical philosophy was the work of the five most prominent German philosophers of that time:

• Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804);
• Johann Fichte (1762 - 1814);
• Friedrich Schelling (1775 - 1854);
• Georg Hegel (1770 - 1831);
• Ludwig Feuerbach (1804 - 1872).

Each of these philosophers created his own philosophical system, filled with a wealth of ideas and concepts.

Founder of German classical philosophy the vast majority of researchers consider the brightest thinker of the second half of the 18th century. Immanuel Kant.

German classical philosophy became a kind of outcome of the development of all previous European philosophy and at the same time was the most important basis and source for the further development of philosophical thought.

Features of German philosophy of the XIX century

German philosophy of the 19th century is a unique phenomenon in world philosophy.

Feature of German philosophy in the fact that in just over 100 years she has succeeded in:

• deeply explore the problems that have tormented mankind for centuries, and come to conclusions that determined the entire future development of philosophy;
• to combine in itself almost all philosophical trends known at that time - from subjective idealism to vulgar materialism and irrationalism;
• to discover dozens of names of outstanding philosophers who entered the "golden fund" of world philosophy (Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Engels, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, etc.).

German classical philosophy developed several general problems, which allows us to speak of it as a holistic phenomenon: it turned the attention of philosophy from traditional problems (being, thinking, cognition, etc.) to the study of human essence, paid special attention to the problem of development, significantly enriched the logical and theoretical apparatus of philosophy and looked at history as a holistic process.

Directions and stages of classical German philosophy

In general, in German philosophy of the XIX century. the following can be distinguished four main steps:

• German classical philosophy(first half of the 19th century);
• materialism(middle and second half of the 19th century);
• irrationalism(second half and end of the 19th century);
• "philosophy of life"(second half and end of the 19th century).

In German classical philosophy were presented three leading philosophies:

• objective idealism(Kant, Schelling, Hegel);
• subjective idealism(Fichte);
• materialism(Feuerbach).

It became a reaction to the changes taking place in European society. There are three main directions in which these changes took place.

First of all, with the advent of the Age of Enlightenment, a spiritual revolution took place, the very way of thinking of man changed. The consequence of this was the Great French Revolution (1789-1794), which had a huge worldwide resonance. It affected neighboring states not only ideologically, but also in reality, in the form of wars waged from 1792 to 1815 first by revolutionary and then Napoleonic France against coalitions of opposing states. The period of relative calm that followed, when the feudal-monarchist regimes were able to restore their strength, was only a temporary "calm before the storm" - a whole series of bourgeois-democratic revolutions, which in 1848-1849. swept through several European countries. Moreover, in some countries the first actions of the revolutionary proletariat took place. The French Revolution created the illusion of putting the ideas of the Enlightenment into practice. However, this was precisely an illusion, since progressive ideas unexpectedly turned into the most severe terror. Naturally, philosophers could not fail to notice this and not to reconsider the foundations on which they built their systems.

Secondly, in the 18th century the fight between freethinking and religion intensified, which, in the period after the French Revolution, tried to win back the positions lost during the Enlightenment, and then again was forced to retreat in the conditions of a new upsurge in the liberation struggle.

Finally, thirdly, cardinal changes took place in the understanding of the world, science arose and developed dynamically, primarily in the form of natural science. Mechanics, which had dominated physics since the beginning of the New Age, gradually lost its former dominant role. It was replaced by chemistry as a science of qualitative transformations of natural substances, as well as new branches of physics (the doctrine of magnetism and electricity, which soon merged into one scientific discipline that studies electromagnetic phenomena). Finally, biological disciplines progressed rapidly, moving more and more towards creating conditions for the development of a scientifically based theory of evolution as a generalizing theoretical construction.

Characteristic features of German classical philosophy

An important feature of German classical philosophy is the revival of the dialectics created by the philosophers of antiquity as a special method of cognition. This is its essential difference from the philosophy of the Enlightenment, which was generally based on metaphysics. Enlightenment philosophers proceeded from the assumption that all phenomena of the world are static and unchanging. Dialectics, as a new method for European philosophy, assumed the consideration of a phenomenon in all its complex relationships, was not content with random observations and was guided by a holistic view of phenomena. The main merit in the development of the new method belongs to Hegel, although his predecessor I. Kant prepared all the possibilities for this.

Classical German philosophy defines a holistic concept of dialectics:

• Kant's dialectic is the dialectic of the limits and possibilities of human cognition: feelings, reason and human reason;
• Fichte's dialectic is reduced to the development of the creative activity of the I, to the interaction of the I and the non-I as opposites, on the basis of the struggle of which the development of human self-consciousness takes place;
• Schelling transfers to nature the principles of dialectical development proposed by Fichte, nature for him is a developing spirit;
• Hegel presented a detailed, comprehensive theory of idealistic dialectics. He explored the entire natural, historical and spiritual world as a process, i.e. in its continuous movement, change, transformation and development, contradictions, breaks in gradualness, the struggle of the new with the old, directed movement;
• Feuerbach in his dialectic considers connections phenomena, their interactions and changes the unity of opposites in the development of phenomena (spirit and body, human consciousness and material nature).

Human nature was explored, not just human history:

• for Kant, man is a moral being;
• Fichte emphasizes the effectiveness, activity of consciousness and self-consciousness of a person, considers the structure of human life according to the requirements of reason;
• Schelling shows the relationship between the objective and the subjective;
• Hegel more broadly considers the boundaries of the activity of self-consciousness and individual consciousness: the self-consciousness of the individual in him correlates not only with external objects, but also with other self-consciousness, from which various social forms arise;
• Feuerbach defines a new form of materialism - anthropological materialism, in the center of which is a real person who is a subject for himself and an object for another person.

All representatives of classical German philosophy defined it as a special system of philosophical disciplines, categories, ideas:

• Kant singles out epistemology and ethics as the main philosophical disciplines;
• Schelling - natural philosophy, ontology;
• Fichte saw in philosophy such sections as ontological, epistemological, socio-political;
• Hegel defined a broad system of philosophical knowledge, which included the philosophy of nature, logic, the philosophy of history, the history of philosophy, the philosophy of law, the philosophy of state, the philosophy of morality, the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of the development of individual consciousness, etc.;
• Feuerbach considered the philosophical problems of history, religion, ontology, epistemology and ethics.

Philosophy of Immanuel Kant

The German philosophy of the second half of the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries, which entered the history of world philosophy under the name of classical philosophy, begins with Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). His philosophical work is traditionally divided into two periods: subcritical and critical.

In the most significant work of the pre-critical period, "The General Natural History and Theory of the Sky" (1775), Kant formulated an idea that later in Western European science took shape in a kind of "collective" theory - the Kant-Laplace hypothesis. It was the thought of the natural origin of the universe under the influence of dynamic forces from the original gaseous nebula. In the same theory, he developed the idea of ​​the integrity of the structure of the universe, the presence in it of the laws of the relationship of celestial bodies, which together form a single system. This assumption allowed Kant to make a scientific prediction about the presence of still undiscovered planets in the solar system. In the age of domination of mechanism, Kant was one of the first among philosophers who tried to build a picture of a mobile, dynamic, evolutionary world.

The pre-critical period was, as it were, a preparatory stage for the critical period - already at that time Kant hatched immortal ideas that later became the classics of world philosophy and, according to Kant himself, constituted the “Copernican revolution” in philosophy. The main ideas of the critical period, in addition to the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), are set forth in such works as the Critique of Practical Reason (1786), The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), The Critique of Judgment (1790) and a number of others.

Kant showed that if a person with his mind begins to reason about the universal, which goes beyond the limits of his finite experience, then he inevitably falls into contradictions.

The antinomy of reason means that statements that contradict each other can be equally well either both provable or both unprovable. Kant formulated universal statements about the world as a whole, about God, about freedom in the antinomic form of theses and antitheses in his Critique of Pure Reason.

Formulating and solving these antinomies of reason, Kant revealed a special category of universal concepts. Pure, or theoretical, reason develops such concepts as “God”, “the world as a whole”, “freedom”, etc.

The antinomies of reason are resolved by Kant by distinguishing between the world of appearances and the world of things in themselves. Kant proposes a method of dual consideration, which he called the experimental method in philosophy. Each object must be considered dually - as an element of the world of cause-and-effect relationships, or the world of phenomena, as an element of the world of freedom, or the world of things in themselves.

According to Kant, the thing-in-itself, or the absolute, the spontaneous force acting in man, cannot be a direct object of cognition, since human cognition is not connected with the task of cognizing the absolute. Man cognizes not things in themselves, but phenomena. It was this assertion of Kant that gave rise to his accusation of agnosticism, i.e., of denying the cognizability of the world.

Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, formulated his famous question, "What can I know?" and took upon himself the labor of substantiating by means of reason the very conditions and possibilities of human cognition.

In his theory of knowledge, he solves the problem: how, starting from subjectivity, from human consciousness, one can come to objective knowledge. Kant makes the assumption that there is some kind of proportionality between consciousness and the world. He connects the dimension of cosmic processes with human existence.

Before cognizing something, it is necessary to identify the conditions of cognition. Kant's conditions of cognition are a priori forms of cognition, i.e., not dependent on any experience, pre-experimental, or, more precisely, super-experimental forms that make it possible to understand the world. The comprehensibility of the world is ensured by the conformity of the mental structures that the subject has with the connections of the world.

Knowledge is a synthesis of sensibility and reason. Kant defines sensibility as the ability of the soul to contemplate objects, while the ability to think the object of sensuous contemplation is reason. “These two abilities,” writes Kant, “cannot perform the functions of each other. Reason cannot contemplate anything, and the senses cannot think anything. Only from their combination can knowledge arise.”

Knowledge is never chaotic, human experience is structured on the basis of a priori forms of sensibility and a priori forms of reason. The universal and necessary forms of sensibility for Kant are space and time, which serve as a form of organization and systematization of countless sensory impressions. Without these forms of sensory perception of the world, a person would not be able to navigate in it.

The a priori forms of reason are the most general concepts - categories (unity, plurality, wholeness, reality, causality, etc.), which represent a universal and necessary form of conceivability of any objects, their properties and relations. Thus, a person, cognizing the world, constructs it, builds order from the chaos of his sensory impressions, brings them under general concepts, creates his own picture of the world. Kant for the first time in the history of philosophy revealed the specificity of science and scientific knowledge as a constructive and creative creation of the human mind.

It should be borne in mind that Kant interpreted the perception of nature on the basis of theoretical reason. Therefore, his theory of knowledge is divided into three parts: feelings, reason, reason.

Kant's doctrine of the limits of knowledge was directed not against science, but against blind faith in its limitless possibilities, in the ability to solve any problem by scientific methods. “Therefore,” writes Kant, “I had to limit my knowledge in order to make room for faith.” Critical philosophy required an awareness of the limitations of human knowledge, which is limited to scientifically reliable knowledge, in order to make room for a purely moral orientation in the world. Not science and not religious faith, but “the moral law within us” serve for Kant as the basis of morality.

The Critique of Practical Reason answered Kant's second fundamental question: "What should I do?" Kant introduces a distinction between theoretical and practical reason. This difference is as follows. If pure or theoretical reason “determines” the object of thought, then practical reason is called upon to “implement”, i.e., produce a moral object and its concept (it must be borne in mind that Kant’s term “practical” has a special meaning and - a productive activity, but simply an act). The sphere of activity of practical reason is the sphere of morality.

As a philosopher, Kant realized that morality cannot be derived from experience, empiricism. The history of mankind demonstrates a great variety of norms of behavior, often incompatible with each other: actions considered as a norm in one society are subject to sanctions in another. Therefore, Kant took a different path: he substantiates the absolute nature of morality by philosophical means.

Moral action, as Kant showed, does not apply to the world of appearances. Kant revealed the timeless, i.e., independent of knowledge, of the development of society, the nature of morality. Morality, according to Kant, is the most existential basis of human existence, that which makes a man a man. In the realm of morality, the thing-in-itself, or free causality, operates. Morality, according to Kant, is not derived from anywhere, is not substantiated by anything, but, on the contrary, is the only justification for the rational structure of the world. The world is arranged rationally, since there is moral evidence. Conscience, for example, possesses such moral evidence, which cannot be further decomposed. It acts in a person, prompting to certain actions, although it is impossible to answer the question why this or that action is performed, since the act is performed not for one reason or another, but according to conscience. The same can be said about debt. A person acts according to a sense of duty, not because something forces him, but because some kind of self-coercive force operates in him.

Unlike theoretical reason, which deals with what is, practical reason deals with what should be. Morality, according to Kant, has the character of imperativeness. The concept of imperativeness means the universality and obligatory nature of the requirements of morality: “the categorical imperative,” he writes, “is the idea of ​​the will of every being, as the will that establishes universal laws.”

Kant wants to find the highest principle of morality, i.e., the principle of revealing the moral content itself, and gives a formulation of how a person should act, striving to join the truly moral. “Act only according to such a maxim, guided by which you can at the same time wish that it become a universal law.”

Kant distinguished between socially approved norms of behavior and norms of morality. Socially approved norms of behavior are historical in nature, but far from always being the realization of the requirements of morality. Kant's teaching was just aimed at revealing in it the historical and timeless characteristics of morality and was addressed to all mankind.

Philosophy of Johann Fichte

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) accepted Kant's ethical philosophy, which made the evaluation of human activity dependent on its consistency with a priori duty. Therefore, for him, philosophy appears primarily as a practical philosophy, in which "the goals and objectives of the practical action of people in the world, in society" were directly determined. However, Fichte pointed out the weakness of Kant's philosophy, which, in his opinion, was insufficiently substantiated precisely at the moment of combining the theoretical and practical parts of philosophy. This task is put by the philosopher at the forefront of his own activity. Fichte's main work is The Appointment of Man (1800).

Fichte singles out the principle of freedom as a fundamental principle that allows the unification of the theory and practice of a philosophical approach to the world. Moreover, in the theoretical part, he concludes that “the recognition of the objective existence of things in the surrounding world is incompatible with human freedom, and therefore the revolutionary transformation of social relations must be supplemented by a philosophical doctrine that reveals the conditionality of this existence by human consciousness.” He designated this philosophical doctrine as "scientific teaching", acting as a holistic substantiation of practical philosophy.

As a result, in his philosophy there is a rejection of the possibility of interpreting the Kantian concept of “thing in itself” as an objective reality and the conclusion is made that “a thing is that which is posited in the Self”, i.e., its subjective-idealistic interpretation is given.

Fichte draws a clear dividing line between materialism and idealism on the principle of solving the problem of the relationship between being and thinking. In this sense, dogmatism (materialism) proceeds from the primacy of being in relation to thinking, and criticism (idealism) from the derivativeness of being from thinking. On the basis of this, according to the philosopher, materialism determines the passive position of a person in the world, and criticism, on the contrary, is inherent in active, active natures.

Fichte's great merit is the development of his doctrine of the dialectical way of thinking, which he calls antithetical. The latter is "such a process of creation and cognition, which is inherent in the triadic rhythm of positing, negating and synthesizing."

Philosophy of Friedrich Schelling

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775 - 1854) turned out to be a kind of link between Kant's philosophy, Fichte's ideas and the formation of the Hegelian system. It is known that he had a great influence on the formation of Hegel as a philosopher, with whom he maintained friendly relations for many years.

At the center of his philosophical reflections is the task of building a unified system of knowledge by considering the specifics of cognition of truth in private areas. All this is realized in his “natural philosophy”, which acts as, perhaps, the very first attempt in the history of philosophy to systematically generalize the discoveries of science from the point of view of a single philosophical principle.

This system is based on the idea of ​​“the ideal essence of nature”, based on the idealistic dogma about the spiritual, immaterial nature of the activity manifested in nature.” A huge achievement of the German philosopher was the construction of a natural philosophical system, which is permeated with dialectics as a kind of link in explaining the unity of the world. As a result, he was able to capture the fundamental dialectical idea that “the essence of all reality is characterized by the unity of opposing active forces. Schelling called this dialectical unity "polarity". As a result, he managed to give a dialectical explanation of such complex processes as “life”, “organism”, etc.

Schelling's main work is The System of Transcendental Idealism (1800). Schelling, within his classical tradition, separates the practical and theoretical parts of philosophy. Theoretical philosophy is interpreted as a substantiation of the "highest principles of knowledge". At the same time, the history of philosophy acts as a confrontation between the subjective and the objective, which allows him to single out the corresponding historical stages or philosophical eras. The essence of the first stage is from initial sensation to creative contemplation; the second - from creative contemplation to reflection; the third, from reflection to an absolute act of will. Practical philosophy explores the problem of human freedom. Freedom is realized through the creation of a legal state, and this is the general principle of the development of mankind. At the same time, the specificity of the development of history lies in the fact that living people act in it, so the combination of freedom and necessity is of particular importance here. Necessity becomes freedom, says Schelling, when it begins to be known. Solving the question of the necessary nature of historical laws, Schelling comes to the idea of ​​the realm of "blind necessity" in history.

Philosophy of Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), based on the principle of development, gives an impressive model of being in all its manifestations, levels and stages of development. It is he who constructs dialectics as a system of basic relationships and categories in relation to the development of the absolute idea. At the same time, Hegel is well aware of the fact that the description of the development of the absolute idea is not an end in itself of philosophical research.

Considering the relationship between idea and reality, Hegel poses the problem of the very essence of the transition from the ideal (logical) to the real, from the absolute idea to nature. The absolute idea must “escape” from absoluteness, i.e., “get out of itself and step into other spheres.” Nature turns out to be just one of these spheres and, accordingly, a stage in the internal development of an idea, its other being or its other incarnation.

Thus, nature is fundamentally explained from the idea that initially underlies it. Undoubtedly, this thought is deeply idealistic, but this does not deprive it of its semantic significance in solving, among other things (and perhaps in the first place) the problems of studying real life. Philosophical analysis of problems from the standpoint of dialectics is one of the most effective forms of reflection on the world, which allows us to consider the latter as a special integral system that develops according to universal laws.

According to Hegel, dialectics is a special model of the philosophical approach to the world. In this case, dialectics is understood as the theory of development, which is based on the unity and struggle of opposites, i.e., the formation and resolution of contradictions. Hegel wrote: “Contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality: only insofar as something has a contradiction in itself, it moves, has an impulse and activity.”

Any object, phenomenon, is a certain quality, the unity of its aspects, which, as a result of the quantitative accumulation of contradictory tendencies and properties within this quality, come into conflict, and the development of the object is carried out through the negation of this quality, but with the preservation of some properties in the resulting new quality. The dependencies found by Hegel, being aspects of the development process, characterize it from different angles.

The categories of dialectics that express these dependencies form a kind of conceptual framework that allows us to look at the world dialectically, describing it with their help, not allowing the absolutization of any processes or phenomena of the world, to consider the latter as a developing object. As a result, Hegel manages to create a grandiose philosophical system of the entire spiritual culture of mankind, considering its individual stages as a process of the formation of the spirit. This is a kind of ladder, along the steps of which humanity walked and along which every person can go, joining the global culture and passing through all stages of the development of the world spirit. At the top of this ladder, the absolute identity of thinking and being is reached, after which pure thinking begins, that is, the sphere of logic.

The merit of Hegel in the development of social philosophy is enormous. He developed the doctrine of civil society, human rights, and private property. In his works Phenomenology of the Spirit (1807) and Fundamentals of the Philosophy of Law (1821), he showed the dialectics of man and society, the universal significance of labor. He paid much attention to elucidating the mechanism of commodity fetishism, the nature of value, price and money.

Philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach

Despite the fact that classical German philosophy received its most complete expression in idealistic philosophical systems, it was in its depths and on its foundation that one of the most powerful materialistic concepts of Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) arose.

Feuerbach builds his philosophy on the basis of opposing philosophy and religion as forms of worldview that are incompatible and oppose each other. In this regard, he tries in a materialistic spirit to rethink the essence of Christianity as one of the forms of religion. As a result, the Christian God is interpreted by him not as a special kind of being or divine essence, but as an image that reflects in the minds of people their own, human essence. He writes that “the divine essence is nothing but a human essence, purified, freed from individual boundaries, i.e. from a real, bodily person, objectified, i.e. considered and revered, as an extraneous, separate entity” .

The source of religion, notes Feuerbach, lies in the fear and impotence of man before nature, which gives rise to fantastic religious images in his mind. As a result, God, as a creation of the human spirit, turns in the minds of people into a creator on whom a person depends. All this gives religion an anti-human character, since it “paralyzes a person’s desire for a better life in the real world and for the transformation of this world, replaces it with a humble and patient expectation of the coming supernatural reward.”

Defending the last thesis, Feuerbach takes a clearly atheistic position, although he himself denies this, putting forward a religious interpretation of his own concept, which was realized in the well-known slogan that no supernatural God is needed, namely: “man is God to man.” As a result, Feuerbach creates a bizarre concept that actually denies God (in the religious sense), and does not act as some kind of higher religion.

Criticism of religion necessarily led the thinker to the criticism of the idealistic worldview as a whole. It is here that the well-known thesis about the possibility of “reversing” idealistic philosophy and placing it on materialistic soil appears, which is later applied by K. Marx, distinguishing his own dialectical-materialistic method from the Hegelian one. Thinking is secondary to being, says Feuerbach, and proceeds from this. Thus, the entire concept of the philosopher, even in form, appears as a consistent opposition of materialistic theses to the Hegelian system, or their “reversal”. The question of being in his system is not just another formulation of a philosophical problem. It has practical significance for a person, therefore, "philosophy should not be in conflict with the actual being, but, on the contrary, it should comprehend precisely this vitally important being."

Philosophical opposition to Hegel is also realized in Feuerbach's theory of knowledge, when he replaces the concept of thinking with sensibility.

In the ontological aspect, this means that material being (sensory being) is primary in relation to consciousness. This enables a person as a material being the ability to feel and feel. Therefore, the basis of philosophy should not be the concept of God or the absolute principle, which gives it an unconditional character, - "the beginning of philosophy is the finite, definite, real." And since man is the highest creation of nature, he must be at the center of the construction of a philosophical system and philosophical reflections. This is what allows Feuerbach's philosophy to be defined as anthropological materialism.

In epistemological terms, this is realized as materialistic sensationalism. The process of “cognition of objective reality, actual being has as its basis sensory perceptions, sensations, contemplations caused by the influence of cognizable objects on the senses”.

In the praxeological aspect, the concept of the philosopher is complemented by sensory-emotional characteristics. Since the world is sensually perceived by a person, the perception of the world is enriched with such an emotional characteristic as love. It is she who determines all other relations to being.

In social terms, Feuerbach's concept consistently acts from anti-religious positions in relation to the role of religion in society. A person's beliefs must be inside, not outside. Religions, according to the philosopher, should be abolished in order for a person to lead a more active life in society, to increase his political activity. This, in turn, is a condition for the real freedom of man. And here Feuerbach's philosophy turns out to be the most contradictory. On the one hand, he denies religion, and on the other hand, he strongly emphasizes the role of sensuality and emotional experiences that affect a person. Therefore, the impact on the consciousness of a person in order to change his worldview attitudes should be based on “sensory arguments”. As a result, he comes to the conclusion that it is necessary to create a “new religion” that will replace the old ones, and in this capacity the “new philosophy” proposed by him should act.

Regarding the transformation of public life, there have always been two opinions: some said that the moral improvement of everyone is necessary, the correction of our nature (the position is usually religious or idealistic), while others proposed to radically change the conditions of human life, considering their imperfection to be the main cause of all misfortunes ( mostly materialistic). Feuerbach shared the second point of view, and his philosophical views in many respects became the ideological basis of the concept that appeared in the middle of the 19th century. Marxism - the theory of the revolutionary transformation of reality.

Historical Significance of German Classical Philosophy

The main result and historical significance of German classical philosophy, represented by the names of five luminaries, can be expressed simply: this philosophy has changed the way of thinking in European, and hence world culture. The novelty of the style approved by her consisted in the extreme breadth of thinking, its universality.

Philosophical acquisitions turned out to be very weighty as well. The ideas of the cognitive activity of the subject, the universality of development through the formation and resolution of contradictions, the universal nature of the spirit, consciousness fairly “shaken up” philosophy. The development of philosophical concepts, categories was carried out at a high level.

And yet, probably, the main merit of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Feuerbach was that they made our thinking historical. This alone is enough to call them classics of philosophy.

Table of Contents 2
Classical German Philosophy 3
§ 1. Kant's philosophical system 4
The ethical teaching of Kant 12
§ 2. Fichte's "scientific teaching" 14
§ 5. Schelling's natural philosophy 19
§ 4. System and method of Hegel's philosophy 23
Philosophical system 24
Dialectical method 38
§ 5. Anthropological materialism of Feuerbach 39
List of used literature: 45

Classical German philosophy
German philosophy of the late 18th - first third of the 19th centuries, represented by the names of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Feuerbach, is deservedly called classical. It marks an important stage in the history of world philosophical thought. It continued the progressive ideas of the philosophy of the New Age - faith in the power of reason, humanism, inalienable rights of the individual. But its main achievement is the development of the dialectical method, the substantiation of the world law of eternal development. This philosophy reflected both the main features of the era of the formation of a new, capitalist system, and the specific historical features inherent in Germany at that time. The classics of German philosophy were the ideologists of their bourgeoisie, which lagged far behind the bourgeoisie of the advanced countries in socio-economic and political development. From the time of the Reformation to the end of the eighteenth century Germany was not a single economic entity, the capitalist market was in the process of becoming. It did not represent a single political entity either: the country was divided into almost 300 independent states, most of which were dwarf.
The economic well-being of the burghers largely depended on the orders of the court and the feudal lords, on supplies for the army. This determined the political flabbiness of the German bourgeoisie. And although her interests did not completely coincide with the interests of the junkers, she dutifully followed the policy of the noble state.
These circumstances could not but find their reflection in the German philosophy of that time, defining its dual, compromise, sometimes contradictory character. If the works of the French enlighteners were banned and burned, and they themselves were subjected to legal persecution, up to imprisonment in the Bastille, then the German idealist philosophers were honored professors of German universities, recognized mentors of youth, and their works were published and distributed without any obstacles. But although they did not oppose the political institutions existing in the German states, their teachings were essentially hostile, incompatible with the feudal order, which had outlived its time. The dialectical method, especially thoroughly and consistently developed by Hegel, could easily be turned against these orders. This is exactly what the most radical students of the Berlin professor did. Therefore, Marx called the philosophy of Kant, the founder of classical German philosophy, the German theory of the French Revolution. With no less reason, this definition can be extended to other representatives of classical German philosophy.
§ 1. Kant's philosophical system
The founder of German classical philosophy, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), came from a family of an artisan. Early manifested abilities helped him to get an education. He deeply studied not only philosophy, logic, theology, but also mathematics and natural science. The whole life of the philosopher, poor in external events, but filled with tireless and intense creativity, passed in Konigsberg. Here he studied, taught, for many years was a professor and at one time - the rector of the university. Here he created all his philosophical and natural science works.
The philosophical development of Kant is usually divided into two periods: the first - until the beginning of the 70s - is called "pre-critical", the second - from the beginning of the 70s - "critical", since it was then that the main works were written that brought world fame to the philosopher: " Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, and Critique of Judgment. The main one is the first work devoted to the theory of knowledge. The second "criticism" expounds the ethical doctrine, and the third - aesthetics and the doctrine of expediency in nature.
In the "pre-critical period" Kant dealt a lot and fruitfully with questions of natural science, promoting the idea of ​​development in nature. Based on the discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo and Newton, Kant in the book "General Natural History and Theory of the Sky (1755) puts forward a brilliant hypothesis about the origin of the solar system in a natural way from the original nebula. Further, Kant comes close to the conclusion about the plurality of worlds, about the continuous process of their emergence and The philosopher draws an analogy referring to the boundless fertility of nature, which, instead of the countless number of animals and plants that perish every day, produces no less number of them in other places.In the same way, worlds and systems of worlds perish and are swallowed up by the abyss of eternity, but creation never stops: in others places in the sky, new formations arise and the loss is replenished in abundance. Half a century later, the French scientist Laplace, independently of Kant, gave a more rigorous, mathematical justification for the ideas about the natural origin of our Universe. After that, the "nebular" theory was called the Kantolaplace hypothesis. Although the book K Anta, due to purely random circumstances, remained unknown to the public for a long time, Kant's priority in creating the cosmogonic hypothesis is undoubted.
Kant is credited with creating another cosmogonic theory - about the slowing down of the Earth's rotation due to the action of the tides in the ocean. Kant's historical, dialectical approach to natural science dealt a significant blow to the dominant metaphysical worldview at that time. However, one cannot ignore the dual, contradictory position of the philosopher on this issue. On the one hand, he seeks to give a scientific picture of the emergence of the solar system on the basis of the laws of the development of matter. "Give me matter, I will build a world out of it," says Kant, calling Newton's opinion about the need for a divine first push "pathetic." But, on the other hand, he sees the ultimate root cause of the world still in God. The philosopher considers the very fact of the natural and regular development of the Universe from the initial chaos to be the "only possible" basis for proving its existence.
Already in the "pre-critical period" Kant speaks of the limits of knowledge. If it is possible to give a purely natural, mechanical explanation for the emergence of the Universe from chaos, then this cannot be done in relation to even the simplest living being. Here, the philosopher thinks, teleological principles of expediency, based on divine will, dominate.
The motives of agnosticism, the fundamental unknowability of the world around us, became the leading ones in the Critical Period, making up the specifics of what is called Kantianism.
The problems of the theory of knowledge are at the center of the philosophical system of Kant and his numerous followers. In the preface to the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant writes: "I had to limit the field of knowledge in order to make room for faith." Proceeding from this main task for him, the philosopher developed a very complex epistemological construction.
The process of cognition includes three stages, three stages: sensory cognition, rational cognition, rational cognition. All our knowledge begins with experience, with the work of the senses. They are affected by objects of the external world outside the person, or, as Kant calls them, things in themselves. The philosopher does not give an unambiguous definition of this concept. In many places in the Critique of Pure Reason he declares unambiguously that things in themselves exist objectively, i.e. independent of human consciousness, although they remain unknowable. Such an understanding of the thing in itself as the basis of all phenomena, as the actual cause of human sensations, as an objective reality, is Kant's dominant, which allows him to qualify as materialistic. But he also has other interpretations. By the thing-in-itself, he means a borderline, ultimate concept that closes the circle of possible human ideas and limits people's claims to knowledge of the world, as well as God, the immortality of the soul and free will. Obviously, the latter interpretations of the thing-in-itself contradict the former and are idealistic.
Sensations caused by the action of things in themselves on sensibility, according to Kant, are in no way similar to the originals. They belong only to the subjective properties of sensibility, are its modifications and do not give knowledge about the object. For example, the pleasant taste of wine is not one of the objective properties of the senses of the subject who enjoys it. Colors are also not properties of bodies, they are only a modification of the sense of sight, which is subjected to some action from the direction of light. Consequently, although sensations are caused by the action of "things in themselves" on human sensibility, they have nothing in common with these things. Feelings are not images, but symbols of things.
A similar point of view, which, as is well known, was most thoroughly expressed by D. Hume, is called agnosticism. Agreeing with Hume, Kant adds something of his own. Although our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it comes entirely from experience. Knowledge, according to Kant, has a complex composition; and is made up of two parts. The philosopher calls the first part; "matter" of knowledge. This is a stream of sensations, or empirical knowledge, given a posteriori, i.e. through experience. The second part - form - is given before experience, a priori, and must be completely ready to be in the soul, in the subject.
Thus, along with agnosticism, a prioriism is a characteristic feature of Kant's theory of knowledge. The question arises as to where the a priori, i.e. pre-experimental forms of sensibility and all other a priori forms of which Kant spoke. The philosopher was forced to admit that he was unable to answer this question: "this question cannot be resolved, because for it. And the resolution, as for any thinking, we already need these properties."
The concept of apriorism is the most important position of Kant's teaching, on which he based the possibility of achieving the necessary and reliable knowledge. Kant shared the general prejudice of rationalism, which underestimated the role of experience, the role of sensory knowledge in the process of achieving universal and necessary knowledge. According to Kant, experience can never give judgments a true and strict universality, but only an assumed and comparative universality. At the same time, he believed that mathematical knowledge was absolutely necessary. He tried to get out of this difficulty with the help of apriorism: only a priori judgments are universal, reliable and objective. For Kant, the concepts "a priori", "necessary", "universal", "objective" are closely intertwined and are used as equivalent. At the same time, he refused to recognize a priori knowledge as innate.
If the "matter" of knowledge is, according to Kant, an experimental, a posteriori nature, then the form of sensory knowledge is non-experiential, a priori. Prior to the perception of objects of experimental knowledge, "pure" ones must exist in us, i.e. free from everything empirical, visual representations, which are the form, the condition of all experience. Such "pure", i.e. a priori visual representations are space and time. According to the philosopher, space and time are forms of sensibility, and not reason, they are representations, not concepts. Kant argues this as follows: the concept is discursive and includes various types, for example, the concept of "man" includes various types of people. But the same cannot be said about space and time. There is, as Kant thought, one and only time and one and only space. Therefore, space and time are single representations of an intuitive nature.
Space does not at all represent the properties of any things in themselves, time also does not belong to things in themselves either as their property or as their substance. Kant thus takes away from space and time any claim to reality, he turns them into special properties of the subject.
Kant believed that with his doctrine of a priori forms of sensibility and reason, he saved science from Hume's skepticism and subjectivism. But in fact, apriorism is only one of the varieties of subjectivism. Speaking about the fact that there is only one space, he relied on the physics and cosmogony of his time, who really knew one thing, namely the Euclidean space. A quarter of a century after Kant's death, the Russian scientist N.I. Lobachevsky showed that the properties of space depend on the properties of matter, and that Euclidean geometry is by no means the only possible one. Other systems of non-Euclidean geometry also emerged. The theory of relativity also did away with the metaphysical idea of ​​the absolute independence of time, showing that the general properties of matter determine the properties of both space and time. Consequently, there are many forms of space and time, which refutes Kant's main argument in favor of their a priori nature. The first stage of knowledge - the field of sensibility - is characterized by the ability of a person to organize the chaos of sensations with the help of subjective forms of contemplation - space and time. In this way, according to Kant, the object of sensibility, or the world of phenomena, is formed. The next step is the realm of reason. Experience is a product of activity, on the one hand, of sensibility, on the other, of reason. None of these abilities can be preferred over the other. Without sensibility, no object would be given to us, and without understanding, not one would be conceivable. Thoughts without content are empty, and visual representations without concepts are blind. Knowledge thus arises from two conditions: sensibility and reason. Judgments of perception obtained on the basis of sensibility have only a subjective meaning - this is a simple connection of perceptions. The judgment of perception must acquire an "objective" meaning, in Kant's words, i.e. acquire the character of universality and necessity, and thereby become an "experienced" judgement. This happens, according to Kant, by subsuming the judgment of perception under the a priori category of reason. An example is given: "When the sun shines on a stone, it becomes warm." According to Kant, we have a simple judgment of perception, in which the causal relationship between the heat of the sun and the heating of the stone is not yet expressed. But if we say: "The sun warms the stone," then a rational concept, or category of reason, is added to the judgment of perception, which turns this judgment into an experimental one.
Causality is one of the categories that are a priori principles of thought. They serve as tools for processing sensory material. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant builds a special table of these categories. There are only 12 of them, which corresponds to the number of types of judgments according to the traditional classification of judgments in formal logic. These are the categories of unity, plurality, universality, reality, negation, limitation, belonging, causality, communication, possibility, existence, necessity. Kant cannot justify why there are exactly twelve categories and where they come from: “No further grounds can be indicated for this circumstance, just as it is impossible to substantiate why we have such and such and not other functions of judgment, or why time and space are the only forms of visual representation possible for us.
The artificial nature of Kant's doctrine of categories was already clear to his contemporaries. Hegel rightly reproached Kant for dogmatism and formalism. According to the figurative expression of Hegel, the union of sensibility and reason in Kant takes place in a purely external way, "just as, for example, a piece of wood and a leg are tied with a rope."
By turning causality into a subjective category of reason, Kant created numerous difficulties for himself. First of all, the "thing in itself", since it exists outside the subject, cannot be considered the cause that, acting on the subject's sensibility, generates the "matter" of knowledge. Further, all the achievements of Kant of the “pre-critical” period are called into question, primarily his cosmogonic theories, since they, like all natural science, are based on the recognition of the objective nature of the laws of nature, including cause-and-effect relationships.
Kant in his "Critique of Pure Reason" argues that the principles of "pure reason", realizing the application of categories to experience, make possible nature itself and the science about it - "pure" natural science. He found the highest legislation of nature in the human mind: "Although strange, it is nevertheless true if I say: the mind does not draw its laws (a priori) from nature, but prescribes them to her."
The last and highest stage is reasonable knowledge. It is the "highest authority" for processing the material of visual representations and for bringing it under the highest unity of thinking. "Explaining these provisions, Kant points out that reason, unlike reason, generates" transcendental ideas "that go beyond experience. Such ideas three: 1) psychological (the doctrine of
soul), 2) cosmological (the doctrine of the world), 3) theological (the doctrine of God). These ideas express the desire of the mind to comprehend things in themselves. The mind greedily seeks to comprehend these things, tries to go beyond the limits of experience, but all in vain: things "run away from it" and remain unknown.
As a result, the mind creates only "paralogisms", "antinomies", "ideals without reality", gets entangled in insoluble contradictions. Kant pays great attention to antinomies, i.e. contradictory, incompatible with each other provisions, each of which, according to Kant, can be proved; logically flawless. There are four such antinomies in Kant:
1) thesis - "The world has a beginning in time and is also limited in space";
antithesis: "The world has no beginning in time and no boundaries in space; it is infinite in both time and space."
2) the thesis: "Every complex substance in the world consists of simple parts and in general there is only simple and that which is composed of simple";
antithesis: "Not a single complex thing in the world consists of simple things, and in general there is nothing simple in the world."
3) thesis: "Causality, according to the laws of nature, is not; the only causality from which all phenomena in the world can be derived. To explain phenomena, one must also admit free causality";
antithesis: "There is no freedom, but everything happens in the world only according to the laws of nature."
4) the thesis: "Belongs to the world, either as part of it, or as its cause, an unconditionally necessary being";
antithesis: "There is no absolutely necessary being, either in the world or outside the world, as its causes." In other words, there is no God.
In the first antinomy, it is important to see an approach to revealing the dialectical contradiction of the finite and the infinite: the world is both finite and infinite in the sense that infinite matter is composed of finite quantities. In the second antinomy, essentially the same question is posed as in the aporias of Zeno - about the unity of the finite and the infinite, the discontinuity and continuity of matter. But from this the Eleans made a metaphysical conclusion: since the movement and diversity of the world are contradictory, and any contradiction destroys thought, then movement is an illusion, the world is motionless and devoid of diversity. Kant does something similar. He believes that he equally flawlessly proves both the thesis and the antithesis of each antinomy from the point of view of logic. For example, in the fourth antinomy it is proved that God exists and that God does not exist. How to be? Both the thesis and the antithesis must be discarded. Logic and reason are powerless here. Belief in God is not a matter of science, but of morality, Kant believes.
So, antinomies are contradictions that testify to the impotence of the mind, its inability to comprehend "things in themselves", to go beyond the boundaries of experience. “There is something sad and humiliating in the fact that in general there is an antithesis of pure reason and that reason, which constitutes the highest tribunal for all disputes, is forced to enter into a dispute with itself,” states Kant.
It would be unfair not to notice the positive, progressive aspects of Kant's theory of knowledge. In the "Critique of Pure Reason" the cardinal problems of the theory of knowledge and logic are raised, an attempt is made to solve them dialectically. Kant was the first in the philosophy of modern times to show the complexity and inconsistency of the process of cognition. These ideas of his found a continuation and deeper development in Hegel's philosophy.
Ethical doctrine of Kant
Since the theoretical ("pure") reason failed in its attempts to comprehend the world of things in itself, then the only thing left for a person is to rely on "practical reason", by which the philosopher understood the doctrine of morality, ethics. In his opinion, in the field of morality, a person is no longer subject to necessity, which dominates with inevitable force in the field of phenomena. As a subject of moral consciousness, a person is free, i.e. attached to the world of things in themselves. Kant establishes a relationship of subordination between theoretical and practical reason: theoretical reason is subordinate to practical reason.
By practice, Kant understood not real activity, but the sphere of application of moral assessments of people's actions. Any moral assessments are based on the categorical imperative - the basic law of Kant's ethics. The imperative is a form of commands associated with the category of due. The philosopher calls a categorical imperative such a form of command, which is an action, as it were, for its own sake, a relationship to another goal. The imperative is not connected with the desire for the benefit or happiness of people, it has a strictly formal a priori character and has the form of a commandment, unconditional, obligatory for all people. The categorical imperative is formulated as follows: act in such a way that the maxim (basic principle) of your will can at all times serve as the principle of universal legislation. This principle is abstract. A wide variety of requirements and postulates can correspond to it: religious commandments, the conclusions of worldly wisdom, and much more.
The most important concretization of the categorical imperative is the "practical" imperative: act in such a way that humanity in your person, just as in the person of everyone else, will certainly be used as an end and never as a means.
These provisions, expressing the principles of humanism, were of great progressive importance for their time. They contain a protest against the bonds of the feudal-absolutist system that enslaves a person. A great influence on the ethical and socio-political views of Kant had J. Zh. Rousseau. "There was a time when ... I despised the mob," wrote Kant. Speaking for human rights, the philosopher emphasized that "a person who depends on another is no longer a person; he has lost this title, then he is nothing more than the belonging of another person, ... in human nature, slavery is the highest of evils" . Kant borrowed from Rousseau the idea of ​​the independence of the moral nature of man from the achievements of science and culture, refracting it in his doctrine of the independence and originality of morality, of the primacy of practical reason over theoretical. Kant, contrary to the tenets of Protestantism and Catholicism, believed that morality is autonomous and does not depend on religion. On the contrary, religion must be derived from the principles of morality.
The practical imperative, proclaiming a person an end, not a means, eliminates, according to the philosopher, "fanatic contempt for oneself as a person (for the entire human race) in general ...". A person cannot be anyone's slave, including God's slave. Therefore "morality should be cultivated more than religion", and "God is necessary only from a moral point of view". God has been turned into an ethical symbol. Philosophy of Kant, thus, approaches deism.
Kant dreamed of eternal peace on earth, of the union of free states and free peoples as the guarantor of this world. His treatise "Eternal Peace" is devoted to the justification of this.
Kant is one of the key figures in world philosophical thought. Hegel rightly believed that in the teachings of Kant there was a major transition to modern philosophy. In his teaching on the categories of reason and the antinomies of reason, on the activity of the subject in cognition and moral practice, the development of the dialectical method of cognition, the main achievement of German classical philosophy, began.
Kant had a huge number of followers and no less number of critics. Criticized him "right" and "left". Right: - from the positions of consistent idealism - for the assumption of the materialistic thesis about the existence of things in themselves independently of the subject. On the left - from the positions of materialism - for agnosticism and apriorism, which led to subjective idealism. For this, Hegel criticized him, but from the standpoint of absolute objective idealism and, which is very important, from the standpoint of a comprehensively developed dialectical method.
§ 2. Fichte's "scientific teaching"
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) was born into a peasant family. Thanks to his outstanding abilities and rare diligence, he managed to get an education. Unlike Kant or Hegel, Fichte's life was full of dramatic events. Fichte is not only a prominent representative of classical German philosophy, but also the ideologist of the German liberation movement directed against the French occupiers. At the same time, progressive ideas of the French Enlightenment and revolution were reflected in his work. In 1793 he published (anonymously) two writings praising these ideas. In 1799, articles appeared in a philosophical journal in which Fichte identified the idea of ​​God with the moral world order. The journal was banned by the government, Fichte was accused of atheism and dismissed from his post as professor at the University of Jena. Only in 1805 did he succeed in becoming a professor at the University of Erlangen. In 1807, in French-occupied Berlin, Fichte delivered a series of public lectures - "Speech to the German Nation", c. whom he called for the unification of the country, its revival, democratic reforms. The patriotic activity of the philosopher finds a wide response in the states of the then Germany. Since 1809, Fichte was a professor at the University of Berlin, and in 1811-1812. elected as its rector. In 1813, he joined the landshturm (militia) and in 1814 died in the hospital, having apparently contracted typhus.
Fichte calls his philosophy "the first system of freedom", which frees the human "I" from the fetters of things in themselves, from external dictates. Philosophy, in his opinion, is not a worldview, but self-awareness associated with the character, way of thinking, practical actions of the individual.
Fichte criticizes the philosophy of Kant. He does not agree with the statement about the unknowability of things in themselves. This criticism is being made from the right, from the standpoint of a more consistent subjective idealism. Fichte calls the primary reality the absolute human "I", which includes everything that can be thought. "I" - a thinking subject with great activity. His activity results in a dialectical process: there is a movement from the original position (affirmation) to the opposite position (negation), and from it to the third position (unity, synthesis of the first two positions).
In addition to the "I" there is a "not-I", or some object of nature, the surrounding reality. It affects the "I" and even determines to some extent its activity. According to the philosopher, it is impossible to understand the mechanism of this influence with the mind; it can only be felt. Along with the theoretical activity of the "I", thinking, the philosopher also recognizes the activity of the unconscious. The moral behavior of the subject belongs to the unconscious activity: the fulfillment of his duty, obedience to the laws of morality and law.
"Not-I" not only exists, but also affects the "I". The physical nature of a person, his natural inclinations, which make up the "not-I", induce the "I" to act and at the same time distort the manifestations of morality, counteract the manifestations of moral duty. The stronger the influence of the "not-I", or the sensual nature of a person, the more difficult it is for the "I" to fulfill its ethical duty.
Fichte correctly grasps the contradiction that actually exists between feeling and duty. But what, after all, should be understood by the category "not-I"? One might get the impression that, using a peculiar terminology, Fichte expresses the usual materialistic views on the relationship between subject and object, consciousness and nature. However, this impression is deceptive. Fichte consciously distances himself not only from materialism as a philosophical worldview, but also from the half-hearted views of Kant, who recognized the objectively real existence of things in themselves. As Fichte emphasizes, the "not-I" cannot be identified with the thing-in-itself in the Kantian sense. The category "not-I" is the result of the activity of consciousness, i.e. product "I". It seems to ordinary consciousness that the things around it, nature, the whole world exist independently of human consciousness. Fichte is convinced that we are dealing with an illusion that is overcome by philosophical thinking. In a word, the subject, "I", is primary. His active activity, which, however, is of a spiritual nature, creates an object, an external world.
It is easy to see that in Fichte's reasoning there is a logical circle: "I" generates "not-I", and "not-I" generates "I". Trying to break out of this logical whirlwind, the philosopher introduces another category - intellectual contemplation, or "intellectual intuition". It is designed to eliminate the opposition of subject and object, but this opposition still remains, and overcoming it turns into an infinitely distant, unattainable goal.
Intellectual intuition does not belong to theoretical thinking, but to "practical activity", by which Fichte understands the sphere of morality, moral "action" and "should", ethical assessments, which is very similar to "practical reason" in Kant's philosophy. Here another contradiction arises in Fichte's philosophical system. On the one hand, he proclaims the omnipotence of reason, he calls his doctrine "the doctrine of science", "scientific teaching" (Wissenshcaftslehre). Philosophy is the science of science, the highest and unconditional foundation for all sciences, the universal method of cognition. On the other hand, theoretical reason obeys "practical", i.e. moral consciousness and will, which are comprehended intuitively, are areas closed to theoretical reason.
Fichte's philosophy is burdened with other contradictions that are inevitable for subjective idealism. If we proceed from its premises and be consistent, subjective idealism inevitably leads to solipsism, i.e. the assertion that there is one and only my "I", and the whole world around is its creation. Fichte tries by deductive means to deduce from the original "I" the possibility of the existence of many other free individuals, other "I". According to the philosopher, this deduction is also conditioned by the rules of law. If we recognize the existence of one "I", then there can be no question of any right and legality. Of course, this is true, but then the initial premises of subjective idealism as a monistic philosophy collapse. In fact, Fichte moves to the positions of idealistic pluralism of the type of Leibniz's monadology. However, this path does not appeal to Fichte, and he tends to objective idealism, combining it with the subjective.
In fact, Fichte uses two meanings of the concept "I": 1) "I", identical to individual consciousness and 2) "I", not: identical to individual consciousness, absolute "I", i.e. superhuman consciousness. And this is already objective idealism. The philosopher does not always warn in what sense he uses the concept of "I", which creates difficulties for understanding his thoughts. Both meanings either coincide or diverge, and in this the philosopher sees the driving principle of thinking, the core of dialectics.
The evolution of Fichte's views should be taken into account. After 1800, he made significant adjustments to his philosophy. In the first period it was dominated by subjective idealism. The absolute "I" was considered as an unattainable goal of the subject's activity, as a potential infinity. In the second period, the absolute "I" is interpreted as an actual being, equivalent to God, and everything that is outside this absolute is its creation, image, scheme. This interpretation is close to Platonism, is an objective idealism. In the first period, the activity of the subject was identified with morality; in the spirit of Protestant ethics, activism was regarded as a virtue. In the second period, activity and morality were separated, since they do not always coincide, and activity may not be virtuous.
Socio-political views were also changed: a transition was made from bourgeois liberalism to national patriotism.
Fichte contributed to the development of the dialectical method. True, he calls his method not dialectical, but antithetical. Unlike Hegel, Fichte's antithesis is derived not from the thesis, but is compared with it, forming a unity of opposites. "I" is set in motion and impelled to action by something opposite. The subject of activity is the "I" interacting with the "not-I". There is a contradiction between the activity and the task performed by it. The resolution of this contradiction leads to the emergence of a new one, and so on without end.
Fichte considers freedom to be the central category of "practical philosophy". Like Spinoza, Fichte believed that man is subject to the law of causality, i.e. need. Randomness is interpreted by him as a subjective category; by accident, the cause of which we do not know. But since everything is causal, everything is necessary. In the historical process, freedom is possible and it is achieved by the awareness of the need, which makes it possible to act with knowledge of the circumstances. Therefore, freedom consists in active activity within the framework of recognized necessity. The practical-active attitude to the subject precedes the theoretically contemplative one. The dialectic of active activity of the subject is the most important feature of Fichte's philosophy, which influenced the further development of classical German philosophy.
Fichte paid much attention to the doctrine of law. The science of law concerns external relations between people and differs from ethics, which studies the inner world of a person based on freedom. Thus, law and ethics are not comparable. Law is based on reciprocity relations, on the voluntary submission of each citizen to the law established in society. The law is an agreement on civil hostel.
The state as a political organization can only function where there is property. People are divided into owners and non-owners, while the state is an organization of owners. Of course, this is a conjecture about the dependence of law:. and state structure from economic relations, from the institution of property. In his work "The Closed Trading State" (1800), Fichte argues for the right to work and labor private property. The task of the state is to protect these social institutions. Fichte stands for active state intervention in the economic sphere. It should regulate the monetary system, restrict freedom of trade and competition, "in order to protect the interests of its citizens, to protect them from trade and financial expansion by stronger powers. These requirements can only be understood in the context of the specific historical conditions in which the German states were at the beginning of the 19th century.
Fichte's philosophy is not just a link between the philosophy of Kant, on the one hand, and the philosophy of Schelling and Hegel, on the other. It is of great independent importance as a peculiar expression of the progressive aspirations of the radical sections of German society, as a philosophy of human freedom and active practical action.
§ 5. Schelling's natural philosophy
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854) was born in the family of a priest, graduated from the theological seminary and the University of Tübingen, where he studied with Hegel. In his youth, Schelling expressed sympathy for the French Revolution, mainly for its Girondin wing. In the 90s he published works on the problems of natural philosophy, which were accepted with interest by scientists and philosophers. On the recommendation of Goethe, Schelling was invited as a professor at the University of Jena. During this period, he communicates with Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, Hegel.
Schelling lived a long life. His work includes a number of stages. Especially fruitful was, apparently, the first one, connected with understanding the dialectics of nature. Schelling approached the traditional philosophy of nature, or natural philosophy, as a dialectician. At the same time, he relied on major discoveries made by that time in physics, chemistry, biology by such scientists as Lavoisier, Galvani, Brown, Volt, Priestley.
Schelling opposes the metaphysical gap between "matter" and "force", as well as the notion of the existence of a special "life force". He does not agree with the opinion that light is immaterial. The philosopher views nature as a dynamic process that includes the evolution of inorganic and organic matter. He expresses the fruitful idea of ​​the inner unity of nature. From these positions, Schelling criticizes the mechanistic ideas common in the natural sciences of that time.
Among the classics of German philosophy, Schelling came closest to understanding the philosophy of nature as a dialectic of nature. True, he understood this dialectic in an idealistic manner. Nature, from his point of view, is an expedient whole, as well as a form of the unconscious life of the mind.
The originally laid down goal of nature is the generation of life, capable of knowing itself, i.e. endowed with self-awareness. Nature, said Schelling, "is the Odyssey of the spirit."
In natural processes, Schelling sees the expression of the principle of differentiation of the original unity; every body is a product of the interaction of oppositely directed forces (attraction and repulsion, positive and negative electricity, magnet poles, etc.). Polarity, duality and at the same time the unity of opposite sides is the universal principle of nature.
In the phenomena and processes of nature, Schelling discovers dialectics, namely the unity of such opposite principles as necessity and chance, whole and part, internal and external, finite and infinite. Overcoming mechanistic ideas about evolutionary processes, he points to the appearance of a qualitatively new thing in the course of development. The dynamic process of nature consists of steps qualitatively different from each other. The higher degrees or forms of nature are the lower ones raised to a power. In other words, a quantitative increase leads to a new quality.
Each stage of development contains all the lower stages in a "removed" form. Schelling approaches the formulation of the law of negation of negation, most fully and consistently developed by Hegel.
Schelling's views on the development of forms of thinking are peculiar. Traditional thinking, which obeys the laws and rules of formal logic, is the sphere of reason, which is not able to reveal the essence of phenomena. This can be done only by the mind, not relying on ordinary inferences, but by direct contemplation of the object with the help of intellectual intuition. Reason sees the hidden essence of things - the unity of opposites. But the mind is not ordinary, not ordinary, but "philosophical and artistic genius",
The positive side of Schelling's natural-philosophical views was the struggle against the metaphysical, mechanistic worldview, the assertion of the dialectical way of thinking. However, like any natural philosopher of that time, he did not always reckon with the specific data and conclusions of the natural sciences, he came into conflict with them.
At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, Schelling concentrated his efforts on the development of a "transcendental philosophy". In it he saw the second most important part of his system. If the first considers nature from philosophical positions, then the second considers the subjective world, the history of consciousness from its lower manifestations to higher forms, to self-consciousness.
Although the subjective moment is proclaimed the only basis of all that exists, Schelling believes that transcendental idealism cannot be considered a kind of subjective idealism. After all, the subjective is reduced by him not to the subjective feeling or thinking of the individual subject, but to the direct contemplation by the mind of the essence of things. But such an intellectual intuition is capable not of an ordinary subject, but of a "genius" expressing absolute reason.
Schelling's "transcendental idealism" is an objective idealism based on the concept of the identity of spirit and nature. Spirit is not an individual consciousness, but an absolute superhuman mind, the self-consciousness of God. Absolute reason is the only reality in which the differences between the subjective and the objective are erased, all opposites coincide, and the possibilities of everything that can be are concentrated. Absolute mind generates the Universe and there is nothing else in the Universe besides it. Absolute reason is neither spirit nor nature, but "the indifference of both," like the indifference of the poles in the center of a magnet. Such views can be considered panlogism, but they are even closer to Neoplatonism.
From about 1801 until the end of his life, Schelling preached the philosophy of identity, which grew with him into the philosophy of revelation. The philosopher abandons his youthful hobbies when he showed some radicalism and free-thinking, substantiating, for example, the need for a historical and critical approach to the study of the Bible.
The philosophy of revelation goes far beyond the philosophical criticism and rationalism characteristic of classical German philosophy. Moreover, it goes beyond the traditional for philosophy in general, and goes into theosophy and mysticism. Schelling seriously argues that there are two parts in the concept of God, one is God himself, and the second is some kind of indefinite basis, "abyss", "groundlessness", irrational will. The bifurcation of the absolute is an act above the temporal and inaccessible to human understanding.
The Prussian king invited Schelling to the University of Berlin. However, Schelling's lectures on the philosophy of revelation disappointed the audience and provoked protests from the progressive German public. The philosopher has clearly outlived his glory and could not adequately replace Hegel in the philosophical department.
§ 4. System and method of Hegel's philosophy
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was born into the family of a prominent official. He studied at the Tubingen Theological Institute. For some time he worked as a home teacher. He served as director of the gymnasium in Nuremberg. From 1801 he taught at the University of Jena. At this time, together with Schelling, he publishes the Critical Philosophical Journal. From 1816, Hegel was a professor at the University of Heidelberg, and from 1818, at Berlin. For some time he was its rector.
Hegel's work is considered the pinnacle of classical German philosophy. It continued the dialectical ideas put forward by Kant, Fichte, Schelling. But Hegel went much further than his great predecessors. He was the first to present the entire natural, historical and spiritual world in continuous development. He discovered and substantiated from the standpoint of objective idealism the basic laws and categories of dialectics. He deliberately opposed dialectics as a method of cognition to its antipode - metaphysics. Agreeing with the need to study the premises of knowledge, which Kant insisted on, Hegel rightly reproached him for trying to present them outside the history of knowledge, in isolation from the mental activity of man. Kant, as you know, put forward the requirement: know the ability of knowing before you start to know something. This is similar to the anecdote that is told about the scholastic who did not want to enter the water before he learned to swim, ironically Hegel.
Hegel is an opponent of Kant's agnosticism and apriorism. He does not agree with the metaphysical gap between essence and appearance, as Kant insisted. Appearance, according to Hegel, is no less objective than essence. The essence is, i.e. is found in the phenomenon, and the phenomenon acts as the carrier of the essence. This is the unity of opposites that cannot exist without each other. Therefore, Kant's assertions about the fundamental unknowability of things in themselves are untenable. The thing-in-itself, Hegel teaches, is only the initial moment, only a stage in the development of the thing. "So, for example, a man in himself is a child, a sprout is a plant in itself ... All things are first in themselves, but the matter does not stop there."
Contrary to Kant, the thing-in-itself, firstly, develops, entering into diverse relationships, and, secondly, is cognizable, insofar as it reveals itself in phenomena.
Criticizing Kant's subjectivism and agnosticism, Hegel recognizes the possibility of adequate knowledge of the world on the basis of the identity of thought and being. Untenable, according to Hegel, is Fichte's attempt to deduce all nature and society from the "I", i.e. from individual consciousness. He criticized Schelling for his intuitionism, for underestimating the role of reason and logic. However, common to Hegel and his predecessors was an idealistic solution to the question of the relationship between consciousness and nature, matter. The differences between them in this matter are the differences between objective and subjective idealism.
Hegel's philosophy is the most rationalized and logical objective idealism. At the heart of everything that exists are the laws of thinking, i.e. the laws of logic. But the logic is not formal, but coinciding with dialectics - dialectical logic. When asked where these laws came from, Hegel answers simply: these are the thoughts of God before the creation of the world. Logic is "the image of God as he is in his eternal essence before the creation of nature and any finite spirit."
Philosophical system
The philosophical system is divided by Hegel into three parts: 1) logic, 2) philosophy of nature, 3) philosophy of spirit. Logic, from his point of view, is a system of "pure reason, coinciding with the divine mind. However, how could Hegel know the thoughts of God, and even before the creation of the world? The philosopher simply postulates this thesis, i.e. introduces without proof. In fact, his Hegel draws his system of logic not from sacred books, but from the great book of nature itself and social development.Therefore, the most seemingly mystical part of his philosophy - logic - is based on a huge natural-scientific, historical material that was at the disposal of an encyclopedically educated thinker.
The "thoughts of God" turn out to be the most general laws of the development of nature, society and thought. It is precisely in logic that Hegel's dialectical idealism stands closest to dialectical materialism. In essence, this is an inverted and turned upside down materialism. The matter, of course, cannot be reduced to a simple "reversal". There are significant differences between Hegel's idealist dialectic and materialist dialectics, which will be discussed below.
The starting point of Hegel's philosophy is the identity of thinking (consciousness) and being. Things and thoughts about them coincide, therefore thinking in its immanent definitions and the true nature of things are one and the same.
Logics. The identity of being and thinking, from Hegel's point of view, is the substantial unity of the world. But the identity is not abstract, but concrete, i.e. one that implies a difference. Identity and difference are the unity of opposites. Absolute identity, as in Schelling, excludes the very possibility of development. Thinking and being are subject to the same laws, this is the rational meaning of the Hegelian position on concrete identity.
Objective absolute thinking, Hegel believes, is not only the beginning, but also the driving force behind the development of everything that exists. Manifesting itself in all the variety of phenomena, it acts as an absolute idea.
The absolute idea does not stand still. It is constantly evolving, moving from one stage to another, more specific and meaningful. The ascent from the abstract to the concrete is the general principle of development.
The highest stage of development is "absolute spirit". At this stage, the absolute idea manifests itself in the sphere of human history and makes itself the subject of thought.
The philosophical system of Hegelian objective idealism has certain peculiarities. First, pantheism. Divine thought does not hover somewhere in the sky, it permeates the whole world, constituting the essence of every, even the smallest thing. Secondly, panlogism. Objective divine thinking is strictly logical. And thirdly, dialectics.
Hegel is characterized by epistemological optimism, the conviction that the world is knowable. Subjective spirit, human consciousness, comprehending things, discovers in them a manifestation of the absolute spirit, divine thinking. From this follows an important conclusion for Hegel: everything real is reasonable, everything reasonable is real. Many have been mistaken in interpreting the thesis about the reasonableness of everything real as an apology for everything that exists. In fact, what exists, Hegel believed, is reasonable only in a certain sense, namely, when it expresses some kind of necessity, regularity. Only then can the existing be qualified as something reasonable. But as soon as the necessity of the existence of something disappears, it loses the status of the real and must necessarily disappear. Obsolete forms of life will certainly give way to the new, such is the true meaning of Hegel's formula.
So, logic is a regular movement of concepts (categories), expressing the content of the absolute idea, the stages of its self-development.
Where does this idea start? After a long discussion of this difficult problem, Hegel comes to the conclusion that the category of pure being is the beginning. Being, in his opinion, does not have an eternal existence and must arise. But from what? Obviously, from non-existence, from nothing. "So far, there is nothing and something must arise. The beginning is not a pure nothing, but such a nothing from which something must come, being, therefore, is also already contained in the beginning. The beginning, therefore, contains both, being and nothing; it is the unity of being and nothing, or, to put it differently, it is non-being, which is at the same time being, and being, which is at the same time non-being.
One may get the impression that we have before us a verbal balancing act, devoid of meaning. The course of Hegel's thought seems artificial, if we proceed from natural-science, deterministic premises. Indeed, out of non-existence, out of nothing, something can arise. But after all, Hegel is not talking about the real world, but about the thoughts of God before the creation of the world.
If we ignore the mystical plots of the divine creation of the world, being out of nothing, then in the reasoning of the philosopher we will find a reasonable content, or, as they say, a rational grain. Being and non-being are the unity of opposites. One category negates the other. As a result, a third category arises, which synthesizes both previous ones. Hegel calls this new category becoming. "Becoming is the inseparability of being I am nothing ... in other words, such a unity in which there is both being and nothing." Becoming - "; this is a dialectical process of emergence, which is appropriate to call becoming, is a turning point, when a thing as an established integrity is not yet there, but it cannot be said that it does not exist at all. And in this sense, becoming can be considered the unity of non-being and being. “Becoming is an unsteady restlessness that settles down, passes into a kind of calm result.
If Hegel seeks to express the dialectical process of emergence with the help of the category of becoming, then the process of disappearance, annihilation is expressed by him with the help of the category of removal. It must be borne in mind that the German verb aufheben - to remove - has many meanings, including negative ones: to stop, cancel, abolish, liquidate. But at the same time, it also has a number of positive meanings: to save, preserve, provide. Accordingly, the noun aufheben means both cancellation and preservation. Hegel also refers to the Latin language, where the verb tollere has two meanings: 1) to destroy, deny, remove, and 2) to exalt. The philosopher does not accidentally use linguistic polysemy. In this case, it expresses spontaneous dialectics and its main feature: the identity of opposites. Nothing in the world perishes without a trace, but serves as a material, an initial step for the emergence of a new one. This regularity is reflected in the category of removal, as well as the category of negation, which Hegel widely uses in his philosophical system.
Hegel calls the new category becoming. "Becoming is the inseparability of being I am nothing ... in other words, such a unity in which there is both being and nothing." Becoming is a dialectical process of emergence, which it is appropriate to call becoming, is a turning point, when a thing as an established integrity does not yet exist, but it cannot be said that it does not exist at all. And in this sense, becoming can be considered the unity of non-being and being. “Becoming is an unsteady restlessness that settles down, passes into a kind of calm result.
The synthesis of the categories of pure being and nothing gives the category of becoming, and from it a transition to the present is possible, i.e. some particular being. This is the scheme proposed by Hegel.
If Hegel seeks to express the dialectical process of emergence with the help of the category of becoming, then the process of disappearance, annihilation is expressed by him with the help of the category of removal. It must be borne in mind that the German verb aufheben - to remove - has many meanings, including negative ones: to stop, cancel, abolish, liquidate. But at the same time, it also has a number of positive meanings: to save, preserve, provide. Accordingly, the noun aufheben means both cancellation and preservation. Hegel also refers to the Latin language, where the verb tollere has two meanings: 1) to destroy, deny, remove, and 2) to exalt. The philosopher does not accidentally use linguistic polysemy. In this case, it expresses spontaneous dialectics and its main feature: the identity of opposites. Nothing in the world perishes without a trace, but serves as a material, an initial stage for the emergence of a new one. This regularity is reflected by the category of withdrawal, as well as the category of negation, which Hegel widely uses in his philosophical system. Each category expresses one moment, an aspect of the development process and simultaneously serves as a starting point for the next category, which denies, removes the previous category. The new denies the old, but dialectically denies not only throws it aside and destroys it, but preserves and uses the viable elements of the old in a reworked form to create the new. Hegel calls this negation concrete.
Negation for Hegel is not a one-act process, but essentially an endless process. And in this process, he everywhere finds a bunch of three elements: thesis - antithesis - synthesis. As a result of the denial of any position taken as a thesis, an opposition (antithesis) arises. The latter is necessarily negated. There is a double negation, or negation of negation, which leads to the emergence of the third link, synthesis. It reproduces some features of the first, initial link at a higher level. This whole structure is called a triad.
In Hegel's philosophy, the triad performs not only a methodological function, but also a system-creating function. This is not only a substantive principle, or the law of dialectics, but also a way of building a system. The whole architectonics, the structure of Hegelian philosophy is subject to a triple rhythm, is built in accordance with the requirements of the triad. In general, Hegel's philosophy is divided into three parts: - logic, philosophy of nature and philosophy of spirit. These are not adjacent parts that can be swapped. This is a triad, where each part expresses a natural stage of dialectical development. At least that's what Hegel himself thinks. He also divides logic into three parts: the doctrine of being, the doctrine of essence, and the doctrine of the concept. Each of these parts is also a triad. The doctrine of being, for example, includes: 1) certainty (quality), 2) magnitude (quantity), 3) measure. Quality consists of three parts: 1) being, 2) being present, 3) being for-itself. Being, as we have already said, is a triad: pure being - nothingness - becoming. Here the limit of division is reached, or the triad, consisting of categories, each of which cannot be decomposed into triads.
It is neither possible nor necessary to expound this entire complex system of large and small triads. Let's take a look at some of the most important points.
its inherent quality. By virtue of qualitative certainty, things not only differ from each other, but are related to each other.
The category of quality precedes the category of quantity in Hegel's logic. This order generally corresponds to the history of human knowledge. Savages (like children) distinguish things by their qualitative certainty, although they do not know how to count, i.e. do not know the proportions.
The synthesis of qualitative and quantitative certainty is the measure. Every thing, insofar as it is qualitatively determined, is a measure. Violation of the measure changes the quality and turns one thing into another. There is a break in gradualness, or a qualitative leap.
Hegel resolutely opposes flat evolutionism, which recognizes only a gradual transition from one qualitative state to another. "They say: there are no leaps in nature... But we have shown that, in general, a change in being is not only the transition of one quantity into another, but also the transition of the qualitative into the quantitative and vice versa, becoming different, which is a break in gradualness, and qualitatively different in comparison with the previous state. Water through cooling does not gradually become solid, does not at first become mushy, so that then, gradually becoming harder and harder, it reaches the consistency of ice, but solidifies immediately. Having already reached the temperature of the freezing point, it can still completely retain its liquid state if it is left alone, and a slight shaking brings it to a solid state.
Hegel gives another example, but from the moral realm. Here, too, there are transitions of quantitative changes into qualitative ones, and the "quality difference" turns out to be based on the difference in magnitudes. Thus, due to quantitative changes, the measure of frivolity is transcended and the result is something completely different, namely crime. A qualitative leap can turn right into injustice, virtue into vice. The philosopher's reasoning is also curious: other things being equal, states acquire a different qualitative character due to their difference in size. Laws and government become something else when the size of the state increases and the number of citizens increases. The state has a measure of its magnitude, exceeding which it irresistibly disintegrates under the same state structure, which, with a different size, constituted its happiness and strength.
Hegel convincingly substantiates what later became known as the law of the transition of quantitative changes into qualitative ones and vice versa through jumps. The development of science and social practice confirmed the correctness of this dialectical law discovered by Hegel.
The dialectic of the transition from quantity to quality answers the question about the form of development of all natural and spiritual things. But there remains an even more important question about the driving force, the impetus for this development. And here Hegel is looking for an answer not in the other world, but in reality itself. He formulates this answer in the doctrine of essence. "Only by wandering from one quality to another and only by the transition from qualitative to quantitative and vice versa, the matter is not yet over, but there is something abiding in things, this abiding is, first of all, essence."
Quality, quantity, measure - all these, as already mentioned, are categories of being. These are the forms in which we perceive reality, and perceive it empirically, empirically. But empirically it is impossible to comprehend the essence of things. Essence is the inner basis of being, and being is the external form of essence. There are no pure essences, they are expressed, manifested in the forms of being. Essence is the same being, but on a higher level. Essence, as the internal cause of being, is not identical with the latter, it is different from it. In other words, essence is known from the opposite of immediate being. This means that knowledge must go deep, to reveal their essence in phenomena.
What, according to Hegel, is this hidden essence of being? In short, in its internal inconsistency. Everything that exists contains a contradiction, a unity of opposite moments.
Identity, the unity of opposites is the key concept of Hegel's logic. Ordinary consciousness is afraid of contradiction, considering it as something abnormal. And formal logic with its laws (not contradictions, excluded middle) forbids logical contradictions. Hegel says many unkind words to this logic. But in fact, he is not against formal logic, but against its absolutization. Such logic cannot claim to be a universal methodology as opposed to dialectics. In this case, formal logic turns into metaphysics. Correctly interpreted formal logic forbids absurd contradictions, doctrinal, verbal contradictions that confuse reasoning. Hegel also fulfills these requirements, otherwise he would simply not be understood. But besides the contradictions of incorrect reasoning, there are real contradictions, contradictions of life itself. And no one can get rid of them. "Contradiction is what really moves the world, and it is ridiculous to say that contradiction cannot be thought." - "Contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality, only in so far as it has contradiction in itself, it moves, has impulse and activity."
Contradiction leads forward; it is the principle of all self-movement. Even the simplest type of motion - the movement of a body in space - is a constantly emerging and immediately resolved contradiction. Something moves not only because it is now here, and at another moment there, but also because it is both here and not here at the same moment, i.e. both is and is not at the given point of the trajectory. Hegel proposes "together with the ancient thinkers" to recognize the contradictions they discovered in the movement. But it does not follow from this that there is no movement, but, on the contrary, it follows that movement is an existing contradiction.
The "ancient dialecticians", and these are the philosophers of the Eleatic school and, above all, Zeno, revealed in their aporias the objective contradictions inherent in movement, space, and time. But since any contradictions were considered an unacceptable anomaly, an error in logical reasoning, the revealed contradictions were declared to be an appearance generated by the imperfection of sensory cognition. And in its essence, the world comprehended by the mind is devoid of both movement and diversity.
Kant's line of reasoning is similar: the mind's attempt to comprehend things in themselves leads to antinomies, i.e. to irresolvable logical contradictions. According to Kant, one should recognize the powerlessness of reason and the unknowability of the world. Hegel does not agree with this: the revealed contradictions testify not to the impotence of reason, but to its power. Antinomies are not a dead end, but a path leading to the truth. “Since each of the two opposite sides contains within itself its other, and neither of them can be conceivable without the other, it follows from this that none of these definitions, taken separately, is true, but only their unity is true. This is the truly dialectical way of considering these definitions, as well as the true result.
One cannot metaphysically separate the finite from the infinite, discontinuity from continuity, freedom from necessity, and so on. This is the essence of the dialectical way of thinking.
The doctrine of the concept is the third and final part of Hegel's logic. Here he most sharply expresses the point of view of absolute idealism. From these positions, the philosopher criticizes formal logic, which sees in the concept of "an empty and abstract form." “In fact, everything is the other way around: the concept is the beginning of all life, it is entirely concrete. This is a conclusion from all the logical movement that has been carried out so far and therefore does not require proof here.” And why, in fact, does it not? Formal logic formulates the law of sufficient reason: every thought must be proved either by experimental data, facts, or with the help of scientific and other logical conclusions from already proven positions. Therefore, a proof can be either inductive or deductive. But Hegel does not require any of this. The concept and other logical forms are not, as he believes, a reflection of things. On the contrary, things are secondary, they are reflections of concepts, they must correspond to them. And the concepts are of divine origin. After all, "God created the world out of nothing, or, in other words, ... the world and finite things came from the fullness of divine thought and divine plans. By this we recognize that thought, or, more precisely, the concept, is that infinite form, or free creative activity that does not need external material for its realization. Neither concepts, nor judgments, nor inferences are only in our head and are not formed only by us. The concept is that which lives in things; to understand an object means, consequently, to realize its concept.
All this, of course, is absolute idealism: real things in their essence are concepts, judgments and conclusions. However, there is a rational point here too: logical forms are not a subjective creation of the human head (although, from the point of view of materialism, they cannot exist outside this head), but a reflection of the laws of the objective world, the ordinary relations of things. Hegel rightly emphasizes that concepts, judgments, and inferences are a dialectical unity of such categories as universal, particular, and individual. But this unity is inherent in real things, in the objective world, and then, because of this, in logical forms. By applying the dialectical method to the analysis of logical concepts, judgments, and inferences, Hegel, in contrast to traditional formal logic, revealed the dialectics of these forms. Marx rightly regarded Hegelian dialectics as the basic form of all dialectics, but only after it had been purged of its mystical form.
Philosophy of nature. Hegel considers nature to be the second stage in the development of the absolute idea. Nature is a product of the absolute idea, its other being. Generated by the spirit, nature has no existence independent of it. This is how Hegel solves the basic question of philosophy, although he does not use this expression itself. At the same time, Hegel tries to dissociate himself from the traditional religious idea of ​​the creation of the world. The absolute idea at the level of logic exists, according to him, outside of time and space. It is no coincidence that these categories are absent from his logic. As Hegel says, it is wrong to talk about what was before and what will be after. The expressions "before" and "then" are not appropriate for this case. They express "purely logical" primary and secondary. And although Hegel's God is not quite traditional, but an abstract idea of ​​the world mind, he still does not abandon the Christian dogma about the creation of the world.
Nature interests Hegel not in itself, but as a necessary stage in the development of the absolute idea. He considers mechanics, physics, organics to be its manifestations in nature. The transition from inanimate nature to living nature completes a purely natural process. The spirit comes out of nature, breaking through the outer crust of materiality as something lower.
A preconceived philosophical scheme did not allow Hegel to understand properly the dialectic of nature. Oddly enough, the great dialectician did not accept the evolutionary ideas advanced for his time in geology, organic chemistry, embryology, plant and animal physiology. He called the evolutionary doctrine of the origin of more developed organisms from the lower ones meaningless. In his opinion, the whole variety of changes in nature fits into the framework of the eternal cycle. Therefore, "nothing is new under the sun," and the diverse play of nature's forms "causes boredom." Only in the changes that take place in the spiritual realm does the new appear.
Sometimes in Hegel's reasoning about nature there is no logic, whether dialectical or formal. Engels rightly calls the philosopher's statement that nature develops in space, but not in time, nonsense. After all, time is the basic condition for any development.
Contrary to this, Hegel expresses deep dialectical conjectures, which were confirmed in the further development of natural science. These, for example, include indications of the transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative ones in chemical processes, the understanding of electricity as a special form of the movement of matter. On the whole, the philosopher could not overcome the metaphysical, mechanistic understanding of nature. He remained on the positions of the old natural philosophy, the essence of which is that the philosopher, as a representative of the "science of sciences" and the owner of "absolute knowledge", may not take into account the opinion of specialists in specific areas of natural science. This, apparently, should explain Hegel's speeches against atomism, his non-recognition of the wave and corpuscular theories of light, the assertion that blood globules are formed only when blood comes into contact with air. Hence the strange formulas: “light is the simplest thought that exists under the form of nature”, “sound is the complaint of the ideal”, etc.
Philosophy of spirit. This is the third stage of the Hegelian system, which is a synthesis of the two previous ones. Here, the absolute idea, as it were, awakens, frees itself from natural bonds and finds its expression in the absolute spirit. Man is part of nature. However human; spirit is not a product of nature, but of absolute spirit. Yes, and nature itself is generated by the spirit. “For us, the spirit has nature as its prerequisite, it is its truth, and thus absolutely first in relation to it. In this truth, nature has disappeared, and the spirit has appeared in it as an idea that has reached being-for-itself.”
The self-development of the spirit proceeds along three steps. The first is "subjective spirit" - individual human consciousness, which is divided into three types: anthropology, phenomenology and psychology. The second step is the "objective spirit" - human society and its three main forms: law, morality, and the state. The last step - "absolute spirit" - includes art, religion, philosophy.
The problems raised by Hegel in the "Philosophy of the Spirit" are considered in more detail in the series of works: "Phenomenology of the Spirit", "Philosophy of History", "Philosophy of Law", "Aesthetics", "Philosophy of Religion", "Lectures on the History of Philosophy".
"Philosophy of Spirit" is a work devoted mainly to individual and social consciousness, as well as the dialectics of historical development.
Spirit is something unified and whole, but in the process of development, transition from the lower to the higher. Hegel considers the dialectical contradiction of subject and object, thought and object, to be the driving force behind the development of the spirit. Overcoming this contradiction, the spirit progresses in the consciousness of its freedom. "The substance of the spirit is freedom, i.e. independence from another, relation to oneself." Real freedom, according to Hegel, does not consist in the negation of necessity, but in its awareness, in the disclosure of its content, which has an ideal character. The history of mankind is a progress in the consciousness of freedom, but again freedom of the spirit, of thought. Undoubtedly, Hegel's understanding of freedom was progressive in nature, as it was directed against feudal survivals.
As for the philosophy of history, Hegel has a teleological character, i.e. the development of society is directed towards a predetermined goal. The philosopher divides world history into three epochs: eastern, ancient and German. The Eastern era is completely devoid of the consciousness of freedom, in the ancient era the consciousness of freedom reached a select minority, and as for the Germanic peoples, primarily the Germans, they have already reached the stage of freedom. The artificial nature and bias of such a scheme is quite obvious. According to Hegel, the estate system, the monarchy (though constitutional) fit perfectly into the category of freedom. He considered the state not only the embodiment of freedom, but also the procession of God on earth. The limit of the development of human society and its political institutions is the constitutional monarchy, which preserves class features, but promotes transformations in the bourgeois-liberal spirit.
The events of world history are a dialectic of individual "folk spirits". Each nation with its inherent "spirit" is one of the stages, or moments of world history. And world history realizes the "absolute goal of the world." However, the vast majority of peoples remain beyond the limits of progress, they are declared unhistorical. They failed to express some moments of the absolute spirit. The peoples of the East, the Slavs, were especially unlucky in this sense. They have no future and are forever frozen in their development. If world history begins in the East, then it ends in the West. Here the "absolute goal of the world" is realized. The development of human society, according to Hegel, must stop in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Here is the pinnacle and the end of world history. Here she "stops her course."
Still higher than the state are art, religion and philosophy in Hegel's system. And not just any, but the philosophy of Hegel himself. It was in it that the absolute idea found its full embodiment. Hegel believed that the essence of the world is as it is depicted in his philosophy, especially in the Logic. His philosophy is "single", "absolute", "philosophy in general".
Ironically about such claims, L. Feuerbach noted: “But no matter how witty this author may be, he still acts uncritically right off the bat, without asking himself the question: is it possible at all for the genus of the absolute to be realized in one artist, and philosophy in one philosopher.
Dialectical method
As already mentioned, in Hegel's philosophy it is necessary to distinguish between the research method and the system, in accordance with which the material is not only presented, but also structured. The method, according to Hegel, "is the movement of the very essence of the matter", the consciousness of the "internal self-movement of the content" Hegel has a dialectical character, being the most general expression of the contradictory development of the world. The dialectical method, its principles and categories are developed mainly in the first part of its system. The system is the order of presentation of the material chosen by the philosopher, the connection of logical categories, the general construction of the entire philosophical building. Unlike the method, which is determined mainly by the objective content of the world, the system largely bears the features of the author's arbitrariness. The main principle of structural construction is the triad, as we could see. It has a rational meaning (an expression of the dialectical law of negation of negation). However, Hegel formalizes this principle and often uses it as a template that specific material is forced to obey. Therefore, many transitions of categories are arbitrary, artificial. For example, the last triad in the system: art - religion - philosophy. To substantiate the logical connection between them, to show that philosophy is a synthesis, the unity of art and religion - this task remained unresolved. Hegel simply declares, but does not substantiate this construction.
Feuerbach, Herzen, Engels and other thinkers drew attention to the contradiction between method and system in Hegel's philosophy. The very spirit of the dialectical method contradicts the formalized conservative system. This contradiction cannot be classified as dialectical, it is a contradiction of doctrine, which is forbidden by both formal and dialectical logic. Hegel gets a paradoxical picture: dialectics with its struggle of opposites, spiritual and historical progress are actually turned into the past. They have no place either in the present or in the future: after all, the "absolute goal" of progress has been achieved. For Hegel, the dialectical method cannot serve as a tool for critical reflection and transformation of reality. For it to become such, it is necessary to discard the conservative system of Hegelian philosophy. And this was done by K. Marx and F. Engels. The idealist dialectic was replaced by the materialist dialectic.
§ 5. Anthropological materialism of Feuerbach
The galaxy of classics of German philosophy is closed by Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) - an outstanding representative of philosophical materialism and atheism. His philosophical views were formed under the influence of Hegel, whose lectures he listened to at the University of Berlin. However, Feuerbach was not an orthodox Hegelian. Moving to the positions of materialism, he systematically criticized philosophical idealism and the religious worldview. Feuerbach has been teaching at a German university for two years, but he is fired for publishing a work in which he doubts the personal immortality of a person, believing that only great deeds of the human mind can be immortal. Before Feuerbach, the doors of all German universities are closed, and he is forced to lead a secluded life in the countryside, where his wife had a small factory.
Feuerbach creates a series of philosophical works, the most significant of which is recognized as "The Essence of Christianity" (1841). Feuerbach's materialism had a strong influence on the formation of the worldview of Marx and Engels. Toward the end of his life, Feuerbach joined the German Social Democratic Party and studied Marx's Capital. However, Feuerbach did not become either a Marxist or a revolutionary. All his life he eschewed active political activity, did not take part in the revolution of 1848 and refused to run for the national (Frankfurt) assembly. He entered the history of philosophy as the last great representative of classical German philosophy.
Feuerbach called his philosophical system "new philosophy" and "philosophy of the future". Having overcome Hegel's idealism, Feuerbach calls man a product of nature, and his mental activity is the only bearer of reason. Only man can think, there is no superhuman divine mind in the world. This is evidenced by the data of natural science, all experimental sciences.
Solving the fundamental question of philosophy materialistically, Feuerbach is convinced of the cognizability of the world. He is a consistent supporter of materialistic sensationalism, an opponent of agnosticism. The new philosophy must proceed not from abstractions, but from sensory data, from experience. Feuerbach calls human sense organs in this sense the organs of philosophy. Those sense organs that a person has are quite enough for adequate knowledge of things, the philosopher believes. Sensory perceptions are direct and mediated. As Feuerbach writes, “not only the external, but also the internal, not only the body, but also the spirit, not only the thing, but also the Self constitute objects of the senses. Therefore, everything is sensually perceived, if not directly, then indirectly, if not ordinary crude senses, then refined, if not the eyes of an anatomist or surgeon, then the eyes of a philosopher, so empiricism quite legitimately sees the source of our ideas in the senses.
Human feelings are qualitatively different from the feelings of animals. Feeling in animals is animal, in man - human, Feuerbach emphasized. Speaking against the speculative, i.e. divorced from the empirical basis of philosophizing, he pays tribute to theoretical thinking, capable of reflecting the inner essence of things, their natural connections. The truth of theoretical propositions, according to the philosopher, is verified by their comparison with sensory data. Of course, such a criterion of truth cannot be recognized as reliable; it is not universal. As a result of a generally just criticism of philosophical idealism, Feuerbach lost what was valuable that was contained in the works of his great predecessors, and, above all, Hegel - dialectics, including the dialectics of knowledge.
The subject of the new philosophy, Feuerbach believed, should be man, and philosophy itself - the doctrine of man, or anthropology. The unity of being and thinking for a philosopher makes sense only when man is taken as the basis, the subject of this unity. The new philosophy turns man, including nature as the basis of man, into the only, universal and highest subject of philosophy, thus turning anthropology, including physiology, into a universal science.
Man is a part of nature, a natural living being. Natural science, primarily physiology, proves the inseparability of thinking and physiological processes occurring in the brain. Feuerbach dissociates himself from the views of the vulgar materialists, who asserted that thought is a special kind of substance secreted by the brain. Thought is a product of the brain, but it is immaterial. Not wanting to be identified with vulgar materialists, Feuerbach hesitates to call his philosophy materialism. Of course, the materialistic essence of his philosophy does not disappear from this.
Feuerbach's anthropological philosophy proceeds from the natural essence of a person who strives for happiness, loves and suffers, needs to communicate with his own kind. His freedom depends on the environment, which either helps or hinders the manifestation of his essence. As Feuerbach says, a bird is free in the air, a fish in the water, and a man is where nothing prevents him from realizing his natural desire for happiness. Feuerbach speaks of man in general as a generic being. Such a view sins with an abstract, naturalistic approach to man, ignoring his social characteristics. As a humanist and democrat, Feuerbach understood that class barriers and privileges are contrary to human nature. But how to get rid of this evil, he did not know. Being far from politics, the philosopher relied mainly on morality and ethics.
Like the French materialists, Feuerbach believed that the rightly understood interest of the individual ultimately coincides with the public interest. This is the theory of "reasonable egoism", supplemented by altruism. "I" cannot be happy without "You". A person cannot be happy alone, therefore, love for others is a prerequisite for social harmony, the goal of human existence. However, such a philosophical construction greatly simplifies reality, abstracts from the prose of life, where, along with love, ill will, envy, malice, and enmity are often encountered.
Feuerbach recognizes the existence of both individual and group egoism. The clash of various kinds of group egoisms creates tension, gives rise to social conflicts. Feuerbach speaks of the "completely legitimate egoism" of the oppressed masses, that "the egoism of the now oppressed majority must exercise and is exercising its right and will begin a new era in history." These arguments can be regarded as the germ of historical materialism, but only as a germ. Ultimately, the philosopher tries to explain the social opposites by the anthropological features of people.
Based on the anthropological principle, Feuerbach criticizes the opposition of ethical norms, characteristic of Kantianism, to the natural needs of man, his desire for happiness. Morality, opposed to human nature, is worth little. Therefore, one cannot consider sensual inclinations as something sinful. There is no "original sin" on which religious doctrine is based. Our vices are failed virtues, said the philosopher. They did not become virtues because the conditions of life did not meet the requirements of human nature.
Criticism of religion occupies a significant place in Feuerbach's work. He tried to explain the origin of religious feelings and beliefs from the standpoint of anthropological materialism. Religious feelings are generated not only by fear of the elemental forces of nature and the deceit of priests, as the materialists of the 17th-18th centuries believed. According to Feuerbach, not only and not so much fear, but aspirations, hopes, suffering, ideals inherent in human nature, his entire emotional world to a decisive extent contribute to the generation of religious beliefs. Religion, therefore, has a real life content, it is not accidental, but necessary for people. The birthplace of the gods, Feuerbach believed, is in the heart of man, in his suffering, hopes, and hopes. In contrast to the cold mind, the heart seeks to love and believe. In religion the whole man is expressed, but in a wrong way.
A person believes in the gods not only because he has fantasy and feelings, but also because he has the desire to be Happy. He believes in a blissful being, not only because he has an idea of ​​bliss, but also because he himself wants to be blissful. He believes in a perfect being because he himself wants to be perfect. He believes in an immortal being because he himself does not want to die.
Feuerbach derived religious consciousness from the peculiarities of human nature, but understood this nature itself not historically, but abstractly. Hence his interpretation of religion was unhistorical, abstract. The naturalistic approach to human essence prevented him from seeing the social content of religious ideas, their historical character.
If religion is born in a person's heart, then it is as indestructible as human emotions are indestructible. Feuerbach, however, assumed that religious fantasy ideas would someday disappear. But when? Then, answered the philosopher, when the love of man for man becomes a religious feeling and replaces traditional religion. Man will achieve on earth what religion promises in heaven. Atheism is the true religion, a religion without God, a religion of human brotherhood and love.
Religious beliefs and feelings are based on the alienation of certain human properties. Mind, strength, justice and other qualities are torn off from their specific carriers, generalized and multiplied many times over. Then they are attributed to fantastic creatures - the characters of numerous religions. If birds had a religion, Feuerbach said, then their 6ogs would appear to be mighty birds. Man, on the other hand, creates gods in his own image and similar, alienating from himself and attributing to them his best qualities, but in a fantastic and hypertrophied form. It is necessary to put an end to this process of alienation, to return to a person the qualities taken from him, to reduce religious beliefs to their earthly, real basis.

The scope of the concept of "classical German philosophy" includes the philosophical systems of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Feuerbach. Created in a relatively short historical period and forming a succession series, these systems have some common features. These include, firstly, the development of dialectics not only as a way of criticizing "pure reason" (Kant), but also as a universal method of cognition and an integral system of logical categories. Second, application; dialectical method to the historical process, attempts to formulate the laws of social development, however, on the basis of objective idealism. Thirdly, faith in historical progress, in the fruitfulness of scientific, including philosophical knowledge. And, finally, humanism, a deep respect for man, who acts as an end, not a means (Kant) and as a universal subject of philosophy (Feuerbach's anthropological materialism).
Classical German philosophy left a noticeable imprint on the subsequent course of development of world philosophical thought. It served as a theoretical source for the formation of the philosophical views of Marx and Engels, Herzen and Chernyshevsky. On its basis, influential philosophical schools of neo-Kantianism and neo-Hegelianism arose, the flourishing of which falls in the last third of the 19th and the first third of the 20th centuries.

List of used literature:

1. Kant I. Criticism of Pure Reason. 2nd ed. SPb., 1915.
2. Kant I. Prolegomena. M., 1934.
3. Kant I. Op. in 6 volumes, T.P.S.
4. Hegel. Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences. Ch.1,2,3. M., L., 1929
5. Hegel. Science of logic. Op. T. V. M., 1937
6. Feuerbach L. Op. T. 1. M., 1956
7. Feuerbach L. Selected Philosophy. works: In 2-vol. T. 1.,2. M., 1955
8. Philosophy: Ch 1, History of Philosophy. Ed. 2nd., M., Jurist., 1998