The problem of man in Western philosophy translations 1988. Introduction to philosophy - textbook. The problem of man in Western philosophy

Introduction _________________________________________________________ 2

General characteristics of modern Western philosophy ________________ 3

Man in the world and the world of man _______________________________________ 6

Between life and death ___________________________________________ 8

Analysis of the relationship "Man-technician" ________________________________ 8

Conclusion ______________________________________________________ 10

List of used literature _________________________________ 11

Introduction:

In the second half of the 19th century, the transition to non-classical philosophy was gradually being prepared, there was a departure from the classics, a change in principles, models, and paradigms of philosophizing took place. Classical philosophy, from the point of view of modern, is characterized as a kind of general orientation, a total tendency or stylistics of thinking, inherent in general, approximately three hundred years of development of Western thought. The thought structure of the classics was permeated with an optimistic sense of the presence of a natural order, rationally comprehensible in cognition. Classical philosophy believed that reason is the main and best tool for transforming human life. Knowledge and rational cognition were proclaimed to be the decisive force allowing hope for the solution of all the problems that a person would face.

The classical philosophical constructions did not satisfy many philosophers because, as they believed, the loss of a person in them. The specificity, diversity of subjective manifestations of a person, they believed, is not "grasped" by the methods of reason and science. In contrast to rationalism, non-classical philosophy began to develop, in which life (philosophy of life) and human existence (existentialism) began to be represented as the primary reality. The "destruction" of reason took place: instead of reason, the will (A. Schopenhauer, F. Nietzsche), instincts (psychoanalysis of Z. Freud), etc. came to the fore. In non-classical philosophy, the desire of the philosophical classics to present society as an objective entity, analogous to natural objects, was questioned. The new image of social reality, characteristic of the philosophy of the twentieth century, is associated with the concept of "intersubjectivity". It is designed to overcome the division into subject and object, characteristic of classical social philosophy. Intersubjectivity is based on the idea of \u200b\u200ba special kind of reality that develops in human relationships. In its origins, this reality is the interaction of "I" and "Other".

General characteristics of modern Western philosophy.

In general, Western philosophy of the second half of the XIX-XX centuries. represents a wide variety of different movements, schools, concepts, problems and methods, often opposing each other.

From the middle of the 19th century to the rationalist vector of classical modern European philosophy, through the efforts of A. Schopenhauer, S. Kierkegaard and F. Nietzsche, the phenomenon irrational - unconscious processes and emotional-volitional acts. Note that for a number of reasons discussed above, classical thought did not focus on the problems of will, intuition, spiritual enlightenment, instinct, will to live and will to power, that is, on those that did not obey the laws of logic and reason. This intellectual "gap" and tried to fill the philosophical opponents of classical rationalism.

The founder of European irrationalism is Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), who systematically set forth his views in the work "The World as Will and Representation" (1818). The world, according to Schopenhauer, can be discovered by man both as a will and as a representation. Will - this is the absolute beginning of all existence, a kind of cosmic and biological in nature force that creates the world and man. With the appearance of the latter, the world appears as a representation, as a human picture. Man is a slave to the will, since in everything he serves not himself, but the Absolute. Will makes a person live, no matter how meaningless his existence may be. It lures the individual with ghosts of happiness and temptations such as sexual pleasure. In fact, a person has only an indirect meaning for the will, since he serves as a means for its preservation. A person has only one way out - to extinguish the will to live in himself. This truth, according to Schopenhauer, was discovered by the ancient Indian sages, who expressed it in the Buddhist doctrine of nirvana.

Schopenhauer singled out two types of people who ceased to be slaves to the will: saints in earthly life and geniuses in art. According to Schopenhauer, genius is the ability to be in pure contemplation. A person immersed in such a state is no longer an individual, but a pure, weak-willed, timeless subject of cognition. The ordinary person is incapable of this kind of contemplation. He pays attention to objects due to the fact that they are related to his will. Therefore, he must be content with either unsatisfied desires, or, if they are satisfied, boredom. At the same time, Schopenhauer emphasized, each person has the three highest benefits of life - health, youth and freedom. While they are there, the individual is not aware of and does not value them, he is aware only in case of their loss, since these benefits, according to Schopenhauer, are only negative values.

Schopenhauer was the first in the 19th century. gave a philosophical basis for pessimism. However, his arguments about the meaninglessness of human existence did not seem convincing enough. European society continued to look ahead optimistically, the ideal of progress was not yet darkened by future upheavals. The glory of a true thinker-prophet will come to Schopenhauer much later.

One of the brightest representatives of European philosophical irrationalism was the German thinker Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). In his first major work, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (1872), the philosopher analyzes the culture of pre-Socratic Greece. Nietzsche claims that it was determined by the equality of two principles - Dionysian and Apollo. Dionysus is the god of wine and intoxication, the god of life itself in its physical sense. Apollo is the patron of the arts. The Apollo Cult is a cult of reason and harmony. According to Nietzsche, since the time of Socrates and Plato, European culture has followed the path of suppressing the Dionysian principle with hypertrophied Apollinism. This led her to a deep crisis. As for everyday life, it turned out to be strictly regulated, there was no more room for heroism and deed in it. Everywhere the triumph of mediocrity. Mediocre people have come up with mass religions - Christianity and socialism. These religions are religions of the offended and oppressed, religions of compassion. According to Nietzsche, Christian morality, like socialist morality, only weakens the personality principle in a person. Man, however, is the path to the Superman, the one who stands above the “flock,” above the crowd with its prejudice and hypocrisy. The latter needs a special morality - the courageous morality of a fighter and a warrior.

Nietzsche viewed life as " will to power". All living things, according to the philosopher, strive for power, the inequality of forces creates a natural differentiation. Life is a struggle of all against all, the strongest wins in it. Violence, according to Nietzsche, is a crystal clear manifestation of man's innate will to power.

The philosopher saw the main reason for the collapse of contemporary civilization in the dominance of the intellect, in its prevalence over the will. Where the intellect rises above the will, it is doomed to inevitable decay. That is why the mind must be subordinate to the will and work as an instrument of power.

Nietzsche tried to break the boundaries of purely theoretical knowledge and introduce practical life into it as a regulator. However, this regulator turned out to be nothing more than an instinctive activity directed by a blind irrational will to power.

Nietzsche was one of the first to say about the onset of nihilism, i.e. a time when the Christian God lost his significance for European culture. The thinker saw the purpose of the European man sober by nihilism to courageously triumph over the remnants of illusion.

The German prophet philosopher was certainly right in describing contemporary European culture as " a thin apple peel over a hot chaos".

At the beginning of the XX century. the teaching of the French philosopher, representative of intuitionism, gained great popularity in Europe Henri Bergson (1859-1941), whose goal was to overcome the one-sidedness of positivism and traditional rationalist metaphysics. The emphasis in it is placed on direct experience, with the help of which the absolute is supposedly comprehended. In metaphysics, according to Bergson, there are two central moments - true, concrete time (duration) and intuition comprehending it as a truly philosophical method. Duration is understood by the philosopher as the basis of all conscious mental processes. Unlike the abstract time of science, it presupposes the constant creation of new forms, the formation, the interpenetration of the past and the present, the unpredictability of future states, and freedom. Intuition as a way of comprehending duration, it opposes the intellectual methods of cognition, which are powerless before the phenomena of consciousness and life, for the latter are subordinate to practical and social needs and are able to give knowledge only of the relative, not the absolute.

Man in the world and the world of man.

Existentialism (from lat.exsistentia - existence), or

philosophy of existence , played and continues to play a significant role in the development of philosophy of the twentieth century. She is characterized by anti-scientistic

focus and focused on the problems associated with a person, the meaning of his being in the modern world.

However, the philosophy of existence does not represent some kind of monolithic, unified teaching. Each of its main representatives creates, as it were, his own teaching. Each of the existentialist philosophers concentrates attention on some real side of human relations and gives them a convincing socio-psychological analysis. However, paying attention to one of the characteristics of these relations, he leaves aside others, considering them to be derivatives of it, and at the same time creates rather complex philosophical constructions. The forerunner of existentialism as a philosophy of human existence is rightfully called the great Russian writer and thinker FM Dostoevsky. But a systematic ordering of the ideas of the philosophy of existence appears in German philosophers, first of all in the book "Being and Time" by M. Heidegger (1927), and in the three-volume "Philosophy" by K. Jaspers (1932), as well as by the French philosopher J.- P Sartre in his book Being and Nothingness (1943).

Existentialism is often subdivided into atheistic and religious. But this division is rather arbitrary, since all representatives of this direction focus on common existential problems for them, first of all, the meaning of human existence in the world, and not just a person in general, but each individual. Big influence the Danish thinker S. Kierkegaard, who dissolved a concrete person in an absolute idea, which was unfolding in history strictly logically and dialectically, had an impact on the existentialists.

Existentialists use phenomenological method Edmund Husserl (1859 - 1938), changing it in accordance with his concept. For

It was important for Husserl to find a reliable basis on the basis of which philosophy could be created as a rigorous science that would serve as the foundation for all other sciences and all human culture. The main thing in his method is the direct perception of the essence of a thing in the process of experiencing this thing. This method is also called the method intentional analysis ... Intention means the focus of consciousness on an object. Consciousness is always consciousness about something. If I am experiencing joy or sorrow, then this joy and sadness will be about some object or event. There are no pointless experiences. A disciple and follower of Husserl, from whom he moved further and further, Martin Heidegger (1889 - 1976) takes not the categories of objective science, but subjective categories as a means of describing and interpreting being - existentials - emotionally charged concepts. Heidegger's basic existential “being-in-the-world” says that human being and the world are inseparable from each other. Man is always in the world and the world is the world of man. The philosophy of existence tries to reveal the social and ethical sides of human existence. At the same time, German and French existentialism often emphasize the dark, pessimistic properties of being, its absurd nature. Anxiety, fear, guilt, suffering invariably accompany a person in his life. Heidegger distinguishes between empirical fear, concerning the everyday existence of man (Furht), and ontological fear, which lies at the core of his being (Andst). This is fear of nothing, death in its true sense, as well as fear due to the inability to find your personal meaning of being. The problems of life and death appear as the most important for a person.

Pessimistic motives characterizing human existence (

pessimistic existentialism ) prevail because the existentialists developed their teachings in the era of major historical

shocks after the First World War, as well as during and after the Second World War. In many ways, the senseless deaths of millions of people on the battlefields and other tragedies of the twentieth century, of course, affected this worldview. However, it should be noted that in the 60s, an optimistic version of existentialism appeared in England. One of the main representatives is the writer and philosopher Colin Wilson. He considers Heidegger's philosophy to be nihilistic and pessimistic and therefore has no future for its development. Wilson talks about a new understanding of freedom, which consists in the expansion and deepening of consciousness through various methods of psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and meditation. Wilson wrote The Outsider, a six-volume work. The outsider is the prototype of a new person with

developed intellect, in contact with the sphere of the subconscious as a source of cosmic energy. Wilson's hero is busy searching for and realizing the meaning of human existence. K. Wilson himself writes that he develops optimistic existentialism .

Another important topic in the philosophy of existence is the topic of human communication, intercommunication or intersubjectivity. Man in existentialism initially acts as a social being. In an alienated being, for example, in a crowd, in the masses, everyone acts as others do, following fashion, established communication patterns, customs, and habits. Existentialists do not just describe facts, but they clearly protest against mass, tabloid culture. Nevertheless, it is characteristic that, opposing mass culture, existentialism itself later became a fashion and an element of the same mass culture.

Between life and death .

One of the most important problems considered by existentialists is the problem of being between life and death.

Each person experienced the death of loved ones, many in the midst of life or at the end of it had to look death in the eyes; every person necessarily thinks about death.

A person's life can be filled with meaning, but it can suddenly lose this meaning for him.

It is worthy to die when death comes, to fight it when there is a chance to live, to help other people in their mortal struggle - this is a great skill that any person needs. Life itself teaches him. Human life and death, the meaning of life - these are eternal themes for philosophy.

This problem is becoming more and more urgent. The global historical situation today has become borderline: both the death of a person and his survival are possible. The most important step that humanity must take and is already taking is the realization that a qualitatively new situation has developed, bordering between human life and death. And in this regard, the task of philosophy is to help humanity overcome fear and survive. Unfortunately, the existentialists do not give an answer to this question how to do this.

Technician man .

According to many philosophers and thinkers of our time, the contradiction in the culture of the twentieth century stems from the contradiction between man and machine. In general, the past century has demonstrated to mankind that culture, as an integrating principle of social development, encompasses not only the sphere of spiritual, but, increasingly, material production.

All the qualities of a technogenic civilization, whose birth was noted a little more than three hundred years ago, were able to fully manifest themselves precisely in our century. At this time, civilizational processes were as dynamic as possible and were of decisive importance for culture. A catastrophic gap is growing every year between the traditional humanitarian culture of the European West and the new, so-called "scientific culture" derived from the scientific and technological progress of the 20th century. The enmity between the two cultures can lead to the death of humanity.

Most acutely, this conflict affected the cultural self-determination of an individual. Technogenic civilization could realize its potential only through the complete subordination of the forces of nature to the human mind. This form of interaction is inevitably associated with the widespread use of scientific and technical achievements that helped the contemporary of our century to feel his dominance over nature and at the same time deprived him of the opportunity to feel the joy of harmonious coexistence with it.

Machine production has cosmological significance. The kingdom of technology is a special form of being that has arisen quite recently and forced to reconsider the place and prospects of human existence in the world. The machine is a significant part of culture, in the XX century it is mastering gigantic territories and taking possession of masses of people, in contrast to past eras, where cultures covered a small space and a small number of people, being built on the principle of “selection of qualities”. In the twentieth century, everything becomes global, everything spreads to the entire human mass. The will to expand inevitably evokes broad strata of the population into historical life. This new form of organization of mass life destroys the beauty of the old culture, the old way of life and, depriving the cultural process of originality and individuality, forms a faceless pseudo-culture.

Conclusion:

The twentieth century forced many scientists to view culture as the opposite of civilization education. If civilization always strives for a steady movement forward, its path is climbing the ladder of progress, then culture carries out its development, rejecting the unidirectional linear movement forward. Culture does not use the previous spiritual heritage as a springboard for new achievements for the reason that it cannot give up in whole or in part from the cultural fund. On the contrary, involvement with various incarnations of tradition is of great importance in the cultural process. Culture can be built only on the basis of spiritual continuity, only taking into account the internal dialogue of cultural types.

Today, the development of the principle of the dialogue of cultures is a real opportunity to overcome the deepest contradictions of the spiritual crisis, to avoid the ecological deadlock and atomic night. A real example of the consolidation of different cultural worlds is the union formed by the end of the 20th century in Europe between European nations. The possibility of a similar union between vast cultural regions can only arise through dialogue that preserves cultural differences in all their richness and diversity and leads to mutual understanding and cultural contacts.

List of used literature:

Ortega y Gasset H. “Aesthetics. Philosophy of Culture "," Art ", M., 1991.

Aisina F. O., Andreeva I. A. "History of world culture", "Education", M., 1998.

Philosophy. Tutorial. Ed. Kokhanovsky V.P., R / Don., "Phoenix", 1998.

"Foundations of Modern Philosophy". Ed. "Doe". St. Petersburg, 1997

person .... Conclusion Russian philosophy combines both westernand oriental culture, and western - initially ...

Content:
Introduction ______________________ ______________________________ _____2
General characteristics of modern Western philosophy ________________ 3
Man in the world and the world of man ________________ _______________________6
Between life and death _____________________ ______________________8
Analysis of the relationship "Man-technology" _____________ ___________________8
Conclusion ____________________ ______________________________ ____10
List of used literature ____________________ _____________11

Introduction:

In the second half of the 19th century, the transition to non-classical philosophy was gradually being prepared, there was a departure from the classics, a change in principles, models, and paradigms of philosophizing took place. Classical philosophy, from the point of view of modern, is characterized as a kind of general orientation, a total tendency or stylistics of thinking, inherent in general, approximately three hundred years of development of Western thought. The thought structure of the classics was permeated with an optimistic sense of the presence of a natural order, rationally comprehensible in cognition. Classical philosophy believed that reason is the main and best tool for transforming human life. Knowledge and rational cognition were proclaimed to be the decisive force, allowing hope for the solution of all the problems that a person would face.

The classical philosophical constructions did not satisfy many philosophers because, as they believed, the loss of a person in them. The specificity, the variety of subjective manifestations of a person, they believed, is not "grasped" by the methods of reason and science. In contrast to rationalism, non-classical philosophy began to develop, in which life (philosophy of life) and human existence (existentialism) began to be represented as the primary reality. The "destruction" of reason took place: instead of reason, the will (A. Schopenhauer, F. Nietzsche), instincts (psychoanalysis of Z. Freud), etc. came to the fore. In non-classical philosophy, the desire of the philosophical classics to present society as an objective formation, analogous to natural objects, was questioned. The new image of social reality, characteristic of the philosophy of the twentieth century, is associated with the concept of "intersubjectivity". It is designed to overcome the division into subject and object, characteristic of classical social philosophy. Intersubjectivity is based on the idea of \u200b\u200ba special kind of reality that develops in human relationships. In its origins, this reality is the interaction of "I" and "Other".

General characteristics of modern Western philosophy.

Since the middle of the 20th century, the interest of philosophers has noticeably increased in the problems of interaction between society and nature, in understanding the results and ways of developing modern civilization.
In general, Western philosophy of the second half of the XIX-XX centuries. represents a wide variety of different movements, schools, concepts, problems and methods, often opposing each other.
From the middle of the 19th century to the rationalist vector of classical modern European philosophy through the efforts of A. Schopenhauer, S. Kierkegaard and F. Nietzsche, the phenomenon irrational - unconscious processes and emotional-volitional acts. Note that for a number of reasons discussed above, classical thought did not focus on the problems of will, intuition, spiritual enlightenment, instinct, will to live and will to power, that is, those that did not obey the laws of logic and reason. It was this intellectual "gap" that the philosophical opponents of classical rationalism tried to fill.
The founder of European irrationalism is Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), who systematically set forth his views in the work "The World as Will and Representation" (1818). The world, according to Schopenhauer, can be discovered by man both as a will and as a representation. Will - this is the absolute beginning of all existence, a kind of cosmic and biological in nature force that creates the world and man. With the appearance of the latter, the world appears as a representation, as a human picture. A person is a slave to the will, since in everything he serves not himself, but the Absolute. Will makes a person live, no matter how meaningless his existence may be. She lures the individual with ghosts of happiness and temptations such as sexual pleasure. In fact, a person has only an indirect meaning for the will, since he serves as a means for preserving it. A person has only one way out - to extinguish the will to live in himself. This truth, according to Schopenhauer, was discovered by the ancient Indian sages, who expressed it in the Buddhist doctrine of nirvana.
Schopenhauer distinguished two types of people who ceased to be slaves to the will: saints in earthly life and geniuses in art. According to Schopenhauer, genius is the ability to be in pure contemplation. A person immersed in such a state is no longer an individual, but a pure, weak-willed, timeless subject of cognition. The ordinary person is incapable of this kind of contemplation. He pays attention to objects due to the fact that they are related to his will. Therefore, he must be content with either unsatisfied desires, or, if they are satisfied, boredom. At the same time, Schopenhauer emphasized, each person has the three highest benefits of life - health, youth and freedom. While they are there, the individual is not aware of and does not value them, he is aware only in case of their loss, since these benefits, according to Schopenhauer, are only negative values.
Schopenhauer was the first in the 19th century. gave a philosophical basis for pessimism. However, his arguments about the meaninglessness of human existence did not seem convincing enough. European society continued to look forward optimistically, the ideal of progress was not yet overshadowed by future upheavals. The glory of a true thinker-prophet will come to Schopenhauer much later.
One of the brightest representatives of European philosophical irrationalism was the German thinker Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). In his first major work, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (1872), the philosopher analyzes the culture of pre-Socratic Greece. Nietzsche claims that it was determined by the equality of two principles - Dionysian and Apollo. Dionysus is the god of wine and intoxication, the god of life itself in its physical sense. Apollo is the patron of the arts. The Apollo Cult is a cult of reason and harmony. According to Nietzsche, starting from the time of Socrates and Plato, European culture followed the path of suppressing the Dionysian principle with hypertrophied Apollinism. This led her to a deep crisis. As for everyday life, it turned out to be strictly regulated, there was no more room in it for heroism and deed. Everywhere the triumph of mediocrity. Mediocre people have invented mass religions for themselves - Christianity and socialism. These religions are religions of the offended and oppressed, religions of compassion. According to Nietzsche, Christian morality, like socialist morality, only weakens the personality principle in a person. Man, however, is the path to the Superman, the one who stands above the “flock,” above the crowd with its prejudice and hypocrisy. The latter needs a special morality - the courageous morality of a fighter and a warrior.
Nietzsche viewed life as " will to power". All living things, according to the philosopher, strive for power, the inequality of forces creates a natural differentiation. Life is a struggle of all against all, the strongest wins in it. Violence, according to Nietzsche, is a crystal clear manifestation of man's innate will to power.
The philosopher saw the main reason for the collapse of contemporary civilization in the dominance of the intellect, in its prevalence over the will. Where the intellect rises above the will, it is doomed to inevitable decay. That is why the mind must be subordinate to the will and work as an instrument of power.
Nietzsche tried to break the boundaries of purely theoretical knowledge and introduce practical life into it as a regulator. However, this regulator turned out to be nothing more than an instinctive activity directed by a blind irrational will to power.
Nietzsche was one of the first to say about the onset of nihilism, i.e. the time when the Christian God lost his significance for European culture. The thinker saw the purpose of a European man sober by nihilism to courageously triumph over the remnants of illusion.
The German prophet philosopher was certainly right in describing contemporary European culture as " a thin apple peel over a hot chaos".
At the beginning of the XX century. the teaching of the French philosopher, representative of intuitionism, gained great popularity in Europe Henri Bergson (1859-1941), whose goal was to overcome the one-sidedness of positivism and traditional rationalist metaphysics. The emphasis in it is placed on direct experience, with the help of which the absolute is supposedly comprehended. In metaphysics, according to Bergson, there are two central moments - true, concrete time (duration) and intuition comprehending it as a truly philosophical method. Duration is understood by the philosopher as the basis of all conscious mental processes. Unlike the abstract time of science, it presupposes the constant creation of new forms, the formation, the interpenetration of the past and the present, the unpredictability of future states, and freedom. Intuition as a way of comprehending duration, it opposes the intellectual methods of cognition, which are powerless before the phenomena of consciousness and life, for the latter are subject to practical and social needs and are capable of giving knowledge only of the relative, not the absolute.

Man in the world and the world of man.

Existentialism (from lat.exsistentia - existence), or
philosophy of existence , played and continues to play a significant role in the development of philosophy of the twentieth century. She is characterized by anti-scientistic
focus and focused on the problems associated with a person, the meaning of his being in the modern world.

However, the philosophy of existence does not represent some kind of monolithic, unified doctrine. Each of its main representatives creates, as it were, his own teaching. Each of the existentialist philosophers concentrates attention on some real side of human relations and gives them a convincing socio-psychological analysis. However, paying attention to one of the characteristics of these relations, he leaves aside others, considering them to be derivatives of it, and at the same time creates rather complex philosophical constructions. The forerunner of existentialism as a philosophy of human existence is rightfully called the great Russian writer and thinker FM Dostoevsky. But a systematic ordering of the ideas of the philosophy of existence appears in German philosophers, first of all in the book "Being and Time" by M. Heidegger (1927), and in the three-volume "Philosophy" by K. Jaspers (1932), as well as in the French philosopher J.- P Sartre in his book Being and Nothingness (1943).

Existentialism is often subdivided into atheistic and religious. But this division is rather arbitrary, since all representatives of this direction focus on common existential problems for them, first of all, the meaning of human existence in the world, and not just a person in general, but each individual. The Danish thinker S. Kierkegaard had a great influence on the existentialists, who dissolved a specific person in an absolute idea, which is strictly logically and dialectically unfolding in history.

Existentialists use phenomenological method Edmund Husserl (1859 - 1938), changing it in accordance with his concept. For
It was important for Husserl to find a reliable basis on the basis of which philosophy could be created as a rigorous science that would serve as the foundation for all other sciences and all human culture. The main thing in his method is the direct perception of the essence of a thing in the process of experiencing this thing. This method is also called the method intentional analysis ... Intention means the focus of consciousness on an object. Consciousness is always consciousness about something. If I am experiencing joy or sadness, then this joy and sadness will be about some object or event. There are no pointless experiences. A disciple and follower of Husserl, from whom he moved further and further, Martin Heidegger (1889 - 1976) takes not the categories of objective science, but subjective categories as a means of describing and interpreting being - existentials - emotionally charged concepts. Heidegger's basic existential “being-in-the-world” says that human being and the world are inseparable from each other. Man is always in the world and the world is the world of man. The philosophy of existence tries to reveal the social and ethical sides of human existence. At the same time, German and French existentialism often emphasize the dark, pessimistic properties of being, its absurd nature. Anxiety, fear, guilt, suffering invariably accompany a person in his life. Heidegger distinguishes between empirical fear, concerning the everyday existence of man (Furht), and ontological fear, which lies at the core of his being (Andst). This is the fear of nothing, death in its true sense, as well as fear due to the inability to find your personal meaning of being. The problems of life and death appear as the most important for a person.

Pessimistic motives characterizing human existence (
pessimistic existentialism ) prevail because the existentialists developed their teachings in the era of major historical
shocks after the First World War, as well as during and after the Second World War. In many ways, the senseless deaths of millions of people on the battlefields and other tragedies of the twentieth century, of course, affected this worldview. However, it should be noted that in the 60s, an optimistic version of existentialism appeared in England. One of the main representatives is the writer and philosopher Colin Wilson. He considers Heidegger's philosophy to be nihilistic and pessimistic and therefore has no future for its development. Wilson talks about a new understanding of freedom, which consists in the expansion and deepening of consciousness through various methods of psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and meditation. Wilson wrote The Outsider, a six-volume work. The outsider is the prototype of a new person with
etc.................

Introduction _________________________________________________________ 2

General characteristics of modern Western philosophy ________________ 3

Man in the world and the world of man _______________________________________ 6

Between life and death ___________________________________________ 8

Analysis of the relationship "Man-technician" ________________________________ 8

Conclusion ______________________________________________________ 10

List of used literature _________________________________ 11

Introduction:

In the second half of the 19th century, the transition to non-classical philosophy was gradually being prepared, a departure from the classics took place, a change in principles, models, and paradigms of philosophizing took place. Classical philosophy, from the point of view of modern, is characterized as a kind of general orientation, a total tendency or stylistics of thinking, inherent in general, approximately three hundred years of development of Western thought. The thought structure of the classics was permeated with an optimistic sense of the presence of a natural order, rationally comprehensible in cognition. Classical philosophy believed that reason is the main and best tool for transforming human life. Knowledge and rational cognition were proclaimed to be the decisive force allowing hope for the solution of all the problems that a person would face.

Classical philosophical constructions did not satisfy many philosophers due to, as they believed, the loss of a person in them. The specificity, the variety of subjective manifestations of a person, they believed, is not "grasped" by the methods of reason and science. In contrast to rationalism, non-classical philosophy began to develop, in which life (philosophy of life) and human existence (existentialism) began to be represented as the primary reality. The "destruction" of reason took place: instead of reason, the will (A. Schopenhauer, F. Nietzsche), instincts (psychoanalysis of Z. Freud), etc. came to the fore. In non-classical philosophy, the desire of the philosophical classics to present society as an objective formation, analogous to natural objects, was questioned. The new image of social reality, characteristic of the philosophy of the twentieth century, is associated with the concept of "intersubjectivity". It is designed to overcome the division into subject and object, characteristic of classical social philosophy. Intersubjectivity is based on the idea of \u200b\u200ba special kind of reality that develops in human relationships. In its origins, this reality is the interaction of "I" and "Other".

General characteristics of modern Western philosophy.

In general, Western philosophy of the second half of the XIX-XX centuries. represents a wide variety of different movements, schools, concepts, problems and methods, often opposing each other.

From the middle of the 19th century to the rationalist vector of classical modern European philosophy through the efforts of A. Schopenhauer, S. Kierkegaard and F. Nietzsche, the phenomenon irrational - unconscious processes and emotional-volitional acts. Note that for a number of reasons discussed above, classical thought did not focus on the problems of will, intuition, spiritual enlightenment, instinct, will to live and will to power, that is, those that did not obey the laws of logic and reason. It was this intellectual "gap" that the philosophical opponents of classical rationalism tried to fill.

The founder of European irrationalism is Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), who systematically set forth his views in the work "The World as Will and Representation" (1818). The world, according to Schopenhauer, can be discovered by man both as a will and as a representation. Will - this is the absolute beginning of all existence, a kind of cosmic and biological in nature force that creates the world and man. With the appearance of the latter, the world arises as a representation, as a human picture. A person is a slave to the will, since in everything he serves not himself, but the Absolute. Will makes a person live, no matter how meaningless his existence may be. She lures the individual with ghosts of happiness and temptations such as sexual pleasure. In fact, a person has only an indirect meaning for the will, since he serves as a means for preserving it. A person has only one way out - to extinguish the will to live in himself. This truth, according to Schopenhauer, was discovered by the ancient Indian sages, who expressed it in the Buddhist doctrine of nirvana.

Schopenhauer identified two types of people who ceased to be slaves to the will: saints in earthly life and geniuses in art. According to Schopenhauer, genius is the ability to be in pure contemplation. A person immersed in such a state is no longer an individual, but a pure, weak-willed, timeless subject of cognition. The ordinary person is incapable of this kind of contemplation. He pays attention to objects due to the fact that they are related to his will. Therefore, he must be content with either unsatisfied desires, or, if they are satisfied, boredom. At the same time, Schopenhauer emphasized, each person has the three highest benefits of life - health, youth and freedom. While they are there, the individual is not aware of and does not value them, he is aware only in case of their loss, since these benefits, according to Schopenhauer, are only negative values.

One of the brightest representatives of European philosophical irrationalism was the German thinker Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). In his first major work, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (1872), the philosopher analyzes the culture of pre-Socratic Greece. Nietzsche argues that it was determined by the equality of two principles - Dionysian and Apollo. Dionysus is the god of wine and intoxication, the god of life itself in its physical sense. Apollo is the patron of the arts. The cult of Apollo is the cult of reason and harmony. According to Nietzsche, starting from the time of Socrates and Plato, European culture followed the path of suppressing the Dionysian principle with hypertrophied Apollinism. This led her to a deep crisis. As for everyday life, it turned out to be strictly regulated, there was no more room in it for heroism and deed. Everywhere the triumph of mediocrity. Mediocre people have invented mass religions for themselves - Christianity and socialism. These religions are religions of the offended and oppressed, religions of compassion. According to Nietzsche, Christian morality, like socialist morality, only weakens the personality principle in a person. Man, however, is the path to the Superman, the one who stands above the “flock,” above the crowd with its prejudice and hypocrisy. The latter needs a special morality - the courageous morality of a fighter and a warrior.

Nietzsche viewed life as " will to power ". All living things, according to the philosopher, strive for power, the inequality of forces creates a natural differentiation. Life is a struggle of all against all, the strongest wins in it. Violence, according to Nietzsche, is a crystal clear manifestation of man's innate will to power.

The German prophet philosopher was certainly right in describing contemporary European culture as " a thin apple peel over the incandescent chaos ".

At the beginning of the XX century. the teaching of the French philosopher, representative of intuitionism, gained great popularity in Europe Henri Bergson (1859-1941), whose goal was to overcome the one-sidedness of positivism and traditional rationalist metaphysics. The emphasis in it is placed on direct experience, with the help of which the absolute is supposedly comprehended. In metaphysics, according to Bergson, there are two central moments - true, concrete time (duration) and intuition comprehending it as a truly philosophical method. Duration is understood by the philosopher as the basis of all conscious mental processes. In contrast to the abstract time of science, it presupposes the constant creation of new forms, the formation, the interpenetration of the past and the present, the unpredictability of future states, and freedom. Intuition as a way of comprehending duration, it opposes the intellectual methods of cognition, which are powerless before the phenomena of consciousness and life, for the latter are subject to practical and social needs and are capable of giving knowledge only of the relative, not the absolute.

Man in the world and the world of man.

Existentialism (from lat.exsistentia - existence), or

philosophy of existence , played and continues to play a significant role in the development of philosophy of the twentieth century. She is characterized by anti-scientistic

orientation and focused on the problems associated with a person, the meaning of his being in the modern world.

§ 1 The main problems and features of modern Western philosophy... Modern Western philosophy is characterized by a huge number of schools, directions, concepts, therefore, it is advisable to analyze this period in the history of philosophy on the basis of the main problems being developed. Moreover, with all the abundance of philosophical schools and trends, many of them have common features, and this also allows for a certain classification. The merit of Western philosophy is that it raised a number of questions that were not properly resolved in the previous period. These problems include the following:

- the problem of human existence in the world

*existentialism K. Jaspers (1883-1969), M. Heidegger (1889 \u003d 1976), J.P. Sartre (1905-1980), A. Camus (1913-1960);

*pragmatism C. Pierce (1839-1914), W. James (1842-1910), J. Dewey (1859-1952);

*personalism H. W. Kerr (1857-1931), W. Stern (1871-1938), R. T. Fluelling (1871-1960), E. Sh. Brightman (1884-1953).

- the problem of language, the meaning of terms, the specifics of philosophy

*neopositivism R. Carnap (1891-1970)

*philosophy of linguistic analysis Wittgenstein (1889-1951);

- problems of science development

*critical rationalism K. Popper (1902-1994)

*post-positivismI. Lakatos (1922-1974), T. Kuhn (born 1922), P. Feyerabend (born 1924);

- history development problems

*theories of post-industrial society, welfare society D. Bell (born 1919), A. Toffler (born 1928), W. Rostow;

*theories of the cycle of locally closed civilizations O. Spengler (1880-1936), A. Toynbee (1889-1975);

- understanding problems

*hermeneutics of consciousness F. Schleiermacher ((1868-1934), V. Dilthey (1833-1911)

*phenomenology, hermeneutics of being E. Husserl (1859-1938), H. G. Gadamer.

All of the above areas are characterized by some features, which are worth mentioning separately.

First, the principles of classical philosophy are undergoing critical revision. The latter was rational in its orientation: it believed in the power of reason and science, considered reason an effective means of cognizing and transforming reality. Knowledge was assumed only as clear, evidence-based, logically harmonious, corresponding to the external world. The mind itself was considered in its supra-individual form, which sets a reasonable order for nature, which opens to the individual mind (Hegel). In the 20th century, philosophers drew attention to the fact that the composition of the spirit includes irrational moments (instincts, intuition, emotional and volitional acts). They cannot be reduced to intelligible, rational moments of our knowledge. Irrationalist trends in philosophy emerge: Freudianism, intuitionism, hermeneutics, Bergson's "philosophy of life".

Secondly, despite some irrationality of modern philosophical systems, they adapt, are guided by modern scientific knowledge. Even theological systems try to assimilate the data of modern science. So, the representative neo-Thomism (modern interpretation philosophical doctrine of Thomas Aquinas) P. Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), scientist, philosopher and theologian, attempted to synthesize scientific and religious knowledge to explain the laws of the evolution of the Universe and the appearance of man.

Thirdly, at the beginning - the middle of the 20th century, some philosophical trends (neopositivism, pragmatism) declare worldview problems as pseudoscientific, and philosophy as a meaningless form of knowledge. For the second half of the century, such an anti-philosophical orientation is no longer characteristic, numerous connections between philosophy and science are recognized and analyzed, but the status of philosophy as a discipline of worldview, and not scientific, has already been determined.

Fourth, modern philosophers are not satisfied with classical systems due to the loss of a specific person in them. In man, first of all, his essence was considered, and even that from the side of the universal (spirit, universal thinking); diverse subjective manifestations of a person remained outside the analysis. Non-classical modern philosophy takes life in its various manifestations (philosophy of life), the existence of an individual person (existentialism) as the basis. The method used by classical philosophy, namely, the reduction of every individual, individual to the general, is replaced by the consideration of a specific individual in specific life circumstances. The philosophy of entities is replaced by the philosophy of existence.

Fifth , in a number of philosophical systems that consider changes in society, theories appear that reject the idea of \u200b\u200bprogress. It is also characteristic that society tends to be presented as an integral system. As a rule, they deny the decisive role of economic relations in the development of society and recognize the influence of many factors in social processes. These are, for example, the “theory of local civilizations” by A. Toynbee, the idea of \u200b\u200bcultural supersystems by P. Sorokin. Particular attention is paid to the phenomena specific to our time - scientific and technological revolution, the unification of the life of various societies, the increasing role of various technologies in the life of people. This is the theory of a single industrial society, the theory of convergence.

§ 2. The main currents of modern Western philosophy... Let us dwell in more detail on the most essential problems of modern Western philosophy, first of all on the problems of science, scientific knowledge, methods of cognition. They, in the opinion of Western philosophers, should be reinterpreted, since rational-rational ways of knowing must be supplemented with irrational moments. This was initiated by the positivists E. Mach (1838) and R. Avenarius (1838-1916). This trend in philosophy was named second positivism.

The main point from which Mach and Avenarius start is the separation of the subject and the object of research. The research subject exists outside of me, but the research object? What is he like? It's obvious that cognitive activities subject, means of observation affect the image of the investigated object of nature. We can even say that we see only what our means of observation and cognition allow us to see (this idea in Kant was expressed in the separation of "things in themselves" and "things for us"). What, then, are scientific concepts in essence? It can be assumed that they are nothing more than symbols for describing our sensory experience, organizing and ordering our knowledge. Then the content of the concept is a complex of sensations, "Marked" by them. There are elements of truth in such arguments of the Machians, and there are also some productive moments. For example, the content of knowledge was associated with experience, practice. From this I started pragmatism.

Pragmatism became most widespread in the 20s of our century. The most prominent representatives of this trend are I. Pearce, W. James and D. Dewey. According to Peirce, the concept of an object is achieved by considering the practical results obtained in interactions with this object. Conversely, our beliefs (knowledge) are the rules for our actions. Then, according to W. James, to find out the meaning of any statement means to determine the mode of action, behavior that causes this statement. The meaning of the concept of "gravity" is revealed in the direct acts of "pulling" us to the Earth.

What then is meant by reality? The reality I can judge about is experience, any content of consciousness, a "stream of consciousness." Experience is not given to us initially, it changes depending on our goals. Then all objects of cognition are formed by our cognitive efforts in the course of solving life problems. And the functions of knowledge are to overcome doubts before action, to choose the means to achieve the goal, to solve the “problematic situation”.

James generally believes that the truth of our knowledge is determined by its usefulness for our behavior. It is true that which serves the success of the action, which is useful, which gives an effective result. Truth is the performance of an idea. But it is obvious that not only the truths of science "work" in this sense. The idea of \u200b\u200bGod must also be recognized as true. The thought of the existence of a higher power helps humanity to realize the highest ideals of morality, goodness and love, organizes, to some extent, the coexistence of people in society.

In the light of the above, the tasks of philosophy must also be revised. It should not “contemplate” and comprehend some of the first beginnings of being, it should become a method for solving empirically fixed life problems that arise in a continuously changing world. Dewey believes that philosophy arose not from surprise at the world, but from social conflicts and stress.

The Dewey position is also called instrumentalism. He saw the tasks of philosophy in such an organization of social life, which would improve people's lives. Science, reason should help her in this. Scientific ideas and theories act as intellectual tools for understanding and effectively overcoming various life problems. Those that are effective, successful, lead to the set goals, are true. Moreover, the choice of theories should not be subjective (depend on the desires of the subject), it should correspond to the nature of the problem - the means are determined by the goal.

Of course, there are some logical strains in the concept of pragmatism: practice from the criterion of truth turns into the content of truth; the specificity of science is lost, its difference from other spiritual formations in culture, for example, from religion. But the influence of pragmatism on politics (Dewey was a remarkable political thinker), on pedagogy and psychology is indisputable.

In another way, the status of philosophy and science decides analytical philosophy... This direction is represented by a large number of schools (logical positivism or neopositivism, philosophy of linguistic analysis, post-positivism), but all of them are united by a special interpretation of the subject and tasks of philosophy, the idea of \u200b\u200bcreating a "scientific" philosophy in the likeness of natural science. The ideal of a scientifically oriented and scientifically organized philosophy was formed under the impression of the tremendous successes of science of the 20th century, especially mathematics and physics.

One of the founders of neopositivism, Bertrand Russell, is sure that reliable knowledge about the world is given to us directly, primarily in sensory data. Knowledge is expressed in language, so it is logical to analyze language structures... Ludwig Wittgenstein, founder of the philosophy of linguistic analysis, offers an unconventional understanding of language in Philosophical Investigations. Common sense considers that the word corresponds to the object to which it points. For example, the phrase "my hand" corresponds to an object - a hand as a part of my body. But Wittgenstein shows that the correspondence of a word to the designated object is not always obvious. For example, a paralyzed person may call a caregiver “do-it-yourself”. According to Wittgenstein, the meaning of a word is determined by its use... That is why the same word receives different meanings in its use by children and adults, scientists and non-scientists. You probably know the youth, professional slang, there are territorial dialects. Wittgenstein believes that language is more of a form play activities, a form of life. The rules of the game are not set initially, they are formed and assimilated within a certain community of people. The meaning of words is constructed in the process of life, in a language game. Philosophy, however, must reveal these rules of the game, clarify the ways of using words, remove linguistic nonsense. The object of philosophical analysis is natural language. Based on the above, we can say that Wittgenstein proposed new way philosophizing and even defined the nature of Western philosophy. But what about the fate of philosophy itself?

The world of facts and events is described by a set of scientific proposals. The meaning of sentences is facts. All sentences are generalizations of some elementary sentences that can be correlated directly with facts. If such a correlation is impossible (for example, mystical knowledge), then this is not knowledge at all. Philosophy, unlike science, consists of such proposals that cannot be correlated with facts, therefore worldview problems in general are pseudo-problems. How can such concepts as "absolute spirit", "pure mind", "matter" be correlated with experimental data? Hence, philosophical propositions are neither true nor false: they are meaningless. And the task of philosophy is not to give information about the world, but to clarify our thoughts with the help of logic. Philosophy is not a system of knowledge, but some kind of activity. Neopositivists deny the importance of philosophy as a teaching about the first principles of being. From their point of view, all currently known philosophical values \u200b\u200bshould be re-evaluated and a “testable philosophy” should be built.

To clarify the nature of scientific knowledge and the status of philosophical knowledge, neopositivists divide all sentences into analytical and synthetic ... Analytical proposal - this is such a sentence, the truth of which is determined by its own content. “There are three angles in a triangle”, “the corner of a square is a straight line”, “bodies are extended”. Indeed, the three angles follow from the definition of a triangle, and so does the length of the body. But the sentence "this tutorial will help me get acquainted with some philosophical problems" is synthetic... It is empirical and unnecessary. The truth of such a proposal will be tested in practice: if you read it, you really met (maybe a negative result). The positions of philosophy are neither analytical nor synthetic. "Being determines consciousness." The concept of consciousness does not follow from the concept of being, and in experience I do not deal with pure being.

Neopositivists set the task of "learning" philosophy. If earlier in philosophy there were statements that were not verified by practice, now all the statements of philosophy must be checked for truth. Philosophical statements that do not directly touch upon experience are verified by reducing them to the simplest, "atomic" sentences and comparing the latter with experimental conditions. Is it impossible to do this for philosophical knowledge? Hence, philosophical knowledge extrascientific, and he is left with the functions of developing beliefs (which brings it closer to art and science).

Division of judgments into analytical and synthetic, expulsion of philosophy from the field theoretical knowledgeis, of course, a logical extreme. It is necessary to take into account the coherence of all provisions within the framework of a theory. And if a theory is experimentally confirmed, then the philosophical assumptions on which it is based are automatically confirmed. In addition, the speech in such an empirical test is more about the correctness of knowledge, and not about its truth. "The sun rises and sets" is confirmed by experience, but is not true. Finally, not all knowledge can be expressed in language.

But neopositivists demand direct experimental verification of not only philosophical truths, but also scientific ones. They introduce verification principle: each sentence of the language of science must correspond to a set of "basic" "protocol" sentences, which must be directly verified by practice. A more specific task has been determined - to reduce the provisions of science to "protocol" proposals. And difficulties immediately arise: the generalizing provisions of science cannot be reduced to such proposals, since this is the specificity of theoretical knowledge. The theory does extralogical a step beyond experience. Even the seemingly understandable: “all people are mortal” cannot be verified in practice (do all of the possible people already exist now?).

Post-positivism introduces and works out softer than strictly verifiable criteria for the selection of knowledge, in particular scientific theories. K. Popper and his followers believe that knowledge cannot be absolutely true at all. What we thought was true turns out to be a delusion over time. A much more important and interesting problem is not the test of knowledge, but its growth and development. Popper suggests falsification principleas a criterion for the selection of scientific knowledge: all scientific proposals must be in such a form that they can be refuted. Until the moment when a refuting fact is not found, the theory is considered scientific, and even true. But such it will be until the moment of refutation.

Some basic provisions

T1 are refuted, the entire T1 is rejected T2….

In fact, Popper assumes that in science there is simply no true knowledge, it is all clearly expressed hypothetical, and, rather, these are just plausible statements with a limited time of existence.

Popper reflected some regularities in the growth of scientific knowledge, but the main idea of \u200b\u200bthe scientist's refusal from the theory, in respect of which the refuting material was obtained, is not confirmed by scientific practice. For example, now a large number of facts have been obtained that contradict Newton's theory, but it is still widely used by scientists. Taking this into account, Popper's follower I. Lakatos offers a more flexible model for the development of scientific knowledge, which makes it possible to explain this situation in science. Lakatos believes that in science not one theory competes with another, but systems of interrelated theories united by similar topics and research methodology. These are the so-called research programs... The research program includes a "hard core": some assumptions and assumptions; and "protective belt": some hypotheses that should explain anomalous facts and can be destroyed without affecting the research program. The transition from one program to another occurs if the “hard core” of the old one is destroyed. Thus, the "hard core" of Newton's classical mechanics includes three laws of mechanics and the law of universal gravitation. On their basis, new knowledge in physics is still being developed.

The Lakatos development model assumes the accumulation of an array of knowledge in science, at least within the framework of research programs. American philosopher Paul Feyerabend is sure that the cumulation of knowledge in science does not occur, since various theories are incommensurable with each other. Each of the theories uses its own categorical apparatus, presupposes its own methods of studying the object, even the same observation data within the framework of different theories receive a different theoretical interpretation. Moreover, the more various forms of knowledge exist (even contradicting each other, even absurd ones), the better for knowledge itself. The task of the scientist is to put forward as many of the most unexpected theories as possible and to propagandize them. But the next logical move will be the recognition of any form of knowledge, whether science, religion or magic, valuable for obtaining truth. In such conditions, it is difficult even to distinguish one form from another.

American philosopher Thomas Kuhn, also critically revising Popper's scheme of the development of science, focuses not on the system of knowledge, but on the activities of the scientist within the scientific community. He introduces the concept paradigmscharacteristic of this stage of the development of science. A paradigm is a certain pattern of scientists' activity that dominates in the scientific community, determining their behavior and providing an increase in knowledge. Some values \u200b\u200bare included scientific research, technical and logical techniques, basic assumptions and criteria for assessing the knowledge gained. The paradigm appears to be broader than a research program or theory. It is clear that as long as this particular paradigm dominates in science, scientists receive knowledge that does not contradict it, and it grows. This is the so-called "normal science" period. But over time, on the basis of facts unexplained from the point of view of the prevailing paradigm (anomalous facts), a new model is formed scientific activities, which destroys it, the period of the scientific revolution begins. The new paradigm replaces the old one. Kuhn assumed that paradigms are incommensurable with each other, there is no logical continuity between them. The merit of his model is that the role of social and psychological factors in scientific knowledge.

Structuralism(K. Levi-Strauss, J. Lacan, M. Foucault), which mainly spread in France, raised the question of the main methods of research in science. The structure is understood as the order, the stable way of organizing the system, the ratio of its parts. Structuralists insist on the importance of applying structural research methods in science. To do this, it is necessary to identify a certain structure - a set of relations that is preserved during various transformations (as an example, a stable system of connections between people, a social structure). You can then identify structural patterns for multiple objects. With this approach, it is not the "natural" properties of objects that enter into relations that become important, but system-acquired... The system takes precedence over the element. For example, society is a set of relationships between people, and a person acquires certain qualities by entering into these relationships. I am Russian not because I was born as such, but because I am involved in a system of relations typical for Russia. As a rule, structuralism works on some sign structure, and behind the connection of elements it tries to discover some unconscious deep structures. Thus, it was supposed to eliminate subjectivism in cognition. For example, culture as a set of sign systems (language, science, art, mythology, religion, mass culture, fashion, advertising ...) should be analyzed from the side of deep structures (mentality, paradigm, linguistic patterns, etc.). Then you can discover hidden patterns that a person obeys. This is how unmotivated murders or universal human schemes and laws of the activity of the intellect can be explained. Structuralism has achieved great results in the study of historical communities, political and moral structures, but it should be noted that this is still an exaggeration and the transfer of one of the specific methods of cognition to all other spheres. Well, for example, if structuralism is transferred to the area of \u200b\u200bunderstanding the problems of modern society, then paradoxical conclusions can be drawn. First, the question of human freedom is removed, since his activity is predetermined by systemic connections of a more general nature. Secondly, if social structures give system-forming properties to a person, if a person is viewed simply as an element, then the problem of a person is removed altogether. There is no longer a person - a free subject, all his characteristics are predetermined by more general structures: linguistic, cerebral, historical and cultural. That is why structuralism received the name "the concept of human death", and is clearly opposed to the currents of hermeneutics and existentialism.

Hermeneutics - a philosophical direction that explores the process of understanding. The main issue of this trend is the ability to understand the meaning of the recorded knowledge. Representatives of hermeneutics are F. Schleiermacher, V. Dilthey, H. Gadamer. In translation, hermeneutics is the art of interpreting texts. In the 20th century, hermeneutics turned into a methodology of historical and humanitarian sciences. The question of whether it is possible and how to understand the products of a past culture, a text in which the individuality of another person is fixed or the meaning of some sign structure (this can be science) is very interesting for people of the modern era. Let's pay attention to the Russian word "understand", which actually indicates the mechanism of understanding: "understand" - "have", or grasp the meaning, give a name. Modern hermeneutics believe that one can talk about understanding not only texts, but everything that is involved in human life. You can grasp the meaning of the stone if it acts as a symbol of any deed or game of a person.

Hermeneutics today can be conditionally divided into two directions: the hermeneutics of consciousness and the hermeneutics of being. The first deals with the psychological world of another person, and understanding is getting used to the state of mind of other people - the authors of books, technical devices, theatrical plays, musical works, empathy with their creative act. The hermeneutics of being has as its object the work, the experience of another person, understanding presupposes the re-creation of those conditions that led the person (author) to any result of his activity, the comprehension of the essence of the accomplished work.

The difference between the two directions can be seen on the example of the Moscow Kremlin. The hermeneutic of consciousness will be interested in the thoughts, opinions, experiences of the creators of this architectural monument. The hermeneutic of being will seek in him the embodiment of some national tradition, a symbol of the Russian people. Understanding the past in both cases presupposes, as it were, transferring oneself to this past. Hermeneutists believe that sometimes a person can be understood better than he understands himself. Probably, we all faced such situations when the world of another person became our world, when his awareness of his problems seemed to us insufficient, we saw more than he did.

In any case, understanding presupposes dialogue, and dialogue can begin if there is already something in common between people. Understanding is based on pre-understanding, preliminary understanding. It is given by an already existing tradition, or a common semantic and cultural field. For example, viewing and evaluating a certain feature film by people of different nationalities may differ significantly due to the difference in pre-understanding. Pre-understanding can be corrected, but you cannot get rid of it. Based on pre-understanding, the understander analyzes the parts, then the structure as a whole, and finally full understanding arises. The interpreter understands the meaning more than the author put it, since the meaning of some creation has already expanded due to new connections in a wider structure. For example, Dostoevsky's character Rodion Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment is more tragic for us in the light of historical events associated with real attempts in Germany and Russia to embody the idea of \u200b\u200ba superman in society. Complete understanding enriches our pre-understanding. This is how hermeneutic circle: to understand the whole it is necessary to understand its individual parts, but to understand the individual parts it is already necessary to have an idea of \u200b\u200bthe meaning of the whole. In conclusion, it must be said that hermeneutics as a philosophical direction has significant undisclosed potential.

§ 3. The problem of man... The main problems of philosophy: what does a person live for? What is the meaning of his life? What is its place in the world? Attitude towards death? - are solved in a new way in the 20th century. Existential philosophy offers its own solution. Existentialism(Heidegger, Jaspers, Sartre, Marcel, Camus) tries to reflect the diverse aspects of a person's being in the world. Existence in translation means existence. The essence of this concept can be conveyed in the following provisions:

1) The starting point for a person is his own existence. He fixes it not with the help of thought, in concepts, but emotionally.

2) In man, existence precedes essence. In the world of things, essence precedes existence, i.e. before the moment of creation (beginning of existence), a thing already exists as this thing, as a thing with this essence in the mind of the creator - man. In a person, everything is the other way around: first, a person begins to exist, and then he makes himself, acquires his essence.

3) Thus, there is no predetermined human nature, and no one, except the person himself, can turn him into a person. The person himself is responsible for not becoming a person (read, a free person). A person is a kind of project that lives, self-unfolds, self-actualizes (or does not self-actualize), and this process of making oneself a person lasts all life. Moreover, this “sculpting” a person out of himself is not just a person's desire, it is his destiny, difficult and truly human. The meaning of human existence, according to the existentialists, is precisely the realization of oneself as a free individual. A person is not born free; a person must become free.

4) A person forms not only his essence, he creates a special human being, built with the help of man around the man himself. New ideas about the world (ontology) appear, in which the characteristics of being, consciousness, activity, and historical epoch are intertwined. The being of the world is the being of the world for a person through the prism human consciousness... We know only the world we have mastered, it exists insofar as I attach meaning and meaning to it. The question of the independent existence of nature is not interesting for existentialism. The connection scheme of concepts is as follows: being existence (human existence) being-in-the-world (these are Heidegger's provisions). Moreover, being-in-the-world is emotionally experienced, burdened with concern about the world, "care" about it. How true are the existentialists' reasoning on the existence of the world? Partly true. Each specific individual sees the world in his own way, identifies characteristics that are significant for himself. But this does not mean at all that the world as such does not exist. People are able to distinguish not only the properties that are significant for them, but also the properties of things in themselves. Otherwise, we together, each of us, simply could not exist in this world.

5) Empirically, we fix another fact that a person lives in a hostile world filled with suffering. Human alienation is not a momentary state, it exists in all historical epochs and gives rise to tragic attitudes in people. Philosophy, according to existentialists, is obliged to help a desperate person overcome his mood and seek his true "I" in the most absurd situations.

6) It is clear that it is difficult to reveal the essence of a person in a situation of alienation. But this is possible in the conditions of the so-called. "Borderline situation", "borderline person", which are understood as existence on the verge of life and death. In his real existence, when a person is “thrown” into this world due to circumstances beyond his control, he is constantly in the face of the future, in the face of death. A person experiences fear, anxiety, expectation, and he is forced to make a choice: to be or not to be in this world, where it is scary, and boring, and absurd (Camus). Being between life and death, being a desperate individual, is undoubtedly an interesting question. With such a being, existing in such a world, a person must self-determine in relation to his fate. In this regard, Camus draws an analogy with the fate of the mythical hero Sisyphus - a man who did not want to part with earthly life and deceived the god of the underworld, Hades. The gods punished him with eternal stay on earth and eternal work: he had to roll a stone up the mountain, but at the top the stone fell down again. It would seem that Sisyphus should prefer death to such an eternal existence, but the spirit of the mythical hero is not broken. Camus considers Sisyphus happy. Through the seeming senselessness of his actions, their deeper meaning appears: Sisyphus reveals his strengths and capabilities, he strengthens his will, he learns to solve the tasks set by fate and the gods. The struggle for the top fills his heart, and this compensates for the absurdity of his situation. So a person, it would seem, eternally carries out the activity imposed on him, bears the burden of life, but, solving absurd problems, he becomes a person, forms his inner world. Constructive activity and creativity more than compensate for the shortcomings of an alienated society. Therefore, a person is afraid to part with this life. He is unhappy when, having discovered the inauthenticity of his existence, he does nothing to turn it into genuine.

7) Nevertheless, the question of death inevitably arises before a person. Existentialists also view human existence as a movement towards death. And in some borderline situations, when a person seriously thinks about the meaning and content of life, he may consciously choose death. Therefore, A. Camus considers the issue of suicide to be the main philosophical issue. The humanistic task of philosophy, in his opinion, is to help a person on the verge of suicide to choose life after all. The somewhat pessimistic sentiments of the existentialists reflect the sentiments of people existing in crisis societies. The loss of established landmarks (and on this basis the need to choose new ones), uncertainty in the future (even a self-chosen one) - all this sometimes makes one prefer death to life. But it is more humane to orient a person towards life and opposition to death. A person must die with dignity when death is inevitable, fight it when there is a chance to survive and help other people in the fight against death.

8) Genuine human existence, the essence of a person is understood as freedom, free personal choice. A person has a sea of \u200b\u200bpossibilities, and he is forced to choose some of them. Carrying out his choice, a person realizes himself as a free being. Choice situations are not always associated with rational arguments; people often act contrary to calculations and circumstances. They seek support for their choice in themselves, in their individual essence (in their existence, as an existentialist would say).

9) Some existentialists understand freedom as complete independence from circumstances, even as ignoring objective laws, which is very reminiscent of unlimited arbitrariness. But the understanding of freedom is more widespread, rather, in the form of a mental negation of objective conditions, and not as some real action. A slave can be free if he relates to his position in a certain way. Mental disagreement is already an act of liberation. As Camus said: "I rebel, therefore, I exist." Therefore, in order to become free, it is not necessary to change the world, you need to change your attitude towards it.

10) But free choice is necessarily associated with responsibility for your thoughts and actions. This responsibility is not only to other people, but, above all, to oneself. And this is the burden of responsibility that falls on a person's shoulders as a heavy burden.

11) It is already clear that the alienated existence of man differs from his true existence, from his essence. Alienated, Inauthentic existence means that a person is "not free", he is included in everyday life, and society dominates him. When a person is not free, then he is not responsible for his actions. Other people impose on him motives for action, means of achieving goals and a form of behavior. Existentialists have a sharply negative attitude towards society, towards "We". "I" is killed by "We".

12) Existentialism openly proclaims uniqueness of human existence, human integrity. To be free is to be yourself, not to be guided by others, to preserve your individuality. Society, on the other hand, limits the individual, it imposes impersonal, average standards, and one must get rid of them. Such a rejection of standard norms has nothing to do with immorality (with violation of moral norms), on the contrary, only under this condition will a person be able to realize the potentialities inherent in him. Note that existentialism became widespread in the 40s, when the struggle against fascism, an ideology imposed on many members of society, was very relevant. It was against such a society that the French existentialists protested. From a philosophical point of view, being with other people, of course, somehow standardizes us, but what my individual “I” is, I know only in communication with other people, my “I” can only develop in interaction with others. It is impossible to deny the influence of society on the individual.

§ 4. Problems of social development are also in the focus of attention of modern thinkers. The peculiarity is that they focus on such phenomena that are especially noticeable and specific for our time. These are, first of all, the consequences of the scientific and technological revolution and the negative impact of human activity on their environment. The ideas about the development of society are diverse, but they can be classified using the following scheme.

Development of society

Directional non-directional(circulation)

Theories of the cycle of locally closed civilizations (O. Spengler, A. Toynbee).

progress regression

factors determining development

scientism antiscientism

Until the beginning of the 20th century, ideas about history in Western European philosophy are clearly progressive in nature. Each subsequent stage in the development of society is seen as more organized and complex. The reasons for such attitudes are, firstly, a really obvious and long period of progression of society, secondly, insufficient study of the civilizations preceding our society, and thirdly, the dominance in philosophy and culture in general of the idea of \u200b\u200bdevelopment in the form of progress. As the negative consequences of diverse and large-scale human activities are identified, regressist ideas are formed. Each subsequent social state was viewed as a decline in comparison with the previous one. Regressism in explaining social development was already characteristic of J.J. Rousseau, but he associated it, first of all, with the decline of human morality.

The scientific and technological revolution that unfolded in the second half of the 20th century gave rise to the hope that with its help the problems and contradictions of modern life will be solved. This mindset is called "Scientism"(From english word science - science). Scientists argue that with the help of scientific achievements and the latest technology, all the global problems of mankind can be solved. Scientism underlies the concepts of post-industrial, information society.

At first, the impact of scientific and technological advances on public life and social development was thought of as powerful and immediate. This is the concept of a "welfare society" (W.W. Rostow, D. Bell). It was assumed that due to the development of science and technology, new technologies would emerge, the management of social processes would become truly scientific, the volume of scientific information and the educational level of the entire population would increase manifold, competent scientific and technical specialists would come to power, not being distracted by often conflicting value systems. Such views are also called “ technocratism"(Translated as the power of technology). Essentially, it is progressive sentiments about the development of society, combined with scientism.

In the 70s and 80s, technocratic thinking faced aggravated problems and contradictions in society against the background of unprecedented scientific and technological achievements. The ground has arisen for the emergence of scientistic pessimism, which does not see in science and technology a panacea for all diseases of society, but does not see any other factors of development as powerful as these.

The more optimistic wing of scientism, recognizing the presence and even the development of social conflicts, suggests that a new round in scientific and technological development will make it possible to solve them. These are the concepts of “post-industrial society”, “information society”. A post-industrial society is characterized by: a developed sphere of production of services, the criterion of social progress is the growth of production of goods, the goal is to achieve a developed "consumer society", mental workers prevail, the development and use of science and technology is controlled, but they are also the main factors in the development of society.

The version of the information society as a developed stage of the post-industrial society is based on the recognition of information as the fundamental principle of scientific and technical activity. In such a society, information is quickly accumulated, intelligently, versatile and reused, largely determines the sphere of production and management. In the developed countries of the West and the East (USA, Japan, Western European countries), phenomena characteristic of information societies can already be observed: multichannel media, automated and computerized services, health care and education, automatic monitoring of the state environment and much more. Still, it would not be entirely correct to make the development of society directly dependent on the accumulation and use of information. The reaction to scientism and technocratism was anti-scientism.

Antiscientism noted that science and technology can be brought to perfection, but the consequence of this can be suppression of human individuality. As the driving forces behind the development of society, representatives of this trend note non-scientific factors, such as the preservation of traditions, the religiosity of the population, national values \u200b\u200band others. In the 20th century, talented works in the genre of dystopia were created: R. Bradbury "Fahrenheit 451", J. Orwell "1984", E. Zamyatin "We", O. Huxley "Brave New World". They depict a future dominated by technology, a totalitarian state, suppressed by freedom and lack of individuality. Perfect technical devices control the behavior and consciousness of people, society through the system of education and training practically constructs the necessary type of person, depriving him of independent thinking. Dystopias are a way to prevent the consequences of the omnipotence of science and technology.

Along with the concepts of the directed development of society in the 20th century, theories of historical cycles arose. In this sense, the work of O. Spengler "The Decline of Europe" is interesting. In it, the author quite rightly declares that culture as a whole has a relative unity. There is no single common human culture, there are different types of cultures: Egyptian, Chinese, Western European, Maya, Russian-Siberian (8 in total). Each of the cultures has its own life span, "internal life cycle". After the death of culture, it is reborn into a "civilization". The latter is materialized intelligence, mechanical reproduction of social technologies. For Western civilization, culture begins to turn into civilization in the 19th century. Then technicism begins to dominate.

Developing the thoughts of Spengler, A. Toynbee presents the entire socio-historical development of mankind as a cycle of local civilizations. World history then is a collection of histories of peculiar, closed civilizations. Each civilization goes through some stages: emergence growth breakdown decomposition death. Repetition in social development is possible in the performance of various local civilizations. That is why there can be foresight of major events in history.

The driving force behind the development of civilization is the "creative minority" possessing a "vital impulse" and captivating the "inert majority". This "creative minority" must successfully capture and respond to "historical challenges". In this sense, it is a public authority. If this is not the case, then the struggle of the majority in combination with external enemies can lead to the death of civilization. According to Toynbee, the criterion for the progressive development of mankind as a whole is its spiritual improvement, which, first of all, manifests itself in the development of religious beliefs.

Conclusion

Two and a half thousand years of meaningful development of mankind have given a solid philosophical experience. The course of history was accompanied by a change in the styles and forms of philosophizing, each historical era - antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, New time, modernity - has its own face. But no direction of philosophy can claim to be absolute truth, absolute understanding of beauty or goodness.

The history of philosophy acts as a successive system of various schools and trends. A person can become a philosopher when he brings together all the best in them, and then, synthesizing this, in a new way, he will more deeply understand himself and others, the world as a whole. Philosophy does not pretend to be priorities over science, art, religion - everyone has their own tasks. But it remains the prerogative of philosophy to positively combine the experience accumulated at different stages and in different ways of mastering the world.

To form your opinion on the above issues, we invited you to get acquainted with the main ideas of Western and Eastern philosophy, with the main stages in their development. The concise nature of the presentation of the material could only arouse further interest in the study of philosophy, which would be satisfied with more serious independent searches. The result of mastering the philosophical heritage will be an integral worldview system that helps a person in theoretical and practical activities.

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Similar information.

The Human Problem in Western Philosophy

Introduction _________________________________________________________ 2

Man in the world and the world of man _______________________________________ 6

Analysis of the relationship "Man-technician" ________________________________ 8

Conclusion ______________________________________________________ 10

philosophy, from the point of view of the modern, is characterized as a kind of general orientation, a total tendency or style of thinking, characteristic in general of about three hundred years of development of Western thought. The thought structure of the classics was permeated with an optimistic sense of the presence of a natural order, rationally comprehensible in cognition. Classical philosophy believed that reason is the main and best tool for transforming human life. Knowledge and rational cognition were proclaimed to be the decisive force allowing hope for the solution of all the problems that a person would face.

"grasped" by the methods of reason, science. In contrast to rationalism, non-classical philosophy began to develop, in which life (philosophy of life) and human existence (existentialism) began to be represented as the primary reality. There was a "destruction" of reason: instead of reason, the will (A. Schopenhauer, F. Nietzsche), instincts (psychoanalysis of Z. Freud), etc., came to the fore instead of reason. In non-classical philosophy, the desire of the philosophical classics to present society as an objective formation was questioned. similar to natural objects. The new image of social reality, characteristic of the philosophy of the twentieth century, is associated with the concept of "intersubjectivity". It is designed to overcome the division into subject and object, characteristic of classical social philosophy. Intersubjectivity is based on the idea of \u200b\u200ba special kind of reality that develops in human relationships. In its origins, this reality is the interaction of "I" and "Other".

General characteristics of modern Western philosophy.

irrational instinct, will to live and will to power, that is, those who did not obey the laws of logic and reason. It was this intellectual "gap" that the philosophical opponents of classical rationalism tried to fill.

The founder of European irrationalism is (1788-1860), who systematically set forth his views in the work "The World as Will and Representation" (1818). The world, according to Schopenhauer, can be discovered by man both as a will and as a representation. Will - this is the absolute beginning of all existence, a kind of cosmic and biological in nature force that creates the world and man. With the appearance of the latter, the world arises as a representation, as a human picture. A person is a slave to the will, since in everything he serves not himself, but the Absolute. Will makes a person live, no matter how meaningless his existence may be. She lures the individual with ghosts of happiness and temptations such as sexual pleasure. In fact, a person has only an indirect meaning for the will, since he serves as a means for preserving it. A person has only one way out - to extinguish the will to live in himself. This truth, according to Schopenhauer, was discovered by the ancient Indian sages, who expressed it in the Buddhist doctrine of nirvana.

One of the brightest representatives of European philosophical irrationalism was the German thinker Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). In his first major work, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (1872), the philosopher analyzes the culture of pre-Socratic Greece. Nietzsche argues that it was determined by the equality of two principles - Dionysian and Apollo. Dionysus is the god of wine and intoxication, the god of life itself in its physical sense. Apollo is the patron of the arts. The cult of Apollo is the cult of reason and harmony. According to Nietzsche, starting from the time of Socrates and Plato, European culture followed the path of suppressing the Dionysian principle with hypertrophied Apollinism. This led her to a deep crisis. As for everyday life, it turned out to be strictly regulated, there was no more room in it for heroism and deed. Everywhere the triumph of mediocrity. Mediocre people have invented mass religions for themselves - Christianity and socialism. These religions are religions of the offended and oppressed, religions of compassion. According to Nietzsche, Christian morality, like socialist morality, only weakens the personality principle in a person. Man, however, is the path to the Superman, the one who stands above the “flock,” above the crowd with its prejudice and hypocrisy. The latter needs a special morality - the courageous morality of a fighter and a warrior.

Nietzsche viewed life as " ". All living things, according to the philosopher, strive for power, the inequality of forces creates a natural differentiation. Life is a struggle of all against all, the strongest wins in it. Violence, according to Nietzsche, is a crystal clear manifestation of man's innate will to power.

Nietzsche was one of the first to speak about the onset of nihilism, that is, the time when the Christian God lost his significance for European culture. The thinker saw the purpose of a European man sober by nihilism to courageously triumph over the remnants of illusion.

"a thin apple peel over the incandescent chaos ".

At the beginning of the XX century. the teaching of the French philosopher, representative of intuitionism, gained great popularity in Europe Henri Bergson (1859-1941), whose goal was to overcome the one-sidedness of positivism and traditional rationalist metaphysics. The emphasis in it is placed on direct experience, with the help of which the absolute is supposedly comprehended. In metaphysics, according to Bergson, there are two central moments - true, concrete time (duration) and intuition comprehending it as a truly philosophical method. Duration is understood by the philosopher as the basis of all conscious mental processes. In contrast to the abstract time of science, it presupposes the constant creation of new forms, the formation, the interpenetration of the past and the present, the unpredictability of future states, and freedom. Intuition as a way of comprehending duration, it opposes the intellectual methods of cognition, which are powerless before the phenomena of consciousness and life, for the latter are subject to practical and social needs and are capable of giving knowledge only of the relative, not the absolute.

Man in the world and the world of man.

Existentialism

philosophy of existence , played and continues to play a significant role in the development of philosophy of the twentieth century. She is characterized by anti-scientistic

orientation and focused on the problems associated with a person, the meaning of his being in the modern world.

However, the philosophy of existence does not represent some kind of monolithic, unified doctrine. Each of its main representatives creates, as it were, his own teaching. Each of the existentialist philosophers concentrates attention on some real side of human relations and gives them a convincing socio-psychological analysis. However, paying attention to one of the characteristics of these relations, he leaves aside others, considering them to be derivatives of it, and at the same time creates rather complex philosophical constructions. The forerunner of existentialism as a philosophy of human existence is rightfully called the great Russian writer and thinker FM Dostoevsky. But the systematic ordering of the ideas of the philosophy of existence appears in German philosophers, first of all in the book "Being and Time" by M. Heidegger (1927), and in the three-volume "Philosophy" by K. Jaspers (1932), as well as in the French philosopher J. - P Sartre in his book Being and Nothingness (1943).

Existentialism is often subdivided into atheistic and religious. But this division is rather arbitrary, since all representatives of this direction focus on common existential problems for them, first of all, the meaning of human existence in the world, and not just a person in general, but each individual. The Danish thinker S. Kierkegaard had a great influence on the existentialists, who dissolved a specific person in an absolute idea, which is strictly logically and dialectically unfolding in history.

phenomenological method Edmund Husserl (1859 - 1938), changing it in accordance with his concept. For

It was important for Husserl to find a reliable basis on the basis of which philosophy could be created as a rigorous science that would serve as the foundation for all other sciences and all human culture. The main thing in his method is the direct perception of the essence of a thing in the process of experiencing this thing. This method is also called the method ... Intention means the focus of consciousness on an object. Consciousness is always consciousness about something. If I am experiencing joy or sadness, then this joy and sadness will be about some object or event. There are no pointless experiences. A disciple and follower of Husserl, from whom he moved further and further, Martin Heidegger (1889 - 1976) takes not the categories of objective science, but subjective categories as a means of describing and interpreting being - existentials - emotionally charged concepts. Heidegger's basic existential “being-in-the-world” says that human being and the world are inseparable from each other. Man is always in the world and the world is the world of man. The philosophy of existence tries to reveal the social and ethical sides of human existence. At the same time, German and French existentialism often emphasize the dark, pessimistic properties of being, its absurd nature. Anxiety, fear, guilt, suffering invariably accompany a person in his life. Heidegger distinguishes between empirical fear, concerning the everyday existence of man (Furht), and ontological fear, which lies at the core of his being (Andst). This is the fear of nothing, death in its true sense, as well as fear due to the inability to find your personal meaning of being. The problems of life and death appear as the most important for a person.

pessimistic existentialism ) prevail because the existentialists developed their teachings in the era of major historical

Another important topic in the philosophy of existence is the topic of human communication, mutual communication or intersubjectivity. Man in existentialism initially acts as a social being. In an alienated being, for example, in a crowd, in the masses, everyone acts as others do, following fashion, established communication patterns, customs, and habits. Existentialists do not just describe facts, but they explicitly protest against mass, tabloid culture. Nevertheless, it is characteristic that, opposing mass culture, existentialism itself later became a fashion and an element of the same mass culture.

Between life and death .

One of the most important problems considered by existentialists is the problem of being between life and death.

Each person experienced the death of loved ones, many in the midst of life or at the end of it had to look death in the eyes; every person necessarily thinks about death.

A person's life can be filled with meaning, but it can suddenly lose this meaning for him.

This problem is becoming more and more urgent. The global historical situation today has become borderline: both the death of a person and his survival are possible. The most important step that humanity must take and is already taking is the realization that a qualitatively new situation has emerged, bordering between human life and death. And in this regard, the task of philosophy is to help humanity overcome fear and survive. Unfortunately, the existentialists do not give an answer to this question how to do this.

Technician man .

A significant part of culture, in the XX century, is developing gigantic territories and taking possession of the masses of people, in contrast to past eras, where cultures covered a small space and a small number of people, building on the principle of "selection of qualities." In the twentieth century, everything becomes global, everything spreads to the entire human mass. The will to expand inevitably evokes broad strata of the population into historical life. This new form of organization of mass life destroys the beauty of the old culture, the old way of life and, depriving the cultural process of originality and individuality, forms a faceless pseudo-culture.

The twentieth century forced many scientists to view culture as the opposite of civilization education. If civilization always strives for a steady movement forward, its path is climbing the ladder of progress, then culture carries out its development, rejecting the unidirectional linear movement forward. Culture does not use the previous spiritual heritage as a springboard for new achievements, for the reason that it cannot give up in whole or in part from the cultural fund. On the contrary, involvement with various incarnations of tradition is of great importance in the cultural process. Culture can be built only on the basis of spiritual continuity, only taking into account the internal dialogue of cultural types.

cultural worlds is an alliance formed by the end of the 20th century in Europe between European nations. The possibility of a similar union between huge cultural regions can only arise if a dialogue that preserves cultural differences in all their richness and diversity and leads to mutual understanding and cultural contacts.

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