As originally meant "philosophy": definition, history and interesting facts

The statements of ancient philosophers are as relevant today as they were two and a half millennia ago. Does this mean that the world has changed little since then, or are the truths that they pondered truly eternal? If an ordinary philistine asks himself a question, but as I understand philosophy, then most likely this word will be associated with the ancient wise men, it is so much older.

In fact, philosophers have lived in all ages, there are also in the 21st century, since the main questions, for example, about the essence of being and the meaning of life, the answers have not been found so far.

Meaning of the thought process

If you turn to the very origins, then the term philosophy is based on two Greek words: phileo, which means to love, and sophia - wisdom. Thus, philosophy was initially understood as a love of wisdom, but not of one individual person, but of a whole community:

• At the heart of this science is thinking, not studying something, not believing and not feeling.
• Philosophy is not the result of one person's awareness of the truth, it is a collective reflection on it. In ancient times the thinker advanced his theory, the reality of which he had to substantiate with facts, and then others started to think about it, sometimes it was in disputes that truth was born.

It is necessary to go deeper into history to understand how philosophy was initially understood. It was perceived as a tool for achieving the truth about the essence of things. In ancient times, it was difficult for people to encompass all phenomena and interrelations in the world around them. Watching a particular fragment of it, for example, behind the tides of the sea, they expanded their consciousness, filling it with the experience of studying nature.

It was the thought process that made man rational, since unconditioned reflex behavior was inherent in him from the very beginning. For example, people do not argue to not burn themselves hot, but instinctively withdraw their hand from the fire.

When there is a delay in the reaction between action and sensation, filled with thinking about how safer or more beneficial it is to act, this is a manifestation of the philosophical approach.

Philosophers of antiquity

The first prephilosophical period was a special section of culture, as it was associated with practical everyday life. For example, Confucius taught how to behave in society according to the rule: do not do to others the way you would not want to be treated with you. Similar sages lived not only in ancient China, but also in India.

These people can not yet be called philosophers, they were thinkers. Studying their statements, one can form an idea, as originally understood by the philosophy of people of that time.

The first real philosopher is Thales, who lived in 625 - 545 BC. E. His saying that everything is the essence of water is the work of the mind alone, since he did not rely on other sources, for example, mythology.

Reflecting on this subject, he based exclusively on his observations of the nature of things and tried to explain the properties by studying them. The fact that the primary cause of all living and inanimate nature is water, he came to a conclusion, exploring its various states: solid, gaseous and liquid.

The disciples and followers of Thales continued to develop the ideas of their teacher, thereby laying the foundation of the first philosophical school, without which there would be no Heraclitus who believed that one can not enter the same river twice, nor Pythagoras, who found a numerical pattern among a large number of things and phenomena.

The brightest representatives of the philosophical schools of antiquity are Socrates and Plato, Aristotle and Epicurus, Seneca. They lived BC, but they were looking for answers to the same questions that worried about modern people.

Philosophers of the Middle Ages

The main teaching of the Middle Ages was the dogmas of the church, therefore the main work of the philosophers of this period was the search for evidence of the existence of the Creator.

Since philosophy was originally understood as the love of wisdom and the search for truth through the processes of reflection and observation of nature, then at the time of the complete decline of scientific thought, it almost degenerated.

During the long and gloomy period of the Middle Ages, all the most famous thinkers were either associated with the church or subordinated to its will, which is unacceptable, since philosophy is a special form of cognition of the world with the help of thought free from bindings to any dogmas.

The most famous thinkers of the time:

• Augustine Aurelius, who wrote a treatise "On the City of God," whose ideas were embodied in the creation of the Catholic Church.

• Thomas Aquinas adhered to the ideas of Aristotle, who managed to adapt to the dogmas of dogma.

The main spheres of philosophical disputes of that time were the primacy of matter or idea, and the direction - theocentrism.

Renaissance

The main achievement of this period is the gradual liberation of people's minds from the influence of religion, which, in turn, led to the flourishing of the sciences, arts, literature and invention.

What was originally understood by the word philosophy, in the Renaissance, was called the return of the ancient ideas of humanism, based on anthropocentrism. Man becomes the center of the universe, and his study comes to the fore. For example:

• Pico della Mirandola argued that the Creator created man free to choose what he should be: to fall to a low level of existence or to rise at the will of his soul.
• Erasmus of Rotterdam believed that everything around him is God, and he denied the external control of all that exists.

• Giordano Bruno was executed at the stake for the concept of the multiplicity of worlds.

Thanks to the thinkers of this time, one can see how originally philosophy was understood in antiquity and how its traits changed when the teachings of the ancient sages were revised and revised.

New time

The seventeenth century gave the world a whole galaxy of great philosophers, which greatly influenced the development of human thinking in the future.

If philosophy was originally understood as a love of wisdom, then now the knowledge and their practical applications come first. Thinkers of this time divided into 2 camps: empiricists and rationalists. To the first belonged:

• Francis Bacon, who claimed that knowledge-power, enabled people to free themselves from prejudices and religious dogmas by studying the world from the particular to the general.
• Thomas Hobbes believed that knowledge must be based on experience, namely, contact with nature and its perception through the senses.
• John Locke was of the opinion that there is nothing in the human mind that is not originally in his feelings. It is through sensations that a person learns the world, reflects on its nature and makes scientific conclusions.

Empiricists were able to rely on feelings in the knowledge of the world and the influence of circumstances on human life.

Rationalists

Unlike empiricists, the rationalists held a different opinion, for example:

• Rene Descartes expressed a fundamental thesis: I think, then I exist. This meant that only from the fact that a person is a thinking being, the fact of his existence is determined. A significant role in the development of human consciousness was played by his statement about how we think, so is our life. He was the first to talk about the duality of the world, which is based not only on the material, but also on the spiritual principle, which constitutes a single whole.

• Benedict Spinoza believed that at the core of all that exists is a certain substance from which all visible and invisible worlds appeared. They put forward a theory of the picture of reality, in which the Creator was identified with nature.
• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz created the doctrine of monads, according to which each person has a unique monad - soul.

On the example of the theories of the scientists of the 17th century, one can see how philosophy was initially understood (love of wisdom of the ancients) and to what level of human thought it came out.

Philosophers of the 18th

The Age of Enlightenment gave rise to a new kind of philosophical schools, where the main intellectual battle was fought between such concepts as materialism and idealism. Among the great thinkers of the time are especially well known:

• Voltaire, who was opposed to absolute monarchical power and the influence of the church on the minds of people. He was a freethinker who claimed that there was no God.
• Jean Jacques Rousseau was a critic of progress and civilization, which led to the emergence of states, which led to the separation of people by social status.
• Denis Diderot represented the materialists. He believed that the whole world is a moving matter, within which atoms move.
• Immanuel Kant, in contrast, was an idealist. So he put forward and proved the theory that the world has a beginning, and the opposite to it, that the world has no beginning. It is famous precisely for its antinomies - philosophical contradictions.

If philosophy was initially understood as a love of wisdom and freedom of thought, then the enlighteners of the 18th century brought it beyond the limits of the human mind to the understanding of matter.

Philosophical directions of the 19th century

The most striking philosophical direction, influencing the subsequent development of this science, was positivism, which was founded by Auguste Comte. He believed that at the heart of everything should lie only positive knowledge, based on experimentally obtained experience.

If philosophy is usually described as a theory based on a person's knowledge of the world through meditation on it, Comte stated that there is no longer any need for it, since everything must be based on facts, supported by facts. His theories became the impetus for the development of new trends in philosophy as early as the 20th century.

Philosophy in the 20th century

Karl Popper first divided the concepts of science and philosophy. If in previous centuries there have been disputes between thinkers about this, Popper has finally proved that philosophy is not a science, but a special kind of culture that has its own way of knowing the world.

Today, this culture has penetrated into all spheres. There is a philosophy of art, religion, history, politics, economics, etc.

Genesis and the picture of the world

In the 20th century, the concept of a picture of the world appeared and became popular. To know how to understand philosophy, you should be aware of what it is:

• Initially, it was the knowledge of being through reflections on various phenomena occurring in the world, and about everything that fills it.
• The next stage is the study of man and his place in reality.
• The next stage is the development of scientific knowledge, the separation of philosophy into a separate discipline.

No science by virtue of the fact that it studies only part of the surrounding world, can not imagine it as a whole. It is accessible only to philosophy, so it is not a science, but it can take from it the best knowledge and on them make up a picture of the world.

The essence of man

At all times, philosophers were interested in the meaning of human life and its purpose. Today, these categories are known more than the wise men of antiquity, but no one has yet received definitive answers. Therefore, philosophy continues to study man as a microcosm in the whole universe organism.