What is "society"? It seems that everyone has heard expressions of this type: “What a pleasant company this has gathered”, “the cream of society”, “a society for the protection of consumer rights”, “a society of beer lovers” - you never know what other options are available when the term “society” seems quite appropriate! At the same time, philosophy can hardly be interested in a society of beer lovers or a society for the protection of consumer rights, because it studies the most general concepts. Philosophy studies society as a whole. Let's figure out what interests philosophers in society, what problems of its development they pay attention to. In everyday life, the concept of “society” is used extremely widely. Therefore, various interpretations are possible:

• 1) a group of people who create an organization based on common interests,
• 2) a group of people, not formally organized, but having common interests and values ​​(having a common “lifestyle”, as Western sociologists put it),

IN scientific literature There are many definitions of society. The simplest of them sounds like this: society is a collection of people and their relationships. In Western literature, society most often refers to a geographical entity connected together legal system and having a certain “national face” (Smelser N.D. Sociology Sociological Research. 1991. N2. P. 115). Another definition is possible: “Society is, first of all, such a special kind of relationship between people that gives them the opportunity to rise together above their purely animal, biological nature and create a truly human supra-biological reality” (Essays on Social Philosophy. M., 1994. P.48).

In philosophical, as well as in social and humanitarian literature, as well as in periodicals and the media, a distinction is often made between the so-called “open society” and “ closed society". What do they mean?

The term "open society", introduced into the dictionary of modern social philosophy by the famous English philosopher K.R. Popper, serves as a kind of password for liberal democratic and social democratic reformism and is used as a synonym for democracy, which had developed by the middle of the twentieth century in countries Western Europe and North America.

According to Popper himself, the term “open society” was borrowed from A. Bergson’s book “Two Sources of Morality and Religion” (1932), widely known in the 30s. But K.R. Popper did not limit himself to just using this term: he devoted one of his most significant and world-famous works to the study of “open” and “closed” societies - “The Open Society and Its Enemies.”

A “closed society,” according to A. Bergson, is a society whose members in their life behavior are guided by moral norms imposed by the social community. They are transmitted by customs and traditions in the form of strict regulations or taboos. (The great British politician W. Churchill described the similar situation in the USSR as follows: “You have nothing allowed. And what is allowed is ordered”). Such a society can be compared to living organisms functioning according to immutable biological laws. Morality as a way of spiritual and practical organization of society can be considered in it by analogy with the system of primary biological impulses of the body. Religious consciousness performs a similar function.

The “closedness” of society gives rise to mechanisms for the formation and transmission of all kinds of fears, and hence a hostile or wary attitude towards everything emanating from another human society, from a foreign culture, religion. At certain stages of the evolution of society, such mechanisms work to unite people and contribute to the success of their collective efforts. Under certain natural and sociocultural circumstances, a “closed society” can exist for quite a long time without undergoing noticeable changes.

The “openness” of a society is a multidimensional characteristic. This is an opportunity for active interaction between different political, ideological, religious positions, their constructive dialogue and complementarity. It also includes economic freedom, the absence of psychological and legal barriers between forms of ownership and management, the openness of cultures (in which the values ​​of each of them are affirmed not in opposition, but in comparison with each other), freedom of dissemination and receipt of any information under reasonable conditions. restrictions established by law. And perhaps the most important thing is the openness of people towards each other, the sovereignty of the individual, which is positively realized only in a free society.

Modern philosophy views society as a collection of various parts and elements that are closely related to each other and constantly interact, therefore society exists as a separate integral organism, as a single system.

The idea of ​​society as a single organism is the result of long-term development philosophical thought. Its beginnings appear in ancient Greece, where society was understood as an ordered whole, consisting of individual parts. The reason for the appearance of such views is simple: “part” and “whole” are one of the most developed categories of the dialectical way of thinking, the foundations of which were laid in Ancient Greece. However, the concept of “system” is of more recent origin and is more difficult to understand.

By “element” or “part” we usually mean the smallest particle of a system. It is clear that the parts of the system are very diverse, multi-quality and have a hierarchical structure. In other words, each system, as a rule, has subsystems, also consisting of certain parts.

Systematic problem public life developed by O. Comte, G. Spencer, K. Marx, E. Durkheim, M. Weber, P.A. Sorokin, many other philosophers and sociologists of the 19th - 20th centuries. There are usually two main aspects to the concept of society: the structure of society and the change in society.

Modern social philosophy identifies four main characteristics of society: initiative, self-organization, self-development, self-sufficiency. Self-activity, self-organization and self-development to one degree or another are inherent not only in society as a whole, but also in individual elements. But only society as a whole can be self-sufficient. None of the systems included in it are self-sufficient. Only the totality of all types of activities, all social groups and institutions taken together (family, education, economics, politics, etc.) create society as a whole as a self-sufficient system.

Society is always in a state of mobility, changing in one way or another. But, at the same time, it needs to ensure a certain level of stability. Otherwise, as dialectics proves, exceeding the measure leads to significant qualitative changes, which for such a complex hierarchical system as society can be associated with big problems and threaten his very existence.

The basic structure of society is formed by the main types social activities, which are constantly reproduced in it. This:

• * material activities,
• * spiritual activity,
• * regulatory or management activities,
• * service activities, which are sometimes called humanitarian or social in the narrow sense.

In addition to this approach, there is another, more traditional for Russian philosophical thought, highlighting the following spheres of society:

• * material and economic,
• * social,
• * political,
• * spiritual

It is not difficult to notice that these approaches are in many ways similar, however, the first is more justified for the current level of development of socio-philosophical thought, which is why we will dwell on it in more detail. Although it should be noted that both approaches have a right to exist, because to some extent they complement each other.

In any human activity, four constituent elements can be distinguished. These are people themselves, physical things, symbols and connections between them.

There are several definitions of activity. Let us use those of them that are given in the textbook “Social Philosophy”: activity is a specifically human form of active relationship to the surrounding world, the content of which is purposeful comprehension, change and transformation of this world.

In any activity, the active side, without which no activity simply can exist, is a person. Human activity can be directed at another person (for example, in a “teacher-student” situation), at things (tools of labor, instruments of spiritual production) and symbols or signs, which are oral and written language, information on various media (floppy disks, laser disks, magnetic tapes), books, paintings, artificial languages, etc.

However, a person in himself, like things without a person, do not yet form a social action. For such an action, connections between them are necessary. The elements of human activity: people themselves, physical things, symbols and connections between them - must be constantly reproduced. This gives rise to the main types of social activity.

The four named elements of the simplest social action correspond to the above four types (or spheres) of social activity. Moreover, each sphere has its own specificity, as a result of which it plays its own, unique role in the life of society. We will go into more detail on this in the following sections of the tutorial.

Society as philosophical problem. The problem of social philosophy is the question of what society actually is, what significance it has in human life, what its true essence is and what it obliges us to.” Society is a collection of people and their relationships.

In Western literature, society most often refers to a geographical entity that is bound together by a legal system and has a certain “national face.” Society at any stage of its development is a multifaceted entity, a complex interweaving of many different connections and relationships between people. The life of society is not limited to the lives of the people who make it up. Society creates material and spiritual values ​​that cannot be created by individual people: technology, institutions, language, science, philosophy, art, morality, law, politics, etc. The complex and contradictory tangle of human relationships, actions and their results is what makes up society as a whole.

Modern philosophy views society as a collection of various parts and elements that are closely related to each other and constantly interact, therefore society exists as a separate integral organism, as a single system.

It is clear that the parts of the system are very diverse, multi-quality and have a hierarchical structure. In other words, each system, as a rule, has subsystems, also consisting of certain parts. Modern social philosophy identifies four main characteristics of society: initiative, self-organization, self-development, self-sufficiency. Self-activity, self-organization and self-development to one degree or another are inherent not only in society as a whole, but also in individual elements.

But only society as a whole can be self-sufficient. None of the systems included in it are self-sufficient. Only the totality of all types of activities, all social groups and institutions taken together (family, education, economics, politics, etc.) create society as a whole as a self-sufficient system. The structure of human society is formed by: production and the production, economic, social relations formed on its basis, including class, national, family relations; political relations and, finally, the spiritual sphere of society - science, philosophy, art, morality, religion, etc. The basic structure of society is formed by the main types of social activity (subsystems of social life), which are constantly reproduced in it.

These are: material activity, spiritual activity, regulatory or managerial activity, service activity, which is sometimes called humanitarian or social in the narrow sense.

In addition to this approach, there is another, more traditional for domestic philosophical thought, highlighting the following spheres of society: material-economic, social, political, spiritual. It is not difficult to notice that these approaches are in many ways similar, but the first is for the current level of social development philosophical thought is more justified, which is why we will dwell on it in more detail. Although it should be noted that both approaches have a right to exist, because to some extent they complement each other.

In any human activity, four constituent elements can be distinguished. Activity is a specifically human form of active relationship to the surrounding world, the content of which is the purposeful understanding, change and transformation of this world. In any activity, the active side, without which no activity simply can exist, is a person.

Human activity can be directed at another person (for example, in a “teacher-student” situation), at things (tools of labor, instruments of spiritual production) and symbols or signs, which are oral and written speech, information on various media (floppy disks, laser disks, magnetic tapes), books, paintings, artificial languages, etc. However, a person in himself, like things without a person, do not yet form a social action. For such an action, connections between them are necessary. The elements of human activity: people themselves, physical things, symbols and connections between them - must be constantly reproduced.

This gives rise to the main types of social activity. The four named elements of the simplest social action correspond to the above four types (or spheres) of social activity. Moreover, each sphere has its own specificity, as a result of which it plays its own, only its inherent role in the life of society. We will dwell on this in more detail in the following sections of the essay. 2.

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Philosophy of society. Specifics of social laws

Society is a kind of single whole, consisting of people connected by varying degrees of community, which allows us to call them togetherness, and this.. The word “community” is also used in relation to animals: some of them.. This is precisely what In this sense, we will consider this concept and the reality it reflects. 1. Society as a philosophical...

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Social philosophy studies society (in Latin. societies- society, socialis– public). Making sense of the world, people, and then the philosophers of antiquity, tried to understand and explain not only the world as a whole, nature, but also society. Analyzing social phenomena, they were interested in the questions of why and when society arises, whether there is some higher meaning in development of society, whether there are certain laws of social development or is this the result of the spontaneous activity of rulers, individuals, leaders.

Philosophical teachings about society developed historically and how component philosophies have come a long way of development. Yes, already in ancient world Many provisions of social philosophy were formulated. The philosophers of Ancient Greece, on the question of the origin of the state, adhered to religious and mythological views, according to which a cycle prevails in society, as in nature. Already Democritus defined the history of mankind as a natural process, and the transition of people from a pre-social state to a social one as a “need”, which put them on the path of acquiring knowledge, providing means of subsistence, etc. Plato in his dialogues “Laws” and “State”, building a theory ideal state, believed that it is difficult for an individual to satisfy all his needs for food, housing, clothing, etc.

It is difficult for a person to survive alone - that is why a state arises, which is based on the initial inequality of people. By nature, every person, according to Plato, is imperfect, and in this earthly world only the state, as the highest form of unification of people, realizes the idea of ​​justice. Plato not only created the theory of the ideal state, but also tried more than once to implement this project. For Aristotle, a necessary prerequisite for the origin of the state was the desire of people to life together and political communication. According to his views, man is a political, public, social animal and carries within himself an instinctive desire for coexistence. True, Aristotle did not yet separate society from the state; he deduced the political nature of man from his nature, and not vice versa - the nature of man from his activity in society.

Most ancient philosophers were close to the idea that people’s actions are subject to the will of fate and the gods, that everything in human history repeats itself sooner or later, and the decisive factor in human behavior is the passions and will of leaders, heroes and politicians that are unchangeable by nature.

More than a thousand years of the Middle Ages in its views on society put forward fundamentally new views and ideas, based on the ideological principles of that time. Just as the social existence of Antiquity formulated the ideological paradigms of antiquity, so the Middle Ages developed new approaches to the problem of the origin of society. Already in the Middle Ages social world was defined as a being of a special kind, given by God, society was considered as the result of a contract between man and God, and God was the reason for the origin of the state. Both Augustine the Blessed, who stood at the origins of the formation of Christian methodology and theology, and Thomas Aquinas, the consummator of the Christian medieval tradition, considered the fall of Adam and Eve to be the beginning of human history. That is why the process of development of civilization was a long struggle between the “kingdom of grace” and the “kingdom of evil”, the acquisition by humanity of the lost unity with God. The Augustinian concept of the origin of human society dominated European philosophy until the end of the Middle Ages.

In contrast to Christian thinkers, the humanists of the Renaissance in social cognition sought to explain the historical process based on earthly conditions, namely, human nature, which was, to some extent, a revival of ancient ideas about the origin of society.

The era of New Time - a period of breaking down feudal relations and forming bourgeois relations - is looking for new answers to old questions in understanding social processes and phenomena. During this period, the tendency for philosophers to explain the origin of society based on nature, as well as the material conditions of life, is clearly evident. The rationalism of the New Age (Hobbes, Rousseau) is characterized by the idea that people, under the pressure of circumstances, are forced to transfer control over their actions to the state, i.e. voluntarily alienate or limit one's freedom. Thus, rejecting the religious concept of the origin of society, the concept of a social contract was formed, which explains the unification of people into society in a natural earthly way. Civil society is considered by philosophers as a collection of individuals and is known on the basis mechanical description object.

German philosopher of the 18th century. I.G. Herder views social development as a direct continuation of the history of nature. Therefore, in his opinion, the laws of social development are natural. He came up with the idea that in historical phenomena it is necessary to find the reasons that gave rise to these phenomena. Turning to human nature, Herder considered it inseparable from society, understanding it as a single organic whole. Outside of this whole, he believed, the individual is nothing. Herder is the author of the famous saying: “ Man is born for society”. Driving force He considered historical development to be living human forces, and the basic law of society was the interaction of human actions and natural conditions. For Herder, the search for a stimulus for social development, the meaning of human life, came down to the activities of people aimed at satisfying needs.

J.J. Rousseau, in his treatise “On the Social Contract,” substantiated the conclusion that private property is the cause of social inequality and the emergence of the state. A different view on the problem of social structure was expressed by Hegel, who rejected the “contractual concept” of Hobbes and Rousseau and singled out “civil society” - the sphere of economic, property, labor relations, which are at the same time the sphere of “the comprehensive interweaving of the dependence of all on all.” It was Hegel who laid the foundations of scientific typification historical process. History moves, according to Hegel, not automatically, but is composed of the actions of individual people, each of whom strives to realize their own interests. However, as a result of the activities of people pursuing their goals, something new arises in contrast to their original plans, which people in the process of their further existence must take into account as an objective prerequisite. Chance becomes a necessity in the process of social development of mankind.

Social philosophy of that time took a step forward thanks to the views of Hegel. He formulated the principle of historicism in social development. One of the main theses of his philosophy says: real people they make history, which has its own objective logic, the world spirit recognizes itself in history. Hegel identified three such historical stages and, accordingly, three types of society: eastern world, antiquity and the Germanic world.

INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY

Social philosophy studies society is the totality of human connections and relationships, which arises in the process of human life and determines the forms and methods of their social existence.

Social life is complex and not fully understood. Meanwhile, any society and each of us needs its knowledge. A person needs a clear picture of the world of social realities, an accessible system of social “coordinates” of human activity.

How to install them? The realities and forms of social life are studied by a combination of socio-economic and human sciences. Social philosophy analyzes the world invisible social realities, the study of which requires theoretical means and assessments. It cannot be said that public life has atomic weight, that people’s relations are 45% friendly and 55% selfish, that the degree of military tension in relations between the two countries has reached 90° C. - Concepts and values ​​of sociality, goodness, selfishness, altruism, cooperation or rivalries between people, norms of war and peace between countries arose in the course of philosophical and theoretical understanding of a huge number of situations and relationships that make up the fabric of social life.

The process of clarifying and “densifying” the content of social abstractions continues. The times of socio-political “alchemy”, approximation and improvisation when solving problems of public life are becoming a thing of the past. Human society is gaining global status and the uncontrollable consequences of human activities threaten innumerable global disasters. Therefore, society needs scientific forecasts, recommendations and generalizations. Without them, the human road to the future is impossible. We also need a socio-philosophical culture adequate to acute situations.

Social philosophy formulates nodal ideas of this culture. In changing circumstances she decides eternal issues of human existence at the theoretical and axiological level. What is society as a system of social connections and relationships? What elements and structures does it include? What forces preserve the social system, and what processes transform it? What is the structure of human history, and what fate awaits humanity? - In other words, how and why do people interact with each other, change the ways of this interaction, create and transform forms of joint social life?

In search of answers to these questions, let us dwell on the main thing, focus on main concepts and problems of social philosophy.

SOCIETY AS A PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM

Social life for any of us is the most important and familiar dimension of our human existence. A person “swims” in the social element like a fish in water and living beings in the air. According to Aristotle’s well-known definition, man is a social or “political” being (“ zoon politikon") predominantly.

The direct gift to man of his social side own life creates the illusion of obvious clarity and situational intelligibility of those phenomena of social life with which we deal every day. However, this is far from the case. Human social existence is permeated with a series of paradoxes. Everyone pursues their own goals and seeks their own benefit. But when everyone forgets about the principles that unite them, and everyone begins to live on their own, then society will inevitably fall apart. If the social life of people is built on the principles of selflessness, “cementing” society, then what is the reason for the massive (and not hidden by many) selfishness of members of an established society as opposed to the philanthropy of the utopians? Social life is possible because people need each other. But how and in what capacity: in the role of selfish people seeking to exploit others, or in the role of disinterested people who serve others, giving their lives “for their friends.”

Let's dwell on incentives social education. One of them is the exchange of activities and abilities. A viable community of settlers is possible, Plato believed, if there are already four to five people, one of whom is a plowman, another is a craftsman (or builder), the third is a merchant, the fourth is a warrior, the fifth is a ruler. By exchanging the results of their activities, community members form a community - a self-sufficient polis. In principle this is true. The question is: what determines the proportions of the exchange of their activities, without which there arises hunger, shortage of housing, difficulties in defense, and a lack of wise administration. Why did one farmer in ancient times feed two or three people, but in modern times, post-industrial society- sixteen?

Questions, questions, questions... But it seemed that everything was clear in the world of social problems. It is no coincidence that popular wisdom states: “man proposes, but life (in society) disposes.” Everyday life Each of us sometimes runs counter to the hidden logic of social events. Unexpected successes and failures in life, numerous “we wanted the best, but it turned out as always” - a clear demonstration of people’s limited understanding of the essence of the events taking place and the resulting incorrect accounting of life circumstances and decisive factors. social factors. In other words, the degree to which a person’s life corresponds to the goals he has set precisely serves as a kind of “indicator” of the level of our understanding of the essence of social processes in which every social being is included.

For orientation in social realities and for eliminating the discrepancy between the seeming self-evidence of social phenomena and their complexity and problematic nature, there is a special area of ​​knowledge - social cognition, the laws and principles of which differ from those accepted in the natural sciences.

Social cognition deals, firstly, with social behavior conscious beings who have free will and therefore freedom of choice from alternatives.

Secondly, your most meaningful actions people commit collectively - as part of associations and social groups. Therefore, the laws of social life are, for the most part, not dynamic, allowing one to make unambiguous, rigid forecasts, but laws of mass phenomena - statistical laws or probabilistic. Each of us moves in a “corridor” of social opportunities, and our choice (and the subsequent struggle for its implementation) turns these opportunities into one or another version of necessity. Lots of options for “trajectories” social behavior people are summed up into a certain averaged vector of social patterns, which cuts off at human actions their extremes, turning these actions from atypical to typical - socially acceptable.

Thirdly, a huge number of people simultaneously enter into social interactions and relationships. Each of us (and there are currently about six billion people living on Earth and, if desired, every earthling can contact anyone through just six intermediaries) has diverse life (vital) and socio-cultural needs and preferences. The number of “combinations and permutations” of social manifestations of human activity is so great that it often defies ordinary rational accounting and interpretation.

According to the classification of the American urbanist D. Forrester, society is not just a complex system, but a system of such a degree of complexity that it becomes cognitively unpredictable, counterintuitive character. A complex system (such as organic integrity) includes a set of elements that are united by diverse connections, multi-link chains of human decision-making. Such a system has reverse connections of an ever-increasing order. The “system order” is determined by the number of levels and states of connections that are taken into account when describing the system. TO complex systems D. Forrester classifies systems of a higher order than the fourth and fifth as complex social systems - systems from the tenth to the hundredth order. For example, he considers the city to be a system of the twelfth order. However, L. Feuerbach noted a century earlier that the life of a province is an order of magnitude more complex than the life of the city that is part of it, the life of society is the life of the country, The World History- history of the country. The growing avalanche of direct and feedback, which characterizes society and the history of people, acquires features of unpredictability and irrationality. Well-organized knowledge turns into a collection of gaps, into a chaos of misconceptions and false conclusions, into a fixation of random symptoms that are presented as real causes. And this leads to the replacement of causes by factors that, although close to the causes in space and time, do not express real and significant social interdependencies.

Social cognition much more complex than other mysteries of nature. As a result of failure to take into account the characteristics of society and its subsystems (due to the inherent counterintuitive nature of their behavior), international crises arise, energy price hikes, the manifestation of a policy of double standards, disappointment in the results of social development, which (the results) diverged from forecast expectations, and unjustified theft of resources nature and society, numerous and needless human sacrifices, other costs of social development. Struck by such unpredictability of the consequences of one’s own activities, a person may agree with the logic of one-sided empiricism, abandon rational approaches to social life, move to the position of agnosticism and fatalism, and adopt a strategy of irresponsible social improvisations.

Fourthly, society is multifaceted And multidimensional phenomenon. Therefore, social life is studied by a series of economic sciences, political and legal knowledge, history, demography, economical geography, social ecology, a family of sociological disciplines, cultural studies, religious studies, and a number of other sciences that cover one or another aspect or section of social life. All of them are included in the scope social studies.

In the field public knowledge a special science of society stands out - sociology. She studies the laws of development and functioning of social groups and institutions, relations between social communities, and mechanisms for regulating social relations. At the same time, they are studying social phenomena different levels and degrees of organization. Only “microsociology” and the sociology of social groups and public institutions have dozens of directions: sociology of the city, industrial sociology, sociology of business, sociology of the army, sociology of the family, sociology of culture, sociology of religious confessions, sociology of politics, sociology of conflict, sociology of deviant behavior (crime), sociology of leisure, sociology of youth and the elderly...

The problem-sectoral diversity of sociological research is also explained by the fact that in social science There are two opposing but complementary approaches to the study of the phenomena of social life. One of them is emphasized empirical, which analyzes social facts in isolation, so to speak, “piece by piece” and phenomenologically, that is, in their immediate reality. Second - abstract–theoretical or “system-creator.” Its task is to study and interpret the fundamental foundations of social life, to create a general and consistent model of the social whole.

Theoretical, social and philosophical science explains which integrative–systemic forces bind people and social groups in society, how and in what direction they evolve social systems , why society persists and reproduces for a long time in relatively stable parameters.

At the theoretical stage of the study of society, social knowledge acquires the character of socio-philosophical knowledge. The transition from social science to social knowledge and from last to social philosophy- not a violation of cognitive logic, but a movement in the knowledge of society from the essence of the first order to the essence of the second, third... - that is, to deeper levels of social analysis. What do we mean?

Firstly, social philosophy (together with sociology) studies various shapes human communication, but at the same time it places emphasis on defining general structure and the essence of communication in human society, on clarifying it mechanisms and character intersubjective And subject– an object– subject relations.

Secondly, social philosophy answers the question about the specifics social organization, explores what is different social life from the life of zoological “communities”.

Thirdly, social philosophy clarifies patterns of functioning and development of society as a whole- How social system or social organism.

Fourthly, moving to philosophy of history, socio-philosophical knowledge provides an answer to the question of succession communications individual steps in historical development of society, O focus qualitative transformations of society, about sense historical changes and their sources.

Fifthly, in real life various social relations and connections create historical and cultural gradations and variations of society. The problem of their social modeling. For correct orientation in weaving public relations so they are looking for something system-forming attitude, then " cell"fundamental level of social life, then social " genotype"social organism. At the same time, they use methods of idealization and concretization, individualization and generalization, distinction and identification, synchrony and diachrony - all those that act as methodological tools for modeling society as a whole, its levels, sections and individual spheres.

Social philosophy must build generalized And consistent models of the social whole, reveal to the utmost general grounds social life, clarify the content " nodal» social concepts(categories), specifics analysis of social life. The task of socio-philosophical knowledge is to find out why, in the course of social life, people interact with each other, enter into relations of competition and cooperation, creating, producing and changing the forms of joint social life.

So, the main task of social philosophy is to create a model of the social whole that would explain what forces bind people in society, why and how the main forms of their life are reproduced, and in what direction social systems evolve.

Philosophy is a science that asks many questions that require solutions. All of them are specific, and many of them are extremely complex. This discipline has a complex structure, which means it is difficult to determine which ancient or modern problems philosophies are paramount. It all depends on its direction.

However, we note that there are also basic questions of philosophy - that is, those questions that are of interest to all philosophers working in any direction of this science. First of all, it is worth noting the importance of issues that are in one way or another connected with the relationship between the material and the ideal. The debate about which of the above is the basis of all things on Earth has been going on since ancient times. It is no coincidence that idealism and materialism are included in the main ones - there are many arguments in support of both. The debate here can go on forever. The material and ideal play an important role in the interpretation of existence. In fact, being consists precisely of the material and the ideal, and there is nothing else in it.

Both materialism and idealism have a huge number of categories, as well as principles. Both of them contribute to the disclosure of philosophy as a certain general methodology of knowledge.

Philosophical teachings are different, but essentially they consider the same problems. Almost always questions of existence are touched upon in one way or another. Let us note that being itself in most cases is affected in a universal sense. The main problems of philosophy are the relationship between existence and non-existence, ideal existence and material existence, the existence of man, society, and also nature. Ontology is the name given to the doctrine of being.

The main problems of philosophy are problems related to knowledge. Perhaps the most important question related to knowledge is whether the world is knowable at all. Agnostics claim that a person will never be able to understand it, but Gnostics claim that the human mind has no boundaries, and sooner or later all the secrets of the universe will be revealed to him. Philosophers are also interested in the essence of knowledge itself, the characteristics of relationships, and so on. Philosophy does not ignore but still assigns them a secondary role - the very essence this process philosophers are much more interested. Epistemology is the name of the study of knowledge.

Basic philosophies should also be mentioned in this article. Society is something that is constantly being studied. A variety of sciences are interested in it. Of course, philosophy is no exception. The problems of society are partly addressed by ontology, but ontology has its own questions that have little to do with morality, the individual, the collective, and so on. Social qualities human beings are studied in a separate section - that is, social philosophy.

The main problems of philosophy include the problems of man himself - that is, the problems not of the individual, but specifically of the individual. It is important to study man, first of all, because he is the starting point of all philosophizing.

Summing up, we come to the conclusion that the range of issues that philosophy solves is very wide. This science seeks answers to questions related to man himself, his personality, the structure of the world, the essence of being, God, the universe, and so on. Philosophy questions tend to be deep. Many of them simply cannot be answered unambiguously. There are many problems of philosophy that great minds have been solving for centuries. Will any questions remain unanswered even after a thousand years? It is quite possible that they will indeed remain unresolved.