Anything; 3) beginning as superiority, primacy. The process of terminology (arche as “first principle, principle”, not initium, but principium) occurred in the 4th century. BC e. at the Academy, probably under the influence of the language of mathematicians, where arche in the plural (άρχαί) are the starting points of proof, axioms. Already in Plato, arche is used in the sense of 1) an ontological principle (cf. scholastic principium reale) and 2) the beginning of knowledge, an epistemological principle (cf. principium cognoscendi). For the 1st, “Phaedrus” is especially important (245Іу ff., d l ff.: “the beginning is unarisen; in fact, everything that arises must necessarily arise from a certain beginning...”), for the 2nd - 6th book “States” (510b5 sl. - about the “non-preconditioned beginning”, where, however, the arche also has an ontological meaning, since Plato’s ideas are simultaneously the principles of being and knowledge).

Aristotle first gives a semantic arche (“Metaphysics” V l, 1012b34 pp.) and distinguishes: 1) epistemological principles (“the principles from which they prove”, “syllogistic”, “apodictic”, “scientific” principles) and 2) ontological principles (“the beginnings of essence” - ibid. III I, 995b7), and the “beginnings of knowledge” often act as “initial premises”, “postulates”, “axioms” (“the beginnings of inference-premise”: Anal. Pr. 1.27 43a21). Aristotle proclaims “the most reliable, the most reliable, the unconditional” of the “principles of evidence” (“Metaphysics” IV 3-6; XI 5-b), denied by Heraclitus. “Principles” must have self-evident reliability, they are “unprovable” (Magn. Mog., 1197a22), cannot be obtained syllogistically (Eth. Nie. 1139b30; 1098ы; Top. lOlbl); “the beginning” of scientific knowledge (“episteme”) - the intuitive mind-nos (Anal. post. 23, 84b37; 33.88b35; Eth. Nie. 1140b33; 1143bl0), “The beginnings of essence”, or the principles of being, the same, that there are as many “causes” (αίτίαι) as there are metaphysical “causes”, i.e. four: matter, or “that from which” (eidos), or “whatness”, the beginning of movement and, go “that , for the sake of” (telos). They act as factors constituting a specific, “this-this-this-something” (τόδε τι), or the first (πρώτη οίσίοΟ. “The moving arche” Aristotle calls “the beginning in the proper sense” (for example, Meteor. 346b20). In a historical essay doctrine of “principles” (“Metaphysics” II 3-9, cf. “Physics” I, 2 ff.) Aristotle considers all his predecessors from the point of view of their anticipation of one or more of the “four principles” (reasons) of being. “ Most of the first philosophers," according to Aristotle (Metaphysics 983b6 ff.), anticipated the "beginning" (arche). It is in this sense that the statements of Aristotle, Theophrastus and later doxography (see Doxographers) should be understood that Thales, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, etc. “they took for arche” water, air and fire itself, and there is no reason to attribute the peripatetic term “arche” to the Ionian natural philosophers (the use of arche in a meaning close to the ontological principle is first attested for Philolaus, DK fr. B 6).

Lit.: Lebede “A. V. On the original formulation of the traditional thesis ΤΗΝ ARCHN ΥΔΩΡ ΕΙΝΑΙ, “Balcanica. Linguistic Research". M., 1979, p. 167-176; Lumpe A. Der “Prinzip” (αρχή) von den Vorsokratikem bis auf Aristoteles;-“Archiv für Begriftsgeschichte”, Bd. l. Bonn, 1955, S. 104-16.

A. V. Lebedev

New philosophical encyclopedia: In 4 vols. M.: Thought. Edited by V. S. Stepin. 2001 .

Synonyms:

See what "ARCHE" is in other dictionaries:

ARCHE- ARCHE (ἀρχή), beginning, principle (Latin principiurn), a term of ancient Greek philosophy. In pre-philosophical usage (starting with Homer): 1) a starting point, the beginning of something in a spatial or temporal sense; 2) the beginning as the beginning,... ... Ancient philosophy

- (Latin name Arche, code S/2002 J1), satellite of Jupiter (see JUPITER (planet)), average distance to the planet 23.3 million km, orbital eccentricity 0.2496, period of revolution around the planet 732 days. The orbit rotates in the direction... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

Noun, number of synonyms: 3 origin (9) principle (19) satellite (174) Dictionary of... Synonym dictionary

Arche- (gr.arche – bastau, bastama, principle, lat. principium) – kubylystar kesegindegi (in the series of phenomena) bastama, algashky principle, ozgermeytindik zane mangilik. Ertedegi filosoftar alemnіn arkhesi dep, algashky eementteri dep su (Thales), aua (Anaximenes),… … Philosophy terminerdin sozdigi

See Arch... Large medical dictionary

See the Ark... Encyclopedic Dictionary F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Ephron

- (Greek archē beginning) the highest principle, according to the idealistic ideas of Paracelsus (1493-1541), influencing the organism as a whole and determining its life processes; according to the ideas of Van Helmont (1577-1644), each organ has its own A ... Medical encyclopedia

See Arch... Medical encyclopedia

- ... Wikipedia

Arche- (from the Greek arche beginning) the root cause, principle ... The beginnings of modern natural science

Books

• The male archetype in the unconscious space of Russia, Afrin I.. Despite all the diversity of modern psychological literature, among its multitude, it is very difficult to find a book that would describe the features of the functioning of the collective Russian...

Topic 1.

The problem of being in philosophy. Material and ideal.

Key words: being and non-being, soul, spirit, idea, ideal, matter, material, metaphysics, monotheism, ontology, polytheism, existence, body, form.

· Being visible and invisible

· The problem of origins: monotheism and philosophical monism.

· Philosophy of physis and the problem of origin – arche.

· The world of ideas and the world of things. Plato.

· Aristotle's theory of four causes.

Being visible and invisible.

Soul is first fundamental concept culture. Being is a philosophical category, the meaning of which is everything that is, everything that exists. The noun “being” is formed from the irregular verb “to be”, which causes some difficulties in understanding the term “being”. The past tense forms of this verb, cognate with the infinitive – was, were. Present tense forms have a different root - “is”. The doctrine of being includes our ideas about what is, what exists, about what is.

There are a lot of things, so what's the problem? – The fact is that not everything that exists is perceived by us in an explicit form. The most ancient concept of invisible being is the soul. The body is visible, but the soul is invisible. The soul exists, otherwise a dead body would not be different from a living one, but since it is invisible, it must have a different nature than the body. Consequently, the body is decomposable, but the soul is indecomposable; the body is mortal, but the soul is not.

The emergence of ideas about the soul is connected in time with the burial of the dead. Burial rituals - first forms spiritual practices.

Neanderthals were the first humans to bury their dead.

The earliest undisputed human burial discovered so far dates back to 130,000 years ago. A human skeleton stained with red ocher was discovered in the Skul Cave in Israel. Many funerary objects were found at this site, including the lower jaw of a boar in the hands of one of the skeletons. Prehistoric cemeteries are called "grave fields." Numerous archaeological cultures are characterized specifically by funeral customs: the “Culture of the Urn Fields” or the “Bronze Age”.

Ideas about the soul have not changed much since then.

“I believe that the soul is immortal. It is possible that after the death of a person, the soul is reborn, or remains free and awaits its “judgment” to determine its future (heaven or hell).

“I believe that my soul will go to heaven or hell after death, because... I am an Orthodox Christian."

“I think that after death my soul will move into another vessel, because... It seems to me that the soul cannot die, but, on the other hand, at the moment there are more people on the planet than there have always been, x 4-5 times, then where did so many souls come from?”

From students' essays.....

Engels: “Already from that very distant time when people, still not having any idea about the structure of their body and not being able to explain dreams, came to the idea that their thinking and sensations are the activity not of their body, but of some special soul living in this body and leaving it at death - from that time on they had to think about the relationship of this soul to the outside world. If at the moment of death she separates from the body and continues to live, then there is no reason to invent some other special death for her. This is how the idea of ​​her immortality arose, which at that stage of development seemed not to be a consolation, but an inevitable fate and quite often, for example, among the Greeks, was considered a real misfortune” (Engels F. Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy).

Engels is a materialist and believes that the soul “is the activity of the body.”

S. (13-13) “The soul doesn’t go anywhere, because... what is meant by soul is the life processes occurring in a living organism, with the end of which life ends.”

From a student's essay.

Spirit and nature. If the soul is immortal, it is logical, further, to assume that, having left the body, it dwells in some invisible world. Human thinking with its ability to generalize leads to the creation of the concept “ perfume " Spirits, unlike souls, are not associated with the human body, but belong to natural phenomena - goblin, water spirit, brownie, mountain spirit. The Arabs called fire worshipers who came into contact with the spirit of fire magicians. Handling fire, the ability to light it, store it, extinguish it, really resembles witchcraft.

Magic(lat. magic, from Greek. μαγεία) is a system of thinking in which a person turns to secret forces in order to influence events, as well as influence the state of man or nature. Magic involves the performance of a symbolic action (rite) aimed at achieving a certain goal by supernatural means.

Shamans and magicians are special people who know how to enter the world of spirits and communicate with them. Modern magicians work via the Internet.

These invisible spirits obviously, in one way or another, influence the relationship of natural forces to man. Their fickle nature keeps people in constant fear: fire, water, wind show their hostility towards people at the most inopportune moments.

Transformation of spirits into gods. The next step in thinking is taken to the concept gods. Spirits become gods when they are assigned the following properties: incomprehensibility, power, and the ability to change people's lives.

For religious consciousness it is necessary to have sacred , i.e. sacred: supreme, absolute, incomprehensible, powerful. The sacred becomes an object of cult and worship. The first form of religious consciousness is polytheism – polytheism, paganism .

Paganism (from church glory. ıảzycs"peoples" ıảlanguage“people”, which is a copy of the Greek. ἔθνος – “ethnos”) is a term accepted in Christian theology denoting pre-Christian and non-Christian religions. The word comes from the New Testament, in which paganism meant peoples or “tongues” opposed to the early Christian communities. Christianity has become a world, international religion, in contrast to the beliefs of individual peoples, languages, and ethnic groups.

After the baptism of Rus', the pagans also began to be called “filthy” (from the Latin paganus - farmer). The abstract concept of “paganism” in the Russian language appears much later than the specific terms “pagan” and “pagan”.

Nowadays, new teachings and spiritual practices (Romuva, Asatru, Wicca) or reconstructed ancient pagan teachings (Rodnoverie, Dievturiba) are becoming fashionable. Neopaganism must be distinguished from uninterrupted pagan traditions such as shamanism. Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Alexy II At the opening of the Council of Bishops in 2004, in his speech he called the spread of neo-paganism one of the main threats of the 21st century, putting it on a par with terrorism and “other destructive phenomena of our time.” Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus' stated in an interview in 2009 that devil appeared to peoples in various ways - for example, through pagan gods. He also called paganism a delusion through which people unconsciously and unreasonably worship the dark force.

2. The problem of origins: monotheism and philosophical monism .

To the idea first principles human thought has followed different paths. Outstanding German thinker of the twentieth century. Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) considered the idea of ​​beginnings to be one of the pillars of the spiritual axis on which the history of different countries began to be strung in the first millennium BC. In the “Axial Age” the problem of origins was solved either by means of religion or in a new form of worldview, which in 6th century Greece. BC. called philosophy (love of wisdom). The ancient historian of philosophy Diogenes Laertius says:

“Sosicrates in his Successions says that when asked by Leontes, the tyrant of Phlius, who he was, Pythagoras answered: “Philosopher,” which means “wise of wisdom.” Life, he said, is like games: some come to compete, others to trade, and the happiest come to watch; so in life, others, like slaves, are born greedy for fame and profit, while philosophers are born greedy for only the truth” (Diogenes L. On the life, teachings and sayings of famous philosophers. Book 8.8).

Monism(from ancient Greek μόνος - one, only) is a type of worldview that affirms the unity of the world, the origin of all the diversity of the world from a single beginning and the possibility of reducing it to a single basis.

Judaism- one of the oldest monotheistic religions, and the most ancient of those existing to the present day. Judaism arose from the polytheism of the ancient Hebrew tribes approximately 20 centuries BC. The first and central doctrine of Jewish monotheism is that God is one, eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent, limitless and incorporeal. God created man in his own image and likeness and therefore loves him. On earth, the image of God corresponds to the human mind, the consequence of which is the belief in the immortality of the human soul. In accordance with the norms of Judaism, the believer maintains contact with God through prayer, and God's will is revealed to man through the Pentateuch of Moses - the Tanakh.

In the VI century. BC. The Greeks considered the Olympians, led by Zeus, their gods. Not all ancient Greek philosophers abandoned the shrines of their religions, but the method of criticism that they began to use forced them to give decisions on the question of origins in accordance with their observations and rational grounds.

Some also openly criticized traditional religion, for example, Xenophanes. The central theme of Xenophanes' lyric poetry was a critique of Homer's and Hesiod's understanding of the Gods, as well as the ideas of popular religion, in which he discovered errors and absurdities. Thus, the absurdity lies in attributing to the Gods external forms, psychological characteristics, and passions that are in all respects similar to those of humans. Xenophanes sarcastically objects that if animals had hands and knew how to depict the Gods, the latter would have the forms of animals; Thus, the Ethiopians, being black and with wide noses, depict the Gods as black-haired with flattened noses, other people with blue eyes and red hair depict the Gods exactly the same. Even worse, man attributes to the Gods everything he does, not only good, but also bad.

“But mortals believed that Gods were also born.

Homer and Hesiod attributed everything indiscriminately to the Gods,

What is considered disgraceful

and it’s a shame that people think -

It’s as if they steal, commit fornication and deceit.”

The refusal to understand God by human standards led to the idea that God is a cosmos. “The One, God, the highest between gods and people, does not resemble people either in figure or in thoughts,” says Xenophanes. “He sees the whole whole, he thinks the whole whole, he describes the whole whole”; “But without effort, with the power only of your mind, everything makes you tremble”; “He always remains in the same place without moving, for it is not fitting for him to be now in one place, now in another.”

In the VI century. BC. concepts have been developed in philosophy being and non-being. Their creator is considered to be the founder of the Eleatic philosophical school, Parmenides.

Ontology- the doctrine of existence (lat. ontology from ancient Greek ὄν, born. n. ὄντος - existing, that which exists + λόγος - teaching, science).

Parmenides was born in Elea (now Velia), in the second half of the 6th century. and died in the middle of the 5th century. BC. At Elea he founded his school, which was destined to have a significant influence on Greek thought. They say about him that he was an active politician who gave laws to his city. From his poem “On Nature” the prologue, almost the entire first part and fragments of the second have come down to us.

Parmenides puts his teaching into the mouth of a certain goddess, who warmly receives him. He depicts himself, drawn by her in a carriage drawn by trotters, crosses the threshold of the stern goddess of Justice, and, in the company of the daughters of the Sun, Night and Day, achieves his cherished goal. The Goddess, symbolizing Truth, solemnly proclaims: “It is necessary that you study the One.” The goddess points to him three paths: 1) the path of absolute truth; 2) the path of changeable opinions, mistakes and falsehoods; finally, 3) the path of opinions worthy of praise.

The most important principle of Parmenides is the principle of truth (“the unshakable heart of truth, rightly rounded”): being exists and cannot but exist; non-existence does not exist and cannot exist anywhere or in any way.

The argument is very simple: everything that is said and thought exists. It is impossible to think (that is, speak) otherwise than by thinking (that is, speaking) about something that exists. Thinking about nothing is the same as not thinking, and talking about nothing means not talking about anything. That is why nothing is unthinkable and inexpressible. Being is that which is neither generated nor destroyed. For if it happened, it would come from non-existence, which is absurd, since it has been established that there is no non-existence. In the case of origin from being, this is no less absurd, for we would have to admit that it already exists. For the same reasons, there is no non-existence, since moving towards being would mean that being already exists, and therefore will remain. Existence has no past, because the past is something that no longer exists, and does not have a future, because it does not yet exist, it is the eternal present without beginning and without end. Being is unchanging and motionless, because mobility and variability presuppose non-being, in relation to which being moves or into which being is transformed. Parmenidean being is equal in everything; “more being” or “less being” is unthinkable, for this immediately means the invasion of non-being.

The only truth is that there is a being that is ungenerated by nothing and no one, indestructible, unchanging, motionless, equal to itself, spherical and united. Everything else is empty names.

Subsequently, this principle began to be called the principle of the identity of thinking and being. .

The existence of Parmenides and the monotheistic God of the Jews are expressed by the same concepts with the difference, however, that the dogmas of the Jewish religion cannot be refuted, but the philosophical ideas of Parmenides can be refuted. Parmenides' theory could not but cause a stunning effect and aroused lively controversy. Opponents refuted the thesis of the immobility and unity of being by a simple demonstration of the movement and diversity of the world, which is accessible to our senses.

Concepts matter and idea had not yet appeared at that time, so Parmenides did not call himself an idealist, however, two main directions of thought were outlined.

“The great fundamental question of all, especially modern, philosophy is the question of the relationship of thinking to being... Philosophers were divided into two large camps according to how they answered this question. Those who argued that spirit existed before nature, and who, therefore, ultimately, one way or another recognized the creation of the world - and among philosophers, for example, Hegel, the creation of the world often takes on an even more confused and absurd form than in Christianity , - formed an idealistic camp. Those who considered nature to be the main principle joined various schools of materialism."

F. Engels “Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy.”

The philosophy of physis and the problem of origin – arche.

In traditional civilization, the value of the ancient is higher than the new. Arche is ancient and important.

Ionian philosophy. Thales Miletus from Ionia, lived around last decades VII and first half of the VI century. BC. Philosopher, scientist, politician. His thoughts are known to have been transmitted through oral tradition.

He believed that water was the root cause of everything. This primordial basis is that from which all things come, and that into which everything is resolved. Thales designated it with the term "physis", physis, which meant nature not in the modern sense of the word, but in the original sense - the first and fundamental reality. An indirect tradition attributes to Thales the statements that “the nutrition of all things is wet,” that “the seeds and grains of all things are of a wet nature,” and why the drying up of everything is death. Life is connected with moisture, and moisture presupposes water, which means that everything comes from water, finds its life in water and ends in water.

Thales' level of rationality was such that, based on his study of celestial phenomena, he was able to predict, to the general amazement of the townspeople, an eclipse of the sun (possibly in 585 BC). One of the theorems of geometry is named after him.

When Thales argued that “everything is full of gods,” he only wanted to say that everything is imbued with the first principle. And since life is primary, everything is alive and everything has a soul (panpsychism). The magnet was for Thales an example of the universal animism of things.

Anaximander from Miletus was a student of Thales. He was born at the end of the 7th century, and died at the beginning of the second half of the 6th century. BC. Anaximander sees in water something derivative and considers the infinite to be the beginning (arche), the “physis” infinite and indefinite, from which all things flow. The term used by Anaximander, apeiron, means something devoid of boundaries, both external (in the spatial sense, and therefore quantitatively infinite) and internal (meaning, qualitatively indefinite).

This infinite principle appears as divine, for it is immortal and indestructible; he clarifies that it not only has no boundaries, no end, but also no beginning. The ancient gods did not die, but were born. The deity of Anaximander neither dies nor is born. Thus, in him, as in Thales, we see a shift in the foundation on which the theogony was built, i.e. the genealogy of the Gods, in a different meaning than in traditional Greek mythology.

For Anaximander, God is the first cause, and the Gods become worlds, universes, of which there are many, and they cyclically arise and perish.

Thales did not raise the question of how and why from the first cause all things come. Anaximander poses this question and answers it: “Where things receive their birth, there they also find a solution in accordance with necessity; they mutually pay tribute to Injustice through their own fault in the order of time.” Guilt, redemption, injustice and the justice that balances it are the ideas of the Orphic religion. Anaximander's Logos still borrows these ideas. But already his student Anaximenes trying to give strictly rational decision this problem.

Anaximenes lived in Miletus in the 6th century. BC. Three fragments from his work “On Nature” in Ionian prose, as well as oral traditions, have reached us.

If the fundamental principle is infinite, the worlds are also infinite. Our world is one of the endless worlds, among those that preceded and those that will follow (according to the scheme of birth - life-death). Our world also coexists simultaneously with many other worlds.

This is what the genesis of space looks like. At a certain moment of eternity, the first two opposites arose: cold and hot. The cold was originally liquid; partially transformed by hot fire, it forms air, peripheral spheres. The fiery sphere triples, giving birth to the sun, moon and stars. The liquid element, collecting in the earth's depressions, forms seas.

The earth, imaginary in the shape of a cylinder, unsupported by anything, rests in a suspended state due to the equal distance of all parts, i.e. balance of forces. From the liquid element, under the influence of the sun, the first organisms are born, from which, little by little, more and more complex animals develop.

Anaximenes believed that the first principle is infinite, but this infinite is air, an airy boundless substance. “Just like our soul,” he said, “the air supports everything and controls everything; breath and air embrace the entire cosmos.” And again: “Air is what is closer to the incorporeal (in the sense that it has no form or boundaries, no body, and therefore is invisible), and we are born thanks to its influence, which means it is infinite and generous, so as to never decrease.” . For this reason, Anaximenes considers the air divine, like the other two Milesians who preceded him.

He found "physis" in the air element, due to its most mobile nature and constant changes. As the air condenses, it cools and turns into water, then into earth; weakening and expanding, it heats up and becomes fire. Quantitative changes in the initial reality thus give rise to everything else. In a certain sense, it is Anaximenes who gives the most rigorous and logical expression of Milesian thought, since with the processes of “condensation” and “rarefaction” the principle of dynamic cause is introduced.

Heraclitus from Ephesus. Between the 6th and 5th centuries BC. Heraclitus lived in Ephesus. He was obstinate, withdrawn and irritable. IN public life I didn’t want to take part. He wrote an essay “On Nature,” from which many fragments have come down to us in the form of a series of aphorisms in a vague style, reminiscent of the maxims of oracles. He was nicknamed Heraclitus the Dark.

The Milesians drew attention to the universal dynamism of things, to the fact that things arise, grow and die, and all worlds are subject to this process. They considered this dynamism to be an essential characteristic of the beginning, but only Heraclitus explored this topic in depth. "Everything moves", "everything flows" "panta rhei" nothing remains motionless and constant, everything changes and transforms without exception. In two of its famous fragments we read: “You cannot enter the same river twice and you cannot touch something mortal twice in the same state, but, due to the uncontrollability and speed of change, everything is scattered and collected, comes and goes”; “We enter and do not enter the same river, we are the same and not the same.”

Heraclitus was the first to construct a picture of the world in which the principle of change became fundamental. Subsequently, the method of cognition, which believes that the world is constantly changing as a result of the struggle of opposites, began to be called dialectics (ancient Greek: διαλεκτική - the art of arguing, reasoning) .

In order to continue to be, we must continuously not-be more than what we just were, at any given moment. And this, according to Heraclitus, is valid for all reality without exception. This aspect of Heraclitus' teaching led some of his disciples to extreme conclusions, such as Catelus, who reproached Heraclitus for his lack of consistency. Indeed, we not only cannot swim in the same river twice, but we cannot swim once either, due to the speed of the current (at the moment of entering and immersing in the river, another water arrives, and we ourselves are different even before we are completely immersed).

However, for Heraclitus this statement was not the main one. It was the point from which he moved to deeper and bolder conclusions; to becoming as a continuous transition from one opposite to another: cold things become hot, hot things cool, wet things dry up, dry things become moistened, a youth becomes decrepit, a living dies, another youth is born from a mortal, and so on. There is always a war going on between opposing sides. But as soon as the reality of any thing is in formation, war reveals itself as an essence: “War is the mother of everything and the mistress of everything.” But we are talking about a war that at some point is peace, i.e. contrast, which is also harmony. Only in alternation do opposites give each other a specific meaning: “Illness makes health sweet, hunger imparts the pleasantness of satiety, and hard work makes one taste of rest”; “It would be impossible to understand the name of justice if there were no offense.”

Opposites unite in harmony: “The road up and the road down are the same road”; "Common - the end and the beginning of the circle"; “The living and the dead are the same thing”; awake and sleeping, young and old, since some things, changing, became others, and those others, changing in turn, became first." So, “everything is one,” and “from one everything flows.” This harmony of “unity opposites" is God and the divine: "God is day-night, winter-summer, war and peace, satiety and hunger."

Heraclitus considers fire to be the fundamental principle, and considers everything else as transformations of fire. “All things are the exchange of fire, and one fire changes all things, just as goods are the exchange of gold, and all things are exchanged for gold”; “This order, the same for all things, was not created by any of the Gods, and by none of the people, but always was, is and will be an eternal living fire, ignited in proportions and extinguished in proportions.” This fire is like “lightning that governs everything,” and that which governs everything is understanding, reason, logos, reasonable laws.

Heraclitus revealed the versatility of truth and knowledge. It is necessary to be alert to the senses, since the latter are satisfied by the appearance of things. You should also be wary of people's opinions based on appearance. Truth is achieved by the mind beyond the senses. In this sense, Heraclitus considered himself a prophet of intelligible truth, hence his oracular tone as a specific way of expression.

Pythagoreans. The number is the beginning. Pythagoras was born on Samos. The heyday of his life occurred in the 530s BC, and his death at the beginning of the 5th century. BC. Pythagorean teaching was widespread in southern Italy and Sicily. Immediately after his death, his name and appearance lost the human traits of a mortal, acquiring instead divine ones, and his every word was given the weight of prophecy. An expression that has become famous shows the attitude towards his teaching: "autos epha, ipse dixif, those. "he said it himself."

Philosophical quests, moving from the eastern Ionian colonies to the western ones, where the ancient Ionian tribes migrated, noticeably become more refined in the new cultural climate. A change in perspective among the Pythagoreans introduced the concept of number as a beginning instead of water, air or fire.

The discovery that everything is based on mathematical regularity, i.e. numerical, entailed a change in the perspective of knowledge and marked a fundamental stage in the spiritual development of Western culture. It was also discovered that sounds and music can be translated into numerical relationships: the difference in sounds caused by the blows of hammers depends on the difference in their weight (defined in numbers), the difference in the sound of different strings musical instrument depends on the difference in the lengths of these strings. The Pythagoreans also discovered the harmonic relationships of the octave, fifth and fourth and the numerical laws governing them (1:2, 2:3, 3:4).

No less important was the discovery of numerical proportions in universal phenomena: year, season, months, days, and so on. The incubation periods of animal embryos, the cycles of biological development, turned out to be also regulated by numerical laws.

Spurred by the euphoria of their discoveries, the Pythagoreans also looked for non-existent connections between phenomena of different types. Thus, some of them connected justice, as a kind of reciprocity or equality, with the number 4 or 9 (i.e. 2x2 or 3x3, the square of even and odd), science and reason as constant quantities - with the number 1, mobile opinion - with number 2, etc.

So, number is the beginning of all things. The archaic meaning of the concept of “number” differs from the modern one. For us it is an abstraction, a creation of the mind; for the ancient (up to Aristotle) ​​way of thinking, number is something real, moreover, it is more real than things, and only in this sense is it understood as the beginning that forms things. Therefore, number is not an aspect that we mentally extract from things, but the reality, the “physis” of things.

The transition from numbers to things and justification of the concept of space. If numbers were understood as points, i.e. as masses that have density, the transition from them to physical things is obvious. But it is even more clear that the antithesis of the ultimate and the infinite was interpreted in a cosmological sense. The Boundless is the empty circle of everything, and the world is born through inspiration, the inhalation of this emptiness by the One (the genesis of which is not specified). The empty enters with a breath. The One defines it and gives rise to various things and numbers. This understanding strongly resembles some of the thoughts of Anaximander and Anaximenes, which indicates the unity and continuity of early Greek philosophy.

Apparently, Philolaus was the one who connected the four elements with four geometric bodies: earth = cube, fire = pyramid, air = octahedron, water = hexahedron (the cube carried the idea of ​​​​the density of the earth, the pyramid - a tongue of flame, etc.). All this led to a fundamental description of the cosmos. If number is order (harmonization of limiting elements with infinite ones), then everything is order. And since in Greek the order sounded like "kosmos" The Pythagoreans called the universe the cosmos, i.e. in order. "Pythagoras was the first to designate the cosmos with all the things in it as the order that is in it." “The sages (Pythagoreans) said that heaven, earth, Gods and people are maintained by order, and that is why they called all this cosmos, i.e. order,” sources testify.

Pythagorean is the idea that the heavens, rotating according to numerical harmony, produce “divine music of the spheres, wondrous harmonies, not perceived by our ears, accustomed to them as always.” With the Pythagoreans, human thought took a decisive step forward: the world dominated by blind, unpredictable forces was already behind us; number evoked order, rationality and truth. “All known things have a number,” Philolaus asserted, “without this nothing could be thought or known”; "someday a lie will die through a number."

Atomism. Leucippus and Democritus. Leucippus, originally from Miletus, arrived in Italy, in Elea (where he became acquainted with the teachings of the Eleatics) around the middle of the 5th century. BC, from where he proceeded to Abdera. There he founded a school, which became especially famous under Democritus, a native of Abdera. Democritus was slightly younger than his teacher, born around 460 BC, and died very old. Many works are attributed to him, but the corpus of texts may also include works by students of his school. Democritus spent many years traveling.

Atomists confirmed the impossibility of the existence of nothingness, as well as the fact that something appears as a combination of what already exists, and disappears in the event of decay. But they introduce a decisively new concept: we are talking about “an infinite number of bodies invisible due to their smallness.” These bodies are indivisible, and therefore they are "atoms" , in Greek, that which cannot be divided. All together the atoms form being in its entirety, but are distinguishable from each other only by shape or geometric figure . The atoms of the Abderites, thus, are nothing more than the Being-One of the Eleatics, broken into an infinite multitude.

We do not perceive the atom sensually, but comprehend it with the mind. The atom, therefore, is an intelligible form, visible to the intellect. It is clear that the atom, conceived as the fullness of being, also presupposes emptiness (and therefore non-existence). Without emptiness, atoms-forms would be devoid of differences and movements. So atom, emptiness and movement explain everything else.

It is necessary to clarify the differences between the three forms of motion in original atomism:

· the first movement should be chaotic , similar to the dispersion of atmospheric dust, as can be seen in the sun's rays penetrating through a window.

· then movement vortex-like , causing similar atoms to unite and different atoms to separate, resulting in the birth of a world.

Finally, the movement of atoms forming evaporation things (composed of atoms), a typical example of which is smells.

Since atoms are infinite, then the worlds formed from them are also infinite, different from one another, at the same time they are identical, because out of infinitely possible combinations only one has been realized. All worlds are born, develop and then are destroyed to give rise to other worlds, and this happens endlessly.

Atomists entered the history of philosophy thanks to the concept "case" on which, in their opinion, the world stands. However, this does not mean that they did not see the reason for the birth of the world, but it means that they did not find an intelligible reason, a final reason. Order (cosmos) is the result of the mechanical interaction of atoms and is not designed by the mind. Mind, intellect follows, not precedes general order connections of atoms. This does not cancel the atomists’ instructions that there are certain privileged atoms, smooth, spherical, easily flammable, from which the soul and mind are formed: it is precisely such atoms that Democritus believed to be divine.

Cognition is explained as the result of the contact of the atoms of the bodies emitting fluids with our senses. The similar is recognized as similar from the contact of the external with the internal. Democritus insists on the difference between sensory knowledge and intelligible knowledge: the first provides opinion, the second - truth.

Physics of Epicurus. The foundations of the physics of Epicurus (341-270 BC) can be formulated as follows:

1) “Nothing is born from nothingness,” because, otherwise, it would be necessary to admit that something can arise without a generating seed, as well as that something disintegrates into nothingness, and, therefore, recognize the disappearance of everything. But, since nothing is born from nothing and does not disappear forever, then reality in its totality was, is and will be, as it is, without fundamental changes.

2) All reality is formed from two components: bodies and emptiness. The existence of bodies is proven by the senses themselves, while the existence of space and emptiness stems from the fact of movement, for space is necessary for the movement of bodies. Apart from bodies and emptiness, there is nothing.

3) Reality is infinite. It is infinite as a totality, but its components are also infinite: many bodies, space. If the set of bodies were finite, then they would be lost in infinite space, and if the void were finite, it would not be able to accommodate infinite bodies.

4) “Bodies” can be complex or simple, absolutely indivisible. The divisibility of bodies to infinity cannot be accepted, since this ultimately means the resolvability of things into non-existence.

Epicurus' understanding of the nature of the atom differs from that of Leucippus and Democritus in three respects. Ancient atomists identified figure, order and position as essential characteristics of the atom. Epicurus has this figure, weight and size . Differences between atoms in shape are purely quantitative. Quantitative differences are sufficient to explain the existence of a variety of things. Also, the concept of magnitude is sufficient to explain motion. The shapes of atoms are different and multiple, but their variety is not infinite, but their number is infinite.

The second difference is in the theory of minima. According to Epicurus, all atoms, from the largest to the smallest, are physically and ontologically indivisible. However, the fact that we are talking about bodies endowed with a figure, that is, volume, size, means that they must have parts. Obviously, we are talking about “parts” that are ontologically indivisible, but only logically and ideally distinguished, precisely because the atom is structurally indivisible. Due to the same motive of the Eleatics, it is impossible for atoms to decrease to infinity, but only to a certain limit, which Epicurus calls the “minimum” or “unit of measure.” At the same time, Epicurus speaks of the “minimum” not only in relation to atoms, but also in relation to space, time, motion, etc. "deflections of atoms".

The third difference concerns the concept of the initial push. Epicurus understands the movement of atoms differently than the first atomists - as equal in all directions; for him, movement is a fall down into infinite space, under the influence of the gravity of atoms. Heavy and light, all atoms fall (thought is the fastest movement). Such a correction to the ancient atomists gives us a striking example of a hybrid of the concept of the infinite with a sensualist idea, in which visual representations of above and below are inevitable. But why don’t atoms fall to infinity along parallel trajectories? To resolve this difficulty, Epicurus introduces the theory of "deflection" (or declination) of atoms, (in Greek "clinamen"), according to which atoms at any time and at any point

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Arche (Greek ἀρχή - beginning, principle) in pre-Socratic ancient Greek philosophy is the primary principle, the primary substance, the primary element of which the world consists.

Thales: Arche - water.
Anaximander: Arche-apeiron is the generative principle that determines everything that exists, the source of development, that into which everything returns again.

Anaximenes: Arche is a certain air (air as the basis of everything).

Pythagoras: Arche is a number.
Heraclitus of Ephesus: Arche - fire.
Parmenides: Arche is being itself, it is one and...

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1. The concept of origin (arche) as the principle of constructing the first philosophical schools.

2. Natural philosophy of the Milesian school: Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes. Teachings of Heraclitus of Ephesus.

3. The problem of being in the philosophy of the Eleatic school.

4. The concept of the atom in the philosophy of Leucippus and Democritus.

Methodical instructions.

This test should reveal the main provisions of early Greek philosophy, which appeared before the 5th century BC. and called pre-Socratic philosophy. The main problem that interested the early Greek philosophers was the problem of origin, that is, where the world came from, what underlies the universe. Analyzing the concept of “arche” in the first question of the test, the student must learn that this concept arose first in a series of subsequent philosophical concepts and meant that a person turned to the world with the question of the origin of this world, therefore the first philosophers were called “natural philosophers”, that is thinkers who talked about nature.

In the second question of the test, the student must analyze the teachings of the Milesian school, which offered various options the origins of the world, and the philosophy of Heraclitus from Ephesus, who first defined the world as becoming, fluid and ever-changing. Here the student must learn that in ancient Greek philosophy the first principle was understood not as a “dead” chemical or physical element, but as a living, spiritualized substance.

The third paragraph of the test reveals a new problem raised by the thinkers of the Eleatic school Parmenides and Zeno, the problem of being. The student must analyze the concept of being as a single and motionless whole and explain the meaning and meaning of the proofs of the impossibility of movement, called aporia.

Considering the fourth question of the test, the student learns the concept of “atom” in ancient philosophy and its differences from the modern understanding of the atom in physics. The atomistic doctrine takes a different approach to the concept of origin and for the first time declares that there are countless of these origins (atoms) in the world.

Key Concepts : arche, being, apeiron, atom, aporia, becoming.

Additional literature.

1. Laertius Diogenes About the life, teachings and sayings of famous philosophers. / Diogenes Laertius. – M., 2011.

2. Cassidy F. Heraclitus. / F. Cassidy. – M., 2003.

3. Philosophy of nature in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. / P. Gaidenko, V. Petrov. – M., 2000.

Topic 5. Ancient philosophy: from cosmocentrism to the problem of man.

1. Reasons and main features of the transition from problems of natural philosophy to human problems in ancient philosophy of the 5th century BC.

2. Relativism of sophistic teachings. Sophistry as an example of new knowledge.

3. Knowledge and morality as basic principles in the philosophy of Socrates. Socrates' method.

Methodical instructions.

In this test, the student, first of all, must identify the reasons why there was a turn to the problem of man in the philosophy of antiquity. In the 5th century BC. questions of a natural philosophical nature fade into the background, and the central place in the reasoning of philosophers is given to man and his actions. This transformation of philosophical knowledge was determined by social, political, and general cultural reasons, when the appearance of the Greek state changed and a new type of government replaced the aristocracy - democratic.

In the second question, the student must reveal the features of the activities and philosophical teachings of the sophists, paying special attention to the relativistic features of not only their theory of knowledge, logic, but also ethics. The student is faced with the task of comprehending the activities of the sophists and drawing conclusions about the impact they had on European culture and education.

The third question of the test involves revealing the main provisions of the philosophy of Socrates, who was a fierce opponent of sophistic teaching. However, despite this, similar features and tasks can be traced in the two indicated teachings. The student should note that Socrates creates a new ethical theory in which knowledge is equated with virtue, and any evil act is simply the result of ignorance. The special methodology proposed by Socrates is based on the same principles.

Key concepts: relativism, sophistry, sophistry, ethics, dialectics, irony, maieutics.

Additional literature.

1. Cassidy F. Socrates. / F. Cassidy. – M., 2001.

2. Surikov I. Socrates. / I. Surikov. – M., 2011.

3. Chernyshev B.S. Sophists. / B.S. Chernyshev. – M., 2010.

4. Gilyarov I.N. Sources about the Sophists. Plato as a historical witness. – M., 2011.

§ 2. MAIN DIRECTIONS AND PROBLEMS OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY

Traditionally, the development of Greek philosophy is considered as a single cycle from its origins (VI century BC), through flowering and maturity (V-IV centuries BC), to decline. The origin of ancient Greek philosophy has already been considered by us when describing the process of the formation of philosophy and its isolation from myth. Let's look briefly at the subsequent stages. This is maturity and flowering, or the classical period; decline, or the philosophy of the Hellenistic era and Latin philosophy of the period of the Roman Republic (III-I centuries BC), decline (I-V centuries AD).

The period of classics in ancient philosophy is based on the idea of ​​an integral sensory-material Cosmos as an object of philosophical reflection. The stage of the early classics (Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Democritus) is characterized by an intuitive consideration of the sensory-material cosmos. This is a kind of intuitive natural philosophy.

The search for the primary elements of the world is carried out here in material, real, tangible things, phenomena and elements that surround a person. Man lives on earth, this is his basis, so it would certainly be correct to assume that this is the basis of the Cosmos. However, the earth is motionless, and the world moves, which means there must be the foundations of this fluidity of the world, and they are found in water and air. But earth, water, and air seem to always be present, always exist, and in the world there is also death and destruction, and fire, a mobile and subtle element of matter, is chosen as the element that reflects these processes. In addition, some less concretely sensual representation was also required, reflecting the eternity of the world and matter. As such, ether acts as a special type of fire-light.

Philosophers understood that any phenomenon, any studied object is diverse and has properties that cannot always be detected by the senses. Therefore, the Ionian tradition of Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, which develops the doctrine of physical matter as primary in relation to form, is opposed by the Pythagorean tradition, in which an important place is occupied by form, with the help of which matter, which has potential properties, became a concrete object (formed). The implementation of this idea was the Pythagorean doctrine of numbers.

Representatives of the Eleatic school (Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno and others) argued that form is primary. On the contrary, philosophers of the atomistic school (Leucippus, Democritus) put matter in first place. In the course of discussions, a synthetic direction emerges, within which an attempt is made to connect matter and form, multiplicity and unity and consider them as mutually transforming into each other. Empedocles considered such a transition as the result of cosmic revolutions occurring with a certain periodicity. Diogenes of Apolonia, on the contrary, is like a gradual transition of one thing into another.

As a result of philosophical debates, what we now call the main achievement of antiquity was formed, namely dialectics as a method of considering objects in which the unity of opposite sides is seen and the possibility of synthetic, unifying reasoning about the diversity of the world around us, about the heterogeneity of processes in it.

One of the central places in ancient philosophy is occupied by the doctrine of Logos. In the ordinary meaning, "logos" is nothing more than simple speech, as well as conversation, judgment, decision, or even general mathematical meaning, order. In addition, in the Greek tradition, logos was seen as a genre of prose, distinct from poetry, and people working in this prose genre were called logographers. In ancient drama, logos denoted the dialogue of the characters, as opposed to the choral performance. However, modern culture includes a different understanding of this term in antiquity, primarily its philosophical interpretation. And here logos means the process of rational (logical) penetration of a thinking person into the meaning of phenomena, opposed to irrational thinking.

Thus, Heraclitus (550-480) believed that speech itself already organizes and gives meaning to individual sounds, although it is necessary to speak or express one’s logos wisely. Logos is not speech ordinary person, but a special property of the sensory cosmos. It, as something objective, substratum, is an expression of the activity of the Cosmos in ordering the world; it is everything that opposes the chaotic and formless. Listening to Speech (Logos) is like understanding the world order, the world structure. Just like the Cosmos, the Logos is eternal, according to it everything happened and is happening.

At the stage of middle classics, problems of hermeneutics and dialectics are actively developed. The development of hermeneutics was associated primarily with the activities of the Sophists - the first Greek philologists. During this period, new interpretations and interpretations of the ancient texts of Homer and other Greek poets were required. The fact is that since Homer’s life there have been significant changes in language, and the poet’s works were already literary monuments at that time. At the same time, the works of Homer and some ancient poets were the source of classical written language, from which people studied literacy. Therefore, their interpretation and translation into the new Greek language were very pressing practical tasks. Intellectual work in this area leads to the creation of a number of hermeneutic programs. But since the ancient Greeks did not know translation in the modern sense of the word, a special method of interpreting the text - paraphrase - was born and became widespread, which combines elements of commentary and translation and is the first use of contextual analysis.

At this stage, dialectics is considered by the sophists (Protagoras, Gorgias, etc.) as a certain method of substantiating the propositions being proven, often without regard to their truth in the modern meaning of the word, which allows the use of dialectics to substantiate directly opposite statements. In the latter case, it is often referred to as “negative dialectics.” “Positive dialectics,” with which many researchers associate the beginning of philosophy as such, is developed in Socratic philosophy (Socrates, Xenophon). In the history of philosophy, the period preceding this is called pre-Socratic, and the philosophers representing it are called pre-Socratics.

The stage of mature classics is characterized by the widespread use of dialectics, which is already applied to the entire sensory-material cosmos. This finds its full expression in the philosophy of Plato. On the one hand, following the Socratic tradition, Plato sees in dialectics a special way of searching for truth. On the other hand, on the basis of dialectics, he creates his own understanding of the sensory-material cosmos as a synthesis of mind and necessity, idea and matter. Matter is interpreted as something indefinite and formless, and idea, on the contrary, as something formed and limited.

At the stage of the late classics (Aristotle), the idea of ​​universal formation is developed, and the idea acts as a formative force. The appearance of a thing generated by an idea is called eidos (a certain cause-and-target construction). The entire cosmos is interpreted as a huge eidos, a cause-and-goal design of the entire world, “eidos of eidos”, “idea of ​​ideas” - “prime mover mind”. He is the cause of himself, he is thinking, but also thinkable. This is a kind of self-thinking creature. For Aristotle, therefore, “the eternal idea is not just something motionless and inactive, but is always in action, in formation, in creativity, in life’s quest, in the pursuit of certain, but always certain goals.” There is no thing in itself and an idea in itself, such opposition is purely mental, in reality they mutually transform into each other.

The period, which is often designated as the decline of ancient philosophy, is characterized by the fact that the sensory-material cosmos is considered not as an object, but as a subject who has will and feelings, who is aware of himself and can be the creator of history. In early Hellenism there are three schools - Epicureanism, Stoicism and Skepticism.

Epicureanism was named after its founder, Epicurus (342-271 BC). Representatives of the direction were Lucretius and Horace. The school was located on the outskirts of Athens, in the wilderness of the village, the building was located in the garden. Hence the name - "philosophers of the Garden". The main provisions of the Epicurean manifesto: “1) reality is completely permeable to the human mind and can be comprehended; 2) in the space of the real there is a place for happiness; 3) happiness is the displacement of suffering and anxiety; 4) to achieve happiness and peace, a person does not need any anything other than oneself; 5) for this, states, institutions, nobility, wealth, and even Gods are also superfluous." The school was founded on democratic principles, its doors were open to everyone, but it was not an educational institution, but a closed partnership of like-minded people.

Representatives of Epicureanism proceed from the fact that any sensation or feeling must be preceded by “tangibility” as a kind of primary property. These are atoms. Atoms were mental constructs that embodied the tangibility of existence, could change their direction, and the source of their movement was in themselves. And finally, the gods were of the same tangibility, who therefore could not depend on anything: “neither they influence the world, nor the world can influence them.” From here follows the famous principle of freedom of Epicureanism, which in fact acts not just as some internal active position, but as an expression of the very structure of the world. Accordingly, the principle of pleasure was a natural characteristic of human nature. This was determined not by the subjective will of man, but by the objective state of affairs.

Epicurus' theory of knowledge is empirical. The most genuine source of knowledge, which never deceives us, seems to be feelings to Epicurus. Reason cannot even be imagined as an independent source of knowledge independent of the senses. Objectively existing things “exude” streams of atoms, due to which the images of things are imprinted on the soul that perceives them. The results of this influence, sensations, are true if they correspond to things, and false if they convey only the appearance of correspondence to things (for example, due to poor lighting or distance). The concept of “image” in this case is an intermediary between a thing and a feeling. Sensations are the basis for the formation of ideas that are stored in memory. Their totality can be called past experience. The names of human language record ideas. The meaning of names is represented by representations correlated through an image (flow of atoms) with a thing. In addition to the usual five senses in Epicurus, these include pleasure and suffering, which are evaluative, allowing one to distinguish not only truth and falsehood, but also good and evil. That which promotes pleasure is good, and that which brings pain is evil. The theory of knowledge serves Epicurus as the fundamental basis of his ethics.

Philosophy is intended to discover the paths to pleasure and happiness. Knowledge frees man from fear of nature, gods and death. A person must have convictions, value love and friendship, and in every possible way avoid negative passions and hatred that can destroy the social contract. The latter represents the basis for the coexistence of people with the goal of mutual benefit. The laws of social life, expressing ideas about the highest justice, are a consequence of the social contract.

Stoicism (3rd century BC - 3rd century AD) differs significantly from Epicureanism in many ways. For example, in the school of Epicurus, both in his time and after him, the cult of the teacher reigned, whose authority was considered indisputable; the students not only studied his theory, but also adamantly followed it. In the Stoic school, on the contrary, all dogma was rejected, criticism was driving force their teachings. The Stoics did not accept the mechanistic atomism of the Epicureans, according to which man was the same combination of atoms as a chicken and a worm. Atomism fundamentally could not explain the moral and intellectual essence of man. The Stoics also did not accept the Epicurean ethics of pleasure for the sake of pleasure.

Stoicism existed for many centuries, without remaining a homogeneous movement; its philosophical problems underwent serious changes. It was extensive, but the main points were related to the study of logic, physics and ethics. The Stoics figuratively presented their philosophy in the form orchard, in which logic is its fence, physics is its trees, and ethics is its fruit. Thus, the goal and highest purpose of philosophy, according to the Stoics, should be the substantiation of moral ideas. Philosophy and philosophizing are the art of practical life and a guide to it.

The Stoic school was founded by Zeno of Kition (336-264 BC) in Athens. He was of Semitic origin, originally from the island of Crete, and according to the laws of that time, a non-Athenian could not rent houses in Athens. Therefore, school meetings were held in the Portico, in Greek - “Standing”, hence the name “Stoics”. Early Stoicism is also represented by Zeno's student Cleanthes from Assos in Troas (born 232 BC) and Chrysippus from Sol in Cilicia (281-208 BC). All of them develop problems of logic, which is considered broadly, including problems of language and the theory of knowledge.

The Stoics attach great importance to the problem of the semantic significance of words. The meaning of the word is original. This is a special state (lekton), inherent only in a word, a kind of comprehension of what exists. The sound of a voice becomes a meaningful language only through the participation of the mind.

The basis of knowledge, according to the Stoics, is perception obtained from the influence of an object on the senses; it changes the state of our material soul (Chrysippus) or is even “pressed” into it, like into wax (Zeno). The resulting imprint-impression forms the basis of the idea and is correlated with the ideas of other people. Ideas are considered true if they are the same for many people; the joint experience of ideas is a criterion of their truth and clearly indicates their correspondence to reality. In other words, concepts arise as a common element of different perceptions, as a kind of anticipation of the internal logos.

According to the teachings of the Stoics about nature, there are two closely related foundations of being: passive - matter and active - form, understood as Logos, divine reason. The Logos of the Stoics can in no way be represented as a personified God or as his hypostasis. The Logos of the Stoics is immanent in nature, it is the world mind that spiritualizes matter devoid of properties and thereby causes its systematic development. Logos is inextricably linked with matter and permeates it. That is why everything in the world happens as intended by the divine Logos. There is no chance in the world, everything happens with necessity. And yet the Stoics believe that human freedom is possible. But it is possible only for those who penetrate with their thoughts into the divine plan. And only wise men can do this. This is how the famous formula arises: “Freedom is a perceived necessity.” An action or deed performed in accordance with the known laws of nature, society, and the inner world of a person is free.

The ethics of the Stoics is based on the recognition of happiness as the main goal of human life, and in this it is similar to the ethics of the Epicureans. But that's where the similarities end. Happiness, according to the Stoics, is following nature, internally reasonable tranquility, rational adaptation to environmental conditions for the sake of self-preservation. Good is what is aimed at preserving a human being, evil is what is aimed at its destruction. But not every good is equally valuable. The good aimed at preserving physical life is essentially neutral, and the good aimed at preserving and developing logos, reason, is a true virtue and can be assessed as a moral quality - good (its opposite is vice). Everything that contributes to the self-preservation of the dual essence of man is valuable. In accordance with this, the Stoics have the most important concept - duty, by which they understand morally perfect behavior based on rational adherence to nature, understanding of its structure, knowledge of its laws. We are all equal before nature, so the requirement of self-preservation applies to everyone. The desire for one’s own preservation by each is a condition for not causing harm to another. Equality before nature pushes people to enjoy each other, to universal love, but this is only possible in a rational way. organized society. As we see, here too there is a sharp divergence from the individualistic ethics of pleasure of the Epicureans. The ethics of the Stoics also had political significance: while affirming the foundations of natural law, it questioned the foundations of slavery and turned out to be incompatible with ideas about the elitism of the Greek people.

Middle Stoicism is represented by figures such as Panetius (180-110 BC) and Posidonius (135-51 BC), who "transfer" Stoic thinking to Roman soil, softening its original ethical rigidity . They actively develop problems of theology. God, according to their interpretation, is the Logos, who is the root cause of everything and carries within himself the rational germs of all things. This is what explains the purposefulness of the course of things and events. In middle Stoicism, Plato’s thought about the world of ideas is further developed, and Cosmos is no longer interpreted only as something material, but is understood as a reflection of the world of ideas (Posidonius), as a material-semantic organism in which extra-rational factors, such as fate, are of great importance.

Late Stoicism is associated with the names of Seneca (4-65), Epictetus (50-138) and Marcus Aurelius (121 - 180). At the center of philosophical research here are moral issues and the problem of human life orientation. The idea of ​​personality changes. Before this, man was viewed as the highest product of nature. The cruel era of this period, associated, in particular, with the intensification of persecution of emerging Christianity, gives rise to the interpretation of man as an insignificant and at the same time helpless being. Many ideas of late Stoicism were later adopted by Christian thinkers and even writers of the Renaissance.

The Stoics received philosophical understanding of the change in society's attitude towards slavery. Seneca distinguishes between physical and spiritual slavery, slavery to passions, vices, and things. Epictetus, developing the views of Seneca, argues that human freedom consists in possessing freedom of mind and will, which cannot be taken away from him. From this point of view, the slave is also free, the master owns only the body of the slave, he can sell it or use it as an instrument of production, or even take his life. But the human soul is free. She lives in the shackles of a body that is imperfect, and a person is even free to free the immortal soul from the shackles of a sinful body by committing suicide (cases of voluntary taking one’s own life were quite common at that time). Note, however, that Seneca did not consider suicide the best way of personal salvation. Allowing such a departure from life for the sake of liberating the soul, he believed that there must be good reasons for this. Seneca’s goal was rather to free man from the fear of death by equalizing the positions of life and death: both are necessarily inherent in man, one cannot exist without the other. The fear of death is removed by an optimistic motive: those who have not lived must not die.

But we must live with dignity the period of time allotted by nature, which is usually called life. To do this, one must free oneself from the desire for vices, especially not commit vicious actions. One should live in accordance with the truth, which is the correspondence of knowledge to benefit. Using knowledge, act in such a way as not to harm yourself and others. In this regard, philosophy is understood as a means of forming a character resistant to the adversities of life; only it leads to the deliverance of the soul from the mortal body and the acquisition of true freedom by a person. All philosophy comes down to applied (or practical) philosophy; metaphysics, theory of knowledge, logic are of little concern to the Stoics. Their main ethical position is to live in harmony with nature. But this was an empty, meaningless principle of moralizing. As A.N. notes Chanyshev, “the Stoics did not know the natural, nature, they did not know a single law of nature. They... turned nature into a metaphysical reality, to which they attributed features that were not characteristic of it: rationality and divinity.”

Seneca’s concept of equality was also abstract: people are equal to each other as natural beings. It was also adopted by Christianity. In Christian teaching, equality is ensured by the same attitude of people towards God. Both concepts, although they were not consistent, played a progressive role in the era of the dominance of slave relations, from different positions expressing protest against the monstrous oppression of people, against slavery in the first place.

The last Roman Stoic, Marcus Aurelius, takes the gloomy picture of human insignificance to its final limits: complete decline, skepticism, disappointment, apathy, the absence of any positive ideals are the main motive of his writings. However, at the same time, he believes that there is a means to elevate a person above the frailty of random existence. This is prudence and generally beneficial activity. The philosopher-emperor introduces the category of “citizenship” and creates a “positive ideal of man” (of course, he could only refer to a Roman): “This creature is “courageous, mature, devoted to the interests of the state,” it is invested with power, feels at home and “with with a light heart awaits the challenge to leave life"; it sees "wisdom exclusively in just action." It is impossible to change life, just as it is impossible to change what is given from above, but one should live, performing both feats and all mortal deeds in this world, as if today is the last.

The third direction of early Hellenism is skepticism. Its largest representatives were Pyrrho of Elis (365-275 BC) and Sextus Empiricus (200-250). Skeptics consciously follow the general principle of early Hellenism - the principle of the relativity of everything around us, our thoughts and actions - and come to the conclusion that it is impossible to know the cosmos. According to skeptics, one should not strive to understand the world, one should simply live, without expressing any judgments that claim to be true and maintaining inner peace. Previous philosophical thought has no value. To questions like “What is truth?” or “What, where and how does it happen?” Not only are there no reliable answers, but they themselves are illegitimate. They are installed out of vanity and idleness, out of the desire to become famous.

Historically, skepticism is a complex phenomenon. A.N. Chanyshev wrote about this: “The agnosticism of skeptics cannot be credited to them. However, skepticism also had positive value Thanks to the fact that he acutely posed the problem of knowledge and truth, he drew attention to philosophical pluralism, which, however, turned against philosophy and philosophers. The advantage of skepticism is its anti-dogmatism. Skepticism can be said to be twofold. It directly leads to agnosticism and teaches about the unknowability of the world. Indirectly, it pushes philosophical thought to search for a criterion of truth, and generally arouses interest in the problem of philosophical knowledge, its similarities with scientific knowledge and its differences from it."

The imperfection of human senses, his insignificance before the greatness of nature, the historical limitations and relativity of knowledge were absolutized, and the sentence was pronounced on philosophy: “Philosophy is not capable of providing adequate knowledge.” Skepticism as a philosophical trend (not to be confused with doubt, criticism and skepticism as methodological techniques that are very useful for any researcher) is a sign of the fading of the creative thought of Greek thinkers, although, according to Kant, skeptics rightfully questioned the first experiments in constructing philosophy: “Attempts to create such a science were even, without a doubt, the first reason for the skepticism that arose so early, in which reason acts against itself so violently that such a way of thinking could appear only in complete despair to achieve a satisfactory solution to the most important problems of reason."

The period of decline of ancient philosophy (I-V centuries) includes not only Greek, but also Roman philosophy. He is mainly represented by Plotinus (205-270), Porphyry (233-303); Syrian Neoplatonism represented by Iamblichus (mid-3rd century - c. 330), Salust (mid-4th century) and Julian; Athenian Neoplatonism represented by Plutarch, Hierocles, Sirian, Proclus.

Plotinus develops the doctrine of the functioning of the Logos as a kind of world destiny. Logos is the world soul, or rather, its active part. The Logos is severe and manifests itself as a necessary law. But the Logos is perfect only in its pure form; its manifestations in the world are imperfect.

Beginning with Plotinus, Logos becomes a theological concept and is reinterpreted as the Word of God. The Bible text: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1) - receives a philosophical interpretation. God calls out to things, calling them out of nothingness. Jesus is the embodiment of God in the world through the Logos.

During the same period, the idea of ​​the Cosmos as a subject further developed. This is a return to myth, but at a new level, enriched by previous philosophical ideas: “Ancient philosophy... began with a myth and ended with a myth. And when the myth was exhausted, ancient philosophy itself turned out to be exhausted.”

Numerous philosophies of the first centuries AD are questioned and reworked to suit the needs of Christianity. The transition from antiquity to early medieval patristics is characterized by syncretism. “So beautifully, but ingloriously and so naturally and tragically, a thousand-year-old ancient philosophy perished, which often and deeply influenced many phenomena of subsequent cultures, but which, as a living and integral worldview, perished once and for all.”

ΑΡΧΕ (ἀρχή) – beginning, principle (lat. principium), a term of ancient Greek philosophy. In pre-philosophical usage (starting with Homer): 1) the starting point, the beginning of something in a spatial or temporal sense; 2) the beginning as the beginning, the reason for something; 3) the beginning as superiority, power, supremacy. The process of terminology (arche as “first principle, principle”, not initum, but principium) occurred in the 4th century. BC. at the Academy, probably under the influence of the language of mathematicians, where arche in the plural (ἀρχαί) are the starting points of proof, axioms. Already in Plato, arche is used in the sense of 1) an ontological principle (cf. scholastic principium reale) and 2) the beginning of knowledge, an epistemological principle (cf. principium cognoscendi). For the 1st, “Phaedrus” is especially important (245b10 ff., d 1st ff.: “the beginning is something that has not arisen; in fact, everything that arises must necessarily arise from a certain beginning...”), for the 2nd – 6 - I book “States” (510b5 ff. – about the “preconditionless beginning”, where, however, arche also has an ontological meaning, since Plato’s ideas are simultaneously the principles of being and knowledge).

Aristotle first gives a semantic description of arche (“Metaphysics” V 1, 1012b34 sll) and distinguishes: 1) epistemological principles (“the principles from which they prove”, “syllogistic”, “apodictic”, “scientific” principles) and 2) ontological beginnings (“beginnings of essence” - ibid., III 1, 995b7), and “beginnings of knowledge” often act as synonyms for “initial premises”, “postulates”, “axioms” (“beginnings of conclusion - premises”: Anal. Pr. 1 , 27. 43a21). “The most reliable, the most reliable, the unconditional” of the “principles of evidence,” Aristotle proclaims the law of contradiction (“Metaphysics” IV 3–6; XI 5–6), denied by Heraclitus. “Principles” must have self-evident reliability, they are “unprovable” (Magn. Mor., 1197a22), cannot be obtained by syllogistic means (Eth. Niс. 1139b30; 1098b1; Thor. 101b1); the “beginning” of scientific knowledge (“episteme”) is the intuitive mind-nus (Anal. post. 23, 84b37; 33, 88b35; Eth. Niс. 1140b33; 1143b10). “Principles of essence”, or principles of being, are the same as “reasons” (αἰτίαι), there are as many of them as there are metaphysical “reasons”, i.e. four: matter, or “that from which,” form (eidos), or “whatness,” the beginning of motion and purpose, or “that for which” (telos). They act as factors constituting a specific thing, “this is not something” (τόδε τι), or the first essence (πρώτη οὐσία). Aristotle calls the “moving arche” “the beginning in the proper sense” (eg Meteor. 346b20). In a historical outline of the doctrine of “principles” (“Metaphysics” II 3–9, cf. “Physics” I, 2 ff.), Aristotle considers all his predecessors from the point of view of their anticipation of one or more of the “four principles” (reasons) being. “Most of the first philosophers,” according to Aristotle (Metaphysics 983b6 ff.), anticipated the material “beginning” (arche). It is in this sense that one should understand the statements of Aristotle, Theophrastus and later doxography (see Doxographers) that Thales, Anaximenes, Heraclitus and others “took for arche” water, air and fire itself, and there is no reason to attribute the peripatetic term “arche” Ionian natural philosophers (the use of arche in a meaning close to the ontological principle is first attested for Philolaus, DK fr. B 6).

SOPHISM(from the Greek sóphisma - trick, trick, invention, puzzle) - reasoning, inference or persuasive speech (argumentation), justifying any deliberate absurdity (absurdity) or statement contrary to generally accepted ideas (paradox). Here is an example of sophism based on the separation of the meaning of the whole: “5 = 2 + 3, but 2 is even, and 3 is odd, therefore 5 is both even and odd.” But here is a sophism constructed in violation of the law of identity and the semiotic role of quotation marks: “If Socrates and a man are not the same thing, then Socrates is not the same as Socrates, since Socrates is a man.” Both of these sophisms are cited by Aristotle. He called sophisms “imaginary evidence”, in which the validity of the conclusion is only apparent and is due to a purely subjective impression caused by a lack of logical or semantic analysis. The external persuasiveness of many sophisms, their “logicality” is usually associated with a well-disguised error - semiotic (due to the metaphorical nature of speech, amonymy or polysemy of words, amphiboly, etc.), violating the unambiguity of thought and leading to confusion in the meanings of terms, or logical (due to ignoring or substituting the thesis in case of proofs or refutations, errors in deriving consequences, use of “unauthorized” or even “forbidden” rules or actions, for example, division by zero in mathematical sophisms).

Historically, the concept of “sophism” has invariably been associated with the idea of ​​deliberate falsification, guided by Protagoras’ recognition that the task of the sophist is to present the worst argument as the best way cunning tricks in speech, caring not about the truth, but about practical benefits, about success in an argument or in litigation. His well-known “criterion of foundation” is usually associated with the same task: a person’s opinion is the measure of truth. Already Plato, who called sophistry “shameful rhetoric,” noted to this that the basis should not lie in the subjective will of a person, otherwise the legality of contradictions will have to be recognized, and therefore any judgments should be considered justified. This idea of ​​Plato was reflected in the Aristotelian “principle of non-contradiction” (see Law of Logic) and, already in modern logic, in the requirement to prove the absolute consistency of theories. But this requirement, which is quite appropriate in the field of “truths of reason,” is not always justified in the field of “factual truths,” where the criterion of Protagoras’ foundation, understood, however, more broadly as the relativity of truth to the conditions and means of its knowledge, turns out to be very significant. Therefore, many reasonings that lead to paradoxes, but are otherwise impeccable, are not sophisms. Essentially, they only demonstrate the interval nature of the epistemological situations associated with them. These are, in particular, the well-known aporias of Zeno of Elea or the so-called. sophism “heap”: “One grain is not a heap. If n grains are not a heap, then n + 1 are also not a heap. Therefore, any number of grains is not a heap.” This is not sophism, but only one of the paradoxes of transitivity that arises in situations of indistinguishability (or interval equality), in which the principle of mathematical induction is not applicable. The desire to see in such situations an “intolerable contradiction” (A. Poincaré), which can be overcome in the abstract concept of mathematical continuity (continuum), does not resolve the issue in the general case. Suffice it to say that the content of the idea of ​​equality (identity) in the field of factual truths essentially depends on what means of identification are used. For example, it is not always possible for us to replace the abstraction of indistinguishability with the abstraction of identification. And only in this case can we count on “overcoming” contradictions such as the transitivity paradox. The first who understood the importance of theoretical analysis of sophisms were, apparently, the sophists themselves (see Sophistry). Prodicus considered the teaching of correct speech and the correct use of names to be the most important. Analysis and examples of sophisms are also presented in Plato's dialogues. But their systematic analysis, based on the theory of syllogistic inferences (see Syllogistics), belongs to Aristotle. Later, the mathematician Euclid wrote “Pseudarius” - a kind of catalog of sophisms in geometric proofs, but it has not survived

Plato's philosophy

PLATO (Πλάτων) of Athens (427–347 BC) - ancient Greek philosopher. The first philosopher whose works have come down to us not in short passages quoted by others, but in full.

LIFE. Plato's father Ariston, who came from the family of the last Athenian king Codrus and the Athenian legislator Solon, died early. Mother - Periktiona, also from the clan of Solon, a cousin of one of the 30 Athenian tyrants Critias, remarried Pyrilampos, a friend of Pericles, a rich man and famous politician. The third son of Ariston and Periktiona, Aristocles, received the nickname "Plato" ("broad") from his gymnastics teacher because of the width of his shoulders. The nobility and influence of the family, as well as his own temperament, disposed Plato to political activity. Information about his youth cannot be verified; he is reported to have written tragedies, comedies and dithyrambs; studied philosophy with Cratylus, a follower of Heraclitus. It is certain that from 407 BC. he finds himself among Socrates' listeners; According to legend, upon hearing Socrates for the first time, Plato burned everything he had written so far and abandoned his political career, deciding to devote himself entirely to philosophy.

The execution of Socrates in 399 shocked Plato. He left Athens for ten years and traveled through southern Italy, Sicily, and probably also Egypt. During this trip, he became acquainted with the teachings of Pythagoras and the structure of the Pythagorean League, struck up friendships with Archytas of Tarentum and the Syracusan Dion, and experienced his first disappointment from communicating with the tyrant of Syracuse Dionysius I: in response to Plato’s instructions on how to create the best state, Dionysius sold the philosopher into slavery . Ransomed by his friends, Plato, upon returning to Athens (c. 388–385), organized his own school, or rather a community of those wishing to lead a philosophical lifestyle, modeled on the Pythagoreans. Legally, Plato's school (Academy) was a cult union of guardians of the sacred grove of the hero Academus, admirers of Apollo and the muses; Almost immediately it became the center of philosophical research and education. Striving not to limit himself to theory and teaching, but to put the found philosophical truth into practice and establish a correct state, Plato twice more (in 366 and 361, after the death of Dionysius I) went to Sicily at the invitation of his friend and admirer Dion. Both trips ended in bitter disappointment for him.

ESSAYS. Almost everything that Plato wrote has survived. Only fragments of his lecture on the good, first published by his students, have reached us. The classic edition of his works - Corpus Platonicum, which includes 9 tetralogies and an appendix - is usually traced back to Thrasyllus, the Alexandrian Platonist, astrologer, and friend of Emperor Tiberius. The appendix included “Definitions” and 6 very short dialogues, which already in antiquity were considered not to belong to Plato, as well as a short conclusion to the “Laws” - “Posle-Law”, written by Plato’s student Philip of Opunt. The 36 works included in the tetralogy (with the exception of the “Apology of Socrates” and 13 letters are dialogues) were considered truly Platonic until the 19th century, before the beginning of scientific criticism of the texts. To date, the dialogues “Alcibiades II”, “Gigsharkh”, “Rivals”, “Pheag”, “Clitophon”, “Minos”, and letters, with the exception of the 6th and 7th, have been recognized as not authentic. The authenticity of Hippias the Greater and Hippias the Less, Alcibiades I and Menexenus is also disputed, although most critics already recognize them as Platonic.

CHRONOLOGY. The tetralogies of Plato's corpus were organized strictly systematically; The chronology of Plato's work is a subject of interest to the 19th and 20th centuries, with their emphasis on genetics rather than systematics, and the fruit of reconstruction by modern scholars. By analyzing the realities, style, vocabulary and content of the dialogues, their more or less reliable sequence was established (it cannot be completely unambiguous, because Plato could write several dialogues at the same time, leaving some, taking on others and returning to those started years later).

The earliest, under the direct influence of Socrates or the memory of him (probably immediately after 399), the Socratic dialogues “Crito”, “Ion”, “Euthyphro”, “Laches” and “Lysias” were written; adjacent to them is “Charmides,” which outlines approaches to constructing a doctrine of ideas. Apparently, a little later, a series of dialogues directed against sophistry was written: “Euthydemus”, “Protagoras” and the most important of them – “Gorgias”. Cratylus and Meno should be attributed to the same period, although their content goes beyond the scope of antisophistic polemics. “Cratylus” describes and justifies the coexistence of two areas: the area of ​​visible things, continuously changing and fluid – according to Heraclitus, and the area of ​​eternal self-identical existence – according to Parmenides. The Meno proves that knowledge is the recollection of the truth contemplated by the soul before birth. The next group of dialogues represents the actual doctrine of ideas: Phaedo, Phaedrus and Symposium. During the same period of the highest flowering of Plato’s work, “The Republic” was written (probably the first book examining the idea of ​​justice was written several years earlier than the nine subsequent ones, where, in addition to political philosophy itself, a final review and outline of the doctrine of ideas in general is placed). At the same time or somewhat later, Plato turns to the problem of knowledge and criticism of his own theory of ideas: “Theaetetus”, “Parmenides”, “Sophist”, “Politician”. Two of the most important late dialogues, Timaeus and Philebus, are marked by the influence of Pythagorean philosophy. And finally, at the end of his life, Plato devoted himself entirely to working on the “Laws”.

TEACHING. The core of Plato's philosophy is the doctrine of ideas. Its essence is briefly and clearly presented in Book VI of the Republic in the “comparison with a line”: “Take a line divided into two unequal segments. Each such segment, that is, the region of the visible and the region of the intelligible, was again divided in the same way...” (509d). The smaller of the two segments of the line, the region of sensory things, is in turn divided into two classes “on the basis of greater or less distinctness”: in the larger class “you will place living beings around us, all types of plants, as well as everything that is manufactured "; the smaller ones will contain “images – shadows and reflections in water and in dense, smooth and glossy objects.” How do shadows relate to real beings, discarding them, so the entire area of ​​sensually perceived as a whole relates to intelligible things: the idea is as much more real and alive than a visible thing as the thing is more authentic than its shadow; and to the same extent the idea is the source of the existence of an empirical thing. Further, the area of ​​intelligible existence itself is divided into two classes according to the degree of reality: the larger class is truly existing, eternal ideas, comprehensible only by the mind, unpremisedly and intuitively; the smaller class is the subject of discursive background knowledge, primarily the mathematical sciences - these are numbers and geometric objects. The presence (παρουσία) of an authentic intelligible being makes possible the existence of all lower classes that exist thanks to participation (μέθεξις) of the higher one. Finally, the intelligible cosmos (κόσμος νοητός), the only true reality, has existence thanks to the highest transcendental principle, which is called God, in the “State” - the idea of ​​good or the Good as such, in “Parmenides” - the One. This beginning is above being, on the other side of everything that exists; therefore it is ineffable, unthinkable and unknowable; but without it no existence is possible, for in order to be, every thing must be itself, be something one and the same. However, the principle of unity, simply one as such, cannot exist, because with the addition of the predicate of being to it, it will already become two, i.e. many. Consequently, the One is the source of all being, but itself is on the other side of being, and reasoning about it can only be apophatic, negative. An example of such a negative dialectic of the one is given by the dialogue “Parmenides”. The transcendental first principle is called good because for every thing and every being the highest good lies in being, and being oneself to the highest and most perfect degree.

The transcendental divine principle, according to Plato, is unthinkable and unknowable; but the empirical world is also unknowable, the region of “becoming” (γένεσις), where everything arises and dies, forever changing and not remaining identical to itself for a moment. True to the Parmenidean thesis “thought and being are one and the same,” Plato recognizes only truly existing, unchangeable and eternal things as accessible to understanding and science—“intelligible.” “We must distinguish between two things: what is eternal, non-originating being and what is always arising, but never existing. What is comprehended through reflection and reasoning is obvious and is eternally identical being; and that which is subject to opinion and unreasonable sensation arises and perishes, but never really exists” (Timaeus, 27d-28a). In every thing there is an eternal and unchanging idea (εἶδος), the shadow or reflection of which the thing is. It is the subject of philosophy. The Philebus speaks about this in the language of the Pythagoreans: there are two opposite principles of all things - “limit” and “infinite” (they approximately correspond to the “one” and “other” of “Parmenides”); In themselves, both are unknowable and have no existence; the subject of study of philosophy and any special science is that which consists of both, i.e. "definite".

What in Pythagorean-Platonic language is called “infinite” (ἄπειρον) and what Aristotle later called “potential infinity” constitutes the principle of continuum, in which there are no clear boundaries and one gradually and imperceptibly passes into another. For Plato, there is not only a spatial and temporal continuum, but, so to speak, an ontological continuum: in the empirical world of becoming, all things are in a state of continuous transition from non-existence to being and back. Along with the “infinite,” Plato uses the term “big and small” in the same meaning: there are things, such as color, size, warmth (cold), hardness (softness), etc., that allow for gradation “more or less.” "; and there are things of a different order that do not allow such gradation, for example, one cannot be more or less equal or unequal, more or less a point, a quadruple or a triangle. These latter are discrete, definite, identical to themselves; these are ideas, or truly existing things. On the contrary, everything that exists to a “greater and lesser” degree is fluid and indefinite, on the one hand, dependent and relative, on the other: so, it is impossible to say for sure whether a boy is tall or small, because, firstly, he is growing, and secondly, it depends on the point of view and on whom he is compared with. “Big and small” is what Plato calls the principle by virtue of which the empirical material world differs from its prototype - the ideal world; Plato's student Aristotle would call this principle matter. Another distinctive feature of Plato’s idea, in addition to certainty (discreteness), is simplicity. The idea is unchanging, therefore eternal. Why are empirical things perishable? - Because they are complicated. Destruction and death are decomposition into component parts. Therefore, that which has no parts is incorruptible. The soul is immortal because it is simple and has no parts; Of all that is accessible to our imagination, the geometric point, simple and unextended, is closest to the soul. Even closer is the arithmetic number, although both are just illustrations. The soul is an idea, and an idea is inaccessible to either imagination or discursive reasoning.

Moreover, ideas are values. Most often, especially in the early Socratic dialogues, Plato considers such ideas as beauty (or “beautiful in itself”), justice (“the just as such”), prudence, piety, courage, virtue. In fact, if ideas are genuine being, and the source of being is good, then the more real something is, the better it is, the higher it stands in the hierarchy of values. Here the influence of Socrates is revealed in the doctrine of ideas; at this point it differs from the Pythagorean doctrine of opposite principles. In later dialogues, Plato gives examples of ideas from Pythagorean mathematical metaphysics: three, triangle, even, equal, similar in itself. But even these, in a modern view, valueless concepts are value-defined for him: equal and similar are beautiful and perfect, inequality and dissimilarity are vile and nasty (cf. Politician, 273a–e: the world is degenerating, “plunging into the boundless quagmire of dissimilarity”). Measure and limit are beautiful, useful and pious; infinity is bad and disgusting. Although Plato (the first of the Greek philosophers) began to distinguish between theoretical and practical philosophy, his own ontology is at the same time a doctrine of values, and ethics is thoroughly ontological. Moreover, Plato did not want to consider his entire philosophy as a purely speculative exercise; to know the good (the only thing that deserves to be known and is knowable) meant for him to put it into practice; the purpose of a true philosopher is to govern the state in accordance with the highest divine law of the universe (this law is manifested in the movement of the stars, so a wise politician must first of all study astronomy - Post-Law 990a).

As a value and good, Plato’s idea is an object of love (ἔρως). True love only exists for an idea. Since the soul is an idea, then a person loves the soul in another person, and the body only insofar as it is enlightened by a beautiful rational soul. Love only for the body is not genuine; it brings neither good nor joy; this is a delusion, a mistake of a dark soul blinded by lust, which is the opposite of love. Love - eros - is aspiration; the desire of the soul to return to its homeland, to the eternal realm of existence, beautiful as such; therefore, here the soul rushes to everything in which it sees a reflection of that beauty (Pir, 201d–212a). Subsequently, according to Aristotle, a student of Plato, God - the “perpetual motion machine” - will move the world precisely with love, for everything that exists lovingly strives for the source of its being.

From a logical point of view, an idea is something that answers the question “What is this?” in relation to any thing, its essence, logical form (εἶδος). Here Plato also follows the teachings of Socrates, and it is this aspect of the theory of ideas that has been most vulnerable to criticism from the very beginning. In the first part of the dialogue “Parmenides”, Plato himself gives the main arguments against the interpretation of ideas as general concepts that exist independently and separately from the things involved in them. If in the Phaedo, Phaedrus, and Symposium ideas are considered as completely transcendental to the empirical world, and in the Republic the highest Good is also called an “idea,” then in Parmenides the One is introduced as a true transcendence, standing above and beyond that side of all being, including true, i.e. ideas. After Parmenides, in the dialogue “The Sophist,” Plato criticizes both materialist immanentism and his own theory of the separation of ideas (χωρισμός) and tries to present ideas in the form of a system of categories - the five “greatest genera”: being, identity, difference, rest and movement. Later, in Timaeus and Philebus, Pythagorean principles appear as examples of ideas - mainly mathematical objects, and not general concepts, as in the early dialogues, and the term “idea” itself gives way to such synonyms as “being” , “truly existing”, “model” and “intelligible cosmos”.

In addition to certainty, simplicity, eternity and value, Plato's idea is distinguished by cognition. Following Parmenides and the Eleatics, Plato distinguishes between knowledge proper (ἐπιστήμη) and opinion (δόξα). We form an opinion on the basis of sensory perception data, which experience transforms into ideas, and our thinking (dianoia), abstracting and generalizing ideas, comparing concepts and drawing conclusions, turns into opinion. An opinion may be true or false; may refer to things empirical or intelligible. Regarding empirical things, only opinion is possible. Knowledge is not based on the data of sensation, is not false, and cannot relate to empiricism. Unlike opinion, knowledge is not the result of a cognitive process: we can only know what we have always known. Consequently, knowledge is the fruit not of discussion, but of one-time (more precisely, timeless) contemplation (θεωρία). Before our birth, before our incarnation, our winged soul, whose mental gaze was not clouded by the body, saw true existence, participating in the round dance of the celestials (Phaedrus). The birth of a person, from the point of view of knowledge, is the oblivion of everything that the soul knew. The purpose and meaning of human life is to remember what the soul knew before falling to earth (therefore, the true meaning of life and the salvation of the soul are found in the pursuit of philosophy). Then, after death, the soul will return not to a new earthly body, but to its home star. Knowledge is precisely recollection (anamnesis). The path to it is purification (the eyes of the soul must be cleared of the turbidity and dirt brought in by the body, primarily carnal passions and lusts), as well as exercise, asceticism (studying geometry, arithmetic and dialectics; abstinence in food, drink and love pleasures). The proof that knowledge is recollection is given in the Meno: a slave boy, who has never learned anything, is able to understand and prove the difficult theorem about doubling the area of ​​a square. To know means to see, and it is no coincidence that the object of knowledge is called a “view”, an idea (εἶδος). Moreover, in order to know something, you need to be identical to the object of knowledge: the soul itself is an idea, therefore it can know ideas (if freed from the body). In later dialogues (Sophist, Timaeus) that by which the soul sees and knows ideas is called mind (nous). This Platonic mind is not so much a subject as an object of knowledge: it is an “intelligible world,” the totality of all ideas, an integral reality. As a subject, this same mind acts not as a knower, but as a doer; he is the creator of our empirical world, the Demiurge (in Timaeus). In relation to knowledge, subject and object in Plato are indistinguishable: knowledge is true only when the knower and the known are one.

METHOD. Since knowledge for Plato is not the sum of information external to the knower and acquired, the learning process is, first of all, education and exercise. Plato's Socrates calls his method of influencing his interlocutors maieutics, i.e. the art of midwifery: just as his mother was a midwife, Socrates himself is engaged in the same craft, only he takes birth not from women, but from young men, helping to give birth not to a person, but to thought and wisdom. His calling is to find young men whose souls are pregnant with knowledge, and help them bear and give birth to a child, and then determine whether what was born is a false ghost or the truth (Theaetetus 148–151). The ghosts that are born one after another - false opinions about the subject of research - should be destroyed one by one, clearing the way for true fruit. All early Platonic - Socratic - dialogues are maieutic in nature: they refute incorrect interpretations of the subject, but the correct interpretation is not given, because the listener of Socrates and the reader of Plato must give birth to it himself. Thus, most of Plato’s dialogues are aporia without a clear conclusion. The paradox and aporetic nature itself should have a beneficial effect on the reader, awakening in him bewilderment and surprise - “the beginning of philosophy.” In addition, as Plato writes already in the late 7th letter, knowledge itself cannot be expressed in words (“that which is made up of nouns and verbs is not reliable enough,” 343b). “For each of the existing objects there are three stages with the help of which its knowledge must be formed; the fourth stage is knowledge itself, while the fifth should be considered that which is cognizable in itself and is true being” (342b). Words and imagination are good only at the first three stages; Discursive thinking only lasts up to the fourth. That is why Plato did not set himself the task of giving a systematic presentation of philosophy - it could only mislead, creating the illusion of knowledge in the reader. That is why the main form of his writings is a dialogue in which different points of view collide, refuting and purifying each other, but without pronouncing a final judgment on the subject. The exception is the Timaeus, which offers a relatively systematic and dogmatic summary of Plato's doctrine of God and the world; however, at the very beginning a warning is made that this work should under no circumstances be made available to the uninitiated, for it will bring them nothing but harm - temptation and delusion. In addition, the entire narrative is repeatedly called “plausible myth,” “true tale,” and “probable word,” because “we are only people,” and we are not able to express or perceive the final truth from words (29c). In the dialogues “Sophist” and “Politician” Plato tries to develop a new method of research - a dichotomous division of concepts; this method did not take root either with Plato himself or with his followers as it was not entirely fruitful.

PLATO AND PLATONISM. From antiquity to the Renaissance, simply Philosopher, without specifying the name, was called not Plato, but Aristotle (just as Homer was simply called Poet). Plato was always called “divine”, or “god of philosophers” (Cicero). From Aristotle, all subsequent European philosophy borrowed terminology and method. From Plato - most of the problems that remained invariably relevant at least until Kant. However, after Kant, Schelling and Hegel again revived Platonism. For ancient authors, Plato's word is divine, because he, like an oracle or prophet, sees and speaks the truth by inspiration from above; but just like an oracle, he speaks in a dark and ambiguous way, and his words can be interpreted in different ways.

During Hellenism and Late Antiquity, the two most influential schools of thought were Platonism and Stoicism. Since the time of Max Weber, ancient philosophy - namely the Platonic or Stoic sense - has often been classified as a "religion of salvation", placing it on a par with Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. And this is true: for the Platonist and Stoic, philosophy was not an autonomous science among other specialized sciences, but knowledge as such, and knowledge was considered as the meaning, goal and condition for saving a person from suffering and death. The cognizing part of the soul - the mind - is the “most important thing” for the Stoics, and for the Platonists it is the only original and immortal thing in man. Reason is the basis of both virtue and happiness. Philosophy and its crown - wisdom - is the way of life and the structure of a person striving for perfection or achieving it. According to Plato, philosophy also determines the afterlife of a person: he is destined to be reincarnated again and again for thousands of years for the suffering of earthly life, until he masters philosophy; only then, freed from the body, will the soul return to its homeland, to the region of eternal bliss, merging with the soul of the world (“State”, book X). It was the religious component of the teaching that led to the constant revival of interest in Plato and the Stoa in European thought right up to the present day. The dominant of this religious component can be schematically designated as dualism among the Platonists and pantheism among the Stoics. No matter how much the metaphysics of Plato, Philo of Alexandria, Plotinus, Proclus, medieval realists and the Neoplatonists of the Renaissance differed, the separation of two worlds remains fundamental to them: the empirical and the ideal, the intelligible. They all recognize the immortality of the soul (in its rational part) and see the meaning of life and salvation in liberation from the bonds of the body and the world. Almost all of them profess a transcendental Creator God and consider intellectual intuition to be the highest form of knowledge. Based on a single criterion - the dualistic position of two substances irreducible to each other - Leibniz classified Descartes as a Platonist and criticized him for “Platonism”.

The attitude of Christian thinkers to Platonism was quite complex. On the one hand, of all the pagan philosophers, Plato, as Augustine put it, is closest to Christianity. Already from the 2nd century. Christian authors repeat the legend about how Plato, during a trip to Egypt, became acquainted with the Mosaic Book of Genesis and copied his “Timaeus” from it, for the doctrine of the all-good, all-powerful and all-knowing God, who created the world solely because of his goodness, could not exist without revelations from above arise in the pagan head. On the other hand, many key points of Platonism were unacceptable for Christianity: first of all, dualism, as well as the doctrine of the pre-existence of ideas in the mind of the Creator and the pre-existence and transmigration of the soul. It was precisely against the Platonists that he spoke out already in the 2nd century. Tatian, arguing that “the soul itself is not immortal, Hellenes, but mortal... In itself, it is nothing more than darkness, and there is nothing bright in it” (Speech against the Hellenes, 13). Convicted for Platonism in the 4th century. Origen's teachings. Augustine, who spent most of his life thinking in the spirit of dualism under the influence of the Manichaeans and Plato and Plotinus, in the end sharply breaks with this tradition, finding it seductive and contrary to Christianity, condemns the passion for knowledge and philosophy, calling for humility and obedience without arrogance. Convicted for the “Platonic heresy” in the 12th century. Church John Italus, and later fights with the Platonist-humanists of the Renaissance, relying on Aristotle, Gregory Palamas.

The first and most thorough critic of Platonism was Aristotle, a student of Plato himself. He criticizes Plato precisely for dualism - the doctrine of the separate existence of ideas, as well as for the Pythagorean mathematization of natural science - the doctrine of numbers as the first true and knowable structure of the empirical world. In Aristotle's presentation, Platonism appears as a radically dualistic doctrine, much closer to the philosophy of the Pythagoreans than can be seen from Plato's own dialogues. Aristotle expounds a complete dogmatic system, which is not in Plato’s texts, but it is precisely similar system will then be used as the basis for the metaphysics of Neoplatonism. This circumstance has led some researchers to suggest that in addition to written dialogues intended for a wide range of readers, Plato disseminated “unwritten teaching” for initiates in a narrow esoteric circle (the discussion about Plato’s “unwritten teaching”, begun by the books of K. Gaiser and G. Kremer, continues to this day day). Of the written dialogues, the Timaeus has always aroused the greatest interest, considered the quintessence of Plato's work. According to Whitehead (Whitehead A.N. Process and Realty. N. Y, 1929, p. 142 sqq.), the entire history of European philosophy can be considered as a lengthy commentary on Timaeus.

Aristotle's philosophy

ARISTOTLE (Ἀριστοτέλης) from Stagira (384, Stagira, eastern coast of the Chalkidiki Peninsula - October 322 BC, Chalkis, Euboea) - Greek philosopher and encyclopedist, founder of the Peripatetic school. In 367–347 - at Plato's Academy, first as a listener, then as a teacher and an equal member of the community of Platonist philosophers. Years of wanderings (347–334): in the city of Asse in Troas (M. Asia), in Mytilene on the island. Lesvos; from 343/342 teacher of 13-year-old Alexander the Great (probably until 340). During the 2nd Athenian period (334–323) he taught at the Lyceum. For a complete collection of all ancient biographical evidence about Aristotle with comments, see I. Düring, 1957.

The original works of Aristotle fall into three classes: 1) published during his lifetime and literary processed (so-called exoteric, i.e. popular science), ch.o. dialogues; 2) all kinds of collections of materials and extracts - the empirical basis of theoretical treatises; 3) so-called esoteric works - scientific treatises (“pragmatism”), often in the form of “lecture notes” (during Aristotle’s lifetime they were not published, until the 1st century BC they were little known - about their fate, see the article. Peripatetic school) . All the original works of Aristotle that have come down to us (Corpus Aristotelicum - a set preserved in Byzantine manuscripts under his name, also includes 15 non-authentic works) belong to the 3rd class (except for the Athenian Polity), the works of the first two classes (and, judging by ancient catalogues, some of the 3rd grade works) have been lost. Fragments - quotations from later authors - give some idea of ​​the dialogues (there are three general editions: V.Rose, 3ed. 1886; R.Walzer, 2ed. 1963; W.D.Ross, 1955 and many separate publications with attempts at reconstructions).

The problem of the relative chronology of Aristotle's works is closely intertwined with the problem of the evolution of his philosophical views. According to the genetic concept of the German scientist W. Jaeger (1923), during the academic period Aristotle was an orthodox Platonist who recognized the “separateness” of ideas; only after Plato's death; Having experienced an ideological crisis, he criticized the theory of ideas and then, until the end of his life, evolved towards natural scientific empiricism. Accordingly, Yeager and his school dated Aristotle's writings according to the degree of “distance” from Platonism. Yeager's theory, which predetermined the development of Aristotelian studies in the 20th century, is currently shared by few people in its pure form. According to the concept of the Swedish scientist I. Dühring (1966), Aristotle was initially an opponent of the transcendence of ideas, the sharpest tone of his polemics is in his early works, on the contrary, in his mature ontology (“Metaphysics” Г – Ζ – Η – Θ) he essentially returned to the Platonic problematics of supersensible reality.

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