15. Milesian school: Anaximander Anaximander (c. 610-after 546 BC) - a compatriot of Thales, an outstanding mathematician, geographer, prose writer and philosopher. He owns the original idea of ​​the infinity of worlds. For the fundamental principle of existence, he took the indefinite and boundless

2. Milesian school: Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes Thales from Miletus (c. 625-547 BC) - the founder of European science and philosophy; in addition, he is a mathematician, astronomer and politician, who was highly respected by his fellow citizens. Thales came from a noble

/560 BC e.

Western Philosophy

The beginning

Anaximenes of Miletus(other Greek. Ἀναξιμένης , / - /502 BC e. , Miletus) - an ancient Greek philosopher, a representative of the Milesian school of natural philosophy, a student of Anaximander.

The genesis of the world in Anaximenes

Anaximenes is the last representative of the Milesian school. Anaximenes strengthened and completed the trend of spontaneous materialism - the search for natural causes of phenomena and things. Like Thales and Anaximander earlier, he considers a certain type of matter to be the fundamental principle of the world. He considers such matter to be unlimited, infinite, having an indefinite form. air, from which everything else arises. “Anaximenes… proclaims air to be the beginning of existence, for from it everything arises and everything returns to it.”

As a meteorologist, Anaximenes believed that hail is formed when water falling from clouds freezes; if air is mixed with this freezing water, snow is formed. Wind is compressed air. Anaximenes associated the state of the weather with the activity of the Sun.

Like Thales and Anaximander, Anaximenes studied astronomical phenomena, which, like others natural phenomena, tried to explain naturally. Anaximenes believed that the Sun was a [flat celestial] body, similar to the Earth and the Moon, which became hot from rapid movement. Earth and heavenly bodies hover in the air; The earth is motionless, other luminaries and planets (which Anaximenes distinguished from stars and which, as he believed, arise from earthly vapors) are moved by cosmic winds.

Compositions

The writings of Anaximenes have been preserved in fragments. Unlike his teacher Anaximander, who wrote, as the ancients themselves noted, “artificial prose,” Anaximenes writes simply and artlessly. Outlining his teaching, Anaximenes often resorts to figurative comparisons. The condensation of air, "giving birth" to the flat earth, he likens to "felting wool"; The sun, the moon - fiery leaves floating in the middle of the air, etc.

Literature

• Fragments of early Greek philosophers, vol. 1. - M .: Nauka, 1989. - S. 129-135.
• Thomson J. Studies in the history of ancient Greek society, v. 2. The first philosophers. Per. from English. - M.: 1959. - S. 153-154.
• Losev A.F. History of ancient aesthetics. Early classic. - M.: Ladomir, 1994. - S. 312-317.
• Trubetskoy S. N. The course of the history of ancient philosophy. - M.: Russian yard, 1997.
• Asmus V. F. Antique Philosophy. - M.: Higher School, 1998. - S. 11-12.

Links

• // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: In 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.

Ancient philosophy, its main schools.

Philosophy originated in ancient Greece in VI-V centuries BC. As in other countries, it arose on the basis of mythology and duty kept in touch with it.

The main periods in the development of ancient (Greco-Roman) philosophy:

1. Early period of Greek philosophy 7th century BC. ser. V. V. BC.
2. Classical period of Greek philosophy 2nd half. V beg. 4th century BC.
3. Hellenistic period of Greco-Roman philosophy 2nd half. IV V. BC. 529 AD

In content, philosophy strives for a rational explanation of total reality. Its interests are far from the later interests of science, which explains only fragments of reality. In fact, philosophy is created by a question addressed to reality as a whole: what is the beginning of all things? The subject of philosophy being, reality as a whole. Being, in turn, can be revealed only through understanding the origin of all things. In methods, philosophy strives for a rational explanation, while considering the universal as an object. In philosophy, mind, logic, logos are significant. Philosophy must go beyond facts and experience, relying on reason. Rationality at the level of logos difference between philosophy and such ideological forms as religion and art. The goal of philosophy is the pure contemplation of truth. At the same time, the contemplation of truth as such does not go beyond the limits of the logos, does not turn to the help of mythological images.

1. Milesian school: Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes
Thales of Miletus (c. 625547 BC) founder of European science and philosophy; in addition, he is a mathematician, astronomer and political.

Thales literally made a revolution in the worldview, putting forward the idea of ​​substance - the fundamental principle of everything, generalizing all diversity into a coexistent and seeing the beginning of everything in moisture: after all, it permeates everything. He tried to find a physical beginning without the mediation of myths. Water, as a natural principle, turns out to be the bearer of all changes and transformations, which was the reason for the “resignation” of the Olympic, i.e. pagan, gods, ultimately mythological thinking, and continued the path to a natural explanation of nature. What else is the genius of the father of European philosophy? He first came up with the idea of ​​the unity of the universe. This idea, once born, never died: it was communicated to his students and the students of his students ... Thales, like his successors, stood on the point of view of hylozoismthe view that life is an immanent property of matter, the existent itself is moving, and at the same time animated. Thales believed that the soul is poured into everything that exists.

Thales' successor Anaximander (c. 610 after 540 BC) was the first to rise to the original idea of ​​the infinity of worlds. For the fundamental principle of existence, he took apeiron an indefinite and boundless substance: its parts change, but the whole remains unchanged. This infinite principle is characterized as a divine, creative and moving principle: it is inaccessible to sensory perception, but is comprehensible by reason. Since this beginning is infinite, it is inexhaustible in its possibilities for the formation of concrete realities. This is an ever-living source of new formations: everything in it is in an indefinite state, as a real possibility. Everything that exists is, as it were, scattered in the form of tiny slices. So small grains of gold form whole ingots, and particles of the earth form its concrete arrays.

The third representative of the Milesian school is Anaximenes (c. 585525 BC). He believed that the beginning of everything is air, thinking of it as infinite and seeing in it the ease of change and transmutability of things. According to Anaximenes, all things arose from the air and are its modifications, formed by its condensation and discharge. So, the Milesians made a breakthrough with their views, in which the question was clearly posed: “What is everything from?” Their answers are different, but it was they who laid the foundation for a proper philosophical approach to the question of the origin of beings: to the idea of ​​substance, i.e. to the fundamental principle, to the essence of all things and phenomena of the universe.

2. Pythagoras and his school
Pythagoras (VI V. BC), was also preoccupied with the problem: “What is everything from?”, But he solved it differently than the Milesians. "Everything is a number" this is his starting position. He, who was the first to call philosophy by this name, worked not alone, but in a school organized by him, which, by the way, included women. It was in numbers that the Pythagoreans saw the properties and relationships inherent in various harmonic combinations of existence. The Pythagoreans saw in number and mathematical relations an explanation of the hidden meaning of phenomena, the laws of nature. They studied the dependence of the nature of the sound of musical instruments on the length of the strings; searched for simple numerical relationships in geometry and astronomy. Pythagoras successfully developed various kinds of mathematical proofs, which contributed to the development of the principles of an exact rational type of thinking. The culture of this type of thinking is still developing. The Pythagoreans were among the first to subtly comprehend the significance of the number not only in concrete scientific, but also in philosophical thinking. It is important to emphasize that the Pythagoreans, although they absolutized numbers, achieved considerable success in their search for harmony, a surprisingly beautiful quantitative consistency that permeates everything that exists, primarily the phenomena of the Cosmos.

The harmony of the Universe is conditioned by measure and number, mathematical proportionality.

Pythagoras taught that the soul is immortal. He owns the idea of ​​the reincarnation of souls. He believed that everything that happens in the world is repeated over and over again after certain periods of time, and the souls of the dead after some time inhabit others, giving life to their physicality.

3. Heraclitus of Ephesus
The great dialectician of the ancient world is Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 530470 BC). Everything that exists, according to Heraclitus, constantly passes from one state to another. He owns the famous words: "Everything flows!" (is it possible to overestimate this ingenious maxim?!), “You cannot enter the same river twice”, “There is nothing immovable in the world: the cold gets warmer, the warm gets colder, the wet dries up, the dry gets moistened.” Emergence and disappearance, life and death, birth and death existence and non-existence are interconnected, conditioning and passing into each other.

It turns out that there is nothing, everything just becomes. According to the views of Heraclitus, the transition of a phenomenon from one state to another is accomplished through the struggle of opposites, which he called the eternal universal Logos, i.e. by a single law common to all existence: listening not to me, but to the Logos, it is wise to recognize that everything is one. According to Heraclitus, fire and the Logos are "equivalent": "fire is reasonable and is the cause of the control of everything", and that which "controls everything through everything", he considers reason. Heraclitus teaches that the world, one of everything, was not created by any of the gods and none of the people, but was, is and will be an ever-living fire, naturally igniting and naturally extinguishing. Fire is an image of perpetual motion. Fire as a visible form of the combustion process is the most appropriate definition for the element, understood as a substance, which is characterized by the fact that it is an eternal process, a “flaming” dynamic of existence. But this does not mean at all that Heraclitus put fire in place of water and air. The matter is much more subtle. True, in Heraclitus Cosmos is an eternally blazing fire, but it is a living fire. He is identical with the deity. Hylozoistic pantheismfinds its most perfect expression.

Fire as the soul of the Cosmos presupposes rationality and divinity. But the mind has the power to control everything that exists: it directs everything and gives form to everything. Mind, i.e. The Logos rules everything through everything. At the same time, the objective value of the human mind is determined by the degree of its adequacy to the Logos, i.e. general world order. Heraclitus is considered a prominent representative of the religious movement of his age. He shared the idea of ​​the immortality of the soul, considering death to be the birth of the soul for a new life.

4. Elean school. Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno
Heraclitus emphasized one side of the contradiction of being - the change of things, the fluidity of being. Criticizing the Heraclitean teaching, Xenophanes, and especially Parmenides and Zeno, turned their attention to the other side - to the stability, the preservation of things. If Heraclitus argued that everything changes, then Parmenides - just the opposite: nothing changes. Remarkable in its power of generalization is Parmenides' assertion: "Nothing can become something, and something cannot become nothing."

Xenophanes of Colophon (c. 565473 BC)

He opposed the anthropomorphic elements in religion: he ridiculed the gods in human form. He believed that God is neither in body nor spirit like mortals. Xenophanes expressed a number of thoughts that were original for his time, for example, about the origin of the Earth, believing that it appeared from the sea. As arguments, he referred to the fact that shells are found far from the sea (in the mountains), and prints of fish and plants are found on stones.

The philosophical views of Xenophanes are especially significant for us because he stood at the head of the monotheists and at the head of the skeptics. It was from his lips that a cry of despair escaped: nothing can be known for certain! The indecision of his subtle mind sowed the seeds of skepticism, which germinate in the field of the entire subsequent history of philosophy. For the first time, it was Xenophanes who carried out the division of types of knowledge, formulating the problem of the relationship between "knowledge by opinion" and "knowledge by truth." The testimonies of the senses do not give true knowledge, but only opinion, visibility: “opinion reigns over everything”, “it is not the truth, but only opinion is available to people,” the thinker claims.

Xenophanes, overwhelmed with doubts, was not satisfiedviews of Thales and Pythagoras on being. Xenophanes believed that there is only one Being in many forms and this is one God. Under the One God, Xenophanes did not at all mean a personal God, separate from the world: God is inseparable from the world, which is only its manifestation. Xenophanes can be called a pantheistic monotheist.

Parmenides (late VIIVI V. BC) philosopher and politician, the central figure of the Eleatic school.

He distinguishes (following Xenophanes) truth based on rational knowledge, and opinion based on sensory perceptions, which acquaint us only with the appearance of things, but do not give knowledge of their true essence. He divided philosophy into the philosophy of truth and the philosophy of opinion, calling reason the criterion of truth, but in the senses, he said, there is no accuracy: do not trust sensory perceptions, do not roll aimlessly with your eyes, do not listen with ears in which only noise is heard, and do not chat idly with your tongue , but examine the evidence expressed with reason.

The central idea of ​​Parmenides is being, the correlation of thinking and being. Thought always refers to something, for without the being about which it speaks we cannot find thought. Try to think of nothing! And you will see that it is impossible. There is nothing and nothing will be, except for what is, and there is no being, where it would be empty of what is. Being has not arisen: it is imperishable. Parmenides' idea that there is not and cannot be empty space and time outside the changing being is brilliant. Existing Parmenides considered devoid of variability and diversity. Parmenides thus created an impassable abyss between the world, as it is given to us in perception, full of movement, and the world of a single and immovable being, which opens up to thinking. A dramatic situation arose in the development of knowledge: some melted the world in a stream of water and a blaze of fire, while others, as it were, crystallized it in an immovable stone. Such an idea of ​​Parmenides is valuable: only being exists, there is no non-being. Only among the “empty-headed tribe” are existence and non-existence recognized as identical. Non-being can neither be known nor expressed: only the existent is conceivable. It is impossible to find thought without being: thought without being is nothing.

The profound wisdom of this idea must be noted. And in fact: try to think of what is not, i.e. non-existence. You won't succeed. Your thought will rush about in search of non-existence, each time as if “grabbing” something that exists. Non-existence is not accessible to either feelings or thoughts. Here, Parmenides reveals an exceptionally deep idea about the subject relatedness of thought; this fundamental idea remains unshakable through the ages. The thought of Parmenides, who believed that the Universe has no flaws, is curious. Describing the being in its wholeness, he says: the being cannot be "neither a little more, nor a little less." Therefore, there is no empty space: everything is filled with being. This idea is completely true in the spirit of A. Einstein.

Let us especially emphasize that Parmenides linked the spiritual world of a person with such determinants as the position of a person and the level of his bodily organization: the highest degree of organization gives the highest degree of thinking. And corporeality and spirituality coincide in the universe in God.

Zeno of Elea (c. 490430 BC) philosopher and politician, favorite student and follower of Parmenides. He developed logic as dialectics. Let us turn to the most famous refutation of the possibility of motion, the famous aporias of Zeno, whom Aristotle called the inventor of dialectics. The aporias are extremely deep and arouse interest to this day.

The internal contradictions of the concept of movement are clearly revealed in the famous aporia "Achilles", which analyzes the situation in which swift-footed Achilles can never catch up with the tortoise. Why? Each time, with all the speed of his run and with all the smallness of the space separating them, as soon as he steps into the place that the turtle previously occupied, it will move forward somewhat. No matter how the space between them decreases, it is infinite in its divisibility into intervals, and all of them must be passed through, and this requires infinite time. Both Zeno and we know perfectly well that not only Achilles is quick-footed, but any lame-footed one will immediately catch up with the tortoise. But for the philosopher, the question was raised not in the plane of the empirical existence of movement, but in terms of the conceivability of its inconsistency in the system of concepts, in the dialectic of its relationship with space and time.

Zeno's aporias are connected with the dialectic of the fractional and the continuous in motion (as well as in space-time itself).

If we assume that "time" is measured by the number of segments, then the conclusion is true. Usually, however, it is pointed out that Zeno simply did not know the concept of the sum of an infinite series, otherwise he would have seen that an infinite number of terms nevertheless gives a finite path, which Achilles, moving with constant speed, no doubt, will overcome in the proper (finite) time.

Thus, the Eleatics failed to prove that there was no movement. With their subtle reasoning, they showed what hardly any of their contemporaries comprehended, what is movement? They themselves, in their reflections, climbed high level philosophical search for the mystery of movement. However, they were unable to break the fetters of the historical limitations of the development of philosophical views. Some special trains of thought were needed. These moves were groped by the founders of atomism.

5. Empedocles
Empedocles (ca. 490 ca. 430 BC), influenced the whole trend of scientific and philosophical thinking. It is impossible to overestimate his contribution to the development of the natural sciences. He treated air as a special substance. Based on observation, he proved that if a vessel is immersed upside down in water, it does not penetrate into it. He owns a subtle observation of the fact of centrifugal force: if you rotate; a bowl of water tied to the end of a rope, the water will not spill out. He knew that plants have sex. Showing a keen interest in the kingdom of the living, Empedocles put forward the hypothesis of the evolution of plants and animals, as well as the principle of the survival of the fittest (biologists lead the idea of ​​adaptation from him). He said that the Moon shines by reflected light, that a certain time is required for the propagation of light, but it is so short that we do not notice it. He knew (as did others) that a solar eclipse is caused by the passage of the Moon between the Sun and the Earth. His merits in medicine are significant: its history in European culture begins with him. Like many others, he wrote in verse.

In his interpretation of being, Empedocles takes as a starting point the thesis of Parmenides, which consists in the fact that in the proper sense there can be neither emergence nor death. At the same time, in an effort to explain the fact of apparent emergence and disappearance, Empedocles finds this explanation in the mixing of the original elements the “roots” of everything that exists and the disintegration of this mixture. The initial elements are characterized by predicates that have not arisen, are immutable and unchanging: they are eternal being, and from the spatial movement, as a result of which they are mixed in various respects, both the diversity and the change of individual objects must be explained.Thus, Empedocles came to the understanding that everything that exists somehow, from something and into something, was organized, happened, and does not remain in this state once and for all from time immemorial. In order to make the Parmenidean concept of being more acceptable for explaining nature, Empedocles developed the idea of ​​an element (although he apparently did not use the term itself) as a substance that, being homogeneous in itself, emits qualitatively unchanged and only changing states of motion and mechanical divisions, and this is already the way to atomistics. As the first principles of existence, Empedocles proceeded from the recognition of four elements: earth, fire, air and water (the very number of elements is arbitrary, and they were taken from previous natural philosophers).

Empedocles conceived the process of mixing as the penetration of particles of one into the pores of another, and disintegration as an exit from these pores. Regarding the qualitative differences of things, he reasoned only in general terms: they arise from the different degree to which there is a mixture of all or only a few elements in things. But as a purely immutable being, the elements cannot move and need to be set in motion. Naturally, there is a need to find the cause of the movement, i.e. driving force. On this path, Empedocles departs from the hylozoism of the Milesian philosophers. With him, for the first time, force and substance are isolated and conceived as independent world potencies. As a poet and philosopher, Empedocles introduced in the form of these forces not strictly scientific concepts, but logical-poetic forces-images Love and Enmity. They were conceived as independent essential forces, alternating in their predominance: there was once a Golden Age Love reigned, people worshiped Aphrodite. And wherever consent and harmony reign, Love rules there. Hence, according to Empedocles, all changes in the world are subject not to any goal, but to Chance and Necessity. Development occurs in cycles four states of the world alternate in a circle: the boundless dominance of Love and the complete unification of all elements (Empedocles called this state a ball and characterized it as one, or God); the process of gradual decomposition of the mixture by the increasing predominance of Hostility; absolute separation of all four elements due to the dominance of Enmity; the process of gradual formation of a new mixture due to the ever-increasing predominance of Love. In a state of enmity, heads without necks, arms without shoulders, eyes without foreheads, hair, internal organs move on their own. But then the power of Love invades, and everything tends to merge:

In the process of mixing in a fit of Love, ugly creatures were also obtained: with a face and chest turned in different directions, with the body of a bull and the face of a man, etc., hermaphrodites and other inconsistencies were formed. According to Empedocles, all ugly forms, like the mistakes of nature, could not adapt and perished; only expediently organized beings survived.

In his views on knowledge, Empedocles in many respects adjoins the Eleatics: like them, he complains about the imperfection of the senses and in "questions of truth he trusts only reason, partly human, and partly divine. But reason is replaced by sensory impressions. According to Empedocles, reason grows in people in accordance with the knowledge of the world, and a person can contemplate God only by the power of reason. Speaking of opinion, he admits only a fraction of the truth in it. Empedocles put forward such a famous principle of true knowledge: "Like is known by like." In "his religious quest and interpretation of the soul, Empedocles relied on the idea of ​​Pythagoras about immortality and the transmigration of souls.

6. Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras (c. 500428 BC) was the first professional scientist who devoted himself entirely to science. Anaxagoras was strongly influenced by the principle of the universal fluidity of being. But this principle was opposed by the conviction that what exists is eternal and indestructible. At the same time, both of these principles are combined. Anaxagoras expressed his views in this way: the Greeks are mistaken in thinking that something has a beginning or an end, nothing is born or destroyed, for everything is an accumulation and separation of pre-existing things. Therefore, everything that is formed can be called mixingseparation. This means that there was no act of creation, but there was and is only dispensation. Thus, if nothing can come from nothing, then all objects can only be combinations of already existing principles. That which enters into union or undergoes separation is called seeds or (which is the same thing) homeomerism. (This is something similar to the modern understanding of the chemical elements.)

In contrast to Parmenides and Thales, who taught that "everything is one", Anaxagoras argued: "Everything is many"; but the mass of elements is itself chaotic. What combines the elements? What force from an innumerable set of germinal elements arranges an all-encompassing harmonic system? This force, said Anaxagoras, is Reason (Nus) the force that moves the Universe. He was a follower of Anaximenes and for the first time attached reason to matter, beginning his work (and it is written in a style filled with greatness) like this: “All things were mixed up, then Reason came and ordered them.” Therefore, Anaxagoras was called Reason.

Reason, as Anaxagoras understood it, is not a moral Reason, but an omniscient and driving force that brings the elements into a certain arrangement.

According to Aristotle, Anaxagoras is “the first sober thinker”: if he did not directly state that the Universe is the Mind “activated” by an eternal process, then he subtly understood that this is a self-moving soul. The goal of the movement is "to fulfill all that is good in the soul." Let us note that such a goal is not something extraneous to thought. We are accustomed to usually setting the goal on the one hand, and the one who achieves it, on the other. But after all, taken in its universal understanding, the goal itself is contained in the achiever, it is actuated by him. The realization of an object is under the influence of its purposefulness: what was fulfilled, or what is contained is developing. In purposive movement, the result resides in the beginning, i.e. it is the fulfillment of the preceding. With this beginning, Anaxagoras accepted Reason as the Law and put it at the basis of being. His Nous, containing all that is good in the possibility, the Mind, self-preserving in its development, having a measure in itself, triumphantly reigns over being and governs movement. Putting the beginning of the universal, the Mind within the very essence, Anaxagoras posits the world-sovereign goal as a hidden thought of the world process.

Anaxagoras for the first time separated the immaterial principle of thought, or Mind, from matter. This is the new word of this thinker. He understood that matter as such does not explain the phenomena of movement, thinking and expediency in the universal world order: these phenomena cannot be deduced from impenetrability, inertia, extension, i.e. purely material properties of matter. Anaxagoras distinguished between the material and non-material principles of existence and defined the latter by analogy with the rational spirit of man. Thus, for the first time the concept of the universal principle was introduced. However, Anaxagoras did not call this beginning the Logos. In his system of philosophical views, it plays the role of an exclusively causal principle, the world engine. He came to this view from understanding the phenomena of nature, and not on the basis of an analysis of logical processes.

7. Atomism of Leucippus Democritus
Atomism manifested itself as a movement of ancient thought towards the philosophical unification of the fundamental principles of being, this hypothesis developed by Leucippus (VV. BC) and especially Democritus (c. 470 or 460 BC).

Democritus and his followers reduced the origins of other ancient thinkers to atoms. Both water, and air, and earth, and fire consist of a large number of atoms, differing in their qualitative specifics, but individually not perceived by the senses. The atomists considered the world as a whole, consisting of countless tiny indivisible particles atoms moving in the void. In the very concept of the atom (indivisible), its Eleatic origin is highlighted. Atoms, according to Democritus, are indivisible due to their absolute density, the absence of empty spaces in them and their exceptional smallness. Atoms and emptiness are the only reality. Atoms are forever rushing in the boundless void, which has no top, no bottom, no end, no edge, colliding, clinging and separating. The compounds of atoms form the whole diversity of nature. Atoms have the power of self-movement: such is their eternal nature. Atoms are formed into various configurations, which we perceive as separate things, but the difference in the structures of these configurations, i.e. the qualitative diversity of the world depends on different types of interactions between atoms. Thus, a discrete picture of the world that has existed for more than two millennia was created, in which being is thought of as consisting of the smallest and most isolated (discrete) particles of matter, and the relationship between these particles (i.e., the principle of interaction) is considered not to be the being itself, but only a property of atoms.

The indivisible physical Democritanian atoms were endowed with many geometric properties bodies of the visible world, for example, curvature, “hook-tostu”, etc. (As already mentioned, the soul was made up of round atoms.) Amers (according to Democritus), or "elements" (according to Epicurus), being parts of atoms, have properties that are different from the properties of atoms. So, if gravity is inherent in atoms, then amers are deprived of it. Failure to take into account this seeming contradiction led to an inaccurate interpretation of the teachings of Democritus. Gravity was presented not as a property of matter, but as a consequence of the movement of amers. In this case, an atom, as a collection of amers and surrounded by amers, can experience attraction from other atoms due to energy impulses transmitted by amers, and in different ways, depending on which side other atoms are on, which creates the effect of mutual attraction. Thus, gravity was conceived as a property inherent in the complex, and not in its parts.

Overcoming the difficulties of ancient atomism would have been possible only with the introduction of elements of differential and integral calculus into ancient science. Democritus developed a scientific method of cognition based on experience, observation and theoretical generalization of factual material. Sensations, he believed, represent, although insufficient, but a necessary source and basis of knowledge. Evidence about the world around us, which give sensations, are supplemented and corrected by the subtle work of the mind.

According to Democritus, the human soul consists of the smallest, round, fiery, constantly restless atoms; with inner energyit is the cause of the movement of living beings. He was the first to express the idea of ​​projective objectification.subjective image: from the thing separate the thinnest "films" (surfaces) flowing into the eyes, ears, etc. In other words, a kind of fluids flow from objects, which, getting into our body through the sense organs, give rise to sensations, perceptions, i.e. images that we feel not in us, but where the perceived object is located: otherwise, we would not reach with a spoon into a plate, say, with soup, but into our eyes. In this case, the visual image is formed by the outflow emanating from the eyes, and from what is visible. (Specially studying this question (the power of the gaze), I must say: this is an extremely subtle insight of a genius.)

Democritus hesitated on the question of the nature of the gods, but was firm in recognizing the existence of God. According to Democritus, the gods are composed of atoms, and God is the cosmic mind. In the combination of atoms there is a certain living and spiritual force, and the beginnings of the mind are in the worlds that it endows with divinity: the world was created by the divine mind and the gods help people. The totality of fiery atoms, poured into the entire Cosmos, animates everything and gives everything and the whole Mind.

Unlike all the ideas of the beginning put forward so far, the idea of ​​the atom contains, among other things, the principle of the limit of divisibility of matter: the atom was conceived as the smallest particle that acts as the initial in creation and the last in the decomposition of the material element of existence. And this is a brilliant take-off of thought to a fundamentally new level of philosophical comprehension of existence.

8. Sophists and sophistry: Protagoras, Gorgias and Prodik

A sophist was first called a person who devoted himself to mental activity, or was skilled in some kind of wisdom, including learning. There were many Sophists, but we will focus on the three most characteristic of the essence of this trend Protagoras (c. 480 ca. 410 BC), Gorgias (c. 483375 BC), Prodicus (b. between 470 and 460 BC). Each of them had a unique personality, but in general they shared similar views.The Sophists focused their attention on social issues, on the individual and on the problems of communication.

Most fully the essence of the views of the sophists was expressed by Protagoras. He owns the famous position: "Man is the measure of all things: those that exist, that they exist, and those that do not exist, that they do not exist." He spoke of the relativity of all knowledge, proving that every statement can be countered with equal grounds by a statement that contradicts it.

In Gorgias, it has rather a negative character, only as a means of proof or refutation, and, moreover, is devoid of systematicity. So, Gorgias, deriving their specific definitions from general concepts and pointing out the contradictions of these definitions, comes to the proof of the inconsistency of the general concept itself. In his work “On Nature”, Gorgias proves three propositions: that nothing exists, and if something exists, then it is unknowable, and if it exists and is knowable, then it is inexpressible and inexplicable. As a result, he came to the conclusion that nothing can be said with certainty. We considered, for example, a person to be good, but when we talk about him, he may have already done something bad or even very bad: after all, everything changes quickly! If you are asked about something, it would be more correct to remain silent and only point your finger at what they are asking about: you can’t go wrong here. Prodik showed an exceptional interest in language, in the nominative (nominative) function of words, in the problems of semantics and synonymy, i.e. identification of words coinciding in meaning, the correct use of words. He compiled etymological clusters of words related in meaning, and also analyzed the problem of homonymy, i.e. distinguishing the meaning of graphically coinciding verbal constructions with the help of appropriate contexts, and paid great attention to the rules of the dispute, approaching the analysis of the problem of refutation techniques, which was of great importance in discussions.

Sophists were the first teachers and researchers of the art of the word, it is with them that philosophical linguistics begins. They are credited for the study of Greek literature.

Sophists considered literature an extremely important object of reflection, and the word was an independent subject of study. Although some sophists were great thinkers, their relativism often led to subjectivism and skepticism. At the same time, their undeniable role in the development of dialectics cannot be denied.

9. Socrates
The turning point in the development of ancient philosophy was the views of Socrates (469399 BC).

Socrates became famous as one of the founders of dialectics in the sense of finding truth through conversations and disputes; in his practice, dialogue became the main method of finding truth. Socrates used the so-called midwifery art, called maieutics the art of defining concepts through induction. With the help of skillfully asked questions, he singled out false definitions and found the correct ones. The method of dialectical disputes of Socrates was to detect contradictions in the reasoning of the interlocutor and bring him to the truth through questions and answers. In disputes, Socrates sought to prove the expediency and reasonableness of both the world and man. He made a turn in the development of philosophy, for the first time placing man, his essence, at the center of his philosophizing. internal contradictions his soul. Thanks to this, knowledge moves from the philosophical doubt "I know that I know nothing" to the birth of truth through self-knowledge. The main goal of his philosophy is to restore the authority of knowledge, shaken by the sophists.

The line between the spiritual processes inherent in man and the material world was more clearly marked precisely by Socrates. He emphasized the originality of consciousness in comparison with material existence and was one of the first to deeply reveal the sphere of the spiritual as an independent reality, thereby, as it were, laying it on the altar of universal human culture for study by all subsequent philosophical and psychological thought. Considering the phenomenon of the soul, Socrates proceeded from the recognition of its immortality, which was linked with his faith in God.

In matters of ethics, Socrates developed the principles of rationalism, arguing that virtue stems from knowledge and a person who knows what good is will not act badly. After all, good is also knowledge, so the culture of intellect can make people good: no one is evil out of good will, people are only evil out of ignorance.

At the end of his life, Socrates was brought to trial for an interpretation of the deity that differed from that accepted according to the tradition that existed in Athens, and also for allegedly “corrupting youth” with “seditious” ideas. As a result of various intrigues, he was ultimately sentenced to death. Refusing the opportunity provided by his friends to flee, Socrates died by drinking poison (hemlock).

10. Plato
Plato (427347 BC) Plato says: "The world is not just a bodily cosmos, and not separate objects and phenomena: in it the general is combined with the individual, and the cosmic with the human." Space is a kind piece of art. He is beautiful, he is the wholeness of singularities. The cosmos lives, breathes, pulsates, full of various potentialities, and it is controlled by forces that form common patterns. The cosmos is full of divine meaning, which is the realm of ideas (eidos, as they said then), eternal, imperishable and abiding in their radiant beauty. According to Plato, the world is dual in nature: it distinguishes between the visible world of changeable objects and the invisible world of ideas. Thus, individual trees appear and disappear, but the idea of ​​a tree remains unchanged. The world of ideas is a true being, and concrete, sensually perceived things are something between being and non-being: they are only shadows of ideas, their weak copies.

The idea is the central category in Plato's philosophy. The idea of ​​a thing is something ideal. So, for example, we drink water, but we cannot drink the idea of ​​water or eat the idea of ​​bread, paying in stores with ideas of money: an idea is the meaning, the essence of a thing.

In Plato's ideas, all cosmic life is generalized; they have regulative energy and govern the Universe. They have a regulative and formative power; they are eternal patterns, paradigms (from the Greek. paradigma sample), according to which the whole multitude of real things is organized from formless and fluid matter. Plato interpreted ideas as some kind of divine essence. They were conceived as target causes, charged with the energy of aspiration, while between them there are relations of coordination and subordination. The highest idea is the idea of ​​absolute goodness it is a kind of "Sun in the realm of ideas", the world Mind, it deserves the name of Mind and Divinity. But this is not yet a personal divine Spirit (as later in Christianity). Plato proves the existence of God by the feeling of our affinity with his nature, which, as it were, "vibrates" in our souls.

Interpreting the idea of ​​the soul, Plato says: the soul of a person before his birth resides in the realm of pure thought and beauty. Then she falls on the sinful earth, where, temporarily being in human body, like a prisoner in a dungeon, "remembers the world of ideas." Here Plato had in mind memories of what happened in the Former Life: the soul resolves the main questions of its life even before birth; when she comes into the world, she already knows everything there is to know. She herself chooses her lot: her own fate, destiny, is already destined for her. Thus, the Soul, according to Plato, is an immortal essence; three parts are distinguished in it: rational, turned to ideas; ardent, affective-volitional; sensual, driven by passions, or lusty. The rational part of the soul is the basis of virtue and wisdom, the ardent part of courage; the overcoming of sensibility is the virtue of prudence. As for the Cosmos as a whole, the source of harmony is the world mind, a force capable of adequately thinking itself, being at the same time an active principle, the helmsman of the soul, controlling the body, which in itself is devoid of the ability to move. In the process of thinking, the soul is active, internally contradictory, dialogical and reflexive. “Thinking, she does nothing more than reason, asking herself, affirming and denying.” Harmonious combination of all parts of the soul under the regulative beginning of the mind gives a guarantee of justice as an essential property of wisdom.

In his doctrine of cognition, Plato underestimated the role of the sensory stage of cognition, believing that sensations and perceptions deceive a person. He even advised to “close your eyes and plug your ears” to know the truth, giving room to the mind. Plato approached knowledge from the standpoint of dialectics. What is dialectic? This concept comes from the word "dialogue" The art of reasoning, moreover, reasoning in communication, means to argue, dispute, prove something, and refute something. In general, dialectics is the art of “exploratory thinking”, while thinking strictly logically, unraveling all kinds of contradictions in the clash of different opinions, judgments, and beliefs.

Plato developed the dialectic of the one and the many, the identical and the other, movement and rest, etc., in particular detail. Plato's philosophy of nature is characterized by its connection with mathematics. Plato analyzed the dialectic of concepts. This was of great importance for the subsequent development of logic.

Recognizing with his predecessors that everything sensible "eternally flows", constantly changes and is not subject to logical understanding, Plato distinguished knowledge from subjective sensation. The connection that we introduce into judgments about sensations is not a sensation: in order to cognize an object, we must not only feel it, but also understand it. It is known that general concepts are the result of special mental operations, "the amateur activity of our rational soul", they are not applicable to individual things. General definitions in the form of concepts do not refer to individual sensible objects, but to something else: they express a genus or species, i.e. something that refers to certain sets of objects. According to Plato, it turns out that our subjective thought corresponds to an objective thought that resides outside of us. This is the essence of his objective idealism.

Early Greek thought considered the elements as philosophical categories: earth, water, fire, air, ether. Then the categories take on the form of generalized, abstract concepts. This is how they look to this day. The first system of five guilty categories proposed by Plato: being, movement, rest, identity, difference. Here together are the categories of being (existing, movement), and logical categories (identity, difference). Plato interpreted the categories as sequentially following from each other.

11. Aristotle
Aristotle (384322 BC) is a student of Plato, but on a number of fundamental issues he disagreed with his teacher. In particular, he believed that the Platonic theory of ideas is completely insufficient for explaining empirical reality. It is Aristotle who owns the saying: “Plato is my friend, but the truth is dearer!” He sought to overcome the Platonic gap between the world of sensible things and the world of ideas.

Proceeding from the recognition of the objective existence of matter, Aristotle considered it to be eternal, uncreated and indestructible. Matter cannot arise from nothing, nor can it increase or decrease in its quantity. However, matter itself, according to Aristotle, is inert, passive. It contains only the possibility of the emergence of a real variety of things. In order to turn this possibility into reality, it is necessary to give the matter an appropriate form. By form, Aristotle meant an active creative factor, thanks to which a thing becomes real. Form is a stimulus and a goal, the reason for the formation of diverse things from monotonous matter: matter is a kind of clay. In order for various things to arise from it, a potter is needed - a god. Form and matter are inextricably linked, so that every thing in the possibility is already contained in matter and, by natural development, receives its form. The whole world is a series of forms connected with each other and arranged in order of increasing perfection. Thus, Aristotle approaches the idea of ​​a single being of a thing, a phenomenon: they represent a fusion of matter and form. Matter acts as a possibility and as a kind of substratum of being. Marble, for example, can be considered as the possibility of a statue, it is also a material principle, a substrate, and a statue carved from it is already a unity of matter and form. The main engine of the world is God, defined as the form of all forms, as the top of the universe.

Aristotle's consideration of the relationship between matter and form reveals the energetic dynamism of the being in its development. At the same time, the thinker sees the causal dependence of the phenomena of existence: everything has a causal explanation. In this regard, he makes a distinction between causes: there is an active cause - this is an energy force that generates something in the flow of the universal interaction of the phenomena of being, not only matter and form, act and potency, but also the generating energy-cause, which, along with the active principle, has a target Meaning: "for what". Here we are dealing with such an extremely important position of Aristotle's philosophy as the semantic beginning of all things, as well as the hierarchy of its levels from matter as an opportunity to the formation of individual forms of being and further from inorganic formations to the world of plants, living beings, different types animals and, finally, to man, society. In Aristotle, the principle of the development of beings played a huge role, which is organically connected with the categories of space and time, which for him act not as substances, but as a “place” and a number of motion, i.e. as a sequence of real and conceivable events and states.

Aristotle developed a hierarchical system of categories in which the main one was "essence", or "substance", and the rest were considered its features. In an effort to simplify the categorical system, Aristotle then recognized only three main categories: essence, state, relation.

According to Aristotle, the world movement is an integral process: all its moments are mutually conditioned, which implies a single engine. Further, starting from the concept of causality, he comes to the concept of the first cause. And this is the so-called cosmological proof of the existence of God. God is the first cause of movement, the beginning of all beginnings. Indeed, a series of causes cannot be infinite or beginningless. There is a cause that determines itself, does not depend on anything: the cause of all causes! After all, the series of causes would never end if we did not allow the absolute beginning of any movement. This beginning is the deity as a global supersensible substance. Aristotle substantiated the existence of the deity by considering the principle of the beautification of the Cosmos. According to Aristotle, the deity serves as the subject of the highest and most perfect knowledge, since all knowledge is directed to form and essence, and God is pure form and the first essence. Aristotle's God, however, is not a personal God.

Descending in his philosophical reflections from the abyss of the Cosmos to the world of animate beings, Aristotle believed that the soul, possessing purposefulness, is nothing more than its organizing principle, inseparable from the body, the source and method of regulating the body, its objectively observable behavior. Soul entelechybody. Therefore, those who believe that the soul cannot exist without a body are right, but that it itself is immaterial, not corporeal. What we live, feel and think about is the soul, so that it is a certain meaning and form, and not matter, not a substratum: “It is the soul that gives meaning and purpose to life.” The body has a vital state that forms its orderliness and harmony. This is the soul, i.e. a reflection of the actual reality of the universal and eternal Mind. The soul distinguishes and cognizes what exists, but it "spends a lot of time in mistakes." “To achieve anything reliable in every respect about the soul is certainly the most difficult thing.” According to Aristotle, the death of the body frees the soul for its eternal life: the soul is eternal and immortal.

For Aristotle, knowledge has being as its object. The basis of experience is in sensations, in memory and habit. Any knowledge begins with sensations: it is that which is able to take the form of sensually perceived objects without their matter. The mind, on the other hand, sees the general in the particular. It is impossible to acquire scientific knowledge only by means of sensations and perceptions, due to the transient and changing nature of all things. The forms of truly scientific knowledge are concepts that comprehend the essence of a thing.

Conclusion

The cumulative problems of ancient philosophy can be thematically defined as follows: cosmology (natural philosophers), in its context, the totality of the real was seen as "physis" (nature) and as cosmos (order), the main question, while: "How did the cosmos arise?"; morality (sophists) was a defining theme in the knowledge of man and his specific abilities; metaphysics (Plato) declares the existence of an intelligible reality, claims that reality and being are heterogeneous, moreover, the world of ideas is higher than the sensual; methodology (Plato, Aristotle) ​​develops the problem of the genesis and nature of knowledge, while the method of rational search is understood as an expression of the rules of adequate thinking.

It should be noted that in line with the ancient ability to perceive this world, philosophically theoretical philosophical thought seems to be the most important for the subsequent formation of philosophical knowledge. At the very least, the doctrine of philosophy as life has now undergone a significant change: philosophy is no longer just life, but life precisely in cognition.