Being is traditionally one of the basic and most complex philosophical concepts of Existence as such. It is with him that the great sages of the past begin their reflections, and modern philosophers talk about him. Being is life

man in the Universe or the entire great Cosmos, from which each of us came and where we will all go in due time? An incredible mystery and an eternal question that haunts people. In attempts to find answers, to create a complete and correct picture of human Existence, an incredible number of interpretations of the concept have come to light. It is not for nothing that the main terms in the current text are written with. They do not represent the usual designation of things, but are intended to emphasize their scale and depth.

Sciences such as metaphysics and ontology, theology, cosmology and each of them consider the types of Being as part of universal space and mind have been trying to most fully consider the main aspects for hundreds of years. Thus, theology is a branch of knowledge devoted to the divine existence. Metaphysics speaks of the principles, the super-subtle, super-sensitive principles of this human phenomenon. It was this that Aristotle called “first philosophy,” and often these two concepts are considered as interrelated, and sometimes even completely identical. Cosmology chose the Essence of the world as the subject of its study. Space, like the whole world, is the realm of knowledge. Ontology considers everything that exists. The dialectics of Being, proposed by Hegel, sees it as a continuous chain of events, thoughts, incessant movement and development. However, this point of view is often criticized.

Of course, such a quantity led to the natural emergence of such concepts as “types of Being.” What forms can it take? Despite the differences in interpretation, Genesis is only the material and spiritual part of our world. It is precisely this belonging to one or another area of ​​Existence that is called objective and subjective reality.

The material part includes everything that exists regardless of the will and desire of Man. It is in itself, self-sufficient and independent. At the same time, not only natural objects are included, but also phenomena of social life. Spiritual existence is a more subtle structure. Thoughts and desires, thoughts, reflections - all this is part of the subjective reality of the Universal Existence.

Just as white cannot exist without black, so Genesis loses its meaning without its opposite. This antipode is called a certain “Nothing”.

Non-existence is what is often called the counterweight to Existence. The most interesting and inexplicable feature of Nothing is that in the absolute understanding of the Universe, it simply cannot exist. Despite some absurdity of such a statement, it has a place in philosophy.

The person himself, after his death, goes into this Nothingness, but his creations, descendants and thoughts remain in this world, and become part of the reality in which subsequent generations continue to live. Such “flowing over” allows us to say that Being is infinite, and Nothing is conditional.

BEING (Greek - τ? ε?ναι, ουσ?α; Latin - esse), one of the central concepts of philosophy, characterizing everything that exists - both actually and potentially (actual being, possible being), both in reality and in consciousness (thoughts, imagination). Ontology - the doctrine of being - has been the subject of so-called first philosophy since the time of Aristotle. The concepts of “being”, “essence”, “existence”, “substance” represent various aspects of being.

Genesis in ancient Greek philosophy. Ancient philosophy, especially the teachings of Plato and Aristotle, determined the general nature and methods of dividing the concept of being for many centuries. In a theoretically reflected form, the concept of being first appears among representatives of the Eleatic school, who opposed being, as something true and knowable, to the sensory world, which, being just an appearance (“opinion”), cannot be the subject of true knowledge. The concept of being, as it was conceptualized by Parmenides, contains three important points: 1) there is being, but there is no non-being; 2) being is one, indivisible; 3) existence is knowable, but non-existence is incomprehensible.

These principles were interpreted differently by Democritus, Plato and Aristotle. Leaving in force the main theses of the Eleatics, Democritus, in contrast to them, thought of existence as plural - atoms, and non-existence - as emptiness, preserving the principle of indivisibility for atoms, to which he gave a purely physical explanation. Plato, like the Eleatics, characterizes existence as eternal and unchanging, cognizable only by reason and inaccessible to the senses. However, Plato’s existence is plural, but these are not physical atoms, but intelligible immaterial ideas. Plato calls incorporeal ideas “essences” (Greek ο?σ?α from the verb “to be” - ε?ναι), that is, those that “exist.” Being is opposed to becoming - the sensory world of transitory things. Claiming that non-existence is impossible to express or think (“Sophist” 238 c), Plato, however, admits that non-existence exists: otherwise it would be incomprehensible how delusion and lies, that is, “the opinion of non-existence,” are possible. For the sake of substantiating the possibility of knowledge, which presupposes a relationship between the knower and the known, Plato contrasts being with something else - “existing non-being.” Being as an interconnected set of ideas exists and is conceivable only by virtue of participation in the super-existent and unknowable One.

Aristotle retains the understanding of being as the beginning of the eternal, self-identical, unchangeable. To express various aspects of being in concepts, Aristotle uses rich terminology: τ? ε?ναι (substantivized verb “to be”) - being (Latin esse); τ? δν (substantivized participle from the verb “to be”) - existing (ens; the concepts of “being” and “being” are interchangeable in Aristotle); ο?σ?α - essence (substantia); τ? τ? ?ν ε?ναι (substantivized question “what is being?”) - whatness, or the essence of being (essentia); α?τ? τ? ?ν - existing in itself (ens per se); τ? ?ν η оν - existing as such (ens qua ens). In Aristotle's teaching, being is not a category, for all categories point to it; the first among them - essence - stands closest to being; it is more of an entity than any of its predicates (accidents). Aristotle defines the “first essence” as a separate individual - “this person”, and the “second essence” - as a species (“man”) and a genus (“animal”). The first essence cannot be a predicate; it is something independent. Existence as such can be understood as the highest of all first essences, it is a pure act, an eternal and immovable prime mover free from matter, which is characterized as “being in itself” and is studied by theology, or the science of the “first being” - the Divine.

The Neoplatonic understanding of being goes back to Plato. According to Plotinus, being presupposes a super-existential principle standing on the other side of being and knowledge - the “One”, or “Good”. Only being is conceivable; that which is above being (the One) and that which is below it (the infinite) cannot be the subject of thought, for “mind and being are one and the same” (“Enneads” V 4.2). Being is the first emanation, the “firstborn of the One”; being intelligible, being is always something definite, formed, stable.

Genesis in medieval philosophy and theology. The understanding of existence in the Middle Ages was determined by two traditions: ancient philosophy, on the one hand, and Christian Revelation, on the other. For the Greeks, the concept of being, as well as perfection, is associated with the concepts of limit, single, indivisible, formed and defined. Accordingly, the boundless, the limitless is recognized as imperfection, non-existence. On the contrary, in the Old and New Testaments, the most perfect being - God - is unlimited omnipotence, and therefore any limitation and certainty are perceived here as a sign of finitude and imperfection. Attempts to reconcile these two trends or to contrast one with the other have determined the interpretation of existence for more than one and a half millennia. Thus, Augustine, in his understanding of being, proceeds both from Holy Scripture (“I am who I am,” God said to Moses, Ex. 3:14), and from Greek philosophers, according to whom being is good. God is good as such, or “mere good.” Created things, according to Augustine, only participate in being or have being, but they themselves are not the essence of being, for they are not simple. According to Boethius, only in God, who is being itself, are being and essence identical; He is a simple substance that does not participate in anything, but in which everything participates. In created things, their being and essence are not identical; they have existence only by virtue of participation in that which itself is being. Like Augustine, being for Boethius is good: all things are good insofar as they exist, without, however, being good in their essence and their accidents.

Distinguishing, following Aristotle, actual and potential states, Thomas Aquinas, following the famous formula of Albertus Magnus “The first among created things is being,” considers being as the first of the actual states: “No creation is its own being, but only participates in being” (“No creation is its own being, but only participates in being” (“ Summa theologiae", q. 12, 4 pp.). Being is identical with goodness, perfection and truth. Substances (entities) have independent existence, while accidents exist only thanks to substances. Hence, in Thomism, the distinction between substantial and accidental forms: the substantial form imparts simple existence to things, while the accidental form is the source of certain qualities.

A revision of the ancient and medieval traditions in the understanding of being, occurring in nominalism and German mysticism of the 13th-14th centuries (for example, Meister Eckhart eliminates the difference between creature and creator, that is, being and being, as Christian theology understood it), as well as in pantheistic and related to pantheism in the currents of philosophy of the 15th-17th centuries (Nicholas of Cusa, G. Bruno, Spinoza’s being, etc.), led in the 16th-17th centuries to the creation of a new logic and a new form of science - mathematical natural science.

Genesis in philosophy of the 17th-18th centuries. As in the philosophy of the 17th century, the spirit, the mind, loses its ontological status and acts as the opposite pole of being, epistemological problematics become dominant, and ontology develops into natural philosophy. In the 18th century, along with criticism of rationalistic metaphysics, being was increasingly identified with nature, and ontology with natural science. Thus, T. Hobbes, considering the body to be the subject of philosophy, excludes from the knowledge of philosophy the entire sphere that in antiquity was called “being” as opposed to changeable becoming. In R. Descartes’ formula “I think, therefore I exist,” the center of gravity is knowledge, not being. Nature as the mechanical world of efficient causes is opposed to the world of rational substances as the kingdom of goals. This is how existence is split into two incommensurable spheres. Substantial forms, almost universally expelled from philosophical and scientific use in the 17th and 18th centuries, continue to play a leading role in the metaphysics of G. W. Leibniz. Although essence coincides with being only in God, nevertheless, in finite things, essence, according to Leibniz, is the beginning of being: the more essence (that is, actuality) in a thing, the more “existent” this thing is. Only simple (immaterial and unextended) monads have true reality; As for bodies, extended and divisible, they are not substances, but only collections or aggregates of monads.

In the transcendental idealism of I. Kant, the subject of philosophy is not being, but knowledge, not substance, but the subject. Distinguishing between the empirical and the transcendental subject, Kant shows that the definitions attributed to substance - extension, figure, movement - actually belong to the transcendental subject, the a priori forms of sensibility and reason which constitute the world of experience; that which goes beyond the limits of experience - the thing in itself - is declared unknowable. It is “things in themselves” - relics of substances, Leibnizian monads in Kantian philosophy - that carry the beginning of being. Kant retains a connection with the Aristotelian tradition: being, according to Kant, cannot be a predicate and cannot be “extracted” from a concept. The self-activity of the transcendental Self gives rise to the world of experience, the world of phenomena, but does not give rise to being.

Genesis in 19th century philosophy. In I. G. Fichte, F. W. Schelling and G. W. F. Hegel, who stood on the positions of mystical pantheism (its roots go back to Meister Eckhart and J. Boehme), for the first time an absolutely self-determining subject appears. Convinced that the human Self in its deepest dimension is identical with the divine Self, Fichte considers it possible to derive from the unity of self-consciousness not only the form, but also the entire content of knowledge, and thereby eliminate the concept of “things in themselves.” The principle of knowledge takes the place of being here. Philosophy, according to Schelling, is possible “only as a science of knowledge, having as its object not being, but knowledge.” Being, as it was understood by ancient and medieval philosophy, in German idealism is opposed to activity as an inert and dead principle. Hegel’s panlogism comes at the cost of transforming being into a simple abstraction, into “the general after things”: “Pure being is pure abstraction and, therefore, absolutely negative, which, taken just as directly, is nothing” (Hegel. Works. M.; L ., 1929.T. 1. P. 148). Hegel considers becoming to be the truth of such being. The advantage of becoming over being, change over immutability, movement over immobility was reflected in the priority of relationship over being, characteristic of transcendental idealism.

The principle of the identity of thinking and being, G. W. F. Hegel’s panlogism caused a reaction in the philosophy of the 19th century. L. Feuerbach spoke in defense of the naturalistic interpretation of being as a single natural individual. The existence of an individual personality, which is not reducible either to thinking or to the world of the universal, was opposed to Hegel by S. Kierkegaard. F.V. Schelling declared his early philosophy of identity and Hegel's panlogism that grew out of it unsatisfactory precisely because the problem of being disappeared in them. In the irrationalistic pantheism of the late Schelling, being is not a product of a conscious act of good divine will, but the result of the bifurcation and self-disintegration of the absolute; being here is rather the beginning of evil. This tendency deepens in the interpretation of being as an unreasonable will, a blind natural attraction in the voluntaristic pantheism of A. Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer's being is not simply indifferent to good, as with T. Hobbes or the French materialists - rather, it is evil. Philosophical teachings of the 2nd half of the 19th century, based on Schopenhauer’s voluntarism - the “philosophy of the unconscious” by E. Hartmann, the “philosophy of life” by F. Nietzsche - also consider being as opposed to spirit, reason. According to Nietzsche, being, or life, lies on the other side of good and evil, “morality is an aversion from the will to being” (Poln. collected work M., 1910. T. 9. P. 12).

The result of this process was the deontologization of nature, knowledge and human existence, the reaction to which in the 2nd half of the 19th-20th centuries was a turn to ontology in the neo-Leibnizianism of I. F. Herbart and R. G. Lotze, the realism of F. Brentano, in phenomenology, existentialism, neo-Thomism, Russian religious philosophy. In the pluralistic realism of Herbart and B. Bolzano, the Aristotelian-Leibnizian understanding of being is revived. The subject of Bolzano's scientific teaching is not an absolute subject, as in J. G. Fichte, but existence in itself, timeless and unchangeable, similar to the ideas of Plato. Bolzano's ideas influenced the understanding of existence of A. Meinong and the early E. Husserl, who spoke out in the late 19th and early 20th centuries against subjectivism and skepticism from the standpoint of an objective ontology of the Platonist type. Brentano, who prepared the phenomenological movement, also spoke out in defense of Aristotelian realism.

Attempts to revive realistic ontology were opposed from the mid-19th century by positivism, which continued the nominalistic tradition and the criticism of substance that was begun by English empiricism and completed by D. Hume. According to O. Comte, knowledge has as its subject the connection of phenomena, that is, exclusively the sphere of relations: the self-existent is not only unknowable, but it does not exist at all. Deontologization of knowledge was carried out in the last quarter of the 19th century by neo-Kantianism. In the Marburg school, the principle of relation is declared absolute, the unity of being is replaced by the unity of knowledge, which G. Cohen justifies based on the unity of function, not substance.

Being in the philosophy of the 20th century. The revival of interest in the problem of being in the 20th century is accompanied by criticism of neo-Kantianism and positivism. At the same time, the philosophy of life (A. Bergson, V. Dilthey, O. Spengler, etc.), considering the principle of mediation to be specific to the natural sciences and scientism oriented towards them (mediated knowledge deals only with relationships, but never with being itself), appeals to direct knowledge, intuition - but not the intellectual intuition of 17th century rationalism, but irrational intuition. According to Bergson, being is a stream of creative changes, an indivisible continuity or duration that is given to us in introspection; Dilthey sees the essence of being in historicity, and Spengler - in historical time, which constitutes the nature of the soul. The role of being in phenomenology is restored in a different way. A. Meinong contrasts the neo-Kantian principle of “significance” related to the subject with the concept of “evidence” emanating from the object and therefore built not on normative principles (ought), but on the basis of being. The basis of Meinong's theory of knowledge is the distinction between object and being, essence (Sosein) and existence (Dasein). The requirement of evidence as a criterion of truth also underlies the phenomenological “consideration of essence”; however, the actual orientation of E. Husserl towards psychology (like F. Brentano, he considers only the phenomena of the mental world to be directly comprehended) led to his gradual transition to the position of transcendentalism, so that the true existence of the late Husserl was not the world of “truths in themselves”, but immanent life of transcendental consciousness. In M. Scheler’s personalistic ontology, being is a personality, understood as a “substance-act” that is not objectified in its deep essence, related in its being to the supreme personality - God. Reviving the tradition of Augustinianism, Scheler, however, unlike Augustine, views the higher being as powerless in relation to the lower: according to Scheler, spiritual being is no more original than the being of the blind vital force, which determines real reality.

Starting, like M. Scheler, from neo-Kantianism, N. Hartmann declared being the central concept of philosophy, and ontology the main philosophical science, the basis of both the theory of knowledge and ethics. Being, according to Hartmann, goes beyond the limits of all existing things and therefore cannot be directly defined, but by studying - in contrast to the concrete sciences - existing as such, ontology thereby concerns being. Taken in its ontological dimension, existence differs from objective being, or “being-in-itself,” that is, an object opposite to the subject; existence as such is not the opposite of anything.

M. Heidegger sees the task of philosophy in revealing the meaning of the existence of things. In “Being and Time” (1927), Heidegger, following Scheler, reveals the problem of being through consideration of the existence of man, criticizing E. Husserl for the fact that he considers man as consciousness (and thereby knowledge), whereas it is necessary to understand him as being - “here-being” (Dasein), which is characterized by “openness” (“being-in-the-world”) and “understanding of being.” Heidegger calls the existential structure of man “existence.” Not thinking, but existence as an emotional-practical-understanding being is open to the meaning of being. By proposing to see being in the horizon of time, Heidegger thereby unites with the philosophy of life against traditional ontology: like F. Nietzsche, he sees the source of the “oblivion of being” in Plato’s theory of ideas.

The turn to being was begun in Russian philosophy of the 19th century by Vl. S. Solovyov. Rejecting, following Solovyov, the principles of abstract thinking, S. N. Trubetskoy, L. M. Lopatin, N. O. Lossky, S. L. Frank and others brought the question of being to the center of consideration. Thus, Frank showed that the subject can directly contemplate not only the content of consciousness, but also being, which rises above the opposition of subject and object, being absolute being, or All-Unity. Starting from the idea of ​​All-Unity, Lossky combines it with the doctrine of individual substances, going back to Leibniz, G. Teichmüller and A. A. Kozlov, while highlighting the hierarchical levels of being: spatio-temporal events of the empirical world, the abstract-ideal existence of universals and the third, the highest level is the concrete-ideal existence of superspatial and supertemporal substantial figures; the transcendental God the Creator is the source of existence of substances. Thus, in the 20th century, there was a tendency to return existence to its central place in philosophy, associated with the desire to free ourselves from the tyranny of subjectivity, which is characteristic of modern European thought and forms the spiritual basis of industrial and technical civilization.

Lit.: Lossky N. O. Value and being. Paris, 1931; Hartmann N. Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie. 2. Aufl. Meisenheim, 1941; Litt Th. Denken und Sein. Stuttg., 1948; Marcel G. Le mystère de l’être. R., 1951. Vol. 1-2; Heidegger M. Zur Seinsfrage. Fr. / M., 1956; Möller J. Von Bewußtsein zu Sein. Mainz, 1962; Sartre J. R. L'être et le néant. R., 1965; Lotz J.V. Sein und Existenz. Freiburg, 1965; Wahrheit, Wert und Sein/Hrsg. v. V. Schwarz. Regensburg, 1970; Man and his existence as a problem of modern philosophy. M., 1978; Gilson E. Constantes philosophiques de l’être. R., 1983; Stein E. Endliches und ewiges Sein. 3. Aufl. Freiburg u. a., 1986; Dobrokhotov A. L. The category of being in classical Western European philosophy. M., 1986.

« It is impossible to define existence without falling into absurdity(i.e., without trying to explain the meaning of any word with the same word), because the definition of any word begins with the expression “it is...”- it does not matter whether it is expressed explicitly or implied. This means that to define being it is necessary to say: “being is...”, and thereby use the word itself in the definition” (Pascal, “On the Spirit of Geometry”, I). Lalande's Dictionary confirms the same thing, without even quoting Pascal: being is “a simple term, the definition of which is impossible”. And not because we do not know the meaning of this word, but because we cannot define it without assuming that we already have this knowledge, albeit vague. If the word being “is used in many senses,” as Aristotle said (for whom each of these meanings resulted in a category: being appears under the names of substance, quantity, quality, relationship), this does not help us in the least to establish what it is in itself. itself, there is nothing in common in all these senses.

There is no consensus on what being is. Generally speaking, this concept is interpreted as a philosophical category that denotes objective reality: space, man and nature. Existence does not depend on human will, consciousness or emotions. In the broadest sense, this term refers to general ideas about all things; everything that exists: visible and invisible.

The science of being is ontology. Ontos translated from Greek means existence, logos means word, i.e. ontology is the study of existence. Even followers of Taoism and philosophers of antiquity began to study the principles of human existence, society and nature.

The emergence of questions about existence is relevant for a person when natural, ordinary things turn out to be the cause of doubts and reflections. Humanity still has not fully clarified the issues of existence and non-existence. Therefore, again and again a person thinks about the incomprehensible topics of real life. These themes arise especially clearly at the junctions of two different eras, when the connection between times breaks down.

How philosophers discovered the universe

The first to highlight reality as a category called “being” was Parmenides, an ancient Greek philosopher who lived in the 6th-5th centuries. BC. The philosopher used the work of his teacher, Xenophanes and the Eleatic school, to classify the entire world, using mainly such philosophical concepts as being, non-being and movement. According to Parmenides, existence is continuous, heterogeneous and absolutely motionless.

Plato made a great contribution to the development of the problem of existence. The ancient thinker identified being and the world of ideas, and considered ideas to be genuine, unchanging, eternally existing. Plato contrasted ideas with inauthentic being, which consists of things and phenomena accessible to human feelings. According to Plato, things perceived through the senses are shadows that reflect true images.

Aristotle located primary matter at the base of the universe, which defies any classification. Aristotle's merit is that the philosopher was the first to bring up the idea that a person is capable of cognizing real existence through form, an accessible image.

Descartes interpreted this concept as dualism. According to the concept of the French thinker, existence consists of material form and spiritual substance.

The XX philosopher M. Heidegger adhered to the ideas of existentialism and believed that existence and being are not identical concepts. The thinker compared existence with time, concluding that neither the first nor the second can be known by rational methods.

How many types of reality exist in philosophy?

The philosophy of existence includes everything in human consciousness, nature and society. Therefore, its categories are an abstract concept that unites various phenomena, objects and processes according to a common feature.

1. Objective reality exists regardless of human consciousness.
2. Subjective reality consists of what belongs to a person and does not exist without him. This includes mental states, consciousness and the spiritual world of a person.

There is a different distribution of being as a total reality:

• Natural. It is divided into what existed before the advent of man (the atmosphere) and that part of nature that was transformed by man. This may include selective plant varieties or industrial products.
• Human. Man, as an object and subject, is subject to the laws of nature and at the same time is a social, spiritual and moral being.
• Spiritual. Divided into consciousness, unconsciousness and the sphere of the ideal.
• Social. Man as an individual and as part of society.

The material world as a single system

Since the birth of philosophy, the first thinkers began to think about what the world around us was and how it came into being.

Existence, from the side of human perception, is twofold. It consists of things (the material world) and spiritual values ​​created by people.

Aristotle also called matter the basis of existence. Phenomena and things can be combined into one whole, a single basis, which is matter. The world is formed from matter as a unity that does not depend on the will and consciousness of man. This world influences man and society through the environment, and they, in turn, directly or indirectly influence the world around them.

But no matter what, existence is one, eternal and limitless. Various forms: space, nature, man and society exist equally, although they are presented in different forms. Their presence creates a single, universal, infinite universe.

At every stage of the development of philosophical thought, humanity has strived to understand the unity of the world in all its diversity: the world of things, as well as the spiritual, natural and social worlds that form a single reality.

What makes up a unified universe

Being as a total unity includes many processes, things, natural phenomena and the human personality. These components are interconnected with each other. Dialectics believes that the forms of existence are considered only in indissoluble unity.

The variety of parts of existence is extremely great, but there are signs that generalize what exists and distinguish certain categories from it:

• Universal. The universe as a whole. Includes space, nature, man and the results of his activities
• Single. Every person, plant or animal.
• Special. Comes from a single thing. This category includes various species of plants and animals, social classes and groups of people.

Human existence is also classified. Philosophers highlight:

• The material world of things, phenomena and processes that arose in nature or were created by man
• The material world of man. The personality appears as a bodily being and part of nature, and at the same time as a thinking and social being.
• Spiritual world. Unites the spirituality of each individual and universal spirituality.

Differences are revealed between ideal and real existence.

• Real or existence. This includes material things and processes. It is spatio-temporal in nature, unique and individual. It was considered the basis of being in materialism.
• Ideal or essence. Includes the inner world of a person and mental state. Devoid of the character of time and action. Unchangeable and eternal.

Real and ideal worlds

The two worlds, real and ideal, differ in their mode of existence.

The physical world exists objectively and does not depend on the will and consciousness of people. Ideal is subjective and possible only thanks to man, depends on human will and desires.

Man is simultaneously in both worlds, so man has a special place in philosophy. People are natural beings, endowed with material bodies that are influenced by the world around them. Using consciousness, a person reasons about both the universe and personal existence.

Man is the embodiment of dialectical unity and idealism, body and spirit.

What did philosophers think about the universe?

N. Hartmann, a German philosopher, contrasted the “new ontology” with the theory of knowledge and believed that all philosophical directions study being. Existence has many faces, it includes physical, social, and mental phenomena. The only thing that unites the parts of this diversity is that they exist.

According to M. Heidegger, a German existentialist, there is a connection between nothingness and being. By denying nothingness arises and helps to reveal being. This question is the main question of philosophy.

Heidegger rethought the concepts of God, reality, consciousness and logic from the point of view of bringing philosophy to a scientific basis. The philosopher believed that humanity had lost awareness of the connection between man and existence since the time of Plato, and sought to correct this.

J. Sartre defined being as pure, logical identity with oneself. For a person - being-in-itself: suppressed moderation and complacency. According to Sartre, as humanity develops, the value of existence is gradually lost. This softens the fact that nothingness is part of existence.

All philosophers agree that the universe exists. Some consider it to be based on matter, some on ideas. Interest in this topic is inexhaustible: questions of existence interest people at all stages of human development, because an unambiguous answer has not yet been found, if it can still be found.

MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

VOLGOGRAD CONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUE

SPECIALTY: 2902

Abstract on the topic:

"Being as the meaning of existence"

Completed:

Rubanov S. N.

Accepted:

Volgograd 1998

The question of understanding being and the relationship with consciousness determines the solution to the main question of philosophy. To consider this issue, let us turn to the history of the development of philosophy.

Being is a philosophical category denoting a reality that exists objectively, regardless of human consciousness, will and emotions. The problem of the interpretation of being and its relationship with consciousness is at the center of the philosophical worldview.

Being something external and pre-found for a person, existence imposes certain restrictions on his activity and forces him to measure his actions against it. At the same time, being is the source and condition of all forms of human life. Being represents not only the framework, the boundaries of activity, but also the object of human creativity, constantly changing being, the sphere of possibilities, which man transforms into reality in his activity.

The interpretation of being has undergone a complex development. Its common feature is the confrontation between materialistic and idealistic approaches. The first of them interprets the foundations of existence as material, the second – as ideal.

2. Periods in the interpretation of existence.

It is possible to isolate several periods in the interpretation of existence. The first period is the mythological interpretation of existence.

The second stage is associated with the consideration of being “in itself” (naturalistic ontology).

The third period begins with the philosophy of I. Kant. Being is seen as something related to the cognitive and practical activities of man. In a number of areas of modern philosophy, an attempt is being made to rethink the ontological approach to being, which comes from the analysis of human existence.

The essence of the development of scientific and philosophical knowledge lies in the fact that man is increasingly aware of himself as the subject of all forms of his activity, as the creator of his social life and forms of culture.

In the history of philosophy, the first concept of being was given by the ancient Greek philosophers of the 6th - 4th centuries BC - the Desocrats. For them, existence coincides with the material, indestructible and perfect cosmos.

Parmenides

Some of them considered existence as unchanging, unified, motionless, identical to itself. These were the views of the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides. The essence of his philosophical position lies in drawing a fundamental distinction between thinking and sensibility, and, accordingly, between the conceivable world and the sensually cognizable world. This was a genuine philosophical discovery. Thinking and the corresponding conceivable, intelligible world is, first of all, “one,” which Parmenides characterized as being, eternity and immobility, homogeneity, indivisibility and completeness, contrasting it with formation and apparent fluidity. For the gods there is no past or future, but only the present.

He gives one of the first formulations of the idea of ​​the identity of being and thinking: “to think and to be is one and the same thing,” “thought and that to which thought is directed are one and the same.” Such being, according to Parmenides, can never be non-being, since the latter is something blind and unknowable; being cannot come from non-being, nor contain it in any way.

Contrary to the opinion that prevailed in ancient times, Parmenides did not deny the sensory world at all, but only proved that for its philosophical and scientific understanding, sensuality alone was not enough. Considering reason to be the criterion of truth, he rejected sensations because of their inaccuracy.

Heraclitus

Other ancient philosophers viewed existence as continuously becoming. Thus, Heraclitus formulated a number of dialectical principles of being and knowledge. Dialectics for Heraclitus is the concept of continuous change, formation, which is conceived within the material cosmos and is mainly the cycle of material elements - fire, air, water and earth. Here the philosopher uses the famous image of a river, which cannot be entered twice, since at every moment it is new.

Becoming is possible only in the form of a continuous transition from one opposite to another, in the form of a unity of already formed opposites. Thus, for Heraclitus, life and death, day and night, good and evil are one. Opposites are in eternal struggle, so that “discord is the father of all, the king of all.” The understanding of dialectics also includes the moment of relativity (the relativity of the beauty of a deity, man and ape, human strengths and actions, etc.), although he did not lose sight of the one and whole within which the struggle of opposites takes place.

Plato

Being is fixed in relation to non-being, and being in truth, revealed in philosophical reflection, and being in opinion, which is only a false, distorted surface of things, are opposed.

This was expressed most sharply by Plato, who contrasts sensible things with pure ideas as “the world of true being.” The soul was once close to God and “rising, looked into true existence.” Now, burdened with worries, “he finds it difficult to contemplate what exists.”

The most important part of Plato's philosophical system is the doctrine of three main ontological substances (triad): “one”, “mind” and “soul”. The basis of all being is the “one”, which in itself is devoid of any characteristics, has no parts, that is, neither beginning nor end, does not occupy any space, cannot move, since movement requires change, that is, multiplicity . The signs of identity, difference, similarity, etc. are not applicable to being. Nothing can be said about it at all; it is above all being, sensation, and thinking. This source hides not only the “ideas” or “eidos” of things, that is, their substantial spiritual prototypes and principles to which Plato attributes timeless reality, but also the things themselves, their formation.

The beauty of life and real existence for Plato is higher than the beauty of art. Being and life are imitation of eternal ideas, and art is imitation of being and life, that is, imitation of imitation.

Aristotle

Aristotle identifies types of being in accordance with the types of judgments: “it is.” But he understands being as a universal predicate that applies to all categories, but is not a generic concept. Based on his principle of the relationship between form and matter, Aristotle overcomes the opposition between the spheres of being inherent in previous philosophy, since form for him is an integral characteristic of being. However, Aristotle also recognizes the immaterial form of all forms (God).

Aristotle criticized Plato's doctrine of ideas and gave a solution to the question of the relationship between the general and the individual in being. The singular is something that exists only “somewhere” and “now”; it is sensually perceived. The general is that which exists in any place and at any time (“everywhere” and “always”), manifesting itself under certain conditions in the individual through which it is cognized. The general constitutes the subject of science and is comprehended by the mind.

To explain what exists, Aristotle accepted 4 reasons:

The essence and essence of being, by virtue of which every thing is what it is (formal cause);

Matter and subject (substrate) – that from which something arises (material cause);

The driving cause, the beginning of movement;

The target reason is the reason for which something is done.

Although Aristotle recognized matter as one of the first causes and considered it a certain essence, he saw in it only a passive principle (the ability to become something), but he attributed all activity to the other three causes, and attributed eternity and immutability to the essence of being - form, and the source He considered every movement to be a motionless but moving principle - God. Aristotle's God is the “prime mover” of the world, the highest goal of all forms and formations developing according to their own laws.

Christianity

Christianity makes a distinction between divine and created being, between God and the world, which he created out of nothing and is supported by the divine will. Man is given the opportunity to freely move towards a perfect, divine existence. Christianity develops the ancient idea of ​​the identity of God and perfection (good, truth and beauty). Medieval Christian philosophy in the tradition of Aristotelianism distinguishes between actual being (act) and possible being (potency), essence and existence. Only the existence of God is entirely relevant.

Renaissance

A sharp departure from this position began in the Renaissance, when the cult of material existence, nature, and the body gained general recognition. This transformation, which expresses a new type of human relationship with nature - a relationship determined by the development of science, technology and material production, prepared the concepts of being in the 17th - 18th centuries. In them, being is considered as a reality opposing man, as a being mastered by man in his activity. This gives rise to the interpretation of being as an object opposed to the subject as an inert reality, which is subject to blind, automatically operating laws (for example, the principle of inertia) and does not allow the intervention of any external forces.

The starting point in the interpretation of existence for all philosophy and science of this era is the concept of body. This is due to the development of mechanics - the main science of the 17th - 18th centuries. In turn, this understanding of existence served as the basis for the natural scientific understanding of the world at that time. The period of classical science and philosophy can be characterized as a period of naturalistic-objectivist concepts of existence, where nature is considered outside of man’s relationship to it, as a certain mechanism acting on its own.

B. Spinoza

Regarding the concept of substance in the Dutch philosopher of existence Spinoza, it can be noted that this is a metaphysically disguised nature in its isolation from man. These words characterize one of the features of the philosophy of this time - the opposition of nature to man, the consideration of being and thinking in a purely naturalistic way.

Spinoza made the central point of his ontology the identity of God and nature, which he understood as a single, eternal and infinite substance, excluding the existence of any other principle, and thereby as the cause of itself. Recognizing the reality of infinitely diverse individual things, he understood them as a set of modes - individual manifestations of a single substance.

This is an important feature of the concepts of being in modern times. It consists in the fact that they are characterized by a substantial approach to being, when substance is fixed (the indestructible, unchangeable substrate of being, its ultimate basis) and its accidents (properties), derived from substance, transitory, changeable.

With various modifications, all these features in the understanding of being are found in the philosophical systems of F. Bacon, T. Hobbes, J. Locke (Great Britain), B. Spinoza, among the French materialists, in the physics of R. Descartes.

R. Descartes

But in the metaphysics of Descartes, a different way of interpreting being originates, in which being is determined along the path of a reflective analysis of consciousness, that is, an analysis of self-consciousness, or along the path of understanding being through the prism of human existence, the existence of culture, social existence.

Descartes' thesis - “cogito ergo sum” - I think, therefore I exist - means: the existence of the subject is comprehended in the act of self-knowledge.

The main feature of Descartes' philosophical worldview is the dualism of soul and body, “thinking” and “extended” substance. Man is a real connection between a soulless and lifeless bodily mechanism and a soul possessing thinking and will. Of all the abilities of the human soul, he put will in first place. The main effect of affects, or passions, is that they dispose the soul to desire those things for which the body is prepared. God himself united the soul with the body, thereby distinguishing man from animals.

Descartes saw the ultimate goal of knowledge in the dominance of man over the forces of nature, in the discovery and invention of technical means, in the knowledge of causes and actions, in the improvement of human nature itself. He is looking for an unconditionally reliable initial foundation for all knowledge and a method by which it is possible, based on this foundation, to build an equally reliable edifice of all science.

The starting point of Descartes' philosophical reasoning is doubt about the truth of generally accepted knowledge, covering all types of knowledge. However, doubt is not the conviction of an agnostic, but only a preliminary methodological device. One may doubt whether the outside world exists, or even whether my body exists. But my doubt itself, in any case, exists. Doubt is one of the acts of thinking. I doubt because I think. If, therefore, doubt is a reliable fact, then it exists only because thinking exists, since I myself exist as a thinker.

This line is developed by the German philosopher G. Leibniz, who derives the concept of being from the internal experience of man, and it reaches its extreme expression in the English philosopher J. Berkeley, who denies the existence of material being and puts forward the subjective idealistic position “to be means to be in perception.”

I. Kant

Without denying the existence of things in themselves, I. Kant considers being not as a property of things, but as a bundle of judgments. “...Being is not a real predicate, in other words, it is not a concept of something that could be added to the concept of a thing... In logical application it is only a connective in a judgment.” By adding the characteristic of being to the concept, we do not add anything new to its content.

The dissertation “On the Form and Principles of the Sensibly Perceptible and Intelligible World” was the beginning of the transition to the views of the “critical” period, the main works of which were “Critique of Pure Reason”, “Critique of Practical Reason” and “Critique of the Power of Judgment”.

The basis of all three “Critiques” is Kant’s teaching about phenomena and things as they exist in themselves - “things in themselves.” Our knowledge begins with the fact that “things in themselves” influence the external sense organs and evoke sensations in us. In this premise of his teaching, Kant is a materialist. But in his doctrine of the forms and limits of knowledge, Kant is an idealist and an agnostic. He claims that neither the sensations of our sensuality, nor the concepts and judgments of our reason can provide any theoretical knowledge “about things in themselves.” These things are unknowable. True, empirical knowledge can expand and deepen indefinitely, but this will not bring us one iota closer to the knowledge of “things in themselves.”

I. Fichte

For I. Fichte, authentic being is the free, pure activity of the absolute Self, and material being is the product of this activity. In Fichte, for the first time, the existence of culture, the existence created by human activity, appears as the subject of philosophical analysis.

The basis of Fichte's philosophy is the conviction that a practical-active attitude towards an object precedes a theoretical-contemplative attitude towards it. Consciousness is not given, but given, generating itself. Its evidence rests not on contemplation, but on action; it is not perceived by the intellect, but is affirmed by the will. Become aware of your Self, create it by the act of this awareness - this is Fichte’s demand. By this act the individual gives birth to his spirit, his freedom.

“By nature,” an individual is something impermanent: his sensory inclinations, motivations, moods always change and depend on something else. He frees himself from these external determinations in the act of self-knowledge: his self-identity - “I am I” - is the result of the free action of the Self. Self-determination appears as a requirement, a task to which the subject is destined to eternally strive.

F. Schelling

This thesis is developed by F. Schelling, according to which nature, being itself, is only an undeveloped, dormant mind. In his work “The System of Transcendental Idealism,” he notes that “freedom is the only principle to which everything here is raised, and in the objective world we do not see anything existing outside of us, but only the internal limitation of our own freedom of activity.”

G. Hegel

In G. Hegel’s system, being is considered as the first, immediate and very vague step in the ascent of the spirit to itself, from the abstract to the concrete: the absolute spirit materializes its energy only for a moment, and in its further movement and activity of self-knowledge it removes and overcomes the alienation of being from the idea and returns to itself, since the essence of being is the ideal. For Hegel, true being, coinciding with the absolute spirit, is not an inert, inert reality, but an object of activity, full of restlessness, movement and fixed in the form of a subject, that is, actively.

Related to this is historicism in the understanding of being, which originates in German classical idealism. True, history and practice here turn out to be derived from spiritual activity.

The approach to considering existence as a product of the activity of the spirit is also characteristic of the philosophy of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At the same time, existence itself is interpreted in a new way. The main trend in the development of ideas about being coincides with the trend in the development of scientific knowledge, which overcomes both the naturalistic-objectivist interpretation of being and the substantial approach to it. This is expressed, in particular, in the widespread penetration into scientific thinking of such categories as function, relation, system, etc. This movement of science was largely prepared by criticism of the ideas of being as a substance, carried out in epistemology, for example, in the works of the German philosopher - neo-Kantian E. Cassirer.

3. The existence of man and the existence of the world

In contrast to classical ontologism and epistemology, representatives of the analyzed trends of the 20th century considered it necessary to truly make man the center of philosophy. After all, man himself is, exists, is a being, and a special being at that. Classical philosophers considered “being” as an extremely broad (human) concept of the world and at the same time considered being completely independent of man. The exception was the teaching of Kant. In it, philosophers of the 20th century especially appreciated the idea that we see the world exclusively through the prism of human consciousness. The things of the world, the world itself, exist in themselves, completely independent of consciousness, but “in themselves” they are not revealed to us, people. Since the world, things and processes of the world appear to people, the results of its awareness are already inseparable from man. These theses of Kant, significantly strengthening their subjectivist bias, are joined not only by phenomenologists, existentialists, personalists, but also by representatives of many other directions. However, unlike the classics, and even Kant, the center of “anthropological philosophy” of the 20th century is not the doctrine of reason, not epistemology and logic, but ontology. The center of the “new ontology” becomes not some isolated human consciousness, but consciousness, or rather, spiritual consciousness (consciousness and unconsciousness), taken in inextricable unity with human existence. This new meaning is put into the traditional concept of Dasein (existing being, here being), which becomes the basic category of existentialist ontology.

So, the path of the phenomenologist, existentialist, personalist is not the path from Sein, being in general, not from the world as being to the being of man, as was the case in classical ontology. The reverse path is chosen - from human Dasein to the world, as it is seen by a person and “built” around him. This approach seems preferable to the philosophers of the 20th century not only from a realistic point of view (after all, in a different way, they say, a person does not master the world), but also from a humanistic point of view: the person, his activity, the possibilities of freedom opened by his very nature are placed at the center. being.

In a number of philosophical concepts, the emphasis is on a specific form of existence - human existence.

The concept of “existence” comes from the Latin existo – I exist. In the history of philosophy, the concept of “existence” was usually used to designate the external existence of a thing, which, unlike the essence of a thing, is comprehended not by thinking, but by experience.

Existence receives a fundamentally new categorical meaning from Kierkegaard. He contrasts rationalism with the understanding of existence as human existence, which is comprehended directly. Existence, according to Kierkegaard, is singular, personal, of course. Finite existence has its own destiny and has historicity, for the concept of history, according to Kierkegaard, is inseparable from the finitude, uniqueness of existence, that is, from fate.

In the twentieth century, Kierkegaard's concept of existence is revived in existentialism, where it occupies a central place. Existence, that is, existence (hence the term “existentialism”) is interpreted in existentialism as something correlated with transcendence, that is, a person’s going beyond his own limits. The connection between existence and transcendence, incomprehensible to thought, its finitude, is revealed, according to existentialism, in the fact of existence itself. However, finitude, the mortality of existence, is not just an empirical fact of the cessation of life, but a beginning that determines the structure of existence, permeating all human life.

Hence the interest in so-called “borderline situations” characteristic of existentialism - suffering, fear, anxiety, guilt, in which the nature of existence is revealed.

The German philosopher F. Nietzsche, for example, interprets the concept of being as a generalization of the concept of life. He strives to overcome the rationality of the philosophical method. Concepts are not arranged into a system in Nietzsche, but appear as polysemantic symbols. These are the concepts of “life”, “will to power”, which is being in itself in its dynamism, and passion, and the instinct of self-preservation, and the energy driving society, etc.

This thesis is carried out even more sharply in the philosophy of life of the German philosopher W. Dilthey, for whom true existence coincides with the integrity of life, comprehended by the sciences of the spirit.

Central to Dilthey is the concept of life as a way of human existence, a cultural and historical reality. Man has no history, but he himself is history, which alone reveals what he is. Deltay is sharply separated from the human world of history by the world of nature. The task of philosophy, as a “science of the spirit,” is “to understand life based on itself.” In this regard, the method of “understanding” is put forward as the direct comprehension of some spiritual integrity, a holistic experience. He contrasts understanding, akin to intuitive insight into life, with the method of “explanation” applicable in the “sciences of nature,” which deals with external experience and is associated with the constructive activity of the mind. Understanding of the inner world itself is achieved through introspection, self-observation, understanding of someone else's world - through “getting used to”, “empathy”, “feeling”.

The initial concept of “life” is put forward as a kind of intuitively comprehended holistic reality, not identical to either spirit or matter. Here attention is focused on individual forms of realization of life, its unique, unique cultural and historical images.

The German philosopher G. Rickert, like all neo-Kantianism, distinguishes between sensory-real and unreal being. If natural science deals with real being, then philosophy deals with the world of values, that is, being, which presupposes an obligation.

Rejecting the “thing in itself” as an objective reality from the standpoint of neo-Kantianism, Rickert reduces being to the consciousness of the subject, understood as universal, impersonal consciousness. On this basis, the problem of the transcendental, central to the theory of knowledge, is solved - the question of objective reality independent of consciousness: the reality given in knowledge is immanent in consciousness. At the same time, there is an objective truth independent of the subject, that is, a transcendental truth inaccessible to knowledge. Reality is considered as the result of the activity of impersonal consciousness that constructs nature, natural science, and culture, the sciences of culture.

Being is not a felt, but a categorically conceivable being. Space and time are not forms of sensitive intuition, but categories of logical thinking. Hence the thesis about the immanence of being to consciousness.

The phenomenology of the German thinker E. Husserl is characterized by a distinction between real and ideal being. The first is external, factual, temporary, and the second is the world of pure essences (eidos), possessing genuine evidence. The task of phenomenology is to determine the meaning of being, to reduce all naturalistic-objectivist attitudes and to turn consciousness from individual factual existence to the world of essences. Being is correlative to the act of experiencing, consciousness, which is intentional, that is, directed towards being, drawn towards being. The central point of phenomenology is the study of the conjugacy of being and consciousness.

Claiming a neutral position in resolving the main issue of philosophy, Husserl proposed excluding “propositions about being” from phenomenology. The phenomenological setting is achieved using the reduction method, which includes:

1) eidetic reduction, that is, the rejection of any statements about the objective existence of being, about its spatio-temporal organization, abstention from any judgments about real being and consciousness, and

2) transcendental reduction, that is, the exclusion of all anthropological, psychological interpretations of consciousness and a turn to the analysis of consciousness as pure contemplation of essences.

Prominent philosophers of the 20th century studied the phenomenological school - one of the founders of religious (Catholic) anthropology, M. Scheler, and the creator of the “critical ontology” of N. Hartmann. Phenomenology has had a great influence on many other philosophical movements - existentialism, hermeneutics, etc.

The German philosopher N. Hartmann, contrasting material being as transient, empirical with ideal being as transhistorical, draws a distinction between the methods of their knowledge. Accordingly, he understands ontology as the science of existence, which consists of various layers of being - inorganic, organic, spiritual.

The concept of the German existentialist M. Heidegger criticizes the traditional approach to being, based on considering being as an entity, a substance, as something given from outside and opposite to the subject. For Heidegger himself, the problem of being makes sense only as the problem of human existence, the problem of the ultimate foundations of human existence. The most important expression of the universal human way of being is the fear of nothing.

In the essay “Being and Time,” he raises the question of the meaning of existence, which, in his opinion, has been forgotten by traditional European philosophy. Trying to build an ontology on the basis of Husserl’s phenomenology, Heidegger wants to reveal the meaning of being through consideration of human existence, since only man initially has an understanding of being (“open” being). The basis of human existence is its finitude, its temporality. Therefore, time must be considered as the most essential characteristic of existence.

Heidegger seeks to rethink the European philosophical tradition, which viewed pure being as something timeless. He saw the reason for such an “inauthentic” understanding of existence in the absolutization of one of the moments of time - the present, the “eternal presence”, when genuine temporality seems to disintegrate, turning into a successive series of “now” moments, into physical time. Heidegger considers the main defect of modern science, as well as the European worldview in general, to be the identification of being with existence, with the empirical world of things and phenomena.

The experience of temporality is identified with a keen sense of personality. Focus on the future gives the individual genuine existence, while the preponderance of the present leads to the fact that the “world of things,” the world of everyday life, obscures the person’s finitude.

Concepts such as “fear”, “determination”, “conscience”, “guilt”, “care”, etc., express the spiritual experience of a person who feels his uniqueness, one-timeness and mortality.

Subsequently, they are replaced by concepts that express reality not so much personal-ethical as impersonal-cosmic: being and nothingness, hidden and open, basis and baseless, earthly and heavenly, human and divine. Now Heidegger is trying to comprehend man himself, based on the “truth of being.” Analyzing the origin of the metaphysical way of thinking and worldview in general, he tries to show how metaphysics, being the basis of all European life, gradually prepares new European science and technology, which aims to subordinate all things to man, how it gives rise to irreligiosity and the entire lifestyle of modern society, its urbanization and massification.

The origins of metaphysics go back to Plato and even Parmenides, who introduced the principle of understanding thinking as contemplation, constant presence and motionless presence of being before the eyes. In contrast to this tradition, Heidegger uses the term “listening” to characterize true thinking: being cannot be seen, it can only be listened to. Overcoming metaphysical thinking requires a return to the original, but unrealized possibilities of European culture - to that “pre-Socratic” Greece, which still lived “in the truth of being.” Such a return is possible because, although “forgotten,” being still lives in the most intimate womb of culture - in language: “Language is the house of being.”

With the modern attitude towards language as a tool, language is technicalized, becomes a means of transmitting information and thereby dies as a genuine “speech”, as a “utterance”, a “story”. The last thread that connected man and his culture with existence is lost, and the language itself becomes dead. Therefore, the task of “listening to language” is considered as world-historical. It is not people who speak with a tongue, but a language that speaks to people and by people.

Thus, if in his first works Heidegger tried to build a philosophical system, then later he proclaimed the impossibility of rational comprehension of being.

The fundamental basis of existentialist ontology (and at the same time phenomenology, for in it attention is focused on the clarification, or rather, “self-clarification” of phenomena, manifestations of consciousness) is, but for Heidegger, Dasein interpreted as a special human existence. Its characteristics and advantages, Heidegger explains, are that it is the only being that is capable of “questioning” about itself and being in general, somehow “establishing itself” (“establishing itself”) in relation to being. That is why such being-existence exists, but for Heidegger, the foundation on which any ontology should be built. This understanding of the specifics of human existence is not without foundation. Not a single living creature known to us, except humans, is capable of thinking, asking questions about existence as such - about the universe and its integrity, about its place in the world. Here, by the way, we see a certain difference in the understanding of “existence” by Heidegger and Sartre. Sartre, using this concept, emphasizes individual choice, responsibility, and the search for one’s own “I,” although, of course, he connects the world as a whole with existence. In Heidegger, the emphasis is nevertheless shifted to being - for the “questioning” person, being is revealed, “shines” through everything that people know and do. We just need to recover from the most dangerous disease that has struck modern humanity - “oblivion of being.” People suffering from it, exploiting the riches of nature, “forget” about its integral, independent existence; Seeing other people as mere means, people “forget” about the high purpose of human existence.

So, the first step of existentialist ontology is a statement of the “originality” of human existence as being-questioning, being-establishing, as being, which “is myself.” The next ontological step that existentialists invite their readers to take and which, generally speaking, naturally follows from the logic of their thinking, is to introduce the concept and theme of being-in-the-world. After all, the essence of human existence really lies in the fact that it is being-in-the-world, connected with the being of the world.

Being-in-the-world, on the one hand, is revealed through the “division” inherent in man - and this is reminiscent of German classical philosophy, in particular the concept of “deed - action” in Fichte. Being-in-the-world “glows,” but for Heidegger, through “doing,” and “doing” is revealed through “caring.” (Of course, care as a category of philosophy should not be confused with specific “hardships”, “sadness”, “life concerns”; in the philosophy of existentialism we are talking about general, “metaphysical” care, concern for the world, for being itself.) So, Dasein is capable of not only to inquire about being, but also to take care of oneself as being, to take care of being as such. And these moments really characterize the existence of man in the world and are very important, especially today, when it is the concern of man and humanity about existence, about preserving the existence of the planet, civilization, about preserving the natural environment that must resist those that have escaped control.

destructive tendencies of human life.

The French existentialist J.P. Sartre, contrasting being in itself and being for itself, distinguishes between material existence and human existence. The first is for him something inert, acting only as an obstacle, generally beyond the control of human action and knowledge. “At every moment we experience material reality as a threat to our life, as resistance to our work, as the limit of our knowledge, and also as an already used or possible tool.” The main characteristics of human existence are the free choice of opportunities: “... to be for a person means to choose oneself...”.

Sartre's idealistic philosophy is one of the varieties of atheistic existentialism, focused on the analysis of human existence, as it is experienced, comprehended by the individual himself and unfolds in a string of his arbitrary choices, not predetermined by the laws of existence, by any predetermined essence.

Existence is identified with the self-awareness of the individual, which finds support only in itself, and constantly collides with other, equally independent existences and with the entire historically established state of affairs, which appears in the form of a certain situation. The latter, in the course of the implementation of the “free project”, is subject to a kind of spiritual “cancellation”, since it is considered untenable, subject to restructuring, and then change in practice.

Sartre viewed the relationship between man and the world not in unity, but as a complete gap between a thinking individual hopelessly lost in the Universe and, however, dragging the burden of metaphysical responsibility for its fate, on the one hand, and nature and society, which act as a chaotic, structureless, loose strip “alienation”, on the other.

Sartre’s existential philosophy reveals itself as one of the modern branches of Husserl’s phenomenology, as the application of his method to “living consciousness,” to the subjective-active side of that consciousness with which a specific individual, thrown into the world of specific situations, takes any action, enters into relationship with other people and things, strives for something, makes everyday decisions, participates in public life, and so on. All acts of activity are considered by Sartre as elements of a certain phenomenological structure and are actually assessed depending on the tasks of the individual’s personal self-realization. Sartre examines the role of the “subjective” (genuinely personal) in the process of human personalization and historical creativity. According to Sartre, the act of specifically human activity is an act of designation, giving meaning (to those moments of the situation in which objectivity is visible - “other”, “given”). Objects are only signs of individual human meanings, semantic formations of human subjectivity. Outside of this, they are simply a given, raw matter, passive and inert circumstances. Giving them one or another individual human meaning, meaning, a person forms himself as one way or another defined individuality. External objects are simply a reason for “decisions”, “choices”, which should be a choice of oneself.

Sartre’s philosophical concept develops on the basis of the absolute opposition and mutual exclusion of the concepts: “objectivity” and “subjectivity”, “necessity” and “freedom”. Sartre sees the source of these contradictions not in the specific content of the forces of social existence, but in the general forms of this existence (material properties of objects, collective and socialized forms of existence and consciousness of people, industrialization, technical equipment of modern life, and so on). The freedom of the individual as a bearer of restless subjectivity can only be a “decompression of being”, the formation in it of a “crack”, “hole”, nothingness. Sartre understands the individual of modern society as an alienated being, elevating this specific state to the metaphysical status of human existence in general. In Sartre, alienated forms of human existence acquire the universal significance of cosmic horror, in which individuality is standardized and detached from historical independence, subordinated to mass, collective forms of life, organizations, the state, spontaneous economic forces, tied to them also by its slave consciousness, where the place of independent critical thinking is occupied by socially compulsory standards and illusions, the demands of public opinion, and where even the objective reason of science appears to be a force separated from man and hostile to him. A person alienated from himself, doomed to an inauthentic existence, is not in harmony with the things of nature - they are deaf to him, pressing on him with their viscous and solidly motionless presence, and among them only a society of “scum” can feel well settled, but a person feels “nausea”. In contrast to any general “objective” and mediated by things relations that give rise to individual productive forces, Sartre affirms special, immediate, natural and integral human relations, on the implementation of which the true content of humanity depends.

In Sartre’s mythologizing utopian thinking, the rejection of the reality of modern society and its culture still comes to the fore, expressing a strong stream of modern social criticism. To live in this society, according to Sartre, as a “self-satisfied consciousness” lives in it, is possible only by renouncing oneself, from personal authenticity, from “decisions” and “choices,” shifting the latter to someone else’s anonymous responsibility - to the state, the nation , race, family, other people. But this refusal is a responsible act of the individual, for a person has free will.

The concept of free will is developed by Sartre in the theory of “project”, according to which the individual is not given to himself, but projects, “assembles” himself as such. Therefore, a coward, for example, is responsible for his cowardice, and “there is no alibi for a person.” Sartre's existentialism seeks to make man realize that he is fully responsible for himself, his existence and his surroundings, for it proceeds from the assertion that, without being given anything, man constantly builds himself through his active subjectivity. He is always “ahead, behind himself, never himself.” Hence the expression that Sartre gives to the general principle of existentialism: “... existence precedes essence...” In essence, this means that universal, socially significant (cultural) objectifications, which act as “essences”, “human nature”, “universal ideals”, “values” and so on are only sediments, frozen moments of activity with which a specific subject never coincides. “Existence” is a constantly living moment of activity, taken in the form of an intra-individual state, subjectively. In his later work, “Critique of Dialectical Reason,” Sartre formulates this principle as the principle of “the irreducibility of being to knowledge.” But Sartre’s existentialism does not find any other basis from which a person could develop himself as a truly self-active subject, except for the absolute freedom and internal unity of the “designing self.” In this possible development, the personality is alone and without support. Sartre denotes the place of active subjectivity in the world, its ontological basis, as “nothing.” According to Sartre, “... man, without any support or help, is condemned at every moment to invent man” and thereby “man is condemned to freedom.” But then the basis of authenticity (authenticity) can only be the irrational forces of the human underground, prompts of the subconscious, intuition, unaccountable emotional impulses and rationally not comprehended decisions, which inevitably lead to pessimism or the aggressive self-will of the individual: “The history of any life is the history of defeat.” The motive of the absurdity of existence appears: “It is absurd that we are born, and it is absurd that we die.” Man, according to Sartre, is a useless passion.

Sartre's worldview was formed in a world that had reached a dead end, an absurd one, where all traditional values ​​had collapsed. The first act of the philosopher had, therefore, to be a negation, a refusal, in order to get out of this chaotic world without order, without purpose. To distance yourself from the world, to reject it - this is what is specifically human in a person: freedom. Consciousness is precisely that which does not get bogged down “in itself,” it is the opposite of “in itself,” a hole in being, absence, nothingness. This consciousness of human freedom is at the same time a consciousness of the loneliness of humanity and its responsibility: nothing in “Being” provides or guarantees the value and possibility of success of action. Existence is precisely the lived experience of subjectivity and transcendence, freedom and responsibility. Reproducing Dostoevsky’s formula “If there is no God, everything is permitted,” Sartre adds: “This is the starting point of existentialism.” This way of perceiving the world, reinforced by Sartre's study of Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Husserl, found expression primarily in his psychological sketches and novels. He studies first of all the imagination, in which an essential act of consciousness is revealed: its essence is to move away from the given world “in oneself” and to find ourselves in the presence of what is absent. “The act of imagination is a magical act: it is a spell that causes a thing to appear that is desired.”

Sartre's novels translate the same experience into a moral or political plane: in “Nausea” Sartre shows that the world has no meaning, the “I” has no purpose. Through the act of consciousness and choice, the Self gives meaning and value to the world. Sartre’s doctoral dissertation “Being and Nothingness” is a presentation in a philosophical form of his experience. Starting from the basic idea of ​​existentialism - existence precedes essence - Sartre tries to avoid both materialism and idealism. Idealism because it appears to him only in the Hegelian form: “Reality is measured by consciousness” and because, following Husserl in this, he claims that consciousness is always consciousness of something (some thing). Materialism - because, in his opinion, being does not generate consciousness, “for itself” cannot be generated “in itself”.

In fact, Sartre's concept is eclectic: he gives as a starting point a certain “in itself”, about which we know nothing except that it is “targeted” by consciousness and is its basis. But if consciousness is the goal, then how could it be born, since, according to the initial definition, nothing happens in itself.

Sartre could never overcome this contradiction, although he did not give up trying to do so. The reason for this is that his starting point is deeply individualistic. Sartre remains a prisoner of an existentialist, subjectivist mindset. Due to his initial postulates, Sartre cannot go beyond the framework of positivism, agnosticism and subjectivity. Even in his last philosophical work, “Critique of Dialectical Reason,” he contrasts “positivistic reason,” which must be content with the limits of the natural sciences, with “dialectical reason,” the only one worthy of being called reason, since it allows one to understand, and not just predict, but which is applicable only to human sciences.

In the field of morality, Sartre was unable to go beyond his original individualism. He may extol both the responsibility and freedom of the individual, but he cannot answer the question of what needs to be done with this freedom.

All of Sartre’s attempts to bridge the gap between the spiritualized person and the material world yielded only a simple addition of his own reworked psychoanalysis, empirical sociology of groups and cultural anthropology, revealing the inconsistency of Sartre’s claims to “build on top” of Marxism, which he recognized as the most fruitful philosophy of the twentieth century, the teaching about the hotel personality.

Existentialism rejects the legitimacy of considering existence as such, the existence of something objective. Being in existentialism turns out to be an instrumental field or horizon of possibilities within which human freedom exists and develops.

Both existentialists and phenomenologists recognize that the world exists outside and independently of man. However, philosophy, according to the existentialists, only then takes the path of life realism and the path of humanism, when it places man at the center of analysis and begins with his being. The world, as such, exists for a person insofar as he, proceeding from his being, gives meaning and meaning to the world and interacts with the world. All categories of being that were “dehumanized” by previous philosophy must be “humanized” by modern philosophy, say existential philosophers. Their ontology, therefore, turns over the characteristics of being, action, consciousness, emotions, and socio-historical characteristics. In a number of cases, sharply critical assessments of this path are expressed in the literature - it is criticized for idealism, subjectivism, psychologization, etc. Are there any grounds for such assessments? Yes, I have.

The individual existence of a person is contradictory: a person, in fact, cannot look at the world otherwise than “through the prism” of his being, consciousness, knowledge, and at the same time is capable - which is Heidegger’s character - to “question” about being as such. Not without reason, seeing in such a contradiction the source of the drama of human life, phenomenology and existentialism, especially in the initial stages of their development, essentially lost sight of another, no less, if not more important circumstance. Individuals, not to mention generations of people, about humanity as a whole, proceed, of course, from their “location” and from their “time” when they “settle” in the world. But they would not have taken a single vital, effective step if they had not daily, hourly found out what the objective properties (including spatial and temporal) of the world itself, its things and processes are. Therefore, from the fact that a person sees the world no other than with his own eyes, comprehends it no other than with his own thought, idealism does not at all follow, as existential philosophers mistakenly believe. People learn to compare themselves with the world, to see their existence as a part and continuation of the existence of the world. They know how to judge the world, master it not only by the standards of their species, their consciousness and actions, but also by the standards of the things themselves. Otherwise, they would not be able to survive in this world, much less would they be able to “question” about existence as such. It is no coincidence that M. Heidegger in his later works, trying to overcome the subjectivism and psychologism of his earlier position, brings being as such to the fore.

And yet we cannot agree that ontologies of the 20th century, such as phenomenological and existentialist ones, deserve only negative assessments. Linking the doctrine of being with human action, building a doctrine of human existence, the spheres of existence, and social existence is the path followed by Marxist philosophy. It also differs from classical versions of ontology. But at the same time, in contrast to existential philosophy, Marxism develops some tendencies of classical ontology - first of all, the idea that a person, with all the inseparability of an individual’s thoughts, actions, feelings from his own being, is capable of not only “questioning” about being as such , but also give answers to your questions that can be verified in a variety of ways. Therefore, a person accumulates objective knowledge about the world and himself in everyday action, in science, and in philosophy. He always, one way or another, builds (with varying degrees of consciousness, depth, elaboration) “objective ontologies” that help him to understand the world and master it. In particular, human being-in-the-world has independent objective structures, independent of individuals and, at least in part, gradually grasped by man and humanity.

Philosophers of the 20th century (following Kant) rightly emphasized the danger of identifying human ideas about reality with the world itself - the danger of direct “ontologization” of human states and knowledge. Particularly important was the struggle of phenomenologists and existentialists against such “naturalization,” the biologization of man, when his study by the natural sciences, no matter how valuable, was presented as the “last word” in the study of human essence, especially the essence of man as such. Philosophers of the 20th century - especially E. Husserl (1859-1938) in his work “The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology” rightly linked the tendency to “naturalize” man in the sciences, in philosophy, with socially dangerous manipulative attempts to treat people in approximately the same way as people are treated things. One of the most important accents of such a “new ontology,” as well as other humanistically oriented philosophical movements of the 20th century, is the idea of ​​the uniqueness of man.

Bibliography

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7. Heidegger M. Time and Being. – M., 1993.