Philosophical ideas of A. Schopenhauer

10.10.2019

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860).

The main works of Schopenhauer are: "The World as Will and Representation" On Free Will (1839); "On the foundation of morality (1841); "Aphorisms of worldly wisdom (1851).

According to Schopenhauer, “philosophy is the knowledge of the true essence of our world, in which we exist and which exists in us .... He added to this: “The ethical result of any philosophy always draws the most attention to itself and is rightly considered its central point.

The philosophy of this thinker is a contradictory phenomenon. However, it is bright and original. His philosophy was called life-denying and at the same time they saw in it the source of the school "Philosophy of Life.

In his philosophizing, A. Schopenhauer proceeded from the ideas of I. Kant, whom he considered a major philosopher. However, this did not prevent Schopenhauer from treating the philosophy of I. Kant critically, as he treated the philosophers K. Fichte, Schelling and Hegel with contempt.

Schopenhauer believed that the cognizing subject has no way to "things in themselves" from the outside, that is, through empirical and rational knowledge. In his opinion, the road to "things in themselves" is open to us from the inside, like an underground passage.

Schopenhauer contrasts external experience and its comprehending rational cognition with internal experience, on which he bases the irrational comprehension of "things in themselves, which provides the opportunity to leave the world as representations. kind that can lead us into the otherwise incomprehensible world of the essences of things in themselves. Intuitive knowledge has nothing to do with the external world. It penetrates into being-in-itself. According to Schopenhauer, only on the basis of such intuition "the true and true essence of things is revealed and appears. This intuition becomes possible thanks to human will or will. At the same time, the intellect, which, according to the philosopher, is capable of possessing intuition, is only an instrument of the will to live. they are supernatural, indestructible, and the intellect is natural, destructible. Will, according to Schopenhauer, is baseless and supernatural. He believed that the basis of the world is will, the manifestation of which is subject to necessity.

Schopenhauer divides the world into the world as will and the world as representation. Having penetrated through the veil of ideas, thanks to "desire, we gain self-knowledge. For this thinker, philosophy acts as knowledge of the unknowable. It serves the purpose of preserving a being undivided by will. The will is armed with intellect and helps to satisfy diverse needs. Wills fight among themselves and hence the struggle between different bearers of wills Because of this, the world as a whole can be described as suffering.The suffering of people is eternal, due to the infinity of their desires and the insatiability of their needs.

For Schopenhauer, the main question of philosophizing is the question of how to avoid suffering. The will to live helps to do this. It develops, but remains flawed and unfinished. Such a state of her, in his opinion, is natural. The will to live is an unfortunate will, for it does not save one from torment and suffering. According to Schopenhauer, the will is filled with ethical content when a person renounces himself. In other words, the moral will is the mortification of the will to life and freedom.

Schopenhauer considers freedom as “the absence of barriers and obstacles. In his opinion, it can be physical, intellectual and moral. Moreover, “physical freedom is the absence of any kind of material obstacles.

Moral freedom for him is the realization of independent free will, which is transcendental. Will is the true core of the human personality.

Schopenhauer objected to those philosophers who tried to prove that the goal of human life should be happiness, which, in their opinion, is achievable. For the German thinker, happiness in this world is impossible, and the ideal is the asceticism of a saint, a hermit who has chosen a heroic life path, serving the truth.

Focusing on the suppression of the will to live, Schopenhauer's ethics sanction life bondage, asceticism and self-denial. Schopenhauer states: “My philosophy is the only one that knows something higher, namely asceticism. Ethical perfection consists in getting rid of self-love, from serving one’s Self and from satisfying personal egoistic desires. The ascetic in Schopenhauer takes every suffering for granted.

However, asceticism is not the end point of Schopenhauer's ethics. This point is not in "suffering, but in" compassion.

According to Schopenhauer, "any kind of humanity, even true friendship, which is not regret, compassion ... is not a virtue, but self-interest.

Schopenhauer's understanding of social life is distinguished by anti-historicism. The world, according to the German thinker, is permanent, and its development is illusory. History only repeats what has already happened. There are no laws in history, which means that history is not a science, since it does not rise to the universal.

Schopenhauer, in his views on history, reflected the mindset of the desperate part of bourgeois society, which hoped to change the world for the better, but failed along the way.

According to the views of the German thinker, the state is a means of curbing human egoism. It must not allow freedom.

Schopenhauer believed that he was ahead of his time and that his time would come. Indeed, after his death he became widely known. His ideas were criticized, but he also had admirers. So, F. Nietzsche wrote: “I belong to those readers of Schopenhauer who, having read one of his pages, are quite sure that they will read everything written by him and will listen to every word he said. I immediately had confidence in him, and this trust is now the same as it was nine years ago ... I understood him as if he wrote for me. F. Nietzsche called A. Schopenhauer a leader who leads "from the heights of skeptical discontent or critical renunciation to the heights of a tragic understanding of life.

Biography of Schopenhauer - briefly – famous German philosopher (1788-1860). In his youth, he traveled with his parents to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and England (1803–1805). Returning from a trip, Schopenhauer, at the request of his father, entered (1805) as an apprentice to a large businessman, but when his father died soon after, he decided to devote himself to the scientific field. In 1809 he entered the faculty of medicine at the University of Göttingen, then studied philosophy in Berlin and Jena. At the end of his main work, The World as Will and Representation (published in Leipzig, 1819), Schopenhauer went to Spain. Upon his return from there, he unsuccessfully sought a chair at the University of Berlin, and in 1831 he left for Frankfurt am Main, which he considered the healthiest city in Germany and devoted himself exclusively to philosophical studies. In 1895 a monument was erected to him in Frankfurt.

The philosophy of Schopenhauer adjoins the critique of Kant's reason and, above all, like the philosophy of Fichte, to its idealistic side. Schopenhauer, like Kant, declares things given to us in space and time as simple phenomena, and space and time themselves as subjective, a priori forms of consciousness. The essence of objective things remains unknown to our intellect, because the world contemplated through subjective forms of perception (time and space) cannot be identified with the real. The world given to us in rational consciousness is only "the world as a representation", a fiction of the intellect or (in the words of Schopenhauer himself) an empty "brain ghost". (For more on this, see the articles Schopenhauer and Kant, Schopenhauer on the metaphysical need of man)

But it's all about activities. reason . In evaluating it, Schopenhauer (like Fichte) goes much further than Kant in idealistic subjectivism. However, behind another mental function - will - he, on the contrary, categorically recognizes complete objectivity and reliability. For Kant, the only organ of knowledge is the intellect. Schopenhauer, on the other hand, emphasizes the huge role in the perceptions given to us of the human will, which, in his opinion, comprehends the data. his experience not only distinctly, but also "immediately". "Will" forms our main and true spiritual essence. The fact that Kant, in his philosophy, paid almost no attention to this most important side of our personality, is a major mistake. With the word "will" Schopenhauer's philosophy denotes not only conscious desire, but also unconscious instinct and force acting in the inorganic world. The real "world as will" differs from the imaginary "world as representation". If the “world as a representation” as a “brain phenomenon” exists only in the intellect, “consciousness”, then the “world as will” acts without intellect and consciousness - as a “meaningless”, “blind”, “will to live” that does not know fatigue .

Pessimism and irrationalism of Schopenhauer

According to Schopenhauer's philosophy, this will is meaningless. Therefore, our world is not "the best possible world" (as Leibniz's theodicy proclaims), but "the worst possible". Human life has no value: the amount of suffering it causes is much greater than the pleasure it brings. Schopenhauer counters optimism with the most resolute pessimism - and this fully corresponded to his personal mental make-up. The will is irrational, blind and instinctive, because in the development of organic forms the light of thought lights up for the first time only at the highest and final stage of the development of the will - in the human brain, the bearer of consciousness. But with the awakening of consciousness, there also appears a means to "overcome the senselessness" of the will. Having come to the pessimistic conclusion that the incessant, irrational will to live causes an unbearable state of prevailing suffering, the intellect is also convinced that deliverance from it can be achieved (according to the Buddhist model) by escaping from life, by denying the will to live. However, Schopenhauer emphasizes that this denial, the “quietism of the will”, comparable to the transition to Buddhist nirvana, to the silence of non-existence free from suffering, should in no way be identified with suicide (which the philosopher who was influenced by him later began to call for). Eduard Hartman).

Between will and individual things, according to Schopenhauer, there are still ideas - the stages of objectification of the will, which are reflected not in time and space, but in countless individual things. We can rise to the knowledge of these ideas when we stop considering separate things in time, space and causal connection, and comprehend them not by abstraction, but by contemplation. In the moments when we do this, we are freed from the pain of life and become subjects of knowledge, for which there is no longer time or suffering. Ideas make up the content of art, which is addressed to the essences that are unchanged in the eternal change of phenomena.

Significance of Schopenhauer in the history of philosophy

Schopenhauer owed his success (albeit late) both to the originality and courage of his system, as well as to a number of other qualities: an eloquent defense of a pessimistic worldview, his ardent hatred of "school philosophy", his gift of exposition, free (especially in small works) from any artificiality. Thanks to this, he (like the popular English and French thinkers highly valued by him) became primarily a philosopher of "secular people". He had many adherents of low rank, but very few able followers of his system. The “Schopenhauer School” did not emerge, but he still strongly influenced a number of original thinkers who developed their own theories. Of the philosophers who relied on Schopenhauer, Hartmann and the early Nietzsche are especially famous. Most of the representatives of the later " philosophy of life”, whose true founder Schopenhauer has every right to be considered.

German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) belongs to that galaxy of European philosophers who had a noticeable influence on the philosophy and culture of his time and the next century. In 1819, his main work, The World as Will and Representation, saw the light of day, in which he gave his system of philosophical knowledge. This book was not successful, because in Germany at that time there were enough authorities who controlled the minds of contemporaries. Among them, perhaps the first magnitude was Hegel, who had a very strained relationship with Schopenhauer.

A feature of the personality of A. Schopenhauer was his gloomy, gloomy and irritable character, which was reflected in the general mood of his philosophy. It admittedly bears the stamp of deep pessimism. But with all this, he was a very gifted person with versatile erudition, great literary skill; He spoke many ancient and new languages and was one of the most educated people of his time.

In the philosophy of Schopenhauer, two characteristic points are usually distinguished - the doctrine of the will and pessimism.

The doctrine of will is the semantic core of Schopenhauer's philosophical system. The mistake of all philosophers, he proclaimed, was that they saw the basis of man in the intellect, while in fact it lies exclusively in the will, which is completely different from the intellect, and only it is original. Moreover, the will is not only the basis of man, but it is also the inner foundation of the world, its essence. It is eternal, not subject to death, and in itself is baseless, that is, self-sufficient.

Two worlds should be distinguished in connection with the doctrine of the will: I. The world where the law of causality prevails (the one in which we live), and II. A world where not specific forms of things, not phenomena, but general transcendent entities are important (a world where we are not). In everyday life, the will has an empirical character, it is subject to limitation; if this were not the case, a situation would arise with Buridan's donkey: placed between two armfuls of hay, on opposite sides and at the same distance from him, he, having free will, would die of hunger, not being able to make a choice. A person in everyday life constantly makes choices, but at the same time he inevitably limits free will.

Outside the empirical world, the will is independent of the law of causality. Here it is abstracted from the concrete form of things; it is conceived outside of all time as the essence of the world and man. Will is the “thing-in-itself” of I. Kant; it is not empirical, but transcendental. In the spirit of I. Kant's reasoning about a priori (pre-experimental) forms of sensibility - time and space, about the categories of reason (unity, plurality, wholeness, reality, causality, etc.), Schopenhauer reduces them to a single law of sufficient reason. Its simplest form is time.

The world, taken as a “thing-in-itself”, is an ungrounded will, and matter acts as its visible image. The being of matter is its "action". Only by acting, it "fills" space and time. Well acquainted with natural science, Schopenhauer explained all manifestations of nature by the endless fragmentation of the world will, by its multitude of “objectifications”. Among them is the human body. It connects the individual, his representation, with the world will and, being its messenger, determines the state of the human mind. Through the body, the world will acts as the mainspring of all human actions.

Every act of the will is an act of the body, and vice versa. From this we come to an explanation of the nature of affects and motives of behavior, which are always determined by specific desires in this place, at this time, in these circumstances. The will itself is outside the law of motivation, but it is the basis of a person's character. It is “given” to a person and a person, as a rule, is not able to change it. This idea of Schopenhauer can be disputed, but later it will be reproduced by S. Freud in connection with his doctrine of the unconscious.

The highest stage of objectification of the will is associated with the manifestation of individuality in the form of the human spirit. It manifests itself with the greatest force in art, in which the will reveals itself in its purest form. With this, Schopenhauer associates the theory of genius: a genius does not follow the law of sufficient reason (consciousness following this law creates sciences that are the fruit of the mind and rationality), a genius is free, because it is infinitely distant from the world of cause and effect and, therefore, is close to insanity . So genius and madness have a point of contact.

Schopenhauer declares that freedom should not be sought in our individual actions, as rational philosophy does, but in the whole being and essence of man himself. In the current life, we see many actions caused by causes and circumstances, as well as time and space, and our freedom is limited by them. In this reasoning, freedom is not expelled, but only moved from the realm of current life to a higher realm, but not so clearly accessible to our consciousness. Freedom in its essence is transcendental. This means that each person is initially and fundamentally free, and everything that he does has this freedom as its basis.

The theme of pessimism is revealed in the fact that every pleasure, every happiness that people strive for at all times, is negative, since they are the absence of something bad. Our desire stems from the acts of will of our body, but desire is the suffering of the absence of what is desired. Satisfied desire inevitably gives birth to another, and again we desire. If we imagine all this in space as conditional points, then the voids between them will be filled with suffering, from which desires will arise. This means that it is not pleasure, but suffering - this is the positive, constant, unchanging, always present that we feel.

Schopenhauer claims that everything around us bears traces of despondency; everything pleasant is mixed with unpleasant; every pleasure destroys itself, every relief leads to new hardships. We must be unhappy in order to be happy, moreover, we cannot but be unhappy, and the reason for this is the person himself, his will. In fact, need, deprivation, sorrow are crowned with death; the ancient Indian Brahmins saw this as the goal of life (Schopenhauer refers to the Vedas and Upanishads). In death we are afraid of losing the body, which is will itself. This is immortality in time: the intellect perishes in death, but the will is not subject to death.

His universal pessimism was in sharp contrast to the mentality of Enlightenment philosophy and classical German philosophy. Schopenhauer led a person to the idea of what is the highest value of life. Pleasure, luck, happiness in themselves, or everything that precedes them, is also valuable for us?

5. "Philosophy of life".

In the last third of the 19th century, a movement was formed in Germany and France, which received the general name "philosophy of life". One of the researchers of the philosophy of life, G. Rickert, noted her desire not only to comprehensively consider life as a single entity, but also to make it the center of the worldview, the key to all philosophical knowledge.

On the one hand, the manifestation of interest in life was an act of humanism, because life as a value was taken under protection, attention was drawn to it, its fundamental character was emphasized. On the other hand, the concept of "life" turned out to be ambiguous and indefinite; therefore the whole philosophy of life took on a discordant form. Accustomed to strict and rational forms, to exact knowledge and its practical usefulness, the consciousness of a European could hardly perceive the specific logic of the philosophy of life and its general aspiration “to nowhere”, the absence of a clear goal and direction.

One of the representatives of the philosophy of life, Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), a German cultural historian and philosopher, proceeded from the thesis that scientific knowledge is opposed to cultural-historical knowledge, that sciences of nature and sciences of the spirit really exist.

The sciences of nature are based on rational knowledge and have the reliability of their conclusions. They rely on categories, apply procedures generally accepted in their field, and are aimed at finding the causes of phenomena and the laws of nature. The sciences of the spirit are knowledge of an entirely different kind. It has a fundamentally different basis. What is important here is not rational thinking, but intuitive comprehension of the essence, experiencing the events of history and current life, the subject's involvement in the subject of knowledge, it is especially valuable for the subject. At the heart of the humanities is life itself, which is expressed in the teleological (i.e., in its intrinsic purposeful cause) connection of experiences, understanding and interpretation of the expressions of this life.

Spiritual life arises on the soil of the physical world, it is included in evolution and is its highest step. The conditions under which it arises are analyzed by natural science, which reveals the laws that govern physical phenomena. Among physical bodies In nature, the human body also exists, and experience is most directly connected with it. But with it we are already moving from the physical world to the world of spiritual phenomena. But it is the subject of the sciences of the mind, and their cognitive value does not depend at all on the study of physical conditions. Knowledge about the spiritual world arises from the interaction of experience, understanding of other people, historical comprehension of communities as subjects of historical action, and, finally, objective spirit. Experience There is a fundamental premise behind all of this.

It includes elementary acts of thinking (intellectuality of experience), judgments about the experienced, in which the experience is objective. The subject of cognition is one with its object, and this object is the same at all stages of objectification.

To comprehend the essence of life, Dilthey considered it important to see a common feature of external objects that appear in it. This sign is time. This is revealed already in the expression "the course of life". Life is always flowing, and it cannot be otherwise. Time is given to us thanks to the unifying unity of our consciousness. The concept of time finds its ultimate realization in the experience of time. It is perceived as a continuous movement forward, in which the present ceaselessly becomes the past, and the future becomes the present. The present is a moment filled with reality, it is real as opposed to memory or ideas about the future, manifested in hope, fear, aspiration, desire, expectation.

Being in the stream of life, we cannot comprehend its essence. What we take for essence is only its image, imprinted by our experience. The flow of time itself, in the strict sense, is not experienced. For when we wish to observe time, we destroy it by observation, because it is established by attention; observation stops the flowing, the becoming.

Another important characteristic of life, according to Dilthey, is its connectedness. All components of life are connected into one whole. We master this whole with the help of understanding, the presence of our own meaning in each life. The meaning of individual existence is absolutely unique, it cannot be analyzed by any rational cognition.

famous French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941) draws attention to the creative nature of the flow of life - it is continuous creativity. Creativity, as you know, is the creation of something new, unique. Therefore, to anticipate new form no one can live. Life has a fundamentally open character. In order to approach the principle of all life, one must rise to intuition. It is a form of cognition that is abstracted from details and logical procedures and allows one to instantly grasp the subject under study in its most general essential manifestations. The philosopher, however, abandons intuition, as soon as its impulse is communicated to him, he surrenders to the power of concepts. Only intuitive philosophy can comprehend life and spirit in their unity, but not science, although science can “sweep away” philosophy with its arguments, although it will not explain anything.

Perhaps the most paradoxical and at the same time famous representative of the philosophy of life was Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). With his original works, among which the most famous are “Beyond Good and Evil”, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, “Antichrist”, etc., he created a reputation for himself as a thinker who made deep insights in those areas of philosophy and culture where everything seemed clear and established. He subjected to total criticism the traditional values of European culture and, above all, the Christian religion and rational thinking. Nietzsche showed that all the wealth of the living world cannot be comprehended and mastered in the existing system of cultural values, and that life is far from being understood by us, and if it is understood, it is one-sided and wrong.

Nietzsche's worldview is based on a natural instinct, expressed in the desire of all living things for domination and power. Following A. Schopenhauer in evaluating the world will as the primary principle of being, Nietzsche modifies this principle into the will to power.

Life, according to Nietzsche, is determined by the law of subordination of the weak to the strong, and this is the extremely broad principle of being. Dominance manifests itself in economic, political, social, interpersonal and even intimate relationships; it is filled with the real content of human history. It is also observed in nature. It can be hidden, it can be opposed as a principle, but it cannot be crossed out. The will to power as a principle splits society into slaves (weak) and masters (strong); hence the two moralities: the aristocratic and the morality of the crowd, the people, the masses. The latter is cultivated by Christianity and humanistic European culture, and therefore rejected by Nietzsche.

The will to power is seen by Nietzsche as a manifestation of the instinct of freedom. But to freedom, as well as to domination, war brings up. In war, male fighting qualities dominate and suppress all others - the instinct for happiness, peace, peace, compassion, etc. Peaceful life kills the will to power, makes a person a weak personality and turns him into a herd animal. In particular, such a concept as "conscience" makes a person a slave to the herd instinct. Nietzsche's measure of true value is freedom from the social norms of his contemporary society. So who is free? This is the one who is "beyond good and evil", that is, outside the morality and laws of society. Nietzsche saw his hero in the form of a "blond beast", that is, a person of Aryan origin, not burdened by conscience and moral doubts. He called N. Machiavelli and Napoleon the historical prototypes of such a hero.

If the philosophers of the era of reason saw progress in the history of mankind, that is, the rise of society from lower, primitive forms of life to higher forms, then Nietzsche saw in history the weakening of the will to live and the degradation of the natural principle in man and among peoples. Therefore, he was an opponent of progress, opposed the ideas of socialism and different kind projects for the transformation of society. Progress, from his point of view, would be the education of a new ruling caste for Europe, consisting of smaller but stronger human specimens. They would have constituted a race of masters and conquerors, a race of Aryans.

Nietzsche's works bear the stamp of irrationalism and unconventionality. They are written in the form of parables, aphorisms, and require considerable effort of imagination and will when reading. But Nietzsche himself said that they were not written for everyone.

Nietzsche was one of the most educated people of the 19th century, but by virtue of his inherent genius, he himself placed himself outside society. His ideas were actively used in Nazi Germany to promote war and racism. Nor were they alien to the revolutionaries in Russia and other countries. This, however, is not the point; all this happened against the will of Nietzsche himself. The main thing is different: with his work, he warned against the inevitable, but ugly forms of development of Western civilization; he warned us about the coming alienation in the sphere of European culture, about its deep rebirth, about the massification and primitivization of spiritual life.

Topic 8. RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHY

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHY

Photographer Andrea Effulge

Arthur Schopenhauer, even among famous and significant philosophers, is an ambiguous and distinguished person, of course, distinguished by his views. The thinker was ahead of the philosophical mood of his time by more than a century ahead, this largely explains his limited fame. Until old age, even having created his main works and formulated his philosophical views, Schopenhauer remained very limitedly known only in certain circles, but he still received well-deserved recognition, or rather, his works in the field of science.

In this article, I will try to summarize the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, despite the breadth of his views and creative fertility. For me personally, this philosopher is close not so much to his conceptual views as to his personal worldview, lifestyle and being, but these are personal details. The works of this thinker influenced many prominent philosophers, and F.W. Nietzsche called him the leader of tragic discontent and showed solidarity with the views of Schopenhauer.

The philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, nicknamed the philosophy of pessimism, in many respects converged in an invisible dispute with the classical philosophy that prevailed in his time, which affirmed irrepressible and unlimited progress, reinforced by successes in science and technology. At the same time, the philosophy of the misanthrope Schopenhauer criticized the love of life and affirmed the irony of the struggle for existence with the inevitable defeat in the form of death. That is, irrationalism in the philosophy of Schopenhauer criticized German classical philosophy and its objective idealism. The fruits of this intellectual struggle was the assertion in the irrationalist philosophy of Schopenhauer of three postulates in the understanding of the world:

The collision of the mystical intuition of knowledge and the classical theory of knowledge. Schopenhauer argued that only art, where the creator is devoid of will, can be a real mirror that truly reflects reality, that is, wisdom is not the product of some kind of education obtained by abstract study and thinking, but the achievement of concrete thinking;
A refutation of the theories of progress and assertions that the world is rationally and harmoniously constructed, and its movement in every sense is the embodiment of this rational design. The philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, from a truly misanthropic point of view, criticized the rationality of the structure of the world, and even more so the special and initially free place assigned to man in this world. The thinker considered the existence of man primarily as torment;
On the basis of the previous two postulates, it seems logical to consider the irrationalist philosophy of Schopenhauer's existence as a criterion and methodology in understanding the world.

The problem of man in the views of the thinker lies in the fact that man is not some kind of abstract object of knowledge, but a being included in the world, a suffering, struggling, bodily and objective being. And it also depends on all these objective factors.

Another manifestation of irrationalism in the philosophy of Schopenhauer was the consideration of wisdom, where it was presented as intuitive knowledge, free from the power of the will; the rejection of the volitional act in cognition and gave the necessary willless intuition necessary for the study of the world. Such a weak-willed intuition could best be embodied in art: only a mind that has achieved genius in art, which is the embodiment of a weak-willed contemplation, can be a true mirror of the universe.

Despite the criticism of German classical philosophy, Schopenhauer highly valued rationalism itself and Kant in particular, in his office there was a bust of the German thinker, as well as a statuette of Buddha, since Arthur Schopenhauer found the philosophy of Buddhism very worthy. Motives and consistency with Asian philosophy in general, and with the philosophy of Buddhism, are clearly traced in Schopenhauer's philosophy itself: the achievement of a limp state and the rejection of individuality is similar to the desire for nirvana, asceticism as a path to achieving the meaning of existence and overcoming the will resembles the views of Taoism and much more.

The philosophy of Schopenhauer, in short, is more ethical and aesthetic than, for example, metaphysical; it considers a lot, including knowledge of the world, from the standpoint of moral and aesthetic views, declares irrationalism, talks about the everyday life and being of a particular individual, his morality, and so on. Despite all this, Schopenhauer's philosophy is called pessimistic for a reason, because the existence ordinary person he considered it as a transition from boredom and idleness to suffering, and retention in these states by the will acting as a pest.

After all that has been said above, the reader may be shocked by the statement that, in fact, in its irrational essence, Schopenhauer's philosophy is a "philosophy of life." Yes, this is true, the views of Arthur Schopenhauer, despite all the pessimism that comes through from them, are a philosophy of life; I will explain. The fact is that the saying is applicable to the views of this thinker: "Having - we do not appreciate, having lost - we grieve." Schopenhauer claims that everyone, absolutely every person, having the three greatest values, does not save them until he loses them; these values are freedom, youth and health. Moreover, in the value of "youth" he invested the concept of initiative, motives, aspirations and everything that is inevitably associated with this concept - "youth". The philosopher in his writings urged everyone to take a completely different look at their existence, overcome illusions and learn to appreciate these three great blessings given from birth: freedom, youth and health. And then every moment of being will sparkle with new colors, it will become beautiful and valuable in itself without the participation of anything obviously superfluous in this. That is why, despite the pessimistic mood, Schopenhauer's views are a philosophy of life. And, having understood the value of every moment and overcoming illusions, each person will be able to begin to achieve a genius in art and achieve a true reflection of the Universe.

I hope that after reading this article, you, the reader, understood a lot about this, albeit not the most famous philosopher, but no doubt worthy of attention, and also that a misanthrope with pessimistic views can be an apologist for the philosophy of life, as was the case with Arthur Schopenhauer . Of course, it is impossible to briefly describe the philosophy of Schopenhauer, as well as any outstanding thinker, therefore I suggest you familiarize yourself with his main works: “The World as Will and Representation”, “On the Fourfold Root of the Law of Sufficient Reason”, “On the Freedom of the Human Will”, "Aphorisms of worldly wisdom", "On the substantiation of morality", "Parerga and paralipomena (appendices and additions)".

Philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer

Only in the 50s of the XIX century. In Germany, interest in the philosophy of Schopenhauer began to awaken, and it increased after his death.

A feature of the personality of A. Schopenhauer was his gloomy, gloomy and irritable character, which undoubtedly affected the general mood of his philosophy. It admittedly bears the stamp of deep pessimism. But with all this, he was a very gifted person with versatile erudition, great literary skill; he spoke many ancient and new languages and was undoubtedly one of the most educated people of his time.

In the philosophy of Schopenhauer, two characteristic points are usually distinguished: this is the doctrine of the will and pessimism.

The doctrine of will is the semantic core of Schopenhauer's philosophical system. The mistake of all philosophers, he proclaimed, was that they saw the basis of man in the intellect, while in fact it - this basis, lies exclusively in the will, which is completely different from the intellect, and only it is original. Moreover, the will is not only the basis of man, but it is also the inner foundation of the world, its essence. It is eternal, not subject to death, and in itself is baseless, that is, self-sufficient.

Two worlds must be distinguished in connection with the doctrine of the will:

I. the world where the law of causality prevails (that is, the one in which we live), and II. a world where not specific forms of things, not phenomena, but general transcendental essences are important. This is a world where we do not exist (the idea of doubling the world is taken by Schopenhauer from Plato).

In our everyday life, the will has an empirical character, it is subject to limitation; if this were not the case, a situation would arise with Buridan’s donkey (Buridan is a scholastic of the 15th century who described this situation): placed between two armfuls of hay, on opposite sides and at the same distance from him, he, “possessing free will” died would be hungry, not being able to make a choice. A person in everyday life constantly makes choices, but at the same time he inevitably limits free will.
Outside the empirical world, the will is independent of the law of causality. Here it is abstracted from the concrete form of things; it is conceived outside of all time as the essence of the world and man. Will is “a thing-in-itself” by I. Kant; it is not empirical, but transcendental.

In the spirit of I. Kant’s reasoning about a priori (pre-experimental) forms of sensibility - time and space, about the categories of reason (unity, plurality, wholeness, reality, causality, etc.), Schopenhauer reduces them to a single law of sufficient reason, which he considers “the mother of all sciences". This law is, of course, a priori. Its simplest form is time.

Further, Schopenhauer says that the subject and object are correlative moments, and not moments of causal connection, as is customary in rational philosophy. It follows that their interaction generates a representation.

But, as we have already noted, the world taken as a “thing-in-itself” is an unfounded will, and matter acts as its visible image. Being of matter is its "action" only by acting, it "fills" space and time. Schopenhauer sees the essence of matter in the connection between cause and effect.

Well acquainted with natural science, Schopenhauer explained all manifestations of nature by the endless fragmentation of the world will, multitude; its "objectifications". Among them is the human body. It connects the individual, his representation with the world will and, being its messenger, determines the state of the human mind. Through the body, the world will acts as the mainspring of all human actions.
Every act of the will is an act of the body, and vice versa. From this we come to an explanation of the nature of affects and motives of behavior, which are always determined by specific desires in this place, at this time, in these circumstances. The will itself is outside the law of motivation, but it is the basis of a person's character. It is “given” to a person and a person, as a rule, is not able to change it. This idea of Schopenhauer can be disputed, but later it will be reproduced by 3. Freud in connection with his doctrine of the subconscious.

The highest stage of the objectification of the will is associated with a significant manifestation of individuality in the form of the human spirit. It manifests itself with the greatest force in art, in which the will reveals itself in its purest form. With this, Schopenhauer associates the theory of genius: genius does not follow the law of sufficient reason (consciousness following this law creates sciences that are the fruit of the mind and rationality), while genius is free, since it is infinitely distant from the world of cause and effect and, because of this, is close to insanity. So genius and madness have a point of contact (Horace spoke of "sweet madness").

In the light of the above premises, what is Schopenhauer's concept of freedom? He firmly states that freedom should not be sought in our individual actions, as rational philosophy does, but in the whole being and essence of man himself. In the current life, we see a lot of actions caused by causes and circumstances, as well as time and space, and our freedom is limited by them. But all these actions are essentially of the same character, and that is why they are free from causation.
In this reasoning, freedom is not expelled, but only moved from the area of current life to a higher one, but it is not so clearly accessible to our consciousness. Freedom in its essence is transcendental. This means that each person is initially and fundamentally free, and everything that he does has this freedom as its basis. This thought will meet us later in the philosophy of existentialism; J.-P. Sartre and A. Camus.

Now let's move on to the topic of pessimism in the philosophy of Schopenhauer. Any pleasure, any happiness that people strive for at all times, have a negative character, since they - pleasure and happiness - are in essence the absence of something bad, suffering, for example. Our desire stems from the acts of will of our body, but desire is the suffering of the absence of what is desired. A satisfied desire inevitably gives rise to another desire (or several desires), and again we lust, etc. If we imagine all this in space as conditional points, then the voids between them will be filled with suffering, from which desires will arise (conditional points in our case) . This means that it is not pleasure, but suffering - this is that positive, constant, unchanging, always present, the presence of which we feel.

Schopenhauer claims that everything around us bears traces of despondency; everything pleasant is mixed with unpleasant; every pleasure destroys itself, every relief leads to new hardships. It follows from this that we must be unhappy in order to be happy, moreover, we cannot but be unhappy, and the reason for this is the person himself, his will. Optimism paints life for us as a kind of gift, but if we knew in advance what kind of gift it was, we would refuse it. In fact, need, deprivation, sorrow are crowned with death; the ancient Indian Brahmins saw this as the goal of life (Schopenhauer refers to the Vedas and Upanishads). In death we are afraid of losing the body, which is will itself.

But the will is objectified through the pangs of birth and the bitterness of death, and this is a stable objectification. This is immortality in time: the intellect perishes in death, but the will is not subject to death. Schopenhauer thought so.

His universal pessimism was in sharp contrast to the mentality of Enlightenment philosophy and classical German philosophy. As for ordinary people, they are accustomed to being guided by the formula of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus: “Death does not concern us at all: while we exist, there is no death, and when there is death, we do not exist.” But let's give Schopenhauer his due: he shows us the world not in one color, but rather in two colors, that is, more real and thus leads us to the idea of what is the highest value of life. Pleasure, luck, happiness in themselves, or everything that precedes them is also valuable for us? Or maybe this is life itself?
Schopenhauer initiated the process of affirming the volitional component in European philosophy as opposed to a purely rational approach that reduces a person to the position of a thinking tool. His ideas about the primacy of will were supported and developed by A. Bergson, W. James, D. Dewey, Fr. Nietzsche and others. They were the basis of the “philosophy of life”.

Topic 9. Western European philosophy of the XIX century

Plan

Materialistic understanding of the history of K. Marx
The positivism of O. Comte. Neo-Kantianism.
Irrational philosophy of A. Schopenhauer, F. Nietzsche

1. In the second half of the 19th century, industrial societies were established in Western Europe. The main value of society is technological progress. Science has entered a golden age. Rationalism and optimism, faith in limitless progress are a characteristic feature of this era. Under these conditions, a materialistic understanding of the history of K. Marx, positivism, neo-Kantianism, and later the irrational philosophy of A. Schopenhauer, F. Nietzsche and others. K. Marx and F. Engels created a dialectical materialist philosophy. This philosophy logically follows from the main philosophical discovery of Marx - the materialistic understanding of history (historical materialism). Historical materialism is the extension of materialism to the sphere of social life, to the social world, to history. According to the teachings of Marx, it is not consciousness that determines being, but social being that determines social consciousness. All levels, all forms of manifestation of consciousness are born from social (material) production. Human history is a natural-historical process: not a single formation will become a thing of the past until the relations of production have exhausted themselves, if they do not hinder the further development of the forces of production. Marx and Engels considered their philosophy not as a set of ready-made truths, but as a "guide to action", meaning by such "action" the revolutionary transformation of society. Marx made the social aspects of the process of capitalist production: exploitation and alienation the object of his research. He came to the conclusion that labor under capitalism is forced, alienated. At the free stages of social (now already communist) development, social wealth will be determined not by working time, but by free time - remaining outside the limits of material production, i.e. truly human creativity. Of all the main wealth, the main thing will be the all-round development of man.

During the period under review, there is an increased interest in socio-humanitarian knowledge. Positivism is emerging - a philosophical trend that asserts that only separate, specific (empirical) sciences can be a source of genuine, positive, "positive" knowledge, and philosophy as a special science cannot claim to be an independent study of reality. The founder of this trend is Auguste Comte (1798 - 1857). Positivism, seeking to strengthen the connection between philosophy and concrete sciences, to strengthen the reliance on the achievement of science, absolutizes concrete scientific knowledge, replaces the philosophical subject and method with a concrete scientific subject and method. Positivism, starting already with Comte, denies almost all the previous development of philosophy, identifies philosophy and science. Meanwhile, philosophy is an independent field of knowledge based on the achievements of the entire culture, incl. and on natural science, and on the social sciences, and on art, and on the everyday experience of all mankind. The successors of positivism were empirio-criticism and Machism. One of the directions of the "philosophy of science" was neo-Kantianism, which continues to exert a strong influence on all European philosophy today. Neo-Kantianism sought to revive some of Kant's important principles. It formed two philosophical schools - Marburg (G. Cohen, P. Natorp, E. Cassirer) and Baden (W. Windelband, G. Rickert). They were mainly focused on the study of research methods, in particular the transcendental method of interpreting reality, philosophy was understood as a critical theory of science. Here, knowledge is understood not as a reflection of reality, but as an activity to describe the subject of knowledge in general, and science in particular.

3. Western philosophy of the second half of the 19th century is also associated with the names of such irrationalist thinkers (non-classical philosophers) as A. Schopenhauer, F. Nietzsche and many others. Irrationalism is a doctrine where the decisive factor in cognition, behavior, worldview, in the course of the historical process is played not by the forces of reason, not by the rational principle, but by the irrational, i.e. unreasonable, unconscious (instinct, intuition, blind faith, feelings, etc.) beginning. The affirmation of irrationalism occurs as the broad masses of people become disillusioned with the ideals that philosophical rationalism operated on. By the middle of the 19th century, people were convinced that the progress of science and technology in itself does not lead to the realization of the age-old ideas of mankind. People have ceased to see the manifestation and realization of higher reason in the world historical process.

According to Schopenhauer, the very foundation of being is unreasonable, irrational. In the structure of the world there is no order, no regularity. Being is unreasonable because it is meaningless, disharmonic, absurd. The basis of the universe is not the mind, but the world will, spontaneous, not limited by anything, not determined by anything. Under the will, Schopenhauer understands the endless striving, "life impulse" (A. Bergson). Will is the inner essence of the world. There is an insatiable attraction in this world, a dark dull impulse and nothing more. Will, i.e. desires, desires, motives for inducing a person to action determine the direction and nature of the implementation of the action, and its result. Thus, voluntarism is the basic and universal principle of Schopenhauer's entire philosophy. Schopenhauer's ethics are pessimistic. Suffering is inevitable. The ethical principle should be suffering, the transition to complete asceticism.

F. Nietzsche (1844-1900) is a German philosopher and philologist, a bright preacher of individualism, voluntarism and irrationalism. Following Schopenhauer, he believed that the basis of the world is will, impulse, "the will to power", the will to expand one's Self, to expansion. Nietzsche transferred Charles Darwin's ideas about the struggle for the existence of animals to the life of human society. Nietzsche's central concept is the idea of life. He is the founder of the philosophy of life. The new, perfect man is inherent in strength, health, creative power and joy. "God is dead", i.e. The West abandoned the old system of values based on Christianity. But this means that life has become worthless, life has turned into evil, suffering. The cultural and moral ideal of a perfect man should be a "superman", superior to Homo Sapiens. Nietzsche writes about the new morality, about man and the superman in his work Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Topic 10. Russian philosophy XIX - early. XX centuries

Plan

The specifics of Russian philosophy
Philosophy of the Slavophiles
Russian religious philosophy

1. Philosophical thought in Russia was formed under the influence of the achievements of world philosophy. But it was still largely formed under the influence of the socio-cultural processes that took place in Russia, i.e. pagan culture, Christianization, the works of Metropolitan Hilarion, who raised the question of the place of the Russian people in world history, the literary monuments "The Tale of Igor's Campaign", "The Tale of Bygone Years", the processes of political unification, the formation of the Russian nation, the introduction of Russia to world culture through Byzantium and etc. All this determined the originality of Russian philosophical culture. The true philosophical work of Russian scientists and thinkers begins in the middle of the 18th century (M.V. Lomonosov, A.N. Radishchev). but the heyday of philosophy fell on the 19th century - beginning of the 20th century. (P.Ya. Chaadaev, A.S. Khomyakov, V.S. Soloviev). Russian philosophy contains a high moral truth: any social project cannot be implemented if it is designed for coercion, violence against a person. Russian thought, spirituality opposed Western European, i.e. bourgeois, rational with its pragmatism, rationality. According to Russian philosophers, one-sided rationalism led to a crisis in Western philosophy, a betrayal of the humanistic spirit of philosophy. V. Solovyov believed that integral knowledge is necessary, i.e. synthesis of science, philosophy and religion. Only all-encompassing, cosmic Love can impart such wholeness to consciousness. The meaning of Love is to be the opposite of selfishness, calculation and profit. Russian philosophy thereby tried to unite reason with moral consciousness. Another feature is the inextricable connection with real life. She was deeply concerned about solving problems in front of society.

2. The philosophical search for Russian philosophical thought took place in an atmosphere of confrontation between two tendencies. The first trend was represented by the Slavophiles, who focused on the originality of Russian thought and hence the unique originality of Russian spiritual life. Representatives of the second trend (Westerners) sought to include Russia in the development of European culture and believed that it should learn from the West and follow the same historical path. The basis of the philosophical teachings of the Slavophiles (A.S. Khomyakov, Yu.F. Samardin) was the idea of the messianic role of the Russian people, of its religious and cultural identity and even exclusivity. The initial thesis of their teaching is the assertion of the decisive role of Orthodoxy for the development of the entire world civilization. According to Khomyakov A.S., it was Orthodoxy that formed the original Russian principles, the “Russian spirit”, which created the Russian land with its vast expanses.

2. Philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer

Orthodoxy is a religion of freedom, it addresses the inner world of a person, requires him to be conscious of the choice between good and evil. Connected with this important principle is the notion of catholicity, which means "unity in plurality." It reveals not only the external, visible connection of people, but also the constant possibility of such a connection on the basis of a spiritual community (in the church, in the family, in society, in relations between states, etc. It is a consequence of the interaction of a free human principle (“free will man") and the divine principle ("grace"). Orthodoxy gave rise to a kind of social organization - the rural community, the communal structure of Russian life, which developed such moral traits as the willingness to stand up for common interests, honesty, patriotism, etc. Thus, Russia, relying on catholicity, Orthodoxy and communality in its own special way, which should lead it to world domination. The philosophy of the Slavophils had a significant influence on Russian religious philosophy.

3. V.S. Soloviev (1853-1900) was the first in Russia to create his own philosophical system. According to his teaching, the ultimate unity of being is God (“everything is one in God”). It is God who embodies the positive unity of existence. All the diversity of existence is held together by divine unity. Existing contains good as a manifestation of will, truth as a manifestation of reason and beauty as a manifestation of feeling. The Absolute realizes the good through truth and beauty. These three principles - goodness, truth and beauty - constitute a unity that presupposes love - a force that undermines the roots of selfishness. In epistemological terms, unity is realized through the concept of integral knowledge, which is an inextricable relationship between scientific, philosophical and religious knowledge. So Solovyov tries to combine philosophical and theological thought, rational and irrational types of philosophizing, Western and Eastern cultural traditions. He sought to put reason at the service of faith, to enable religion to rely on a rational principle.

According to Solovyov, humanity is an intermediary between God and nature. Man is called to spiritualize nature. Hence the goal of world history is the unity of God and the extra-divine world, headed by humanity. The moral meaning of personality as a link between the Divine and natural worlds, is realized in an act of love for another person, for nature, for God. In society, the idea of unity is revealed as a divine-human union, as a universal church. It will unite all peoples, remove social contradictions and contribute to the establishment of the "kingdom of God" on earth. At the end of his life, Solovyov, having lost faith in the possibility of realizing his ideas, came to the idea of a catastrophic end to history, to eschatology.

In the first decades of the 20th century, religious philosophy in Russia was developed by N.A. Berdyaev, N.O. Lossky, S.L. Frank and others. Moral quests were the main thing in N. Berdyaev’s work. According to him, man is originally divine, has in himself the image of God. That is what makes him human. But man also contains an animal image, distorted and terrible. Personality is developed by a long process, choice, displacement of what is not my "I" in me. This is done through acts of freedom, choice. The soul is a creative process, an activity. The question of creativity is central to Berdyaev's anthropology. There are differences between a creative person and an everyday person who does not fulfill his purpose. Creativity is “transcending”, going beyond oneself, it is the secret of life, the creation of something new and unprecedented.

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Federal State Educational Institution of Higher Professional Education

"CHELYABINSK STATE INSTITUTE OF CULTURE"

INSTITUTE OF CORRESPONDENCE TRAINING

Department of Directing theatrical performances and holidays

TEST

in the discipline "Philosophy"

"Western non-classical philosophy of the XIX - XX centuries."

Completed:

Student of group 204 RTPP

Bessoltsev Alexander Olegovich

Checked:

Checked:

Doctor of Philosophy, Associate Professor

Marina Petrovna

1. Introduction

2. Irrational foundations of human existence: philosophy of life

3. Philosophy of life A. Schopenhauer

4. Basic ideas of the philosophy of pragmatism Ch. Pierce and W. James.

6. Bibliography.

Introduction

The period of the 19th century is the most significant in the history of the progressive upheaval of the general scientific trend. This revolution was the most significant and positive in the development various areas scientific activity, art, and the emergence of a new course of knowledge. Science has opened a new way for the development of society - technogenic, which is the leading one in our time. Art was revived by modernism, which led to the creation of new and different approaches to the perception and philosophical rethinking of the picture of the world. An example of this sharp rethinking can be found in Western culture, but here contradictions arise between the old ethics and the new one that replaces it. Such a replacement will seem very paradoxical and surprising, as philosophical concepts based on solid rationalism, which prevailed over all other philosophical trends, are being replaced by irrationalism, which is the opposite of it.

The founder of this trend is Arthur Schopenhauer.

(1788-1860). The theoretical sources of Schopenhauer's ideas are the philosophy of Plato, the transcendental philosophy of Kant and the ancient Indian treatise Upanishads. This is one of the first attempts to merge Western and Eastern cultures. The difficulty of this synthesis is that the Western style of thinking is rational, while the Eastern one is irrational. The irrational style of thinking has a pronounced mystical character, that is, it is based on the belief in the existence of forces that govern life that do not obey the unprepared mind. These theories are united by the idea present in ancient mythology that the world in which we live is not the only reality, that there is another reality that is not comprehended by reason and science, but without taking into account the influence that our own life becomes contradictory. His philosophy is inherently unique, since only he dared to give a completely different assessment of the understanding of being than other Western philosophers. Some areas of his philosophy will be outlined in this work.

Irrational foundations of human existence:

Philosophy of life

A. Schopenhauer

In the first half of the 19th century, two main currents of philosophical thought arise: the philosophy of science, the second current is irrationalism.

First, let's look at what rationalism and irrationalism are.

Rationalism -(from lat. ratio - mind) - a method according to which the basis of knowledge and action of people is the mind. Since the intellectual criterion of truth has been accepted by many thinkers, rationalism is not feature some particular philosophy; in addition, there are differences in views on the place of reason in cognition from moderate, when the intellect is recognized as the main means of comprehending the truth along with others, to radical, if rationality is considered the only essential criterion. In modern philosophy, the ideas of rationalism are developed, for example, by Leo Strauss, who proposes to apply the rational method of thinking not by itself, but through maieutics. Other representatives of philosophical rationalism include Benedict Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, Rene Descartes, Georg Hegel, and others. Rationalism usually acts as the opposite of both irrationalism and sensationalism.

Irrationalism- (unreasonable, unconscious), the designation of currents in philosophy, which, in contrast to rationalism, limit or deny the possibilities of reason in the process of cognition and make something irrational the basis of worldview, highlighting the will (voluntarism), direct contemplation, feeling, intuition (intuitionism ), mystical "illumination", imagination, instinct, "unconscious", etc. assumes the recognition of the leading role of instinct, intuition, blind faith, which play a decisive role in knowledge, in worldview as opposed to reason and reason. This is a worldview setting, which is based on the absolutization of the role of irrational, unconscious motives in human activity. Irrationalism is not a single and independent philosophical movement. Rather, it is a characteristic and element of various philosophical systems and schools. More or less obvious elements of irrationalism are characteristic of all those philosophies that are declared inaccessible to scientific knowledge(reason, logic, reason) some spheres of reality (God, immortality, religious problems, etc.). On the one hand, reason is aware and raises such questions, but, on the other hand, scientific criteria are not applicable to these areas.

Sometimes at all (mostly unconsciously) rationalists in their philosophical reflections of history and society postulate extremely irrational concepts.

Some philosophers tend to think that irrationalism is a by-product of rationalism. This can be explained by the fact that the too firm rationalization and organization of Western society caused a backlash, which led to a deep moral crisis.

In the philosophy of Schopenhauer, the leading basis of life is no longer the mind, but the will. Will is understood as a universal cosmic phenomenon, and every force in nature is understood as will. Every corporeality is the "objectivity of the will." Man is a manifestation of the will, his nature, and therefore is not rational, but irrational. Reason is secondary to will. The world is will, and the will fights with itself. Thus absolute rationalism was replaced by extreme voluntarism for Schopenhauer.

Voluntarism- this is a direction of philosophical thought that exaggerates the importance of volitional principles in the activities of people, suggesting the possibility of building and rebuilding social processes in accordance with the most attractive projects, models, ideologies.

Schopenhauer cultivates the “will to live,” that is, a blind aimless desire for life. His follower Nietzsche cultivates the "will to power" that permeates everything: the universe, nature, society, man, life itself. It is introduced into being itself, but it is not one, but multiple (because there are many struggling "centers" of forces). Will controls the world. Nietzsche created a prototype of a liberated person - a superman with a hypertrophied will to power - a "blond beast" - continued to develop "philosophy of life".

The irrationalists countered the thesis of the rationalists about the reasonableness of the world with the opposite: the world is unreasonable, man is controlled not by reason, but by blind will, instinct, fear and despair.

Philosophy of life A Schopenhauer

The philosophy of life refers to those philosophical currents of the 19th - early 20th centuries, in which some philosophers protested against the dominance of epistemological and methodological problems in the philosophy of the New Age, primarily in German classical philosophy. Representatives of the philosophy of life were against focusing on the problems of cognition, logic, and methodology. They believed that detailed philosophy breaks away from real problems, becomes entangled in its own ideal constructions, becomes too abstract, that is, breaks away from life. Philosophy must explore life.

From the point of view of most representatives of the philosophy of life, life is understood as a special integral reality, not reducible to either spirit or matter.

The first representative of the philosophy of life was the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.

The whole world, from his point of view, is the will to live. The will to live is inherent in all living beings, including man, whose will to live is the most significant, because man is endowed with reason, knowledge. Each individual person has his own will to live - not the same for all people. All other people exist in his view as dependent on the boundless egoism of a person, as phenomena that are significant only from the point of view of his will to live, his interests. The human community is thus represented as a set of wills of individuals. A special organization - the state - somehow measures the manifestations of these wills so that people do not destroy each other. The overcoming of egoistic impulses is carried out, according to Schopenhauer, in the sphere of art and morality.

In the views of Schopenhauer one can notice some similarities with the ideas of Buddhism. And this is not accidental, since he knew Indian culture, highly appreciated and used its ideas in his teaching. True, Schopenhauer did not join the eightfold path of the Buddha, but just like the Buddhists, he was pessimistic about the attempts and the possibility of creating a just and happy society on Earth, devoid of suffering and selfishness. Therefore, the teachings of Schopenhauer are sometimes called pessimism. Schopenhauer was one of the first philosophers who pointed out the important role in human life of the unconscious, instinctive impulses associated with the biological origin of man. Similar ideas were subsequently used by Freud in the creation of his theory. Schopenhauer's works were distinguished by their vivid style, metaphor, and figurative expression. One of his original works was the "Treatise on Love", Schopenhauer believed that love is too serious a phenomenon to be left only to poets.

In Schopenhauer's "Treatise" there are many interesting, vivid images arising from his system, for example, love is a strong attraction that occurs between two people of the opposite sex. Attraction, a mysterious force that attracts lovers, is a manifestation of the will of an unborn being, their unborn child - that is, nature “calculates” at the level of organisms of two people that, from a biological point of view, the combination of these organisms will give optimal offspring, and as a result, energy arises mutual attraction of these organisms.

Schopenhauer is usually called one of the founders of irrationalism, meaning by this term all those directions that belittled the role of a rational, conscious person in human behavior. According to the views of supporters of some philosophical schools, irrationalism is a negative phenomenon.

It would be more accurate to say that Schopenhauer simply explained the basics of human behavior better, but not in the most flattering way for people.

passive nihilism. The first European experience of reassessment of the values of the mind. Schopenhauer's ontology is a doctrine of the will as the fundamental principle of being, "the will to live" - an irrational world principle unknowable by scientific methods, actively operating, free and purposeless. This power is meaningless, like life itself. A person has only one way out - to extinguish the will to live in himself. Will is a striving without a goal or an end. A person's life is nothing more than a tragicomedy, suffering, crowned with death. Besides death, a person has no other goal.

The second component of the world is will, a kind of irrational force. Will is the urge to life. Schopenhauer distinguishes between stages of activation of the will.

Volitional beginnings:

1. attraction,

2. magnetism

3. chemistry (inorganic).

4. on a living level, the highest stage -

5. motivated will (in humans).

Motives can come into play.

There is an initial reservoir of the volitional beginning - absolute will. The initial world will has an aggressive, evil character. Absolute blind will manifests itself at the level of inorganic nature. Breaks into the organic world in search of food. Since this process is objective, the world develops in the same direction. All for the worse. Resources are limited. Nothing can be done about all this, this is how the world works. Philosophy of global pessimism.

Schopenhauer spoke of Buddhism (a minimum of deeds so as not to deepen suffering) as the basis of his philosophy. He was extremely negative about Christianity. Realizing such a structure of the world, a person can consciously tame his will. Suicide is a departure from life, due to the fact that life does not satisfy his needs. The overall potential for evil will does not change as a result of suicide. Man must calmly face death, for the will is indestructible. You need to try to tame your needs. Ethics of Schopenhauer: you need to tame the will, do not increase the amount of evil. Only art and morality are able to form a feeling of compassion, or rather, to create the illusion of overcoming selfishness. Compassion is identity with another, revealing to a person the suffering of another person. The anthropology of Schopenhauer is the antipode of the Enlightenment doctrine of man. Reason cannot be a measure of human existence, the irrational principle is a reality. The state and law are factors that restrain individual aggressiveness. Schopenhauer criticizes the mass consumer society. He is one of the first to consider such a path of development of society as a dead end. Proclaims the priority of the artist as a natural genius. Classification of genera and types of arts (for Hegel, literature is the highest art form, most of all spiritual).

Schopenhauer, Arthur

For Schopenhauer, on the contrary, music is closer to the manifestation of the forces of nature. The words blur. The dynamics of human will, crystallized in music, reflects the dynamics of culture. Music is the mediator between the world of will and the world of representation. Representation is the starting point of the split into object and subject. The presentation is taken in its developed form. The development of forms of representations occurs at the level of living nature. The idea arises in response to the movement of organisms in search of food. Schopenhauer, proceeds from the idea that idealism and materialism are illegal, vulnerable, erroneous, since the world is explained on the basis of other things

Conclusion

Until the middle of the 19th century, all philosophies argued that humanity should and does have its own purpose. This goal could be God or the development of nature, it could be a goal not yet discovered, the goal could be the inner peace of the individual. And only in Schopenhauer does a new philosophical motive appear, that life has no purpose at all, that it is a soulless movement, devoid of purpose. The will is a blind impulse, since this impulse acts without a goal, no rest can be found. This leads to the fact that a person is constantly tormented by a feeling of dissatisfaction. Therefore, life is the sum of small worries, and human happiness itself is unattainable. A person bends under the weight of the needs of life, he constantly lives under the threat of death and fears it. Philosophy and religion, according to Schopenhauer, create the illusion of a life goal. Bringing temporary relief to people who believed in these mirages. A follower of Kant, Will in Schopenhauer's philosophy is a “thing in itself”, representation is a world of individual things. Representation is the starting point of the split into object and subject. The presentation is taken in its developed form. The development of forms of representations occurs at the level of living nature.

Modern philosophy owes much to irrationalism. Modern irrationalism has clearly expressed outlines, first of all, in the philosophy of neo-Thomism, existentialism, pragmatism and personalism. Elements of irrationalism can be found in positivism and neopositivism. In positivism, irrational presuppositions arise due to the fact that the construction of theories is limited to analytical and empirical judgments, and philosophical justifications, evaluations and generalizations are automatically shifted to the sphere of the irrational. Irrationalism is found wherever it is argued that there are areas that are fundamentally inaccessible to rational scientific thinking. Such spheres can be conditionally divided into subrational and transrational.

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1. PHILOSOPHICAL VIEWS OF A. SCHOPENHAUER

2.

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER (1788-1860)
German philosopher. One of the most
famous thinkers
irrationalism.

Nothing is clear?

gravitated towards German
romanticism, was fond of mysticism.
Theoretical sources of ideas,
philosophy of Plato, Kant and
Upanishads. Called an existing
world, "the worst possible
worlds", for which he received the nickname
"philosopher of pessimism".

3.

WORKS:
"On the fourfold root of the law of sufficient
foundations" (1813), "On vision and colors" (1816),
"The World as Will and Representation" (1819), "On the Will
in nature" (1826), "On the freedom of the will" (1839), "On
the basis of morality "(1840)," Two main
problems of ethics" (1841).

4.

Irrational thinking style - bright
pronounced mystical character is based on
belief in the existence of disobedient
to the unprepared mind of the forces that govern
life. based on the idea that the world in which we
live is not the only reality that
there is another reality that is not
comprehended by reason and science, but without taking into account the influence
which becomes contradictory our
own life.

5. Philosophy of Schopenhauer

Schopenhauer's philosophy is pessimistic
those. suggestion of despondency, hopelessness, disbelief in
their strength, to progress, to a better future "World
unreasonable and senseless, it is controlled by
blind evil Will. We owe our lives to her
and consequently by their sufferings.

6.

Schopenhauer in his central
"The World as Will and Representation"
deduces the logical law of sufficient
grounds.
True
philosophy
must
proceed
only
only
from
representation that is a fact
consciousness
and
which
is divided
on the
subject representations and representations
object.

7.

The universal principle of Schopenhauer's philosophy
is VOLUNTARISM. The main driving force
WILL determines everything in the surrounding world.
WILL is the absolute beginning, the root of all things,
able to determine and influence everything that exists. There is a will
universe. Will is the basis of consciousness and is
the universal essence of people.
For Schopenhauer, the will is a “thing in itself”. Only will
capable of defining and influencing everything that exists. Will is
the highest cosmic principle that underlies
universe. Will - the will to live, the desire.

8.

Based on Kant's theory: the world there is only
world of ideas in the human mind. Essence
the world, its things, phenomena - WILL.
Will is inherent not only in living organisms, but also
inanimate nature in the form of "unconscious, dormant"
will. And, accordingly, the whole world around us in its own way
essence is the realization of Will.

9.

Man is a creature that owes its appearance to the will
to life. Each person has his own will to live - it is the main thing
in his mind, the source of his boundless selfishness.
A person always and in everything serves not himself, not his own
interests, but will. Will makes him live, no matter how
meaningless and miserable was not his existence.
All life is full of disappointments and suffering. Human
under the influence of the will all the time wants something, but everything
the fact is that desires are never satisfied, and if
and satisfied, they bring with them indifference and
disappointment. "LIFE IS SOMETHING THAT IS NECESSARY
SUFFER." And yet the main thing in life is
compassion…

10.

There is only one kind of people who have stopped
to be slaves of the will, conquered in themselves desires and aspirations,
became weak-willed subjects - these are geniuses in art, and
saints in earthly life. When a man, lifted by the power of the spirit,
ceases to see the world as a representation connected
laws of causality, in space and time.
"Genius is complete objectivity."
But an ordinary person is completely incapable of
any lengthy contemplation. To him
remains satisfied or dissatisfied
desires, or if they are satisfied by boredom. "The truth is
Every person has three blessings of life - health,
youth, freedom. As long as we have them, we are not aware of them.
and we are not imbued with their value, but we realize only then,
when we lose, because they are only negative values.

11.

The Art of Happiness in the Ethics of Schopenhauer
that everything that determines the difference in the fate of people,
can be summarized in three main categories:
1)
What is a person: - that is, his personality in the widest
sense of the word. These include health, strength,
beauty, temperament, morality, intelligence and its degree
development.
2)
What a person has: - that is, the property that is in his
property or possession.
3)
What is a person; these words
refers to what a person is
representation of others: how they imagine it; - in a word, this is the opinion of others about him, the opinion,
expressed outwardly in his honor, position and
glory ... ".

12.

Famous saying:
"When people enter into close
communication with each other,
behavior resembles porcupines,
trying to keep warm in the cold
winter night. They are cold, they
pressed against each other, but
the harder they do it, the more it hurts
they prick each other with their
long needles. Forced by
the pain of the injections disperse, they again
approach because of the cold, and so - all
all night long."

Philosophical views of A. Schopenhauer

English RussianRules

Philosophy of A. Schopenhauer

One of the most striking figures of irrationalism (from Latin irrationalis - unreasonable, unconscious; a trend in philosophy that opposes rationalism and limits or denies the possibilities of reason in the cognition of reality, affirming the irrational, illogical nature of being) is Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), who was dissatisfied with Hegel's optimistic rationalism and dialectics (primarily his panlogism: "everything that is real is reasonable, everything that is reasonable is real). Schopenhauer gravitated toward German romanticism, was fond of mysticism. He considered himself a follower of the philosophy of I. Kant and was fond of the philosophical ideas of the East (especially Buddhism).

Schopenhauer not only reduced the role of the mind at the expense of emotions and, most importantly, the absolutized will understood by him, he challenged the very concept of the mind as a field of conscious activity of human consciousness, introducing unconsciously irrational moments into it. In his main work, The World as Will and Representation (1819), the unconscious will appears as a universal irrational element, not subject to any rational methods of research. The intellect, according to Schopenhauer, without realizing it, functions not according to its rational plan, but according to the instructions of the world will, which is recognized as the single energy basis of all personal wills and the objective world itself: the intellect is only an instrument of the will to live in a person (like claws and the teeth of the beast). The intellect is tired, but the will is indefatigable. Only one cosmically enormous will is real, which manifests itself in the entire course of the events of the Universe: the world is only a mirror of this will, acting as an idea.

If the idea of a rational cause of the world was natural for the European consciousness, then the idea of a volitional primary impulse, not subject to any rational, ethical and even aesthetic restrictions, was a foreign phenomenon for Europe. It is no coincidence that Schopenhauer himself admitted that among the sources that stimulated his thought, one of the first places was occupied by Buddhist ideas about maya (illusion) and nirvana (extinction of life, salvation). His will as the first cause of the world is "an insatiable blind attraction, a dark deaf impulse." The world, according to Schopenhauer, is absurd, and the whole history of the world is a history of meaningless unrest of volitional sparks, when the will is forced to absorb itself, since there is nothing besides it, and besides, it is hungry and cruel, constantly weaving a web of suffering. Hence pain, fear and suffering. In the same way, Buddhism proclaims earthly existence in the psychophysical shell of the human personality as ineradicable suffering.

Defending the primacy of the will in relation to the mind, the philosopher expressed many subtle and original ideas regarding the features of the volitional and emotional components of the human spiritual world and their vital significance. He criticized the erroneous position of the supporters of extreme rationalism, according to which the will is a mere appendage of the mind or is simply identified with it. According to Schopenhauer, the will, i.e. desires, desires, motives for inducing a person to action, and the very processes of its implementation are specific: they largely determine the direction and nature of the implementation of the action and its result. However, Schopenhauer turned the will into a completely free desire, i.e. he absolutized the will, turning it from a component of the spirit into a self-sufficient principle.

Philosophy of A. Schopenhauer

Moreover, Schopenhauer considered the will as something akin to the "inscrutable forces" of the universe, believing that "volitional impulses" are characteristic of all things. The will for Schopenhauer is the absolute beginning, the root of all things. The world was conceived by him as will and representation. Thus, voluntarism is the basic and universal principle of the entire philosophy of the thinker.

In contrast to Kant, Schopenhauer asserted the knowability of the "thing in itself" (manifested nature). He saw the first fact of consciousness in representation. Cognition is carried out either as intuitive, or as abstract, or reflective. Intuition is the first and most important kind of knowledge. The whole world of consciousness ultimately rests on intuition. According to Schopenhauer, truly perfect knowledge can only be contemplation, free from any relation to practice and to the interests of the will; scientific thinking is always conscious. It is aware of its principles and actions, and the activity of the artist, on the contrary, is unconscious, irrational: it is not able to understand its own essence.

Schopenhauer's ethics are pessimistic (from Latin pessimus - the worst). Suffering, according to Schopenhauer, is inevitable in life. What is called happiness is always negative, and not positive, it comes down only to liberation from suffering, which must be followed by new suffering or tedious boredom. This world is nothing but an arena of tormented and frightened creatures who live only because one creature destroys another, and self-preservation is a chain of painful deaths. From the recognition of the dominant role of suffering, compassion follows as the most important ethical principle of Schopenhauer. The opposing state of mind that prevents suffering is the state of complete absence of desire. A symptom of this is the transition to complete asceticism. Schopenhauer saw the resolution of the tragedy of human life in the mortification of the flesh and in the extinction of man's rational quest. Moreover, Schopenhauer's pessimistic voluntarism suggested an apology for suicide as an outcome.

In conclusion, it should be said that Schopenhauer was a first-class writer, a brilliant stylist. Not a single author of philosophical literature, according to W. Windelbandt, was able to formulate philosophical thought with such clarity, with such concrete beauty, as Schopenhauer. He had a gift for presenting many philosophical ideas in a truly brilliant and transparent presentation.

Schopenhauer's views had a great influence not only on individual major thinkers and writers (Nietzsche, L. Tolstoy), but also on a number of areas of philosophical thought. It is worth noting that the aesthetic views of the composer R. Wagner were formed largely under the influence of Schopenhauer.

COURSE WORK

on the topic: Philosophy of A. Schopenhauer

Introduction

Modern democratic society is rapidly striding forward, achieving more and more new results in its development. The ongoing changes in one way or another affect all countries, regardless of culture. For the most part, people give attention to material values, and democratic culture is a deceptive concept of happiness and progress. The result is technical discoveries that prevent man from communicating with nature. This leads to a disorder of consciousness, which cannot reconcile itself in order to live in harmony with the soul, body and nature. Already today, many people have ceased to strive to communicate with God. They already believe in technical developments. People in their development came to the fact that the democratic culture of society failed and began to degrade.

The first critics to speak out against the culture of a democratic society were such as Wagner, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer. At that time, society rejected the method of rational knowledge. It became irrelevant, besides, a new teaching of Hegel arose. He considered all processes as a pattern correct use. Hegel attached great importance to reason, believing that it distinguishes man from the entire animal world, that it is impossible to know the human soul. Hegel's ideas were that a person lives without using the logic of life in the material world. Many philosophers have made repeated attempts to understand the soul different culture, however, their efforts were in vain, because they could not unite the soul, body, culture and world. This trend in philosophy was called pessimistic, and the most prominent representatives of this trend were Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer.

The aim of the work is to study the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, as well as the influence of this philosophy on the development of society.

) Explore the views and ideas of Arthur Schopenhauer in the context of the development of European irrationalism.

) To explore the main work of the philosopher "The World as Will and Representation", to identify the main ideas of the work.

) Explore Schopenhauer's pessimism, his contribution to the development of pessimism. To identify the reason for the unpopularity of the works of Arthur Schopenhauer.

The relevance of the teachings of the German philosopher Schopenhauer lies in the fact that many philosophers took a large number of his thoughts as a basis for further development philosophical concepts. His statements about will, life, death, truth began to take shape as human wisdom, which must be known, understood, conveyed to all mankind. Arthur Schopenhauer in the writings of Western scientists of the 20th century is mentioned much more often than the philosophers of his time. Explaining his concepts, the philosopher tried to "sow" in the world around him reasonable, eternal, good and wanted each person to be happy in his own way. Schopenhauer is one of the brightest representatives of the pessimistic post-realism of his time. His teachings on truth and will are in some respects applicable to our modern life. It is always difficult for a weak-willed person to live, and the will needs to be developed, raised, nurtured, educated.

The philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer is a huge contribution to the development of mankind. His works have not disappeared without a trace. Despite the fact that popularity came in the last years of his life, and all his life he tirelessly defended his views, Schopenhauer's philosophy had a huge impact on many of the most famous philosophers in the future. The great significance of Schopenhauer's philosophy also lies in its influence on the general course of philosophical thought, on the formation of new systems and trends.

Arthur Schopenhauer made an invaluable contribution to the development of irrationalist philosophy in the 19th century.

1. A. Schopenhauer and European irrationalism

.1 Main features and representatives of European irrationalism

AT early XIX century in Europe, such a trend in philosophy as irrationalism was born. Irrationalism insists on the limitations of the human mind in comprehending the world, assumes the existence of areas of worldview that are inaccessible to the mind, and achievable only through such qualities as intuition, feeling, instinct, revelation, faith, etc. Thus, irrationalism affirms the irrational nature of reality, postulates the impossibility of knowing reality by scientific methods. Irrational philosophers argued that faith in reason, in its power, is the source of all social evils. In place of reason, they put the will, a blind, unconscious force.

The first representative of the so-called philosophy of life was the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). For some time, Schopenhauer worked with Hegel in the philosophy department at the University of Berlin. (Schopenhauer was assistant professor and Hegel was professor.) Interestingly, Schopenhauer made an attempt to teach his philosophy as an alternative course to Hegel's philosophy, and even scheduled his lectures at the same time as Hegel. But Schopenhauer failed and remained without listeners.

Subsequently, from the second half of the 19th century, the glory of Schopenhauer eclipsed the glory of Hegel. The failure of the lectures in Berlin was doubly offensive to Schopenhauer, since he sharply negatively assessed Hegelian philosophy, sometimes calling it the delusions of a paranoid, then the impudent nonsense of a charlatan. Especially unflattering was Schopenhauer's opinion about dialectics, which he considered a cunning device that masks the absurdity and shortcomings of the Hegelian system.

Among philosophers, irrationalist tendencies to some extent are also inherent in such philosophers as Nietzsche, Schelling, Kierkegaard, Jacobi, Dilthey, Spengler, Bergson.

1.2 Biography of A. Schopenhauer. His contribution to the development of irrationalism.

Arthur Schopenhauer was born on February 22, 1788 in Gdansk and was the son of the then famous banker of this city, Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer, and the German novelist Johanna Schopenhauer. Lectures by Kant's student, Schulze, inspired his interest in philosophy. He studied the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and the philosophical ideas of the East (in his office there was a bust of Kant and a bronze statuette of Buddha), the Upanishads, as well as the Stoics - Epictetus, Ovid, Cicero and others, criticized his contemporaries Hegel and Fichte. He called the existing world "the worst possible world", for which he received the nickname "philosopher of pessimism".

As for character traits and lifestyle, Arthur Schopenhauer was an old bachelor, famous for his inner and spiritual freedom, neglected elementary subjective benefits, put health in the first place, and was distinguished by sharpness of judgments. He was extremely ambitious and hypocritical. He was distinguished by distrust of people and extreme suspicion. He was terribly afraid of dying from a contagious disease and, having learned a little about a possible epidemic, he immediately changed his place of residence.

Schopenhauer, like many other philosophers, spent a lot of time reading books: "If there were no books in the world, I would have despaired long ago ...". However, Schopenhauer was very critical of reading, because. he believed that excessive reading is not only useless, since the reader in the process of reading borrows other people's thoughts and absorbs them worse than if he had thought of them himself, but also harmful to the mind, since it weakens it and teaches it to draw ideas from external sources and not out of your own head.

This man had a very great self-conceit, unbearable arrogance, which manifested itself in a sense of unconditional superiority over others. However, this conceit was not unfounded; moreover, on the slippery academic and literary path, it was precisely this that protected him from steps that were unworthy of him. In addition, if it were not for excessive conceit, the world would not have heard such ideas and opinions, because only such a person could write his works. But at the same time, this trait of his character brought him a lot of grief and trouble, his actions were not always laudable and worthy of imitation.

In the first decades of the XIX century. Schopenhauer's philosophy did not arouse any interest, and his works passed almost unnoticed. The turning point in the attitude towards Schopenhauer occurred after the revolutions of 1848, when a decisive turn in the bourgeois consciousness actually took place and the typical trends of apologetic philosophy of the 19th century began to take shape. .

A. Schopenhauer is usually considered the founder of the irrationalist trend in the bourgeois philosophy of the 19th century. and the direct predecessor of the "philosophy of life". However, although he was one of those thinkers who initiated a new - in comparison with the classical - type of philosophizing, and his teaching marks a complete rejection of the traditions of classical bourgeois philosophy, the theoretical origins of his doctrine are rooted precisely in the ideas and views of representatives of German classical idealistic philosophy.

The theoretical sources of Schopenhauer's ideas are the philosophy of Plato, the transcendental philosophy of Kant and the ancient Indian treatise Upanishads. This is one of the first attempts to merge Western and Eastern cultures. The difficulty of this synthesis is that the Western style of thinking is rational, while the Eastern one is irrational. Schopenhauer was an irrational philosopher who criticized idealism.

In His teaching, ideas and motifs borrowed from many philosophers merged or were used. Schopenhauer's philosophy does not consist of separate pieces, but is like an alloy, the elements of which, although they can, are nevertheless connected into a single, consistent, integral system in its own way, which does not exclude, however, numerous conspicuous contradictions. But, as the history of philosophy shows, not a single philosophical doctrine even before Schopenhauer was free from contradictions. .

Schopenhauer's attitude towards materialism deserves attention. After all, he admits with chagrin that, at its core, "the goal and ideal of all natural science is a completely carried out materialism." But he does not think about why natural science is so drawn to materialism and does not attach any importance to this. important fact. The idealist Schopenhauer believes that it is not difficult to refute materialism. To do this, it is enough to take the position of idealism: "There is no object without a subject" - this is the position that forever makes any materialism impossible. The sun and the planets without the eye that sees them, and the mind that knows them, can be called words, but these words for presentation are a ringing cymbal, .

Regarding the content of the sciences in general, Schopenhauer says that it must always answer the question "why?". He calls the indication of such an attitude an explanation. At the same time, any natural-scientific explanation must ultimately lead to an indication of some primary force of nature, for example, gravity. Thus, Schopenhauer is alien to the positivist idea of replacing the question "why?" the question "how?". At the same time, he is inclined to absolutize the finality and ignorance of those forces of nature on which science stops at each given stage of its development, not allowing the thought of the fundamental ability of scientific knowledge to move beyond any time limits.

All his life he steadfastly tried to defend his views, fighting with popular philosophers at that time, such as Hegel. However, his views were not supported in society, because the ideas of Hegel and other philosophers were popular in society. Wide recognition came to Arthur Schopenhauer only in the last years of his life. The great philosopher died on September 21, 1860 in Frankfurt at the age of 72.

The significance of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer lies not in the influence that Schopenhauer had on the closest students and followers of his teaching, like Frauenstedt, Deissen, Mainländer, Bilharz and others. These students were only useful commentators on their teacher's teachings. The great significance of Schopenhauer's philosophy lies in its influence on the general course of philosophical thought, on the formation of new systems and trends. New-Kantianism owes its success to a certain extent to the philosophy of Schopenhauer: Liebmann is influenced by Kant in Schopenhauer's treatment (especially on the question of the relation of intuition to the concept). Helmholtz is also a Kantian in the spirit of Schopenhauer (the doctrine of the innate nature of the law of causality, the theory of vision), A. Lange, like Schopenhauer, combines materialism and idealism in an unreconciled form. From the fusion of Schopenhauer's ideas with other thoughts, new systems were born; Thus, Hegelianism, combined with Schopenhauer's teaching and other elements, gave rise to Hartmann's "Philosophy of the Unconscious", Darwinism and Schopenhauer's ideas became part of Nietzsche's philosophy, Dühring's doctrine of the "value of life" grew in contrast from Schopenhauer's pessimism.

In conclusion, I would like to note that Arthur Schopenhauer was and to this day remains a great philosopher, whose views deserve attention and respect. It is he who is considered the founder of the irrational trend in philosophy. It was his views and ideas that were further developed by many philosophers. This teaching of his marks a complete rejection of the traditions of classical bourgeois philosophy. Challenging the then philosophers, he tirelessly defended his opinion. However, for some reasons, the study of which will be further, his philosophy did not at first gain popularity. True fame came to Schopenhauer only in the last years of his life. However, having lived a long life, the philosopher realized that his work was not in vain and in the future would have a huge impact on the development of European philosophy.

2. The main ideas of the work "The World as Will and Representation"

In 1818, Arthur Schopenhauer published his main work, The World as Will and Representation. This work contains the main thoughts of the philosopher, his views and ideas about the world. Schopenhauer was engaged in its commentary and popularization until his death.

However, this work was not appreciated. The first volume, which was published in 1818, outlines the main ideas of the entire work. Twenty-five years later, Schopenhauer added a second volume to the first volume, in which he returns to various issues that were already dealt with in the first volume, and develops them further without changing the main idea. However, the book was also ignored. Then the third and fourth volumes were issued.

As noted earlier, the book did not arouse interest among the reading public, his lectures at the University of Berlin (1819) ended in complete failure (students left them to listen to Hegel), and he wrote: for a whole new era to dawn."

In the preface, the author explains that the material of the work is presented systematically, in order to facilitate its assimilation, but must function as an integral organism, i.e. as a single thought. According to Schopenhauer, “Depending on which side to consider this single thought, it turns out to be what was called metaphysics, what was called ethics, and what was called aesthetics. And she really must be all this, if she really is what, as already indicated, I think she is.

As Schopenhauer explained, in order to understand his book, one should first study three sources: the writings of Plato, Kant, and the Hindu philosophy expounded in the Upanishads, a work that, in his opinion, the Germans "are only just discovering" .

2.1 The first book "The World as Representation"

The first book, The World as Representation, begins with the statement, "The world is my representation." Schopenhauer believes that this truth is true for all living beings, but only a person can bring it into consciousness. This conception of the world as a conscious representation of the world is, according to the author's thesis, the starting point of the philosophical spirit. “Man knows that the world around him exists only as a representation, i.e. in relation to another, to the representer, who is himself. This idea of the world expresses all kinds of any possible and conceivable experience in the world. According to Schopenhauer, the world is a relationship between the subject and the object: "... everything that exists for knowledge, therefore, this whole world, is only an object in relation to the subject, the contemplation of the contemplator, in a word, representation" . Schopenhauer formulates the question: what is this subject? According to his version, “that which cognizes everything and is cognized by no one, is the subject ... Everyone finds himself such a subject, but only insofar as he cognizes, and not because he is an object of cognition. The object is already its body, which we therefore, from this point of view, call a representation ... The subject and the object mutually complement each other, and if the subject disappeared, the world would cease to exist. Representation is the meeting of subject and object.

2.2 The second book "The World as Will"

The second book, The World as Will, opens with the thought that "if I admit that the world is my idea, then I must admit that the world is my will."

Schopenhauer considered the will to be the basis and life-giving, although it is a blind and unconscious life force. Other idealists usually took some kind of human cognitive ability as the starting point. Thus, in Schopenhauer's "reasonable man" reason ceased to be considered his generic essence, it became an unreasonable will, and reason began to play a secondary, auxiliary role. The intellect has thus been relegated to the background.

"The will is revealed by the inner experience of my body." However, Schopenhauer argues that the will is not only a psychological quality of a person. He writes: "Every true act of the will is immediately and inevitably a movement of his body."

Schopenhauer insists on the priority of the unconscious will over the conscious intellect: "The will is the essence of man, and the intellect is its manifestation."

With regard to character, Schopenhauer adheres to the point of view that the character of each person is innate, as are his inherent virtues and vices. The essence of each individual, he believes, is set from the beginning and is something irrational, inexplicable, arising from the will, the manifestation of which is one or another person. Thus, Schopenhauer rejects the opinion coming from Locke and the French materialists, according to which a person is a product of the environment, the result of education, theoretical or aesthetic training, etc. etc. .

2.3 The third book "On the World as Representation"

In the third book, On the World as Representation, Schopenhauer states that various manifestations of the unified will, the degree of its objectification, natural forces, animal species, human individualities should be identified with Plato's "ideas" or Kant's "thing in itself".

The possible transition from the ordinary knowledge of separate things to the knowledge of the idea takes place suddenly, when knowledge breaks out of the service of the will, and precisely as a result of this the subject ceases to be only an individual and is now a pure, willless subject of knowledge, which, according to the law of reason, no longer follows the relations , but rests and dissolves in a steady contemplation of the forthcoming object without its connection with any other objects. Later, Schopenhauer notes: “The individual as such knows only separate things; pure subject of knowledge - only ideas.

According to Schopenhauer, “... a combination of genuine genius with prevailing rationality is rare; on the contrary, individuals of genius are often subject to strong affects and unreasonable passions. In a conversation, they think not so much about the person with whom they are talking, but about the subject of the conversation, which is vividly presented to them. Genius and madness have a point of contact, in which they are close to each other and even pass into each other. Genius, in turn, is freed from the power of the principle of reason. A genius is able, having perceived an Idea, to transform it, to make it visible in his work. The artist no longer cognizes reality, but only an idea. He strives to reproduce in his work only a pure idea, singles it out from reality, eliminating all accidents that interfere with this. The artist makes us look at the world through his eyes.

When a person is guided in life only by the will, he experiences needs and desires that are never satisfied. At the same time, the knowledge of an idea is the ability to forget about individuality. Subject and object are already out of the flow of time and all other relationships.

Schopenhauer considers various types of fine arts, showing their specific connections with aesthetic pleasure: architecture, sculpture, painting. From his point of view, "the object of art, the image of which is the goal of the artist and the knowledge of which, therefore, must precede his creation, as a germ and source, is an idea." Although in poetry, according to Schopenhauer, the words "directly convey only abstract concepts, nevertheless, the intention is obvious to force the listener to contemplate in these words representing concepts, ideas of life." The highest form of poetry is tragedy as an expression of human destiny. Music, according to the author, has more greater value, since it expresses not ideas, but directly the very will to live: "Music, bypassing ideas and being also independent of the manifest world, completely ignores this world ...".

2.4 The fourth book "On the world as will"

In book four, "On the World as Will," the philosophy of "practical life" is expounded. But Schopenhauer does not put forward any moral imperative: “Philosophy is always theoretical in nature, since, whatever the immediate subject of its study, it tends to only consider and study, and not prescribe ... Virtues are not taught in the same way that they do not teach genius » .

Schopenhauer is distinguished by a certain pessimism: “In the light of the metaphysics of will, human experience reveals to us that the basis of all life is suffering ... Constant suffering is essential property life".

According to the philosopher, at the level of the individual, the affirmation of the will to live is expressed, first of all, in selfishness and injustice. Selfishness, enlightened by reason, can rise above injustice and create the state and law.

The book ends with a reflection on the state in which a person reaches the complete denial of his own will (ecstasy, pleasure, illumination, union with God) and the Idea of which cannot be conveyed to another: “What remains after the complete elimination of the will for all those who are still full of her, really nothing. But vice versa: for those whose will turned and came to deny themselves, this world of ours, so real, with all its suns and milky ways, is nothing.

Thus, Schopenhauer outlined all his ideas and views in his greatest work, The World as Will and Representation. In it, the author touches on many aspects of our life, makes us think about various philosophical problems. However this book, like the philosophy of Schopenhauer in general, at first did not receive support in society. But after a while, many philosophers drew ideas from this book. "The World as Will and Representation" is to this day one of the main books in the irrational direction of philosophy.

3. Philosophical pessimism of A. Schopenhauer

.1 Pessimism in Schopenhauer's philosophy

Human life, as well as the history of mankind, gives grounds for both optimistic and pessimistic assessments. In the history of human thought, both have been given, and the second more often than the first. A society built on exploitation and oppression gave more grounds for pessimism. History bears witness to this.

Arthur Schopenhauer is one of the most famous representatives of pessimism. His concept of evil as a necessary existence for the inevitable desire to live is erroneous. According to the theory of Arthur Schopenhauer, the world needs to be completely changed in order for everyone to be happy. Reading his teachings, the concept of life and death becomes scary to live. The world in his eyes is terrible, a person is in constant struggle with nature and with himself. His dual concept of human suffering, where he claims that life without suffering is impossible, but also undesirable, that it be filled with suffering, leads to a dead end. Schopenhauer argues that being has no foundation, that is, a foundation, and a “blind” will to life controls a person, and this will cannot obey the laws of nature, it exists on its own, and everything revolves around it. And in nature there are laws of being that we can rule, our mind and our will. Perhaps this is what is called optimism. The concepts of time and space are also pessimistic. He believes that time is the most mournful and destructive aspect for a person, depriving the most precious thing - life. And the space separates close people and their interests.

But, nevertheless, we live in the concept of time and space, during the time we manage to fall in love, suffer, have fun, and in space we manage to miss loved ones if it separates us. And we perceive it with optimism. Schopenhauer argues that it is the will that is to blame for the tragic coincidences and states of the world, that all evil, wars, sins have a common root and give birth to their human will, which makes them suffer. It turns out that the will generates only evil. And this is not so! The philosopher claims that all pleasures, joys of being are hostile to life morals, but how then to be happy in this life, rejecting the pleasures of being and thinking only about will, evil, hostility and envy. Schopenhauer also rejects religion and doctrine as one. There can be no teaching about religion, only holy idolatry is possible, faith in something and teaching, in his opinion, are not compatible. And our consciousness, soul, mind, needs faith, because it gives rise to mercy and love.

As for Schopenhauer's attitude to death, he believed that fear of death is often caused by dissatisfaction with one's own life. A person realizes that he lives incorrectly, not the way he should, and he is afraid of losing her, not fulfilling his human destiny, not tasting the true joy of being. On the contrary, when a person has succeeded in realizing himself and his potential in his real life, when he feels that his life is of real value both for himself and for other people, that he is doing the right thing and living right, then the fear of death recedes before joy. life and the satisfaction it brings.

This, according to Schopenhauer, is the case with regard to death. But even more important for a person is the question of attitude to life. It is solved, according to Schopenhauer, with the help of knowledge. However, this time it is no longer about disinterested contemplation of the idea, but about a deep knowledge of the very will and essence of human life. Schopenhauer states that "in man, the will can achieve its full self-consciousness, a clear and inexhaustible knowledge of its own essence, as the latter is reflected in the whole world", .

Schopenhauer proclaims the need to renounce the world and worldly concerns, the death of all desires. When this succeeds, then “the will turns away from life; she shudders now before her joys, in which she sees her affirmation. A person comes to a state of voluntary renunciation, resignation, true serenity and complete absence of desires. It may seem that the best way to get rid of the will to live would be suicide. But Schopenhauer strongly objects to such a decision. He believes that suicide means giving in to the will to live, recognizing its invincibility, and not at all denying it. A person kills himself because he cannot satisfy his life demands and suffers unbearably from this dissatisfaction. On the contrary, overcoming the will to live means giving up all demands and desires.

It remains to add a few words about Schopenhauer's views on religion. These views are highly ambiguous. On the one hand, Schopenhauer continues the line of refutation of all kinds of evidence for the existence of God, outlined by Kant. He categorically rejects the possibility of any such evidence. From his point of view, it is absurd to talk about the creation of the world, because the will, as the basis of the world and its inner being, is something primordial, existing outside of time.

He denies the existence of a world purpose and divine providence. He ridicules Leibniz's idea that our world is the best of all possible worlds. On the contrary, he claims that our world is "the worst possible world".

Thus, Schopenhauer appears, on the one hand, as a militant atheist, and it would be wrong to underestimate the significance of his criticism of religion and his argument against it. However, his atheism is far from consistent. It cannot be consistent, because it relies not on materialism, but on an idealistic perception of the world. Schopenhauer believes that atheism is good for enlightened people, and not for the ignorant masses. The mass cannot rise to philosophical thinking, and religion is necessary and useful for it, since it, albeit in a distorted form, still enables people to be convinced of the presence of some metaphysical beginning of the world, in its metaphysical essence.

irrationalism Schopenhauer philosophy pessimism

3.2 Reasons for the unpopularity of Schopenhauer's works

Approaching the end of the work, I would like to answer the question: “So why didn’t the irrational philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer gain popularity among Schopenhauer’s contemporaries, why did he become famous only before his death, at the end of his life path?”

After reading a lot of literature, we can conclude that there are several reasons. First, in the society of that time, the ideas of Hegel dominated, and many adhered to his views. It was necessary to prove to people that the philosophy of Hegel was nothing compared to the philosophy of Schopenhauer. Secondly, there were reasons in the very philosophy of Schopenhauer.

The fundamental defect inherent in Schopenhauer's entire critical way of thinking is the almost complete lack of historical knowledge and evaluation of facts. In the way in which Schopenhauer considers and discusses the phenomena of religion and philosophy, we have not seen the historical factor that complements the critical and forms with it the historical-critical point of view, the historical-critical or evolutionary-historical approach, which distinguishes the scientific character of the nineteenth century. from the eighteenth.

Consider specific example. Because In the Kantian teaching, the evolutionary-historical view of the world is not only established and recognized as necessary, but also applied in a number of remarkable works on natural philosophy and the philosophy of history and proclaimed the basis of the philosophy of the future, then I cannot agree that Schopenhauer was "the only and rightful heir quantum throne”: throughout his life, he denied what Kant throughout his life affirmed and considered one of the main problems of philosophy, on the solution of which he worked for half a century, both in the pre-critical and in the critical period of his activity; this problem is the study of things from the evolutionary-historical point of view. “True philosophy,” he wrote already in his “Physical Geography,” “consists in tracing the difference and diversity of a thing through all times.”

Schopenhauer not only did not take any part in this, but almost did not notice this work. And the peculiarity of his philosophical way of thinking did not contribute to this. This explains why he so lacked an understanding of his own era, why he explained the long oblivion of his philosophy not by its inherent features, not by its inactive and isolated position (in the period from 1820 to 1850), but only by a conspiracy against her professors of philosophy and other imaginary and false motives. What was historically clear and rather easily explained, for him was and remained incomprehensible. One can only guess whether or not this great philosopher realized his mistakes, whose great works were not appreciated only because of the misunderstanding of simple things by the author himself, Arthur Schopenhauer.

So, Schopenhauer is a philosopher of world sorrow, but this is not dull sorrow. It is rather a kind of heroic pessimism, close to stoicism. Schopenhauer justifies his pessimistic views with a certain understanding of time and space. Time is hostile to man. Space separates the closest people to each other by the fact that their interests collide. Causality also brings its troubles. It, like a pendulum, throws people from one state to another, opposite to them. Causality is the most destructive basis of human sorrows.

Also, in conclusion, I would like to add that A. Schopenhauer does not call for suicide, and in this he differs from Eduard Hartmann, in whose philosophy, close to the teachings of Schopenhauer, the question of the expediency of settling accounts with life is resolved quite positively. Schopenhauer will give a negative answer and substantiate it as follows. The suicide does not start from life itself, but only from what makes it unpleasant and prevents you from enjoying its joys, which is why he puts an end to all these life-poisoning events. The task is to part with the very will to live, for which one should rise above its sorrows, and above its joys, and above its monochromaticity, and above its variegation.

Summing up, we can also add that the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer did not gain popularity in society, mainly due to the fact that historical knowledge and evaluation of facts were almost completely absent in his works.

Conclusion

Philosophy is a science of a special kind. This is the age-old wisdom in which humanity poses and tries to solve the final questions of being and thinking, looking for truth, goodness and beauty, the meaning of life and death. This is a unique form of spirituality that shapes the worldview by more than just rational means. Schopenhauer showed this convincingly. Today, his philosophy exemplifies the anti-positivist understanding of this science.

Schopenhauer proposed a systematic doctrine, addressed to a holistic understanding of the world, man and his behavior. In this teaching, man and nature are one. The basis of this unity is will.

His teaching about the mighty world force - the will, the objectification of which is a person, about the will that subordinates a person to the power of the state, society, social environment, his own passions and aspirations, about the will that dooms a person to grief and suffering, about the will that he is forced to obey as an inescapable fate - all this causes rejection, because it deprives a person of the meaning of existence.

Now both the world as a whole and the individual are losing their sense of self-preservation, even common sense. Therefore, the philosopher’s answers to the eternal tormenting questions of human existence, his advice not to look back at the past, to rejoice in the morning as a new birth, and today with at least a little luck, and a completed work, his lessons in resisting fate with self-restraint, self-discipline, self-compulsion, self-denial and the direction of the constrained will against fate - all this promises to find a small particle of happiness that a person can hope for and be able to achieve in this really cruel world. This is the attraction and vitality of Schopenhauer's philosophy.

Schopenhauer teaches to love nature, to think about it, to live in harmony with it. In his doctrine of self-restraint, one sees the call: “A little slower, horses!.. A little slower!..” Back to nature, including to human nature itself, which, after all, needs very little to live.

Mankind strives for a "convenient" life, for comfort. Is this aspiration worthy of a man? Schopenhauer believed that absolute comfort leads to nothingness and called it boredom.

Arthur Schopenhauer's "Philosophy for All" - the rejection of unbridled desires, greed, the call to responsibility - is a pointer to the path to salvation in our everyday existence.

Arthur Schopenhauer made an invaluable contribution to the development of European philosophy. He is considered the founder of the irrational trend in philosophy. His views and ideas were further developed by many philosophers. Challenging the then philosophers, he tirelessly defended his opinion. However, due to the reasons described above, his philosophy did not gain popularity at first. True fame came to Schopenhauer only in the last years of his life. However, having lived a long life, the philosopher realized that his work was not in vain and in the future would have a huge impact on the development of European philosophy.

Schopenhauer outlined all his ideas and views in his greatest work, The World as Will and Representation. In it, the author touches on many aspects of our life, makes us think about various philosophical problems. However, this book, like the philosophy of Schopenhauer as a whole, did not initially receive support in society. But after a while, many philosophers drew ideas from this book. "The World as Will and Representation" is to this day one of the main books in the irrational direction of philosophy.

In his philosophy, he adhered to pessimistic views, did not call for suicide.

The philosophy of Schopenhauer did not gain popularity in society, mainly due to the fact that his works almost completely lacked historical knowledge and evaluation of facts.

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