Chapter 14. The situation and philosophy of postmodern

The second half of the twentieth century is characterized by appearance of the principally new approaches and viewpoints which make accent on the conditional and pluralistic character of any knowledge that only can exist. In short, no common and universal truths and conceptions; all they depend on situation, historic, cultural or pragmatic premises and have meaning only in the frame of some context. Knowledge is understood not as a representation of outer reality but as a kind of linguistic game or discourse. This understanding is accompanied by the growing of mistrust to any epistemology, ontology, methodology. All this is united under the title of metaphysics and rejected out of consideration. The task of a philosopher consists in liberation from any metaphysics. The same was one of the central problems of the positivist philosophy but if the adherents, for example, of the analytical philosophy (neo-positivism) aspired to replace metaphysics with epistemological and logical analysis and tried to deduce universal methods of that analysis, so representatives of this new outlook treat the latter as the same metaphysics and prefer historical analyzing. The state of affairs conducting to this point has been called postmodern (or the epoch that comes after the classic one, the epoch of modern). Correspondingly the outlook and philosophy of this epoch is called postmodernism. Strictly speaking, the postmodernism is a sufficiently wide spectrum of different enough trends of the modern thought such as post-structuralism, deconstructivism, post-positivism (regarded earlier), feminist researches, archeology of knowledge etc. The common features uniting them all together are: 1) replacing of the logical analysis with the historical one (for no universal approach, method or outlook may exist) and 2) comprehension of the investigated fields by analogy with a text or as a discourse, a semantic system represented by some or other symbols. The most of the classical philosophy’s rules and approaches are rejected and not taken into consideration in postmodernism. The forerunner of postmodernism is regarded F. Nietzsche who still in the 19th century determined the aim of his philosophy as re-estimation of all values. Among other things there is a statement on the purely linguistic conditionality of any our ideas, that is quite in the postmodernist spirit.

However, not always the clear boundary between a postmodernist and corresponding to it classical system may be put. As an example let us consider the so-called structuralism and post-structuralism. Structuralism is an approach in the frame of humanitarian studies which makes an accent on the structures lying in the base of the processes and phenomena we investigate. It supposes that these structures exist and are determinative. The emergence of structuralism was connected with works of F. de Saussure the Swiss linguist, the founder of the so-called structural linguistics. He suggested beforehand to pay attention not to semantic interpretations but to abstract theoretic structures. The structure is deemed as a set of hidden relations [between elements of system] revealed by the force of abstraction in the course of going from phenomenon to entity. The structures of the language are its grammar. Namely through the grammar structures de Saussure suggested to regard the development and functioning of language. Other structuralists transferred his approaches into other spheres, in particular into anthropology. It was supposed there that there exist some universal apriorial structures of human consciousness which determine any sides of human activity. They manifest themselves in language, habits, myths, etc. Therefore analyzing these latter we can deduce them; that is the structuralists were occupied with. These structures are not internal but external and unconscious. Their unconsciousness shouldn’t be confused with the sub-consciousness of psychoanalysis, for the latter is the deeply inner (and therefore hidden) but the structuralist unconsciousness is quite open and outer, it all lies completely on the surface. The structures are unconscious in the sense of colloquial language’s grammar structures (one may speak fluently one’s own natal language having no idea of its grammar). That’s why structuralists spoke of the so-called ‘natural grammar’ (i.e. inborn apriorial structures of thinking and consciousness). Their attempts to reconstruct the natural grammar were not a success. All they had been able to discover were the so-called binary oppositions such as up ─ down, truth ─ falsehood, subject ─ object, yes ─ no, good ─ bad, right ─ left etc. The binary opposition compounds the base for any other oppositions: the triple ─ right ─ middle ─ left, I ─ you ─ he/she, sky ─ earth ─ sea, heaven ─ earth ─ underground, true ─ false ─indefinite etc., quaternary ─ north ─ south ─ west ─ east, left ─ right ─ up ─ down etc. They are conditional and not inborn at all. This was the only result of the research on the problem of the universal structures and so structuralism spilled over into the post-structuralism the trend based on the same approaches the structuralism is but recognizing conditional character of any really existing structure. I. e. the structures may exist but their character is floated.

To post-structuralism the archeology of knowledge is closely related. M. Foucault, the founder of it, proceeded from the Nietzsche’s conception of the will to power and as well as his predecessor asserted, that no objective independent on human needs knowledge exists and any knowledge is a means of attaining a control over an object or a human. He illustrated this point with a lot of examples from the history of development of notions on psychic disorders, sexuality, methods of suppression and torture. Thus, in the Middle Ages special manuals and codices on the methods of torturing existed; they were, according to Foucault, knowledge on managing a control on a human as a whole as well as on his particular organs. So regarding the knowledge by itself, according to Foucault is meaningless, it’s necessary to consider complexes “power ─ knowledge”. These complexes have their strategies acting in some or other strata or historical formations which are representations of cultural unconsciousness in a concrete historic epoch. The method suggested by Foucault is archeology of knowledge that is an exposure of any visible and expressed strata representations and acting within them strategies. In his book “Words and Things” Foucault put archeology of the European culture for the several last centuries. It has the following sight. Beginning from the Middle Ages and till the 17th century the strategy of cognition was directed into the exposure of visible and hidden resemblances. All that time science (theology, astronomy, linguistics, medicine) proceeded from resemblance, analogies and signs. On its base the belief that God had created the world according to some image and plan (a human as a microcosm created by God according to his own image and resemblance is also a reflection of the macrocosm) and scattered everywhere signs and tokens of this plan. The task of cognition consists in collecting and deciphering them. So medical science represented, as first, by anatomy likened the human body to cosmos and put some or other cosmic objects in correspondence to its organs. Linguistics sought likeness between the sense and sounding of words etc.; in short, analogies and signs were everywhere.

The epoch of resemblance finished to the beginning of the 17th century. After it the age of classifications and taxonomies started. The sign of the change was the novel “Don Quixote” by Cervantes. Its hero, having forgotten what age is out of doors and putting on a panoply, looks for resemblances and commits gaffes everywhere, taking a sheep flock for an army of enemies, windmills for giants, because the world already doesn’t believe in resemblances. In this world any things have been classified and distributed by their places. In this time, beginning from the 17th century, new methods and sciences based on these methods appeared, such as common grammar, natural history, taxonomic biology, descriptive anatomy, English political economy, etc. All of them were based on comparison and classification. But their time wasn’t eternal as well. In the next 19th century taxonomies are not sufficient, the interest is what is behind them. Investigators seek hidden deep-laid grounds of things. The expression of this reorientation, Foucault deems, is the novel “Justine” by marquise de Sade. An honest and virtuous girl Justine gets constantly into trouble, becoming a victim of different scoundrels. An evident discrepancy between the character and the fate of Justine is present. Hidden intentions of different wicked men stand behind her disasters. The knowledge of them allows comprehend the destiny of Justine. The same takes place in sciences: hidden regularities allow understand causes of some or other taxonomic peculiarities. In this time such sciences as physiology, psychoanalysis, teachings about the structure of matter etc. appear.

Representatives of deconstructivism proceed from the necessity to deconstruct (to separate into constituent parts) any binary and other oppositions lying in the base of structures and get out beyond them. Oppositions are identified with metaphysics, the aim of the 20th century philosophy (deconstructivists determine it as well as analytical philosophy representatives) consists in deliverance of any possible metaphysics. Oppositions determine boundaries between subject and object, truth and falsehood, knowledge and reality. If the boundaries are over, the difference between the opposite components and knowledge becomes a continuation of reality, subjects ─ that of objects, falsehood ─ that of truth. In attitude to knowledge and reality it means the following. For thinking is wordy, any knowledge is wordy as well and, therefore, the reality, a knowledge of which is possible, doesn’t exist beyond the verbal oppositions. J. Derrida, one of the most considerable representatives of deconstructivism, reckons that the opposition ‘voice-writing’ compounds the base of the European culture. The voice is both speech and thought simultaneously (the unity of the speaking and listening persons as well as of the speaking ones and the object of one’s speaking is achieved in it, i. e. the voice is the voice of the being itself, a direct expression of reality). The writing in the wide sense is any trace of the voice, i. e. a representation of reality i. e. of the voice (the writing shouldn’t confuse with literature, the latter is a particular case of the writing). The opposition of the voice and writing compound a base of the so-called ‘logocentrism’ (i. e. the point logos or logical thinking compounds the ground) and ‘phonocentrism’ (the point the voice ‘phone’ is in the center). The logo- and phonocentrism form a ground for any other centrisms (theocentrism, cosmocentrism, ethnocentrism etc.) of culture. They all are closely connected with the phonetic literature and compound the entity of the European metaphysics. Deconstruction consists in demonstration of that the opposition ‘voice ─ writing’ is conditional and degraded for in fact the voice and writing intermingle with each other and the voice is the same trace of the being as the writing is. Derrida recognizes that’s impossible to go out completely beyond the metaphysics boundary, because it would mean the outgo beyond the language and the thinking as itself, for the latter is confined completely in language. The deconstruction, according to Derrida, means exposure of the metaphysics mechanisms (after it they cease to dominate over our thinking). The first deconstructivist in the New Time European culture, according to Derrida, was Kant who tried to comprehend mechanisms of our mind functioning. Later deconstructivism developed in the philosophy of Hegel, whose system was a reflection on the same problem of the ‘voice-writing’ relation. The culmination of deconstructivism was achieved in the philosophy of Nietzsche, whose Zarathustra dances beyond the being, i.e. is quite free of metaphysics.

A variant of deconstructivism may be regarded the so-called feminist studies. The logocentrism there is identified with the so-called phallocentrism as the main peculiarity of the existing culture masculine in its base. The masculine phallocetric thinking knows only two alternatives ‘yes ─ no’ placed in the rigid frame of logic (logocentrism). In opposite to it the feminine thinking is much more flexible and allows to take into consideration a lot of other hues. Namely there, the feminists assert, the way to the rejuvenation of the modern culture lies.

Thus, to sum up let us remark that the philosophy in its development has gone a long way from the ancient and in much naive nature philosophy to the refined postmodern conceptions. A lot of quite different systems have gone before our eyes. What is common for all of them? It’s aspiration to look beyond the everyday opinions to see a universal in habitual things.

Control questions and exercises

1. What is a situation of postmodern? What are the peculiarities of a postmodernist style in philosophizing?

2. Why is F.Nietztsche called a predecessor of postmodernism?

3. What are common and different between structuralism and poststructuralism?

4. What does the death of subject mean?

5. What are the voice and the writing? What are the phonocentrism and logocentrism? Give examples.

6. Analyze the Fouckault's conception of cognition strategies, give examples of different kinds of them.

Plans of practical lessons

Lesson 1. Philosophy, the circle of its problems

and its place among other sciences

1. Philosophy as a science, its place among other sciences.

2. The philosophy's main constituents (ontology, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, philosophical anthropology, social philosophy), basic directions and doctrines: materialism, idealism, dualism, monism, pluralism, agnosticism.

3. Functions of the philosophy.

4. The problem of a method in the philosophy.

Lesson 2. The emergence of philosophy. The Antique philosophy

1. The Orient and Occident worldview paradigms, their origins and consequence.

2. Emergence of the ancient Greek philosophy.

3. Problems of changing and constancy in Parmenides' and Heraclites' doctrines.

4. The Zeno's movement aporias.

5. The antique atomism and epicurism.

6. The dialectical method of Socrates.

7. The Plato's philosophy.

8. The philosophy of Aristotle (logics, metaphysics, physics, ethics and "politics").

9. Hellenistic and Roman philosophy (academics, peripatetics, epicurists, stoicists, neo-platonists, kinics, skeptics, eclectists).

Lesson 4. The Medieval and Renaissance philosophy

1. Philosophical and theological views of St. Augustine (doctrines about the time, the God, the human soul and salvation).

2. Аverroes and the doctrine of the truth duality.

3. A scholasticism: debates of the mind and faith relation. The dispute about universals' nature. Nominalists, realists and conceptual realists.

4. Renaissance philosophy, its humanism, anthropocentrism, antiquity authority.

Lesson 5. The Oriental philosophy

1. The orthodox and non-orthodox systems of the Ancient India.

2. The orthodox systems: vedanta, mimansa, vaisheshica, nyaya, sankhya, yoga.

3. Vedanta and neovedantism.

4. Yoga as a philosophical system, science and life mean.

5. Non-orthodox systems: charvaka (locayata), jainism and buddhism.

6. "Six schools" of the Chinese philosophy.

7. Confucianism as a system of the ethical and social philosophy.

8. "Book of changes" and its role in the Chinese spiritual culture.

9. Taoism as science, religious and philosophical system.

10. Analogies and parallels between the orient philosophy and modern western sciences.

Lesson 6. The New Time philosophy

1. Empiricism of F. Bacon.

2. Rationalism of R. Descartes.

3. The European rationalist philosophy after Descartes: methods and conceptions.

4. The sensualist philosophy.

5. The skepticism of D.Hume.

Lesson 7. The Classical German philosophy

1. Kant's theory of cognition ("Criticism of pure mind").

2. Kant's ethics ("Criticism of practical mind" and others).

3. The Schelling's philosophy of identity.

4. The dialectical logics of Hegel and its substantiation. The application of dialectical logics in the philosophy of nature, religion, history and so forth.

Lesson 8. The Marxist philosophy

1. The basic subsistents of the Marxist philosophy: materialism and dialectics.

2. Marx's doctrines of dialectical development of the human person from the primitive state to the communist one, the concept of communism.

3. The Marxist ontology: the doctrine about the development of nature and materialist dialectics, doctrines about forms of movement (physic, chemic, biologic and social).

4. The social-economic theory and the philosophy of history ('Capital'), reasons of their erroneousness.

Lesson 9. The irrationalist philosophy

1. Mysticism, rationalism, empirism and irrationalism.

2. The pre-existentialism of S. Kierkegaard.

3. The A. Schopengauer's philosophy of life.

4. The Nietzsche's philosophy of life.

5. The intuitivism of A. Bergson.

Lesson 10. Ukrainian philosophy

1. The philosophy of Grigory Skovoroda.

2. The philosophy of heart by P. Yurkevich.

3. The modern Ukrainian philosophy.

Lesson 11. The positivist, analytical and pragmatist philosophy

1. The positive philosophy of A. Comte and H. Spencer.

2. The empiriocriticism of E. Mach and R. Avenarius.

3. Neopositivism and analytical philosophy.

4. L.Wittgenstein's philosophy of the everyday language.

5. A problem of correlation between solipsism and realism.

6. The pragmatist philosophy of Ch. Pierce and W. James.

7. The instrumental pragmatism (instrumentalism) of Dewey and the conceptual pragmatism (Lewis).

Lesson 12. Epistemology and the philosophy of science

1. The classical (correspondal) conception of truth and its problems.

2. Semantic, coherent and pragmatic conceptions of truth and their problems. Truth as an evidence.

3. The definition of science, the difference between the science and pseudoscience and its criteria.

4. Problems of verification, falsification and conventionalism in the scientific cognition. Kuhn - Feurabend's thesis.

5. The hermeneutics as an art of interpretation. The hermeneutic circle and means of its solution.

6. Structuralism and its applications in different sciences.

Lesson 13. Postpositivist conceptions of science

1. "The structure of scientific revolutions " by T. Kuhn. The strong and weak sides of Kuhn's theory.

2. St. Toulmin's theory of the evolutionary development of science.

3. The epistemologic anarchism of P. Feurabend.

Lesson 14. Phenomenology and existentialism

1. Husserl's phenomenology as the philosophy in the sense of a strict science.

2. The problem of the transcendent and psycho-physic ego and its solution.

3. The existential phenomenology of M. Heidegger.

4. J. P. Sartre's existentialism.

5. "Is the life worth to be lived?" – A.Camus' philosophy of revolt and absurdity.

6. Existentialism of K. Jaspers: the doctrines of philosophic faith and its substitutes, of the historic time and the sense of history.

Lesson 15. The philosophical anthropology

1. A person as the unity of the natural, social and spiritual in the man.

2. Problems and paradoxes of modeling of the human consciousness. Behaviorism and cognitive psychology.

3. The psychoanalytic theory of Freud and the non-orthodox alternative of A.Adler.

4. The analytic psychology of K. G. Jung: map of psychics (a person (mask), аnimа/аnimus, shadow, selfness), conception of collective unconsciousness and archetypes.

5. The transpersonal psychology and its philosophic interpretations.

Lesson 16. Social philosophy

1. A communication as a factor of the person's and society's evolution.

2. A conception of the natural state and social agreement in theories of Hobbes and Locke.

3. The society and the state, problems of emergence of the state.

4. The society and the culture: culture as a means of man's being.

5. The play-element of culture and its manifestation in the life of society.

Lesson 17. Philosophy of history

1. Historicism and antihistoricism. The antihistoricist theory of K. Popper.

2. Civilizational theories of O. Spengler and A. Toynbee.

3. Formational theories of Marx and modern economists- and historian-thinkers.

4. The informational theory of E. Toffler.

Lesson 18. Postmodernism

1. A spectrum of the philosophical trends united under the common name of "postmodernism": poststructuralism, deconstructivism, postpositivism, archaeology of knowledge, shisoanalysis, feminist studies and so on.

2. Structuralism and poststructuralism: a problem of the author's death.

3. Deconstructivism of J. Derrida.

4. M. Foucault's archaeology of knowledge.

Exam questions

Philosophy as a science, its basic constituents and functions. The basic question of philosophy.

Miletus philosophical school and its meaning.

Philosophy of Pithagores.

Problems of changing and constancy in Parmenides' and Heraclites' doctrines.

The Zeno's movement aporias.

The antique atomism and epicurism.

The dialectical method of Socrates.

Plato's philosophy.

The philosophy of Aristotle (logics, metaphysics, physics, ethics and "politics").

Hellenistic and Roman philosophy (Academics, Peripatetics, Epicurists, Stoicists, Neo-platonists, Kinics, Sceptics, Eclectists).

Philosophycal and theological views of St. Augustine.

Аverroes and the doctrine of the truth duality.

A scholasticism: debates of the mind & faith relation, the disput about universals' nature.

Renaissance philosophy, its humanism, anthropocentrism, antiquity authority.

The orthodox systems of the Indian philosophy.

Vedanta and neovedantism.

Yoga as a philosophical system, science and life means. Non-orthodox systems of Indian thought.

Buddhist philosophy.

"Six schools " of the Chinese philosophy.

Confucianism as a system of the ethical and social philosophy. Taoism as a scientific, religious and philosophical system.

Empiricism of F. Bacon.

Rationalism of R. Descartes.

Spinoza's philosophy.

Leibniz's philosophy.

The sensualist philosophy of J. Lock.

Idealism of G. Berkeley.

The skepticism of D. Hume.

Kant's theory of cognition ("Criticism of pure mind").

Kant's ethics and aesthetics.

The Schelling's philosophy of identity.

The dialectical philosophy of Hegel.

Marx's social philosophy and the philosophy of history.

The Marxist ontology.

The pre-existentialism of S. Kierkegaard.

The A.Schopengauer's philosophy of life.

The Nietzsche's philosophy of life.

The intuitivism of A. Bergson.

The positive philosophy of A. Comte and H. Spencer.

The empiriocriticism of E. Mach and R. Avenarius.

Neopositivism and analytical philosophy.

L.Wittgenstein's philosophy of the everyday language.

The pragmatist philosophy of Ch. Pierce and W.James.

The instrumental pragmatism and the conceptual pragmatism.

The classical (correspondal) conception of truth and its problems. Semantic, coherent, pragmatic, fideistic and conventional conceptions of truth and their problems.

The classifications of truths, according to K. Wilber.

The definition of science, the difference between science and pseudoscience and its criteria.

Problems of verification, falsification and conventionalism in the scientific cognition. Kuhn – Feurabend's thesis.

The hermeneutics as an art of interpretation.

"The structure of scientific revolutions " by T. Kuhn. St. Toulmin's theory of the evolutionary development of science. The epistemologic anarchism of P.Feurabend.

Husserl's phenomenology as the philosophy in the sense of a strict science.

The existential phenomenology of M. Heidegger.

Existentialism in the Sartre's and Camus versions.

Existentialism of K. Jaspers.

A person as the unity of the natural, social and spiritual in the man.

The psychoanalytic theory of Freud and the non-orthodox alternative of A.Adler.

The analytic psychology of K. G. Jung.

The transpersonal psychology and its philosophic interpretations.

K. Wilber’s conception of the spectrum of consciousness.

A communication as a factor of the person's and society's evolution.

A conception of the natural state and social agreement in theories of Hobbes and Locke.

The society and the state, problems of emergence of the state.

The society and the culture: culture as a means of man's being.

The play-element of culture and its manifestation in the life of society.

Historicism and antihistoricism. The antihistoricist theory of K. Popper. Civilizational theories of O. Spengler.

Civilizational theories of A. Toynbee.

Formational theories of Marx and modern economists- and historians-thinkers. The informational theory of E. Toffler.

The philosophy of Grigory Skovoroda.

The philosophy of heart by P. Yurkevich.

A spectrum of the philosophical trends united under the common name of "postmodernism" and their peculiarities.

Structuralism and poststructuralism. Deconstructivism of J. Derrida.

M. Foucault's archaeology of knowledge.

Examples of the test questions

Variant I

1. Epistemology is: a) love to wisdom; b) a set of the teachings about the Universal; c) the theory of cognition; d) the theory of the being; e) the art of interpreting.

2. What may and what may not be doubted, according to Descartes?

a) the existence of oneself; b) the existence of the outer world; c) norms of logic and mathematics; d) the existence of God; e) empirical data.

3. What are the solutions of the Kant’s pure reason antinomies?

4. The Plato’s theory of ideas.

5. The classical (correspondent) conception of truth.

Variant II

1. Ontology is: a) love to wisdom; b) a set of the teachings about the Universal; c) the theory of cognition; d) the theory of the being; e) the teaching of that’s beyond the physics’ boundary.

2. Tao is: a) some irrational, inexpressible, omnipresent beginning of the being; b) a set of sexual techniques; c) the place (function) of a human in society; d) a way of thinking; e) the humanistic approach to life.

3. Dialectical method of Socrates.

4. Human and reality from the point of different schools of Vedanta.

5. Three stages (waves) of the civilization development, according to Toffler.

Variant III

1. Metaphysics is: a) love to wisdom; b) the science about the formal norms and rules of thinking; c) the theory of cognition; d) the theory of the being; e) the teaching of that’s beyond the physics’ boundary.

2. According to the coherent conception, truth is: a) knowledge corresponding to reality; b) a consistent, non-contradiction knowledge; c) an obvious knowledge; d) the being as itself; e) knowledge leading to the achievement of purposes.

3. Laws of Hegel’s dialectics.

4. The Compte’s law of three stages.

5. What does it mean “the world as the will and representation” (according to Schopenhauer)?

Variant IV

1. The philosophical anthropology is: a) the philosophical teaching of human; b) a set of the teachings about the Universe; c) the theory of cognition; d) the theory of the being; e) the teaching of what’s beyond the physics’ boundary.

2. According to Kuhn, paradigm is: a) a set of theoretic, methodic; metaphysic specimens compounding the foundation of the normal science; b) base of any science, c) a turning point in the development of science; d) break in the development of science; e) cumulatively developing science.

3. Aristotle’s teaching of causality.

4. Yang, Yin, Taichi in the Chinese philosophy.

5. Pragmatist conception of truth.

Variant V

1. Philosophy is: a) love to wisdom; b) a set of the teachings about the Universal; c) a theory of nature; d) the theory of the being; e) the teaching of that’s beyond the physics’ boundary.

2. Normal science is: a) a science developing in the frame of paradigm; b) cumulatively developing science; c) a science based on the informational approaches; d) the science developing on the base of the modern physics; e) the science developing on the base of the humanitarian sciences.

3. Two main attributes of the Spinoza’s Divine substance.

4. Space and time in the philosophy of Kant.

5. Thesis of Kuhn-Feurabend.

Recommended topics for essays

Structure of the philosophical knowledge.

Myth and its philosophical interpretations.

Idealism, materialism and dualism.

Ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosophers.

Socrates and dialectical method.

Plato's theory of the ideal state.

Aristotle as the first scientist in the human history.

Kiniks.

Stoicism.

Antique atomism and epicureism.

Scholastics and discussion on the universals' nature.

Thomism and Neothomism.

Vedanta and Neovedantism.

Philosophy of Jainism.

Philosophy of Buddhism.

Yoga's philosophy.

Confucianist philosophy.

Taoism: science and religion.

I Ching in Ancient and modern China.

Philosophy of R. Descartes.

Philosophy of B. Spinoza.

Philosophy of Leibniz.

Philosophy of F. Bacon.

Sensualism and skepticism.

Inductive and deductive logics.

Kant's theory of the sky.

Kant's critical philosophy.

Schelling's philosophy.

Dialectical logics of Hegel.

Philosophy of Kierkegaard.

Philosophy of Schopenhauer.

Philosophy of Nietzsche.

Problems of intuition.

The positive philosophy of A. Comte and H. Spencer.

The empiriocriticism of E. Mach and R. Avenarius.

Neopositivism and analytical philosophy.

L.Wittgenstein's philosophy of the everyday language.

The pragmatist philosophy of Ch. Pierce and W. James.

The instrumental pragmatism and the conceptual pragmatism.

The problem of truth.

The hermeneutics as an art of interpretation.

"The structure of scientific revolutions " by T. Kuhn.

St. Toulmin's theory of the evolutionary development of science.

The epistemologic anarchism of P. Feurabend.

Husserl's phenomenology as the philosophy in the sense of a strict science.

The existential phenomenology of M. Heidegger.

Existentialism in the Sartre's and Camus versions.

Existentialism of K. Jaspers.

The psychoanalytical theory of Freud.

The psychoanalytical theory of A. Adler.

The psychoanalytical theory of W. Reich.

The psychoanalytical theory of A. Lowen.

The analytic psychology of K. G. Jung.

The transpersonal psychology of St. Grof and its philosophic interpretations.

The transpersonal conception of K. Willber.

The society and the state, problems of emergence of the state.

The society and the culture: culture as a means of the human being.

The play-theory of culture by J. Huizinga.

Civilizational theories of O. Spengler.

Civilizational theories of A. Toynbee.

The informational theory of E. Toffler.

The philosophy of Grigory Skovoroda.

The personalist philosophy of N. Berdyaev.

Structuralism and poststructuralism: a problem of the author's death.

Deconstructivism of J. Derrida.

M. Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge.

The philosophical problems of consciousness.

Culture as a means of the human being.

Philosophical questions of the medical science.

Philosophical questions of the modern physics.

Philosophical questions of biology.

Philosophical questions of evolution.

Philosophical questions of death.

Philosophical questions of the modern management.

Philosophical questions of the modern politics.

Philosophical questions of the modern linguistics.

Philosophical questions of psychoanalysis.

Science and pseudo-science: the problem of boundary.

Science and religion: the problem of communication.

Science and art.

Aesthetic moments of the scientific truth.

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CONTENTS

Introduction…………………………………………………………………………3

Chapter 1. Philosophy, the circle of its problems

and its place among other sciences …………….………………………………4

1.1. Philosophy as a science and its place among other sciences………….4

1.2. The problem of scientism in philosophy……………………………………5

1.3. Basic constituents, main directions and doctrines………………………..8

1.4. The basic question of philosophy………………………………………….11

1.5. Functions of the philosophy………………………………………………..12

Chapter 2. The emergence of philosophy. The Antique philosophy………..13

2.1. Forms of cognitive activity and the emergence of philosophy …………13

2.2. The Antique philosophy. The first Greek philosophers …………………16

2.3. Sophists and Socrates. Socrates as a turning point

in the development of the Antique philosophy ..………………………………23

2.4. The philosophy of Plato…………………………………………………….27

2.5. Aristotle’s philosophy ………………………………………………………30

2.6. The Hellenistic and Roman philosophy ………………………………….32

Chapter 3. The Medieval and Renaissance philosophy……………………..36

3.1. The Medieval philosophy distinctive features …………………………...36

3.2. The philosophy of Augustine Aurilius …………………………………….38

3.3. The scholastic philosophy and the dispute

of the universalia’s nature ………………………………………………………40

3.4. The Renaissance philosophy ……………………………………………..42

Chapter 4. The Oriental philosophy …………………………………………..45

4.1. The Indian philosophy. The orthodox systems …………………………45

4.2. Non-orthodox systems …………………………………………………….52

4.3. The Chinese philosophy. The six schools

of the ancient Chinese philosophy……………………………………………..54

4.4. The Confucianism

(as well as Mohists’, Lawyers’ and Names’ schools) ………………………..56

4.5. The Taoist (also Ying-Yang metaphysics) school……………………….57

Chapter 5. The New Time philosophy………………………………………....60

5.1. The empiricism of F. Bacon ……………………………………………….61

5.2. The rationalism of Descartes………………………………………………63

5.3. Spinoza’s philosophy……………………………………………………….65

5.4. Leibniz’s philosophy …………………………………………………….....66

5.5. The sensualism and skepticism…………………………………………..68

Chapter 6. The Classical German philosophy ………………………………..71

6.1. Kant’s philosophy …………………………………………………………..71

6.2. Fichte’s and Schelling’s philosophy ……………………………………...76

6.3. Hegel’s philosophy ………………………………………………………....78

6.4. Marx’s philosophy…………………………………………………..……….80

Chapter 7. The irrationalist philosophy ………………………………………..83

7.1. The irrationalist philosophy of Kierkegaard ……………………………...84

7.2. “The world as will and representation” by A. Schopenhauer …………..86

7.3. The irrationalism of F. Nietzsche ………………………………………….88

7.4. Bergson’s philosophy ………………………………………………………90

Chapter 8. Ukrainian philosophy ……………………………………………....93

Chapter 9. The positivistic philosophy and epistemology …………………..98

9.1. The positivistic philosophy of Compte and Spencer …………………...98

9.2. Empiriocriticism …………………………………………………………...101

9.3. Neopositivism………………………………………………………………102

9.4. Epistemology. The classical, semantic

and coherent conceptions of truth …………………………………………..104

9.5. The pragmatist conception of truth ……………………………………..107

9.6. Other conceptions of truth ………………………………………………109

Chapter 10. Postpositivist conceptions of science …………………………112

10.1. «The structure of scientific revolutions» by T. S. Kuhn……………...112

10.2. The evolutionist conception of St. Toulmin……………………………115

10.3. Epistemological anarchism of P. Feurabend …………………………116

Chapter 11. Phenomenology and existentialism ……………………………118

11.1. The phenomenology of E. Husserl …………………………………….118

11.2. Phenomenological conception of truth

and philosophy of M. Heidegger ……………………………………………..120

11.3. Existentialism……………………………………………………………..121

Chapter 12. The philosophical anthropology

and philosophy of culture ……………………………………………………..124

12.1. The philosophical anthropology………………………………………..124

12.2. Anthropology and psychoanalysis

The orthodox and non-orthodox psychoanalysis …………………………..125

12.3. The analytical psychology of K. G. Jung………………………………127

12.4. Human from the view point of the transpersonal psychology ………129

12.5. Wilber’s conception of the spetrum of consciousness ………………131

12.6. Social philosophy ………………………………………………………..133

12.7. Philosophy of culture ……………………………………………………136

Chapter 13. The philosophy of history ………………………………………139

13.1. Historicism and anti-historicism………………………………………..139

13.2. Civilizational and psychological conceptions of history …………….141

13.3. Formational and informational conceptions of history ………………144

Chapter 14. The situation and philosophy of postmodern ………………..147

Plans of practical lessons …………………………………………………….153

Exam questions ………………………………………………………………..157

Examples of the test questions……………………………………………….160

Recommended topics for essay ……………………………………………..162

Bibliography …………………………………………………………………….165

[1] The word is translated from Greek as the perceptible.

[2] Axiology is the teaching of values.

[3] In order to tell something it’s necessary to keep it before mental gaze, i.e. to look at from aside. The latter needs some kind of logic analysis yet inaccessible to the man.

[4] Transcendent means that is beyond (everyday reality).

[5] The concept of the being in philosophy usually means something existing by itself with no outer ground for its existence.

[6] The words ‘sophist’, ‘sophism’, ‘sophistic’ came in all the modern European languages.

[7] The paradox arises in this connection whether the God can reject his own omnipotence. Or e.g. can he create a stone which he himself couldn’t lift up. Many Christian philosophers plodded at it.

[8] All the next proofs are analogous in their means of argumentation to the first one.

[9] The spiritual Teacher.

[10] Varna is translated literally as colour. The varnas (the European name is castes) in the Ancient India were closed estate groups with own restrictions, rites and rules of living. There existed four main varnas: the Brahmins (the priestly group), the Kshatriya (the warrior or noble class), the Vaisiya (the peasant and mercantile class) and the Sudra (the slaves). The first two groups were considered the higher, the latter two as the lower.

[11] That is people are the flock of gods.

[12] Deduction is the way of reasoning supposing the movement from the general to a particular (All men are mortal [the general] and Socrates is a man, whence Socrates is mortal [the particular]).

[13] Or the negation of negation.

[14] The initial statement.

[15] Its negation or the contrary statement.

[16] It needs to be reminded that the above process is that of mental activity (that is. from the nothing i. e. qualitatively unspecified inward reality to appearing of particular images and, the world consisting of them), which simultaneously is realized in the shape of its other being as some thing and processes of outer world.

[17] From here the Hegelian definition of metaphysics as some stiffened, numbed and incapable to development theory, opposite to the dialectics which was considered as alive and self-developing teaching capable to give adequate answers to burning problems of epoch.

[18] In Marxism the term ‘dialectics’ had been finally broken with its primal still antique meaning and became simply a teaching about development of nature, society and human, including in itself all moments and components of this development; i. e. generally speaking some sort of verbal equilibristic.

[19] The slaveholding is a negation of slave’s rights and the struggle of slaves for liberation is negation of the slaveholding being thereby the double negation that leads up to the next stage.

[20] Here the difference between Marx’s and Lenin’s positions lies. Lenin asserted that communism would come in result of revolution and so sooner than weaker capitalistic structures in the state are. Therefore the chance for the victory of the communist revolution according to Lenin was greater e. g. in the tsarist Russia than in the developed states of Europe or the USA.

[21] It’s consonant to German ‘Ya’ (Yes).

[22] Dionysius was the Greek god of wine and unruly merriment. In Nietzsche’s philosophy he symbolized the freedom appropriate to superman. ‘The Crucified’ is Jesus Christ symbolizing slavish moral in Nietzsche’s philosophy.

[23] By name of the ancient Greek hero Antheus, whose mother the land where he lived gave him the force with every touch to her. Hercules, in order to win him, was compelled to lift him above the earth to break any contact with the land his mother and be keeping him so until he lost all his force.

[24] In the Aristotelian meaning.

[25] “Noumen” means a mental entity, that is something similar to Jung’s archetypes or Plato’s ideas.

[26] E. Mach, for example, recognized only the experimental physics, asserting that the theoretical one is nonsense.

[27] In the philosophy of Heidegger the existing means existing things, objects, events etc. The existing is opposed to the being as a non-absolute and conditioned to the absolute and non-conditioned.

[28] In the name of the mythical creature Uroboros depicted as a snake beating its own tail and thereby closing itself in itself.

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