The Task and System of Philosophy

The Task of Philosophy

Systematic Division of Philosophy

The history of scientific classification vividly illustrates how the content of a general concept has gradually transformed over time, leading to a point where the subject of classification is no longer what it was at the outset. Classification began with the division of philosophy and concluded with the dismemberment of specialized sciences; however, philosophy ultimately disappeared from the system after some classifiers attempted to include it, primarily in the domain of spiritual sciences, as an adjunct to psychology—efforts that proved entirely futile when it became evident that psychology, by its task and methodological character, had become a specialized science. This final exclusion of philosophy from the system of specialized sciences resulted from the developmental trajectory whereby these sciences were sequentially detached from philosophy as their common mother-science, and during which the task of philosophy underwent a complete transformation. When psychology, as the last of the most expansive fields of knowledge, became a purely empirical discipline, filling the previously vacant space in the system of specialized sciences, it marked the moment when no further place remained for philosophy within the system, as all objects of scientific inquiry became allocated among the specialized sciences, each pursuing its own distinct and limited goal. Yet, alongside this shift in the status of philosophy, it acquired a new task, which now finds its place not within the system of specialized sciences themselves, but within a distinct system of philosophical sciences: the task remaining for philosophy lies outside the realms of particular sciences, for it is grounded in the relationships and connections among the various parts of human knowledge, which together comprise a single system of understanding.

From this assigned task of philosophy—being the universal science—conditions for its systematic division emerge. If the classification of particular sciences stemmed from the question of what logical division of sciences most appropriately corresponds to the existing division of labor, then the division of philosophy must begin from another question: from what perspectives can human knowledge be subjected to comprehensive, comparative, and connective scientific inquiry? There may be two such perspectives; they have emerged as the only viable options in proportion to philosophy's growing recognition of its shared tasks as it distanced itself from specialized sciences. The first of these perspectives is the viewpoint of the origin of knowledge. Questions concerning how knowledge arises, what its sources are, the markers of its veracity, and the boundaries of its domain—all these inquiries cannot be resolved by any single specialized science, as they pertain to all specialized fields of knowledge to a certain extent and presuppose a combination of their diverse outcomes. Thus, these questions constitute the substance of the first major area of philosophy—epistemology. The second perspective from which all human knowledge can be examined is the perspective of established knowledge. Likewise, the question regarding the significance of the principles of knowledge, which, when applied across various fields, cannot be thoroughly examined by any specialized science for their value to the whole system of knowledge, is a philosophical question: its resolution falls to the doctrine of principles.

Epistemology and the doctrine of principles relate to one another analogously to how genetic disciplines are related to systematic sciences within the framework of specialized sciences. In contrast, no area of philosophy corresponds to phenomenological disciplines: due to the universal character of philosophy, such a discipline is impossible. However, its role is filled by the specialized empirical science that provides epistemology with material for its investigations—psychology, which, precisely because it enters into more direct relations with philosophical epistemology than any other science, acquires a unique position among them. The reason for psychology's special status in relation to philosophy lies in the fact that every act of knowledge is fundamentally an empirically given spiritual process, which, therefore, is subject to the scrutiny of psychology before it can be examined by epistemology concerning its significance for the universal process of the development of knowledge. Hence, the view that considers psychology as the foundation of philosophy finds, of course, a very limited justification.

The history of philosophy occupies a distinctive position between the two main areas of philosophy on one side and between philosophy and the specialized sciences on the other. In terms of content, it closely interacts with the doctrine of principles, primarily tasked with tracing the evolution of general worldviews and the fundamental concepts defining the specialized sciences. In terms of purpose, it is akin to epistemology: its principal task ultimately consists in delineating the comprehensive picture of the development of human knowledge as it has occurred historically. Finally, regarding the material it processes and its impact, it stands between philosophy and the specialized sciences: it aims to describe not merely philosophical ideas but also the prevailing ideas within specialized sciences in their historical emergence, thereby occupying the position of a universal history of the sciences.

Of the two main branches of philosophy, genetic epistemology can once again be subdivided into a formal discipline that examines the forms and norms of cognitive thinking, namely logic, and a real discipline, the theory of knowledge. The former constitutes a general philosophical domain of particular formal sciences, such as pure mathematics, while the theory of knowledge corresponds to the aggregate of particular real sciences. At the intersection of formal logic and the theory of knowledge rests the third, predominantly relating to the specialized sciences, part of epistemology: methodology. It seeks, on one hand, to derive the methods employed by various sciences from their applications; on the other hand, it attempts to reduce them to logical norms and principles of knowledge.

The second main systematic branch of philosophy, the doctrine of principles, can only draw its basis for subdivision from the main areas of systematic inquiry, in accordance with the principle of division of labor already prevailing in specialized sciences. Thus, it can be divided primarily into a general doctrine of principles, commonly known as metaphysics, and a multitude of specialized sciences of principles. Among these, philosophy of nature and philosophy of spirit stand in opposition to one another. The former, in turn, subdivides into cosmology, biology, and anthropology, which increasingly approach the specialized sciences, yet still maintain sufficient generality to claim the designation of philosophical. This also applies to anthropology, understood here not in the sense of physical anthropology, as it is commonly conceived, but rather as the study of the psychophysical nature of humanity, in which case it presupposes physiology and psychology, thereby also forming a transitional link to the philosophy of spirit. The so-called “physical anthropology” is a specialized natural science, and moreover, a dependent one, as it entirely belongs to zoology by its nature.

The philosophy of spirit has long been divided according to the differences among the principal products of the human spirit into several distinct areas, which in turn form intermediate links between the general doctrine of principles and the specialized sciences of spirit: such are ethics and the philosophy of law, aesthetics, and the philosophy of religion. Finally, the philosophy of history occupies a peculiar, again in a certain sense, intermediary position. Primarily, it represents a specialized domain of the philosophy of spirit, subordinate to history in the same way that ethics and the philosophy of law, connected by their objectives, are subordinate to the science of law and the history of morals. However, beyond that, the recent challenges of history are so intricately linked with anthropological, and thereby again with biological and cosmological questions, that the philosophical inquiry into the history of humanity reestablishes the unity of the systematic areas of philosophy through the collective genetic investigation. Consequently, the philosophy of history ultimately emerges as a third genetic domain alongside epistemology and the history of philosophy.