Fundamental Concepts and Principles of Philosophy

Fundamental Issues in Philosophy

The historical and philosophical process presents a mosaic of various viewpoints and concepts. With numerous problems and even more perspectives on their resolution, philosophy appears as a complex labyrinth of thought development. Navigating this labyrinth is exceedingly difficult. However, two fundamental problems can serve as useful tools in this endeavor, as their resolutions determine the main types of philosophical perspectives. The first problem is ontological: What is reality? This is the problem of being. The second problem is epistemological: How is knowledge of reality formed? This is the problem of cognition. Both problems are intricately interconnected, such that resolving one impacts the resolution of the other.

Every individual, based on their own experience, recognizes two types of phenomena. On one hand, there are our sensations, thoughts, experiences, and everything that constitutes the content of our consciousness, our spiritual life. On the other hand, there are objects, bodies, events occurring outside our consciousness in the physical, material world. Phenomena of the first type are denoted by terms such as soul, spirit, ideal, subjective reality. Phenomena of the second type are denoted by terms such as matter, thing, nature, objective reality. Thus, there is talk of the existence of two types of reality: material and spiritual. Apart from these types, nothing else is given to human experience. We understand that nature, objects, and the surrounding reality are what we can think about indirectly, through images arising in our consciousness. What then are the objects surrounding us? There are three principal, fundamentally distinct answers to this question:

1. The external world, reality, and things are objective reality that exists separately and independently of our consciousness.
2. They exist only due to our consciousness and are a result of its activity.
3. Both the external world and our consciousness are not realities existing independently; they are manifestations of another, "third" reality—a higher principle that alone possesses autonomous, true, independent being.

Throughout the history of philosophy, all three approaches have been developed in various forms, leading to three main directions in philosophical thought:

1. Materialism
2. Phenomenalism (or Subjective Idealism)
3. Spiritualism (or Objective Idealism)

Materialism holds that the world in which we live exists independently of consciousness. Matter is understood as objective reality that exists independently of consciousness. From a materialist perspective, the concept of "being" only acquires specific meaning in the context in which it is used.

Materialists distinguish between material, spiritual, ideal, and real being. They emphasize that the being of something in thoughts or imagination is fundamentally different from its being in the material world. Matter exists differently than spirit. Only matter possesses independent being, while consciousness and spirit have only "secondary," dependent being and cannot exist independently of matter. However, this does not imply that consciousness is a powerless form. On the contrary, materialists assert that through consciousness, thought, and spirit, humans can understand and alter the surrounding reality.

Materialists argue that the surrounding world is a world of matter, meaning something that exists independently of consciousness. Consciousness cannot create material objects from nothing or from itself, but it can alter material objects only through material, physical actions. Furthermore, consciousness, along with its content (thoughts, images, desires), is, on one hand, a product of brain activity, and on the other, merely a reflection of the external world, and in this context, is derivative and dependent on matter.

Subjective Idealism posits that the external world depends on human consciousness. It suggests that the things we perceive around us are combinations of our sensations, that is, phenomena of our consciousness. This is why this direction is also called phenomenology. Things are equated with our sensations, and the world depends on consciousness, meaning we can only see it as it appears to us.

In its classical form, subjective idealism is represented by the English thinker George Berkeley (1685—1753), who believed that the forms we call things are actually stable combinations of our sensations, which in turn are produced by God. An example of his reasoning is the description of cherry fruit. He writes that the cherry berry is red, moist, and soft; red, moist, and soft are our sensations, meaning the cherry is a combination of our sensations.

Objective Idealism is based on the assertion of the existence of a higher spiritual reality or substance that constitutes every being, including the existing reality and humans with their consciousness. By recognizing the spiritual nature of the substance, we align subjective idealism with objective idealism. Since substance can be considered God, objective idealism is a direction closely related to religion.

Subjective idealists and objective idealists are united by the fact that they place a spiritual principle at the core of being. Therefore, these systems can be viewed as two branches of the same current—idealism. Idealism is characterized by the desire to blur the boundary between being and consciousness. Being is considered a property inherent primarily to consciousness. Therefore, the being of consciousness forms the basis of any other being.

Apart from these views on the problem of being, other movements occupy an intermediate position between materialism and objective idealism. These include hylozoism, pantheism, and dualism. Hylozoism views every object and the whole world as a living organism. Such ideas can be found in the early natural philosophers (Thales, Heraclitus) and in doctrines that endow nature with a soul. In the 19th-20th centuries, hylozoistic tendencies appeared in the views of G. Fechner and C. G. Jung and emerged in the form of panpsychism.

Pantheism is the doctrine that identifies God with the world. God is imagined as an impersonal spirit that merges with and dissolves into nature. Pantheistic views are characteristic of Giordano Bruno, Baruch Spinoza, and Denis Diderot.

Dualism, in contrast to pantheism and hylozoism, asserts that matter and spirit are not aspects of one substance but two distinct and independent forms. The most well-known dualist thinker is the French philosopher René Descartes.

The question of how humans should use the cognitive abilities given to them by nature—senses and reason—was the first to be posed in the history of philosophy concerning the problem of knowledge. This issue gained particular relevance in the modern era as a problem of the method of scientific knowledge, associated with the need for the development of science, especially natural sciences and mathematics.

Even in antiquity, philosophers such as Socrates and Plato questioned that universal and necessary truths should be reached not through sensory experience but through reason, which arrives at them purely logically. In the modern era, this problem questions the source of such truth. Generally, it is considered that there are three possible answers to this question:

1. The source of universal and necessary truths is experience.
2. The source of universal and necessary truths is reason.
3. Laws cannot be derived from either experience or reason.

From this perspective, two main philosophical currents have emerged, each addressing this problem in its way. Empiricism asserts that science should be based on experience and investigate the laws of nature through sensory generalizations of results. Rationalism insists that science should operate solely on "truths of reason" and formulate laws exclusively through logical deductions. A particular position, known as skepticism, was taken by thinkers who doubted the possibility of knowing natural laws or even their existence.

The weakness of the empirical position lies in the fact that the limitations of our experience do not allow for a reliable foundation of universal judgments. This means that empirical methods of knowledge are insufficient for constructing scientific theories. Empiricism has undergone several stages in its development:

1. Everything that exists can be known through experience (Francis Bacon).
2. But experience only gives us our sensations (George Berkeley).
3. Therefore, sensations are all that exists (John Stuart Mill).

Rationalism, like empiricism, faces its own difficulties. The essence of these difficulties is that reason can only derive something when there is a starting point from which to derive it. Any inference must have an ascending reference from which the conclusion arises. That is, for reason to logically derive a universal judgment, it must already have certain initial references in thought. For example, René Descartes considered a priori ideas, inherent from the very beginning (from God), as such initial references. According to Descartes, these ideas are unconditional truths at least because "God would not deceive us." They differ from ordinary innate ideas in that "in the natural light of reason" they appear to us as "clear and distinct." However, rationalism, like empiricism, cannot justify the truth of judgments about laws established in the realm of "pure thought" without referring to data obtained through sensory experience. Rationalism also passes through three stages of development:

1. General laws of nature are known through reason without reference to experience (Baruch Spinoza, René Descartes).
2. But reason, without reference to experience, can only know the laws of its own thinking (Immanuel Kant).
3. Therefore, the laws of thought are the laws of nature, i.e., nature is seen as the "external shell" underlying reason, which, in turn, is at its core (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel).

In contrast to empiricism and rationalism, which asserted the necessity of grounding knowledge on data from experience and principles of reason, a new wave emerged in 19th-20th century philosophy: irrationalism. This philosophical current proclaimed the existence of forms of knowledge that are not subject to rational explanation and allow us to grasp what is beyond science, logic, and experience. Irrationalism minimizes the role of reason and emphasizes the significance of non-sensory and non-rational factors in human life: blind will (Arthur Schopenhauer), archetypes (Carl G. Jung), instinct (Friedrich Nietzsche), and so forth.

In conclusion, the foundational problems of philosophy—the problem of being and the problem of knowledge—are addressed by various philosophical directions and currents. Each direction presents its own answer to the question of what constitutes reality and how we come to know it, reflecting the diverse ways in which humans seek to understand and interpret the world around them.