Rationalist philosophers. What is rationalism
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TwitterIn modern times, science is actively developing, many discoveries appear, and all this has a huge impact on the development of philosophy and the features of philosophical thought. These discoveries would be impossible without faith in the ability of the mind to master the world and influence it. Philosophy played an important role in this process, responding to changes in science and practice and at the same time preparing them. The discovery of a number of laws gives scientists and philosophers the impression that the whole world is subject to the strictest laws that can be understood and described.
In this period anthropocentrism is destroyed... Until the 17th century, there were many reasons to believe that man is in the center of the world. Now the Earth has turned out to be a tiny planet, incomparable with other planets, and even more so with stars. The universe did not appear as a mechanism "revolving around man"; it turned out to be a huge mechanism that could no longer be specially arranged in order to satisfy the needs of people. And indeed, for example, the change of day and night ceased to be a natural phenomenon, as it were, duplicating a person's need for sleep and wakefulness, since it was explained on the basis of completely different laws. In fact, a man of the 17th century experienced about the same thing that any child experiences, realizing that this world is not intended exclusively for him and that mom and dad are not powerful creatures capable of satisfying his every desire.
European philosophy of modern times developed in two directions:- rationalism;
- empiricism.
Rationalism (from Lat. ratio - mind) - the direction in philosophy, according to which the basis of both being and cognition is reason.
Rationalism has two main directions - ontological and epistemological.
According to ontological rationalism at the heart of being is a rational principle (that is, being is rational). In this sense, rationalism is close to idealism (for example, Plato's doctrine of "pure ideas" that precede the material world and the embodiment of which this material world ("the world of things") is). However, rationalism is not identical with idealism, since the meaning of rationalism is not in the primacy of ideas in relation to matter (being), but in the rationality of being. For example, materialists, convinced of divine or other rationality, the internal consistency of being, are rationalists (Democritus, Epicurus, etc.).
main idea epistemological rationalism lies in the fact that cognition is also based on reason. Accordingly, the epistemological rationalists opposed medieval theology and scholasticism, whose representatives saw Divine revelation at the basis of knowledge and rejected reason. Along with this, rationalists were opponents of empiricists - supporters of the philosophical trend widespread in modern times, who also opposed the scholastics and saw not revelation as the basis of knowledge, but knowledge and experience. The rationalists include many philosophers, from ancient times to the present era (Epicurus, etc.), but the greatest contribution to the development of rationalism, its transformation into an officially recognized philosophical direction was made by philosophers, Gottfried Leibniz;
Empiricism - a trend in philosophy, whose supporters believe that knowledge is based on experience: "there is nothing in the mind that would not have been in experience (in feelings)", "knowledge is power."
Empiricism is widespread in England in the 17th century. and subsequently in the USA. Francis Bacon is considered the founder of empiricism. Prominent representatives were Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, John Dewey (USA). Empiricists, as a rule, were opponents of rationalists.
Figure: Representatives of empiricism in the philosophy of modern times
Empiricism: representatives and features
Francis Bacon
With name Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626) most often connect the beginning of the philosophy of modern times. The person is very versatile. having shown himself in various spheres of activity - philosopher, lawyer, scientist, statesman (Lord Chancellor in 1618-1620) - he is primarily known as an advanced thinker of his time, an outstanding philosopher. Among the most important of his works are most often called "New Organon, or True Instructions for the Interpretation of Nature", "New Atlantis".
F. Bacon considered science to be the most essential factor in the life and development of mankind. Therefore, he strove to find the true foundations of knowledge. He devoted much of his life and work to the search for conditions for obtaining the truth. The truth, F. Bacon believed, may be different. He designated knowledge levels: reasonable thinkingwhich is related to philosophy and science; religious knowledge that arises in the field of geology. In addition, he singled out history and poetry, linking them, respectively, with memory and imagination. Therefore, a conclusion was made about "two kinds of truths" - the truth of faith and the truth of knowledge.
F. Bacon was primarily interested in scientific truth. He did not study the truths of faith. As for scientific truth, he clearly understood that a spontaneous search for it could not be. That is why the scientist attached paramount importance to the development of a method that would allow the researcher to comprehend the surrounding reality as fully and adequately as possible. There are many ways to try to know the world. F. Bacon not only singled them out, but also gave each a figurative form and name.
The first one he called "The way of the spider". This is how he characterized the actions of the researcher when he tries to extract the truth from his own consciousness (like a spider pulling a web from itself). Another - "The way of the ant”, When the observer randomly accumulates facts, like an ant, which, according to F. Bacon, drags into his anthill everything that he meets and can carry away. But this is not the way to learn the truth. The scientific way of mastering nature was named "The way of the bee". This means that the researcher systematically collects only the necessary facts (like a bee - nectar from flowers), without missing anything important and leaving out of his attention all unnecessary things that are not related to this problem. In this case, the researcher tirelessly experiments without deviating from the intended goal. The result of this determination is true knowledge.
At the same time, F. Bacon understood that human consciousness is influenced by a number of factors that distort the perception of reality. He called them idols and divided them into four groups.
Idols of the kind due to the limited capabilities of the human body, relative imperfection of the sense organs, human nature. Hearing, sight, smell and other senses have limitations (today we know perfectly well that a person without assistive devices does not perceive ultrasound, infrared radiation, etc.). Nevertheless, a person seeks to measure the world around him "by himself", and therefore, much in nature can be misunderstood or not noticed at all.
Idols of the cave are formed as a result of a person's individuality, formed by all his social experience: culture of the microenvironment, upbringing, education, status and other features. Thus, each person observes the world from his own cave, which limits the "view", makes her look subjective.
Market idols (or area) arise as a result of errors in the use of language, incorrect definition of concepts, ambiguity of some of them. Therefore, it is necessary to achieve unambiguity in the interaction of researchers, in the fixation of certain results of scientific experience.
Idols of Theater generated by a person's tendency to believe in authority. The truth can be replaced by the authority of the source of information (famous person, honored scientist, solid organization ...). Therefore, a critical attitude of a scientist to statements and theories of any kind is necessary.
According to F. Bacon, an experiment can serve as the best test of the truth. But this should not be an isolated experience, but purposeful. repeated as many times as possible. The experiment must be active. This can be achieved, for example, by the method amplification of the experiment. Moreover, a single refuting result is more important than a large number of confirming ones. And only when all the conditions are met and the experience in each of the experiments carried out is confirmed, it is possible to make a generalization about the truth of the knowledge gained.
This is inductive method F. Bacon - from a multitude of special cases it is possible to draw a generalizing conclusion that reflects some revealed pattern.
AT socio-philosophical views F. Bacon reflected his own social experience. He was critical of the masses, considering them the source of turmoil, and the nobility, interested only in their own problems, striving for luxury. Society is imperfect, the way out is in the development of science and technology capable of creating conditions for the satisfaction of all people. to defeat hunger, in the correction of social norms that limit excessive material consumption of the richest. The scientist depicted his ideal in the utopia "New Atlantis", written at the end of his life.
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) became the successor of F. Bacon's empiricism. At the same time, he went beyond his teacher in many ways. He adhered to materialistic views. Nature, in his opinion, is a set of extended material bodies. Moreover, T. Hobbes developed atomism, argued that matter exists forever, it is inherent in motion (but only mechanical, movement). T. Hobbes considered extension, movement and rest not as properties of material bodies, but as forms of perception of this body by man.
However, T. Hobbes received the greatest fame thanks to his book "Leviathan, or Matter, Form and Power of the Church and Civil State." He believed that the world consists of natural material bodies (nature) and artificial (states), which arose not by the will of God, but as a result of the so-called "social contract" between people.
At first, people lived separately from each other, realizing the right in any way, up to violence against other people, to ensure their existence. This state of affairs ("the natural state of society") was expressed by the formulas "war of all against all" and "man to man is a wolf." This threatened the complete extermination of mankind, which was avoided thanks to an agreement between people - a kind of self-organization. As a result, a state arose, which was entrusted with the task of ensuring order and security, but at the same time citizens had to sacrifice part of their rights. The state, according to T. Hobbes, is the highest value of society and man: he considered the monarchy the best form of state.
T. Hobbes's ideas about the materialistic basis of being and about the social contract were developed in the work of many philosophers. So, the author of classical physics Isaac Newton (1643-1727) envisioned nature as a large and complex mechanism (reminiscent of a large and complex clock). One of the successors of the materialist line of T. Hobbes was J. Locke.
John Locke
John Locke (1632-1704), unlike T. Hobbes, considered the world to be created by God, but in the rest of his views can be recognized as materialistic (ie J. Locke is a deist). He rejected the thesis about innate ideas put forward by R. Descartes. Descartes believed that a person's consciousness was not initially "empty", already at the birth of a person there are so-called innate ideas in his consciousness (for example, ideas about God, about "I" as a thinking substance, sound, color).
J. Locke does not agree with R. Descartes, he claims that human consciousness is a "blank slate" (" tabula rasa "). All that is contained in consciousness, according to J. Locke, is possible only as a result of the experience of a particular person. And experience arises on the basis of sensations. Thus, only what is in sensations can be in consciousness. Experience can be external, obtained as a result of the impact of material bodies on the senses, as well as internal, arising in the course of the work of human thought.
Further J. Locke formulates the concept of primary (belonging to the material objects themselves) and secondary (representing the result of the subjective perception of an object by a person) qualities. Primary qualities - density, length, movement: secondary - smell, color, taste, sound. Primary and secondary qualities in the course of the work of consciousness allow the consciousness to form complex ideas.
Secondary qualities are not independent, derived from the interaction of material objects and sensory organs, primary qualities are inherent properties of a material carrier. But nevertheless, their consciousness perceives only through the senses. This is how the main provisions are formed sensationalism.
In his views on society, J. Locke was a supporter of not an absolutist (like T. Hobbes), but a constitutional monarchy. Sharing the opinion of T. Hobbes about the emergence of the state as a result of a social contract, J. Locke believed that the state of society before the emergence of the state is more accurately characterized by the formula: "man to man is a friend." Equality and independence determine the natural rights of people to life, freedom, property, as well as the right to protect "their own character, including from possible violence from the state. To ensure such protection," he suggests the division of power into branches: executive, legislative and judicial.
Subsequently, the ideas of both sensationalism and liberalism were developed in the philosophical systems of scientists.
In particular, sensationalism was developed George Berkeley (1685-1753), who believed that "to exist is to be perceived." However, J. Berkeley criticized the concept of primary and secondary qualities. He believed that material objects do not exist at all. In reality, there are only various aggregates of human sensations, taken for material bodies. Time and space also exist only in the mind of a person who perceives the world in this way “out of habit”.
David Hume (1711 - 1776) also believed that all human experience is formed on the basis of his subjective sensations. At the same time, he did not deny the existence of the external world, although he was sure that a person could know nothing for sure about this world.
Empiricism, sensationalism, as well as the socio-philosophical concepts of F. Bacon and his followers played an important role in the history of philosophy, the development of science and, in general, in the formation of the worldview of subsequent eras. Huck, the philosophy of D. Hume determined the turn in the views of I. Kant.
No less important foundations of the philosophical thought of modern times and subsequent eras were given by rationalism, the founder of which is recognized as R. Descartes.
Rationalism: representatives and features
Rene Descartes
(1596-1656) received a good education at the Jesuit College La Flèche. Thereafter, he served as a civilian officer; participated in hostilities in Holland, where he later stayed to live and where his philosophical system was finally formed.
R. Descartes in his views was actually a deist, although he did not deny the fact of the existence of God and the act of his creation of the world. He believed that religious truths are beyond human understanding, and therefore did not try to comprehend them. In his most famous work, Discourse on Method, he criticized scholasticism for the fact that it restricts, inhibits the development of scientific knowledge.
Scholasticism offers ready-made truths, creates their system, going beyond which is not encouraged. Therefore, R. Descartes suggested starting a scientific understanding of reality with global doubt. One thing is certain - a person's own consciousness, and this is reflected in the well-known aphorism of R. Descartes: “I think, therefore I am” (lat. Cogito ergo sum).
Thus, only the human mind (i.e. ratio). Therefore, R. Descartes is considered the founder of modern European rationalism. Mathematics is a model of rationality. But human consciousness is not "empty". It initially has important content. The point is that, according to R. Descartes, consciousness is a substance.
In the "Cartesian" understanding of substance, an inconsistency is revealed. Substance, according to Descartes, is that which exists by itself, not needing anything external in relation to the given essence. Absolutely such an entity is God (it is logical to assume that no other substances have a place in being). But R. Descartes nevertheless endows the substance and consciousness of a person with the properties of substance (this is his dualism expressed), explaining this by the fact that they were created by God and do not need other creations. Substances have attributes: matter - length (it is also inherent in movement, it is present everywhere, leaving no emptiness), consciousness - thinking.
Consciousness contains innate ideas. They are distinguished by the fact that they are recognized by man as clearly and unambiguously as his very existence; this is a certain criterion of truth. R. Descartes cites the idea of \u200b\u200bGod as an example of an innate idea. He also considers the deductive method of cognition to be innate. All other knowledge can be derived from innate ideas with the help of thinking. Thus, the knowledge of the particular truths of the world is possible only on the basis of a really existing general - thinking, endowed with innate ideas.
Feelings cannot be such a basis, since they are not constant and may well “deceive” the consciousness. This means that induction will not give, according to R. Descartes, true knowledge.
Knowledge has a high status. Among other things, they also carry ethical characteristics. Knowledge is ultimately good, and evil is ignorance.
The Cartesian worldview is mechanistic. God gave the original chaos a vortex movement, as a result of which the world was put in order. Everything is mechanical. Even living organisms in the understanding of R. Descartes are, although very complex, but only mechanisms. Man is no exception, however, unlike other living beings, he has a soul (which has no extension, but still has a completely material "refuge" in the human body - according to Descartes, allegedly in the cerebellum).
The doctrine of R. Descartes, and above all his interpretation of epistemological issues, became a fertile ground for disputes, for the further development of philosophical thought.
B. Spinoza was one of the brightest Cartesians.
Benedict Spinoza
Benedict (Baruch) (1632-1677) was born into a Jewish family who moved from Portugal to Holland to escape the persecution of the Inquisition. After graduating from the Jewish theological school, he continued his studies at a secular school, studied mathematics, physics, and Latin. I was indifferent to religion. Even for a fee (the rabbis offered him a monthly pension for formal attendance at worship services) he was not going to observe the rituals and go to the synagogue, for which he was subjected to excommunication and curse. He did not renounce his convictions, and for the sake of the chair at Heidelberg University, he refused the pension of the King of France.
Thus, philosophical activity not only did not bring any material benefits to Spinoza, but in a certain sense also made his life difficult. However, he worked hard; his piles: "Theological-political treatise", "Ethics", "Political treatise" and others have played a big role in the development of philosophical knowledge and worldview. B. Spinoza earned his living by grinding glass for optical instruments: this did not have the best effect on his health, he died of tuberculosis.
B. Spinoza criticized the position of R. Descartes about innate ideas, but accepted the criterion of clarity, which consisted in the obviousness and unambiguity of the awareness of thought. B. Spinoza was also not satisfied with the Cartesian dualism, he adhered to monistic positions, but its substance is similar to the Cartesian one.
Substance is central to B. Spinoza's system. For him, it is something that exists by itself, is represented through itself, that does not need another thing from which it should be formed. Substance is the only one, free, eternal, infinite. This substance is God, but it is also Nature. Thus, the philosophy of B. Spinoza is pantheism.
Substance, i.e. God-Nature is “creative nature”. It has attributes - space, thinking, as well as self-awareness, the rest of the attributes are inaccessible to human understanding. Attributes are realized in modes that can be infinite (for example, "infinite mind") and finite. Finite modes are material bodies (as well as human thoughts), this is “created nature”. "Creative nature" is the cause of "created nature." A causal relationship soars in the world. All previous phenomena, events are the cause of subsequent phenomena and events. Man is subject to these connections, and in order to achieve freedom, you need to know nature, its interconnections.
It was B. Spinoza who made the statement: "freedom is a cognized necessity." Hence follows the significance of the human mind; he can give freedom and happiness, the achievement of which is the goal of the philosophy of B. Spinoza and the meaning of human life.
Another famous follower of rationalism was G. Leibniz. However, sensationalists, in particular the work of J. Locke, had a considerable influence on his views.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) graduated from the University of Leipzig and at the age of 20 received a doctorate in law. He gave up teaching in favor of legal activity, but ultimately devoted his life and work to science. Known ps only as a philosopher and lawyer, but also as a mathematician. physicist, historian. His most famous works: "Theodicy", "Monadology".
Leibniz is a rationalist. The standard of knowledge for him, as well as for R. Descartes, was mathematics. But he perfectly understood the strengths of empiricism, so he tried to combine the two approaches as much as possible. He proceeded from the opinion of J. Locke, according to which there is nothing in the human mind except what is in the feelings. Nothing, added G. Leibniz, except reason itself. He saw in every mind a goal provided by divine will. It's all about the expediency of the world created by God, the most perfect of all possible worlds. This expediency extends to every single entity of the world. Finally, he, denying innate ideas, saw in every mind an innate ability to perceive fundamental ideas, such as "being", "I", etc.
Thus, a person, whose essence is mind, is an independent ontological unit of the world - a substance. And the world is an aggregate of such substances, which G. Leibniz called monads. Hence his teaching is called monadology.
According to his teaching, the primary monad is God who creates the world - many monads are ideal entities, each of which is a source of its own activity. In other words, monads are of a substantial nature, Leibniz's world is multi-substantial, and he himself, thus, stands on the position of pluralism.
The world as interpreted by G. Leibniz loses all materiality, it is nothing more than a phenomenon of consciousness. The feeling of materiality arises in the mind of a person as a result of the perception of the world.
Monads can be simple or complex. A person, or rather his soul, also belongs to the complex (since the “body”, like all other “matter”, according to Leibniz, is just a “seeming”). The complexity of the monad is determined by the degree of its receptivity to impressions and the ability to reflect the whole world with a certain degree of completeness (today we could add: "and detail"). The most complex monads are capable of self-awareness. The most complex monad is God, it alone reflects the world in an exhaustive way. But each monad is capable of reflecting the world due to its substantiality, self-sufficiency and activity; also, any of them has the ability to develop (more fully display the world) or, in combination with other simple monads, to integrate into complex ones.
G. Leibniz explains space and time in a very original way. Some thinkers, who created their philosophical concepts both earlier and later Leibniz, gave a substantial character to space and time. G. Leibniz solves this problem differently: space is not an independent entity, but order simultaneously existing monads, attitude between them. In a similar way, he interprets time: it reflects the attitude sequences existence of monads. Thus, space and time are not independent objects, but only derivatives of the coexistence of monads. Outside of consciousness, they do not exist, if it were not for man - they would remain only in the consciousness of God.
G. Leibniz is also known as a logician, in particular, as the author of the "law of sufficient reason".
In addition to the named thinkers, such scientists as Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655), Isaac Newton (1643-1727), Christian Wolf (1679-1754) and some others made a significant contribution to the philosophy of modern times. So, to I. Newton, science and philosophy owe the creation of classical physics, the development of a deistic and mechanistic picture of the world, the creation of important foundations of materialism (although I. Newton himself cannot be called a materialist), and H. Wolf was the popularizer of the ideas of G. Leibniz, the founder of the first philosophical school in Germany, and also the founder of the German Enlightenment.
However, some researchers consider J. Locke to be the forerunner of the Enlightenment, and the Enlightenment was most fully manifested in the works of the French enlighteners.
In modern psychological terminology, there are many definitions that we do not fully understand. Some are of historical origin, based on the experience gained in the war, in negotiations; others are based on philosophical teachings, therefore they exist outside of time and space. Well, let's deal with some of them.
Rationalism is a worldview that is fully based on an objective perception of the environment. As you know, everything that exists in our world closely interacts with each other. This manifests itself in relations between people (business, official, hostile, etc.), in friendship with animals, in interaction with flora, as well as with objects of inanimate nature (water, gas, oil, air). In this context, rationalism is a sound assessment of the qualities and properties of each of the above elements, on the basis of which a particular subject performs his actions in relation to something or someone.
In this definition, the main place is occupied by such a concept as impartiality. A rational person does not feel love for beauty, and in the same way he is not characterized by cruelty. He cuts off from his consciousness any habits imposed by culture, does not obey customs (most often the most ridiculous), is not involved in religion. Rationalism is prudence, it is knowledge of the world by studying it. It is completely based on facts, not spiritual impulses and prophecies.
In order to make it clearer, we will provide examples of people who are rationalists. The overwhelming majority of them are skeptics convinced of the complete materiality of our world. All scientists, since the time of the Sumerians, have been convinced rationalists. Today, their "kind" continues and grows, and it is worth noting that so far all scientific dogmas have shown us their truthfulness. There are also “ignorant” rationalists - they are agnostics, perfectionists, materialists.
Now let's try to reveal the principle of rationalism, which will give us an understanding of the essence of the subject. First, it consists in cognizing the world through experience, research, experiment, which is carried out at the material level. Everything that is visible and tangible exists, and that which cannot be said so simply does not exist. Secondly, the world is made up of material elements. Even the air is filled with atoms and molecules that function in a specific order. Chaos is unacceptable for rationalism, unlike poetry, music and other "ephemeral" arts and teachings.
Philosophical rationalism occupies a special place in our world. Any skeptic will immediately say that the term is absurd, since philosophy is characterized by a certain mysticism, obsession with experiences, subjectivity, that is, everything that is opposite to the material worldview. However, today even this science has been able to rationalize its currents, separate them and concretize them. Each ethnic group has its own philosophy, so to speak, a common one, which determined the spiritual orientation of the people and morality. In turn, each individual family and each individual has “its own” philosophy.
Generally speaking, we can say that rationalism is a worldview inherent only in reasonable people. It is also worth focusing on life experience, which often shows that each of us is the only master of our destiny, our environment - both spiritual and material.
Rationalism (in psychology) [lat. rationalis - reasonable] - the doctrine that the human psyche is based on concepts that cannot be obtained by generalizing sensory impressions. From the point of view of R., these concepts can either be innate (the theory of innate ideas of R. Descartes), or they can develop from inclinations, predispositions, which are also already present in the mind of a person at birth (the concepts of Plato, G. Leibniz, G. Hegel). R. opposed the position of sensationalism that the psyche of a child is a "blank slate", arguing that on the basis of individual sensory experience, basic concepts and laws that explain the surrounding reality cannot be derived. R. did not reject the importance of sensations in understanding individual objects and phenomena, agreeing that this knowledge of the properties and qualities of individual objects and phenomena is based mainly on sensory experience. However, general concepts are comprehended only on the basis of reason, the rationalists emphasized, since no logical generalization of data obtained through sensation and perception can penetrate into the essence of things. To explain the process of the emergence of a general concept in R., the term "rational intuition" was introduced, that is, an instantaneous insight that does not have a logical, conscious explanation, which reveals to consciousness the very essence of a thing, its basic properties. Such intuition is not based on sensory experience or experiment, but is the result of a person's thinking, focusing on the data of his own consciousness. Thus, if for sensationalism a concept was the result of a logical generalization of the data of the sense organs, then for R. it is the result of reflection, on the basis of which rational intuition is realized.
Etc. Martsinkovskaya
Definitions, meanings of a word in other dictionaries:
Philosophical Dictionary
When removing costs (abstractness, conventionalism, scientism, "objectivism"), as opposed to existentialism, structuralism, "phenomenology", etc., is the most acceptable direction in philosophy and heuristics of science under the existing state of affairs and other conditions being equal ...
Philosophical Dictionary
(Latin ratio - reason) - 1) in the broad sense of the word - a certain general orientation and stylistics of thinking, as well as the dominant line of philosophical development, going from Plato up to the first third - mid-19th century. with her inherent attitudes towards rationality and natural ...
Philosophical Dictionary
(Latin rationalis - reasonable) - 1) in philosophy - a direction in the theory of knowledge, which believes that reason is the source and criterion of the reliability of knowledge. Major representatives of R .: R. Descartes, B. Spinoza. G. Leibniz. R. separates thinking from sensory perception, whereas in ...
Philosophical Dictionary
(from Lat. ratio - thinking, reason, reason) - a philosophical belief that the individual natural mind is capable of reaching the fundamental infallible truths necessary to build the building of science without resorting to experience, including religious ... ...
Philosophical Dictionary
Recognition for the human mind of the highest and decisive importance: 1) in the practical life of people and nations, 2) in science and 3) in religion. In the first respect, R. collides with everyday conservatism and with a "historical view", in the second - with empiricism, in the third - with ...
Philosophical Dictionary
[lat. rationalis - reasonable]. 1. Teaching in the theory of knowledge, according to which universality and necessity - logical signs of reliable knowledge - cannot be deduced from experience and its generalizations; they can only be gleaned from the mind itself: either from concepts innate to the mind ...
RATIONALISM (from the Latin ratio - reason) - a philosophical and worldview setting, according to which the true foundations of being, knowledge and behavior of people are principles reason ... In philosophy, the term "mind" was transferred from theology, where it designated the direction, the adherents of which insisted on the purification of religion from everything that could not find a rational explanation, subjected the dogmas of faith to logical analysis. Philosophical rationalism goes back to Antiquity: to the teaching of Socrates that beauty and goodness are expediency, and true knowledge is a sufficient condition for ethical behavior; the doctrine of Plato about ideas as a true substantial reality; Aristotle's doctrine of the cosmic mind as a universal condition of being and thinking, etc. Ancient rationalism was reinterpreted by medieval theology, which combined the idea of \u200b\u200bdivine reason as the meaning and primary cause of world existence with the doctrine of the superintelligence of divine will, its incomprehensibility and incomprehensibility by the human mind. In the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, the truths of reason were declared subordinate, "service" in relation to the truths of faith and revelation, but within the limits of its competence (knowledge of nature, mathematics, positive law, ethics and politics), reason was considered the main guide of man as a rational being (Ratio est potissima hominis natura - reason is the most powerful nature of man). Nikolai Kuzansky put forward the idea that the finite human mind is capable of infinitely approaching the divine, never reaching its fullness, but never interrupting its approach to it. The tendency towards the elevation of the human mind, inherent in the humanism of the Renaissance (Erasmus of Rotterdam and others), met with fierce opposition from the ideologists of the Reformation (Luther, Zwingli, etc.), who saw in philosophical rationalism a threat to genuine faith. However, their attitude to reason was ambiguous: rejecting the philosophical claims of rationalism as unfounded and even sinful ("Reason is the whore of the devil," Luther said), Protestantism at the same time allowed the participation of empirical science in the knowledge of God, since the subject of natural science was the world as a divine creation ruled by God in every moment. To a certain extent, this liberated science from the dogmatic control of theology and contributed to the development of scientific rationalism. To an even greater extent, Protestantism stimulated rationalistic behavioral attitudes with its moral sanction of entrepreneurship and productive labor, legal institutions that objectively contribute to the development of democracy.
The classical paradigm of rationalism was created by European philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries. (Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibniz). In the teachings of these thinkers, the idea of \u200b\u200bthe highest intelligence of Divine creation took the ground prepared by the development of natural science and mathematics. Starting from the scholastic methods of speculative search for the foundations of being, rationalism turned to the problems of the scientific method. Central to them was the problem of the foundations of scientific knowledge. Its intended solution was guided by one of two fundamental strategies. The first strategy (most clearly articulated by Locke) was to consider experience (empiricism) as the only reliable source of scientific knowledge. The second strategy took mathematics as a model of true knowledge, which in the 17th century. began to be used in the study of natural phenomena (Galileo, Kepler). The path of mathematics, starting with obvious and undoubted truths, was recognized as the most consistent with the attitude of rationalism and, therefore, the general method of knowledge.
The fundamental requirement of classical rationalism is the achievement of an absolute and unchanging truth that has universal validity for any normal human mind. This requirement appeared to be incompatible with the strategy of empiricism (experience is finite and unreliable, knowledge gained from experience can only be considered probable and relative). Therefore, the version of rationalism associated with the second strategy gradually began to define the rationalistic attitude as a whole. This determines the meaning of the opposition "rationalism - empiricism", which largely determined the content of discussions on scientific methodology for almost three centuries. The supporters of both strategies were united by the cult of reason and the highest confidence in the possibilities of science, therefore, the methodological disputes between the supporters of Descartes and Locke can be considered as a manifestation of the internal contradictions of classical rationalism.
To the characteristic features of rationalism of the 17th and 18th centuries. include: extremely high assessment of deduction as a method of deploying a system of knowledge from undoubted and obvious grounds; "Universal mathematics" (mathesis universalis) as the ideal and model of all science; the identification of logical and cause-and-effect relationships, which meant for rationalism the identity of the structures of being and thinking (ordo et connectio idearum est ac ordo et connectio rerum - the order and connection of ideas are the same as the order and connection of things); confidence that a person by the power of his mind is able to bring out an intelligible root cause and source of being; epistemological optimism - the belief that the Reason is nowhere set limits and its development is, in principle, infinite; high appreciation of science and its role in the life of people, in the structure of culture. The ideas of rationalism played an extremely important role in the formation of the ideology of the Enlightenment, which linked historical progress with the development of the rational principles of human existence. Considering God as a rational root cause of the world, human history as a consistent action of this root cause, leading people from savagery and barbarism to civilization and morality, the enlighteners put forward a program of social transformations on the basis of a social contract, implemented by the purposeful efforts of mankind, united by the principles of reason.
The most important and at the same time the most difficult problem of classical rationalism was the definition of the fundamental and unconditional foundations of cognition (Descartes believed such "innate ideas", Leibniz - predispositions or inclinations of thinking, Spinoza - intellectual intuitions). The truth of these foundations is guaranteed by God, and therefore the "natural light of reason" (lumen naturale), illuminating the path to truth, is kindled and continuously maintained in the human soul by the creator of the Universe. However, further development of science, which intensified the tendency towards its "secularization" and autonomy in relation to metaphysics, stimulated the philosophical search for new versions of rationalism. Kant's "critical philosophy" was an attempt to combine the strategy of rationalism with the strategy of empiricism: the boundaries of rational knowledge, according to Kant, coincide with the sphere of applicability of scientific methodology, the world of phenomena, "phenomena", but the universality and universal truth of the laws of mathematical natural science is guaranteed by the a priori sensory contemplation (intuition) space and time, as well as the categorical structure of the mind. However, Kant, abandoning the appeal to the absolute inherent in classical rationalism as a guarantor of the truth of fundamental grounds and shifting the center of gravity to the attitude of criticism, thereby abandoned the metaphysical claims of rationalism, leaving the latter exclusively methodological functions. "Transcendental subject", claiming true knowledge of "things in themselves", ie to go beyond the limits of rational science into the world of "noumena", inevitably, Kant believed, collides with destructive antinomies, with "dialectics" destroying the scientific significance of rationalism.
Trying to overcome the Kantian dualism of the worlds of the transcendental "I" and "things in themselves", Schelling formulated the concept of the identity of spirit and nature, which have a common basis in absolute mind. Empirical science, the subject of which is individual natural objects and their relationships, occupies, according to Schelling, a subordinate position in relation to natural philosophy, which is addressed to the Absolute itself, to the principles by which it creates all its concrete forms. Natural philosophical rationalism came into conflict with the main trends of contemporary natural science (primarily empiricism) and was regarded by most scientists as an attempt to restore speculative metaphysics and mysticism.
In Hegel's philosophy, rationalism is combined with dialectics, which acts as the general logic of self-knowledge of reason, or the absolute idea, as the logic of a universal world process and at the same time as a fundamental theory of knowledge. The identification of thinking and reality (panlogism) gave Hegel's rationalism the character of speculative natural philosophy, which, in its style and methodological orientation, contrasted with the dominant style of science, although dialectical ideas in the 19th century were markedly overlapped with methodological reflection on major scientific results in biology, physics, chemistry, cosmology (which was noted by K. Marx and F. Engels). In Hegel's philosophy, the classical paradigm of rationalism received its most consistent expression, having essentially exhausted its possibilities. The further development of rationalism was associated with attempts to resolve the internal contradictions of this paradigm, as well as a reaction to criticism addressed to it by those thinkers who considered the claims of reason to dominance in all spheres of reality, to the role of the universal basis of human activity and the historical process as groundless. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard pointed out the main ways of criticizing rationalism, which were subsequently traversed and repeated by philosophers of the 20th century. (existentialism, "philosophy of life", intuitionism, pragmatism, Freudianism and neo-Freudianism, etc.). Rationalism was criticized primarily as a worldview and methodological setting, as a model example of the organization of society and the main spheres of human practice, human behavior, as a set of corresponding ideals and values. In this regard, they criticized the idea of \u200b\u200bman as a rational being par excellence, of reasonable necessity, supposedly directing the action of historical laws, of the ability of science to achieve true and objective knowledge. Giant social catastrophes of the 20th century (world wars, the extermination of peoples, the moral evolution of mankind that has come to a standstill, the danger of self-destruction of mankind, ecological collapse) began to be viewed as a consequence of rationalism's claims to a dominant role in world culture (Horkheimer, Adorno), interpreted as the realization of the inherent desire for domination and power ... In the eyes of most critics, rationalism is only a mask created by a certain cultural tradition behind which a deeply irrational human nature is hidden.
Responding to the challenge of criticism, modern rationalism opposes it with a number of counterarguments, which together represent an attempt to keep the main traditions of European and world culture from threatening them with decay. Thus, critical rationalism (Popper et al.) Focuses on the ability of reason to overcome any delusions and act as the basis of a democratic, or "open, society"; the cause of social cataclysms should be seen not in the vices of rationalism, but, on the contrary, in irrationalism, which inevitably occurs when reason retreats from its positions and loses active supporters. Neorationalism (Bashlyar and others) advocated reforming rationalism in the spirit of the requirements of modern science and technology (by integrating fundamental scientific methods and changing the basic strategy of scientific knowledge towards conceptual construction of reality, attracting productive imagination, creative intuition, metaphysical "insights"); the goal of the reform is the reintegration of rational thinking and cultural activity of a person. Some technocratic directions in social philosophy (Bell, Shelsky, Gelbraith, etc.) are associated with attempts to create a new paradigm of rationalism, in which the principles of rationality (in science, technology, economics, politics) are combined with humanistic, religious and aesthetic guidelines for human activity.
The fate of the classical and non-classical versions of rationalism is inextricably linked with the historical evolution of European (and through it - world, universal) culture. The current crisis of culture, which is likely to have reached a turning point in its history, seriously affects the foundations of rationalism, the criticism of which often takes on a countercultural character. Therefore, modern rationalism, responding to the challenge of the time, evolves to greater adaptability, assimilates the dialogical forms of interaction between cultures, refuses the excessive rigidity and a priori of its boundaries - and at the same time insists on the fundamental role of the rational principles of human existence.
Literature:
- Leibniz G.V.New Experiments on Human Understanding. - He's the same.Op. in 4 t., t. 2. M., 1983;
- Descartes R.Reasoning about the method. - He's the same.Op. in 2 volumes, t. 1. M., 1989;
- Spinoza B.Fav. prod., v. 1–2. M., 1957;
- Bashlyar G.New rationalism. M., 1987;
- In search of a theory of the development of science. M., 1982;
- Shestov L.Job is on the scales. - In the book: He is. Op. in 2 volumes, t. 2. M., 1993;
- P.P. GaidenkoEvolution of the concept of science (XVII – XVIII centuries). M., 1987;
- Shashkevich P.D.Empiricism and rationalism in the philosophy of modern times. M., 1976;
- Lecky J.History of Rationalism. L., 1865.
Rationalism I m. Direction in the theory of knowledge, recognizing reason as the decisive or only source of knowledge. || against. empiricism II m. Excessively rational attitude to life. Efremova's explanatory dictionary