It is traditionally believed that the merit of a holistic formulation of the problem of consciousness, or rather the problem of the ideal, belongs to Plato. Before Plato such a problem did not exist in formalized form. The soul, which was reduced to the fundamental principle of the whole world, was considered the bearer of human thoughts and feelings. Atomists ( Democritus) consider the soul as a formation consisting of special rounded atoms and emptiness, i.e. as a special material formation. Developing Socrates' ideas about the innateness of true knowledge to the soul before its incarnation in the human body, Plato for the first time identifies the ideal as a special essence that does not coincide with and is opposite to the sensory, objective, material world of things. However, for the ancient Greek consciousness was not yet an independent phenomenon. The soul (consciousness) was part of the world cosmos, and absolutely accurately reproduced the surrounding phenomena. The idea of consciousness as the internal spiritual experience of a person appears in medieval philosophy, where it is analyzed through the prism of religious issues. IN modern era, when in fact there is a turn from the concept of soul to the concept of consciousness, the latter is interpreted as a person’s cognitive ability, as “I” - a personal formation. Consciousness is understood as a product of internal development (thinking in Descartes) and as a result of external influences (sensations in Locke and Hobbes). Philosophy19th century opens up new horizons of consciousness. Irrationalists Schopenhauer and Nietzsche make consciousness dependent on unconscious processes. This will be proven later Z. Freud in the psychology of the unconscious. K. Marx And F. Engels analyze the influence of social preconditions on consciousness.
The following have developed in philosophy and retain their significance in modern culture: concepts of consciousness.
1. Objective-idealistic interpretation consciousness as a superhuman, transpersonal, ultimately transcendental idea (the world of ideas in Plato; the absolute idea in Hegel; God in theologians; alien intelligence in ufologists), which underlies all forms of earthly existence. Human consciousness is a particle, product or other being of the world mind.
2. Subjective-idealistic systems consider human consciousness as a self-sufficient entity that contains a picture of itself and is the substance of the material world (R. Descartes, J. Berkeley, E. Husserl).
3. Hylozoism(materialized life) states that all matter thinks, consciousness is an attributive property of the entire material world. From the point of view of hylozoism, all matter is animate or, at least, has the prerequisites for thinking. (Thales, Anaximander, Aristotle, G. Bruno, B. Spinoza).
4. Vulgar materialism as a reductionist identification of consciousness with material formations in the human brain. Consciousness is purely material in nature, it is the result of the functioning of certain parts or formations of the brain (K. Vogt, L. Büchner, J. Moleschott).
5. Sociologization of consciousness. Consciousness is placed in absolute dependence on the external, including social, environment (J. Locke, Voltaire, P.A. Holbach).
6. Dialectical materialism approaches the study of consciousness as a complex, internally contradictory phenomenon of the unity of the material and ideal, objective and subjective, biological and social (K. Marx, F. Engels).
Plato's Doctrine of Consciousness
A.I.YAKOVLEV Doctor of Philosophy, Professor
In philosophy, the idea has long been established that Plato created the doctrine of ideas. In fact, it would be more correct to call his philosophy the doctrine of consciousness. Ideas occupy one of the central places in his philosophy, but no more.
The doctrine of consciousness was developed by him in cosmological, mythological and philosophical terms. Plato is at the same time a naturalist, a myth-maker, and a philosopher. In the early, or “Socratic” period, he was fascinated by the infinity and immortality of the transcendental Cosmos, transferring its main characteristics to the theory of ideas. He retained his interest in the Cosmos throughout his life. In his mature years, he created the fundamental work Timaeus, which can rightfully be called the forerunner of the Christian Bible. The entire creation of the world and man was taken by Christian theologians from Timaeus. Shortly before his death (347 BC), he wrote his famous social -philosophical work “The State”, in which he singles out a special 6th book, where he reveals his basic ideas about consciousness. Plato became the world’s first theorist of consciousness in the history of philosophy.
The wealth of Plato's philosophical heritage is represented primarily by the abundance of theoretical developments and methods for their implementation. In Russian literature, the greatest attention is paid to his doctrine of ideas. This teaching begins already in the early works, Cratylus and Meno. Here he outlines the fundamental theses of his theory of ideas: there are two areas in the world - the area of visible things, continuous, changeable and fluid, and the area of eternal self-identical and self-moving existence. The Meno substantiates the idea of remembering innate truths. The theory of ideas received further development and in-depth elaboration in the works of the 60-40s. ("Phaedo", "Phaedrus"). The predominant method of the early period is mythological. The main works are “The Republic” (especially the 6th book), “Theaetetus”, “Parmenides”, “Sophist”. In the final period of his life, Plato worked on the creation of cosmological theories. In Timaeus, he systematically sets out his ideas about the origin of the Universe, the Earth, the sky, the planets of the solar system, the origin of life on Earth, and the creation of man. It also describes in detail the anatomical structure of a person, the role of the brain in the emergence and functioning of consciousness. Mythological ideas are closely intertwined with natural science ones.
It cannot be said that Plato created his theories at certain periods of time. Plots, large fragments of the theory of ideas, consciousness, cosmology, the idea of good, truth, the idea of movement and self-propulsion as the source of life, development in general and consciousness in particular, the process of cognition, structure, levels of consciousness, classification of consciousness move from one book to another, belonging to different periods, enriching, developing them, subjecting them in some cases to critical analysis.
The universal object of Plato's philosophy is the limitless world. Just as the Cosmos is limitless, so is the knowledge of the visible world. The whole world is divided into two parts: the visible, including the entire sky; and the transcendental, celestial world, invisible, inaccessible to knowledge, amenable only to intelligibility. Plato teaches “that there is an eternal, non-originating being and that there is an eternally arising, but never existing. That which is comprehended through reflection and explanation is obviously an eternally identical being; and that which is subject to opinion and unreasonable sensation , arises and dies, but never really exists" (Plato. Timaeus // Works in Z t. M., 1971, vol. 3, part 1, 28 a)1. The characteristic of the transcendental region is curious. It is occupied by a colorless, without outline, intangible essence, truly existing, visible only to the helmsman of the soul - the mind" (Phaedrus, 247 pp). These same qualities are also inherent in ideas: a person does not see them, does not feel them, does not touch them, but they live in his soul, control the entire material and spiritual life of a person. Ideas are ethereal entities that live their own independent lives, not subordinate to anyone. The permanent residence of ideas is the sky, where the gods live, led by Zeus himself.
Every day they go out in carriages drawn by hard-to-control horses. On the celestial ridge, they get out of their carriages and survey the space above the sky, above the sky, and below the sky. The horses move unevenly: some rush into the heavenly heights, others run along the heavenly ridge, others break down and find themselves in the heavenly world. Horses trample each other and ideas, maiming some of them (see ibid., 247 p.).
The further fate of the soul is determined by how much of the truth it was able to see during such travels and whether it died during a collision of carts. “A soul that has seen even an edge of truth will be prosperous until the next cycle, and if it is able to do this always, it will always be unharmed...” (ibid., 248 b). “The soul that has seen most of all ends up in the fruit of a future admirer of wisdom and beauty, or a person devoted to the Muses and love; the second after it ends up in the fruit of a king who observes the laws, in a warlike man or
capable of managing; the third - into the fruit of a statesman, owner, breadwinner; the fourth - into the fruit of a person who diligently engages in exercises or healing of the body; the fifth in order will lead the life of a soothsayer or a person involved in the sacraments; the sixth will pursue asceticism in poetry or some other area of imitation; the seventh to be a craftsman or farmer; the eighth will be a sophist or demagogue; the ninth is a tyrant. In all these callings, the one who lives, observing justice, will receive a better share, and whoever violates it will receive a worse one" (ibid., 248 c, ^ e).
Souls live in people's bodies for up to ten thousand years, then they leave them. Some return earlier, after three thousand years. Some are punished by a court verdict and go to underground dungeons... In the thousandth year, both of them appear to receive a new destiny for themselves and choose a second life for themselves - whoever wants what. The soul can move into an animal and reincarnate into a person (see ibid., 249 a, b).
As you can see, souls are independent entities, lead an independent life, choose a fruit suitable for them, live in it for thousands of years, then leave the soul in order to move into a new fruit - an animal or a person - after a few thousand years. In the latter case, an echo of the influence of Indian philosophy on the transformation of souls is felt. In this purely mythical story, Plato goes “to the ground”: “a person must comprehend the truth in accordance with an idea emanating from many sensory perceptions, but brought together by reason. This is a recollection of what our soul once saw when she accompanied God, looked down on what we now call being, and rose to true being" (ibid., 249 p.). Here we sense Plato's transition from the mythological paradigm to the method of a common-sense philosopher who understands that our ideas come from many sensory perceptions, and not from invisible, intangible ideas.
The cosmic world is an endless and immortal Universe. The space of the Universe is filled with planets (Earth, Uranus, Venus, Neptune and others, which move around the Earth in circular orbits), as well as the dazzlingly bright Sun.
Plato's major achievement in the analysis of the Cosmos and the transcendental world is his discovery of the movement and self-motion of all things, all areas of the visible and invisible world, which is the cause and source of their life. This idea is especially clearly and consistently conveyed in the Phaedrus: “Every soul is immortal. After all, what is eternally moving is immortal. Only that which moves itself, since it does not decrease, never ceases to move and serves as the source of the beginning of the movement of everything else that is moving... It (movement. - AYA.) can neither die nor arise, otherwise the whole sky and the whole Earth, having collapsed, would stop and come out of nowhere
would be to take on something that, giving them movement, would lead to a new emergence" (ibid., 245 c, ^ e).
From this conclusion about the self-motion of the world, Plato draws a conclusion about the immortality and indestructibility of the soul: “Once it has become clear that everything that is moved by itself is immortal, everyone without hesitation will say the same about the essence and concept of the soul. After all, every body moved from the outside is inanimate, and that which is moved from within, from itself, is animated, because such is the nature of the soul, and that which moves itself is nothing other than the soul, it necessarily follows that the soul is ungenerate and immortal" (ibid.). , 245 f; 246 a).
Here Plato, for the first time in the history of world philosophy, reveals the dialectic of consciousness (soul). The soul is ungenerate and immortal, because it has self-movement from itself, from within. Movement is the source of her eternal life: while she moves, she lives, she is immortal.
Modern philosophers, relying on Plato's teaching about ideas, talk about the dialectical nature of their movement, ideas and consciousness, somehow in passing, without concentrating attention on this truly fundamental point. In movement and self-motion is the root of Plato’s teaching about ideas and consciousness. Their immortality is caused by nothing other than their self-propulsion.
But what drives the movement itself? Plato deepens his teaching further. This cause of movement and self-propulsion is the idea of good, in the image of which God appears. This is not about mono-deity, but probably about God, who is in charge of ideas and consciousness. The pagan Plato did not reach monotheism in his development.
Good is the highest knowledge. But it itself has several levels. There is a good that causes pleasure. This is not the main good: after all, pleasures can also be bad. The highest level of good is in knowledge of the world, its comprehension and explanation, in truth. At the same time, the good for Plato is not some kind of abstraction. The good is concrete: "... as for the good, no one here is satisfied with the possession of an imaginary one, but everyone seeks the real good, and everyone neglects the imaginary..." (State, book U1, 505 a, b, c, ^ e) . B
YAKOVLEV ALEXANDER ILYICH - 2013
Plato's works belong to the classical period of ancient philosophy. Their peculiarity lies in the combination of problems and solutions that were previously developed by their predecessors. For this Plato, Democritus and Aristotle are called taxonomists. Plato the philosopher was also an ideological opponent of Democritus and the founder of the objective.
Biography
The boy we know as Plato was born in 427 BC and named Aristocles. The city of Athens became the place of birth, but scientists are still arguing about the year and city of the philosopher’s birth. His father was Ariston, whose roots went back to King Codra. The mother was a very wise woman and bore the name of Periktion; she was a relative of the philosopher Solon. His relatives were prominent ancient Greek politicians, and the young man could have followed their path, but such activities “for the good of society” were abhorrent to him. All he enjoyed by birthright was the opportunity to receive a good education - the best available at that time in Athens.
The youthful period of Plato's life is poorly studied. There is not enough information to understand how its formation took place. The life of the philosopher from the moment he met Socrates has been studied more thoroughly. At that time, Plato was nineteen years old. Being a famous teacher and philosopher, he would hardly have taken up teaching an unremarkable young man similar to his peers, but Plato was already a prominent figure: he took part in the national Pythian and Isthmian sports games, was involved in gymnastics and strength sports, was fond of music and poetry. Plato is the author of epigrams, works related to the heroic epic and dramatic genre.
The biography of the philosopher also contains episodes of his participation in hostilities. He lived during the Peloponnesian War and fought at Corinth and Tanagra, practicing philosophy between battles.
Plato became the most famous and beloved of Socrates' students. The work “Apology” is imbued with respect for the teacher, in which Plato vividly painted a portrait of the teacher. After the death of the latter from voluntarily taking poison, Plato left the city and went to the island of Megara, and then to Cyrene. There he began to take lessons from Theodore, studying the basics of geometry.
After completing his studies there, the philosopher moved to Egypt to study mathematical science and astronomy from the priests. In those days, adopting the experience of the Egyptians was popular among philosophers - Herodotus, Solon, Democritus and Pythagoras resorted to this. In this country, Plato's idea of the division of people into classes was formed. Plato was convinced that a person should fall into one caste or another according to his abilities, and not his origin.
Returning to Athens, at the age of forty, he opened his own school, which was called the Academy. It belonged to the most influential philosophical educational institutions not only in Greece, but throughout antiquity, where the students were Greeks and Romans.
The peculiarity of Plato’s works is that, unlike his teacher, he told his thoughts in the form of dialogues. When teaching, he used the method of questions and answers more often than monologues.
Death overtook the philosopher at the age of eighty. He was buried next to his brainchild - the Academy. Later, the tomb was dismantled and today no one knows where his remains are buried.
Plato's ontology
Being a taxonomist, Plato synthesized the achievements made by philosophers before him into a large, holistic system. He became the founder of idealism, and his philosophy touched on many issues: knowledge, language, education, political system, art. The main concept is idea.
According to Plato, an idea should be understood as the true essence of any object, its ideal state. To comprehend an idea, it is necessary to use not the senses, but the intellect. The idea, being the form of a thing, is inaccessible to sensory knowledge; it is incorporeal.
The concept of idea is the basis of anthropology and Plato. The soul consists of three parts:
- reasonable (“golden”);
- strong-willed principle (“silver”);
- the lustful part (“copper”).
The proportions in which people are endowed with the listed parts may vary. Plato suggested that they should form the basis of the social structure of society. And society itself should ideally have three classes:
- rulers;
- guards;
- breadwinners
The last class was supposed to include traders, artisans and peasants. According to this structure, each person, a member of society, would do only what he has a predisposition to do. The first two classes do not need to create a family or own private property.
Plato's ideas about two types stand out. According to them, the first type is a world that is eternal in its immutability, represented by genuine entities. This world exists regardless of the circumstances of the external, or material world. The second type of being is an average between two levels: ideas and matters. In this world, an idea exists on its own, and real things become shadows of such ideas.
In the described worlds there are masculine and feminine principles. The first is active, and the second is passive. A thing materialized in the world has matter and idea. It owes its unchanging, eternal part to the latter. Sensible things are distorted reflections of their ideas.
Doctrine of the soul
Discussing the human soul in his teaching, Plato provides four proofs in favor of its immortality:
- Cyclicality in which opposites exist. They cannot exist without each other. Since the presence of more implies the presence of less, the existence of death speaks to the reality of immortality.
- Knowledge is actually memories from past lives. Those concepts that people are not taught - about beauty, faith, justice - are eternal, immortal and absolute, known to the soul already at the moment of birth. And since the soul has an idea of such concepts, it is immortal.
- The duality of things leads to a contrast between the immortality of souls and the mortality of bodies. The body is part of the natural shell, and the soul is part of the divine in man. The soul develops and learns, the body wants to satisfy base feelings and instincts. Since the body cannot live in the absence of the soul, the soul can be separate from the body.
- Every thing has an immutable nature, that is, white will never become black, and even will never become odd. Therefore, death is always a process of decay that is not inherent in life. Since the body decays, its essence is death. Being the opposite of death, life is immortal.
These ideas are described in detail in such works of the ancient thinker as “Phaedrus” and “The Republic”.
Doctrine of knowledge
The philosopher was convinced that only individual things can be comprehended by the senses, while essences are cognized by reason. Knowledge is neither sensations, nor correct opinions, nor certain meanings. True knowledge is understood as knowledge that has penetrated into the ideological world.
Opinion is the part of things perceived by the senses. Sensory knowledge is impermanent, since the things subject to it are variable.
Part of the doctrine of cognition is the concept of recollection. In accordance with it, human souls remember ideas known to it before the moment of reunification with a given physical body. The truth is revealed to those who know how to close their ears and eyes and remember the divine past.
A person who knows something has no need for knowledge. And those who know nothing will not find what they should look for.
Plato's theory of knowledge comes down to anamnesis - the theory of memory.
Plato's dialectic
Dialectics in the works of the philosopher has a second name - “the science of existence.” Active thought, which is devoid of sensory perception, has two paths:
- ascending;
- descending.
The first path involves moving from one idea to another until the discovery of a higher idea. Having touched it, the human mind begins to descend in the opposite direction, moving from general ideas to specific ones.
Dialectics affects being and non-being, one and many, rest and movement, identical and different. The study of the latter sphere led Plato to the derivation of the formula of matter and idea.
Political and legal doctrine of Plato
Understanding the structure of society and the state led to Plato paying a lot of attention to them in his teachings and systematizing them. The real problems of people, rather than natural philosophical ideas about the nature of the state, were placed at the center of political and legal teaching.
Plato calls the ideal type of state that existed in ancient times. Then people did not feel the need for shelter and devoted themselves to philosophical research. Afterwards, they faced a struggle and began to need means for self-preservation. At the moment when cooperative settlements were formed, the state arose as a way to introduce a division of labor to satisfy the diverse needs of people.
Plato calls a negative state a state that has one of four forms:
- timocracy;
- oligarchy;
- tyranny;
- democracy.
In the first case, power is held in the hands of people who have a passion for luxury and personal enrichment. In the second case, democracy develops, but the difference between the rich and poor classes is colossal. In a democracy, the poor rebel against the power of the rich, and tyranny is a step towards the degeneration of the democratic form of statehood.
Plato's philosophy of politics and law also identified two main problems of all states:
- incompetence of senior officials;
- corruption.
Negative states are based on material interests. For a state to become ideal, the moral principles by which citizens live must be at the forefront. Art must be censored, atheism must be punished by death. State control must be exercised over all spheres of human life in such a utopian society.
Ethical views
The ethical concept of this philosopher is divided into two parts:
- social ethics;
- individual or personal ethics.
Individual ethics is inseparable from the improvement of morality and intellect through the harmonization of the soul. The body is opposed to it as related to the world of feelings. Only the soul allows people to touch the world of immortal ideas.
The human soul has several sides, each of which is characterized by a specific virtue, briefly it can be represented as follows:
- the reasonable side - wisdom;
- strong-willed – courage;
- affective – moderation.
The listed virtues are innate and are steps on the path to harmony. Plato sees the meaning of people's lives in the ascent to an ideal world,
Plato's students developed his ideas and passed them on to subsequent philosophers. Touching upon the spheres of public and individual life, Plato formulated many laws of the development of the soul and substantiated the idea of its immortality.
UNIVERSUM OF PLATO'S THOUGHT V
B. R. Gatiyatullin
PLATO'S IDEOLOGY:
AN ATTEMPT AT A RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION OF THE TEACHING ABOUT IDEAS
Consciousness is a being that manifests itself in diverse ways in its abilities. Among them, two cognitive abilities are traditionally distinguished - feeling and thinking. Since each special ability of consciousness corresponds to its own special object, a distinction is made between the object of thought and the object of feeling. (By “feeling” we always mean external feeling, sensation, and not internal feeling, affect, passion.) This, in particular, means that every thing in the world as an object of consciousness differs within itself into the side of thought and the side of feeling. In turn, the presence of the possibility of distinguishing thoughts and feelings in a thing also implies the presence of the possibility of such positions of consciousness in which feeling and thought are not given in mutual connection in a thing, but independently, separately from each other. Indeed, we observe that the abilities of thinking and feeling are independent, independent of each other: both pure thinking, without direct recourse to perception, and simple feeling without thinking are possible. Nevertheless, actually distinguishing thought and feeling in the object of consciousness is not an easy matter.
Historically, we find the first attempt to understand this issue in Plato. In this regard, the greatest interest is the beginning of the dialogue "Parmenides", where the possibility of the separate existence of ideas is discussed, and how one should in this case understand the attachment of things to the ideas from which they receive their names. A reconstruction of Plato's thinking yields the following reasoning. The independence or separate existence of the idea of each thing from the thing itself can be understood in two ways: either in the material sense - ideas are adjacent to things, or in the sense that ideas are something fundamentally immaterial - thought. In the first case, a semantic error of regression to infinity occurs. Indeed, looking around the idea and other things involved in it, which are side by side, and therefore comparable to it, we get another, new idea, and so on ad infinitum. (Infinite regress here is guaranteed by the fact that every time we receive an idea as something real). Certain difficulties arise in this case with the connection of things to ideas. It is not clear, in fact, whether they are attached to a part or to the whole idea (an idea is something material by assumption and, therefore, such reasoning is quite appropriate), and there are no other methods of attachment (since the part and the whole constitute a complete conceptual division). The method of assimilation to an idea-model as a concrete solution to this question is again fraught with regression to infinity.
In the second case, when an idea is thought of as a thought located in our soul, the indicated unpleasantness of regression into infinity does not arise, since a thing and an idea as a thought are inconsistent, and every common thing between a thing and an idea-thought is the same idea-thought. Despite this, Plato himself finds two objections to this idea of ideas: 1) if an idea is a thought, and all other things are involved in ideas, then “either each thing consists of thoughts and thinks everything, or, although it is a thought, it is devoid of thinking... And this makes no sense"; 2) the idea cannot be in us, i.e. in our soul, because otherwise it would not be independent. Let us examine in detail the validity of each argument separately.
What does independence of ideas mean in the second objection? Plato explains that there is a divine existence of ideas in themselves, in which what we call “ideas” are only their similarities. (Because if ideas were in us, they could not exist independently.) Just like ideas themselves, “the essence is that they exist only in relation to one another, only in this relation do they have essence, and not in in relation to [their] similarities that are in us... In turn, these [their] similarities that are in us, of the same name [with ideas], also exist only in relation to each other, and not in relation to ideas...". Independence in this case means that we are in no way involved in these ideas themselves and therefore they are unknowable to us. This is analogous to Kant's assumption of transcendent things-in-themselves, the existence of which is necessarily conceivable, although they are unknowable. For Plato, like Kant, there is no formal-logical contradiction here; however, such a conceivable unknowable independence of ideas cannot serve as an objection.
Let us now turn to the first objection. The following simple syllogism is constructed: every idea is a thought (by assumption), every thing is an idea (due to the fact that things are involved in ideas), therefore, every thing is a thought. According to Plato, this conclusion turns out to be unacceptable either because “thoughts should not arise in any other place, but only in the soul,” i.e. thought is not a thing that is something outside the soul; or because there is a thing - a thought, devoid of thinking, then this contradicts the fact that every “thought is a thought about something.” (Proof by reduction to the absurd.) And yet the reasoning is not flawless. The second premise of a syllogism is not a logical relation of predication (a logical relation of subordination or identity), but has a completely different nature. In order to understand this, it is necessary to delve a little deeper into the problem.
The fact is that for Plato the term “idea” has a double meaning. On the one hand, the idea is what is directly visible in a thing, its image or eidos. On the other hand, by “idea” we mean something that can also be thought independently of the direct vision of a thing - an idea as such or a concept. An example of the first is the direct, sensory image of any thing, an example of the second is the idea of “greatness”, the idea of “fair”, etc. It is obvious that if an idea is a thought, then according to the first meaning of the term “idea”, every thing really is a thought, consists of thoughts (since a thing is always given only through its image), and according to the second meaning, every idea as a thought is a concept, is in the soul is the thought of something. Consequently, it is also true that Plato’s proof is obtained only if this distinction is not first made.
Plato's failure to distinguish between an idea as an image and an idea as a concept, or, in other words, eidos and the idea itself, has deep epistemological roots. Both the image and the concept have the nature of universality, but in different senses. The image is identical to itself due to the fact that consciousness, as a universal in itself, cannot perceive something individual in the stream of other sensually individual ones. This is well shown in Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit” in the section “Sensory Reliability”, the whole meaning and pathos of which lies in the proof that the world in its sensory singularity cannot directly become our knowledge.
In sensory certainty, a single consciousness strives to perceive a single “it.” However, experience or reflection regarding one’s knowledge establishes that the object of consciousness is not a single “this”, but a universal “this”, “this”, which is indifferent to the individuality of what acts as “this”. Thus, “day” gives way to “night”, one “this” gives way to another, but that which is preserved, which is the true meaning of consciousness in sensory certainty, is “this”, which is indifferent to the change of day and night and is equally day when day comes, and night comes when night comes. (Hegel’s example of the change of day and night is an elementary example of a sensory flow. One truth (day) replaces another truth (night) in the order of natural necessity, thereby giving consciousness the opportunity to establish the untruth of its original idea of truth in sensory certainty as something individual .) For Hegel, this phenomenologically first universality of consciousness, however, is not the universality of the concept. The universality of “this” is a sensory universality, conditioned by the fact that consciousness cannot perceive, hold the “this” point in the space-time flow of other “this” points (the point does not exist), but, of necessity, perceives something quite extended and in- self-identical in time (in the constitution of an image we are primarily interested in the temporal form of “this” as “now”). This happens because the singularity of consciousness and the singularity of “this” are different in meaning. If Hegel traditionally constructs the singularity of “this” as a point in the sensory flow of other “this” points, then the singularity of “this” or consciousness has a different meaning, namely, the determination that it is empirical, and not universal consciousness. But whether consciousness is empirical or transcendental, it invariably remains true that it is something equal to itself, self-identical, persisting in the temporal flow of phenomena. Moreover, it is precisely the universal nature of consciousness that constitutes the sensory flow itself, the very temporality of the world, since consciousness is that stable unity, that unchanging point of reference, relative to which any change is possible. The image is only such a sensual universality.
The universality of the concept is another matter. A concept is initially something only thinkable. Thought is found outside the limitations of space and time, and its universality is the universality of a means that can be applied to various sensory material (for-another-being of a concept), and can be used outside of this relationship to something else, but in itself, for the purposes of theoretical reasoning ( being-for-itself).
As a result, we have the following picture. Consciousness, as something universal, holds the image as something sensually universal - it is an object of feelings, at the same time it thinks about the image, using concepts - this is an object of thought. Since each ability - thinking and feeling - acts independently of each other, it is clear how it is possible to simultaneously hold an object sensually and at the same time think about it. If consciousness moves away from the immediacy of an object, then it loses the image, but at the same time retains its concept or thought about it. So, we see, for example, something (a chair). We always see it, of necessity, in profile in the form of some kind of image; this image is formed for us into a “chair”, if at the same time we have in mind the concept of “chair”.
Returning to Plato, the failure of the first objection can now be explained in detail. If the “idea” is understood in the proof as an image and, therefore, according to the assumption, every image as a thought, then it is indeed true that every thing is a thought. (Although this statement requires additional justification.) However, it is not clear in what sense such a thought is a thought about something, and moreover, the thesis of the proof is not then unacceptable or absurd, since in this case there is nothing at all but a thought. If “idea” is understood as a concept, then the statement that every thing is a thought is simply false. Thus, in any case, the proof fails, which means that the very first objection is removed.
So, Plato’s teaching about ideas has the possibility of a correct epistemological interpretation, without mythological digressions. The reconstruction we carried out is proof of this.
Gatiyatullin Bulat Rustamovich - graduate student of the Department of Philosophy of Science and Technology, Faculty of Philosophy, St. Petersburg State University
According to Plato, individual things are comprehended through the senses, but the mind comprehends not individual things, but essences, which means these essences are ideas that form the basis of things.
Consideration of an idea as a real being and as a concept about the essence of an object makes it possible to answer the question about the process of cognition and its essence. Plato believes that knowledge cannot be reduced either to sensation, or to correct opinion, or to the combination of correct opinion with meaning. True knowledge is knowledge that penetrates into the world of ideas. Knowledge, therefore, belongs to the world of ideas - “true” being is the subject of true knowledge. Opinions relate to the world of sensory things, since sensory individual things are changeable and are therefore the subject of opinion, not knowledge. Sensory knowledge cannot be genuine knowledge, since it is nothing without understanding, just as, for example, we do not understand foreign speech, although we hear.
In Plato's theory of knowledge, his concept of memory plays an important role. In his opinion, the soul recalls ideas that it knew during that period of its existence when it had not yet united with the body. The more the soul has been in the next world, the more ideas it remembers, and therefore Plato advised, in order to know the truth, to “close your eyes and plug your ears” and trust your soul, which remembers your divine past.
The paradox of knowledge - if you know something, then why do you need to know it? If you don't know anything, how will you find what to look for?
Thus, Plato's theory of knowledge is anamnesis- theory of recollection.
In support of his theory of memory, in the dialogue “Meno,” Plato cites a conversation between Socrates and a young man who had never studied mathematics before, but after correctly asking questions, came to his own formulation of the Pythagorean theorem.
Thus, in the theory of knowledge, Plato clearly distinguished between knowledge and opinion; this distinction was of great importance to him. The first relates to knowledge of ideas, the second is associated with the sensory world. Knowledge leads to absolute truth; opinion concerns only the external side of things.
Plato calls everything stated above dialectics, by which he understands logic, the doctrine of knowledge, the doctrine of method, the doctrine of being, ideas and their kinds, as well as rational knowledge of these truly existing kinds of real being.
Plato's dialectic is based on the ascent and descent of ideas. The ascent goes from human opinion and sensory things to the general concept - the idea, and the descent, on the contrary, from the general to the particular.
Plato's cosmology
In his philosophical teaching, Plato identifies a “triad”. Everything that exists is made up of three substances: “one”, “mind”, “soul”.
The world of ideas and the natural world are embraced by a single and divine purposeful principle. “The One” is the basis of all being, has no signs (no beginning, no end, no parts, no integrity, no form, no content, etc. The One is above all being, above all thinking, above all sensation, It is the origin of everything - both ideas and things, phenomena and properties (both everything good from the point of view of man, and everything bad).
The cosmos has a spherical shape, it was created and finite. Demiurge(creator, divine mind) gave the world a certain order. "Mind" comes from the "one", is divided with it and is opposed to it. Mind is the essence of all things and is the generalization of all life on Earth.
The world is a living being, it has a soul that is not located in itself, but surrounds the entire world, consisting of the elements of earth, water, fire and air. “The soul rules everything that is in heaven, on earth and in the sea with the help of its own movements” (Laws. 896e). “Soul” is a mobile substance that unites and connects “one - nothing” and “mind - all living things”, and also connects all things and all phenomena with each other. The world soul is dominated by numerical relations and harmony. Moreover, the world soul also has knowledge. The world forms a series of circles: the circle of fixed stars, the circle of planets. So, the structure of the world is as follows: the divine mind (demiurge), the world soul and the world body (cosmos). Living beings are created by God. God, according to Plato, creates souls, which, after the death of the body where they live, move into other bodies. Thus, according to Plato, the soul can be the world soul and the soul of an individual person.
The doctrine of the soul.
Plato's epistemological and ontological views are closely related to his understanding of the soul, which seems to him immaterial, immortal and existing forever. The human soul is part of the world soul. She is the cause of herself. All foreknowledge is contained in it. Foreknowledge is knowledge about the essence of things. As already mentioned, the soul is imprisoned in our body, but is capable of reincarnation (metapsychosis). It has a hierarchy and is divided into three levels or parts: the rational divine soul is immortal; the bodily part is mortal; the lustful part of the soul is black.
Plato's theory of the state.
A large place in Plato’s philosophical worldview is occupied by his views on society and the state. Plato can be considered one of the first ancient Greek philosophers to present his understanding of the state in a systematic form. Plato's focus is not on abstract natural philosophical propositions about the principles of nature, but on human problems. Plato devotes two of his largest works to socio-political issues - “The State” and “Laws”. These questions are also addressed in the dialogues "Politician" and "Crito".
Plato draws an ideal type of state that supposedly existed in ancient times: people were born from the earth, did not need a home, and were engaged in philosophy. Then the need for struggle and self-preservation arose. The ideal time is becoming a thing of the past. A state emerges - a joint settlement. It arises as a result of the diversity of human needs and the resulting social division of labor.
Plato contrasted this ideal type with a negative type of state, which, in his opinion, can exist in four forms: timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, tyranny. Timocracy is a form of government in which power is held by the ambitious and the passion for wealth flourishes, while the lifestyle becomes luxurious. After timocracy comes oligarchy, in which power is vested in the few who dominate the many. It is in the hands of the rich, who gradually waste their property, turning into poor people and completely useless members of society. Oligarchy in its development leads to democracy, in which power is in the hands of the majority, but the opposition between rich and poor becomes even more acute. Democracy arises from the revolt of the poor against the rich, with the rich being destroyed or driven out and power distributed among the remaining members of society. Democracy is followed by tyranny, which is the result of the degeneration of democracy. According to Plato, an excess of something leads to its opposite. Therefore, an excess of freedom, as Plato believes, leads to slavery; tyranny is born from democracy as the highest freedom. First, when tyranny is established, the tyrant “smiles and hugs everyone he meets, does not call himself a tyrant, promises a lot in particular and in general, frees people from debts, distributes lands to the people and those close to him, and pretends to be merciful and meek towards everyone.” (State. VIII. 566). Gradually, the tyrant destroys all his opponents, “until he has neither friends nor enemies left from whom any benefit could be expected” (Ibid. 567b).
In contrast to all negative forms of the state, Plato puts forward his project of an ideal state, which was the first social utopia in the history of society. This ideal state, according to Plato, should be based on the principle of justice. Based on justice, each citizen in this state must occupy his own special position in accordance with the division of labor, although the difference between individual groups of people in Plato is determined by moral inclinations. The lowest social class consists of producers - these are farmers, artisans, merchants, then there are warrior-guards and rulers-philosophers.
The lower social class, according to Plato, also has a lower moral character. These three classes correspond to the three parts of the soul that were mentioned earlier. Rulers are characterized by the rational part of the soul, warriors are characterized by will and noble passion, producers are characterized by sensuality and drive. Thus, Plato places the moral qualities of warriors and rulers above the moral qualities of producers.
An ideal state system, according to Plato, has the features of a moral and political organization and is aimed at solving important state problems. He includes the following tasks among them: protecting the state from enemies, systematically supplying citizens, developing the spiritual culture of society. According to Plato, the fulfillment of these tasks consists in the implementation of the idea of good as an idea that rules the world.
An ideal, and thereby good, state has the following four virtues, three of which are inherent in the three classes of society, respectively, namely: wisdom is inherent in rulers and philosophers, courage in warriors and guards, moderation in productive workers. The fourth virtue is characteristic of the entire state and is expressed in the fact that “everyone does his own thing.” Plato believes that “doing a lot,” that is, the desire to engage in activities that are not typical of one’s class, causes enormous damage to the state. Plato considers an aristocratic republic to be the best form of government. The work of slaves, usually barbarians captured, is allowed and welcomed.
A characteristic feature of negative types of state, according to Plato, is the presence of material interests. Therefore, Plato brings to the fore in his ideal state a moral principle, which should be expressed in the correct lifestyle of all citizens of this society. In Plato's project of an ideal state, the life of its citizens is largely regulated. For the upper classes, Plato does not allow private property; it is possible only for the lower, productive class. They live together, the state supports them.
For the upper classes, Plato also does not allow the existence of a family. He believes that marriages are possible only under state supervision and only for the birth of children. Children are taken away from their parents and raised in special institutions. Boys and girls receive the same education, since, according to Plato, a woman is fully capable of performing the same social functions as a man. Plato's social utopia, aimed at making the entire state happy, ultimately sacrifices the individual. The state is happy as a whole, and not in individual parts. According to Plato, the ideal state consists of people who perform their social functions without taking into account their personal interests and needs. Thus, the cohesion of the state is ensured through severe restrictions and impoverishment of people’s personal lives, and the complete subordination of the individual to the state.
Plato envisaged a strict ideological dictatorship of the authorities. “Godlessness” was punishable by death. All art was subject to strict censorship, which examined each work from the point of view of whether it was aimed at promoting moral excellence in the interests of the state.
“The most important thing here is the following,” writes Plato, “no one should ever be left without a boss - neither man nor woman. Neither in serious studies nor in games should anyone accustom themselves to act at their own discretion...
One must rule over others and oneself be under their command" (Laws. XII. 942a, c).
Plato's state is a theoretical scheme of a utopian state in which the life of society is subject to strict state control.
Conclusions:
* for the first time left a collection of fundamental works;
* laid the foundation for idealism as a major philosophical trend (the so-called “Plato’s line” - the opposite of the materialistic “Democritus’ line”);
* for the first time, the problems of not only nature, but also society - the state, laws, etc. - were deeply studied;
* laid the foundations of conceptual thinking, made an attempt to identify philosophical categories (being - becoming, eternal - temporary, stationary - moving, indivisible - divisible, etc.);
* created a philosophical school (Academy), which existed for about 1000 years.
The main tenets of his idealistic teaching are the following:
* material things are changeable, impermanent and cease to exist over time;
* the surrounding world (“the world of things”) is also temporary and changeable and in reality does not exist as an independent substance, but is only a reflection of pure ideas, and a thing is a material reflection of the original idea (eidos) of a given thing.
* in reality there are only pure (incorporeal) ideas (eidos), which are true, eternal and permanent;
In matters of epistemology (the study of knowledge), Plato proceeds from the idealistic picture of the world he created:
* there is no point in knowing the world of sensory things, since it is constantly changing;
* since the material world is just a reflection of the “world of ideas”, then the subject of knowledge should be, first of all, “pure ideas”, the world of ideas;
* “pure ideas” cannot be known with the help of sensory knowledge (this type of knowledge does not provide reliable knowledge, but only opinion - “doxa”), they can only be known by reason;
* only prepared people can engage in higher spiritual activity - educated intellectuals, philosophers, therefore, only they are able to see and realize “pure ideas”.
* cognition is the process of recollection by the soul of what it saw in the world of ideas before it entered the human body.
Plato was the first in the history of philosophy to explicitly raise the question of the relationship of spirit to matter and consider it from different positions. He believed that first there must arise something that moves itself. And this is nothing more than the soul, the mind.
* distinguishes between the soul of the world and the soul of an individual person
* the soul of a person (thing) is part of the world soul;
* the soul is immortal;
* when a person dies, only the body dies, but the soul, having responded in the underworld for its earthly actions, acquires a new bodily shell;
* constancy of the soul and change of bodily forms is a natural law of the Cosmos.
Plato puts forward his own plan for government, according to which:
* the entire population of the state (policy) is divided into three classes - philosophers, warriors, workers;
* workers (peasants and artisans) engage in rough physical labor, create material wealth, and can own private property to a limited extent;
* warriors engage in physical exercise, train, maintain order in the state, and, if necessary, participate in military operations;
* philosophers (sages) - develop philosophical theories, understand the world, teach, govern the state;
* philosophers and warriors should not have private property;
* residents of the state spend their free time together, eat together (have meals), relax together;
* there is no marriage, all wives and children are common;
