The main question of Philosophy

Basic Question of Philosophy the question of the relation of the consciousness and being, of the spiritual and the material in general. This question is the starting point of philosophical inquiry. Therefore, an answer to it, whether materialistic, idealistic, or dualistic, lies at the foundation of every philosophical doctrine. F. Engels wrote: “The answers which the philosophers gave to this question split them into two great camps. Those who asserted the primacy of spirit to nature … comprised the camp of idealism. The others, who regarded nature as primary, belong to the various schools of materialism”

In formulating the basic question of philosophy, the problem of what is to be considered material and what is to be considered spiritual arises, as well as the issue of the priority of the material or the spiritual. This gives rise to numerous modifications in the answer to the basic question of philosophy, both in materialism and in idealism. Hegel, for example, gives primacy to some thought that exists outside man (the “absolute idea”).

Many pre-Marxist and non-Marxist philosophers do not consider the question of the relation of the spiritual to the material to be the basic question of philosophy. For F. Bacon the basic question of philosophy is the problem of mastering spontaneous natural forces. A. Camus, a 20th-century French philosopher, believed that the basic question is whether life is worth living. Only a few philosophers, particularly Hegel and L. Feuerbach, came close to the correct formulation of the basic question of philosophy.

The main achievements of the scientific revolution.

A scientific revolution began in the Renaissance that had a sweeping and permanent impact on virtually all branches of knowledge. The method of observation implied 2 things. First, traditional explanations of the behaviour of nature should be emperically demonstrated, since such explanations could very well be wrong. Second, new information might be available to scientists if they could penetrate beyond the superficial appearences of things. People now began to look at the heavenly bodies with a new attitude. Galileo Galilei(1564-1642) discovered the moons around Jupiter, Anton Leenwenhock(1632-1723) discovered protozoa and bacteria, Harvey(1578-1657) discovered the circulation of the blood. William Gilbert(1540-1605) wrote a major work on the magnet and Robert Boyle(1627-1681), the father of chemistry, formulated his famous law concernng the relation of temperature, volume and pressure of gases. The Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus(1473-1543) formulated a new hypothesis in his Revolutions of the Heavenly spheres(1543), which said that sun is at the center of the universe and that earth rotates daily and revolves around the sun.

Philosophy of Hegel.

Hegel's philosophy - it is speculative thought . From the perspective of Hegel's philosophical task is to know the absolute . Absolute eludes understanding. All rational thought must go into opposition . Speculative thought grasps the unity of opposites . Opposites are connected and simultaneously. Hegel says of the universal. Universal is the ratio of contrasts , it includes all the moments . If something special of universal falls , everyone lost its character and becomes special. A distinctive feature of Hegel's philosophy was that he tried, like other thinkers , using philosophical thought to comprehend the meaning of all things. On the contrary, all that is perceived by them as pure thought itself becomes philosophy . German thinker's philosophy distinguishes the fact that he, like other philosophers , not subordinate their own philosophy of independent objects (eg , God or nature). In Hegel's philosophy of God - only the thinking mind has reached its own absolute perfection . Nature is the same shell , " scales " dialectical reality. The essence of philosophy , according to a German professor , was in the consciousness , knowledge of the mind itself.