Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Phenomenology of spirit, the science of the experience of consciousness
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born in 1770 in Stuttgart to a treasury official. From 1788 to 1793 he studied at the Tübingen Theological Seminary. His classmates and friends were Hölderlin and Schelling, the future poet and philosopher. Hegel preferred to work as a private tutor first in Bern, then in Frankfurt, to a spiritual career. In 1801, Hegel came to Jena, defended his dissertation “On the Orbits of the Planets” for the title of Privatdozent and began lecturing at the university. The professorial chair at the University of Jena was occupied at that time by Schelling, with whom Hegel actively collaborated on the jointly published “Critical Journal of Philosophy” and was clearly influenced by whose transcendental philosophy he was in the first years of his stay at the university.
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. Transcendental philosophy and Natural philosophy. Contemplative Self
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling was born in Leonberg in 1775 and educated in Tübingen, where he became friends with Hegel and Hölderlin. In 1793 he met Fichte, came under his influence, and published several works written in a Fichtean vein. True, they already showed a number of tendencies that later gave rise to Schelling’s original philosophy. He developed an interest in Spinoza, and Schelling later said that he saw his merit in combining Spinoza’s “realistic” doctrine of nature with Fichte’s dynamic idealism.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Science and science of sciences. Me and not-Me
Johann Gottlieb Fichte was born in Rammenau in 1762 and studied at the universities of Jena and Leipzig. Without receiving a degree, he worked for some time as a tutor in Zurich. The turning point in Fichte’s fate was his acquaintance with the works of Kant in 1790. He immediately felt like a Kantian and began to seek a meeting with the author of his favorite philosophical system. The meeting took place in July 1791, but Kant showed no enthusiasm and Fichte was disappointed. Nevertheless, he still managed to gain the approval of the famous philosopher. In 1792, he anonymously (though not intentionally) published the work “An Essay on the Critique of Every Revelation”, written in the spirit of criticism and accepted by many as the work of Kant himself.
Immanuel Kant. The spirit of critical reflection, the transcendental turn in metaphysics, the absolute value of the human person
This chapter is dedicated to one of the most influential philosophers in the history of thought, Immanuel Kant, the man who instilled in European culture the spirit of critical reflection, carried out a transcendental turn in the metaphysics of the New Age, and proclaimed the “absolute value” of the human personality. The impact of Kant’s ideas is felt by anyone who has any understanding of philosophy.
French Enlightenment. Fighting prejudice and ignorance
The 18th century is rightly called the Age of Enlightenment. The ideas of the enlighteners were spread in many European countries, as well as on the North American continent. But the philosophy of the enlighteners first took shape and found its classical expression in France. As a modern researcher rightly noted, “France was the ‘showcase’ of the European Enlightenment” (9: 9). The philosophy of the French Enlightenment was generally characterized by naturalism (the desire to explain nature based on itself). In the theory of knowledge, the enlighteners adhered to sensualism (the attitude that the source of all knowledge is sensations). In addition, the representatives of the philosophy of the Enlightenment were convinced that all human knowledge could be systematized and presented in the form of a single short encyclopedic collection (the famous “Encyclopedia, or Explanatory Dictionary of Sciences, Arts and Crafts” was published in 1751-1780). A negative attitude towards existing religions was typical of the Enlightenment ideology (although not all enlighteners were atheists).
David Hume. Study of Human Nature
David Hume was born in 1711 in Edinburgh to a family of impoverished Scottish landowners. Having lost his father early, he was left in the care of his mother, who devoted herself entirely to her children. Hume was destined to become a lawyer, but from a young age he was drawn to literary activity and philosophy. He was fond of reading moralistic works. While paying tribute to the wit of classical authors, Hume at the same time drew attention to the arbitrariness and hypothetical nature of their systems. And he became confident that he would be able to change the situation and say a new word in “moral philosophy”.
George Berkeley. To be is to be perceived
George Berkeley was born in Ireland in 1685. He came from a family of English immigrants. In 1700, he entered Trinity College in Dublin, where he was influenced by the ideas of John Locke and hated scholasticism. In 1707, he began teaching at the same college. 1707 can also be considered the beginning of his philosophical activity. Berkeley makes numerous (about 900 fragments) rough sketches, later published under the title “Philosophical Notes”. In these sketches, Berkeley, in particular, develops the theory of existence, set out in “A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge” – Berkeley’s most famous work (1710). A year before the “Treatise”, he published another influential work – “An Essay on a New Theory of Vision”. In this work, Berkeley puts forward a thesis that is paradoxical at first glance – a creature deprived of touch could not judge the real properties of space. According to Berkeley, touch is the teacher of vision.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Mathematization of human knowledge, philosophical calculus
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was born in Leipzig in 1646. From a young age, he showed an interest in science. After finishing school, he continued his education at the University of Leipzig (1661-1666) and the University of Jena, where he spent one semester in 1663. In the same year, under the supervision of J. Thomasius, Leibniz defended his scientific work “On the Principle of Individuation” (written in the spirit of nominalism and anticipating some ideas of his mature philosophy), which earned him a bachelor’s degree. In 1666 in Leipzig, he wrote his habilitative work on philosophy “On the Combinatorial Art”, in which he outlined the idea of creating mathematical logic, and in early 1667 he became a doctor of law, presenting a dissertation “On Confused Cases” at the University of Altdorf.
John Locke. Ideas and reasoning ability
John Locke was born in Wrington in 1632. After graduating from Oxford in 1656, he stayed at the university and subsequently chose the profession of a physician. A fortunate confluence of circumstances allowed him to move to London in 1667 and become the personal physician and secretary of the Earl of Shaftesbury, a member of the government, the leader of the Whig party in parliament, which, in turn, opened up a wide field for Locke to work in the field of public service, to participate in politics and scientific activities – Locke became an active member of the Royal Society, the English Academy of Sciences. Shaftesbury’s transition to open opposition to the king and his subsequent death forced Locke to emigrate to Holland in 1683. In Holland, Locke completed work on his main philosophical work, “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” and published it in England in 1690, after his return. At the same time, he anonymously published Two Treatises on Government, containing his political philosophy, and An Epistle on Toleration, which he had been working on in the preceding years. Later, he wrote Thoughts on Education (1693) and The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695). Locke died in 1704.
Nicola Malebranche. Solving the problem of the relationship between soul and body
Nicolas Malebranche was the most significant of all of Descartes’ followers; he was the systematizer and the greatest theorist of occasionalism. The starting point in the development of occasionalism (from the Latin occasio – case, occasion) was the problem of the relationship between the soul and the body. The solution to this problem proposed by Descartes did not satisfy even many of his followers, and seemed insufficiently convincing to them. The supporters of occasionalism held the opinion that natural interaction between bodily and spiritual substances was impossible. At the same time, they explained the relationship between the soul and the body by divine intervention.