Introduction

1. Creative and life path Jose Ortega y Gasset

2. "Rise of the Masses" by José Ortega y Gasset

3. Basic philosophical views

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955), Spanish philosopher and publicist, representative of the philosophy of life and the philosophy of anthropology. He saw the true reality that gives meaning to human existence in history, interpreting it in the spirit of existentialism as a spiritual experience of direct experience. One of the main representatives of the concepts of "mass society", mass culture ("The Revolt of the Masses", 1929-30) and the theory of the elite. In aesthetics, he acted as a theorist of modernism ("Dehumanization of Art", 1925).

From a young age, he took a place at the left of the center of the political spectrum, constantly and consistently defending liberal democratic values. The philosophical interest of Ortega is the construction of a bridge between the historical way of life and its modern arrangement. The material for this is culture, and the tool is knowledge. It is only important that a creative person understand the spirit of his time and see what of the accumulated culture can be handed over to a museum or archive, and what of the new being born is worthy of inclusion in the building being erected. Only bare denial is dangerous, carrying nothing with it; ignorance is dangerous, rejecting the old culture and morality, proclaiming permissiveness, affirming moral nihilism and violence. Ortega actively promotes the republican political program, becomes a member of parliament, defending these ideas.

The purpose of this work is to consider the philosophy of José Ortega y Gasset.

Consider the life and work of J. Ortega y Gasset;

Consider "Rise of the Masses";

Identify the main philosophical views.

1. Creative and life path of Jose Ortega y Gasset

José Ortega y Gasset was born on May 9, 1883 in Madrid in the family of a famous journalist and writer. His childhood was spent in El Escorial, Cordoba, El Palo (Malaga) and Madrid. In 1893, the family chose the Spanish capital as their permanent residence. In 1897, José began his studies at the University of Deusto in Bilbao, majoring in philosophy, literature and law. In 1898 he transferred to the Central University of Madrid. After a year, he leaves the study of law to concentrate entirely on philosophy. In 1902 he graduated with honors from the university and in 1904 he defended his doctoral dissertation.

From 1905 he continued his studies in Germany, the "Mecca" of philosophy, for three years. In those years, Jose leaves Catholicism and becomes an atheist. In 1910, the philosopher marries Rosa Spottorno y Topeta, who became his mainstay in everything. The kinship of souls was manifested even in handwriting. Rosa often copied Jose's drafts into a clean copy for subsequent publication, and even relatives could not always distinguish their handwriting. In 1910, Ortega y Gasset was elected head of the department of metaphysics at the Central University of Madrid, continuing to teach psychology, logic and ethics free of charge at the Madrid High School of Teachers.

In 1913, J. Ortega y Gasset created the Spanish Political Education League, designed to educate a new generation of politicians capable of pulling the country out of cultural backwardness. In 1915, he founded the magazine "Spain", in 1917, in collaboration with N.M. de Urgoiti - the newspaper "El Sol", in 1923 - the publication "Journal of the West". In 1916, the first of eight volumes of philosophical works, entitled "Observer" ("El Espectador"), was published. In 1931, J. Ortega y Gasset, together with the doctor and writer Gregorio Maranion, created the Union in the service of the Republic, seeing in the establishment of the republic a way out of the country's backwardness. A year later, disillusioned with politics, he dissolves the Union, rejects the presidency of the Parliamentary Commission on the State System and leaves political activity. One of the reasons was disagreement with the Catalan separatists in matters of regional policy.

The name of José Ortega y Gasset, together with the name of Miguel de Unamuno, is the glory and pride of modern Spanish philosophical thought. They have the merit of bringing it out of the stagnation in which it has been since the end of the 18th century. The teachings of both thinkers, bearing a strong charge of striving for national revival, became a major contribution to the treasury of world philosophy. Both scientists were contemporaries, but if older. Unamuno, with his doubts and almost mystical romanticism, remained the son of the European 19th century, then Ortega, wholly surrendering to the flow of life taking him into a new century, symbolizes the new Spain and the new Europe. However, Ortega still retained the romantic impulse transmitted to him by his older contemporary, which entered his work primarily through language, bright and colorful, as if enveloping his thoughts with an elegant verbal veil. But Ortega contrasted the irrational elements of the philosophy of the past with the classical clarity of forms and composure of reason.

Having been educated at the University of Madrid, Ortega at the beginning of the century continued his studies in Germany - in Berlin, Leipzig, Marburg.

The triumph of republicanism, however, was short-lived, and the outbreak of civil war condemns Ortega to exile. In 1948 he returned to his homeland, where he spent his last years.

Ortega's "aristocratism" was sometimes reproached by his left-wing critics. "Spiritual aristocracy", according to Ortega, is precisely the carriers of culture, the builders of the bridge between epochs and people: "the people is a nation organized by the aristocracy." Let us recall the problematics of the intelligentsia, which were once raised in Russia by the authors of Vekhi. True, there seems to be a difference: the God-seekers-Vekhi and the completely secular freethinker Ortega. But both the Spaniard and the Russian thinkers oppose nihilism, ignorance and obscurantism, wherever they come from.

Studying at the College of the Jesuit Fathers Miroflores del Palo (Malaga), Ortega mastered Latin and ancient Greek to perfection. In 1904 he graduated from the Central University with his doctoral thesis "El Milenario" (Thousand Years). Then he spends seven years at the universities of Germany, with a preference for Marburg, where G. Cohen shone at that time. Upon his return to Spain, he was assigned to the University of Madrid, where he taught until 1936, when civil war broke out.

In 1923, Ortega founded the "Reviste de Occidente" (Western Journal), which serves the Cause of "comparing the Pyrenees" - a Europeanized Spain, then isolated from the modern cultural process. Being a politically engaged thinker, he leads the intellectual opposition during the years of the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923-1930), plays an important role in the overthrow of King Alfonso XIII, is elected civil governor of Madrid, which is why he is forced to leave the country with the outbreak of civil war. Upon his return to Madrid in 1948, together with Juan Marias, he created a humanitarian institute, where he taught himself.

International fame comes to Ortega in the 1930s when the "Rebellion de las Masas" (Rebellion of the Masses) appears. Ortega's metaphysics, which he himself calls rationalism, takes shape already in the work "Meditaciones del Ouijole" (Quixote's reflections) Madrid, 1914, where he declares the only reality of human being-with-things: "I am I and my environment." Ortega himself is convinced that with his metaphysics he anticipated Heidegger's Being and Time by fifteen years. In general, Ortega treats the latter coldly, even calling him "Hölderlin's ventriloquist". The refraction of rational-vitalism in the theory of knowledge gives rise to the epistemology of "prespectivism", which claims that "everyone's life is a point of view on the universe" and that "the only false perspective is the one that considers itself unique."

Curious are Ortega's attempts to develop the so-called "aristocratic logic", as well as the fundamental for Ortega, but left unfinished "La idea del principio in Leibniz y la evolucion de la teoria deduktiva", which Ortega sees as the "logic of invention": "Modern philosophy is not begins more with being, but with thought.

However, with regard to the formation of a philosophical school in Spain, Ortega's teaching activities were of great importance for this. So, the basis of the book "What is Philosophy" lay a course of lectures delivered by Ortega in 1929 at the University of Madrid.

2. "Rise of the Masses" by José Ortega y Gasset

His ideas in the field of philosophy, history, sociology, aesthetics, underestimated during his lifetime, influenced certain circles of the European and American intelligentsia. Much of the creative heritage of José Ortega y Gasset is artistic essays, saturated with his philosophical ideas. They are addressed to thinking people and encourage the reader not to agree, but to argue and think. The social problems addressed in the writings of Ortega y Gasset not only did not become obsolete with the growth of the standardization of life, but became more topical. In sociology, his book "The Revolt of the Masses" was most famous. In it, Ortega y Gasset was one of the first to fix the phenomenon of the emergence of "mass consciousness" in the European mentality: the "mass" in him is transformed into a crowd, whose representatives seize dominant positions in the hierarchy of social structures, imposing their own pseudo-values ​​on other social groups. The main property of a creature from the "mass" is not so much its standardness, but its physical inertness. The "mass" is constituted, according to his conclusions, not on the basis of any particular social stratum. We are talking about such a "way of being a man", in which violent attempts are made to transform the structure of society, while deliberately ignoring the laws of its functioning.

"I'm talking about the growing pandemonium, herds, general overcrowding. Cities are overcrowded. Houses are overcrowded. Hotels are overcrowded. Trains are overcrowded. Cafes can no longer accommodate visitors. from the public. The beaches do not accommodate bathers. It becomes an eternal problem that it was not difficult before - to find a place. "

“The mass is anyone and everyone who does not measure himself in a special measure, either in good or in evil, but feels the same, “like everyone else,” and is not only not depressed, but is pleased with his own indistinguishability.

The key problem that one of the most famous Spanish philosophers Ortega y Gasset encourages the reader to think about in his the best work"The revolt of the masses" is the structural changes that took place in the social and political life of Europe at the beginning of the first third of the twentieth century. Realizing that he lives in a critical time, he tries to find the roots, the origins of the destructive processes that began in most European countries, analyzes the historical mechanisms that led Europe to such a state, and tries to understand what set of alternatives contemporary society has. Along the way, he talks about the nature of the state, and in such a way that, in terms of the depth of his conclusions, he deservedly ranks with such meters as Machiavelli and Hobbes.

And all this Jose Ortega y Gasset does brilliantly. The conclusions, striking in their simplicity, consistency and strength, are "dressed" in a beautiful, figurative and intelligible style. Here, for example, in the chapter "The Age of Smug Undergrowth" he describes the new human type he singled out: "In social terms, the psychological structure of this beginner is determined by the following: first, an underlying and innate sense of the lightness and abundance of life, devoid of heavy restrictions, and, secondly, as a result of this - a sense of one's own superiority and omnipotence, which naturally encourages one to accept oneself as one is, and consider one's mental and moral level more than sufficient.This self-sufficiency commands not to succumb to external influence, not to question one's views and The habit of feeling superiority constantly stirs up the desire to dominate, and the mass man behaves as if only he and others like him exist in the world, and hence his third feature is to interfere in everything, imposing his wretchedness unceremoniously, recklessly, without delay and unconditionally."

"Creative life requires impeccability, the strictest regime and self-discipline, giving rise to self-esteem. Creative life is active, and it is possible only under two conditions - either to be the one who rules, or to be in the world ruled by the one for whom we fully recognize this right. Either I rule or I obey. To obey does not mean to endure - to endure is humiliating - but, on the contrary, to respect the one who leads, and willingly follow him - joyfully becoming under his broad banner.

“Human life, by its very nature, must be given to something, great and small, brilliant or everyday. The condition is strange, but immutable, inscribed in our destiny. On the one hand, to live is an effort that everyone makes on his own and for On the other hand, if this life of mine, which belongs only to me and only means something to me, I will not give anything away, it will fall apart, losing its pressure and coherence.

"The normal and strong connection between people, called "power", never rests on force; on the contrary, that social instrument or mechanism, which is briefly called "force", comes at the disposal of a person or group of people only because they rule. The best evidence This is precisely the cases when power seems to be based on force.Napoleon undertook to conquer Spain, stayed in it for some time, but did not rule a day. strength".

"Contrary to popular belief, service is the lot of the elect, not the masses. Life burdens them if it does not serve something higher. Therefore, service does not oppress them. And when it is absent, they languish and find new heights, even more inaccessible and stricter, so trust them."

3. Basic philosophical views

Declaring the problem of philosophy, we find that it turns out to be the most radical of all imaginable, arch-problematic. On the other hand, we have seen that the more problematic a problem is, the purer is the relation - cognitive, theoretical, which grasps and clarifies it. Therefore, philosophy remains an intellectual effort par excellence - in comparison with it, all other sciences, including pure mathematics, retain a vestige of practicality. But does not this very purity and superiority of intellectual heroism, which philosophy presents itself, give it the character of a frenetically impudent one? Is it a matter of common sense to pose before itself a problem as enormous as the problem of philosophy? If we start talking about possibilities here, we would have to say that the success of an attempt called philosophy is the least possible in the world. It seems - I would say - a crazy idea. Why are we trying then? Why are we not satisfied with life without philosophy? If the success of her undertaking is impossible, then philosophy serves no purpose, there is no need for it. Wonderful; but, to begin with, there are people for whom the superfluous is necessary, and let us recall the divine opposition of Martha "utilitarian" and Mary "superfluous". The truth is - and this is ultimately what Christ's words say - that there is no such strictly defined duality and that life itself, including biological life, is ultimately a utilitarian inexplicable huge sporting phenomenon. Such is the fact, the end and the beginning of life, which is what philosophizing is. Necessary? Not necessary? If by necessary we mean "a useful being" for something else, philosophy is not, at least initially, necessary. But the necessity of the useful is only relative, relative to its end. True necessity is that which makes being what it is - makes the bird fly, the fish swim, and the intellect philosophize.

This need to perform the function or action that we are is the most important and essential. Therefore, Aristotle does not hesitate in expressing his attitude to the sciences: anankatioterai pasai, ameinon d "ojudemia. It is significant that Plato, when he wanted to find the most decisive definition of philosophy, there, at the highest moment of his most rigorous thinking, there, in the depths of the Sophist, said that philosophy is he episteme ton eleutheron, the subtlest translation of which would be: the science of athletes. What happened to Plato, who said this? And if, moreover, the words were spoken in a public gymnasium, where graceful Athenian youths, drawn by the round head of Socrates, rushing to the sounds of his speeches, like night moths to a flame of fire, stretching their long necks of discus throwers towards him.

Philosophy does not increase because of utility, but it does not increase because of the chance of caprice.

As its necessary component, the intellect must be present. Her last feature was the search for everything as everything, the grasping of the Universe, the hunt for the unicorn. But why this zeal?

Why should we not be satisfied with what we find in the world without philosophizing, with what is already there, and is here in the most obvious way before our eyes.

For a simple reason: everything that is and exists here, when it is given to us, available, possible, is in its essence only a fragment, a particle, a fragment, a separation. And we cannot see this without foreseeing and anticipating the lack of the missing part.

In all this being, in every piece of information of the world, we find an essential feature of its break, its nature of the part, we see the mutilation of its ontological distortion, its pain screams in us for the amputated member, its nostalgia for the part that it lacks for perfection, its divine discontent .

Matter also, according to Ortega, cannot be conceived without seeing it put into existence by some other force, just as it is impossible to see arrows in flight without looking for the hand that sends it.

Therefore, it is also part of a more general process that produces it, of a wider reality that completes it. All of the above is rather trivial and serves me only to clarify the idea with which we are now content. Another example seems clearer and more direct to me. This hall is present in its entirety in our perception of it. It seems - at least in our opinion - something integral and self-sufficient. It consists of what we see in it and nothing else.

At least if we analyze what is in our perception when we contemplate it, then it seems that we do not find anything but colors, light, forms, space, and that there is no need for anything else.

But if, leaving it, we discovered that the world ends behind the door, that there is nothing outside this hall, not even empty space - our mind would hardly have retained its ordinary calmness.

Why are we, of course, amazed at the possibility of the non-existence of the house, the street, the earth, the atmosphere and everything else outside the walls of the hall, if before that there was nothing in our mind except what we saw in it?

Apparently, in our perception, along with the immediate presence of the interior, with what we saw, existed, albeit in latent form, a whole world of conditions for the possibility of its existence, whose absence would clearly affect us.

This means that this hall was not, even in simple perception, something integral, but only the "First Plan", which stands out against the general background, which we implicitly mean, which already existed for us before this vision (albeit hidden and ambiguous ), surrounded what we really contemplate.

"What we contemplate is just a bump on the immense forehead of the universe. Thus, we can induce our observation as a universal law and say: something is always present - to the coexisting world."

And the same thing happens if we pay attention to the reality that is intimate to us, to the psychic. What is seen in every moment of our inner being is only a small part: these ideas that we now think, this pain that we endure, the images that arise on the intimate stage of the psychic, the emotion that we now feel; but this meager handful of certainties that we now see in ourselves is only that which in each case appears to our gaze turned inward, this is only the foundation of our perfect and real I, which remains in the depths like a great hollow or mountainous area, from where at each moment only a fragment of the landscape is visible.

So the world, in the sense we now ascribe to the word, is simply a collection of things that we can consider one after the other.

Philosophy is the knowledge of the Universe, or everything that exists. We have already seen that this implies for the philosopher an obligation to set himself an absolute problem, i.e. do not proceed calmly from preliminary beliefs, do not regard anything as previously known. What is known is no longer a problem. However, what is known outside, beyond or before philosophy, is known from the point of view of the particular, and not the universal. There is knowledge of a lower level, which cannot be applied in the heights where philosophical knowledge moves.

If viewed from philosophical heights, then any other knowledge seems naive and relatively false, i.e. again becoming problematic. That is why Nicholas of Cusa called the sciences docta ignorancia. This position of the philosopher, inherent in his intellectual heroism and absurd to those deprived of this vocation, imposes on his thinking what I call the imperative of autonomy. This methodological principle means the rejection of reliance on anything prior to the emerging philosophy itself and the obligation not to proceed from the assumed truths, philosophy is a science without prerequisites. Ortega says that "I understand by such a system of truths constructed without the assumption as grounds of any provisions that were considered proven outside and before the system."

Consequently, there are no philosophical truths that have not been acquired by philosophy itself.

That is, philosophy is an intellectual law for itself, is an autonomous knowledge.

This is what Ortega calls the principle of autonomy - and it links us to the whole past of criticism in philosophy; he leads us to the great initiator of modern thought and defines us as the later grandchildren of Descartes. But the caresses of these grandchildren are dangerous. We'll have to settle scores with our grandfathers the next day."

The philosopher begins by freeing his spirit from beliefs. From its transformation into an island uninhabited by foreign truths. And then he, a prisoner on the island, sentences himself to a methodical robinsonade.

Such is the meaning of methodical doubt, forever placed by Descartes at the frontiers of philosophical knowledge.

Its meaning is not limited to just suspending everything that actually causes us doubt - every worthy person does this every day - but also that which is usually not doubted, but in principle - they can. Such instrumental technical doubt, which is the scalpel of the philosopher, has a much wider range of action than the ordinary suspicion of man, for, leaving the doubtful, it reaches the point of being questionable at all.

Every philosophy is a paradox; it distances itself from the “naturally obvious truths” that we use in life, since it considers theoretically doubtful those most elementary beliefs that in life do not seem suspicious to us.

But after, according to the principle of autonomy, the philosopher confines himself to those few truths, which even theoretically cannot be doubted and which, therefore, prove and verify themselves, he must turn his face to the Universe and conquer it, embrace it holistically. These minimum points of strict truth must be flexibly expanding in order to be able to embrace everything that is. Along with this ascetic principle of folding, which is autonomy, operates the opposite principle of tension: universalism, intellectual striving for the whole, what I call pantonomy. "The one principle of autonomy, which is negative, static and cautious, calls us to discretion, but not to action that does not orient us or guide us in our path is sufficient. depending on everything, in contrast to the concepts of particular disciplines, which are defined by what a part is, as an isolated part or a complete "whole".

Thus, physics speaks only of what matter is, as if only matter exists in the Universe, as if it were the Universe itself.

Therefore, physics often tries to rebel in order to become a real philosophy itself, and it is this rebellious pseudo-philosophy that is materialism.

The philosopher, on the contrary, will look for its value in matter as a part of the Universe and determine the truth of each thing in its relation to the rest. Ortega calls this principle of conception pantonomy, or the law of totality.

The principle of autonomy has been proclaimed in abundance from the Renaissance to the present day, sometimes even with pernicious exclusivity that paralyzes philosophical thinking. On the contrary, the principle of pantonomy or universalism has received adequate attention only in some part of the ancient soul and in the short philosophical period from Kant to Hegel, in romantic philosophy. I would dare to say that this and only this brings us closer to post-Kantian systems. But even this coincidence is of great importance.

Ortega notes that "we are one with them in their dissatisfaction with the mere avoidance of errors and in the judgment that the best way to achieve this will not be to narrow the visual field, but, on the contrary, to expand it to the maximum, turning it into an intellectual imperative, into a methodical principle, the intention to think through everything and leave nothing out.Already after Hegel, it begins to be forgotten that philosophy is integral thinking and nothing more - with all its advantages and, naturally, disadvantages.

We are pursuing a philosophy that would be philosophy and nothing else, that would accept its fate with all its brilliance and poverty and would not harbor envy, craves for itself the cognitive virtues of other sciences, for example, the accuracy of mathematical truths or the sensible verifiability and practicality of the truth of physics .

It is no coincidence that in the last century the philosopher turned out to be so changeable in relation to his essence. For that time, the West was characterized by rejection of fate, the desire to become what you are not. That is why it was predominantly an epoch of revolutions.

Ultimately, the "revolutionary spirit" itself means not only a passion for improvement - which is always noble and commendable - but also the belief that you can become unlimitedly what you are not, you are not fundamentally, that it is enough to think about that order of the world. and society, which is more optimal for us, so that it leads us to realize the need for its implementation; it is overlooked that the world and society have an essentially indispensable structure that limits the feasibility of our desires and gives the character of frivolity to any reformism that does not take it into account.

The revolutionary spirit, utopically trying to make things what they can never be (and there is no need for this), should be replaced by a great ethical principle, once lyrically proclaimed by Pindar and sounding nothing more than: "Become what you are."

It is necessary that philosophy be satisfied with its poverty and leave outside those graces that do not belong to it, so that other methods and types of knowledge may be adorned with them. "Contrary to the titanism that philosophy initially suffers from in its claim to embrace the Universe and absorb it, philosophy itself is, strictly speaking, a discipline no more and no less modest than others."

Because the Universe, or all that exists, is not each of the existing things, but only the universal of each thing, and therefore only a certain side of each thing. In this sense, but only in this sense, the object of philosophy is also particular, since it is a part, thanks to which every thing is included in the whole, let's say, it is the umbilical cord that connects them to the whole.

And it would not be senseless to assert that the philosopher, after all, is a specialist, namely, a specialist in universes.

That which cannot be spoken, whether inexpressible or inexpressible, is not a concept, and the knowledge which consists in the inexpressible vision of an object will be whatever you please, even, if you like, the highest form of knowledge, only not what we pursue under the name of philosophy.

"If we imagine a philosophical system like Plotinus's or Bergson's, which through concepts represent to us the true knowledge of the ecstasy of consciousness, in which this consciousness goes beyond the intellectual and comes into direct contact with reality, then, without intermediary and mediation, which is the concept, then, they said We would not, they are philosophies only insofar as they prove the necessity of ecstasy by non-ecstatic means and cease to be such as soon as they leave the solid ground of the concept, embarking on the unsteady abyss of a mystical trance.

José Ortega y Gasset rejected mysticism. He said that My objection to mysticism is that mystical vision does not provide any intellectual advantage. Fortunately, some of the mystics turned out to be, before mystics, brilliant thinkers - like Plotinus, Maestro Eckhart, Herr Bergson. In them, the benevolence of the combination of logical and mediated thinking with the poverty of their ecstatic inquiries stands out in particular contrast.

Mysticism seeks to use depth, to speculate with depth; in any case, the depths fill him with enthusiasm, they draw him. Philosophy today is moving in a different direction. She is not interested, like a mystic, in plunging into the depths, but, on the contrary, it is attractive to turn the deep into the superficial.

Contrary to what is commonly assumed, philosophy is a titanic thirst for superficiality, a thirst for bringing to the surface, for making, if possible, into the obvious, the clear, the banal, what was underground, secret, hidden.

She hates the mystery and the melodramatic gestures of the initiate, the mystagogue.

She can say to herself in the words of Goethe: "I recognize myself born in a kind / From the darkness of those striving stubbornly towards the light of the sun."

Philosophy is a great thirst for clarity and a determined will for the noon. Its root intention is to bring to the surface, to announce, to reveal the hidden and the veiled. In Greece, philosophy began with the name aletheia, which means unfolding, revelation, and devoid; the end result is manifestation. And to manifest is nothing but to speak - logos.

If mysticism is silence, then philosophizing is the opening, the discovery in the great nakedness and transparency of the word of the being of things, that is, ontology (ontologia). Contrary to mysticism, philosophy would like to be a secret known to everyone.

Conclusion

Ortega y Gaset Jose (1883 - 1955) - Spanish philosopher, occupied a transitional position between the Nietzschean philosophy of life and modern existentialism. Ortega y Gaset's focus was on social issues. In his works "The Dehumanization of Art" (1925) and "The Revolt of the Masses" (1929-30), Ortega y Gaset for the first time in Western philosophy outlined the basic principles of the doctrine of "mass society", by which he understood the spiritual atmosphere that has developed in the West as a result of the crisis of bourgeois democracy, the bureaucratization of public institutions, the spread of money-exchange relations to all forms of interpersonal contacts. A system of social relations is taking shape, within which each person feels like an extra, a performer of a role imposed on him from the outside, a particle of an impersonal beginning - the crowd. Ortega y Gaset criticizes this spiritual situation "from the right". He considers it an inevitable result of unleashing the democratic activity of the masses and sees a way out in the creation of a new, aristocratic elite - people capable of arbitrary "choice", guided only by a direct "impulse of life" (a category close to Nietzsche's "will to power"). Rationalism Ortega y Gaset considers a kind of intellectual style of "mass society". He calls for a return to pre-scientific forms of orientation in the world, to the ancient, not yet dissected "love of wisdom."

"Adherents of all kinds of confusion will always prefer the anarchy and intoxication of the mystics to the clear and orderly intellect of the priests, i.e. the Church. I am sorry that I cannot be in solidarity with them in this preference, the Service of the truth does not allow me to do this. It consists in that any theology, from my point of view, reveals to us many more God, more signs and ideas of divinity, than all the ecstasies put together by all the mystics put together.For instead of approaching the ecstatic skeptically, we should, as I said , take him at his word, accept whatever he brings us from his dives into the transcendent, and then judge whether what he offers us is worth anything.

Indeed, when we accompany the mystic on his exquisite journey, we discover nothing important for ourselves.

“I believe,” writes Ortega, “that the European soul is close to a new experience about God, to new discoveries about this reality, the most important of all. ways of discursive thinking Theology and not ecstasy.

Firmly insisting on this, I do not consider it necessary to neglect the work of mystical thinkers. In other senses and dimensions, they are quite interesting. Today more than ever, we must learn from them. Even the very idea of ​​ecstasy - though not ecstasy itself - is not without significance. To what extent, we will see later.

But what I stand for is that mystical philosophy is not what we pursue under the name of philosophy.

Its only initial limitation is the desire to be theoretical knowledge, a system of concepts and, therefore, statements.

Bibliography

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4. Ortega y Gasset X. The uprising of the masses. / Translation: S.L. Vorobyov, A.M. Geleskul, B.V. Dubinin and others - M., 2001.

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Contents Introduction 1. Creative and life path of José Ortega y Gasset 2. "The revolt of the masses" by José Ortega y Gasset 3. Basic philosophical views Conclusion References Introduction José Ortega-

Ortega y Gasset What is philosophy?

Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) - Spanish philosopher, essayist - was born into a family of hereditary Spanish intellectuals. He grew up in an atmosphere of constant communication with many representatives of the Spanish intelligentsia, who were attracted by the openness, nobility and talent of this family. Ortega graduated from the Jesuit College and at the age of 15 entered the University of Madrid. After graduation, he received his doctorate. He continued his studies in Germany. With the outbreak of the Civil War (1936) he emigrated to Latin America. In 1945 he returned to Europe, in 1948 - to Spain. Until the end of his life he remained an open opponent of Francoism.

"What is philosophy?" (1929) - a series of lectures that José began to read at the University of Madrid, and then continued in the theater, in connection with the closure of the university by the dictator Primo de Rivera.

X. Ortega y Gasset first of all warns of the possibility of erroneous perception of his lectures as a staged examination of a set of traditional philosophical questions, which are presented in a new form as an introduction to the foundations of philosophy. He focuses his attention on a very important aspect: the question of what philosophy is, more precisely, should be for human life as a way of understanding the world and oneself in the world. In this regard, he "... conceived something completely opposite to entry into philosophy: to take the very philosophical activity, namely philosophizing, and subject them to a deep analysis."

X. Ortega y Gasset thus reflects a new understanding of the nature of philosophy by representatives of the existential-phenomenological thought of the 20th century, namely: the process of philosophizing becomes in their work as a way of being a person. So, M. Heidegger claims: philosophy is "a request for being." Ortega, replaces the concept of "being" with the concept of "life", as if repeating this idea: philosophical activity is a form of life activity, and philosophical truth is integral to the experience of life, including everyday human life.

So, philosophy, according to Ortega, is the main means of human understanding of the world and its connection with the world. Highly appreciating the importance of professional philosophy, he nevertheless believed that everyone carries out philosophical activity, but it is necessary to do this consciously and competently.

The specificity of philosophical knowledge about the world, according to Ortega, is the observance of very important rule: an appeal to the world in all its openness, nakedness. That is, a person must break through those layers of meanings that society has imposed on this or that phenomenon of the world, and, having done this hard work, “meet” it (the world) in its primitiveness and comprehend it independently. And since human life in its originality is carried out in a state of loneliness, then real philosophical activity also presupposes a state of loneliness.

One of the important aspects of the nature of philosophical knowledge is the concept of truth. Traditionally, the problem of the truth of philosophy has been viewed as a dilemma: "truth - error." Ortega draws attention to the fact that such an important aspect of this problem as the question of truth, the truthfulness of the philosopher himself is completely ignored. Truthfulness Ortega understood as "concern for the truth", an ardent desire to achieve a state of certainty, certainty. He believed that the history of philosophy has always been studied only from the point of view of the truth or fallacy of teachings, and it would be desirable to create a history of philosophy from the point of view of assessing the greater or lesser philosophical truth, the truthfulness of the philosophers themselves.

Ortega's interpretation of the historical and philosophical process is marked by originality. He believed that behind any philosophical doctrine is the biography of its author, which is inextricably linked with a certain historical period. Hence, the historical-philosophical process is not an abstractly existing sum of ideas. The history of philosophy is filled with people with their search for truth, their doubts, this is their continuous and necessary dialogue with modern man. Man is a being that requires absolute truth. This shows Ortega y Gasset's belonging to the existential trend of philosophers

Ortega believed that modern philosophy is closely related to classical philosophy, but at the same time spoke of the emergence of a new European concept. He expressed his views on the subject and tasks of philosophy through criticism of the basic philosophical views of Leibniz, Galileo and, especially, Descartes. The philosophical position that proclaims the autonomy and independence of human activity both from its bodily substance and from the outside world, Ortega called "idealism" and considered its overcoming the task of his time, his philosophy.

He criticized idealism for the fact that "the ideas of my I" became the subject of philosophical analysis for him, while "things, the world, namely my body were only ideas of things, ideas of the world, a fantasy about my body." The real world was disappearing with such a philosophy. "Starting with Descartes, Western man was left without light. Therefore, the task of modern philosophy, according to Ortega, is to release a person into the real world," give back to a person the world ".

"What is philosophy?" - the work of X. Ortega y Gasset. Published in 1957 based on a course of lectures given in 1929. Initially, the lectures were published in the Spanish newspaper "El Sol" and in the Argentinean "La Nación". Ortega began to read a course at the University of Madrid, after its closure due to a student strike, he continued reading in the theater, which became an event in the intellectual life of Spain.

José Ortega y Gasset - What is philosophy? Abstract:

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José Ortega y Gasset - What is philosophy? Summary:

Ortega saw the task in making a new step in understanding the nature of philosophy compared to the rationalism of modern times (Ortega calls it idealism). "Overcoming idealism is a huge intellectual task, the lofty historical mission of our era." But to transcend means to inherit, preserve and contribute one's own. Since the essence of philosophy lies in the idea of ​​being, for Ortega it is precisely "the revision of the idea of ​​being means a fundamental revision of philosophy." Highly appreciating the ideas of rationalist philosophy, which discovered the “primary reality of consciousness, subjectivity”, discovered a new form of reality - the being of thinking, and thereby raised philosophy to new level However, he makes two points. First, in the understanding of Descartes, being remains substantial. The subject, I is a thinking, but a thing, the property and manifestation of which is thinking. Thus, Descartes, in the understanding of Ortega, opens up a new philosophical world and at the same time destroys it. Secondly, “the mistake of idealism was that it turned into subjectivism, into emphasizing the dependence of things ... on my subjectivity” (p. 159); as a result, the ego itself, the thinking subject, having absorbed the external world, turned out to be imprisoned in its subjectivity.

Ortega considered it necessary to amend the very starting point of philosophy: The initial given of the Universe is not the existence of thinking and I, thinking, but the inseparability of my existence with the world, when I am aware of the world, I am engaged in this world. In this case, the consciousness, the Self, emerges from imprisonment into the world, but retains its intimacy, subjectivity, and so on. overcome subjectivity.

This initial given is “my life”, which Ortega defines as “a huge phenomenon that precedes all biology, all science, all culture”, as “what we do and what happens to us”, as a problem that we must decide, choosing from many possibilities. He believes that the discovery of "life" as an initial given gives rise to a new idea of ​​being, a new ontology. “My life” is a “needy being”, since it is not only I - the subject, but also the world: to live is “to be in front of the world, with the world, inside the world, to be immersed in its movement, in its problems” .

Ortega defines the philosophical theory that has existed so far as "an abstraction of the true reality of philosophy", which was interested in things as they are when I cease to live them. In fact philosophizing is a special form of life. "The being of philosophy is what the philosopher creates, is philosophizing." This is not an abstract philosophical theory, but "theorizing as a vital phenomenon and vital action", a means of clarifying a person's connection with the world .

Life requires from a human philosopher a complete, holistic view of the world in its unity, a holistic truth, and not a partial truth of science (Rational Vitalism). The object of philosophy becomes "the universe or everything that exists" , i.e. something that is not predetermined, so that the unknowability of the object is also allowed. Therefore, Ortega defines the problem of philosophy as an absolute problem. Philosophy is also considered by him as a “science without prerequisites”, it is autonomous, not a single truth that is considered proven “outside the given system” can be put at its foundation. The philosopher must abandon the generally accepted beliefs, "to obtain all philosophical assumptions by one's own means." Ortega emphasizes drama and intellectual heroism, courage in posing problems in philosophical activity.

A.B. Zykova, New Philosophical Encyclopedia: In 4 vols. M.: Thought. Edited by V. S. Stepin. 2001.

José Ortega y Gasset (Spanish: José Ortega y Gasset, May 9, 1883, Madrid - October 18, 1955).
Spanish philosopher and sociologist, graduated from the Complutense University of Madrid, then spent seven years at universities in Germany. On his return to Spain, he was assigned to Complutense University. Being a staunch Republican, Ortega was the leader of the intellectual opposition during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923-1930), was one of the founders of the "Republican Association of Intelligentsia" (1931), was elected civil governor of Madrid and for these reasons was forced to leave the country with the outbreak of civil war . Upon his return to Madrid in 1948, together with Julian Marias, he created the Humanitarian Institute, where he taught himself. Until the end of his life he remained an open opponent of Francoism.

José Ortega y Gasset is the most original philosopher of the 20th century, who in many of his works develops the concept of "rationalism", interpreting it as listening to life with the help of "vital reason". Ortega's insight about the fate and purpose of man, fueled in many respects by the ideas of existential-phenomenological philosophy, simultaneously correlates and opposes Heidegger's concept of "being-in-the-world" and Husserl's concept of "consciousness about".

Introduction

Philosophy, like love for wisdom, is the search and finding by a person of answers to the main questions of being.

So, according to I. Kant, these are the questions:

1) What can I know?

2) What should I do?

3) What can I hope for?

4) What is a person?

Philosophy reveals the meanings of human actions, forms strategic goals. Each person at least once in his life thought about where he came into this world and where he will go after death, thought about love, the meaning of life, i.e. philosophized. It is philosophy that tells us about the most important thing - how to be a man. The populist P. Lavrov considered philosophy "an identification of thought, image and action." Being a conscious being, a person philosophizes, he cannot do otherwise, since this is the most universal way its existence throughout which. The history of the development of world philosophical thought has more than two and a half millennia, and throughout its entire length the controversy about the nature and specifics of philosophical knowledge does not subside. On the question "What is philosophy?" worked, putting forward certain answers, the great thinkers of different eras. Some believed that philosophy is a “natural inclination” of a person, others considered philosophy an art and a worldview, others argued that philosophy is a science, and finally, a fourth tried to prove that philosophy is a specific form of human activity, combines both worldview and science, and art and the "natural inclination" of man.

This essay will consider the question "What is philosophy and why is it?".

Philosophy through the eyes of José Ortega y Gasset

“... Modern man, before philosophy becomes an internal matter for him, finds it (including material attributes) outside, as a social reality. He is faced with such a side of philosophy as the state magistracy, the bureaucracy - "professors of philosophy", - their work is paid, buildings are at their disposal. These are also books that are sold in stores and are a product of production. The fact that this is what he knows about philosophy, who knows at least a little about it, proves that this is precisely its original aspect. The true philosopher, who lives by thinking about the most subtle problems of his science, tends to forget this first aspect or treat it with contempt. But the one who takes seriously both this forgetfulness and this contempt will be mistaken. For it is obvious that this is by no means deserving of contempt part of the integral reality called "philosophy". If the state grants subsidies to philosophy departments, establishes and maintains them, if there are branches of industry diligently taking care of the publication of philosophical texts, then there is a strong conviction in society that philosophy is a collective need. And this is already very serious. It is foolish to despise any fact for its clarity and obviousness. Why, how, to what extent is philosophy a social need? Has it always been like this? What changes have taken place, what vicissitudes of fate has experienced throughout social history, starting with Greece, this belief, how effective was it? Let us speculate on the following topic: is it possible that the discipline called "history of philosophy" does not seek to define the social role of philosophy, as if participation in collective life is something alien to the reality called "philosophy"? We forget that if we do not consider each idea as a function serving a certain purpose in the existence of the philosopher, the history of doctrines is already damaged, and this very forgetting leads to the absence of sufficiently deep and possibly accurate studies about what role in each era of collective life really played philosophical thinking. As a result, we find ourselves, as I have already noted, in a funny situation, not representing, even with a small degree of certainty and accuracy, what is the "meaning" in the history of the discipline in which we are engaged. The point is that the reality of any properly human thing lies in its "meaning". The slightest manifestation of our life presupposes its totality, and only when correlated with the latter does it reveal its true value and significance. There is only one reality in what we do and in what happens to us: the meaning of all this for our life. Therefore, in the human sciences, instead of talking about "things" (and this is precisely the naturalistic approach, suitable only for temporary use in physics), we would have to talk about their "meaning". Now, though it may seem incredible, there is not a single book in which an author has attempted to tell us the history of the real "meaning" of philosophy from its very beginning to the present day. Moreover, I do not know of a single publication that would consistently consider the social function of philosophy and raise the question of what it was as a collective fact, at least in some particular era. This crucial issue received only occasional and incidental attention.

Philosophy is not only "official", existing in the form of an institution, and economic, associated with the publishing industry and its market. Public opinion also sees in it a different form of reality: for a long time the philosopher had a certain prestige in society, and this prestige is a social matter. Here is the other side of the history of philosophy: the undulating history of gaining and losing the prestige of the philosopher. Few studies can tell us about the deeper mysteries of human history than those associated with an attempt to reconstruct the trajectory of social destiny that brought pleasure and suffering to the philosopher, than clarifying the place that in every society and in every era was occupied by the one who philosophized.

But this throws us back from the question of philosophy as a social reality to the question of what philosophy is for the philosopher himself. The fact is that, as I already mentioned, for the role that the ideas of the philosopher played in his social life, his social situation is not indifferent. The philosopher thinks not only at a certain time and in a certain place, but also from a certain social position - in some cases he finds himself at the center of society, in others - at the top or bottom, and in some - those of him: in prison or in exile. It is especially important to clarify the degree of freedom that a philosopher has at every moment. What results in philosophy does the absence of freedom lead to? But similar questions should be asked about the consequences of both encouraging the philosopher and neglecting him. It is not so obvious that encouragement is beneficial and inattention is detrimental.

I said that the first aspect of reality "philosophy", in which it appears before us, is connected with what it contains of social fact. For two and a half millennia, this aspect has existed and is waiting for its historian. There, in that vast external sphere which is the life of society, the institution of philosophy exists just as there are politics, medical institutions, the fire department, the executioner's function, ceremonial customs and fashion.

Consider this: it is a social fact that we do things simply because we do them. The impersonal pressure of collectivity compels us - physically or morally - to perform certain actions. There is no rational connection between what we do and why we do it. It is quite possible that a professor of philosophy has none of the characteristics of a true philosopher: he teaches philosophy to earn a living or to distinguish himself socially. The student studies philosophy because he has no other choice. It follows from this that social reality - its reality - being assimilated by someone, does not in the least guarantee the human authenticity of what philosophy claims, therefore, it does not in any way carry authenticity in itself. All this can be said in another way: any social reality is unauthentic.

The true philosopher who devotes himself to philosophy by virtue of an inner need does not turn to a ready-made philosophy, he constantly creates his own philosophy; this is so true that the most accurate sign of such a philosopher is his denial of all already existing philosophy and immersion in the hopeless loneliness of his own philosophizing.

When a person indulges in his pursuits, his social environment constantly inclines him towards inauthenticity. The first philosophers, whose activity was the creation of philosophy, since it did not yet exist at all, who, strictly speaking, did not create, but only just began to create philosophy - here they are, all together, and are the true professor of that philosophy, to which it is necessary break through the thickness of subsequent philosophy, created by numerous professors. Any great philosopher was such because he was able to at least approximately reproduce in himself the initial situation of the birth of philosophy. There is no way to recreate this or that philosophy, or philosophy at all, without first breaking it down, just as there is no way to know a machine without taking it apart.

The history of philosophy is a discipline within philosophy, and not some kind of supplement to it and not a subject for satisfying curiosity. There are two reasons for this assertion. First, we always create our philosophy within certain thought traditions in which we are so immersed that they are reality itself for us and are not perceived by us as particular tendencies or as just one of the possible manifestations of the human mind. We fully master these intellectual traditions (representing, as it were, our intellectual subsoil) only if we get to know them enough, if we penetrate into their innermost secrets, if we discover their most “obvious” premises. Second: in the need to think within certain boundaries there is something of captivity, of the shackling of freedom; but this only to a small extent hinders the renewal of philosophy in its original form, in the way it was at the time of its origin, when it did not yet exist in tradition, or at those decisive moments of its subsequent history, when it is reborn and transformed, when new directions...

The Path to Philosophy. Anthology…” p.183-195.

Ortega called his philosophy the philosophy of "vital reason", opposing it to both rationalism and intuitionism. Its main idea is the idea that since the time of Plato and Aristotle (in ancient era) world-abstract ideas, and later, starting from the era of Galileo and Descartes (in modern times), the mind opposed itself to life, a priori identified its laws with the laws of being. Meanwhile, reason (science) is just an apparatus with which a person created his conditional, subjective picture of the world. Therefore, to try to change (or rebuild) life, guided by the laws of an abstract, “pure” mind, is to violate the spontaneous logic of its development. The true reality is life, which always represents the unity of subject and object, idea and reality, man and "his circumstances". It has its own "vital reason" immanently inherent in it, which should serve both as the basis of philosophical knowledge and the basis of the life position of an individual.

Life is the energy of the cosmos, concentrated in certain things, which in each specific case have their own ideal "project" potentially contained in them. The desire to implement this “project” is the process of life, and in some cases the “project” inherent in things (or in a person) is carried out, and in other cases, subjective and objective difficulties arise in the way of its implementation.

Thus, the universe, in the understanding of Ortega, to a certain extent resembles the world of Leibniz's monads, that is, the world consisting of countless "small worlds" charged with energy. Each of these "small worlds" has its own "project", the ideal goal of self-realization embedded in it. This "project" forms its "ideal" beginning. The real appearance of each thing is determined by how much it succeeds (or fails) to approach its "ideal" beginning. This applies to the human person as well.

Ortega argues that every thing and every person has its own special historical place and time. The history of mankind is a continuous series, which includes any era and any person. This historical place and time, acting with a force beyond our control, determines the perspective of human worldview and attitude to the world. Being born, a person cannot be absolutely free, because he is born in certain circumstances, at one or another stage of culture.

These are the main, central provisions of Ortega's philosophy, in which life at every stage of the development of the Spanish thinker made additions and amendments. These additions and amendments were due not only to the evolution of purely speculative, epistemological, ontological and anthropological ideas of Ortega. To a large extent, they were determined by the changing conditions of his life and work, and above all by the change in the cultural-historical and socio-political environment in which he lived and worked. Can be added to this general characteristics the main provisions of Ortega's philosophy, his humanism and political liberalism, the idealistic-utopian belief that the main driving force of history is not the masses, but the "chosen minority" (noble-minded, advanced minds capable of correctly solving the main historical issues in the name of the common cause of the nation ), and no less firm conviction in the idea of ​​a special path historical development Spain (with its openness to the pan-European culture).

Current page: 1 (the book has 14 pages in total)

Jose Ortega y Gasset
WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?

Lecture I

Philosophy today. - An extraordinary and true adventure: the coming of truth. - Correlation between history and philosophy.

In the realm of art, love, or ideas, statements and programs, I believe, are of little use. As far as ideas are concerned, this distrust is explained by the following: thinking on any subject - if it is really deep and positive thinking - inevitably removes the thinker from the generally accepted, or conventional, opinion, from what, for more compelling reasons than you could now suppose deserves the name "public opinion", or "triviality". Any serious mental effort opens up unknown paths before us and takes us away from the common coast to deserted islands, where unusual thoughts visit us. They are a product of our imagination. Now, an ad or program notifies us in advance of the results, without saying a word about the path that led to their discovery. But, as we shall shortly see, thought, torn off from the path leading to it, resembles an island with steep banks; it is an abstraction in the worst sense of the word, so it is incomprehensible. What is the use of erecting before the public the impregnable cliff of our program at the very beginning of the investigation, that is, starting from the end?

Therefore, I will not print the contents of this series of lectures in capital letters in the program, but I propose to start from the beginning, from what can become for you today, as it was for me yesterday, the starting point.

The fact that we first of all encounter is obvious and well-known: today philosophy has taken a different place in the collective consciousness than it was thirty years ago, and accordingly today the attitude of the philosopher towards his profession and his work has changed. The first, like an obvious and well-known fact of love, can be confirmed with the help of no less obvious examples: in particular, by comparing the statistics on how many books on philosophy are sold out now with how many were sold out thirty years ago. It is known that today in almost all countries the sale of philosophical books is growing faster than the sale of fiction, and everywhere there is a lively interest in ideology. This interest, this striving, realized with varying degrees of clarity, is made up of the need for ideas and the pleasure that people again begin to experience from them. The combination of these two words is not accidental: we will see later that any essential, internal need of a living organism, in contrast to secondary, external needs, is accompanied by pleasure. Pleasure is the face of happiness. And every being is happy when he follows his destiny, in other words, his inclinations, satisfies his urgent needs; when it fulfills itself, is what it really is. Therefore, Schlegel, inverting the relationship between pleasure and fate, said: "We are brilliant in what we like." Genius, that is, the greatest gift received by a being for the performance of any work, is always accompanied by a manifestation of the highest pleasure. Soon, under the pressure of an avalanche of evidence, we will have to be convinced with amazement that today it may seem like an empty phrase: our destiny is our highest pleasure.

Probably, our time, in comparison with the previous one, has a philosophical fate, therefore we like to philosophize - to begin with, listen when a philosophical word flashes like a bird in the public atmosphere, listen to the philosopher, as a wanderer, perhaps bringing fresh news from beyond countries.

This situation is exactly the opposite of what it was thirty years ago! Curious coincidence. The term, as is customary, is considered to separate one generation from another.

And in surprising harmony with this change in the public mood, we find that the philosopher today approaches philosophy in a very different frame of mind than his colleagues of the previous generation. This is what we will talk about today: that the mood with which we begin to philosophize is profoundly different from the mood that prevailed among philosophers yesterday. Having made this the starting point of your course of lectures, we will gradually approach its true topic, which for the time being is not worth naming, since the title will not tell us anything. We will begin to approach it in circles, each time closing them more closely and more demandingly, sliding in a spiral - from pure exteriority, seemingly abstract, indifferent and cold, to the innermost center, full of our own, not brought by us, inner drama. Large philosophical problems they demand the same tactics that were used by the Jews when taking Jericho with its roses: avoiding a direct battle, they slowly went around the city, closing the ring ever closer to the incessant dramatic sounds of trumpets. Under an ideological siege, the drama of the melody is achieved by the constant concentration of our consciousness on problems that are a drama of ideas. I hope his tension will not ease, because the path we have chosen is such that it attracts the more, the further you go along it. From the indistinct superficial words that we must utter today, we will descend to closer questions, closer than which nothing can be, to questions about our life, the life of each of us. Moreover, we will fearlessly plunge into what everyone considers their life and which in reality turns out to be only its shell; breaking through it, we will fall into the underground depths of our being, which remain a mystery to us simply because they are inside us, because they are your essence.

However, I repeat, talking about this, addressing you with this vague initial idea, I do not announce my program, quite the contrary, I am forced to take precautions, unexpectedly confronted with a huge number of listeners whom our generous restless city wished me to send, much more restless and restless in a much deeper sense than is commonly believed. I announced an academic and, therefore, strictly scientific course called "What is philosophy?". Perhaps many were confused by the inevitable ambiguity of the title, thinking that I was offering an introduction to the foundations of philosophy, that is, a superficial treatment of a set of traditional philosophical questions presented in a new form. It is necessary to partly dispel this delusion, which can only confuse your thoughts and divert your attention. I conceived something quite the opposite of an introduction to philosophy: to take philosophical activity itself, philosophizing itself, and subject them to deep analysis. As far as I know, no one has ever done this, although it's hard to believe; at least, I did not do it with the determination with which we will try to do it today. As you can see, this question is not at all one of those that usually arouse general interest; at first glance, it seems to be a purely special and professional issue for philosophers alone. And if in the course of its consideration it turns out that we are faced with the broadest universal themes, if, with a strict investigation of the question of what philosophy is as a special, private occupation of philosophers, we suddenly fall into the hatch and find ourselves in the most human, in hot pulsating bowels of life, and there you will be relentlessly pursued by the tempting problems of the street and even the bedroom, it will be because it should be so, that this is required by a special presentation of my special problem, and not at all because I announced it, or strove for the atom, or invented it. On the contrary, I promise only one thing: a monographic study of a highly specialized issue. Therefore, I reserve the full right to all the intellectual roughness that is inevitable in the implementation of such an intention. Of course, I must honestly try to make my words understandable to all of you, even those who have not received prior training. I've always thought that clarity is politeness. philosopher, moreover, today, more than ever, our discipline considers it an honor to be open and permeable to all minds, in contrast to the private sciences, which every day more and more strictly guard the treasures of their discoveries from the curiosity of the profane, placing between them the monstrous dragon of inaccessible terminology. In my opinion, in investigating and pursuing his truths, (the philosopher must observe the utmost rigor in methodology, but when he proclaims them, puts them into circulation, he should avoid the cynical use of terms, so as not to become like scientists who like, like a strong man at a fair, to brag in front of the public biceps terminology.

So, I say that today our understanding of philosophy is fundamentally different from that of the previous generation. But this statement is tantamount to admitting that the truth is changing, that yesterday's truth is becoming a delusion today, and therefore today's truth will probably no longer be suitable tomorrow. Doesn't this mean to belittle in advance the significance of our own truth? Rather crude, but the most popular argument of skepticism was Agrippa's trope about divergence of opinion. The diversity and variability of opinions about the truth, adherence to different and even seemingly contradictory teachings gives rise to mistrust. Therefore, we should not hesitate to confront this popular skepticism.

You have probably noticed more than once an extraordinary but true incident. Take, for example, the law of gravity. To the extent that this law is true, it certainly has always been true, that is, since there has been matter with weight, there have been bodies; the latter always behaved in accordance with his formula. Nevertheless, we had to wait until one fine day in the 17th century. it will not be opened by one person from the British Isles. And vice versa, there is nothing impossible that on another fine day people will forget this law - they will not refute or clarify it, since we assume its complete truth, but they will simply forget and begin to treat it in the same way as before Newton - they will not even suspect him. This gives truths a double, very curious quality. By themselves, they always pre-exist, without undergoing the slightest distortion or change. However, the fact that they are possessed by a real subject, subject to the influence of time, gives them the appearance of historicity: they appear one day and, perhaps, disappear the next. It is clear that this temporality does not actually refer to them, but to their presence in the human mind. In time, in fact, there is a mental act in which we think them, it is this, a real event, a real change In a series of moments. Strictly speaking, only your knowledge or ignorance belongs to history. It is this fact that seems mysterious and disturbing, since it turns out that with the help of our thought - the changing and ephemeral reality of a highly ephemeral world - we take possession of something permanent and timeless. Thus, thinking is a point of contact between two worlds with an antagonistic consistency. Our thoughts are born and die, leave and return, die. Meanwhile, their content, what is thought, remains unchanged. Two times two is always four, even though the intellectual act in which we realized this has already taken place. But to say so, to say that truths are eternal, is to use an inadequate expression. Eternal, imperishable being means a certain constancy throughout the entire time series, unlimited duration, which is no different from ephemeral duration, and to last means to be immersed in the flow of time and in one way or another depend on its flow. So, truths do not have any - neither small nor large duration, they do not have any temporal attribute, they are not washed by the river of time. Leibniz called them verites eternelles, which is also inaccurate in my opinion. We will soon see for what good reasons. If the imperishable lasts as long as time as a whole in itself, then the eternal exists before the beginning of time and after its end, although it positively includes all time; it is hyperbolic duration, superduration. In this super-duration, duration is preserved and at the same time destroyed: the eternal being lives endlessly, that is, his life lasts an instant, or does not last, he is inherent in "perfect possession at once of all the fullness of infinite life." This is, in fact, Boethius' elegant definition of eternity: interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio. However, the relation of truths to time is not positive, but negative, they simply have nothing to do with time in any sense, they are completely alien to any temporal definition, they are always strictly achronic. Therefore, the statement that truths are always such does not, strictly speaking, contain the slightest inaccuracy, as if we were to say - remembering the famous example used by Leibniz for other purposes - "green justice". On the ideal hull of justice there is no mark or hole to which the attribute of "greenness" could be quickly pinned, and no matter how much we try to do this, we see that it slides off justice, as from a polished surface. It is not possible to connect both concepts: although we pronounce them together, they stubbornly remain separate, excluding the possibility of connection, or merging. So, there is no greater heterogeneity than between the timeless mode of existence characteristic of truths and the temporal existence of the subject who discovers and comprehends them, is aware or not aware, remembers or forgets. If we nevertheless use the expression "truths are always such," it is because in practice this does not lead to erroneous consequences: this is an innocent and convenient mistake. Thanks to her, we see such an unusual way of the existence of truth In the time perspective in which we are accustomed to consider the things of our world. And finally, to say about something that it is always what it is, means to affirm its independence from temporary changes, its invulnerability. Thus, within the temporal there is a sign that most of all resembles pure timelessness, a quasi-form of timelessness, species quaendum aeternitatis.

Therefore Plato, feeling that the truths which he called ideas should be placed outside the temporal world, invents another quasi-place lying outside the world, the supralunar world; although this step had serious consequences, one cannot but admit that as an image this concept is fruitful. It allows us to imagine our temporary world as a world surrounded by a different space, with a different ontological atmosphere, where timeless truths dispassionately reside. But at one fine moment one of these truths - the law of universal gravitation - seeps from this supralunar world into ours, slipping through a suddenly opened hole. Having fallen, the ideal meteorite remains in the real, human and historical world - such is the image of the coming, the descent from heaven, trembling in the depths of all divine revelations.

But this fall and seepage of truth from the supralunar world into your world poses an obvious and ambiguous problem, which, to our shame, still awaits its investigation. The hole that, when opened, lets in the truth, is simply the human mind. Then why is a certain truth grasped, grasped by a certain person at a certain time? Why wasn't it thought about sooner or later? Why did this person open it? Obviously, we are talking about an essential similarity between the configuration of this truth and the shape of the hole - the subject - through which it passes. Everything has a reason. If it so happened that before Newton the law of universal gravitation was not discovered, then between the human individual Newton and this law there was a certain relationship. What kind of relationship is this? Similarity? The problem should not be alleviated, on the contrary, it is necessary to emphasize its mysteriousness. How can a person resemble, for example, geometric truth? - however, as in any other. How is the Pythagorean theorem similar to the Pythagorean man? The schoolboy will wittily answer that with his pants, experiencing an unconscious desire to connect the theorem with the personality of its author. Unfortunately, Pythagoras did not have pants, at that time only the Scythians wore them, but they did not discover theorems.

Here we encounter for the first time the fundamental difference between our philosophy and that which has prevailed for many centuries. This difference consists in the fact that our philosophy is concerned with the most elementary things, such as the fact that there is no direct resemblance between a seeing, imagining, or thinking subject and what he sees or imagines; on the contrary, there is a generic difference. When I think of the Himalayas, neither I - the one who thinks - nor my act of thought is like the Himalayas: the Himalayas are mountains occupying a huge space, my thought does not resemble mountains in any way and does not occupy the slightest place. The same thing happens when, instead of thinking about the Himalayas, I think about the number eighteen. In my Self, in my mind, in my soul, in my subjectivity - whatever you want to call it - I will not find anything to do with eighteen. In addition, it can be said that I think eighteen units in one single act. Who's to say they're the same? Thus, we are talking about heterogeneous entities. And no less than the main task of history, if one day it really wants to become a science, there must be one thing: to show that such and such a philosophy or such and such politic system could be discovered, developed, in short, experienced only by people of such and such a type, who lived at such and such a time. Why, out of the multitude of possible philosophies, did one "criticism" find refuge, be realized in Kant's soul? Is it not obvious what can be explained and understood only by constructing a double table of correspondences, where each kind of objective idea would correspond to a similar subjective state, a type of person capable of thinking it?

However, let's not fall into the triviality that has hindered the development of thinking for the last eighty years, let's not interpret what has been said in the spirit of extreme relativism, according to which each truth is true only for a certain subject. The fact that the real truth is suitable for everyone, and the fact that only one or a few of all of them manage to learn and assimilate it, or only in one or another era, are completely different things, and that is why it is necessary to connect them, harmonize them, overcoming the scandalous situation. into which thought fell when the absolute value of truth seemed inconsistent with the change of opinion that has so often occurred in human history.

It must be understood that thoughts change not as a result of a change in yesterday's truth, which today has become a delusion, but as a result of a change in a person's orientation, thanks to which he begins to see other truths that differ from yesterday's. Therefore, it is not truths that change, but man, and he, changing, looks through a series of truths and selects from underworld, which we mentioned earlier, are closest to him, without noticing all the others, pay attention to the fact that this is the main a priori of the story. Isn't this the content of human history? And what is the being called man, whose changes in time history seeks to study? Defining a person is not easy; the range of its differences is enormous; the fuller and broader is the concept of man with which the historian begins his work, the deeper and more accurate will be his work. Man is both Kant and a pygmy from New Guinea or an Australian Neanderthal. Nevertheless, between the extreme points of human diversity there must be a minimum of commonality, before the last limit there must be a space allotted to the human race. Antiquity and the Middle Ages had a concise and, to our shame, virtually unsurpassed definition of man: a rational animal. It raises no objections, but, unfortunately, a clear idea of ​​what an animal is and what a rational being is has become very problematic for us. Therefore, for historical reasons, we prefer to say that a person is any creature thinking meaningfully and therefore understandable by us. The minimum assumption of history is that the subject it speaks of can be understood. However, only that which to some extent possesses truth is accessible to understanding. We would not be able to recognize the absolute delusion, because we simply would not understand it. Thus, the basic assumption of history is in direct opposition to extreme relativism. When studying culture primitive man we assume that his culture had meaning and truth, and if it had it, it still does. What is this truth, if at first glance the actions and thoughts of these creatures seem so ridiculous? History is a second look, able to find meaning in what seems meaningless.

Therefore, history cannot be real history without fulfilling its main task: to understand any person, even the most primitive epoch. However, it is possible to understand it only if the person of this era leads a meaningful life, that is, his thoughts and actions are rational. structure. Thus, history undertakes to justify all times, i.e., it does just the opposite of what it seemed to us at first glance: by unfolding before us all the diversity of human opinions, it allegedly dooms us to relativism, but since it gives each relative position of man the entire fullness of meaning, revealing to us the eternal truth of each epoch, it decisively overcomes the incompatibility of relativism with the belief in a triumphant over relativity and, as it were, eternal destiny of man. I have certain reasons to hope that in our time the interest in the eternal and unchanging, that is, philosophy, and the interest in the transient and changing, that is, history, will for the first time unite and embrace each other. For Descartes, man is a purely rational being, incapable of change; therefore, history seemed to him the history of the inhuman in man, and he ultimately explained it as a sinful will, constantly forcing you to neglect the life of a rational being and embark on adventures unworthy of a person. For him, as for the 18th century, history is devoid of positive content and is a series of human errors and errors. Historicism and positivism of the 20th century, on the other hand, abandon all eternal values ​​in favor of the relative value of each epoch. Today it is not worth raping our sensuality, which does not want to give up any of the two dimensions: temporary and furnace. Their combination should be the great philosophical task of the modern generation, and the method I have developed, which the Germans, prone to labeling, have dubbed "perspectivism", will help to solve it.

It can be said that from 1840 to 1900 mankind experienced one of the most unfavorable periods for philosophy. It was an antiphilosophical time. If philosophy could essentially be dispensed with, it would undoubtedly have disappeared completely over the years. But since the human mind cannot be completely deprived of the philosophical dimension, it has been reduced to a minimum. And today, your common battle with you, which still promises to be stubborn, consists precisely in reaching again a complete and perfect philosophy - in a word, to the maximum of philosophy.

How did this decline, this exhaustion of the corpus of philosophy, come about? This fact is due to a number of reasons, which we will deal with next time.