The problem of man in medieval philosophy - abstract. Features of medieval philosophy. "God and man" - the central problem

In medieval Western philosophy, ancient cosmocentrism was replaced by Christian theocentrism. This was a radical shift in public consciousness, which was accompanied by a significant “revaluation of values.” If previously a person was considered as a particle of the cosmos, now he was assessed and measured through the principles of religion with the idea of a personal absolute God who communicates knowledge about himself in revelation. Hence, a completely understandable revision of traditional views on the essence and purpose of man, a rethinking of the ancient tradition.

"At the base of all Christian anthropology was a phrase from the book of Genesis: “Let us make man in our image and likeness” (Gen. 1:26), reinterpreted in the letters of the Apostle Paul. It is the theology of image and likeness, viewed through the prism of the dogmas of creation, fall, incarnation, redemption and resurrection, that has become the cornerstone of Christian anthropology. And in the anthropological teachings of medieval authors, both the opposition between the Creator and the created nature of man, emphasized by the theologem of the Fall, and the way to overcome the alienation of man from God, defined, in particular, by the theologems of incarnation and redemption, were conceptualized."

Byzantine anthropology

In Russian historiography, paradoxically, we usually immediately move from antiquity to the Middle Ages, and then to the Renaissance. Thus, outside of such division there remains a very significant period of history, directly connected with the birth of Orthodoxy. The anthropological thought of Byzantium is distinguished by its originality.

“In the writings of Byzantine thinkers, philosophical and, in particular, anthropological issues were usually immersed in theological ones. The attitude towards Greek philosophy could be different: respectful, like that of Psellus or Pletho, who were inspired by Plato and the Neoplatonists, and dismissive, characteristic, for example, of Symeon the New Theologian, and utilitarian, like the taxonomists of religious doctrine, with whom Aristotle was favored since the time of Leontius of Byzantium and John of Damascus.Nevertheless, for the majority of Byzantine authors, interpretations of Holy Scripture turned out to be more significant than interpretations of any philosophical text, and the “definitions” of ecumenical councils were more significant than any, even the most serious philosophical definitions."

The anthropological problems of Byzantium are extensive. Thus, Nemesius of Emesa reflects on how the union of the soul and the inanimate body occurs. Maximus the Confessor talks about the unity of the world, which to a certain extent is identical to the unity of man. According to John of Damascus, it is absolutely impossible for one complex nature to be formed from two natures. Psellus sees in the mind the most perfect state of the soul. Gregory Palamas believes that the intelligible world cannot be deified.

M.A. Gartsev notes that the process of dogmatic self-determination of the Christian religion was associated not only with the approval of the symbol of faith, but also with the opposition to all sorts of distortions of the doctrine. Hence the polemical orientation of many works - “Against the Arians”, “Against the Nestorians”. This allows us to understand how the principles of Trinitarian theology (that is, the doctrine of the Trinity) and Christology were projected onto theological anthropology.

In the Byzantine theological tradition, comprehensive negation was interpreted not only as a theoretical procedure, but also as a purposeful ascetic-mystical action. It also included the fight against what Maximus the Confessor called “people-pleasing.” This was the basis for the impulse of self-denial and spiritual asceticism, which went beyond ordinary religious experience.

The problem of soul and body

Among the traditional anthropological questions medieval philosophy relates to the problem of the relationship between soul and body. It goes without saying that the thinkers of this era could not neglect the conclusions that were made by ancient philosophers, primarily Plato and Aristotle. The first, as already mentioned, considers man as a self-moving, immortal, self-thinking, incorporeal soul that owns a body. The latter deserves contempt. “The basis of this model is the intuition of the soul, as an incorporeal substance and life, and the body, as a corpse, for it is also considered alive through the prism of future decay... And the status of the individual, already contradictory, here in anthropology, even acquires some negative meaning: a concrete, individual person is the fruit of a regrettable union of body and soul, the result of self-will and disobedience of the lower parts of the soul to the higher ones." The soul, therefore, is a self-sufficient spiritual substance.

Aristotle rethinks the original anthropological intuition. He believes that the soul and body are not substances at all, one of which is incorporeal and eternal, and the other is composite and destructible. It's more of a person's point of view. With this approach, interpretations of the body as something base are eliminated. The question of whether the body has taken possession of the soul also disappears. Aristotle's concept fits into the definition: “Man is a living being endowed with reason.” Man, therefore, is a concrete sentient body. The soul is the materiality or form of the body.

These two concepts created a certain field, within which there were many intermediate interpretations. For example, representatives of early scholasticism gave preference to Plato and paid more attention to the distinction between the spiritual and the physical than to how the soul and body relate in man. At the same time, priority remained with the soul as the best part of a person, a specific embodiment of the person himself. It is an expression of the personal content of the individual. This is, in particular, the point of view of Hugh of Saint-Victor.

In a short work “On the Soul” (538), Cassiodorus summarized what was expressed on this topic in the writings of Aurelius Augustine, Claudian Mummert and other Christian authors. The philosopher was inclined to think that the soul is an incorporeal and immortal substance, involved in the world of immutable intelligible entities, but due to its own creation, it is not identical to them.

In the 13th century, when Aristotle turned out to be a very fashionable and attractive thinker, a rethinking of this topic took place. Some interpreters of this problem have come to the conclusion that although the soul does not completely depend on the body, at the same time it is not free from it. Thus began the search for a middle line between the interpretation of the mental soul as a spiritual substance and the understanding of the soul as a form of the body. A controversy broke out between the Thomists and the Augustians. The first proceeded from the statement of Thomas Aquinas that the thinking soul is an incomposite and the only substantial form in man. Their opponents believed that several substantial forms are found in man.

In the perception of these views, the initial opposition of reason and faith was also important. Among the scholastics of the 13th century. there was no doubt that the diverse problems of anthropology could be presented and justified rationally. The situation was different in the scholasticism of the 14th century. (say, in Ockham’s school), where it was even assumed that it is not reason, but faith that tells us the idea of the soul as a form of the body.

Related information.

The basis of medieval ideas about man lay religious(theocentric) attitudes, the essence of which is that the origin, nature, purpose and entire life of a person are predetermined by God. God is the beginning of all things.

AUGUSTINE THE BLESSED. Man is the soul that God breathed into him. The body and flesh are despicable and sinful. Only humans have a soul; animals do not have it. Man is completely and entirely dependent on God; he is not free and not free in anything. Man was created by God as a free being, but, having committed the Fall, he himself chose evil and went against the will of God. the main objective man - salvation before the Last Judgment, atonement for the sinfulness of the human race, unquestioning obedience to the church as the “city of God.”

THOMAS AQUINAS - God is the efficient and final cause of the world, the world was created by God “out of nothing”; the soul of man is immortal, his ultimate goal is bliss; man himself is also a creation of God, and in his position he is an intermediate being between creatures (animals) and angels. Theocentric attitudes in the doctrine of man in the Middle Ages were gradually overcome in the philosophy of the Renaissance. Deistic and pantheistic concepts of the creation of the world and man appeared.

PICO DELLA MIRANDOLE (1463-1494), man occupies a central place in the universe. Freedom of choice and creative abilities determine that everyone is the creator of their own happiness or misfortune and is capable of reaching both an animal state and rising to a god-like being.

The idea of a comprehensively developed harmonious personality is becoming widespread. The development of art is reaching unprecedented heights. It was the language of art, in the form of artistic images, that all the basic anthropological ideas of the Renaissance were expressed, which differed most significantly from the corresponding ideas of the Middle Ages. Thinkers such as N. Machiavelli and F. Guicciardini carried out in their writings the desacralization and de-theologization of social existence, explaining its development and essential content by natural causes. In the philosophical anthropology of this period, one can already quite clearly hear the motives of approaching individualism, egoism and utilitarianism associated with emerging capitalist social relations and the dominance of private interest.

Thus, LORENZO VALLA states with all certainty that prudence and justice come down to the benefit of the individual, one’s own interests should come first, and the homeland in last place.

10. The problem of man in modern European philosophy.

The influence of the dominance of private interest on ideas about a person, the motives of his behavior and life attitudes are clearly expressed in the concept T. Hobbes(1588-1679). In contrast to Aristotle, he argues that man by nature is not a social being. On the contrary, “man is a wolf to man” (homo homini lupus est), and “war of all against all” is the natural state of society. Pascal: argued that all the greatness and dignity of a person “lies in his ability to think.” I. Descartes . According to him, thinking is the only reliable evidence of human existence, which follows from the fundamental thesis of the French philosopher: “I think, therefore I exist.” There is an anthropological dualism of soul and body, viewing them as two substances of different quality, which had great importance to develop a psychophysical problem. According to Descartes, the body is a kind of machine, while the mind acts on it and, in turn, is influenced by it. I. Kant believed that the subject of philosophy is not just wisdom, but knowledge addressed to man. Answering the question of what a person is. Kant noted that man is evil by nature, but has the beginnings of goodness. Hegel introduced the principle of historicism into the consideration of man. If earlier a person was considered as an abstract being, unchangeable in its essence, then G. Hegel pointed out the need to take into account, when studying human essence, those specific socio-historical conditions in which the formation of this or that person took place.

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Essay

" The problem of man in medieval philosophy"

Completed by student: Rodionova E.A.

Moscow 2015

Introduction

1. Thomas Aquinas and the scholastic stage of development of medieval philosophy

2. Problems of being, essence and existence in medieval philosophy

3. Main problems of medieval philosophy

4. The problem of man in medieval philosophy

5. Problems of faith and reason in medieval philosophy

6. Basic concepts

Conclusion

List of sources used

Introduction

For better orientation in historical space, scientists have divided eras into several stages. The Middle Ages was the name given to the period that followed antiquity and continued until modern times. More precisely from the 1st to the 15th century new era. The Middle Ages were a period of complete dominance of feudalism, serfdom and Christianity in Europe. It was precisely two features - feudalism and Christianity - that determined the content and state of the philosophy of the Middle Ages. This philosophy is theology. Medieval philosophy is too meaningful and a long stage in history. The movement of philosophical thought is permeated with problems of religion.

1 . Thomas Aquinas and the Scholasticsstage of developmentmedievalphilosophy

Along with mysticism, scholasticism, a philosophy adapted for teaching the masses the basics of the Christian worldview, enjoyed enormous influence in medieval philosophy. It was formed during the period of absolute dominance of Christian ideology in all spheres of public life in Western Europe, and was the heir to the traditions of Christian apologetics, primarily the philosophy of Augustine. Its representatives sought to create a coherent system of Christian worldview. There was a hierarchy of spheres of existence, at the top of which was the church. One of the most characteristic features of the scholastic method of philosophizing was authoritarianism. The scholastics, in particular, did not care about the origin of certain provisions with which they operated. For them, the main thing was the approval of these provisions by the authority of the church.

Scholasticism is divided into three periods:

1) Early Scholasticism (from the 400s to the 1200s) In many ways, this period is associated with Augustine and his close Neoplatonism. Its prominent figures were the Irish monk John Scotus Eriugena, Anselm of Canterbury, famous for the so-called ontological proof of the existence of God, as well as the skeptical and freethinking Frenchman Peter Abelard, who, in particular, contributed to honing the scholastic method of posing and discussing philosophical questions.

2) Mature scholasticism (from approximately 1200 to the first decades of the 14th century). Outstanding representatives of this era of grandiose systems and synthesis were Albertus Magnus, his student Thomas Aquinas and Thomas's main opponent John Duns.

3) Late scholasticism (from the beginning of the 14th century to the heyday of the Renaissance). Its leading representative was the Englishman William of Ockham. He argued that faith and reason are fundamentally different from each other and substantiated nominalism and the turn of reason to the empirical. Thus, his teaching marked the transition to the philosophy of the New Age.

A significant contribution to the systematization of orthodox scholasticism was made by the monk, representative of the Dominican Order, Thomas Aquinas.

2. Problems of being, essence and existence in medieval philosophy

Before Thomas Aquinas, the dominant concept with the help of which theologians and philosophers tried to rationally comprehend the idea of \u200b\u200bthe Divine Being was the concept of essence. According to Anselm of Canterbury, for example, God, i.e. “nature” (essence), which imparts existence to everything.

With this interpretation, the existence of God, like the existence inherent in finite things, is a characteristic attributed to the essence - the bearer of existence, just as the predicate “is” is always attributed to some subject of judgment.

Both in ancient and medieval teachings up to Thomas Aquinas as an essence, i.e. the stable unit of being was always distinguished by that which corresponds to the noun; There was only one point of disagreement: whether this being is a generic or an individual substance. Thomas, as the fundamental basis of ontology, chooses the being that corresponds to the verb, namely, the verb “to be.” Taken separately, the verb “to be” indicates an act of being, not the being of some entity, but pure being, which does not need to be attributed to any entity in order to be. Such pure existence is not characteristic of finite things; God alone possesses it, or rather, does not possess it, and He Himself is nothing other than Being. According to Thomas, God is the act of being through which all things come into existence, i.e. become things that can be said to exist.

There is no something in God to which existence can be attributed, Thomas argues; his own being is what God is. Such being lies beyond any possible conception. We can establish that God exists, but we cannot know that he is, because there is no “what” in him; and since all our experience concerns things that have existence, we cannot imagine a being whose only essence is to be. Therefore, we can prove the truth of the statement God exists, but in this single case we cannot know the meaning of the verb.

Since God is a pure act, he is not composed of matter and form. Since God is what all beings have, there is no separate essence in him that needs to be united with the act of being. The absolute simplicity of God follows from his “place” in the structure of the universe. He is the First Cause of all things, and therefore is not the result of a combination of simple principles. All individual beings owe their existence to the First Cause. Therefore, they receive their existence. Their essence (what they are) receives existence from God. On the contrary, since the First Cause does not receive its existence, it cannot be said that it is different from it.

Unlike God, all created beings are not simple. Even the incorporeal angels, although they are not composed of matter and form, are, like all creatures, composed of essence and existence. In them there is that which receives being, namely, essence, and being imparted to them by God. In the hierarchy of creations, man is the first being distinguished by its double composition. Firstly, it consists of soul and body, which is simply special case composition of form and matter inherent in all corporeal beings. Form (the rational part of the soul) determines what a person is. Secondly, since man is a created being, there is another composition in him: from essence and existence

Through the form of the "soul" existence is communicated to all constituent elements human being.

Thus, in the teaching of Thomas Aquinas, the pure act of being, corresponding to the verb “to be,” precedes the existence of this or that essence. Being ceases to be a sign of essence and is separated from moments of precision, conceptual and semantic certainty, expressed by the concepts of essence and form. The introduction of the concept of the act of being allowed Thomas Aquinas to take a new approach to the solution the most important problems scholastic philosophy. Along with this, contradictions arose on some philosophical issues.

The largest philosopher of the European Middle Ages, who created a system that absorbed all the achievements of scholasticism, was Thomas Aquinas (1225 -1274). The philosophy of Thomas Aquinas represents the ultimate systematization of Christian Aristotelianism with the goal of establishing harmony between faith and reason. We find the implementation of this goal in the main works - “Summa Theology” and “Summa against the Pagans”. In Thomas Aquinas, the first philosophy, or metaphysics, is aimed at knowing God as the ultimate spiritual goal, and also as a universal, necessary, personal and efficient cause, carrying out its work in nature and the human world through “secondary causes.” Medieval philosophy viewed law not as a necessary connection between the phenomena of the material world, but as a manifestation of the divine will. According to Thomas Aquinas, they are tendencies to strive towards a certain goal placed by God in things. One of the main tendencies of the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas is the desire to “link” the existence of God and the existence of the world of things. Recognizing that God in all his completeness is inaccessible to the limited human mind, Aquinas believes that reason can and. must cognize "God in the aspect of his divinity." This possibility is due to the distinction between existence and essence. God, understood not as a person, but as an absolute being, can be the subject of rational comprehension, his existence can be proven based on the existence of things. Thomas Aquinas put forward five proofs for the existence of God, each based on this principle.

Christian theology, with its teaching about a transcendent God, creates a unique religious picture of the world in which theocentrism is embodied.

According to the principle of theocentrism, the source of all being, goodness and beauty is God. The highest goal of life is seen in serving God. The ancient recognition of the existence of many gods, i.e. Polytheism is coming to an end. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam insist on monotheism. These kinds of teachings are monotheistic. What is it like philosophical meaning theocentrism? It must be assumed that it is not by chance that philosophy takes on a geocentric form. Our main task is to understand the meaning of theocentrism, its vital roots.

Theocentrism is a historical form of expression of the subject, his special place in the universe. In conditions when a person is still closely connected with all natural realities and tribal relations, but is already beginning to realize his specificity, the only acceptable principle is the principle of absolute personality, the principle of God. The role of the subject has already been highlighted, but not so much that it can be fully attributed to individual people. The principle of absolute personality is the result of a deeper understanding of the subjective than in antiquity.

It is significant that ancient thinkers, contemporaries of Christianity, did not perceive the latter. It seemed monstrous to them to consider the Jew Christ the son of God. They found in the same Christianity (remember that the Old Testament was written before our era, and New Testament- in the 1st-11th centuries. AD) there are many contradictions. But even the actual presence of the latter could not stop the main strengthening of the principle of the subject, which was precisely what found its embodiment in geocentrism. By the way, it turned out that it was the ancient thinkers who prepared the basis for geocentric ideas. This, in particular, is the development of a fairly strict style of thinking, the ability to develop a single logical principle, without which monotheism, as is obvious, cannot do, as well as an understanding of the one as good. When theologians began to give Christianity a strict logical form, they turned directly to the arsenal of ideas of ancient philosophy.

Of course, the principle of the subject could not be carried out in the Middle Ages except in accordance with the content of life's realities: even in scientific treatises God appears as a lord, a feudal lord, a king. Augustine believed that “a creator is called creator in relation to his creatures, just as a master is called master in relation to his servants.” The idea was repeated many times that angels, monks, and lay people are vassals of God. In golden French, the image of Christ was accompanied by the inscription: “Christ is the winner, Christ is the king, Christ is the emperor.” At the same time, God the Son is closer to the laity than his powerful father.

Christ appears as the God-man, as a man, teacher, mentor, who surprisingly subtly understands the humble soul of the uneducated peasant. The human nature of Christ is the true basis of medieval humanism.

The principle of theocentrism, with its comprehensiveness, forced medieval philosophers to consider and clarify such concepts as being, essence, existence, property, quality.

The basis of medieval human knowledge was the religious (theocentric) attitude that God is the beginning of all things. He created the world, man, determined the norms human behavior. The first people (Adam and Eve), however, sinned before God, violated his prohibition, wanted to become equal with him in order to determine for themselves what good and evil are.

This is the original sin of humanity, which was partially redeemed by Christ, but which must be redeemed by every person through repentance and godly behavior. Medieval philosophy raised fundamental questions about essence and existence, about God, man and Truth, the meaning of eternity, the relationship between the cities of the “earthly” and “God’s” (Augustine, Boethius, Eriugena, Albertus Magnus, etc.).

At the pinnacle of medieval intellectual thinking stands Thomas Aquinas. According to Thomas Aquinas, “there are some truths that transcend no matter how powerful reason: for example, God is one in three persons. Other truths are quite accessible to reason: for example, that God exists, that God is one, and the like.”

Thomas Aquinas first introduced the distinction between the truths of fact and faith, which became widespread in religious philosophy.

God is the active and final cause of the world, the world was created by God “out of nothing”; the soul of man is immortal, his ultimate goal is bliss found in the contemplation of God in the afterlife; man himself is also a creation of God, and in his position he is an intermediate being between creatures (animals) and angels.

In general, the influence of Thomas Aquinas on European culture is difficult to overestimate, since it was he who synthesized Christianity and the ideas of Aristotle, harmonizing the relationship between faith and knowledge. In his concept, they do not oppose each other, but merge into a whole, which is achieved by allowing for the possibility of rational comprehension of the essence of the universe created by the Creator.

The most succinct philosophical and anthropological views of the Middle Ages are presented in the works of Augustine the Blessed. He argued that man is a soul that God breathed into him.

The body and flesh are despicable and sinful. Only humans have a soul; animals do not have it. Man is completely and entirely dependent on God; he is not free and not free in anything. Man was created by God as a free being, but, having committed the Fall, he himself chose evil and went against the will of God. This is how evil arises, this is how a person becomes unfree. From the moment of the Fall, people are predestined to evil, doing it even when they strive to do good.

The main goal of man, Augustine believed, is salvation before the Last Judgment, atonement for the sinfulness of the human race, unquestioning obedience to the church as the “city of God.”

Thus, in medieval philosophy the theocentric understanding of man prevails, the essence of which is that the origin, nature, purpose and entire life of man are predetermined by God. The body (natural) and soul (spiritual) are opposed to each other. Subsequently, the question of their relationship became one of the core questions in philosophical anthropology.

4 . The main problems of medieval philosophy

The intellectual movement developing at the end of the 12th and 13th centuries in the countries of Western Europe, the philosophical inspiration of which was Aristotelian teaching, entailed a growing tendency towards the separation of science from theology, reason from faith. This point of view was in clear contradiction with the interests of the church, and therefore it was necessary to look for ways to resolve the issue of the relationship between theology and science. This was not an easy task, for it was a matter of developing a method that, without preaching a complete disregard for knowledge, would at the same time be able to subjugate rational thinking dogmas of revelation, that is, to maintain the primacy of faith over reason. This task was carried out by Thomas, relying on the Catholic interpretation of the Aristotelian concept of science. Therefore, Catholic historians of philosophy are convinced that Thomas Aquinas autonomized science, turning it into a field completely independent of theology. theology philosophy scholastic

Due to the fact that theology is the highest wisdom, the final object of which is exclusively God as the “first cause” of the universe, a wisdom independent of all other knowledge, Thomas does not separate science from theology. In essence, Aquinas's concept of science was an ideological reaction to rationalist tendencies aimed at freeing science from the influence of theology. One can, however, say that he separates theology from science in the epistemological sense, that is, he believes that theology draws its truths not from philosophy, not from private disciplines, but exclusively from revelation. Thomas could not stop there, because this was not what theology required. This point of view only confirmed the superiority of theology and its independence from other sciences, but it did not solve the most significant task for that time facing the Roman Curia, namely the need to subordinate the developing scientific movement to theology, especially one with a natural science orientation. The point was, first of all, to prove the non-autonomy of science, to turn it into a “handmaiden” of theology, to emphasize that any human activity, both theoretical and practical, ultimately comes from theology and is reduced to it.

In accordance with these requirements, Aquinas develops the following theoretical principles that define the general line of the church on the issue of the relationship between theology and science:

1. Philosophy and special sciences perform service functions in relation to theology. An expression of this principle is the well-known position of Thomas that theology “does not follow other sciences as superior to it, but resorts to them as its subordinate handmaidens.” Their use, in his opinion, is not evidence of the lack of self-sufficiency or weakness of theology, but, on the contrary, follows from the wretchedness of the human mind. Rational knowledge in a secondary way facilitates the understanding of the known dogmas of faith, brings us closer to the knowledge of the “first cause” of the universe, that is, God;

2. The truths of theology have their source in revelation, the truths of science have sensory experience and reason. Thomas argues that from the point of view of the method of obtaining truth, knowledge can be divided into 2 types: knowledge discovered by the natural light of reason, for example, arithmetic, and knowledge that draws its foundations from revelation;

3. There is an area of certain objects common to theology and science. Thomas believes that the same problem can be the subject of study by different sciences. But there are certain truths that cannot be proven by reason, and therefore they belong exclusively to the sphere of theology. Aquinas included the following dogmas of faith among these truths: the dogma of the resurrection, the history of the incarnation, the Holy Trinity, the creation of the world in time, and so on;

4. The provisions of science cannot contradict the dogmas of faith. Science must indirectly serve theology, must convince people of the validity of its principles. The desire to know God is true wisdom. And knowledge is only the handmaiden of theology. Philosophy, for example, based on physics, must construct evidence for the existence of God, the task of paleontology is to confirm the Book of Genesis, and so on.

In connection with this, Aquinas writes: “I think about the body in order to think about the soul, and I think about it in order to think about a separate substance, and I think about it in order to think about God.”

If rational knowledge does not fulfill this task, it becomes useless, moreover, it degenerates into dangerous reasoning. In case of conflict, the decisive criterion is the truths of revelation, which surpass in their truth and value any rational evidence.

Thus, Thomas did not separate science from theology, but, on the contrary, completely subordinated it to theology.

Aquinas, expressing the interests of the church and feudal strata, assigned science a secondary role. Thomas completely paralyzes contemporary scientific life.

During the Renaissance and at a later time, the theological concept of science created by Thomas became a pre-criminal and ideological brake on scientific progress.

The dispute between representatives of scholasticism and mysticism about the most effective means introducing people to religion at the level of philosophy and theology resulted in a dispute about the best forms and methods of defending and justifying the Christian worldview. Various approaches to solving these issues have formulated two main trends: religious intellectualism and religious anti-intellectualism.

Religious intellectualism clearly expresses the desire to rely on the rational principle in human consciousness, to appeal to social and intellectual experience, and common sense. The goal of intellectualism is to develop in a person a conscious perception of religious doctrine, based not only on authority, but also supported by reasonable arguments. Representatives of intellectualism, to a certain extent, allow the participation of reason and the associated means of theoretical analysis and evaluation in the religious life of people. They strive to put reason at the service of faith, to reconcile science and religion, and to make maximum use of the possibilities of rational means of influencing people.

In contrast to religious intellectualism, representatives of religious anti-intellectualism believe that the rational approach to religion, which contains a moment of coercion and obligation for God, excludes creativity, freedom, arbitrariness, and omnipotence. Actions

God, from the point of view of anti-intellectualists, are not subject to the laws of reason. God is absolutely free, his actions are absolutely unpredictable. On the path to God, the mind is a hindrance. To come to God, you need to forget everything you knew, forget even that there can be knowledge. Anti-intellectualism cultivates blind and thoughtless faith among religious adherents.

The struggle between religious intellectualism and religious anti-intellectualism runs like a red thread through the entire history of medieval philosophy.

However, at each specific historical stage of history, this struggle had its own characteristics.

During the period of the formation of Christian apologetics, it was conducted on issues of attitude to ancient culture in general and to ancient philosophy, as a theoretical expression of this culture, in particular; Representatives of anti-intellectualism took a negative position towards ancient culture. They sought to discredit it in the eyes of their adherents as false, contradictory in nature views that lead people away from their true purpose - “the salvation of their souls.”

The negative position of anti-intellectualism in relation to ancient culture was partly explained by the fact that in Christian communities at the first stage the absolute majority were illiterate, poorly educated people. The position that the truth proclaimed in Christianity is complete and final, sufficient to solve all the problems of human existence, to a certain extent satisfied its adherents and ensured the functioning of Christianity in society. However, the ideologists of Christianity constantly sought to expand the social base of the new religion. They wanted to win over the educated layers of Roman society: the patricians, the intelligentsia. Solving this problem required a change in policy towards ancient culture, a transition from confrontation to assimilation.

Representatives of intellectualism believed that conceptually rational means of influence should not be thrown aside, much less left in the hands of enemies. They must be put at the service of Christianity. As V.V. Sokolov notes, Justin already outlined a conciliatory line in relation to Hellenistic philosophy (see: V.V. Sokolov, Medieval Philosophy. -M., 1979. -P. 40).

The orientation towards familiarization with ancient culture finds its highest expression in the theory developed by Augustine about the harmony of faith and reason.

Augustine demands recognition of two ways of introducing people to religion: conceptually rational (logical thinking, achievements of science and philosophy) and non-rational (the authority of the “Holy Scripture” of the church, emotions and feelings). But these paths, from his point of view, are unequal. Augustine gives undisputed priority to irrational means. “It was not by human teaching, but by inner light, as well as by the power of the highest love, that Christ could convert people to saving faith.” According to Augustine’s views, religious faith does not imply rational justification in the sense that in order to accept certain provisions of religion it is necessary to know, understand, and have evidence.

In the sphere of religious life one should simply believe without requiring any proof.

At the same time, Augustine is clearly aware of the fact that important role, which is played by rational means of influence. Therefore, he considers it necessary to strengthen faith with evidence of reason, and advocates for the internal connection of faith and knowledge. Healing the soul, according to him, is divided into authority and reason. Authority requires faith and prepares a person for reason. Reason leads to understanding and knowledge. Although reason does not constitute the highest authority, the known and understood truth serves as the highest authority. Reason obedient to religion and faith supported by reasonable arguments - this is the ideal of Augustinian apologetics. However, it should be noted that the theory presented by Augustine about the harmony of faith and reason does not allow for the possibility, at least to some extent, of making faith dependent on reason. Decisive importance in his system, without any doubt, is given to revelation.

Augustine created his theory of the harmony of faith and reason in the 4th-5th centuries. in the early period of Christian history. In the XI-XII centuries. In the struggle for ideological dominance in society, free-thinking, which originated in the depths of feudal culture, begins to exert an ever-increasing influence. The emergence of medieval free-thinking is associated with a number of objective factors: the separation of crafts from the peasant economy and the development of cities on this basis, which gradually became a significant factor in medieval life. A secular culture begins to take shape in cities. One of the most important consequences of this factor is that the church has ceased to be the absolute bearer of education and sophistication. In connection with the development of crafts and trade among the urban population, the need for knowledge of law, medicine, and technology increases. Private law schools are emerging, which are under the control of the church and city government.

During the period of decline of medieval scholasticism, the so-called theory of “two truths” arose, according to which faith and reason turn out to be two independent areas, the differences between which are so radical that they can never be overcome. For the supporters of this theory, Seager of Brabant (c. 1240 - 1281), William of Ockham (c. 1300 - c. 1350), the distinction between faith and reason is actually a requirement for the emancipation of philosophy, its liberation from the control of religion.

In the XI-XII centuries. most of the scholastics were “realists” - John Scott Eriugena, Anselm of Kenggerbury (1033 - 1109), Thomas Aquinas. Being heterogeneous, this direction was manifested in a number of concepts.

Thus, extreme realists adhered to Plato’s doctrine of ideas, the essence of which boiled down to the fact that there is a general (i.e., Ideas) that exists before individual things and outside of them. For example, first the idea of a table appears and exists, and then specific tables are created; first the idea of good, and then - concrete good deeds, etc. Moreover, before the creation of the world, these general ideas, or “universals,” as medieval authors called them, are found in the Divine Mind. Nature, in their opinion, is a sequence of stages in the manifestation of God, who, according to “universals”, as according to models, creates the world. Ultimately, from the point of view of extreme realists, the original, genuine existence is not possessed by the real (physical) world, but by the world of general concepts and ideas.

4. The problem of man in medieval philosophy

For the medieval consciousness, the whole meaning of human life was in three words: live, die and be judged. No matter what social and material heights a person reaches, he will appear naked before God. Therefore, one must not worry about the vanity of this world, but about the salvation of the soul. The medieval man believed that throughout his life evidence accumulated against him - sins that he committed and for which he did not confess or repent. Confession requires a duality so characteristic of the Middle Ages - a person acted simultaneously in two roles: in the role of the accused, for he was responsible for his deeds, and in the role of the accuser, since he himself had to analyze his behavior in the face of the representative of God - the confessor. The personality received its completeness only when a final assessment was given of the individual’s life and what he had done throughout it:

The “judicial thinking” of medieval man expanded beyond the boundaries of the earthly world. God, the Creator, was understood as the Judge. Moreover, if at the first stages of the Middle Ages He was endowed with the traits of balanced, stern inflexibility and paternal condescension, then at the end of this era he was already a merciless and vengeful Lord. Why? Philosophers of the late Middle Ages explained the extraordinary increase in the preaching of fear of the formidable Deity by the deep socio-psychological and religious crisis of the transition period.

God's Judgment had a dual character, for one, private, judgment took place when someone died, the other. Universal, must take place at the end of the history of the human race. Naturally, this aroused great interest among philosophers in understanding the meaning of history.

Most complex problem, sometimes incomprehensible to modern consciousness, was the problem of historical time.

Medieval man lived, as it were, outside of time, in a constant sense of eternity. He willingly endured the daily routine, noticing only the change of day and seasons. He did not need time, because it, earthly and vain, distracted him from work, which in itself was only a delay before the main event - God's Judgment.

Theologians argued for the linear flow of historical time. In the concept of sacred history, time flows from the act of Creation through the passion of Christ to the end of the world and the Second Coming. In accordance with this scheme, they were built in the 13th century. and concepts of earthly history (for example, Vincent of Beauvais).

Philosophers tried to solve the problem of historical time and eternity. But this problem was not simple, because, like all medieval consciousness, it was also characterized by a certain dualism: the expectation of the end of history and at the same time the recognition of its eternity. On the one hand, there was an eschatological attitude, that is, the expectation of the end of the world; on the other, history was presented as a reflection of supra-temporal, supra-historical “sacred events”: “Christ was born once and cannot be born again.”

A great contribution to the development of this problem was made by Augustine the Blessed, who is often called one of the first philosophers of history. He tried to explain such categories of time as past, present and future. In his opinion, only the present is valid, the past is connected with human memory, and the future lies in hope. Everything is united once and for all in God as Absolute Eternity. This understanding of the absolute eternity of God and the real variability of material and human world for a long time became the basis of the Christian medieval worldview.

Augustine deals with the “fate of humanity,” guided, however, by biblical historiography, which asserts that what was predicted by the prophets over many centuries comes true in due time. Hence the conviction that history, even with the uniqueness of all its events, is fundamentally predictable, and, therefore, filled with meaning. The basis of this meaningfulness lies in Divine Providence, Divine care of humanity. Everything that needs to happen serves the implementation of the original Divine plan: the punishment of people for original sin; testing their ability to resist human evil and testing their will to good; atonement for original sin; the calling of the best part of humanity to build a sacred community of righteous people; the separation of the righteous from the sinners and the final reward to each according to his deserts.

In accordance with the objectives of this plan, history is divided into six periods (eons). Augustine, as a rule, refrains from talking about the temporal duration of each of the periods and considers all biblical eschatological periods to be purely symbolic.

In contrast to his Christian predecessors and medieval followers, Augustine is more interested not in chronology, but in the logic of history, which was the subject of his main work - On the City of God. In the book we're talking about about a global community of people, a community that is not political, but ideological, spiritual.

5. Problems of faith and reason in medieval philosophy

Philosophy is theoretical basis worldview, or its theoretical core, around which a kind of spiritual cloud of generalized everyday views of worldly wisdom has formed, which constitutes a vital level of worldview. But the worldview also has highest level- a generalization of the achievements of science, art, the basic principles of religious views and experience, as well as the most subtle sphere of the moral life of society. In general, worldview could be defined as follows: this is a generalized system of views of a person (and society) on the world as a whole, on his own place in it, a person’s understanding and assessment of the meaning of his life and activities, the destinies of humanity; a set of generalized scientific, philosophical, socio-political, legal, moral, religious, aesthetic value orientations, beliefs, convictions and ideals of people.

Depending on how the question of the relationship between spirit and matter is resolved, the worldview can be idealistic or materialistic, religious or atheistic. Materialism is a philosophical view that recognizes matter as substance, the essential basis of being. According to materialism, the world is matter in motion. The spiritual principle, consciousness, is a property of highly organized matter - the brain.

Idealism is a philosophical worldview, according to which true existence belongs not to matter, but to the spiritual principle - mind, will. The integrity of human spirituality finds its completion in the worldview. Philosophy as a unified worldview is the work not only of every thinking person, but also of all humanity, which, like an individual person, has never lived and cannot live by purely logical judgments, but realizes its spiritual life in all its colorful fullness and integrity its diverse moments. Worldview exists in the form of a system of value orientations, ideals, beliefs and convictions, as well as the way of life of a person and society.

The problem of values as part of a worldview is closely connected with such phenomena of the spirit as faith, ideals and beliefs. Faith, based on the deep moral need of the soul, gracefully enlivened by the “warm breath of feelings,” is one of the core foundations of the spiritual world of man and humanity. Could it be so? so that a person does not believe in anything throughout his entire life? This cannot be: even though there is a dormant faith, it is certainly present in the soul of even such a person about whom they say that he is an unbeliever Thomas.

Faith is a phenomenon of consciousness that has the power of inevitability and enormous vital significance: a person cannot live at all without faith. Faith in general cannot be identified with religious faith.

Ideals are an important component of a worldview. A person in his life, in his constant modeling of the future, cannot do without striving for the ideal. A person feels the need to invent ideals: without them there is not a single reasonable person, nor society; Without them, humanity could not exist.

Beliefs constitute the core of the worldview and the spiritual core of the personality. A person without deep convictions is not yet a person in the high sense of the word; it is like a bad actor playing roles forced on him and, ultimately, losing his own self.

6. Basic Concepts

Nominalism is a philosophical doctrine that asserts that universals do not exist in reality, but only in thinking. Medieval nominalism experienced its heyday in the 14th century. The most outstanding nominalist of this period is Ockham, who claims that only individual individuals can be the object of knowledge.

Realism is a religious and philosophical teaching based on the primacy of supersensible general ideas (God, the world soul).

Scholasticism is a medieval "school philosophy", whose representatives - the "scholastics" - sought to rationally substantiate and systematize the khan's dogma. To do this, they used the ideas of ancient philosophy.

Theocentrism is a philosophical concept based on the understanding of God as an absolute, perfect, highest being, the source of all life and any good. At the same time, the basis of morality is reverence and service to God, and imitation and likening Him is considered the highest goal human life. Theocentrism is associated with theism and its principles. Theocentrism is contrasted with cosmocentrism and anthropocentrism.

The most widespread theocentrism was the theological concept in the Middle Ages, according to which God, understood as an absolute, perfect being and the highest good, is the source of all being and good. Imitation and assimilation to God are considered as the highest goal and main meaning of human life, veneration of God and service to him as the basis of morality.

The theocentrism of medieval philosophy rested on a merger with religion and gave support to the Christian behavior of man in the world.

The Bible was seen as the source of all knowledge about the world, nature and human history. Based on this, it arose a whole science about the correct interpretation of the Bible - exegesis.

Accordingly, medieval philosophy and theocentrism were entirely exegetical.

Edification. Training and education had value only when they were aimed at knowing God and saving the human soul. The training was based on the principle of dialogue, erudition and encyclopedic knowledge of the teacher.

The theocentrism of medieval philosophy was devoid of skepticism and agnosticism. Divine instructions and revelations could be known through insights, through faith. The physical world was studied through science, and the divine nature through Divine revelations. Two main truths stood out: divine and worldly, which the theocentrism of medieval philosophy symbiotically united. Personal salvation and the triumph of Christian truths were established on a universal scale.

Universals is a term of medieval philosophy denoting general concepts. The problem of universals goes back to the philosophical ideas of Plato and Aristotle and is one of the main themes of scholasticism, especially its early period. The theme of universals comes to medieval philosophy not directly from the works of ancient philosophers, but through commentaries on their works. In particular, through Porphyry's comments on Aristotle's Categories.

This is how general ideas were designated in medieval philosophy. The debate about universals was about whether they are objective, real, or just names of things. According to the first point of view, universals exist “before things,” ideally (the point of view of extreme realism of Eriugena) or existing “things” (the melancholy view of moderate realism of Thomas Aquinas).

The opposite view: universals exist only in the mind, “after the thing,” in the form of mental constructs (conceptualism) or even a hundred words (extreme nominalism).

Conclusion

So, medieval philosophy made a significant contribution to the further development of epistemology, developing and clarifying everything logically possible options the relationship between the rational, empirical and a priori, a relationship that will subsequently become not only the subject of scholastic debate, but the foundation for the formation of the foundations of natural science and philosophical knowledge.

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3. Yu.V. Tikhonravov. Philosophy. Tutorial. M.: JSC "Business school "INTEL-SINTEZ"", 1998 - 304 p.

4. Fundamentals of philosophy: Textbook for universities. /ed. Popova E.V./. - M.: Humanite. Ed. VLADOS Center, 320 p.

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Essay

Man and the world in medieval philosophy

1. The emergence of medieval philosophy 3

2. The problem of man in the history of philosophy 8

3. Man and society: anthropocentrism or sociocentrism? 10

4. The problem of personality in philosophy 12

References 14

1. The emergence of medieval philosophy

The emergence of medieval philosophy is often associated with the fall of the Western Roman Empire (476 AD), but such dating is not entirely correct.

At this time, Greek philosophy still reigns, and from its point of view, the beginning of everything is nature.

In medieval philosophy, on the contrary, the reality that determines all things is God. Therefore, the transition from one way of thinking to another could not happen instantly: the conquest of Rome could not immediately change either social relations(after all, Greek philosophy belongs to the era of ancient slaveholding, and medieval philosophy belongs to the era of feudalism), neither the internal worldview of people, nor religious beliefs built over centuries.

The formation of a new type of society takes a very long time. In the 1st - 4th centuries AD. e. The philosophical teachings of the Stoics, Epicureans, and Neoplatonists compete with each other, and at the same time, centers of new faith and thought are formed, which will later form the basis of medieval philosophy.

So, the period of the emergence of medieval philosophy I - IV centuries AD. e.

The roots of the philosophy of the Middle Ages lie in the religion of monotheism (monotheism).

Such religions include Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and it is with them that the development of both European and Arab philosophy of the Middle Ages is associated. Medieval thinking is theocentric: God is reality, determining all things. Christian monotheism is based on two most important principles that are alien to the religious-mythological consciousness and, accordingly, philosophical thinking pagan world: the idea of creation and the idea of revelation. Both of them are closely related to each other, for they presuppose one personal God. The idea of creation underlies medieval ontology, and the idea of revelation forms the foundation of the doctrine of knowledge.

The Middle Ages occupies a long period of European history from the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th century to the Renaissance (XIV-XV centuries). The philosophy that took shape during this period had two main sources of its formation. The first of these is ancient Greek philosophy, primarily in its Platonic and Aristotelian traditions. Second origin - Holy Bible, who turned this philosophy into the mainstream of Christianity.

The idealistic orientation of most philosophical systems of the Middle Ages was dictated by the basic dogmas of Christianity, among which the most important were the dogma of the personal form of God the creator, and the dogma of God’s creation of the world “out of nothing.” In the conditions of such a cruel religious dictatorship, supported state power, philosophy was declared the “handmaiden of religion”, within the framework of which all philosophical issues were resolved from the position of theocentrism, creationism, and providentialism.

According to Christian dogma, God created the world out of nothing, created it through the influence of his will, thanks to his omnipotence, which at every moment preserves and supports the existence of the world. This worldview is characteristic of medieval philosophy and is called creationism (creatio - creation, creation). The dogma of creation shifts the center of gravity from the natural to the supernatural. Unlike the ancient gods, who were akin to nature, the Christian God stands above nature, on the other side of it, and therefore is a transcendental God. The active creative principle is, as it were, withdrawn from nature, from the cosmos, and transferred to God; in medieval philosophy, the cosmos, therefore, is no longer a self-sufficient and eternal being, is not a living and animate whole, as many of the Greek philosophers considered it. Another important consequence of creationism is the overcoming of the dualism of opposite principles characteristic of ancient philosophy - active and passive: ideas or forms, on the one hand, matter, on the other. Dualism is replaced by a monistic principle: there is only one absolute principle - God, and everything else is his creation. The difference between God and creation is enormous: they are two realities of different ranks. Only God possesses genuine being; he is attributed the attributes that ancient philosophers endowed being with. He is eternal, unchangeable, self-identical, independent of anything else and is the source of everything that exists.

If we try to somehow identify the main trends of the medieval worldview, we get the following:

Theocentrism - (Greek theos - God), such an understanding of the world in which God is the source and cause of all things. He is the center of the universe, its active and creative principle. The principle of theocentrism also extends to knowledge, where theology is placed at the highest level in the system of knowledge; Below it is philosophy, which is in the service of theology; even lower are various private and applied sciences.

Creationism - (Latin creatio - creation, creation), the principle according to which God created living and inanimate nature out of nothing, corruptible, transitory, in constant change.

Providentialism - (Latin providentia - providence), a system of views according to which all world events, including the history and behavior of individual people, are controlled by divine providence (providence - in religious ideas: God, a supreme being or his actions).

In medieval philosophy, one can distinguish at least two stages of its formation - patristics and scholasticism, a clear boundary between which is quite difficult to draw.

Patristics is a set of theological and philosophical views of the “church fathers” who set out to substantiate Christianity, relying on ancient philosophy and, above all, on the ideas of Plato. There are three stages in patristics:

1. Apologetics (II-III centuries), which played an important role in the formation and defense of the Christian worldview;

2. Classical patristics (IV-V centuries), which systematized Christian teaching;

3. The final period (VI-VIII centuries), which stabilized dogmatics.

Scholasticism is a type of philosophizing in which, by means of the human mind, they try to substantiate ideas and formulas taken on faith. Scholasticism in the Middle Ages went through a series of stages of its development:

1. Early form (XI-XII centuries);

2. Mature form (XII-XIII centuries);

3. Late scholasticism (XIII-XIV centuries).

The philosophical dispute between spirit and matter led to a dispute between realists and nominalists. The dispute was about the nature of universals, that is, about the nature of general concepts, whether general concepts are secondary, that is, a product of the activity of thinking, or whether they represent the primary, real, exist independently.

Nominalism represented the beginnings of the materialist trend. The doctrine of nominalists about the objective existence of objects and natural phenomena led to the undermining of church dogma about the primacy of the spiritual and the secondary nature of the material, to the weakening of the authority of the church and Holy Scripture.

Realists showed that general concepts in relation to individual things of nature are primary and exist really, in themselves. They attributed to general concepts an independent existence, independent of individual things and people. Objects of nature, in their opinion, represent only forms of manifestation of general concepts.

Two currents (mentioned above) are very characteristic of medieval philosophical thought: realists and nominalists. At that time, the word "realism" had nothing in common with the modern meaning of the word. Realism meant the doctrine according to which only general concepts, or universals, and not individual objects have true reality.

According to medieval realists, universals exist before things, representing thoughts, ideas in the divine mind. And only thanks to this the human mind is able to cognize the essence of things, for this essence is nothing more than a universal concept. The opposite direction was associated with emphasizing the priority of will over reason and was called nominalism.

The term "nominalism" comes from the Latin "nomen" - "name". According to nominalists, general concepts are only names; they do not have any independent existence and are formed by our mind by abstracting certain features common to a number of things.

For example, the concept of “man” is obtained by discarding all the characteristics characteristic of each person individually, and concentrating on what is common to all: a person is a living being, endowed with more intelligence than any other animal.

Thus, according to the teaching of nominalists, universals exist not before things, but after things. Some nominalists even argued that general concepts are nothing more than the sounds of the human voice. Such nominalists included, for example, Roscelin (XI-XII centuries).

In the Middle Ages, a new view of nature was formed. A new view of nature deprives it of independence, as it was in antiquity, since God not only creates nature, but can also act contrary to the natural course of things (work miracles). In Christian doctrine, the dogma of creation, belief in miracles and the conviction that nature is “insufficient for itself” and that man is called to be its master, to “command the elements” are internally interconnected. Due to all this, the attitude towards nature changed in the Middle Ages.

The problem of man in medieval philosophy - abstract. Features of medieval philosophy. "God and man" - the central problem

10. The problem of man in modern European philosophy.

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