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classical German philosophers. German philosophy - a new look at the worldview

The philosophy of the Enlightenment managed to be realized practically - in the slogans and ideals of the Great French Revolution of 1789-1794. A fundamentally new stage in its development was the work of the German classics of the late 18th - early 19th centuries. - Immanuel Kant, Johann Fichte, Friedrich Schelling, Georg Hegel, Ludwig Feuerbach. With them, the themes of history, development, activity of the cognizing subject came to philosophy.

An important stage and development of world philosophical thought has become. It became especially widespread at the end of the 18th - the first half of the 19th centuries.

Representatives and founder of German philosophy

The basis of German classical philosophy was the work of the five most prominent German philosophers of that time:

  • Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804);
  • Johann Fichte (1762 - 1814);
  • Friedrich Schelling (1775 - 1854);
  • Georg Hegel (1770 - 1831);
  • Ludwig Feuerbach (1804 - 1872).

Each of these philosophers created his own philosophical system, filled with a wealth of ideas and concepts.

Founder of German classical philosophy the vast majority of researchers consider the brightest thinker of the second half of the 18th century. Immanuel Kant.

German classical philosophy became a kind of outcome of the development of all previous European philosophy and at the same time was the most important basis and source for the further development of philosophical thought.

Features of German philosophy of the XIX century

German philosophy of the 19th century is a unique phenomenon in world philosophy.

Feature of German philosophy in the fact that in just over 100 years she has succeeded in:

  • deeply explore the problems that have tormented mankind for centuries, and come to conclusions that determined the entire future development of philosophy;
  • to combine in itself almost all philosophical trends known at that time - from subjective idealism to vulgar materialism and irrationalism;
  • discover dozens of names of prominent philosophers who entered the "golden fund" of world philosophy (Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Engels, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, etc.).

German classical philosophy developed several general problems, which allows us to speak of it as a holistic phenomenon: it turned the attention of philosophy from traditional problems (being, thinking, cognition, etc.) to the study of human essence, paid special attention to the problem of development, significantly enriched the logical and theoretical apparatus of philosophy and looked at history as a holistic process.

Directions and stages of classical German philosophy

In general, in German philosophy of the XIX century. the following can be distinguished four main steps:

  • German classical philosophy(first half of the 19th century);
  • materialism(middle and second half of the 19th century);
  • irrationalism(second half and end of the 19th century);
  • "philosophy of life"(second half and end of the 19th century).

In German classical philosophy were presented three leading philosophies:

  • objective idealism(Kant, Schelling, Hegel);
  • subjective idealism(Fichte);
  • materialism(Feuerbach).

It became a reaction to the changes taking place in European society. There are three main directions in which these changes took place.

Firstly, with the advent of the Age of Enlightenment, a spiritual revolution took place, the very way of thinking of man changed. The consequence of this was the Great French Revolution (1789-1794), which had a huge worldwide resonance. It affected neighboring states not only ideologically, but also in reality, in the form of wars waged from 1792 to 1815 first by revolutionary and then Napoleonic France against coalitions of opposing states. The period of relative calm that followed, when the feudal-monarchist regimes were able to restore their strength, was only a temporary "calm before the storm" - a whole series of bourgeois-democratic revolutions, which in 1848-1849. swept through several European countries. Moreover, in some countries the first actions of the revolutionary proletariat took place. The French Revolution created the illusion of putting the ideas of the Enlightenment into practice. However, this was precisely an illusion, since progressive ideas unexpectedly turned into the most severe terror. Naturally, philosophers could not fail to notice this and not to reconsider the foundations on which they built their systems.

Secondly, in the 18th century the fight between freethinking and religion intensified, which, in the period after the French Revolution, tried to win back the positions lost during the Enlightenment, and then again was forced to retreat in the conditions of a new upsurge in the liberation struggle.

Finally, thirdly, cardinal changes took place in the understanding of the world, science arose and developed dynamically, primarily in the form of natural science. Mechanics, which had dominated physics since the beginning of the New Age, gradually lost its former dominant role. It was replaced by chemistry as a science of qualitative transformations of natural substances, as well as new branches of physics (the doctrine of magnetism and electricity, which soon merged into one scientific discipline that studies electromagnetic phenomena). Finally, biological disciplines progressed rapidly, moving more and more towards creating conditions for the development of a scientifically based theory of evolution as a generalizing theoretical construction.

Characteristic features of German classical philosophy

An important feature of German classical philosophy is the revival of the dialectics created by the philosophers of antiquity as a special method of cognition. This is its essential difference from the philosophy of the Enlightenment, which was generally based on metaphysics. Enlightenment philosophers proceeded from the assumption that all phenomena of the world are static and unchanging. Dialectics, as a new method for European philosophy, assumed the consideration of a phenomenon in all its complex relationships, was not content with random observations and was guided by a holistic view of phenomena. The main merit in the development of the new method belongs to Hegel, although his predecessor I. Kant prepared all the possibilities for this.

Classical German philosophy defines a holistic concept of dialectics:

  • Kant's dialectic is the dialectic of the limits and possibilities of human cognition: feelings, reason and human reason;
  • Fichte's dialectic is reduced to the development of the creative activity of the I, to the interaction of the I and the non-I as opposites, on the basis of the struggle of which the development of human self-consciousness takes place;
  • Schelling transfers to nature the principles of dialectical development proposed by Fichte, nature for him is a developing spirit;
  • Hegel presented a detailed, comprehensive theory of idealistic dialectics. He explored the entire natural, historical and spiritual world as a process, i.e. in its continuous movement, change, transformation and development, contradictions, breaks in gradualness, the struggle of the new with the old, directed movement;
  • Feuerbach in his dialectic considers connections phenomena, their interactions and changes the unity of opposites in the development of phenomena (spirit and body, human consciousness and material nature).

Human nature was explored, not just human history:

  • for Kant, man is a moral being;
  • Fichte emphasizes the effectiveness, activity of consciousness and self-consciousness of a person, considers the structure of human life according to the requirements of reason;
  • Schelling shows the relationship between the objective and the subjective;
  • Hegel considers the boundaries of the activity of self-consciousness and individual consciousness more widely: the self-consciousness of the individual in him correlates not only with external objects, but also with other self-consciousness, from which various social forms arise;
  • Feuerbach defines a new form of materialism - anthropological materialism, in the center of which is a real person who is a subject for himself and an object for another person.

All representatives of classical German philosophy defined it as a special system of philosophical disciplines, categories, ideas:

  • Kant singles out epistemology and ethics as the main philosophical disciplines;
  • Schelling - natural philosophy, ontology;
  • Fichte saw in philosophy such sections as ontological, epistemological, socio-political;
  • Hegel defined a broad system of philosophical knowledge, which included the philosophy of nature, logic, the philosophy of history, the history of philosophy, the philosophy of law, the philosophy of state, the philosophy of morality, the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of the development of individual consciousness, etc.;
  • Feuerbach considered the philosophical problems of history, religion, ontology, epistemology and ethics.

Philosophy of Immanuel Kant

The German philosophy of the second half of the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries, which entered the history of world philosophy under the name of classical philosophy, begins with Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). His philosophical work is traditionally divided into two periods: subcritical and critical.

In the most significant work of the pre-critical period, "The General Natural History and Theory of the Sky" (1775), Kant formulated an idea that later in Western European science took shape in a kind of "collective" theory - the Kant-Laplace hypothesis. This was the thought of the natural origin of the universe under the influence of dynamic forces from the original gaseous nebula. In the same theory, he developed the idea of ​​the integrity of the structure of the universe, the presence in it of the laws of the relationship of celestial bodies, which together form a single system. This assumption allowed Kant to make a scientific prediction about the presence of still undiscovered planets in the solar system. In the age of domination of mechanism, Kant was one of the first among philosophers who tried to build a picture of a mobile, dynamic, evolutionary world.

The pre-critical period was, as it were, a preparatory stage for the critical period - already at that time Kant hatched immortal ideas that later became the classics of world philosophy and, according to Kant himself, constituted the “Copernican revolution” in philosophy. The main ideas of the critical period, in addition to the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), are set forth in such works as the Critique of Practical Reason (1786), The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), The Critique of Judgment (1790) and a number of others.

Kant showed that if a person with his mind begins to reason about the universal, which goes beyond the limits of his finite experience, then he inevitably falls into contradictions.

The antinomy of reason means that statements that contradict each other can be equally well either both provable or both unprovable. Kant formulated universal statements about the world as a whole, about God, about freedom in the antinomic form of theses and antitheses in his work Critique of Pure Reason.

Formulating and solving these antinomies of reason, Kant revealed a special category of universal concepts. Pure, or theoretical, reason develops such concepts as “God”, “the world as a whole”, “freedom”, etc.

The antinomies of reason are resolved by Kant by distinguishing between the world of appearances and the world of things in themselves. Kant proposes a method of dual consideration, which he called the experimental method in philosophy. Each object must be considered dually - as an element of the world of cause-and-effect relationships, or the world of phenomena, as an element of the world of freedom, or the world of things in themselves.

According to Kant, the thing-in-itself, or the absolute, the spontaneous force acting in man, cannot be a direct object of cognition, since human cognition is not connected with the task of cognizing the absolute. Man cognizes not things in themselves, but phenomena. It was this assertion of Kant that served as a pretext for accusing him of agnosticism, that is, of denying the cognizability of the world.

Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, formulated his famous question, "What can I know?" and took upon himself the labor of substantiating by means of reason the very conditions and possibilities of human cognition.

In his theory of knowledge, he solves the problem: how, starting from subjectivity, from human consciousness, one can come to objective knowledge. Kant makes the assumption that there is some kind of proportionality between consciousness and the world. He connects the dimension of cosmic processes with human existence.

Before cognizing something, it is necessary to identify the conditions of cognition. Kant's conditions of cognition are a priori forms of cognition, i.e., not dependent on any experience, pre-experimental, or, more precisely, super-experimental forms that make it possible to understand the world. The comprehensibility of the world is ensured by the conformity of the mental structures that the subject has with the connections of the world.

Knowledge is a synthesis of sensibility and reason. Kant defines sensibility as the ability of the soul to contemplate objects, while the ability to think the object of sensuous contemplation is reason. “These two abilities,” writes Kant, “cannot perform the functions of each other. The understanding cannot contemplate anything, and the senses cannot think anything. Only from their combination can knowledge arise.”

Knowledge is never chaotic, human experience is structured on the basis of a priori forms of sensibility and a priori forms of reason. The universal and necessary forms of sensibility for Kant are space and time, which serve as a form of organization and systematization of countless sensory impressions. Without these forms of sensory perception of the world, a person would not be able to navigate in it.

The a priori forms of reason are the most general concepts - categories (unity, plurality, wholeness, reality, causality, etc.), which represent a universal and necessary form of conceivability of any objects, their properties and relations. Thus, a person, cognizing the world, constructs it, builds order from the chaos of his sensory impressions, brings them under general concepts, creates his own picture of the world. Kant for the first time in the history of philosophy revealed the specificity of science and scientific knowledge as a constructive and creative creation of the human mind.

It should be borne in mind that Kant interpreted the perception of nature on the basis of theoretical reason. Therefore, his theory of knowledge is divided into three parts: feelings, reason, mind.

Kant's doctrine of the limits of knowledge was directed not against science, but against blind faith in its limitless possibilities, in the ability to solve any problem by scientific methods. “Therefore,” writes Kant, “I had to limit my knowledge in order to make room for faith.” Critical philosophy required an awareness of the limitations of human knowledge, which is limited to scientifically reliable knowledge, in order to make room for a purely moral orientation in the world. Not science and not religious faith, but “the moral law within us” serve for Kant as the basis of morality.

The Critique of Practical Reason answered Kant's second fundamental question: "What should I do?" Kant introduces a distinction between theoretical and practical reason. This difference is as follows. If pure or theoretical reason “determines” the object of thought, then practical reason is called upon to “implement”, i.e., produce a moral object and its concept (it must be borne in mind that Kant’s term “practical” has a special meaning and - a productive activity, but simply an act). The sphere of activity of practical reason is the sphere of morality.

As a philosopher, Kant realized that morality cannot be derived from experience, empiricism. The history of mankind demonstrates a great variety of norms of behavior, often incompatible with each other: actions considered as a norm in one society are subject to sanctions in another. Therefore, Kant took a different path: he substantiates the absolute nature of morality by philosophical means.

Moral action, as Kant showed, does not apply to the world of appearances. Kant revealed the timeless, i.e., independent of knowledge, of the development of society, the nature of morality. Morality, according to Kant, is the most existential basis of human existence, that which makes a man a man. In the realm of morality, the thing-in-itself, or free causality, operates. Morality, according to Kant, is not derived from anywhere, is not substantiated by anything, but, on the contrary, is the only justification for the rational structure of the world. The world is arranged rationally, since there is moral evidence. Conscience, for example, possesses such moral evidence, which cannot be further decomposed. It acts in a person, prompting to certain actions, although it is impossible to answer the question why this or that action is performed, since the action is performed not for one reason or another, but according to conscience. The same can be said about debt. A person acts according to a sense of duty, not because something forces him, but because some kind of self-coercive force operates in him.

Unlike theoretical reason, which deals with what is, practical reason deals with what should be. Morality, according to Kant, has the character of imperativeness. The concept of imperative means the universality and obligatory requirements of morality: “the categorical imperative,” he writes, “is the idea of ​​the will of every being, as the will that establishes universal laws.”

Kant wants to find the highest principle of morality, i.e., the principle of revealing the moral content itself, and gives a formulation of how a person should act, striving to join the truly moral. “Act only according to such a maxim, guided by which you can at the same time wish that it become a universal law.”

Kant distinguished between socially approved norms of behavior and norms of morality. Socially approved norms of behavior are historical in nature, but far from always being the realization of the requirements of morality. Kant's teaching was just aimed at revealing in it the historical and timeless characteristics of morality and was addressed to all mankind.

Philosophy of Johann Fichte

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) accepted Kant's ethical philosophy, which made the evaluation of human activity dependent on its consistency with a priori duty. Therefore, for him, philosophy appears primarily as a practical philosophy, in which "the goals and objectives of the practical action of people in the world, in society" were directly determined. However, Fichte pointed out the weakness of Kant's philosophy, which, in his opinion, was insufficiently substantiated precisely at the moment of combining the theoretical and practical parts of philosophy. This task is put by the philosopher at the forefront of his own activity. Fichte's main work is The Appointment of Man (1800).

Fichte singles out the principle of freedom as a fundamental principle that allows the unification of the theory and practice of a philosophical approach to the world. Moreover, in the theoretical part, he concludes that “the recognition of the objective existence of things in the surrounding world is incompatible with human freedom, and therefore the revolutionary transformation of social relations must be supplemented by a philosophical doctrine that reveals the conditionality of this existence by human consciousness.” He designated this philosophical doctrine as "scientific teaching", acting as a holistic substantiation of practical philosophy.

As a result, in his philosophy there is a rejection of the possibility of interpreting the Kantian concept of “thing in itself” as an objective reality and the conclusion is made that “a thing is that which is posited in the Self”, i.e., its subjective-idealistic interpretation is given.

Fichte draws a clear dividing line between materialism and idealism on the principle of solving the problem of the relationship between being and thinking. In this sense, dogmatism (materialism) proceeds from the primacy of being in relation to thinking, and criticism (idealism) from the derivativeness of being from thinking. On the basis of this, according to the philosopher, materialism determines the passive position of a person in the world, and criticism, on the contrary, is inherent in active, active natures.

Fichte's great merit is the development of his doctrine of the dialectical way of thinking, which he calls antithetical. The latter is "such a process of creation and cognition, which is inherent in the triadic rhythm of positing, negating and synthesizing."

Philosophy of Friedrich Schelling

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775 - 1854) turned out to be a kind of link between Kant's philosophy, Fichte's ideas and the formation of the Hegelian system. It is known that he had a great influence on the formation of Hegel as a philosopher, with whom he maintained friendly relations for many years.

At the center of his philosophical reflections is the task of building a unified system of knowledge by considering the specifics of cognition of truth in private areas. All this is realized in his “natural philosophy”, which acts as, perhaps, the very first attempt in the history of philosophy to systematically generalize the discoveries of science from the point of view of a single philosophical principle.

This system is based on the idea of ​​“the ideal essence of nature”, based on the idealistic dogma about the spiritual, immaterial nature of the activity manifested in nature.” A huge achievement of the German philosopher was the construction of a natural philosophical system, which is permeated with dialectics as a kind of link in explaining the unity of the world. As a result, he was able to capture the fundamental dialectical idea that “the essence of all reality is characterized by the unity of opposing active forces. Schelling called this dialectical unity "polarity". As a result, he managed to give a dialectical explanation of such complex processes as “life”, “organism”, etc.

Schelling's main work is The System of Transcendental Idealism (1800). Schelling, within his classical tradition, separates the practical and theoretical parts of philosophy. Theoretical philosophy is interpreted as a substantiation of the "highest principles of knowledge". At the same time, the history of philosophy acts as a confrontation between the subjective and the objective, which allows him to single out the corresponding historical stages or philosophical eras. The essence of the first stage is from initial sensation to creative contemplation; the second - from creative contemplation to reflection; the third, from reflection to an absolute act of will. Practical philosophy explores the problem of human freedom. Freedom is realized through the creation of a legal state, and this is the general principle of the development of mankind. At the same time, the specificity of the development of history lies in the fact that living people act in it, so the combination of freedom and necessity is of particular importance here. Necessity becomes freedom, says Schelling, when it begins to be known. Solving the question of the necessary nature of historical laws, Schelling comes to the idea of ​​the realm of "blind necessity" in history.

Philosophy of Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), based on the principle of development, gives an impressive model of being in all its manifestations, levels and stages of development. It is he who constructs dialectics as a system of basic relationships and categories in relation to the development of the absolute idea. At the same time, Hegel is well aware of the fact that the description of the development of the absolute idea is not an end in itself of philosophical research.

Considering the relationship between idea and reality, Hegel poses the problem of the very essence of the transition from the ideal (logical) to the real, from the absolute idea to nature. The absolute idea must “escape” from absoluteness, i.e., “get out of itself and step into other spheres.” Nature turns out to be just one of these spheres and, accordingly, a stage in the internal development of an idea, its other being or its other incarnation.

Thus, nature is fundamentally explained from the idea that initially underlies it. Undoubtedly, this thought is deeply idealistic, but this does not deprive it of its semantic significance in solving, among other things (and perhaps in the first place) the problems of studying real life. Philosophical analysis of problems from the standpoint of dialectics is one of the most effective forms of reflection on the world, which allows us to consider the latter as a special integral system that develops according to universal laws.

According to Hegel, dialectics is a special model of the philosophical approach to the world. In this case, dialectics is understood as the theory of development, which is based on the unity and struggle of opposites, i.e., the formation and resolution of contradictions. Hegel wrote: “Contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality: only insofar as something has a contradiction in itself, it moves, has an impulse and activity.”

Any object, phenomenon, is a certain quality, the unity of its aspects, which, as a result of the quantitative accumulation of contradictory tendencies and properties within this quality, come into conflict, and the development of the object is carried out through the negation of this quality, but with the preservation of some properties in the resulting new quality. The dependencies found by Hegel, being aspects of the development process, characterize it from different angles.

The categories of dialectics that express these dependencies form a kind of conceptual framework that allows us to look at the world dialectically, describing it with their help, not allowing the absolutization of any processes or phenomena of the world, to consider the latter as a developing object. As a result, Hegel manages to create a grandiose philosophical system of the entire spiritual culture of mankind, considering its individual stages as a process of the formation of the spirit. This is a kind of ladder, along the steps of which humanity walked and along which every person can go, joining the global culture and passing through all stages of the development of the world spirit. At the top of this ladder, the absolute identity of thinking and being is reached, after which pure thinking begins, that is, the sphere of logic.

The merit of Hegel in the development of social philosophy is enormous. He developed the doctrine of civil society, human rights, and private property. In his works Phenomenology of the Spirit (1807) and Fundamentals of the Philosophy of Law (1821), he showed the dialectics of man and society, the universal significance of labor. He paid much attention to elucidating the mechanism of commodity fetishism, the nature of value, price and money.

Philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach

Despite the fact that classical German philosophy received its most complete expression in idealistic philosophical systems, it was in its depths and on its foundation that one of the most powerful materialistic concepts of Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) arose.

Feuerbach builds his philosophy on the basis of opposing philosophy and religion as forms of worldview that are incompatible and oppose each other. In this regard, he tries in a materialistic spirit to rethink the essence of Christianity as one of the forms of religion. As a result, the Christian God is interpreted by him not as a special kind of being or divine essence, but as an image that reflects in the minds of people their own, human essence. He writes that “the divine essence is nothing but a human essence, purified, freed from individual boundaries, i.e. from a real, bodily person, objectified, i.e. considered and revered, as an extraneous, separate entity” .

The source of religion, notes Feuerbach, lies in the fear and impotence of man before nature, which gives rise to fantastic religious images in his mind. As a result, God, as a creation of the human spirit, turns in the minds of people into a creator on whom a person depends. All this gives religion an anti-human character, since it “paralyzes a person’s desire for a better life in the real world and for the transformation of this world, replaces it with a humble and patient expectation of the coming supernatural reward.”

Defending the last thesis, Feuerbach takes a clearly atheistic position, although he himself denies this, putting forward a religious interpretation of his own concept, which was realized in the well-known slogan that no supernatural God is needed, namely: “man is God to man.” As a result, Feuerbach creates a bizarre concept that actually denies God (in the religious sense), and does not act as some kind of higher religion.

Criticism of religion necessarily led the thinker to the criticism of the idealistic worldview as a whole. It is here that the well-known thesis about the possibility of “reversing” idealist philosophy and placing it on materialistic soil appears, which is later applied by K. Marx, distinguishing his own dialectical-materialist method from the Hegelian one. Thinking is secondary to being, says Feuerbach, and proceeds from this. Thus, the entire concept of the philosopher, even in form, appears as a consistent opposition of materialistic theses to the Hegelian system, or their “reversal”. The question of being in his system is not just another formulation of a philosophical problem. It has practical significance for a person, therefore, "philosophy should not be in conflict with the actual being, but, on the contrary, it should comprehend precisely this vitally important being."

Philosophical opposition to Hegel is also realized in Feuerbach's theory of knowledge, when he replaces the concept of thinking with sensibility.

In the ontological aspect, this means that material being (sensory being) is primary in relation to consciousness. This enables a person as a material being the ability to feel and feel. Therefore, the basis of philosophy should not be the concept of God or the absolute principle, which gives it an unconditional character, - "the beginning of philosophy is the finite, definite, real." And since man is the highest creation of nature, he must be at the center of the construction of a philosophical system and philosophical reflections. This is what allows Feuerbach's philosophy to be defined as anthropological materialism.

In epistemological terms, this is realized as materialistic sensationalism. The process of “cognition of objective reality, actual being has as its basis sensory perceptions, sensations, contemplations caused by the influence of cognizable objects on the senses”.

In the praxeological aspect, the concept of the philosopher is complemented by sensory-emotional characteristics. Since the world is sensually perceived by a person, the perception of the world is enriched with such an emotional characteristic as love. It is she who determines all other relations to being.

In social terms, Feuerbach's concept consistently acts from anti-religious positions in relation to the role of religion in society. A person's beliefs must be inside, not outside. Religions, according to the philosopher, should be abolished in order for a person to lead a more active life in society, to increase his political activity. This, in turn, is a condition for the real freedom of man. And here Feuerbach's philosophy turns out to be the most contradictory. On the one hand, he denies religion, and on the other hand, he strongly emphasizes the role of sensuality and emotional experiences that affect a person. Therefore, the impact on the consciousness of a person in order to change his worldview attitudes should be based on “sensory arguments”. As a result, he comes to the conclusion that it is necessary to create a “new religion” that will replace the old ones, and in this capacity the “new philosophy” proposed by him should act.

Regarding the transformation of public life, there have always been two opinions: some said that the moral improvement of everyone is necessary, the correction of our nature (the position is usually religious or idealistic), while others proposed to radically change the conditions of human life, considering their imperfection to be the main cause of all misfortunes ( mostly materialistic). Feuerbach shared the second point of view, and his philosophical views in many respects became the ideological basis of the concept that appeared in the middle of the 19th century. Marxism - the theory of the revolutionary transformation of reality.

Historical Significance of German Classical Philosophy

The main result and historical significance of German classical philosophy, represented by the names of five luminaries, can be expressed simply: this philosophy has changed the way of thinking in European, and hence world culture. The novelty of the style approved by her consisted in the extreme breadth of thinking, its universality.

Philosophical acquisitions turned out to be very weighty as well. The ideas of the cognitive activity of the subject, the universality of development through the formation and resolution of contradictions, the universal nature of the spirit, consciousness fairly “shaken up” philosophy. The development of philosophical concepts, categories was carried out at a high level.

And yet, probably, the main merit of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Feuerbach was that they made our thinking historical. This alone is enough to call them classics of philosophy.

The philosophy of the Enlightenment was able to find practical implementation in the ideals and slogans of the Great French Revolution, which took place in the period from 1789 to 1794. German philosophy of that period went down in history as a classic. The problems of German classical philosophy, summarized below, were not satisfied with the teachings of their predecessors. Therefore, the developments of the German philosophers of the late 18th - early 19th centuries became a fundamentally new milestone in the Enlightenment. The subject of this article is a brief description of German classical philosophy. Let's get acquainted with it by examining the work of the main philosophers of that time. So, German classical philosophy briefly: read the most important thing below.

Kant

Immanuel Kant became the first philosopher on whose worldview the classical German philosophy was based. Briefly reviewing its postulates, we can get an idea of ​​the beginning of this historical period.

Kant's developments are divided into the following periods: subcritical and critical. The most significant work of the pre-critical period was the treatise "The General Natural History and Theory of the Sky", which was published in 1775. It is Kant who owns the idea, which will later be formalized in the form of the "collective" theory of Kant-Laplace. This is the idea of ​​the origin of the Universe from a gaseous nebula under the action of dynamic forces. Together with her, Kant developed the idea of ​​a holistic structure of the universe and the presence of laws in it that determine the interconnection of celestial bodies. Thanks to this assumption, the philosopher predicted the presence of undiscovered planets in the solar system. At a time when mechanism dominated, Immanuel Kant was one of the first to formulate an evolutionary picture of the world.

The pre-critical period became a kind of foundation for the critical period. Already in those years, Kant formulated the immortal postulates that will become classics of world philosophy and will be recognized by him as part of the "Copernican Revolution".

"Critique of Pure Reason"

Kant illustrated that when a person begins to reason about the universal, which goes beyond the scope of his experience, he inevitably encounters contradictions. The antinomy of reason lies in the fact that opposite statements can be either provable or unprovable with equal success. German classical philosophy was based on this in its initial form. Briefly, in the form of theses and antitheses, Kant outlined the most important thing in the treatise Critique of Pure Reason.

The philosopher solves the antinomies of reason by searching for the difference between the world of appearances and the world of things in themselves. Each object, in his opinion, must be considered from two sides: as an element of the world of phenomena or causal relationships and as an element of things in themselves or the world of freedom.

"Thing in itself", or the absolute - this is how Kant calls the spontaneous force that acts in a person, but is not a direct object of knowledge. Man cognizes phenomena, not things in themselves. It was for this judgment that the philosopher was accused of agnosticism - the denial of the knowability of the world.

"What can I know?"

In the Critique of Pure Reason, the philosopher asked the question "What can I know?" and tried to substantiate the conditions and possibilities of knowledge with the help of the means of reason. Before you know something, you need to decide on the conditions of knowledge. Conditions philosopher calls a priori forms of knowledge, that is, those that do not depend on experience. The "comprehensibility" of the world is achieved by the correspondence of mental structures to the connections of the world.

Knowledge is a synthesis of reason with sensibility. Sensuality is the ability of the human soul to contemplate objects. And reason is the ability to comprehend this contemplation. The intellect cannot contemplate, while the senses cannot think. Knowledge is not random. It is always built on the basis of a priori manifestations of sensibility and reason.

Thus, while cognizing the world, a person collects it from the chaos of impressions, which he subsumes under general concepts. Kant's theory of knowledge studies feelings, reason and reason separately. The study of the boundaries of knowledge did not run counter to science, but only denied its unlimited possibilities and ability to explain any phenomenon. To "make room for faith" Kant had to "limit knowledge". The critical view illustrated the limitations of scientifically reliable knowledge.

"Critique of Practical Reason"

This treatise answered the second question of the philosopher: "What should I do?" Kant begins to draw a line between the theoretical and practical manifestations of reason. Theoretical (pure) reason is aimed at "defining" the subject of thought, and practical - at its "implementation". Morality, according to Kant, is the sphere of activity of practical reason.

In the history of mankind, one can observe a great variety of behavioral norms, which can be completely different from each other. Moreover, the same act can be the norm in one society, and a gross violation of morality in another. Therefore, Kant decided to justify morality with the help of philosophical means.

Morality is not part of the world of phenomena, it has a character independent of knowledge and development, and also makes a person a person. Morality, from the philosopher's point of view, is the only justification for a reasonable world order. The world is reasonable as long as moral evidence operates in it, which, for example, is endowed with conscience. It leads to certain decisions that do not require explanation. Practical reason, unlike theoretical reason, is directed to what should be.

According to Kant, there are differences between socially approved norms and norms of morality. The former are historical in nature and rarely enforce morality. Kant's teaching, which he tried to address to all mankind, was aimed at revealing the historical and timeless spectrums of morality. This is how classical German philosophy was born. It is difficult to briefly consider Kant's teaching, because it was one of the most capacious among the developments of the German classics.

Kant became the first "classic" and set the vector of development for his followers. Therefore, one can often hear the phrase "German classical philosophy and Kant." Having briefly considered the developments of this philosopher, we turn to his follower - Johann Fichte.

Fichte

Many single out only three philosophers, on whose shoulders the formation of such a concept as German classical philosophy fell: Kant, Hegel (will be briefly discussed below) and Feuerbach (became the last of the German classics). However, the merits of Fichte and Schelling were no less significant.

For Fichte, philosophy was above all practical. Supporting Kant's teaching in many aspects, he also found weaknesses in it. The main one is the insufficient substantiation of the synthesis between the theoretical and practical parts of philosophy. It was this synthesis that became Fichte's main task on his philosophical path.

The first work of the philosopher was the treatise "The Purpose of Man", which was published in 1800. The philosopher considered the principle of freedom to be the main principle that allows to combine theory with practice. It is noteworthy that the scientist in his work concludes that human freedom is incompatible with the recognition of objective reality.

As a result, in his philosophy, Fichte abandons the Kantian "thing in itself" and interprets this concept from a subjective-idealistic point of view.

Fichte clearly distinguishes between idealism and materialism based on the problems of being and thinking that they solve. Materialism is the result of the primacy of being in relation to thinking. At the same time, idealism proceeds from the derivativeness of being from thinking. Thus, materialism is inherent in people with a passive position, while idealism is the opposite.

The main merit of Fichte is the doctrine of the dialectical (antithetic) way of thinking. Antithetical thinking is a process of cognition and creation, which is characterized by a triadic rhythm of denial, positing and synthesizing.

Schelling

The philosophy of Friedrich Schelling is a kind of link between Kant's worldview, Fichte's developments and the formation of Hegelian philosophy. Moreover, Schelling made a significant contribution to the formation of Hegel, with whom they were on friendly terms for many years. Therefore, considering such an issue as classical German philosophy, it is worth briefly mentioning the developments of Schelling.

At the head of his philosophical reflections is the construction of a unified system of knowledge based on the knowledge of truth in various fields. This is displayed in his "natural philosophy", which was the first generalization of scientific discoveries under the prism of a philosophical principle.

This system was based on the idea of ​​the “ideal essence of nature”. Schelling's natural philosophical system is permeated with dialectics as a connecting link in explaining world unity. The philosopher discovered such a thing as polarity. It was built on the idea that the essence of any activity can be characterized by the unity of opposing forces. As a result, the philosopher was able to interpret from the point of view of dialectics such complex processes as life, the organism, and so on.

"The system of transcendental idealism"

Schelling's main work was published in 1800 and was called "The System of Transcendental Idealism". Within the classical tradition, he shares practical and theoretical philosophy. The theoretical part substantiates the highest principle of knowledge. At the same time, the history of philosophy is a confrontation between the objective and the subjective. In this regard, Schelling distinguishes three philosophical eras:

  1. From sensation to creative contemplation.
  2. From creative contemplation to reflection.
  3. From reflection to an absolute act of will.

The object of study of practical philosophy is the problem of human freedom. In the history of mankind, freedom is realized through the creation of a rule of law state. Living people act in history, which means that the combination of freedom and necessity takes on special significance. When necessity begins to be known, it becomes freedom, says Schelling. Considering questions about the nature of laws, the philosopher comes to such a concept as "blind necessity".

Despite the fact that Schelling, like Fichte, is by no means always mentioned when talking about the German classics, his contribution to philosophy was very significant. Along with the more significant philosophers, Schelling and Fichte outlined some of the features of German classical philosophy. Having briefly reviewed their developments, we turn to more prominent philosophers. Hegel became the next classic after Schelling. He will eventually owe much to German classical philosophy.

Hegel

Briefly speaking about the developments of Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, it is worth noting that he gave a very impressive model of being from the principle of development. It was he who constructed dialectics as a system of relationships and categories from the point of view of an absolute idea. However, the description of the absolute idea was not for Hegel the end in itself of philosophical work. Studying the relationship between idea and reality, the philosopher defines the problem of transition from the ideal to the real or from the absolute idea to nature. According to the philosopher, the absolute idea must go beyond itself and enter other spheres, one of which is nature.

Thus, an idealistic idea is formed that nature is explained by the idea underlying it. Analysis of problems from the point of view of dialectics is one of the most effective forms of thinking about the world. It allows us to consider the world as an integral system that operates according to certain laws.

Dialectics, from the point of view of the Hegelian worldview, is a special model of the philosophical approach. In this case, it means the theory of development, which is based on the formation and resolution of contradictions. According to Hegel, contradiction is the root of all movement.

Any phenomenon or object is a unity of parties that eventually come into conflict. Development, thus, is carried out through the denial of qualities with the preservation of some of their properties, generating new, more attractive qualities.

The dependencies that Hegel defined characterize the process from different angles. The categories that reflect these dependencies serve as a kind of conceptual framework that allows us to describe the world without absolutizing any phenomena or processes. Ultimately, Hegel creates a unique philosophical system of spiritual human culture, considering its stages as the formation of the spirit. This is a kind of ladder along which humanity and each of its individual representatives go. At its peak, a complete triumph of thinking and being is achieved, followed by logic, i.e. pure thinking.

Hegel also made an enormous contribution to social philosophy. He owns the doctrine of civil society, private property and human rights. In his works, the philosopher showed the universal significance of labor and the dialectics of man in society. Hegel also paid much attention to the nature of value, prices, money, and commodity fetishism. This is how versatile German classical philosophy was. Hegel briefly but very capaciously touched upon various aspects of human existence in his works.

Feuerbach

Despite the fact that German philosophy was most fully reflected in idealistic systems, the strongest materialistic concept of Feuerbach arose in its depths.

Ludwig Feuerbach bases his philosophy on the opposition of philosophy and religion. In a materialistic spirit, he tries to rethink the essence of Christianity. He interprets the Christian God as an image that reflects the human essence in the minds of people, and not as some kind of being or divine essence.

According to Feuerbach, the source of religion lies in the fear and helplessness of man in front of nature, which gives rise to the creation of fantastic images. Due to the fact that God in the minds of people turns into a creator on whom their life depends, religion paralyzes the desire for the best in a person. She replaces it with a submissive expectation of a supernatural reward.

Criticizing religion, the philosopher comes to the criticism of the idealistic worldview in all its manifestations. Thus, with its help, German classical philosophy acquires a new look. Feuerbach, in short, in his developments proceeds from the fact that thinking in relation to being is secondary. In his system, the question of being is of practical importance for man. Philosophy should comprehend the vitally important being, and not contradict the actual being. Feuerbach also implements philosophical opposition to Hegel in his theory of knowledge, in which he replaces thinking with sensibility.

There have always been two points of view regarding the transformation of public life. Adherents of the first of them argued that the moral growth of each individual and the correction of our essence are necessary. The opposite side proposed radical changes in living conditions, considering them to be the cause of all misfortunes. Feuerbach was more inclined towards the second point of view. The end of classical German philosophy, briefly discussed above, was the beginning of Marxism, which appeared in the middle of the 19th century. It was based on some ideas of Feuerbach.

Historical meaning

A general description of German classical philosophy, briefly presented by the developments of its five luminaries, showed that this historical period changed the style of thinking not only in European, but also in world culture. Philosophical acquisitions of that time were very significant.

The features of German classical philosophy, summarized above, clearly illustrate the breadth and universality of thinking, which became the main novelty of this period. Ideas about the development through the resolution of contradictions, the cognitive activity of the subject, as well as the comprehensive nature of the spirit and consciousness, caused a great resonance in society. Philosophical concepts and categories were developed by the German classics at the highest level.

The features of German classical philosophy can be briefly expressed by the phrase "historical thinking", which became the main merit of the five German classics.

Conclusion

Today the subject of our conversation is classical German philosophy. Having briefly reviewed the achievements of its main representatives, we can conclude that this historical period is unique and important. Of course, it has become one of the foundations of the worldview of modern man. In many sources German classical philosophy is associated with only three names: Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach. Briefly reviewing this period, it is worth noting that Fichte and Schelling also played an important role in it.

The term "classical German philosophy" was introduced by F. Engels. Engels himself does not specifically explain what he means by "German classical philosophy." But the classics usually mean the highest measure of something, some kind of complete form. And after the classics, as a rule, there is a decrease in the level.

German classical philosophy covers a relatively short period, which is limited to the 80s of the XVIII century, on the one hand, and 1831 - the year of Hegel's death - on the other (or the later anthropological, materialistic philosophy of Feuerbach, which, however, came into conflict with the main character of the German philosophy of this period - its idealism). For a number of points, it represents the pinnacle of philosophical development (the ideas of the Renaissance, the New Age, the Enlightenment). The main representatives of this philosophy were its founder Immanuel Kant, his follower Fichte, Schelling, the opponent of Kantian philosophy Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

As for the general characteristics of classical German philosophy, there is a shift in emphasis (compared, for example, with the thought of the Enlightenment) from the analysis of nature to the study of man, the human world and history. At the same time, Kant already clearly expressed the idea of ​​the autonomy of man and his history in relation to nature. Prior to this, philosophers knew, on the one hand, nature. and on the other hand, a person, who was considered as a special kind of natural body, endowed with an incorporeal soul. Representatives of the German classics for the first time realize that a person does not live in the world of nature, but in the world of culture. And just looking at it as a product of culture, you can solve a number of philosophical riddles. Also, the German classics goes further than the rationalism of the New Age (Descartes, Leibniz, who believed that we learn about the essence of the world only by plunging into the depths of the mind itself, since the sensual diversity of natural bodies hides from us the basis of being). In the German classics, we are talking about a rationally organized reality, where the essence of the world is revealed to us directly. And the further the thought of German philosophers advances, the clearer it is that we are not talking about primordial nature, but about the world of culture, organized in accordance with the laws of Truth, Goodness and Beauty (metaphysics, ethics and aesthetics are the three parts of Kant's philosophy, which are devoted to the discovery these laws). German philosophers deduce this world of culture from the activity of the human spirit, and the thinking subject, thus, turns out to be the basis of the universe. The activity of people is interpreted by them only as spiritual activity, and therefore the representatives of classical German philosophy answer the most fundamental questions from the position of first subjective (Kant), and only then objective idealism (Hegel).

Another feature of this philosophy is that, turning to the study of the subject, to the study of his active abilities, German philosophers leave the level of a popular exposition of philosophy. “Until the advent of Kantian philosophy,” Hegel writes in this connection, “the public was still in step with philosophy; before the advent of Kantian philosophical doctrine, philosophy aroused general interest in itself. It was accessible and people wanted to know it; educated man. That is why practitioners, statesmen, were engaged in it. Now that the confused idealism of Kant's philosophy has come out, their wings are lowered. Thus, already with the appearance of Kant, this separation from the usual mode of consciousness was laid.

Thus, one of the features of classical German philosophy manifested itself in the fact that it was doomed to social failure. In other words, she could not become popular. And this is for the simple reason that serious science cannot be popular. Any popularization of science leads to the fact that first the scientific form is sacrificed for the sake of simplicity of presentation, and then the content itself - for the sake of simplicity of perception. As for the German classics, the opposite task was set here. Kant and Fichte in particular sought to turn philosophy into a science. It is with this that the methods of deduction (logical derivation and justification) and construction (metaphysical and dialectical) that they used to build a philosophical theory are connected.

Let us list some of the positive aspects of German classical philosophy. Kant's philosophy completes rational philosophy (begun by Descartes). In his philosophy, the theoretical reflection and understanding in the Enlightenment spirit of human freedom and equality in the period before the French Revolution found its expression. In German classical philosophy, one can see the beginnings of Fichte's "philosophy of the active side", the foundations of a new natural philosophy in Schelling (his concept of the "dynamic process" in nature, close to materialist dialectics), Hegel's dialectical concept (rethinking the old understanding of dialectics as a way of arguing and discussion of problems in the direction of its scientific construction, where dialectics becomes a method of cognition of the developing reality). Starting with Herder, German philosophy introduces historicism, the idea of ​​development into the study of society and nature, and thereby rejects the non-historical and mechanistic concepts of the previous Enlightenment era (the idea of ​​development becomes the main one in Hegel's dialectic).

Post-Kantian philosophy also conducts a serious criticism of agnosticism (the theory of the unknowability of reality) and of the entire previous rationalistic and empirical tradition.

The predominance of idealism in the German classics is connected with the development of all philosophy after Descartes. In contrast to the ontological position of ancient and medieval philosophy, as insufficiently substantiated, Descartes emphasized the idea that the most essential point from which philosophy must begin is the certainty of the knowing self, the subject. Within the framework of this tradition, a number of philosophers of the New Age place more emphasis on the subject (man) than on the object (world, nature), and give preference to the question of the nature of knowledge over the question of the nature of being (epistemology over ontology). In Kant's philosophy, a similar privileged position of the subject and the theory of knowledge is also manifested (subjectivism, which began with the works of Descartes, is brought to its logical end by Kant, and therefore he can be considered the last consistent subjective idealist, which is connected with the fact that in the subsequent phase of development of German philosophy (Schelling, Hegel) there is a transition to an ontological position).

It can also be said that a characteristic feature of German idealism was pantheism (it is characteristic of Fichte, Schelling of the classical period and Hegel). The impetus for the development of pantheism was given by Kant with his criticism of metaphysical ideas (God, the soul, the idea of ​​world integrity), as well as the discussion that flared up at the end of the 18th century around the philosophy of Spinoza (caused by F. Jacobi's book "On the Teachings of Spinoza", representing an atheistic interpretation of his philosophy).

In social terms, German philosophy is evidence of the ideological awakening of the "third estate" (burghers, bourgeoisie) in Germany and the development of social and liberal political ideas of the New Age and the Enlightenment (in this regard, Kant and Hegel give one of the best interpretations of "civil society" and "legal society"). states").

The philosophy of the Enlightenment was born in slogans and ideals during the French Revolution of 1789-1794. Since the beginning of the 18th century, German writers, thinkers and philosophers have helped to develop this stage of mental science about the world around us and human interaction with it. German classical philosophy carries the teachings and knowledge of such classics as Johann Fichte, Friedrich Schelling, Ludwig Feuerbach.

General characteristics of German philosophy

German philosophy is an influential current of thought of modern thinkers. It was with her that the replacement of thoughts about the analysis of nature with thoughts about the study of man, his world and history began. It was at that time that thinkers came to the conclusion that people do not live in the natural world, but in culture.

German philosophy is characterized by the following features:

  • the emphasized role of science in working on the problems of humanism, as well as its attempts to rethink the life path of a person;
  • philosophers said that this science should be the voice of all human culture;
  • Philosophy has played a big role in the history of mankind and the development of culture around the world.

The man who became the founder of German philosophy was Immanuel Kant. He said that the study of nature, things and man does not play a role in theoretical knowledge. Instead, attention should be paid to research, which can become a cognitive activity of the human personality, as well as to establish the laws of knowledge and its boundaries.

Immanuel Kant

In the second half of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century, German philosophy began to develop. The founder of this trend was Immanuel Kant. His teachings and work are usually divided into pre-critical and critical periods.

In his famous work during the pre-critical period on the general natural history and theory of the sky, the thinker created the idea that the universe was created in a natural way, due to the action of dynamic forces from cosmic gas. The same theory includes the general structure of the whole world and the presence in it of all physical laws between celestial bodies, which served as the formation of one system. Thanks to this assumption, Kant made a scientific prediction that there are still undiscovered planets in the solar system. During the period of mechanism, he became one of the first philosophers who sought to create an image of a dynamic, subject to evolution, world.

During the pre-critical period, which is presented as a preparatory stage for the critical one, the philosopher created ideas that later became immortal and entered the world classics of philosophy. In the critical period, ideas were created, which are called basic, because they described the work of the human mind and criticism of its work.

In his writings, Kant wrote that if people with their minds begin to talk about the work of the whole world, having no experience behind them, they will come to contradictions in the end. Contradictory statements must together either be provable or refuted.

Kant pointed out that any thing or force that influences a person is not capable of becoming an object for research, since human cognition is in no way connected with the main goals of cognition. Thus, people should cognize in themselves phenomena, not things. This statement played against Kant: because of him, the philosopher was accused of agnosticism, namely, the denial of world knowledge.

Philosophy of Johann Fichte

The philosopher who perceived the ideas and thoughts of Kant, who evaluated the abilities of a person depending on the agreement with human duty, was Johann Fichte. He became a follower of Kant. For him, the philosophical current acted as a practical science that distributed the goals and objectives of the reality of mankind in society and the world. But at the same time, Fichte said that Kant's philosophy is weak because of the lack of evidence between theoretical and practical philosophy. In his writings, Fichte set himself the task of showing philosophy as the head of all human activity.

Fichte singled out the principle of freedom, which is able to combine theory and practice of a philosophical approach to the world. The theory said that freedom does not allow a person to comprehend the recognition of the existence of things in the whole world. That is why humanity needs a revolution that would transform social relations, and they would be supplemented by the teachings of philosophers. Fichte called such a teaching "scientific teaching", and it acted as a holistic substantiation of the practical part of philosophy.

As a result, the philosopher abandoned the study of Kant's concept of "things inside a person" and devoted himself to other concepts and became a representative of the idea that "a thing is what is inside me."

It is worth saying that there was a person who connected the philosophy of Kant and the ideas of Fichte, and it was Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. It was his teachings that influenced Hegel as a philosopher.

Philosophy of Friedrich Schelling

Friedrich Schelling, in his reflections, set himself the task of creating a general system of knowledge by studying the knowledge of truth in individual areas. Subsequently, all this turned into "natural philosophy", acting as the first attempt to combine scientific discoveries under the careful supervision of a philosopher.

The main idea of ​​this system is the image of "ideal nature", which is based on the idea of ​​the spiritual nature of natural activity. The huge work that made the philosopher famous included thoughts and hypotheses about the natural philosophical system. As a result, the philosopher was able to prove that each entity can be characterized as a single whole of opposing forces. This unity would later be called by Schelling “popularity. In his writings, he was able to accurately explain life and the organism, which are complex processes in nature.

In his main book, The System of Transcendental Idealism, the philosopher draws a line between theoretical and practical philosophy, since the theoretical part acts as an explanation of the higher principles of knowledge. Practical philosophy was created to find a solution to the problems of human freedom, which is created through the creation of a legal state that binds all the principles of human development.

Philosophy of Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel became a philosopher who gave the world an image in all its levels, manifestations and stages of development. Hegel argued that by describing the development of an idea, one cannot independently achieve philosophical research. The idea must independently break out of the circle of absoluteness, if the essence of this expression is expressed in other words, then it must leave itself and become part of other spheres. Nature is one such area.

Thus, nature can be explained by an idea, which at the very beginning is its basis. And in any object or phenomenon there is a special quality that unites its sides, which come into conflict due to the accumulated contradictory properties within such a quality.

Hegel had an enormous influence on the development of the social part of deep and thought science. It was he who created the doctrine of a society of citizens, of human rights and private property. Most of his work was aimed at elucidating the mechanism of price and money, value and commodity fetishism.

Philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach

Feuerbach built his theory on the opposition of religion and philosophy as worldviews that cannot be combined with each other. Because of this, the scientist tried to explain the materialistic form of the spirit and criticized Christianity as one of the religious forms. As a result, in his writings, the scientist wrote that God is not a divine being, but only an image that was born in the human mind, reflecting the human essence.

Feuerbach noted that the basis of religion is humanity's fear of natural phenomena, which is why powerful images are born in the minds of people. For this reason, God, who is nothing but a creation of the human mind, takes on the form of a creator, to whom the will and destiny of man are subject. And because of this, religion has acquired anti-human character traits, since it does not allow a person to strive for a better life in the real world, as well as its transformation, replacing it with a submissive expectation of a future reward from a supernatural being.

Historical Significance of Philosophy

Already at the end of the 18th century it became clear that the current philosophy had exhausted itself. It was no longer capable of being the basis for future scientific discoveries and knowledge. At the same time, science took a far step forward than during the teachings of Descartes. Practical science pointed to the inconsistency of reality, as it constantly changed. But it was thanks to the German classical philosophers that this science acquired new ideas.

It was the German philosophical classics who had to prove the contradiction of nature, which served as the opening of a new path to scientific knowledge. German philosophy played an important role in the development of philosophical thoughts and ideas. It caused a change in the way of thinking of the whole world.

Philosophical concepts were raised to a high level, and the main merit of the German classics is that they made human thinking historical, which is quite enough to call them philosophical classics.

Introduction

German classical philosophy covers more than a hundred years. It is associated with the names of the great philosophers I. Kant (1724-1804), I.G. Fichte (1762-1814), F.W. Schelling (1775-1854), G.V. Hegel (1770-1831), L. Feuerbach (1804-1872).

Despite the fact that each of these thinkers is surprisingly unique, one can speak of German classical philosophy as a single, holistic formation, since it is distinguished by adherence to a number of general principles.

First, the philosophers who are classified as German classical philosophy are united by a similar understanding of the role of philosophy in the history of mankind and culture. They believed that philosophy is called upon to critically comprehend the history of mankind.

Secondly, in the philosophical systems of German thinkers, a holistic, dialectical concept of development was developed, which makes it possible to explore all spheres of human life.

Thirdly, German classical philosophy is characterized by a scientific and theoretical approach to the study of history, the rejection of its intuitive comprehension. Philosophers have tried to isolate the patterns of historical development, which they understood as the principles of historical "reasonableness".

All these principles developed on an idealistic basis.

Brief description of German classical philosophy

philosophy dialectics kant hegel

Classical German philosophy occupies a period of time from the middle of the eighteenth century to the until the 70s of the nineteenth century. It is represented by five outstanding minds of mankind: I. Kant (1724-1804), I. Fichte (1762-1814), F. Schelling (1775-1854), G. Hegel (1770-1831), L. Feuerbach (1804-1872 ). The first two are most often classified as subjective idealists, the next two as objective idealists, and the last as materialists. Thus, German classical philosophy embraces all major philosophical trends.

Classical German philosophy arose and developed in the general mainstream of the Western European philosophy of modern times. She discussed the same problems that were raised in the philosophical theories of F. Bacon, R. Descartes, D. Locke, J. Berkeley, D. Hume and others, and tried to overcome the shortcomings and one-sidedness of empiricism and rationalism, materialism and idealism, skepticism and logical optimism, etc. German philosophers strengthened the claims of the mind to the possibility of knowing not only nature (I. Kant) and the human "I" (J. Fichte), but also the development of human history (G. Hegel). Hegel's formula "What is reasonable is real; and what is real is reasonable" was precisely intended to show that the reality of reason can be comprehended by philosophy. Therefore, according to Hegel, philosophy is time grasped in thought. Bacon also has a similar statement: "... it is correct to call truth the daughter of time, and not authority" (16. Vol. 2. P. 46).

Classical German philosophy is a national philosophy. It reflects the features of the existence and development of Germany in the second half of the eighteenth century. and the first half of the 19th century: its economic backwardness in comparison with the states developed at that time (Holland, England) and political fragmentation. The unattractive German reality gave rise to German daydreaming, expressed in the rise of the German spirit, in the creation of philosophical theories and great literary works (J. Schiller, J. Goethe, and others). Something similar happened in the middle of the nineteenth century. Russia, whose literature (L.N. Tolstoy, F.M. Dostoevsky, I.S. Turgenev, N.A. Nekrasov, and others) rose above the Russian reality, bound by the chains of feudalism. One can probably say that the rotten swamp of life gives rise to a spiritual thirst to get out of it and create, at least in dreams, a new social reality in a dry and beautiful place.

German philosophers are patriots of their fatherland, even if it does not correspond to their ideals. In the midst of the war with France, when Napoleon's troops were stationed in Berlin (1808), Fichte, realizing the danger that threatened him, delivered his "Speeches to the German Nation", in which he sought to awaken the self-consciousness of the German people against the invaders. During the war of liberation against Napoleon, Fichte, together with his wife, devoted himself to caring for the wounded. Hegel, seeing all the ugliness of German reality, nevertheless declares that the Prussian state is built on reasonable principles. Justifying the Prussian monarchy, Hegel writes that the state in and for itself is a moral whole, the realization of freedom.

Classical German philosophy is contradictory, just as German reality itself is contradictory. Kant maneuvers between materialism and idealism; Fichte moves from the position of the subjective to the position of objective idealism; Hegel, justifying German reality, writes with admiration of the French Revolution as of the rising of the sun.

Thus, German classical philosophy covers a relatively short period. Nevertheless, in a number of respects it represents the pinnacle of philosophical development that could be reached at that time, and thus the pinnacle of pre-Marxist philosophy in general. Let's list at least some of its positive moments. Kant's philosophy completes the poetic (noema, noesis. - Transl.) philosophy. In the philosophy of Kant, the theoretical reflection of the reflection of human freedom and equality in the period before the French Revolution found its expression. In German classical philosophy, we find the beginnings of Fichte's "philosophy of the active side", the foundations of natural speculation in Schelling, his concept of the "dynamic process" in nature, close to materialist dialectics, Hegel's dialectical concept, close to reality and at the same time due to its idealism far from it. Beginning with Herder, German philosophy introduces historicism into the study of society and thereby rejects the non-historical and mechanistic conceptions of the previous era.

Post-Kantian philosophy introduces a serious critique of agnosticism and the entire previous poetic position. In Hegel's philosophy, laws are developed not only for objective, but also for subjective dialectics.

The reverse side of these positive results is the ideological statement of the majority of philosophers in idealism. This trend is associated with a number of circumstances that lie in the concept of idealism, where a strictly scientific explanation is not required when formulating new discoveries, ideas, theories. The materialistic position makes great demands on the accuracy of presentation, on the rigor of formulations, which implies a certain time period. The idealism of German classical philosophy is associated with bringing a concept to absurd results in spite of experience or empirical evidence. The economic and political weakness of the German bourgeoisie played a role in this, which led to the fact that Germany experienced its existence more in theory than in practice.

The next point explaining the predominance of the idealist position in German classical philosophy is related to the development of philosophy after Descartes. In contrast to the ontological position of ancient and medieval philosophy as insufficiently substantiated, Descartes emphasized the idea that the most essential point from which philosophy must begin is the validity of the knowing Self itself. Within this tradition, a number of modern philosophers put more emphasis on the subject, rather than an object, and the question of the nature of knowledge is given preference over the question of the nature of being. Kant's philosophy also shows a similar privileged position of the subject. Although in the subsequent speculative phase of the development of philosophy (Schelling, Hegel) there is a transition to an ontological position, the former poetic priority of the subject is projected onto the concept of the foundations of any reality.

Less well known is that pantheism was a characteristic feature of this idealism (it is characteristic of Fichte, Schelling of the classical period and Hegel). The impetus for development was given by Kant with his criticism of metaphysical ideas (God, the soul, the idea of ​​world integrity). Another reason for this orientation is the so-called Spinoza discussion, caused by the book of F.-G. Jacobi (1743-1819) "On the Teaching of Spinoza", published in 1785. The discussion aimed at the rehabilitation of Spinoza's philosophy is one of the milestones of the progressive spiritual development in Germany at that time. Herder participated in the Spinoza discussion with his treatise God (1787), in which he attempted to modernize Spinozism (replacing "abundance" with "organic forces" modeled on a living being rather than a physical object). In contrast to Jacobi's atheistic interpretation of Spinoza, Herder advocates a pantheistic concept of a god with some personal traits (wisdom, providence). Spinoza's discussion shows that post-Kantian philosophy also included those philosophical trends in Germany that developed independently of Kant.

In social terms, German philosophy is evidence of the ideological awakening of the "third estate" in Germany. The economic immaturity and political weakness of the German bourgeoisie, the territorial fragmentation of Germany left their mark on it. At the same time, German philosophy used the results of the development of philosophical thought in Italy, France, England and Holland. This moment is very positive.

The significance of German classical philosophy was partly devalued by the idealistic form, which later became fatal for it. At the same time, despite its non-specific, mystifying nature, which excluded a strict causal analysis of the phenomena under study, it contributed to the fact that the reflection of new scientific knowledge and the impact of social development took place so timely that, as they say, it instantly reacted to new incentives.