A.L. Dobrokhotov

“History of ancient aesthetics” in the context of the era

- As is known, « History of ancient aesthetics» Alexei Fedorovich Losev became a great event for our philosophical sciences in the second half XXcentury, which influenced not only aesthetic thought. Is this so, and what, from your point of view, is the source of such influence?

This is true. Eight volume« History of ancient aesthetics» (hereinafter referred to as IAE) was created and published over 30 years (1963-1994), capturing the thaw, stagnation and perestroika, and it turned out to be an entire era in itself. Actually, it was not only and not so much the history of aesthetics as a grandiose panorama of ancient culture. The axis of this construction was ancient philosophy (although it is almost impossible to separate the philosophical from the aesthetic in antiquity). And the author’s method was his original dialectical philosophy of culture. I think it makes sense to read IAE now from the point of view of his general theory of culture, because some of his works on the history of culture have been well studied. Losev also has works on philology, linguistics and philosophy of history, in which he adds T There is a theme of culture. But sometimes behind this bright scientific literature, rich in an incredible amount of facts and polemical excursions, his philosophy of culture is not visible. Meanwhile, it does not boil down to the usual Western models, nor to what we know about the Silver Age, although, of course, Florensky and Vyach are quite close to Losev. Ivanov, Frank, Berdyaev. And it is no coincidence that the first area of ​​application of the method, thought out and suffered in the experience of the 20s and 30s, became ancient aesthetics: it was A a common “territory” that is natural, native to the author and interesting to his contemporaries. For the 60s and 70s, “longing for world culture” made interest in antiquity almost obligatory. It was in this garb that Losev’s alternative cultural philosophy came to his contemporaries. Educated readers understood that,despite the sporadic use of Marxist vocabulary, the author came “from another universe,” and for them the significant experience was the very fact that their contemporary and compatriot had opened a window into the Other World, more interesting and fascinating than the official teachings about the errors of the thinkers of the past, which they didn’t understand something and didn’t grow up to something.

- But still, this was precisely the history of aesthetics. I wonder what the relationship was between A.F.’s works. Losev, related to aesthetics and cult swarm, with the research of contemporaries?

The ideological landscape of that time was not at all simple. The boundaries of what was permitted expanded, and aesthetics was also a very convenient niche for independent humanitarian thinking. One can try to note the main aesthetic trends in the “force field” of the culture of that time. Firstly, some kind of radiation came from the 20s, when a whole system of innovative institutions such as the State Academy of Agricultural Sciences flourished, whose task was to build a new philosophy of art. Some of them were directly related to ideology, while others only “rhymed” with it, but in fact correlated with the latest designs of Western formal aesthetics. Despite the short time given to them by the regime, their work was charged with such energy that at the first opportunity,explicitly or - more often - implicitly,returned to culture. Secondly, there was a continuous tradition of the “author’s” interpretation of Marxism, to one degree or another connected with aesthetic theory: M.A. Lifshitz, D. Lukacs, M.F. Ovsyannikov, V.S. Bibler, M.S. Kagan, E.V. Ilyenkov, M.K. Mamardashvili and others. For most of these theorists, the “middle term” between Marxism and classical philosophy was Hegel. Here we can no longer talk about a “niche,” since the thinkers sincerely worked in the Marxist paradigm, which, however, was even riskier than ideological decoration. (Closer to Jupiter - closer to lightning.) Thanks to them - scientists and teachers - in 60- e gg. sectors appeared anddepartments that have incorporated aesthetics into scientific and educational institutions, as well as the corresponding “cells” in the publishing world.Thirdly, there were thinkers who miraculously survived and returned from oblivion. Perhaps I can name only two, and very different ones: A.F. Losev and M.M. Bakhtin. IN-fourthly, a phenomenon arose that in itself became “Res publica litterarum”: the Moscow-Tartu school of semiotics with its multifaceted and colossal influence. Fifthly, there was a steady tendency to return “to the origins” of national culture, to the revival and reinterpretation of tradition, which in the case of Russian culture naturally led to the primary aesthetic codes of culture and, paradoxically, to the expansion of the world contexts of national culture. As an example, we can mention the evolution of research by V.V. Bychkova with a range from patristics to avant-garde or M.N. Gromov with a range from monastic architecture to Kant. Sixthly, it is necessary to separately note the intensive work that was carried out in domains indirectly related to aesthetics: sometimes more like art criticism; sometimes less like exact and natural sciences. What was uniting here was the desire to find a new language for describing and understanding the aesthetic. A case in point is the creative evolution of B.V.Rauschenbach from the problem board orientation of spacecraft to the theme of spatial constructions in painting. Or the Vyach movement. Sun. Ivanov from linguistics to the wide sphere of non-trivial connections of anthropology, neurophysiology, semiotics and aesthetics. This is what I remembered ad hoc , but what has been said is enough to imagine the richness and intensity of the field in which aesthetic thought existed.

- How would you place A.F.’s aesthetics in this field? Loseva. Was this a form of escape from social reality? ? Or was it a form of dialogue with her?

It definitely wasn't escapism. From the very beginning, aesthetics was both a theme and an expressive form of Losev’s thinking. His path to IAE is described in detail by A.A. Taho-Godi, and we see that already for the early Losev to understand culture meant to decipher its artistic and expressive energies. In the 20s Losev worked actively inState Academy of Artistic Sciences (RAKhN, and later GAKhN), at the State Institute of Musical Science (GIMS), making many reports. He was a professor at the Moscow Conservatory, where he taught a course« History of aesthetic teachings» . In the 30s he worked on a manuscript« History of aesthetics» . (We should not forget that he is the author of vivid intellectual prose, relatively recently brought out of oblivion through the efforts of E.A. Tahoe-Godi.) But perhaps most important of all is his famous"octateuch" 20s, in which a sophisticated, essentially Neoplatonic hierarchy and dialectic of forms of expression of the First One at different levels of otherness is given. Aesthetics in these books was deeply based on ontology. And when in 1963 volumes of the IAE began to appear, and then books about other aesthetic eras (for example,“Aesthetics of the Renaissance”), they are already provided with a powerful philosophical resource of the 20s.

- The internal logic of Losev’s work is clear. But how did IAE fit into the spirit of the times?

- Far from being conflict-free. Losev was a militant thinker and often encountered the same active reaction. (At one time, he boldly challenged much more terrible enemies than the sluggish tyranny of the 60s, and paid dearly for it.) The matter was further complicated by the fact that his method of morphological, “physiognomic” portrait of eras and cultural types, in some way then echoing Spengler’s, it implied familiarization and depiction from within the object of interpretation. It was the aesthetic expressiveness of this method that sometimes allowed critics to too hastily identify Losev the author and his experimental self, on whose behalf he described the appearance of a particular culture. (Although it must also be said that it is not at all easy to separate these subjectivities.) An important feature of Losev’s style is the desire to follow the path of immanent cultural logic to the end and identify all possible consequences. This inevitably led to cultural criticism: sometimes harsh, sometimes quite delicate. An example of the latter -polemics with the structuralists of the Tartu “Proceedings on Sign Systems” in the 1978 article “Terminological polysemy...”. Losev here struggles with the reduction of cultural phenomena to formal sign systems, which leads to “asemantism”, to the transformation of culture into a meaningless conglomerate of empty signs. Not here it is important how right Losev is in his criticism (it is unlikely that his opponents deserved such reproaches), but what is important is that, With his point of view,“asemantism” is followed by the power of an impersonal form with its value nihilism, and he considered himself obliged to respond to this challenge (at least with restraint, so that the authorities could not use his criticism as a reason for another pogrom).

- If Losev’s aesthetics was essentially a hermeneutics of culture, then what was its method?

We will not find a theoretical manifesto of his methodology (although much can be learned from« Dialectics of artistic form" And " Essays on ancient symbolism and mythology» ). Nevertheless, this method is clearly and specifically outlined in practice and is present in all of Losev’s works. This is Neoplatonic dialectics, read through the optics of patristics. When applied to culture, this the conviction that the entire world culture is a naturally unfolding integrity. In a sense, this is a fundamentally anti-Spenglerian approach, since it assumes the original semantic unity and connection of all forms of culture. Losev believed that Spengler had learned to brilliantly draw the unique “tree” of a particular culture and notice common morphological features in all its details. But he criticized Spengler for the fact that he could not imagine a number of cultures as the life of a single all-human organism with transce n dental connection of all its foundations. He was sure that it was necessary to combine the physiognomy of individual cultures of Spengler and the dialectical philosophy of history of Hegel. For Losev, there has always been an absolute context in which movement from one culture to another occurs, a kind of vertical along which there is an ascent to the absolute, or more precisely, to the “absolute Personality.” But at the same time, there is a horizontal dimension of empirical history in which any phenomenon is always individually specific. Accordingly, Losev’s method is twofold: on the one hand, he analyzes large historical contexts, and on the other, he moves on to a detailed, scientific verified description of local phenomena. He himself called it, in Hegelian terms, the method of combining the universal, the particular and the individual.

- Where is the aesthetics here?

Aesthetics in the narrow sense of the word is only part of the objectivity that interests him. To understand Losev’s unique panaestheticism, one must pay attention to the foundations of his symbolism. Only symbolism, according to Losev, saves from contradictions in which Western European culture is entangled. Symbolism recognizes the existence of a source of phenomena, but a source that is inexhaustible and irreducible to any phenomena (apophatism), and asserts that this source, different from its phenomena, nevertheless manifests itself in them in various ways. If we separate symbolism (appearance) and apophatism (hiddenness), we will get either agnosticism or positivism. That is, being must be understood as an inaccessible, but revealed meaning, and aesthetics - as the science and art of reading this manifestation. Everything thus turns out to be aesthetics.

This is best said not even in Losev’s aesthetic works, but in “The Philosophy of the Name,” where a strict sequence of formulations of meaning is given. There Losev gives a vivid formulation of symbolism, which is better to quote literally: “Only symbolism saves a phenomenon from subjectivistic illusionism and from the blind deification of matter, nevertheless affirming its ontological reality, and only apophatism saves the appearing essence from agnostic negativism and from rationalistic-metaphysical dualism, affirming, nevertheless, its universal significance and irreducible real element.” That is, apophatic symbolism preserves both essence and appearance, but obliges us, so to speak, to be subjects of endless aesthetic interpretation. Losev’s concept is also very important"myth" , i.e. a symbol that has grown to the status of a “magical name” (to the status of a life practice) and developed into a cultural and historical event. In other words, symbolism offers two central ways of understanding phenomena: this is what platonists call eidos, that is, a face, a face, a drawn individual image of a phenomenon; And logo, that is, a mental formula that gives the essence of an object. Losev, as a true Platonist, connects logos and eidos into one point, and a concretely revealed logical formula is obtained, which has a portrait appearance. In culture, this manifests itself as a person realizing meanings. This personality can reach levels that develop into the historical destiny of the individual: Losev called this the word “myth.”

- It turns out that Losev’s philosophy of culture can be called “myth-making”?

Well, in a sense... Losev saw culture this way. Myth is a way to talk about culture, to show how empirical individuals, and perhaps some embodied ideas, create a certain field, a kind of theatrical stage on which historical events take place. Myth is the essence of personality, unfolded in historical fate in specific circumstances. Connected with this is such a key Losev concept as the “dominant first principle” of culture. Losev argues that the typology of cultures is subject to a certain integral principle, based on which it is possible to describe both the general and all the filiations of the individual in a particular culture.

- This seems to be similar to Spengler’s ur-phenomenon...

The fact of the matter is that this is not a phenomenon, but a principle. Pervoeidos, not pervoeikon. The principle must exist in the world (in the community) of principles and, as such, requires an exit from the dimension of culture into something else, to a higher degree of generality. That’s why Losev’s comparative historical portraits are so interesting (almost like Plutarch’s): they allow you to compare principles, see unobvious closeness and unobvious conflicts. (Example: cultural-virtuoso analysis of the opposition and hidden twinning of Schopenhauer and Hegel.)

- But then Losev still shares with Spengler some kind of determinism, the predetermination of the phenomenon of culture by its “first principle”.

This question arose not only for you. For example, S.S. writes about this. Averintsev, who finds in Losev “the imperative of absolute rigidity of connections between meaning and form” and even elements of a totalitarian style. But precisely this “absolute rigidity” was not present in Losev’s teaching. This type of cultural-historical determinism arose during the Enlightenment's attempts to transform metaphysics into science, but at that time - the time of struggle against Christian providentialism - it could not fully develop. Recognition of chance, living historicism, the cult of moral responsibility - all this gave the Enlightenment immunity from the transformation of history into the kingdom of the “demon” of Laplace. True historical determinism arises in XIX century, and completes its development in Spengler’s vitalism and totalitarian ideology. It is this tendency that Losev is fighting, looking for its precedents in the past. In particular,on the pages of the IAE and especially temperamentally in “Dialectics of Myth.” He himself inherits the dialectic of Plato and Hegel: an “open system” that presupposes the indeterministic inclusion of man in divine plans. Averintsev correctly notes Losev’s “Hegelian-Schelling training,” but in vain he puts it on a par with Spenglerianism. Losev's philosophy of culture is a rather complex, but very biased by real history, teaching about the ways of symbolic communication of the divine and the human, the uncreated and the created. As I have already said, Losev’s symbolism requires the expression of essence, its aesthetic phenomenalization. Therefore, the phenomenon always serves as a symptom and evidence for those who are looking for hidden s e "messages". But the essence itself cannot be either a symptom or a primordial phenomenon. According to Losev, it is an irreducible reality and presupposes a personal interpretation of everything given to free consciousness. It seems to me that it is precisely these ideas of Losev that should not now be handed over to the archives of the history of philosophy.

(b. December 8, 1947) - Doctor of Philosophy, specializing in Philosophy of Politics, Candidate of Historical Sciences.

Academic degree and title: Doctor of Philosophy, Professor

Scientific and public biography: from 1966 to 1990 - at Komsomol and party work in Moscow, including work as a responsible employee of the international information department of the CPSU Central Committee. He was a people's deputy. He was a senior researcher at the Academy of Social Sciences under the CPSU Central Committee. From 1990 to 1992 – Advisor to the Embassy of the USSR (then the Russian Federation) in the USA.

From 1992 to 1998 – permanent representative of the International Humanitarian Foundation “Knowledge” named after. N.I. Vavilov in the USA. At the same time, he is a professor of Russian history and world politics at the University of Virginia, USA. From 1998 to 2013, at the Russian State Trade and Economic University - scientific secretary of the Academic Council, head of the department of Russian and world history. Since 2013 – Professor at the Department of Sociology of International Relations, Faculty of Sociology, Moscow State University.

Graduated from the Moscow State Institute of History and Archives, postgraduate studies at the Institute of International Labor Movement of the USSR Academy of Sciences. There he defended his PhD thesis on the ideological problems of democratic movements in the USA (in the 60s and 70s). The doctoral dissertation was devoted to the study of the dynamics of changes in the political orientations of the US scientific intelligentsia.

In 2013, the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation awarded the honorary title of “Honorary Worker of Higher Education of the Russian Federation.”
In 2015, he was elected a full member of the International Slavic Academy of Sciences, Education, Arts and Culture (this is a public organization).

Main area of ​​scientific interests– US history and politics, history and current state Soviet-American and Russian-American relations, problems of information wars.

Publications: monographs, books and scientific articles published in the USSR, Russia and the USA are mainly devoted to problems of history, US domestic and foreign policy, Soviet-American and Russian-American relations, American Sovietology and Russian studies, Soviet and Russian history, the history of religion and churches in the USSR and Russia, ideological problems of information and information wars. Co-author of a course of lectures on the history of Russia in the 20th – early 21st centuries, published in the form teaching aid for university students and was noted as a winner at the All-Russian History Textbook Competition.

The above issues were mainly devoted to special courses for students in the USA and Russia, reports at conferences and seminars in Russian and English.

Latest publications
1. Russia-America: new " cold war" George Kennan as her prophet // Academic project, book, 316 p. 2014.
2. Why the USSR died: historical and political aspects // Collection “Socialism: from dawn to dawn”, 2015, article, 1.0 pp.
3. “The Great Divide” by Joseph Stiglitz // Journal “Sociology”, No. 3, 2015, article, 0.5 pp.
4. The revival of socialism in the USA as a reflection of the global trend // Collection “Socialism: theory, practice, trends of renewal in the 21st century”, 2016, article, 1.0 pp.
5. On social inequality in the USA, Russia and China today (experience of comparative analysis) // Collection “The Limits of Capitalism and the Breakthrough of Socialism”, 2016, article, 1.0 pp.
6. The rise and fall of Marco Rubio as a result of the first stage of the 2016 election campaign in the United States // World Politics Magazine, No. 2, 2016, article, 0.5 pp.
7. Social inequality is a pressing problem of American society // Journal of Sociological Research, No. 2, 2016, article, 0.5 pp.

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I. FORMATION OF THE CONCEPT OF BEING

IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE PRE-SOCRATICS AND SOPHISTS

Being as a concept was introduced into philosophy by Parmenides, and although it acquired the character of a term much later - apparently, in the context of Platonism - it is clearly a concept in Parmenides' poem. Before Parmenides, the subject of philosophers' thought was existing things, and not being as such. However, the environment in which the concept crystallized arose with the birth of philosophy, and perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the birth of philosophy was the environment that made ontology possible. In fact, the main task of the new type of knowledge - philosophical - was not only to build a picture of the world, but also to justify its right to this attempt. Empirical science did not need this kind of self-justification: the presence of experience both as a material for generalization and as a criterion for the effectiveness of an idea served as a sufficient guarantee of the expediency of science. But philosophy claimed to comprehend what, in principle, could not become the subject of experience. Therefore, the decisive question for the self-justification of philosophy was whether thought, regardless of experience, can discover an objective, universally valid truth. Naturally, a thought or a series of thoughts exist on their own, and a thing or a series of things exist on their own. These two series cannot intersect due to their nature. In order for philosophy to win the right to exist, it was necessary to find the point of intersection of these parallel series - a task for the solution of which it was necessary to find some new dimension.

The sought-after point was found by the first founders of philosophical systems: it was the point of coincidence of thinking and being, which Pythagoras saw in number, Heraclitus in words, Parmenides in being. In other words, a thought was found that could not remain just a thought, but always somehow contained objectivity. Therefore, the question of being was actually raised already in the first constructions of thinkers, even if they did not contain the concept of being as such. And in these very first steps of philosophical thinking, important feature the concept of being - its close connection with the concept of truth (and, therefore, thinking) and the close, although less obvious, connection with the concept of good. Philosophy needed to substantiate the possibility of achieving truth, the criteria of truth for thought and the true foundation of being. Hence the connection, if not identity, of “thought”, “truth” and “being”. The very search for reliable knowledge, that is, knowledge that would coincide with what actually exists, was a symptom of the upcoming identification of thought and being.

The realization of reliable knowledge necessarily presupposed ontological conclusions: if, for example, the desired point of coincidence of thinking and being turned out to be “number,” then it became for the Pythagoreans the basis of being: after all, number, on the one hand, is a thought, but, on the other hand, only thanks to the organizing - the determining power of a number that something can “be.” It is significant that in the case when the subject of thinking was the elements in their interaction, that is, when we were talking about “physics” and not about ontology, the naturalness of the transition from the substance of nature to the substance of thinking was preserved: if it became clear what the origin of the world is - for example , fire, - then it was possible to determine what thought is - accordingly, the fiery principle in the soul. Thus, it turned out that what truly exists and what is correctly thought are one and the same. And both of these aspects are good both in the sense of the goodness of the cosmos and in the sense of ethical dignity. For example, fire is the basis of the cosmos, its identity in all transformations is good, but it is also best condition the human soul, Heraclitus seeks to convince us of this. The same applies to the number, which, according to Pythagoras, organizes both the world and the soul.

Thus, the first philosophers discovered a new dimension of the universe, which, in fact, was not reducible to nature and led thinking away from “physiology” to ontology. But the demarcation of these paths occurred much later - clearly in the era of Socrates - and, due to the peculiarities of ancient thinking, never became final. The decisive step from the possibility to the reality of the concept of being was the poem of Parmenides. Pre-Aelic philosophy, as was said, opened the ontological dimension, but the concepts it put forward were only in content the point of coincidence of thought and being that ensured the autonomy of philosophical knowledge; in form, neither logos nor number are a necessary object of thought (if they exist, then certain consequences can be drawn from them; but do they exist?). Parmenides finds the idea that combines both ontological content and the necessity of logical form. If Heraclitus and Pythagoras showed the possibility of a path to being, behind which the trinity of truth, goodness and beauty is highlighted, then Parmenides demonstrated the impossibility of another path, which, according to the unanimous opinion of historians of philosophy, made it possible to give a new type of thinking its own solid foundation. “Being is, but non-being is not,” proclaims Parmenides. This idea, which at first glance seems to be a meaningless tautology or a naive logical trick and as such has been subjected to sharp and justifiable criticism many times - from antiquity to the present day, has been stubbornly reproduced in the history of philosophy and has often become a force creating one or another concept.

Although pre-Elenic philosophy, no less energetically than Parmenides, defended the truly existing basis of all appearances, the essential difference in the new formulation of the question was that it was not “something existing” that was subject to interpretation, but simply “existent”, and this made it possible to direct not thought to the subject of interpretation about something, but just a “thought”. Being and thought in this case merge into one, because their definitions coincide. Parmenides' poetic inspiration is quite understandable. After all, he discovered that among thoughts, which in themselves are only subjective human abilities, there is a thought that inevitably leads us out of subjectivity, gives us certainty and thus solves one of the main tasks of newborn philosophy, the task of self-justification of reason. It should be noted that the objection to being as a concept, which has arisen more than once among thinkers different eras, that is, doubt about the very possibility of substantivization of such a linguistic element, did not receive clear expression in ancient philosophy. Even the witty criticism of Gorgias, directed against the Eleans, also substantives the connective “is,” but with the opposite evaluative sign. Moreover, even Aristotle’s thesis “being is not a genus” can hardly be called an exception to the rule; this thesis only indicates the limitations of generic subordination.

Parmenides' intuition of pure being was so reliable and vivid for him that it made it possible to give a meaningful description of the “empty tautology” in plastic images. At the same time, the metaphorical nature of these images (light, sphericity, bliss) is reduced to a minimum, in which imagery turns into symbolism. The logical explication of the concept of being according to Parmenides looks like this: being is the thought of being, and the thought of being is being (this conclusion establishes the logical impossibility for the thought of being, and only for such a thought, not to have a corresponding object in reality; or, in other words , this conclusion reveals the essence that contains the necessity of its existence); this identity denies the separateness of subject and object and, in general, any separateness, because in pure being there is nothing that could bifurcate it: there is neither relative nor absolute non-existence; From here it follows that being cannot be fragmented either by time, or space, or change. In this regard, the characteristic of the ontological absolute as the One, which is indirectly given by Parmenides and directly by Plato, is legitimate. Also indicative is such a predicate of being, revealed in the poem, as completeness. The impossibility of any discreteness and structure in being can just as easily be interpreted as emptiness, if we think formally. However, for Parmenides it is clear that emptiness, absence, is a derivative concept, dependent on completeness and presence (presence).

Therefore, the indifference of moments of being is precisely fullness, a kind of continuity, potentially generating a world of qualitative diversity (for the Eleatics, an illusion).

A very interesting consequence of Parmenides' discovery is the assertion that being has a limit. This statement seems to contradict the very idea of ​​universal existence. Already Melissus, a follower of Parmenides, believes that existence is limitless, otherwise beyond its limit there will be non-existence, which was denied by Eleatic logic. But Parmenides insists on the certainty and, more specifically, the sphericity of being. His decisive argument is that being is precisely “something”, and the absence of a limit will mean that it is “nothing”; therefore being will disappear. Of course, such a ball, which has a limit, but does not have a spatial boundary, cannot be imagined, but being is not imaginable, but conceivable. For Parmenides, infinity and determinacy do not contradict each other; rather, they require each other, since deprivation of a limit is an eternal lack of something, incompleteness, imperfection, inferiority, even “envy.” Hence the following characteristic of being: it is good. Since it does not need anything, is in absolute peace and is full of itself, then it is good. Finally, being is not just spherical fullness, but also light. Parmenides attributes this sensual quality to him on the basis of the natural conviction for the Pre-Socratic physiologist that there is no insurmountable boundary between the corporeal and the incorporeal; they are only two quantitative poles of one reality, and therefore being must coincide with the most subtle bodily substance, with light.

Thus, the very simple proposition that there is no non-existence, but existence is, leads, on the one hand, to a new, Eleatic image of the universe and, on the other, to the emergence of a new way of thinking, which considers itself independent in its foundations from empirical reality: the specificity of philosophical knowledge arises. Within the framework of Pre-Socratics, the idea of ​​pure being received a varied interpretation; at the same time, the central intuition - the mind's perception of unchanging existence - remained a kind of axiom in all constructions. It was preserved by Empedocles and Anaxagoras, Democritus and Melissus, and in a certain sense, even by the Sophists. The only orthodox follower of Parmenides was Zeno, who put forward striking arguments in favor of the doctrine of one being. His aporias, however, did not convince his contemporaries-philosophers of the truth of the doctrine of Parmenides, but showed that in the strict sense of the word it was not the Eleatic denial of the conceivability of “nature” that was contradictory, but the thinking of physiologists. The second follower of Parmenides, Melissus, made significant adjustments to the Eleatic teaching, apparently trying to reconcile it with Ionian physics, under the influence of which he was. His main innovation - the understanding of being as spatially infinite - was more paradoxical for ancient thinking than Parmenides’s combination of being and sphericity, but from the point of view of late Presocratics, the synthesis of the Ionian and Eleatic directions in the philosophy of Melissa was natural, for the task of late Presocratics was to interpret being as the basis of the diversity of the cosmos. Empedocles also followed this path, in whose system being is only a moment of the cosmic cycle (sphairos, filled with “sacred understanding”), along with moments of varying degrees of fragmentation; Anaxagoras, according to whose teaching the world mind ("nus") - the closest analogue of Eleatic existence - is eternal and omnipresent, but exists along with the diversity of nature, without canceling it; Democritus, whose atoms (being) exist and move against the background of non-existence-emptiness. This compromise path was all the more possible since the philosophy of the Eleatics was itself still natural philosophy and grew out of its problematics; but such a path could not become more than a compromise after Parmenides’ logical reforms.

We find a completely different approach to the concept of being among the Sophists. The short, but unique and historically important period of activity of the senior sophists became a time of a thorough reassessment of values, affecting not least ontology. It should be noted that the school of sophists was represented by very different thinkers, who sometimes even held opposing views. Therefore, the sophists did not oppose a single theory to their opponents, but a general trend in their understanding of existence can still be detected. The sophists deprive the “single existing” of its universality and necessity, and not only deny existence, but in one form or another give it a new interpretation. This does not exclude the possibility of individual sophists gravitating towards or even joining the point of view of the Eleatics or physiologists. For example, Antiphon (B1; B10) argues as an Eleatic, Gorgias completely follows Eleatic logic, although he turns it inside out. It is not the very logic of thinking about existence that changes, but its ideological context. Unlike physiologists, the sophists limit the universality of being not so much by principles and causes external to being, that is, by other being, which is presented with complete logical consistency by Democritus as non-being, but by internal distinctions. The sophists revealed the need to clarify and criticize the concept of being, which was interpreted too abstractly in pre-Socratics, so convincingly that neither the Megaricians, nor Plato, nor Aristotle turned away from this path, no matter how they treated the positive conclusions of the sophists.

The main internal division to which the concept of being was subjected was the separation of the logic of thinking about the general and the logic of thinking about the individual. Accordingly, it was discovered that both of these spheres cannot be covered by one concept of being. Protagoras and Antiphon oppose the unity of existence; Gorgias demonstrates the discrepancy between concept and individuality at the end of his discussion of non-existence; The younger sophist Lycophron, believed to belong to the school of Gorgias, denies the possibility of using the connective “is”, since it makes one many. The sophists discovered that the individual is illogical as such: the general concept is inapplicable to it, and not general concepts can not be. But the presence of the individual is much more obvious than the general. Therefore, various ways of solving the antinomy of the general and the individual are opening up - we can admit: that everything that exists is singular; that the singular is illusory; that existence is dual. The later dialogues between Plato and the aporeticist of “first philosophy” Aristotle will reveal the entire logical spectrum of these possibilities.

The second division, which, however, can be considered as another aspect of the first, is the distinction between essence and existence, implicit in the sermons of the sophists. If the general is associated with the concept, and the individual with existence, then it is clear that logos does not have the universality of being and cannot be a universal measure of being, especially since logos is two-valued, which was discovered by Heraclitus, and being is unambiguous, which was discovered by Parmenides. Hence the conclusion of Protagoras: the measure of existence is man. The subjectivism that grew out of this thesis has been well described by cultural historians, but the philosophical significance of Protagoras’ thesis is by no means exhausted by this. If we ignore Plato's criticism of the sophists, we can see another side of the idea. Having discovered the ontological neutrality of logic, which correlates more with possibility than with reality, Protagoras does not, in essence, deny the Parmenidean sphere of being, but merges it with the sphere of individual existence. What is asserted is not that man is weaker than objectivity, but that logic is weaker than humanity, for the status of existence is given to impersonal possibility only by man. (Remember that the predictions of the oracle - the representative of Apollo - are ambiguous, and the historical actions that realize them are unambiguous. Here the necessity of being and free will find a place.) Thus, Protagoras is faithful to the original ontological idea of ​​the Pre-Socratics, but the shift in emphasis from space to human reality as the place where existence was discovered speaks of the onset of a new historical and philosophical period. The general intuition of the sophists: the final decision about existence belongs not to logic, but to man. (It is interesting to compare this statement with the spirit of Greek legal proceedings, which was the most important element of the social life of the polis: the law itself cannot guarantee its identity with individual case; this is done by the person and those whom he convinced.)

If we take sophistry as a worldview as a whole, then, of course, the indicated ontological subtleties will be obscured by the interpretation of man as a specific natural being: the secret of personality only shines through the anthropological naturalism of the sophists. Moreover, sophistry became a symbol of subjectivism, and in no small part due to the criticism of those thinkers who internal capabilities Humanitarian reform turned the sophists into a new type of philosophy. This refers to Socrates and Plato.

II. SOCRATES

1. Ontological significance of the Socratic method

Turning to Socrates in the context of the history of the category of being may cause some confusion. In fact, Socrates not only did not abandon ontological constructions, but also directly spoke out against the teaching of physiologists about being, considering it an unfounded claim to divine knowledge. And yet, the philosophy of Socrates is one of the key moments in the history of Western European ontology. The difficulty is that this opinion can only be substantiated by taking into account all the events of subsequent history, comparing isomorphic moments with each other, that is, simply put, in hindsight. This way of justification is not suitable for the principle of a strictly chronological presentation of the topic adopted in this study. What remains is the way of interpreting evidence taken outside the perspective of itself.

First of all, let us turn to the first historical and philosophical interpretation of the role of Socrates, which has no less value than the first evidence of Plato and Xenophon - to the statements of Aristotle. “Socrates dealt with the question of moral virtues and for the first time tried to establish general definitions in their field (horizesthai katholoy)” (Met. 1078b, 18-20). “...Socrates rightfully sought the essence (to ti estin) (of a thing), since he sought to make logical conclusions, and the beginning (arche) for the conclusion is the essence of a thing” (Met. XIII, 1078b, 23-25). “And in fairness, two things should be attributed to Socrates, inductive reasoning and the formation of general definitions (toys tepaktikoys logoys kai to horizesthai katholoy)” (ibid. 27-29; cf.: ibid., 987b, 1-2). “But Socrates did not attribute separate existence and definitions to the general aspects (of things) either (ta katholoy oy chorista epoiei oyde toys horismoys)” (ibid., 1078b, 30). “In any case, he did not separate (this general) from individual things” (ibid., 1086b, 3-4).

So, Socrates was engaged in clarifying moral judgments, and, while defining the general, he did not single it out as a special ontological object. This modest activity looks like a step back compared to the constructions of the first philosophers. This is what it is in its essence. One must only take into account that the activity of the Pre-Socratics was also a kind of retreat: instead of the sages, lovers of wisdom appeared, who abandoned the role of a direct and unreflective medium of truth, establishing a distance between themselves and the truth, which was filled by the mind of the individual with its own rules and norms. As a result of such self-restraint, the claims of philosophers to the status of representatives of the deity decreased; The autonomy of the mind increased, and with it the objective significance of the results of thinking. Socrates takes the second step back and, in fact, the last, because there is nowhere to retreat further: to try to do this means to go beyond the limits of reason altogether, which was subsequently demonstrated in some aspects of Hellenistic philosophy.

Refusing cosmological research, Socrates leaves the sphere of reason for philosophizing - to the extent that it is capable of discerning the “general”. Reason becomes not only a means, but also the goal of philosophy. The fact that not a person in general, but his reason becomes the theme of thinking is the radical difference between the Socratic method and sophistry. Socrates, judging by the evidence, did not leave the rejection of physiology (and thereby the anthropology of the Sophists, which remained part of “physics” to the extent that “man” was considered as an object) without justification. Most often, he sounds three motives that have correspondences in his positive teaching: firstly, in discussions about the cosmos there is a shade of wickedness, an excess of human authority; secondly, such reasoning is dogmatic in nature and therefore its conclusions are unprovable; thirdly, they have nothing to do with what is most important for a person - virtue. But what's all more important to a person, - knowledge of the good, according to Socrates, coincides with both piety and accurate knowledge. Stepping back to individual reason, Socrates narrows to the limit the scope of applicability of philosophical statements, but he brings the autonomy of thinking to the highest degree - after all, no result can be opposed to the self-reliability of the results of thinking in this sphere. Such a seemingly petty task as the search for definitions appears in this light as the discovery of an inalienable and unconditional privilege of philosophical thinking - the right to possess the beginning and criterion of evidence, the right, so to speak, to eidos and logos, which themselves testify to their truth.

The position that Socrates occupied in the disposition of philosophical trends of the 5th century. BC e., decisively separates him both from physiologists with their naturalistic objectivism, and from the sophists with their anthropological subjectivism. The reality that he discovers through his activity is neither nature nor man, it is some kind of third reality, which is given in thinking, but indefinable in terms of natural philosophy. At the same time, the natural and human exhaust everything that one way or another can be or become a phenomenon. Therefore, it is not surprising that the discovery of Socrates was so difficult to interpret, that the teachings of the Socratics were so different from each other. Both contemporaries and later interpreters - right up to the present day - often made it easier for themselves to understand Socrates by identifying him with either the “physicists” or the sophists: it is too difficult to stay on the invisible line between the two visible realities. Moreover, Socrates cannot be considered as a figure abstracted from the historical and philosophical situation; connection with the era is, after all, the only key to historical interpretation. Let us try to use this key to connect and separate the points of view that emerged during this period, and in this indirect way to outline the reality discovered by Socrates - after all, it corresponds to what was called “being” in the previous and subsequent periods.

In the immediate and sufficiently clear form in which Socrates' discovery appears in ancient evidence of his method, it can be determined. as the discovery and affirmation of the concept as the substantial basis of thinking. But to reduce the significance of this discovery to logic would be as naive as to reduce the role of Socrates to the justification of ethics - the latter opinion has been quite popular almost since Socrates’ times. The concept, which emerged as an independent force, marked a turn in ancient philosophy, not only formal, but also substantive. It is unlikely that Hegel was right when he argued that the influence of Socrates remained formal, since he put forward the principle of subjective consciousness, and not objective thought (see: (30, 10, 89)). The fact that consciousness is the source of positive knowledge and correct action, that it and only it is objective significance - all this constitutes the leitmotif of Socrates' "conversations." Aristotle especially emphasizes that Socrates did not hypostatize the entities he sought and found. In the Aristotelian assessment there is a barely audible “not yet” and an implied assessment of one’s own position - “no longer.” If we, following his scheme of gradual maturation of scientific knowledge, look at Socrates as the inventor of the archaic prototype of the doctrine of ideas, then we will have to agree that his historical significance comes down to moral preaching and some heuristic discoveries in the field of logic. To put the question more simply: did Socrates need to attribute separate existence to the general? - then we will see why neither Socrates nor Plato ever hypostatized concepts (except, of course, for Platonic metaphors).

The point is not that the concepts found during the dialectical conversation had not yet matured to the status of eidos, but that they did not need to be given any additional separate existence: the fullness of being was already inherent in them in the very form in which they were revealed in the maieutic procedure. The content that the participants in the conversation worked on to determine it could not have independent evidence; it always remained a sphere of uncertainty and inaccuracy. The required evidence could only be possessed by a conscious form, which gave the content the character of universal significance, that is, allowed it to exist not in relation to something, but independently. From the point of view of the Socratic method, what actually exists in our consciousness, and not illusorily, is something of which we can give ourselves and others a rational account. Let us remember how Melissus reasoned (B8): if there are many qualities, then each of them, in order to exist, must meet the criteria of Eleatic existence, that is, become an unchanging and indivisible entity. Socrates also looks for stable and indivisible moments in the stream of experience, those moments that can answer the question “what,” receive their name, become completely transparent to consciousness. True, each to ti estin of this or that thing has only relative determinability; Only consciousness itself, that is, pure thought, fully corresponds to itself, and the most accurate knowledge is knowledge of ignorance. In this respect, Socrates is closer to Parmenides than to Melissa and Plato. Thus, the ability to make the material of our experience a concept belongs only to consciousness; consciousness is a concept as such. It turns out to be that “atom” that cannot be decomposed into diversity and is not subject to becoming. From this it is clear that hypostatizing a concept would only deprive it of the highest level of reality, for it would become either “nature” or “man.”

When interpreting the theory of ideas, which traces its origins to Socrates, two typical mistakes are made. On the one hand, it is assumed that ideas have the status of ideal objects, and thereby Platonism comes closer to the ontology of the Presocratics; on the other hand, it is assumed that ideas are ontological correlates of the concepts of human thinking, which brings Platonism closer to the anthropology of the Sophists. All the confusion generated by these approximations is eliminated if we take into account that ideas do not belong to this or that kind of reality, but are reality itself, and, therefore, their hypostasis is meaningless. All the more distinct in the light of what has been said becomes the demarcation between the line of Platonism and the line consistently formulated in the teachings of Democritus. The philosophizing of Socrates is the starting point of this demarcation, because he was the first to put forward, as elementary particles, “atoms” of existence, not an element with its inherent form, but a reality found only in consciousness.

Parmenides discovered that being can only be discovered in thought and that this does not make it subjective, but his intuition of being was completely pre-Socratic, it remained within the framework of physiology. Parmenidean being dissolves in itself individual qualities, including the thinking of the individual. The sophists discovered that the true measure of being can be the existence of an individual, but the individual for them was an empirical, “natural” person. Socrates bases his method on the intuition of an individual, but universally valid consciousness. Although the evidence did not bring to us any statements of Socrates about being (and stylistically they would not be in the spirit of Socrates), this intuition is directly related to the problem of being: in the conditions of the crisis of the first - pre-Socratic - version of ontology, the question was raised about the very possibility of thinking about existence, and Socrates, having discovered a reality that is irreducible to human and natural principles, which is an indivisible and indestructible particle of existence, substantiated the possibility of a new version of ontology.

It is significant that along with the change in the character of the elementary particle of being, the character of the elementary unit of thinking also changes. If among the Pre-Socratics the bearer of truth was thought, the nature of which was identified with the original element and which seemed to dissolve in direct contact (understood quite literally) with the substantial basis of the world, then for Socrates the truth is captured by a concept based on a definition. In the first case, the process of proof is not decisive for either thinking or its transmission, while in the second, proof for oneself and others is the only form of understanding the truth. Parmenides, even having constructed a logical proof, makes it the source of the word of the goddess; Socrates, even obeying the demon and Apollo, puts forward rational grounds for the action. For the Pre-Socratics, a dispute about the great mysteries of existence would be profanation simply because it is a dispute, and for Socrates, everything that did not go through polemical dialogue cannot claim to be a full-fledged truth. The new unit of thinking - the formal concept - differs from the noema and logos of the Pre-Socratics, firstly, in that it is no longer a particle of the cosmos, it is a purely human property; secondly, by the fact that it does not merge thinking with the universal, but separates thought from the object, introducing the obligatory mediation of reason; thirdly, it ceases to be simply a means for discerning content, but to some extent becomes an end in itself of philosophy, because direct involvement in being exceeds the capabilities of thought.

On the other hand, a certain semantic commonality of both stages is preserved. The concept is necessarily connected with the existence of its bearer (and with a special type of conscious existence), and thereby it is connected with being. The concept distinguishes between the subjective and the objective, but the cosmic mind of the Pre-Socratics was as much a separating as a connecting force: just as in Empedocles’ cosmos, Love and Enmity each did two things at the same time - they connected and separated, so world wisdom through human thinking connects the fragmented parts of the primary element into one, thereby breaking the connection of the elements. There is a detachment of the arche element from the mixture of elements, an ascent to the simple and general, which in its true state is not only universal, but also unique. The Socratic method is an isomorphic process: there is a renunciation of the confusion of opinions, which, after verification, turn out to be not a personal conviction, but a general and no one’s prejudice, and an ascent to the simplicity and clarity of the concept that captures the truly general, which is the only one - and as one truth in relation to to an infinite number of possible errors, and as a certainty protected by the reflection of a single “I”. Heraclitus' idea of ​​wisdom detached from everything, panton kechorismenon (B 108), remains valid for Socrates. Finally, the self-limitation of philosophy, the reduction of its task to working with concepts, naturally continues the attitude of the Pre-Socratics: truly thinkable is that which is equal to thought, for example, number.

The semantic commonality of the Socratic reform with archaic views outlined above is revealed, strictly speaking, only in the light of the further development of ancient philosophy. As for the contrast between them, it is obvious at the first consideration: in the spiritual atmosphere of the Socratic era, which consciously opposed itself to the rhapsodic thinking of the first philosophers, a new method of philosophizing was born, which became dominant, and in this sense classical, for the Western European tradition. It is more appropriate to give its formula at the end rather than at the beginning of the study, so we will note only those features that are necessary in order to take the next steps.

The main tool of philosophizing becomes the concept as an element of individual reason. The concept has universality of meaning, the necessity of the consequences arising from it and verifiability - all this was necessary in order to distinguish the sought-after exact knowledge from opinion. The last property is especially important; it makes it possible to make knowledge the conscious property of the subject and, no less important, depreciates knowledge that is not confirmed by reflection, even if it objectively coincides with reality. The enumeration of the properties of the concept lacked a very essential property for an instrument of cognition - the ability to comprehend being. Oddly enough, the price of the gains of the new epistemology was the loss of perhaps the main advantage of strict thought - to see what actually exists. The reconfiguration of epistemological “optics” achieved clarity in one respect, but lost it in another. The sophists talk about the relativity of being, Socrates prefers to talk about virtue, but whether thought can be not just knowledge, but knowledge of being, remains in question. That Socrates had an answer, or the prerequisites for it, is demonstrated by the topic of the next section. For now, let’s return to listing the features of the new method of philosophizing.

Not only the elementary particle of thinking changes, but also its leading scheme for explaining the world in general and in particular. For physiology, the universal explanatory image was the image of the generating force of nature. The biomorphic model was a model of intelligibility. For Socrates, the technomorphic model becomes such a model. The expedient activity of the master is the main explanatory image in Socratic conversations. This image contains everything that will make up the arsenal of the new method: consciousness, an ideal scheme, passive material, creative activity, purposefulness, imitation of a model, personal interest in the result, meaning that gives integrity to individual acts. The embodiment and realization of these moments is a thing - not generated, but created. The technomorphic model already contains the thesis periodically formulated by this tradition: “we only know what we can do”; it already outlines the radical difference between the Platonic movement and pre-Socratics - teleology instead of determinism and the special status of the ideal.

2. Being and moral consciousness

The fact that Socrates chose moral subjects as the topic for his maieutic discourses is not explained only by his inclination towards ethics. The relationship between goodness and knowledge occupied Socrates as the main problem of philosophy. This topic contains the solution to Socrates' interpretation of existence. Socrates' main thesis - knowledge and virtue are identical - caused a lot of confusion and criticism. And today Socrates is reproached for excessive ethical rationalism, underestimation of the unconscious, etc. But first of all, in order to understand Socrates (and this must be done if we set out to follow the paths of Western European ontology), we must refuse to limit this thesis to the sphere of moral sermons. Socrates, of course, understood that one can have information about good and not be good, that one can do good deeds, have virtues and virtues (arete) and not understand either this fact itself or the essence of good. But he insisted that if we did not become virtuous by knowing about goodness, then it was not real knowledge. Real knowledge cannot leave us in the same state we were in before learning the truth. And if we do good unconsciously, then it is not real good, because it has no moral meaning. In order to make such statements, one must assume the presence of some common basis for knowledge and human existence. Here we hear the familiar Eleatic motif: “to be and to know are one and the same.” But now it is more important to fix the difference between theses, rather than their commonality; after all, we are looking for a new understanding of existence from Socrates.

In Pre-Socratics, the position about the identity of knowledge and virtue was already revealed comprehensively and thoroughly: knowledge is the highest dignity (arete) for a person; it is his distinctive feature and even purpose; good is knowledge, since good consists in joining the cosmic mind, for which an appropriate level of individual knowledge is necessary. Both goodness and knowledge are inextricably linked with being. A bad person cannot know the truth because he does not have the appropriate mode of existence. The one who knows cannot be evil, because he has become a particle of the world-building force. But Socrates, putting forward the doctrine of the identity of good and knowledge, was outside the circle of cosmological intuitions of the first philosophers; he rejected cosmology as a dogma. Consequently, he could not rely on tradition. His substantiation of the thesis is of a fundamentally different nature.

Actually, we do not find direct justification in the evidence, and it is unlikely that it should be expected from Socrates. After all, we are talking not about an object that can be pointed to, and not about an idea that can be deduced from principles, but about the principle itself, about intuition, which became the starting point for the construction of the method. Moreover, this intuition can be called self-evident only in a special philosophical sense. For normal consciousness - both in ancient times and now - the statement of this identity looks extremely paradoxical, even if we take into account that Socrates could use the features of the Greek language and ordinary ethical ideas. Therefore, justification should be sought in the entire interconnection of Socrates’ ideas and life.

The “space” in which the meeting of such heterogeneous categories as good and knowledge occurs is not given to us directly, but its ontological status is indicated by the very nature of knowledge, which was discovered and described by Socrates. Socrates discovered that at a certain level of human consciousness, its content ceases to be a subjective image and becomes an objective concept, and, therefore, a person has the necessary connection with reality. True, it is not knowledge about something that possesses true objectivity, but knowledge itself, that is, its form, inalienable from the existence of consciousness. But is this truth really so formal? Socrates constantly repeated: “I know that I know nothing.” There are two statements here: one is “I know” and the other is “I know nothing.” No matter how poor their content, it follows from them that there is reliable knowledge, although there is no object worthy of it, except for knowledge itself, which is in this case turns out to be self-awareness. The thesis “I know nothing” is directed against the dogmatism of the Pre-Socratics, and against the skepticism of the Sophists - “I know”. Thus, if the position of Socrates does not give anything for positive, empirical knowledge, then for solving the philosophical problem of finding unconditional reality it provides the necessary conditions.

The immutability of the existence of self-consciousness, discovered by Socrates, leads to a chain of important consequences. First of all, it is clear that truth - whether we are able to cognize it or not - is inevitably present in our consciousness as a form and thereby as a goal; although its essence is not given, its existence is obvious, it cannot be discarded without becoming entangled in contradictions. But since our consciousness itself is this form, we can say that conscious existence coincides with the goal and task of knowledge. The existence of self-consciousness frees us from subordination to empirical content, because this content never completely coincides with the concept: Socrates by no means transforms the world into abstract ideality. But, on the other hand, self-consciousness, like any knowledge, must be general and have the necessary consequences. Socrates' unknowing knowledge - in the unity of these two sides - is the discovery that absolute necessity is only the necessity of our freedom. Natural necessity among physiologists and the arbitrariness of the individual among sophists turn out to be only facets of a higher type of integrity. It is important to understand that Socrates does not propose to reduce spiritual life, and indeed human life in general, to logic. After all, the identity in question, and the maieutic method that realizes it, and Socrates himself as a person - all these living and ideal phenomena revealed precisely the indecomposability of consciousness into logic and substance, its beingness, universality, personal character, its “coreness” for the truly human existence.

In other words, true thought is life - and not in a metaphorical, but in a strict and precise sense. The biological and psychological meanings of the word “life” appear in this light as derivatives of the ontological one. Since in the course of further presentation of the topic we will have to face the conflict of “life” and “logic” several times, it is worth noting that Socrates consciously defends their unity. This teaching is generally inherent in ancient noology, but it does not always act as a distinguished principle. Among the Eleatics, for example, the identity of life and thought is only implied, and the personal nature of the identity is not expressed at all. It is easy to understand why it was during this period that the need arose to solve the problem of the status of reason in relation to life: the Sophists and then the Socratics sharply divided these realities - after all, it was necessary either to oppose something to this direction, or to stand at a dead end with it. It is more difficult to understand the nature of Socrates' decision, especially since instead of teaching we have activity, even verbal, proceeding from some implicitly expressed principle. In any case, the information we have gives grounds to understand the identity of mind and life as something primary in relation to empirical vitality and rationality, and, therefore, not amenable to a simple explanation of one through the other. (Nietzsche, who needed to do exactly this kind of procedure, was forced to turn inside out all the evidence that he could not help but cite in his “Birth of Tragedy...”.)

So, Socrates puts forward a thesis about the identity of knowledge and good, the deep meaning of which we define as ontological. The point is that ontology is the only “field” in which the conditions of identity can be satisfied. Let us pay attention to one important area, general morality and thinking - the personal responsibility inherent in the actions of their subject. Commandments and laws in the sphere of morality, as well as any statements in the sphere of thinking, only then become a full-fledged fact of the corresponding sphere when they acquire the character of a conscious decision. It is not enough for a fact to be an objective truth or an objective good; it must pass through the judgment of consciousness. If a fact is appropriated by consciousness, it acquires an amazing property - independence from external, both higher and lower, authorities and self-sufficiency, providing reliable statements or correct actions, that is, it becomes a kind of measure. Since we find both the general and the moral only in man, we can say that man, at least in these two respects, can truly be the measure of existence.

Socrates' dialectical conversations reveal in the interlocutors a layer of unconscious content, which must be made an element of consciousness or rejected, that is, recognize the right to exist for something or deny such a right. It is clear that man not only becomes the measure of existence, but that he cannot have any other measure. After all, the sanction of consciousness will always be higher than simple objectivity. However, the peculiarity of Socrates’ position is that the measure is not the person himself, but rather the only carrier of which he is. It is not man who creates the measure, but the measure who creates man; otherwise, Plato’s objection will be valid: why is a man and not a monkey the measure? We have traced how knowledge, in the light of the Socratic method, reveals its true nature in the sphere of ethics, ethics - in the sphere of existence of a rational and free individual, the individual - in his own being, which is necessarily universal. But this is already ontology.

The fact that we have reached a new level in the ancient teaching of being can be seen by comparing Socrates and Parmenides. Although Parmenides earned the nickname “anti-naturalist” from his critics, his theory of being is thought and expressed in the figurative-logical system of physiology. From the point of view of Socrates, Parmenides should be regarded as a dogmatist, even if we take into account the presence of strict proof in his poem - after all, nature and necessity (even if the first does not give birth to anything, and the second does not control anything) are the main properties of the universe and in the part of the poem where it is stated "the path of truth." Because of this, a contradiction arises between two aspects of thinking, which, according to the Eleatic Testament, is identical to being - between the logical act of thought and its ontological content. The personal character of the intuition of being is lost in its impersonal nature, and identity is thereby not fully realized. But if being abolishes individuality, then its own basis disappears. Existentially neutral being can easily be interpreted as nothing. However, the need for individualization of being is implicitly contained in the teaching of Parmenides, but only that which has or can have the form of a statement becomes a historical-philosophical fact.

For Socrates, unlike Parmenides, being is not nature; only his own consciousness can become the theme of strict thought, which means that only in this area is a categorical statement about what “is” permissible. On the one hand, the level of ontological generalization becomes, as it were, lower, because in the ideal concept we grasp not what exists, but what should be. On the other hand, the complete autonomy of what should be (for it cannot be imposed from the outside or prohibited), or morality, makes it at least an element of the absolute: it cannot be relative, it cannot be a means and cannot be a phenomenon of an invisible essence, since it shows itself . Therefore, Socrates increases the degree of reliability of the intuition of being. Socrates, who apparently sensed the possibility of ontological nihilism (in fact, already realized by the Sophists), which was hidden in Eleatic logic, proves through his activity the necessary connection between being, goodness and consciousness: true being cannot, from his point of view, be stratified into a logical structure and the real existence of the individual. Just as Plato later overcame the abstractness of Megarian ontology, Socrates overcomes those aspects of Parmenidean teaching that became the source of argumentation for the Sophists and Megarics. It is no coincidence that Plato's demarcation with the Megarian and his own early theory of ideas looks like a meeting - historically unlikely - of the old Parmenides and the young Socrates.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to note the closeness of these thinkers. They essentially founded an independent line of Greek philosophy, moving away from the cosmologism of the early sages to what became “metaphysics.” Socrates and Parmenides not only contradict, but also seem to complement each other. This is historically confirmed by the desire for a synthesis of both concepts, which was clearly expressed by the deepest followers of Socrates - Euclid and Plato. As a logical confirmation, we can take Socrates’ teaching about the unity of virtue. Socrates puts forward the thesis (later taken up by the Stoics) that virtue is unambiguous and indivisible, from which it follows that degrees of virtue are impossible and that its relativity is inadmissible. It is difficult to come to terms with this paradox if you do not attract the Eleatic concept of being, which also does not allow divisibility, relativity and quantitative gradation: you cannot be a little, you can either be or not be. And the fact that to be, to be aware and to ought are one and the same thing for Socrates has already been noted. Guthrie (158, 3, 458) and F. X. Cassidy (52, 151) rightfully compare the single being of Parmenides and the single virtue of Socrates: the logic here is the same, but the ways of revealing ontological reality are different, which is why the impression arises differences in the objects of research themselves. It is worth noting how far Socrates’ “single virtue” is from what ethics does as an independent science. Socrates first of all seeks the ontological basis of goodness, which illuminates certain features of human behavior, but cannot itself be illuminated by one or another particular type of virtue.

We can say with sufficient confidence that in the combination of the teachings of Parmenides and Socrates, we find not just a similarity, but an identity of a theme that has gone through two stages of development, and the Eleatic and Socratic stages are separated not only by a theoretical boundary, but between them there is a sharp boundary of two mutually repelling cultural eras. The difference between the two concepts of truly existing being discussed is obvious, but Fr. It is more difficult to talk about, the similarity needs to be proven, but it is easy to determine once we notice it. The similarity is that these concepts open up a special kind of reality that is neither space nor man, but relates to them as reality relates to appearance. In both cases, for the found reality, being and thinking are the same thing. According to Parmenides, I truly think only when I am the object of thought. existence turns out to be in its truth. According to Socrates, I truly exist when I am the subject of conscious thought. In both cases, open reality is not formal: Parmenides gives a cataphatic description of being, Socrates considers good as such to be an adequate object of conscious thinking. Even the peculiarity that the starting premise for the Eleatics is universal existence, and for Socrates - thinking person, does not fundamentally differentiate their positions. After all, thinking finds itself only by grasping the general, and being finds itself only in man. What is more significant is the interpretation of thinking and the interpretation of being behind it. The different understanding of thinking between Parmenides and Socrates leads us to clarify the specifics of the Socratic revolution in philosophy.

About the fact that thinking is not indifferent to its bearer, that one cannot think correctly without changing the entire being of the thinker, and one cannot think with impunity. bad, says Fr. B16 Parmenides. Socrates says the same thing, arguing that a person cannot remain bad if he has truly thought good. Truth presupposes a special way of being for the knower. But if Parmenides talks about the physical mixture of the thinking body, then Socrates, who refrains from natural philosophical constructions, points to a reality of a different order - to self-consciousness, in which the conditions for the identity of being and thinking are fulfilled. Since thinking thinks about itself, it thereby changes itself. In this case, thinking cannot have non-existence as its object, because its own existence is a condition of thinking. But the more thinking is thinking, that is, the more obvious and reliable its content, the more it exists, because the more it coincides with its own nature. Thus, what cosmology was looking for was found only in man, but the part of humanity, his consciousness, turned out to be, upon its consistent consideration, a whole, to which man belongs as a part. Socrates' discovery of general definitions neutralized the real or potential "subjectivism of sophistry, but Socrates, in essence, made another discovery - the personal nature of thinking. True thought, his conversations show, is not an abstract ideal essence, but a living, personified meaning. With this discovery, a whole a complex of near-Socratic trends.

The principle of the identity of being and thinking in the form in which Socrates substantiated it necessarily requires personal knowledge. I truly exist when “I” is “I”, and not a complex of general opinions, uncritically accepted and therefore equating my “I” with “we”. I truly think when my “I,” which is conscious of both the course and purpose of thinking, thinks; After all, logic itself can be the form of thought or its content, but it does not think, that is, it is not a subject. All these characteristics do not fit well with the empirical “I” that comes to us without effort or merit. The Socratic method involves finding not the “I” of empirical and not the “I” of sophistic humanism, but the reality that makes personality possible. Further, having discovered that the more truly we think, the more we exist, we must assume that thinking is the truer the truer it is to its nature and its purpose. Socrates precisely finds that specificity of thought that distinguishes it from other types of causality in the universe, for example, from physical causality, namely the ability to discern the general. The general is always the invisible unity of visible diversity; the general cannot be found in the sensory reality. In other words, it is a ought, or an ideal example. The ability of the general to be a model and organize individual units around itself allows us to call it a goal. On the other hand, we can find justification for the fact that what should exist at all, and is not a fiction of the mind, in the field of morality, which is impossible without it. Here is the point of convergence of logic and morality: both are manifestations of being, not appearance. So, thinking is itself when its object becomes the ought, or the exemplary.

As we see, the Socratic method crosses at one point the concept, goal, ought, existence, good, self-consciousness, or, to generalize, knowledge and good. This is accomplished through a new understanding of thinking. Thinking is interpreted as a living consciousness, interested in the good, for which knowledge of causes and effects is not enough, but knowledge of the meaning is necessary. (If we talk about a formal discipline based on the Socratic method, then it will not be ethics or even epistemology, but teleology; since meaning is found outside of nature, but in being, it is also ontology.) Knowledge of meaning is fundamentally unattainable by the methods of physiology, which operated concepts of reason, necessity and fate. This is a special knowledge of the goal, inalienable from its bearer - man. In this regard, Socrates can be considered the discoverer of the specifics of humanitarian knowledge. Of course, all these discoveries lead us away from the usual image of Socrates as the founder of rationalistic ethics. V. E. Seseman, who in general convincingly criticized this popular image, still believes that Socrates’ “intellectualism” lies not in the fact that he identified goodness and knowledge, but in the fact that two types of knowledge were identified: moral and logical (see .: (79, 245)). But we cannot agree with this reservation either: knowledge itself for Socrates is not the ultimate reality, it is justified by conscious existence and only to this extent can it become an element of identity.

Socrates did not present the ideas in question either directly or systematically, and, if you think about it, he could not have done so. But they are reproduced with a sufficient degree of reliability both on the material of Xenophon and on the material of Plato’s Socratic dialogues. It follows from this that Socrates preached them persistently and methodically. Still, one cannot ignore the logical question, despite its naivety, of where all this positive content comes from, thoroughly revealed by the Socratics and, first of all, by Plato, if Socrates himself avoided dogmatic statements and acted as a questioner and seeker in conversations. Moreover, Socrates skillfully avoided the need to express a definite judgment about this or that particular problem. In this he is similar to his famous inner voice, which, according to Plato, did not assert anything, but only warned. This silence, which turns out to be the other side of endless conversations, becomes especially significant if we consider that it was the background of the most active criticism of any dogmatic positions put forward in the name of ordinary thinking or a person experienced in philosophy. Apparently, this is the secret of the positive content of Socratism. Encouraging thinking, “Socrates at the same time prohibits any of its stable results from being considered knowledge, but, criticizing the claims of thought to finality, he always insists on the necessity of thinking about the absolute. As if protecting thinking about the absolute from skeptics and dogmatists, he convinces of the existence of the metalogical relationship to truth. For obvious reasons, one cannot hope for a direct positive answer, explaining what kind of relationship this is and what kind of reality it reveals. Such an answer would already be a slide into logical reality. But it would be wrong to see in this only apophatic methods of philosophizing; the theme of the unity of knowledge and virtue points to a specific sphere that contains a metalogical attitude to truth. Therefore, it was so easy for the Socratics to take advantage of the lessons of Socrates and build a completely positive concept of individual life corresponding to knowledge.

So, the teaching of Socrates allows its essence to be formulated in the words of Parmenides: “To be and to think are one and the same.” But here we are faced with facts that demonstrate almost the diametrical opposition of both concepts. If Parmenides listens to the words of the goddess in order to follow logic, then Socrates forces logic to turn to God for knowledge. Socrates denies reason the right to complete control over knowledge and actions, which calls into question the very universality of the concept. Together with Heraclitus, Socrates could say that knowledge is not inherent in the human ethos, but knowledge is inherent in the divine (B78). The following contradictions are added to this paradox as the first link in the chain.

Researchers are surprised that rational sobriety as a goal is combined in the personality of Socrates with a passion that embraces his entire nature, aimed at achieving sobriety; they are surprised that the main authority for the rationalist Socrates was the demonic (daimonion), which prompted him to make decisions in small things and in the main. His activities to enlighten the consciousness of his interlocutors were distinguished by extreme ambiguity: on the one hand, in its essence it should unchain, free thinking, which, of course, is achieved; on the other hand, its influence produces a strange effect, causing numbness of consciousness, its inhibition, loss of one’s own initiative. In Plato's dialogues, Socrates is compared to an electric stingray, the touch of which paralyzes, to a sorcerer who brings his interlocutors to oblivion of themselves. Socrates agrees with this, adding that he himself becomes numb at the same time. They also talk about his strange freezing, caused by the in-depth work of thought. The notorious sociability and equal attention to the interlocutor of any social and spiritual rank lead to a confusing assumption about Socrates’ indifference to the individuality of the person being convinced. In addition, the Socratic manner of conducting a conversation is not at all similar to a dialogue that enriches all participants; Socrates subjugates the listener to himself, forces him to make decisions, and the fact that this happens in the clear light of consciousness only strengthens the need for conclusions.

Socrates taught the Athenians seriousness and responsibility in words and deeds, therefore, he taught the freedom underlying these qualities; but he did not so much convince as force. For example, he forced them to pass judgment and then execute himself. This is truly a lesson in deadly seriousness. To force freedom does not only sound paradoxical, but is actually contradictory. And the famous irony, is it similar to a pedagogical device, to slyness, even if not entirely benevolent? If so, then Socrates' sermon will remain within the framework of humanistic enlightenment. But Socrates quite clearly explained the meaning of his thesis “I know that I do not know,” and this excludes suspicions of insincerity. It is not difficult to continue the listing of poorly compatible aspects of Socrates’ personality and activity: the cult of obedience to the law and the glorification of moral independence, avoidance of political activity and an outstanding role in the public life of the polis, piety and execution for heresy... But is there a root cause for the fact that Socrates’ thesis about the unity of good and thinking, and, accordingly, the intuition of being behind it doubles at the first approach to it?

Before trying to answer this important question, let us pay attention to another paradox: the struggle for the dignity of reason, which Socrates waged against his era of cultural relativism, received support from the Delphic priesthood, which, it would seem, should not have rejoiced about it. Why did this unexpected ally proclaim Socrates the wisest of all? The Delphic slogan "know thyself", associated with the name of the Delphic ruler - Apollo, was also the guiding principle of Socrates (Xenoph. Symp. I, 5). (Cf. Heraclitus: “I found myself” (B101). Edizesamen - questioned, examined, rushed.) Since the Delphic interpretation of the saying and the degree of its coincidence with the Socratic one can only be a matter of conjecture, we should rely on what we know about the role of Delphi in the spiritual life of Greece.

Delphi is a pan-Greek religious center, the abode of the Pythia, through whose mouth Apollo spoke. In addition, as the center of Amphictyony, it is still a significant political and financial force. The college of Delphic priests apparently closely followed the spiritual and political trends in Hellas, having explicit and implicit means of influence. Delphi's attitude towards polis democracy and the variants of its official religion was complex. Probably, the brewing crisis of the democratic structure should, in the opinion of the clergy, be prevented by a deep reform of both society and consciousness. Socratic propaganda precisely suggested such a reform. Criticizing the arrogance and false omniscience of the Athenians, Socrates led his contemporaries to realize the special duty due to the nature of reason. Socrates' "ignorant knowledge" had both an affirmative and a negative side. Cognitive audacity and the absolutization of the final results of thinking were denied. Socrates believed that this was precisely why he was so exalted by the oracle. The affirmative side of criticism opened up the possibility for a consciousness “purified” of pseudo-knowledge to become a repository of real knowledge. Here the ontological significance of Socrates' teaching is revealed. The search for “common” in the sphere of morality (this, according to Aristotle, is the specificity of the Socratic method) ultimately comes down to the self-determination of thinking.

Self-determination of thinking is necessarily associated with the establishment of a boundary, which as such reveals both itself and its opposite. By denying the mind the possession of knowledge, Socrates takes the source of the content of thought beyond the limits of reason, but its form - the concept - reveals its significance all the more clearly. “Man in general” cannot receive knowledge even with a humble readiness to accept it. In order to have content, it must become a form - this is the moral and logical purpose of man. Without a “test” set by the consciousness of the individual, the content will not become knowledge. In this sense, we should not talk about the duality of Socrates, but about the duality of unity that permeates Socratism (including the human character of Socrates, as if embodying the Delphic Apollo-Dionysus in his synthesis of passion and rational light). Socrates sees the inalienable greatness of reason in the fact that it can move from appearance to the reality of self-consciousness, and having become itself, it can discover something else.

Thus, the concept of being receives a new interpretation from Socrates, so new that “being” as a term is not even used by him. Reality, about which one can say “is,” is no longer impersonal nature or abstract ideality, but living consciousness. True reality is interpreted as an effective existence that contains meaning or is aimed at it (this is what Socrates wanted and could not see in Anaxagoras’ “nous”). The associated transition of Socrates from determinism to teleology may seem like a step back, since there is an indirect revival of the anthropomorphism overcome by the first philosophers. In fact, here are the foundations of a method that has become a new type of rationality, a method called dialectic by Plato. The retreat of philosophy from the conquered positions may seem like a rejection of physiology and anthropology, but here too Socrates takes a step forward, finding being in a reality independent of them.

3. Socratics

Moving on to the interpretation of the concept of being by the Socratics, it is more appropriate to ask whether they had anything in common with Socrates than to clarify the differences. The general formula remains the identity of existence, goodness and thought. But its interpretation, and the style of thinking in general, are more naturally coupled with the problems of the Sophists: if it were not for Socrates, the Sophists and Socratics would have formed a smooth line of development of a single tendency.

There is nothing surprising here. Most thinkers participate in the history of philosophy, and only a few create it. All the more interesting for us are the Socratics as bearers of logic common to an entire cultural and philosophical movement. The ideas of Socrates and the Sophists were taken by the Socratics in their one-sidedness, without synthesis. But each of these ideas is presented in a complete and pure form, and thus the Socratic schools provided later philosophers with ideal material for synthesis. Although the ontological significance of their constructions ends here, there is no reason to treat them with disdain. Their hyper-consistency in one-sidedness is much more valuable than poorly thought-out compromises; Without this kind of preliminary work there would be no great syntheses in the history of philosophy. Another thing is that the Pre-Socratics, for example, having become an element of synthesis in Platonism, did not lose their intrinsic value and even acquired, as a historical and philosophical phenomenon, the character of an alternative and an inexhaustible source. The Socratic schools cannot, of course, claim such significance, but if we consider that their intuitions have become. an obligatory component of the Platonic synthesis, that, being not only schools of thought, but also primarily schools of life, they had a broader impact on Greek, especially Hellenistic, culture than Platonism, then their role will be difficult to underestimate.

Two ontological problems are explored by all Socratic schools: the problem of the status of ideality and the problem of predication. Both can be combined into the problem of the relationship between the one and the many. The Socratics answer this question very consistently: the one and the many are incompatible. But what can be called truly existing?

Here we have three answer options. Cynics say that to be is to be singular. For them, the singular is the immediately given. Antisthenes puts forward the thesis about the uniqueness of each concept, and therefore about its uselessness. Even Gorgias, his teacher, noted the discrepancy between the word and the designated phenomenon; The sophist Antiphon wrote about the impossibility of thinking about the individual. This is entirely consistent with Eleatic logic: for thought there is no individual, but only one. But for the Cynics, the indisputability of the Eleatic argument turns into an argument against reason, since it does not directly grasp a given individuality, that is, it has no relation to real being. Aristotle writes that “Antisthenes looked at the matter rashly, believing that nothing can be designated otherwise than by its inherent statement (to oikeio logo), in relation to one only one thing is possible (hen ephenos), from which it turned out that it is impossible to contradict , but perhaps telling a lie is also (me einai antilegein, sche-don de mede pseydesthai)" (Met. V, 1024b, 32-34). It is also reported that, according to the supporters of Antisthenes, “for the essence of a thing (to ti estin) it is impossible to give a definition, such a definition is (only) a “long speech” (logon makron), but what is the thing in its quality, this can be taught, as, for example, about silver, what it is (ti estin) cannot be said, but (only) that it is like tin" (ibid., VIII, 1043b, 25-28). From here, according to Aristotle, it follows that definition and logos are possible only in relation to the complex, and the original simple is indefinable. Diogenes Laertius claims that Antisthenes was the first to define the concept: “logos estin ho to ti en esti delon” (VI, 3) (that is, a concept is something that expresses what something was or is). It is not entirely clear how this definition works in the general teaching of the Cynics, but, in any case, the connection between logos and being is recognized in it.

The evidence presented does not allow us to clearly imagine the nature of the ontology of the Cynics, although their attitude to thinking is outlined very clearly. Thought deals only with itself; if we assume that thought has grasped a real object, then it turns out that there are many such objects, since thought is the general; therefore, what is said about one will not be said about it, but about the many, and the individual will remain unidentified. If we assume that a strictly unambiguous thought is expressed about a single object, which has a single object - its own essence (oikeios logos), then the thought will turn into a proper name, and knowledge into a designation that does not allow connection. In this case, it will not be possible to ascribe a single predicate to the subject without contradiction. Truth will be only the self-identity of the concept. One ontological conclusion from here is clear - being and concept are incompatible. It is also clear that everything simple (indivisible) cannot be defined and known. Logos is the connection of many things, and all definitions, in fact, turn out to be detailed descriptions. Judging by the testimony of Aristotle, the law of the unknowability of the simple is valid, as Antisthenes believed, for both the sensible and the intelligible. Only description, indication and name can relate to being. If the “Theaetetus” (155e) refers to the Cynics, then we can conclude that they deny any ideal being, everything that cannot be “grabbed with the hand.”

However, the question of singularity in the world of immediate givenness remains unclear among the Cynics. After all, without thinking, a person cannot become an individual and achieve virtue; Cynic ethics demands not singularity, but individuality. Obviously, a Cynic might say that man should imitate a concept divorced from the world, and not a fluid reality. Of course, Cynic ethics calls for moving away from the dangers and temptations of culture to nature, but it should be remembered that Socrates’ student could understand nature differently than the first physiologists. Human nature lies in the autonomy of consciousness. However, the first philosophers also distinguished in nature the law of the elements and the law of wisdom: for Heraclitus, wisdom is overcoming separation from nature, but at the same time, the wise is separated from everything. The task of wisdom is to gather within oneself. The sage is like that simple element which, according to the logic of the Cynics, has no definition and only enters into external Relations, not related to its essence. One may recall that between Parmenides and Antisthenes there was a thinker who had already drawn conclusions for the individual from the Eleatic method, but did not tear it away from nature, but made it the basis - this is Democritus. Antisthenes could learn from Democritus to think of the individual as a serene atom, knowing not only eternal motion, but also the law of isonomy. The sage, like the atom, is free, because necessity or logos arises at the level of connections, and not at the level of simplicity; the individual without connections is inaccessible to subordinating necessity.

The noted aspects of cynicism suggest the ontological role of that abstract ideality, which was described by Antisthenes as thinking about essence. Antisthenes, of course, sharply separates the flow of life from the idea, but it can hardly be said that he neglects ideal reality. The prohibition of the ideal is directed against the hypostatization of the idea; it cannot exist in nature, but in man, as Socrates discovered, its natural place is. From the point of view of cynicism, it is absurd to ask what is true being - life or thought; the border between truth and illusion passes in another dimension, in the moral. But for the future development of the idea of ​​being, the work done by the Cynics will be very significant. Of paramount importance here is the clash between Cynicism and Platonism, which is directly or indirectly recorded in many of Plato’s texts. Claiming that the Cynic criticism of logic can impress only youngsters and half-educated elders, Plato nevertheless devoted a lot of energy to the analysis of Cynic statements. The struggle between the Cynics, Megarics and Platonists revolved around the problem of the status of the ideal. It is clear at which pole the Cynics were and at which the Megarics. Plato tries to overcome the extremes of these positions, but the more important for him is the logical limit to which the argumentation of his opponents is brought. Oddly enough, Plato's teaching about the extreme state of being - about the one good - does not contradict Antisthenes' thesis about the unknowability of the one.

The Cyrenaics, while remaining within the framework of the problematics of the Socratic schools, consciously remove the problem of being as such. We can only talk about perceptions, or more precisely, about states (pathe). Their well-attested thesis is: "Only states are comprehended." If in Protagoras, whose teaching is correlated in sophistry with Cyrene, relativism has an ontological basis, then here we are faced with a fundamental rejection of judgments about being. That which is capable of causing pathe may exist, but it is not what appears to us (see: Sext. Emp., Adv. Math. VII, 194; there Sextus indicates that, from the point of view of the Cyrenians, speech about the phenomena of states is always true and they are knowable, speech about their causes is always false. Naturally, concepts in this case turn out to be only names). In Theaetetus, where the Cyrenaic point of view is criticized, Plato gives the following formulation: “Nothing is in itself, but everything always arises in connection with something, and the concept of “exist” must be removed from everywhere, although until recently we were forced it is used out of habit and ignorance" (157a-b).

The extreme phenomenalism of the Cyrenaics is complemented by the extreme substantialism of the Megarics. The meager information from the sources does not make it possible to obtain a coherent picture of the Megarian teaching, and this is all the more unfortunate since its role in the formation of Platonism is very significant. Yasen general principle, which allows us to talk about the synthesis of the teachings of Parmenides and Socrates. The One and the Good merge in the philosophy of the Megarians into an absolute principle that does not allow any other existence. Only this Good exists, for it is one, similar to itself and one and the same (Cic. Acad. II 42, 129). Euclid called the Good One, attributing to it different names: thinking (phronesis), god, mind (noys), etc. (Diog. L. II 106). Euclid recognized only one being (Euseb. Praep. evang. XIV 17, 1) and only one virtue (Diog. L.VII 161).

It is difficult to say whether there was any intermediate level of multiple being between the absolute and the world, as can be assumed from Plato’s polemics with the “friends of ideas.” It could be a real world of ideas, as in Plato, or a hypothetical world of eternal qualities, as in Melissa. It is clear, in any case, that for the Megarians multiple being cannot have final reality. Indeed, in the Megarian school, what was later called the “problem of predication” is clearly formulated: contradictions cannot be avoided if one ascribes several predicates to one subject or relates one predicate to several subjects, and in general the connection between a predicate and a subject, if it is not tautological, is contradictory, because different things become the same. It is impossible, Euclid believed, to explain by comparison: if it brings similar objects together, then we must deal with the similarities themselves, if they are dissimilar, then there is nothing to talk about (Diog. L. II 107). All these Megarian arguments allow us to consistently think of only one being. If we do not agree with them, then it is necessary to rethink our ideas about the relationship between unity and plurality, about the connection of ideas, or, like Lycophron, about the role of the connective “is” in meaningful speech.

Numerous paradoxes created by the Megarian school to prove their teaching by contradiction give an indirect idea of ​​the positive content of their ontology. It can be concluded that fundamental differences there is no eleatism here. Wheeler (see: 247) shows that all the Megarian paradoxes can be reduced to the Eleatic ones without much theoretical difficulty. Usually Zeno's paradoxes are treated with great respect, and this is not without reason, but it must be taken into account that many easily given solutions to the Megarian aporias do not solve the actual ontological problems. For example, clarifying the language allows us to avoid the paradox of the “Liar” type, but the original problem was that there are statements whose truth cannot simply be answered with “yes” or “no,” and this undermines the usual idea of ​​​​a reasonable statement. The same thing happens when the Pythagorean aporia of incommensurability is solved mathematically, or Zeno’s “Stadium” by referring to the relativity of motion, or the “Heap” paradox by indicating the threshold of perception: the solution itself only confirms the paradoxicality. The relativity of motion explains the situation, but how is relativity conceivable? The Eleatic-Megarian sensitivity to illogicality, together with their intuition of intelligible existence, makes these paradoxes insoluble for simple-minded rationalism.

In the Hellenistic era, the Megarians retained their understanding of existence, despite such a serious alternative as the late Platonic and Aristotelian movements. It is possible that some kind of diffusion of Megarian and Cynic logic is taking place. So, for example, Stilpo denies “species” (anerei kai ta eide. - Diog. L. II 119), for, as Laertius explains, to say “man” means to say “no one.” Menedemos, a student of Stilpo and a representative of the Elido-Eretrian school close to the Megarics, also denied the independent existence of generic concepts. It is unclear, due to the lack of context, what this denial meant - a deviation from the initial principles of the school of Euclid or, on the contrary, extreme dogmatism in upholding them. In any case, an example of the fidelity to the original intuition of absolute being can be the argument of Diodorus Cronus about the non-existence of possibility: something acts when it actually acts, but when it does not act, it cannot act (see: Arist. Met. IX, 1046b). Thus, everything that is real is impossible.

The peculiarities of the Megarian understanding of being, in contrast to its understanding by other Socratics, are not only that being was recognized by the Megarians as the only reality, but also that the concept of being was already a synthesis for them, and not just a one-sided defense of abstraction. The discoveries of Parmenides and Socrates are present in the teachings of Euclid. T. Gompertz writes: “The elements of human personality were expelled from the Eleatic idea of ​​the world being. Now, to our surprise, they have united again, although they have not formed a completely vital personality” (37, 2, 131). But neither the position of the Megarians, nor the phenomenalism of the Cyrenaics, nor the vitalism of the Cynics could be a full-fledged synthesis, and they did not strive for synthesis, trying rather to dissociate themselves from what they considered an illusion. A viable synthesis was achieved by the Platonists, who consciously sought it.

III. PLATO

1. Being as eidos

We saw how pre-Platonic philosophy developed the concept of pure being, how the philosophers of the Greek Enlightenment, clarifying this concept, came to the conclusion that being is not compatible either with the world of phenomena or with human existence, on which both the Sophists and Socratics agree . Actually, in this case, philosophy has nothing to do, and it must give way to science, religion, and moral (or immoral) practicality. Socrates showed the way out of this impasse. Plato interpreted this instruction.

The Platonic era of ontology is characterized by justification necessary communication being with other being, and consequently, with the world of phenomena and with human thinking (in the light of Socratic teleology - and with the meaning of the universe). Since the core concept of Platonism was the doctrine of ideas, and an idea, according to Plato, is being in the strict sense of the word, the theme of being is the leading one in all dialogues of the middle and late period of Plato’s work. Various aspects, possibilities and aporias of the concept of being were deployed by Plato with such a variety of mental moves that, perhaps, were never repeated in the European history of philosophy.

Let us list the main ontological intuitions thematized in Plato’s dialogues. First of all, this is the identification of a special layer of reality, which can be called being - the reality of “speculative species”. Next is the final formulation of the primordial tendency of Greek philosophy to identify being with truth, goodness and beauty; understanding the elementary unit of being - the idea - as an active creative force and at the same time as the goal of the aspirations of the entire world of becoming; identification and description of two spheres bordering existence: the sphere of the Single Good, which is the beginningless beginning of existence, and the sphere of formless space - “matter”; systematic consideration of the problem of true knowledge as being and error as non-being; the connection between the interpretation of the self-identity of an idea as a substance and the self-knowledge of the soul as a personality; the connection between existence and freedom and non-existence with necessity; discovery of patterns of manifestation of integral being in a discrete sense, eidos - in logos; putting forward in an implicit form an “ontological argument” that substantiates the connection between thought and being (“Phaedo”); bringing the theme of existence closer to the concepts of limit and infinity (“Philebus”); finally, the development in the Sophist and Parmenides of the doctrine of the need for being to go beyond its own limits, of the inevitability of the generation of other being and the related dialectics of the higher kinds of existence.

The variety of ontological themes was developed from one intuition, which remained unchanged in all periods of Plato’s work - from the understanding of pure being as eidos. To be means to be an eidos. What is eidos? It is impossible to answer this question directly and unambiguously - and not only for reasons that are well known to all who have studied Plato, that is, because of the lack of information, the non-dogmatic form of presentation, the periodic change in aspects of the consideration of being, the lack of consistency and stable terminology, the free transition from myth to logic and vice versa, because of the difficulty of the question, in the end. There is one more reason that can confuse us from the very beginning: answering the questions “what is this?”, “What is this?”, we have “this” in front of us, we must find “what” within ourselves and identify that and another through “is”. But eidos are the contents of every “what” and the principles of explanation as such. Therefore, there is not and cannot be any “this” before us; it is possible to explain “what” through “that” only in some indirect way, which excludes accuracy, or in a completely direct way, which therefore excludes intelligibility. Actually, in Plato we encounter these two methods.

The boundary between the early and late versions of Plato's eidology - very conditional - can be drawn according to the following principle: at first, Plato is interested in the question of the relationship between two types of being - ideas and phenomena of the perceived world; then the problem of the “third type” arises, matter, and in a more general formulation - otherness. The general features of the idea as true being are invariant at both stages. Being is revealed to conceptual knowledge as “essentially existing” (to ontos on) (Theaet. 188; Resp. 476). The nature of the ontological level being discovered depends on the method of cognition (Tim. 27, 51; cf.: Resp. 509, 533). The idea, as an object of true knowledge, corresponds to the predicates of Eleatic existence, it is “in itself, through itself, a uniform eternal existence” (ayto kathhayto methhaytoy monoeides aei on) (Conv. 211b). She never experiences change, in any respect or way (oyde potoydame oydamos alloiosin oydemian endechetai) (Phaed. 78). Being opposes the ever-becoming world of appearance, just as thinking and sensation oppose each other in the soul (noesis - aisthesis). Being and appearance exist completely separately (choris). Being is “incorporeal species” (asomata eide), which exist in a pure form (eilikrinos) outside of space, as if in a “conceivable place” (topos noetos) (Tim. 27d; Conv. 211; Resp. 507; Tim. 28 ). To the extent that the properties of individual things ascend to being, the idea unites in itself what they have in common (to koinon), and in this sense, ideas are, according to Aristotle’s expression, one in many things (hen epi pollon) (Met. I 9, 990b6 ).

But the unity of being for knowledge cannot be achieved by generalization; it cannot necessarily be derived from plurality. A leap is required that leads us to direct contemplation of the essence (Phaedr, 265; Resp. 537). Accordingly, there is no simple transition from true being to the world of becoming. The idea is only reflected in individual things that are in a relationship of imitation (mimesis) with the idea. A thing is a copy (eidolon) of a truly existing prototype (paradeigma), it participates in the idea (metechein) with varying degrees of approximation, while the idea is in some sense present (paroysia) in the thing, joins it (prosgignesthai) or moves away. This mobility of the idea is outlined in the Phaedo. Already in the middle period of Plato’s work we find a difference from the position of those whom Plato called “friends of ideas” (eidon philoi) (Soph. 248). Since the time of Schleiermacher, it has been customary to identify megarics with “friends,” and since no other contenders for this title can be found in the Socratic era, one should agree with this, unless one assumes the existence of an extracurricular group that developed eidology simultaneously with the early Plato. But still, we have no evidence that the Megariks had a doctrine of a plurality of ideal self-contained entities. Be that as it may, those mysterious “protoplatonists” mentioned by Plato and Aristotle himself denied the ability of ideas to be involved in movement. From the first detailed eidological constructions, Plato makes the mobility of fixed ideas the theme of reflection. The later interpretation of being as dynamis, that is, as a force or ability (including the ability of the soul; see: Resp. 477), is therefore not a break with the earlier period.

Based on the given characteristics of eidos, we will try in the most abstract form to draw a preliminary conclusion regarding Plato’s understanding of being, without affecting the later concepts of good and otherness. The usual context for Plato in which the theme of existence arises is the opposition of two worlds: the truly existing and the constantly striving for existence. A characteristic passage from the Timaeus: “...we must distinguish between these two things: what is eternal, non-originating being and what is eternally arising, but never existing” (ti to on aei, genesin de oyk echon, kai ti to gignomenon men, on de oydepote) (Tim. 27d-28a), as well as from the Phaedo: “...we will establish two kinds of things - visible and invisible (dyo eide ton onton, to men horaton, to de aeides) ... The formless are always unchanged, but the visible are constantly changing" (79a). The Philebus clarifies their subordination: being (oysia) and becoming (genesis) are connected in such a way that all becoming as a whole becomes for the sake of all being (xympasan de genesin oysias heneka gignesthai xympases) (54c). The tense relationship between the visible and the invisible sets the tone for all Plato’s discussions of existence, and that dissatisfaction with the visible world, which forces us to look for another world, arises not so much because of its fluidity, but because of the lack of self-sufficiency of phenomena. The student of Cratylus felt fluidity extremely acutely, but logically it is not so indisputable; What is much more obvious to him is the inability of the sensory world to be its own foundation.

Thus, in Plato the invisible basis of the visible is given through phenomena and described in the language of the revealed world. This, in particular, is one of the reasons that being is often called eidos or idea, although it does not have a “type”. The positive description of being in Plato’s dialogues takes us back to the Eleatic teaching and those interpretations of it that were given in late Pre-Socratics: on the one hand, being is the only existing reality, on the other, it is pluralistic, and each of its elements has an individual form. The influence exerted on Plato by the Pythagoreans is generally recognized; Sometimes Anaxagoras is mentioned, less often Democritus. But all these comparisons are necessary both for understanding the genesis of the doctrine of ideas (eidology), and for understanding the specifics of Platonism. What Plato and the Pre-Socratics have in common is that their teachings represent a compromise between Eleatic ontology and traditional philosophical cosmology, achieved by recognizing “two species” (cf. Parmenides B8, v. 53-59, which speaks of two morphai, one of which should be discarded) and individuality, that is, the indivisibility and specificity of each unit of being. The difference is that Platonic existence is fundamentally taken out of the world of extension into a “conceivable place” and is disconnected from corporeality. This difference persists even if we take into account the difficult attitudes of the Pythagoreans and Democritus to the problem of extension.

More particular, but no less interesting differences are that each of the options assigns to being one of the moments of the sensory world: the Pythagoreans - the organization of matter, Anaxagoras - stable qualities, Democritus - a spatial scheme, Plato - any phenomenon of becoming, which paradoxically poses he is closer to the world of sensory diversity than other interpreters of existence. Since nothing arises without a cause, every phenomenon must be raised to being (Tim. 28a), and to its own, which, like a hidden center, draws around itself the indefinite, fluctuating becoming of a thing. It is significant that in Plato the nature of many “this-worldly” qualities changes: Anaxagoras, for example, speaks primarily about physical qualities, while Plato, to ascend to the “paradigm,” more often chooses a moral quality - virtue, beauty, etc. Here he is a student of Socrates, perceiving the moral as more obvious. Therefore, for him a question arises, which in itself does not follow from the concept of idea: can there be a prototype of an insignificant thing and of evil as such. Ideality is not only incorporeality, but also an ideal; the ideality of being was so closely associated in Plato’s thinking with perfection that objects whose perfection had no moral meaning risked remaining without an idea (Parm. 130d).

If we characterize the Platonic idea not from the side of sensory things, but in itself, then it approaches the absolute of the Eleatics; such, for example, is the description of the idea of ​​beauty (Conv. 211). Perhaps the predicate monoeides, meaning ideological simplicity, not only likens beauty to Eleatic existence, but also distinguishes it from it: Parmenides’ sphairos is simple, but it is exhaustively simple, and the uniformity of the idea is one of many types of simplicity. The remaining properties of beauty as such coincide with the “being” of Parmenides’ poem: eternity, immutability, self-equality, conceivability. So, to be an idea (or eidos) means to be identified with being. It is clear that this is lost: qualities perceived by the senses disappear, space collapses, time stops. But what is being acquired? A thing becomes itself, emerges from a process in which it was, as it were, stretched into a line, equal to itself at one point and unequal at all others. Having gathered in itself, at a single point, it really exists. The predicate aytos competes with the term “idea” as an equally used way of transferring a particular quality or object to the ontological level. “Self,” the authenticity of a thing, is its most important acquisition in the sphere of being. Unity, eternity and certainty of being, proven by Parmenides, are also inalienable properties of Plato’s eidos. At the same time, a property appears that is inherent in being only in the Platonic version.

We know that in pre-Socratics the unit of existence was always understood as the cause of an indefinitely lasting series of consequences, that in Socrates and Plato being becomes the ideal goal, and in connection with this, the location of being becomes not the element, but the concept, and the model of explanation is not the unconscious creation of nature, but the systematic activity of a master. But, while recording these changes, we must not lose sight of the compatibility of the old and new points of view, which, in fact, was realized during the period of the first “acme” of Platonism - in the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. Reason and purpose are two ways of being, open to two mental directions: from idea to thing and from thing to idea. But the idea itself is both. To designate this unity with a Greek word, Aristotle had to invent the neologism “entelechy”; in the Russian language it can be conveyed by the naturally formed word “sense”. Being as an idea is meaning, that is, the determining force of reason, the driving force of purpose, the fulfilling and justifying force of purpose. From here it is clear that “to be” for Plato means to coincide with oneself, with those invisible semantic outlines of eidos, which are always already present in their incarnations, making at least passive participation in them inevitable, and thereby realize reality instead of possibility or, in others in terms, effectiveness instead of passivity.

2. Eidos and logos

As already noted, the peculiarity of Plato’s interpretation of being is in finding the necessary connection between absolute existence and its relative manifestations. The Eleatics, Sophists and Socratics proved the logical incompatibility of the ideally conceivable and the concretely perceptible, having differently assessed the right of these principles to be called being. The late Pre-Socratics sought connections between the world of truth and the world of phenomena, but for them being appeared as a principle indifferent to its other existence. Plato, faced with the inconsistency of these positions, is looking for a new path.

The situation that has developed in philosophy is described by Plato in a famous passage from the Sophist: “it is no easier to explain what being is than to say what non-existence is,” therefore, among philosophers “there is something like a struggle between giants over a dispute with each other about being "(dia ten amphisbetesin peri tesoysias pros alleloys), "some people draw everything from heaven and from the realm of the invisible to earth... they claim that only that which allows touch and touch exists, and they recognize bodies and being as one and the same ..."; "those who enter into a dispute with them prudently defend themselves as if from above, from somewhere invisible, resolutely insisting that true being is certain intelligible and incorporeal ideas (noeta kai asomata eide); bodies... they , breaking it down into small parts in their reasoning, they call it not being, but something moving, becoming” (Soph. 246a-c). In a somewhat different way in the Theaetetus: “There are people who agree to recognize as existing only that which they can tenaciously grasp with their hands, but actions or becomings (paraxeis de kai geneseis), like everything invisible, they do not assign a share in being "(Theaet. 155e). Most likely, they mean the Cynics and Megarics. To these two groups one could add a third - the “artists”, whom Plato criticizes in the person of Protagoras in Theaetetus.

The path that Plato chose for himself involved revealing the connection between different levels of being, that is, solving the problem of the one and the many, truth and lies, identical and different. This meant that the integral comprehension of being, accessible to a special intellectual ability (noys, noema), had to find a rational correspondence, which in turn meant giving an account of the intuitive content (the doctrine of knowledge), understanding how being is present in a thing (the doctrine of being ), explain how the soul can contain what truly exists (the doctrine of the soul). How the whole is present in the fragmented - this is one of the possible generalizing formulations (or, in other words, how to find the logos for being). Plato raises the question of what is “the very essence of being, to which we give logos” (ayte he oysia, hes logon didomen toy einai) (Phaed. 87c). After all, one can possess the truth without possessing knowledge, which is impossible without a rational verbal report, logos (Theaet. 202c). Apparently, Plato believed that truth - at least if we are talking about the highest truth - must be a conscious truth. This is a higher type of truth compared to the unconscious and, therefore, more worthy of the absolute. On the other hand, Plato's seventh letter contains an indication of the inexpressibility of higher truths. An expressed thought is already incomplete and therefore a lie. But we cannot help but talk about the absolute, just as we cannot express it. Unrevealed truth is poorer than revealed truth, and this obliges us to seek the word, that is, logos, for being. For the same reasons, being must fragment and lose itself in things, and the single soul - in individuals, who will then, each at their own peril and risk, look for a way back.

In Theaetetus, Plato raises the question of whether a true view, clarified by the word, can be considered knowledge, and therefore examines the concept of “some people” (Cynics?), who claim that the primary elements of everything do not have a logos corresponding to them; they cannot even be attributed existence or non-existence, since they are simple, have no composition and, therefore, cannot be defined. They can only have a name (ou gar einai ayto alle onomazesthai) (202b). That which is formed from the beginnings may already have a word (logos), “for the essence of the word is in the interweaving of names” (onomaton gar xymploken einai logoy oysian) (ibid.).

Plato objects to this theory, although, in essence, he does not criticize it, but develops it. He shows that not only the primary elements, but also any wholeness cannot be derived from its parts, and therefore is indefinable, “without logos.” But integrity is imparted by the idea, therefore, being as an idea is always illogical and cannot be rationally accounted for. Next to this problem, another one arises, naturally connected with it: if the logos is always in a certain sense a lie, then it is always the truth, because lies and truth are indistinguishable; if one does not limit the other, then none of these principles can be the only one that exists. From here it is clear: in order to save the truth, one must recognize the reality of a lie, and since a lie is thinking about non-existence, one must still attribute existence to non-existence. The paradoxes of the concept of “being” that emerged and were clearly formulated in the Theaetetus will receive a detailed interpretation in the Sophist and Parmenides. But this dialogue allows us to draw significant conclusions. Oddly enough, the skeptical-looking Theaetetus contains a very definite result: knowledge is inevitable, even if we are unable to grasp its essence; being cannot but be thought, even if we realize its inaccessibility to thinking. But at the same time, the sufficiency of that abstract theory of being-eidos, which was discussed in the previous paragraph, is called into question, because it leads to contradictions.

3. Names of existence

Even that which cannot have a logos has a name, as we have just found out. One of Plato's tasks was to find names for those objects that his philosophical thinking discovered. Since for thought this was a reality of a new, unusual type - neither nature nor man, the task turned out to be difficult for language. Plato's ontological terminology is a becoming that never turned into a state, but what was a quest for Plato became the thesaurus of subsequent metaphysics, so it is worth paying attention to this issue.

The main ontological terms in Plato are derivatives from the verb einai - “to be”. First of all, it is to on - “existing”, or to on ontos - “truly existing”, “really existing”, “essentially existing” (for example: Phileb. 59d). In addition to the frequently used expressions “really existing” and “eternally existing,” Plato gives to on in other combinations: “purely (eilikrinos) existing” (Resp. 478d), “by nature (pephykos) existing” (Resp. 490a), “perfectly (pantelos) being" (Resp. 477a), "uniform (monoeides) being", "in itself (kathhayto) being" (Phaed. 78d). The most important term with a complex history in Greek and Latin (equivalent) philosophical languages ​​is oysia ("being" or "essence"). Plato also used its strengthened forms, for example oysia ontos oysa (Phaedr. 247c). Oysia is one of the most commonly used terms in Plato's ontological dictionary. Its original meaning is “property”, “property”, “good”, “wealth”, “state”. This meaning does not disappear in many philosophical texts, so sometimes it is very difficult to establish the nature of its semantics, since the everyday use of the word oysia is easy to interpret in the spirit of “existential” problematics. Derived from the participial form of the verb “to be” (einai), this noun means in the broadest sense “that which exists,” “that which essentially exists,” “that which actually is.” “Property”, “cashness” and “property” - this means that there really is and is presented some kind of content, collected around its owner - a certain “self”. The philosophical meaning of the term - “being”, “essence” - naturally grows out of this semantic bush. After all, substantial meaning is inherent in its most ordinary uses (cf. the use of “-wesen” in German or “-st” in Russian to substantive qualities or form abstract concepts).

The word oysia can be translated as “being”, since it is truly existing, and as “essence”, since it is the stable core of a phenomenon, and even as existentia, for it is the presence and givenness of being. Since “existence” was not distinguished as an independent category in ancient philosophy, the corresponding connotation of the word oysia should be especially emphasized. The lack of differentiation of meanings in “oysia” is perhaps most conveniently conveyed by the Russian word “essence”, if we bear in mind not only its narrow school usage, but also the semantic possibilities: existent, essential, inherent, existing, essential, as well as being, individual. In the terminological study of Plato's dialogues undertaken by A. F. Losev, the patterns of use of oysia and some others are traced ontologically meaningful expressions: esti, hos esti, to onti on. His results indicate that the philosophical meaning of a number of expressions appears gradually, from dialogue to dialogue, always adjacent to everyday, “naive-realistic” usage. Of course, it is not always possible to confidently qualify the status of an expression, and the usual meaning of the word never prevented Greek philosophers from climbing the “heavenly ridge” with its help, but nevertheless Plato’s desire to find stable terms for changing his ontological intuitions, to rely on a methodologically used set linguistic symbols is quite revealing. "Oysia, as recently denoting household property, becomes a term for designating a semantic essence, and eidos and idea, denoting the sensory appearance of a thing, deepen to the degree of designating phenomena in the mind, the semantic structure of a thing. Language feeds philosophy with its intuitions, and it is also the organ of awareness these intuitions,” writes A.F. Losev (58, 361).

An interesting example of understanding the linguistic roots of the concept oysia is given by Plato’s “Cratylus” (401c-d). Noting the wisdom of the “founders of names,” Socrates gives three variants of the word “essence”: oysia, essia, osia. Essia - a more ancient version - is associated, Socrates believes, with the goddess Hestia, as well as with the name of sacrifice (thysia), since, apparently, the “founders” made the very first sacrifices to Hestia. “Those who call her Hosea, perhaps, almost according to Heraclitus, believe that everything that exists moves... And they consider the push ("I push" will be otheo) to be the beginning and the first cause...” Here Plato, more than anyone of the Greek philosophers, who paid attention to mental strife, gives an image of the struggle of ideas imprinted in language, an image that is most likely fantastic, but still remains a fact of Platonic thinking. Hestia, the goddess of stability and abiding, the mother of the gods, in whose name Plato also hears “sacrifice,” is being, essia. The primary impulse that gives rise to the cosmos of physiologists with their “vortices” and the world of relativists, fluid and unknowable, is osia.

Researchers, clarifying the semantics of the term oysia, strive to find patterns of its use in different periods of Plato’s work and reveal its meanings through equivalents of modern epistemology. However, the conclusions following from their own work convince us of the limitations of this type of analysis. For all its undeniable usefulness, the concept of “being” is considered in it only within the framework of the rules prescribed to Plato, both linguistic and logical. But Plato himself did not have a general system for using this or that term and filled it with a specific meaning depending on the context of reflection in general and dialogue in particular. Polysemy and even direct ambiguity not only did not prevent him from expressing thoughts, but were also the direct matter of the embodiment of meaning. This does not mean that Plato's language is lawless arbitrariness. Rather, on the contrary - constant reflection on the possibilities of the word, the desire to leave open its ability to interface with different, sometimes very distant from the immediate, semantic orders lead to a conscious play on the inequality of the word to itself. For example, noting the frequent use of oysia in the sense of “truth”, we can hardly accept this fact as explaining the meaning of “essence”; after all, “truth” in Plato’s philosophy is just as in need of interpretation as “being”; By substituting the concept of “reality” instead of “being,” we rather complicate the interpretation, discarding some semantic shades and introducing others. Of course, all these methods of interpretation are necessary, but one must come to terms with the fact that Plato, carefully choosing words for thoughts, reserves the right to use them “indiscriminately”: oysia can refer to something that, strictly speaking, does not have it (that is, appearance , becoming; e.g.: Phaed. 79a), eidos - to appearance, soma - to ideality. In connection with this feature of the Attic (by no means only the Platonic way of thinking), one should not say downwardly that such and such a concept has not yet become a term; rather, we must pay tribute to the wisdom of the Greeks, who feared that the concept could become one.

At the same time, Plato’s interest in the ultimate generalization of one or another type of reality in the word can definitely be traced. If in early dialogues the ontologization of the studied qualities or virtues is carried out using ad hoc invented phrases taken from the vocabulary of a given conversation (what is something - ti pote esti, through which - dia ti, kata ti), with the help of an article (the question is not “what there is...", and "whatness" is ou ti esti..., allho esti to...) (Hipp. Maj. 287d), then later eidos, genos, typos, morphe, paradeigma, physis appear. Oysia in early dialogues is often used in the plural, since we are talking about the essences of things: in the “Theaetetus” the question of essence as such, that is, of “being” is already raised: “That which is common in all things... which you name” being" or "non-being" (185c); essence "... especially extends to everything" (toyto gar malista epi panton parepetai) (186a). In the "State" oysia is already no-primarily pure being (V 479c, VI 486a, IX 585b-d). The highest generalizations of the Sophist (megista gene, among which “being”) are also a characteristic theme of the late Plato.

Having thus raised the question of “being as being,” Plato comes to the need to explore the general nature of this concept, find its correspondence in reality, including cosmological reality, and determine its relationship with other genes.

4. Otherness

In the dialogues of the late period, Plato conducts a comprehensive analysis of the concept of being, clarifying the concept itself and developing the meaningful possibilities hidden in it. It is clear that being is the limit of the formation of things in the “here” world, that they need it as their truth and basis. But is being self-sufficient, can it be its own basis, can it be one in itself, and how does it relate to the multitude outside itself? In Parmenides, perhaps the most fundamental of these problems is considered - the relation of the one to the other. In the Sophist, the other penetrates into unity itself and it is revealed that being cannot remain simple homogeneity, but must have an internal structure. Philebus reveals this problematic in the language of the Pythagorean categories of limit and infinite. The Timaeus gives the cosmological aspect of Plato’s ontology. And finally, the Republic contains the doctrine of the groundless basis of being.

Let us consider the dialogues “Parmenides” and “Sophist” to the extent that the concept of being receives new definitions in them. Both dialogues are directed against the Eleatic and Neo-Eleatic doctrine of the existence of a self-contained absolute. In "Parmenides" eight assumptions (hypothesis - premise, basis) regarding the existence or non-existence of the one and the consequences arising from them for the one itself and the other are systematically examined. The implications of two assumptions are particularly significant. The first premise poses the question: “if there is one, then what can it be?” Or: “can one (hen) be many (polla)?” It turns out that if there is one, then it cannot be anything, and therefore cannot exist at all: after all, any certainty will turn it into multitude. If the one is only one, then it “in no way participates in being (oydamos ara, to hen oysias metechei)” (141e). From this we can conclude that it is impossible to be yourself if you limit yourself to only this. At the same time, to be means to be oneself, to be self-identical. Plato sees the way out of this antinomy in revealing the internal logic of being. The second premise allows that the one is not only one, but also an existing one. Analysis of the first assumption has already shown that the one and being are not the same thing. The second reveals that as soon as we recognize the one as existing, duality arises, for the one is united not with itself, but with something else, that is, with being; therefore, a set, a relation and everything connected with it will arise. The One is fragmented by being (kekermatismenon hypo tes oysias) and divided by being (hypo toy ontos dianenememenon), resulting in a numerous and indefinite multitude (polla te kai apeira to plethos estin) (144e).

Being in this situation has become a dividing, but at the same time a connecting force, since the one here, unlike the first assumption, exists. The most important consequence of the connection between the one and being is that many properties can now be attributed to it that were not compatible with the one within the framework of the first assumption, and it was precisely being that opened up such a possibility. “The fact that being is a predicate, and, moreover, the first of the predicates, the basis and source of predication in general - this statement contains the essence of Plato’s entire system” (27, 148). The conclusion of P. P. Gaidenko, made on the basis of implicit Platonic attitudes, receives, as we will see, confirmation in the further history of the problem of being as a predicate. It should only be noted that the understanding of being as a subject of predication is also present in Plato’s ontology: this is the “idea” in the early and middle dialogues.

Everything revealed by Plato in the remaining assumptions varies the main ideas of the first two: the need for the one to go beyond its limits, the inevitability of positing otherness and returning to oneself from the other. The existence of the one makes the one many and differentiated within itself. Along with this, a new category of thinking and a new aspect of the absolute appear - “other” (143b). Thanks to something else, the whole process of the unit acquiring its own structure takes place. "Parmenides" shows how the other, destroying the one, at the same time gives it an intelligible internal structure and thereby a unity of another type, the concrete unity of the parts as a whole. It is especially important that the necessity of the one coming out of itself is revealed: at the beginning of the argument the conclusion is made that if the one is one, then there is nothing; in the end it turns out that if there is no one, then there is nothing. Being, in order to be being, must go through the path of self-negation. On this path, the manifestation of existence, cognition, and endless structural possibilities of the universe are acquired, which is fragmented, remaining in each of its parts equal in power to its whole (142e - 143a).

What is fundamentally new in the understanding of being in Parmenides (and the Sophist) is the ability of ideas to move and transform. At the beginning of the dialogue, Socrates remarks to Zeno that it would be surprising to discover confusion and disunity in the ideal world (xygkerannysthai kai diakrinesthai) (129e), and not in the material world. Eight hypotheses fulfill the desire of Socrates with the utmost completeness. Of course, movement and change here are different from the dynamics of the sensory world, but they are connected with it, like a sample with a copy. The dynamics of the intelligible even has its own intelligible time: participation in being requires participation in one or another mode of time (141e). Interesting in this regard are the concepts of “suddenly” (exaiphnes) (156d) and “now” (nyn) (152b), which, according to Plato, are a timeless moment of time and becoming, a mysterious boundary between two states, between the past and the future. Without this presence of a limit in becoming, time would not become time. Becoming itself cannot make a leap into a new quality.

In the dialogue “The Sophist” the theme of otherness and mutual transformation, the coexistence of an ideological community (koinonia) is presented in a different aspect. The difference in the dramatic “framework” of these dialogues is indicative: in “Parmenides” the great thinker introduces the novice dialectician into the world of ontological “higher mathematics”, himself evaluating his constructions as a game (which, of course, should not be completely trusted); in The Sophist, the analysis of being and non-being is aimed at finding the definition of the sophist, which requires finding the ontological basis of lies. The theme of existence in the Sophist is saturated with ethical motives and in this sense echoes the Phaedo and Philebus. The main problem of dialogue is to clarify the nature of non-existence. The abstract negation of non-existence, Plato believes, leads both the Eleatics and the Sophists to the same result: the criterion for distinguishing truth and lies disappears. Nevertheless, the basis for solving the problem is the axiomatics of the Eleatics.

The stranger, starting to criticize Parmenides, emphasizes that he does not seek to completely break the connection of his reasoning with the Eleatic (241d; 242b). First of all, in unraveling the cunning weave (xymploke) (240c) of being and non-being, we should consider “the greatest and primordial” (243d), that is, being. In the Sophist - perhaps for the first time in Greek philosophy - they not only reflect on being, but pose a methodological “question”: what do you want to mean when you say “being”? (244a). Refuting the most obvious misconceptions of those who spoke about being (who denied the incorporeal, separated being from life and movement, that is, “people of the earth,” on the one hand, and “friends of ideas” on the other), Plato refuses to allow the “terrible statement "that "movement, life, soul and mind are not involved in perfect being and that being does not live and does not think, but, sublime and pure, not having a mind, stands motionless in peace" (248-249a).

To answer the question of what being can be associated with, it is necessary to find out the very ability of genera to interact. According to Plato, there are three possible answers: 1) childbirth is unable to communicate with each other; 2) everything is attached to everything and, therefore, is reduced to one; 3) some genera interact, some do not (251d). The first option is refuted by the fact that without communion with being, nothing will exist at all, the second will lead to a contradiction, but “the highest necessity prevents movement from resting and peace from moving” (252d), and the third way remains - studying the special art of recognizing compatibility or incompatibility of genera (ta gene), to find a connection that allows genera to mix (xymmignysthai), and the reasons for their separation (tes diaireseos aitia). This is nothing more than dialectical art, true philosophy, “the science of the free” (253b-d). Using the example of the main genera, Plato provides an example of dialectical art. Clarifying the relationship between being, rest, movement, identical and other, he shows how these genera require not only self-identity, but also communication - attraction or repulsion - with other genera. The conclusion that “being and otherness permeate everything and each other” (259a) sums up the search for the ontological basis of diversity.

Plato finds the sense in which one can talk about non-existence without violating the Eleatic prohibition of considering non-existence to be. Moving away from solving the problem of non-being as the opposite (to enantion) of being, he allows the possibility of thinking about relative non-being, that is, the other, which extends throughout all existing things that are interconnected, extends to all kinds, including being itself, and in this regard, involved in being ( 256d-e; 258d-e; Being in general and every individual being, thus, exists in many respects and does not exist in infinitely many respects (256e; 259a-b).

These conclusions by no means presuppose a fusion of opposites, which violates the law of inadmissibility of contradiction (251d). Being turns into non-being in a strictly defined relation, and the reverse transformation is due to a change in relation. The significance of the conclusions of the Sophist lies precisely in the fact that the idea of ​​being is saved from the meaninglessness and structurelessness of empty abstraction. Otherness turns out to be a way of existence of being, allowing one to absorb into being all the positive possibilities of the universe: movement, thinking, life. And when Plato further analyzes speech (logos), - in fact, the sixth genus, not designated, however, as great - it turns out that it and with it philosophy are possible thanks to the mutual interweaving of ideas generated by being. Otherness provides another important opportunity - to find the ontological place of lies, to distinguish it from the truth, to expose the sophist. The sophist in Plato’s portrayal receives - through the revelation of his ontological essence - not just a negative assessment, but some infernal features that make him the focus of evil: he is a conscious creator of ghosts, mimicking the dialectical creativity of being, snatching from it a purely human element, which in itself there is only a trick that subjugates to its subjectivity those whom it has misled by depriving them of the criteria of objectivity. Thus, the theme of otherness in the Sophist and Parmenides opened up new horizons of ontology, showing that being is not exhausted by abstract universality, but carries within itself the potentialities of the sensory and intelligible cosmos.

III. PLATO (continued)

5. Formation of the concept of being as such

In Plato's later dialogues there is a gradual separation of the concept of “being in general” from vague terminology early period, which, as a rule, denotes the world of truly existing things. The early Plato in this respect does not differ from the point of view of the Pre-Socratics, who understood being most often as a predicate of truth. reality, but not as a subject. The only exception - the Eleatics - also do not quite clearly distinguish between “being” and “something existing.” Actually, the ancient understanding of being never prompted philosophers to highlight being as an independent hypostasis; only in Parmenides and, perhaps, in Democritus, “being” is the main name of reality. For Plato, “being” is also the name of the world of ideas, “mind,” rather than vice versa. But what is of fundamental importance is that the question of being as being is singled out as an independent problem (esse qua esse, as this problem was formulated later, based on Aristotle). Plato discovered that the shining region of existence is no more understandable than the darkness of non-existence, that both concepts are two sides of the same problem (Soph. 249e - 251).

Therefore, it is necessary to resolve the question of the nature of being as such (kata ten haytoy physin) (250c; cf. Phaed. 78c: about the logos of the very essence of being). The necessity of thinking about being itself stems already (and first of all) from the nature of the sensory world. Things of this world exist in relation to another and for another; therefore, there must also be something that exists for itself and in itself (Phileb. 53c-54c). Accordingly, at the level of knowledge, things are found that are known through the senses and those that are grasped by the soul in itself (Theaet. 185e-186a). Thus, there is a reality that cannot be a phenomenon - it is always the essence itself - and which cannot be a means - it is always a goal. The world of relative existence presupposes existence itself. The dialectics of the higher genera in the Sophist showed that being must be only being, this is what allows it to be an element of “koinonia”, the community of genera. For example, being cannot be either movement or rest, but they can be involved in being: from the fact that something is, it does not follow that it should move or be at rest, but at the same time, to move and be at rest means to be. Being embraces (periechein) (250b) both kinds, but itself is outside this alternative, that is, it cannot be either Heraclitian or Parmenidean (ibid.).

It is more difficult to document the emergence of the problem of pure being using vocabulary material. Here, as always, Plato is very attentive to words, but uses terms in the way that is convenient for him at the moment. For example, in the Sophist (250b) to on, einai and oysia are used side by side as synonyms. At the same time, the famous passage from the Republic (509b) shows that being (einai) and essence (oysia) are not the same thing: einai here seems to be the pure ability to be, and oysia is the idea possessing being. These and a number of other passages already mentioned indicate Plato’s conscious formulation of the problem of the exact meaning of the verb “to be” in its philosophical use.

An indicative aspect of Plato’s search for the meaning of “being as such” must be recognized as the description of this being using the term dynamis (strength, ability, possibility). In the mentioned passage from the Sophist, where Plato reveals the insufficiency of the categories of rest and movement for defining being, an attempt is made to find a point of view from which being could be consistently recognized as both moving and at rest - because otherwise one would have to agree with the Megaricians and Heracliteans or “people of the earth,” which in all cases would lead to the same result - existence would become unknowable. The following definition of being as such is put forward: everything that is capable of influencing or being affected is truly existing. What exists is nothing other than a faculty (ta onta hos estin oyk allo ti plen dynamis) (Soph. 247e). This solution allows Plato to stand “above the clash of giants”, to remove the question of essence from the sphere of definition of “being in general”, in a sense, even to bracket ontological statements, leaving only the question of the meaning of the term “to be” in the most general use.

Just like Aristotle later, Plato distinguishes between the problem of being and the problem of essence. But, like Aristotle, he does not exclude the possibility that the problem of essence will turn out to be decisive: with the words “later, perhaps... something else will appear” (248a) Plato indicates the conditionally methodological nature of his definition. Dynamis is an abstract definition of being, but that is why it covers everything related to different levels of existence, so long as it all can somehow act and manifest itself. Plato calls this definition sufficient (hikanon) (248c). And this becomes clear in the course of the dialogue: since suffering (pathema) and action (poiema) arise from the power-ability, born of the meeting of things, Socrates manages to destroy the concept of being separated from all being and put into motion his dialectic of koinonia of the higher genera, ultimately proving that being is impossible without transformation into something else and without knowledge (including self-knowledge). Through dynamis, accepted as a working hypothesis, energeia thus shines through.

Many researchers note such features of the philosophical use of dynamis as the unity of action and result, the assumption of a goal that completes the action of the ability (see, for example: (100, 360-375)). The “State” contains a reflection on the nature of opinion and knowledge, associated with a curious confirmation of the indicated features of the term (477-478a): opinion and truth are first given to us as objects of corresponding directions, therefore, without understanding the ability-direction in which its object is contained, it is impossible to understand what it is aimed at. Abilities, Plato defines, are “a certain kind of existing”, in which it is impossible to discern sensory qualities, but only “what it is aimed at and what is its effect”, “each ability by its nature has its own direction.” The only thing (ekeino monon) (477dl) that distinguishes one ability from another is the object and nature of the action. Plato, thus, identifies a special ontological reality, which cannot be called either a thing or an object: it is a purposeful process.

Interestingly, knowledge is rated as the most powerful ability, the ability par excellence (477e1). The peculiarity of the highest ability is its focus on being. In general, the reasoning seeks to clarify the place of opinion in the structure of knowledge and to find the ability corresponding to it (just as in the Sophist, it turns out that everything different from the truth must have its own place in the structure of being), but in the course of the reasoning, another important point was put forward position: there is no empty ability; each, and especially such a powerful one as cognition, has a layer in itself that is objectivity. The ability to know is already being, although not in perfect form. The identification of the potential of being in the “Sophist” and “The Republic” demonstrates not only a method of ultimate generalization of existence, allowing one to go beyond the opposition “substantial - immaterial” (which, perhaps, is not so important for Plato), but also an essential feature of the understanding of other existence, that is, the entire world generated by existence, a feature consisting in the recognition of an inextricable connection between self-sufficient reality (ideas) and processes that in one form or another are involved in reality and are even teleologically directed towards it. The Timaeus speaks of the creation by a master of the idea and power (ability, function, purpose) of a thing (idean kai dynamin) (Tim. 28a). The two aspects of creation that Plato considers necessary to designate separately are the appearance of a thing and the power of its action. But his analysis of being as dynamis showed that any minimum function presupposes substance, and the maximum power of action is the substance itself, that is, being.

In the research literature of recent years, special attention has been drawn to another aspect of being as such, most clearly manifested in the Sophist and Parmenides - the ability of the verb "to be" to perform various functions in language. As a logical norm, the so-called “Fregean trichotomy” is used, according to which the verb “to be,” acting as a connective, has three meanings: 1) “is” predication (“Socrates is wise”); 2) “there are” identities (“Socrates is a man”); 3) “is” existence (“Socrates exists”). The question is raised whether Plato distinguished between these meanings, whether he was generally aware of the variability of the verb “to be,” and what is the implicit interpretation of the functions of this verb, which can be traced in Plato’s texts. Particularly problematic in this regard are the arguments in Soph. 251-259.

Depending on how and what meaning of “is” is put forward, according to experts, in this passage, they are trying to resolve the question of the nature of Plato’s later ontology and epistemology, to establish the degree of Plato’s loyalty to his theory of ideas, the principles of the “koinonia” of ideas, etc. P. Cornford (135, 296) suggested that Plato isolated only the meanings of identity and existence. Malcolm (193, 130-146), Owen (203, 223-267) and Gosling (154, 213 et seq.) argue that Plato did not emphasize the existential meaning of “is.” Gosling writes that because of the use of the metaphor of participation (metechein), Plato did not clearly isolate “is” as a copula (copula) and “is” in an existential sense - because of the concept of the “great kind” of being (154, 220). Rankman (222, 84-90) believes that Plato did not pose the problem of existence at all, but only argued that everything has its own specific way of being, and he used einai in such a way that a special distinction between copulative (predicative) and existential meanings was not needed. Kahn (173, 65-69) argues that the existential and predicative meanings of “is” were not distinguished not only by Plato, but by no one in ancient Greek philosophy. Guthrie (158, 5, 149-151) believes that Plato recognized the difference in the meanings of identity and existence, as the text of Soph directly indicates. 255c3; the concept of “involvement” was a form of using the third meaning - predicative-copulative.

Acryl (109) believes that Plato in Soph. 251-259 reveals the function of being as a bundle. Based on Plato's analysis of two contradictory statements about motion (256a10-c4), Akril concludes that the solution to the antinomy is due to the following assumptions of Plato: 1) where “is” is used as a connective, it can be replaced, from Plato’s point of view, on metechei; 2) where “is” is a designation of identity, “does not exist” can be replaced by “participating in another in relation to...”. Thus, according to Akryl, Plato shows the difference between “is,” used to connect two concepts, and “is” (“is not”), which expresses the concept of identity (or difference). “Participation” thus performs the work of a connective for Plato, and “identity” or “difference” denotes concepts. Plato, Acryl emphasizes, considered the distinction put forward as a decisive argument against his opponents, who interpreted each “is” as a designation of identity. Referring to Ross's observation that Plato uses koinonia, koinonein, epikoinein, epikoinonia, proskoinonein in two different constructions - with the genitive and dative cases, where the first use means "participates in" and the second "combines with", Akryl comes to conclusion regarding two corresponding groups of expressions: koinonein, used with the genitive, asserts that some eidos “is” such and such, that is, that one concept is included in another. The dative construction indicates the connection of eidos. Thus Plato uses the verb koinonein in two different senses. Akryl formulates the final conclusion as follows: “... the verb metechein with its variants plays in Plato’s philosophical language a role corresponding to the role of the copula in ordinary language;... Plato reveals... the difference between the copula (metechei...), the meaning of identity ( metechei taytoy...) and the existential meaning of estin (metechei toy ontos)" (109, 218).

Pryer made a number of comments regarding Plato’s concept of distinguishing the meanings of “is.” He agreed that Plato distinguished three types of statements corresponding to Frege's classification, but objected to extending this distinction to the senses of the use of the verb “to be” (215, 199). Plato, in his opinion, uses “is” in a single sense - as “participates in...” and does not distinguish this meaning from others (215, 201, 206); It is significant that Plato does not see any ambiguity in “not is,” which would not be possible if we assumed the ambiguity of “is” (215, 207). Pryer also argues with Ketchum's article (175), which credits Plato with moving away from his theory of forms into the realm of neutral conceptual analysis in the Sophist. Pryer insists that the Sophist does not provide a logical analysis of the problem of predication, but further development Plato's theory of ideas. Plato's constructions in the Sophist have ontological significance and concern not statements about abstract objects, but the interpretation of being (215, 208, 210; cf. 158, 5, 159).

As the indisputable results of the above debate about the polysemy of “is” in the “Sophist,” one can note the identification of Plato’s conscious and deep analysis of the antinomies that arise in connection with the use of the verb “to be” as a philosophical concept. Plato skillfully constructed a way of describing the “koinonia” of ideas that allowed him to avoid the anti-Sthenesian paradox of predication, preserve the requirement of consistency and at the same time provide a justification for the plurality of being. However, the analytics of “is” given in the “Sophist” gave rise to such a variety of contradictory and at the same time sufficiently reasoned interpretations that the question arises as to whether only the features of the text, with its peculiar semi-logical and semi-metaphorical nature, are to blame for this discord. Is the logical norm chosen by the interpreters of the Sophist really so indubitable? A sober remark on this point is made by Pryer at the end of his article (215, 211); By assuming that “is” contains three meanings that are not reducible to each other, we impose on the ancient thinker a distinction that is not justified by the very nature of Greek ontology. In fact, not only in Plato, but also in Aristotle, with his thesis about the diversity of meanings of things, the unity of the meaning of “to be” is a condition for its philosophical significance. In order to have many functions, the verb "to be" must have one meaning. Philosophical problem the meaning of “to be” is not resolved by Frege’s trichotomy; it can only be resolved by the answer to the question of why “is” can perform the functions of a connective in judgment, an indicator of existence, and identification.

6. Boundaries of existence

Everything that Plato did, clarifying and rethinking the concept of being developed by his predecessors, was aimed at overcoming the dead ends in which ontological thought was stuck. The doctrine of ideas overcame the interpretation of being as an empty abstraction easily identified with “nothing”; the doctrine of otherness is the idea of ​​the absolute isolation of being from the sensory world. Being as determinacy and as a source of determinability in general - this was Plato’s version. But thereby the question was raised about the boundaries of being, existing due to the own nature of being, that is, not as an external alien element, but as a necessary property of the self-determination of truly existing things.

Naturally, the question of the boundaries of being is identical to the question of the structure of the intelligible world. For Plato and ancient Platonism, this question was of paramount importance, because the structure of being became not only the general framework of the universe, but also the formula by which any individual being unfolded and was embodied. Plato solves this problem (just like everyone else) not with a system of unambiguous concepts, but with several internally consistently developed semantic “worlds” that have the same subject of description, but nevertheless do not presuppose any common denominator. Plato (and this is confirmed by his seventh letter) apparently did not consider it correct to assign one system of signs to the topics that he considered the most significant. In this case we have two themes, each expressed in several ways. One, “lower,” boundary of existence is matter, the second, “upper,” is the super-existential unity. The theme of matter is explored on at least four levels: the “indefinite dyadic” (aoristos dyas) (“unwritten teaching”); the nature of the “other”, which gives rise to a variety of levels of being (“Sophist”); “limitless”, opposing the “limit” (“Philebus”); "space" that gives birth (Timaeus). The theme of super-existence is in the following four: the sun-good (“State”); unpremised beginning (ibid.); "mind" as the cause of the mixture ("Philebus"); demiurge ("Timaeus"). This grouping is highly debatable, but has grounds.

A number of problems, conventionally generalized here as the theme of “matter,” are solved by Plato on two levels: the first level, actually ontological, reveals the need for the “shadow” side of being, without which the very concept of being becomes contradictory; at the second level the issue of the “physical” possibility of materializing being is resolved. The ontological status of matter is analyzed by Plato in the constructions of the Sophist and Parmenides discussed above and in the theory of the limit and the infinite set forth in the Philebus. The Pythagorean constructions of the Philebus echo what we know about Plato’s “unwritten teaching” (agrapha dogmata) (see, for example, Aristotle: Met. I 987b). Matter as an element of the structure of the cosmos is considered in Timaeus. If the ontological aspect of matter quite clearly grows out of the problems of tradition and the tasks of Platonism, then the concept of the Timaeus produces questions rather than answers. This is largely due to the compositional complexity and figurative-linguistic multi-layered dialogue, but the very mystery of matter, a “dark and difficult to understand” type of existence, as Plato notes (49a), poses non-random obstacles before interpreters.

The fact is that matter, according to Plato, belongs to that element of the universe that is fundamentally illogical. We reach matter only by some “bastard inference”; its existence is almost incredible (52b). Nevertheless, Plato gives a rich description of the “third type” of existence, using almost all of his stated methods of illustration: bioerotic (mother, nurse), technical (mass, “like a sieve”), grammatical (“this”, “this” ), spatial-geometric (place, space) analogy. A strictly philosophical term is also used - “necessity”. From the point of view of the method of comprehension, matter has two characteristics: it is “dreamed” and “illegally thought.” Since matter, as the Neoplatonists said, is a mirror of being, let’s try to see how the content of this concept is reflected in it.

Being necessarily has a boundary beyond which its own characteristics are lost: certainty, conceivability, etc. The sensory world cannot be such a boundary, because it partially coincides with being. This boundary (which is strictly proven in Parmenides) must be the “other” of being. If it is not placed outside (ontologically), it will remain inside (ontologically), and this will turn being into its own opposite. The necessity of a boundary beyond which being renounces itself also has a “physical” manifestation. More precisely, the border itself is the possibility of the “physical” - it is nothing more than a “place” (chora). However, chora is not a physical space, it is eternal, indestructible, imperceptible and inconceivable. Physical space is its manifestation through the formation that takes place in it. The unthinkability of “chora” is clear - it was discovered by the Eleatics and even proved it (Zeno). But sensory imperceptibility is Plato's discovery: indeed, neither extension nor place is given directly; plane and fullness are given. "Hora" always eludes direct sight, but is inevitably imagined "as in a dream." It is as incredible as it is necessary. But it also has features in common with being - eternity and indestructibility, and this makes the connection of both principles a supra-temporal ontological union. Being is eternally in itself, but also eternally in something else, which is the world of birth. Matter, as shown in the article by T. Yu. Borodai, is assessed by Plato as a principle that deserves the name “it,” that is, a bearer of qualities, which corresponds to the Aristotelian concept of subject matter (15, 56).

But eidos has the same advantage. Moreover, eidos is not external mechanical cause, but the semantic source of the birth of a thing. However, “chora” is not an abstract void, but a mother-nurse, an abode, not indifferent to what is in it (see the semasiological analysis of the term performed by T. Yu. Borodai, in: (16)). In a sense, being and matter are closer to each other than each of these principles is to the sensory world. Perhaps there is confirmation of this in the picture of the structure of the cosmos given in the Timaeus. Space is a sphere, but the sphere is created by boundaries and the space outlined by them. “Chora” extends and gives space to the cosmos, invisibly present at every point of it, like Hesiod’s chaos (about the connection between “chora” and “chaos”, see N. I. Grigorieva: (38, 55, 65, 92)) . But in two - in the center and on the periphery - “places” the sphere of space cannot exist. The spherical boundary of space is the closest resemblance to an extra-cosmic paradigm, that is, being as such; its flesh, the type of movement, the nature of the connection with the soul are the ruling models for the inner spheres of the cosmos. From the periphery to the center, the similarity with the model decreases, the similarity to being gives way to the increasing intensity of becoming. Although geometrically the sphere contracts and space becomes smaller, ontologically it increases, for there are more births; therefore, the “chora” is heterogeneous and bears little resemblance to Newtonian space. Thus, the center of the sphere should have the most "chora". So it is: Plato calls the Earth “the nurse” and “the oldest and most honorable of the deities born within the sky” (40c). The earth, of course, is not the “hora” itself, but at least its physical correlate.

What follows is a not entirely logical conclusion to the departure from the paradigm: the world soul is placed in the center of the cosmos; it is from there that it spreads throughout and around the cosmos (34b). This soul is “first and oldest in its birth and perfection” (34c). Disregarding for now the question of the composition of the soul, we note that it, being that which is “more perfectly born” (37b), occupies the most honorable place in the cosmic sphere - in the center, that is, where there is no longer a “chora”, and in at the same time next to her. Since it is not a body, this kind of localization is quite logical. To expand the circle of associations, let us remember that the Pythagoreans placed Hestia in the center of the cosmos; that Plato brought Hestia closer to the “essence”; that in the Critias the most glorious abode of Zeus is mentioned as being located in the center of the world, from which everything involved in birth is visible (121c); that Philolaus called the center of the world “the fortress of Zeus.” So, in a strange way, what is closest to being and what is most distant are side by side. We will have to return to this incident a little later, when we talk about the super-existential boundary of being. For now, let us turn to the question of the composition of the soul as a mediator between being and the cosmos. The soul, as is clear from 35a-b and 37a-b, is an amalgam of the same, the other, and also a mixture of both. Touching every thing in its eternal movement, the soul recognizes like as like and pronounces a silent word regarding the connections of a thing with its elements of the soul. The circulation of the soul is, as it were, a cosmological analogue of the dialectic of the Sophist. The soul, like being, by its nature is not capable of entering into such a union; the external force of the demiurge is the only unifying principle of the mixture.

Approximately the same classification of “everything that arises” is given in the Philebus: the infinite (apeiron), the limit (peras), the essence generated by their mixture (oysia), and the cause of the mixture (aitia tes mixeos) (27b-c; 30b). However, the fragments do not provide complete clarity either regarding the nature of the mixture or the role of the creator. A notable feature of them is the predominant designation by the word oysia of a mixture of two principles. For the Pythagoreans, the combination of the limit and the infinite gives rise to a monad, which in turn unfolds from itself all numbers. For Plato, apparently, the middle link of the system is a unit of being, and it is possible that the idea-numbers discussed in the “unwritten teaching” are generated precisely by this essence. The aforementioned testimony of Aristotle speaks of the intermediate role of numbers connecting ideas with objects: numbers seem to create the structure of the sensory world, but they themselves, unlike ideas, do not exist outside of this structure; there are as many numbers as what is counted by them, and the idea is always unique. (It is curious that Tim. 35b speaks of a single idea of ​​the whole mixture. It is possible, however, that this usage has no terminological meaning.) Since Plato's intermediary numbers are nothing more than geometric entities (and this is also consistent with the Pythagorean doctrine), the role of the “chora” in the organization of space seems even more significant. It not only divides, but also connects. Aristotle noted this ambiguity when setting out the “unwritten doctrine” and objected to attributing to matter the function of numerical division of an idea (thus beginning a long debate about the “principle of individuation”).

Thus, the “lower” limit of being - matter - is a necessary condition for being itself and the formation involved in being. Since matter can be considered in some sense as a function of being, then matter will have as many forms as there are levels of being found in space. The two most thoroughly depicted types of matter - the other "Parmenides" and the "chora" of the "Timaeus" - represent, respectively, the ontological and physical levels of self-limitation of being. The divisible other “Timea” and the infinite “Philebe” are something in between these types because they are, on the one hand, intracosmic matter, on the other, a principle, and not its concrete manifestation. The instability of these distinctions does not prevent us from seeing the general nature of the listed aspects of matter in the fact that it is a negative being. But what is the role of the negative for being itself, what is the degree of independence of matter - all these are questions that not only face the historian of philosophy, but also faced post-Platonic philosophy. Therefore, we will have to return to them in the course of this study.

By crossing the border we were talking about, being renounces itself. But there is a limit, crossing which being surpasses itself. The presence of this boundary - the “upper” limit of being - Plato discovers and proves with the same energy as in the case of matter, a direct indication of the open sphere and the evasive ambiguity of its description. The problem of transcendence arises already at the level of being as such. Although being is nothing more than the notorious Platonic world of ideas, its internal structure is depicted by Plato in an extremely unclear way. Compared to the theme of the relationship of being to becoming, the “geography” of the world of ideas is barely outlined. On the one hand, being must be multiple, and each of its elements must not be reduced to others. On the other hand, if the world of ideas is something at all, then it must have its own principle of unity; the principle of unity for each set is eidos; therefore, there must be an eidos of all eids. But then it will be an element of many eidos and will not be able to become a unifying principle. From here two conclusions follow: the world of ideas is not self-sufficient and needs a basis (an extremely paradoxical conclusion, which is not always noticed, because an idea is something that exists on its own) and, further, the following conclusion: within the world of ideas there must be a hierarchy of ideas according to degree community and self-sufficiency. There is practically no explication of the last conclusion in Plato, although in the Philebus and Sophist we will find the idea of ​​good, expressed by the three highest ideas - beauty, truth and proportionality (Phileb. 65a), and five great genera. The question of the place of the idea of ​​being in general in this hierarchy is also unclear: despite the above Platonic remarks about being as the most general idea, the ambiguity of the very identification of being as an idea poses a number of problems, and the description of the sphere of actual being, which is given in the Symposium and Phaedrus “, rather completely obscures the answer than gives a solution, for the extra-celestial being can be understood both as a structureless continuum and as a “constellation” of higher principles. As for the conclusion about the necessity of the basis of being, it was realized by Plato in a few but expressive texts.

First of all, let us note that famous passage from the Republic, which speaks of good as the highest principle (509b). Good relates to everything knowable, just as the Sun relates to the visible. “It gives them both being and existence, although good itself is not existence, it is beyond existence, exceeding it in dignity and power” (alia kai to einai te kai ten oysian hypekeinoy aytois proseinai, oyk oys-ias ontos toy agathoy, alleti epekeina tes oysias presbeia kai dynamei hyperechontos). Here the basis of being is postulated, generating all that exists, but itself already going beyond the limits of being. Thus, being receives an “upper” limit. But what is this beginning? The question itself demonstrates the powerlessness of any answer. It “is” being: being, being the essence of sensory phenomena, is itself a phenomenon in relation to the superexistent. But we need to know what is behind the phenomenon. To the question of what the superexistent is, we can confidently answer: being, because “is” for the superexistent is the level to which it gives the power of existence. It itself moves away not only from knowledge, but even from the question.

The theme of transcendence thus introduced becomes a constant subject of reflection in Western ontology; The recent history of Platonism has already shown how many possibilities and at the same time problems are hidden in this necessary, but extremely problematic step of thinking. It remains not entirely clear how Plato himself understood the relationship between being and good. Good, he said, is on the other side of essence, it is not essence. Usually the conclusion is drawn from this that good is non-existence in the sense of super-existence. Of course, the apophatic meaning of the text is indisputable, but since it gives a distinction between being (to einai) and essence (oysia), and it is said that good gives things both, but it exceeds only the essence, then, strictly speaking, we cannot It is safe to say that good cannot be called being, although it is clear that it is not an essence. In addition to this purely apophatic indication of the role of transcendence in the structure of the universe, Plato also gives cataphatic, positive characteristics of a higher principle: in a metaphorical and symbolic sense, he compares it with the Sun and generally gives in the “State” a whole series of optical-light metaphors - at the end of the sixth and in the seventh book, devoted mainly to the problem of the intelligible world (myth of the cave, 514-519b; "true day of being", 521c); in conceptual and symbolic terms, he calls it good. We are talking here about the good as such; nevertheless, the concrete goods to which all souls always strive are only his presentiments (505e).

The fact that the most adequate name for the absolute turns out to be good indicates the completion of the long process of the birth of teleology. In Platonic ontology, ideas are not only a formal principle, but also a good for things. Plato expands the intuition of the unity of thought, existence and virtue, clearly contained in Socratism and implied in the cosmological constructions of the Pre-Socratics, into a hierarchy of levels of the universe.

The new step is that not only ideas play the role of purpose and good. The ideas themselves find their completion in the highest principle, which, without existing, makes everything possible. The student of Socrates quite consistently considers the limit of being as good, but neither Socrates nor Parmenides say that good exceeds being. Therefore, the boundary drawn by Plato changes the status of existence: if transcendence in a certain sense can be called being (after all, Plato even uses the word “idea” in this regard), then it cannot be called “essence” (as well as “eidos”), it is not is certainty and acquires it only by coming into contact with ideas. But it follows from this that

Culturology. Dobrokhotov A.L., Kalinkin A.T.

M.: Publishing House "Forum": 2010 - 480 p.

The textbook combines a theoretical analysis of culture as an integral system with a historical overview of the main schools, teachings and trends in cultural studies and philosophy of culture. Mainly attention is paid to the description and patterns of change of various cultural and historical types. The history of world and domestic culture is presented in essays of individual eras. The "Electives" section provides examples of author's research on various cultural phenomena.

Intended for students of higher educational institutions, graduate students, teachers and anyone interested in the history and theory of culture.

Format: pdf

Size: 17 MB

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
From the authors 3
1. DEFINITION OF CULTURE 4
2. HOW CULTURAL SCIENCE IS POSSIBLE 11
Artifact Comparability 11
The need for a special science of culture 14
3. BASIC MECHANISMS OF CULTURE 15
Objectification 15
Alienation 16
Interpretation 18
Broadcast 19
Integration 20
4. MAIN AREAS OF CULTURE 23
Vital culture 24
Spiritual culture 24
Social culture 26
5. CULTURE IN TIME 29
Culture of the Ancient East 29
Ancient culture 48
Arab-Muslim culture 67
Byzantine culture 76
Culture of the Western European Middle Ages 86
Modern Culture 102
Russia as a type of culture 126
Rhythms of cultural dynamics 186
6. HISTORY OF CULTUROLOGICAL THOUGHT 201
Background 201
XVIII century 211
XIX century 264
XX century 285
Cultural Sciences in Russia XIX-XX centuries 336
7. OPTIONS 361
1. The Middle Ages, which we lost 361
2. Spatial arts in the culture of the Italian Renaissance 374
3. The Patriot's Speech, or On Hogarth's Engravings 407
4. The doctrine of culture in German classical idealism (Kant and Hegel) 414
5. Cultural anthropology as a cultural discipline 432
Literature 455
List of topics and questions for oral interview 473
Dictionary of cultural terms 475

Intended both for the reader and for oneself.

Sometimes they say that philosophy is not a school science. Only a person wise with life experience and long reflection can comprehend it. Of course, neither one nor the other will hurt. But maybe childhood and adolescence are the best time to start. Philosophy loves to ask; for it, questions are often more important than answers. But childhood and youth are asked more often than other eras of life, and their questions are sharper, more fundamental than the questions of mature people. The teenager has not yet joined the “system”; he is often critical of the adult world, wants to understand and appreciate it. But here, too, his ally is philosophy. He is naive, and philosophy is essentially naive; it is impractical, but philosophy is also distracted from immediate benefit. He is idealistic, and philosophy also seeks ideals. Philosophy fights prejudices, but young people don’t have them yet.

Let's imagine the usual objections.

"Too early". But experience shows that successful methods eliminate this problem. In the USA there is even an Institute for the Development of Philosophy for Children with branches in 20 countries, which recommends introducing philosophy lessons from the age of 6 and is developing methods for kindergartens. Let us finally remember history. In Plato's dialogues, very young creatures listen to the wise men and argue with them. This is probably what really happened at the Academy. Plato. Berkeley made his main discovery while still a student. Program German idealism was formulated by yesterday’s schoolchildren, the “green” Tübingen students, and was implemented in almost the same form by them, but by mature thinkers. Schelling Becomes a Master of Philosophy at age 17. Hegel reads, and not without success, his puzzling philosophy to Nuremberg high school students. Nietzsche becomes a respected professor at age 24. Of course, these are exceptions rather than the rule. But they say that there is no reason to be afraid of philosophy: children know how to philosophize, philosophers know how to teach children, and sometimes they even learn something from them themselves.

"Too difficult." But systems that are expressed in a special language are complex. The beginnings of philosophizing (what is most important) are simple. They do not require special knowledge. Of course, this does not mean that they do not require work. There are things that are difficult because they are complicated. But some are difficult precisely because they are simple: they cannot be reduced to something else, more understandable, or explained through something else. Knowledge makes the complex simple, but what do we do with the simple? This is where philosophy begins.

“It is better to postpone philosophy for later. First - positive, indisputable sciences.” But if you offer questions with ready-made solutions, it won’t take long to wean you off the excitement of searching. If we do not vaccinate ourselves against dogma as early as possible, we risk simply being late.

"Philosophy is useless." But youth is intellectually unselfish. She knows how important the game is. This means that playing with concepts won’t seem too strange to her. In addition, there are things that are useless because they are not a means, but an end.

“Philosophy, like art, cannot be taught.” But you can teach not poetry, but grammar; not music, but musical notation. In every art lies a craft; the word art itself is associated with the concept of “skill” (skilled craftsman). The same connection can be seen in many languages. Philosophy also has “craft” skills, without which it is better not to enter its world. Their knowledge does not give wisdom, but it does give the opportunity to choose the right profession.

Even if you are not interested in philosophy, you can learn to see a problem where others will not notice it, and at the same time not make a tragedy out of the fact of the simultaneous coexistence of incompatible ways of explaining reality (without which there is no modern science); you will feel the difference between a hypothesis and a theory, a metaphor from a concept, a logical conclusion from the statement of axioms of a worldview; You will understand how important it is to listen to your interlocutors, patiently endure their “dissent,” formulate and express your ideas, striving not so much for self-expression, but perhaps for understanding; perhaps you will master the difficult art of painlessly coming into contact with a community or individual who has a different, unusual way of thinking, a different psychology and a different value system: you will acquire the ability not to be afraid of authorities, but to respect them, having developed in yourself a flair for the “higher”: and absolutely It will be good if you understand that there are mysteries in the world that surpass the capabilities of our minds, which nevertheless can be thought about without sacrificing the dignity, clarity and honesty of the intellect.

Part one