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Ontology. Ontology is a philosophical doctrine about existence

We exist in this world. Besides us, there are still many objects there, both living and inanimate. But everything doesn't last forever. Sooner or later, it will happen that our world will disappear. And he will go into oblivion.

The existence of objects or its absence has been subject to philosophical analysis for quite some time. It is this that forms the basis of the science that studies being – ontology. Concept of ontology

This means that ontology is a doctrine, a section of philosophy that studies being as a philosophical category. Also included in ontology is the concept of development of the most important thing. At the same time, it is necessary to distinguish dialectics from ontology. Although these currents are very similar. And in general, the concept of “ontology” is so vague that none of the philosophers could offer the only correct interpretation of this science.

And there is nothing surprising about this. After all, the very concept of “being” is very multifaceted. For example, three meanings of the concept “ontology” are proposed. The first is the theory of the fundamental causes of existence, principles and the first cause of all things. Ontology is a science that studies the fundamental principles of being:

Space

Movement

Causality

Matter.

If we take into account Marxist philosophy, then ontology is meant as a theory that explains everything that exists, regardless of the will of man and his consciousness. These are the same categories as matter and movement. But Marxist philosophy also includes such a concept as development. It is not for nothing that this movement in philosophy is called dialectical materialism.

The third trend of ontology is transcendental ontology. It dominates Western philosophy. This, one might also say, is an intuitive ontology that studies being on a supersensible level, and not through empirical research.

The concept of being as a philosophical category

Being is a philosophical category. What does the concept of philosophical category and being in particular mean? A philosophical category is a concept that reflects the general properties of everything that this science studies. Being is a concept so multifaceted that it cannot be put into one definition. Let's figure out what the concept of being as a philosophical category means.

First of all, being means everything that we see among those that really exist. That is, hallucinations do not fall under the concept of being. A person can see or hear them, but the objects that are shown to us in hallucinatory acts are nothing more than a product of a sick imagination. Therefore, we should not talk about them as an element of being.

Also, we may not see something, but it objectively exists. These can be electromagnetic waves, radiation, radiation, magnetic fields and other physical phenomena. By the way, despite the fact that hallucinations are not the subject of the study of ontology and they do not exist, we can say that other products of the imagination belong to existence.

For example, myths. They objectively exist in our world. You can even read them. The same goes for fairy tales and other cultural acquisitions. This also includes various ideas about the ideal as the antipode to the material. That is, ontology studies not only matter, but also idea.

Ontology also studies reality that objectively exists. These may be the laws of physics and chemistry. And not necessarily those that have been discovered by humanity. This may include those that have not yet been discovered.

Material and ideal

There are two schools of thought in philosophy: dogmatism or materialism and idealism. There are two dimensions in existence: the “world of things” and the “world of ideas.” Nowadays in philosophy there is no end to disputes about what is primary and what is secondary.

Ideal is a philosophical category that denotes a part of existence that depends on human consciousness and is produced by it. Ideal is a category of images that do not exist in the material world, but can have a significant impact on it. And in general, the concept of ideal has at least four interpretations.

Structural levels of matter

There are three levels in total in matter. The first is inorganic. It includes atoms, molecules and other non-living objects in themselves. The inorganic level is divided into microworld, macroworld and megaworld. These concepts are found in a number of other sciences.

The organic level is divided into organismic and superorganismic levels. The first group includes living beings, regardless of their level of biological development. That is, both worms and humans belong to the organismal level. There is also a superorganism level.

This level is dealt with in more detail by a science such as ecology. There are many categories here, such as population, biocenosis, biosphere, biogeocenosis and others. Using ontology as an example, we see how philosophy is connected with other sciences.

The next level is social. It is studied by many scientific disciplines: social philosophy, social psychology, sociology, social work, history, political science. Philosophy studies society as a whole.

There are many categories here, such as family, society, tribe, ethnicity, people and so on. Here we see the connection between philosophy and the social sciences, which came out of philosophy. In general, most sciences, even physics and chemistry, came out of philosophy. That is why philosophy can be considered a superscience, although it is not one in the classical definition of the concept “science”.

Ontology(novolat. ontology from ancient Greek ὄν, born. n. ὄντος - existing, that which exists and λόγος - teaching, science) - the doctrine of existing; the doctrine of being as such; a branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental principles of existence, the most general essences and categories of existence.

The main question of ontology is: what exists?

Basic concepts of ontology:being, structure, properties, forms of being (material, ideal, existential),space, time, movement.

Matter(from lat. materia- substance) is a philosophical category to designate physical substance in general, as opposed to consciousness (spirit). In the materialist philosophical tradition, the category “matter” denotes a substance that has the status of a primary principle (objective reality) in relation to consciousness (subjective reality): matter is reflected by our sensations, existing independently of them (objectively).

Matter is a generalization of the concepts of material and ideal, due to their relativity. While the term “reality” has an epistemological connotation, the term “matter” has an ontological connotation.

The concept of matter is one of the fundamental concepts of materialism and, in particular, of such a direction in philosophy as dialectical materialism.

Attributes and properties of matter

The attributes of matter, the universal forms of its existence, are movement, space and time, which do not exist outside of matter. In the same way, there cannot be material objects that do not have spatiotemporal properties.

Friedrich Engels identified five forms of motion of matter:

    physical;

    chemical;

    biological;

    social;

    mechanical.

The universal properties of matter are:

    uncreateability and indestructibility

    eternity of existence in time and infinity in space

    matter is always characterized by movement and change, self-development, transformation of one state into another

    determinism of all phenomena

    causality - the dependence of phenomena and objects on structural connections in material systems and external influences, on the causes and conditions that generate them

    reflection - manifests itself in all processes, but depends on the structure of interacting systems and the nature of external influences. The historical development of the property of reflection leads to the emergence of its highest form - abstract thinking

Universal laws of existence and development of matter:

    The law of unity and struggle of opposites

    The law of transition of quantitative changes into qualitative ones

    Law of Negation of Negation

Forms of motion of matter

Forms of motion of matter- the main types of movement and interaction of material objects, expressing their holistic changes. Each body has not one, but a number of forms of material movement. In modern science, there are three main groups, which in turn have many of their own specific forms of movement:

    in inorganic nature,

    spatial movement;

    movement of elementary particles and fields - electromagnetic, gravitational, strong and weak interactions, processes of transformation of elementary particles, etc.;

    movement and transformation of atoms and molecules, including chemical reactions;

    changes in the structure of macroscopic bodies - thermal processes, changes in states of aggregation, sound vibrations, etc.;

    geological processes;

    changes in space systems of various sizes: planets, stars, galaxies and their clusters.;

in living nature,

  • metabolism,

    self-regulation, management and reproduction in biocenoses and other ecological systems;

    interaction of the entire biosphere with the natural systems of the Earth;

    intraorganismal biological processes aimed at ensuring the preservation of organisms, maintaining the stability of the internal environment in changing conditions of existence;

    supraorganismal processes express the relationships between representatives of different species in ecosystems and determine their numbers, distribution zone (area) and evolution;

in society,

  • diverse manifestations of people's conscious activity;

    all higher forms of reflection and purposeful transformation of reality.

Higher forms of motion of matter historically arise on the basis of relatively lower ones and include them in a transformed form. There is unity and mutual influence between them. But the highest forms of movement are qualitatively different from the lower ones and cannot be reduced to them. The disclosure of material relationships is of great importance for understanding the unity of the world, the historical development of matter, for understanding the essence of complex phenomena and their practical management.

Consciousness- the state of a person’s mental life, expressed in the subjective experience of events in the external world and the life of the individual himself, as well as in a report on these events.

Term consciousness is difficult to define because the word is used and understood in a wide range of ways. Consciousness can include thoughts, perceptions, imagination and self-awareness, etc. At different times it can act as a type of mental state, as a way of perception, as a way of relating to others. It can be described as a point of view, like the Self. Many philosophers view consciousness as the most important thing in the world. On the other hand, many scholars tend to regard the word as too vague in meaning to be used.

ABSOLUTE(from Latin absolutus - unconditional, unlimited), in philosophy and religion - the unconditional, perfect beginning of being, free from any relationships and conditions (God, absolute personality - in theism, the One - in Neoplatonism, etc.) P.).

BEING, a philosophical concept that conceptualizes the presence of phenomena and objects (by themselves or as given in consciousness), and not their meaningful aspect; synonymous with the concepts of “existence” and “being”. Often acts as an element of conceptual opposition (for example, being and consciousness, being and thinking, being and essence.) The problems of being are studied by the philosophical discipline “ontology”.

DIALECTICS[from Greek dialektike (techne) - the art of conversation, argument], philosophical doctrine about the formation and development of being and knowledge and a method of thinking based on this doctrine. In the history of philosophy, various interpretations of dialectics have been put forward: as the doctrine of eternal formation and variability of being (Heraclitus); the art of dialogue, achieving truth through confrontation of opinions (Socrates); the method of dismembering and linking concepts in order to comprehend the supersensible (ideal) essence of things (Plato); the doctrine of the coincidence (unity) of opposites (Nikolai Cusansky, G. Bruno); a way to destroy the illusions of the human mind, which, striving for complete and absolute knowledge, inevitably becomes entangled in contradictions (I. Kant); a universal method of comprehending the contradictions (internal impulses) of the development of being, spirit and history (G. W. F. Hegel); teachings and methods put forward as the basis for knowledge of reality and its revolutionary transformation (K. Marx, F. Engels, V. I. Lenin).

Dialectics is the doctrine of development, the science of the most general laws of development of nature, society and thinking. The idea of ​​development is the essential principle of the worldview. Plato believed that development (becoming - in his philosophy) does not “reach” the level of ideas, true being, but it also does not reduce to the level of matter, i.e. spiritless existence. There is a better state than development, i.e. idea, but there is something worse than development, i.e. non-existence. Development mediates the connections between these worlds; its role is auxiliary and intermediary. A law is an internal and stable connection between phenomena that determines their orderly change. The law is a reflection of the essential. In dialectics there are three laws: the law of unity and struggle of opposites, indicating the source of development; the law of the transition of quantity to quality, indicating the “mechanism of development”; the law of negation of negation, showing the development trend. Dialectical laws of development express the essential connections of things. The idea of ​​development in philosophy and science of the twentieth century. We can observe internal and external contradictions of the classical theory of development in the twentieth century: Contradictions between the idea of ​​endless development and the idea of ​​man as the highest final form of this development. Discrepancies between dialectics and the idea of ​​development. Critical dialectics, “negative dialectics”, “existential dialectics” as types of dialectics without the idea of ​​development. The concepts of “creative evolution”, “emergent evolution” as types of development theory without dialectics. Limiting the scope of development laws in system methodologies. Hermeneutics presents play as a principle of development. Category (Greek statement, evidence) is a form of expression in terms of the most general, essential properties and laws of nature, society, thinking and human relations to the world. Essence and phenomenon are universal categories of philosophy, expressing the extreme opposition between the intelligible and sensually perceived sides of things. Essence is an internal, law-conforming, self-acting, hidden, creative principle of being. A phenomenon is an external, random, dependent on another, visible, derivative beginning of the world. Visibility, semblance, the problem of transformed forms. The possibility of mutual alienation of essence and phenomenon. Essentialism and phenomenalism as distorted and alienated images of essence and phenomenon. SPACE AND TIME

SPACE AND time, philosophical categories. Space is the form of existence of material objects and processes (characterizes the structure and extent of material systems); time- a form of sequential change in the states of objects and processes (characterizes the duration of their existence). Space and time have an objective character, inextricably linked with each other, endless. Universal properties of time - duration, non-repetition, irreversibility; universal properties of space - extension, unity of discontinuity and continuity.

The concept of ontology (Greek ontos - existing, logos - teaching) was first used by R. Goklenius in 1613 in the work “Philosophical Lexicon” in the meaning of metaphysics. But as a term denoting an independent section of metaphysics, it was introduced into the philosophical language by X. Wolf in his work “First Philosophy, or Ontology” (1730), defining ontology as the doctrine of existence as such. Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Plato are considered the “fathers” of ontology.

The specificity of ontology is that it explores the problem of the existence (being) of reality, the laws of organization, functioning and development of all types of things. In various historical types of ontology, these problems were solved in different ways:

In antiquity, ontology was engaged in the search for the inherent principles of the world (material or ideal), from which everything arises. In the Middle Ages, the subject of ontology was already super-existent being, i.e. God as the only true reality, in which essence and existence coincide, and everything created by Him exists through Him;

In modern times, epistemology (the theory of knowledge) takes priority and the subject field of ontology shifts towards questions about the nature of scientific knowledge, the methods of obtaining it and the adequacy of the reality being studied, etc.;

From the 19th-20th centuries. ontology is revived by understanding the problems of human existence in the universe in the aspect of its historicity, temporality, finitude, determining the essence of genuine and inauthentic human existence, etc.

The historical and logical beginning of ontological knowledge are such fundamental categories as: being, non-being, existence, essence, substance, reality, matter, movement, development, space, time, etc.

The category of being is associated with the search for a unifying principle in the diverse world of things. Its function is to testify to the presence of the fact that something already exists, has been realized as reality and has acquired a certain form.

The most fundamental philosophical problem is the problem of the relationship between being and non-being. What is primordial - being or non-being? “To eat or not to eat”? - asks Parmenides (VI-V centuries BC). Otherwise, this is a question about the ultimate foundations of the world and the nature of its existence, the different solutions of which allow us to highlight:

The philosophy of being - proceeds from the fact that being was originally, the world in one form or another has always existed, and therefore non-existence is relative, derived from being since “nothing can arise from nothing.”

The philosophy of non-being - recognizes non-being as primary ("all from nothing") and believes being to be derivative from it or even illusory.

Today, the most pressing ontological topics are the problem of non-existence and ways to substantiate it, virtual existence and the reality of its existence, etc.

Holistic being as a real variety of different things and phenomena is divided into certain types and forms. There are two main types of existence - material and spiritual (ideal).

Material existence means everything that constitutes objective reality (natural objects, phenomena of human and social life), i.e. exists independently of a person and can affect his senses.

Ideal existence is represented by the phenomena of the spiritual life of man and society - their feelings, moods, thoughts, ideas, theories (subjective reality). This type of being is objectified in the form of concepts, formulas, text, values, etc. These two main types of being can be presented in four main forms: the being of things (nature), the being of man, the being of the spiritual (ideal) and the being of social. From here we can talk about different ontologies: ontologies of nature, ontologies of humans, ontologies of culture, ontologies of society.

- this is the doctrine of being, which is one of its basic components in the system of philosophy. As section philosophy ontology studies the fundamental principles of the structure of being, its beginnings, essential forms, properties and categorical distributions.

Subject ontology is the being itself or being as such (regardless of the subject and his activity), the content of which is revealed in such categories as something and nothing, possible and impossible, definite and indefinite, quantity and measure, quality, order and truth, and also in the concepts of space, time, movement, form, formation, origin, transition and a number of others. In modern non-classical philosophy, ontology is understood as the interpretation of ways of being with an unfixed status.

Ontology - in the system scientific disciplines— is understood as the organization of a certain subject area of ​​knowledge, presented in the form of a conceptual diagram, which consists of a data structure containing a set of objects, their classes, connections between them and rules adopted in this area. Ontological analysis of the subject area of ​​a particular field of knowledge, scientific discipline or research program is aimed at identifying the objective status of the ideal objects and theoretical constructs they create.

Ontology as the identification and description of subject areas involved in the orbit of human life is opposed to ontike, that is, the speculative construction of being as such and its moments to which existence is attributed, although they exist regardless of any acts of empirical and theoretical knowledge, any phenomena of consciousness.

Ontology - in the system methodological knowledge- understood as a fundamental form of expression objectivity within one or another thought activity. An ontological representation is a representation (that is, in a broad sense, “knowledge”) about an object generated by mental activity, which at the same time is used not as knowledge, but as the object itself, an object “as such,” outside and independently of any mental activity .

In this sense, regarding this or that mental activity as a system-structural integrity, ontology performs the function of reality, the projection of mental activity onto the “logical plane” of reality. Therefore, all other components of mental activity are objectified and interpreted in the ontological picture, through it revealing and acquiring their essence. The methodological construction of an ontological picture is called ontologization.

The term “Ontology” was first introduced by R. Gocklenius and in parallel by I. Clauberg, who used it under the name “ontosophy” as an equivalent to the concept of “metaphysics” (“Metaphysika de ente, quae rectus Ontosophia”, 1656). Further, the concept of “ontology” was consolidated and significantly expanded in the philosophical works of H. Wolf, in which he outlined the doctrine of ontology as a fundamental section of metaphysics (metaphysica generalis), constituting, along with cosmology, theology and psychology (metaphysica specialis), its main content .


The spread of the term “ontology” was facilitated by the widespread dissemination of the teachings of H. Wolf in mainland Europe in the 18th century. To date, in various interpretations of knowledge, many ontology programs have emerged that imply different patterns of activity. The variety of forms of ontology is due to the variety of cognitive problems - from understanding what knowledge is to studying the emergence of things, and from understanding the structures of things to analyzing being as a system of various processes.

Ontology emerged from the teachings about the existence of nature as a teaching about being itself back in early Greek philosophy, although it did not have a special terminological designation at that time.

Initially, the formulation of the problem of being is found in the activities of the Eleatic school, whose representatives distinguished between the individual existence of certain specific objects and “pure being”, which constitutes the unchanging and eternal basis of the visible diversity of the world. In order to consider being in itself, as opposed to its particular manifestations in certain concrete things, it is necessary to assume that such “pure” being is not a fictitious object, but represents a special kind of reality. Parmenides makes this assumption, thus moving from reasoning about the existence of individual things to thinking about existence as such.

By making this transition, philosophy claimed to discover a reality that, in principle, could not become the subject of sensory perception. Therefore, the decisive question for the self-justification of philosophy is whether thinking, regardless of empirical experience, can ensure the achievement of objective, universally valid truth. The thesis of Parmenides, which deduces being from the necessary truth of the thought of being, becomes such a justification and acts as one of the fundamental ideas linking thinking and being together.

The essence of this thesis is that thought, the clearer and more distinctly it is presented to a person, is something more than just a subjective experience: it contains a certain objectivity, and, therefore, being and thinking are one and the same. This idea influenced the teachings of Plato and the Neoplatonists about being and truth and, through them, the entire European tradition. Thus, the prerequisites were formed for a methodological principle that played a significant role in Western philosophy, allowing one to deduce the necessity of the existence of an object from the thought of this object - the so-called ontological argument.

Evidence for the timeless, spaceless, non-multiple, and intelligible nature of existence is considered the first logical argument in the history of Western philosophy. The moving diversity of the world was considered by the Eleatic school as a deceptive phenomenon. This strict distinction was softened by the subsequent ontological theories of the Pre-Socratics, the subject of which was no longer “pure” being, but qualitatively defined principles of being (“roots” of Empedocles, “seeds” of Anaxagoras, “atoms” of Democritus).

Such an understanding made it possible to explain the connection between existence and concrete objects, and the intelligible with sensory perception. At the same time, critical opposition arises to the sophists, who reject the conceivability of being and, indirectly, the very meaningfulness of this concept. Socrates avoided ontological topics, so one can only guess about his position, but his thesis about the identity of (objective) knowledge and (subjective) virtue suggests that he was the first to pose the problem of personal existence.

The most complete concept of ontology was developed by Plato. It can be called an eidetic ontology, where the generated model is eidos (universals), their embodiments are numbers, which are samples (paradeigmas) of the formation of changeable bodies. In the threefold division of being (eidos, numbers and the physical world), the dominant place is occupied by eidos that exist in the transcendental rational world, remembered in human knowledge.

Plato's ontology is closely connected with the doctrine of knowledge as an intellectual ascent to truly existing types of being. Contrasting knowledge and opinion in their content, criteria and reliability, Plato interprets knowledge as an ascent to intelligent ideas - to the highest kinds of existence, to eternal and unchanging being - the One, or the Good. In the dialogues “Timaeus” and “Parmenides”, Plato develops cosmology based on the doctrine of regular geometric solids (tetrahedrons, octahedra, icosahedrons, dodecahedrons). The proportions in the relationships between these mathematical and physical-geometric structures are explained, according to Plato, by the transition from one element to another.

Aristotle systematized and developed Plato's ideas, while developing a different - continualist and at the same time essentialist version of ontology. Essentialism in Aristotle's ontology is expressed in the doctrine of the first and second essences (ousia) and proceeds from the interpretation of the relationship between a thing and a name (homonymy, synonymy and paronymy), which are subject to genus-specific affiliation. Unlike Plato, for whom genus is a “class of classes of universals,” or a model that generates a variety of things, Aristotle does not connect the origin and destruction of things, living bodies, and the like with genus.

He subordinates essentialism in ontology to a continualist scheme - the relationship between matter and form: matter is eternal and passes from one state to another under the influence of an active and primary form. Assuming the existence of “first matter” as an indefinite being, devoid of any properties, he assumes the existence of a form of forms (“eidos of eidos”) - the Prime Mover, a motionless and self-contemplating deity. Emphasizing the priority of form over matter, Aristotle develops the positions of hylemorphism and combines them with modal ontology, in which the categories of possibility (dynamis) and reality (energeia) are central: matter turns out to be a possibility, and form is an active principle.

Subject to it are various forms of movement, culminating in entelechy - the realization of the goal of any thing, and living beings with their morphology, where the soul is the entelechy of the organic body, and the entire cosmos with its form - the motionless and unchanging Prime Mover. The origins of Aristotle’s ontological schemes are the universalization, firstly, of man’s productive relationship to the world, in which activity appears as the active beginning of the formation of any thing (pragma), and, secondly, of the forms (morphe) of organic bodies, primarily living beings.

Associated with these ontological schemes is Aristotle’s teaching about different levels of reality, differing in the level of potentiality and actuality, his distinction between energeia with its atemporality, the fullness of reality and teleological self-perfection and kinesis (movement). The Prime Mover is Mind in the highest and most complete reality, and ontology coincides with Aristotle's theology. Aristotle introduces a number of new and significant themes for later ontology: being as reality, the divine mind, being as the unity of opposites and the specific “limit of comprehension” of matter by form. Later, Aristotle's modal ontology was interpreted in two directions.

On the one hand, it is interpreted theologically, becoming in monotheistic religions the doctrine of divine energy (for example, Eusebius describes the descent of God on Mount Sinai as an action of God). On the other hand, the “categories energy”, “possibility” and “reality” are used to describe the operation of mechanisms (Heron of Alexandria), the activity of the organs of the human body (Galen Claudius), and human abilities (Philo of Alexandria). Plotinus divides energy into two types - internal and external; the first generating, including souls by the contemplative Mind, or the One - the highest energy. For Proclus, the One is God, the reason for the existence of all things.

The ontology of Plato and Aristotle and its later reworking had a decisive influence on the entire European ontological tradition. Medieval thinkers skillfully adapted ancient ontology to solve theological problems. This combination of ontology and theology was prepared by some trends of Hellenistic philosophy (Stoicism, Philo of Alexandria, Gnostics, middle and new Platonism) and early Christian thinkers (Marius Victorinus, Augustine, Boethius, Dionysius the Areopagite and others).

The ontological argument is a method of proof by which the existence of an object is deduced from the thought of it - during this period it was widely used in theology as the basis for the so-called ontological proof of the existence of God, when the necessity of its existence is deduced from the idea of ​​supreme perfection, otherwise it would not be such. . In medieval ontology, depending on the orientation of the thinker, the concept of absolute being could differ from the divine absolute (and then God is thought of as the giver and source of being) or be identified with God (at the same time, the Parmenidean understanding of being often merges with Plato’s “interpretation of the good”), many pure essences (Platonic being) came closer to the idea of ​​the angelic hierarchy and was understood as being that mediates between God and the world.

Part of these essences (essences), endowed by God with the grace of being, was interpreted as existing existence (existence). Characteristic of medieval ontology is the “ontological argument” of Anselm of Canterbury, according to which the necessity of the existence of God is derived from the concept of God. The argument has a long history and is still controversial among theologians and logicians alike. The centuries-old discussion about the “ontological argument” revealed a number of identifications, both epistemological and linguistic, and showed its logical unreliability, since it implicitly proceeds in ontology from ontic premises that introduce being as something unthinkable. Mature scholastic ontology is distinguished by a detailed categorical development, a detailed distinction between the levels of being (substantial and accidental, actual and potential, necessary, possible and accidental, and so on).

By the 13th century, the antinomies of ontology accumulated, and the best thinkers of the era took on their solution. At the same time, a division of ontological thought into two streams is outlined: the Aristotelian and Augustinian traditions. The main representative of Aristotelianism, Thomas Aquinas, introduces a fruitful distinction between essence and existence into medieval ontology, and also emphasizes the moment of the creative effectiveness of being, concentrated fully in being itself (ipsum esse), in God as actus purus (pure act). John Duns Scotus, the main opponent of Thomas Aquinas, comes from the tradition of Augustine.

He rejects the rigid distinction between essence and existence, believing that the absolute completeness of essence is existence. At the same time, God rises above the world of essences, about whom it is more appropriate to think with the help of the categories of Infinity and Will. This attitude of Duns Scotus lays the foundation for ontological voluntarism. Various ontological attitudes manifested themselves in the scholastics' dispute about universals, from which the nominalism of W. Ockham grew with his idea of ​​the primacy of will and the impossibility of the real existence of universals. Ockhamist ontology plays a large role in the destruction of classical scholasticism and the formation of the worldview of the New Age.

Ontological problems were generally alien to the philosophical thought of the Renaissance, but in the 15th century there was a significant milestone in the history of ontology - the teaching of Nicholas of Cusa, which contains both summative and innovative points. In addition, late scholasticism developed far from fruitlessly, and in the 16th century it created a number of sophisticated ontological constructions within the framework of Thomist commentaries (I. Capreol, F. Cajetan, F. Suarez).

In modern times, theology loses its status as the highest type of knowledge, and science becomes the ideal of knowledge, however, the ontological argument retains its significance as a methodological basis for the search for reliable foundations of scientific knowledge (see: Methods of scientific knowledge). If during the Renaissance pantheism was established in the understanding of the involvement of God in the world, and energy was understood as an immanent characteristic of being, then the philosophy of the New Age put forward a new ontological scheme, which was based on natural bodies, their forces and their balance, and interpreted nature as a system of natural bodies and their elements. The category “thing” with its properties and quantitative parameters became the foundation of the ontology of this period. The doctrine of society and man was based on the use of schemes and models of mechanics, deductive methods of geometry, and the distinction between statics and dynamics.

The ontology of rationalism of R. Descartes, B. Spinoza and G. W. Leibniz describes the relationship of substances and the subordination of levels of being, and the problems associated with them (God and substance, the multiplicity and interaction of substances, the deducibility of its individual states from the concept of substance, the laws of development of substance) become the central theme of ontology. However, the rationale for the systems of rationalists is no longer ontology, but epistemology. R. Descartes, the founder of the rationalistic interpretation of the concept of being, making an attempt to combine the doctrine of being and the doctrine of knowledge, considers being through the prism of the theory of knowledge, finding the substantial basis of the thought of being in the pure act of self-consciousness - in the “cogito”.

The ontological meaning of the Cartesian argument lies in the undoubted self-authenticity of this act. Thanks to this self-authenticity, thinking no longer appears simply as the thinking of being, but itself becomes an existential act. Thus, thinking becomes for Descartes the most adequate way of not only discovering, but also verifying being,” and being becomes the content and purpose of thinking. Developing the ideas of R. Descartes, Chr. Wolf develops a rationalistic ontology, where the world is understood as a set of existing objects, the way of being of each of which is determined by its essence, comprehended by the mind in the form of a clear and distinct idea.

The main methodological principle of the ontology of Chr. Wolf becomes the principle of consistency, understood as a fundamental “characteristic of being as such, for nothing can simultaneously be and not be. The principle of sufficient reason, in turn, is intended to explain why some of the essences are realized in existence, while others are not, and it is existence, and not non-existence, that needs explanation and justification. The main method of such an ontology is deduction, through which the necessary truths about being are derived from clear and undoubted first principles. The further development of rationalistic philosophy led to the affirmation of the actual identity of being and thinking, which, acting as forms of each other’s otherness, acquire the ability to transform into each other.

New European scientific thought put forward its ontological ideas based on “mechanistic” models, methods and methods of explanation, establishing mechanics as a priority scientific discipline.

Classical mechanics presents various ontology options:

Ontology of Cartesian physics, which is based on the distinction between substances into thinking and extended, on the interpretation of movement as movement in space, on the continuity of matter, the movement of particles of which forms vortices;

The ontology of Newtonian physics with its assumption of absolute space and absolute motion, the isotropy of empty space, the endowment of bodies with forces;

The ontology of Leibnizian physics, which does not allow the action of forces at a distance, the existence of absolute space and absolute motion, but presupposes the activity-force of primary elements - monads.

In addition to the above three versions of ontology, in the theories of mechanics Chr. Huygens, L. Euler, R. Boskovic developed specific ontological schemes. In the biology of the organism, specific schemes of description and explanation were introduced - the organism was considered as a natural body, possessing irritability, action and reaction, forces not reducible to mechanics, although many scientists sought to reduce life in the form of an organism to mechanics.

Along with the dominant ontology of the natural thing in classical science, there were ontologies of substance and attributes, atoms and their properties, and qualities were reduced to quantitatively measurable parameters. The diversity of ontological schemes, even in mechanics, required their clarification and generalization in the emerging doctrine of the first principles - about things, definite and indefinite, about wholes and parts, about complex and simple entities, about principles and causes, about a sign and the thing designated by it. This is, for example, the table of contents of the “Metaphysics” of Chr. Baumeister (1789) - a supporter of the ideas of G.V. Leibniz and Chr. Wolf.

The turning point in the development of ontology was the “critical philosophy” of I. Kant, which contrasted the “dogmatism” of the old ontology with a new understanding of objectivity as a result of the design of sensory material by the categorical apparatus of the knowing subject. Kant's position on ontology is twofold: he criticizes the former "first philosophy", emphasizing both its achievements and failures, and defines ontology as a part of metaphysics, "constituting the system of all rational concepts and principles, in so far as they relate to objects that are given to the senses, and , therefore, can be certified by experience” (Kant I. Soch., T. 6. - M.: 1966. P. 180).

Understanding ontology as a propaedeutic and critical threshold of genuine metaphysics, which he identifies with the analysis of the conditions and first principles of any a priori knowledge, he criticizes dogmatic versions of ontology, calling all attempts to recognize objective reality behind the concepts of reason without the help of sensuality as illusory. He interprets the previous ontology as a hypostatization of the concepts of pure reason. In the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Kant offers a completely different - critical - interpretation of ontology. Its goal is to give an analysis of the system of “all concepts and principles relating to objects in general” (Kant I. Critique of Pure Reason. // Soch., T. 3. - M.: 1964. P. 688).

He does not accept the previous ontology for its dogmatization of the experience of certain sciences, for its desire to provide a priori synthetic knowledge about things in general, and seeks to replace it with “the modest name of simple analytics of pure reason” (Ibid. p. 305). Kant's “Critical Philosophy” set a new understanding of being as articulated in a priori cognitive forms, without which the formulation of the ontological problem itself is impossible. He divides existence into two types of reality - into material phenomena and ideal categories; only the synthesizing power of the “I” can unite them.

Thus, he sets the parameters of a new ontology, in which the ability, common to pre-Kantian thinking, to enter the dimension of “pure being” is distributed between the theoretical ability, which reveals supersensible being as a transcendent beyond, and the practical ability, which reveals being as the this-worldly reality of freedom. In general, Kant radically transforms the understanding of ontology: for him it is an analysis of the transcendental conditions and principles of knowledge, primarily natural science.

Therefore, “Metaphysical principles of natural science” (1786) he identifies the principles of classical physics as rational knowledge about nature, which is presented in a system of categories - in the doctrine of transcendental analytics, then (in 1798-1803) discusses the issue of the transition from the metaphysical principles of natural science to physics, based on the doctrine of matter, its natural bodies and driving forces.

In post-Kantian philosophy, a critical attitude towards ontology as supersensible and speculative knowledge about nature was established, although representatives of German idealism (F.W.I. von Schelling, G.W.F. Hegel), relying on Kant’s discovery of transcendental subjectivity, partially returned to pre-Kantian rationalistic tradition of constructing ontology on the basis of epistemology: in their systems, being is a natural stage in the development of thinking, that is, the moment when thinking reveals its identity with being.

However, the nature of the identification of being and thought (and, accordingly, ontology and epistemology) in their philosophy, which makes the structure of the subject of cognition the meaningful basis of unity, was determined by Kant’s discovery of the activity of the subject. That is why the ontology of German classical idealism is fundamentally different from the ontology of modern times: the structure of being is comprehended not in static contemplation, but in its historical and logical generation, ontological truth is understood not as a state, but as a process. The basis for constructing the ontological concept of G. W. F. Hegel is the principle of the identity of thinking and being.

Based on this principle, in “The Science of Logic” (1812-1816) Hegel formulates the idea of ​​the coincidence of logic and ontology and from this position creates in the sections “Being” and “Essence” a subordinated system of categories, which acts as the main content of his ontological concept. The construction of a system of ontological categories by the method of ascension from the abstract to the concrete allows us to present being itself as a process, and the process, first of all, as a process of development - immanent development through contradictions, as the transition of quantitative changes into qualitative ones, as the unity of continuity, gradualism and discontinuity, spasmodicity, as the negation of negation .

It is the processual understanding of being that distinguishes the Hegelian approach to revealing the content of the main category of ontology from those definitions and approaches to the concept of being that existed and exist both in pre-Hegelian and post-Hegelian ontological concepts. Along with this, Hegel in “Phenomenology of Spirit” (1807) revealed the connection between a number of formations (Gestalte) of consciousness (master and slave self-consciousness, unhappy consciousness, horror of terror during the French Revolution and others) with specific stages of historical reality, filling the ontology with social historical content.

European philosophy of the 19th century is characterized by a sharp decline in interest in ontology as an independent philosophical direction and a critical attitude towards the ontology of previous philosophy. On the one hand, significant achievements of the natural sciences served as the basis for attempts at a non-philosophical synthetic description of the unity of the world and positivist criticism of ontology.

On the other hand, the philosophy of life tried to reduce ontology (together with its source - the rationalistic method) to one of the pragmatic by-products of the development of the irrational principle (“will” in A. Schopenhauer and F. Nietzsche). Neo-Kantianism and trends close to it accelerated the epistemological understanding of ontology, outlined in classical German philosophy, turning ontology into a method rather than a system. From neo-Kantianism comes the tradition of separating axiology from ontology, the subject of which—values—does not exist, but “means.”

By the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, psychological and epistemological interpretations of ontology were being replaced by trends oriented toward revising the achievements of previous European philosophy and returning to ontologism. There has also been a tendency to return to being its central place in philosophy, associated with the desire to free ourselves from the dictates of subjectivity, which was characteristic of European thought of the New Age and formed the basis of industrial and technical civilization

In the phenomenology of E. Husserl, a positive attitude towards ontology as an eidetic science of objects in general has been revived. Husserl develops ways of transition from “pure consciousness” to the structure of being using the analysis of intentional structures of consciousness, to positing a world without subjective epistemological additions, develops the idea of ​​“regional ontologies” (which, instead of the traditional all-encompassing ontology, allow us to build a method of eidetic description), introduces the concept of “life world" as an ontological predetermination and irreducibility of everyday experience.

In Ideas for Pure Phenomenology (1913), Husserl made thinking one of the acts of experience. Therefore, the analysis of objective content, correlative to acts of experience, is broader than just an analysis of objects of thought and includes semantic noemas (immanent content) of such noetic acts as perception, memory, attention, fantasy and others. Their intentional subject areas are different - from the objectivity of a thing to ideal significance. Therefore, Husserl distinguishes between the potential and actual positing of the semantic content of acts of experience, noting the specificity of objectifying (representations) and non-objectifying (joy, desires, will) acts.

In the process of studying the diverse acts of experiencing, Husserl gives preference to the transcendental doctrine of the constitution of the pure “I” (a certain “I-community”, a communication community of “I”), the correlate of which is the “surrounding world” (Umwelt) and in which, as in a phenomenological field, the various experiences. In the phenomenology of reason, constructive objectification is achieved, a distinction is made between ontic, that is, relating to the existential moments themselves, and ontological, that is, relating to being as it is given to consciousness, and on this basis, a division of regional, material ontologies and formal ontology is carried out. Husserl raises the question of the possibilities of a universal ontology as an ideal system of all regional ontologies.

The phenomenological school continued to analyze imaginative representations and their intentional content in painting (L. Blaustein) and literary works (R. Ingarden). Ingarden's treatise “The Dispute about the Existence of the World” (1954-1965) combines a phenomenological approach, epistemological realism and a thorough analysis of the tradition of ontological thought coming from Aristotle. Ingarden seeks to describe possible ways of being and their possible relationships. He divides ontology into formal, material and existential ontologies, according to three aspects that can be distinguished from any object (formal structure, qualitative characteristics and way of being).

The categories of formal ontology are associated with the well-known ontological distinction between objects, processes and relationships. In addition to them, Ingarden, following Husserl, distinguishes categories of material ontology; they include real spatiotemporal objects and high-level objects such as works of art. Finally, he distinguishes between categories of existential ontology that characterize ways of being: dependent - independent existence, existence in time - outside of time, conditioned existence - necessary existence, and so on. Ingarden's four highest existential-ontological categories are: absolute, real, ideal and purely intentional existence.

An absolute (supratemporal) mode of being can only be attributed to a being like the being of God, which does not depend on whether anything else exists or has ever existed. The ideal way of being is a timeless existence, such as the existence of numbers in Platonism. The real way of being is the way of existence of random space-time objects, which a realist would include, for example, trees and rocks. A purely intentional mode of being is inherent, for example, in fictional characters and other objects that owe their nature and existence to acts of consciousness. Thus the debate between idealism and realism can be reformulated as a debate about whether the so-called “real world” has a real or a purely intentional way of being.

Neo-Kantianism put forward the doctrine of values ​​(axiology) - specific objects that are not given, but given, have meaning (G. Cohen, P. Natorp) and are constituted in relation to objects of unconditional necessity and obligation (W. Windelband, G. Rickert). Neo-Thomism revives and systematizes the ontology of medieval scholasticism (primarily Thomas Aquinas). Various versions of existentialism, trying to overcome psychologism in the interpretation of human nature, describe the structure of human experiences as characteristics of being itself.

In M. Scheler's axiology, the question is raised about the way of being of values ​​in their correlation with acts of cognition and evaluation. H. Hartmann, starting, like M. Scheler, from neo-Kantianism, declared being the central concept of philosophy, and ontology the main philosophical science, the basis of both the theory of knowledge and ethics. In his “critical ontology,” Hartmann did not accept Husserl’s identification of Fr. with the analysis of the constitutive acts of transcendental subjectivity and took a more realistic position. Being, according to Hartmann, goes beyond the limits of all existing things and therefore cannot be directly defined; the subject of ontology is the existence of beings. By exploring (as opposed to concrete sciences) existence as such (Aristotle's ens qua ens), ontology thereby also concerns being.

Taken in its ontological dimension, existence, according to Hartmann, differs from objective being, or “being-in-itself,” as epistemology usually views it, that is, as an object opposite to the subject; existence as such is not the opposite of anything; it is also neutral in relation to any categorical definitions. The existential moments of existence are existence (Dasein) and qualitative certainty associated with essence (Sosein); modes of being of beings - possibility and reality, ways of being - real and ideal being. Hartmann considers categories as principles of being (and hence as principles of knowledge), and not as forms of thinking.

The ontological structure of the real world, according to Hartmann, is hierarchical: he distinguishes various levels and layers of being (ideal and real, the reality of things, relationships, human events), considering the various worlds - human, material and spiritual - as autonomous layers of reality, in relation to which cognition is not a determining principle, but a secondary principle. Hartmann's ontology excludes evolutionism: the layers of being constitute the invariant structure of existence. He builds a modal ontology, in which the focus is the analysis of the modes of being (reality, possibility, necessity, chance) both real and ideal.

In linguistics, which continues the line of W. Humboldt, language sets the divisions of the world (B. Whorf, E. Sapir), forming the fundamental categories of the development of the world (matter, space, time and others). The same line is presented in the philosophy of M. Heidegger, who calls his philosophy “fundamental ontology,” contrasting it with both all previous and contemporary philosophy. According to him, philosophy, starting with Plato, from the doctrine of being turned into the metaphysics of existence, which, being opposed to the cognizing subject, began to be interpreted in its objectivity and in its alienation from man.

Heidegger puts forward Dasein as the center of philosophy - being-here, presence, characterized by genuine (being-in-the-world, temporality and others) and inauthentic (Man, rumors and others) existentials - a priori structures of human existence, which finds itself in determination before death. Heidegger's merit is not only in the ontological analysis of mental and spiritual phenomena - the ancient understanding of truth as unconcealment, eidos as perfect being, in the rejection of that naturalization of the knowing subject and its object - nature, which is characteristic of new European natural science and the doctrine of knowledge, but also in the turn to existential ontology - the ontology of human existence with its inherent experience of temporality (Zeitlichkeit). In his later works, Heidegger, calling language the “house of being,” connects the language of poetry with the language that forms being.

The line of ontology of human existence is presented in German and French existentialism: K. Jaspers proceeds from the analysis of communications, O. F. Bolnov - from the “experience of rootlessness” (Heimatlosigkeit), J.-P. Sartre - from the analysis of the annihilation of being, which is represented in the imagination and in the imaginary - an object of another [virtual] reality. In the work “Being and Nothingness. Experience of phenomenological ontology” (1943) Sartre differentiates “being-in-itself” (that is, the being of a phenomenon) and “being-for-itself” (as the being of the pre-reflective cogito).

The fundamental ontological insufficiency of consciousness inspires the intention to “make oneself” through an individual “project of existence”, due to which being is constituted as an “individual adventure” - in the originally knightly sense of the word: “The being of self-consciousness is such that in its being there is a question about its being . This means that it is pure interiority. It constantly turns out to be a reference to the self that it should be. Its being is determined by the fact that it is this being in form: to be what it is not, and not to be what it is.” On this path, individual being “needs another in order to holistically comprehend all the structures of its being.”

Sartre, in addition to the concept of “being-in-the-world” (being-in-being), follows Heidegger to the formulation of “being-with” (“being-with-Pierre” or “being-with-Anna” as constitutive structures of individual being). Unlike Heidegger, Sartre’s “being-with” presupposes that “my being-for-another, that is, my I-object, is not an image cut off from me and growing in someone else’s consciousness: it is a completely real being, my being as a condition of my selfhood in the face of another and the selfhood of another in the face of me” - not “You and I”, but “We”.

The ontological semantics of the concept of “being-with-each-other” as the unity of the modes of “inseparability” and “non-fusion” in the existential psychoanalysis of L. Binswanger is similar; hermeneutic interpretation of the “I” in X.-G. Gadamer (“being open to understanding is the Self”). In the culturological branch of philosophical anthropology, an interpretation of cultural creativity as a way of human existence in the world is also being developed (E. Rothacker and M. Londman). The philosophy of life (and some representatives of the philosophy of religion) are trying to build an ontological picture of the world consistent with modern natural science, in which the main structural elements are ontologized models (A. Bergson, J. Smuts’ holism, W. Ostwald’s energeticism, A.H. Whitehead’s process philosophy, P.A. Florensky, T. de Chardin, probabilism).

These trends were opposed by the analytical philosophical tradition, which considers all attempts to revive classical ontology as relapses of the errors of the philosophy of the past. Over time, representatives of analytical philosophy came to the need to rehabilitate ontology - either as a useful ideological function, or as a tool for removing semantic antinomies, turning to language as the medium that defines the categorical divisions of being. Ontological premises began to be included in the study of language as a problem of reference, denotation, mereological aggregates, and related variables.

This is typical for R. Carnap, who separated internal and external questions of existence and connected them with the linguistic framework, and for W. V. O. Quine, and for N. Goodman, who, having turned first-order logic into a logic that ensured the existence of objects of the theory , sharply narrowed the understanding of theories and the existence of objects introduced into them. In the context of this setting, ontology is constituted on the basis of fundamental relativity, the classic expression of which is Quine’s “principle of ontological relativity”: knowledge about an object is possible only in the language of a certain theory (Tn), but operating with it (knowledge about knowledge) requires a metalanguage, that is, the construction of a new theory (Tn + 1), and so on.

The problem of ontology is transformed as a result as a “problem of translation,” that is, an interpretation of logical formalism, but its “radical translation” is impossible in principle, because the “method of reference” of objectivity in judgment is “not transparent” and, therefore, uncertain. Quine referred to ontology as entities that, from the point of view of the author of a certain theoretical system, constitute the structure of the reality being described (and this may not necessarily be empirically recorded phenomena, but also a certain “possible world”).

A new stage in the interpretation of ontology is associated with postmodern philosophy, which in its ontological (more precisely, anti-ontological) constructions goes back to the presumption of Heidegger, who introduces the attitude that “ontology cannot be substantiated ontologically.” According to postmodern reflection, the entire previous philosophical tradition can be interpreted as a consistent development and deepening of the idea of ​​deontologization: for example, if the classical philosophical tradition is assessed as focused on the “ontologization of meaning,” then the symbolic concept is assessed as making a certain turn towards their “deontologization,” and modernism — as preserving only the idea of ​​the original “ontological rootedness” from subjective experience (D. V. Fokkema).

As for the reflexive assessment of one’s own paradigmatic position, postmodernism constitutes the fundamental principle of “epistemological doubt” in the fundamental possibility of constructing any “model of the world” and a programmatic rejection of any attempts to create an ontology.

The concept of ontology. Ontology is the doctrine of being and existence. A branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental principles of existence, the most general essences and categories of existence; the relationship between being (abstracted nature) and the consciousness of the spirit (abstracted man) is the main question of philosophy (about the relationship of matter, being, nature to thinking, consciousness, ideas).

Main directions of ontology

    Materialism answers the main question of philosophy this way: matter, being, nature are primary, and thinking, consciousness and ideas are secondary and appear at a certain stage of knowledge of nature. Materialism is divided into the following areas:

    • Metaphysical. Within its framework, things are considered outside the history of their origin, outside their development and interaction, despite the fact that they are considered to be material. The main representatives (the brightest are the French materialists of the 18th century): La Mettrie, Diderot, Holbach, Helvetius, Democritus can also be attributed to this direction.

      Dialectical: things are considered in their historical development and in their interaction. //Founders: Marx, Engels.

    Idealism: thinking, consciousness and ideas are primary, and matter, being and nature are secondary. It is also divided into two directions:

    • Objective: consciousness, thinking and spirit are primary, and matter, being and nature are secondary. Thinking is detached from the person and objectified. The same thing happens with human consciousness and ideas. Main representatives: Plato and Hegel (19th century) (the pinnacle of objective idealism).

      Subjective. The world is a complex of our relationships. It is not things that cause sensations, but a complex of sensations is what we call things. Main representatives: Berkeley, David Hume can also be included.

Issues. In addition to resolving the main question of philosophy, ontology studies a number of other problems of Being.

    Forms of existence of Being, its varieties. (What nonsense? Maybe all this is not necessary?)

    The status of the necessary, accidental and probable is ontological and epistemological.

    The question of discreteness/continuity of Being.

    Does Genesis have an organizing principle or purpose, or does it develop according to random laws, chaotically?

    Does the Existence have clear principles of determinism or is it random in nature?

    A number of other questions.

Ontology: main topics, problems and directions. (Main directions in ontology.)

Ontology is the doctrine of being as such; a branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental principles of existence, the most general essences and categories of existence. Ontology emerged from the teachings about the existence of certain objects as a teaching about existence itself back in early Greek philosophy. Parmenides and other Eleatics, contrasting the deceptive appearance of the sensory world with true being, built ontology as the doctrine of eternal, unchanging, united, pure being (i.e., only being itself truly exists). Heraclitus; being is continuously becoming. Being is opposed to non-being. On the other hand, the Pre-Socratics distinguished between being “according to truth” and being according to “opinion,” i.e., ideal essence and real existence. Subsequent ontological theories - the search for the beginning of being ("roots" of Empedocles, "seeds" of Anaxagoras, "atoms" of Democritus). Such an understanding made it possible to explain the connection of existence with specific objects, intelligible with sensory perception. Plato contrasted sensible being with pure ideas in his ontology of “ideas.” Being is a collection of “ideas” - intelligible forms or essences, the reflection of which is the diversity of the material world. Plato drew a line not only between being and becoming (i.e., the fluidity of the sensually perceived world), but also between being and the “beginningless beginning” of being (i.e., the incomprehensible basis, which he also called “good”). In the ontology of the Neoplatonists, this difference is fixed in the relationship between the “one” and the “mind”. Plato's ontology is closely connected with the doctrine of knowledge as an intellectual ascent to truly existing types of being. Aristotle overcomes the opposition of spheres of being (since for him form is an integral part of being) and builds a doctrine of different levels of being.

Medieval Christian philosophy contrasts true divine being and untrue, co-created being, distinguishing between Real being (act) and possible Being (potency), essence and existence, meaning and symbol. Absolute being is identified with God, the multitude of pure essences is understood as being that mediates between God and the world. Some of these essences (essences), endowed by God with the grace of being, are interpreted as existence (existence).

During the Renaissance, the cult of material existence and nature received general recognition. This new type of world-perception prepared the concepts of Genesis in the 17th and 18th centuries. In them, Being is considered as a reality opposing man, as a being mastered by man in his activity. This gives rise to the interpretation of being as an object opposed to the subject, as an inert reality, which is subject to blind, automatically acting laws (for example, the principle of inertia). In the interpretation of being, the concept of the body becomes the starting point, which is associated with the development of mechanics. During this period, naturalistic-objectivist concepts of being dominated, in which nature is considered outside of human relations to it, as a certain mechanism that acts on its own. The teachings about being in modern times were characterized by a substantial approach, when substance (the indestructible, unchangeable substrate of Being, its ultimate basis) and its properties are fixed. With various modifications, a similar understanding of being is found in the philosophical systems of the 17th and 18th centuries. For the European naturalistic philosophy of this time, Being is an objectively existing thing, opposing and awaiting knowledge. Being is limited by nature to the world of natural bodies, and the spiritual world does not have the status of being. Along with this naturalistic line, which identifies Being with physical reality and excludes consciousness from being. In modern European philosophy, a different way of interpreting being is being formed, in which the latter is defined along the path of epistemological analysis of consciousness and self-consciousness. It is presented in the original thesis of Descartes' metaphysics - “I think, therefore I am”; in Leibniz’s interpretation of Being as spiritual substances-monads, in Berkeley’s subjective-idealistic identification of existence and givenness in perception. For philosophical empiricists, ontological problems fade into the background (for Hume, ontology as an independent doctrine is completely absent).

A turning point in the history of ontology was Kant’s “critical philosophy,” which contrasted the “dogmatism” of the old ontology with a new understanding of objectivity as a result of the design of sensory material by the categorical apparatus of the knowing subject. According to Kant, the question of being in itself has no meaning outside the sphere of actual or possible experience. For Kant, being is not a property of things; Being is a generally valid way of connecting our concepts and judgments, and the difference between natural and morally free being lies in the difference in the forms of law - causality and purpose.

Fichte, Schelling and Hegel returned to the pre-Kantian rationalist tradition of constructing ontology on the basis of epistemology: in their systems, being is a natural stage in the development of thinking, i.e., the moment when thinking reveals its identity with being. However, the nature of the identification of being and thought (ontology and epistemology, respectively) in their philosophy, which makes the structure of the subject of cognition the meaningful basis of unity, was determined by Kant’s discovery of the activity of the subject. For Fichte, true being is free. The pure activity of the absolute “I”, material existence is a product of awareness and self-consciousness of the “I”. For Fichte, the subject of philosophical analysis is the existence of culture - spiritually - the ideal existence created by human activity. Schelling sees in nature an undeveloped dormant mind, and true existence in human freedom, in his spiritual activity. In Hegel's idealistic system, being is seen as the first, immediate step in the ascent of the spirit to itself. Hegel reduced spiritual human existence to logical thought. His being turned out to be extremely poor and, in fact, negatively defined (being as something vague, qualityless), which is explained by the desire to derive being from acts of self-consciousness, from the epistemological analysis of knowledge and its forms. Having criticized the previous ontology, which tried to build a doctrine of being before and outside of any experience, without addressing how reality is conceived in scientific knowledge, German classical idealism (especially Kant and Hegel) revealed such a level of being as objective-ideal being, embodied in various forms of activity of the subject. Associated with this in the understanding of being was the characteristic development of German classical idealism. The structure of being is comprehended not in static contemplation, but in its historical and logical generation; ontological truth is understood not as a state, but as a process.

For Western European philosophy of the 19th century. characterized by a sharp decline in interest in philosophy as an independent philosophical discipline and a critical attitude towards the ontology of previous philosophy. On the one hand, the achievements of the natural sciences served as the basis for attempts at a non-philosophical synthetic description of the unity of the world and positivist criticism of ontology. On the other hand, the philosophy of life tried to reduce ontology (together with its source - the rationalistic method) to a pragmatic by-product of the development of the irrational principle ("will" in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche). Neo-Kantianism developed an epistemological understanding of the nature of ontology, outlined in German classical philosophy.

By the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. to replace psychological and epistemological interpretations with ontologies that focus on a return to ontologism. Thus, in Husserl’s phenomenology, ways of transition from “pure consciousness” to the structure of Being, to the positing of a world without subjective epistemological additions are developed.

Neo-Thomism revives and systematizes the ontology of medieval scholasticism (primarily Thomas Aquinas). Various versions of existentialism, trying to overcome psychologism in the interpretation of human nature, describe the structure of human experiences as characteristics of being itself. Heidegger, in his “fundamental ontology,” isolates “pure subjectivity” through the analysis of existing human existence and strives to free it from “inauthentic” forms of existence. In this case, being is understood as transcendence, not identical to its objectified manifestations, i.e., existing. In modern bourgeois philosophy, such trends are opposed by neopositivism, which considers all attempts to revive philosophy as relapses of the errors of philosophy and theology of the past. From the point of view of neopositivism, all antinomies and problems of ontology are solved within the framework of science or eliminated through the logical analysis of language.

Marxist philosophy, based on the theory of reflection and disclosure of the dialectic of subject and object in the process of human practical activity, has overcome the opposition between ontology and epistemology, which is characteristic of pre-Marxist and modern Western philosophy. The fundamental principle of dialectical materialism is the coincidence of dialectics, logic and theory of knowledge. The laws of thinking and the laws of being coincide in their content: the dialectic of concepts is a reflection of the dialectical movement of the real world. The categories of materialist dialectics have ontological content and at the same time perform epistemological functions: reflecting the objective world, they serve as steps of its knowledge.

Modern scientific knowledge, which is characterized by a high level of abstraction, gives rise to a number of ontological problems associated with the adequate interpretation of theoretical concepts and justification of the theoretical foundations of new directions and methodological approaches (for example, quantum mechanics, cosmology, cybernetics, systems approach).

Basic forms of being.

The category of being allows for any form of existence of the world. The world exists in an infinite variety of manifestations and forms, includes countless specific things, processes, and phenomena that are combined into certain groups that differ in the specifics of their existence. Each science examines the patterns of development of a specific specific variety of being, which is determined by the subject of this science. In philosophical analysis, it is advisable to highlight the following main specific features: forms of being:

1) The existence of things, phenomena and processes, in which, in turn, it is necessary to distinguish:

a) the existence of phenomena, processes and states of nature, the so-called “first” nature;

b) the existence of things, objects and processes produced by man, “second” nature.

2) The existence of man, in which we can distinguish:

a) human existence in the world of things;

b) specifically human existence;

3) The existence of the spiritual (ideal), in which the following are distinguished:

a) individualized spiritual;

b) objectified spiritual;

4) Being social:

a) the existence of an individual;

b) the existence of society.

The existence of things, phenomena and states of nature, or the existence of first nature, exists before, outside and independently of human consciousness. The existence of each specific natural phenomenon is limited in time and space, it is replaced by their non-existence, and nature as a whole is infinite in time and space. First nature is objective and primary reality, most of it, even after the emergence of the human race, still exists as a completely independent reality, independent of humanity.

“Second nature” - the existence of things and processes produced by man - depends on the first, but, being produced by people, it embodies the unity of natural material, a certain spiritual (ideal) knowledge, the activity of specific individuals and social functions, the purpose of these objects. The existence of things of “second nature” is a socio-historical existence, a complex natural-spiritual-social reality; it can come into conflict with the existence of the first nature, being within the framework of a single existence of things and processes.

The existence of an individual person is a unity of body and spirit. Man is both his first and second nature. It is no coincidence that in traditional, classical philosophy, man was often defined as a “thinking thing.” But the existence of man as a thinking and feeling “thing” in the natural world was one of the prerequisites for the emergence and communication, i.e. a prerequisite for the formation of the specifics of human existence. The existence of each individual person is the interaction, firstly, of a thinking and feeling “thing” as a unity of natural and spiritual being, secondly, of an individual taken at a given stage of the evolution of the world together with the world, and thirdly, as a social historical being. Its specificity is manifested, for example, in the fact that: without the normal functioning of a person’s spiritual and mental structure, a person as an integrity is not complete; a healthy, normally functioning body is a necessary prerequisite for spiritual and mental activity; human activity, human bodily actions depend on social motivation.

The existence of each individual is limited in time and space. But it is included in the boundless chain of human existence and the existence of nature and is one of the links of socio-historical existence. Human existence as a whole is a reality that is objective in relation to the consciousness of individuals and generations. But, being a unity of objective and subjective, man does not simply exist in the structure of being. Possessing the ability to cognize existence, he can influence it, unfortunately, not always positively. Therefore, it is so important for each person to realize his place and role in a single system of existence, his responsibility for the fate of human civilization.