Key aspects of the history of society development

There are many approaches to understanding what the history of world philosophy is. It seems to me that at least two of them deserve our close attention.

On the one hand, the history of philosophy is viewed as a single, one-line, cumulative process, like the history of science - knowledge gradually accumulates in the course of human history, and every thinker, every philosophical school adds its grain to the general treasury of philosophical thought. Therefore, it is believed that the philosopher of the 20th or 19th century knows much more and thinks incomparably deeper than the thinker of Antiquity, because he mastered all the ideas and concepts that were before him, he, figuratively speaking, stands on the shoulders of his predecessors. Indeed, what the ancient sage Epicurus knew is known to millions of modern students. But, what Epicurus knew at one time, only he knew, and in this sense, his knowledge is a million times more valuable.

On the other hand, many philosophers did not recognize the cumulative nature of philosophy. The main philosophical questions formulated by I. Kant sound like this: “What can I know? What should I do? What can I hope for? What is a person? To all these questions there are no, there were not and probably will not be unambiguous and exact answers. Most philosophical propositions are not proven by experience and do not follow from experience. Thus, it is impossible to prove experimentally that life and reason arose from developing nature, it is also impossible to prove that God is the foundation of the world, that human freedom necessarily follows from human nature, and so on. It would be much easier for a person to live if the most important questions of his existence could be proven one day - once and for all. As each person, in so far as he thinks, so each epoch must find answers to these questions for itself. It can hardly be argued that we are smarter, more conscientious than our ancestors, that we know better how to live with dignity than Socrates knew. It cannot be argued that Shakespeare is deeper and more significant than the ancient Greek poet Archilochus, just as it cannot be said that Hegel is smarter and more significant than Aristotle, who lived many centuries earlier.

Philosophy is the oldest science, and at the same time it is always young, because the knowledge and ideas put forward by thinkers never become obsolete.

Now people would laugh at the statements of ancient physicists that heavy bodies fall down and light ones fly up, but no one will laugh at the philosophical ideas of Socrates and his main conclusion, that the highest human wisdom is to know that you you don't know anything. Or over the statement of Diogenes that there are many people, and it is very difficult to find a person among them, although both Socrates and Diogenes lived more than two thousand years ago.

For example, modern physics has gone far ahead in comparison with Antiquity. Ancient Greek science claimed that all things consist of fire, water, air and earth, she was looking for various combinations of these elements. Today's physical science includes more than thirty disciplines, to become a specialist in one of them, you need to spend half your life. And philosophy, both in antiquity and now, is struggling with the same questions formulated by I. Kant.

Therefore, the second point of view seems preferable to me - philosophy is not a cumulative process of accumulating knowledge, but a reflection of a person’s eternal attempts to know himself: his capabilities, his abilities, his place in the world around him, the meaning of his existence. Each philosophy grows out of the originality of the culture on the basis of which it is formed. If in the field of exact sciences there is an idea of a certain progress of knowledge, of an ever more accurate and complete approximation to reality, then in philosophy one cannot speak of a simple elimination of errors in the process of replacing earlier stages of development with later ones, because each era with its various theories is completely different. - a new approach to the study of the same subject and comprehends it in a new aspect. Each philosophy is a concentrated expression of its time - "an era captured in thought" - Hegel.

The modern understanding of the essence of society as a special form of purposeful and reasonably organized joint activity of large groups of people is based on ideas and concepts dating back to the second half of the 19th century. K. Marx developed a dialectically materialistic concept of society, the essence of which is the provision on the method of production of material goods, which is formed objectively, i.e. regardless of the will and consciousness of people, and mainly determines the way of being of the "connective organism". From a certain form of material production “... follows, firstly, a certain structure of society, and secondly, a certain attitude of people to nature. Their state system, and their spiritual way of life is determined by both one and the other. “(K. Marx). History appears as a "natural-historical process", where objective "lawstrends" operate in combination with a subjective factor. The strength of this concept is the doctrine of the special "sensual-supersensory" nature of "social matter", the duality of the existence of man and society, as well as the idea of the evolution of social ties depending on the forms of people's existence and their joint activities. However, in this concept, a number of provisions, in particular, on the basis and superstructure, on private property, on the historical mission of the proletariat, on the inevitability of the world revolution, have not been confirmed in real socio-historical practice.

In the 19th century, the development of naturalistic approaches to explaining the phenomena of society and man continued. From these positions, society is seen as a natural continuation of natural and cosmic patterns. The course of the history and fate of peoples is mainly determined by the rhythms of the Cosmos and solar activity (A. Chizhevsky, L. Gumilyov), the characteristics of the natural and climatic environment (L. Mechnikov), or the natural organization of man (sociobiology). Society is regarded as the highest, but far from the most successful creation of nature, and man as the most imperfect living being, weighed down by the genetic desire for destruction and violence. This leads to an increase in the threat to the existence of mankind and the possibility of its transition to other forms of being.