What are the three historical forms of philosophy?

Philosophy, as the unity of world outlook and methodology, is essentially the way of thinking or mode of thinking embodied in philosophy. A certain philosophical thinking system or viewpoint is determined by a certain philosophical thinking mode. In this sense, a certain philosophy is a certain way of thinking. around the world

In the history of philosophy development, the development of philosophy has experienced three historical forms: ancient philosophy, modern philosophy and modern philosophy. Marxist philosophy is the origin of modern philosophy. These three philosophical ways of thinking are the ancient way of thinking which is biased towards unity, the modern way of thinking which is biased towards opposition and.

Modern dialectical thinking mode of the whole structure of unity of opposites. The connection and difference between these three philosophies are mainly manifested in the connection and difference between the three philosophical thinking modes. Below, we express our views on the above issues in order to teach colleagues.

First, the ancient philosophical way of thinking that pursues harmony and advocates unity.

According to the logic of the development of world history, China's traditional philosophy and ancient Greek and Roman philosophy both belong to the category of ancient philosophy, so there are great similarities in the way of thinking. They pursue harmony in thinking direction and unity in thinking mode. This is its most essential thinking feature.

The ancient Chinese nation is a nation that emphasizes peace, and has formed a tradition of pursuing harmony and unity since the Yin and Zhou Dynasties. The "Five Elements Theory" is about "harmony", and it is about "harmony with real creatures, and the same is not continued" (Mandarin Zheng language). In other words, everything is made up of different elements, which is "harmony". If we just put the same things together, it will damage the existence and development of things. "Yin-Yang Theory" talks about "order" and holds that only the balance between Yin and Yang Can can maintain the established order of things and maintain their existence and development. In the sense of value, the imbalance between Yin and Yang will produce evil, and only the balance between Yin and Yang Can will produce realistic goodness, so we advocate a neutral and coordinated attitude in the relationship between Yin and Yang. Because most ancient philosophers in China were politicians or moralists, the question they raised was "What is the ideal social state" at first, and their greatest concern was what kind of human relations should be established to help maintain social stability and realize the ideal social state. So they all put the maintenance of the established social order above everything else. Therefore, although they admit the objectivity of contradictions, they are used to and tend to treat the struggle and transformation of both sides of contradictions with a rational attitude considering social consequences, control and handle the development of contradictions and the transformation of opposites, and promote their desalination and reconciliation instead of going to extremes. For example, Yao, Shun and Yu ruled the world by "allowing them to be loyal to China", and Xia, Shang and Zhou ruled the world by "being loyal to China". Confucius further affirmed the thinking method of "harmony without difference" and "holding two purposes", developed the theory of contradiction and harmony with "neutralization" as the goal, and further put forward the thought of "golden mean". He said: "The golden mean is also called virtue, which is even worse." (The Analects of Confucius Yongye) Zisi wrote the book The Doctrine of the Mean, which is a way of life, that is, to be moderate at all times and not to go to extremes. Zhang Zai also talked about the objectivity of contradiction and put forward the famous thesis of "one thing and two bodies", but his purpose was to demonstrate the importance and inevitability of "harmony". He said, "If an elephant is right, it will be the opposite. If there is an enemy against Sri Lanka, the enemy will reconcile. " (Zhengmeng Taihe) In other words, the end of the contradictory struggle should not be a leap from the old quality to the new quality, but still a return to the unity of the old quality. It can be said that "harmony is the most important" is a major tradition and feature of China's ancient philosophical thinking mode. As Mr. Cai Yuanpei said, "I, the Chinese nation, who hold extreme views, have failed after a test, but the golden mean is often recognized by most people and is more lasting" (Cai Yuanpei's Philosophy, 355 pages, Hebei People's Publishing House, 1985 edition). This sentence really captures the essence of China's ancient philosophical way of thinking.

The thinking mode of ancient western philosophy is also biased towards the overall pursuit of harmony. Thales, the earliest philosopher in ancient Greece, said that "water" is the origin of the world, and water produces everything, and everything returns to water; Heraclitus said that "fire" is the source of all things, fire produces all things, and all things return to fire; Democritus said ".

"atom" is the starting base of all things, which constitutes all things, and all things are reduced to atoms; Plato said that "idea" is the origin of all things, and all concrete things are just copies or shadows of ideas. Aristotle, the master of ancient Greek philosophy, further regarded form as the most fundamental thing that constitutes things.

. Ancient Greek philosophers were mostly natural scientists. They are keen on exploring nature, and most people adhere to the basic idea of "the unity of all things" in their way of thinking. This is actually another form of harmonious concept and holistic concept. Because of this, although ancient Greek philosophers saw and admitted the objectivity of contradictions and struggles,

Sex, but they strongly reject contradictions and confrontation, and hold a firm negative attitude towards things that may cause contradictions and confrontation. For example, they reject falsehood, evil and ugliness, and only pursue absolute and unique truth, perfection and perfection. From an ethical point of view, Aristotle talks about the best, and the best is the golden mean, that is, the golden mean.

, that is, against up and down. Therefore, Aristotle tried to find a "middle way" between asceticism and sensualism, that is, "middle way".

Both western and China ancient philosophy pursue harmony and neutralization, but the way to achieve harmony or neutralization is not to find a theoretical "middle point" between the opposing sides. However, in order to maintain a certain social order or natural order, the existing order is rationalized by praising one and belittling the other.

And stability, to borrow a modern philosophical term, is to keep the main and secondary aspects of contradictions unchanged, and its status and role unchanged. This is the case with China's ancient "three cardinal guides and five permanent members". Ancient Greece only emphasized truth, goodness and beauty, not falsehood, ugliness and ugliness. It is in this sense that I

Scientists just use "whole" instead of "whole".

The fundamental reason why China's ancient philosophy and ancient Greek philosophy tend to be harmonious in their way of thinking is that their overall way of thinking is circular theory. Some people say that the ancient philosophical method is simple dialectics, but this is actually an exaggeration. Because whether it's China's Confucianism,

Talking about "harmony", Taoism says that "Tao" gives birth to all things, or ancient Greek philosophy says that "opposition leads to harmony", all of which are said in the framework of circular theory. When they talk about harmony as a whole, they will reject the reasonable position and function of the opposite, and the movement of rejecting the opposite lacks historical direction.

There will be no qualitative change. This kind of movement can only lead to circular movement, and there is no problem of development at all.

The thinking mode of ancient philosophy pursues pure unity and harmony, and inhibits the opposite and its development, resulting in the almost single and simple nature of the constituent elements in the whole culture. In line with this, the form of thought has been greatly developed, even to the point where form overrides content.

The second is the modern way of thinking that pursues diversity and tends to be antagonistic.

From the logic of historical development, modern philosophy mainly refers to the philosophy of the whole capitalist era since the Renaissance, including the so-called modern western philosophy. The emergence and development of modern philosophical thinking mode is directly based on the opposition to ancient philosophical thinking mode. if

The thinking mode of ancient philosophy pursues harmony and emphasizes the holistic method. Then, modern western philosophy developed a philosophical way of thinking that was biased towards opposition and focused on analysis. It emphasizes the diversified development and imbalance of individual elements in the whole thing, and pays attention to the inevitability of opposition and conflict.

Analyzing the historical reasons why the thinking mode of modern western philosophy has developed into an antagonistic thinking mode can make us have a deeper understanding of this issue.

First, the tradition of European medieval nominalism attaching importance to individuals and denying universal truth became the beginning of opposing thinking in modern philosophy. In medieval scholasticism, there was a debate between realism and nominalism. Realism, from the perspective of maintaining Christian theology, believes that it generally exists before individual things.

, is independent of the objective existence of individual things, more real than the individual. On the contrary, nominalists believe that there are only individuals, no commonness, only nouns or concepts that people use to express individual things. Here, although nominalists wrongly denied the truth of universality or * * *, they attached importance to the idea that individuals or concrete things really existed, which was completely contrary to the ancient Greek thinking method of "the unity of all things", leaving a far-reaching impact on later generations and providing theoretical guidance for the diversified development of ideology and culture.

Secondly, the reanalysis method in modern natural science research provides the internal and most direct motive force for the opposing thinking of modern philosophy. Modern natural science takes concrete things as the research object and conducts classified research. Bacon, as the originator of modern experimental science, only admitted to "living according to certain rules"

The authenticity of "moving individual things" holds that the work and purpose of human knowledge is to study the laws and essence of the activities of these individual things. Here, Bacon actually acknowledged the diversity of the existing forms of the objective world. Leibniz talked about monism in philosophical ontology and said that "everything is different"

, thus clearly put forward the diversity of things. In his view, the number of lists is infinite, and there is no quantitative difference between lists, only qualitative difference. "Because there are no two identical things in essence, it is impossible to find an internal difference according to the inherent nature."

(Selected Readings of the Original Works of Western Philosophy, Volume 477, The Commercial Press 198 1 Edition). Since there are only a few real and changeable things, modern natural science characterized by experiments must be based on direct perceptual things and pay more attention to studying and describing the "details" of nature. That is to say, contrary to the ancient people's emphasis on universality and wholeness, modern people emphasize the particularity and individuality of the world, and from the individual's point of view, they decompose objects into various elements and attributes and study the particularity of these elements.

Thirdly, Hume denied the causal relationship of things, which also had a noticeable influence on the opposing thinking mode of modern philosophy. Hume's philosophical thought is an extreme manifestation of the development of modern empirical philosophy. Starting from pure sensory experience, he denied the objective and realistic basis of human causal concept.

The acquisition of the concept of causality is completely regarded as a man-made thing. In his view, people do not have the impression that there is a causal link between things, nor do they have the ability to obtain causal links. In his view, the concept of "connection" is absolutely useless whether it is used in philosophical reasoning or in daily reasoning.

Meaningful. " So the correct description should be like this: "We can only say that one object or thing follows another object or thing, but we can't say that this produces another, and this produces another." (Hume: A Study of Human Understanding, pp. 68 and 75, Commercial Press, 1972)

Because Hume's view was cloaked in empiricism and hung with the signboard of "positivism", it had a great influence in natural science, which contributed to the formation of classified research methods and opposing ways of thinking at that time.

Fourthly, the value orientation of individualism leads to the estrangement and opposition between individuals and society, and also has a very profound impact on people's antagonistic way of thinking. The development of private ownership in western society and the birth of capitalist mode of production exposed the pure interest relationship naked.

Style dominates all the activities of the whole society, thus forming and developing the social value orientation of individualism. Starting from opposing religious oppression, Renaissance thinkers have long advocated breaking free from social shackles and living for their own purposes, not for others. Hobbes, helvetius, etc

On the other hand, people demonstrate the rationality of starting from people's perceptual needs at the philosophical level, regard personal interests as the moral basis of society, and think that personal interests are the source of social interests, and social interests should be subordinate to personal interests. These theories essentially determine the basic model of modern European ethics and social psychology.

. Hegel was unlucky because he advocated the supremacy of the state. It should be acknowledged that the emergence and development of modern individualism has played a great progressive role in Europe compared with the supremacy of society (state) that ignored and suppressed the existence and development of individuals in ancient society. However, individualism as a bourgeois life

View, putting individuals or personal interests above others and the whole will inevitably lead to the opposition between people, individuals and society, the excessive expansion of individual subject desire, and the extreme egoism, which will inevitably affect the harmony and stability of social order, lead to the opposition and separation of interpersonal relationships, and cause society.

Unstable.

Fifth, due to the excessive publicity of human subjectivity and the conquest of nature, the era of science and technology and industrialization has developed. However, the development of science, technology and industrialization not only improves the ability of human beings to conquer and control nature, but also brings new disasters and difficulties to human beings, making people believe in their own abilities.

In order to shake, there is hesitation, and on the issue of development, people become helpless and at a loss. This situation and trend also aggravate the continuation and development of antagonistic thinking mode.

Due to the comprehensive effect of the above reasons, western culture has further developed from binary opposition to pluralistic opposition and extreme development. The ancient falsehood, evil and ugliness are not only recognized and affirmed, but also show a general trend of independent development. This was the most basic in ancient times.

Impossible, it can also be said that the antagonistic thinking mode is the most profound internal core and mode of modern western culture. The "era of analysis" put forward by the west from the perspective of modern science and the "principle of opposition" put forward from the perspective of cultural research essentially reflect an opposing feature of modern western thinking mode.

Some important signs. From the perspective of philosophy and cultural development, modern western thinking has more advantages than the ancient thinking mode which tends to be integrated. It broke the shackles of the holistic thinking of ancient elements, differentiated and independently developed various elements within the whole, thus promoting the emergence of new elements.

, thus making the development of human culture more diversified and enriched. Of course, the diversified and autonomous development of various cultural elements will easily lead to extremes and disorder, resulting in various drawbacks. However, from the consistency of practice and cognition, from the theory of practice development process,

This extreme development is precisely the opportunity for the inheritance and development of human culture. Because extreme development and sharp opposition easily arouse people's attention and reflection, thus providing mature opportunities and conditions for people to correct these drawbacks and contradictions. One of the causes of Marxist philosophical dialectics is the sharp confrontation of various contradictions in modern society. One of its basic historical tasks is to explore the roots of modern social opposition and explore ways to solve problems and contradictions from the perspective of universal connection and eternal development.

Third, the whole and systematic modern dialectical thinking mode of unity of opposites.

We believe that only the dialectical thinking mode of Marxism is the philosophical thinking mode with modern significance. Dialectics has two basic characteristics, one is the concept of universal connection, and the other is the concept of eternal development. The core of dialectics is unity of opposites, or the core of dialectical thinking is unity of opposites. correct

As a dialectical way of thinking, unity is formed on the basis of critically inheriting the ancient way of thinking that favors the whole pursuit of harmony and the modern way of thinking that favors the analysis of opposites. It is a brand-new philosophical way of thinking, which has a higher form than modern way of thinking. This is mainly manifested in the following aspects.

(A) fully affirmed the rationality and inevitability of modern antagonistic thinking mode in the historical development.

1. Philosophically, Marxism holds that ancient philosophy focused on studying the origin of the world from the perspective of objects, emphasizing generality and inevitability, while ignoring individuality, particularity and contingency; Emphasis on the study of nature, while ignoring the dynamic role of human beings in front of nature. Modern philosophy pays more attention to the individual.

The study of sex, particularity and contingency attaches importance to people's use of natural laws and emphasizes people's subjectivity, and so on. All these are helpful to make up for the deficiency of ancient philosophy research, so that two aspects of things have the opportunity to be studied concretely and deeply, thus affirming the historical rationality of opposing thinking mode.

2. In terms of ethics and political concepts, Marxism believes that ancient ethics and political concepts lay particular stress on the argument of the supremacy of nation, state and society, ignoring individuals and their interests and relative independence, and suppressing personal development. Modern ethical and political concepts pay more attention to individual's subjective freedom and rationality of interests, put forward the slogan of natural human rights and freedom and equality, and emphasize individual's freedom and independent development, which has important positive significance in anti-feudalism, anti-religion and individual liberation.

3. Aesthetically, ancient times emphasized perfection, harmony and ethics. Modern aesthetics, on the other hand, has broken the simplicity and tranquility of the ancient Venus style, recognized and developed new aesthetic styles such as sublime and ugly, and put forward diversified development requirements for people's appreciation interest, thus making the artistic style more colorful.

May be aesthetically satisfied at different levels and in different aspects.

4. Scientifically speaking, Marxism believes that the ancient people's understanding of the objective world is in a state of confusion and ambiguity due to the simple intuitive experience and the low level of science and technology. They emphasize the whole and ignore the parts, only to see the forest without trees. Although verbally speaking, heteropoly constitutes a whole, but

Actually, I don't know the overall details. However, modern science has further overcome this limitation of ancient science. With the help of observation and experiment, we can directly go deep into the internal details of things. "It is beneficial for organisms to break down nature into various parts and divide various processes and things in nature into certain categories.

According to its various anatomical forms, it promoted the "great progress" of natural science (Selected Works of Marx and Engels, 2nd edition, Volume 3, page 734).

In a word, the antagonistic thinking mode of modern philosophy overcomes and makes up for the limitations of the thinking mode of ancient philosophy in all aspects, promotes the development and progress of society and promotes the new development of philosophy.

(2) Criticized the disadvantages and limitations of modern opposing thinking, and developed a new dialectical thinking of unity of opposites.

1. Modern antagonistic thinking only talks about particularity, individuality, contingency and difference, but ignores universality, * * homosexuality, inevitability and consistency. Only pay attention to the part and ignore the whole; Only pay attention to details, not to the whole; Only pay attention to empirical thinking, ignoring theoretical thinking. The necessity, also suddenly.

Ignoring the movement, connection and development of things is naturally mechanized and static. In view of these problems, Marxist philosophical dialectics emphasizes that the existence of objective things is dialectical. We must persist in understanding the overall system characteristics of objective nature and the characteristics of contact development, and understand the "fineness" of nature.

Festival ",that is, the motive force, process and mechanism of the interrelated development of things, that is to say, we should understand a series of dialectical relations at macro and micro levels, such as universality and particularity, inevitability and contingency, whole and part, movement and stillness.

2. The modern antagonistic thinking mode emphasizes that individuals and personal interests are higher than social and social interests, only stresses personal freedom of will, ignores the overall harmony of society, and only cares about oneself regardless of others, leading to cross-flow of human desires and material desires, and all social relations are introduced into money relations, thus putting all spears.

Shields are pushed to the extreme. The existence of these problems not only restricts the harmonious development of society, but also restricts the free development of individuals. In this regard, Marxism believes that it is necessary to eliminate private ownership, establish public ownership, realize new forms of social organization, and re-establish the relationship between people and individuals and society.

The way of communication between individuals promotes the coordinated development of individuals and society. And put forward collectivism as the value-oriented principle of society. The so-called collectivism is neither a simple theory of social (collective) supremacy nor a neglect of the legitimacy and inevitability of personal interests and personal freedom. Its accurate historical positioning,

It is to establish a harmonious relationship between individuals and society (collective) and others on the basis of fundamental interests.

(3) The research focus of the thinking mode of unity of opposites is the study of structural integrity among the internal elements of things. One of its important signs is the introduction of the concept of intermediary.

Materialist dialectics holds that the whole material world is a whole, and its internal components are interrelated, interactive and transformed on the basis of opposition and difference. This connection and transformation is realized through intermediary. The mode of thinking of modern philosophy is stuck in opposites, because it fails to grasp the intermediary between opposites. Once the intermediary between opposites is grasped, the foundation of the unity of opposites is found, and a series of problems about the movement, connection, change and development of things are easy to understand. Therefore, we might as well say that grasping the intermediary relationship between internal opposites of things is a breakthrough in the way of thinking from opposition to unity of opposites. Because grasping the intermediary link not only makes us finally reveal and grasp the dialectical essence of the connection and development of things, but also makes it possible for us to go deep into things and comprehensively explore and grasp the internal mechanism that constitutes the connection and development of things from the perspective of overall structure. In this sense, the thinking mode of unity of opposites is also a systematic and holistic thinking mode. In this way of thinking, things that are interrelated and unified are based on opposites. We must grasp unity in opposition; Things that are opposite and different from each other are interconnected and unified through the intermediary. We should grasp the opposition in unity. Things form a whole on the basis of opposition and unity. The thinking mode of unity of opposites is a scientific reflection of the whole system of things.

Fourthly, the dialectical development law among the three ways of thinking is seen from the negative law of negation, and the scientific nature of the thinking mode of unity of opposites is further demonstrated.

Judging from the development history of thinking, it has gone through a process of negation and negation, from the ancient way of thinking that is biased towards integrity to the modern way of thinking that is biased towards opposition, and then to the Marxist way of thinking that pays attention to the overall structure of unity of opposites. In ancient times, a holistic way of thinking was the starting point of this process.

, is the affirmative stage. It re-forms the integrity and ignores the diversity of internal factors. However, both the internal structure of objective things and the structure of subjective thoughts are based on certain elements, all of which have elements, structures and functions, and all follow the law of mutual development of the three. Therefore, the elements are bound to change and develop qualitatively and quantitatively. In modern times, the antagonistic way of thinking is the negative stage. The main object of negation is to affirm the characteristics of formal integration in the stage, liberating many elements from the integrated form and making it develop in a diversified direction. It is in this sense that I describe the characteristics of this stage as an overwhelming stage. Breaking the shackles of old forms is one of the important conditions for the development of new elements. The Marxist thinking mode of unity of opposites, focusing on the overall structure, is the stage of negation of negation. Its first characteristic is to affirm and inherit the harmony of ancient thinking mode, and to deny and reverse the important structure of modern thinking mode; The second feature, as a denial of modern antagonistic thinking mode, is not only a denial of the limitation of ancient thinking mode that ignores the integrity of form, but also a diversified development based on different elements. That is to say, the elements on which the modern dialectical thinking mode is based are more complex and diverse, which makes both of them emphasize formal problems, but they are different in essence. In the ancient way of thinking, due to the lack of intermediary, the unity between elements is direct, and the structure is functionally characterized by seeking common ground while reserving differences. In dialectical thinking, due to the role of intermediary, we can both seek common ground and seek differences, and pay equal attention to direct contact and indirect contact, thus forming an overall structural contact. In this structural connection, many elements with different properties show new attributes and characteristics and play new functions. That is to say, in this overall structure based on the unity of opposites, elements of different natures can exist and develop independently in a specific sense, and can coexist harmoniously through the intermediary, thus realizing the harmonious unity of content (elements) and form (structure) at a higher level.

(Originally published in Qilu Daily 1998 03)