Filozofia

I. *GENURI ŞI STILURI ÎN FILOZOFIE

 Immanuel Kant-Criticismul
 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel –
Filozofia speculativă
 Auguste Compte-Filozofia pozitivă
 Friedrich Nietzsche-Filozofia voinţei
de putere
 Edmund Husserl-Fenomenologia
 Filozofie şi analiză logică a
limbajului:
a. Rudolf Carnap
b. Ludwig Wittgenstein

II. FILOZOFIE ŞI VIAŢĂ

 Platon
 Baruch Spinoza
 Lucian Blaga
 Bertrand Russell
 Karl Jaspers

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 Genuri şi stiluri în filozofie

Concepţia despre filozofie a lui Immanuel Kant

-Criticismul-

1. Concepţia sa despre filozofie este redată printr-un

fragment din principala sa lucrare, Critica raţiunii
pure.
2. teme:
a. contextul:emprism +raţionalism= revoluţia
copernicană
b. domenii:
i. gnoseologie
ii. filozofie practică
c. idealism transcendental
d. concepte: lucri in sine, fenomen, , raţiune,
intelect, snesibilitate, intuiţie, categorie, idee,
analitică, transcendental, voinţă, datorie,
imperativ (categoric, ipotetic), maximă
3. Filozofia sa mai este cunoscută şi sub numele de
criticism.Aceasta deoarece Kant a considerat că
principala sarcină a filozofiei constă în realizarea unei
critici a cunoaşterii umane.Prin critică trebuie să
înţelegem discriminare analitcă (de la grecescul krisis
–discriminare raţională).

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 4. Immanuel Kant a considerat că filozofia trebuie să
devină asemenea unei ştiinţe, să fie riguroasă în
determinarea afirmaţiilor sale despre lumea
înconjurătoare, iar acest lucru se poate face doar
printr-o determinare a capacităţii noastre de
cunoaştere ( redată prin cele trei faclutăţi ale
cunoaşterii din Critica raţiunii pure: sensibilitatea,
intelectul şi raţiunea).
5. Kant a încercat astfel o reconstrucţie a ideii de
filozofie, care ar fi trebuit să aibă următoarele sarcini:
a. respingerea vechiului stil de filozofare
speculativă (metafizica);
b. reconstruirea metafizicii sub forma riguroasă
a unei ştiinţe;
c. analiza (critica) celor trei facultăţi de
cunoaştere şi precizarea limitelor fiecăreia din
ele;
d. stabilirea raportului dintre experienţa
simţurilor şi aportul formelor mentale în
constituirea cunoaşterii;
e. verificarea validităţii cunoştinţelor prin
raportarea la date eixstente în experienţă.
Principalele concepte şi idei, în ordinea importanţei mesajului
textului, sunt: criticism, analiză, critică a cunoaşterii,limite
ale cunoaşterii, facultăţi ale cunoaşterii, sensibilitate,
intelect, raţiune,experienţă,respingere a metafizicii,
cunoaştere speculativă.
Immanuel Kant

1. Immanuel Kant is one of the most influential

philosophers in the history of Western

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 philosophy.
2. His contributions to
 metaphysics
 epistemology(C.R.Pur)
 ethics( C.R.Pr, Baz. Metaf. morav)
 aesthetics (C.R Fac. de Jud.)
 have had a profound impact on almost every
philosophical movement that followed him.

CRITICA RAŢIUNII PURE

1. A large part of Kant's work addresses the
question "What can we know?"
2. The answer, if it can be stated simply, is that
our knowledge is constrained to mathematics
and the science of the natural, empirical world.
3. It is impossible, Kant argues, to extend
knowledge to the supersensible realm of
speculative metaphysics.
4. The reason that knowledge has these constraints,
Kant argues, is that the mind plays an active role
in constituting the features of experience and
limiting the mind's access to the empirical realm
of space and time.

Historical Background to Kant

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1. There are two major historical movements in the
early modern period of philosophy that had a
significant impact on Kant:
a. Empiricism and
b. Rationalism.
2. Kant argues that both the method and the content
of these philosophers' arguments contain serious
flaws.
3. A central epistemological problem for
philosophers in both movements was determining
how we can escape from within the confines of
the human mind and the immediately knowable
content of our own thoughts to acquire
knowledge of the world outside of us.
4. The Empiricists sought to accomplish this
through the senses and a posteriori reasoning.
5. The Rationalists attempted to use a priori
reasoning to build the necessary bridge.
6. A posteriori reasoning depends upon
experience or contingent events in the world to
provide us with information. That "Bill Clinton is
president of the United States in 1999," for
example, is something that I can know only
through experience;
a. I cannot determine this to be true through
an analysis of the concepts of "president"
or "Bill Clinton."
7. A priori reasoning, in contrast, does not depend
upon experience to inform it.

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 a. The concept "bachelor" logically entails
the ideas of an unmarried, adult, human
male without my needing to conduct a
survey of bachelors and men who are
unmarried.
8. Kant believed that this twofold distinction in
kinds of knowledge was inadequate to the task of
understanding metaphysics for reasons we will
discuss in a moment.

Kant's Answers to his Predecessors

1. Kant's answer to the problems generated by the
two traditions mentioned above changed the face
of philosophy.
2. First, Kant argued that that old division between
a priori truths and a posteriori truths employed
by both camps was insufficient to describe the
sort of metaphysical claims that were under
dispute.
3. An analysis of knowledge also requires a
distinction between synthetic and analytic truths.
4. In an analytic claim, the predicate is contained
within the subject.
a. In the claim, "Every body occupies
space," the property of occupying space is

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 revealed in an analysis of what it means to
be a body.
5. The subject of a synthetic claim, however, does
not contain the predicate.
a. In, "This tree is 120 feet tall," the
concepts are synthesized or brought
together to form a new claim that is not
contained in any of the individual
concepts.
6. The Empiricists had not been able to prove
synthetic a priori claims like "Every event must
have a cause," because they had conflated
"synthetic" and "a posteriori" as well as
"analytic" and "a priori."
a. Then they had assumed that the two
resulting categories were exhaustive.
b. A synthetic a priori claim, Kant argues, is
one that must be true without appealing
to experience, yet the predicate is not
logically contained within the subject, so
it is no surprise that the Empiricists failed
to produce the sought after justification.
c. The Rationalists had similarly conflated
the four terms and mistakenly proceeded
as if claims like, "The self is a simple
substance," could be proven analytically
and a priori.
7. Synthetic a priori claims, Kant argues, demand
an entirely different kind of proof than those

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 required for analytic, a priori claims or synthetic,
a posteriori claims.
8. Indications for how to proceed, Kant says, can be
found in the examples of synthetic a priori claims
in natural science and mathematics,
specifically geometry.
9. Claims like Newton's, "the quantity of matter is
always preserved," and the geometer's claim, "the
angles of a triangle always add up to 180
degrees" are known a priori, but they cannot be
known merely from an analysis of the concepts of
matter or triangle.
a. We must "go outside and beyond the
concept. . . joining to it a priori in thought
something which I have not thought in it."
(B 18)
b. A synthetic a priori claim constructs upon
and adds to what is contained analytically
in a concept without appealing to
experience.
10. So if we are to solve the problems generated by
Empiricism and Rationalism, the central question
of metaphysics in the Critique of Pure Reason
reduces to "How are synthetic a priori
judgments possible?"
a. If we can answer that question, then we
can determine the:
i. Possibility
ii. legitimacy, and
iii. range of all metaphysical claims.

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Kant's Copernican Revolution:
Mind Making Nature
1. Kant's answer to the question is complicated, but
his conclusion is that a number of synthetic a
priori claims, like those from geometry and the
natural sciences, are true because of the
structure of the mind that knows them.
2. "Every event must have a cause" cannot be
proven by experience, but experience is
impossible without it because it describes the way
the mind must necessarily order its
representations.
3. We can understand Kant's argument again by
considering his predecessors. According to the
Rationalist and Empiricist traditions, the mind is
passive either because:
a. it finds itself possessing innate, well-
formed ideas ready for analysis,
b. or because it receives ideas of objects into
a kind of empty theater, or blank slate.
4. Kant's crucial insight here is to argue that
experience of a world as we have it is only
possible if the mind provides a systematic
structuring of its representations.

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5. This structuring is below the level of, or logically
prior to, the mental representations that the
Empiricists and Rationalists analyzed.
6. Their epistemological and metaphysical theories
could not adequately explain the sort of
judgments or experience we have because
a. they only considered the results of the
mind's interaction with the world,
b. not the nature of the mind's
contribution.
7. Kant's methodological innovation was to employ
what he calls a transcendental argument to
prove synthetic a priori claims.
8. Typically, a transcendental argument attempts to
prove a conclusion about the necessary
structure of knowledge on the basis of an
incontrovertible mental act.
9. Kant argues in the Refutation of Material
Idealism that "There are objects that exist in
space and time outside of me," (B 274)
a. which cannot be proven by a priori or a
posteriori methods, is a necessary
condition of the possibility of being aware
of one's own existence. It would not be
possible to be aware of myself as existing,
he says, without presupposing the existing
of something permanent outside of me to
distinguish myself from. I am aware of
myself as existing. Therefore, there is
something permanent outside of me.

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This argument is one of many transcendental arguments
that Kant gives that focuses on the contribution that the
mind itself makes to its experience. These arguments
lead Kant to conclude that the Empiricists' assertion that
experience is the source of all our ideas. It must be the
mind's structuring, Kant argues, that makes experience
possible. If there are features of experience that the mind
brings to objects rather than given to the mind by objects,
that would explain why they are indispensable to
experience but unsubstantiated in it. And that would
explain why we can give a transcendental argument for
the necessity of these features. Kant thought that
Berkeley and Hume identified at least part of the mind's
a priori contribution to experience with the list of claims
that they said were unsubstantiated on empirical grounds:
"Every event must have a cause," "There are mind-
independent objects that persist over time," and
"Identical subjects persist over time." The empiricist
project must be incomplete since these claims are
necessarily presupposed in our judgments, a point
Berkeley and Hume failed to see. So, Kant argues that a
philosophical investigation into the nature of the external
world must be as much an inquiry into the features and
activity of the mind that knows it.

The idea that the mind plays an active role in structuring

reality is so familiar to us now that it is difficult for us to
see what a pivotal insight this was for Kant. He was well
aware of the idea's power to overturn the philosophical
worldviews of his contemporaries and predecessors,

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however. He even somewhat immodestly likens his
situation to that of Copernicus in revolutionizing our
worldview. On the Lockean view, mental content is
given to the mind by the objects in the world. Their
properties migrate into the mind, revealing the true
nature of objects. Kant says, "Thus far it has been
assumed that all our cognition must conform to objects"
(B xvi). But that approach cannot explain why some
claims like, "every event must have a cause," are a priori
true. Similarly, Copernicus recognized that the
movement of the stars cannot be explained by making
them revolve around the observer; it is the observer that
must be revolving. Analogously, Kant argued that we
must reformulate the way we think about our relationship
to objects. It is the mind itself which gives objects at
least some of their characteristics because they must
conform to its structure and conceptual capacities. Thus,
the mind's active role in helping to create a world that is
experiencable must put it at the center of our
philosophical investigations. The appropriate starting
place for any philosophical inquiry into knowledge, Kant
decides, is with the mind that can have that knowledge.

Kant's critical turn toward the mind of the knower is

ambitious and challenging. Kant has rejected the
dogmatic metaphysics of the Rationalists that promises
supersensible knowledge. And he has argued that
Empiricism faces serious limitations. His transcendental
method will allow him to analyze the metaphysical
requirements of the empirical method without venturing

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into speculative and ungrounded metaphysics. In this
context, determining the "transcendental" components of
knowledge means determining, "all knowledge which is
occupied not so much with objects as with the mode of
our knowledge of objects in so far as this mode of
knowledge is to be possible a priori." (A 12/B 25)

The project of the Critique of Pure Reason is also

challenging because in the analysis of the mind's
transcendental contributions to experience we must
employ the mind, the only tool we have, to investigate
the mind. We must use the faculties of knowledge to
determine the limits of knowledge, so Kant's Critique of
Pure Reason is both a critique that takes pure reason as
its subject matter, and a critique that is conducted by
pure reason.

Kant's argument that the mind makes an a priori

contribution to experiences should not be mistaken for an
argument like the Rationalists' that the mind possesses
innate ideas like, "God is a perfect being." Kant rejects
the claim that there are complete propositions like this
one etched on the fabric of the mind. He argues that the
mind provides a formal structuring that allows for the
conjoining of concepts into judgments, but that
structuring itself has no content. The mind is devoid of
content until interaction with the world actuates these
formal constraints. The mind possesses a priori templates
for judgments, not a priori judgments.

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Kant's Transcendental Idealism
With Kant's claim that the mind of the knower makes an
active contribution to experience of objects before us, we
are in a better position to understand transcendental
idealism. Kant's arguments are designed to show the
limitations of our knowledge. The Rationalists believed
that we could possess metaphysical knowledge about
God, souls, substance, and so; they believed such
knowledge was transcendentally real. Kant argues,
however, that we cannot have knowledge of the realm
beyond the empirical. That is, transcendental knowledge
is ideal, not real, for minds like ours. Kant identifies two
a priori sources of these constraints. The mind has a
receptive capacity, or the sensibility, and the mind
possesses a conceptual capacity, or the understanding.

In the Transcendental Aesthetic section of the Critique,

Kant argues that sensibility is the understanding's means
of accessing objects. The reason synthetic a priori
judgments are possible in geometry, Kant argues, is that
space is an a priori form of sensibility. That is, we can
know the claims of geometry with a priori certainty
(which we do) only if experiencing objects in space is
the necessary mode of our experience. Kant also argues
that we cannot experience objects without being able to
represent them spatially. It is impossible to grasp an

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object as an object unless we delineate the region of
space it occupies. Without a spatial representation, our
sensations are undifferentiated and we cannot ascribe
properties to particular objects. Time, Kant argues, is
also necessary as a form or condition of our intuitions of
objects. The idea of time itself cannot be gathered from
experience because succession and simultaneity of
objects, the phenomena that would indicate the passage
of time, would be impossible to represent if we did not
already possess the capacity to represent objects in time.

Another way to understand Kant's point here is that it is

impossible for us to have any experience of objects that
are not in time and space. Furthermore, space and time
themselves cannot be perceived directly, so they must be
the form by which experience of objects is had. A
consciousness that apprehends objects directly, as they
are in themselves and not by means of space and time, is
possible--God, Kant says, has a purely intuitive
consciousness--but our apprehension of objects is always
mediated by the conditions of sensibility. Any discursive
or concept using consciousness (A 230/B 283) like ours
must apprehend objects as occupying a region of space
and persisting for some duration of time.

Subjecting sensations to the a priori conditions of space

and time is not sufficient to make judging objects
possible. Kant argues that the understanding must
provide the concepts, which are rules for identifying
what is common or universal in different representations.

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(A 106) He says, "without sensibility no object would be
given to us; and without understanding no object would
be thought. Thoughts without content are empty;
intuitions without concepts are blind." (B 75) Locke's
mistake was believing that our sensible apprehensions of
objects are thinkable and reveal the properties of the
objects themselves. In the Analytic of Concepts section
of the Critique, Kant argues that in order to think about
the input from sensibility, sensations must conform to the
conceptual structure that the mind has available to it. By
applying concepts, the understanding takes the
particulars that are given in sensation and identifies what
is common and general about them. A concept of
"shelter" for instance, allows me to identify what is
common in particular representations of a house, a tent,
and a cave.

The empiricist might object at this point by insisting that

such concepts do arise from experience, raising questions
about Kant's claim that the mind brings an a priori
conceptual structure to the world. Indeed, concepts like
"shelter" do arise partly from experience. But Kant raises
a more fundamental issue. An empirical derivation is not
sufficient to explain all of our concepts. As we have
seen, Hume argued, and Kant accepts, that we cannot
empirically derive our concepts of causation, substance,
self, identity, and so forth. What Hume had failed to see,
Kant argues, is that even the possibility of making
judgments about objects, to which Hume would assent,
presupposes the possession of these fundamental

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concepts. Hume had argued for a sort of associationism
to explain how we arrive at causal beliefs. My idea of a
moving cue ball, becomes associated with my idea of the
eight ball that is struck and falls into the pocket. Under
the right circumstances, repeated impressions of the
second following the first produces a belief in me that
the first causes the second.

The problem that Kant points out is that a Humean

association of ideas already presupposes that we can
conceive of identical, persistent objects that have regular,
predictable, causal behavior. And being able to conceive
of objects in this rich sense presupposes that the mind
makes several a priori contributions. I must be able to
separate the objects from each other in my sensations,
and from my sensations of myself. I must be able to
attribute properties to the objects. I must be able to
conceive of an external world with its own course of
events that is separate from the stream of perceptions in
my consciousness. These components of experience
cannot be found in experience because they constitute it.
The mind's a priori conceptual contribution to experience
can be enumerated by a special set of concepts that make
all other empirical concepts and judgments possible.
These concepts cannot be experienced directly; they are
only manifest as the form which particular judgments of
objects take. Kant believes that formal logic has already
revealed what the fundamental categories of thought are.
The special set of concepts is Kant's Table of

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Categories, which are taken mostly from Aristotle with a
few revisions:

Of Quantity

Unity

Plurality

Totality

Of Quality Of Re

Reality Inhere

Negation Causa

Limitation Comm

Of Modality

Possibility-Impossibility

Existence-Nonexistence

Necessity-Contingency

While Kant does not give a formal derivation of it, he

believes that this is the complete and necessary list of the
a priori contributions that the understanding brings to its
judgments of the world. Every judgment that the

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understanding can make must fall under the table of
categories. And subsuming spatiotemporal sensations
under the formal structure of the categories makes
judgments, and ultimately knowledge, of empirical
objects possible.

Since objects can only be experienced spatiotemporally,

the only application of concepts that yields knowledge is
to the empirical, spatiotemporal world. Beyond that
realm, there can be no sensations of objects for the
understanding to judge, rightly or wrongly. Since
intuitions of the physical world are lacking when we
speculate about what lies beyond, metaphysical
knowledge, or knowledge of the world outside the
physical, is impossible. Claiming to have knowledge
from the application of concepts beyond the bounds of
sensation results in the empty and illusory transcendent
metaphysics of Rationalism that Kant reacts against.

It should be pointed out, however, that Kant is not

endorsing an idealism about objects like Berkeley's. That
is, Kant does not believe that material objects are
unknowable or impossible. While Kant is a
transcendental idealist--he believes the nature of objects
as they are in themselves is unknowable to us--
knowledge of appearances is nevertheless possible. As
noted above, in The Refutation of Material Idealism,
Kant argues that the ordinary self-consciousness that
Berkeley and Descartes would grant implies "the
existence of objects in space outside me." (B 275)

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Consciousness of myself would not be possible if I were
not able to make determinant judgments about objects
that exist outside of me and have states that are
independent of the of my inner experience. Another way
to put the point is to say that the fact that the mind of the
knower makes the a priori contribution does not mean
that space and time or the categories are mere figments
of the imagination. Kant is an empirical realist about
the world we experience; we can know objects as they
appear to us. He gives a robust defense of science and
the study of the natural world from his argument about
the mind's role in making nature. All discursive, rational
beings must conceive of the physical world as spatially
and temporally unified, he argues. And the table of
categories is derived from the most basic, universal
forms of logical inference, Kant believes. Therefore, it
must be shared by all rational beings. So those beings
also share judgments of an intersubjective, unified,
public realm of empirical objects. Hence, objective
knowledge of the scientific or natural world is possible.
Indeed, Kant believes that the examples of Newton and
Galileo show it is actual. So Berkeley's claims that we do
not know objects outside of us and that such knowledge
is impossible are both mistaken.

In conjunction with his analysis of the possibility of

knowing empirical objects, Kant gives an analysis of the
knowing subject that has sometimes been called his
transcendental psychology. Much of Kant's argument
can be seen as subjective, not because of variations from

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mind to mind, but because the source of necessity and
universality is in the mind of the knowing subject, not in
objects themselves. Kant draws several conclusions
about what is necessarily true of any consciousness that
employs the faculties of sensibility and understanding to
produce empirical judgments. As we have seen, a mind
that employs concepts must have a receptive faculty that
provides the content of judgments. Space and time are
the necessary forms of apprehension for the receptive
faculty. The mind that has experience must also have a
faculty of combination or synthesis, the imagination for
Kant, that apprehends the data of sense, reproduces it for
the understanding, and recognizes their features
according to the conceptual framework provided by the
categories. The mind must also have a faculty of
understanding that provides empirical concepts and the
categories for judgment. The various faculties that make
judgment possible must be unified into one mind. And it
must be identical over time if it is going to apply its
concepts to objects over time. Kant here addresses
Hume's famous assertion that introspection reveals
nothing more than a bundle of sensations that we group
together and call the self. Judgments would not be
possible, Kant maintains, if the mind that senses is not
the same as the mind that possesses the forms of
sensibility. And that mind must be the same as the mind
that employs the table of categories, that contributes
empirical concepts to judgment, and that synthesizes the
whole into knowledge of a unified, empirical world. So
the fact that we can empirically judge proves, contra

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Hume, that the mind cannot be a mere bundle of
disparate introspected sensations. In his works on ethics
Kant will also argue that this mind is the source of
spontaneous, free, and moral action. Kant believes that
all the threads of his transcendental philosophy come
together in this "highest point" which he calls the
transcendental unity of apperception.

Kant's Analytic of Principles

We have seen the progressive stages of Kant's analysis of
the faculties of the mind which reveals the transcendental
structuring of experience performed by these faculties.
First, in his analysis of sensibility, he argues for the
necessarily spatiotemporal character of sensation. Then
Kant analyzes the understanding, the faculty that
applies concepts to sensory experience. He concludes
that the categories provide a necessary, foundational
template for our concepts to map onto our experience. In
addition to providing these transcendental concepts, the
understanding also is the source of ordinary empirical
concepts that make judgments about objects possible.
The understanding provides concepts as the rules for
identifying the properties in our representations.

Kant's next concern is with the faculty of judgment, "If

understanding as such is explicated as our power of
rules, then the power of judgment is the ability to
subsume under rules, i.e., to distinguish whether

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something does or does not fall under a given rule." (A
132/B 172). The next stage in Kant's project will be to
analyze the formal or transcendental features of
experience that enable judgment, if there are any such
features besides what the previous stages have identified.
The cognitive power of judgment does have a
transcendental structure. Kant argues that there are a
number of principles that must necessarily be true of
experience in order for judgment to be possible. Kant's
analysis of judgment and the arguments for these
principles are contained in his Analytic of Principles.

Within the Analytic, Kant first addresses the challenge of

subsuming particular sensations under general categories
in the Schematism section. Transcendental schemata,
Kant argues, allow us to identify the homogeneous
features picked out by concepts from the heterogeneous
content of our sensations. Judgment is only possible if
the mind can recognize the components in the diverse
and disorganized data of sense that make those
sensations an instance of a concept or concepts. A
schema makes it possible, for instance, to subsume the
concrete and particular sensations of an Airedale, a
Chihuahua, and a Labrador all under the more abstract
concept "dog."

The full extent of Kant's Copernican revolution becomes

even more clear in the rest of the Analytic of Principles.
That is, the role of the mind in making nature is not
limited to space, time, and the categories. In the Analytic

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of Principles, Kant argues that even the necessary
conformity of objects to natural law arises from the
mind. Thus far, Kant's transcendental method has
permitted him to reveal the a priori components of
sensations, the a priori concepts. In the sections titled the
Axioms, Anticipations, Analogies, and Postulates, he
argues that there are a priori judgments that must
necessarily govern all appearances of objects. These
judgments are a function of the table of categories' role
in determining all possible judgments, so the four
sections map onto the four headings of that table. I
include all of the a priori judgments, or principles, here
to illustrate the earlier claims about Kant's empirical
realism, and to show the intimate relationship Kant saw
between his project and that of the natural sciences:

Axioms of Intuition

All intuitions are extensive

magnitudes.

Anticipations of Perception

In all appearances the real that is

an object of sensation has
intensive magnitude, i.e., a
degree.

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 Postulates of Empirical
Thought

What agrees (in terms of intuition

and concepts) with the formal
conditions of experience is
possible.

What coheres with the material

conditions of experience (with
sensation) is actual.

That whose coherence with the

actual is determined according to
universal conditions of
experience is necessary (exists
necessarily)

Kant's Dialectic

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The discussion of Kant's metaphysics and epistemology
so far (including the Analytic of Principles)has been
confined primarily to the section of the Critique of Pure
Reason that Kant calls the Transcendental Analytic.
The purpose of the Analytic, we are told, is "the rarely
attempted dissection of the power of the understanding
itself." (A 65/B 90). Kant's project has been to develop
the full argument for his theory about the mind's
contribution to knowledge of the world. Once that theory
is in place, we are in a position to see the errors that are
caused by transgressions of the boundaries to knowledge
established by Kant's transcendental idealism and
empirical realism. Kant calls judgments that pretend to
have knowledge beyond these boundaries and that even
require us to tear down the limits that he has placed on
knowledge, transcendent judgments. The
Transcendental Dialectic section of the book is devoted
to uncovering the illusion of knowledge created by
transcendent judgments and explaining why the
temptation to believe them persists. Kant argues that the
proper functioning of the faculties of sensibility and the
understanding combine to draw reason, or the cognitive
power of inference, inexorably into mistakes. The faculty
of reason naturally seeks the highest ground of
unconditional unity. It seeks to unify and subsume all
particular experiences under higher and higher principles
of knowledge. But sensibility cannot by its nature
provide the intuitions that would make knowledge of the
highest principles and of things as they are in themselves
possible. Nevertheless, reason, in its function as the

26
faculty of inference, inevitably draws conclusions about
what lies beyond the boundaries of sensibility. The
unfolding of this conflict between the faculties reveals
more about the mind's relationship to the world it seeks
to know and the possibility of a science of metaphysics.

Kant believes that Aristotle's logic of the syllogism

captures the logic employed by reason. The resulting
mistakes from the inevitable conflict between sensibility
and reason reflect the logic of Aristotle's syllogism.
Corresponding to the three basic kinds of syllogism are
three dialectic mistakes or illusions of transcendent
knowledge that cannot be real. Kant's discussion of these
three classes of mistakes are contained in the
Paralogisms, the Antinomies, and the Ideals of Reason.
The Dialectic explains the illusions of reason in these
sections. But since the illusions arise from the structure
of our faculties, they will not cease to have their
influence on our minds any more than we can prevent the
moon from seeming larger when it is on the horizon than
when it is overhead. (A 297/B 354).

In the Paralogisms, Kant argues that a failure to

recognize the difference between appearances and things
in themselves, particularly in the case of the introspected
self, lead us into transcendent error. Kant argues against
several conclusions encouraged by Descartes and the
rational psychologists, who believed they could build
human knowledge from the "I think" of the cogito
argument. From the "I think" of self-awareness we can

27
infer, they maintain, that the self or soul is 1) simple, 2)
immaterial, 3) an identical substance and 4) that we
perceive it directly, in contrast to external objects whose
existence is merely possible. That is, the rational
psychologists claimed to have knowledge of the self as
transcendentally real. Kant believes that it is impossible
to demonstrate any of these four claims, and that the
mistaken claims to knowledge stem from a failure to see
the real nature of our apprehension of the "I." Reason
cannot fail to apply the categories to its judgments of the
self, and that application gives rise to these four
conclusions about the self that correspond roughly to the
four headings in the table of categories. But to take the
self as an object of knowledge here is to pretend to have
knowledge of the self as it is in itself, not as it appears to
us. Our representation of the "I" itself is empty. It is
subject to the condition of inner sense, time, but not the
condition of outer sense, space, so it cannot be a proper
object of knowledge. It can be thought through concepts,
but without the commensurate spatial and temporal
intuitions, it cannot be known. Each of the four
paralogisms explains the categorical structure of reason
that led the rational psychologists to mistake the self as it
appears to us for the self as it is in itself.

We have already mentioned the Antinomies, in which

Kant analyzes the methodological problems of the
Rationalist project. Kant sees the Antinomies as the
unresolved dialogue between skepticism and dogmatism
about knowledge of the world. There are four

28
antinomies, again corresponding to the four headings of
the table of categories, that are generated by reason's
attempts to achieve complete knowledge of the realm
beyond the empirical. Each antinomy has a thesis and an
antithesis, both of which can be validly proven, and since
each makes a claim that is beyond the grasp of
spatiotemporal sensation, neither can be confirmed or
denied by experience. The First Antinomy argues both
that the world has a beginning in time and space, and no
beginning in time and space. The Second Antinomy's
arguments are that every composite substance is made of
simple parts and that nothing is composed of simple
parts. The Third Antinomy's thesis is that agents like
ourselves have freedom and its antithesis is that they do
not. The Fourth Antinomy contains arguments both for
and against the existence of a necessary being in the
world. The seemingly irreconcilable claims of the
Antinomies can only be resolved by seeing them as the
product of the conflict of the faculties and by recognizing
the proper sphere of our knowledge in each case. In each
of them, the idea of "absolute totality, which holds only
as a condition of things in themselves, has been applied
to appearances" (A 506/B534).

The result of Kant' analysis of the Antinomies is that we

can reject both claims of the first two and accept both
claims of the last two, if we understand their proper
domains. In the first Antinomy, the world as it appears to
us is neither finite since we can always inquire about its
beginning or end, nor is it infinite because finite beings

29
like ourselves cannot cognize an infinite whole. As an
empirical object, Kant argues, it is indefinitely
constructible for our minds. As it is in itself, independent
of the conditions of our thought, should not be identified
as finite or infinite since both are categorial conditions of
our thought. Kant's resolution of the third Antinomy (A
445/B 473) clarifies his position on freedom. He
considers the two competing hypotheses of speculative
metaphysics that there are different types of causality in
the world: 1) there are natural causes which are
themselves governed by the laws of nature as well as
uncaused causes like ourselves that can act freely, or 2)
the causal laws of nature entirely govern the world
including our actions. The conflict between these
contrary claims can be resolved, Kant argues, by taking
his critical turn and recognizing that it is impossible for
any cause to be thought of as uncaused itself in the realm
of space and time. But reason, in trying to understand the
ground of all things, strives to unify its knowledge
beyond the empirical realm. The empirical world,
considered by itself, cannot provide us with ultimate
reasons. So if we do not assume a first or free cause we
cannot completely explain causal series in the world. So
for the Third Antinomy, as for all of the Antinomies, the
domain of the Thesis is the intellectual, rational,
noumenal world. The domain of the Antithesis is the
spatiotemporal world.

30
The Ideas of Reason
The faculty of reason has two employments. For the
most part, we have engaged in an analysis of theoretical
reason which has determined the limits and requirements
of the employment of the faculty of reason to obtain
knowledge. Theoretical reason, Kant says, makes it
possible to cognize what is. But reason has its practical
employment in determining what ought to be as well. (A
633/B 661) This distinction roughly corresponds to the
two philosophical enterprises of metaphysics and ethics.
Reason's practical use is manifest in the regulative
function of certain concepts that we must think with
regard to the world, even though we can have no
knowledge of them.

Kant believes that, "Human reason is by its nature

architectonic." (A 474/B 502). That is, reason thinks of
all cognitions as belonging to a unified and organized
system. Reason is our faculty of making inferences and
of identifying the grounds behind every truth. It allows
us to move from the particular and contingent to the
global and universal. I infer that "Caius is mortal" from
the fact that "Caius is a man" and the universal claim,
"All men are mortal." In this fashion, reason seeks higher
and higher levels of generality in order to explain the
way things are. In a different kind of example, the
biologist's classification of every living thing into a
kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and

31
species, illustrates reason's ambition to subsume the
world into an ordered, unified system. The entire
empirical world, Kant argues, must be conceived of by
reason as causally necessitated (as we saw in the
Analogies). We must connect, "one state with a previous
state upon which the state follows according to a rule."
Each cause, and each cause's cause, and each additional
ascending cause must itself have a cause. Reason
generates this hierarchy that combines to provide the
mind with a conception of a whole system of nature.
Kant believes that it is part of the function of reason to
strive for a complete, determinate understanding of the
natural world. But our analysis of theoretical reason has
made it clear that we can never have knowledge of the
totality of things because we cannot have the requisite
sensations of the totality, hence one of the necessary
conditions of knowledge is not met. Nevertheless, reason
seeks a state of rest from the regression of conditioned,
empirical judgments in some unconditioned ground that
can complete the series (A 584/B 612). Reason's
structure pushes us to accept certain ideas of reason that
allow completion of its striving for unity. We must
assume the ideas of God, freedom, and immortality,
Kant says, not as objects of knowledge, but as practical
necessities for the employment of reason in the realm
where we can have knowledge. By denying the
possibility of knowledge of these ideas, yet arguing for
their role in the system of reason, Kant had to, "annul
knowledge in order to make room for faith." (B xxx).

32
Kant's Ethics
1. It is rare for a philosopher in any era to make a
significant impact on any single topic in
philosophy.
2. For a philosopher to impact as many different
areas as Kant did is extraordinary.
3. His ethical theory has been as, if not more,
influential than his work in epistemology and
metaphysics.
4. Most of Kant's work on ethics is presented in two
works:
a. The Foundations of the Metaphysics of
Morals (1785) is Kant's "search for and
establishment of the supreme principle of
morality."
b. In The Critique of Practical Reason
(1787) Kant attempts to unify his account
of practical reason with his work in the
Critique of Pure Reason.
5. Kant is the primary proponent in history of what
is called deontological ethics.
a. Deontology is the study of duty.
b. On Kant's view, the sole feature that gives
an action moral worth is not the outcome
that is achieved by the action, but the
motive that is behind the action.

33
 c. The categorical imperative is Kant's
famous statement of this duty: "ACT
ONLY ACCORDING TO THAT
MAXIM BY WHICH YOU CAN AT
THE SAME TIME WILL THAT IT
SHOULD BECOME A UNIVERSAL
LAW."

Reason and Freedom

1. For Kant, as we have seen, the drive for total,
systematic knowledge in reason can only be
fulfilled with assumptions that empirical
observation cannot support.
2. The metaphysical facts about the ultimate nature
of things in themselves must remain a mystery
to us because of the spatiotemporal constraints on
sensibility.
3. When we think about the nature of things in
themselves or the ultimate ground of the
empirical world, Kant has argued that we are still
constrained to think through the categories, we
cannot think otherwise, but we can have no
knowledge because sensation provides our
concepts with no content.

34
 4. So, reason is put at odds with itself because it is
constrained by the limits of its transcendental
structure, but it seeks to have complete
knowledge that would take it beyond those
limits.
5. Freedom plays a central role in Kant's ethics
because the possibility of moral judgments
presupposes it.
6. Freedom is an idea of reason that serves an
indispensable practical function.
7. Without the assumption of freedom, reason
cannot act.
a. If we think of ourselves as completely
causally determined, and not as uncaused
causes ourselves, then any attempt to
conceive of a rule that prescribes the
means by which some end can be
achieved is pointless. I cannot both think
of myself as entirely subject to causal law
and as being able to act according to the
conception of a principle that gives
guidance to my will. We cannot help but
think of our actions as the result of an
uncaused cause if we are to act at all and
employ reason to accomplish ends and
understand the world.

So reason has an unavoidable interest in thinking of itself

as free. That is, theoretical reason cannot demonstrate
freedom, but practical reason must assume for the

35
purpose of action. Having the ability to make judgments
and apply reason puts us outside that system of causally
necessitated events. "Reason creates for itself the idea of
a spontaneity that can, on its own, start to act--without,
i.e., needing to be preceded by another cause by means
of which it is determined to action in turn, according to
the law of causal connection," Kant says. (A 533/B 561)
In its intellectual domain, reason must think of itself as
free.

It is dissatisfying that he cannot demonstrate freedom,

nevertheless, it comes as no surprise that we must think
of ourselves as free. In a sense, Kant is agreeing with the
common sense view that how I choose to act makes a
difference in how I actually act. Even if it were possible
to give a predictive empirical account of why I act as I
do, say on the grounds of a functionalist psychological
theory, those considerations would mean nothing to me
in my deliberations. When I make a decision about what
to do, about which car to buy, for instance, the
mechanism at work in my nervous system makes no
difference to me. I still have to peruse Consumer
Reports, consider my options, reflect on my needs, and
decide on the basis of the application of general
principles. My first person perspective is unavoidable,
hence the deliberative, intellectual process of choice is
unavoidable.

36
The Duality of the Human Situation
The question of moral action is not an issue for two
classes of beings, according to Kant. The animal
consciousness, the purely sensuous being, is entirely
subject to causal determination. It is part of the causal
chains of the empirical world, but not an originator of
causes the way humans are. Hence, rightness or
wrongness, as concepts that apply to situations one has
control over, do not apply. We do not morally fault the
lion for killing the gazelle, or even for killing its own
young. The actions of a purely rational being, by
contrast, are in perfect accord with moral principles,
Kant says. There is nothing in such a being's nature to
make it falter. Its will always conforms with the dictates
of reason. Humans are between the two worlds. We are
both sensible and intellectual, as was pointed out in the
discussion of the first Critique. We are neither wholly
determined to act by natural impulse, nor are we free of
non-rational impulse. Hence we need rules of conduct.
We need, and reason is compelled to provide, a principle
that declares how we ought to act when it is in our power
to choose

Since we find ourselves in the situation of possessing

reason, being able to act according to our own
conception of rules, there is a special burden on us. Other
creatures are acted upon by the world. But having the
ability to choose the principle to guide our actions makes

37
us actors. We must exercise our will and our reason to
act. Will is the capacity to act according to the principles
provided by reason. Reason assumes freedom and
conceives of principles of action in order to function.

Two problems face us however. First, we are not wholly

rational beings, so we are liable to succumb to our non-
rational impulses. Second, even when we exercise our
reason fully, we often cannot know which action is the
best. The fact that we can choose between alternate
courses of actions (we are not determined to act by
instinct or reason) introduces the possibility that there
can be better or worse ways of achieving our ends and
better or worse ends, depending upon the criteria we
adopt. The presence of two different kinds of object in
the world adds another dimension, a moral dimension, to
our deliberations. Roughly speaking, we can divide the
world into beings with reason and will like ourselves and
things that lack those faculties. We can think of these
classes of things as ends-in-themselves and mere means-
to-ends, respectively. Ends-in-themselves are
autonomous beings with their own agendas; failing to
recognize their capacity to determine their own actions
would be to thwart their freedom and undermine reason
itself. When we reflect on alternative courses of action,
means-to-ends, things like buildings, rocks, and trees,
deserve no special status in our deliberations about what
goals we should have and what means we use to achieve
them. The class of ends-in-themselves, reasoning agents
like ourselves, however, do have a special status in our

38
considerations about what goals we should have and the
means we employ to accomplish them. Moral actions, for
Kant, are actions where reason leads, rather than follows,
and actions where we must take other beings that act
according to their own conception of the law, into
account.

Concepţia despre filozofie

a lui
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
-Filozofia speculativă-

1. Concepţia sa despre filozofie este redată printr-un

fragment din lucrarea Prelegeri de istorie a filozofiei.
2. Filozofia lui Hegel, după propriile cuvinte, este o
filozofie speculativă, a Ideii ce se desprinde de lumea
sensibilă şi trece dincolo de experienţa înşelătoare şi
particulară a simţurilor.
3. Lumea are o structură ideală, ea este o expresie a
transfigurărilor unei entităţi ideale denumite de Hegel,
Spiritul Absolut.Istoria omului nu reprezintă altceva
decât etapele( determinaţiile) pe care le parcurge
această entitate absolută şi misterioasă de la forme
mai simple de gândire la forme mai de gândire mai
înalte şi speculative.
4. Filozofia se confundă de fapt cu istoria filozofiei,
care este identică, la rândul său, cu istoria devenirii
Spiritului Absolut ca gândire. Etapele devenirii
Spiritului Absolut sunt momente ale istoriei filozofiei,

39
 care trebuie gândite ca fiind legate între ele într-un
proces dialectic în trei momente: teză – antiteză –
sinteză.
5. Filozofia reprezintă forma de gîndire integratoare a
tuturor acestor momente ca fiind părţi ale aceluiaşi
proces.Filozofia reprezintă gândirea care a înţeles
întregul, care are perspectiva întregului, înălţându-se
dincolo de momentele particulare.Ea este gândirea la
scara istoriei, nu doar a unui singur moment.Este
gândirea sintetică, prin care lucrurile sunt legate
împreună.
6. Pentru Hegel, faţă de Kant, cunoaşterea adevărată este
cunoaşterea speculativă, ca fiind mai mult decât
privirea dincoace şi dincolo de ceea ce ne apare hic et
nunc (acum şi aici) şi este verificabil prin
confruntarea cu experienţa.
7. Principalele concepte şi idei, în ordinea importanţei
mesajului textului, sunt: Spirit Absolut, Idee,
dialectica hegeliană în trei trepte, filozofia ca istoria
filozofiei, istoria filozofiei ca istoria devenirii
Spiritului Absolut, gândire sintetică , gândire
speculativă.

Concepţia despre filozofie a lui Auguste Compte

-Filozofia pozitivă-

1. Este redată printr-un fragment din cartea sa Curs de

filozofie pozitivă.
2. Auguste Compte ca şi Imannuel Kant, de exemplu,
este unul dintre aceia care au dorit ca filozofia să fie
trnsformată în ştiinţă. Conceptul de ştiinţă şi ideea de

40
 ştiinţă, au suferit de la o epocă la alta diverse
modificări de înţeles. În timpul lui Compte, ştiinţa
este înţeleasă ca ştiinţă pozitivă, bazată pe experiment
şi pe analiza exclusivă a fenomenelor, ignorând
cauzele ascunse (metafizice), care le determină pe
acestea din urmă.
3. Şi Auguste Compte este un critic al metafizicii,
accepţiune dată filozofiei speculative, care emite idei
ce trec dincolo de orice cadru experimental prin care
ele să poată fi verificate.
4. După Compte, gândirea umanităţii se găseşte într-un
proces progresiv, care cuprinde următoarele etape:
a. etapa teologică, dominată de gândirea de tip
superstiţios, care încearcă să vadă în spatele
fenomenelor obişnuite cauze supranaturale;
b. etapa metafizică, corespunde unei evoluţii: la
baza manifestării fenomenelor sunt gândite
principii abstracte precum conceptele de
,,principiu”, ,,cauză primă”, ,,esenţă”;
c. etapa pozitivă , care corespunde gândiri de tip
ştiinţific şi pozitiv, în care explicaţiile bazate
pe observaţie, experienţă şi teorii ştiinţifice
identifică ca determinante pentru fenomene
anumite legi naturale.
5. Principalele concepte şi idei, în ordinea importanţei
mesajului textului, sunt: filozofie pozitivă, filozofie
speculativă, ştiinţă, ştiinţă pozitivă, fenomene, cauze,
metafizică, etape ale eoluţiei gândirii, etapa telogică,
etapa metafizică, etapa pozitivă, legi naturale,
principii abstracte ale gândirii, superstiţii.

Concepţia despre filozofie a lui Friedrich Nietzsche

-Filozofia ,,vieţii”-

41
1. Este redată prin câteva fragmente din cărţile Dincolo
de bine şi de rău şi Voinţa de putere.
2. Ca şi Kant, Nietzsche se raportează critic la filozofia
anterioară lui. ,,Critica” lui Nietzsche nu este, precum
cea kantiană, raţionalistă, ci din perspectiva
manifestărilor psihologice abisale ale omului.Filozofia
de tip raţionalist este criticată de Nietzsche ca fiind o
piedică şi o falsificare a adevăratelor impulsuri ale
omului, cele provenind din voinţa de putere. Critica sa
se îndreaptă în special împotriva definirii omului ca
fiinţă eminamente raţională (definiţie consacrată de
tradiţia de gândire europeană) şi, de asemenea,
împotriva considerării omului, din această cauză, ca o
fiinţă aproape angelică, fără insincte sau senzualitate.
3. Sarcina filozofie, după Nietzsche, ar tebui să constea
în recuperarea imaginii integrale a omului, în care
senzualitatea, instinctualitatea şi zestrea sa biologică
să nu mai fie refulate sau evitate din discursul
filozofic.
4. Filozofia trebuie să fie o expresie a vieţii, a bucuriei
de a crea.Nietzsche dezvoltă în acest sens o teorie a
supraomului, văzut ca o persoană dotată cu o voinţă
de putere mare, pe care o converteşte în creaţia
artistică de excepţie.
5. Filozofia , în concepţia lui Nietzsche se asemeană cu
un exerciţiu de demontare a miturilor impuse de
filozofia raţionalistă şi de gândirea teologică creştină,
ea trebuie să anunţe un amurg al idolilor. În acest
sens, Nietzsche dezvoltă o concepţie proprie despre
adevăr, cunoscută sub numele de
perspectivism.Conform acesteia, adevărul, falsul,

42
 binele şi răul sunt construcţii valorice ale
omului(metafore), vestigii ale aspectelor abisale ale
omului, şi nicidecum entităţi obiective, detaşate de
subiectivitatea umană.
6. Principalele concepte şi idei, în ordinea importanţei
mesajului textului, sunt: voinţă de putere, critică a
filozofiei raţionaliste, perspectivism, teoria
supraomului, senzualism,intepretare,creaţie artistică,
subiectivitate.

Concepţia despre filozofie a lui Edmund Husserl

- Fenomenologia-

1. Concepţia sa despre filozofie este redată printr-un

fragment din cartea Filozofia ca ştiinţă riguroasă.
2. Edmund Husserl este părintele fenomenologiei, curent
filozofic care pune accent pe studierea lumii lăuntrice
a omului, denumită subiectivitate sau lume a
conştiinţei.
3. Există o lume a conştiinţei la fel cum există o lume
fizică exterioară nouă.Reprezentările noastre despre
lume nu sunt simple copii sau ogilndiri ale lumii fizice
date într-o conştiinţă pasivă. Dimpotrivă, consideră
Husserl, conştiinţa noastră are iniţiativă, trimite
semnale spre lumea exterioară, denumite de el acte
intenţionale.Prin aceste intenţionări se învestesc cu
sens şi valoare, dinspre lumea interioară a omului,
obiectele din lumea fizică, care sunt în sine neutre,
lipsite de sens sau valoare. Ele capătă sens pentru noi,
sunt îmbogăţite în statutul lor ontic printr-o
dimensiune valorică.
4. Pentru Husserl, filozofia este fenomenologie, iar
fenomenologia este analiză a lumii conştiinţei

43
 intenţionale, este o explorare a lumii interioare a
conştiinţei.
5. Ca şi alţi filozofi, Husserl a crezut că filozofia trebuie
să se transforme într-o ştiinţă riguroasă.O ştiinţă este
opusă superstiţiilor, convingerilor neîntemeiate.
Ştiinţele pozitive moderne, după Husserl, conţin însă
o mare doză de superstiţii, anume acelea legate de
faptul că ar putea exista cunoştinţe absolut obiective,
provenite sută la sută din fapte brute.În realitate, în
ştiinţele pozitive, o mare parte din ceea ce se numeşte
cunoaştere este datorat subiectivităţii. Ştinţa
riguroasă, ca ideal al lui Husserl, ar trebui să
pornească de la o analiză temeinică a structurilor
conştiinţei, care ar face posibilă înţelegerea mai bună
a cunoştinţelor despre lumea exterioară sau fizică.
6. Principalele concepte şi idei, în ordinea importanţei
mesajului textului, sunt: fenomenologie, lume a
conştiinţei, conştiinţă intenţională, analiză a
conştiinţei, sens, valoare, intenţionalitate, acte
intenţionale.

Filozofie şi analiză logică a limbajului

Concepţia despre filozofie a lui Rudolf Carnap

1. Concepţia sa despre filozofie este redată printr-un

fragment din lucrarea Depăşirea metafizicii prin
analiza logică a limbajului.
2. Rudolf Carnap este unul din reprezentanţii
pozitivismului logic, nume dat unei orientări filozofice
care avea dept program următoarele:

44
 a. fundamentarea filozofiei pe baze
experimentale ca cele din ştiinţele pozitive;
b. respingerea oricărei filozofii de tip metafizic
şi speculativ ca fiind eronată;
c. determinarea adevărului propoziţiilor
filozofice prin metoda analizei logice a
limbajului, care presupunea următoarele:
i. diferenţierea între propoziţii:
 cu semnificaţie:
a. tautologiile;
b. propoziţii de
experienţă;
 propoziţii fără semnificaţie
(propoziţiile metafizice care
conţin termeni fără un
corespondent direct în
realitate ca: Absolut,
Necondiţionat, Fiinţă etc.)
3. Filozofia, în accepţiunea dată de pozitivismul logic, ar
trebui să devină o disciplină de analiză şi verificare a
propoziţiilor cu sens şi de separare a acestora de cele
fără sens.Filozofia nu ar avea , prin urmare, o funcţie
creatoare sau constitutivă de teorii, ci se reduce la o
simplă metodă de verificare, pusă în slujba ştiinţei,
singura care poate să fie constructivă.
4. Principalele concepte şi idei, în ordinea importanţei
mesajului textului, sunt: pozitivism logic, analiză
logică a limbajului, propoziţii cu sens sau
semnificaţie, tautologii, propoziţii de experienţă,
critică a metafizicii, metodă de verificare, ştiinţă.

45
 Concepţia despre filozofie a lui Ludwig Wittgenstein

1. Concepţia sa despre filozofie este redată printr-un

fragment din cartea sa Tractatus logico –
philosophicus.
2. Filozofia, consideră Wittgenstein, nu are alt rost decât
acela de a fi o analiză logică a limbajului.Relaţia
dintre limbajul logic şi lume este una simetrică,
propoziţiilor elementare sau atomare le corespund
situaţii simple din realitate, iar propoziţiilor compuse
sau moleculare, stări de fapt cmplexe.
3. Filozofia este considerată de Wittgenstein o activitate
de clarificare a limbajului, de identificare a
propoziţiilor fără sens ale metafizicii ca fiind lipsite
de semnificaţie.
4. Rolul filozofiei este unul strict explicativ, creaţia de
teorii revine ştiinţei.Filozofia nu este o doctrină, ci o
activitate.
5. Concepţia sa filozofică a cunoscut două etape.În
textul din manual, se redă prima concepţie filozofică a
sa, care este în mare parte asemănătoare cu cea a lui
Carnap.
6. Principalele concepte şi idei, în ordinea importanţei
mesajului textului, sunt:
analiză logică a limbajului, propoziţii atomare,
propoziţii moleculare, propoziţii metafizice, stare de
fapt, doctrină, activitate.

46
 Filozofia şi viaţă

Concepţia despre filozofiei a lui Platon

1. Concepţia sa despre filozofie este redată printr-un

fragment din dialogul Republica.
2. Filozofia platoniciană a fost expusă de autorul ei sub
forma unor dialoguri pe anumite teme, dezbătute de
anumite personaje; cel mai celebru dintre acestea fiind
personajul Socrate, care apare aproape constant în
dialogurile platonice.Prin Socrate, se spune, este
exprimat indirect punctul de vedere al lui Platon.
3. Dialogul Republica este unul dintre cele mai mari şi
mai complexe dialoguri platonice.Tema rolului
filozofiei în viaţa omului şi a caracteristicilor
adevăratului filozof este abordată în cărţile VI şi VII
ale dialogului amintit.
4. Cea mai spectaculoasă parte a acestei dezbateri despre
filozofie se regăseşte în aşa numitul Mit al Peşterii,
care redă esenţa concepţiei platoniciene despre
filozofie, despre realitate şi despre cunoaştere.
5. Mitul Peşterii cuprinde următoarele idei redate
simbolic:
a. viaţa omului de pe pământ poate fi asemănată
cu mediul unei peşteri, în care domină

47
 întunericul, care determină orientarea omului
prin cunoaşterea înşelătoare a simţurilor;
b. mitul redă trei etape în care se găseşte un
ipotetic personaj uman, care :
i. face parte dintr-un grup de oameni
legaţi de la naştere şi aşezaţi în faţa
unui perete, pe care sunt proiectate
nişte umbre.Neavând posibilitatea să
se mişte şi să vadă şi altceva, ei iau
drept realitate acest spectacol al
umbrelor;
ii. unul dintre aceştia, personajul
ipotetic, este dezlegat făcând
următoarele:
 învaţă să se mişte;
 învaţă să priveasă şi să
compare obiectele pe care le
descoperă ;
 urcă dinspre ieşirea din
peşteră spre domeniul luminii
;
iii. personajul iese din peşteră şi străbate
următoarele etape:
 învaţă să-şi obişnuiască
privirea cu lumina zilei;
 reuşeşte să privească direct în
soare, simbol al cunoaşterii
absolute.
6. Prin Mitul Peşterii, Platon ne transmite mesajul că
filozofia ar fi asemenea urcuşului personajului
principal, care este de fapt filozoful, către adevăr şi
realitatea ultimă, prin străbaterea unor trepte ale

48
 cunoaşterii ( cunoaştere prin simţuri, cunoaştere
analitică , cunoaştere intelectual-intuitivă) şi , o dată
cu acestea, ale realităţii (trecerea de la lumea umbrelor
şi aparenţelor la lumea entităţilor absolute –Ideile
platonice).
7. Filozofia este, prin urmare:
a. un urcuş transformator al celui care se
îndeletniceşte cu ea;
b. are un rol paideutic,;
c. este o, ,,artă a răsucirii” esenţiale a omului
dinspre ceea ce este aparent şi înşelător către
ceea ce este real în cel mai mare grad .
Principalele concepte şi idei, în ordinea mesajului textului,
sunt: simbolul peşterii, simbolul urcuşului, gradele
cunoaşterii, gradele realităţii, ,,arta răsucirii”, educaţie
esenţială (paideia), lumea simţurilor, aparenţe, lumea
inteligiblă, Idei platonice, soarele ca simbol al Ideii de Bine-
Ideea supremă.

Plato
I INTRODUCTION

Plato (circa 428-c. 347 BC), Greek philosopher, one of the most
creative and influential thinkers in Western philosophy.

II LIFE

49
Plato was born to an aristocratic family in Athens. His father, Ariston,
was believed to have descended from the early kings of Athens.
Perictione, his mother, was distantly related to the 6th-century BC
lawmaker Solon. When Plato was a child, his father died, and his
mother married Pyrilampes, who was an associate of the statesman
Pericles.

As a young man Plato had political ambitions, but he became

disillusioned by the political leadership in Athens. He eventually
became a disciple of Socrates, accepting his basic philosophy and
dialectical style of debate:

 the pursuit of truth through questions

 answers

 and additional questions.

Plato witnessed the death of Socrates at the hands of the Athenian

democracy in 399 BC. Perhaps fearing for his own safety, he left
Athens temporarily and traveled to Italy, Sicily, and Egypt.

In 387 Plato founded the Academy in Athens, the institution often

described as the first European university. It provided a
comprehensive curriculum, including such subjects as astronomy,
biology, mathematics, political theory, and philosophy. Aristotle was
the Academy's most prominent student.

50
Pursuing an opportunity to combine philosophy and practical politics,
Plato went to Sicily in 367 to tutor the new ruler of Syracuse,
Dionysius the Younger, in the art of philosophical rule. The
experiment failed. Plato made another trip to Syracuse in 361, but
again his engagement in Sicilian affairs met with little success. The
concluding years of his life were spent lecturing at the Academy and
writing. He died at about the age of 80 in Athens in 348 or 347 BC.

FORMA ŞI CLASIFICAREA OPERELOR LUI PLATON

Plato's writings were in dialogue form; philosophical ideas were

advanced, discussed, and criticized in the context of a conversation
or debate involving two or more persons. The earliest collection of
Plato's work includes :

 35 dialogues
 13 letters.

The authenticity of a few of the dialogues and most of the letters

has been disputed.

The dialogues may be divided into

51
  early
 middle

 later periods of composition.

I.THE EARLIEST represent Plato's attempt to communicate the

philosophy and dialectical style of Socrates. Several of these
dialogues take the same form. Socrates, encountering someone who
claims to know much, professes to be ignorant and seeks assistance
from the one who knows. As Socrates begins to raise questions,
however, it becomes clear that the one reputed to be wise really
does not know what he claims to know, and Socrates emerges as the
wiser one because he at least knows that he does not know. Such
knowledge, of course, is the beginning of wisdom. Included in this
group of dialogues are Charmides (an attempt to define temperance),
Lysis (a discussion of friendship), Laches (a pursuit of the meaning of
courage), Protagoras (a defense of the thesis that virtue is
knowledge and can be taught), Euthyphron (a consideration of the
nature of piety), and Book I of the Republic (a discussion of justice).

Middle and Late Dialogues

The dialogues of the middle and later periods of Plato's life reflect his
own philosophical development. The ideas in these works are
attributed by most scholars to Plato himself, although Socrates
continues to be the main character in many of the dialogues.

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 II.THE MIDDLE PERIOD include Gorgias (a consideration of
several ethical questions), Meno (a discussion of the nature of
knowledge), the Apology (Socrates' defense of himself at his trial
against the charges of atheism and corrupting Athenian youth),
Criton (Socrates' defense of obedience to the laws of the state),
Phaidon (the death scene of Socrates, in which he discusses the
theory of Forms, the nature of the soul, and the question of
immortality), the Symposium sau Banchetul (Plato's outstanding
dramatic achievement, which contains several speeches on beauty
and love), the Republic (Plato's supreme philosophical achievement,
which is a detailed discussion of the nature of justice).

III:THE WORKS OF THE LATER PERIOD include the

Theaitetos (a denial that knowledge is to be identified with sense
perception), Parmenides (a critical evaluation of the theory of Forms),
Sophist (further consideration of the theory of Ideas, or Forms),
Philebos (a discussion of the relationship between pleasure and the
good), Timaios (Plato's views on natural science and cosmology),
and the Laws (a more practical analysis of political and social
issues).

TEORIA PLATONICĂ A
IDEILOR (FORMELOR)

At the heart of Plato's philosophy is his theory of Forms, or Ideas.

Ultimately, his view of :

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  knowledge
 his ethical theory

 his psychology

 his concept of the state

A Theory of Knowledge

Plato's theory of Forms and his theory of knowledge are so

interrelated that they must be discussed together. Influenced by
Socrates, Plato was convinced that knowledge is attainable. He
was also convinced of two essential characteristics of knowledge:

 First, knowledge must be certain and infallible.

 Second, knowledge must have as its object that which is
genuinely real as contrasted with that which is an
appearance only. Because that which is fully real must, for
Plato:

 be fixed,

 permanent,

 and unchanging, he identified the real with the ideal realm

of being as opposed to the physical world of becoming.

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One consequence of this view was Plato's rejection of empiricism,
the claim that knowledge is derived from sense experience. He
thought that propositions derived from sense experience have, at
most, a degree of probability. They are not certain. Furthermore, the
objects of sense experience are changeable phenomena of the
physical world. Hence, objects of sense experience are not proper
objects of knowledge.

Plato's own theory of knowledge is found in the Republic,

particularly in his discussion of the image of the divided line and the
myth of the cave. In the former, Plato distinguishes between two
levels of awareness:

I. opinion
II. knowledge.

Claims or assertions about the physical or visible world, including

both commonsense observations and the propositions of science,
are opinions only. Some of these opinions are well founded; some
are not; but none of them counts as genuine knowledge. The higher
level of awareness is knowledge, because there reason, rather than
sense experience, is involved. Reason, properly used, results in
intellectual insights that are certain, and the objects of these
rational insights are the abiding universals, the eternal Forms or
substances that constitute the real world.

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The myth of the cave describes individuals chained deep within the
recesses of a cave. Bound so that vision is restricted, they cannot
see one another. The only thing visible is the wall of the cave upon
which appear shadows cast by models or statues of animals and
objects that are passed before a brightly burning fire. Breaking free,
one of the individuals escapes from the cave into the light of day.
With the aid of the sun, that person sees for the first time the real
world and returns to the cave with the message that the only things
they have seen heretofore are shadows and appearances and that
the real world awaits them if they are willing to struggle free of their
bonds. The shadowy environment of the cave symbolizes for Plato
the physical world of appearances. Escape into the sun-filled setting
outside the cave symbolizes the transition to the real world, the
world of full and perfect being, the world of Forms, which is the
proper object of knowledge.

B Nature of Forms

The theory of Forms may best be understood in terms of

mathematical entities. A circle, for instance, is defined as a plane
figure composed of a series of points, all of which are equidistant
from a given point. No one has ever actually seen such a figure,
however.

What people have actually seen are drawn figures that are more or
less close approximations of the ideal circle. In fact, when
mathematicians define a circle, the points referred to are not spatial

56
points at all; they are logical points. They do not occupy space.
Nevertheless, although the Form of a circle has never been seen—
indeed, could never be seen—mathematicians and others do in fact
know what a circle is. That they can define a circle is evidence that
they know what it is. For Plato, therefore, the Form “circularity”
exists, but not in the physical world of space and time. It exists as a
changeless object in the world of Forms or Ideas, which can be
known only by reason. Forms have greater reality than objects in
the physical world both because of their perfection and stability and
because they are models, resemblance to which gives ordinary
physical objects whatever reality they have. Circularity, squareness,
and triangularity are excellent examples, then, of what Plato meant
by Forms. An object existing in the physical world may be called a
circle or a square or a triangle only to the extent that it resembles
(“participates in” is Plato's phrase) the Form “circularity” or
“squareness” or “triangularity.”

Plato extended his theory beyond the realm of mathematics. Indeed,

he was most interested in its application in the field of social ethics.
The theory was his way of explaining how the same universal term
can refer to so many particular things or events. The word justice, for
example, can be applied to hundreds of particular acts because
these acts have something in common, namely, their resemblance
to, or participation in, the Form “justice.” An individual is human to the
extent that he or she resembles or participates in the Form
“humanness.” If “humanness” is defined in terms of being a rational
animal, then an individual is human to the extent that he or she is

57
rational. A particular act is courageous or cowardly to the extent that
it participates in its Form. An object is beautiful to the extent that it
participates in the Idea, or Form, of beauty. Everything in the world of
space and time is what it is by virtue of its resemblance to, or
participation in, its universal Form. The ability to define the universal
term is evidence that one has grasped the Form to which that
universal refers.

Plato conceived the Forms as arranged hierarchically; the supreme

Form is the Form of the Good, which, like the sun in the myth of the
cave, illuminates all the other Ideas. There is a sense in which the
Form of the Good represents Plato's movement in the direction of an
ultimate principle of explanation. Ultimately, the theory of Forms is
intended to explain how one comes to know and also how things
have come to be as they are. In philosophical language, Plato's
theory of Forms is both an epistemological (theory of knowledge)
and an ontological (theory of being) thesis.

V POLITICAL THEORY

The Republic, Plato's major political work, is concerned with the

question of justice and therefore with the questions “what is a just
state” and “who is a just individual?”

The ideal state, according to Plato, is composed of three classes.

The economic structure of the state is maintained by the merchant
class. Security needs are met by the military class, and political

58
leadership is provided by the philosopher-kings. A particular
person's class is determined by an educational process that begins
at birth and proceeds until that person has reached the maximum
level of education compatible with interest and ability. Those who
complete the entire educational process become philosopher-kings.
They are the ones whose minds have been so developed that they
are able to grasp the Forms and, therefore, to make the wisest
decisions. Indeed, Plato's ideal educational system is primarily
structured so as to produce philosopher-kings.

Plato associates the traditional Greek virtues with the class

structure of the ideal state:

 Temperance is the unique virtue of the artisan class;

 courage is the virtue peculiar to the military class;

 wisdom characterizes the rulers.

 justice, the fourth virtue, characterizes society as a whole.

The just state is one in which each class performs its own
function well without infringing on the activities of the
other classes.

Plato divides the human soul into three parts: the rational part, the
will, and the appetites. The just person is the one in whom the
rational element, supported by the will, controls the appetites. An
obvious analogy exists here with the threefold class structure of the

59
state, in which the enlightened philosopher-kings, supported by the
soldiers, govern the rest of society.

VI ETHICS

Plato's ethical theory rests on the assumption that virtue is

knowledge and can be taught, which has to be understood in terms
of his theory of Forms. As indicated previously, the ultimate Form for
Plato is the Form of the Good, and knowledge of this Form is the
source of guidance in moral decision making. Plato also argued that
to know the good is to do the good. The corollary of this is that
anyone who behaves immorally does so out of ignorance. This
conclusion follows from Plato's conviction that the moral person is the
truly happy person, and because individuals always desire their own
happiness, they always desire to do that which is moral.

VII INFLUENCE

Plato's influence throughout the history of philosophy has been

monumental. When he died, Speusippus became head of the
Academy. The school continued in existence until AD 529, when it
was closed by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, who objected to its
pagan teachings. Plato's impact on Jewish thought is apparent in the
work of the 1st-century Alexandrian philosopher Philo Judaeus.
Neoplatonism, founded by the 3rd-century philosopher Plotinus, was
an important later development of Platonism. The theologians

60
Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and St. Augustine were early
Christian exponents of a Platonic perspective. Platonic ideas have
had a crucial role in the development of Christian theology and also
in medieval Islamic thought (see Islam).

During the Renaissance, the primary focus of Platonic influence was

the Florentine Academy, founded in the 15th century near Florence.
Under the leadership of Marsilio Ficino, members of the Academy
studied Plato in the original Greek. In England, Platonism was
revived in the 17th century by Ralph Cudworth and others who
became known as the Cambridge Platonists. Plato's influence has
been extended into the 20th century by such thinkers as Alfred North
Whitehead, who once paid him tribute by describing the history of
philosophy as simply “a series of footnotes to Plato.”

Concepţia despre filozofie a lui

Baruch Spinoza

1. Concepţia sa despre filozofie este reddată printr-un

fragment din cartea Etica.
2. Ca şi Platon, Spinoza priveşte filozofia ca o cale spre
desăvârşirea interioară a celui care o practică.Din
înţelegerea lumii, prin parcurgerea mai multor etape,
survine în cele din urmă înţelegerea naturii umane.

61
3. Concepţia depre lume a lui Spinoza se numeşte
panteism.Pentru el Natura şi Dumnezeu sunt
una.Omul este o parte din Natură, care este absolut
ordonată, raţională şi necesară.Înaintarea în filozofie
înseamnă înaintarea în înţelegerea acestui mecanism
perfect.
4. Cunoaşterea nefilozofică este o cunoaştere iluzorie, în
care omul crede că se poate sustrage acestei ordini; în
realitate, el este supus necesităţii
naturale.Neînţelegerea este datorată, după Spinoza,
pasiunilor iraţionale ale sufletului, care distorsionează
realitatea.Filozofia are rolul de a rectifica modul
omului de a privi în lume, de a adecva cunoaşterea şi
a sincroniza sufletul cu Natura.Această ,,însănătoşire”
a sufletului are loc printr-o asceză raţională, de analiză
şi discriminare atentă a lumii înconjurătoare şi a celei
lăuntrice, sufleteşti.
5. Consecinţele îndeletnicirii cu filozofia sunt:
a. schimbarea opticii asupra lumii: necesitatea
nu mai este resimţită ca o constrângere, ci ca
o formă de ordine; astfel , necesitatea este
convertită în libertate;
b. Atingerea unei stării contemplativ-raţionale,
care culminează cu ceea ce Spinoza numeşte
amor Dei raţionalis (iubirea intelectuală de
Dumnezeu), forma de cunoaştere supremă a
omului, după Spinoza , care îi aduce acestuia
împăcarea cu sine, cu ordinea raţională a
Naturii sau a lui Dumnezeu.
6. Principalele concepte şi idei, în ordinea importanţei
mesajului textului, sunt: panteism, înţelegere,
cunoaştere adecvată, pasiuni ale sufletului, asceză

62
 raţională, schimbarea opticii umane, necesitate,
ordine naturală sau divină, libertate, convertirea
necesităţii în libertate, iubirea intelectuală de
Dumnezeu, contemplaţie.

Concepţia despre filozofie a lui Lucian Blaga

1. Concepţia sa despre filozofie este redată printr-un

fragment din lucrarea Despre conştiinţa filozofică.
2. Domeniul privilegiat al reflecţiei filozofice blagiene
este reprezentat de filozofia culturii.Concepţia sa
despre filozofie este privită dintr-o perspectivă
culturală şi umanistă.În lucrarea mai sus amintită,
considerată o lucrare de metafilozofie (domeniu
filozofic care are drept obiect de reflecţie filozofia) ,
capitolele Filozofie, ştiinţă, experienţă şi Filozofie şi
artă , Despre conştiinţa filozofică ,Blaga îşi expune
concepţia sa despre filozofie în urma unei comparări a
filozofiei cu ştiinţa şi cu arta.Toate acestea, spune el
trebuie judecate nu detaşat de cadrul cultural, ci ca
manifestări culturale cu note specifice.
3. Specificul filozofiei, de exemplu este redat de
următoarele caracteristetici:
a. este un domeniu autonom al culturii,
b. este reflexivă;
c. caută înţelegerea misterului;
d. domeniul sau obiectul său de reflecţie îl
constitue întregul existenţei;
e. filozofia dezvoltă o conştiinţă filozofică celui
care filozofează.Aceasta se caracterizează

63
 prin faptul că filozoful supune reflecţiei sale,
din dorinţa de a înţelege ,chiar activitatea sa ,
filozofia.
4. Principalele concepte şi idei, în ordinea importanţei
mesajului textului, sunt:
filozofia culturii, cultură, metafilozofie,domenii ale
culturii,ştiinţă, artă, mister, totul existenţei, conştiinţă
filozofică, reflecţie.

Concepţia despre filozofie viziunea lui Bertrand

Russell

1. Concepţia sa despre filozofiei este redată printr-un

fragment din lucarea sa Problemele filozofiei.Carte
apărută în 1911, care cuprinde 15 capitole şi în care
autorul abordează teme filozofice precum: ce este
realitatea, ce este materia, ce este idealismul, ce
înseamnă cunoaşterea şi despre câte feluri de
cunoaştere se poate vorbi, ce este filosofia (mai ales
în ultimele două capitole: Limitele cunoaşterii
filosofice şi Valoarea filosofiei ).
2. Pentru Bertrand Russell, filozofia reprezintă un
exerciţiu intelectual cu urmări practice desoebite
pentru viaţa celui care se îndeletniceşte cu acest tip de
activitate:

a. îl eliberează de prejudecăţi;

64
 b. îi dezvoltă o atitudine critică (ne eliberează de
,,atitudinea dogmatică”);
c. îi lărgeşte orizontul gâdirii şi îl eliberează
de ,,tirania obişnuinţei”;
d. prin acceptarea incertitudinii sau a limitelor
cunoaşterii noastre ni se dezvoltă atitudinea
de a ne mira în faţa măreţiei lumii;
e. ne dezvotlă simţul libertăţii ca o consecinţă a
contemplării universului;
f. ne face generoşi, prin lărgirea Eului nostru la
dimensiunile şi măreţia Universului
contemplat, eliberându-ne astfel de
egocentrism şi egoism.
Principalele concepte şi idei, în ordinea importanţei mesajului
textului, sunt: valoare a filozofiei, atitudine critică, atitudine
dogmatică, prejudecăţi, mirare, lărgire a Eului, Univers,
incertitudine, certitudine, cunoaştere.

3. Russell, Bertrand Arthur William, 3rd Earl

Russell (1872-1970), British philosopher,
mathematician, and Nobel laureate, whose emphasis
on logical analysis influenced the course of 20th-
century philosophy.
4. Born in Trelleck, Wales, on May 18, 1872, Russell
was educated at Trinity College, University of
Cambridge. After graduation in 1894, he traveled in
France, Germany, and the United States and was then
made a fellow of Trinity College. From an early age
he developed a strong sense of social consciousness;
at the same time, he involved himself in the study of

65
 logical and mathematical questions, which he had
made his special fields and on which he was called to
lecture at many institutions throughout the world. He
achieved prominence with his first major work, The
Principles of Mathematics (1902), in which he
attempted to remove mathematics from the realm of
abstract philosophical notions and to give it a precise
scientific framework.

5. Russell then collaborated for eight years with the

British philosopher and mathematician Alfred North
Whitehead to produce the monumental work
Principia Mathematica (3 volumes, 1910-1913). This
work showed that mathematics can be stated in terms
of the concepts of general logic, such as class and
membership in a class. It became a masterpiece of
rational thought. Russell and Whitehead proved that
numbers can be defined as classes of a certain type,
and in the process they developed logic concepts and
a logic notation that established symbolic logic as an
important specialization within the field of
philosophy. In his next major work, The Problems of
Philosophy (1912), Russell borrowed from the fields
of sociology, psychology, physics, and mathematics
to refute the tenets of idealism, the dominant
philosophical school of the period, which held that all
objects and experiences are the product of the

66
 intellect. Russell, a realist, believed that objects
perceived by the senses have an inherent reality
independent of the mind.

6. Russell condemned both sides in World War I (1914-

1918), and for his uncompromising stand he was
fined, imprisoned, and deprived of his teaching post
at Cambridge. In prison he wrote Introduction to
Mathematical Philosophy (1919), combining the two
areas of knowledge he regarded as inseparable. After
the war he visited the Russian Soviet Federated
Socialist Republic, and in his book Practice and
Theory of Bolshevism (1920) he expressed his
disappointment with the form of socialism practiced
there. He felt that the methods used to achieve a
Communist system were intolerable and that the
results obtained were not worth the price paid.

7. Russell taught at Beijing University in China during

1921 and 1922. From 1928 to 1932, after he returned
to England, he conducted the private, highly
progressive Beacon Hill School for young children.
From 1938 to 1944 he taught at various educational
institutions in the United States. He was barred,
however, from teaching at the College of the City of
New York (now City College of the City University
of New York) by the state supreme court because of

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 his attacks on religion in such works as What I
Believe (1925) and his advocacy of sexual freedom,
expressed in Manners and Morals (1929).

8. Russell returned to England in 1944 and was

reinstated as a fellow of Trinity College. Although he
abandoned pacifism to support the Allied cause in
World War II (1939-1945), he became an ardent and
active opponent of nuclear weapons. In 1949 he was
awarded the Order of Merit by King George VI.
Russell received the 1950 Nobel Prize for Literature
and was cited as “the champion of humanity and
freedom of thought.” He led a movement in the late
1950s advocating unilateral nuclear disarmament by
Britain, and at the age of 89 he was imprisoned after
an antinuclear demonstration. He died on February 2,
1970.

9. In addition to his earlier work, Russell also made

a major contribution to the development of
logical positivism, a strong philosophical
movement of the 1930s and 1940s. The major
Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, at
one time Russell's student at Cambridge, was
strongly influenced by his original concept of
logical atomism. In his search for the nature
and limits of knowledge, Russell was a leader in
the revival of the philosophy of empiricism in

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 the larger field of epistemology. In Our
Knowledge of the External World (1926) and
Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (1962), he
attempted to explain all factual knowledge as
constructed out of immediate experiences.
Among his other books are The ABC of Relativity
(1925), Education and the Social Order (1932),
A History of Western Philosophy (1945), The
Impact of Science upon Society (1952), My
Philosophical Development (1959), War Crimes
in Vietnam (1967), and The Autobiography of
Bertrand Russell (3 volumes, 1967

Concepţia despre filozofie a lui Karl Jaspers

1. Este redată printr-un fragment din lucarea sa Originile

filozofiei.
2. În această lucrare, Jaspers încearcă să caute originile
filozofării şi să identifice specificitatea ei.De-a lungul
istoriei filozofiei , spune el, filozofia a parcurs
anumite trepte de poziţionare înţelegătoare a
subiectului faţă de lumea din jurul său şi faţă de sine,
redate de autor astfel:
a. mirarea sau uimirea (primul act al căutării
înţelegeri de tip filozofic, ca o cunoaştere de
tip dezinteresat);
b. îndoiala (ca îndoială metodică, de confruntare
cu limitele cunoaşterii umane);

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 c. cutremurarea (atitudinea de implicare de sine
a subiectului cunoscător, luare de atitudine,
reflexivitatea adâncă legată de situaţiile-
limită precum moartea, suferinţa, eşecul etc. ).
3. În ceea ce priveşte specificul şi menirea filozofiei,
Jaspers consideră că filozofia trebuie să-i ajute pe
practicanţi să realizeze o comunicare autentică,
dincolo de tendinţa de banalizare şi stereotipizare a
comunicării.Acestă comunicare autentică poate fi
realizată prin implicarea participanţilor la comunicare
într-un dialog revelator al propriei fiinţe, dar şi prin
care să desoperim comunicarea animată de iubirea
seamănului (liebender Kampf).Ea trebuie să fie o
comunicare transfiguratoare prin iubire de adevăr.
4. Concepţia lui Jaspers despre filozofie poate fi inegrată
existenţialismului religios, în care autenticitatea
existenţei individuale este atinsă prin transcenderea
egoismului uman spre forme de comunicare mai
cuprinzătoare, precum sunt cele oferite de diferitele
forme de transcendenţă religioasă.
5. Principalele concepte şi idei, în ordinea importanţei
mesajului textului, sunt: origine a filozofiei, specificul
filozofiei, uimire, îndoială, cutremurare, dialog,
comunicare autentică, situaţie-limită, comunicare
animată de iubire, trnscendenţă, existenţialism.

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