Basic question of philosophy

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A fundamental question of philosophy is a question whose answer is of fundamental importance for the progress of all further philosophizing . This importance lies in the fact that by answering the basic question (see, to also Arché ) Before decisions are made that the treatment of all subsequent issues determined in advance. With the help of the basic question or the answer to it, one can find one's way around philosophy. - However, whether it makes sense at all for philosophy to begin (beginning and ending) in a basic question has become the subject of postmodern criticism . Objectivism denies the basic question of philosophy and rejects the related struggle between materialism and idealism.

meaning

The concept of the basic question is used in both the singular and the plural. Basic questions of ethics, epistemology or ontology are spoken of. The more surprising is the basic question of philosophy as the only basic question. Reducing questions to a single basic question is worth striving for in a generalizing sense, but it makes the search for answers more difficult, e.g. B. because of ambiguity or conceptual ambiguity (see world formula ). With the basic question of philosophy, the answer to all questions in all areas of philosophy, such as metaphysics , epistemology, or ethics related to an essential question, should be based on it. Conversely, this means that all philosophical questions must have similar characteristics, that ultimately the subject of philosophy can be limited, that the world is a unified whole ( monism ). But that is more likely to be denied today. In complete contrast to this, materialism, which explains philosophy as the science of the most general laws of motion of nature, human society and thought, which proceeds monistically from the existence of only one substance, matter.

L. Feuerbach on this: "The question of whether a God created the world, the question of God's relationship in general to the world, ... I notice ... that this question is one of the most important and at the same time most difficult questions of human knowledge and As is already evident from this, philosophy belongs to the fact that the whole history of philosophy really only revolves around this question ... "

With the basic question of philosophy, materialism distinguishes itself from all other philosophies. The idealistic solution to the basic question of philosophy allegedly proceeds in all variants from the primacy of consciousness over matter.

The answer to the basic question of philosophy is important for all other sciences and also for practical life, especially for politics and ethics. B. the question of whether there are objective values ​​beyond subjective values ​​and desires.

Concept history

Plato

Even in antiquity, Plato examined the relationship between objects and knowledge with his so-called theory of ideas and the theory of the soul . He differentiates between the sensually perceptible and the sensually imperceptible. For him, knowledge is a recollection of ideas which the soul saw in a “heavenly” place before entering the body. Knowledge and knowledge therefore refer to a realm of ideas. What a person has forgotten through incorporation ( body-soul problem ), he can regain with the help of sensory perceptions and conversations and with the guidance of a teacher. The sensory perceptions relate to real material bodies and convey to the soul the recall of corresponding (divine) ideas. For him, because of their divine character, ideas are the essential, the primary.

Descartes

Descartes is said to be one of the founders of modern philosophy. In worldview he is a dualist. He starts from two independent eternal substances: material substance and spiritual substance. The strange "correspondence" of the physical and spiritual world - their "knowledge" of each other - is ultimately explained with God as infinite and inexhaustible substance. Epistemologically, Descartes sticks to innate ideas.

Hobbes

Hobbes rejects Descartes' innate ideas. For him, perceptions in human consciousness are images of things. He reduces matter to physical reality and its movements. He even understands spiritual activity in this way. He was the first in modern times to answer the basic question of philosophy in a consistently materialistic way.

Spruce

For Fichte there are only two consistent philosophical systems: the idealistic, which derives being from thinking - Fichte describes this as the perfection of idealism - and the materialistic, which derives the idea from the thing. Each of these two systems is so internally consistent that neither can directly refute the other. Fichte criticized the mechanical character of the materialism of the time, which supposedly made the mind into a thing and denied it its freedom. He wrote the famous saying: “What kind of philosophy you choose depends on what kind of person you are; .. "

Angel

In Ludwig Feuerbach and the outcome of classical German philosophy in 1886, Friedrich Engels points out that there is a problem on the solution of which every other philosophical decision depends: "The great fundamental question of all, especially newer philosophy, is that of the relationship between thinking and being . .., the spirit to nature ... The question: What is the original, the spirit or the nature ? ... Depending on which question was answered one way or another, the philosophers split into two large camps Asserting the originality of the spirit in relation to nature, that is to say in the last instance assumed a world creation of some kind ... formed the camp of the idealists . The others who regard nature as the original belong to the different schools of materialists . " This view is cultivated especially by dialectical materialism and similar theoretical structures determined by Marxism.

Lenin

Only with the concept of matter (philosophy) as objective reality - in physics only a synonym for matter - as the disjoint to consciousness at the beginning of the 20th century, the basic question of philosophy was formulated as the question of the relationship between matter and consciousness. Since the terms matter and consciousness, as basic philosophical terms ( categories ), cannot be traced back to other terms, they can only be determined by comparing and clarifying their relationship to one another. The basic question of philosophy is accentuated in the question of the primary: matter or consciousness? Only two answers are possible when matter and consciousness are defined as disjoint terms - which is what makes these terms meaningful. The materialists see the primary in matter, the idealists in consciousness. The materialists explain consciousness as a product of matter. The objective idealists separate human consciousness from the subject as an independent objective entity, the subjective idealists explain the contents of consciousness by emphasizing sensory knowledge as the primary.

Heidegger

In the course of his project of overcoming metaphysics - including metaphysical distinctions such as idealism and materialism - Martin Heidegger introduces the distinction between the central question and the basic question . The central question refers to the metaphysical questioning of beings as beings and the being of beings (spirit / matter), which then led to various answers in metaphysics and ontology since Plato and Aristotle , while Heidegger, with his formulation of the basic question of being as aimed at this, that is, examined the various concealments and uncoverings of being in the course of history. The aim is no longer to determine being, but to examine how such determinations came about in the first place.

For Heidegger, the distinction between the basic and the central question is accompanied by a rejection of the previous concept of the basic question. Heidegger sees central metaphysical questions about the supreme being (for example spirit / matter) as the determining factor in the history of philosophy. With his reformulation of the basic question, however, he rejects this approach and sets a completely differently formulated basic question at this point: Why at all and in what way do the various metaphysical determinations develop in the course of history? Heidegger tries to give answers in his writings on the history of being .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Marxist letters: The basic question of philosophy. In: trend online newspaper - backgrounds and subject points. Working Group Abolish Capitalism (AKKA), accessed on September 17, 2015 (edition 10/06).
  2. ↑ L. Feuerbach: Das Wesen der Religion, A. Kröner Verl. Stuttgart 1938, pp. 140 f.
  3. ^ Rohs, P .: Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Beck, Munich 1991, 1st edition - p. 61
  4. ^ Karl Marx / Friedrich Engels - Works. Dietz Verlag, Berlin. Volume 21, 5th edition 1975, unchanged reprint of the 1st edition 1962, Berlin / GDR. Pp. 259-307.
  5. ^ WI Lenin: Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Dietz Verlag Berlin 1971 Written in May 1908 p. 124
  6. ↑ Cf. Martin Heidegger: Contributions to Philosophy. From the event. ( GA 65), p. 74ff.