The Science of Philosophy. Foundations of Philosophical Methodology

Abstract

This methodological study is dedicated to illuminating the genuine origins of philosophy among the multitude of other culturally significant cognitive systems – specifically, to the reasoned substantiation of its subject matter, method, principles, and other starting points as an epistemologically expansive s c i e n c e, rather than merely a distinct, if paramount, domain of worldview knowledge, a form of consciousness, or a variety of art. In other words, this essay identifies and argues for a logical (as opposed to the conventionally historical) perspective on the trajectory of philosophy’s development and its current state, examined through the analytical-theoretical dimensions of its scientific status, subject field, the method organic to its objectification, and the internal sources of intellectual self-organization. Within this context, the ensemble of subject-object connections and relations in philosophical inquiry and the construction of knowledge and practice/practising, forms of consciousness (legal, scientific, political, aesthetic), and explanatory principles is identified. At the same time, a thorough reconsideration is undertaken of the in its own way multi-component, cohesive, and open system of philosophical knowledge – and above all the methodology of G.W.F. Hegel – in the direction of creating a kind of «Mendeleev’s table» that visually structures and elaborates the logical-historical achievements of advanced philosophical thought in two versions: a) in the form of a planar (two-dimensional) s c h e m e of attributive features, derivative characteristics, and semantic connotations within the subject framework of philosophy’s investigation of the foundational relation «being – consciousness»; b) in the form of a spatial (three-dimensional) m o d e l of the extraordinarily complex subject field of philosophy as a science, constructed by conceptual-categorical means as an intricate and integrally synthetic interaction of being and the consciousness that reflects it, providing the source and forms of their historical development. On the basis of these methodological foundations, a concise authorial definition of the subject of philosophy is arrived at: it is the relation of the internally articulated unity of being and consciousness, wherein the priority of being is realized through interaction with consciousness, which not only reflects but simultaneously enriches it creatively. Furthermore, by demonstrably revealing the structure of human activity as the most fundamental mode of human here-being-in-practice, the scope, content, and semantic-meaningful substance of such key philosophical concepts as «approach,» «method,» «way,» «principle,» «fact,» and «experience (empiria)» are elucidated. In particular, a p p r o a c h is interpreted as the directedness of human activity – occasioned by the vitality of the subject (primarily a need or goal) – that enables a distinct perspective or style-order of seeing the world and the human being within it, and is attributively characterized by the intentionality of consciousness/thinking toward an objectified, or objective, or subjective reality in one way or another. At the same time, m e t h o d is a certain sum of foundational invariant knowledge about a subject (primarily several interrelated principles) that: a) reflects its most general essential features, deepening and refining knowledge of it; b) determines the direction of its further investigation, integrating in accordance with its specificity the development of the given sphere of knowledge; c) is epistemologically organized in the format of a particular philosophical or strictly scientific approach as a productive synthesis of principles previously adopted for realization in life; d) is potentially realized in the form of variable ways of its theoretical comprehension, and is practically carried out as an optimal style or model of situational practising. In its essence, w a y consists in the following: the organization of practice «here and now» – that is, of concretely objectified and activity-embodied practising – leads to the actual achievement of the goal of activity, consciously grounded in method as a distinct system of knowledge. It is likewise demonstrated that the primary purpose of a p r i n c i p l e, as the foundation of any thought-activity, is to possess self-sufficient, enduring value as an ideal object of human here-being, by which one consciously guides oneself in one’s cognition and everyday practising. In this connection, a series – more precisely, seven – of philosophical principles is presented, reflecting the l o g i c of constructing the complexly dimensional method of philosophy in its own developmental-existential substantiation. From these methodological positions, the essential definitions and interpretive views on the hitherto problematic questions of the basic source of knowledge, truth, and philosophical fact and experience (empirics) are revisited; the significance of such a fundamental feature of philosophy as the concreteness of its scientific knowledge is motivated – meaning the many-sidedness and comprehensiveness in the elaboration of the subject of cognition and practising, equivalent to the complexity and concentratedness of its method for the intellectual comprehension of the boundless universe of the interaction of being and consciousness.

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