- •The nature of philosophical knowledge.
- •2 Philosophy as the theoretical basis of worldview.
- •Philosophy as general methodology.
- •4. Philosophy in its various representations.
- •5. Worldview. Historical forms of worldview.
- •6. The main functions and the significance of philosophy.
- •7.An outline history of philosophy. The historical stages and modes of philosophizing.
- •8. Philosophy of Antiquity. General characteristics of schools and philosophical systems.
- •9. Middle Ages: general characteristics and an account on the religious philosophy.
- •10. The Mediaeval argumentation on the universals. Nominalists and Realists
- •11. The Renaissance: the ideas of Humanism and Philosophy of Science.
- •12. The Modern Ages: transition to a new philosophy. Empiricism and Rationalism
- •13. The philosophical problem of Man, Society and State in French Enlightenment.
- •15. Kant and his critical philosophy.
- •Marxism – a new doctrine of the 19th century. The idea of alienation.
- •Philosophy of Antiquity. General characteristics of schools and philosophical systems.
- •Interlude on Russian Philosophy. The Westerners and Slavofiles.
- •29 An outline Theory of Dialectics. Historical forms of Dialectics. Dialectics and Metaphysics.
- •30. The basic categories of Dialectics.
- •The methodological significance of the Law of Negation. The progressive nature of development.
- •35. Matter: the unity and diversity of the Forms of its manifestations.
- •The philosophical conception of Man. Man as a biopsychosocial being.
- •Cosciousness: essence and origin.
- •41 Consciousness, language and communication.
- •42)The decisive role of labour operations in the formation of man and his consciousness
- •The structure of Consciousness. Self-consciousness. Reflection.
- •45.Practice as the Basis and Purpose of Cognition and the Criteria of True Knowledge.
- •46. The philosophical concept of Truth. Absolute and Relative Truth. Truth, Error and Lie
- •50. The Economic Sphere of Society’s life. Material Production: the concept and the main elements
- •The Political Sphere of Society’s Life. Politics, the State and Law.
- •55. The Structure of Social Consciousness: Moral, Legal, Political, Religious, Science, and Aesthetic Consciousness.
- •Progress as a historically necessary Direction of Society’s Development.
Progress as a historically necessary Direction of Society’s Development.
There is nothing ultimately complete in the world: everything is on the path towards something else. The principle of the motion of matter as a mode of its existence, combined with the principle of universal connection, gives a general idea of the development of the world. Development is an irreversible, definitely oriented and law-governed change of material and ideal objects resulting in the emergence of new qualities.
Progressive development is thus thought of not as movement of some object from one point to another but as a process which, at each subsequent stage of its further movement, raises higher and higher the whole mass of already attained content and, far from losing something essential, carries with it all that it has accumulated, bringing in new content. The new is an intermediate or final result of development correlated with the old. Development is a dual process: the old departs and the new comes in, asserting itself in the struggle against the old rather than through unhampered unfolding of its potential.
The relationship between the concepts of development and progress must be clearly understood. They are close to each other but not identical. Development results in the appearance of a new
quality, but it is not at all necessary that this quality should be more complex or more perfect than the previous one. If the new quality is in some respect superior to the old one, we have a progressive tendency of development, and if it is inferior, we have a regressive tendency. Progress and regress are two different tendencies of development which, however, are intertwined with one another, forming a complex interdependence of matter and energy accumulate, and the extent of coded information grows. Descending development is the path of decay, degeneration, impoverishment and decomposition.
Rejecting internal contradictions as the source of development, metaphysics cannot find in matter itself the true causes for this process and therefore often resorts to supernatural forces. The dialectical conception, on the other hand, primarily stresses the source of self-motion and self-development. "The first conception is lifeless, pale and dry. The second is living. The second alone furnishes the key to the 'self-movement' of everything existing; it alone furnishes the key to the 'leaps', to the 'break in continuity', to the 'transformation into the opposite', to the destruction of the old and the emergence of the new."'
The concept of self-motion merely means that the source of development is inherent in the developing object itself, which interacts with others. The self-motion of matter on the whole is not conditioned by any external factors, while the self-motion of the concrete forms and kinds of matter is conditioned by internal and external causes. If the self-motion of matter is absolute, the self-motion of concrete systems is relative: the higher the level of the organization of a system, the greater its independence in behavior, and consequently in its development.