Introduction

1.2. Man in ancient philosophy

2. Problems of life and death

2.1. Reflections on life, death and immortality from a philosophical point of view

2.2. Types of immortality

2.3. Ways to solve the problems of death, life and immortality

Conclusion

List of used literature

INTRODUCTION

"He who has a WHY to live can bear any HOW"

The problem of man, his life and death has attracted the attention of thinkers for many centuries. People tried to comprehend the mystery of human existence, to solve eternal questions: what is life? When and why did the first living organisms appear on our planet? How to prolong life? The question of the mystery of the origin of life naturally entails the question of the meaning of death. What is death? The triumph of biological evolution or the payment for perfection? Can a person prevent death and become immortal? And finally: what reigns in our world - life or death?

The problem of the meaning of life has become, according to G. Heine, a “cursed” question of philosophy and history.

The tragedy of human existence lies in the fact that a person is, as it were, “abandoned” (in the expression of existentialists) into the objective-physical world. How to live in the world, realizing the frailty of your existence? How to cognize the infinite by finite means of cognition? Does a person fall into constant errors, explaining the world to himself? Most people feel their break with the world of nature, society, space, and they experience this as a feeling of loneliness. A person's awareness of the reasons for his loneliness does not always relieve him, but leads to self-knowledge. This was formulated in antiquity, but to this day the main secret of man is himself.

In everyone's life normal person sooner or later there comes a moment when he questions the finiteness of his individual existence. Man is the only being who is aware of his mortality and can make it the subject of reflection. But the inevitability own death is perceived by a person not as an abstract truth, but causes the strongest emotional upheaval, affects the very depths of his inner world.

Mythology, various religious teachings, art, and numerous philosophies have been and are engaged in the search for an answer to this question. But unlike mythology and religion, which, as a rule, seek to impose, dictate certain decisions to a person, if it is not dogmatic, it appeals primarily to the human mind and proceeds from the fact that a person must seek an answer on his own, applying his own spiritual efforts. Philosophy helps him by accumulating and critically analyzing the previous experience of mankind in this kind of search.

The clash of life and death is the source of human creativity. In art, the situation of death is realized in one of the most developed forms of aesthetic expression - in tragedy. As M. Voloshin wrote: "The source of all creativity lies in deadly tension, in a break, in an anguish of the soul, in a distortion of the normal-logical course of life."

It is unlikely that rational arguments will make a person ever fall in love with death, but philosophical reflections on this subject can help him to treat life more wisely.

Everyone must sooner or later answer the question: "WHY?". After that, really, “HOW?” is no longer so important, because the meaning of life has been found. He can be in faith, in service, in achieving a goal, in devotion to an idea, in love - this is no longer important.

In his work, the author tried to consider the problem as fully as possible in the historical aspect. The second part of the work presents the main philosophical categories, without which reflection on such a topic is impossible, as well as their interpretation, which has passed through the prism of my worldview. It also contains the main material on the philosophical aspects of death and immortality. The third chapter is devoted to the meaning of life, its varieties and the problem of search.

1. Reflections on life and death in a historical context

See everything, understand everything, know everything, experience everything, Absorb all forms, all colors with your eyes, Walk all over the earth with burning feet, Perceive everything and embody again

M. Voloshin

1.1. Eastern approach to human life

Life is suffering, which is associated with the law of necessity (karma). Jains teach about the presence in the universe of two independent beginnings- "Jiva" (living) and "Ajiva" (non-living). The body is inanimate, the soul is alive. A person is reborn from one body to another and is subject to suffering all the time. The ultimate goal is the separation of jiva and ajiva. Their combination is the main and main karma - the source of suffering. But the law of karma can be conquered if the jinn (soul) is freed from karma by the "three pearls" of the Jains: correct faith; correct knowledge; correct behaviour. Happiness and freedom of man - in the complete liberation of the soul from the body.

The Buddha was mainly interested in human life, filled with suffering and disappointment. Therefore, his teaching was not metaphysical, but rather psychotherapeutic. He pointed out the cause of suffering and the method of overcoming it, using for this purpose traditional Indian concepts such as Maya, Karma, Nirvana, etc., and giving them a completely new psychological interpretation. The “noble truths” of Buddhism are aimed at comprehending the causes of suffering and thus freeing ourselves from them. According to Buddhists, suffering occurs when we begin to resist the flow of life and try to keep some stable forms, which, be it things, phenomena, people or thoughts, everything is “maya”. The principle of impermanence is also embodied in the idea that there is no special ego, no special "I", which would be the subject of our changing impressions. The path of liberation is eightfold: the correct understanding of life (the fact that it is suffering that must be got rid of); determination; correct speech; action (non-causing harm to the living); right way of life; effort (fight against temptation, bad thoughts); Attention; concentration (consists of four steps, at the end of which nirvana is complete equanimity and invulnerability).

Buddhism preaches detachment from everything that binds a person to life, disgust for the body, feelings, and even the mind:

“... Not attached to anything by thought,

Defeated himself, without desires,

Detachment and inaction

Man will achieve perfection.

Thus, the goal of life, according to the Buddhist tradition, is to break the vicious cycle of "samsara", to free oneself from the bonds of "karma", to achieve "nirvana", to become enlightened. And the meaning of life, accordingly, is in such a state when there are no longer ideas about a separate “I”, and the experience of the unity of all that exists becomes a constant and only sensation.


Cyrenaki were supporters of one of the branches of the teachings of Socrates. This group was founded around 400 BC in North Africa and was led by Aristippus, one of Socrates' students. Their teaching contained the position that the experience and knowledge available to an individual is always subjective. Therefore, no one can see the world the way another sees it. They also believed that we know nothing definite about the world, and that the only knowledge available is sensory experience.

They taught that the only purpose of life is to experience pleasure in the present, instead of making plans for the future. Physical pleasures are paramount and a person should take all measures to maximize their quantity. On the whole, this was a very selfish point of view, placing the pleasure of the individual above the well-being of the community, city, or country.

The Cyrenaics ignored not only foreign philosophy, but also traditional social norms. So, Aristippus taught that there is nothing bad in incest - in his opinion, only social convention led to the taboo of related marriages.

Moism

Moism was being developed by Chinese philosophers around the same time that Cyrenaics appeared in the Hellenistic world. This teaching was created by Mo Di, who was one of the first in China to raise the question of the meaning of life. He outlined 10 principles that people should follow in Everyday life, the central of which was impartiality.

According to this teaching, the meaning of life will be achieved when each person equally pays attention to everyone else, without putting any of the people above the others. This meant, of course, the rejection of luxury, wealth and pleasure. Mohists saw the ideal of human relations in equality and believed that they would be rewarded for this with the same equality in the afterlife.

Cynics

The Cynics were another group close to Socrates. They found the meaning of life in living more in obedience to the natural order of things, rather than ethics and traditions. Cynics believed that such social conventions, such as wealth or hypocrisy, prevent people from achieving the virtues.

They did not abandon social institutions entirely, but believed that each person develops his own personal ideas about good and evil and has the right to go against society, following his own principles. From this arose the principle of "paresis" - the principle of telling the truth.

Another important principle of cynicism was self-sufficiency. Cynics believed that a person can maintain freedom only if he is ready at any moment to refuse communication with other people and the benefits of civilization.

Albert Einstein

Einstein was one of the most prominent representatives of mankind. In 1951, a young woman asked him in a letter what the meaning of life was. The answer was short: "To create satisfaction for yourself and for others."

In a letter to his son Edward, Einstein was more specific. He wrote to him that he believes in "a higher stage of consciousness as the highest ideal" and that the human ability to create new things out of nothing is more than we might think. It is the act of creation that allows us to experience happiness. He also reminded that you need to create not out of a desire to be remembered, but out of love for the thing you create.

Darwinism

Charles Darwin had complicated relationship with religion and with the religious meaning of the meaning of life. Initially, he adhered to Christian beliefs, but later his ideas were noticeably shaken.

Some of his heirs began to practically deify evolution - after all, it was it that ensured the appearance of man. They see in this the highest meaning of evolution and believe that it inevitably had to lead to modern people. Some, on the contrary, emphasize that evolution is a combination of a chain of chance and survival abilities. But both of them agree that the meaning of life is to pass on part of their DNA to future generations.

Nihilism

Most often, the word "nihilism" is associated with the predecessors of the Russian revolutionaries of the early 20th century, but this term is much more complicated. Nihilism - from the Latin hihil ("nothing") - believes that such things as "value" or "meaning" do not exist in nature, and therefore the existence of man has no meaning.

Nietzsche believed that the spread of nihilistic beliefs would eventually lead to the fact that people would cease any activity in principle. This, as we see, did not happen, but nihilism as indifference to what is happening still remains popular.

Tibetan philosophy

These teachings are common in Tibet and other parts of the Himalayas. Tibetan philosophy, very similar to classical Buddhism, believes that the meaning of life is the cessation of earthly suffering. The first step to this is understanding the world. By understanding the world, you can come to the knowledge necessary to end suffering.

Philosophy provides an opportunity to choose the "Path of small opportunities", on which a person is primarily concerned with his salvation from the world, or the "Path of great opportunities", on which a person helps others. The true meaning of life is found in practice. Tibetan philosophy is also remembered for the fact that it offers its followers precise instructions for behavior.

epicureans

Epicurean philosophy is often oversimplified. According to Epicurus, everything is made up of tiny particles, including human body, which is made up of particles of the soul. Without the particles of the soul, the body is dead, and without the body, the soul is unable to perceive external world. Thus, after death, neither the soul nor the body is able to continue to exist. After death there is no punishment, no reward, nothing. This means that a person needs to concentrate on earthly affairs.

Soul particles are capable of experiencing both pleasure and pain. Therefore, you need to avoid pain and enjoy. With what we cannot control (unexpected death), we just need to come to terms.

This does not mean that you can do whatever you want. Even if a bank robbery brings some pleasant experiences, a real epicurean remembers that feelings of guilt and anxiety can bring more discomfort later. Epicureans are also committed to friendship, the sweetest, safest, and most secure feeling that a person can have.

Aztec philosophy

The highest meaning of life for the Aztecs was to live in harmony with nature. Such a life allows the continuation of energy and the formation of new generations. This energy was called "teotl" and was not a deity, but something like the Jedi Force. Teotl fills the world, all our knowledge and extends beyond knowledge.

In teotl there are polar opposites that fight with each other and thus maintain balance in the universe. Neither life nor death is bad - they are just part of the cycle. The Aztecs believed that it was best to stay in the middle, not striving for wealth and using what you already have wisely. This was a guarantee that the children would receive the world in the same state as their fathers.

Stephen Fry and the Humanists

Stephen Fry is one of prominent representatives modern humanism- raises the question of the meaning of life in such a way that it concerns everyone, regardless of gender, beliefs, race or age. In humanism there is no specific meaning of life. Each person finds their own meaning in life. Instead of looking for it outside, a person should find it within himself, thinking about what makes him happy.

Because the meaning of life will really be different for each of us. Someone wants to create a masterpiece, someone - charitable foundation. Or plant a garden, adopt a child, pick up an animal from the street... There is no single correct answer to the question about the meaning of life - everyone develops this answer on their own. And it seems that this theory allows the greatest number of people to be happy.

(1880-1936), Ludwig Klages (1872-1956). This direction includes thinkers of very different orientations - both in their own theoretical, and especially in worldview terms.

The philosophy of life arises in the 60-70s of the 19th century, reaches its greatest influence in the first quarter of the 20th century; subsequently, its significance decreases, but a number of its principles are borrowed by such areas as existentialism, personalism, and others. In some respects, such directions are close to the philosophy of life as, firstly, neo-Hegelianism with its desire to create sciences about the spirit as a living and creative principle, as opposed to the sciences about nature (for example, V. Dilthey can also be called a representative of neo-Hegelianism); secondly, pragmatism with its understanding of truth as usefulness for life; thirdly, phenomenology with its requirement of direct contemplation of phenomena (phenomena) as wholes, in contrast to mediating thinking, which constructs the whole from its parts.

The ideological forerunners of the philosophy of life are, first of all, the German romantics, with whom many representatives of this trend have in common an anti-bourgeois attitude, a longing for a strong, unsplit individuality, and a desire for unity with nature. Like romanticism, the philosophy of life starts from a mechanistic-rational worldview and gravitates toward the organic. This is expressed not only in her demand to directly contemplate the unity of the organism (here the model for all German philosophers of life is J. W. Goethe), but also in the thirst for a "return to nature" as an organic universe, which gives rise to a tendency to pantheism. Finally, in line with the philosophy of life, a characteristic interest, especially for the Jena school of romanticism and romantic philology with its doctrine of hermeneutics, historical research such "living wholes" as myth, religion, art, language.

The main concept of the philosophy of life - "life" - is vague and ambiguous; depending on its interpretation, one can distinguish variants of this current. Life is understood both biologically - as a living organism, and psychologically - as a stream of experiences, and culturally and historically - as a "living spirit", and metaphysically - as the initial principle of the entire universe. Although each representative of this trend uses the concept of life in almost all these meanings, however, as a rule, either a biological, or a psychological, or a cultural-historical interpretation of life turns out to be predominant.


The biological-naturalistic understanding of life is most clearly expressed by F. Nietzsche. It appears here as the being of a living organism as opposed to a mechanism, as "natural" as opposed to "artificial", original as opposed to constructed, primordial as opposed to derivative. This trend, represented in addition to Nietzsche by such names as L. Klages, T. Lessing, anatomist L. Bolk, paleographer and geologist E. Dake, ethnologist L. Frobenius and others, is characterized by irrationalism, a sharp opposition to spirit and reason: the rational principle is considered here as a special kind of disease peculiar to the human race; many representatives of this trend are distinguished by a penchant for primitiveness and the cult of strength. These thinkers are not alien to the positivist-naturalistic desire to reduce any idea to the "interests", "instincts" of an individual or a social group. Good and evil, truth and falsehood are declared "beautiful illusions"; in a pragmatic spirit, that which strengthens life turns out to be good and true, and that which weakens it turns out to be evil and false. This variant of the philosophy of life is characterized by the substitution of the personal principle by the individual, and the individual by the genus (totality).

Another variant of the philosophy of life is connected with the cosmological-metaphysical interpretation of the concept of "life"; the most prominent philosopher here is A. Bergson. He understands life as a cosmic energy, a vital force, as a "life impulse" (elan vital), the essence of which is the continuous reproduction of oneself and the creation of new forms; biological form life is recognized as only one of the manifestations of life along with its soul-spiritual manifestations. “Life in reality belongs to the psychological order, and the essence of the psychic is to embrace a vague multiplicity of mutually penetrating members ... But what belongs to the psychological nature cannot be accurately applied to space, nor enter completely into the framework of reason.”

Since the substance of mental life, according to Bergson, is time as pure "duration" (duree), fluidity, variability, it cannot be known conceptually, by means of rational construction, but is comprehended directly - intuitively. True, that is, life time, Bergson considers not as a simple sequence of moments, like a sequence of points on a spatial segment, but as an interpenetration of all elements of duration, their internal connection, different from physical, spatial rowing. In Bergson's concept, the metaphysical interpretation of life is combined with its psychological interpretation: it is psychologism that permeates both ontology (the doctrine of being) and the theory of knowledge of the French philosopher.

Both naturalistic and metaphysical understanding of life are characterized, as a rule, by an ahistorical approach. Thus, according to Nietzsche, the essence of life is always the same, and since life is the essence of being, the latter is always something equal to itself. According to him, this is an "eternal return." For Nietzsche, the flow of life in time is only its external form, not related to the very content of life.

The essence of life is interpreted differently by thinkers who create a historical version of the philosophy of life, which could be characterized as a philosophy of culture (W. Dilthey, G. Simmel, O. Spengler and others). Just like Bergson, in interpreting life "from within," these philosophers proceed from direct inner experience, which, however, for them is not a spiritual-psychic, but a cultural-historical experience. Unlike Nietzsche and, to some extent, Bergson, who focus on the principle of life as an eternal principle of being, here attention is riveted to individual forms of the realization of life, to its inimitable, unique historical images. The criticism of mechanistic natural science, characteristic of the philosophy of life, takes the form of a protest against the natural-scientific consideration of spiritual phenomena in general, against reducing them to natural phenomena. Hence the desire of Dilthey, Spengler, Simmel to develop special methods knowledge of the spirit (Dilthey's hermeneutics, Spengler's morphology of history, etc.).

But unlike Nietzsche, Klages and others, the historical trend is not inclined to "expose" spiritual formations - on the contrary, the specific forms of human experience of the world are precisely the most interesting and important for him. True, since life is considered "from within", without being correlated with anything outside of it, it turns out to be impossible to overcome that fundamental illusionism that all moral and cultural values ultimately deprives them of their absolute significance, reducing them to more or less durable historically transient facts. The paradox of the philosophy of life lies in the fact that in its non-historical versions it opposes life to culture as a product of a rational, "artificial" principle, and in the historical one it identifies life and culture (finding an artificial, mechanical principle in the opposed culture of civilization).

Despite the essential difference between these options, their commonality is found primarily in the revolt against the characteristic late XIX- the beginning of the 20th century, the dominance of methodologism and epistemology, which spread due to the influence of Kantianism and positivism. The philosophy of life demanded a return from formal to substantive problems, from the study of the nature of knowledge to the comprehension of the nature of being, and this was its undoubted contribution to philosophical thought. Criticizing Kantianism and positivism, representatives of the philosophy of life believed that the scientific and systematic form of the latter was acquired at the cost of refusing to solve substantive, metaphysical and worldview problems.

In contrast to these directions, the philosophy of life seeks to create a new metaphysics with a life principle at its core and a new, intuitive theory of knowledge corresponding to it. The vital principle, as philosophers of this orientation are convinced, cannot be comprehended either with the help of those concepts in which idealistic philosophy thought, identifying being with the spirit, idea, or with the help of those means that were developed in natural science, which, as a rule, identifies being with the dead. matter, for each of these approaches takes into account only one side of the living integrity. Life reality is comprehended directly, with the help of intuition, which allows you to penetrate the inside of an object in order to merge with its individual, therefore, inexpressible in general concepts nature.

Intuitive knowledge, therefore, does not imply opposition of the knower to the knowable, the subject to the object, on the contrary, it is possible due to the initial identity of both sides, which is based on the same vital principle. By its very nature, intuitive knowledge cannot be universal and necessary character, it is impossible to learn it, as one learns rational thinking, it is rather akin to artistic comprehension of reality. Here the philosophy of life resurrects romantic pan-aestheticism: art acts as a kind of organ (instrument) for philosophy, the cult of creativity and genius is reborn.

The concept of creativity for many philosophers of this trend is essentially a synonym for life; depending on which aspect of creativity seems to be the most important, the nature of their teaching is determined. Thus, for Bergson, creativity is the birth of the new, the expression of the richness and abundance of nature, common spirit his philosophy - optimistic. Simmel, on the other hand, the most important moment creativity turns out to be its tragically dual character: the product of creativity - always something inert and frozen - becomes in the end in a hostile attitude towards the creator and creativity. Hence the general pessimistic intonation of Simmel, echoing the fatalistic-gloomy pathos of Spengler and ascending to the deepest ideological root of the philosophy of life - the belief in the immutability and inevitability of fate.

The most adequate form of expression of those organic and spiritual integrity, to which the attention of the philosophers of life is riveted, is a means of art - a symbol. In this respect greatest influence they were influenced by Goethe's teaching about the primordial phenomenon as a prototype that reproduces itself in all elements of the living structure. Goethe is cited by Spengler, who tried to "unfold" the great cultures of antiquity and modern times from their ancestral phenomenon, that is, the "greater soul symbol" of any culture, from which the latter is born and grows like a plant from a seed. In his cultural-historical essays, Simmel resorts to the same method. Bergson, also considering the symbol (image) as the most adequate form of expression of philosophical content, creates a new idea of ​​philosophy, rethinking the previous understanding of its essence and history.

Any philosophical concept is considered by him as a form of expression of the basic, deep and essentially inexpressible intuition of its creator; it is as unique and individual as the personality of its author, as the face of the era that gave birth to it. As for the conceptual form, the complexity philosophical system is the product of an incommensurability between the simple intuition of the philosopher and the means by which he seeks to express this intuition. In contrast to Hegel, with whom Bergson is arguing here, the history of philosophy no longer appears as a continuous development and enrichment, the ascent of a single philosophical knowledge, but - by analogy with art - turns out to be a collection of various spiritual contents, intuitions, closed in themselves.

being critical of scientific form of knowledge, representatives of the philosophy of life come to the conclusion that science is unable to comprehend the fluid and elusive nature of life and serves purely pragmatic goals - the transformation of the world in order to adapt it to human interests. Thus, the philosophy of life fixes the fact that science turns into a direct productive force and grows together with technology, the industrial economy as a whole, subordinating the question "what?" and why?" the question "how?", which ultimately boils down to the problem "how is it done?". Making sense new feature sciences, philosophers of life see scientific concepts as instruments of practical activity that have a very indirect relation to the question "what is truth?".

At this point, the philosophy of life approaches pragmatism, but with an opposite value emphasis; the transformation of science into a productive force and the emergence of an industrial type of civilization do not cause enthusiasm among the majority of representatives of this trend. Philosophers of life oppose the feverish technological progress characteristic of the late 19th-20th centuries and its agents in the person of a scientist, engineer, inventor-technician with aristocratic-individual creativity - the contemplation of an artist, poet, philosopher. Criticizing scientific knowledge, the philosophy of life singles out and opposes various principles underlying science and philosophy. According to Bergson, scientific constructions, on the one hand, and philosophical contemplation, on the other, are based on various principles, namely space and time.

Science has succeeded in turning into an object everything that can take the form of space, and everything that has been turned into an object, it seeks to dismember in order to master it; giving a spatial form, the form of a material object, is the only way of constructing one's object, the only one available to science. Therefore, only that reality that does not have a spatial form can resist modern civilization, which turns everything that exists into an object of consumption. The philosophy of life considers time to be such a reality, which, as it were, constitutes the very structure of life. It is impossible to "master" time otherwise than by surrendering to its flow - an "aggressive" way of mastering life reality is impossible.

With all the differences in the interpretation of the concept of time within the philosophy of life, the common thing remains the opposition of "living" time to the so-called natural-scientific, that is, "spatialized" time, which is conceived as a sequence of "now" moments external to each other, indifferent to those phenomena that are in it. flow. The most interesting studies of Bergson (the doctrine of spiritual memory, as opposed to mechanical memory) are associated with the doctrine of time, as well as attempts to build historical time as a unity of the present, past and future, undertaken by Dilthey and developed by T. Litt, X. Ortega-i- Gaset, as well as M. Heidegger.

The philosophy of life not only tried to create a new ontology and find adequate forms of cognition. It also appeared as a special type of worldview, which found its most striking expression in Nietzsche. This worldview can be called neo-paganism. It is based on the idea of ​​the world as an eternal game of irrational elements - life, outside of which there is no higher reality in relation to it. In contrast to positivist philosophy, which seeks to subjugate the blind to man with the help of reason natural forces, Nietzsche demanded to submit to the vital element, to merge with it in an ecstatic impulse; he saw true heroism not in resisting fate, not in trying to "outwit" fate, but in accepting it, in amor fati - tragic love for fate.

Nietzsche's neo-pagan worldview grows out of his rejection of Christianity. Nietzsche rejects the Christian morality of love and compassion; this morality, he is convinced, is directed against healthy vital instincts and breeds impotence and decadence. Life is a struggle in which the strongest wins. In the person of Nietzsche and other philosophers of life, European consciousness turned against the tragic non-religiousness that prevailed in it, as well as against its Christian roots, acquiring that sharpness and tragedy of worldview that it had long lost.

The tragic motive underlying Nietzsche's philosophy and developed by Spengler, Simmel, Ortega y Gaset and others was perceived by representatives of symbolism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries: G. Ibsen, M. Maeterlinck, A. N. Scriabin, A. A. Blok, A. Bely, and later - L. F. Selin, A. Camus, J. P. Sartre. However, often in a paradoxical way, the seemingly courageous "love of fate" turns into the aesthetics of lack of will: the thirst for merging with the elements gives rise to a feeling of sweet horror; the cult of ecstasy forms a consciousness for which intoxication becomes the highest state of life - it doesn't matter what it is - music, poetry, revolution, eroticism.

Thus, in the struggle against rational-mechanistic thinking, the philosophy of life in its extreme forms came to the denial of any systematic way of reasoning (as not corresponding to life reality) and thereby to the denial of philosophy, because the latter cannot do without understanding being in terms of and, it became be, without creating a system of concepts. The philosophy of life was not only a reaction to the way of thinking, it also acted as a criticism of industrial society as a whole, where the division of labor also penetrates into spiritual production.

However, along with the cult of creativity and genius, it brings with it not only the spirit of elitism, when the ideals of justice and equality before the law, glorified by the Enlightenment, give way to the doctrine of hierarchy, but also the cult of strength. In the 20th century, there are attempts to overcome not only the psychologism of the philosophy of life and give a new justification for intuition, devoid of irrationalistic pathos (Husserl's phenomenology), but also its characteristic pantheism, for which there is no being open to a transcendental principle. The philosophy of life is being replaced by existentialism and personalism, the understanding of a person as an individual is replaced by an understanding of him as a person.

What is life in terms of philosophy, biology, physics and religion?

    From the point of view of physics, this is the period of time during which the organism is first born, then dies. Like life, any elementary particle.

    From the point of view of biology, life is the continuation of the family, that is, the continuation of life itself with the possibility of developing.

    From the point of view of philosophy, life is the development of the soul.

    FROM THE POINT OF VIEW, religion is the spiritual component of all things.

    from my point of view, life is only a moment, on the scale of the universe, and therefore, I do not have enough time to characterize this concept.

    Life is a certain set of parameters given to the unit for conservation, energy balance, both creative and destructive energy, magic is the first science, the balance between knowledge and conjecture, like a Lego constructor, you are a detail and created you to take a place in the universe constructor!

    From the point of view of physics, life is a movement that generates energy.

    Biology is the processes of vital activity, the physiological processes that occur in our organisms - the digestion of food, growth, reproduction, etc.

    Philosophies - life is a moment in the big universe.

    Religions are state of mind, belief in something higher that moves people.

    For me, life is a gift from the Universe with all its manifestations and trials.

    Life is the existence of living organisms, limited in time. These organisms are different, from simple to the most complex. Over time, they change, adapting to environment, it's called evolution. Evolution is also life.

    Life is the movement of energy and particles, the interaction of species, a continuous series of transformations. This is both thinking and consciousness.

    It is impossible to consider life solely from the point of view of any one science - physics, chemistry, biology, philosophy. Life is a process in which there are many dimensions, levels. Big Picture voluminous, it is formed by adding many puzzles.

    your question draws on a dissertation in any of the areas you have indicated - therefore, it can only be answered in the most general form ...

    in any of these areas, life is a PROCESS...

    So, for example, from the point of view of philosophy, life is a process of KNOWLEDGE...

    From the point of view of religion, life is a process of preparation for a future eternal life or eternal torment...

    My point of view is this: in the distant past, aliens were forced to land on Earth, while they completely lost their material component, they remained like some kind of intelligent blobs of energy that could not survive on their own, but after studying the data of the then animal world, they came to the conclusion - one the species of monkeys is most suitable for the role of a donor, from whom you can wait for help over time, feeding on its brain energy. A hundred millennia have passed, they still cannot influence directly, but indirect influence certainly goes on throughout the history of human development. About help, apparently , we are no longer talking, but a certain stable mutually beneficial symbiosis has formed. They have all the knowledge of that civilization, and when we reach the level of complete understanding, this will be a breakthrough in the development of mankind, and of those who are in our heads. fuh. it’s good that it’s a joke, otherwise it didn’t feel good.

    Looking at what kind of life in question. Life begins with microorganisms, ends with the life of planets, stars, and the universe in general. The universe is a real living organism. He is one, although sometimes it seems that it is not. It's just that its components live their own lives, the components of their own, and so on, but all this is very closely connected. There is a reasonable living form life: these are living organisms that have at least a particle of reason (independence). Some are part of nature, interconnected with it (we are talking about our planet, others are not yet known), some only use its resources, in other words, destroy it. Well, let's not deviate too much from the topic.

    Life, from the point of view of religion, cannot go out, it simply passes in different bodies, starting with the human, the very first. The final stage is the soul that moves into another human body and the cycle repeats.

    From the point of view of biology, life is a state of a living organism in which biological processes take place in it. As long as the body's brain is working (sending impulses), it is believed that the body is alive.

    I can not decide which point of opinion (religion, philosophy, biology) is closer to mine. If you look at life from different angles, then each point of view is appropriate. All the best:)

    • in terms of physics?

    there is movement, there is life

    • in terms of biology?

    there is development, there is life

    • in terms of philosophy?

    there is a feeling, there is life

    • in terms of religion?

    there is faith, there is life

    • life for me

    this one is like a temporary place of stay on earth, and everything else is eternity. God grant that our eternity be favorable.

Philosophy about the meaning of human life

1. Approaches and solutions to questions about the meaning of life

2. Search for the meaning of life

Introduction

Man is the only being who is aware of his mortality and can make it a subject of discussion. The vocation, purpose, task of every person is to comprehensively develop all his abilities, to make his personal contribution to the history, to the progress of society, its culture, the meaning of the life of society. The meaning of life lies in life itself, in its eternal movement as the formation of man himself. Death is terrible for those who do not see how meaningless and disastrous their personal lonely life is, and who thinks that he will not die. A person has died, but his attitude to the world continues to affect people, not even the way it was during life.

Meaning of life - this is a perceived value to which a person subordinates his life, for the sake of which he sets and fulfills life goals. The question of the meaning of life is the question of the meaning of human death and of his immortality. If a person did not leave a shadow after his life, then his life in relation to eternity was only illusory. Understand the meaning of life, determine your place in the eternal stream of change.

The question of the meaning of life, one way or another, confronts every person - if he has at least somehow developed as a person. Usually such questions come in early adolescence, when the newly created man must take his place in life - and strives to find it. But it happens that one has to think about the meaning of life both in old age and in the dying state. This collision of a single person with himself as a particle of a vast, infinite world is not always easy. It is terrible to feel infinity in oneself - and it is terrible not to notice it. In the first case, it is an incredible burden of responsibility, too jubilant pride, from which the soul can break; the opposite is a sense of one's own illogicality, the hopelessness of existence, disgust for the world and for oneself. However, thinking about the meaning of life is necessary for any person, without it there are no full-fledged people.

1. APPROACHES AND SOLUTIONS TO QUESTIONS ABOUT THE MEANING OF LIFE

The question of the meaning of life is the question of whether it is worth living? And if everything is worth it, then why live? Since ancient times, people have been asking this question, trying to find the logic of their lives.

There are two answers to this question:

1. The meaning of life is originally inherent in life in its deepest foundations, this approach is most characteristic of the religious interpretation of life. The only thing that makes life meaningful, and therefore has absolute meaning for man, is nothing else than active participation in God. human life.

2. The meaning of life is created by the subject himself- in accordance with this statement, it can be understood that we ourselves are consciously moving towards the goal set before us, by any means of being. We give meaning to life and thereby choose and create a human essence, only we and no one else.

Awareness of the meaning of life, as the main value, is of a historical nature.

Each era, to one degree or another, influenced the meaning of life definition of a person.

Life is meaningful - when you are needed for something and you understand why. Even in a semi-animal state, in the web of everyday worries and in the swamp of narrow-minded interests, a person does not cease to be universal, belonging not only to himself, his family, his class, but also to humanity as a whole, and to the world in its entirety. Of course, a separate person, an individual - cannot be a person in general, these are different levels. But man in general is represented in each individual man, since the universal can exist only as a community of its representatives. Each of them reveals its own side of the universal - and any side of it must be represented by someone, must incarnate and go its own way as a thing, or a living being.

When a person lives meaningfully, it does not become easier for him to live, rather the opposite. But a person who knows his purpose, his destiny, is always a force. He may doubt and suffer, he may make mistakes and retreat from himself - this will not change anything. The meaning of his life will guide him and force him to do what is required - even if it is contrary to the will of the person himself, his desires and interests, as far as he is aware of them.

There are various approaches to solving the life-meaning problem, of which the following can be distinguished:

    The meaning of life is in its spiritual foundations, in life itself;

    The meaning of life is carried beyond the limits of life itself;

    The meaning of life is introduced by the person himself into his life;

    There is no meaning to life.

Within the framework of the first approach, there is a religious version. The meaning of human life was given by God already at the time of the creation of man. Having created man in his own image, endowed him with free will. And the meaning of a person's life is to achieve a given similarity with God. The meaning of human life is the preservation and purification of one's immortal soul.

Philosophy considers the moral meaning of human life in the process of improving its spiritual foundations and its social essence on the basis of goodness.

The meaning is contained in life itself, but, unlike the religious point of view, it is argued here that the meaning of a person's life is found in it himself. The meaning of life consists of situational, specific meanings that are individual, as life itself is individual. On the basis of situational meaning, a person plans and solves situational tasks of every day or even hour.

The second approach takes the meaning of life beyond the limits of a specific human life, extrapolating the meaning of human existence to the progress of mankind, for the benefit and happiness of future generations, in the name of bright ideals and justice.

All of the above is the highest meaning and end in itself, while every human generation and every living person acts as a means to achieve this goal. Many people live for their own future.

From the point of view of the proponents of the third approach, life in itself has no meaning, and the person himself brings it into his life. Man, as a conscious and volitional being, creates this meaning in his own ways. But the will, ignoring the objective conditions of human existence, imposing its own meaning, turns into voluntarism, subjectivism and can lead to the collapse of meanings, existential emptiness and even death.

From the lips of a modern young man, one can hear that the meaning of his life lies in pleasure, joy, and happiness. But pleasure is only a consequence of our aspirations, and not its goal. If people were guided only by the principle of pleasure, then this would lead to a complete devaluation of moral actions, since the actions of two people, one of whom spent money on gluttony, and the other on charity, would be equivalent, since the consequence of both is pleasure.

As for joy as the meaning of life, then joy itself must have meaning. Even a child, with his very mobile nervous system, directs his joy outward, to the object or action that causes it. Joy, therefore, is also not an end in itself, but a consequence of the goal achieved. The meaning of life is revealed to a person only when it is required by an objective necessity, when humanity as a whole is mature enough to accept, to master this particular aspect of its existence. In other words, the meaning of the life of an individual is realized when this life becomes truly universal, when the actions and deeds of a person are not his individual characteristics, but something inherent in many people, albeit to varying degrees, and not all together.

But still, attempts to find the meaning of human life prevailed in the history of human thought:

    The meaning of life is in its aesthetic side, in achieving what is majestic, beautiful and strong in it, in achieving superhuman greatness;

    The meaning of life is in love, in striving for the good of what is outside of man, in striving for harmony and unity of people;

    The meaning of life is to achieve a certain ideal of a person;

    The meaning of life is to contribute to solving problems as much as possible community development and all-round development of personality

The realized meaning of life, which has value not only for the living, but also for society, relieves a person of the fear of death, helps to meet it calmly, with dignity and a sense of accomplishment.

2. SEARCH FOR THE MEANING OF LIFE

The life of every person is dramatic, no matter how successfully life develops, no matter how long it is, the end is inevitable. All our life affairs must be commensurate with the eternal, a person is doomed to think about death, and this is his difference from an animal that is mortal, but does not know about it, though animals feel the approach of death, especially domestic ones.

Spiritual values ​​- a kind of spiritual capital of mankind, accumulated over a millennium, which not only depreciates, but usually increases.

How and why can philosophy help in the search for the meaning of life? The fact is that the unity of the various aspects or stages of life is achieved only when they are subordinate to something else that does not change right now (although, generally speaking, it may be subjected to in the future. Philosophy cannot directly answer any vital problem, indicate a way out of any situation.But it is able to prepare a person to choose a path, give him the means to solve a problem - and confidence in the possibility of such a solution.The cornerstone of philosophical materialism - the principle of the material unity of the world - is a direct indication that continuity and stability in any things or affairs are the same necessary aspects as their change and development.If there is something, then it should be.And if there is me, then I will definitely be needed - for myself, other people, the world as a whole. to doubt your own necessity - you just need to realize it, discover it for yourself.

Philosophy gives a person a direction to search for the meaning of life. After all, if it is clear to him why humanity exists in general, why there is a society in the form in which he sees it around, why this or that group of people is in society, it is much easier for a person to decide, through his attitude towards others, to understand why he himself.

Questions :

1. How do you understand the term "meaning of life"?

2. What are spiritual values?

3. What is the meaning of life from a religious point of view?

Bibliography:

Introduction to psychology / Ed. ed. prof. A.V. Petrovsky. - M .: Publishing Center "Academy", 1996. - 496s.

Modern Philosophy: Dictionary and reader. - Rostov-on-Don: Phoenix publishing house, 1995. - 511p.

Philosophical Encyclopedic Dictionary / Ch. edition: L.F. Ilyichev, P.N. Fedoseev. – M.: Sov. Encyclopedia, 1983. - 840s.

Khapchaev I.A. Fundamentals of philosophy. - Pyatigorsk, 1997. - 294 p.