Білет 8.Antiquity: general characteristics, basic ideas, schools, philosophers.

Ancient philosophy is philosophy in antiquity, or before the end of the Roman Empire. It usually refers to ancient Greek philosophy. It can also encompass various other intellectual traditions, such as Chinese philosophy, Indian philosophy, and Iranian philosophy. Ancient philosophies are generally deeply rooted in religious traditions. Accordingly, ancient philosophies have a comprehensive outlook as opposed to modern or contemporary philosophies, which tend to have more narrow methodologies and areas of focus.

In the Western tradition, ancient philosophy was developed primarily by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.

Major philosophies include: ancient Greek and Roman philosophy in the West, which date approximately from the sixth century B.C.E. through the third century C.E.; Chinese philosophy including Yin-yang philosophy, Taoism, Confucianism; Indian philosophy including Upanishads and Vedic traditions, Jainism, Buddhist philosophy, and Hindu philosophy; and ancient Iranian philosophy including Zoroastrianism.

Ancient philosophy tends to have a comprehensive perspective which includes a wide range of components, including myth, religious beliefs, ethics, literature, cosmology, and theories of nature. Also ancient philosophy is often deeply rooted in religious traditions. Modern and contemporary philosophy tend to develop philosophy as an autonomous discipline independent of religious traditions.

Білет 9. Middle Ages: general characteristics and an account on the religious philosophy.

The idealist orientation of most mediaeval philosophical systems was prompted by the dogmas of Christianity, of which the most important were the dogma of the personal form of the one God the Creator, which rejected out of hand the atomistic doctrines of antiquity (this dogma was primarily worked out by St. Augustine); and the dogma of the creation of the world by God out of nothing; this last dogma erected an insurmountable barrier betweep the ideal world of God the Creator and the material world of earthly life, it asserted the latter’s derivative origin from the ideal will of the Supreme Being and, moreover, it also assumed the limitedness of the world in time (the beginning and the end of the world).

Subject to these harsh dictates of religion supported by state authority, philosophy was declared to be the maidservant of theology (St. Pietro Damiani’s formula) expected to use the power of the rational apparatus to confirm the dogmas of Christianity. This philosophy came to be known as scholasticism (fr. L. scholasticus "learned", fr. Gk. schole "school"). All truth was believed to have been given in the biblical texts, so it was necessary to apply a system of correctly constructed syllogisms to actualize that truth by deriving the entire fulness of logical consequences. Naturally, scholasticism relied in this respect on the heritage of antiquity, particularly on Aristotle’s formal logic. Since the biblical texts and the symbols of faith were mystical or allegoric in character, their unambiguous interpretation demanded sophisticated logic, a kind of scholastic rationalism, which treated, for example, the dogma of the Trinity, i.e. of the three hypostases of the one God, as a model of logical prob­lems. The content of scholastic debates had no serious impact on philosophy, but in terms of the technique of reasoning scholasticism proved very useful for the development of logic.

There are 4 main ideas of Cristianian worldview which expose the very essence of the consepts of God, of man and the world in Mediaeval philosophers’ speculations:

1. The Idea of the Trinity or believing God as the Creator, Savior and Holy Spirit. God is Havency Father who created subsequently the world and man. The latter was the sort of perfection as God created him similar to himself, but man fell away from God because of his primodial transgression.

God is the Savior Christ who is in the same time both the son of God and the Human son, who takes off the burden of the primodial sin from Human. He manifests in himself both devine and human character. God Father and God Son are linked by the Holy Spirit. He also links them both with Human.

2. The Idea of Free Choice between Good and Evil. According to Cristian dogmas the world is divided into 3 realms: the Devine- Heavens, the earthly one and the Devil’s – the hell. On the Earth man makes his choice and comes at last either to God or to Devil. (They accepted this though Cristianity suggested absoluteness of Good and relativeness of Evil).

3. The idea of afterdeath recompense and Devine Mercy. In Cristianity we have additionaly the idea of devine grace and absolution. The most attractive expression of such absolution is the act of crusifixion of The Christ, who liberated mankind from the primodial sin. In Cristianity an important role got the idea and practice of penance (repentence) when man opens his feelings and consciousness to God and then gets salvation.

4. The idea of repentence is a sort of the bridge between God and man. The one who forgives is approaching The Christ. From this follows the deepest Christian principle of non-resistance to evil.

5. The idea of Apocalipses (from Greek revelation) of human history, it shows the history of mankind not as a cycle, but as a line, which got its beginning and end, that in its turn is the transmission into some other being.