The formation and development of modern Western philosophy is a continuous process of movement, which is not only the continuation of classical Western philosophy, but also the development of classical Western philosophy under new historical conditions. The characteristics of theoretical thinking in modern Western philosophy are mainly manifested in three aspects: thinking content, thinking method, and thinking form.
1. The irrationality of modern Western philosophy has turned to the theory of human existence.
Modern Western philosophy, unlike classical Western philosophy, focuses on more than just the fundamental relationship between thinking and being. Modern Western philosophers generally believe that the first problem that the human world encounters is the relationship between man and reality, subject and object, rather than the relationship between thinking and existence. What philosophy wants to study is the intermediary basis of how to connect and unify man and reality, subject and object.
Modern Western philosophy does not deviate from the development path of classical Western philosophy, but continues to investigate and study the relationship between thinking and existence, and goes deep into the relationship between thinking and being, and tries to reveal the connection between man and reality, subject and object, and the basis of unity. This is a historic development.
2. Modern Western philosophy starts from practical problems and explains life problems from a theoretical perspective.
Most of the schools of modern Western philosophy come from reality and return to reality. For example, Lefebvre's critical theory of daily life, the social critical theory of the Frankfurt School, the philosophy of science on the impact of the development of science on society, Freud's unconsciousism, etc., are all closely related to reality and have a strong breath of life. Although the basis of this theory is idealistic, and there are also errors in the elaboration of some specific issues, this spirit of exploration is commendable.
3. The turn of the philosophy of language.
An important feature of modern Western philosophy is the recognition that the philosophy of language is not based on metaphysics or epistemology, but rather on the fact that metaphysics, epistemology, and any other philosophical discipline must be based on the philosophy of language, and that it is only through the analysis and elucidation of language that any philosophical problem can be studied, clarified, or resolved. Anglo-American analytic philosophy, structuralism, and hermeneutics all place great emphasis on the study and elucidation of language, but with different perspectives. Analytic philosophers tend to think that scientific problems are factual problems, and that scientific research cannot be separated from language for a moment, while philosophical problems are themselves linguistic problems, or can be reduced to linguistic problems. Their main focus is on the analysis of formal or everyday language, but they have a different focus. One is to view the various sub-disciplines of philosophy as the analysis and elucidation of various languages or discourses, such as religion, ethics, and science. In this way, philosophical talk is talk of talking, which belongs to the second level of talking about metalanguage. Other analytic philosophers devote themselves to the analysis of words and phrases that are essential to philosophy in everyday language, and oppose the substitution of artificial language for everyday language.
Classical Western philosophy is in keeping with its quest for the world's highest entity, adopting a top-down method of speculation, often using logic to clarify the individual empirically. If ancient philosophy focused on human intuitive psychology, and medieval philosophy focused on the formal logic of experience, then modern philosophy directly combines formal logic with human psychological feelings. Hegel reduced psychology to logic and moved towards pan-logicism.
Modern Western philosophy has adopted a bottom-up empirical approach, often using experiential individual phenomena to illustrate the general nature of individual phenomena. Analytic philosophers generalize and philosophize mathematical logic, and use the logical analysis of propositional concepts or propositional language to reveal the internal empirical logical relations between man and reality, subject and object. This empirical method of combining empiricism and rationalism on the basis of empirical facts has three main characteristics:
1. Starting from empirical facts, forming hypotheses or schemes based on empirical observations, and confirming or rejecting all assumptions or schemes with empirical facts.
2. From beginning to end, it does not depart from empirical facts, and makes the internal connection of human psychological experience directly logical, which is both perceptual rather than abstract, and rational rather than intuitive.
3. Decompose and reduce all the relations in the entire real world, including people, especially the relationship between subject and object, to the most basic and universal empirical facts with internal logical connections.
Both classical and modern Western philosophies focus on analyzing and revealing the relationship between individual phenomena and general essences. Classical Western philosophy mainly extends from the general essence to the individual phenomena of experience, with a great psychological speculativeness;
However, modern Western philosophy mainly starts from the individual phenomena of experience and sensibility, and then understands and grasps the general essence of individual phenomena, which clearly shows the empirical positivity.
Modern Western philosophy uses a relational view and an empirical approach to promote the unity of sensibility and reason, experience and logic.
Classical Western philosophy focused on the study of the relationship between metaphysical thinking and existence.
The whole study of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy was based on the intuitive psychological feelings of individuals, so the emphasis on sensibility and the rationality were downplayed and shallow. For example, Plato's idea entity and Aristotle's formal ontology are both ontological categories of perceptual materialization.
Although the philosophy of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance linked the sensibility with the individual, the rational with the general, it was only an external connection in a form, and in the end it still made the rational and belief.
Modern philosophy has turned to epistemology, studying the relationship between thinking and existence from the perspective of the subject. Two different and even opposing tendencies have formed around human perceptual experience and rational logic. For example, Feuerbach emphasized sensibility over reason, and even sensualized rational logic into experience; The German classical idealists emphasized reason over sensibility, and even rationalized and logicalized perceptual experience.
Modern Western philosophers believe that sensibility and reason, experience and logic are intrinsically and inevitably related and can be unified. There is no insurmountable gulf between psychological experience and the logic of judgment. Since psychological experience can be believingized as mental habits like Hume, and can be congenitally synthesized and categorized a priori like Kant, it can also be transformed into a speculative logic of the unity of absolute idea, subjectivity and objectivity like Hegel. Mental experience itself is inherently inherently inherently logically connected with direct and intrinsic necessity. The psychological experience of the logic of necessity is different from Hume's psychological speculation, different from Kant's empirical speculation, and also different from Hegel's logical speculation, so that the sensibility and reason, experience and logic are closely penetrated and tend to be unified in the structure and its flow.
The structuralist philosopher Lévi-Strauss argues that structure is everything and everything depends on structure. The main body compiles a combination table of various changes in the internal components of the structure, which can not only understand all the empirical changes of the structure and its components, but also directly understand the connection and essence of these changes. James, a pragmatist philosopher, saw human consciousness as the fusion and flow of sensibility and reason, experience and logic. Perceptual experience is transformed into rational logic when it is unified according to psychological intentions, and the decomposition of psychological intentions leads to the reduction of rational logic to perceptual experience.
Modern Western philosophy is contrary to the empirical speculation or logical speculation of classical Western philosophy, which is manifested as the empirical evidence of experience and logic, which promotes the unity of sensibility and reason, experience and logic in the movement, and inherits and develops classical Western philosophy in the form of thinking. The result was a series of positive results that were diametrically opposed to the past: the emphasis on the fact that philosophy was neither above science, nor outside science, but within science, re-established the alliance between science and philosophy; Emphasizing that philosophy has both theoretical and applied functional attributes, it opens up a new field of applied philosophical research and applied philosophical research. Emphasizing that the world view is the principle of direction, Fang ** is the world view that is specifically developed, and establishes the important position that Fang ** should have in philosophy but has not been paid attention to in the past.