Philosophical reflections. Philosophy of love

In ancient and classical philosophy, the main emphasis was on its self-determination as a special kind of knowledge: knowledge of the Universal, the One, the Absolute. Modern philosophy (within the horizon of its tasks) emphasizes the very process of philosophizing, considering this process as its own feature of the human mind or consciousness, corresponding to transcendent(going beyond the limits of existence) to the nature of man. Therefore, the question of the essence of philosophy coincides with the question of the essence of man. In Heidegger's formulation, philosophy is basic co-existence human presence, i.e. philosophizing, a person is at the essence of Being, "is thrown back to himself" (K. Jaspers).

Every normal person philosophizes, but unlike a professional philosopher, he does not philosophize in a "pure form". That is why the teaching of philosophy, among other things, is called upon and promotes the ability to philosophize more consistently, which means, according to Hegel, to learn to be in the realm of "pure thinking".

As Aristotle remarked: "Philosophy begins with wonder." positing" wonders"of the world is expressed in asking special "childish" questions like: "why does the sun shine?" Such questions are only a naive form of the ultimate philosophical question: "Why is something, and not vice versa not there?" (It is easy to catch that the childish question about the sun refers us to the world as a whole. In Kantian terms, it would sound like this: "How should the world be arranged so that there are conditions for the possibility of a luminous sun in it?")

The understanding of philosophy as a universal modality (i.e. ability) of thinking in general corresponds to creative(i.e. creative) experience (the experience of generating one’s own thoughts) of each person and the experience of modern professional philosophy. The further task of the definition will be to reveal the content of this modality.

Here are a few "definitions" of philosophy and its tasks that are typical of modern times, and which are characterized by the fact that they break with the classical understanding of philosophy as a kind of knowledge (or as a kind of science).

Philosophy is:

questioning (M. Heidegger);

the very process of philosophizing (K. Jaspers);

consciousness "aloud" (M. Mamardashvili);

search for the unity and integrity of the World (J. Ortega y Gasset);

longing to be at home everywhere (Novalis);

concrete reflection mediated by the entire universe of signs (P. Ricoeur);

philosophy is not one of the sciences, its goal is the logical clarification of thoughts (L. Wittgenstein), etc.

But in general - how many philosophers - so many formulations. In the circle of limited and specific tasks of propaedeutics, it is possible to make a conditional choice, which we will further understand as philosophy. This choice is dictated by the extent to which this definition allows us to explicate (expand, logically deduce) all philosophical problems.

In this course, we will test for the possibility of explication the understanding of philosophy as reflection ("deficient reflection": the hyphen, which is often found in modern philosophical texts, acts as an operator indicating the need to delve into the semantic structure of the word in opposition to the objectivity or thingness that it denotes ). In other words, the idea of ​​"thinking" means unfolding thought from itself.

If it is permissible to speak of an innovation that the author wants to emphasize more methodically than to introduce into the "definition" of philosophy (the latter has already been done without him), then it consists in a systematic substantiation of the fact that the entire philosophical culture consists in the development of the original ability of each person. As if the most important task of the course is not to introduce new knowledge, but to give an opportunity to recognize or discover in oneself this trait of his mind. "I did not seek to express my thoughts, but to help you release from the fog of uncertainty what you yourself think". Bataille J. Theory of Religion. Minsk, 2000. - S. 109.

So, each person has, to a greater or lesser extent, the ability to reflection. The question now is the following. Is there a logic for the development of thought from itself? And since a positive answer is supposed, then this logic is the basis of the philosophical culture of thinking.

The ability to unfold thought from itself is only the expressed ability of human consciousness. This ability can be clearly expressed, but in the field of consciousness it never exists separately from other abilities. Thought always exists together with feeling, will and faith (the state of involvement in something). Every act of thought as such unfolds itself in a relationship to these other instances of consciousness. In relation to feeling, will and faith, thought plays a constructive role. It constructs consciousness of itself in relation to faith as part of some integrity (this is understanding); singles out the subject of consciousness (ego instance) in relation to feeling; constructively divides the integrity of the world into its component parts (things) in relation to the will.

Thus, the act of consciousness (thought) is a unity of reasoning, experiencing (imagination), understanding and reflection. Each of these modes of thought has its own natural order: the order of judgment is determined by the structure of things (this is clearly seen when we are faced with the need to describe any thing); this order is guarded by such a discipline as formal logic, and positive science is an institutionalized expression of the human ability to judge (note that "judgment" is from the word "judge"). The order of experience has its own logic - the logic of feeling, which is institutionally represented in the field of art (we clearly encounter this logic when we are forced to express our experience in words or other symbols - namely express rather than describe). Understanding - is the internal condition of any communication, is an intuitive consciousness of involvement in something. The logic of thinking is the own internal logic of thought or mind.

In mature ancient philosophy, a hierarchy of cognitive abilities was already established. Plato and Aristotle distinguished between the ability to cognize intelligible objects - the mind (Greek. Nus. It is worth noting that the words "mind", "science", "Teaching" have the same root "U"); mind (gr. Dianoia)- discursive ability to link eidos-images according to logical rules. Reason is expressed in the ability of judgment. In addition, one should highlight the vague comprehension of transient things by opinion (Greek. doxa) and "similarity" - representation. In general, the distinction between mind and reason is mandatory for the entire European philosophical tradition. This distinction was especially reinforced by Kant (Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Judgment).

The logic of the development of thought from itself (from meaning) is based on the peculiarity of the rational vision of any thing. This feature (a feature of relatively non-reflexive mental vision) consists in the fact that we see not only the material fabric of an object (in the words of Heidegger, the "thingness of a thing"), but we simultaneously understand the field of possibilities of a thing, its belonging to some whole. In other words, we see intelligently (consciously) when and only when we see not only what is, but also what can be (what this thing can be, how it can still be used). So, we certainly know, contemplating "this table", that it is something more than "this": it is also a representative of the class of tables (corresponds to a certain concept) and can be used in a variety of ways.

The ability to see a thing in the field of its possibilities (which are given to it by belonging to some integral continuum of being) also determines our freedom from things. After all, if a thing is perceived only as it is (at the level of sensory perception and only), then the individual turns out to be dependent on his material environment, he is compared with an animal that does not know, nor what it knows nothing it knows.

At the same time, we understand the difference that exists between a thing (existing) and its possibilities, and it is this understanding, the focus on this difference as a problem, that make up the peculiarity of the modern episteme (i.e., the method of categorical division of the world, which is historically changing). In previous epistemes, the distinction between the existent and the sphere of its possibilities did not have a clear reflexive expression, in other words, it was poorly thematized. The main categorical division took place in other "places": between the thing and the idea, between the thing and the essence, between nature and spirit. In other words, where we previously saw continuity, we see a gap. And we see these gaps, first of all, because we are forced to live in them.

We live in a gap between what is in nature and the changes that we can make to it (through innovation and involvement in economic turnover) - this is the essence of environmental issues; we live in the perspective of options for our own lives and the need for our own choices - which traditional society almost did not allow. In general, we are in a situation where it is not so much the need that compels us to action, but the future (in all its virtuality) attracts us.

In an implicit form, a reasonable vision of a thing is bringing it under the question: how is it possible? Questioning is indeed the original and main form of reflection. No other form of expression of thought so clearly relies on itself, grows out of its own content (meaning). The real question is the paradoxical knowledge of ignorance and grows out of this reflexive ignorance. In questioning, thought most clearly unfolds from itself. This means that thought owes its birth not to the perceived object, but to the subject as the bearer of meaning.

The question is the main, but not the only figure of reflection. A more general form is the internal logic of the Language. Many philosophers have noted that philosophy is a special language practice, where statements are directed at themselves. In this way, philosophy is like poetry, which uses special techniques (rhythm and rhyme, for example) and focuses on the semantic structure of the word, on the play of its meanings.

Various forms of meaning transfer (which is a formal condition for reflection) occur through the use of rhetorical figures or tropes: metaphors, synecdoches, catachreses, etc.

Thus the use of language, questioning and tropes is a general but formal condition of reflection. The content side of the development of meaning is due to the existential nature of the Reason itself, the methods that it uses.

Proving the existence of God is one of the main tasks of Christian theology. And the most interesting argument in favor of divine existence was put forward by the Italian theologian Anselm of Canterbury.

Its essence is the following. God is defined as the totality of all perfections. He is the absolute good, love, goodness, and so on. Existence is one of the perfections. If something exists in our mind but does not exist outside of it, then it is imperfect. Since God is perfect, it follows from the idea of ​​his existence that his real existence must be inferred.

God exists in the mind, therefore, he exists outside of it.

This is a rather interesting argument, illustrating what philosophy was like in the Middle Ages. Although it was refuted by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, try to think about it for yourself.

Rene Descartes: "I think, therefore I am"

Can you say anything with absolute certainty? Is there at least one thought that you have no doubt about? You say, “Today I woke up. Of this I am absolutely sure.” Sure? What if your brain was hit an hour ago and now they are sending electrical signals to it to artificially create memories in you? Yes, it looks implausible, but it is theoretically possible. It's about absolute certainty. What then are you sure of?

Rene Descartes found such undeniable knowledge. This knowledge is in man himself: I think, therefore I am. This statement is beyond doubt. Think about it: even if your brain is in a flask, your very thinking, however wrong, exists! Let everything you know be false. But one cannot deny the existence of that which thinks falsely.

Now you know the most indisputable statement of all possible, which has become almost the slogan of all European philosophy: cogito ergo sum.

Plato: "It is the concepts of things that really exist, not the things themselves"

The main problem of ancient Greek philosophers was the search for being. Don't worry, this beast is not scary at all. Being is what is. That's all. “Then why look for it,” you say, “here it is, everywhere.” Everywhere, but just take some thing, think about it, as being disappears somewhere. For example, your phone. It seems to be there, but you understand that it will break down and be disposed of.

Basically, everything that has a beginning has an end. But being has no beginning and no end by definition - it just is. It turns out that since your phone exists for some time and its existence depends on this time, its existence is somehow unreliable, unstable, relative.

Philosophers have dealt with this problem in different ways. Someone said that there is no being at all, someone stubbornly continued to insist that there is being, and someone - that a person cannot say anything definite about the world at all.

Plato found and argued the most powerful position, which had an incredibly strong influence on the development of the entire European culture, but with which it is intuitively difficult to agree. He said that the concepts of things - ideas - have being, while the things themselves belong to another world, the world of becoming. There is a particle of being in your phone, but being is not peculiar to it as a material thing. But your idea of ​​a telephone, unlike the telephone itself, does not depend on time or anything else. She is eternal and unchanging.

Plato has put a lot of effort into proving this idea, and the fact that he is still considered by many to be the greatest philosopher in history should make you slightly reluctant to unequivocally reject the position of the reality of ideas. Better read the "Dialogues" of Plato - they are worth it.

Immanuel Kant: "Man constructs the world around him"

Immanuel Kant is a giant of philosophical thought. His teaching became a kind of waterline that separated the philosophy "before Kant" from the philosophy "after Kant".

He was the first to express an idea that today may not sound like a bolt from the blue, but which we completely forget about in everyday life.

Kant showed that everything that a person deals with is the result of the creative forces of the person himself.

The monitor in front of your eyes does not exist "outside of you", you yourself have created this monitor. The easiest way to explain the essence of the idea is physiology: the image of the monitor is formed by your brain, and it is with it that you are dealing, and not with the “real monitor”.

However, Kant thought in philosophical terminology, while physiology as a science did not yet exist. Besides, if the world exists in the brain, then where does the brain exist? Therefore, instead of the “brain”, Kant used the term “a priori knowledge”, that is, such knowledge that exists in a person from the moment of birth and allows him to create a monitor from something inaccessible.

He identified various types of this knowledge, but its primary forms, which are responsible for the sensory world, are space and time. That is, there is neither time nor space without a person, it is a grid, glasses through which a person looks at the world, while simultaneously creating it.

Albert Camus: "Man is absurd"

Is life worth living?

Have you ever had such a question? Probably not. And the life of Albert Camus was literally permeated with despair from the fact that this question cannot be answered in the affirmative. Man in this world is like Sisyphus endlessly doing the same meaningless work. There is no way out of this situation, no matter what a person does, he will always remain a slave of life.

Man is an absurd being, wrong, illogical. Animals have needs, and there are things in the world that can satisfy them. A person, on the other hand, has a need for meaning - for something that does not exist.

The essence of man is such that it requires meaningfulness in everything.

However, its very existence is meaningless. Where there should be a meaning of meanings, there is nothing, emptiness. Everything loses its foundation, not a single value has a foundation.

The existential philosophy of Camus is very pessimistic. But you must admit that there are certain grounds for pessimism.

Karl Marx: "All human culture is an ideology"

In accordance with the theory of Marx and Engels, the history of mankind is the history of the suppression of some classes by others. In order to maintain its power, the ruling class distorts knowledge of real social relations, creating the phenomenon of "false consciousness". Exploited classes just don't know they're being exploited.

All creations of bourgeois society are declared by philosophers as ideology, that is, a set of false values ​​and ideas about the world. This is religion, and politics, and any human practices - in principle, we live in a false, erroneous reality.

All our beliefs are a priori false, because they originally appeared as a way of hiding the truth from us in the interests of a certain class.

A person simply does not have the opportunity to look at the world objectively. After all, ideology is a culture, an innate prism through which he sees things. Even such an institution as the family must be recognized as ideological.

What is real in this case? Economic relations, that is, such relations in which a way of distributing life's goods is formed. In a communist society, all ideological mechanisms will collapse (that means there will be no states, no religions, no families), and true relationships will be established between people.

Karl Popper: "A good scientific theory can be refuted"

What do you think, if there are two scientific theories and one of them is easily refuted, and the other is impossible to undermine at all, which one will be more scientific?

Popper, the methodologist of science, showed that the criterion of being scientific is falsifiability, that is, the possibility of refutation. A theory not only must have a coherent proof, it must have the potential to be broken.

For example, the statement "the soul exists" cannot be considered scientific, because it is impossible to imagine how to disprove it. After all, if the soul is immaterial, then how can you be sure for sure whether it exists? But the statement “all plants carry out photosynthesis” is quite scientific, since in order to refute it, it is enough to find at least one plant that does not convert light energy. It is quite possible that it will never be found, but the very possibility of refuting the theory should be obvious.

Such is the fate of any scientific knowledge: it is never absolute and is always ready to resign.

1. LAW OF VOID. Everything starts from the void. The void must always be filled.

2. THE LAW OF THE BARRIER. Opportunities are not given in advance. A decision must be made to cross the barrier as a conditional obstacle. Opportunities are given after an internal decision. Cherished desires are given to us along with the strength to fulfill them.

3. LAW OF NEUTRAL POSITION. To change, you have to stop. and then change direction.

4. LAW OF PAYMENT. You need to pay for everything: for action and inaction. What will be more expensive? Sometimes the answer is obvious only at the end of life, on the deathbed - the price for inaction is more expensive. Avoiding failure does not make a person happy. “There have been many failures in my life, most of which never happened” - the words of the old man to his sons before his death.

5. LAW OF SIMILARITY. Like attracts like. There are no random people in our lives. We attract not the people we want to attract, but those who are like us.

6. LAW OF THINKING. The inner world of human thoughts is embodied in the outer world of things. One should not look for the causes of unhappiness in the outside world, but turn one's gaze inward. Our outer world is the realized world of our inner thoughts.

7. THE LAW OF THE ROCKER. When a person wants something, but it is unattainable, it is necessary to come up with another interest, equal in strength to the first one.

8. LAW OF ATTRACTION. A person attracts to himself what he loves, fears or constantly expects, i.e. whatever is in his central, focused consciousness. Life gives us what we expect from it, not what we want.
“What you count on is what you get.”

9. LAW OF REQUEST. If you don't ask anything from life, you don't get anything. If we ask fate for something we don't know, then we get something we don't know. Our request attracts the corresponding reality.

10. LAW OF LIMITATION #1 It is impossible to foresee everything. Everyone sees and hears only what he understands, and therefore he cannot take into account all the circumstances. Everything depends on our internal barriers, our own limitations. There are events that occur against our will, they cannot be foreseen, and we are not responsible for them. With all his desire, a person cannot control all the events of his life.

11. LAW OF REGULARITIES. In life, events often occur beyond our control. An event that happened once can be considered an accident, an event that happened twice is a coincidence, but an event that happened three times is a pattern.

12. LAW OF LIMITATION #2. A person cannot have everything. He often lacks something in life. The secret of happiness lies not in indulging your whims and desires, but in the ability to be content with what you have. It is not easy to be satisfied with a little, but it is most difficult to be content with a lot. You can lose happiness in search of wealth, which means losing everything. You can gain the whole world and lose your soul.

13. LAW OF CHANGE. If you want change in your life, take control of the circumstances in your own hands. You cannot change your life without changing anything in it and without changing yourself. Because of his passivity, a person often misses a real chance given by fate. Who prioritizes your life - you or someone else? Maybe life itself arranges them, and you go with the flow? Become the master of your destiny. If you don't go anywhere, you won't get anywhere.

14. LAW OF DEVELOPMENT. Life forces a person to solve precisely those tasks that he refuses to solve, which he is afraid to solve, the solution of which he avoids. But these tasks will still have to be solved on another, already on a new round of one's life. And the intensity of emotions, experiences will be more powerful, and the price of the decision will be higher. From what we run, to that we will come.

15. TAXI LAW. If you are not a driver, if you are being driven, then the farther you are driven, the more expensive it will be for you. If you have not booked a route, you can be anywhere. The further you go down the wrong path, the more difficult it will be for you to return.

16. LAW OF CHOICE. Our life is made up of many choices. You always have a choice. Our choice may be that we do not make a choice. The world is full of possibilities. However, there are no gains without losses. When we accept one thing, we give up something else. Going through one door, we miss another. Everyone must decide for himself what is more important to him. Losses can also be gained.

17. THE LAW OF THE HALFWAY. In a relationship with another person, your zone is halfway. You cannot completely control the behavior of another person. Another may not move, you cannot go the way for him and make the other person change.

18. THE LAW OF CONSTRUCTION OF THE NEW. In order to build something new, you need to: a) destroy the old, if necessary, clear the place, set aside time, mobilize forces to build a new one; b). know exactly what you want to build. Do not destroy, not knowing the ways to create. You need to know where you're going. If you don't know where you're going, you'll end up in the wrong place. "Who does not sail anywhere - for those there is no fair wind" / M. Montel/

19. LAW OF BALANCE. No matter how much a person wants to change his life, his way of thinking, stereotypes of his behavior will try to keep him in his old, familiar life. But if a person manages to change something in his life, then a new, changed life will obey the Law of balance. Changes usually proceed slowly and painfully due to inertia in thoughts and behavior, their internal resistance and the reaction of those around them.

20. LAW OF OPPOSITES. Our life is inconceivable without opposites, it contains birth and death, love and hate, friendship and rivalry, meeting and parting, joy and suffering, loss and gain. A person is also contradictory: on the one hand, he strives to ensure that his life is stable, but at the same time, a certain dissatisfaction drives him forward. In the world of opposites, a person seeks to regain the lost unity with himself, with other people and with life itself. Everything has a beginning and an end, this is the earthly cycle and the cycle of life. Things, having reached their limit, turn into their opposite. A pair of opposites maintains balance, and the transition from one extreme to another creates a variety of life. Sometimes, in order to understand something, you need to see, to know the opposite of it. One opposite cannot exist without the other - in order for there to be day, night is needed.

21. LAW OF HARMONY. Man seeks harmony in everything: in himself, in the world. You can achieve harmony with the world only by being in harmony with yourself. A good attitude towards oneself, self-acceptance is the key to harmony with the world, people and one's own soul. Harmony does not mean the absence of difficulties and conflicts, which can be an incentive for personal growth. Harmony between mind, feeling and action - maybe this is happiness?

22. THE LAW OF GOOD AND EVIL. The world is not created just for pleasure. It does not always correspond to our ideas about it and our desires. He who is not capable of doing a good deed himself will not appreciate the good from others. For those who cannot see evil, evil does not exist.

23. THE LAW OF THE MIRROR. What annoys a person in others is in himself. What a person does not want to hear from other people is what is most important for him to hear at this stage of life. Another person can serve as a mirror for us, helping us to discover what we do not see, do not know about ourselves. If a person corrects what irritates him in others in himself, fate will not send him such a mirror. Avoiding everything that is unpleasant for us, avoiding people who cause us negative feelings, we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to change our lives, deprive ourselves of the opportunity for inner growth.

24. LAW OF SUPPLEMENT. We need people, events, sources of knowledge that can give us what we want to have, but have only a small amount. We try to become part of the potential of other people. We build ourselves outside. Our desire to possess someone or something is non-recognition, denial of our own merits, disbelief that we have them.

25. LAW OF CHAIN ​​REACTION. If you allow your negative feelings to play out, then one unpleasant experience will follow another. If you live indulging in dreams and daydreams, then reality will be squeezed out by the illusory world of fantasies. It can be difficult for a person to stop the flow of their negative and unproductive thoughts, because. he develops the habit of worrying, worrying, suffering, dreaming, i.e. move away from reality, from active problem solving. Whatever you give more energy to, that will be more. The thought to which you give your time acts like a magnet, attracting its kind. One disturbing thought is easier to deal with than a swarm of intrusive thoughts. In the course of our communication with other people, we tend to adopt their mood through emotional contagion.

26. LAW OF SUPPRESSION. What a person suppresses in his thoughts or actions, what he denies in himself, at the most inopportune moment can erupt outward. You need to accept your thoughts and feelings, and not suppress and accumulate them in yourself. Accept yourself, accept what you don't like about yourself, don't criticize yourself.
Acceptance, recognition of the rejected and denied in oneself contributes to the internal growth of a person. This allows him to live life to the fullest. We seek to regain the lost unity.

27. LAW OF ACCEPTANCE OR CALM. Life itself is neither bad nor good. It is our perception that makes it good or bad. Life is what it is. You have to accept life, enjoy life, appreciate life. Trust life, trust the power of your mind and the dictates of your heart. "Everything will be as it should, even if it is different."

28. THE LAW OF VALUATION OF YOUR PERSONALITY. People around almost always evaluate a person the way he evaluates himself. You need to accept and appreciate yourself. Do not create idols for yourself, or an unattainable, ideal image of yourself. Do not accept the opinion of others about you as the truth without criticizing it. Trying to earn the love of all people (which is impossible), you neglect your own needs, you can lose yourself, lose respect for yourself. It is impossible to be perfect in everything. You are worth exactly as much as you value yourself, what is your self-worth. However, a bit of realism never hurts.

29. LAW OF ENERGY EXCHANGE. The more a person has advanced in knowing himself and the world, the more he can take from the world and give to it. One must be able to establish an adequate, fair exchange with fate. If you give more than you take, this will lead to your energy depletion. If you give someone more than you receive from them, you may develop resentment towards the person. The world exists to be shared with each other.

30. THE LAW OF THE MEANING OF LIFE. We come from the void, trying to find the meaning of life, and again we go into the void. Each person has his own meaning of life, which can change at different life stages. What is the meaning of life - to strive for something or just to live? After all, striving for something, we are forced to let life itself out of sight, thus. for the sake of the result, we lose the process itself. Perhaps the most important meaning of life is life itself. It is necessary to get involved in life, accepting it, then it will be possible to perceive life in its diversity, and then it will color a person's being with those colors that it owns. A person can find the meaning of life only outside himself, in the world. In life, the one who does not ask fate for a single recipe, a panacea for all diseases and all troubles, wins.

Sooner or later, every person begins to think about the question of why people live in this world. This problem has accompanied humanity throughout its history. Over the millennia, people have accumulated a sufficient baggage of approaches to answering this question. Let's talk about the basic concepts of the meaning of life that have developed in religion, philosophy and psychology.

The problem of determining the meaning of life

The phrase "meaning of life" appears in philosophical use only in the 19th century. But the question of why people live in the world arises several thousand years ago. This problem is central to any mature worldview, reflecting on the finiteness of their existence, each person asks himself this question and looks for a suitable answer. From the point of view of philosophers, the meaning of life is a personal characteristic that determines the attitude towards oneself, other people, and life in general. This is a unique awareness of a person's place in the world, which affects life goals and priorities. However, this understanding of one's place in life is not easy for a person, it appears only through reflection, sometimes painful. The complexity of this problem lies in the fact that there is no single-true, generally accepted answer to the key question: why do people live in the world? The meaning of life is not equal to its purpose, and so far no unequivocally verifiable argument has been found in favor of one or another concept. Therefore, for centuries there have been and coexist different approaches to answering this question.

Religious Approach

For the first time, a person thought about why people live in the world, in ancient times. As a result of these searches, the very first answer to the question appears - religion, it gave universal justifications for everything that exists in the world, including man. All religious concepts are built on the idea of ​​the afterlife. But each denomination imagines the path of immortality in different ways, and therefore the meaning of life is different for them. So, for Judaism, the meaning lies in the diligent service of God and the fulfillment of his commandments set forth in the Torah. For Christians, the main thing is the salvation of the soul. It is possible only through a righteous earthly life and the knowledge of God. For Muslims, too, the meaning is submission to the will of God. Only the one who lived devotedly to Allah will go to heaven, the rest is prepared for hell. A significantly different approach can be seen in Hinduism. Here the meaning lies in salvation, in eternal pleasure, but for this you need to go through the path of asceticism and suffering. Buddhism thinks in the same direction, where the main goal of life is understood as getting rid of suffering through the renunciation of desires. One way or another, every religion sees the meaning of human existence in the improvement of the spirit and the limitation of bodily needs.

Philosophers of ancient Greece about the meaning of life

The ancient Greeks thought a lot about the origins of being, the origins of all things. The problem of the meaning of life is perhaps the only one in which representatives of different schools of ancient philosophy agreed. They believed that the search for meaning is a difficult, daily work, a path that has no end. They assumed that every person on earth has his own, unique mission, to find which is the main task and meaning. Socrates suggested that the acquisition of meaning allows a person to achieve harmony between the body and the spirit. This is the path to peace and success not only in earthly life, but also in the other world. Aristotle believed that the search for the purpose of life is an integral element of human self-consciousness, and with the growth of the soul, the purpose of existence, the awareness of the purpose of a person change, and there is no single, universal answer for everyone to the eternal question of why we live in the world.

Artur Schopenhauer's concept

The 19th century saw a surge of reflection on the purposes of human existence. The irrational concept of Arthur Schopenhauer offers a new approach to solving this problem. The philosopher believes that the meaning of human life is just an illusion, with the help of which people are saved from the terrible thought of the aimlessness of their existence. In his opinion, the world is governed by an absolute will, which is indifferent to the fate of individuals. A person acts under the pressure of circumstances and someone else's will, so his existence is a real hell, a chain of uninterrupted suffering, replaced by each other. And in search of meaning in this endless series of suffering, people come up with religion, philosophy, the meaning of life in order to justify their existence and make it at least relatively bearable.

Denying the meaning of life

Following Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche explained the features of the inner world of man in the aspect of the nihilistic theory itself. He said that religion is the morality of slaves, that it does not give, but deprives people of the meaning of life. Christianity is the greatest deception and must be overcome, and only then can the purpose of human existence be understood. He believes that most people live in order to prepare the world for the emergence of the superman. The philosopher called for abandoning humility and relying on an external force that would bring salvation. A person must create his own life, following his nature, and this is the main meaning of existence.

Existential theory of the meaning of life

In the 20th century, philosophical reasoning about the purposes of human existence becomes central in many areas, including existentialism. Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger reflect on the meaning of life and come to the conclusion that the main thing for a person is freedom. Everyone brings meaning to their lives, as the world around them is absurd and chaotic. Actions and, most importantly, choice, moral, vital, are what people live in the world for. Meaning can only be comprehended subjectively; it does not exist objectively.

A pragmatic approach to determining the meaning of life

Reflecting on the purpose for which we come into this world, William James and his fellow pragmatists come to the conclusion that meaning and purpose are equal. The world is irrational, and it is futile to look for objective truths in it. Therefore, pragmatists believe that the meaning of life is commensurate only with the success of a person in life. Everything that leads to success has value and meaning. It is possible to evaluate and identify the existence of the meaning of life only by applying the criterion of usefulness and profitability. Therefore, often this concept appears in the subsequent assessment of the life of another person.

Viktor Frankl's concept and psychology

The meaning of human life has become a central category in the theory of the psychologist and philosopher Viktor Frankl. He developed his concept while experiencing terrible torment in a German concentration camp, and this gives special weight to his thoughts. He says that there is no abstract meaning of life common to all. Each person has their own, unique. Moreover, the meaning cannot be found once and for all, it is always the requirement of the moment. The main conductor of a person in search of global goals of existence is conscience. It is she who helps to evaluate each act in the aspect of common life meaning. According to V. Frankl, a person can follow three paths on the way to acquiring it: the path of the values ​​of creativity, the values ​​of attitude and the values ​​of experiences. The loss of the meaning of life leads to inner emptiness, an existential vacuum.

Answering the question of why people are born into the world, Frankl notes that for the search for meaning and oneself. More recent psychologists say that the search for the meaning of life and its acquisition are the most important motivational mechanisms. A person who has found the answer to the main question for himself lives a more productive and happy life.

Does free will exist? Is it possible to break out of the framework imposed by one's own horoscope? Or is a person obliged to go through those troubles, problems that are embedded in his natal chart? This is an incomplete list of questions that subscribers, friends and customers periodically ask. Everyone wants to know - do you have to fight fate or does fate require humility? I often wonder about free will myself. Sometimes it seems to me that someone puts certain thoughts, ideas into my head, and I only need to write them down. Each person must have time to do something while on Earth. Someone needs to open their own business, someone needs to treat people, and someone needs to blog. Each has its own mission. Does this mean we are no longer free to choose our own course of action? Or is the "corridor of free will" just very narrow? Let's try to understand this issue.

For myself, I conditionally identified 3 groups of factors that can limit a person’s free will:

1. Restriction of free will by the natal/relocation horoscope.
2. Restriction of free will by prognostic indicators.
3. Restriction of free will by natal horoscopes of close people (relatives, lovers, friends, etc.).

I will go through each of the points.

Restriction of free will by a natal horoscope / relocation horoscope.

In a person’s life, something cannot happen that his natal chart does not indicate. So if there are no indications of widowhood in the chart, a person will not be widowed, if there are no indicators for world fame, the native will not become mega popular, etc. Some indicators of the natal chart are corrected by moving, and in natal it is usually clearly visible that moving will help, emigration will be realized on a specific topic or not.

But maybe we see the question of free will in black and white, excluding 50 shades of gray? In my opinion, a person has free will, just not everywhere and not in everything. For example, the house where Saturn stands is clearly an area in which the freedom of the native is limited. And the Sun, Jupiter, on the contrary, indicate the sphere where we are free to act as we want. Of course, everything must be taken into account - and aspects to the planets, cusps, and not just the location of the house or sign.

Some people have more freedom initially. These include the owners of planets in the First House, especially in the region of the Ascendant. By and large, many areas of life are subject to them. But it is worth evaluating those planets that are in the abode of our Ruler of the First House. We are also able to influence the houses that these planets rule.

Accordingly, the accumulation of planets in the Twelfth House forms a strong feeling that nothing can be done, that the hand of karma is visible everywhere (if the sign in which the planet is located and the sign in which the Ascendant is located are different). There was a case when the owner of a cluster of planets in the Seventh house said that there is no free will. I suppose that in his case, this position simply gave an emphasis on the strong influence of other people - they make a decision, thereby forcing the native to act in a certain way or not to act, his career, level of wealth, etc. depend on them.

We also have freedom because each planet has several meanings. Neptune is not only drug addicts, mental patients, but also narcologists, tarologists, musicians, singers. If Neptune is in the Seventh House, then we are limited in choosing a satellite, but we are free to choose from what the planet represents. Do not want a relationship with the singer? Please, you have an actor!

We seemed to have come to a restaurant, say, Mediterranean cuisine. We can order grilled shrimps, mussel pasta or crab soup. But we won't get borscht or chicken Kiev.

This principle of replacement (or rather, similarity) underlies some methods of correcting / working out a horoscope. Tense aspects, the presence of weak planets in the chart will not go anywhere, and turning a blind eye to them, pretending that they simply do not exist is wrong. It is necessary to choose an adequate replacement for the horoscopic factor, and then the problems will become many times less.

Restriction of free will by prognostic indicators.

Sometimes our freedom is limited not so much by natal aspects, planets, as by the indicators that have developed in prognostication. Prognostic aspects form in us certain feelings, thoughts, desires, and they, in turn, influence what decisions we make.

The square from transiting Uranus to the Moon - Ruler of the Twelfth House in a pregnant woman can be lost through stress, nervousness and, as a result, the need to be under the supervision of doctors in a hospital, because of which her freedom to move around the city will be limited.

Or the native hopes for a career advancement, and in the directorates the natal square from Saturn to Jupiter, the Ruler of the Tenth House, has become more active, and the man has remained in the "flight". Thoughts may arise that making a career is simply not destiny. But the aspect will pass, a harmonious aspect will form from the directional Sun to the natal MC, and the man will be able not only to climb the career ladder, but to open his own company.

In other words, if it seems to you that fortune has turned its back on you, that you can’t reach any heights with your natal, you can’t get married, you can’t buy an apartment, etc., then maybe you are just going through an unsuccessful period, and after a while a favorable natal factor is activated.

Another point of view, also directly related to prognostication, is appropriate here. According to it, a person is free, but at certain moments of his life his will becomes limited, pressure is put on a person, which forces him to act only this way and not otherwise. At such moments, there is a feeling that there is no freedom, that some kind of energy flow is carrying you to no one knows where and what it all will lead to is incomprehensible. A person feels like a spring in a huge system.

The reverse is also true. If a person is initially limited in certain areas by his horoscope, then the influence of some prognostic factors (planets, groups of aspects, etc.) leads to greater freedom. But the aspect passes, the feeling of independence also passes. The person is back to normal.

Restriction of free will by natal horoscopes of loved ones.

According to our horoscope, we can assess the fate of people close to us, but the same can be done according to their natal charts. Close relationships, whether friendly or romantic, are a sure sign that people fit into each other's horoscopes.

For example, a woman has the Sun in the Tenth House trine Jupiter, Mars, Pluto in the Second House and her husband is a successful entrepreneur. But she could marry a wealthy man, or she could marry an ordinary hard worker who, after marriage, suddenly began career growth. In the chart of this hard worker, there were initially indicators for success in business, he just met a woman exactly when this particular factor in his horoscope became more active.

The reverse is also true. In the horoscope of a male Descendant in Scorpio, a heavily aspected Pluto is in the Sixth House in Virgo, and the exiled Moon is in the Eighth House. The fate of the wife is not written in the best way. Either the wife's profession will be specific (surgeon, obstetrician, etc.), or she herself will be seriously ill. A woman who will live with such a man will definitely fall under the power of his natal horoscope. If earlier a woman did not complain about life, then after several years of living together, she may begin to have problems.

There is a phrase that I love very much. It sounds like this: "If you want to change your life, change your environment." This is a 100% true statement, but I would also add that you also need to choose the environment wisely.