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ph. d., associate
professor, Sharova M. A.
Kaluga State
University named after K. Tsiolkovsky, Russia
THE STUDY OF THE LAWS OF
THOUGHT A LOGICAL – PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES I. A. CHISTOVICH
I.A. Chistovich (1828 – 1893) – a representative
of the school of philosophical theism, a scientist, a historian, a prominent
Church and state leaders. In the history of the ecclesiastical - academic
thought he went not only as the Creator of the cycle of works devoted to the
traditions of the St. Petersburg theological Academy («History of the St.
Petersburg theological Academy» (1857), «The St. Petersburg theological Academy
over the past 30 years, 1858 – 1888» (1889)), but as the author of one of the
first Russian textbooks on psychology («The Course of experimental psychology» (1868)), for which he was awarded the St.
Macarius prize (1869). A.P. Lopukhin thought this tutorial is the result of
years of scientific and pedagogical activities of the thinker at the St. Petersburg
theological Academy (1851 - 1873) and the Imperial school of jurisprudence
(1866-1882), where I.A. Chistovich taught psychology [1]. Information about I.A.
Chistovich, the teacher remained in the memories of a contemporary Archbishop
Nikanor (A.I. Brovkovich) [2].
His philosophical and psychological views were
directed to the knowledge of the truths of the existing through experiments:
the natural and the metaphysical, connected to the ultimate source of existence
– God. Consideration of the soul, he made a sphere of inner reality, where the
inner man was expressed from the sensual – subject conditions and
phenomenological manifestations. The task of psychology thinker saw: 1) the
description of the phenomena of the spiritual life; 2) the definition of the
logical - mental laws governing the progress of the spiritual life; 3) the
drafting of concepts about the real existence of the human soul [3, p. 3].
In justification of memory as a form of psychic
reflection of reality I.A. Chistovich turned to the works of English empiricism
(Hobbes, George. Locke and others) in connection with the discussion of the
experience and criticism of the doctrine of innate ideas. The philosopher
considered the memory of the natural science positions, as the ability of maintaining
and sustaining ideas in the shower, differentiating: 1) memory, like the
ability to playback images in mind, 2) preparatoria, namely, the arbitrary and
deliberate memory. In addition to the famous mid-nineteenth century types of
memory (mechanical, witty, rational [3, p. 59]). I.A. Chistovich determined
another memory as a talent (citing the example of historical figures: Cyrus and
Caesar, who knew his soldiers in the face). Using the ontological model of
memory, they interpreted the historical process and the interpretation of time
as a direct inner experiences that appear in the sphere of the historical
experience of spiritual culture: childhood (visual memory in the absence of
logic), adolescence (memory associations), maturity (mechanical Association and
internal logic). He emphasized that memory is the ability to accumulate, store,
and reproduce information that goes back to Plato's comparison of memory to a
wax tablet. Disadvantages of memory – forgetfulness and dementia that is not
only from physiological, but also psychological reasons (the condition of the
nervous system).
A kind of mental processes I.A. Chistovich
believed dreams (distinguished category of «sleep» and «dreaming»), which are
influenced by associative views. Dream thinker imagined as a form of spiritual
– sensual life, embodying the essence of the physical and mental sides. At the
same time, he went into the field of irrationality and believed that physical
and mental processes during sleep, weaken, stop the processes of consciousness
and will. I.A. Chistovich called sleep chaotic state of mind, when various
images emerge and mingle among themselves without participation of the will. He
wrote that in sleep «the soul goes from the conscious state to a semi-conscious
and finally, in the unconscious» [3, p. 65]. «During sleep stops only
consciousness, but the mental life does not stop and does not change» [3, C.
66]. Dreams are subjective and are a border state between sleep and waking, and
also reflect the spiritual experience of a person (here, a so-called «prophetic
dreams»). Arguing the relationship of philosophical and psychological knowledge
to metaphysics, he, however, acknowledged the fact that the metaphysical realm
is opened through the facts of spiritual reality (for example, sleep –
wakefulness of the spirit while braking other psycho – physiological processes
of the organism).
Justification of logical – philosophical
research in psychology is revealed in the understanding of the laws of
thinking: concept, judgment, reasoning. After Descartes («Cogito ergo sum»), I.A.
Chistovich thought thinking is the essential property and the highest degree of
human intellectual activity, contrasting it to the «lower» ways of
understanding the world: feeling and perception. The specificity of formation
of concepts was then that her mind connected the fixed characteristics of one
object in a single view. The difference between the concepts from the thinking
of the thinker saw the following: 1) the uniqueness of the concept (a single interpretation);
2) the invariance of the concept (does not depend on subjective perception); 3)
recognition of the concept of form of life; 4) the assignment of the concept to
the General (= generic) to things and phenomena; 5) concepts are conceived only
significant, without the actualization of random phenomena [3, p. 75]. Judgment
was understood by him as the ability of reason to make a new view (the subject)
to an existing (predicate) to form a logically connected chain of relations.
Conclusion served as a form of thinking through which of the available
judgments formed new concepts (deductive and inductive methods in psychology).
I.A. Chistovich of philosophy takes in
theoretical psychology the concept of mind as a form of consciousness, the
highest expression of the spiritual life of man. Analyzing the rationalism of
Descartes and the idealistic systems of I.Kant and G. Hegel, he explained the difference
between intelligence and from other forms of consciousness, as if the mind as a
thinking consciousness, aimed at peace and the underlying principle recognizes
the consistency of knowledge; the mind as mind, conscious of itself, relates
not only different content, but himself with this content, which can hold the
contradictions and to reach the truth. With the category of the mind are
associated ideas like the desire coming from the own nature of the soul and
penetrates all mental strength. In keeping with the philosophy of Platonism I.A.
Chistovich recognized ideas as objective entities that have a Genesis,
regardless of the representing mind, and make up the special world different
from the world of phenomena. Anthropological thinker recognized the innate
human desire for truth, acquired through the ratio with the ideal essence (=
idea). By I.A. Chistovich, the absolute dignity of things or phenomena can be
considered only from the point of view of the ideal look at it as a reasonable
feasibility.
The category of «expediency» pervades not only
ontological foundations, but gnoseological the main spheres of human existence:
knowledge of the world, God and man, according to which they defined the types
of ideas: 1) the idea of the Infinite; 2) the cosmological idea; 3)
psychological idea. First he thought a reasonable idea of perpetual peace,
linking all spheres of existence from the Infinite and Unconditional to
conditional and limited in your final creature takes on the character of
religious ideas (= faith). Closest to the understanding of the truths of divine
revelation I.A. Chistovich considered Christianity. The cosmological idea
formed the basis of the internal sensible view of the world from a position of
uninterrupted zakonodateli, where one part serves as a support and cause the
other, and all laws operate with the same necessity (= «Kosmos» in ancient
philosophy). The psychological idea in the philosophy of I.A. Chistovich
presented as the basis of a reasonable view of the life and activity of the
human soul, expressed in the forms: the idea of the mental (= the truth),
practical (= morality), aesthetic, the totality of which was the free will of
the individual and the moral duty to mankind.
They highlighted two areas of mental activity:
1) knowledge, where, combining some concepts with other people to strive for
the full and complete truth (= ideal); 2) creativity, through which he displays
his mental state in sensory images (in – out). Content knowledge consists of
the facts of empirical experience and mentally represent the supersensible
life. Space and time I.A. Chistovich related to the conditions for empirical
knowledge in which the subject acts on the spirit. The specifics of his
understanding of space and time was that, Recalling the arguments of a priori
forms of cognition of Kant, the philosopher, has never taken a certain
scientific positions (substantial or relational). It is characterized by
understanding the subjective and social forms of empirical knowledge based on
their own beliefs and observations and, in the second case, the components of
the historical experience of the people. Actualization of the forms of
knowledge becomes the base when the items have been removed time («faith and
knowledge merge into each other ... the past is not available observation and
is the area of extrasensory, becoming exclusively a matter of faith» [3, p.
94]).
Mental cognition I.A. Chistovich deduced from
the categories: mental – determined existence (formal generic) and mentally
represent supersensible being (real idea). Being the thinker identified the «highest
concept, encompassing all the others ... unconditional things... Genesis
contains only one sign, not showing the nature and feature of conceivable
things, but her independent thinking existence» [3, p. 95]. The main categories
of being: substance and accident (a thing and its properties), causality. The
method of self-observation I.A. Chistovich deduced from the specifics of
consciousness, able to call a thing not only an object for observation
(substance), but also due to the combined properties (typesetting), to
distinguish it from the other. So, introspection becomes available to the inner
connection of mental processes, the life of the spirit (= «spiritual being»),
opening in consciousness. Things of the outer world (= the «material existence»)
the mind perceives as they are in their actions on us. Causality is the set of
actions that have internal logical consistency. So, in the sensual perception
of the essence of things is hidden from observation, but the thing appears to
perception of the phenomenon (impact of sensory excitation). The mind
consciousness comes from the causal advisability of life. He believed that
philosophy, as a science of supersensible or unconditioned, seeks to know the
purpose of all things, knowing underneath the idea of God. Having the character
of universality and necessity, philosophical knowledge admits the idea of the
Infinite inherent in the mind of each person according to his nature, so
well-defined its laws being binding and important for people. The ratio of the
human mind as a private and specific, and Unconditional as a General and
necessary, I.A. Chistovich resorted to empirical methods (induction) and
theoretical (deduction) of knowledge, where truth was defined by internal
evidence or rational necessity. At the same time, they recognized the
probabilistic knowledge as an intermediate stage between reality and
possibility (something that can be confirmed through evidence), the critical
boundary of which was made by the spiritual experience of man (John. Locke, I.
Kant).
His work «Course in experimental psychology» (1868) meant the attempt of logical – philosophical
research of the foundations of psychological knowledge, discovery and
demonstration of the functioning of such sources of the psyche in which are
formed: ideas, thoughts, concepts, etc., that is, all logical form of
knowledge.
Literature:
1. Lopukhin A. P. in memory of the historian of the St. Petersburg
Theological Academy I. A. Chistovich: Obituary (extract from the Ecclesiastical
Gazette ¹. 45 of 1893). SPb. 1893. 11s.
2. Nicanor (A. I. Brovkovich), Archbishop. Note // Russian archive.
1906. ¹. 9. P. 5 - 38
3. Chistovich I. A. Course in experimental psychology. SPb. 1868. 272 s.