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Вестник СПбГУ Философия и конфликтология. 2021. Т. 37. Вып. 3
The invention of reality
V. S. Levytskyy
Ukrainian Institute of Strategies of Global Development and Adaptation, 6, Round-point Schuman, Brüssel, 1040, Belgium
For citation: Levytskyy V. S. The invention of reality. Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Philosophy and Conflict Studies, 2021, vol. 37, issue 3, pp. 428-440. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu17.2021.305
The subject of the article is the process of forming ideas about the world as reality, which is most accurately described by the word "invention". The author, relying on classical texts in this respect (E. Husserl, M. Heidegger) and modern studies (A. Makushinsky, J.-F. Kurtin) substantiates the position according to which the idea of reality is not a cultural invariant. The notion that reality has always existed, and thanks to scientific reason has been most adequately reflected, understood and described, is a significant modernization. This has been evidenced by both the etymology of the concepts of "reality" and "reality", which first appeared only in scholasticism (D. Scotus, M. Eckhart), and the process of their content filling, which is inextricably linked with the formation of scientific rationality. The article shows that both the scientific mind and the integral image of the world created by it, which we call reality, genetically date back to the Christian value-semantic universe. Initially, it was within the framework of the discourse of natural theology that the image of the autonomous world has been conceptualized, developing according to the universal principles established by God. In the first scientific programs (R. Descartes, G. Galilei, I. Newton), these ideas were continued, as a result of which the world began to be understood as an immanent reality that is subject to the laws of nature. The new ontological beliefs received the ultimate philosophical foundation in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, to whom the phenomenal world exhausts the reality available to man. Accordingly, the world turns into a one-dimensional detranscendentalized reality. This methodological approach allows the author to make the following conclusions: 1) the image of world "reality" is a rather modern "invention", which was unknown in previous eras; 2) at the same time, it is genetically connected with the Christian semantic universe, outside of which it could not appear; 3) the world in it is understood as a one-dimensional immanent reality. Keywords: reality, existence, world, scientific reasoning, Christianity, natural theology, modernity.
Back in the late 90s, Jürgen Habermas drew attention to recent transformations in the understanding of reality, which he associated with the linguistic turn. The German philosopher showed that the relativization of ontological beliefs inevitably leads to the recognition of the relativity of ethical imperatives that threaten the stable functioning of society. Habermas writes that in order to overcome this state, a concept of truth is needed, which "connects the result of successful justification with something in the objective world" [1, p. 42]. In this connection, he proposes to return from the historicity and locality of Hegel's conceptualism to Kantian universalism, that is, in a sense, to go in the opposite direction along the path of detranscendentalization of existence.
Recently, the debate about the nature of reality has flared up with renewed vigor. We can say that it was initiated by the concept of "new realism" proposed by Maurizio Ferraris
© St. Petersburg State University, 2021
and supported by Markus Gabriel, Evandro Agazzi, Rom Harre and others. In the Russian-language discourse, similar views are defended by such scholars as David Dubrovsky, Vladislav Lektorsky, and Elena Mamchur. A consolidating position in this regard can be considered the idea of Ferraris, who wrote that according to realism, natural objects exist regardless of the ways in which we cognize them [2].
Gloria Origgi criticized this position, formulating the delusions of the new realism in five points. She writes that new realism is possible only when ignoring the achievements of philosophy of recent decades, according to which natural facts are always social facts: "... all those things that our ancestors thought of as natural are now culturalized, they have become social facts" [3]. From the Russian-speaking studies in this regard, one should acknowledge Ilya Kasavin who presented the social determinism of ontological attitudes and Andrey Smirnov, who connected statements about the nature of what exists with the logic of meaning. Separately, it is necessary to mention the last monograph of Habermas, which traces the connection between modern ways of conceptualizing beings, the origins of which are associated with German classical idealism, and Christian ontology [4].
Accordingly, the "archaeology" of the content of the notion "reality", which is undertaken within the framework of this article, is further developing this discussion and allows us to clarify the status of our judgments about reality and check their historical invariance.
In his famous work "The Age of the World Picture", Heidegger convincingly showed the historicity of the worlds that appear to man. He connects modern times with a unique situation when the world appears in front of a person in the form of a picture. "Hence world picture," Heidegger writes, "when understood essentially, does not mean a picture of the world but the world conceived and grasped as picture. What it is, in its entirety, is now taken in such a way that it first is in being and only is in being to the extent that it is set up by man, who represents and sets forth" [5, p. 129-130].
According to the German philosopher, the truth of being, understood as certainty, determines such a world where to be now means to be a part of the picture of the world, which is understood as a picture. Naturally, this is fundamentally different from the medieval "worldview", where to be means to be a part of the hierarchy of beings, or from the ancient one, where to be is the essence of being an element of the cosmic order. It is obvious that these metamorphoses concern not only special issues of ontology, but affect the entire cultural image. Accordingly, as Heidegger claimed, there has never been anything like the ancient or medieval picture of the world, the world presented in the form of a picture characterizes exclusively the age of modernity.
Following Heidegger, the same can be said about reality: what seems to us to be an invariant characteristic of any cultural universe turns out to be quite a recent and unique cultural concept. Moreover, such ontological concepts are: 1) historically changeable; 2) assume a unique, characteristic only of a given historical era, form of rationality and the type of objectivity associated with it; 3) legitimize relevant behavioral strategies and public goals. The integral image of the world, which we call reality, is characteristic only for our age. Therefore, the question of its genealogy becomes logical. Taking into account the position the idea of "reality" occupies in the modern worldview, the limit of this question becomes self-evident. Thus, the purpose of this study is to analyze the formation of the of the world picture, understood as reality.
The first thing that draws attention to itself is the etymology of the very concept of "reality". It is really not as archaic as it might seem and begins its history from the time of
scholasticism. Word use in the modern sense has even less history and may be associated with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. John Kurtin, the author of the article "'Reality' in the European Dictionary of Philosophy", writes that the term "realitas" (reality) is a neologism of Duns Scotus (possibly Henry of Ghent), derived from res (thing), and inscribed in his doctrine of formalities to originally denote the essence and characteristics of a certain thing.
The conceptualism of Scotus laid the foundation for the understanding and use of the concept of "reality" for the entire European philosophy up to Kant. Reality for him is devoid of independent existence, it is always the reality of a thing, while several realities are simultaneously present in a thing. Accordingly, "reality" or "formalities" make it possible to distinguish one thing from another, "such a distinction that is neither actual nor potential, but only virtual or exclusively formal" [6, p. 30].
This understanding has been classical for many centuries; a good example of this is the dictionary of Etienne Chauvin, published at the very end of the 17th century. In it, the genealogy of the concept of "reality" is raised to the Scotus' tradition, and the meaning is associated with the characteristic of the thing [6, p. 33].
Modern usage of the concept of "reality" begins with the first Kantian Critique. Despite the fact that the German philosopher uses this term in several meanings, including in the scholastic understanding: following the tradition of Scotus, he associates "reality" to the second group of the table of categories, to quality, not modality. Nevertheless, it was Kant who, using additional adjectives (objective reality, empirical reality, subjective reality), initiated the understanding of reality as something external in relation to the subject of knowledge [6, p. 39].
The situation is almost identical with the closest synonym for "reality" — "existence". The term "existence" was invented during the late Middle Ages (in German Christian mysticism) as a designation for the actual (existing) state of some potency. Here, we are referring to the reality of something. In the meaning of "the totality of everything that exists", "that which is", "existence" is used starting only from the end of the 18th century. Alexey Makushinsky, who convincingly showed the historicity of reality as an image of the world, writes that the adjective wirklich (real) first occurs in the mystical literature of the 13th century, it is formed from the verb wirken (to do, act). Directly, the noun wirklichkeit was introduced by Meister Eckhart as a translation of the Latin term actualitas, opposite to potentialitas: thus, the opposition of actual existence to the possible is defined. "And only in the 18th century," Makushinsky writes, "the concept of "wirklich", delimiting itself from "wirksam" ("potent"), acquires the meaning of "real"; the noun Wirklichkeit preserves the value of the property ("the existence of something"), that is, is an abstract noun according to the meaning of the adjective "real". Even more recent is the use of the term in the meaning of "the sum of all that is real," "the totality of everything available to experience and perception" [7, p. 270].
Makushinsky shows that the image of the world "existence" is relevant only to the worldview of a man of modernity: previous epochs "knew no existence" [7, p. 271]. Accordingly, the researcher concludes: "The matter, in other words, is not at all as if in the middle (approximately) of the 19th century there was a turn to the already actual existence, which, allegedly, was expressed in realism, but realism itself therefore became possible because the existence (that is, the idea of existence is the same thing) has finally won a dominant position" [7, p. 269].
Thus, an etymological analysis of the concepts of "reality" and "existence" shows, on the one hand, the historicity of their modern word use, and at the same time the particularity of their referents. On the other hand, it reveals the Christian origins of their genealogy.
This conclusion compels us to pose the following question. If our ideas about the world are historical and at the same time culturally loaded, how did that integral image of the world, which we call "reality", form? The answer to this question may consist of several parts, which in one way or another go back to the fact of the genetic dependence of new science on Western Christian theology. In the wording of Piama Gaidenko, this fact is expressed in the following thesis: "Today, the point of view has become widespread, according to which it is the Christian attitude to nature as to the object of human domination that underlies both the modern European science and the modern technogenic civilization that has grown on its basis" [8, p. 162].
In this process of emerging scientific rationality, there are several key factors to consider. Firstly, the formation of an intellectual discourse in which creation (nature) becomes a special subject. Secondly, the substantiation of new ideas about the autonomous world, which is developing according to its own internal laws. Thirdly, the rethinking of ancient ideas about the world, as a result of which it is endowed with new attributes. And finally, fourthly, which is fundamental for the first three points, there is a change in the ancient metaphysical premises of thinking and cultural experience, Christian ones, which are enshrined in the form of general church dogmas.
Ernst Cassirer, while analyzing his contemporary philosophy of science, wrote: "...only with the construction of a certain symbolic world, the world of physical "reality" becomes accessible" [9, p. 325]. The subject appears only within a certain theoretical discourse. Mikhail Petrov points out that theology, which became the prototype for the science of modern age, was such a discourse in which the subject "nature" was initially conceptualized. Already by the XII century, (Alain de Lille) the expression "Book of Nature" was established, and Raymond of Sabunde in "Natural Theology" writes that God gave people two books: The Bible and the Book of Nature. Both books have one author and by studying them, you can better understand the author's intention. Nature, as created by a perfect God, becomes the bearer of permanent and final truths (which essentially distinguishes such a worldview position from antiquity), and its knowledge is a godly deed. "First, by theologians., — Petrov writes, — and later by scientists. "nature" is understood as a book — a bearer of the text, and since The Bible and the "Book of Nature" have the same author, "nature" is understood as a sacred text that carries the ultimate truth, equal to The Bible, and possibly a higher dignity" [10, p. 254]. The need to study nature follows from the very doctrine of creation. If the world is created, and man is its crown, then the world must be cognizable so that man can exercise control over this world.
Over time, such a theoretical attitude leads to transformations in the very structure of knowledge, as a result of which a separate discipline stands out, the subject of which is nature, and its study becomes an alternative path to God. In this regard, Petrov notes:
We find the beginning of this process in the shifts in the internal division of theology. The most dogmatized part of it, i. e., what should become an array of untouchable and finally resolved issues, an array of available disciplinary knowledge, is first isolated into the "divine" (theologia divina), and then into the theology of "revelation" (theologia revelata), while the objective
component makes a sliding movement from the theology of the world (theologia mundana) to "natural" theology (theologia naturalis). The division of unified theology into the theology of revelation and natural theology becomes stable... [10, p. 252]
It was within the framework of the latter that "nature" was conceptualized, and natural theology itself, over time, "mutated" into the science of modern times. In this respect, one can solidarize with the position of Anatoly Akhutin, who wrote: "The Christian worldview in general and scholastic peripatetics in particular is a cultural, conceptual and scientific environment in which scientific reason was being born and formed" [11, p. 24].
Thus, in scholasticism, the discourse itself was invented, in which, some time later, it became possible to look at creation as both nature and reality.
Such a view made it possible to see an autonomous world developing according to its own internal laws. And for the first time it was done by theologians, not scientists. Of course, creation itself in Christian theology was not conceived of as having an independent being, without a connection to its Creator. But once having received existence from Him, it continues to develop according to the laws, which were communicated by God. In this regard, the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas can be considered as generalizing, about which Etienne Gilson wrote when analyzing it:
In communicating existence to all creatures, God simultaneously gives them form, movement and ability to act; but from that moment on, all these properties belong to creatures, and they perform their actions themselves. The essence of the lowest level acts and gives rise to a certain effect, although it generates it due to all reasons higher than itself, to which it itself is submitted and which influence is transmitted from one cause to another until this influence reaches it. At the beginning of this sequence is God, who is the universal and immediate cause of all produced effects and all the unfolding activity; in the end God is the natural body, the immediate cause of the implementation of its own action, although this action is performed only thanks to the acting causality imparted to the body by God [12, p. 232].
In the above quote, it is not difficult to see the prototype of the mechanistic picture of the world, which is characteristic for the first scientific programs: God launches the world machine, which further develops autonomously according to the laws embedded in it. The subject of natural-scientific reason — an independent world, which is submitted to its immanent laws, was originally constructed within the framework of Christian theology.
Vyacheslav Stepin has very accurately described the worldview status of science for the modern era, where "it independently forms the dominant worldview images, and the scientific picture of the world claims a special position in the processes of people's world-view orientation" [13, p. 19]. In turn, Gaidenko singles out a number of transformations that led to the formation of the scientific mind and the physical image of the world as its subject. She writes about the substantiation of the possibility of the infinity of the world, the revision of the understanding of the natural and artificial, the supralunary and sublunary worlds, the relationship between mathematics and physics, the expulsion of the final cause from nature. According to Gaidenko, all these changes have either occurred within the framework of the Christian worldview, or were prepared by it [8].
As it is known, Aristotle, and after him ancient and practically all medieval science, have proceeded from the finiteness of space and the heterogeneity of its constituent places. This has caused a different understanding of the nature of the world and movement from the modern one. The need to revise these ideas was clearly manifested when it became necessary to reconcile the finite space with the infinite omnipotence of God.
Thomas Bradwardine wrote: "God is necessary everywhere, not only in the world and in all its parts, but also outside the world in a place or in an imaginary infinite emptiness. Whence it clearly follows that emptiness can exist without a body, but in no way can there be emptiness without God" (cit. according to [8, p. 145-146]. If God is infinitely omnipotent, then nothing can limit him, "he is present not only in the world, but also where there is no world, in an infinite void". The logic of this argument was almost identically reproduced in their time by Giordano Bruno, Thomas More and Isaac Newton, who wrote: "... the creator and ruler of all things does not come anywhere and ever (but always and everywhere)" [14, p. 660].
At the same time, the purposeful reason is progressively expelled from the world: in order for God to realize his plan, effective reasons are needed, which should be sought. Jean Buridan has refused to accept the final cause as an explanation of the phenomena occurring in nature. Fruits on trees cannot be the cause of leaves and flowers, nor can chicks be the cause of nesting for birds: the effect cannot be the cause. According to Annelize Meyer, Buridan wants to explain the universe only with the help of acting reasons. The premise, in the form of the absence of a final cause in the world, is fundamental for the constitution of the world within the framework of physical theory. In Critique of Scientific Reason, Kurt Huebner proved that modern physics and science as a whole can exist only in a theoretical space, which lacks the idea of a final cause.
Buridan has also made significant contributions to the physics of impetus, which formed the basis of the momentum theory. In Aristotelian physics, the continuation of the movement of a body, which is no longer affected by the engine, was explained by the fact that the engine acts not only on the body, but also on the environment in which it moves, thereby this environment, for example, air for the thrown body, continues moving it for some time. Even John Philoponus suggested that the thrower imparts some immaterial driving force (later called virtus impressa, or virtus motiva, impetus impressus, impetus) on the thrown object. Buridan, in this regard, wrote: ".In a stone or other thrown body, there is something imprinted, representing the motive force (virtus motiva) of the body. This is obviously better than resorting to the assertion that the air continues to move the thrown body. It seems that the air is rather resisting. Therefore, I suppose, it should be said that the engine, when moving the body, imprints (imprimit) some impetus in it. And the faster the engine moves the mobile, the stronger the impetus it imprints on it. It is through this impetus we move the stone after the thrower stops moving" (cit. according to [8, p. 231]).
Researchers associate the law of inertia with the idea of the continuous creation of the world by God. Bede the Venerable formulated four senses of the concept of "divine creation", the fourth of which says that the "seeds and primary causes of things", which have been created, continue to develop in a natural way and now, the activity of the Creator is still continuing: "God still feeds birds and clothes lilies". This understanding of creation allowed the authors of the first scientific programs to see in it an autonomous world with laws that are immanent to it. Gaidenko notes "In what Bede characterized as the fourth sense of the idea of creation, namely the continual preservation of the created, Descartes sees the source of the law of conservation; from the fact that God acts "with the greatest constancy and immutability", the philosopher deduces the fundamental law of nature, that is the law of inertia" [8, p. 158].
Thus, in scholasticism, conceptual foundations were prepared, which eventually became the starting point for the first scientific programs. In this regard, one should agree
with Alexander Belokobylsky, who writes that "in scholastic metaphysics а "rational "Doppelganger" of the mythical picture of the world has been formed. This Doppelganger, opening new horizons in regard to the knowledge of God within the framework of "natural theology", was guided by the rationalized concepts of "God" (as an ultimate rational concept), which unfolds its activity in "infinite space", launches the "world machine" with its "first impulse" (giving all things eternal "impetuses" — the Divine presence, which is imprinted in things) and is present in the created world as its inner foundation and principle" [15, p. 111].
At the same time, scholars emphasize that science, as a continuation of natural theology, became possible due to the dominance of Christian dogmatics. Petrov points to the Trinity doctrine as a factor in the formation of scientific reasoning. Gaidenko speaks about the doctrine of creation as a prerequisite for the formation of a modern understanding of nature and the doctrine of the Incarnation, as a reason for removing the impassable difference between the supralunary and sublunary worlds, and as a consequence of the mathematization of physics. Alexandre Kojeve connects the formation of scientific rationality exclusively with the doctrine of the Incarnation. He consistently defends the exclusively Christian origin of science and finds its ultimate sense in the incarnation of Christ. Thanks to this, the impenetrable barrier between the transcendental world and the immanent was removed, the "sky" was lowered to earth, and it became possible to study the physical world by using mathematical methodology, which was previously relevant to the supralunary world.
"Indeed," Kojeve writes, "what is the Incarnation, if not the possibility for the eternal God to really, without losing his absolute perfection, be present in the temporal world where we ourselves live? But if the presence in the perceived world does not destroy this perfection, then the world itself is perfect (either it was or will be), in any case, to some extent (which, however, no one bothers to establish with accuracy). If, as believing Christians assert, the earthly (human) body can "at the same time" be the body of the God, thus, the divine body, and if, as the ancient Greeks thought, the divine (heavenly) bodies correctly reflect the eternal connections between mathematical entities, then nothing prevents from finding these connections in this world, as well as in heaven" [16]. If the earthly body can be divine, then the methodology that has previously corresponded only to divine bodies is equally applicable to it. Here, not only does mathematical physics take its origin, and mechanics becomes a part of physics, but there is also the implicitly presented thought of a homogeneous infinite space, which, as a result of several intellectual moves, can be thought of as absolutely immanent.
Concurrently, if we thoroughly think over the idea of the dogmatic foundations of science, it should be recognized that it was the first three confessions of Faith1, in which these dogmas were enshrined, that made modern science possible.
Thus, summarizing the above, it should be noted that: 1) in the depths of scholasticism, the discourse of natural theology arose, in which "nature" was initially conceptual-
1 1. I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible.
2. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made.
3. For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.
ized; 2) the world in this discourse was interpreted as autonomous and developing according to the principles established by God; 3) Christian doctrines acted as metaphysical preconditions for Christian reasoning, which led to a revision of the established ancient ideas about the world and reasoning, and, ultimately, the emergence of the science of modern times. Accordingly, it should be emphasized that the constitutive characteristics of both the natural-scientific mind and the world created by it were initially thematic within the framework of the Christian semantic universe and could not appear outside of it.
In the first scientific programs, ideas, which were originally formulated in scholasticism, received a new, somewhat unexpected development. The end result of this was a one-dimensional detranscendentalized world, which made it possible to look at it like a picture.
Heidegger associated the appearance of the world with the philosophy of Descartes. Specialists in the field of philosophy and history of science supplement this list with the names of Copernicus, Bruno, Galilei, Newton, etc. It was stated in their works that: 1) the picture of the world was constructed, in which the world appeared as an endless, homogeneous, material, which is developing according to its immanent, eternal laws, the integral image of which we today call reality; 2) a special intellectual attitude that is relevant to this subject is substantiated, the extreme form of which is naturalism. At one time Edmund Husserl, showing the nature of naturalism, gave it a very capacious characteristic: "Naturalism is a phenomenon that arose as a result of the discovery of nature — nature in the sense of the unity of spatio-temporal state according to the exact laws of nature. So, the naturalist, to whom we now will specially turn to, sees nothing at all except nature, and above all physical nature. Everything that exists is either itself physical, i. e., refers to the connection imbued with the unity of the physical nature, or, perhaps, psychically, but in this case it turns out to be simply dependent on the physical variable, at best a secondary 'parallel accompanying fact'" [17, p. 133]. Husserl himself connected the appearance of the scientific picture of the world with Galileo and his idea of the mathematization of nature.
Husserl also emphasized the historicity of nature, showing that it is the result of a specific theoretical attitude of the mind. In turn, Akhutin convincingly showed that the "'nature' of the ancient Greek thinker and the "nature" of a theoretical physicist of the 17 th century are not just different understandings of the same subject or different attitudes towards it. We are talking about completely different subjects" [11, p. 7]. At the same time, as it has been shown that this subject itself was initially constituted in theological discourse, the other being was the science of modern times.
Indeed, the language, the problems, and the tone of the first scientific programs reveal more of their closeness to theological discourse than to the modern scientific one. Therefore, Nicolaus Copernicus, in the Preface to On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, dedicated to the then acting Pope Paul III, writes: ".When I had meditated upon this lack of certitude in the traditional mathematics concerning the composition of movements of the spheres of the world, I began to be annoyed that the philosophers, who in other respects had made a very careful scrutiny of the least details of the world, had discovered no sure scheme for the movements of the machinery of the world, which has been built for us by the Best and Most Orderly Workman of all.." [18, p. 13] In turn, Descartes on the essence of the laws of nature wrote: "The mathematical truths which you call eternal have been laid by God and depend on Him entirely no less than the rest of His creatures. It is God who has laid down these laws in nature just as a king lays down laws in his kingdom"
[19, p. 588]. Newton considered the rationality of the structure of the universe discovered by him indisputable evidence of the existence of its (the universe's) intelligent Creator: "...by the help of these Principles, all material Things seem to have been composed of the hard and solid Particles above-mention'd, variously associated in the first Creation by the Counsel of an intelligent Agent. For it became him who created them to set them in order. And if he did so, it's unphilosophical to seek for any other Origin of the World, or to pretend that it might arise out of Chaos by the mere Laws of Nature" (cit. according to [20, p. 218]). One can find numerous examples, however, the main thing that becomes obvious here is that Copernicus, Descartes, Newton and others solve, by and large, theological problems, in theological language with full reverence for the sacred center of this discourse to God. They tried not to destroy or overcome theology, but to strengthen and substantiate it.
And it is in this theoretical semantic space the idea of an infinite, homogeneous, material world, which has gradually absorbed the attributes of God and became reality by definition, is formed. Alexandre Koyré conducted an excellent analysis of the process of transformation of the ancient enclosed space into the endless universe of modern science. He singled out the figures of Giordano Bruno, Henry More, Isaac Newton, Samuel Clarke, Gottfried Leibniz and others. Bruno, in particular, substantiates the infinity of space, using, by and large, the scholastic argument about the infinite omnipotence of God: "Thus is the excellence of God magnified and the greatness of His kingdom made manifest; He is glorified not in one, but in countless suns; not in a single earth, a single world, but in a thousand thousand, I say in an infinity of worlds" [21, p. 338].
Henry More makes the infinite space something sacred, giving divine attributes to it: the only, simple, immovable, eternal, independent, existing in itself, necessary, incomprehensible, all-existent, incorporeal, which is a pure act, etc. [20, p. 148]. Isaac Newton wrote about the infinite space as the Sensory of God, through which He perceives things.
The creation of the new image of the world also presupposed a rethinking of the understanding of matter. Galilei played a key role in this regard, showing the possibility of applying mathematical (geometric), models to changeable and unstable matter, which assumes constancy. As a result, the age-old concept of the fluidity of matter, emanating from Plato's philosophy, was revised and an attribute that was previously characteristic of God — immutability, was given to it: "Since I assume that matter is immutable, that is, it constantly remains the same, it is clear that such an eternal and necessary property may well be the basis for purely mathematical reasoning" [22, p. 118]. Gaidenko writes that as a result of this fundamental transformation, the matter became equal to itself, unchanging, self-identical, and acquired attributes that Plato attributed to ideas, and Aristotle to the form. A similar analogy can be recorded in regards to the transformation of the understanding of reality: scholastic thought linked reality with a thing, thingness, and over time, physical reality became synonymous with being as a whole. For the ancient mind, on the contrary, things have the smallest being, which practically comes to naught in the case of matter, about which Plato says "becomes and perishes and is never really existent" (Timaeus, 28a).
It has been justified that this material world itself is governed by eternal and immanent principles — the laws of nature. However, their divine origin among the first scientists does not raise any doubts. As noted above, Descartes attributes their authorship to Divine Providence. This point of view is also shared by the creator of modern physics,
Isaac Newton, whose thoughts, in the Preface to Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, were summed up by his student, apologist and publisher Roger Cotes: ".the world, distinguished by the most beautiful forms and variety of movements, could not have happened otherwise than by the free will of all predetermining and governing deity. From this source flowed all those properties that we call the laws of nature, in which a lot of the greatest wisdom is manifested, but there are no signs of necessity" [14, p. 19-20].
Though, in this almost orthodox rational activity, the world became more and more autonomized, matter became its universal substance. God was further removed from control of the world, remaining present in it in the form of the First Impulse, the role of which in the modern physical picture of the world is just as successfully performed by the Big Bang, and the once divine principles of the world management became the laws of nature, which is immanent to it. The world turned into a detranscendentalized object that is open for conquest by the subject. As Peter Berger once very aptly noted: "A sky empty of angels becomes open to the intervention of the astronomer and, eventually, of the astronaut" [23, p. 132].
As time went by, this infinite material world, which has inherited the attributes of God, needed His help less and less, and Laplace already proposed to abandon this "hypothesis." We can say that we are talking about those general cultural transformations that, after a little more than half a century, Friedrich Nietzsche would diagnose as the death of God. Koyré summed up this process in the following words: "The infinite Universe of the New Cosmology, infinite in Duration as well as in Extension, in which eternal matter in accordance with eternal and necessary laws moves endlessly and aimlessly in eternal space, inherited all the ontological attributes of Divinity. Yet only those — all the others the departed God took away with Him" [20, p. 276].
The new ontological concepts received the ultimate philosophical foundation in the work of Immanuel Kant. Although, as indicated, the author of the Critique of Pure Reason refers reality to the second group of the table of categories, to Quality, adhering by and large to the scholastic tradition. Furthermore, he redefines the concept of "reality", using it in a modern sense. He writes about reality as an objective importance [24, p. 135], about the empirical reality of space and time [24, p. 135, 141], and about objective reality [24, p. 259].
In general, regarding the understanding of reality, which was substantiated by Kant, it should be noted that the phenomenal world formed by the transcendental subject becomes reality for him: "Nature. is the totality of all objects of experience" [25, p. 113]. The process of constructing the world is associated with transcendental conditions of sensation, a priori forms of reasoning and ideas of reason. As a result of this, the reality acquires an objectivist status, since it becomes an "imprint" of the architectonics of pure reasoning, which has an important nature. Science also receives justification, which in this case turns out to be an explicit form of a priori structures of reasoning. Kant writes: "In all appearances sensation, and the real which corresponds to it in the object (realitas phaeno-menon)" [24, p. 271]. Reality is given to us through our sensation, it is sensation that fills our concepts, without which they would remain empty: "Only possible experience can communicate reality with our concepts; without this, any concept is only an idea, devoid of truth and relation to the object" [24, p. 526]. Space and time here act as transcendental conditions of sensation, setting the boundaries of the whole experience. Experience itself becomes possible due to the a priori forms of reason.
For example, causal relationships found in the external world have a source for the category of reason (in this case, causality as a category of relationship), according to which the phenomenal world is constituted. The concept of the world is possible only as a consequence of the ideas of pure reasoning. Accordingly, the laws of nature are based on a priori conditions of experience. Considering which, as noted by Huebner: "For Kant, physics is the only possible way of truly constructing an object" [26, p. 35]. Science (physics) receives the ultimate justification, since it corresponds to the a priori forms of reasoning: the principles of physics are the principles of reasoning itself. Consequently, natural-scientific knowledge is a true knowledge of the external world, because it is carried out on the basis of the principles of the mind itself, which has designed this world. Thus, the phenomenal world acquires the status of reality, moreover, the only reality about the existence of which a meaningful, consistent judgment is possible, and science, as the most adequate way of cognizing it, acquires an apodictic meaning.
Thus, in the philosophy of Kant, the phenomenal world becomes an exhaustive reality for a person, which at the same time is constituted in an act of cognitive ability, access to the noumenal world turns out to be closed for him: reality is given within the limits of only reason, while reason constructs a phenomenal, one-dimensional world. It should be noted that in Kantian philosophy, God becomes a function of moral consciousness and immanent reality takes on an almost complete form. We can say that Georg Hegel completed this process of detranscendentalization of reality, reducing the fullness of existence to the self-development of the Spirit in History.
The conducted analysis allows us to make the following conclusions. Firstly, it should be noted that the integral image of the world, which we today call the reality (the totality of all that exists) is a historical construct, which is characteristic only for the age of modernity. Secondly, the presence of a genetic connection between the world in this way, the scientific reason that created it, and Christian theology and even doctrines, outside of which they could not appear, can be emphasized. Thirdly, it can be stated that new ontological concepts receive the ultimate philosophical justification in German classical philosophy, the result of which is the world turning into a detranscendentalized one-dimensional reality.
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Received: November 26, 2020 Accepted: June 25, 2021
Author's information:
Viktor S. Levytskyy — PhD; [email protected]
Изобретение реальности
В. С. Левицкий
Украинский институт стратегий глобального развития и адаптации, Бельгия, 1040, Брюссель, пл. Робера Шумана, 6
Для цитирования: Levytskyy V. S. The invention of reality // Вестник Санкт-Петербургского университета. Философия и конфликтология. 2021. Т. 37. Вып. 3. С. 428-440. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu17.2021.305
Предметом статьи является процесс формирования представлений о мире как реальности, который точнее всего описывается словом «изобретение». Автором с опорой на классические в этом отношении тексты (Э. Гуссерль, М. Хайдеггер) и современные исследования (А. Макушинский, Ж.-Ф. Куртин) обосновывается позиция, согласно которой идея реальности не является культурным инвариантом. Мысль о том, что реальность существовала всегда, а благодаря научному разуму оказалась наиболее адекватно отражена, понята и описана, является существенной модернизацией. Об этом свидетельствует как этимология концептов «реальность» и «действительность», впервые появившихся лишь в схоластике (Д. Скот, М. Экхарт), так и процесс их содержательного наполнения, который неразрывно связан со становлением научной рациональности. В статье показано, что как научный разум, так и созданный им интегральный образ
мира, который мы называем реальностью, генетически восходят к христианскому ценностно-смысловому универсуму. Изначально именно в рамках дискурса естественной теологии был концептуализирован образ автономного мира, развивающийся по универсальным принципам, установленным Богом. В первых научных программах (Р. Декарт, Г. Галилей, И. Ньютон) эти представления получили свое продолжение, в результате чего мир стал пониматься как имманентная реальность, подчиненная законам природы. Предельное философское обоснование новые онтологические убеждения получили в философии И. Канта, для которого феноменальный мир исчерпывает доступную человеку реальность. Соответственно, мир превращается в одномерную де-трансцендентализированную реальность. Такой методологический подход позволяет автору прийти к следующим выводам: 1) образ мира «реальность» является достаточно современным «изобретением», неизвестным предыдущим эпохам; 2) при этом он генетически связан с христианским смысловым универсумом, вне которого не мог бы появиться; 3) мир в нем понимается как одномерная имманентная реальность. Ключевые слова: реальность, действительность, мир, научный разум, христианство, естественная теология, модерн.
Статья поступила в редакцию 26 ноября 2020 г.; рекомендована в печать 25 июня 2021 г.
Контактная информация:
Левицкий Виктор Сергеевич — канд. филос. наук; [email protected]
