Читать книгу Philosophical Notes. Learning the world through philosophy - Andrei Tikhomirov - Страница 3

Philosophical ideas in ancient India began to take shape around the second millennium BC. Humanity does not know earlier examples. In our time, they became famous thanks to the ancient Indian literary monuments under the general name «Vedas», literally meaning knowledge, knowledge. The Vedas are a kind of hymns, prayers, chants, spells, etc. They are written approximately in the second millennium BC. e. in Sanskrit.

For the first time, the Vedas make an attempt to approach the philosophical interpretation of the human environment. Although they contain a semi-superstitious, semi-mythical, semi-religious explanation of the world around a person, nevertheless they are considered as philosophical, or rather pre-philosophical, pre-philosophical sources. Actually, the first literary works in which attempts are made to philosophize, that is, to interpret the world around a person, could not be different in content.

The philosophical works corresponding to our ideas about the nature of the statement of problems, and the form of presentation of the material and their solutions, are the Upanishads, which literally means sitting at the feet of the teacher and receiving instructions. They appeared approximately in the 9th – 6th centuries BC and in form represented, as a rule, the dialogue of the sage with his student or with a person who seeks the truth and subsequently becomes his student. In total, about a hundred Upanishads are known. The religious and mythological interpretation of the environment in the most famous Upanishads develops to a certain extent into a differentiated understanding of the phenomena of the world. So, there are ideas about the existence of various types of knowledge, in particular, logic (rhetoric), grammar, astronomy, science of numbers and military science. Ideas are also emerging about philosophy as a kind of field of knowledge. Although the authors of the Upanishads failed to completely get rid of the religious and mythological interpretation of the world, the Upanishads and, in particular, such as Brihadaratsyaka, Chandogya, Aytareya, Isha, Kena, can be considered»,» Katha «the earliest known philosophical works.

In the Upanishads, primarily in the works mentioned above, an attempt is made to pose and discuss such significant philosophical problems as clarifying the fundamental principles of nature and man, the nature of man, his place and role in his environment, cognitive abilities, norms of behavior and role in this human psyche. Of course, the interpretation and explanation of all these problems is very controversial, and sometimes there are opinions that are mutually exclusive.