Typologies of the world view: mythology, religion, philosophy

THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF THE REPUBLIC OF KAZAKHSTAN

T. RYSKULOV’S KAZAKH ECONOMIC UNIVERSITY

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT 
 

SEMESTR ABSTRACT

PHILOSOPHY 
 
 

THEME: ”TYPOLOGIES OF THE WORLD VIEW: MYTHOLOGY, RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY”. 
 
 
 

Author: Aissulu A. Adilova

                                                                                                     Finance, group – 101/1-cours

             Tutor: Dr. Sergey A. Zolotukhin Ph.D 
 
 
 
 

REPUBLIC OF KAZAKHSTAN

ALMATY 2010 

CONTEXT 

1. INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................3

1.2 PHILOSOPHY AS A SCIENCE...................................................................3

2. MAIN STREAM ……………………………………………………………….4
1. THE MEANING OF THE TERM “WORLD-VIEW” …………………….4
2. MYTHOLOGY……………………………………………………………..8
3. RELIGION………………………………………………………………...12
4. PHILOSOPHY…………………………………………………………….15
3. CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………………….17

SOURCES……………………………………………………………………..18 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

1. INTRODUCTON: PHILOSOPHY AS A SCIENCE

  Philosophy is one of the most ancient science and interesting sphere of human knowledge, spiritual culture, logical thinking. Every other science meets us with the concrete circle of     things and has attitude to physical, chemical or other spheres of reality.

   Philosophy lets us come to know about the world in its totality, unity, tries to understand surrounding world from the position of correlation of things and processes which each other in the context of the whole.

    The main task of Philosophy is thinking about everything what exists. Philosophy creates and improves mentality of a man, group of people, society at all. It lives in thinking. Aristotle said: “activity of brain is the life”. Philosophy teaches us as abstract thinking, and at the same time realises its results in practical sphere.

   Philosophy has straight connections with Culture, Economics, Politics, Laws, Religion or Atheism, History, Ethics, Aesthetics, etc. It is the quintessence of epoch, civilisations in thoughts.

  The History of Philosophy tells us about endless attempts of thought turn to develop rational necessity. Contemporary Philosophy studies “Planetary” way of living, construction of the new values. Term of “Philosophy” consists of two ancient Greece words: “Philio” – “love” and “Sophia” – “wisdom”. So we can translate this word as “the love to wisdom”. Aristotle told: “Wisdom is art of living a life”.

  Philosophy researches and finds answers to questions of a person around his being. It is the love to truth, way to wisdom, and creation of theoretical thinking.

   Core question of Philosophy is the question of worldview.  Hegel said: “To came to know what is it? And how do we understand it? Is the main purpose of Philosophy”? This science obliges us to know what for person tries to know this world and what about the place of man in this world.

  So PHILOSOPHY is the science about most general laws of development of the nature, society and thinking and ways of its cognition. ¹

   Till that time I haven’t get the faintest idea about Philosophy. Why we are need in it? What about the benefit of that for us?  What does it study? Etc. But when I read this textbook everything becomes clear to me.   
 
 

2. MAIN STREAM: THE MEANING OF THE TERM “WORLD-VIEW”

       The meaning of the term "world-view" and its significance in life. At first glance the term "world-view" suggests a general view of the world—and no more. But the appearance of the word does not reveal the full meaning of this complex intellectual phenomenon. A world-view, as we understand it, is a system of generalized views of the surrounding world and man's place in it, of man's relationship to the world and himself, and also the basic positions that people derive from this general picture of the world, their beliefs, socio-political, moral and aesthetic ideals, the principles by which they know and appraise material and spiritual events. While it possesses a relatively independent existence in the sphere of social consciousness, the world-view also functions as something individual. A person becomes an individual when he forms a definite world-view. This process of formation indicates the maturity not only of an individual but also of any given social group, social class or theirs party.                   

     The concept of world-view, which was first encountered among the Greek skeptics, is substantially broader in meaning than the concept of Philosophy; moreover it has several different meanings. We speak of the philosophical, the socio-political, the natural-scientific, the artistic, the religious, and even the ordinary man's world-view. And this is quite natural. If we picture the various types of world-view in the geometrical form of circles, the central position should be given to the circle of the philosophical world-view. And this circle will intersect with all the others and form their nucleus. In this way we find that the meaning people and social groups attach to the term "world-view" is extremely diverse. But despite this diversity, every world-view reveals a certain unity in the sense that it embraces a certain range of questions. For example, what is the world that exists outside us? What is the relationship between spirit and matter? What is man? What is his place in the universal interconnection of phenomenon? How does man come to know reality? What are good and evil? What is beautiful in life and in art? What laws guide the development of society? The totality of the natural sciences forms a natural-scientific picture of the world, and that of the social sciences yields a socio-historical picture of reality. What is a picture of the world? It is a picture of how matter moves and how in the shape of the human being it feels, thinks and poses goals. The creation of a general picture of the world is the task of all fields of knowledge, including Philosophy. In compressed form, general pictures of the world are presented in universal encyclopedias compiled at various historical stages to reflect the intellectual achievements of mankind.²

     In my opinion, understanding the term of "world-view” helps us to know answers on many questions.

      The world-view is by no means all the views and notions of the surrounding world, that is to say, it is not simply a picture of the world taken in its integral form. Not a single specific science can be identified with a world-view, although each science does contain a world-view principle. For example, Darwin discovered the laws of the origin of species. This caused a revolution in biology and evoked universal interest. Did these laws evoke such interest because they were merely biological laws? Of course, not. They awakened such interest because they helped us to understand various philosophical questions, the question of purpose in living nature, the origin of man, and so on. The name of Einstein was made immortal by his discovery. But was this discovery purely physical, a solution to some particular scientific problem? No, Einstein's theory provided a key to the philosophical problem of the essence of space and time, their unity with matter. Why did the ideas of Sechenov on cerebral reflexes create such a furor among intellectuals? Not because they were merely physiological ideas, but because they solved certain philosophical problems of the relationship between consciousness and the brain.

     We know what a broad impact the principles of cybernetics have had. But cybernetics is not just a specific scientific theory. Informatics, and also genetics, raise profound philosophical problems. The world-view contains something more than scientific information. It is a crucial regulative principle of all the vital relationships between man and social groups in their historical development. With its roots in the whole system of the individual and society's spiritual needs and interests, deter mined by human practice, by all man's accumulated experience, the world-view in its turn exerts a tremendous influence on the life of society and the individual. The world-view is usually compared with ideology and these two concepts are sometimes treated as synonyms. But they intersect rather than coincide. Ideology embraces that part of the world-view that is oriented on social, class relationships, on the interests of certain social groups and, above all, on the phenomena of political power.               

     The world-view, on the other hand, is oriented on the world as a whole, on the "man-universe" system. The world-view may exist on the ordinary, everyday level generated by the empirical conditions of life and experience handed down from generation to generation. It may also be scientific, integrating the achievements of modem science concerning nature, society and humanity itself. The world-view is not only the content, but also the mode of thinking about reality, and also the principles of life itself. An important component of the world-view is the ideals, the cherished and decisive aims of life. The character of a person's notion of the world, his world-view, facilitates the posing of certain goals which, when generalized, form a broad plan of life, ideals, notions of wellbeing, good and evil, beauty, and progress, which give the world-view tremendous power to inspire action. Knowledge becomes a world-view when it acquires the character of conviction, of complete and unshakable confidence in the rightness of certain ideas, views, principles, ideals, which take command of a person's soul, subordinate his actions, and rule his conscience or, in other words, form bonds that cannot be escaped without betraying oneself, set free "demons" that a person can conquer only by submitting to them and acting in accordance with their overwhelming power. The world-view influences standards of behavior, a person's attitude to his work, to other people, the character of his aspirations in life, his everyday existence, tastes and interests. It is a kind of spiritual prism through which everything around us is perceived, felt and transformed. As most people would agree, it is ideological conviction, that is to say, a certain view of the world, that enables a person at a moment of mortal danger to overcome the instinct of self-preservation, to sacrifice his own life, to perform feats of daring in the name of freedom from oppression, in the name of scientific, moral, socio-political and other principles and ideals.³

    From this paragraph I’ve got that “World - View” is not only the content but also a way to understand reality, as well as the principles of life that define the nature of the activity. The nature of the world contributes to setting specific goals, which is formed from the synthesis of common life plan, formed ideals, giving a strong world power.

    The world-view does not exist by itself, apart from specific historical individuals, social groups, classes and parties. In one way or another, by reflecting certain phenomena of reality it expresses their value orientations, their relationship to events of social life. Philosophy, too, as the theoretical nucleus of the world-view, basically defends the interests of certain social groups and thus has a class and, in this sense, a party character. Depending on whether the socio-political interests of a given class coincide with the objective trend of history, its philosophical positions are either progressive or reactionary. They may be optimistic or pessimistic, religious or atheistic, idealist or materialist, humane or misanthropic. The whole history of philosophical thought is, in fact, a struggle between various world-views, a struggle which has often raged so fiercely that people preferred to be burnt at the stake, thrown into prison or condemned to penal servitude rather than betray their chosen cause. So it is fundamentally wrong to imagine that philosophers have always stood above earthly matters, above people's practical and political interests, the interests of classes and parties, and accumulated knowledge merely for the sake of knowledge, isolated themselves, like Diogenes in his tub, in the seclusion of their studies from the stormy events of real life. Philosophy has by no means set itself apart, hovering somewhere in the blue expanses of the heavens; it has performed a definite socio-political function and constantly been at the centre of political events. Genuine Philosophy is full of civic courage and least of all can be accused of social indifference. Philosophy is political in its very essence, in its social mission. Politics, as we know, is the core of all associations and dissociations, integrations and disintegrations, alliances and conflicts. Science, art, Philosophy, and religion are all drawn into the vortex of political struggle. It is a political question whether scientific discoveries or technical inventions aid the cause of peace or war. It is also a political question what aims and actions are inspired by certain works of art, what feelings and urges they awaken. And it is also a political question whether Philosophy gives the people a scientific world-view, whether or not it orientates them on high ideals and a rational and just order of society. Hegel ironically remarked that Philosophy claims to teach the world but always arrives too late to do so. Its very appearance on the historical scene with the required message indicates that the sun has already set. "When Philosophy begins to paint in grey upon grey, it shows that a certain form of life has grown old and with grey upon grey Philosophy cannot rejuvenate but only understand it; the owl of Minerva begins its flight only in the gathering dusk." This is a splendid metaphor. But though it impresses, it does not convince. If we look back into the past, we see that Philosophy has emerged not only as an owl flying amid the twilight of obsolete forms of life, but also as a lark, joyously heralding the spring floods that will sweep away the very foundations of an obsolete way of life, the swelling buds and forms and colours to be born anew. ⁴

     According to the ancient myth, Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, sprang from the head of Zeus, fully armed, carrying a shield and spear. This mythological image is profoundly symbolic: wisdom comes into the world not to rest on its laurels and passively contemplate existence, indifferently perceiving good and evil, but to fight for the truth, for justice, for the triumph of reason in life and to shield us from the onslaughts of the dark forces of evil, untruth and error. Only reactionary Philosophy, steeped in dogmatism, is doomed to trail behind swiftly moving life. Progressive philosophical thought is always in the vanguard, theoretically substantiating the people's right to overthrow their oppressors, to create higher forms of life. It usually emerges as the stormy petrel of the approaching revolutionary struggle in all spheres of human existence. All socio-political movements in the history of mankind, from the smallest to the great transitions from previous forms of social life to new societies, have been heralded and accompanied by certain forms of philosophical proof, whether in the form of new moral or religious principles, a historical regularity or in the form of such principles as liberty, equality and justice. Socrates was condemned to death for holding philosophical beliefs that threatened the political principles of the society in which he lived. Plato's numerous attempts to give practical expression to his ideals of state nearly cost him his life. In the age of the Renaissance feudalism was dying and capitalism was born. The death of one social system and the birth of the other were prolonged. This complex process took a zigzag course; it was accompanied by wars and revolutionary explosions that shook the whole social edifice until the old system was destroyed to its foundations. All these processes were vividly expressed in the intense struggle between different philosophical world-views. Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot and others awakened and stirred the somnolent socio - political consciousness with their rousing works. They in flamed people's hearts and minds and directed the people's anger against the decayed social system. They struck revolutionary sparks from men's hearts, prepared people's minds for revolution and brought about the situation that Karl Marx was later to describe as follows: "The people must be taught to be terrified at itself in order to give it courage."⁵ Before Bismarck began to unite Germany with an iron hand, there appeared German classical Philosophy, which declared the constitutional monarchy to be the highest embodiment of the world spirit in its progressive motion. Throughout their conscious life Marx, Engels, Lenin and their associates prepared and trained the masses for a socialist revolution organizationally, theoretically, and also philosophically. Philosophy therefore cannot be indifferent to the contest between the old and new in social life, in politics, science and art. Recent Philosophy is as partisan as was Philosophy two thousand years ago. Some bourgeois philosophers maintain that they represent "pure science", that they are unaffected by earthly passions and class struggles. This is either deception or self-deception, or simply a deliberate call for desertion from the field of ideological battle. The so-called deideologising of Philosophy actually seeks to popularize the worst ideology, an ideology born of the fact that in a class-divided society the ruling classes, parties, various groups and sometimes gangs of impostors present their selfish interests as the interests of the whole of society, of the people, and portray them as the only reasonable and generally significant interests in existence. Some bourgeois ideologists maintain that partisanship of a world-view is incompatible with objectivity, with science. It is true that partisanship does not always coincide with science. When a world-view expresses and defends the position and interests of decaying social groups that are departing from the historical scene, it diverges from the truth of life, from its scientific assessment for the sake of narrow partisan interests. On the other hand, a world-view is scientific if it truly reflects and anticipates life in its dynamic development, expresses the position and interests of the advanced forces of society, teaches people to strive honestly and directly for the truth, for all that is truly reasonable. The unity between the partisanship and scientificality of Marxist Philosophy rests on the coincidence of the working people's interests with the objective course of history. Only an unbiased study of reality furthers the interests of working people, enables them to place their practical and political activity on a sound scientific basis. The concern that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union shows for the observance and practical application of the principle of partisanship is in fact concern for the preservation and development of a truthful attitude to life. Truth always has been and will be revolutionary. It is the reflection of life in its forward development.⁶

     The myth is historically the first world outlook form reflects reality, in which artistic, moral, cognitive and practically - transformative development of the world.

    MYPHOLOGY – is universal form of social consciousness prevails in primitive society. It was the first attempt to join together and explain different processes of nature, society and a man in it. The main reason of mythological world-outlook was to trust in today, to perceive world as it is, with it laws which are closer to chaos (absence of any system) because primitive people hadn’t any knowledge about reality except very small own experience.⁷

   Myths - a generalized images, which include not only the world being available, which is often why - that hostility towards the man, but peace hopes and desires, in which freely put the interests of the collective descent. The myth can not be seen as the primary form of science or Philosophy. Moreover, it is not interpreted as a mere fiction myth. Mythology as a collection of myths reflect the views of prehistoric people in the phenomena of nature and life, sprouts scientific knowledge, religious and moral submission, which prevailed in the tribal community, and artistically - aesthetic sense of people at the initial stage of its history.

    I think that the myth is spiritually - practical way to develop forms of public life, forms the relationship between people and nature, people and society.

    The word mythology (from Greek μυθολογία) refers to a body of folklore/myths/legends that a particular culture believes to be true and that use the supernatural to interpret natural events and to explain the nature of the universe and humanity. Mythology also refers to the branch of knowledge dealing with the collection, study and interpretation of myths, also known as mythography.

     The term mythology has been in use since at least the 15th century, and means "the study or exposition of myths". The additional meaning of "body of myths" itself dates to 1781. (In extended use, the word can also refer to collective or personal ideological or socially constructed received wisdom, as in "At least since Tocqueville compared American society to 'a vast lottery', our mythology of business has celebrated risk-taking.").⁸

    Myth in general use is often interchangeable with legend or allegory, but some scholars strictly distinguish the terms. The term has been used in English since the 19th century. The newest edition of the OED distinguishes the meanings:

 1a. "A traditional story, typically involving supernatural beings or forces or creatures, which embodies and provides an explanation, etiology, or justification for something such as the early history of a society, a religious belief or ritual, or a natural phenomenon", citing the Westminster Review of 1830 as the first English attestation.

 1b. "As a mass noun: such stories collectively or as a genre." (1840)

 2a. "A widespread but untrue or erroneous story or belief". (1849)