The invention of reality

In: Vestnik Sankt-Peterburgskogo universiteta: Vestnik of Saint-Petersburg University. Filosofija i konfliktologija = Philosophy and conflict studies, Volume 37, Issue 3, p. 428-440

Abstract

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.