Publication Details

Abstract

An attempt is made to apprehend basic differences between the intuitive philosophical thought of the East and the postulative character of the philosophical and scientific thought in the West. The author’s conclusions follow from findings that the anthropomorphic models of Indian and Chinese philosophy are a consequence of an incorrect determination of the relation between object and subject which is still anonymous. The author thinks the causes to be in such social and objective conditions of philosophical reflexion, which repressed the significance of man as a social and comparatively autonomous being. Man is given the statute of relative independence only in Greece, by rise of Polis, which made it possible, on the gnoseological level, to determine the nature of correlation of subject and object in a new way. Consequently, philosophical thought in the frame of Western civilization became critical, exceeded the frame of the irrational and uncontrolable unity of being and consciousness. Thus, natural structure of the world does not escape Western philosophy which does not devaluate it but constitutes — postulates — its individual elements and planes, which become thereby an object of systematic attention of individual sciences: these aid philosophy in forming an adequate picture of the whole objective reality, and finally also in apprehending the nature of the world or the sense of the existence. The whole investigation leads into an affirmation that both the lines are non-complementary or divergent both from the methodological standpoint and from that of contents.