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Reflection On Development Philosophy From The Process Perspective

Posted on:2008-03-12Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:S L YanFull Text:PDF
GTID:1115360242459707Subject:Marxist philosophy
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Development Philosophy is taken as the main form of Marxism in the 21th century. As the notion development enters the heartland of philosophy, development philosophy is highlighted in our age. However, as a new discipline, development philosophy matures much slower than other development discipline and still needs to be constructed.In the present time, development philosophy as a discipline is not clarified, and so can not show itself, which has been the main difficulty to limit development philosophy. The reason lies in replacing the notion of development in the broad sense with the one in the narrow sense. With the notion development as its heartland, development has two interpretations: in a broad sense, it refers to the existence and change process of universe, nature, human society and their thinking; in a narrower sense, it might be limited to refer to the existence and change process of human society. And in a narrower sense, it refers to the change process of some certain nations, areas. Influenced by western theory of development, development philosophy in China considers development in the narrow sense, and considers the notion of development only as a normative concept related to the estimation of human value, which leads to some confusions, that is, to use social viewpoints to screen natural and world viewpoints, use social development philosophy to screen development philosophy, and these make development philosophy mixed up with historical materialism, social philosophy, sociology of development and social development philosophy. If we consider viewpoints of development only as viewpoints of social development, and consider development philosophy only as a certain exploration on social development or even China's problems about modernization, then sphere of development philosophy will be greatly reduced.We think the way out of the present predicament of development philosophy researches lies in understanding it in a true philosophical way and reconstructing viewpoints of development. Development philosophy qua philosophy involves a metaphysical treatment of the problem of development, that is, to find the foundations and study method of development philosophy. All those definitions on development philosophy, whether strict definition or descriptive account, can be divided into two modes: intellectuality thinking and value criticism. It is because the difference on the viewpoints of philosophy which leads to these two viewpoints on development philosophy. Firstly, we consider the mode of intellectuality thinking. Intellectuality thinking denotes the thinking mode of formal logic and natural science. The thinking mode of formal logic has a property of metaphysics. On Hegel's account, it is formal, abstract and external. It is because formal logic is divorced from concrete thinking content, from concept to concept, and its formulas apply everywhere, which makes it hard to avoid arbitrary. When using it to analyze concrete things, some errors will be unavoidable, and its premise can not stand the test of counterexamples. Concrete things show themselves"the flux of Helakelite", so when using changeless form to frame changing content, mistakes will be unavoidable. Once this thinking mode is generalized, it will become a manipulative ideology: for one thing, it materializes philosophy; for another thing, it makes philosophy a discipline to be demonstrated. The great development of natural science , particularly neoteric industrial culture demonstrates in a great extent the efficacity of this thinking mode. So philosophy took a stand of natural science, and then,"discipline imperialism"centered at scientific thinking came forth, and which coined a new myth of metaphysics. The philosophy in traditional textbook is a version of this thinking mode. According to this philosophy, philosophy is a systematic and theoretical viewpoint of world, and world viewpoints are our viewpoints and essential standpoints. Seen from its content, Marxist's philosophy is divided into dialectical materialism and historical materialism and four parts, that is ontology, dialectics, epistemology and historical viewpoints. And it considers historical materialism only as the generalization and application of dialectical materialism, and so Marxist's historical principles are screened. It renews metaphysical viewpoints of universe as an epistemology wearing a cloth of natural science, and it concerns substance, essence, laws, while ignoring human as subject. It also attempts to interpret the relationship between philosophy and natural science by the mode of generality and particularity, and so traps into great narration of transcending history. According to the uniform theory of development philosophy, development philosophy refers to systematic and theoretical viewpoints on development, and the viewpoints on development are our essential standpoints about social development. Development philosophy includes theoretical development philosophy and discipline of development philosophy, among which the former one can further divided into development ontology, development epistemology, development methodology and development theory of human. This development philosophy is not any analog of the philosophy in traditional textbook. In some author's view, it is merely a new form of the old philosophy of systematic and theoretical viewpoints of world, and it deviates from the essence and process of development. In other words, this development philosophy should be forbidden. Secondly, let us consider the mode of value criticism. What is the essence of philosophy? Philosophy as a way of thinking essentially differs from scientific way of thinking. The development of natural science ended the illusion of traditional metaphysics'attempt to include everything. The essence of philosophy is reflection and criticism. Hegel thinks that the content of reflection is thought itself, and the goal of reflection is to make thought realize itself. Reflection is critical, with a purpose to inquire in a negative way the ground and principles of thought formation. It is because the inquiry of logical ground of its structure and the premise criticism of how is development possible that makes development philosophy a philosophy discipline. It just likes a invisible hand to manipulate the whole system of development philosophy. So the central thesis of development philosophy is how to establish the place of development philosophy in the whole system of disciplines. Professor HE Li gave a wonderful argument about this question. If this question can not be fully illustrated, development philosophy will be ungrounded. Firstly, the essential property of development philosophy is value criticism. Value criticism is centered at harmonizing order at hand and value purpose, exciting the critical power of thinking, and revealing manifold dimensions of social life, and then keeping the vigor of a society. These constitute differences between development philosophy and other disciplines, which is also the best ground of the validity of development philosophy. The direct critical goal of development philosophy is the value premise of development, that is, the critical thinking about deep idea, value principle of the concept development. Is this attribution valid? Secondly, the way to achieve the goal of criticizing the value of development is to clear and arrange value. The first necessary step is to make clear the present status of value. If necessary, a list of value should be provided to compare those contradictive values and select those good from those. Thirdly, we should compare the present ideas, principles and rules so that we can find a table of value with an order of lexicon. This table will be a guide for an agent when she lose her mind so that she can know what should do and what must be forbidden. However, development is not only a kind of value but also a kind of fact. Marxist's process dialectics is the only way to combine these two elements, and process thinking is the only dialectic thinking way to pull development philosophy out of its predicament. So, two questions that must be answered are: what is Marxist's practical process dialectics and in what sense it can be the theoretical premise of development philosophy?Some authors think that the essence of Marxism's revolution is so-called"practical materialism", and practice is the central concept of Marxism. What is practice? Practice is defined as human's objective activity to reconstruct the world. Practice has two traits that is objective corporality and subjective motility. Practice is introduced to make Marxism transcend the contradiction between materialism and idealism, but a new contradiction recurs. This contradiction shows itself via the relationship practice and cognition, which results in a hermeneutic paradox, that is, practice on one hand determines cognition and on the other hand must accept the guide from cognition. The root of this question lies in how to analyze Marxism's true sense of practice. On Marx's account, practice is a process, and the process itself implies thinking and existence. When we discuss their relation, these two factors themselves already exist. So we are discussing thinking and existence in two senses: existence and development, in other words, thinking and existence have an objective relationship, no thinking without existence and no existence without thinking. As Engels said, existence is still an unsolved problem. In other words, thinking and existence has a developing relation, that is only if through interaction between subject and object in practice their relation and their own essence can be established. Marx pointed out that a being having any object outside is not objective being; non-objective beings are Unwesen, is unprovable abstract being."Who is the mother of the first person and the whole nature?", this question attempts to stipulate nonexistence of human and nature taking no account of the actual objective relation between human and nature, while to argue nonexistence exist. Truly speaking, the whole world history is merely a process in which human born itself by means of labor, is a developing process of nature in relation to human. In the process, Subjectivism and objectivism, idealism and materialism, activity and passivity both conflict and combine, radical naturalism and humanitarianism differ both from idealism and from materialism, while combining these two things. Marx criticized Feuerbach because he attempted to inquire sensible objects which radically differ from thought object but not considering human activities as gegenst?ndliche activities, and Marx criticized the old materialism and idealism because the former abstractly treated the mere intuition of concrete things and the latter abstractly treated human activity. There is a metaphysical illusion concerning ontology: idealism considers spirit as ontology of world; materialism considers substance as ontology of world. As far as the whole world is concerned, they can be correct at one time, but they are also arbitrary and extreme because the world itself contains spirit and substance. This view badly mistakes Engels'stipulation about the basic question of philosophy. In Engels'view, the basic questions of philosophy are the questions of relationship between thinking and existence and relationship between spirit and nature; Whoever asserts spirit in relation to nature is primitive is a idealist, accordingly, whoever asserts nature in relation to spirit is a materialist. So called idealism and materialism have no meaning other than this. The popular views ascribe the objective relation between thinking and existence to the relationship between thinking, existence and the whole world, which will unavoidable lapse into unsolvable abstract, masking true ontological meaning and preventing the logical way to ontological development. These views can not grasp the essence of Marxism's revolution, resulting in unwanted confusion in philosophy. Marxism views practice as a process in which subjects and objects interact; thinking and existence are only relative being, or in other words, the premises of thinking and existence are not outside of their relation, and so this"objective relation"is the ontological ground of thinking and existence qua beings. Heraclitus regards the world as a invariable developing process. It appears that he regards fire as the beginning of everything, but the conflict and unity in the process of change of fire in turn become the ground of the existence of fire; Albert Dagelashi School explicitly asserted that"conflicts are origin of beings", and put forward ten pairs of relation as beginning, such as finite and infinite, motionless and motion, one and manifold, etc., which change the way of asking for the beginning of the world. In the history of modern western philosophy, Whitehead is the first to regard process as the object of ontological research. In his view, there is no unchangeable entity in nature, but only all kinds of process that are universal in nature; compared with existence, change is more important;"essence"is defined by means of process, but not contrary, and it is process which results in actual connection, nothing exists outside of process. So in the metaphysical sense, thinking and existence have equal status, and we can not only not ascribe thinking to existence, not ascribing freedom to necessity, but also not ascribe existence to thinking, not ascribing necessity to freedom; we can only stipulate them in their relation, and solve their relation between them in their developing process. Marxism's practical process dialectics transcends the infinity interpretation of entity thinking mode for development process, while the falsity of the infinity interpretation of pure Speculative thinking for development process. According to Marxism, the objective relation between thinking and existence is the truth that is not deviated from concrete content. And then Marxism regards the development of nature, society and human as a developing process. Process dialectics contains a negative motivating principle and a creative principle. That the world is a set composed of all kinds of process is a great and basic idea of dialectics. The thinking mode centered at process understands the relationship between human and nature, human and human from the object sense, and attempts to reveal their internal relation, and then constitute a interpretation principle of philosophy. As far as its application is concerned, so-called process thinking mode refers to regard things as a developing process and know its constituent factors, its stages, the interrelationship between its constituents, its environment and conditions, so that this developing process can be duly sustained or converted. Process thinking advocates systematic, dynamic and sustainable analysis. Development as a process contains many ontological Contradictions such as fact and value, science and humanities, rationality and irrationality, etc.. The task of development philosophy is to solve those Conflicts between thinking and existence, subject and object, so as to achieve their concrete historical unity. On the basis of this, this paper discusses objective development, subjective development, practical process development, and two central theses: the"natural relationship"between human and nature, the"social relationship"between human and human. Undoubtedly, human is the focus of development philosophy. But human lives in the universe and joins nature, society and thinking, is a materialistic, sensible, and rational being. Man's actual existence is destined to have a time structure: the past, the present, and the future constitute human and the history of human. Faced with development, development philosophy never lacks reflection on the social, biological and universal human and will finally lead to the treatment of the relationship between human and nature, between human and human. The universal view offers the ultimate belief for human's ideas of development. The dialectic natural view manipulates biological consciousness, and scientific ideas of society aim at the harmony of human and nature, human and human, human and society. So a correct way to understand development philosophy is to understand it from the point of broad unity of human, society, nature, and world.Marxism's practical process dialectics provide a philosophical premise for sustainable development that is contemporary mainstream of development. The views of development have two directions: 1) the direction of objective things, which views development as increase of economics and wealth, with a Quantization standard to measure development; 2) the direction of human value, which pays attention to human's idea and the importance of value relative to development. Sustainable development is reflection and Sublation of traditional views of development: for one thing, from Horizontal perspective, it concerns more about the balance between society and nature, social development and human development, in pursuit of the unity of nature, human and society; for another thing, from Longitudinal perspective, it concerns with continuity and fairness of different level of development. Essentially, sustainable development does not transcend post-modern sphere of Marxism's process dialectics: firstly, Marx emphasized the unity principle of human and nature. Human is the product of nature, a part of nature, and the relationship between human and nature is only the relationship between nature and itself. The relationship between human and nature forms in the social relationship between human and human, and nature is human's nature. Natural relation is isomorphism to social relation, so human should properly deal with the relation between human and nature, human and human; secondly, Marx emphasized that the relationship between productivity and the relations of production as a given objective force can not be chosen by subjective will. Every generation inherits the productivity achieved by former generation and uses it as materials to serve new production, and so form the connection in human history and the history of human, which embodies an ethical point of how to deal with mutual relation between present age, old age, and future age. Or in other words, sustainable development is enrichment and establishment of Marxism's views about development.The aim of the present paper is not to construct a philosophical system of development, but to reveal a awareness of questions proper to researches on development philosophy, to inquire a way to correctly grasp development philosophy by analyzing Predicament of development philosophy and its Discipline attributes.
Keywords/Search Tags:Development Philosophy, Viewpoints of Development, Process, Practice, Sustainable Development
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