Exploration On The Identity Of Thinking And Being Theory

The relationship between thought thinking and being is the fundamental problem of philosophy. The conception of identity which is concluded in the fundamental problem of philosophy penetrates the whole process of the history of philosophy. In the book Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of German Classical Philosophy, Friedrich Engels systematically illustrated the fundamental problem of philosophy and the conception of identity. However, in my opinion, Engels'explanation about this issue is not exact enough and might mislead the reader in some extent. Identity of thinking and being said by Engles barely means that thinking and being could not be cut. This only contains epistemology which is the only one side of the problem of identity. Identity also asks us to research the nature of things and ontology. This article aims to understand the problem of identity from ontology and epistemology. It will make up Engles'theory of identity from the angle of ontology. This article contains three chapters. There are two sections in the first chapter. The first section introduces the significance and theoretical meaning of fundamental problem of philosophy which provides people a right way to understand the world. The second section figures out the flaw in Engles'fundamental problem of philosophy. The problem is this theory is lack of ontology's meaning. Without ontology, identity is the same to unification. Thus, only when we make up the ontology content into the theory of identity, it can get its entire meaning and help reader understand it thoroughly.In the second chapter, writer discusses the importance of otology in identity through the whole history of philosophy. By scanning the development of history of philosophy, the theory of identity discusses not only how thinking and being, body and soul get together, what is more important, it research the content of ontology and put it on a important place.This chapter contains three sections. The first section mainly talks about the theory of identity in ancient western philosophy. During that time, philosophers explain the relationship between body and soul restricted in the scale of ontology. However, we should clearly know that the ancient philosophers held positive view toward identity. And they especially explained what the nature of soul and body is. Based on this, they explored the further meaning of theory of identity. The theory of identity during this time is not as useless as Engles'comment.The second section mainly discusses the theory of identity and its ontological insight in modern western philosophy. Descartes initiated the conception of I think, which made ontology category turn to epistemology category. Toward theory of identity, he explained the relationship from epistemology, and also explained the nature of I think and I being by ontology. Locke concluded that external things were different, thus, their identity is not the same from both angle of ontology and epistemology. Meanwhile, external identity is the premise of internal identity. Because people take different opinion toward things, their internal identity is different. All in all, modern western philosophy makes epistemology turn come true. After this the fundamental problem of philosophy was deemed as the most crucial problem. And we should never neglect that both of Rationalism and Empiricism emphasize the important of ontology.The third section talks about Kant's and Hegel's ontology category in the theory of identity. Kant tried to make an unification between ontology and epistemology, but he initiated entity and phenomena, which thoroughly negated the possibility that people can cognize the world. Differ from Hume, Kant confessed things have subjectivity, the knowledge people got by sensible intuition was real. This kind of knowledge is phenomena. Thus people were restricted in the world of phenomena, and could never get the real knowledge from entity. Engles deemed that Kant stand for agnosticism, but if we carefully scrutinize Kant's philosophical system, we can know that he tried to prove that people can cognize the world. His metaphysics promoted the further theory of identity.In Hegel's philosophical system, identity contains two meanings: from epistemology, thinking and being can be unified; from ontology, spirit comes first. Every nature existence is belonged to spirit. Things in mind can be changed into real, because spirit is absolute. People's knowledge all comes from absolute spirit. Hegel admitted that spirit and existence have the nature of identity and people can know the world, but his thought belonged to idealism. And it is extremely different from Engles'materialism. If we don't reconsider this problem from ontological angle but only understand Hegel's theory of identity as unification, we cannot identify the difference toward identity between materialism and idealism.The third chapter contains two sections which particularly discuss the integral category of identity and the reconstruction of the theory of identity. Firstly, writer distinguishes the conception of identity and unification to avoid confusing idealism and materialism. The second section makes up ontology category into theory of identity. It enrich Engles'fundamental problem of philosophy. If we rectify Engles'theory as follows, it might be better to understand. By philosophical words, the identity between thinking and being contains two kinds of meaning, one is ontological meaning which discuss the nature of the world, and the nature of thinking and being; the other is epistemological meaning that concludes the relationship of thinking and being.