PARADIGMS OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY IN CONTEXT WORLDVIEW PARADIGMS OF THE EAST AND THE WEST

Abstract

The article proposes to analyze the paradigms of practical philosophy in the context of five general paradigms of philosophizing, namely traditional Indian (with its ascending ideas of cyclicity, rebirth, samsara, liberation-moksha), traditional Chinese (with its organismism, the idea that the universe is something like a single organism, within which people and other living beings perform the role of organs), Ancient Greek and Roman (which is interpreted according to the ideas of Pierre Hadot as the practical art of avoiding suffering and achieving happiness), Abrahamic (paradigms of the worldview of Abrahamic religions with their monotheism, fideism, creationism, authority of scriptures) and Modern scientific peredigm (with its reliance on a scientific worldview). It is shown how the relationship between ontology and axiology works within these paradigms, how the first of them determines the second; as well as how they are determined by the specified worldview paradigms. In particular, it is demonstrated how the caste system and widespread culture of meditative psychotechniques in Indian culture influenced the system of traditional Indian worldview and values; as well as the mutual influence that worldview organismism and the clan system of traditional Chinese society exerted on each other.

            The paradigmatic development of the Western philosophical tradition is also shown through the successive change of three different paradigms – Ancient Greek and Roman, Abrahamic and Modern scientific, which, relying on each other's achievements, nevertheless completely reinterpreted them in a new context. This point is not always visible if limited to the framework of a purely Western tradition (even including Eastern Muslim philosophy). But if we add here the Indian and Chinese paradigms, then everything falls into place.

            That is as a conclusion: within the framework of different cultures, there are corresponding worldview paradigms or sets of dominant ideas that determine the general nature of culture as a set of semantic codes, and within these paradigms, appropriate populations of philosophical ideas are already developing. Their character, acceptability or unacceptability is determined precisely by the paradigm.