Myth, Folklore, and Genesis of Philosophy (To the 55th Anniversary of “The Origin of Philosophy” by M. I. Shakhnovich)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu17.2024.312Abstract
Against the background of modern debates about the origin of philosophical thought in the Ancient East, the article examines an attempt to resolve the riddle of the genesis of philosophy, undertaken by the Leningrad University Professor M. I. Shakhnovich (1911–1992) in his study “The Origin of Philosophy” (1969). Shakhnovich noted that the process of the birth of philosophy from the womb of religious-mythological consciousness cannot be understood as the transformation of mythology into natural philosophy, religious images into physical concepts and philosophical categories. The study of “pre-philosophy,” by which he understood the rudiments of philosophical thought that existed within mythology, believing that the ancient “wisdom literature” already contained philosophical ideas, was based on his deep knowledge of comparative mythology, ethnography and folklore. Archaic mythology intricately combined mysticism with practical knowledge about nature and man, reality and fantasy, amazing guesses and incredible delusions, true truth and absurd fictions. Shakhnovich drew attention to the nature of human cognitive abilities and the features of language, which make it possible to shed light on the nature of mythological consciousness. Contrary to the established tradition of considering early philosophy exclusively from the point of view of the formation of ontological problems, he believed that ethics, as the most important element of philosophical ideas about man, has a very ancient history, that the origins of philosophy go back to folk sayings and rules of worldly wisdom both in the Ancient East and in Ancient Greece. There is no doubt that the process of formation of philosophy is inseparable from the development of human cognitive abilities and the formation of scientific knowledge, but attempts to solve rationally problems of anthropology and ethics that existed in ancient times cannot be discounted when exploring the question of the origin of philosophy.
Keywords:
origin of philosophy, wisdom literature, ethics, Leningrad philosophical school, Mikhail Shakhnovich
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Published
2024-12-30
How to Cite
Shakhnovich, M. M. (2024). Myth, Folklore, and Genesis of Philosophy (To the 55th Anniversary of “The Origin of Philosophy” by M. I. Shakhnovich). Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Philosophy and Conflict Studies, 40(3), 513–525. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu17.2024.312
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Articles of "Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Philosophy and Conflict Studies" are open access distributed under the terms of the License Agreement with Saint Petersburg State University, which permits to the authors unrestricted distribution and self-archiving free of charge.
