Object and definition of Philosophy. Philosophy as metaphysics. /part 8/

If we ever considered colors as being and phenomenon at the same time, we say today that colors are a phenomenon, and the essence is different in frequency electromagnetic oscillations. If, until yesterday, the indistinguishable atom was accepted as being, today, after its breaking, we know that at a certain level it is a phenomenon, and its essence forms the elements and forces that make up it. But neither the electromagnetic oscillations nor the breaking of the atom represent the end and impassable boundary of science.

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What yesterday was the essence of today is seen to be just a phenomenon, and what today's essence is, tomorrow may be revealed to be just a temporary phenomenon. In a word, essence and phenomenon always belong to each other and are in constant dialectical interaction and movement. The same is true for reason and consequence: what is now the reason, only a step back was a consequence, and what is now a consequence, just one step ahead and it will become the cause of something new, and so we see an endless alternation of causes and consequences in both directions . If the essence and phenomenon would be so separated that one always remains a phenomenon, and the other - always an essence that is not accessible to us, as Kant thought, then there could be no real science, because the phenomenon available to knowledge is insignificant and the bodies of interest to science are inaccessible to it. But science is impossible, and if we assume that phenomenon and essence at any given moment coincide. Then we will accept as the last truth what is immediately given to our senses. And here we are not content with this naive realism, but we always ask if what we see is in line with real reality. There is no need for a science to be metaphysics to do so, but on the contrary - there is no science, and no science is possible that does not do that. And the greater the number of changing phenomena and essences, causes and consequences has established and perceived a science, the greater its achievements. At the same time, the more open and accessible it stands for future units in the achieved range, the greater the future will be.

That is what ultimately comes to metaphysics: through an increasingly in-depth and logically imperative continuation of the chain of causes and consequences, through an increasingly radical questioning of the further causes, while the forefront of the problem of ultimate, ultimate, absolute reasons. But this reveals the insubstantiality of any positivism, because this very positive, accessible to the experience that studies positivism points beyond itself, leads by the causality of something behind and before it - leads to metaphysical infinity. A metaphysics built purely destructively, speculatively, without the data of the experience and achievements of the special sciences at any given time, would be a futile impulse. Justly, Albert Lange calls it "poetry in concepts". It is a painfully nebulous frenzy, in which the real reality is not visible. But no less painful and insubstantial is the short-sightedness of positivism, which does not see how every single fact of the surrounding reality is included in the endless chain of relationships, and only gross violence can stop human mind when it moves. Only highly unscientific thinkers can claim that the infinite is almost a fiction of metaphysics, some distant mirage and unreality, and dealing with it is some sort of dream.

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part 1

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part 3

part 4

part 6

part 7