On the Philosophical Ideas of Higher Abstraction (Ultimate Meanings)

Abstract

This article raises the question of the specifics of the ideas of the highest degree of abstraction, their status and the mechanisms of their formation. The author believes that, along with descriptive and schematizing generalization, intellect is characterized by imaginative generalization, or the work of creative imagination controlled by the requirements of coherence and logic. From the historical and anthropological point of view, ultimate meanings are a comprehensible limit of generalization of the significance of any of the “segments” of human existence. They perform the functions of organizing comprehension and indicating meanings and values. A philosopher’s ontological work involves discerning the ultimate meaning in the group of universal meanings, positioning it as the coordinates of the proposed doctrine, as well as arguing in its favour and demonstrating worldview consequences. Philosophers postulate the foundations of their teachings, or ultimate meanings, to later use them as key arguments. Such higher ideas originate both in the objective social context and in the subjective psychological environment. The author is more interested in the latter aspect, revealing the subjective mechanisms of consciousness activity in terms of choosing certain general concepts as ultimate meanings. At the same time, it is argued here that the diversity of philosophical teachings as an expression of numerous subjective images of one real world has anthropological nature. These multiple scenarios support the optimum of selecting the necessary prospects for the development of humankind in all possible areas
of its contact with reality. The positioning of ultimate meanings in the history of philosophy is not a voluntaristic act; it correlates both with the real conditions of human existence and with the requirements of the historical and philosophical tradition of rational justification of the established foundations.