Paradigmatic Transformations of the Western European Theory of Knowledge: From the Formal Distinction ‘Classical – Non-Classical’ to Search for Meaningful Definitions

The article is aimed at revealing the key features of epistemological paradigms, which change each other in the process of development of Western European thinking. The need for such a study is due to the fact that the distinction ‘classic – non-classic’, which is accepted in Russian philosophical literature, has a formal character. The non-classical paradigm is defined by indicating the absence of certain features of the classical (Cartesian) paradigm, such as, for example, fundamentalism, self-centrism, science-centrism, but not by finding the internal principle of each paradigm, on the basis of which its secondary features and the structure specificity of the conscious world of the corresponding epoch could be derived. In search of the basis for paradigm differences, the author turns to the analysis of the classical paradigm. As the analysis shows, it is determined by a change in understanding of the key epistemological opposition – the opposition of our knowledge of reality and reality itself. Тhe ancient and medieval opposition of the sensible and the supra-sensible is replaced by the opposition of subjective and the objective. Thus, the distinction between our knowledge of reality and reality itself is moved into the area of the conscious (sensible) world, which gives rise to the process of autonomization of this world from another world. This key feature allows us to outline the classic epistemology and answer a number of debatable questions, for example, the question of whether I. Kant and G.V.F. Hegel are the classical philosophers. As the subject-object relation becomes a key epistemological relation, the further paradigm shifts are determined by changes in understanding of the character of this relation and its role in cognition. The author of article shows that the non-classical paradigm, the formation of which begins in the works of A. Schopenhauer, brings with it a denial of the division of the conscious world into subjective and objective contents and the transformation of the relation ‘subject – object’ into the correlation ‘objectification – object’, which implies the exclusion of the subjective from the sphere of consciousness. The analysis allows us to conclude that, contrary to M. Heidegger, the age when the world becomes a picture is not the classical, but the non-classical epoch. It can be called the epoch of total objectivism, the reverse side of which is subjectivism. The next paradigmatic shift is prepared by the transformation of the world-picture into the world-text, in which the subject-object relation loses its structure-forming role in the conscious world. As the study shows, the change of the cognitive attitude that determines the structure of the conscious world is carried out through the assumption of a new distinction between the known and the unknown.

Keywords:classical theory of knowledge, non-classical theory of knowledge, the cognitive attitude, the conscious world, the sensible, the supra-sensible, the subjective, the objective, Rene Descartes, German idealism, subjectivism, objectivism, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein