The philosophy of science is a field philosophy and it traditionally studies three families of problems.

1. General problems of science

a. Epistemological problems of science
(i.e. What is the criteria of scientific approach? Is only one type of ‘scientificness’ possible? Can there be any other foundation of a scientific theory than the sensual experience? How reliable is induction? Can a probability of a state of facts (an eventuality) really be measured, or only a probability of a logical possibility (a necessity) can be calculated? What is verification and to what extent can it verify?)

b. Metaphysical problems of science
(i. e. Does scientific theory reveal reality? What is ‘objectivity’? How do contexts exist? What is ‘explanation’ after all? Do the conceived beings really exist /i.e. subatomic particles, ego, financial market, freedom/?)

c. Ethical  problems of science
(i.e. Where are the limits of a scientist’s responsibility regarding dangerous research and dangerous applications? Is the limitation and prohibition of research in certain questions allowable or compulsory /i.e. religious miracles, racial differences, alive autopsy/?)

2. Problems of the connections between scientific fields

(i.e. Is a unified scientific theory and science that connect every scientific field possible? Is there an essential difference between natural and social sciences? Can sciences ultimately be reduced to one fundamental science? What makes a scientific field autonomous and what makes an interdisciplinary science autonomous?)

3. Problems of scientific key concepts

(I.e. What is ‘time’, ‘space’, ‘energy’, ‘matter’, ‘cause’, ‘reason’?)

The autonomous and systemic scientific philosophy separated from the philosophy of logics and epistemology in the 20th century, although previous times also had their own conceptions of scientificness.

1st phase (from the beginnings to the 4th century B.C.)

2nd phase (4th century B.C. - 16th century) Aristotle

4th phase (middle of 19th century – 1970s) Gottlob Frege

5th phase (1970s - ) Thomas Kuhn

Instead of curiosity and compassion, the scientific-technical development as a social phenomenon is still being motivated by power struggle and mainly by wars. The scientific-technical development was ignited at the time of the European-Ottoman, and the Catholic-Protestant wars, when the family-scale battles were replaced by mass armies and by the clash of civilizations and cultures.

It is also the time when the West starts to surpass the East. This is the time when army-supplying civic enterprise becomes a serious business, which provides an even better motivation to the accumulation of capital and to investments than Protestant Ethic itself. It is from this time that the power rewards, finances, and defends the scientific achievements even against itself (i.e. against Inquisition). Besides climatic and demographic reasons, it was mass production (the basis of mass warfare) that played a significant role in the civil progression leading to the era of Renaissance, Rationalism, and Enlightenment. Agriculture, industry, and management supplying and equipping fleets and armies required professionalism, experience, rationality, and ultimately scientific-technical development. The competition of power struggle ignites a scientific-technical competition from the 16th century.

The intense kick-off of the interests of natural science and engineering was no coincidence and until today it is the military interests that decide the most important directions and proportions of scientific research and technical developments. We have been witnessing the spectacular and uninterrupted development of natural and technical sciences ever since. It is no wonder that this circumstance also dominates the concept of ‘scientificness’.

The debates about ‘scientificness’ became especially intense from the second half of the 19th century. By this time it was obvious that the scientific-technical revolution did not live up to the expectations.

The all brand new public opinion created by handouts and journalism was already divided in the question of criticalness. On one side stood the uncritical natural sciences that were fully satisfied with their own performance and their autocracy, while lined up on the other side were the dissatisfied church - being beaten but already preparing for the rematch - and the social sciences that were born from the political demands of the critiques of society and science. The moral, political, and methodical credibility of science were all present in their debate at the same time. There have been several rounds, but the fight still goes on.

‘First Round’: science against religion (from the 16th century)

The collaboration of Empiricism and Rationalism overthrows the religious approach by the end of the 18th century. Francis Bacon replaces the axiomatic-deductive method (which is based on fundamental principles and relies on metaphysics) of scholasticism and Aristotle with the empirical-inductive method (which is based on experiences and quantities, and dismisses metaphysics). The corresponding and publishing natural sciences develop their networks and academies. The debate of ‘scientificness’ commences between the Anglo-Saxon empiricists and the continental rationalists. Within their joint victory the criticism of the socially and politically more sensitive continental enlightenment proves more powerful – mainly because of Kant and Hegel.

‘Second Round’: natural science against social science
(from the 2nd half of the 19th century)

From the middle of the 19th century - after the death of Hegel – the criticism of the axiomatic-deductive method becomes defenseless and fails, and the empiricist-inductive approach of the natural scientific positivism (i.e. Darwin, Huxley) becomes superior in the academies and scientific clubs. Natural science becomes sensational and popular. Showing interest towards it is highborn and fashionable. Both politically and morally it is assertively ‘neutral’, therefore it is useful for the state power for many reasons. Two kinds of criticisms emerge against its power: religious criticism that restored its own workshops and returned to scientific debates (i.e. Pope Leo XIII), and scientific criticism, namely social scientific positivism that emerged from political dissatisfaction (i.e. Comte, Marx). Religious criticism aims to rehabilitate the deductive method, while social and human sciences attempt to create the synthesis of the induction/deduction debate. All three contextualize each other: natural science regards everything as natural phenomena, religion regards everything as religious phenomena, and social science regards everything from a social perspective.

‘Third Round’: power against progression (from the 1920s)

Opposing the revived expectations of the turn of the century, the moral crisis of modernity took astounding proportions after the horrors of World War I, the labour revolutions, and the unjust peace treaties. The collaboration of the intuitive romanticism and empirical realism in literature and fine arts laid the ground for the ‘grand solution’. The natural sciences - attempting to break from the accusation of being ‘conscienceless’ – and the power-striving religious approach joined forces (i.e. Wittgenstein, G. E. Moore) against the raw and utopian demanders of ‘progression’ (i.e. Marxism, Anarchism). Empiricism and religiousness simultaneously attacked the logical analysis of values and historicalism. By referring to an elusive intuition, they demanded sensual data based verification, unequivocal language, natural scientific quantification, and exact mathematic functions in social and human sciences (i.e. the neopositivism of the Vienna Circle). The descriptive and non-explanative, noncritical ‘neutrality’ and ‘objectiveness’ became the synonyms of ‘scientificness’. They offered the distinction of ‘scientificness’ virtually in return for ultimately closing all philosophical problems, research and progress. The social and human sciences were defending criticism by clinging onto humanism (i.e. Frankfurt School).

‘Fourth Round’: the division of social sciences (from the 1970s)

The sizzling hell of World War II and the chilling absurdity of the Cold War provided a continuous supply to the critical approach. In relation to the nuclear bomb, the critical approach has surfaced even in the natural sciences. In turn, the super powers supported critics towards their enemies by all possible means. Because of the global power games the state/military interest towards social and human sciences was grown and eventually these fields also occupied a significant part in the modern institutions. The approach of continuous progress and criticism, however, did not break through because the state/militaristic power colonized social and human sciences. Simultaneously with the initially rebellious rock generation’s employment, family-establishing, and mass submission, the descriptive social sciences that gave up criticism were strengthened by means of finance and science-constitution and for the loss of the explanatory and critical social sciences.  According to the postmodern approach that was initiated simultaneously from technical and human fields in the 1970s, ‘progress’ happens without ‘progression’. Criticism’s cultural foundations have been ruined and its rejection was made fashionable (‘trendy’). The dephilosophization of ‘scientific philosophy’ produces ‘scientific theory’ in the universities which no longer discusses the historical, political, and moral aspects of scientificness.

What is the basis of reliable knowledge? Experience or logics?
(Empiricism – Rationalism debate)

Kant pointed out the indispensability of both. The meaning presupposes an articulation’s logical relationship with other articulations and its reference to a certain set of experiences.

Which is the reliable method? Induction or deduction?

Empirical inductive method (induction): universal abstracted from individual
Axiomatic deductive method (deduction): individual abstracted from universal
Induction is necessary for description. Deduction is necessary for systemization.
Every scientific concept highlights a feature (describes) and puts it into a system (systemize). Both methods are inevitable.

What is the relation between facts and values?

Fact: connection of data based on values, a value-function data-function.
Every factual statement has value statement and every value statement has factual statement.

What is verification?

‘Verification’ according to the Vienna Circle (i.e. Rudolf Carnap /1891 – 1970/) is: backtracing a statement to factual statements that can be verified by experience. Karl Popper (1902 – 1994) says ‘falsification’ is when a falsifiable statement’s nonfalsification (not-being-falsified-ness) strengthens the statement. Being theoretically unfalsifiable is being unscientific.

How does science evolve?

Thomas Kuhn says (1922 – 1996) the scientific thought is dominated by paradigms (world views, fundamental questions). There are always exceptional experiences (anomalies) to which the actual paradigm cannot provide explanation, but these are not disturbing as long as the following of the paradigm brings more success than failure. This standard approach is replaced by a crisis, when the number of failures grow too big and there is no solution yet. This crisis is then followed by a scientific revolution when the new paradigm emerges. The scientific opinion initially rejects it, but it eventually becomes popular by the success from following it. A new standard approach takes shape based on the new paradigm.

What can ‘scientificness’ be measured by?

Not being able to quantify (‘scientify’) exactly the scientific quality has long been disturbing the natural scientific views. Therefore it made a worldwide qualifying system obligatory, which allows every uneducated or unintelligent person (provided he/she can still add) to be able to determine if a scientist is a genius or absolutely useless. Whoever is the most spoken about is the ‘smartest’ of all. No kidding.

The common problem of logics and linguistic philosophy is the articulation (rendition, composition, expression) of observations and experiences and the filtering out of articulational mistakes. They depend both methodically and theoretically on the ‘natural language’ what and in which they speak about, and also on the world which articulation they speak about, but both fields try to eliminate the ‘natural language’ and ignore the nature of this ‘world’, including the nature of articulated articulation itself (its metaphysics). Nevertheless, the analyses of the articulation of relations and the relation of articulations cannot diverge far from each other, even regardless of the common background. The facts that the philosophical experts of both fields are often the same persons and that the professional literature favours to discuss them at the same time both shed light on the interconnectedness of the two fields. Within this interconnectedness, logics researches the conditions of truth and proper conclusion, while linguistic philosophy studies the relation of symbol and meaning (phoneme and morpheme) in the communication.

The word ‘logic’ comes from the ancient Greek word ‘logos’, which refers to the uniformity and coherence of being and experiencing, and symbolizes that common basic law and order, which is the measure of change and ‘meaningful word’. It can be referred to in three different senses:

a. formal logic (the method of articulation)
the non-contradictionality (consistency)
- the order of non-contradictional statements and conclusions
(i.e. Aristotle)

b. dialectic logic (the object of articulation)
the non-contradictive description of contradictionality
- the order of change and generativity (historicalism)
(i.e. Hegel)

c. transcendental logic (the articulation of articulation)
the description of the structure and progress of articulation
- the order of revealing our innate (a priori) orientation
(i.e. Kant)

The center of logical problems is the concept of truth.
Do we find or do we create truth? When is a statement true? What is truth?

Truth is a logical value and depends on logical conditions.
The essence of ‘logicality’ is orderliness, definiteness, and consistency.

We seek for truth in a double sense: in the matter and form of statements.

The main theories of formal consistency (formal truth) are:

1. Violence-based
   A statement is true if it belongs to a more forceful, more authoritative, and more powerful someone.
2. Logic-based
   A statement is true if it does not contradict itself (formally logical).

The main theories of materialistic consistency (contentual truth) are:

1. Experience- based
   A statement is true if it corresponds to my experience.
2. Correspondence- based – i.e. Aristotle, Tarski
   A statement is true if it corresponds to reality.
3. Convention- based (agreement-based) – i.e. Poincaré
   A statement is true if it corresponds to the scientific conventions.
4. Grammatics- based – i.e. Frege
   A statement is true if it is grammatically noncontradictional.
5. Pragmatism- based (application-based) – i.e. Peirce, James, Dewey
   A statement is true if it is usefuI (in survival).
6. Dialogue- based – i.e. Habermas
   A statement is true if it accepted in the scientific dialogue.
7. Dialectic- based (change-based) – i.e. Hegel, Marx
   A statement is true if it is dialectical and historic (logical in its contents).
   

When is logic well-founded? Can it found itself? According to Kurt Gödel’s (1906 – 1978) verification, it can only do so at the cost of self-contradiction, which means a logic attempting to avoid self-contradiction cannot found itself. The trueness of a context can only be decided in the context of another one. Can correspondence to reality establish the trueness of something? John Stuart Mill (1806 – 1873) says that the facts are data processed and defined with preconception, therefore they are conditional to data (sensations) and values (concepts). What are facts good for? They are good exactly to explain relativities with the absolute, and to give meaning, reason, and value to the inexpressive data.

The importance of logics is in the peaceful and reasoning-based solution of conflicts. This is guaranteed by the formal truth (which is approximated by non-contradictionality) and the material truth (which is approximated by dialectics – namely by the context of change) of logics. (The meaning of approximate truth: truth can be improved, but cannot be perfect). In the history logics, however, a bizarre tension has developed between the avoidance of violence and the ignorance of material problems (latent violence). The formalization characterizing the progress of logics has served logicality (in the details) and illogicality (in the fundamental questions of philosophy) at the same time. Adhering to the correspondence-principle and in search of the substantial foundations, classical logics (from Aristotle until Frege) did not separate formal and material truth, but was searching in naïve simplicity for ‘true’ (that is corresponding to reality) statements. Those philosophers did not even separate factual statements and value statements from one another, but simply and naively believed that there are values behind the facts and there are facts behind the values. Based on the initiative of Gottlob Frege (1848 – 1925), however, the modern (‘symbolic’) logics that developed from the second half of the 19th century limits the analyses to the meaning of a statement (how it states) and its form of stating (the grammatical truth of the statement) and isolates itself from the reason of statements and the problem of material truth.

On the basis of the inability to sensually experience values, George Edward Moore (1873 – 1958) dismisses the use of logics related to factual statements in the case of value statements, and thus refers all material questions to the realm of religious intuition. The postmodern approach says that the evaluation of statements (the truth-problem) is nothing but an act of speech, merely the emotional expression of approval or disapproval. Modern logics – above all Alfred Tarski (1902 – 1983) – has explored the secrets of classical paradoxes and pointed out how the multiple meanings and the mixing up of linguistic levels (‘twisting’) lead to unsolvable puzzles, but it still cannot succeed in understanding the logics of change that contextualizes logics, and not even troubles itself with it anymore.

The negligence of the principles of change, self-improvement, enrichment, and progression not only raises moral and political questions, but also causes difficulties in technical methodology. What sort of theory could describe logicality, if, when thinking of ‘logical’, we do not include that it is ‘improvingly logical’, ‘logically changing’, ‘self-generative’, and therefore ‘historical’. How can we define the proper approach, if we do not connect illogicality to unhistoricality and, vice versa, unhistoricality to illogicality? Since this point of view substantiates the critical approach, it is no coincidence that in the modern and richer countries there is less and less people who would exert themselves to put up with its difficulties, therefore the majority rather supports a science which is uncritical (apologetic) towards a cultural and moral status quo.

The logical and value-analysis of concepts and theories related to language belong to linguistic philosophy. The ‘analytical philosophy’ (Anglo-Saxon trend in the 20th century) simply considers it to be the essence of philosophical thinking. Apart from the epistemological reflexivity of philosophy, it is mostly because of the influence of the ‘analyticals’ that numerous handbooks have been born that regard each and every philosophy as linguistic philosophy. It is obvious, however, that the analysis of a special phraseology (philosophy) is not equal to the analysis of theories related to the general nature of language (linguistic philosophy).

The ancient Greeks were already engaged in linguistics (grammatics) and they established phonetics, morphemics, syntax, and etymology, but they did not even attempt to study the general nature and the change of language. Linguistic philosophy is a modern phenomenon that was made possible by the global connections (geographical explorations) and the linguistic experiences of the revolution of social connections (civil equality) by the 19th century.

Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767 – 1835) is one of the most important initiators of comparative linguistic analysis and he is the first to study the changes of ‘flexible’ language and its different versions. It is because of the studies of Jacob Grimm (1785 – 1835) that ‘historic linguistics’, the study of the changing language became widespread, and thus the evolution of languages and language families was discovered by the end of the 19th century.

Nevertheless, linguistic theory fell into crisis, because the communication of cultures and languages that came into contact with each other in the process of colonization, the global strengthening of national consciousness, and the linguistic preciseness together made the scientists of the turn of the century face such a problem that was only solvable by revising the basic presuppositions of linguistics. Historic linguistics had submerged too much into the aspects of matching of languages, and it did not pay enough attention to the logical and functional problems of languages.

By the 1920s the foundations of ‘modern logics’ was established by Gottlob Frege with the separation of reason and meaning and the semiotics and ‘pragmatism’ of Charles S. Peirce (1839 – 1914) with the separation of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. This era of turning towards logics from historicalism was represented by the ‘structural linguistics’ of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 – 1913), and within this field, by the ‘descriptive linguistics’ of L. Bloomfield (1887 – 1949), the ‘logical-philosophical dissertation’ of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951), and the ‘neopositivism’ of the Vienna Circle (1929).

The absence of the dialectic and dynamic (systems theoretical) model of in-time language, however, has led to another crisis, especially with the storm-like progress of cryptography, cybernetics, modern logics, and the artificial languages (computer technology), that gained momentum during World War II and the Cold War. By the 1960s, there were two answers emerging to the theoretical and language philosophical challenge: the ‘linguistic turn’ of analytic philosophy and the ‘generative grammatics’ of Noam Chomsky (1928 - ). The former sought to study the natural languages (and thinking), and the latter attempted to outline the more general language behind all languages.

Semiotics

The possibility/impossibility of a language free from multiple meanings stands in the centre of modern linguistic philosophy. Everyone researches the secrets of signs and meanings. Wittgenstein’s late writings are the first to focus on the importance of the meaning-modifying verbal situations (‘language games’), but the ‘speech act’ theory of J. L. Austin (1911 – 1960) also analyzes them. In what relation are the signs with what they signify? How is language related to the world? What is the role of language in communication? Wittgenstein says that most philosophical problems are false problems (i.e. metaphysics) that come from the miscomprehension of language games and the linguistic abuses (referring to something sensually non-experienceable on a language that refers to sensual experiences). The research of signs has expanded to the research of symbols and indications and to the linguistic analysis of nonverbal languages (i.e. the studying of the role of gestures, physicality, behavioural culture and material culture in the personal and mass communication). Such descriptions are born in which all criticism is limited to the dismissal of criticism.

Aesthetics is a particular field of philosophy and it considers sensual forms to be messages. It has two different approaches based on whether it describes or interprets.

a. descriptive aesthetics:  it does not deal with the content of the message, only with its form and the relations between different elements of influence within the whole experience.
b. interpretive (evaluative) aesthetics: in relation to the content of the message, it interprets and evaluates the form of the message and the relation between the meaning and the elements of influence, within the whole experience.

It has three different approaches based on what kind of sensual forms it is ready to accept as ‘message’.

a. art philosophy (analyzes exclusively the intentional self expressions /compositions/)
b. general aesthetics (ready to analyze every man-made sensual form)
c. universal aesthetics (ready to analyze every sensual form, e.g. even the aesthetic examination of natural phenomena)

The questions and answers of aesthetics change significantly with time.

The awareness of self expression started with the mimetic mind. The source of all arts was born in mimesis (imitation, repeating). The rhythmic, concerted movements and leg pounding, the dance and the music have probably developed from the joint running of the upright postured man (ca. 689 250 B.C.). The free-standing (independent), anytime repeatable and performable message: the story itself appeared parallel to the development of the mythical mind. It was only this time when the first rules of storytelling and experience-articulation were set (ca. 80 520 B.C.).

Following the volatile rhythms and melodies, pictures also appear and some of them successfully remain until today. The message-sensitive art that sees behind the sensual form is the magical connection between everyone’s sensual world and the initiated ones’ supersensual world. It has control over invisible powers and visible relations with analogies. The culture hero discoursing with the supersensual world and showing the hidden contexts interprets the unperceivable order. Art addresses the entire community, initiates and connects every member of it to the discourse with the supersensual world. Ancient art is not only magical but also collective. The whole of the community is both the creator and the outcome (art and artwork) of the process. The participants mobilize and synchronize their intuitions and meanings in the ecstasy of the joint artistic experience. The completion of the direct and mutual experience of interconnectedness and that of the common essence is the catharsis.

The consolidation of myths and rituals led to the standardization of artworks. This process only became stronger with the manifestation of the alienated power (state) (ca. 2904 B.C.). The power interested in protecting status quo canonizes traditions and develops the first official aesthetics.

The aesthetics of every ancient high culture is inflexible and aims to be the summary of eternity and divine order. The power-emanating, pathetic and power-oriented court culture of the ruling elite and the cheerful and sexuality-oriented culture of everyday people become separate. Power struggle ignites in the realm of the arts, styles, and symbols. Parallel to the generalization of social injustice, art receives a specific role: it starts interpreting social tensions. In accordance with the interests of the ruling groups, court culture attempts to ease tensions and aims to demonstrate harmony and controlled pathos (‘orphic’ arts). In accordance with the interests of the subjugated groups, folk culture attempts to raise tensions and aims to create upstir and arouse uncontrollable pathos (‘magical’ arts). Both approaches are obviously magical, but while the former is a taming, the latter is an infuriating magic. This is most apparent in the ornamental arts, where every colour, form, and element of influence has a particular meaning and a magical power up until the modern age, when the this-wordly and in-between-people communication started dominating all the arts.

In the closed aesthetic order of the ancient societies’ closed world order it was the arts and the music that played a leading role from the ancient times. The ancient language and the proportions of the musical order interconnect artistic rules and the mathematical and geometric foundations of sciences (e.g. Chinese and ancient Greek aesthetics both postulated moral and political importance to permissible and prohibited musical forms). Hindu world view believes the primordial energy of the universe is a sound, a vibration. In other places it is Shiva’s pounding that pulsates in everything or it is the Muses -originating from ‘musica’- that determine what the beautiful form of message is in any field.

One of the most serious conflicts of classical aesthetics is the image-destruction. Sensuality appears in all religious aesthetics and within sensuality, the more or less stronger rejection of image-creation. The ‘image-destructors’ say that sensual form diverts attention from the supersensual essence, lock up ideality in the limited prison of reality and distorts pure essence with misleading resemblances. The destruction of the superstitiously revered images served most of the time both the recollection of the sanctities’ power to the hands of those leaders that possessed the relics and the freeing of the same leaders from a religious interpretation that was cemented in the images. On contrary to this, the image-creators emphasized the pedagogical effectiveness of the images and the particular importance those played in the religious life that was independent from the clergy. Although the leaders were often held back by the distinctiveness of the images, the led ones readily clung onto the presumed accurateness of those. The consequence of image-destruction, however, was most often not the spreading of religious illustrations, and this had a positive influence on the progression of the more realistic fine arts.

Rationalism and Enlightenment, turning towards the wordly power of sensuality, make aesthetics become a scientific research (Gottlieb Baumgarten, 1750). Aesthetes are interested in the intuitive proportion-sense of creative ingenuity that steps beyond the course of history and social order. Their aim is not to promote subjective autocratism, but to support something intrepid and powerful that is based on a higher law which surpasses pitiful rules. According to Kant (1724 – 1804), beauty is simply the manifestation of the unselfish desire for values and truth. Hegel (1770 – 1831) says that the principle of universal logics seeks its more and more refined and individual form of expression throughout the three eras of art history:

a. Preclassical era: Architecture is the dominant art.
(The principle searches its articulation in symbolic forms)
b. Classical era: Sculpture is the dominant art. (Greeks)
(The principle finds its perfect sensual form.)
c. Modern era: Painting, music, and literature are dominant.
(The principle is more and more abstract and less and less articulated in sensual forms)

The modern era that started with the French Revolution did not live up to its expectations of eliminating inhumanities and injustice. The resistance, unconcern and hypocrisy connected to the values of liberty, equality, and fraternity has brought upon a constant moral crisis. In addition, the unfolding Capitalism has led to consequences oppositional to the original goals, namely it led to alienation. The relation to the continuous great lie and to progression became the measure and essential context of all action and communication. The fundamental problem of modern aesthetics is no longer beauty, but the possibility and forms of equivocation and straight talk. From this point even the disgusting is beautiful provided it is an instrument of truth (genuine criticism), and vice versa, even beauty is unacceptable if it is an instrument of lie. Such new aesthetical situations emerge as kitsch, l’art pour l’art, absurd, and fashion.

The viewpoints of fashion are popularity and power. The viewpoints of absurd are nonsense and illogicalness. The viepoints of l’art pour l’art (art for art’s sake) are silence and turning aside. The viewpoint of kitsch is lie. None of these approaches is concerned about inhumanity, but any of them can be used as a concept in a credible self criticism.

Kitsch is the comfortable alienation. Man escaping from reality seeks consolation in sensuality as an audience or finds relief in self-satisfaction as a performer. There are three forms of lies:

Absolute kitsch: a. everythig is beautiful, perfect, and idillic
b. everything is horrible, unbearable, and awful
c. everything is irrelevant and funny
Deceitful kitsch: pseudo conflict, pseudo tension, pseudo solution
Relative kitsch: non-self-critical criticism, commonplaces, and egocentric superciliousness

The word ‘kitsch’ was first used by Munich academics in 1870 to describe those ‘sketchy’ ‘patchworks’, ‘mishmashes’ and ‘pseudo arts’ that lacked the basic knowledge of artistic methods. The meaning of the word was changed by the middle of the 20th century: since then it indicates the self centred influence-creation that aims to shake as many people as easily and as much as possible, and it is used in the case of hollow and superficial forms of expression that intentionally avoid deeper and more complex problems. It is the intentional commonplace. The ‘sham’. It was born from the shallower mass taste of the industrialized mass society and the profit oriented poor quality mass production that was abusing mass taste. It is closely connected to consumerism. Most languages have not yet got to the stage of recognizing this problem therefore they do not know the concept.

Credibility is difficult to define since credible becomes commonplace and commonplaces could be used credibly. Even the ‘commonplaceness’ of commonplace can be a commonplace. It is no longer clear if a ‘commonplace’ is a plain commonplace or the refusal of the hypocrisy that commonplacely abhors commonplaces, namely the daring self criticism. It is mainly the distancing self irony and tragicomedy that appear to be credible (e.g. Monty Python, Kurt Vonnegut).

What is violence? It has been researched by various sciences, from psychology and psychiatry through sociology and socio-psychology to the philosophies of law and politics, but even biochemistry or ethology can tell us quite a lot about it. This paper, however, defines violence from a philosophical perspective, so it aims to understand its most general logics, and therefore it sees a special behavioural pattern in it that comes with a particular pattern of approach.

Violence is: isolation from cooperation in a conflict. Without presupposing both the clash of different intentions and coercion, we do not mean isolation and violence. The word ‘presupposition’ is no coincidence. If, for instance, I get angry to an object and punish it ‘violently’, it does not mean that the object really had any intention and that there really was a conflict ‘between us’; yet I still could have acted violently if I did presuppose our conflict and did ‘isolate myself from the object’. If, for example, someone wants exactly the same as I, but for whatever reason he/she pretend to resist and provoke my violence, then I do not really compel him/her to do anything and I do not really ‘force’ anything upon him/her, yet I still could have been violent in case I assume that I did force them. Violence is a type of conflict-management, an alternative to cooperation.

Isolation is revealed in the direct or indirect coercion, but not only isolation can appear in it. Someone who seeks cooperation can also be constrained to force an infant, a sick person, or an animal. Nonetheless, that someone is not violent as long as he/she is open to cooperate, and as long as he/she minimizes force as much as possible and is therefore unhappy with his/her forcing. Violence is always forcing, but forcing is not always violence.

The precondition of avoiding violence is cooperation, and the precondition of that is a cooperative relation, which is an essential equality. But what kind of equality can we speak about in a world where everything is different and there are no identical capabilities, skills, conditions and chances, where therefore we are not equal in anything, where inequality is the natural?

We are naturally equal as well. We only know our inequalities because we measure each other by some sort of equality, by some sort of common measure. In order to reveal the inequalities, it is essential to presuppose basic equality in the measurement and the competition. Equality is nothing other than measuring with the same measure, and nothing less than ensured equality in the same task. We innately presuppose universality in relation to an absolute measure, and compared to this absolute measure all things are equal, because we innately presuppose the totality and the unity of the world beyond inequality and equality.

Equality is the mutual self-restriction and self-subordination to a mutual and universal value. This equality, however, is not a secondary condition, but the foundation of all things and the origin of all values, thereupon it is also a value itself, which reveals itself in the general will for collectiveness, universality, and values after all. Equality is also the purpose of any being that comes to realize the absolute, the unconditional measure, and the inter-connectedness. Equality is the self-extending self-restriction of the other-centered and caring being and also this being’s completion in others, and this equality’s theory and practice are already intentional and contemplated, since it is born from the comprehension and the processing of the directly appearing and the obvious inequalities.
 
The problem is that our natural equality does not appear directly in our social life and social practice, because the conflicts (opposing interests) throw it into the shade. It is not easy to identify the universality of the value-centered equality beyond the interest-centered sensual experience. Our opposing interests highlight exactly our differences and inequalities, mainly by our clashes and the success or failure gained at each other’s expense.

And to top it all, approaching social equality is also particularly difficult for the fact that not only complete inequality is nonfunctional and unacceptable, but is also the aim to measure everyone with the same measure (i.e. small, big, healthy, ill). Besides that, professionalism and the inequality of influencing others also collides with the subjective right of equality before the law when making decisions. Therefore it would not be fortunate to grant and would not be possible to guarantee any kind of right to anyone. Universal measures should therefore be used in such a way that they refer to everyone only in the proportion of their disadvantages, so that they were not universal measures after all.

So how can equality and non-violence be maintained in managing conflicts? What sort of violence can determine what is meant to be a disadvantegous situation, when, for instance, someone gets more or less right than others because of a ‘particularly appreciatous’ situation and this guarantees that he/she would not be able to change his/her own rights either (i.e. ‘insane’), or that he/she could change anyone’s rights unlimitedly (i.e. ‘dictator’)?

So where is social equality? Where is the alternative to violence?
 
We cannot pretend as if - within the framework of equality before the law - the philosophy of law, the theory of law and the legislation had not found elegant solutions to the proportionate limitation of rights and duties and of the social responsibilities. The problem, however, is not the theoretical subjective right to equality, but the unequal equality of the practically different performances and the qualitatively different people. If we realize that social equality is not possible without inequalities and that social justice is not possible without social competition, and furthermore, that we cannot speak of a progressive society without a hierarchy generated by that competition, only then can we come to feel the key importance of justful competing (fair play) that combines equality with the ranking of qualities in the solving of conflicts. Without competition the quality suffers, and in unjust competition everything suffers. The one and only alternative to violence is a fair play based competitive society.

Speaking about the alternative of violence, it is advisable to clarify the difference between pseudo and real alternatives. We solve all the conflicts by way of comparisons, but by what we compare and how we compare are not all the same. Based on the possible definitions of measuring (unmeasurability in chaos, measurability in order) and measure (arbitrary exepction, universal rule), there are four kinds of comparisons (consensus, violence, chance, logics).

We apply consensus when we instead of pursuing values we decide to reconcile interests, because even though we do not know the professional answer, we do not want to be aggressive with each other either, and/or the issue is so important that we do not want to leave it up to chance.

We use violence when we want to enforce our interests. In the case of a violent solution we decide upon a conceivable power and someone’s interest will ultimately prevail based on a relative superiority. The purpose of the violent solution is the isolating, raw enforcement of interests, regardless of them being right or wrong.

We rely on chance if we are concerned more about the risks than the issue itself, but we also rely on chance when even though we do not know the professional answer, we do not want to be aggressive with each other either. With a random solution we decide upon an inconceivable power and someone’s interest will ultimately prevail based on a universal, but relative superiority (luck).

And last but not least, the purpose of a logical solution is to find the appropriate (more approximate to truth), therefore more professional solution. The intelligent and peaceful beings compete with fair play for the right of decision, and therefore they solve their problems in equality, but also with professionalism - as much as they can. And yet there are still times when they happen not to know the right professional solution, so they cannot assess even the risks of the different versions, therefore they either ‘vote’ or ‘draw’, but by all means avoid violence.

Violence is not restricted to physicality, but can appear in all forms of verbal, emotional and social pressure. Nevertheless, violence can be decreased if we intend to avoid it, and we stop it whenever, wherever and however we can. The intention to avoid violence extinguishes the intention to be violent and therefore the violence itself. ‘Violence’ open to non-violence, namely the self-restricting violence (i.e. democratic legality and the self-progressive public order of a government of law) allows less and less conflicts to be solved by raw force. Even majority voting decreases violence by providing the peace of legality, although voting itself is still essentially a forcing based upon a ‘greater power’.
 
It is no coincidence that professions exist and the number of professionals specialized in solving particular problems along with their professional knowledge is growing. As a matter of fact, apart from the enforcement itself, no other problem can be solved by raw physical superiority. It would be all too bad if for instance an engineering or a medical issue were left to the strongest person or the majority of a village to solve. The alternative of solving a problem by violence or by profession is of course quite unromantic and provokes at least three objections.

(A.) Most problems do not have professionals or enough professional knowledge, and not even professionals know all the answers anyway.

(B.) An average earthly mortal cannot be a professional of all important matters.

(C.) People cannot and do not want to contemplate and decide rationally.

These obvious objections can be answered though.

(A.) Professionalism does not mean that there was a ready-made answer to every problem and that a perfect answer existed to each, but what it means in fact that we can only aim to find a logical answer and can only accept such an answer. Therefore every problem can be managed professionally - namely logically. We are absolutely aware of the fact that expert opinion is imperfect and temporal, while at the same time we know that it is optimal and progressive too. Professionalism does not know the solution to everything, but it is only professionalism that knows enough about solutions and searches them well enough.

(B.) The average earthly mortals learn more and more from the professionals and more and more technical knowledge becomes everyday knowledge from physics to psychology, from nutrition to sexuality. But even more important than the ‘average person’s’ technical knowledge is his/her logicality; and anyone can become an expert of any problem, whoever aims to be logical in the given issue.

C.) Well, this is indeed a serious objection against non-violence. We feel ourselves at home with the familiar and controllable forms of violence. Mankind does not want to be rational and would not even be even if it had to die because of that. We mix up the state of observations and experiences with the state of examination and discussion of observation and experiences and we play one off against the other. We do not want both and we do not search the place of both in our lives. In the state of observations an experience there is no place for theoretical-logical contemplation, but all the more necessary its place is in the examination and discussion of observations and experiences.

We are struggling between the bad extremities of emotional life played off against thinking and thinking played off against emotional life, mostly at the cost of logics. It is much simpler, more comfortable and more ‘natural’ for us to be violent. We feel professionalism to be ‘senseless’ and even ‘inhuman’, which – to top it all – can only be mastered with hard work and continuously compels us to a self-critical self-progress. We want to be violent in order to feel alive, and in order not to feel like being a machine. Furthermore, the inclination towards violence can also deepen, especially when the unsolved and swept aside problems accumulate to such an extent when their professional managing becomes more and more unreasonable and unreal, therefore they generate an either continuously latent or undisguised anger and they eventually make reconciliation, relief, and reasoning impossible.

In our premature experiences violence justifies everything (both truth and falseness), and therefore we adopted violence as the ultimate criteria of truth. Even though nobody is right (has a logically contradiction-free point of view) just because he/she can push his/her own will through. On contrary to that, violence itself is self-contradicting: it regards relative superiority (force) as absolute superiority (truth).

The self-contradictions of ‘universal authoritarianism’, ‘universal discrimination’, ‘the value of valuelessness’, and the ‘principle of unprincipledness’ reveal that violence is disoriented, empty and irrelevant in itself. One self-contradiction of violence is that in the delight of the experienced superiority, the defeated is respected (valued) and disrespected (unvalued) at the same time. It is for this specific reason that some refuse violence because it is impossible to become valuable by triumphing over someone invaluable (‘I won’t get my hands dirty with you’). It is not worth mistreating anyone – whether they are ‘valuable’ or ‘invaluable’. Rejection, disrespect, and despise towards the other also evaluates my own fight and victory and ultimately evaluates myself. Everybody is worth only as much as the tasks and the opponents he/she chooses.

The essence of violence is that it is not merely the forcing of others, but the forcing, betraying, and underachievement of our own self by choosing our worse self. It is the dominance of our uncompassionateness, senselessness, and ignorance over our better self. It is a gradual obtuseness, an unsuccessful adaption and a failure. Violence is against ourselves.

As a matter of fact, do not even enjoy it truly. Our transient success does not eliminate the fact that we lost our spiritual balance, our inner peace and composure. Even though there are naturally pleasant forms of enforcement, but in those cases we are playful and cooperative with the others, therefore violence is not real, because it is self-limiting and self-restricting within the fundamental context of our benevolence (i.e. sport, sex, kidding).

Only this truly non-enforcing, l’art pour l’art aesthetic violence can be enjoyed with a good heart, because it is a fake superiority and a fake violence, since we enjoy exactly the moral and emotional control and power over the violence. Those forms of violence that look aesthetic, but in fact provide real superiority in perversity (i.e. torture) are not l’art pour l’art, but tool-like and are plain violence. Only the sick and bound-to-fail selfishness can enjoy a violence that is not the least playful and compassionate in its most fundamental intention.

The violence ultimately wanted in its self-expanding, which is the intentionality and deliberateness of selfishness makes someone unrestful, because everything selfish is depressingly value- and meaningless. Wanting violence is wanting sin, and we cannot forgive ourselves as long as we hold on to it, want it and wear it as the unforgiveable sin of ‘self-satisfaction in sinfulness’. Violence cannot be avoided if our consistency does not lead us to self-criticism. Self-satisfaction is violent in any case. The essence of violence and isolation is exactly the selfishness and self-satisfaction.

The essence of violence is immorality, which is even worse than ‘wrong’ morality. A person with ‘wrong’ morals still have morals (at least he/she does have morals and is consistent in them), it’s only that we do not like them. An immoral person, however, is inconsistent and unprincipled, in other words he/she propagates and exercises principles that rule out each other, therefore he/she ultimately puts him/herself above all principles. The reason why it is immorality and not ‘wrong’ morality that is connected with violence is that a person who puts him/herself above all principles is necessarily unpredictable, therefore unable to cooperate, and thus can only enforce his/her spontaneous interests violently.

It is also true the other way around. A person who accepts violence and rules out cooperation wants his/her own superiority over the truth. From each and every approach, violence is proportional to the restriction of logics, to inconsistency, to the enforcement of the unpredictably different ‘measures’, to unprincipledness and unscrupulousness, therefore ultimately to injustice and immorality. It becomes even clearer if we realize that the foundation of every kind of morality is truthfulness, which develops itself the seeking and following of universal lawfulness and in the equality within that lawfulness; and if we realize that violence, which sweeps aside lawfulness and which is ultimately not value- but interest-centered, stands against it.

The re-evaluation of violence-based values and morals is ultimately the transformation of a power struggle based society and culture. What sort of life form and approach is violence? What is the alternative of violence in thinking, spiritual life, morality, politics, and culture? Philosophy plays a determinant role in these questions, and within philosophy, it is the philosophy of sport that researches fair play and justice.
 
What makes the question of fair play become especially timely at the turn of the millenium is the fact that the matching of seriously unequal participants has by now become a vital problem. It is more and more urgent to think about the rights of the animals and plants, and to find justful competition that also involves children, disabled, women, and minorities. All this is just the tip if the iceberg though, because we also need to treat the norm-and lawbreaking ‘evils’ with fairness, simply because we must treat even the unfair fairly.

How?

We need to learn global fair play right now, when humanity has started to divide both genetically and culturally unconjugateably into subspecies. It is an everyday pedagogic experience in our school system that more and more young people are struggling with insurmountable disadvantages. We more and more often run into such complex problems that can be conceived by less and less people and that grabs the attention of less and less people longer than a passing moment. So all in all, how should the ‘inept’ compete with the ‘intelligent’, or the ‘useful’ with the ‘unuseful’? Who would define these categories and what sort of measures would measure them?

A society is incapable of living without social competition, but every kind of social competition has been unfair so far. The natural human beings are not uniform and naturally not equal. Each and every one of them, however, can rightfully expect that he/she will not be excluded from the definition of the rules of cooperation. Social equality is the equal chance of effectuating the natural inequalities, it is justice itself. The social inequality, namely the unequal chance of effectuating the natural inequalities, is equal to institutionalised violence, in other words equal to oppression. Let us repeat: the alternative of a society of violence can only be a ‘society of justful competition’.

The more humanistic conditions of a better future cannot be realized otherwise than in the new attitude of new generations, which presupposes a new education of new children. Therefore in the center of educational and socializing progress stands the socialization to competition (socialization to justfulness), namely the education of fair play and sport. Most unfortunately though, not the sport shapes society but the society shapes sport and there is no fair sport at present that could foster the next generations so that they can become fair and justful.

Religiousness and atheism are irreconcilable oppositions as long as we consider them to be systems of approach and we see the presupposition or the dismissal of God/Gods in them. (Furthermore, religiousness and atheism as systems are meaningless as what they presuppose or dismiss is simply incomprehensible). If, however, we consider them to be methods of approach and some sort of sensitivities, then we may come to realize that the real opposition exists not between them, but between the self-satisfaction of wrong religiousness and wrong atheism and the self-criticism of right religiousness and right atheism.

The essence of the religious approach is the sensitivity to the meaning and the purpose of life. The wisdom of a religious person is that selfishness is meaningless and that someone can only be good and valuable if he/she is other-centered and caring, so that a person should live for the family, the family for the nation, and the nation for an even wider community. He/she names the purpose of all purposes in God and sees the precondition of goodness in it. On the other hand, the religious approach is insensitive to the aggressive nature behind the ‘legitimacy’ of the authoritative reasoning and the conceptual unclearness. It does not value transiency and uniqueness and considers the individual sacrificable as being a tool of a power and politics that pleads with a community (greater good). A religious person is either self-sacrificing or ruthless.

The essence of the atheist approach is the sensitivity to truth and righteousness. The wisdom of an atheist person is that the authoritative reasoning and the power that pleads with the incomprehensible are violent and evil. An atheist does not know the meaning of life and is not even interested in it, but he/she does not tolerate oppression. An atheist is either an unselfish freedom fighter or unscrupulously lives to satisfy his/her desires in the present. A religious person is a man of the heart of good will, who sees the wood from a distance and neglects the trees. An atheist is a man of reason striving for truth, who sees the trees, but does not notice the wood. Perhaps the most important and most typical procedure of the religious approach is the desire for completeness, in which it is yet unfortunately inconsistent. Perhaps the most important and most typical procedure of the atheist approach is consistency, which it quite unfortunately attempts to realize without striving for completeness. Neither the religious, nor the atheist approach can fulfill its purpose and promise. The problem with both is literally the fact that neither of them is really what it focuses on.

It is the separation of the good will and the desire for truth that makes them oppositional. They should cooperate. The religious desire for completeness is indispensable for a higher approach and outlook (and it is only identical to the so-called ‘holistic’ vision if it is really universal and does not just remain within a whole of a sub-system), but the religious anthropomorphization and personification that allows a more emphatic and deeper experience also shows an important and different face of the life and the world. In this sense all of those who have deeper feelings cannot avoid being religious at the same time. Nevertheless, logics and laws should not be personified, since that would degrade the otherwise researchable and must-be-researched contexts into an arbitrarily almighty and unmanageable player. According to an atheist, nothing and no one stands above the laws, not even the gods, and it would refer to an ill-omened taste to strive for and to invoke such a player or force who is supposed to be like that. Referring to the ‘almighty’s incomprehensible will’ is one of the thinnest and most malignant verbal violence in the conflicts between people.

Some sorts of religiousness are satisfied with mystical intuition and call to accept ignorance, while some others care more for a clearer speech and are unsatisfied with the lack of understanding. Each of the world religion’s development is accompanied by the dilemma of the heart and reason being separated from each other.

More and more think that the meaning of religious thought is the belief that rules out logics, and the less it relies on reason the deeper it becomes. Those think that benevolence can only be justified by hope, and hope can only be guaranteed by the miracle of a protecting mercy. Benevolence can only be justified by a belief that rules out logics in the moments of prayer, when one asks for the miracle of that protecting mercy. Other than that they provide no reason or explanation for the benevolence.

Yet their desire of being able to discuss their problems within the context of religion compels religions to logicality and clearness. Without clear concepts and consistency the religious context becomes inadequate to engage with other contexts and eventually falls into oblivion. The logicization of the authoritative and tradition-centered religious approach necessarily comes with extreme inner pressure and an acute crisis of thought, which from time to time explodes in the form of dogmatic and explicit refusal of logics.

Besides the conventional creation of sense of guilt, authoritarianism and antihumanism, that comes with illogicalism (depolitization and anti-historicalism) are attempted to be humanised by personalism (personification) in the modern age (i.e. Schleiermacher, Renouvier, Buber, Lévinas). The experience of gentleness that comes from the personal attachment and ‘God’ justify each other amidst the context of illogicality.

All this is not about God, rather being a testament about us, human beings.

The most important quality of religiousness – beyond the question of whether being self-satisfied or self-critical – is what it subordinates the concept of ‘God’ to. Why do we think God is right? Do we think ‘God’ is right because it subordinates itself to laws and follows the criteria of truth, or because it ordains itself (‘super-ordinates’) above the laws and therefore it is an unscrupulous power (violent). What do we respect in God? The loveable truthfulness or the fearsome unscrupulousness? Why do horror and the intimidation of others count as moral achievements worldwide? (See the ‘glory’ of a god-fearing personality.)

Not even Satan could have created a better mechanism.

The philosophy of existence (metaphysics) and the philosophy of religion are not the same scientific fields of philosophy, but because of their most important and common fundamental problem, they can shed light upon one another. Albeit from a different perspective, they both aim to understand the most substantial and most comprehensive concepts of human thinking. Metaphysics analyzes the theories regarding the universe, with special attention to ontology (namely the analysis of the theory of existence), and by doing so, it produces definition of God. The philosophy of religion analyzes the theories regarding religion and God, with special attention to theology (the God-doctrine or God-theory), and by doing so it produces definition of existence. How do the most universal concepts (i.e. God, universe, existence, being, soul, substance) define and contextualize each other? Up to this day, there is no logically satisfactory solution to the most substantial questions of the theory of existence. Explanations certainly exist though. Three right away:

a. logically solvable by radically redefining some key concepts
b. logically unsolvable, but belief in God can solve it, because

• a logical articulation that is directed towards the non-experienceable and the logically non-articulateable infinite totality is destined to fail;
• moreover, the task is logically not accomplishable because of the determining role of the likewise incomprehensible God;
• nevertheless, the personification and eulogy of the incomprehensible (the belief in God) provides hope and makes life emotionally liveable which without the miracle of a higher mercy (posterior redemption) would have the threatening possibility of meaninglessness.

c. logically unsolvable and should therefore be dismissed, because

• there is an endless succession of starting contexts that are also conditional to starting contexts;
• no foundation can found itself as everything can only be defined in comparison to something else;
• if the mutual definition of the basic concepts is not gap-free (complete) and is therefore reliant upon other concepts, the founding is unsuccessful;
• if the mutual definition of the basic concepts is gap-free (complete) and is therefore not reliant upon other concepts, then it would become inaccessible for other concepts (and apart from the self-definition of self-definition and the self-foundation of self-foundation it would become useless to define everything else, therefore it would become a meaningless tautology);
• only a construction that is independent from experiences can be logically unconditional and imperative, but such a construction would lack meaning (would be nonsensual), if at all possible - but language and explanation independent from experiences are impossible, however.

Many have tried the first version. In the center of these attempts are the epistemological opposition of experienceable/nonexperienceable, the axiological opposition of reality/ideality, and the ontological opposition of individuality/generality. The most famous versions are as follows:

1. mythological

There are two worlds within existence: the supersensual world of gods and other powers, and the sensual world of humans which is subordinated to it. Both have possible multiple scenes. The other world of gods rules and it reveals itself in the sensual world at its own will. The link between the two worlds is the human soul, which is supersensual and sensual at the same time. The soul locked into a physical body is divine.

2. Plato (428 – 348 B.C.)

There are two worlds within existence: the real world of the sensually non-experienceable, unchanging, and eternal universalities (ideas), and the illusory world of the sensually experienceable, changing, and transitionary individualities (shadows). God is the world soul penetrating both worlds.

3. Aristotle (384 – 322 B.C.)

There are two worlds within existence: the real world of the sensually experienceable, changing individualities (things), and the illusory existence of the sensually un-experienceable universalities. The world of the individual things consists of the passively changing substance and the actively change-making form in such a way that the supreme form’s (God, the unmoved mover, the self-thinking thought) unchanged relations determine each and every change.

4. Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274)

There are two worlds within existence: the sensually perceivable and conceptually conceivable real world, and the illusory world of the sensually non-perceivable universalities. God is neither one being among many others nor it is one substance among many others (it would then again be a being), but existence itself; and only in the case of God (pure existence) existence and substance are consonant, therefore God is the essence and the existence of itself as pure existence, that exists in everything and lets everything be possible.

5. Gottfried Leibniz (1646 –1716)

There are two worlds within existence: the hierarchic world of the non-perceivable, unchanged, eternal individuals (monads, ens reale), and the phenomenal world of the thoughts (ideas, ens mentale) of the supreme monad (God).

6. Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804)

There are two sides of existence: an unknowable side-in-itself and a knowable side-for-ourself. There are two worlds within the side-for-ourself: the outer world of the objects of cognition, and the inner world of the cognitive subject. The existence of God can neither be proved nor be disproved either logically or by experience, nonetheless we inevitably presuppose it logically for the sake of life’s reasonability.

7. Alfred Whitehead (1861 –1947)

Existence is a process and every actual entity is an infinitely complex, ever changing phase, and partial process of the universally interconnected processes. The world is the creative organism of creative organisms, which reserves contexts in the form of ideas, and eternal objects. The two realms of actual processes and the eternal contexts mutually establish each other. The omni-comprehensive principle and logics is: God.

8. Martin Heidegger (i.sz. 1889 – 1976)

The essence of existence is continuity, changeability, within-time-ness, accidentality, and transiency. The existence of man is ‘here-being’, the experience of togetherness of a God-less world.

9. Ludwig Wittgenstein (i.sz. 1889 –1951)

The language refers to the sensually experienceable  world. Whatever cannot be experienced sensually should be not spoken of. Metaphysics, ontology, and theology are pseudo problems that originate in the miscomprehension of language.

1. The philosophy of religion as the critique of the ‘prerational’ mind (the oldest)

It was already born in the earliest analyses of religions at the time of the ancient Greek philosophy, but still active to date (i.e. Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Statius, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Feuerbach, Marx, Comte, Freud, Fromm). Religion is the approach of the premature man. An approach dominated by fear, desperateness, vindictiveness, and hope. A naive approach. A tool of misleading ourselves and/or the masses with the help of illusions. The sign of ignorance.

2. The philosophy of religion as the conversion of religion into philosophy (the most common)

It was born during the period of the formation of the earliest syntheses of religions in the Hellenistic age, but still active to date (i.e. Pythagoreans, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, the Gnostics, Hegel, Jung, Frazer, Bloch). Religion is the primary approach towards unscrutinized topics. Religious myths harbor rational knowledge that is yet to be revealed. Religion deepens in philosophy, and vice versa. Philosophy is the redefinition of religion and the creation of new religious scripts. Philosophy is the introduction of new gods.

3. The philosophy of religion as the philosophical theology (the classical)

Philosophy placed in serving of religion (i.e. St. Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, Descartes, Kant, Marechal, Rahner). The philosophy of religion analyzes the existence and essence of God in the discourse about the beginnings, in the ‘science of primordiality’ (Plato’s archaeology). Its main task is to dissolve the illogicality and unpredictability connected to the concept of God with the indispensable concepts of mercy and hope.

4. The philosophy of religion as the phenomenology of religion (the observing)

The collection of religious terms, the analysis of phrasing in speech (i.e. Pierre Saussaye, Max Scheler, Mircea Eliade). The philosophy of religion puts aside the question of existence and the use of the concept of God, and it analyzes and makes more logical the method of religious argument. It does not engage in researching the existence of God, but in the human use of the concept of God.

The philosophy of religion is not equal with the history of religion, the sociology of religion, or the psychology of religion. The philosophy of religion researches the role the religious thinking and religious concepts (mostly the definition of ‘God’) play in our comprehension. It clarifies three basic principles: religions are not unified, not unchanging, and not complete.

Not unified, not unchanging, and not complete.

This last group is also called ‘real’, ‘philosophical’, ‘meta-‘, or ‘theoretical’ ethics, and ‘moral philosophy’, ‘ethical logics’ as well. Ethics is a particular field of philosophy (thinking about thinking), the thinking about moral concepts and statements. The following refers to ethics in this sense.

• individual ethics: evaluates the norms (principles) of individual acts
• social ethics: evaluates the norms (principles) of common acts and common institutions
• applied ethics: evaluates the norms of a particular technical field (i.e. sport ethics)
• critical ethics: scrutinizes the fundamental questions of a philosophical school within ethics

The most common concepts of ethics:

• ethos (Greek): custom
• éthos (Greek): facade, character, morality (social, common morals)
• morals (Latin): custom, morality (conscientious, individual morals)
• morality: the system of principles and rules (norms) of attitude

‘Immoral’ and ‘bad morals’ are not synonyms, although the common language uses them as such, because it only expects both to show an attitude akin to its own , and not a general principled-ness (fairness). The moral concepts of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are both historically and socially very different, remarkably altering and it quite often happens that the majority becomes minority just as minority often becomes majority. Note that majority is no guarantee for a deeper humanity or a more thorough consistency.

If morality is proportional to the consistency in principles, then every morality can be classified by a logical analysis and so the most consistent and therefore the rightest morality can be chosen. Even so, there is no perfect ethical code. Why? There are at least two theoretical obstacles.

a. perfect consistency is generally impossible
b. even if a ‘perfect script’ were created, there would be no perfect reading or even a unified reading of it.

Perfect morality is impossible, but a more perfect is.

People confuse moral crisis with moral outrage. The meaning of moral outrage is that I am satisfied with my own morals and dissatisfied with someone else’s attitude. The meaning of moral crisis is that I am dissatisfied with my own morals, confused and either cannot or do not want to be oriented by the old morals.

The crisis of the common moral is that the moral of the majority consensus disintegrates and disappears because the system of values and similar interests disintegrates and disappears, therefore the old system of principles loses credit and/or new principles disseminate. Morals in societies with a slow paced change are more permanent, and the crises of adaptation and morals became permanent phenomena in the rapidly changing modern societies.

This modern crisis of morality is only intensified by the modern world’s freedom of speech and the disputability of morals. These achievements are moral phenomena too, namely the modern crisis of morality is the ‘morality of the possibility of the rapidly changing morality’, a kind of accelerated adaptation.

Because of the extraordinary risk of immorality, many believe that humanity has lost or betrayed the golden age of a ‘perfect’ morality. But the logical contradiction of the ‘Golden Age’ myth is that it eventually produced an ‘Iron Age’ and led us to the horrible consequences of the present era, therefore it proved to be incapable to progression and capable to decline, if existed at all.

One form of the permanent modern moral crisis is ‘moral relativism’, which says that moralities cannot be classified because none can be the measure of the other and that there is no higher measure. It mainly tries to avoid the classification and prejudicial interpretation of the various cultures and traditions since it is aware of the fact that the moral rules are meant to serve a given community’s survival and that life conditions can be very different (e.g. polygamy contra bigamy). This perception attempts to avoid futile moral debates as well as groundless moral superciliousness, therefore it aims for moral patience, tolerance, and peacefulness. Nevertheless, it does not solve conflicts, only postpones them or leaves them up to the power balance behind the debate, therefore ultimately to a form of violence.

The most common relativist ethics:

• ‘sensation-ethics’: feeling-based attitude, situation adapted ‘principles’
• ‘authority-ethics’: whatever an accepted authority demands (e.g. church) must be followed
• ‘hedonism’: whatever feels good must be done
• ‘intuitional-ethics’: whatever the intuition of conscience suggests must be followed
• ‘intention-ethics’: whatever the good will of conscience dictates must be done
• ‘consequence-ethics’: the result qualifies the act
• ‘machiavellianism’: the end justifies the means
• ‘common sense-ethics’: the practical solutions of common sense must be followed
• ‘utilitarianism’: whatever is useful must be done
• ‘greater good ethics’: the bigger happiness of more people must be served

None of these ethics define what the acceptable ‘usefulness’, ‘consciousness’, ‘commonsensicalness’, ‘pleasantness’, ‘effectiveness’ means therefore they do not show us the direction in a debate, they are logically useless and ultimately rely upon violent solutions.

‘Justice ethics’

It is a typically modern conception that was formed against the disoriented relativisms since the era of Rationalism. It is the brainchild of the modern contract-theories and it defines the harmonious condition of the mutually non-limiting freedoms, the criteria of the mutual maximal freedom from the perspective of free individuals (e.g. Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant).

The most important representative of justful ethics is Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) who invented a ‘deonthologic’ (postulate-based) ‘commandment-ethics’ that proved enough consistent to pass the test of logical analysis and to supply practical approaches to a violence-avoiding and logics-following attitude. Kant says that a morality is only acceptable if it is justful, in other words it is in a harmonic relation with logical truth.

Instead of the laws of attitude, Kant started with the laws of making laws because a law cannot be justful if it was based on unjustfulness, since that would fundamentally contradict to its own generalness.

Kant found the highest precondition of justfulness in the universality of mutuality which says do not do unto others what we do not want others do unto us. The basis of every morality is the mutual and universal respect of laws, logicality, and consistency because laws can only be changed in accordance with higher (more general and universal) laws. This is the logical precondition of all law systems and the desire for values.

Not all ‘justful-ethics’ stood by Kant. He says that only such ethics makes sense which is not absurd (not ‘nonsensual’, not irrealizable). For all that, striving for goodness without the help of God is destined to fail for two reasons:

a. crucifixion is pointless without resurrection, namely honourable life is pointless without God’s reward (mercy)
b. adapting to a sinful world makes someone become sinful anyhow, namely striving for goodness only make sense with God’s pardon (mercy)

However, the philosophers of the 20th century state that whoever strives for goodness only to be rewarded and pardoned by a higher power is not really good.

Whoever is not gratified by persistence, by the value-following (truthfulness) itself, is not justful, is not striving for values and is therefore not moral, instead he/she is merely an opportunist serving a higher power. The essence of human life and honour is its absurdness and that nothing is guaranteed. So why should we be good after all? ‘Just because’ – says for example Camus or Sartre.

From the beginnings till today we are greatly anguished by our inhumanities. From the beginnings till today the picture of a ‘declining world’ is a popular explanation. On the other hand, humanity’s continuous and ever-growing ambitiousness that sets the bar higher and higher is also the reason why we see ourselves in an ever-deepening and ever-worsening situation.

From a more objective point of view it is only the stakes and the risks that are getting higher, therefore the game is still on, but we can certainly win or lose more and more. It can also feel heavy that more and more depend on us and that instead of having to fight with our external circumstances we already have to fight our internal limits. And this is more difficult. Furthermore, the more effective we are the more effective our inhumanity becomes.
Nietzsche regarded morality as a means of pitiful survival, while Marx thought it to be the means of mindless oppression and class struggle. They were the first to explain moral decline as the morality of the change-fearing social groups. The myth of ‘moral decline’ is a kind of morality that focuses not on improving justfulness but on the conservation or the reinstating of the related social group. This is therefore another logics-eliminating, violence-based myth.

G. E. Moore (1873-1958) called the type of conclusion about supersensual values being derived from sensual experiences as ‘naturalistic fallacy’. He believed that the only connection between the sensual world and e.g. moral values is the mercy of God which enables our conscience to feel the good. The ancient religions of the East and the newest versions of ‘justful-ethics’ (e.g. Fromm), however, think that the logics of existence and of the sensual world are normative, just like ‘Tao’.

Social and political philosophies became possible and necessary when the systematic forming of society and jurisdiction became possible and necessary. Based on what we know it was the ancient lawmakers (e.g. Pythagoreans, Lycurgus, Solon) and Plato who first examined the possibility of a new social organization. Aristotle was the first to collect and analyze constitutions and to attempt to build politics on logical grounds. That was more than 2000 years ago…

Defining society (our public life and interdependence) and politics (our public affairs and tasks) are interrelated the same way as questions with answers, and problems with solutions. What is the problem with society? The basic task of politics depends on this question. What is the principle task? How I see society depends on this question.

Many in the modern political life have been disillusioned from politicians and through this from politics, and one consequence of all this is that some politicians deny being politicians and so they talk politics by denying talking politics. In addition to that, more and more people confuse politics with wrong politics, even though politics means nothing other than the ‘managing of public affairs’. Therefore making politics is unavoidable and each and every issue of each and every person includes the political and social importance of that particular issue. It is a sovereign political will (e.g. in the modern world) not to consider the political importance of every affair and to stop at the borderline of personal life when dealing with public issues. It is a separate political problem where to draw the line between private and public affairs.

It was the Enlightenment that brought the most significant turn in the history of social and political sciences. Despite the sporadic utopias, humanity had accepted the existing social conditions to be natural everywhere until the 18th century and did not attempt to radically change them. There was not a single slave or peasant uprising that wanted different social conditions, they all aimed to improve the conditions of the rebels within the social relations they were accustomed to. Enlightenment, however, not only aimed for a radical change (a justful social system once and for all) but also wanted the constantly progressing (more and more justful) society itself. It is exactly within this political context where the modern world with its typically modern political problems was born.

• How much freedom can we allow and to what extent should we limit each other?
• To what extent should we compete and to what extent should we protect each other?
• To what extent can we accumulate the social advantages and disadvantages?
• How can anyone’s absolute power be avoided?

• How is society really stratified and how does the proportionate (both quantitatively and qualitatively well-balanced) representative system look like?
• Where should the line between the authority of central and local administration be drawn?

• When is a society on the right track?
• Who can determine what is socially ‘normal’?

• Should we control consumption, the use of natural resources, or population growth?
• Should we control the spread of certain addictions (e.g. alcohol, tobacco, drugs)?
• How possible and necessary is it to eliminate or to compensate the inequalities of people (e.g. women, children, elderly, disabled, immigrants, minorities)?
• For what and to what extent should violence be used?

The Enlightenment did not live up to its promise and did not create a more humanistic world, it merely displaced the traditional ruling groups and transformed the instruments of injustice. Therefore every political philosophy set the achievement or the revocation of the original programme of ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’ to be its goal. All versions of liberalism or socialism belong to the ‘achievers’, while all versions of conservativism and racism belong to the ‘revokers’.  

All schools, however, agree that a rational political decision can be made without taking into account the purpose and meaning of human life. Neither modern politicians nor modern voters are interested in where humanity’s path leads to. We give priority to short term problems over long term ones just like we prefer local problems over global ones.

Political schools connected to the church see the meaning of human life in serving God and in the preparing for judgement, but nobody knows from this what God’s will is and what exactly need to be done since God’s will is unknowable and religious leaders are imperfect.

All of the above are mostly preoccupied with seizing and keeping power, and with the distribution and consuming of goods. The ‘achievers’ focus on the extension of individual consumption while the ‘revokers’ aim to extend the consumption of their consanguinity which they consider to be superior. And these are just the theoretical problems.

One problem of social and political philosophy is that its theoretical models about our common problems are being taken less and less serious. Politics is being gradually reduced to more and more panic like and random ideas everywhere. The people and their leaders are being more and more constrained by the consequences of their previous decisions and their circumstances in general.

Conspiracy theories are still popular to date, and those are correct in a sense that there are various power groups attempting to seize power by well disguised steps. Nevertheless, the social and economic interdependence, the complexity of changes, and the billions of intertwined issues guarantee that even if presuming an uninterrupted monitoring and decision-making capability (quite impossible though), still not everything can be known and controlled. Furthermore, we become aware of even the key events afterwards and with delays, not to mention the fact that when taking action the resources are extremely limited compared to the number of tasks.

One self contradiction of modernity that prides itself in professional competency is that –apart from the plain power struggle- delays, flurry, uninformedness, and illogicalness characterize its public actions. (The unbelievable fortunes being wasted on hostility and luxury by ruling groups show the extent of stupidity, while the social miseries could significantly be reduced even from just a fragment of that). The logicalness of political theories is also weak, but even weaker is the political practice and ‘intentionally’ illogical (mood-appealing, simplifying, and engraving) is the political communication.

The strongest political ideologies of modernity

Liberalism (‘laissez-faire’) wants the independence of the ‘rationally selfish’ individual. It says that the control of the smallest possible state maintained by the smallest possible taxes should assure the freedom of both the individuals and the supply’s competition. There are different versions of Liberalism depending on to what extent it allows state control. It is particularly sensible to individual rights of freedom and is the permanent basis of civil rights movements and the legal protection of minorities. Its conception of ‘justiceness’ is self-contradictory since it also supports the competition of unequal players. Its concept of ‘justiceness’ is contradictory since it regards the self-eliminating (e.g. selfish, wasting) independence as equal to self-progressing (e.g. providing, far-sighted) independence. Its most famous philosophers are Thomas Paine (1737-1809), Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), John Dewey (1859-1952), and Ferdinand A. Hayek (1899-1992).

Marxism wants to eliminate social oppression and deprivation in such a way that the victims of oppression take over power from the beneficiaries of oppression. It sees the fundamental reason of social inequalities in the power accumulated by private property therefore it attempts to end oppression in general by abolishing private and establishing public properties. There are different versions of Marxism depending on whether it applies peaceful or aggressive methods (social democracy vs. communism), and based on which victim class it relies on the most (Leninism, Maoism). It is extremely sensitive to deprivation and poverty and is the permanent basis of trade unions and movements fighting against the exposedness and exploitation of employees. Its most famous philosophers are Karl Marx (1818-1883), Friedrich Engels (1820-1895), Eduard Bernstein (1850-1932), Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov /Lenin/ (1870-1924), Antonio Garmsci (1891-1837), Mao Zedong (1893-1976), and Ernst Bloch (1885-1977).

Racism sees the origin of social problems in the biological capabilities of people therefore it would eradicate the ‘bad’ and breed the ‘god’ people. It says that society should be stratified based on the purity and excellence of bloodline and that the inferiors should be unconditionally and unlimitedly obedient to the superiors. It says that birth and the extent of the possessed power justifies abilities. There are different versions of racism based on which ethnicity it regards the best and which one the worst.  It is extremely sensitive to superiority and is the permanent basis of militaristic and race-discriminating movements. Its self-contradiction is that it regards itself as the precondition of truth therefore it places itself above all criteria and principles. It self-contradicts to its own valueness because it establishes its valuableness on the relative superiority against its ‘invaluable enemies’. It contradicts to its own roots because it denies both the universal human ‘goodness’ and the naturalness and usefulness of differences. It contradicts to all scientific and everyday experiences that find both outstanding and well below average performances in the case of each and every ethnicity. It does not understand the ultimate importance of culture, education and learning. It is prejudice being independent from logics and facts. It denies the creative power of free critics and it would build power based on fear and blind submissiveness that eliminate open communication and unbiased understanding and by this these eventually eliminate the enrichment of knowledge and social creativity. Racism regards compassion and equality as the proof of weakness and incapability and therefore it destroys the resources of social cooperation. Similar to a parasite or a cancer cell, it is a self-eliminating system that eats up the reserves and achievements of a previous system. Its most famous advocates are Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1885-1927), and Adolf Schicklgruber /Hitler/ (1889-1945).

Conservativism aims to restore the medieval order-society in which people who are unequal based on birth and possessions are in a family-like relationship in which the rich national elite leads the folks towards a growing existential security with the help of a non-parliamentary nation state that isn’t divided into the three branches of government. It is particularly sensitive to existential security and tradition-based truth interpretations. Its self-contradiction is that it idealizes the rich and the church, and that it attempts to freeze power struggle with power struggle and eradicate violence with violence. It subordinates social mobility, flexibility and creativity to the non-criticizability and non-exchangeability of the ruling groups with which it depletes social capacities and undermines existential security. It denies the progression of progression in a changing world. Its most famous philosophers are Benjamin Constant (1767-1830), Karl Ludwig Haller (1768-1854), Francois Pierre Guizot (1787-1874), Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann (1785-1860), and James S. H. Maine (1822-1888).

All of our solutions are captives of inequality, unjustfulness, imbecile consumption, and spontaneous breeding. We expect and hope caring instead of willing it and taking it. We have not grown up.

The philosophy of history researches the logics and value perceptions of the models about the in-time patterns of occurrences, in other words the different approaches about history. Even the concept of ‘history’ indicates that the stories are not only interconnected by a chronological order of successiveness, but also by some sort of explanatory, universal logic.

The philosophy of history researches the questions ‘What is every story about in general?’ and ‘What is the reason of occurrences?’. The answer is a fundamental narration which is the framing story (context) of all other stories (episodes). Without such narration life would fall apart into unrelated episodes and all episodes would fall apart into unrelated moments. The rejection of ‘history’ is the rejection of mankind’s ‘common faith’ and the ‘meaning of life’ (the desire for values and the search for values). Therefore ‘history’ is rejected only in exceptional cases (e.g. by those against change, by the defenders of ‘status quo’), it is rather that the different versions of the framing story are debated. Nevertheless, a universally comprehensive narrative is both methodologically and politically problematic.

Even the science of history, the most scrupulous form of storytelling and story writing, must face – as do all other sciences – two serious methodological challenges: agnosticism and relativism.

Agnosticism says that we cannot have undistorted experience because our perception and sensitivity filters the world and therefore we cannot know how the world exists ‘in-itself’, independent from us (Immanuel Kant 1724 – 1804), neither can we access the totalness of places and times, therefore we always get a fragmented and imperfect picture of the world and the stories (Thomas Huxley 1825 – 1895).

Relativism says that all approaches and conclusions are dominated and limited by random circumstances and that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ cannot be distinguished (Pyrrho, ca. 365 – ca. 275 B.C.). According to the scientific historical form of these arguments, historically relative and limited situations form pictures about historically relative and limited situations, therefore a historically very limited, partial and distorted experience filters all possible data and describes the infinity of the non-experienceable times.

The reason why these objections do not confuse the majority is quite possibly because they feel that these only warn us about the traps of premature conclusions and remind us to be careful, but they cannot prevent us from forming opinions after all. The impossibility of a perfect theory is not a problem as long as we can improve our theories with logicality and investigation. The real problem is that the suspension of forming conclusions disables articulation, communication, reasoning, and evaluation, therefore extreme agnosticism and relativism ultimately lead to violence.

Surrendering and avoiding logics results in relativizing cynicism which eventually produces the opposing extremity of the mythologizing mysticism. Between the two deeply self-contradictory procedures is the middle way of the critical approach.

Chronological orientation and historical facts are important only in order to understand chronological consequences. The chronological line becomes logical by having direction and causality (cause-effect relationship). Everything is an effect of certain causes and a cause of certain effects. The events have to proceed towards somewhere whether they reach it or not. History does not exist without teleology (‘final-purpose-ness’).

The three explanations of teleology, namely the three possibilities of description are as follows.

A.    „cynicism”    (nihilistic – the rejection of teleology)

• rejects the idea of ‘progression’
• anti-change-ist, relativistic, episodical, disoriented, apologetic
• all is equally meaningless (and undangerous).

This is a modern historical approach. It presupposes and rejects all forms of the approach of ‘progression’. It is the liberal (neoliberal) and conservative (neoconservative) rejection of the ‘dialectics of enlightenment’. Its clearest form is the ‘postmodern’ (from the 1970s). It emerges from the arguments against the aggressive and autocratic utopianism of the illuminati, jacobins, utopian socialists and the communists.

B.    „criticism”    (reformist – the teleology of freedom)

• assumes an endless progression based on the principle and logics of change
• changer, truth desiring, critical, sceptical, value oriented

If the final purpose is an approximatable, but unreachable ideality, then we call it a principle, which organizes occurrences and it is effectual as logics in the changes. The idea of ‘open progress’ is value centred and self reflexive because it also pays attention to its own historic progression. It is also sensitive to freedom and transiency, therefore it considers the uniqueness, contingency and fragmentedness of the things to be important. It is value oriented unselfishness.

This is a modern approach of history. Its existence is conditional to the ‘progression’ principle of the Enlightenment and the debates related to it, but most importantly to the existentialist critique of the perceptions and the concepts of existence and time.

C.    „mysticism”    (fatalist – the teleology of destiny)

• assumes a finite progression until a definite destiny
• anti-changeist, mythical, utopian, dogmatic, autocratic
• all is equally meaningful as a necessary element of the story.

If the final purpose is a reachable state, then we call it destiny that directs history towards itself and dominates over everything as a supreme power. The idea of ‘destiny’ defines every scene within a closed story and is nonhistoric because it disregards its own historic relativity. The story of ‘destiny’ initially emerges from the need for a final frame story (narrative), but the more ‘final’ it is the more inflexible it becomes in the managing of the actual problems. Ultimately, it supplies not the solving of problems but its own preservation and survival. Fatalism proclaims a preordinate ‘goodness’ and ‘evilness’ (‘chosenness’) that are independent from everything. It is a narcissistically self-purposed and alienated theory about changes that aims to justify the status quo of the actual power balance.

Neither a perfect approach nor an irrevocable context exists. Which story of what must be the focus on: e.g. the growth of individuals, families, peoples, cultures, and their wars, economy, technology? And who and how should interpret it? What does historical sensitivity mean and how can it be improved? What chronological pattern does one notice when realizing a hidden context? What do episodes indicate? What is important and what is marginal? The point is exactly the fact that final answers do not exist, but less contradictory and more comprehensive answers do.

The science of history does not explain laws and does not attempt to make prognoses.  Therefore the majority of natural scientists do not regard it as a science. Today’s ‘history’ is considered to be some kind of collective memory and conscience rather than a model of a system that is proven by data sequences and defined in mathematic functions. Only the well quantifiable economic history and the related economic sciences attempt to create historic models, cycle theories, and prognoses (e.g. in futurology). Because of the lack of data sequences, however, the historic horizon of trend researches is very narrow. It would of course be groundless and unnecessary to extend inductive (experience based) models to distant eras that are beyond the reach of experience. Only a deductive model (deducted from the universal logic of change) could naturally refer to the wholeness of history. Presently social science’s chaos research is the closest to this model. But from the previous paragraphs it is also obvious that ‘history’ needs a context (a purpose) in the first place and that the basic story (narration) would be the chasing/achieving of that value.

The fundamental question of the philosophy of history is therefore what value history is about. Which value is the purpose? Nowadays’ history is not up to this level yet. We are still stuck with the dilemma of whether life is about violence or values. The search for history by all means indicates a deeper kind of sensitivity than the rejection of it because it makes us aware of our other-centeredness, just like metaphysics and religions. The (not always scientific philosophical) debates regarding the definition of ‘history’ are of determining importance. The one(s) defining this comprehensive story is (are) the one(s) to define orientation, language, approach, values and meanings, therefore is (are) the one(s) to control public opinion, common talk and therefore who ultimately possesses the power.

The philosophy of history has not always existed because the approach of history was not always problematic. Thousands of years of naïve approach of history had passed until Giovanni Battista Vico (1688 – 1744) attempted to put history-writing on scientific grounds.

Episodic thinking is already history-telling and mythological thinking already distinguishes the visible (everyday like) and the knowable, essential (sacred) times and stories. The sacred story that happens in sacred time is ‘meaningful’, because it expresses a value and because it leads somewhere, therefore it is teleological (purpose-posing). The everyday happenings are contingent and are without meaning in themselves and it is the sacred time of the sacred story that articulates and explains them. Initially the cyclic teleologies that were based on the cycles of seasons were typical everywhere (e.g. Hinduism), but with the emergence of the ‘last judgement’ myths linear teleologies also appeared (e.g. Judaism). By the 6th century B.C. a social need was born to record those everyday events that were important from the aspect of power struggle. Herodotus (5th century B.C.) separates ‘meaningless’ (common, ordinary) and ‘meaningful’ (specific, extraordinary)  everyday events and searches for the causal-effectual reasons of the Greco-Persian conflict. Nevertheless, both the sacred and the common approach of history remain ethnocentric and only the sacred approach distinguishes eras (e.g. it explains declining and revival in the form of ‘Golden’, ‘Silver’, ‘Copper’, and ‘Iron’ ages).

The theory of ‘declining’

All of the eras are comparable by a higher measure, but no era can be a measure of another. Whichever era measures the others by itself simply rejects change (both its own and the universal).

An episode of a limited decline could still fit into the context of evolution, although an explication of its appearance and ending would be essential.

The general problem with the myth of ‘declining’ that is extended to the whole of history is the same as with that of the ‘Golden Age’ myth. The tree is known by its fruit therefore an era resulting in worse eras cannot be essentially better.

The ‘conspiracy’ theory

It is beyond dispute that conspiracies do exist and some of them was/has been sustained by many generations throughout continents and centuries. Quite a number of them have been explored and publicized with time. Nevertheless, no single conspiracy could control history and the world as there are both theoretical and logical limits of a conspiracy that attempts to cover the entire history.

Control over the environment can never be total as (1) no single participant can be enough clear about itself and its own automatisms, (2) the processing of incoming data cannot keep the pace with the simultaneously running, but not yet discovered progressions and with the progressions that are being caused by its (the processing’s) own exploration and interference, and (3) nobody is able to focus on each and every possible direction at the same.

Power struggle is inseparably intertwined with countless conspiracies to which we sacrifice not a little of our time. Nevertheless, apart from the fact that one specific group, although in limited space and time, may be able maintain control over another for a relatively long time, nobody can control the entire evolution because those who take the evolution-control seriously are essentially preoccupied with their own self progression.