This document discusses several philosophers and philosophies from the 19th-20th centuries. It covers "Philosophy of Life" from Dilthey and Simmel, Bergson's "Philosophy of Creative Evolution", and Nietzsche's "Philosophy of Will to Power". It also discusses pragmatism from John Dewey, phenomenology from Edmund Husserl, and Martin Heidegger's analysis of being and the question of what it means to exist as a temporal being.

1. Philosophy in XIX - XXth centuries

2.  “Philosophy of Life” - W.Dilthey and G.Simmel.
 “Philosophy of Creative Evolution” - A. Bergson
 Philosophy of “Will to Power” - F. Nietzsche.

3. “Philosophy of Life”
 Life is a constant creativity, change.
 Life turns chaos in an organized order.
 Life is not subject to any general laws, it can be
grasped only through individuality and uniqueness.
 W.Dilthey: understanding of era is possible only
through diffusion in the spiritual aura of the studied
time, when you feel a unique flavor of a particular
era with your whole being. Hermeneutics.

4. “Creative Evolution” (Henri Bergson)
 Intellect is a rational thinking of man by which he
cognizes the world.
 Intellect cannot open the deep essence of things,
but showing only the connections and relationships
that arise between them.
 Intuition is a loving penetration into the deep
essence of things, discovery of its life, which cannot
achieve by intellect. Intuition is the first principle of
the spirit; therefore, it is life itself.

5. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
 Three linked ideas in particular: first, the idea we
have of “man” or human nature; second, the idea
we have of God; and third, the ideas we have
about morality, or ethics.
 “Revaluation of all values”.
 “God is dead”.
 “Man is a rope tied between the animal and the
Superman - a rope over an abyss”.

6. • Christianity says that everything in this world is less important than
that of the “next” after death.
• It says we should turn away from what seems important in this life,
and try to transcend it.
• But in doing this we turn away from life itself.
• Christianity’s idea of “man” undermines us.
• We must surpass this limiting idea.

7. JOHN DEWEY
 Pragmatism - the purpose of philosophy, or
“thinking”, is not to provide us with a true picture of
the world, but to help us to act more effectively within
it.
 “What are the practical implications of adopting this
perspective?”
 Humans are living beings trying to make sense of
their world, struggling to decide how best to act
within it.
 “We only think when we are confronted with
problems”.

8. JOHN DEWEY
 Existence is a risk, or a gamble, and the world is
fundamentally unstable.
 We can either appeal to higher beings and hidden
forces in the universe for help, or we can seek to
understand the world and gain control of our
environment.
 “Education is not an affair of telling and being told,
but an active and constructive process”.

9. EDMUND HUSSERL
 Put all the sciences—by which he meant all
branches of human knowledge and activity, from
math, chemistry, and physics to ethics and politics –
on a completely secure footing.
 Experience alone did not add up to science,
because as any scientist knows, experience is full of
all kinds of assumptions, biases, and
misconceptions.
 Phenomenology is a philosophical investigation of
the phenomena of experience.

10. MARTIN HEIDEGGER
 “The question of existence never gets straightened
out except through existing itself”.
 Attempts to provide a much more concrete analysis of
“being” from what could be called an insider’s position.
 The question “what is it like to be human?” as a way of
answering deeper questions about existence in general.
 The meaning of our being must be tied up with time; we
are essentially temporal beings.
 Dying is not an event; it is a phenomenon to be
understood existentially.