The Scope of Philosophy

Abstract

The key feature of human consciousness is our ability to access and practice svyaznost’ (coherence, connectivity) grounded in tselostnost’ (wholeness). This ability is common to humans and animals in one of its aspects (comprehending the world as an order of things), though animals do not share its other core mani­festations (coherent speech and thought as a practice of svyaznost’). The com­monplace understanding of language as a sign system falls short of grasping the development of svyaznost’ and therefore needs to be reconsidered. Though universal for humans in its unfolded state, svyaznost’ ability may be practiced only in one the few variant versions and never as an invariant universal. Any of its variant versions lays down the foundations of one of the big cultures which are re­flected upon in its philosophical tradition. Plato’s and Aristotle’s teachings mark major milestones of elaborating the substance version of svyaznost’. The founda­tions of Arab-Islamic big culture, its autochthonic philosophy included, were laid down by elaboration of the process version of svyaznost’. Tkachenko paradox (any big culture cannot be described and analyzed using the theoretical means of a different big culture) and Jullien paradox (foundations of any philosophical tra­dition cannot be grounded and justified by the means of that tradition) are ana­lyzed. Only the logic of sense is capable of finding the way around both para­doxes by elaborating on svyaznost’ and tselostnost’ through their variant versions to escape the limits of the initial circle of logical laws and basic categories that form the basis of any philosophic tradition in this or that big culture.