Li, Baowen

Karel Kosik’s Realism thought and its philosophical significance

e-mail: chinabaowen@sina.com

In study of philosophy, the problems of man and world are the basic one. In dialectics of the concrete, KarelKosik attempted to apply the thought of Marx’s materialist dialectic to answer the question. However, the crux of the matter is how to illuminate the problems of man and world is the dialectic?
Or whether the problems of man and world and dialectic exists inherent identity? In contemporary, many trends of thought in philosophy ignore the basic theory premise, which caused dialectic change into metaphysics, and the problems of man and world has lost the dialectical essence. In Kosik’s opinion, the reason why the problems of man and world are the dialectic is the ideological premise of their being exist as a kind of reality at first. What is called reality, fundamentally, it means man and world is a concrete totality, i.e. a structural, evolving, self-forming whole. This reality itself has formed the dialectical essence. Based on the dialectical understanding of reality, Kosik analyzed and explored dialectically the daily reality, historical reality, social reality, economic reality, art reality and other reality, at the same time, he criticized various contemporary pseudoconcrete and false totality in deeply, and responded to the numerous erroneous ideas of existentialism, positivism, structuralism, phenomenalist empiricism, “metaphysical” rationalism and many other trends of thought in philosophy. His realism thought also produces great significance in philosophy to properly understand modernity and postmodernism.