What is reflection in psychology, pedagogy and philosophy?

“Know yourself” is an appeal to a person, written on the wall of the ancient Greek temple in Delphi 2.5 thousand years ago, which has not lost its relevance today. We all strive to become better, more prosperous, more successful, but how to change ourselves without knowing our abilities, capabilities, goals, ideals? Self-knowledge is the main condition for personal development, and self-knowledge is controlled by a very important and complex mental process called reflection.

Definition of reflection

The term "reflection" comes from the Late Latin word "reflexio", which translates as "turning back." This is a state during which a person pays attention to his own consciousness, deeply analyzes and rethinks himself.

Reflection is a way of understanding the results of human activity. In the process of reflection, a person carefully studies his thoughts and ideas, considers the accumulated knowledge and acquired skills, and ponders completed and planned actions. This allows you to better know and understand yourself.

The ability to draw conclusions based on self-reflection is a unique feature that distinguishes humans from animals. This method helps to avoid many mistakes that occur when repeating the same actions and expecting different results.

The concept of reflection was formed in philosophy, but now it is widespread in pedagogical practice, science, various fields of psychology, physics and military affairs.

Purpose of reflection

Without reflection there is no learning. An individual who repeats an activity suggested in a model a hundred times may never learn anything.

The purpose of reflection is to identify, remember and understand the components of an activity. These are types, meaning, methods, ways to solve them, problems, results obtained. Without awareness of the methods of learning, the mechanisms of cognition, students are unable to appropriate the knowledge that they have acquired. Learning occurs when guided reflection is involved, thanks to which patterns of activity are identified, namely ways of solving practical problems.

Reflective feeling is an internal experience, a way of self-knowledge, and also a necessary tool for thinking. Reflection is most relevant in distance learning.

Forms of reflection

Depending on the time taken as a basis during reflection, it can manifest itself in 3 main forms:

Retrospective form. Characterized by analysis of past events.
Situational form. Expressed as a reaction to events happening to a person right now.
Prospective form. Future events that have not yet occurred are subject to reflection. These are the dreams, plans and goals of a person.

Retrospective analysis of the past in a person's life

Important! Retrospective reflection is considered the most common. It is used in pedagogy, when students reinforce material, and in psychology, when analyzing past events to solve psychological problems.

Types of reflection

The reflective position is divided into several main groups, depending on the object of reflection:

personal, including introspection and study of one’s own “I”, achieving self-awareness;
communicative, analyzing relationships with other people;
cooperative, comprehending joint activities to achieve a goal;
intellectual, paying attention to the knowledge, skills and abilities of a person, as well as the areas and methods of their application;
social reflection, which understands the internal state of a person through how he is perceived and what other people think about him;
professional, helping to analyze movement along the career ladder;
educational, which allows you to better assimilate the material received in the lesson;
scientific, aimed at understanding human knowledge and skills related to science;
existential, pondering the meaning of life and other deep questions;
sanogenic, aimed at controlling the emotional state of the individual.

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Professional reflection will allow you to understand what you have come to and where to go next in your career

Psychological reflection

One of the first in psychology to consider the reflexive state was A. Busemann, who interpreted it as the transfer of experiences from the outside world to oneself.

Psychological studies of reflection are presented in two ways:

— the way the researcher understands the grounds, as well as the results of the study;

- a basic property of a subject in which awareness occurs, as well as regulation of one’s life activity.

Reflection in psychology is a person’s reflection, the purpose of which is to consider and analyze one’s own activity, oneself, one’s own states, past events, and actions.

The depth of the state is associated with the individual’s interest in this process, as well as the ability to pay attention to a lesser or greater extent, which is influenced by education, ideas about morality, the development of moral feelings, and the level of self-control. It is believed that individuals of different professional and social groups differ in the use of a reflexive position. This property is considered as a conversation or a kind of dialogue with oneself, as well as the individual’s ability to self-development.

Reflection is a thought that is directed at a thought or at oneself. It can be considered as a secondary genetic phenomenon arising from practice. This is the practice going beyond the boundaries of itself, as well as the practice turning towards itself. The psychology of creative thinking and creativity interprets this process as a rethinking and comprehension by the subject of stereotypes of experience.

The study of the relationship between the individual’s individuality, reflective state, and creativity allows us to talk about the problems of the creative uniqueness of the individual, as well as its development. E. Husserl, a classic of philosophical thought, noted that the reflexive position is a way of seeing that is transformed from the direction of the object.

The psychological characteristics of this condition include the ability to change the content of consciousness, as well as change the structures of consciousness.

Development of reflection

Anyone can learn to reflect. To start the process, you should practice more by doing simple psychological exercises. They will teach a person to analyze everything that happens around him and live his life meaningfully.

Interaction with the world

Reflection is always a reaction to external influence. Everything that fills a person’s consciousness came to him from the outside. Therefore, the best training for reflection will be interaction with the world around him: with other people’s opinions, criticism, conflicts, doubts and other difficulties.

Contacts with stimuli coming from outside expand the range of human reflexivity. By communicating with other people, a person learns to understand them, and this allows him to understand himself more easily and simply.

By interacting with other people we learn to understand the world around us.

After finishing a day spent surrounded by other people, it is important to reflect on all the events that happened. Analyze your behavior and actions performed during the day. What do you think about it? What do you feel? What were you wrong about?

By doing this exercise daily, you can achieve excellent results.

New information

Being in your comfort zone makes it difficult to learn something new about yourself. Constantly communicating with the same people, watching films of the same genre, reading the same books, a person stops developing as a person. To improve your ability to introspect, you need to learn something new that is the opposite of your usual interests.

We need to constantly step out of our comfort zone, otherwise we won’t develop.

Talk to someone who has a different point of view on important issues than you, or who lives a different lifestyle. Start a book that is unusual for you in a genre that you have not tried to read before, listen to music that you were not familiar with before, and you will be surprised how much new and unusual there is around you.

Analysis of one thing

Neuroscientists believe that the large amount of information received at the modern pace of life has a bad effect on a person’s mental functions and memory. With an abundance of unnecessary knowledge, new information is poorly absorbed and creates interference in the thinking process. Therefore, it is important to analyze the things and relationships that occupy a person’s thoughts.

Questions of concern

To get to know yourself better, write down the questions that concern you on a piece of paper. These may be questions that arose just yesterday, or that have interested you for many years. Make a detailed list and then divide it into categories.

These questions could be:

about past events;
about the future;
about relationships with people;
about feelings and emotions;
about material objects;
about scientific knowledge;
about spiritual matters;
about the meaning of life, existence.

By asking questions to yourself, make them exciting and important.

Which group collected most of the responses? Think about why it turned out this way. This is an excellent training that helps reveal information to a person that he might not be aware of.

REFLECTION

– the concept of philosophical discourse, characterizing the form of human theoretical activity, which is aimed at understanding one’s own actions, culture and its foundations;
the activity of self-knowledge, revealing the specifics of the mental and spiritual world of man. Reflection is ultimately an awareness of practice
, the world of culture and its modes - science, art, religion and philosophy itself.
In this sense, reflection is a way of defining and a method of philosophy, and philosophy is a reflection of reason.
Reflection of thinking on the ultimate foundations of knowledge and human life is the actual subject of philosophy.
The change in the subject of philosophy was also expressed in a change in the interpretation of reflection. Reflection has two meanings - reflection, which is objectified in language and works of culture, and reflection itself, reflecting on the acts and content of feelings, ideas and thoughts. One of the problems posed in connection with reflection procedures was the possibility of the existence of pre-reflective and, in principle, unreflective experience. If classical rationalism did not allow the existence of pre- and extra-reflective experience, gradually expanding the scope of reflection from perception to will, since reflection presupposes the efforts of thought and will, then irrationalism emphasized the irreducibility of direct experience, its originality and impossibility of reflection. Reflection is often identified with the processes of self-awareness, self-knowledge, self-understanding and understanding of the Other
, although for a long time in the history of philosophy, acts of self-awareness belonged to anthropology and psychology, and acts of reflection - to ways of organizing and justifying thinking focused on comprehending the truth, and thereby to the extrapersonal, divine or transcendental knowledge. The promotion of the idea of reflection and its application to cognitive acts was associated with the metaphysics of light and with the interpretation of knowledge as the “natural” or “divine” light of the mind. The features of reflection are 1) retrospectiveness, which assumes that thought turns back to the experimentally comprehending subject, 2) makes its acts and their content the object of reflection, 3) opposes creation and objective-practical activity, 4) producing its subjectivity 5) and conducting a detached distance between what is reflected and the subject of reflection. The metaphysics of subjectivity, which considered reflection as thinking about thinking, is contrasted in modern philosophy with the ontological interpretation of acts of understanding, inseparable from the reality with which they are associated and which they express. Thinking is interpreted as thinking-in-the-stream of life, and the distancing associated with the emphasis on the reflexive interpretation of thinking is seen as limited and requiring deconstruction.

The problem of reflection was first posed by Socrates

, according to which the subject of knowledge can only be what has already been mastered, and since
The activity of his own soul is most subject to man; self-knowledge is the most important task of man. Plato
reveals the importance of self-knowledge in connection with such a virtue as prudence, which is knowledge of oneself (see Charmides, 164 D, 165 C, 171 E);
there is a single knowledge that has no other subject than itself and other knowledge (see ibid., 167 C). Theoretical speculation, philosophical reflection, is valued as the highest virtue. Aristotle
considers reflection as an attribute of the divine mind, which in its pure theoretical activity posits itself as an object and thereby reveals the unity of the object of knowledge and knowledge, the conceivable and the thought, their identity (see Met. XII, 7 1072 in 20; Rus
. lane M.–L., 1934). The difference between the subject of thought and the thought, according to Aristotle, is inherent in the human mind; the divine mind is characterized by the identity of thought and the subject of thought: “the mind thinks of itself, since we have the best in it, and its thought is thinking about thinking” (ibid., XII , 9 1074b 33–35, p. 215). In the philosophy of Plotinus,
self-knowledge was the method of constructing
metaphysics
; Having distinguished sensation and reason in the soul, he believed that self-knowledge is an attribute only of the latter: only the mind can think of the identity of itself and the thinkable, for here thought and thought about thought are one, because the thinkable is a living and thinking activity, i.e. active thought itself. Self-knowledge is the only function of the mind, reflection is associated with self-contemplation of Sophia’s wisdom, with the transfer of an object into the subject and contemplation of it as something unified, in this case the process of contemplation is similar to the process of self-contemplation (Ann., V, 8). Only by plunging into the depths of his own spirit can a person merge together with both the object of contemplation and with the “deity approaching in silence,” his soul becomes a self-soul, and his mind becomes a self-mind (Ann., V, 9, 12), which generates from the depths of his own spirit and external objects. Ancient philosophy was interested primarily in ways to introduce man to the world of ideas (eidos). Self-awareness of the individual, the justification of a moral decision in the subject himself presupposes not just the moral sovereignty of the individual, but the justification of all norms and regulations by the subject himself with the help of his reflection. For ancient philosophy, virtue coincided with knowledge, and eidetic discourse coincided with ethical-axiological discourse.

In medieval philosophy, reflection was considered primarily as a way of existence of the divine mind and as a way of existence of the spirit on the path to faith: the spirit knows the truth insofar as it returns to itself. Augustine

believed that the most reliable knowledge is a person’s knowledge of his own existence and consciousness.
Delving deeper into his consciousness, a person reaches the truth contained in the soul, and thereby comes to God. According to John Scotus Eriugena
, the contemplation of one's essence by God is the act of creation.
Thomas Aquinas
noted the need for reflection on acts of thinking: “Truth is known by the intellect according to the fact that the intellect turns to its actions and ... knows its own actions” (De ver., I, 9). He interprets reflection as a specific ability of the mind, which allows one to comprehend the universal and thanks to which a person achieves an understanding of form (Summ. theol., I, q.85 a2; q.86, al). Renaissance thinkers, putting forward the idea of man as a microcosm in which all the forces of the macrocosm are expressed in a concentrated form, proceeded from the fact that knowledge of natural forces is at the same time self-knowledge of man, and vice versa.

Changes in the interpretation of reflection in the philosophy of the New Age are associated with highlighting the problems of substantiating knowledge and with the search for the foundations of knowledge in the subject. The autonomy of reflection as a way of organizing knowledge was first conceptualized in the metaphysics of subjectivity. Descartes ' Metaphysical Meditations

the reasoning was based on methodical doubt: only one thing is reliable and beyond doubt - my own doubt and thinking, and thereby my existence (Izbr. proizvod. M., 1950, p. 342).
The consciousness about oneself obtained through reflection - the only reliable position - is the basis for subsequent conclusions about the existence of God, physical bodies, etc. Locke
, rejecting Descartes' concept of innate ideas, pursues the idea of the experiential origin of knowledge and in this regard distinguishes two types of
experience
- sensory experience and reflection (internal experience). The latter is “...observation to which the mind subjects its activity and the methods of its manifestation, as a result of which ideas of this activity arise in the mind” (Works, vol. 1. M., 1985, p. 155). Possessing independence in relation to external experience, reflection is nevertheless based on it. From reflection on the appearance of various ideas in our minds, ideas of time arise - sequence and duration, thinking, active force, etc. Locke expands the scope of reflection, believing that feelings can also serve as its source. The object of reflection can be not only the operations of our mind, but also perception, doubt, faith, reasoning, cognition, desire - “all the various actions of our mind” (ibid.). L. Vauvenargues defined reflection as “a gift that allows us to focus on our ideas, evaluate them, modify them and combine them in different ways.” He saw reflection as “the starting point of judgment, evaluation, etc.” (Introduction to the knowledge of the human mind. L., 1988, p. 10).

Leibniz

, criticizing the distinction between external and internal experience in Locke, defined reflection as “attention directed to what lies within us” (Soch., vol. 2. M., 1983, p. 51) and emphasized the existence in the soul of changes that occur without consciousness or reflection. Having distinguished between distinct and indistinct ideas, he connects the former with the reflection of the spirit reflecting on itself, and the latter with truths rooted in feelings (ibid., pp. 82–83). In reflection, he saw an ability that animals do not have (ibid., p. 173), and made a distinction between perception-perception and apperception-consciousness, or reflective knowledge of the internal state of the monad (Works, vol. 1. M., 1982, p. 406). In self-awareness and reflection, he saw the source of the moral identity of the individual, whose transition to the next stage of its development is always accompanied by reflection (Works, vol. 2, p. 236). Leibniz drew attention to the difficulty that arises when we assume that there is nothing in the soul of which it is not conscious, i.e. with the exception of unconscious processes: “It is impossible for us to constantly and explicitly reflect on all our thoughts, otherwise our mind would reflect on each reflection ad infinitum, never being able to move on to any new thought” (ibid., p. 118).He argues with Locke regarding the fact that simple ideas are created through reflection. In Leibniz’s concept, reflection becomes an independent act of thought, determining its specificity, and acts as the ability of monads for apperception, for awareness by thought of its acts and their content.

Kant

considered reflection in connection with the study of the foundations of cognitive ability, a priori conditions of knowledge and interpreted it as an integral property of the “reflective ability of judgment.”
If the determining ability of judgment appears when the particular is subsumed under the general, then the reflective ability is needed if only the particular is given, and the general still needs to be found (see Criticism of the ability of judgment. - Soch., vol. 5. M., 1966, p. 117). It is through reflection that concepts are formed .
Reflection “does not deal with the objects themselves in order to obtain concepts directly from them,” it is “... awareness of the relationship of given ideas to our various sources of knowledge, and only thanks to it their relationship to each other can be correctly determined” (Critique of Pure Reason. – Ibid., vol. 3. M., 1964, p. 314).
Kant distinguished between logical reflection, in which ideas are simply compared with each other, and transcendental reflection, in which the compared ideas are associated with one or another cognitive ability - with sensibility or reason.
It is transcendental reflection that “contains the basis for the possibility of objective comparison of ideas with each other” (ibid., p. 316). Relations between representations or concepts are fixed in “reflective concepts” (identity and difference, compatibility and contradiction, internal and external, defined and determined), in which each member of the pair reflects the other member and at the same time is reflected by it. Rational knowledge, based on reflective concepts, leads to amphiboly - ambiguities in the application of concepts to objects, if its methodological analysis is not carried out, its forms and boundaries are not identified. Such an analysis is carried out in transcendental reflection, which connects concepts with a priori forms of sensibility and reason and constructs the object of science.

In Fichte

reflection coincides with philosophy, interpreted as a scientific doctrine, i.e.
as a reflection of scientific knowledge about oneself. Reflection, which obeys certain laws, belongs to the necessary modes of action of the mind. “Scientific teaching presupposes that the rules of reflection and abstraction are known and significant” (Soch., vol. 1. M., 1995, p. 269). Schelling
contrasts creation and reflection. He places emphasis on direct comprehension of the essence, intellectual intuition. At the same time, reflection characterizes the third era in the development of philosophy as the history of self-consciousness. In the highest act of reflection, the mind reflects simultaneously on both the object and itself, “being simultaneously an ideal and real activity” (Soch., vol. 1. M., 1987, p. 396). Unlike Fichte, who sought to limit reflection to thinking about thinking itself, Schelling spoke of the unconscious existence of reflection in nature, which in man comes to awareness and actualization of its potentials. Nature, becoming an object of reflection, “for the first time completely returns to itself, as a result of which it is evident that it is initially identical to what is perceived in us as rational and conscious” (ibid., p. 234).

In Hegel's

reflection is the driving force for the development of the spirit.
Considering rational reflection as a necessary moment of the cognitive process and criticizing the romantics in this regard, Hegel at the same time reveals its limitations: fixing abstract definitions, reflection of reason is not able to reveal their unity, but claims to be final, absolute knowledge. In “Phenomenology of Spirit,” the spirit’s reflection on itself appears as a form of self-development of the spirit, as a basis that allows one to move from one form of spirit to another. Hegel traces here the specificity of the movement of reflection at each of the three stages of development of the spirit. Logical forms of reflection correspond to historical forms of self-consciousness, the development of which ends in the “unhappy consciousness”, divided within itself and therefore fixing abstract moments of reality in their isolation from each other (Soch., vol. 4. M., 1959, pp. 112, 118 -19). Hegel believed that the object embodies the spirit, which reveals itself in it (as Hegel put it, the object itself reflects into itself). The essence of reflection in a logically generalized form is considered by Hegel in “The Science of Logic” in connection with the analysis of essence and appearance; in contrast to the categories of being, which are characterized by a transition from one to another, and from the categories of concept, where we are talking about their development, the doctrine of essence fixes the relationship of paired categories, each of which is reflected - reflected, shines in the other (Works, vol. 1. M.–L., 1929, p. 195). Hegel distinguishes three types of reflection: 1) positing, which corresponds to the descriptive sciences, 2) external, or comparing, which reflects the dominance of the comparative method in science, and 3) determining. The latter captures the moments of essence in their independence and isolation from each other. In general, Hegel’s doctrine of reflection reveals the categorical structure of that science that fixes identity, difference and opposition, but does not comprehend contradiction
, a science that contrasts the subject with a thing as its object and does not reveal their unity, expressed in the life of the absolute spirit.
The ascent from the abstract to the concrete appears in Hegel as a self-reflective mutual illumination of abstract moments and the grasping of their integrity in speculative thinking. Reflection turns out to be a way for Hegel to mutually reflect and unite opposites, a form of self-conscious production of the spirit. The philosophy of German idealism, which emphasized the reflexive mechanisms of thinking activity and the relationship of thought to reality, was opposed by another line that emphasized the importance of non-reflective processes (the philosophy of feeling and faith of F. G. Jacobi, the anthropology of L. Feuerbach, the philosophy of will of A. Schopenhauer, the philosophy of the unconscious E. von Hartmann, etc.). S. Kierkegaard, emphasizing that a single individual is hidden, made a distinction between objective and subjective thinking. Objective thinking “is indifferent to the thinking subject and his existence, relies on the result in everything and contributes to humanity being deceived,” subjective thinking has a different type of reflection, namely “a type of internality, a type of possession, as a result of which it belongs precisely to this subject and to no one.” to another" ( S. Kierkegaard.
Final unscientific afterword to "Philosophical crumbs." - In the book: From Self to Other. Minsk, 1997, p. 10). Subjective reflection is a double reflection that thinks of the universal and at the same time the internal that subjectivity possesses. Kierkegaard's analysis of double subjective reflection allows him to draw attention to the problematic nature of the message that exists in dialogue - on the one hand, internally isolated subjectivity “wants to communicate itself,” and on the other, it strives to remain “in the interior of its subjective existence” (ibid., p. eleven). The existential message is presented in a dialogue, the subject of which is in the inter-existence sphere, in the common territory between the existence of the questioner and the answerer. The reality of existence cannot be communicated, and it is expressed only in style. Kierkegaard drew attention not only to the fundamental differences between the forms of reflection, but also to the significance of dialogue as a double reflection, where I and the Other are in a relationship of double reflection, and the internal subjectivity of an isolated thinker takes on a universal form and, without dissolving in the Other, shines with its reflection, reflective light.

In Marxism, reflection was interpreted as a way to substantiate metaphysical, rational philosophy. A negative attitude towards reflection as a specifically rational way of identifying the characteristics not of an object, but of ordinary consciousness and its prejudices, presupposed an appeal to the comprehension of acts of thinking-in-history, which would not oppose itself to the object under study, but would be included in the historical process as its necessary component . Already in The Holy Family, K. Marx and F. Engels showed that idealism reduces a real, actual person to self-consciousness, and his practical actions to a mental criticism of his own ideological consciousness. Criticizing rational reflection, which opposes itself to practice, Marx and Engels show that in reality reflecting individuals never rise above reflection (ibid., vol. 3, p. 248). The fundamental limitations of rational reflection, its inability to penetrate into the essence of the subject under study, were analyzed by Marx in connection with the criticism of vulgar political economy, which was ossified in reflective definitions and therefore was unable to grasp bourgeois production as a whole. Marx and Engels associated rational reflection with the specifics of human development in conditions of division of labor and alienation

, when a person turns into a partial person, and the one-sided development of his abilities leads to the fact that a partial social function becomes his life calling. It is in such conditions that reflection on thinking about oneself becomes the vocation of a philosopher and is opposed to practice.

Reflection becomes a central concept in European philosophy of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, revealing the uniqueness of the subject of philosophy in the system of sciences and the specificity of the philosophical method. Since philosophy has always been interpreted as reflection about knowledge, as thinking about thinking, the emphasis on the problem of reflection among modern philosophers expresses the desire to defend the autonomy of philosophy, to understand its subject as self-awareness of acts of cognition and its content. This line was pursued in neo-Kantianism

(Kogen, Natorp, Nelson, etc.).
At the same time , Nelson
specifically highlights psychological reflection as a means of realizing direct knowledge (a type of this reflection - introspection - was the main method of introspective psychology).

Husserl

specifically highlights reflection among the universal features of the pure sphere of experience, connecting with reflection the possibility of a reflective turn of view, when acts of thought become the subject of internal perception, evaluation, approval or disapproval.
Reflection is “a general rubric for all those acts in which the flow of experience with everything diversely encountered in it becomes clearly grasped and analyzed” (Ideas for pure phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy, vol. 1. M., 1999, p. 164). He gives reflection a universal methodological function. The very possibility of phenomenology
is justified with the help of reflection: the implementation of phenomenology is based on the “productive ability” of reflection.
Reflection is the name of a method in the knowledge of consciousness in general. Phenomenology is designed to dissect different types of reflection and analyze them in different orders. In accordance with the general division of phenomenology, Husserl distinguishes two forms of reflection - natural and phenomenological, or transcendental. “In everyday natural reflection, as well as in reflection carried out in psychological science... we stand on the soil of the world, pregiven as a being... In transcendental-phenomenological reflection, we leave this soil thanks to the universal ὲποχή in relation to the being or non-existence of the world” (Cartesian Reflections. St. Petersburg, 1998, p. 97). Husserl associates the formation of a position of disinterested observation with transcendental reflection. Phenomenology is the method of returning the view from the natural attitude to the transcendental life of consciousness and its noetic-noematic experiences, in which objects that are correlates of consciousness are constituted. Late Husserl turned to the concept of “life world,” which is interpreted as a set of pre- and extra-reflective attitudes, practical and pre-theoretical positions, which led to a change in his attitude to reflection. M. Heidegger, using the phenomenological method, interprets it ontologically as a path from existence to being, which allows for the destruction of metaphysics. He criticizes the previous metaphysics, which identified being with existence, reflection with representation (conception). “Subjectivity, object and reflection are interconnected... At its core, repraesentatio is based on reflexio” (Time and Being. M., 1993, p. 184). “Through subjective reflection on thinking, which has already established itself as subjectivity” (ibid., p. 218), it is impossible to achieve being. In the old metaphysics of subjectivity, “being is explained and clarified from its relation to thinking. Explanation and clarification have the character of reflection, which makes itself felt as thinking about thinking... Thinking as reflection means the horizon, thinking as reflection of reflection means a tool for interpreting the being of beings” (ibid., p. 380). In contrast to reflection, which is inextricably linked with the interpretation of being as a being and thinking as a representation, Heidegger appeals to the procedures of hermeneutic interpretation and acts of understanding, which make it possible to comprehend the a priori structures of human here-being (Dasein), and above all, care. A person’s existence can only be revealed when he is left alone with the silent voice of his conscience, in fear of nothing.
Contemporary postmodernism, continuing this line of deconstruction of previous metaphysics, has an equally negative attitude towards the concept of reflection and takes the next step, emphasizing the inexpressibility of the individual’s internal experience and its inability to be subject to both reflexive analysis and understanding.
Thus, M. Foucault, contrasting phenomenology and the postmodern understanding of internal experience, wrote: “In essence, the experience of phenomenology comes down to a certain manner of placing a reflective gaze on some object from the experience, on some transitory form of everyday life - in order to grasp their meanings. For Nietzsche, Bataille, Blanchot, on the contrary, experience results in an attempt to achieve a point of view that would be as close as possible to the unexperienced. Which requires a maximum of tension and at the same time a maximum of impossibility” ( Foucault M.
Dits et ecrits: 1954–1988, v. 4. P., 1995, p. 43). Internal experience turns out to be associated with experiences in borderline situations, and reflection deals with language and writing, which retroactively record and convey the experience.

At the same time, in modern philosophy, a number of trends retain interest in the problems of reflection as a way of organizing philosophical and scientific knowledge. Thus, neo-Thomists, distinguishing psychological and transcendental types of reflection, use it to justify various forms of knowledge. Psychological reflection, focused on the area of aspirations and feelings, determines the possibility of anthropology and psychology. Transcendental reflection, in turn, is divided into logical (abstract-discursive cognition) and ontological (focus on being), with the help of which the possibility of philosophy proper, set forth according to all the canons of pre-Kantian metaphysics, is substantiated. In the philosophy of science, which understands the foundations and methods of scientific knowledge, various research programs have been proposed. Thus, in the philosophy of mathematics in the 20th century. not only various concepts of metamathematics were built, but also various research programs for the substantiation of mathematics - from logicism to intuitionism.

In neopositivism

the concept of reflection is actually (but without using the term) used to distinguish between material language and metalanguage, because
the subject of philosophical and logical analysis is limited only by the reality of language. In Russian religious philosophy, living, universal knowledge, direct intuition of concrete unity, and faith were contrasted with knowledge that had its source in conceptual thinking. Therefore, reflection was perceived as a unique feature of Western abstract philosophy, to which Russian thought is alien. Thus, N.A. Berdyaev, considering any form of objectification as a fall of the spirit, emphasizes that the categories that epistemology reflects have their source in sin, and “the cognizing subject is itself being, and not only opposes being as its object” ( Berdyaev N.A.
Philosophy of a free spirit. M., 1994, p. 253).
A. Bely, developing the anthroposophical approach to spirit, tried to understand the history of the culture of thought as the history of the formation of a self-conscious soul. In Russian philosophy of the 20th century, especially in the 70s, the problem of reflection became the subject of philosophical and methodological research. With its help, the levels of methodological analysis are identified (V.A. Lektorsky, V.S. Shvyrev), the specificity of methodology is shown as a study of means and techniques of work, as a way of organizing methodological thinking and activity, which “introduces individual thinking and individual activity to the social, universal” ( Shchedrovitsky G.P.
Philosophy, science, methodology. M., 1997, p. 418).
By the beginning of the 80s. Not only did the “devaluation of reflection” recorded by many philosophers occur, but also various options for constructing a number of scientific disciplines on the basis of the concept of reflection, primarily psychology, psychotherapy, and pedagogy, appeared. Already S.L. Rubinstein about ( Rubinstein S.L.
Being and consciousness. M., 1957, p. 260).
A.N. Leontiev defined consciousness as “reflection by the subject of reality, his activity, himself” ( Leontiev A.N.
Selected psychological works, vol. 2. M., 1983, p. 150).
B.V. Zeigarnik, explaining motivational disorders in schizophrenia, associated them with pathological processes occurring with a person’s self-awareness, with his self-esteem, with the possibility of reflection ( Zeigarnik B.V.
Mediation and self-regulation in normal and pathological conditions. - “Bulletin of Moscow State University, Psychology ". M., 1981, No. 2, p. 12). In Russian philosophy of the 70–80s gt. various levels of philosophical reflection are highlighted: 1) reflection on the content of knowledge given in various forms of culture (language, science, etc.), and 2) reflection on the acts and processes of thinking - analysis of the ways of forming ethical norms, logical foundations and methods of forming a categorical apparatus Sciences. In its essence, reflection is critical, because, while forming new values, it “breaks” the existing norms of behavior and knowledge. The positive meaning of reflection lies in the fact that with its help, mastery of the world of culture and human productive abilities is achieved. Thinking can make itself the subject of theoretical analysis only if it is objectified in real, objective forms, taken outside and can relate to itself indirectly. Reflection is thus a form of mediated knowledge.

Literature:

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Communication, activity, reflection. – In the book: Study of speech and mental activity. Alma-Ata, 1974, issue. III;

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A.P. Ogurtsov

How to stop reflecting?

Many people believe that the tendency to reflect on a constant basis is harmful, that it negatively affects a person, but this is a natural component of any person’s life.

Important! A person’s turning to himself, to his inner motives and desires only strengthens the will, improves the result and effectiveness of any activity. However, it is important that a reflective person performs this activity: comprehension without action will not bear fruit.

Reflection should not be confused with ordinary soul-searching: unlike the latter, reflection is a creative, not a destructive, activity.

If self-development reaches the point of absurdity and you feel that you are far from reality, you need to get rid of it:

Read also: How to do inhalations with mineral water?

reading books about self-development should not be just a hobby;
attend trainings less and communicate more with people, go for walks, socialize;
if the techniques and methods you have studied do not bring results, do not get hung up on them;
most techniques are businesses that are designed to make money;
When you achieve your goals, give up the idea of improving them.

Examples of reflection

In pedagogy

An example of educational reflexivity in pedagogical practice can be any school lesson. According to the Federal State Educational Standard, at the end of the lesson the teacher must conduct a short survey in symbolic, oral or written form. It contains reflective questions aimed at consolidating the material, assessing emotions, or analyzing why the student needs this information.

In psychology

Retrospective reflection is actively used in psychological practice. An example would be a consultation with a psychotherapist, when he asks the patient leading questions and helps him analyze past events. This technique allows you to cope with problems and illnesses caused by traumatic memories.

Communicative reflection

Analysis of relationships with relatives, friends or significant other. A reflective person remembers events and situations associated with a loved one and analyzes his feelings in relation to this. This helps you understand whether the relationship is going in the right direction and what needs to change.

Communicative reflection is necessary to analyze relationships with loved ones

Reflection is a way of analyzing a person’s consciousness, allowing one to better know oneself. This skill distinguishes people from animals. To develop reflection, you can use interesting methods: interaction with the world, searching for new information different from a person’s interests, a detailed analysis of one thing and compiling a list of issues that concern a person most.