In philosophy, Idealism is the group of metaphysical
philosophies that assert that reality, or
reality as humans can know it, is fundamentally
mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise
immaterial. Epistemologically, Idealism manifests
as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing
any mind-independent thing. In contrast to
Materialism, Idealism asserts the primacy
of consciousness as the origin and prerequisite
of material phenomena. According to this view,
consciousness exists before and is the pre-condition
of material existence. Consciousness creates
and determines the material and not vice versa.
Idealism believes consciousness and mind to
be the origin of the material world and aims
to explain the existing world according to
these principles.
Idealism theories are mainly divided into
two groups. Subjective idealism takes as its
starting point the given fact of human consciousness
seeing the existing world as a combination
of sensation. Objective idealism posits the
existence of an objective consciousness which
exists before and, in some sense, independently
of human ones. In a sociological sense, idealism
emphasizes how human ideas—especially beliefs
and values—shape society. As an ontological
doctrine, idealism goes further, asserting
that all entities are composed of mind or
spirit. Idealism thus rejects physicalist
and dualist theories that fail to ascribe
priority to the mind.
The earliest extant arguments that the world
of experience is grounded in the mental derive
from India and Greece. The Hindu idealists
in India and the Greek Neoplatonists gave
panentheistic arguments for an all-pervading
consciousness as the ground or true nature
of reality. In contrast, the Yogācāra school,
which arose within Mahayana Buddhism in India
in the 4th century CE, based its "mind-only"
idealism to a greater extent on phenomenological
analyses of personal experience. This turn
toward the subjective anticipated empiricists
such as George Berkeley, who revived idealism
in 18th-century Europe by employing skeptical
arguments against materialism. Beginning with
Immanuel Kant, German idealists such as Georg
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Johann Gottlieb Fichte,
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, and Arthur
Schopenhauer dominated 19th-century philosophy.
This tradition, which emphasized the mental
or "ideal" character of all phenomena, gave
birth to idealistic and subjectivist schools
ranging from British idealism to phenomenalism
to existentialism.
Idealism as a philosophy came under heavy
attack in the West at the turn of the 20th
century. The most influential critics of both
epistemological and ontological idealism were
G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, but its
critics also included the New Realists. According
to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the
attacks by Moore and Russell were so influential
that even more than 100 years later "any acknowledgment
of idealistic tendencies is viewed in the
English-speaking world with reservation".
However, many aspects and paradigms of idealism
did still have a large influence on subsequent
philosophy.
== Definitions ==
Idealism is a term with several related meanings.
It comes via idea from the Greek idein (ἰδεῖν),
meaning "to see". The term entered the English
language by 1743. In ordinary use, as when
speaking of Woodrow Wilson's political idealism,
it generally suggests the priority of ideals,
principles, values, and goals over concrete
realities. Idealists are understood to represent
the world as it might or should be, unlike
pragmatists, who focus on the world as it
presently is. In the arts, similarly, idealism
affirms imagination and attempts to realize
a mental conception of beauty, a standard
of perfection, juxtaposed to aesthetic naturalism
and realism.Any philosophy that assigns crucial
importance to the ideal or spiritual realm
in its account of human existence may be termed
"idealist". Metaphysical idealism is an ontological
doctrine that holds that reality itself is
incorporeal or experiential at its core. Beyond
this, idealists disagree on which aspects
of the mental are more basic. Platonic idealism
affirms that abstractions are more basic to
reality than the things we perceive, while
subjective idealists and phenomenalists tend
to privilege sensory experience over abstract
reasoning. Epistemological idealism is the
view that reality can only be known through
ideas, that only psychological experience
can be apprehended by the mind.Subjective
idealists like George Berkeley are anti-realists
in terms of a mind-independent world, whereas
transcendental idealists like Immanuel Kant
are strong skeptics of such a world, affirming
epistemological and not metaphysical idealism.
Thus Kant defines idealism as "the assertion
that we can never be certain whether all of
our putative outer experience is not mere
imagining". He claimed that, according to
idealism, "the reality of external objects
does not admit of strict proof. On the contrary,
however, the reality of the object of our
internal sense (of myself and state) is clear
immediately through consciousness". However,
not all idealists restrict the real or the
knowable to our immediate subjective experience.
Objective idealists make claims about a transempirical
world, but simply deny that this world is
essentially divorced from or ontologically
prior to the mental. Thus, Plato and Gottfried
Leibniz affirm an objective and knowable reality
transcending our subjective awareness—a
rejection of epistemological idealism—but
propose that this reality is grounded in ideal
entities, a form of metaphysical idealism.
Nor do all metaphysical idealists agree on
the nature of the ideal; for Plato, the fundamental
entities were non-mental abstract forms, while
for Leibniz they were proto-mental and concrete
monads.As a rule, transcendental idealists
like Kant affirm idealism's epistemic side
without committing themselves to whether reality
is ultimately mental; objective idealists
like Plato affirm reality's metaphysical basis
in the mental or abstract without restricting
their epistemology to ordinary experience;
and subjective idealists like Berkeley affirm
both metaphysical and epistemological idealism.
== Classical idealism ==
=== Pre-Socratic philosophy ===
Idealism as a form of metaphysical monism
holds that consciousness, not matter, is the
ground of all being. It is monist because
it holds that there is only one type of thing
in the universe and idealist because it holds
that one thing to be consciousness.
Anaxagoras (480 BC) taught that "all things"
were created by Nous ("Mind"). He held that
Mind held the cosmos together and gave human
beings a connection to the cosmos or a pathway
to the divine.
=== Platonism and neoplatonism ===
Plato's theory of forms or "ideas" describes
ideal forms (for example the platonic solids
in geometry or abstracts like Goodness and
Justice), as universals existing independently
of any particular instance. Arne Grøn calls
this doctrine "the classic example of a metaphysical
idealism as a transcendent idealism", while
Simone Klein calls Plato "the earliest representative
of metaphysical objective idealism". Nevertheless,
Plato holds that matter is real, though transitory
and imperfect, and is perceived by our body
and its senses and given existence by the
eternal ideas that are perceived directly
by our rational soul. Plato was therefore
a metaphysical and epistemological dualist,
an outlook that modern idealism has striven
to avoid: Plato's thought cannot therefore
be counted as idealist in the modern sense.
With the Neoplatonist Plotinus, wrote Nathaniel
Alfred Boll "there even appears, probably
for the first time in Western philosophy,
idealism that had long been current in the
East even at that time, for it taught... that
the soul has made the world by stepping from
eternity into time...". Similarly, in regard
to passages from the Enneads, "The only space
or place of the world is the soul" and "Time
must not be assumed to exist outside the soul".
Ludwig Noiré wrote: "For the first time in
Western philosophy we find idealism proper
in Plotinus". However, Plotinus does not address
whether we know external objects, unlike Schopenhauer
and other modern philosophers.
== Christian philosophy ==
Christian theologians have held idealist views,
often based on Neoplatonism, despite the influence
of Aristotelian scholasticism from the 12th
century onward. Later western theistic idealism
such as that of Hermann Lotze offers a theory
of the "world ground" in which all things
find their unity: it has been widely accepted
by Protestant theologians. Several modern
religious movements, for example the organizations
within the New Thought Movement and the Unity
Church, may be said to have a particularly
idealist orientation. The theology of Christian
Science includes a form of idealism: it teaches
that all that truly exists is God and God's
ideas; that the world as it appears to the
senses is a distortion of the underlying spiritual
reality, a distortion that may be corrected
(both conceptually and in terms of human experience)
through a reorientation (spiritualization)
of thought.
== Chinese philosophy ==
Wang Yangming, a Ming Chinese neo-Confucian
philosopher, official, educationist, calligraphist
and general, held that objects do not exist
entirely apart from the mind because the mind
shapes them. It is not the world that shapes
the mind but the mind that gives reason to
the world, so the mind alone is the source
of all reason, having an inner light, an innate
moral goodness and understanding of what is
good.
== Idealism in Vedic and Buddhist thought
==
There are currents of idealism throughout
Indian philosophy, ancient and modern. Hindu
idealism often takes the form of monism or
non-dualism, espousing the view that a unitary
consciousness is the essence or meaning of
the phenomenal reality and plurality.
Buddhist idealism on the other hand is more
epistemic and is not a metaphysical monism,
which Buddhists consider eternalistic and
hence not the middle way between extremes
espoused by the Buddha.
The oldest reference to Idealism in Vedic
texts is in Purusha Sukta of the Rig Veda.
This sukta espouses panentheism by presenting
cosmic being Purusha as both pervading all
universe and yet being transcendent to it.
Absolute idealism can be seen in Chāndogya
Upaniṣad, where things of the objective
world like the five elements and the subjective
world such as will, hope, memory etc. are
seen to be emanations from the Self.
=== Indian philosophy ===
Idealist notions have been propounded by the
Vedanta schools of thought, which use the
Vedas, especially the Upanishads as their
key texts. Idealism was opposed by dualists
Samkhya, the atomists Vaisheshika, the logicians
Nyaya, the linguists Mimamsa and the materialists
Cārvāka. There are various sub schools of
Vedanta, like Advaita Vedanta (non-dual),
Vishishtadvaita and Bhedabheda Vedanta (difference
and non-difference).
The schools of Vedanta all attempt to explain
the nature and relationship of Brahman (universal
soul or Self) and Atman (individual self),
which they see as the central topic of the
Vedas. One of the earliest attempts at this
was Bādarāyaņa's Brahma Sutras, which is
canonical for all Vedanta sub-schools. Advaita
Vedanta is a major sub school of Vedanta which
holds a non-dual Idealistic metaphysics. According
to Advaita thinkers like Adi Shankara (788–820)
and his contemporary Maṇḍana Miśra, Brahman,
the single unitary consciousness or absolute
awareness, appears as the diversity of the
world because of maya or illusion, and hence
perception of plurality is mithya, error.
The world and all beings or souls in it have
no separate existence from Brahman, universal
consciousness, and the seemingly independent
soul (jiva) is identical to Brahman. These
doctrines are represented in verses such as
brahma satyam jagan mithya; jīvo brahmaiva
na aparah (Brahman is alone True, and this
world of plurality is an error; the individual
self is not different from Brahman). Other
forms of Vedanta like the Vishishtadvaita
of Ramanuja and the Bhedabheda of Bhāskara
are not as radical in their non-dualism, accepting
that there is a certain difference between
individual souls and Brahman. Dvaita school
of Vedanta by Madhvacharya maintains the opposing
view that the world is real and eternal. It
also argues that real atman fully depends
and reflection of independent brahman.
The Tantric tradition of Kashmir Shaivism
has also been categorized by scholars as a
form of Idealism. The key thinker of this
tradition is the Kashmirian Abhinavagupta
(975–1025 CE).
Modern Vedic Idealism was defended by the
influential Indian philosopher Sarvepalli
Radhakrishnan in his 1932 An Idealist View
of Life and other works, which espouse Advaita
Vedanta. The essence of Hindu Idealism is
captured by such modern writers as Sri Nisargadatta
Maharaj, Sri Aurobindo, P. R. Sarkar, and
Sohail Inayatullah.
=== Buddhist philosophy ===
Buddhist views which can be said to be similar
to Idealism appear in Mahayana Buddhist texts
such as the Samdhinirmocana sutra, Laṅkāvatāra
Sūtra, Dashabhumika sutra, etc. These were
later expanded upon by Indian Buddhist philosophers
like Vasubandhu, Asaṅga, Dharmakīrti, and
Śāntarakṣita. Yogacara thought was also
promoted in China, by Chinese philosophers
and translators like Xuanzang.
There is a modern scholarly disagreement about
whether Yogacara Buddhism can be said to be
a form of idealism. As Saam Trivedi notes:
"on one side of the debate, writers such as
Jay Garfield, Jeffrey Hopkins, Paul Williams,
and others maintain the idealism label, while
on the other side, Stefan Anacker, Dan Lusthaus,
Richard King, Thomas Kochumuttom, Alex Wayman,
Janice Dean Willis, and others have argued
that Yogacara is not idealist." The central
point of issue is what Buddhist philosophers
like Vasubandhu who used the term Vijñapti-matra
(representation-only or cognition-only) and
formulated arguments to refute external objects
actually meant to say.
Vasubandhu's works include a refutation of
external objects or externality itself and
argues that the true nature of reality is
beyond subject-object distinctions. He views
ordinary consciousness experience as deluded
in its perceptions of an external world separate
from itself and instead argues that all there
is Vijñapti (representation or conceptualization).
Hence Vasubandhu begins his Vimsatika with
the verse: All this is consciousness-only,
because of the appearance of non-existent
objects, just as someone with an optical disorder
may see non-existent nets of hair.Likewise,
the Buddhist philosopher Dharmakirti's view
of the apparent existence of external objects
is summed up by him in the Pramānaṿārttika
(‘Commentary on Logic and Epistemology’):
Cognition experiences itself, and nothing
else whatsoever. Even the particular objects
of perception, are by nature just consciousness
itself.While some writers like Jay Garfield
hold that Vasubandhu is a metaphysical idealist,
others see him as closer to an epistemic idealist
like Kant who holds that our knowledge of
the world is simply knowledge of our own concepts
and perceptions of a transcendental world.
Sean Butler upholding that Yogacara is a form
of idealism, albeit its own unique type, notes
the similarity of Kant's categories and Yogacara's
Vāsanās, both of which are simply phenomenal
tools with which the mind interprets the noumenal
realm. Unlike Kant however who holds that
the noumenon or thing-in-itself is unknowable
to us, Vasubandhu holds that ultimate reality
is knowable, but only through non-conceptual
yogic perception of a highly trained meditative
mind.Writers like Dan Lusthaus who hold that
Yogacara is not a metaphysical idealism point
out, for example, that Yogācāra thinkers
did not focus on consciousness to assert it
as ontologically real, but simply to analyze
how our experiences and thus our suffering
is created. As Lusthaus notes: "no Indian
Yogācāra text ever claims that the world
is created by mind. What they do claim is
that we mistake our projected interpretations
of the world for the world itself, i.e. we
take our own mental constructions to be the
world." Lusthaus notes that there are similarities
to Western epistemic idealists like Kant and
Husserl, enough so that Yogacara can be seen
as a form of epistemological idealism. However
he also notes key differences like the concepts
of karma and nirvana. Saam Trivedi meanwhile
notes the similarities between epistemic idealism
and Yogacara, but adds that Yogacara Buddhism
is in a sense its own theory.Similarly, Thomas
Kochumuttom sees Yogacara as "an explanation
of experience, rather than a system of ontology"
and Stefan Anacker sees Vasubandhu's philosophy
as a form of psychology and as a mainly therapeutic
enterprise.
== Subjective idealism ==
Subjective idealism (immaterialism or phenomenalism)
describes a relationship between experience
and the world in which objects are no more
than collections or bundles of sense data
in the perceiver. Proponents include Berkeley,
Bishop of Cloyne, an Anglo-Irish philosopher
who advanced a theory he called "immaterialism,"
later referred to as "subjective idealism",
contending that individuals can only know
sensations and ideas of objects directly,
not abstractions such as "matter", and that
ideas also depend upon being perceived for
their very existence - esse est percipi; "to
be is to be perceived".
Arthur Collier published similar assertions
though there seems to have been no influence
between the two contemporary writers. The
only knowable reality is the represented image
of an external object. Matter as a cause of
that image, is unthinkable and therefore nothing
to us. An external world as absolute matter
unrelated to an observer does not exist as
far as we are concerned. The universe cannot
exist as it appears if there is no perceiving
mind. Collier was influenced by An Essay Towards
the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World
by Cambridge Platonist John Norris (1701).
Bertrand Russell's popular book The Problems
of Philosophy highlights Berkeley's tautological
premise for advancing idealism;
"If we say that the things known must be in
the mind, we are either unduly limiting the
mind's power of knowing, or we are uttering
a mere tautology. We are uttering a mere tautology
if we mean by 'in the mind' the same as by
'before the mind', i.e. if we mean merely
being apprehended by the mind. But if we mean
this, we shall have to admit that what, in
this sense, is in the mind, may nevertheless
be not mental. Thus when we realize the nature
of knowledge, Berkeley's argument is seen
to be wrong in substance as well as in form,
and his grounds for supposing that 'idea',
i.e. the objects apprehended-must be mental,
are found to have no validity whatever. Hence
his grounds in favour of the idealism may
be dismissed."The Austrailian philosopher
David Stove harshly criticized philosophical
idealism, arguing that it rests on what he
called "the worst argument in the world".
Stove claims that Berkeley tried to derive
a non-tautological conclusion from tautological
reasoning. He argued that in Berkeley's case
the fallacy is not obvious and this is because
one premise is ambiguous between one meaning
which is tautological and another which, Stove
argues, is logically equivalent to the conclusion.
Alan Musgrave argues that conceptual idealists
compound their mistakes with use/mention confusions;
Santa Claus the person does not exist.
"Santa Claus" the name/concept/fairy tale
does exist because adults tell children this
every Christmas season (the distinction is
highlighted by using quotation-marks when
referring only to the name and not the object)and
proliferation of hyphenated entities such
as "thing-in-itself" (Immanuel Kant), "things-as-interacted-by-us"
(Arthur Fine), "table-of-commonsense" and
"table-of-physics" (Sir Arthur Eddington)
which are "warning signs" for conceptual idealism
according to Musgrave because they allegedly
do not exist but only highlight the numerous
ways in which people come to know the world.
This argument does not take into account the
issues pertaining to hermeneutics, especially
at the backdrop of analytic philosophy. Musgrave
criticized Richard Rorty and postmodernist
philosophy in general for confusion of use
and mention.
A. A. Luce and John Foster are other subjectivists.
Luce, in Sense without Matter (1954), attempts
to bring Berkeley up to date by modernizing
his vocabulary and putting the issues he faced
in modern terms, and treats the Biblical account
of matter and the psychology of perception
and nature. Foster's The Case for Idealism
argues that the physical world is the logical
creation of natural, non-logical constraints
on human sense-experience. Foster's latest
defense of his views (phenomenalistic idealism)
is in his book A World for Us: The Case for
Phenomenalistic Idealism.
Paul Brunton, a British philosopher, mystic,
traveler, and guru, taught a type of idealism
called "mentalism," similar to that of Bishop
Berkeley, proposing a master world-image,
projected or manifested by a world-mind, and
an infinite number of individual minds participating.
A tree does not cease to exist if nobody sees
it because the world-mind is projecting the
idea of the tree to all mindsJohn Searle,
criticizing some versions of idealism, summarizes
two important arguments for subjective idealism.
The first is based on our perception of reality:
(1) All we have access to in perception are
the contents of our own experience and(2)
The only epistemic basis for claims about
the external world are our perceptual experiencestherefore;
(3) The only reality we can meaningfully speak
of is that of perceptual experienceWhilst
agreeing with (2) Searle argues that (1) is
false and points out that (3) does not follow
from (1) and (2). The second argument runs
as follows;
Premise: Any cognitive state occurs as part
of a set of cognitive states and within a
cognitive systemConclusion 1: It is impossible
to get outside all cognitive states and systems
to survey the relationships between them and
the reality they cognizeConclusion 2: There
is no cognition of any reality that exists
independently of cognitionSearle contends
that Conclusion 2 does not follow from the
premises.
Epistemological idealism is a subjectivist
position in epistemology that holds that what
one knows about an object exists only in one's
mind. Proponents include Brand Blanshard.
== Transcendental idealism ==
Transcendental idealism, founded by Immanuel
Kant in the eighteenth century, maintains
that the mind shapes the world we perceive
into the form of space-and-time.
... if I remove the thinking subject, the
whole material world must at once vanish because
it is nothing but a phenomenal appearance
in the sensibility of ourselves as a subject,
and a manner or species of representation.
The 2nd edition (1787) contained a Refutation
of Idealism to distinguish his transcendental
idealism from Descartes's Sceptical Idealism
and Berkeley's anti-realist strain of Subjective
Idealism. The section Paralogisms of Pure
Reason is an implicit critique of Descartes'
idealism. Kant says that it is not possible
to infer the 'I' as an object (Descartes'
cogito ergo sum) purely from "the spontaneity
of thought". Kant focused on ideas drawn from
British philosophers such as Locke, Berkeley
and Hume but distinguished his transcendental
or critical idealism from previous varieties;
The dictum of all genuine idealists, from
the Eleatic school to Bishop Berkeley, is
contained in this formula: “All knowledge
through the senses and experience is nothing
but sheer illusion, and only in the ideas
of the pure understanding and reason is there
truth.” The principle that throughout dominates
and determines my [transcendental] idealism
is, on the contrary: “All knowledge of things
merely from pure understanding or pure reason
is nothing but sheer illusion, and only in
experience is there truth.”
Kant distinguished between things as they
appear to an observer and things in themselves,
"that is, things considered without regard
to whether and how they may be given to us".
We cannot approach the noumenon, the "thing
in Itself" (German: Ding an sich) without
our own mental world. He added that the mind
is not a blank slate, tabula rasa but rather
comes equipped with categories for organising
our sense impressions.
In the first volume of his Parerga and Paralipomena,
Schopenhauer wrote his "Sketch of a History
of the Doctrine of the Ideal and the Real".
He defined the ideal as being mental pictures
that constitute subjective knowledge. The
ideal, for him, is what can be attributed
to our own minds. The images in our head are
what comprise the ideal. Schopenhauer emphasized
that we are restricted to our own consciousness.
The world that appears is only a representation
or mental picture of objects. We directly
and immediately know only representations.
All objects that are external to the mind
are known indirectly through the mediation
of our mind. He offered a history of the concept
of the "ideal" as "ideational" or "existing
in the mind as an image".
[T]rue philosophy must at all costs be idealistic;
indeed, it must be so merely to be honest.
For nothing is more certain than that no one
ever came out of himself in order to identify
himself immediately with things different
from him; but everything of which he has certain,
sure, and therefore immediate knowledge, lies
within his consciousness. Beyond this consciousness,
therefore, there can be no immediate certainty
... There can never be an existence that is
objective absolutely and in itself; such an
existence, indeed, is positively inconceivable.
For the objective, as such, always and essentially
has its existence in the consciousness of
a subject; it is therefore the subject's representation,
and consequently is conditioned by the subject,
and moreover by the subject's forms of representation,
which belong to the subject and not to the
object.
Charles Bernard Renouvier was the first Frenchman
after Nicolas Malebranche to formulate a complete
idealistic system, and had a vast influence
on the development of French thought. His
system is based on Immanuel Kant's, as his
chosen term "néo-criticisme" indicates; but
it is a transformation rather than a continuation
of Kantianism.
Friedrich Nietzsche argued that Kant commits
an agnostic tautology and does not offer a
satisfactory answer as to the source of a
philosophical right to such-or-other metaphysical
claims; he ridicules his pride in tackling
"the most difficult thing that could ever
be undertaken on behalf of metaphysics." The
famous "thing-in-itself" was called a product
of philosophical habit, which seeks to introduce
a grammatical subject: because wherever there
is cognition, there must be a thing that is
cognized and allegedly it must be added to
ontology as a being (whereas, to Nietzsche,
only the world as ever changing appearances
can be assumed). Yet he attacks the idealism
of Schopenhauer and Descartes with an argument
similar to Kant's critique of the latter (see
above).
== Objective idealism ==
Objective idealism asserts that the reality
of experiencing combines and transcends the
realities of the object experienced and of
the mind of the observer. Proponents include
Thomas Hill Green, Josiah Royce, Benedetto
Croce and Charles Sanders Peirce.
=== Absolute idealism ===
Schelling (1775–1854) claimed that the Fichte's
"I" needs the Not-I, because there is no subject
without object, and vice versa. So there is
no difference between the subjective and the
objective, that is, the ideal and the real.
This is Schelling's "absolute identity": the
ideas or mental images in the mind are identical
to the extended objects which are external
to the mind.
Absolute idealism is G. W. F. Hegel's account
of how existence is comprehensible as an all-inclusive
whole. Hegel called his philosophy "absolute"
idealism in contrast to the "subjective idealism"
of Berkeley and the "transcendental idealism"
of Kant and Fichte, which were not based on
a critique of the finite and a dialectical
philosophy of history as Hegel's idealism
was. The exercise of reason and intellect
enables the philosopher to know ultimate historical
reality, the phenomenological constitution
of self-determination, the dialectical development
of self-awareness and personality in the realm
of History.
In his Science of Logic (1812–1814) Hegel
argues that finite qualities are not fully
"real" because they depend on other finite
qualities to determine them. Qualitative infinity,
on the other hand, would be more self-determining
and hence more fully real. Similarly finite
natural things are less "real"—because they
are less self-determining—than spiritual
things like morally responsible people, ethical
communities and God. So any doctrine, such
as materialism, that asserts that finite qualities
or natural objects are fully real is mistaken.Hegel
certainly intends to preserve what he takes
to be true of German idealism, in particular
Kant's insistence that ethical reason can
and does go beyond finite inclinations. For
Hegel there must be some identity of thought
and being for the "subject" (any human observer)
to be able to know any observed "object" (any
external entity, possibly even another human)
at all. Under Hegel's concept of "subject-object
identity," subject and object both have Spirit
(Hegel's ersatz, redefined, nonsupernatural
"God") as their conceptual (not metaphysical)
inner reality—and in that sense are identical.
But until Spirit's "self-realization" occurs
and Spirit graduates from Spirit to Absolute
Spirit status, subject (a human mind) mistakenly
thinks every "object" it observes is something
"alien," meaning something separate or apart
from "subject." In Hegel's words, "The object
is revealed to it [to "subject"] by [as] something
alien, and it does not recognize itself."
Self-realization occurs when Hegel (part of
Spirit's nonsupernatural Mind, which is the
collective mind of all humans) arrives on
the scene and realizes that every "object"
is himself, because both subject and object
are essentially Spirit. When self-realization
occurs and Spirit becomes Absolute Spirit,
the "finite" (man, human) becomes the "infinite"
("God," divine), replacing the imaginary or
"picture-thinking" supernatural God of theism:
man becomes God. Tucker puts it this way:
"Hegelianism . . . is a religion of self-worship
whose fundamental theme is given in Hegel's
image of the man who aspires to be God himself,
who demands 'something more, namely infinity.'"
The picture Hegel presents is "a picture of
a self-glorifying humanity striving compulsively,
and at the end successfully, to rise to divinity."Kierkegaard
criticized Hegel's idealist philosophy in
several of his works, particularly his claim
to a comprehensive system that could explain
the whole of reality. Where Hegel argues that
an ultimate understanding of the logical structure
of the world is an understanding of the logical
structure of God's mind, Kierkegaard asserts
that for God reality can be a system but it
cannot be so for any human individual because
both reality and humans are incomplete and
all philosophical systems imply completeness.
A logical system is possible but an existential
system is not. "What is rational is actual;
and what is actual is rational". Hegel's absolute
idealism blurs the distinction between existence
and thought: our mortal nature places limits
on our understanding of reality;
So-called systems have often been characterized
and challenged in the assertion that they
abrogate the distinction between good and
evil, and destroy freedom. Perhaps one would
express oneself quite as definitely, if one
said that every such system fantastically
dissipates the concept existence. ... Being
an individual man is a thing that has been
abolished, and every speculative philosopher
confuses himself with humanity at large; whereby
he becomes something infinitely great, and
at the same time nothing at all.
A major concern of Hegel's Phenomenology of
Spirit (1807) and of the philosophy of Spirit
that he lays out in his Encyclopedia of the
Philosophical Sciences (1817–1830) is the
interrelation between individual humans, which
he conceives in terms of "mutual recognition."
However, what Climacus means by the aforementioned
statement, is that Hegel, in the Philosophy
of Right, believed the best solution was to
surrender one's individuality to the customs
of the State, identifying right and wrong
in view of the prevailing bourgeois morality.
Individual human will ought, at the State's
highest level of development, to properly
coincide with the will of the State. Climacus
rejects Hegel's suppression of individuality
by pointing out it is impossible to create
a valid set of rules or system in any society
which can adequately describe existence for
any one individual. Submitting one's will
to the State denies personal freedom, choice,
and responsibility.
In addition, Hegel does believe we can know
the structure of God's mind, or ultimate reality.
Hegel agrees with Kierkegaard that both reality
and humans are incomplete, inasmuch as we
are in time, and reality develops through
time. But the relation between time and eternity
is outside time and this is the "logical structure"
that Hegel thinks we can know. Kierkegaard
disputes this assertion, because it eliminates
the clear distinction between ontology and
epistemology. Existence and thought are not
identical and one cannot possibly think existence.
Thought is always a form of abstraction, and
thus not only is pure existence impossible
to think, but all forms in existence are unthinkable;
thought depends on language, which merely
abstracts from experience, thus separating
us from lived experience and the living essence
of all beings. In addition, because we are
finite beings, we cannot possibly know or
understand anything that is universal or infinite
such as God, so we cannot know God exists,
since that which transcends time simultaneously
transcends human understanding.
Bradley saw reality as a monistic whole apprehended
through "feeling", a state in which there
is no distinction between the perception and
the thing perceived. Like Berkeley, Bradley
thought that nothing can be known to exist
unless it is known by a mind.
We perceive, on reflection, that to be real,
or even barely to exist, must be to fall within
sentience ... . Find any piece of existence,
take up anything that any one could possibly
call a fact, or could in any sense assert
to have being, and then judge if it does not
consist in sentient experience. Try to discover
any sense in which you can still continue
to speak of it, when all perception and feeling
have been removed; or point out any fragment
of its matter, any aspect of its being, which
is not derived from and is not still relative
to this source. When the experiment is made
strictly, I can myself conceive of nothing
else than the experienced.
Bradley was the apparent target of G. E. Moore's
radical rejection of idealism. Moore claimed
that Bradley did not understand the statement
that something is real. We know for certain,
through common sense and prephilosophical
beliefs, that some things are real, whether
they are objects of thought or not, according
to Moore. The 1903 article The Refutation
of Idealism is one of the first demonstrations
of Moore's commitment to analysis. He examines
each of the three terms in the Berkeleian
aphorism esse est percipi, "to be is to be
perceived", finding that it must mean that
the object and the subject are necessarily
connected so that "yellow" and "the sensation
of yellow" are identical - "to be yellow"
is "to be experienced as yellow". But it also
seems there is a difference between "yellow"
and "the sensation of yellow" and "that esse
is held to be percipi, solely because what
is experienced is held to be identical with
the experience of it". Though far from a complete
refutation, this was the first strong statement
by analytic philosophy against its idealist
predecessors, or at any rate against the type
of idealism represented by Berkeley.
=== Actual idealism ===
Actual idealism is a form of idealism developed
by Giovanni Gentile that grew into a "grounded"
idealism contrasting Kant and Hegel. The idea
is a version of Occam's razor; the simpler
explanations are always correct. Actual idealism
is the idea that reality is the ongoing act
of thinking, or in Italian "pensiero pensante".
Any action done by humans is classified as
human thought because the action was done
due to predisposed thought. He further believes
that thoughts are the only concept that truly
exist since reality is defined through the
act of thinking. This idea was derived from
Gentile's paper, "The Theory of Mind As Pure
Act".Since thoughts are actions, any conjectured
idea can be enacted. This idea not only affects
the individual's life, but everyone around
them, which in turn affects the state since
the people are the state. Therefore, thoughts
of each person are subsumed within the state.
The state is a composition of many minds that
come together to change the country for better
or worse.
Gentile theorizes that thoughts can only be
conjectured within the bounds of known reality;
abstract thinking does not exist. Thoughts
cannot be formed outside our known reality
because we are the reality that halt ourselves
from thinking externally. With accordance
to "The Act of Thought of Pure Thought", our
actions comprise our thoughts, our thoughts
create perception, perceptions define reality,
thus we think within our created reality.
The present act of thought is reality but
the past is not reality; it is history. The
reason being, past can be rewritten through
present knowledge and perspective of the event.
The reality that is currently constructed
can be completely changed through language
(e.g. bias (omission, source, tone)). The
unreliability of the recorded realty can skew
the original concept and make the past remark
unreliable.
Actual idealism is regarded as a liberal and
tolerant doctrine since it acknowledges that
every being picturizes reality, in which their
ideas remained hatched, differently. Even
though, reality is a figment of thought.
Even though core concept of the theory is
famous for its simplification, its application
is regarded as extremely ambiguous. Over the
years, philosophers have interpreted it numerously
different ways: Holmes took it as metaphysics
of the thinking act; Betti as a form of hermeneutics;
Harris as a metaphysics of democracy; Fogu
as a modernist philosophy of history.
Giovanni Gentile was a key supporter of fascism,
regarded by many as the "philosopher of fascism".
Gentile's philosophy was the key to understating
fascism as it was believed by many who supported
and loved it. They believed, if priori synthesis
of subject and object is true, there is no
difference between the individuals in society;
they're all one. Which means that they have
equal right, roles, and jobs. In fascist state,
submission is given to one leader because
individuals act as one body. In Gentile's
view, far more can be accomplished when individuals
are under a corporate body than a collection
of autonomous individual.
=== Pluralistic idealism ===
Pluralistic idealism such as that of Gottfried
Leibniz takes the view that there are many
individual minds that together underlie the
existence of the observed world and make possible
the existence of the physical universe. Unlike
absolute idealism, pluralistic idealism does
not assume the existence of a single ultimate
mental reality or "Absolute". Leibniz' form
of idealism, known as Panpsychism, views "monads"
as the true atoms of the universe and as entities
having perception. The monads are "substantial
forms of being, "elemental, individual, subject
to their own laws, non-interacting, each reflecting
the entire universe. Monads are centers of
force, which is substance while space, matter
and motion are phenomenal and their form and
existence is dependent on the simple and immaterial
monads. There is a pre-established harmony
by God, the central monad, between the world
in the minds of the monads and the external
world of objects. Leibniz's cosmology embraced
traditional Christian theism. The English
psychologist and philosopher James Ward inspired
by Leibniz had also defended a form of pluralistic
idealism. According to Ward the universe is
composed of "psychic monads" of different
levels, interacting for mutual self-betterment.Personalism
is the view that the minds that underlie reality
are the minds of persons. Borden Parker Bowne,
a philosopher at Boston University, a founder
and popularizer of personal idealism, presented
it as a substantive reality of persons, the
only reality, as known directly in self-consciousness.
Reality is a society of interacting persons
dependent on the Supreme Person of God. Other
proponents include George Holmes Howison and
J. M. E. McTaggart.Howison's personal idealism
was also called "California Personalism" by
others to distinguish it from the "Boston
Personalism" which was of Bowne. Howison maintained
that both impersonal, monistic idealism and
materialism run contrary to the experience
of moral freedom. To deny freedom to pursue
truth, beauty, and "benignant love" is to
undermine every profound human venture, including
science, morality, and philosophy. Personalistic
idealists Borden Parker Bowne and Edgar S.
Brightman and realistic personal theist Saint
Thomas Aquinas address a core issue, namely
that of dependence upon an infinite personal
God.Howison, in his book The Limits of Evolution
and Other Essays Illustrating the Metaphysical
Theory of Personal Idealism, created a democratic
notion of personal idealism that extended
all the way to God, who was no more the ultimate
monarch but the ultimate democrat in eternal
relation to other eternal persons. J. M. E.
McTaggart's idealist atheism and Thomas Davidson's
Apeirionism resemble Howisons personal idealism.J.
M. E. McTaggart of Cambridge University argued
that minds alone exist and only relate to
each other through love. Space, time and material
objects are unreal. In The Unreality of Time
he argued that time is an illusion because
it is impossible to produce a coherent account
of a sequence of events. The Nature of Existence
(1927) contained his arguments that space,
time, and matter cannot possibly be real.
In his Studies in Hegelian Cosmology (Cambridge,
1901, p196) he declared that metaphysics are
not relevant to social and political action.
McTaggart "thought that Hegel was wrong in
supposing that metaphysics could show that
the state is more than a means to the good
of the individuals who compose it". For McTaggart
"philosophy can give us very little, if any,
guidance in action... Why should a Hegelian
citizen be surprised that his belief as to
the organic nature of the Absolute does not
help him in deciding how to vote? Would a
Hegelian engineer be reasonable in expecting
that his belief that all matter is spirit
should help him in planning a bridge?Thomas
Davidson taught a philosophy called "apeirotheism",
a "form of pluralistic idealism...coupled
with a stern ethical rigorism" which he defined
as "a theory of Gods infinite in number."
The theory was indebted to Aristotle's pluralism
and his concepts of Soul, the rational, living
aspect of a living substance which cannot
exist apart from the body because it is not
a substance but an essence, and nous, rational
thought, reflection and understanding. Although
a perennial source of controversy, Aristotle
arguably views the latter as both eternal
and immaterial in nature, as exemplified in
his theology of unmoved movers. Identifying
Aristotle's God with rational thought, Davidson
argued, contrary to Aristotle, that just as
the soul cannot exist apart from the body,
God cannot exist apart from the world.Idealist
notions took a strong hold among physicists
of the early 20th century confronted with
the paradoxes of quantum physics and the theory
of relativity. In The Grammar of Science,
Preface to the 2nd Edition, 1900, Karl Pearson
wrote, "There are many signs that a sound
idealism is surely replacing, as a basis for
natural philosophy, the crude materialism
of the older physicists." This book influenced
Einstein's regard for the importance of the
observer in scientific measurements. In § 5
of that book, Pearson asserted that "...science
is in reality a classification and analysis
of the contents of the mind...." Also, "...the
field of science is much more consciousness
than an external world."
Sir Arthur Eddington, a British astrophysicist
of the early 20th century, wrote in his book
The Nature of the Physical World that "The
stuff of the world is mind-stuff": The mind-stuff
of the world is, of course, something more
general than our individual conscious minds....
The mind-stuff is not spread in space and
time; these are part of the cyclic scheme
ultimately derived out of it.... It is necessary
to keep reminding ourselves that all knowledge
of our environment from which the world of
physics is constructed, has entered in the
form of messages transmitted along the nerves
to the seat of consciousness.... Consciousness
is not sharply defined, but fades into subconsciousness;
and beyond that we must postulate something
indefinite but yet continuous with our mental
nature.... It is difficult for the matter-of-fact
physicist to accept the view that the substratum
of everything is of mental character. But
no one can deny that mind is the first and
most direct thing in our experience, and all
else is remote inference."
Ian Barbour in his book Issues in Science
and Religion (1966), p. 133, cites Arthur
Eddington's The Nature of the Physical World
(1928) for a text that argues The Heisenberg
Uncertainty Principles provides a scientific
basis for "the defense of the idea of human
freedom" and his Science and the Unseen World
(1929) for support of philosophical idealism
"the thesis that reality is basically mental".
Sir James Jeans wrote: "The stream of knowledge
is heading towards a non-mechanical reality;
the Universe begins to look more like a great
thought than like a great machine. Mind no
longer appears to be an accidental intruder
into the realm of matter... we ought rather
hail it as the creator and governor of the
realm of matter."
Jeans, in an interview published in The Observer
(London), when asked the question: "Do you
believe that life on this planet is the result
of some sort of accident, or do you believe
that it is a part of some great scheme?" replied:
I incline to the idealistic theory that consciousness
is fundamental, and that the material universe
is derivative from consciousness, not consciousness
from the material universe... In general the
universe seems to me to be nearer to a great
thought than to a great machine. It may well
be, it seems to me, that each individual consciousness
ought to be compared to a brain-cell in a
universal mind.
Addressing the British Association in 1934,
Jeans said: What remains is in any case very
different from the full-blooded matter and
the forbidding materialism of the Victorian
scientist. His objective and material universe
is proved to consist of little more than constructs
of our own minds. To this extent, then, modern
physics has moved in the direction of philosophic
idealism. Mind and matter, if not proved to
be of similar nature, are at least found to
be ingredients of one single system. There
is no longer room for the kind of dualism
which has haunted philosophy since the days
of Descartes.
In The Universe Around Us, Jeans writes: Finite
picture whose dimensions are a certain amount
of space and a certain amount of time; the
protons and electrons are the streaks of paint
which define the picture against its space-time
background. Traveling as far back in time
as we can, brings us not to the creation of
the picture, but to its edge; the creation
of the picture lies as much outside the picture
as the artist is outside his canvas. On this
view, discussing the creation of the universe
in terms of time and space is like trying
to discover the artist and the action of painting,
by going to the edge of the canvas. This brings
us very near to those philosophical systems
which regard the universe as a thought in
the mind of its Creator, thereby reducing
all discussion of material creation to futility.
The chemist Ernest Lester Smith wrote a book
Intelligence Came First (1975) in which he
claimed that consciousness is a fact of nature
and that the cosmos is grounded in and pervaded
by mind and intelligence.
Bernard d'Espagnat, a French theoretical physicist
best known for his work on the nature of reality,
wrote a paper titled The Quantum Theory and
Reality. According to the paper: The doctrine
that the world is made up of objects whose
existence is independent of human consciousness
turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics
and with facts established by experiment.
In a Guardian article entitled "Quantum Weirdness:
What We Call 'Reality' is Just a State of
Mind", d'Espagnat wrote: What quantum mechanics
tells us, I believe, is surprising to say
the least. It tells us that the basic components
of objects – the particles, electrons, quarks
etc. – cannot be thought of as 'self-existent'.
He further writes that his research in quantum
physics has led him to conclude that an "ultimate
reality" exists, which is not embedded in
space or time.
== See also ==
== Notes ==
== References ==
Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason with
an historical introduction by Ludwig Noiré,
available at [2]
Kierkegaard, Søren. Concluding Unscientific
Postscript, Princeton, ISBN 978-0-691-02081-5
Neujahr, Philip J., Kant's Idealism, Mercer
University Press, 1995 ISBN 0-86554-476-X
Watts, Michael. Kierkegaard, Oneworld, ISBN
978-1-85168-317-8
Nisargadatta Maharaj (1973), I Am That (Chetana
Publishing, Mumbai, India), ISBN 81-85300-53-4
(paperback).
Prabhat Rainjan Sarkar (1984), Human Society
. Vols. I and II. (Ananda Marga Publications,
Calcutta, India).
Sri Aurobindo (1984), The Life Divine, (Lotus
Press, Twin Lakes, Wisconsin, USA) ISBN 0-941524-61-2.
Surendranath Dasgupta (1969), Indian Idealism
(Cambridge University Press, New York, NY,
USA), ISBN 0-521-09194-2
Fritjof Capra (2002), The Tao of Physics:
An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern
Physics and Eastern Mysticism (Shambhala Publications
of Berkeley, California, USA), ISBN 1-57062-519-0.
Sohail Inayatullah (2001), Understanding P.
R. Sarkar: The Indian Episteme, Macrohistory
and Transformative Knowledge, (Leiden, Brill
Publishers) ISBN 90-04-12193-5.Further reading
Gustavus Watts Cunningham Idealistic Argument
in Recent British and American Philosophy
Books For Libraries Press, 1967
Hugh Joseph Tallon The concept of self in
British and American idealism Catholic University
of America Press, 1939
Gerald Thomas Baskfield The idea of God in
British and American personal idealism Catholic
University of America, 1933
Vergilius Ture Anselm Ferm A history of philosophical
systems Littlefield Adams, 1968 ISBN 0-8226-0130-3
== External links ==
Idealism at PhilPapers
Idealism at the Indiana Philosophy Ontology
Project
Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). "Idealism". Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
"German idealism". Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy.
A.C. Grayling-Wittgenstein on Scepticism and
Certainty
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures
by Mary Baker Eddy: idealism in religious
thought
Idealism and its practical use in physics
and psychology
'The Triumph of Idealism', lecture by Professor
Keith Ward offering a positive view of Idealism,
at Gresham College, 13 March 2008 (available
in text, audio and video download)
