Idealism

This article is about the philosophical notion of Idealism. Idealism is also a term in international relations theory and in Christian eschatology.

History

Idealism names a number of philosophical positions with quite different tendencies and implications.

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Plato

Plato proposed an idealist theory as a solution to the problem of universals. A universal is that which all things share in virtue of having some particular property. So for example the wall, the moon and a blank sheet of paper are all white; white is the universal that all white things share. Plato argued that it is universals, The Forms, or Platonic Ideals that are real, not specific individual things. Confusingly, because this idea asserts that these mental entities are real, it is also called Platonic realism; in this sense realism contrasts with nominalism, the notion that mental abstractions are merely names without an independent existence. Nevertheless, it is a form of idealism because it asserts the primacy of the idea of universals over material things.

Related Topics:
Plato - Problem of universals - The Forms - Platonic Ideals - Platonic realism - Nominalism

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Plotinus

Schopenhauer wrote of this Neoplatonist philosopher: "With Plotinus 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 (Enneads, iii, lib. vii, c.10) that the soul has made the world by stepping from eternity into time, with the explanation: 'For there is for this universe no other place than the soul or mind' (neque est alter hujus universi locus quam anima), indeed the ideality of time is expressed in the words: 'We should not accept time outside the soul or mind' (oportet autem nequaquam extra animam tempus accipere)." (Parerga and Paralipomena, Volume I, "Fragments for the History of Philosophy," § 7)

Related Topics:
Schopenhauer - Neoplatonist - Plotinus - Western philosophy - East - Enneads - Soul - World - Eternity - Time - Universe - Mind

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Malebranche

If the only things that we know for certain are the ideas within our mind, then the existence of the external world would be dubious and known only indirectly. Malebranche, however, disagreed. He declared that the real external world is actually God. All activity only appears to occur in the external world. In actuality, it is the activity of God. For Malebranche, we directly know internally the ideas in our mind. Externally, we directly know God's operations. This kind of idealism led to the pantheism of Spinoza.

Related Topics:
Malebranche - Spinoza

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George Berkeley

Bishop Berkeley, in seeking to find out what we could know with certainty, decided that our knowledge must be based on our perceptions. This led him to conclude that there was indeed no "real" knowable object behind one's perception, that what was "real" was the perception itself. This subjective idealism or dogmatic idealism led to his placing the full weight of justification on our perceptions. This left Berkeley with the problem, common to other forms of idealism, of explaining how it is that each of us apparently has much the same sort of perceptions of an object. He solved this problem by having God intercede, as the immediate cause of all of our perceptions.

Related Topics:
Bishop Berkeley - Perceptions - Subjective idealism - Dogmatic idealism - Justification - God

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Schopenhauer wrote: "Berkeley was, therefore, the first to treat the subjective starting-point really seriously and to demonstrate irrefutably its absolute necessity. He is the father of idealism...." (Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. I, "Fragments for the History of Philosophy," § 12)

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Arthur Collier

Arthur Collier published the same assertions that were made by Berkeley. However, there seemed to have been no influence between the two contemporary writers. Collier claimed that the represented image of an external object is the only knowable reality. Matter, as a cause of the representative image, is unthinkable and therefore nothing to us. An external world, as absolute matter, unrelated to an observer, does not exist for human perceivers. As an appearance in a mind, the universe cannot exist if there is no perceiving mind.

Related Topics:
Arthur Collier - Berkeley

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Collier was influenced by John Norris's An Essay Towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World 1701. The idealist statements by Collier were generally dismissed by readers who were not able to reflect on the distinction between a mental idea or image and the object that it represents.

Related Topics:
John Norris - Essay Towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World - 1701

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Jonathan Edwards

Edwards, an American theologian, went to Yale University in 1716 at the age of thirteen. After reading Locke's doctrine of ideas, he kept a notebook entitled "Mind." In it, he wrote, at the age of fourteen, that the only things that are real are minds. He contended that matter exists only as an idea in a mind. Due to his theological manner of thinking, he asserted that space is God, due to its infinity. After adolescence, he never elaborated on these early idealistic notes.

Related Topics:
Yale University - 1716 - Locke - Matter - Idea

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Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant held that the mind forces the world we perceive to take the shape of space-and-time. Kant focused on the idea drawn from British empiricism, and its philosophers such as Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, that all we can know is the mental impressions, or phenomena, that an outside world which may or may not exist independently creates in our minds; our minds can never perceive that outside world directly. Kant's postscript to this added that the mind is not a "blank slate", but comes equipped with categories for organising our sense impressions. This Kantian sort of idealism opens up a world of abstractions to be explored by reason, but in sharp contrast to Plato's, leaves only uncertainties about a knowable world outside our own minds. We cannot approach the noumenon, the "Thing in Itself" (German: Ding an Sich) outside our own mental world. This sort of idealism goes by the equally counterintuitive name of transcendental idealism (Transcendental Idealism).

Related Topics:
Immanuel Kant - Empiricism - Locke - Berkeley - Hume - Phenomena - Blank slate - Categories - Noumenon - German - Transcendental idealism

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Hegel

Hegel, another philosopher whose system has been called idealism, thought that history must be rational in something significantly like the way science is. His famous dictum is that "the Real is Rational"; reason is the arbiter that shapes the world as it is, and gives us access to what is real. Hegel's idealism posits that since ideas about reality are products of the mind, there must be a mind at work in the universe that establishes reality and gives it structure. Hegelian idealism goes by the name of absolute idealism.

Related Topics:
Hegel - The Real is Rational - Reason - Mind - Absolute idealism

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Schopenhauer

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 there is only a representation or mental picture of an object. We directly and immediately know only these representations. All objects that are external to the mind are known indirectly through the mediation of our mind.

Related Topics:
Parerga and Paralipomena - Schopenhauer - History - Ideal - Real - Knowledge - Consciousness - World - Representation - Mind

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Schopenhauer's history is an account of the concept of the "ideal" in its meaning as "ideas in a subject's mind." In this sense, "ideal" means "ideational." He does not refer to the other meaning of "ideal" as being qualities of the highest perfection and excellence.

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12:56, 16 September 2005 (UTC)Toby Shandy

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British idealism

British idealism enjoyed ascendancy in English-speaking philosophy in the later part of the 19th century. F. H. Bradley of Merton College, Oxford, saw reality as a monistic whole, which is apprehended through "feeling", a state in which there is no distinction between the perception and the thing perceived. Bradley was the apparent target of G. E. Moore's radical rejection of idealism.

Related Topics:
British idealism - F. H. Bradley - Merton College - Oxford - Monistic - G. E. Moore

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J. M. E. McTaggart of Cambridge University, argued that minds alone exist, and that they only relate to each other through love. Space, time and material objects are for McTaggart unreal. He argued, for instance, in The Unreality of Time that it was not possible to produce a coherent account of a sequence of events in time, and that therefore time is an illusion.

Related Topics:
J. M. E. McTaggart - Cambridge University - Space - Time - The Unreality of Time

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Karl Pearson

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."

Related Topics:
The Grammar of Science - 1900 - Karl Pearson - Materialism - Einstein - Mind - Consciousness

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