Idealism
Idealism in philosophy, also known as philosophical idealism or metaphysical idealism, is the set of metaphysical perspectives asserting that, most fundamentally, reality is equivalent to mind, spirit, or consciousness; that reality or truth is entirely a mental construct; or that ideas are the highest type of reality or have the greatest claim to being considered "real". Because there are different types of idealism, it is difficult to define the term uniformly.
Indian philosophy contains some of the first defenses of idealism, such as in Vedanta and in Shaiva Pratyabhijña thought. These systems of thought argue for an all-pervading consciousness as the true nature and ground of reality. Idealism is also found in some streams of Mahayana Buddhism, such as in the Yogācāra school, which argued for a "mind-only" philosophy on an analysis of subjective experience. In the West, idealism traces its roots back to Plato in ancient Greece, who proposed that absolute, unchanging, timeless ideas constitute the highest form of reality: Platonic idealism. This was revived and transformed in the early modern period by Immanuel Kant's arguments that our knowledge of reality is completely based on mental structures: transcendental idealism.
Epistemologically, idealism is accompanied by a rejection of the possibility of knowing the existence of any thing independent of mind. Ontologically, idealism asserts that the existence of all things depends upon the mind; thus, ontological idealism rejects the perspectives of physicalism and dualism. In contrast to materialism, idealism asserts the primacy of consciousness as the origin and prerequisite of all phenomena.
Idealism came under attack from proponents of analytical philosophy, such as G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, but its critics also included the new realists and Marxists. However, many aspects and paradigms of idealism still have a large influence on subsequent philosophy.
Definitions
Idealism is a term with several related meanings. It comes via Latin idea from the Ancient Greek idea from idein, meaning "to see". The term entered the English language by 1743. The term idealism was first used in the abstract metaphysical sense of the "belief that reality is made up only of ideas" by Christian Wolff in 1747. The term re-entered the English language in this abstract sense by 1796. A. C. Ewing gives this influential definition:the view that there can be no physical objects existing apart from some experience...provided that we regard thinking as part of experience and do not imply by "experience" passivity, and provided we include under experience not only human experience but the so-called "Absolute Experience" or the experience of a God such as Berkeley postulates.
A more recent definition by Willem deVries sees idealism as "roughly, the genus comprises theories that attribute ontological priority to the mental, especially the conceptual or ideational, over the non-mental." As such, idealism entails a rejection of materialism as well as the rejection of the mind-independent existence of matter.
There are two main metaphysical concepts on the position of idealism in contemporary philosophy, depending on whether its thesis is ontological or epistemic:
- Ontological idealism is the view which holds that all of reality is in some way mental or at least ultimately grounded in a fundamental basis which is mental. This is a form of metaphysical monism because it holds that there is only one type of thing in existence. The modern paradigm of a Western metaphysical idealism is Berkeley's immaterialism. Other such idealists are Hegel, and Bradley.
- Epistemological idealism is a position in epistemology that holds that all knowledge is based on mental structures, not on "things in themselves". Whether a mind-independent reality is accepted or not, all that we have knowledge of are mental phenomena. The main source of Western epistemic idealist arguments is the transcendental idealism of Kant. Other thinkers who have defended epistemic idealist arguments include Ludwig Boltzmann and Brand Blanshard.
These two ways of arguing for idealism are sometimes combined to defend a specific type of idealism, but they may also be defended as independent theses by different thinkers. For example, while F. H. Bradley and McTaggart focused on metaphysical arguments, Josiah Royce, and Brand Blanshard developed epistemological arguments.
Furthermore, one might use epistemic arguments, but remain neutral about the metaphysical nature of things in themselves. This metaphysically neutral position, which is not a form of metaphysical idealism proper, may be associated with figures like Rudolf Carnap, Quine, Donald Davidson, and perhaps even Kant himself. The most famous kind of epistemic idealism is associated with Kantianism and transcendental idealism, as well as with the related Neo-Kantian philosophies. Transcendental idealists like Kant affirm epistemic idealistic arguments without committing themselves to whether reality as such, the "thing in itself", is ultimately mental.
Types of ontological idealism
Within ontological idealism, there are numerous further sub-types, including forms of pluralism, which hold that there are many independent mental substances or minds, such as Leibniz' monadology, and various forms of monism or absolute idealism, which hold that the fundamental mental reality is a single unity or is grounded in some kind of singular Absolute. Beyond this, idealists disagree on which aspects of the mental are more metaphysically basic. Platonic idealism affirms that ideal forms are more basic to reality than the things we perceive, while subjective idealists and phenomenalists privilege sensory experiences. Personalism, meanwhile, sees persons or selves as fundamental.A common distinction is between subjective and objective forms of idealism. Subjective idealists like George Berkeley reject the existence of a mind-independent or "external" world. However, not all idealists restrict the real to subjective experience. Objective idealists make claims about a trans-empirical world, but simply deny that this world is essentially divorced from or ontologically prior to mind or consciousness as such. Thus, objective idealism asserts that the reality of experiencing includes and transcends the realities of the object experienced and of the mind of the observer.
Idealism is sometimes categorized as a type of metaphysical anti-realism or skepticism. However, idealists need not reject the existence of an objective reality that we can obtain knowledge of, and can merely affirm that this real natural world is mental. Thus, David Chalmers writes of anti-realist idealisms and realist forms of idealism, such as "panpsychist versions of idealism where fundamental microphysical entities are conscious subjects, and on which matter is realized by these conscious subjects and their relations."
Chalmers further outlines the following taxonomy of idealism:
Micro-idealism is the thesis that concrete reality is wholly grounded in micro-level mentality: that is, in mentality associated with fundamental microscopic entities. Macro-idealism is the thesis that concrete reality is wholly grounded in macro-level mentality: that is, in mentality associated with macroscopic entities such as humans and perhaps non-human animals. Cosmic idealism is the thesis that concrete reality is wholly grounded in cosmic mentality: that is, in mentality associated with the cosmos as a whole or with a single cosmic entity.Guyer et al. also distinguish between forms of idealism which are grounded in substance theory and forms of idealism which focus on activities or dynamic processes.
Classical Greek idealism
Pre-Socratic philosophy
There are some precursors of idealism in Ancient Greek Philosophy, though scholars disagree on whether any of these thinkers could be properly labeled "idealist" in the modern sense.One example is Anaxagoras who taught that all things in the universe were set in motion by nous. In the Phaedo, Plato quotes him as saying, "it is intelligence that arranges and causes all things". Similarly, Parmenides famously stated that "thinking and being are the same" in fragment B3, where he writes: "For thinking and being are the same", which more accurately can be translated as "For apprehending and being are the same" or "For being aware and being are the same" This has led some scholars, such as Hegel and E. D. Phillips, to label Parmenides an idealist.
Platonism and neoplatonism
's theory of forms or "ideas" as described in dialogues like Phaedo, Parmenides and Sophist, describes ideal forms, as perfect beings which "exists-by-itself", that is, independently of any particular instance. Anything that exists in the world exists by participating in one of these unique ideas, which are nevertheless interrelated causally with the world of becoming, with nature. Arne Grøn calls this doctrine "the classic example of a metaphysical idealism as a transcendent idealism". Nevertheless, Plato holds that matter as perceived by us is real, though transitory, imperfect, and dependent on the eternal ideas for its existence. Because of this, some scholars have seen Plato as a dualist, though others disagree and favor a monist account.The thought of Plato was widely influential, and later Late Platonist thinkers developed Platonism in new directions. Plotinus, the most influential of the later Platonists, wrote "Being and Intellect are therefore one nature". According to scholars like Nathaniel Alfred Boll and Ludwig Noiré, with Plotinus, a true idealism which holds that only soul or mind exists appears for the first time in Western philosophy. Similarly, for Maria Luisa Gatti, Plotinus' philosophy is a "'contemplationist metaphysics', in which contemplation, as creative, constitutes the reason for the being of everything". For Neoplatonist thinkers, the first cause or principle is the Idea of the Good, i.e. The One, from which everything is derived a hierarchical procession .