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IDEALISM and ITS TYPES in the Popular Mind the Term Idealist Has a Meaning Which Is Quite Different from the Philosophical Use of the Term

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IDEALISM and ITS TYPES in the Popular Mind the Term Idealist Has a Meaning Which Is Quite Different from the Philosophical Use of the Term IDEALISM and ITS TYPES In the popular mind the term idealist has a meaning which is quite different from the philosophical use of the term. Popularly, the word may mean: (1) One who accepts and lives by lofty moral, aesthetic, and religious standards. Such a man is said to be a man of ideals, or an idealist. (2) One who is able to see and to advocate some plan or program which does not yet exist. Every social reformer and prophet is an idealist in this sense because he is supporting that which has not yet come into existence. Those who work for permanent peace or for the elimination of poverty may be called idealists. The term may be used in a complimentary sense, meaning that which is excellent of its kind. It may be used as a term of reproach. For example, a person may be called a "fanatical idealist" if he stands for what other persons believe to be unattainable goals or if he seems to ignore the "facts" and practical conditions of any situation. The philosophical meaning of the term idealism is determined more by the meaning of the terms idea and mind than by the term ideal. Professor W. E. Hocking, an idealist, says that for sense the term "idea-ism would be more to the point. " The letter has been inserted for euphonious reasons. Idealism asserts that reality is akin to ideas, thought, mind, or selves rather than to material forces. WHAT IDEALISM IS Idealism is a way of interpreting human experience and the world which places emphasis on mind as in some way prior to matter. Just as materialism emphasizes matter, so idealism stresses mind. Whereas materialism says that matter is the real and mind is an accompanying phenomenon, idealism contends that mind is real and matter is in a sense a by-product. On the negative side, idealism is a denial that the world is basically a great machine to be interpreted in terms of matter and mechanism or in terms of energy and the physical sciences alone. More positively, idealism is a world view or a metaphysics which holds that the basic reality is constituted of, or closely related to, mind, ideas, thought, or selves. The real is the rational and the intelligible. The world has a meaning apart from its surface appearance. The approach to the meaning of things is through the self rather than through an objective analysis of nature. The world is interpreted by means of a study of the laws of thought and of consciousness and not exclusively by means of objective science. Since the universe has a meaning, there is a kind of inner harmony between the world and man. What is "highest in spirit" is also "deepest in nature." Man is "at home" in the universe and not an alien or a mere creature of chance, since the universe is in some sense a logical and a spiritual system. The self is not an isolated entity; it is a genuine part of the world process. This process at its high levels manifests itself as creativity, mind, and selves, or persons. Man, as a part of the cosmos, expresses its inner structure in his own life. Nature, or the objective world, is real in the sense that it exists and demands our attention and adjustment to it. Nature, however, is not sufficient in and of itself since it depends to a certain degree upon mind. In nature we find matter, life, mind, and values. Idealists believe that nature is to be interpreted in terms of its later and higher manifestations rather than in terms of its earlier and lower ones. Idealists are willing to let the physical scientists tell us what matter is providing they do not reduce everything in the world to that category. They are willing to let the biological sciences describe 1 life and its processes providing they do not reduce all other levels to the biological or the physiological. Idealists stress the organic unity of the world process. Whole and parts cannot be separated except by a dangerous abstraction. There is an inner unity, an unfolding series of levels, from matter to vegetable forms, through animals to man, mind, and spirit. Thus a central principle of idealism is that of organic wholeness. TYPES OF IDEALISM SUBJECTIVE IDEALISM This type of idealism is sometimes called mentalism or even phenomenalism. It is the least significant and prevalent type and the one most frequently attacked by opponents of idealism. Minds or spirits and their perceptions or ideas are all that exist. The "objects" of experience are not material things; they arcf merely perceptions. Things such as buildings and trees exist, butf they have no independent existence apart from a mind that per-/ ceives them. The subjective idealist does not deny the existence of what we call the "real" world; the question at issue is not its existence but how it is to be interpreted. It is not independently real apart from a knower. No one can get outside or beyond his own experience. This type of idealism is probably best represented by George Berkeley (1685-1753), an Irish philosopher. Berkeley accepted the psychology of John Locke (i 632-1 704), who said that our knowledge deals only with ideas. Locke accepted the existence of spiritual substance, ideas, and material substance. He distinguished between the primary qualities of matter (form, extension, solidity, figure, motion, number, and so on) and secondary qualities (colors, sounds, tastes, odors, and the like). The secondary qualities are not in the material substance; they are in the mind or they are the way in which the primary qualities affect the mind or knower. The secondary qualities vary from person to person. Berkeley went further than Locke and attempted to show that the primary qualities have no existence apart from minds. Berkeley insisted that the arguments used by Locke to prove the subjectivity of secondary qualities apply equally well to the primary qualities. For Berkeley, minds and ideas are therefore all that exist. Esse est percepi, "to be is to be perceived," is the center of his philosophy. An idea, according to Berkeley, is an object known. Objects exist only as they are perceived. There is no distinction between primary qualities and secondary qualities, since both are in the mind. All that is real is a conscious mind or some perception or idea held by such a mind. How, he asks, could we speak of anything that was other than an idea or a perception? When we assert that we can imagine objects existing when they are not seen, and that men do believe in the independent existence of an external world, Berkeley tells us that the order and consistency of the world of nature is due to active spirit, even though I, as an individual, am not responsible for it. God is the author and the governing spirit of nature, and God's will is the Law of Nature. He determines the succession and the order of our ideas. This explains why we cannot determine what we shall .see when we open our eyes. When we say that any object exists, we mean that it is perceived by some mind. The subjectivist holds, then, that there can be no object without a knower; that the subject (mind or knower) in some way creates its object (matter, or thing known); and that all that is real must be a conscious mind or a perception by such a mind. To say that a thing exists is merely to say that it is perceived. What anything would or could be 2 apart from its being known, no one can think or say. What we see or think is a mental fact, and the world is a mental world. .Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is a phenomenalist who stands about midway between the subjective and the objective idealists. Since his world is in some sense a mind-made world, let us make the transition to objective idealism through his interpretation. For Kant there are three realms. There is the inner world of subjective states, which is a purely personal world and not a realm of knowledge. There is the outer world of ultimate reality, the noumenon, which is unknown and unknowable, Man's contact with this world is through the sense of duty or the moral law. There is also the world of nature or phenomenon, which is the realm of human knowledge. According to Kant, the mind has an innate way of working. Form and order are thrust on nature by the mind. Sensory experience merely furnishes the content. The mind is active; it forms into a system of knowledge the raw material brought in by the senses. Just as the potter takes the formless clay and fashions it into one form or another, so the mind forms or organizes the material of the senses. Thus our thoughts regarding the world are determined in large part by the structure of the mind. The understanding prescribes its laws to nature. OBJECTIVE IDEALISM A large number of idealists, from Plato to Hegel and the present, reject subjectivism, or mentalism, and also the view that the world is in any real sense man-made. They do not accept the principle of esse est percipi ("to be is to be perceived"). They regard the organization and form of the world, and hence knowledge, as determined by the nature of the world itself. The mind discovers what there is in the order of the world. They are idealists in that they interpret the universe as an intelligible order whose systematic structure is expressive of rational order and value.
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