idealism

/uy dee"euh liz'euhm/, n.

1. the cherishing or pursuit of high or noble principles, purposes, goals, etc.

2. the practice of idealizing.

3. something idealized; an ideal representation.

4. Fine Arts. treatment of subject matter in a work of art in which a mental conception of beauty or form is stressed, characterized usually by the selection of particular features of various models and their combination into a whole according to a standard of perfection. Cf. naturalism (def. 2), realism (def. 3a).

5. Philos.

a. any system or theory that maintains that the real is of the nature of thought or that the object of external perception consists of ideas.

b. the tendency to represent things in an ideal form, or as they might or should be rather than as they are, with emphasis on values.

[1790-1800; IDEAL + -ISM, prob. modeled on G Idealismus]

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In metaphysics, the view that stresses the central role of the ideal or the spiritual in the constitution of the world and in mankind's interpretation of experience.

Idealism may hold that the world or reality exists essentially as spirit or consciousness, that abstractions and laws are more fundamental in reality than sensory things, or, at least, that whatever exists is known to mankind in dimensions that are chiefly mental

that is, through and as ideas. Metaphysical idealism asserts the ideality of reality; epistemological idealism holds that in the knowledge process the mind can grasp only its own contents. Metaphysical idealism is thus directly opposed to materialism, and epistemological idealism is opposed to realism. Absolute idealism (see G. W. F. Hegel) includes the following principles: (1) the everyday world of things and persons is not the world as it really is but merely as it appears in terms of uncriticized categories; (2) the best reflection of the world is in terms of a self-conscious mind; (3) thought is the relation of each particular experience with the infinite whole of which it is an expression; and (4) truth consists in relationships of coherence between thoughts, rather than in a correspondence between thoughts and external realities (see coherentism). See also George Berkeley.

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▪ philosophy

Introduction

      in philosophy, any view that stresses the central role of the ideal or the spiritual in the interpretation of experience. It may hold that the world or reality exists essentially as spirit or consciousness, that abstractions and laws are more fundamental in reality than sensory things, or, at least, that whatever exists is known in dimensions that are chiefly mental—through and as ideas.

      Thus the two basic forms of Idealism are metaphysical Idealism, which asserts the ideality of reality, and epistemological (epistemology) Idealism, which holds that in the knowledge process the mind can grasp only the psychic or that its objects are conditioned by their perceptibility. In its metaphysics, Idealism is thus directly opposed to Materialism, the view that the basic substance of the world is matter and that it is known primarily through and as material forms and processes; and in its epistemology, it is opposed to realism, which holds that in human knowledge objects are grasped and seen as they really are—in their existence outside and independently of the mind.

      As a philosophy often expressed in bold and expansive syntheses, Idealism is also opposed to various restrictive forms of thought: to Skepticism, with occasional exceptions as in the British Hegelian F.H. Bradley (1846–1924); to Positivism, which stresses observable facts and relations as opposed to ultimates and therefore spurns the speculative “pretensions” of every metaphysic; and often to atheism, since the Idealist commonly extrapolates the concept of mind to embrace an infinite Mind. The essential orientation of Idealism can be sensed through some of its typical tenets: “Truth is the whole, or the Absolute”; “to be is to be perceived”; “reality reveals its ultimate nature more faithfully in its highest qualities (mental) than in its lowest (material)”; “the Ego is both subject and object.”

Approaches to understanding Idealism

      What Idealism is may be clarified by approaching it in three ways: through its basic doctrines and principles, through its central questions and answers, and through its significant arguments.

Basic doctrines and principles

      Six common, basic conceptions distinguish Idealistic philosophy:

The union of individuality and universality (universal)

      Abstract universals, such as “canineness,” which express the common nature or essence that the members of a class (e.g., individual dogs or wolves) share with one another, are acknowledged by all philosophers. Many Idealists, however, emphasize the concept of a concrete universal, one that is also a concrete reality, such as “mankind” or “literature,” which can be imagined as gatherable into one specific thing. As opposed to the fixed, formal, abstract universal, the concrete universal is essentially dynamic, organic, and developing. Thus universality and individuality merge.

The contrast between contemporaneity and eternity

      While most philosophers tend to focus on matters of contemporary concern, Idealists always seek a much wider perspective that embraces epochs and eras in the broad sweep of history. In the words of the 17th-century Rationalist Spinoza (Spinoza, Benedict de), they strive to view the contemporary world “under the aspect of eternity.” Thus, in spite of the extensive formative influence of culture, Idealists claim that their philosophy transcends the parochialism of a particular culture; and Idealisms are found, in fact, in all of the major cultures of the world.

The doctrine of internal relations and the coherence theory of truth

      It seems natural to suppose, as non-Idealists usually do, that the consideration of two things in their relatedness to one another can have no effect on the things themselves—i.e., that a relation is something in addition to the things or terms related and is thus external. On this basis, truth would be defined as a relation of correspondence between a proposition and a state of affairs. The Idealist believes, however, that reality is more subtle than this. The relationship between a mineral deposit and the business cycle, for example, is an internal one: the deposit changes to an ore when prices render it profitable to mine the mineral. Similarly, it is part of the essence of a brick that it is related to a wall or pavement. Thus terms and relations logically determine one another. Ultimate reality is therefore a system of judgments or propositions, and truth is defined in terms of the coherence of these propositions with one another to form a harmonious whole. Thus a successful spy is judged either a hero or a villain only in relation to a total system of international relations, an accepted philosophy of history, and the moral judgments involved. There are therefore degrees of reality and degrees of truth within a system of truth cohering by internal relations, and the truth of a judgment reflects its place in this system.

The dialectical (dialectic) method

      Idealism seeks to overcome contradictions by penetrating into the overall coherent system of truth and continually creating new knowledge to be integrated with earlier discoveries. Idealism is thus friendly to all quests for truth, whether in the natural or behavioral sciences or in art, religion, and philosophy. It seeks the truth in every positive judgment and in its contradictory as well. Thus it uses the dialectical method of reasoning to remove the contradictions characteristic of human knowledge. Such removal leads to a new synthetic judgment that incorporates in a higher truth the degree of truth that was present in each of the two lower judgments.

The centrality of mind in knowledge and being

      Idealism is not reductive, as are opposing philosophies that identify mind with matter and reduce the higher level of reality to the protons and electrons of mathematical physics. On the contrary, Idealism defends the principle that the lower is explained by the higher—specifically, that matter can be explained by mind but that mind cannot be explained by matter. The word spirit can be substituted for “mind” or even placed above it; and “ spiritualism” is often used, especially in Europe, as a synonym for Idealism.

The transmutation of evil into good

      Nearly all Idealists accept the principle that the evils with which man has to deal may become ingredients in a larger whole that overcomes them. The eminent American Hegelian Josiah Royce (Royce, Josiah) (1855–1916) held that the larger whole is the Absolute Mind, which keeps evils under control as a man might hold a viper under the sole of his boot. Along with this doctrine of the sublimation or transmutation of evil, Royce incorporated into his metaphysics a point from the 19th-century irrationalism of Schopenhauer (Schopenhauer, Arthur), itself a voluntaristic (voluntarism) form of Idealism, viz., that “the world is my idea.” Schopenhauer, however, was probably the only Idealist who defended the converse principle that good is transmuted into evil.

Basic questions and answers

      In defining philosophical Idealism in its historical development as a technical metaphysical doctrine, three most difficult and irreducible questions arise. From the efforts to answer these questions there has been created an extensive literature that is the corpus of philosophical Idealism.

Ultimate reality

      The first of the three questions is metaphysical: What is the ultimate reality that is given in human experience? Historically, answers to this question have fallen between two extremes. On the one hand is the Skepticism of the 18th-century Empiricist David Hume (Hume, David), who held that the ultimate reality given in experience is the moment by moment flow of events in the consciousness of each individual. This concept compresses all of reality into a solipsistic specious present—the momentary sense experience of one isolated percipient. At the other extreme, followers of the 17th-century Rationalist Spinoza adopted his definition of ultimate substance as that which can exist and can be conceived only by itself. According to the first principle of his system of pantheistic Idealism, God, or Nature, or Substance is the ultimate reality given in human experience. Hegel (Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich) said that this dogmatic absolutism was the lion's den into which all tracks enter and from which none ever returns. In answering the first question, most philosophical Idealists steer between Hume and Spinoza and in so doing create a number of types of Idealism, which will be discussed below.

The given

      The second question to arise in defining Idealism is: What is given? What results can be obtained from a logical interpretation and elaboration of the given? According to Idealists the result, though it is frequently something external to individual experience, is, nevertheless, a concrete universal, an order system (like the invisible lattice structure of a crystal), or an ideality in the sense explained earlier. In Hegel's words: “What is real is rational, and what is rational is real.” Idealists believe that the collective human spirit of intellectual inquiry has discovered innumerable order systems that are present in external, nonhuman reality, or nature, and that this collective creative intelligence has produced the various sciences and disciplines. This production has required a long period of time called history. But history was antedated by the achievements of ancestors who created languages and religions and other primitive institutions. Consequently, the logical interpretation and elaboration of the given is actually the complete transformation of the earth by its various inhabitants; so that the moon flights portend a similar transformation of the planetary system. An inherent part of the collective intelligence is the spiritual force that Idealists call the spirit of philosophy.

Change

      The third question is: What position or attitude is a thinker to take toward temporal becoming and change, and toward the presence of ends and values within the given? According to Idealists, reason not only discovers a coherent order in nature but also creates the state and other cultural institutions, which together constitute the cultural order of a civilized society. Idealistic political philosophers recognize the primacy of this cultural order over the private order or family and over the public order—the governing agencies and economic institutions. The conservation and enhancement of the values of all three orders is the basic moral objective of every civilized people. A useful distinction drawn by the German philosopher Ernst Cassier (Cassirer, Ernst) (1874–1946), a member of the late 19th- and 20th-century Marburg school of Neo-Kantianism (see below Types of philosophical idealism: Types classed by culture: Western types (Idealism)), between the efficient energies and the formative energies of a people emphasizes the way in which these moral forces function: the efficient energies are the conserving, and the formative are the creative forces in society. It is on the basis of this distinction that Idealists have made a contribution to international ethics, which charges that no nation has a right to use its efficient energies to exercise power over another civilized people except to further the formative energies of that people, to enrich their cultural order. Ethically, then, there can be no power over without power for; economic exploitation is wrong.

      Modern Idealists have also created an Idealistic philosophy of history. An eminent early 20th-century Italian Idealist, Benedetto Croce (Croce, Benedetto) (1866–1952), expressed it in the formula “every true history is contemporary history”; and at the same time in France a subjective Idealist, Léon Brunschvicg (Brunschvicg, Léon) (1869–1944), agreed. There are close relations between the philosophy of history and the philosophy of values.

Basic arguments

      Idealists delight in arguments. They agree with Socrates and Plato in thinking that every philosopher should follow the argument wherever it leads, and, like them, they believe that it will eventually lead to some type of Idealism. Four basic arguments found in the literature of Idealism may be briefly summarized.

The esse est percipi (to be is to be perceived) argument of Berkeley

      According to this argument all of the qualities attributed to objects are sense qualities. Thus hardness is the sensing of a resistance to a striking action, and heaviness is a sensation of muscular effort when holding the object in one's hand, just as blueness is a quality of visual experience. But these qualities exist only while they are being perceived by some subject or spirit equipped with sense organs. A classical 18th-century British Empiricist, George Berkeley (Berkeley, George) (1685–1753), rejected the idea that sense perceptions are caused by material substance, the existence of which he denied. Intuitively he grasped the truth that “to be is to be perceived.” The argument is a simple one, but it has provoked an extensive and complicated literature, and to some contemporary Idealists it seems irrefutable.

The reciprocity argument

      Closely related to the esse est percipi argument is the contention that subject and object are reciprocally dependent upon each other. It is impossible to conceive of a subject without an object, since the essential meaning of being a subject is being aware of an object and that of being an object is being an object to a subject, this relation being absolutely and universally reciprocal. Consequently, every complete reality is always a unity of subject and object—i.e., an immaterial ideality, a concrete universal.

The mystical (mysticism) argument

      In the third argument, the Idealist holds that in man's most immediate experience, that of his own subjective awareness, the intuitive self can achieve a direct apprehension of ultimate reality, which reveals it to be spiritual. Thus the mystic bypasses normal cognition, feeling that, for metaphysical probings, the elaborate processes of mediation interposed between sense objects and their perceptions reduces its reliability as compared to the direct grasp of intuition.

      It is significant that the claims of this argument have been made by numerous thinkers, in varying degrees Idealistic and mystical, living in different periods and in different cultures. In ancient Greece, for example, it was made by Plato, to whom the final leap to the Idea of the Good was mystical in nature. In Indian Hindu (Hinduism) Vedānta philosophy it was made by the 9th-century monistic theologian Śánkara, by the 12th-century dualistic Brahmin theist Rāmānuja, and by the philosopher-president of India Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. In Buddhism the claims were made by the sometimes mystical, extreme subjectivism of the Vijñānavāda school of Mahāyāna (represented by Aśvaghoṣa in the 1st and Asaṅga in the 4th century) and in China by the Ch'an school and by the 7th-century scholar Hui-neng, author of its basic classic The Platform Scripture. In Islāmic lands it was made by Ṣūfīs (mystics)—in particular, by the 13th-century Persian writer Jalāl ad-Dīn ar-Rūmī. And in the recent West it was made by several distinguished Idealists: in Germany, by the seminal modern theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834); in France, by the evolutionary intuitionist Henri Bergson (1859–1941), by the philosopher of action Maurice Blondel (1861–1949), and by the Jewish religious Existentialist Martin Buber (1878–1965); and in English-speaking countries, by the Scottish metaphysician James Frederick Ferrier (1808–64) and the American Hegelian William E. Hocking (1873–1966).

The ontological argument

      This famous argument originated as a proof of the existence of God. It came to the 11th-century Augustinian, St. Anselm of Canterbury (Anselm of Canterbury, Saint), as an intuitive insight from his personal religious experience that a being conceived to be perfect must necessarily exist, for otherwise he would lack one of the essentials of perfection. God's perfection requires his existence. Some Idealist philosophers have generalized the argument to prove Idealism. They distinguish conceptual essences that exist only in the intellect from categorial essences that actually exist in re (in the thing). Every actual reality, therefore, is a unity of one or more categorial essences and existence; and again, this means that it is an immaterial ideality or concrete universal. According to Hegel “the ideality of the finite” is “the main principle of philosophy.”

Types of philosophical Idealism

      Several types of Idealism have already been distinguished. Some modern types should now be mentioned, classified first by cultures and then by branches of philosophy.

Types classed by culture

      Cultural differences suggest a division into Western and Oriental Idealisms.

Western types

      Berkeley's Idealism is called subjective idealism because he reduced reality to spirits (his name for subjects) and the ideas entertained by spirits. In Berkeley's philosophy the apparent objectivity of the world outside the self was accommodated to his subjectivism by claiming that its objects are ideas in the mind of God. The foundation for a series of more objective Idealisms was laid in the late 18th century by Immanuel Kant (Kant, Immanuel), whose epochal work Kritik der reinen Vernunft (2nd ed., 1787; Critique of Pure Reason, 1929) presented a formalistic or transcendental (transcendental ego) Idealism, so named because Kant thought that the human self, or “transcendental ego,” constructs knowledge out of sense impressions, upon which are imposed certain universal concepts that he called categories. Three systems constructed in the early 19th century by, respectively, the moral Idealist J.G. Fichte (Fichte, Johann Gottlieb), the aesthetic Idealist F.W.J. Schelling (Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von), and the dialectical Idealist G.W.F. Hegel, all on a foundation laid by Kant, are called objective Idealisms in contrast to Berkeley's subjective Idealism. The designations, however, are not consistent; and when the contrast with Berkeley is not at issue, Fichte himself is often called a subjective Idealist, inasmuch as he exalted the subject above the object, employing the term ego to mean God in the two memorable propositions: “The Ego posits itself” and “The Ego posits the non-Ego (or nature).” And in contrast now to the subjective Idealism of Fichte, Schelling's is called an objective Idealism and Hegel's an absolute Idealism.

      All of these terms form backgrounds for contemporary Western Idealisms, most of which are based either on Kant's transcendental Idealism or on those of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. Exceptions are those based on other great Idealists of the past—Plato, Plotinus, Spinoza, Leibniz, and others. A revised form of Spinoza's spiritual monism, for example, which held that reality is one Substance to be identified with God, has been formulated by the Idealist logician H.H. Joachim (1868–1938), a follower of the British Hegelian F.H. Bradley (Bradley, F H).

      Unwilling to accept any of the above titles, one school of modern Idealists adopted the motto “Back to Kant” and are thus called Kantian (Kantianism) Idealists. Edward Caird (Caird, Edward) (1835–1908), who imported German Idealism into England, and the German philosopher of “As If,” Hans Vaihinger (Vaihinger, Hans) (1852–1933), who held that much of man's so-called knowledge reduces to pragmatic fictions, were Kantian Idealists or transcendentalists. On this tradition are based the Idealism of the austerely religious essayist Thomas Carlyle (Carlyle, Thomas) (1795–1881) in Sartor Resartus (1833–34) and the New England transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Emerson, Ralph Waldo) (1803–82). It must be stated, however, that Kant preferred the name critical Idealism to that of transcendental Idealism.

      Another group of Idealists, adopting the motto “From Kant forward,” founded the so-called Marburg school of Neo-Kantian, or scientific, Idealism. They rejected the Idealisms of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel and the classical Newtonian dynamics presupposed by Kant and built instead upon the new quantum and relativity theories of modern physics. Founded by Hermann Cohen (Cohen, Hermann) (1842–1918), champion of a new interpretation of Kant, and his colleague, the Platonic scholar Paul Natorp (1854–1924), who applied Kant's critical method to humanistic as well as to scientific studies, this school underwent a remarkable development, especially under the leadership of Ernst Cassirer, noted for his profound analyses of man defined as that animal that creates culture through a unique capacity for symbolic representation. The Russian novelist Boris Pasternak, in his Autobiography, tells of enrolling in Cohen's graduate seminar on Kant at the University of Marburg. Undoubtedly this type of Idealism continues to wield considerable influence on intellectuals in Soviet Russia.

      Theistic Idealism was founded by the medical instructor R.H. Lotze (Lotze, Rudolf Hermann) (1817–81), who became a broadly learned metaphysician and whose theory of the world ground, in which all things find their unity, has been widely accepted by theistic philosophers and Protestant theologians. To Lotze, the world ground is the transcendent synthesis of an evolutionary world process, which is both mechanical and teleological (purposive); it is an infinite spiritual being, or God. In England, the absolute Idealism of T.H. Green (Green, T H) (1836–82), a philosopher influenced chiefly by Plato and Kant, was shared by his disciple, the more Hegelian thinker Bernard Bosanquet (Bosanquet, Bernard) (1848–1923), whose views are based upon Lotze's Idealism, and by the somewhat skeptical metaphysician of the movement, F.H. Bradley (1846–1924).

      Theistic absolutism is represented by a pioneer of contemporary philosophical theology, F.R. Tennant (Tennant, Frederick Robert) (1866–1957), and by the eminent German-American theologian Paul Tillich (Tillich, Paul) (1886–1956). It differs from the personalistic form of absolute Idealism in accepting the traditional theological monotheism that is essential to the Jewish, Christian, and Islāmic religions. It revives classic arguments for the existence of God that were rejected by Kant and uses recent advances in the physical, biological, and behavioral sciences to support these revisions. The cosmological argument, for example, is restated as the continuing relation of the cosmos to a world ground that is spiritual in essence; thus the concept of God as a first cause is rejected. The concept of the fitness of the environment to life and to human history and other recent scientific concepts are used to modernize the teleological argument. Nevertheless, all of this revision is kept within the framework of Idealistic metaphysics and epistemology. A theistic spiritual pluralism, which interprets reality in terms of a multitude of interacting psychic monads (elementary units), was developed by the English philosopher James Ward (Ward, James) (1843–1925). On the other hand, an atheistic spiritual pluralism, which holds that reality consists entirely of individual minds and their contents, was espoused by the Cambridge Hegelian J.M. Ellis McTaggert (1866–1925).

      During the late 19th century a movement known as American Hegelian Idealism arose in the United States. The movement found vigorous early expression in the work of W.T. Harris (Harris, William Torrey) (1835–1909), central figure in a midwestern group of scholars known as the St. Louis school and editor of its Journal of Speculative Philosophy, and finds current expression in the recently organized Hegel Society of America. In its later development, American Idealism split into two branches: one, of the aforementioned Bradley–Bosanquet type, and a second, of the Royce–Hocking type, so called because it was founded by one of America's most distinguished philosophers, the absolute Idealist and personal pantheist Josiah Royce (1855–1916), and developed by his disciple W.E. Hocking (1873–1966). The American philosopher of religion Borden Parker Bowne (1847–1910) founded another important American school, that of personalism, a Kantian- and Lotzean-based variety of theistic Idealism similar to the spiritual pluralism of Ward. Whereas most previous Idealisms had stressed the rational as the highest category of reality and hence as its paradigm, Personalism saw in the centred structures of personhood, both finite and infinite, an even higher category, displaying dimensions richer than the rational alone. Personalism has had an influential development in America, most notably through the Methodist philosopher E.S. Brightman (Brightman, Edgar Sheffield) (1884–1953), known for his defense of the doctrine of a finite God, and through The Personalist, edited by one of Bowne's disciples, R.T. Flewelling (1871–1960). Personalism is also found in the French philosopher C.B. Renouvier (Renouvier, Charles-Bernard) (1815–1903) and in several Latin American philosophers.

      To the above types should be added the vitalism or creative evolutionism of the French anti-intellectualist Henri Bergson (Bergson, Henri) (1859–1941), which first found in the apprehension of subjective time a more valid insight into reality than in that of an objective space–time order and then, extending this metaphysics to the cosmic level, discerned there an Idealistic élan vital (or vital impetus) that is more fundamental than matter, which subsequently appeared in the role of a husk born of the mechanization of the élan. In this same tradition, the voluntarism of Maurice Blondel (Blondel, Maurice) (1861–1949), a unique theory of belief in God as a live option that must be deliberately willed by the self before it can be found to be true in experience, is an important contribution to Idealistic philosophy. Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (Unamuno, Miguel de) (1864–1936), a Spanish philosopher, developed a unique type of Idealism, more literary than philosophical. He stressed the significance of each individual and argued for personal immortality.

Eastern types

      For centuries, philosophical Idealism has dominated the philosophy of India. An Idealism that is quite influential in Japan is that of Nishida Kitarō, a distinguished Berlin-trained philosopher. Prior to World War II, Kitarō created a system of absolute Idealism that employed the dialectical method of Hegel to clarify the Zen Buddhist doctrine of nothingness, which, in his view, is that of which all phenomenal existences are determinations and in which they all appear.

      Some classical types of Indian and Chinese Idealism were considered above (see The mystical argument (Idealism)). A number of gifted Indian and Chinese scholars have restated and revitalized the principles and arguments of classic Oriental Idealisms in an extensive literature.

      Probably the major recent proponent of Indian (Indian philosophy) Idealism has been Radhakrishnan (Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli), who has spent a long lifetime expounding and defending its mystical types and has presented authoritative analyses of all of its classical systems. He saw his modernized Idealism as destined to save civilization from exploitation by Western commercial technology. Surendranath Dasgupta, an outstanding Sanskrit and Pāli scholar, in a monumental work, has revived the classic systems of Indian Idealism, concluding that “Idealism has not only been one of the most dominant phases of Indian thought in metaphysics, epistemology, and dialectics, but it has also very largely influenced the growth of the Indian ideal as a whole.” Ghose Aurobindo (Aurobindo, Śrī), reinterpreting the Indian Idealistic heritage in the light of his own Western education, rejected the māyā doctrine of illusion, replacing it with the concept of evolution. Arguing that the “illumination of individuals will lead to the emergence of a divine community,” Aurobindo founded the influential Pondicherry Ashram, a religious and philosophical community, and headed it until his death. Late in the 19th century, Swami Vivekananda (Vivekananda), a spiritual monist, promulgated the Idealistic philosophy of mystical Brahmanism in lectures on the Vedānta delivered and published widely.

      The inwardness of subjectivity of Indian Idealism has been contrasted with the outwardness of Western objective Idealism, and a synthesis of the two has been advocated in comparative studies made by P.T. Raju, an Indian philosopher who has taught both in Indian universities and in the U.S.

      Prior to World War II, Sir Rabindranath Tagore (Tagore, Rabindranath), a distinguished Hindu Idealist poet and Nobel laureate, contributed to what Dasgupta has called the “Indian ideal as a whole.” A selection from Tagore's aphorisms will convey its spirit:

Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.

Our little heaven, where dwell only two immortals, is too absurdly narrow.

Is it then true that the mystery of the Infinite is written on this little forehead of mine?

Where is this hope for union except in thee my God?

Raise my veil and look at my face proudly, O Death, my Death.

All is done and finished in the eternal Heaven. But Earth's flowers of illusion are kept externally fresh by death.

If my claims to immortal fame after death are shattered, make me immortal while I live.

This I know that the moment my God has created me he has made himself mine.

      In addition to the Ch'an and Hui-neng schools mentioned above (see The mystical argument (Idealism)), three other notable Idealistic schools (Chinese philosophy) have flourished in China. Representing one wing of the Neo-Confucian (Neo-Confucianism) movement of the 11th and 12th centuries, Ch'eng Hao (Cheng Hao) and his disciple, the rationalist Chu Hsi (Zhu Xi), developed a dualistic philosophy that has been compared to Cartesianism. In this view, however, reason takes precedence over matter and the two together are the primary cause of the universe or the absolute; thus this view is essentially Idealistic. At the turn of the 15th century, a more purely Idealistic school arose—forming the other wing of Neo-Confucianism—under the leadership of Wang Yang-ming (Wang Yangming), who, having had an inner experience of enlightenment, sought to understand the cosmos within his own mind and heart. The third school is that of the 20th-century Idealist Hsung Shih-li, who, borrowing to some extent from Wang Yang-ming, proclaimed a “new doctrine of consciousness only,” of which the basic ideas are the unity of substance and function and the primacy of the original Mind. To Hsung Shih-li, reality and all of its manifestations are one, and the original Mind is will and consciousness as well as reason.

Types classed by branches of philosophy

      Another way of classifying Idealisms is to use branches of philosophy to distinguish the various types. Such types, however, overlap those given above.

      A term that covers several of the above types (the spiritual, theistic, and Hegelian; Personalism; vitalism) is metaphysical Idealism. A.N. Whitehead (Whitehead, Alfred North) (1861–1947), noted for his collaboration with Bertrand Russell in mathematical logic and for his process metaphysics, who was profoundly influenced by Bradley, created an original Idealistic philosophy of science, a highly complicated form of metaphysical Idealism; and the leading metaphysician Charles Hartshorne (Hartshorne, Charles) (1897– 2000) may be regarded as a representative of Whiteheadian Idealism, although rightly claiming originality. Epistemological Idealism, of which the Kantian scholar N.K. Smith's (1872–1958) Prolegomena to an Idealist Theory of Knowledge is an excellent example, covers all Idealistic theories of epistemology, or knowledge. Aesthetic Idealism is devoted to philosophical theories of beauty in nature and in all forms of art. Because Schelling claimed that art is the best approach to an understanding of philosophy, his system is designated aesthetic Idealism. Axiological Idealism is a name referring to such philosophies as those of Wilbur M. Urban (1873–1952) and others who have developed Idealistic theories of value and valuation. Ethical Idealism deals with moral values, rights, and obligations. Several of the above-mentioned philosophers, such as Fichte and Green, as well as the Plato scholar A.E. Taylor (1864–1945), the theistic pluralist Hastings Rashdall (1858–1924), and the absolutist W.R. Sorley (1855–1935), could be called ethical Idealists in the sense that they have produced well-thought-out systems of ethics. The writings of the German philosopher of life and action Rudolf Eucken (1846–1926) provide an excellent example of ethical Idealism.

      These classifications are not exhaustive. The actual existence of so many types of philosophical Idealism, however, proves its fertility and ubiquity.

Criticism and appraisal

      Obviously, some of the types of Idealism in the above classifications conflict with one another. For example, spiritual monism and spiritual pluralism are opposite types; Personalism rejects absolute Idealism; and atheistic spiritual pluralism is in sharp conflict with theistic spiritual pluralism. These and other debatable issues keep Idealists in dialogue with each other, but each type tends to preserve itself.

      Over against these internal disputes stand the criticisms of the anti-Idealists. The wide-ranging Realist Ralph Barton Perry's (Perry, Ralph Barton) (1876–1957) article “The Ego-Centric Predicament” (1910) is a widely discussed criticism. Perry admitted that the primary approach of every philosopher to the problem of ultimate reality must be through his own thought, using his own ideas; but this is a human predicament that has been unjustifiably exploited by the Idealists, according to Perry, and turned into the “fallacious” esse est percipi argument.

      The famous “Refutation of Idealism” prepared by the meticulous Cambridge philosopher G.E. Moore (Moore, G E) (1873–1958) and a similar refutation by the Realist Bertrand Russell (Russell, Bertrand) (1872–1970) rest upon the distinction between a subject's act of perceiving and the perceptual object of this act, which they both called a “sense datum.” They claimed that Berkeley's esse est percipi argument is vitiated by his failure to make this distinction.

      Logical Positivism claims that a basic weakness in Idealism is its rejection of the doctrine of empirical verifiability, according to which every proposition that claims to be true must be verified by searching out the sense experience in which its terms originated. Linguistic philosophy attacks Idealism by making a detailed analysis of its more technical terms in an effort to prove that they are full of ambiguities and double meanings. Critics have also severely attacked the ontological and the mystical arguments for Idealism. Karl Marx (Marx, Karl) (1818–83) and his followers borrowed and adapted the dialectical argument of Hegel and used it effectively to develop dialectical materialism, an archenemy of all Idealisms. Buttressed by the political endorsements of various Communist regimes, Marxism poses a formidable opposition to Idealism; and even in the non-Communist countries of Europe it presents a significant cultural alternative to spiritualism and Thomism.

      Idealists consider all of the foregoing criticisms to be external. Instead of answering them in detail, some Idealists prefer to challenge the critics to make really constructive efforts to build an adequate substitute for Idealism—a system to be reached by seriously working at the problems from within philosophy. So far a satisfactory substitute has not been achieved. To produce such a substitute would require careful reconsideration of the arguments of at least some of the above Idealistic systems.

      In evaluating the effects of these criticisms and attacks, the question remains: Will they succeed in eradicating philosophical Idealism? Although it is now on the wane, at least in Western culture, the great Idealist tradition has survived many other historic periods of turmoil and has often been reborn in prolonged periods of settled and peaceful social conditions. Will it rise again? Only the future holds the answer. But Idealism shows evidence of being, perhaps, a reflection of some permanent aspect of the human spirit, and it may then be a perennial philosophy. In any case, it seems highly unlikely that such a rich heritage of philosophical thought will vanish entirely.

Daniel Sommer Robinson

Additional Reading

The two best books on Idealism in English are A.C. Ewing, Idealism: A Critical Survey (1933); and R.F.A. Hoernle, Idealism as a Philosophy (1927). A.C. Ewing (ed.), The Idealist Tradition from Berkeley to Blanshard (1957), is a useful volume containing selections from the texts of the major Idealists and selected criticisms of Idealism. Other important collections are C. Barrett (ed.), Contemporary Idealism in America (1932); J.H. Muirhead (ed.), Contemporary British Philosophy: Personal Statements, First–Second Series, 2 vol. each (1924); and G.P. Adams and W.P. Montague (eds.), Contemporary American Philosophy, 2 vol. (1930). Works on the history and theory of the subject include: B. Blanshard, Reason and Analysis (1962), a careful critical examination of schools of philosophy opposed to Idealism; G.W. Cunningham, The Idealistic Argument in Recent British and American Philosophy (1933), a thorough and dependable treatise; S.N. Dasgupta, Indian Idealism (1933); Nicolai Hartmann, Die Philosophie des Deutsches Idealismus, vol. 1, Fichte, Schelling, und die Romantik (1923), vol. 2, Hegel (1929), 2nd ed. (1 vol., 1960); A.J.M. Milne, The Social Philosophy of English Idealism (1962); J.H. Muirhead, The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Philosophy: Studies in the History of Idealism in England and America (1931); P.T. Raju, Idealistic Thought of India (1953); L.S. Rouner (ed.), Philosophy, Religion, and the Coming World Civilization: Essays in Honor of William Ernest Hocking (1966); and A. Stern, Philosophy of History and the Problem of Values (1962), a good secondary source.On the classical systems of Indian philosophy, see S. Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, 2 vol. (1923–27), an authoritative exposition; S.N. Dasgupta, A History of Indian Philosophy, 5 vol. (1922–55), an erudite examination of the Sanskrit and Pāli texts; Indian Idealism (1933); Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine (1949), a reinterpretation of the heritage; and Swami Vivekananda, The Yogas and Other Works (1953), a collection with biography. In Pragmatism (1907) and in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), William James quoted Vivekananda at length as a typical representative of spiritual monism. In the Sacred Books of the East, 50 vol., ed. by F. Max Muller (1879–1910), see especially vol. 1 and 15, The Upanishads and vol. 8, The Bhagavadgîtâ. In the Harvard Oriental Series, 47 vol., ed. by Charles Rockwell Lanman (1890–1968), see especially vol. 3, Buddhism in Translations, and vol. 17, The Yoga-System of Patañjali.Writings of Idealists are listed in their biographies. P.A. Schilpp, editor of “The Library of Living Philosophers Series,” has issued several important volumes on Idealists: The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, 2nd ed. (1951); The Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer (1949); The Philosophy of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1962); The Philosophy of Martin Buber (1967); and The Philosophy of Brand Blanshard (1980). Other works on Idealists include: J.H. Cotton, Royce on the Human Self (1954), one of the best books on Royce; D.S. Robinson, Royce and Hocking: American Idealists (1968); and Gabriel Marcel, La Métaphysique de Royce (1945; Eng. trans., 1956), which shows the relation of Marcel to Royce and Hocking. H.T. Kim, “Nishida and Royce,” Philosophy East and West, 1:18–29 (1952), and “The Logic of the Illogical: Zen and Hegel,” ibid., 5:19–29 (1955), are informative accounts of Nishida's contributions to Idealism. The following volumes of the Revue Internationale de Philosophie contain valuable bibliographies: Henri Bergson, vol. 3 (1948); Léon Brunschvicg, vol. 5 (1951); Hegel, vol. 6 (1952); George Berkeley, vol. 7 (1953); Benedetto Croce, vol. 7 (1953); Kant, vol. 8 (1954); Whitehead, vol. 15 (1961); Leibniz, vol. 20 (1966); and Josiah Royce, vol. 21 (1967). Godfrey Vesey (ed.), Idealism Past and Present (1982), includes historical essays on idealistic thought of the past 2,500 years.

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