Ideal (philosophy)

“ You have an ideal whereby you desire to judge the world. But this ideal you found in its turn on the fact that somebody has a certain sort of emotion. Any one who has not this emotion you declare to be an incompetent judge. And so your last foundation for the ideal is something whose worth is to be demonstrated solely by the fact that it exists. Thus in this and in the last chapter, in general and in particular discussions, we have found the one problem recurring. The ideal is to have an ideal foundation, yet we seem always to give it a foundation in some reality. ”

“ You have found that you are in possession of an ideal. You cannot get away from that ideal save by repeating the very process that has brought you to it. Your moral insight is attained, and the foundation of your doctrine is no longer a particular aim that is accepted by a mere caprice of one individual, but it is the necessary aim that arises in the mind of any one who actually realizes the warfare of the particular aims. It is the ideal of ideals. It is the absolute ideal that arises for you out of the consideration of the separate ideals. ”

“ You had said that an ideal must have only an ideal foundation. And now you say that the ideally right thing depends on God’s nature, on the existence of the universal Reason, or on the assertions of Conscience. ”

“ We have in the first place to consider the general character of the classic Ideal, which possesses what is pertinent to humanity in its form no less than its content, and elaborates both sides in the completest consistency one with the other. ”

“ If the ideal either does exist, or some day will exist, so much the better; but through all the changes of fate the terrible ought remains, and judges fearlessly the world, whether it be good or whether it be evil. But here the realist, to whom the moral code that is not built on natural fact is just a dream, interposes what shall just here be his final objection. ”

“ But if ideal- ism is to receive rigid theoretical tests, we may still, in view of our present discussion and its needs, be helped on our way more directly if we first consider very generally and briefly what idealism could do for us if it were established, thereafter going on to the theoretical consideration of its claims. ”

“ The opposition of the ideal and the real has given rise to two conflicting opinions. Some conceive of the ideal as something vague, an abstract, lifeless generality, without individuality. Others extol the natural, the imitation of the real in the most minute and prosaic details. ”

“ The Ideal is consequently the reality selected out of the mass of chance particulars, in so far as the inner core in this external totality thus raised in opposition to universality is itself manifested as living individuality. ”

“ The simple and unriven totality of the Ideal is dissolved, and breaks up into one of twofold aspect, namely, that of the essentially subjective life and its exterior semblance, in order to enable mind, by means of this severation, to win the profounder reconciliation in its own most proper element. ”

“ We find the principle by means of the universal doubt, and it is this method of procedure that distinguishes the foregoing discussion of the basis of morals from many of those that have previously been concerned with this problem. To point out that the average man, or the reputed saint, or the inspired prophet, or the great poet, or the reader himself, whenever he is enthusiastic has or has had a given ideal, is not to justify this ideal. ”

“ And yet from out the bosom of it a partial ideality constantly arises which keeps alive our aspiration that the whole may some day be construed in ideal form. Not only do the materials lend themselves under certain circumstances to æsthetic manipulation, but underlying their worst disjointedness are three great continua in which for each of us reason's ideal is actually reached. ”

“ For our general belief in the infinite rationality of things is useless to supersede any jot or tittle of careful scientific study of the common world of experience. Be this aspect of the matter well understood. Some older forms of idealism have looked coldly on experience. Ours does not. To us, if you want to realize your ideal you must know the means, you must study applied ethics as well as the ideal itself ”

“ The ethical manifold, conceived of as unified, furnishes, or rather is, the ideal of the whole. ”

“ Philosophy is a kind of journey, ever learning, yet never arriving at the ideal perfection of truth. ”

“ The Platonic idealist is the man by nature so wedded to perfection that he sees in everything not the reality but the faultless ideal which the reality misses and suggests. ”

“ To believe in an ever-living and perfect Mind, supreme over the universe, is to invest moral distinctions with immensity and eternity, and lift them from the provincial stage of human society to the imperishable theatre of all being. When planted thus in the very substance of things, they justify and support the ideal estimates of the conscience ”

“ But that is idealism, you will say, and this is an only too practical world. I grant it; but I am one of those who believe that the real will never find an irremovable basis till it rests on the ideal. ”

“ The human mind—an important thing to say at this minute—has a greater need of the ideal even than of the real.
It is by the real that we exist; it is by the ideal that we live. ”

“ What our estimate of the world, of life and of our civilization will be must depend, of course, upon our values, upon our standards, upon our ideal, upon what we really prize. Hence, in order to understand our philosopher and his iconoclasm, we must understand his fundamental proposition, his basal thought, his ideal, the standard with which he approaches things. ”

“ Closely connected with this moral end is the more purely intellectual aim of education, the endeavour to make us see and imagine the world in an objective manner, as far as possible as it is in itself, and not merely through the distorting medium of personal desire. The complete attainment of such an objective view is no doubt an ideal, indefinitely approachable, but not actually and fully realisable. ”

“ Where the realist falsely sunders the what and the that, the outer world and the individual soul, the theoretical and the practical interests, the mystic sees the unity of life’s business, identifies the needful and the true, unites the moral Ought with the theoretical Ideal, teaches that the absolutely Real, by virtue of its very function as the Real, must also be the absolutely Good, gives life a genuine coherence of meaning, and defines the whole duty of man as simple fidelity to that meaning. ”

“ The uses of his intellect for practical affairs are therefore subordinate matters. 'The theoretic life' is his soul's genuine concern." Nothing can be more different in its results for our personal attitude than to take sides with one or the other of these views, and emphasize the practical or the theoretical ideal. In the latter case, abstraction from the emotions and passions and withdrawal from the strife of human affairs would be not only pardonable, but praiseworthy; and all that makes for quiet and contemplation should be regarded as conducive to the highest human perfection. ”

“ LESSON XVII. IDEALS DEVELOPED BY CONCENTRATION Through our paltry stir and strife, Glows the wished Ideal, And longing molds in clay, what life Carves in the marble real.—Lowell.
We often hear people spoken of as idealists. The fact is we are all idealists to a certain extent, and upon the ideals we picture depends our ultimate success. You must have the mental image if you are to produce the material thing. Everything is first created in the mind. When you control your thoughts you become a creator. You receive divine ideas and shape them to your individual needs. ”

“ By learning to control our ideals we learn to distinguish between an ideal and a fixed idea and to live by rather than die for them. The book takes up in turn the origin, nature, and function of human ideals and the supreme worth of the individual and of human life. ”

“ It is, in fact, the view which Reason, both speculative and practical, that is, philosophy and virtue, take. For, seen in the light of thought, the world always is phenomenal; and virtue subordinates it to the mind. Idealism sees the world in God. It beholds the whole circle of persons and things, of actions and events, of country and religion, not as painfully accumulated, atom after atom, act after act, in an aged creeping Past, but as one vast picture, which God paints on the instant eternity, for the contemplation of the soul. ”

“ The devotion to the ideal in us presupposes therefore the most strenuous and persistent effort to learn these modes of control, to understand the deep and intricate ways of life, and to bend every power—of mind and body, of science and art—to bring life into harmony with their fundamental demands. ”

“ When we call a state of things ‘ideal’ we may mean three distinct things, which have only this in common: that we always do mean to assert, of the state of things in question, not only that it is good in itself, but that it is good in itself in a much higher degree than many other things. The first of these meanings of ‘ideal’ is (1) that to which the phrase ‘The Ideal’ is most properly confined. ”

“ The Moral Ideal to those who have most deeply reflected on it leads to the thought of an Ideal beyond and above it, which alone gives it meaning, but which seems to escape from definite conception by man. ”

“ It is the end we aim at, the object we strive for, the ideal we set before us, that gives value to what we do, and to what has been done by us and others. Now our ends, our objects, and our ideals are matters of the will, on which the will is set, and not merely matters of which we have intellectual apprehension. ”

“ We have none of that tiresome business of establishing the relation between the mind and its own ideal object, or the discriminating between the ideal thing-in-itself and the mind of which it is the content. ”

“ An ideal, for instance, must be something intellectually conceived, something of which we are not unconscious, if we have it; and it must carry with it that sort of outlook, uplift, and brightness that go with all intellectual facts. ”

“ But, by way of parenthesis, there is no reason to boast in a general way of the sincere aim at truth and the pure mind for the ideal, alleged to prevail in the modern literature of our times, especially in philosophical literature. ”

“ Every such ideal realized will be one moment in the world's salvation. But these particular ideals are not bare abstract possibilities. They are grounded, they are LIVE possibilities, for we are their live champions and pledges, and if the complementary conditions come and add themselves, our ideals will become actual things. ”

“ The first of these questions only, the ideal theory answers. Idealism saith: matter is a phenomenon, not a substance. Idealism acquaints us with the total disparity between the evidence of our own being, and the evidence of the world's being. The one is perfect; the other, incapable of any assurance; the mind is a part of the nature of things; the world is a divine dream, from which we may presently awake to the glories and certainties of day. Idealism is a hypothesis to account for nature by other principles than those of carpentry and chemistry. ”

“ Subjectively every ideal is the ideal of "some one," an ideal of a conscious, personal, and living entity. Objectively every ideal must be embodied in "some one": and must be a standard, a measure, a rhythm, of various energies synthesized in a living soul. ”

“ This philosophy considers the true, the beautiful, the good, as ideas which exist by themselves, without a supreme Spirit of which they are the manifestation. It has received, in consequence, the name of idealism. ”

“ He was the first to place an ideal—his highest conception of good—before himself, and say, "Now for this will I strive;" the first of all the long line of sentient beings to aspire after a higher life ”

“ The ideal is imaginary, and ordinarily unattainable; the standard is concrete, and ordinarily attainable, being a measure to which all else of its kind must conform; as, the standard of weights and measures, of corn, or of cotton. The idea of virtue is the mental concept or image of virtue in general; the ideal of virtue is the mental concept or image of virtue in its highest conceivable perfection. ”

“ It is to say, rather, that the vital straining towards an ideal, definite but latent, when it dominates a whole life, may express that ideal more fully than could the best-chosen words. ”

“ For, as I shall strive to show in a succeeding chapter, the essence of man's life as spiritual, that is as intelligent and moral, is its self-realizing activity. Intellectual and moral life is progress, although it is the progress of an ideal which is real and complete, the return of the infinite to itself through the finite. The cessation of the progress of the ideal in man, whereby man interprets the 145 world in terms of himself and makes it the instrument of his purposes, is intellectual and moral death. ”

“ Thus it is that ideals are a living, vital agency in unfolding the latent virtues of man and so shaping his character.
Hence we may perceive that in these three addresses we have, if I may use the ambitious expression, a full chart of our life — its right methods, its favourable circumstances and its ultimate realisation. Cultivate your self, sparing no pains. Seek and imbibe lofty ideals, drawing no invidious distinction between one and another. And realise that character in which alone lies the justification of human life and the gurantee of human continuity. ”

“ Nevertheless, the psychological conception of an ideal man in an ideal state is a most fascinating one, alike to the philanthropist whose heart broadens out to all humanity, and to the philosopher who aims at absolute perfection of moral or political theory. ”

“ They may be quite real to the sensibilities and yet hardly admit of being formulated. And, too, the evident contrast between the ideals aimed at, and the results attained, is often so great that one hesitates to say in so many words just what is his ideal. ”