Idealism (philosophy)

“ Can the philosopher find the true heart and essence of this our common selfhood? If he can, then idealism becomes a system. We are, then, all in one world of truth. The outer world is indeed show, but no illusion; and our life has an organic fixity, a lawful completeness about it, such as every philosophy longs for.
But now, unfortunately, when idealists set about deducing this unity and consistency of the spiritual world from some deep inner principle, their reflection always leaves us in one great respect dissatisfied. ”

“ Now I have not myself the least objection to idealism,—an hypothesis which voluminous considerations make plausible, and whose difficulties may be cleared away any day by new discriminations or discoveries. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Take idealism and materialism as examples of what I mean, and suppose for a moment that both give a conception of equal theoretic clearness and consistency, and that both determine our expectations equally well. Idealism will be chosen by a man of one emotional constitution, materialism by another. At this very day all sentimental natures, fond of conciliation and intimacy, tend to an idealistic faith. Why? Because idealism gives to the nature of things such kinship with our personal selves. Our own thoughts are what we are most at home with, what we are least afraid of. ”

“ The word "idealism" is used by different philosophers in somewhat different senses. We shall understand by it the doctrine that whatever exists, or at any rate whatever can be known to exist, must be in some sense mental. ”

“ He learns to value the beautiful far above the merely useful; the inner life above mere existence, a genuine spiritual culture above the mere perfecting of natural and social conditions. There is brought into view a new and deeper life in which the emphasis is placed upon the good, the beautiful, and the true. In this way idealism has inspired many men to put forth their energies for the highest aims, has lifted the individual above the narrowness of a life devoted to himself alone, and has produced characters of exceptional beauty and strength. ”

“ But a partial idealism sought to carry out the principle that nothing can come into the mind which had not at least been preformed within it, that all its [Pg 212] knowledge is furnished it by itself. ”

“ 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 ”

“ By Absolute Idealism is meant that system of philosophy which defines the universe as the absolute spirit, which is the human moral, cognitive, or appreciative consciousness universalized; or as the absolute, transcendental mind, whose state of complete knowledge is implied in all finite thinking. ”

“ The grounds on which idealism is advocated are generally grounds derived from the theory of knowledge, that is to say, from a discussion of the conditions which things must satisfy in order that we may be able to know them. ”

“ But idealism makes knowledge, thought, the ego, its point of departure and then proceeds to show how experience, i.e. certain definite forms of knowledge, arises. The ego can contain nothing (known or thought) which is not posited by the activity of the ego. ”

“ And thus the conception of the necessary unity of all that is resolves itself into the poverty of imagination, and a freer logic emancipates us from the strait-waistcoated benevolent institution which idealism palms off as the totality of being. ”

“ By understanding the world I mean being equal to the world. It is the hard reality of living that is the essential, not the concept of life, that the ostrich-philosophy of idealism propounds. ”

“ From the very councils of absolute idealism there has issued a distinction which is fast becoming current, between the World of Appreciation, or the realm of moral and logical principles, and the World of Description, or the realm of empirical generalizations and mechanical causes. ”

“ In contrast to Realism, Idealism represents a few years of history and has been confined to a limited civilization, yet for profundity of insight into the meaning of life Idealism is the consummation of human reflection. ”

“ You may observe already, even in this wholly preliminary sketch of the particular form of Idealism to be developed in these lectures, two principal features. First, Our account of the nature of Being, and of the relation between Idea and Being, is to be founded explicitly upon a theory of the way in which ideas possess their own meaning. Secondly, Our theory of the nature of Meaning is to be founded upon a definition in terms of Will and Purpose. We do not indeed say, Our will causes our ideas. But we do say, Our ideas now imperfectly embody our will. ”

“ Now why I mention these two points is that when engaged in the intricacies of philosophic discussion, we are apt to overlook the vastness of the difference between this idealistic view and the ordinary view of the world, and to overlook the number of different propositions which the idealist must prove. It is, I think, owing to the vastness of this difference and owing to the number of different excellencies which Idealists attribute to the universe, that it seems such an interesting and important question whether Idealism be true or not. ”

“ A compromise between idealism and realism is everywhere necessary; and such a compromise is made, despite all fine words to the contrary, by every one,—by one only more openly or consciously than another. ”

“ It is unnecessary to multiply instances to prove that idealism was never without a protest that there is a heart of existence, life, will, action, which is presupposed by all knowledge and is not itself amenable to explanation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Is not every moral theory dependent in truth on a theory of things? Is it possible for us to make for ourselves our ideal, and only afterwards to go to the real world and to see if our ideal is realized? ”

“ In developing a criticism of the scientific scheme of the eighteenth century, I must first give my main reason for ignoring nineteenth century idealism—I am speaking of the philosophic idealism which finds the ultimate meaning of reality in mentality that is fully cognitive. ”

“ But I raise the standard of idealism, to try everything by it, every custom, every thought before we make it our own, and every sentiment before it finds a place in our hearts. Are these conditions, social and mental, which some would have us strive for really so admirable as we are assured they are? Are they worth having at all? What of the heroic best of man ”

“ Thus defined, idealism is opposed to ordinary common-sense dualism, which regards knowledge or experience as the result of the more or less accidental relation between two separate and independent entities—the mind and its ideas on one side, the thing with its attributes on the other—that serve to limit and condition each other from without. ”

“ But as shown to us in imagination, idealism, which is the race's dream of truth, hovers between these two worlds known to us in tendency if not in conclusion,—the world of salvation on the one hand, in proportion as the order of life is made vital in us, the world of damnation on the other hand, in proportion as the order of death prevails in our will; but the main effort of idealism is to show us the war between the two, with an emphasis on the becoming of the reality of beauty, joy, reason, and virtue in us. ”

“ We pride ourselves upon being realistic, desiring a hardheaded cognizance of facts, and devoted to mastering the means of life. We pride ourselves upon a practical idealism, a lively and easily moved faith in possibilities as yet unrealized, in willingness to make sacrifice for their realization. ”

“ It is not meditation, though it may be its fruit. Whatever idealism may be in philosophical definition, in life it is the desire and the attempt to put into practice conceptions of what ought theoretically to be accomplished in this imperfect world ”

“ Where should we find more counterbalancing, more starting and stopping, warming and cooling, combining and separating 113than in an organism? And if these processes can be stated only in propositions that are "manifestly contradictory," are we to understand that truth has errors for its constituent elements? Such paradoxes have always delighted the soul of absolute idealism. But, as we have seen, only the veil of an infinitesimal finitude intervenes between the logic of the objective universal of absolute idealism and the objective logic of analytic realism. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But this purity of perception implies a rupture with useful convention, an innate and specially localized disinterestedness of the sense or of the consciousness, in short, a certain immateriality of life which is what has always been called idealism. So one might say without in the least playing upon the sense of the words, that realism is in the work when idealism is in the soul, and that it is by force of ideality alone that one can regain contact with reality. ”

“ Transcendental idealism, of course, insists that its ideal world makes this difference, that facts exist. We owe it to the Absolute that we have a world of fact at all. “A world” of fact!—that exactly is the trouble. An entire world is the smallest unit with which the Absolute can work, whereas to our finite minds work for the better ought to be done within this world, setting in at single points. ”

“ With these empirical elements, idealism is guarded from that mystical infatuation which, little by little, gains and seizes it when it is wholly alone, and brings it into discredit with sound and severe minds. ”

“ It suffices to point out that the value of this theory is bound up with the genuineness of the problem of which it purports to be a solution. If the basic concept is a fiction, there is no call for the solution. The more important point is to perceive how far the "thought" which figures in objective idealism comes from meeting the empirical demands made upon actual thought. Idealism is much less formal than historic rationalism. ”

“ Idealism, that view of the universe which, in opposition to Materialism (q. v.) , refers everything to and derives everything from a spiritual root; is Subjective if traced no further back than the ego, and Objective if traced back to the non-ego likewise, its counterpart, or other, in the objective world. Idealism in art is art more or less at work in the region of the ideal in comparative disregard of the actual. ”

“ In my original paper, I expressly pointed out that the “possibilities of experience,” in so far as they remained bare possibilities, are as unintelligible as the realist’s “things in themselves.” Idealism cannot pause half-way without falling a helpless prey to the counter-dialectics of the realists. Our Idealism, as we first stated it, both in the original paper and in the earlier portion of the present review, is just such a half-way Idealism. In presence of the realistic counter-arguments, it is helpless to defend its positive assertion. ”

“ Psychological conception of idealism.8. This distinction has been employed by psychology in refutation of what it conceives to be idealism. Idealism, according to psychology, is founded on a refusal to recognise the primary qualities of matter as clearly distinguishable from the secondary. It is supposed to confound the two classes under a common category, or rather to reduce the primary qualities to the same character and condition as the secondary—to resolve extension, figure, and solidity, no less than heat, and colour, and sound, into mere modifications of the sentient subject. ”

“ Shall we then simply proclaim our own ideals as the lawgiving ones? No; for if we are true philosophers we must throw our own spontaneous ideals, even the dearest, impartially in with that total mass of ideals which are fairly to be judged. ”

“ Traditional watchwords are not of much use. 51 Theoretical idealism itself may turn out to be a most formidable stumbling-block. Yet no one can doubt that a solution of the problem, whenever it is arrived at, must come along the path of idealism. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Those laws or properties of human nature which appertain to man as a mere individual, and do not presuppose, as a necessary condition, the existence of other individuals (except, perhaps, as mere instruments or means) , form a part of the subject of pure mental philosophy. They comprise all the laws of the mere intellect, and those of the purely self-regarding desires. ”