Idealism

IDEALISM

IDEALISM. As a philosophical concept, idealism can be employed both in a broad sense and in a much narrower, more specific form. Broadly speaking, idealism encompasses any philosophy that treats ideas—rather than, for example, matter—as primary. Plato's theory of forms is perhaps the first example of this approach. When applied more specifically, idealism is the notion that the only things that exist are minds and their contents (ideas). This theory was first fully developed by Bishop George Berkeley (1685–1753).

Plato drew a clear distinction between the sensory world and the intelligible world, which we can only apprehend through reason. He argued that the objects of the sensory world are mere copies of universal, ideal "forms," that make up the realm of what is intelligible. Plato's theory was subsequently taken up and developed by the Neoplatonists, especially Plotinus and St. Augustine. To some extent, Berkeley's idealism built on these earlier theories, but it also drew on and challenged scientific understandings of the world that had been developed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Berkeley set out his philosophy in his Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710). Three years later he published his Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, a more accessible version of the theory, in which Philonous ('lover of mind') convinces and converts Hylas ('matter') to his point of view. Both works were, in part, a response to John Locke's (1632–1704) Essay concerning Human Understanding (1689). Locke's explanation of the world relied on four key elements, God, matter, ideas, and minds. While Berkeley expressed great respect for Locke, he rejected the doctrine of matter that Locke, along with many others, accepted. According to Berkeley matter in itself is unintelligible; it is impossible for us to either observe or imagine matter alone, devoid of all other qualities or characteristics. Moreover, Berkeley argued that an adequate explanation of the world could be given on the basis of the other three elements alone, in Berkeley's terminology God, finite spirits, and their ideas. Berkeley defined "ideas" as the objects of perception and "spirits" as the entities that exercise perception. Within this system the existence of an infinite spirit, God, which is both omniscient and omnipresent, is crucial.

Berkeley's theory had a mixed reception. The story is that Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) claimed to be able to refute it simply by kicking a stone, but others took it more seriously. There has been much discussion as to whether (and to what extent) Berkeley influenced Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). In his Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781; Critique of pure reason) Kant attacked Berkeley's traditional version of idealism and advocated a combination of "empirical realism" and "transcendental idealism." Both philosophers saw all experience as mind-dependent. However, for Berkeley there was nothing beyond or outside of mind, whereas Kant retained the regulative idea of "things-in-themselves" lying behind experience.

Idealism continued to be important beyond the early modern period. During the nineteenth century the ideas of Berkeley and especially of Kant provided a basis for the absolute idealism of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1764–1814) and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). Despite a subsequent collapse in the influence of this position, idealism continues to be advocated into the twenty-first century, though usually in forms that are closer to Kant than to Berkeley.

See also Berkeley, George ; Kant, Immanuel ; Philosophy .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Berkeley, George. Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues. Edited by Howard Robinson. Oxford and New York, 1996.

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1998. Translation of Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781).

Secondary Sources

Urmson, J. O. Berkeley. Oxford and New York, 1982.

Vesey, Godfrey, ed. Idealism Past and Present. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1982. See especially the foreword and the first three chapters.

Rachel Hammersley