Ridling Zaine. Philosophy: Then and Now. A look back at 26 centuries of thought

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Ridling, Philosophy Then and Now: A Look Back at 26 Centuries of Thought

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the French philosopher C.B. Renouvier (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 (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 (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 (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 Kitaro, a

distinguished Berlin-trained philosopher. Prior to World War II, Kitaro

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.

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Some classical types of Indian and Chinese Idealism were considered

above. 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 Idealism has been

Radhakrishnan, 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 Pali 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, reinterpreting the Indian

Idealistic heritage in the light of his own Western education, rejected the maya

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, a spiritual monist, promulgated the

Idealistic philosophy of mystical Brahmanism in lectures on the Vedanta

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.

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Prior to World War II, Sir Rabindranath Tagore, 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, three

other notable Idealistic schools have flourished in China. Representing one

wing of the Neo-Confucian movement of the 11th and 12th centuries, Ch’eng

Hao and his disciple, the rationalist Chu Hsi, 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

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wing of Neo-Confucianism – under the leadership of Wang Yang-ming, 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

(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 (1897- ) 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

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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 (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

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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 (1873-1958) and a similar refutation by

the Realist Bertrand Russell (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 (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 (q.v.) 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

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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.

Materialism

The word Materialism has been used in modern times to refer to a family

of metaphysical theories (i.e., theories on the nature of reality) that can best be

defined by saying that a theory tends to be called Materialism if it is felt

sufficiently to resemble a paradigmatic theory that will here be called

mechanical Materialism. This section covers the various types of Materialism

and the ways by which they are distinguished and traces the history of

Materialism from the Greeks and Romans to modern and contemporary

Materialisms.

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Types of Materialist Theory

Mechanical Materialism is the theory that the world consists entirely of

hard, massy material objects, which, though perhaps imperceptibly small, are

otherwise like such things as stones. (A slight modification is to allow the

void – or empty space – to exist also in its own right.) These objects interact

in the sort of way that stones do: by impact and possibly also by gravitational

attraction. The theory denies that immaterial or apparently immaterial things

(such as minds) exist or else explains them away as being material things or

motions of material things.

Types Distinguished by Departures from the Paradigm

In modern physics (if interpreted realistically), however, matter is

conceived as made up of such things as electrons, protons, and mesons, which

are very unlike the hard, massy, stonelike particles of mechanical Materialism.

In it the distinction between matter and energy has also broken down. It is

therefore natural to extend the word Materialist beyond the above paradigm

case (of mechanical Materialism) to cover anyone who bases his theory on

whatever it is that physics asserts ultimately to exist. This sort may be called

physicalistic Materialism. Such a Materialist allows the concept of material

thing to be extended so as to include all of the elementary particles and other

things that are postulated in fundamental physical theory – perhaps even

continuous fields and points of space-time. Inasmuch as some cosmologists

even try to define the elementary particles themselves in terms of the

curvature of space-time, there is no reason why a philosophy based on such a

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geometricized cosmology should not be counted as Materialist, provided that

it does not give an independent existence to nonphysical things such as minds.

Another sort of departure from the paradigm leads in the direction of

what might be called a deistic Materialism. In this view it would be allowed

that, although there is a spiritual Creator of the universe, he does not interfere

with the created universe, which is itself describable in terms of mechanical or

physicalist Materialism.

Still another departure from the paradigm is the theory that holds that

everything is composed of material particles (or physical entities generally)

but also holds that there are special laws applying to complexes of physical

entities, such as living cells or brains, that are not reducible to the laws that

apply to the fundamental physical entities. (To avoid inconsistency, such a

theory may have to allow that the ordinary laws of physics do not wholly

apply within such complex entities.) Such a theory, which could be called

“emergent Materialism,” can shade off, however, into theories that one would

not wish to call Materialist, such as hylozoism, which ascribes vital

characteristics to all matter, and panpsychism, which attributes a mindlike

character to all constituents of material things.

Another common relaxation of the paradigm is that which allows as

compatible with Materialism such a theory as epiphenomenalism, according to

which sensations and thoughts do exist in addition to material processes but

are nonetheless wholly dependent on material processes and without causal

efficacy of their own. They are related to material things somewhat in the way

that a man’s shadow is related to the man. A similar departure from the

paradigm is a form of what might be called “double-aspect Materialism,”

according to which in inner experience men are acquainted with nonphysical

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properties of material processes, though these properties are not causally

effective. A form of double-aspect theory in which these properties were

allowed to be causally effective would be a species of emergent Materialism.

Of course, more than one of these qualifications might be made at the

same time: thus a person might wish to speak of “physicalist deistic

epiphenomenalist Materialism.” If no other qualifications are intended, it is

convenient to use the word extreme and to speak, for example, of “extreme

physicalist Materialism” – which is probably the type most discussed among

professional philosophers in English-speaking countries.

Types Distinguished by Its View of History

In the wider world, however, the word Materialism most commonly

brings to mind dialectical Materialism, which is the orthodox philosophy of

Communist countries. This is most importantly a theory of how changes arise

in human history, though a general metaphysical theory lies in the

background. Dialectical Materialists contrast their view with what they call

“vulgar” Materialism; and it does, indeed, appear that their theory is not an

extreme Materialism, whether mechanical or physicalist. They seem to hold

merely that mental processes are dependent on or have evolved from material

ones. Though they might be akin to emergent Materialists, it is hard to be

sure; their assertion that something new emerges at higher levels of

organization might refer only to such things as that a wireless receiver is

different from a mere heap of the same components. And if so, even an

extreme physicalistic Materialist could acquiesce in this view. The distinctive

features of dialectical Materialism would, thus, seem to lie as much in its