Idealism

George Berkeley, one of the most influential idealist philosophers

Idealism is a philosophical outlook based on the principle that reality is fundamentally mental, spiritual, or idea-based in nature, with mind or spirit being primary to matter. Idealism asserts the primacy of consciousness, ideas, or spirit over the material world, though different forms of idealism articulate this relationship in vastly different ways.

Idealism is not synonymous with subjectivism. There are two main branches of idealist philosophy:

Subjective idealism holds that reality depends on individual perception and consciousness. For subjective idealists like George Berkeley, objects exist only insofar as they are perceived by a mind.

Objective idealism holds that reality is structured by ideas, forms, or spirit that exist independently of individual human minds. Philosophers like Plato, Schelling, and Hegel argued that universal ideas, forms, or the Spirit (Geist) have objective existence and shape reality, regardless of whether any particular human perceives them.

Historically, objective idealism has been the more philosophically influential tradition, particularly in German philosophy through Hegel, whose dialectical idealism formed the basis that Marx would later invert into dialectical materialism.

This leads idealism to assert that problems can be solved primarily through intellectual or spiritual transformation, or that truth can be discovered through rationalism or 'pure reason', independently of engagement with the material world. This renders it ineffective at best for addressing real world problems. Idealists prioritize changing ideas to change the world (i.e. effect material change). Materialists hold the opposite: that by changing the material world, one changes ideas.

Idealism stands in contrast to materialism which holds that all reality, including the mind exists objectively as matter, and that consciousness is derived from material processes and reflects it. Much of Marx's earlier work centered around engaging with Hegel's objective dialectical idealism and correcting its shortcomings with dialectical materialism, which forms the basis of the scientific outlook of the world and scientific socialism.

Idealism as a school of philosophy should not be confused with its more popular definition of 'having ideals'.

History

Idealism and materialism have existed as schools of philosophy since at least Ancient Greece, though these theories took centuries to mature. To the Ancient Greeks, materialism was merely the idea that everything in the world was made of physical matter. Plato is considered the father of idealism.

Yet idealism came to exist somewhat naturally.^{[citation needed]} The first humans observed phenomena that they didn't understand (such as storms, volcano eruptions, seed germination...)^{[citation needed]} and attributed these activities to unseen spirits, which formed the basis of the first human religions, also known as animism (the belief that items, places and things are inhabited by spirits).

Later, as humans experimented and learned about the world, animism would turn into polytheism, and then into monotheism and God^{[citation needed]}. God being here not necessarily the Abrahamic God (of Judaism, Christianity and Islam). The idea of the spirit (or soul) is still at the center of idealist thought.

Modern philosophy

In modern philosophy idealism is generally broken down into three trends: subjective idealism associated with the work of George Berkeley, transcendental idealism associated with the work of Immanuel Kant, and German idealism.

Idealist philosophers such as Berkeley, Kant, Fichte, and others were and are discussed by many important Marxists (such as Lenin's discussion of Berkeley in "Materialism and Empiro-criticism"). The most important idealist philosopher with respect to Marxism is Georg W.F. Hegel. His works, together with the works of the Young Hegelians, formed the basis of Marxist philosophy after the issue of idealism itself had been dismantled and replaced with materialism.

Theories and shortcomings

George Berkeley

The sun as drawn in a 15th century German manuscript

Berkeley represents the subjective idealist tradition, claiming that reality exists only in perception. He argued that an object is heavy or light depending on who experiences it, and concluded from this that objective properties don't exist independently of perception.

Yet the weight of an object is an objective quality; it weighs the same no matter who picks it up, and no matter how it feels in their hand. While there are subjective aspects to experiencing an item (how heavy it feels to lift), Berkeley claimed that objective properties were in fact subjective. This would mean that reality does not exist independently of perception and science would be unable to exist as well if that were true. For example, while humans see the sun as an orange disc with a crown of rays (when seen from Earth), science was able to determine that it is neither a disc nor orange, nor does it have rays. The sun exists in an objective reality independent from our subjective interpretations: it is a ball of bright white plasma. If objective properties did not exist, then we would have been fundamentally unable to determine what the sun actually looks like.

For subjective idealists, the world does not exist outside of perception. Berkeley ultimately resolved this by asserting that God's eternal perception sustains the existence of all things, thus even subjective idealism relies on something beyond individual human minds.

This form of idealism differs radically from the objective idealism of Plato or Hegel, who asserted the existence of objective ideas or spirit independent of any perceiving subject.

Religious nature and opposition to science

Idealism ultimately turns to God to justify its arguments. Likewise it often is used to justify religious beliefs. As it was born of human religious beliefs (themselves based on ignorance of the material world), it can only exist when supported by these beliefs. A view that many idealists come to is that the mind that creates reality is the mind of God, rather than of any subjective individual.

Idealists often explain human consciousness and the existence of thought with the claim that God imbued human beings with a soul and that this soul allows us to think. In the materialist framework, we understand that thoughts are created by the brain, something material. The soul is different from the brain both for idealists and materialist: it is not an organ; it has never been found in the human body, never been able to be measured, never observed or tested because it doesn't materially exist.

God is an ultimate being, an affirmation that cannot be proven (and will not be proven by idealists, who simply accept that God exists as per their framework). Science however demonstrates through practice and experience that the world exists objectively.

Dialectical idealism and Hegel

In the scope of dialectics, idealists claim that ideas move historical development forward. However, the nature of these "ideas" differs significantly between subjective and objective idealism.

For Hegel, the premier objective idealist, history is driven by the self-realization of the Geist (Absolute Spirit). The Geist is not subjective it does not depend on individual human consciousness. Rather, it is an objective, universal process that realizes itself through history, institutions, laws, and social structures.

Hegel's system involves two moments:

1. The objective Geist: The abstract, universal spirit that exists as the totality and telos of human development, independent of any individual's comprehension
2. The subjective Geist: The individual human consciousness that participates in and becomes aware of the objective Geist

These reconcile in objective spirit manifested in concrete institutions: the State, Law, Religion, Morality, and Culture. For Hegel, these institutions are not merely human constructs but the objective realization of the Geist in the world. History progresses dialectically as the Geist works through contradictions toward the realization of the Absolute, and this process occurs whether or not humans comprehend it.

In the idealist framework, the steam engine existed first as an idea in the Geist, which then manifested in material reality. But where did this idea come from? In Hegelian idealism, it comes from the self-movement of the Geist itself through dialectical development, an objective process, not dependent on any individual thinker's subjective experience.

Marx rejected this framework and asserted ideas are dependent on the material conditions. The steam machine could not have existed before steam was understood to create power which could be harnessed to move gears. It also had no practical use before the relations of production were organized enough that it became viable to use steam machines: they require a constant source of power as well as a constant supply of resources to turn into commodities, which was impossible in the pre-industrial world where the absolute majority (>50%) of the population was employed in subsistence farming.

The origin of the steam machine did not start with the idea in the Geist, nor with the idea of Thomas Savery or Thomas Newcomen, but with the material conditions that made the steam machine viable in society and then allowed them to have the idea for it.

Material conditions create the ideas that people are capable of forming. Scientific socialism could not have existed as it does today before capitalism, since it is made possible with the productive capabilities of factories and steam machines (now electronic). While thinkers of the Middle Ages and earlier could have invented something close to communism (say common ownership of the means of production), they could not have foreseen capitalism and the machines it would use. They could not have foreseen the existence of the bourgeoisie and proletariat.

Marx's engagement with idealism was specifically with Hegelian objective idealism, in that he inverted the Hegelian dialectic by making material conditions, not the Geist, the driving force of historical development. This is why understanding the difference between subjective and objective idealism is crucial for understanding Marxism.

Application of idealism

Religion

Religion, particularly organized religions such as Christianity or Islam, contain highly immaterial and idealist thought. Religion commonly overlooks the mundane and observable parts of reality in favor of a often purely abstract and invisible deity. Adherents of organized religions typically view morality as not something that is an invention of humans, and that is dynamic, but as something largely stagnant; given by a god, and that is constant, regardless of the advancement of human civilization. Religion, with its commonly idealistic nature, has often been used as a tool by liberals to justify the idea of "natural rights", or by reactionaries, as a means of claiming that social change is "decadence" or otherwise immoral.

Liberalism

Liberalism largely relies on immaterial values and policies. Liberals view certain legal rights as totally inherent to society, if not completely "god-given", furthermore, Liberals often care little for what real material conditions are like for the vast majority of the population. For example, Liberals will often speak about "economic freedom", however, what this really means is simply the degree throughout which a corporation can exploit their workers without the government caring. If one were to go by the Liberal definition of "economic freedom", then the more "economic freedom" a nation has, the worse it is for the working class. Freedom is not free if it does not exist anywhere outside the fantasy of a politician's mind, or if only a tiny amount of people can benefit from this "freedom", at the expense of the majority.

Opposition

Materialists, such as Marxists, oppose idealism as the two are in contradiction. Moreover, materialism represents the scientific conception of the world (which when applied to socialism forms scientific socialism) whereas idealism represents the utopian conception of the world.

References

Bibliography

Politzer, Georges: Elementary Principles of Philosophy (1946)