Idealism

REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES
POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES
COLLEGE OF EDUCATION
DEPARTMENT OF ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION
I.
MEANING AND NATURE OF IDEALISM

In actual life, we set standards by which we judge things
qualities or characteristics we like people around us to have. We
refer to these as ideals and we expect a person to behave and
conduct himself or herself according to these standards. This
attitude is commonly called idealism.
According to idealism, truth or reality exists in ideas or in the
spirit or in the mind. Material objects are merely representations of
the ideas. Idealists believe that all we know about Nature comes to
us as thought or idea. Reality, according to them, is seen directly
not in the external world but in the inner experience of man.
A. CLASSICAL IDEALISM
Classical Idealism is also known as Platonic Idealism. It is
usually refers to Plato's theory of forms or doctrine of ideas.
Some commentators hold Plato argued that truth is an
abstraction. In other words, we are urged to believe that Plato's
theory of ideas is an abstraction, divorced from the so-called
external world, of modern European philosophy, despite the fact
Plato taught that ideas are ultimately real, and different from
non-ideal thingsindeed, he argued for a distinction between the
ideal and non-ideal realm.
a. EARLY PLATONISM
Platonism, rendered as a proper noun, is
the philosophy of Plato or the name of other philosophical
systems considered closely derived from it. In narrower
usage, platonism, rendered as a common noun (with a lower
case 'p', subject to sentence case), refers to the philosophy
that affirms the existence of abstract objects, which are
asserted to "exist" in a "third realm" distinct both from the
sensible external world and from the internal world of
consciousness, and is the opposite of nominalism (with a
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lower case "n"). Lower case "platonists" need not accept any
of the doctrines of Plato.
b. MIDDLE PLATONISM
Middle Platonism is the modern name given to a stage
in the development of Plato's philosophy, lasting from about
90 BC when Antiochus of Ascalon rejected the scepticism of
the New Academy until the development
of Neoplatonism under Plotinus in the 3rd century. Middle
Platonism absorbed many doctrines from the rival Peripatetic
and Stoic schools. The pre-eminent philosopher in this
period, Plutarch (c. 45-120), defended the freedom of the will
and the immortality of the soul. He sought to show that God,
in creating the world, had transformed matter, as the
receptacle of evil, into the divine soul of the world, where it
continued to operate as the source of all evil. God is
a transcendent being, which operates through divine
intermediaries, which are the gods and daemons of popular
religion. Numenius of Apamea (c. 160) combined Platonism
with Neopythagoreanism and other eastern philosophies, in a
move which would prefigure the development of
Neoplatonism.
c. NEOPLATONISM
Neoplatonism (or Neo-Platonism) is a modern term used
to designate a tradition of philosophy that arose in the 3rd
century AD and persisted until shortly after the closing of
the Platonic Academy in Athens in AD 529 by Justinian I.
Neoplatonists were heavily influenced both by Plato and by
the Platonic tradition that thrived during the six centuries
which separated the first of the Neoplatonists from Plato.
B. RELIGIOUS IDEALISM
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Religious idealism is a religion-term that believes in the
fact that Gods, angels and spirits were the mastermind of the
existence of human beings like us. It tells us that the existence of
the omnipresent God is true. Everything in the Earth or the
universe is God's creation and manifestation.
C. MODERN IDEALISM
In modern times idealism has largely come to refer the sou
rce of ideas to mans consciousness, whereas in the earlier
period ideas were assigned a reality outside and independent of
mans existence. Nevertheless, modern idealism generally
proposes suprahuman mental activity of some sort and
ascribes independent reality to certain principles, such as creativi
II.
ty, a force for good, or an absolute truth.

CONTRIBUTIONS OF WELL-KNOWN PHILOSOPHERS TO
PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION
A. PLATO
Plato was born around the
year 428 BCE in Athens. His father
died while Plato was young, and his
mother remarried to Pyrilampes, in
whose house Plato would grow up.
Plato's birth name was Aristocles,
and he gained the nickname
Platon, meaning broad, because of
his broad build. His family had a
history in politics, and Plato was
destined to a life in keeping with this history. He studied at a
gymnasium owned by Dionysios, and at the palaistra of Ariston
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of Argos. When he was young he studied music and poetry.
According to Aristotle, Plato developed the foundations of his
metaphysics and epistemology by studying the doctrines of
Cratylus, and the work of Pythagoras and Parmenides. When
Plato met Socrates, however, he had met his definitive teacher.
As Socrates' disciple, Plato adopted his philosophy and style of
debate, and directed his studies toward the question of virtue
and the formation of a noble character.
Plato was in military service from 409 BC to 404 BC. When
the Peloponnesian War ended in 404 BC he joined the Athenian
oligarchy of the Thirty Tyrants, one of whose leaders was his
uncle Charmides. The violence of this group quickly prompted
Plato to leave it. In 403 BC, when democracy was restored in
Athens, he had hopes of pursuing his original goal of a political
career. Socrates' execution in 399 BC had a profound effect on
Plato, and was perhaps the final event that would convince him
to leave Athenian politics forever.
Plato left Attica along with other friends of Socrates and
traveled for the next twelve years. To all accounts it appears that
he left Athens with Euclides for Megara, then went to visit
Theodorus in Cyrene, moved on to study with the Pythagoreans
in Italy, and finally to Egypt. During this period he studied the
philosophy of his contemporaries, geometry, geology, astronomy
and religion.
After 399 BC Plato began to write extensively. It is still up
for debate whether he was writing before Socrates' death, and
the order in which he wrote his major texts is also uncertain.
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However, most scholars agree to divide Plato's major work into
three distinct groups. The first of these is known as the Socratic
Dialogues because of how close he stays within the text to
Socrates' teachings. They were probably written during the years
of his travels between 399 and 387 BC. One of the texts in this
group called the Apology seems to have been written shortly
after Socrates' death. Other texts relegated to this group include
the Crito, Laches, Lysis, Charmides, Euthyphro, and Hippias
Minor and Major.
Plato returned to Athens in 387 BC and, on land that had
once belonged to Academos, he founded a school of learning
which he called the Academy. Plato's school is often described at
the first European university. Its curriculum offered subjects
including astronomy, biology, mathematics, political theory, and
philosophy. Plato hoped the Academy would provide a place
where thinkers could work toward better government in the
Grecian cities. He would preside over the Academy until his
death.
The period from 387 to 361 BC is often called Plato's
"middle" or transitional period. It is thought that he may have
written the Meno, Euthydemus, Menexenus, Cratylus, Repuglic,
Phaedrus, Syposium and Phaedo during this time. The major
difference between these texts and his earlier works is that he
tends toward grander metaphysical themes and begins to
establish his own voice in philosophy. Socrates still has a
presence, however, sometimes as a fictional character. In
the Meno for example Plato writes of the Socratic idea that no
one knowingly does wrong, and adds the new doctrine of
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recollection questioning whether virtue can be taught. In
the Phaedo we are introduced to the Platonic doctrine of the
Forms, in which Plato makes claims as to the immortality of the
human soul. The middle dialogues also reveal Plato's method of
hypothesis.
Plato's most influential work, The Republic, is also a part of
his middle dialogues. It is a discussion of the virtues of justice,
courage, wisdom, and moderation, of the individual and in
society. It works with the central question of how to live a good
life, asking what an ideal State would be like, and what defines a
just individual. These lead to more questions regarding the
education of citizens, how government should be formed, the
nature of the soul, and the afterlife. The dialogue finishes by
reviewing various forms of government and describing the ideal
state, where only philosophers are fit to rule. The Republic covers
almost every aspect of Plato's thought.
In 367 BC Plato was invited to be the personal tutor to
Dionysus II, the new ruler of Syracuse. Plato accepted the
invitation, but found on his arrival that the situation was not
conducive for philosophy. He continued to teach the young ruler
until 365 BC when Syracuse entered into war. Plato returned to
Athens, and it was around this time that Plato's famous pupil
Aristotle began to study at the Academy. In 361 BC Plato
returned to Syracuse in response to a letter from Dion, the uncle
and guardian of Dionysus II, begging him to come back.
However, finding the situation even more unpleasant than his
first visit, he returned to Athens almost as fast as he had come.
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Back at the Academy, Plato probably spent the rest of his
life writing and conversing. The way he ran the Academy and his
ideas of what constitutes an educated individual have been a
major influence to education theory. His work has also been
influential in the areas of logic and legal philosophy. His beliefs
on the importance of mathematics in education has had a lasting
influence on the subject, and his insistence on accurate
definitions and clear hypotheses formed the foundations for
Euclid's system of mathematics.
His final years at the Academy may be the years when he
wrote the "Later" dialogues, including the Parmenides,
Theatetus, Sophist,Statesmas,Timaeus,Critias,Philebus,
and Laws. Socrates has been delegated a minor role in these
texts. Plato uses these dialogues to take a closer look at his
earlier metaphysical speculations. He discusses art, including
dance, music, poetry, architecture and drama, and ethics in
regards to immortality, the mind, and Realism. He also works
with the philosophy of mathematics, politics and religion,
covering such specifics as censorship, atheism, and pantheism.
In the area of epistemology he discusses a priori knowledge and
Rationalism. In his theory of Forms, Plato suggests that the world
of ideas is constant and true, opposing it to the world we
perceive through our senses, which is
deceptive and changeable.
In 347 Plato died, leaving the
Academy to his sister's son
Speusippus. The Academy remained a
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model for institutions of higher learning until it was closed, in 529
CE, by the Emperor Justinian.
B. SOCRATES
Socrates was a Greek philosopher and the main source of
Western thought. Little is known of his life except what was
recorded by his students, including Plato.
Socrates was born circa 470 BC, in Athens, Greece. We
know of his life through the writings of his students, including
Plato and Xenophon. His "Socratic method," laid the groundwork
for Western systems of logic and philosophy. When the political
climate of Greece turned, Socrates was sentenced to death by
hemlock poisoning in 399 BC. He accepted this judgment rather
than fleeing into exile.
Born circa 470 BC in Athens, Greece, Socrates's life is
chronicled through only a few sourcesthe dialogues of Plato
and Xenophon and the plays of Aristophanes. Because these
writings had other purposes than reporting his life, it is likely
none present a completely accurate picture. However,
collectively, they provide a unique and vivid portrayal of
Socrates's philosophy and personality.
Socrates was the son of Sophroniscus, an Athenian stone
mason and sculptor, and Phaenarete, a midwife. Because he
wasn't from a noble family, he probably received a basic Greek
education and learned his father's craft at a young age. It is
believed Socrates worked as mason for many years before he
devoted his life to philosophy. Contemporaries differ in their
account of how Socrates supported himself as a philosopher.
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Both Xenophon and Aristophanes state Socrates received
payment for teaching, while Plato writes Socrates explicitly
denied accepting payment, citing his poverty as proof.
Socrates married Xanthippe, a younger woman, who bore
him three sonsLamprocles, Sophroniscus and Menexenus.
There is little known about her except for Xenophon's
characterization of Xanthippe as "undesirable." He writes she
was not happy with Socrates's second profession and complained
that he wasnt supporting family as a philosopher. By his own
words, Socrates had little to do with his sons' upbringing and
expressed far more interest in the intellectual development of
Athens' young boys.
Athenian law required all able bodied males serve as
citizen soldiers, on call for duty from ages 18 until 60. According
to Plato, Socrates served in the armored infantryknown as the
hoplitewith shield, long spear and face mask. He participated
in three military campaigns during the Peloponnesian War, at
Delium, Amphipolis, and Potidaea, where he saved the life of
Alcibiades, a popular Athenian general. Socrates was known for
his courage in battle and fearlessness, a trait that stayed with
him throughout his life. After his trial, he compared his refusal to
retreat from his legal troubles to a soldier's refusal to retreat
from battle when threatened with death.
Plato's Symposium provides the best details of Socrates's
physical appearance. He was not the ideal of Athenian
masculinity. Short and stocky, with a snub nose and bulging
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eyes, Socrates always seemed to appear to be staring. However,
Plato pointed out that in the eyes of his students, Socrates
possessed a different kind of attractiveness, not based on a
physical ideal but on his brilliant debates and penetrating
thought. Socrates always emphasized the importance of the
mind over the relative unimportance of the human body. This
credo inspired Platos philosophy of dividing reality into two
separate realms, the world of the senses and the world of ideas,
declaring that the latter was the only important one.
Socrates believed that philosophy should achieve practical
results for the greater well-being of society. He attempted to
establish an ethical system based on human reason rather than
theological doctrine. He pointed out that human choice was
motivated by the desire for happiness. Ultimate wisdom comes
from knowing oneself. The more a person knows, the greater his
or her ability to reason and make choices that will bring true
happiness. Socrates believed that this translated into politics
with the best form of government being neither a tyranny nor a
democracy. Instead, government worked best when ruled by
individuals who had the greatest ability, knowledge, and virtue
and possessed a complete understanding of themselves.
For Socrates, Athens was a classroom and he went about
asking questions of the elite and common man alike, seeking to
arrive at political and ethical truths. Socrates didnt lecture about
what he knew. In fact, he claimed to be ignorant because he had
no ideas, but wise because he recognized his own ignorance. He
asked questions of his fellow Athenians in a dialectic method (the
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Socratic Method) which compelled the audience to think through
a problem to a logical conclusion. Sometimes the answer seemed
so obvious, it made Socrates's opponents look foolish. For this,
he was admired by some and vilified by others.
During Socrates's life, Athens was going through a
dramatic transition from hegemony in the classical world to its
decline after a humiliating defeat by Sparta in the Peloponnesian
War. Athenians entered a period of instability and doubt about
their identity and place in the world. As a result, they clung to
past glories, notions of wealth, and a fixation with physical
beauty. Socrates attacked these values with his insistent
emphasis on the greater importance of the mind. While many
Athenians admired Socrates's challenges to Greek conventional
wisdom and the humorous way he went about it, an equal
number grew angry and felt he threatened their way of life and
uncertain future.
The jury was not swayed by Socrates's defense and
convicted him by a vote of 280 to 221. Possibly the defiant tone
of his defense contributed to the verdict and he made things
worse during the deliberation over his punishment. Athenian law
allowed a convicted citizen to propose an alternative punishment
to the one called for by the prosecution and the jury would
decide. Instead of proposing he be exiled, Socrates suggested he
be honored by the city for his contribution to their enlightenment
and be paid for his services. The jury was not amused and
sentenced him to death by drinking a mixture of poison hemlock.
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Before Socrates's execution, friends offered to bribe the
guards and rescue him so he could flee into exile. He declined,
stating he wasn't afraid of death, felt he would be no better off if
in exile and said he was still a loyal citizen of Athens, willing to
abide by its laws, even the ones that condemned him to death.
Plato described Socrates's execution in his Phaedo dialogue:
Socrates drank the hemlock mixture without hesitation.
Numbness slowly crept into his body until it reached his heart.
Shortly before his final breath, Socrates described his death as a
release of the soul from the body.
C. ARISTOTLE
Ancient Greek philosopher
Aristotle was born circa 384 B.C. in
Stagira, Greece. When he turned 17,
he enrolled in Platos Academy. In
338, he began tutoring Alexander
the Great. In 335, Aristotle founded
his own school, the Lyceum, in
Athens, where he spent most of the
rest of his life studying, teaching and
writing. Aristotle died in 322 B.C., after he left Athens and fled to
Chalcis.
Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle was born circa 384 B.C.
in Stagira, a small town on the northern coast of Greece that was
once a seaport. Aristotles father, Nicomachus, was court
physician to the Macedonian king Amyntas II. Although
Nicomachus died when Aristotle was just a young boy, Aristotle
remained closely affiliated with and influenced by the
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Macedonian court for the rest of his life. Little is known about his
mother, Phaestis; she is also believed to have died when
Aristotle was young.
After Aristotles father died, Proxenus of Atarneus, who was
married to Aristotles older sister, Arimneste, became Aristotles
guardian until he came of age. When Aristotle turned 17,
Proxenus sent him to Athens to pursue a higher education. At the
time, Athens was considered the academic center of the
universe. In Athens, Aristotle enrolled in Platos Academy,
Greeks premier learning institution, and proved an exemplary
scholar. Aristotle maintained a relationship with Greek
philosopher Plato, himself a student of Socrates, and his
academy for two decades. Plato died in 347 B.C. Because
Aristotle had disagreed with some of Platos philosophical
treatises, Aristotle did not inherit the position of director of the
academy, as many imagined he would.
After Plato died, Aristotles friend Hermias, king of Atarneus
and Assos in Mysia, invited Aristotle to court. During his threeyear stay in Mysia, Aristotle met and married his first wife,
Pythias, Hermias niece. Together, the couple had a daughter,
Pythias, named after her mother.
In 338 B.C., Aristotle went home to Macedonia to start
tutoring King Phillip IIs son, the then 13-year-old Alexander the
Great. Phillip and Alexander both held Aristotle in high esteem
and ensured that the Macedonia court generously compensated
him for his work.
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In 335 B.C., after Alexander had succeeded his father as
king and conquered Athens, Aristotle went back to the city. In
Athens, Platos Academy, now run by Xenocrates, was still the
leading influence on Greek thought. With Alexanders permission,
Aristotle started his own school in Athens, called the Lyceum. On
and off, Aristotle spent most of the remainder of his life working
as a teacher, researcher and writer at the Lyceum in Athens.
Because Aristotle was known to walk around the school
grounds while teaching, his students, forced to follow him, were
nicknamed the Peripatetics, meaning people who travel
about. Lyceum members researched subjects ranging from
science and math to philosophy and politics, and nearly
everything in between. Art was also a popular area of interest.
Members of the Lyceum wrote up their findings in manuscripts. In
so doing, they built the schools massive collection of written
materials, which by ancient accounts was credited as one of the
first great libraries.
In the same year that Aristotle opened the Lyceum, his wife
Pythias died. Soon after, Aristotle embarked on a romance with a
woman named Herpyllis, who hailed from his hometown of
Stagira. According to some historians, Herpyllis may have been
Aristotles slave, granted to him by the Macedonia court. They
presume that he eventually freed and married her. Regardless, it
is known that Herpyllis bore Aristotle children, including one son
named Nicomachus, after Aristotles father. Aristotle is believed
to have named his famed philosophical work Nicomachean
Ethics in tribute to his son.
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When Aristotles former student Alexander the Great died
suddenly in 323 B.C., the pro-Macedonian government was
overthrown, and in light of anti-Macedonia sentiment, Aristotle
was charge with impiety. To avoid being prosecuted, he left
Athens and fled to Chalcis on the island of Euboea, where he
would remain until his death.
One of the main focuses of Aristotles philosophy was his
systematic concept of logic. Aristotles objective was to come up
with a universal process of reasoning that would allow man to
learn every conceivable thing about reality. The initial process
involved describing objects based on their characteristics, states
of being and actions. In his philosophical treatises, Aristotle also
discussed how man might next obtain information about objects
through deduction and inference. To Aristotle, a deduction was a
reasonable argument in which when certain things are laid
down, something else follows out of necessity in virtue of their
being so. His theory of deduction is the basis of what
philosophers now call a syllogism, a logical argument where the
conclusion is inferred from two or more other premises of a
certain form.
In his book Prior Analytics, Aristotle explains the syllogism
as a discourse in which, certain things having been supposed,
something different from the things supposed results of necessity
because these things are so. Aristotle defined the main
components of reasoning in terms of inclusive and exclusive
relationships. These sorts of relationships were visually grafted in
the future through the use of Venn diagrams.
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Aristotles philosophy not only provided man with a system
of reasoning, but also touched upon ethics. In Nichomachean
Ethics, he prescribed a moral code of conduct for what he called
good living. He asserted that good living to some degree defied
the more restrictive laws of logic, since the real world poses
circumstances that can present a conflict of personal values.
That said, it was up to the individual to reason cautiously while
developing his or her own judgment.
In 322 B.C., just a year after he fled to Chalcis to escape
prosecution under charges of impiety, Aristotle contracted a
disease of the digestive organs and died. In the century following
his passing, his works fell out of use, but were revived during the
first century. Over time, they came to lay the foundation of more
than seven centuries of philosophy. Solely regarding his influence
on philosophy, Aristotles work influenced ideas from late
antiquity all the way through the Renaissance. Aristotles
influence on Western thought in the humanities and social
sciences is largely considered unparalleled, with the exception of
his teacher Platos contributions, and Platos teacher Socrates
before him. The two-millennia-strong academic practice of
interpreting and debating Aristotles philosophical works
continues to endure.
D. RENE DESCARTES
Ren Descartes was born on
March 31, 1596, in La Haye,
France. He was extensively
educated, first at a Jesuit college
at age 8, then earning a law
degree at 22, but an influential
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teacher set him on a course to apply mathematics and logic to
understanding the natural world. This approach incorporated the
contemplation of the nature of existence and of knowledge itself,
hence his most famous observation, I think; therefore I am.
Philosopher Ren Descartes was born on March 31, 1596,
in La Haye, a small town in central France, which has since been
renamed after him to honor its most famous son. He was the
youngest of three children, and his mother, Jeanne Brochard,
died within his first year of life. His father, Joachim, a council
member in the provincial parliament, sent the children to live
with their maternal grandmother, where they remained even
after he remarried a few years later. But he was very concerned
with good education and sent Ren, at age 8, to boarding school
at the Jesuit college of Henri IV in La Flche, several miles to the
north, for seven years.
Descartes was a good student, although it is thought that
he might have been sickly, since he didnt have to abide by the
schools rigorous schedule and was instead allowed to rest in bed
until midmorning. The subjects he studied, such as rhetoric and
logic and the mathematical arts, which included music and
astronomy, as well as metaphysics, natural philosophy and
ethics, equipped him well for his future as a philosopher. So did
spending the next four years earning a baccalaureate in law at
the University of Poitiers. Some scholars speculate that he may
have had a nervous breakdown during this time.
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Descartes later added theology and medicine to his
studies. But he eschewed all this, resolving to seek no
knowledge other than that of which could be found in myself or
else in the great book of the world, he wrote much later
inDiscourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and
Seeking Truth in the Sciences, published in 1637.
So he traveled, joined the army for a brief time, saw some
battles and was introduced to Dutch scientist and philosopher
Isaac Beeckman, who would become for Descartes a very
influential teacher. A year after graduating from Poitiers,
Descartes credited a series of three very powerful dreams or
visions with determining the course of his study for the rest of his
life.
Descartes is considered by many to be the father of
modern philosophy, because his ideas departed widely from
current understanding in the early 17th century, which was more
feeling-based. While elements of his philosophy werent
completely new, his approach to them was. Descartes believed in
basically clearing everything off the table, all preconceived and
inherited notions, and starting fresh, putting back one by one the
things that were certain, which for him began with the statement
I exist. From this sprang his most famous quote: I think;
therefore I am.
Since Descartes believed that all truths were ultimately
linked, he sought to uncover the meaning of the natural world
with a rational approach, through science and mathematicsin
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some ways an extension of the approach Sir Francis Bacon had
asserted in England a few decades prior. In addition toDiscourse
on the Method, Descartes also published Meditations on First
Philosophy and Principles of Philosophy, among other treatises.
Although philosophy is largely where the 20th century
deposited Descarteseach century has focused on different
aspects of his workhis investigations in theoretical physics led
many scholars to consider him a mathematician first. He
introduced Cartesian geometry, which incorporates algebra;
through his laws of refraction, he developed an empirical
understanding of rainbows; and he proposed a naturalistic
account of the formation of the solar system, although he felt he
had to suppress much of that due to Galileos fate at the hands
of the Inquisition. His concern wasnt misplacedPope Alexander
VII later added Descartes works to the Index of Prohibited Books.
Descartes never married, but he did have a daughter,
Francine, born in the Netherlands in 1635. He had moved to that
country in 1628 because life in France was too bustling for him to
concentrate on his work, and Francines mother was a maid in
the home where he was staying. He had planned to have the
little girl educated in France, having arranged for her to live with
relatives, but she died of a fever at age 5.
Descartes lived in the Netherlands for more than 20 years
but died in Stockholm, Sweden, on February 11, 1650. He had
moved there less than a year before, at the request of Queen
Christina, to be her philosophy tutor. The fragile health indicated
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in his early life persisted. He habitually spent mornings in bed,
where he continued to honor his dream life, incorporating it into
his waking methodologies in conscious meditation, but the
queens insistence on 5 am lessons led to a bout of pneumonia
from which he could not recover. He was 53.
Sweden was a Protestant country, so Descartes, a Catholic,
was buried in a graveyard primarily for unbaptized babies. Later,
his remains were taken to the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prs,
the oldest church in Paris. They were moved during the French
Revolution, and were put back lateralthough urban legend has
it that only his heart is there and the rest is buried in the
Panthon.
Descartes approach of combining mathematics and logic
with philosophy to explain the physical world turned
metaphysical when confronted with questions of theology; it led
him to a contemplation of the nature of existence and the mindbody duality, identifying the point of contact for the body with
the soul at the pineal gland. It also led him to define the idea of
dualism: matter meeting non-matter. Because his previous
philosophical system had given man the tools to define
knowledge of what is true, this concept led to controversy.
Fortunately, Descartes himself had also invented methodological
skepticism, or Cartesian doubt, thus making philosophers of us
all.
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E. ST. AUGUSTINE
Augustine of Hippo was born
in
Thagaste, (the modern day city of

Souk Ahras in Algeria), on the 13th
of
November in 354. He died on the

28th of August in 430 in Hippo
Regius (the modern day city of
Annaba in Algeria), where he had
been named Bishop thirty-five
years earlier. As it is difficult to encapsulate any renowned figure,
it is especially difficult to do so with Augustine of Hippo. As a
philosopher and theologian, Augustine of Hippo vacillated
between an optimistic Hellenistic view in his earlier years and a
more pessimistic Christian view in his later years. Moving
between such extremes, he accommodated a wide array of
disciplines and thought in his over-arching desire to make sense
of a world, in both theory and practice, seemingly so full of
conflict, strife, and loss. Thus, it is one of his most revered traits
and innovative aspects of his writings that he was able to
commune diverging aspects from the four schools of Hellenistic
philosophy (Epicureans, Stoics, Skeptics, and Platonists) along
with various doctrines of Christian ideology. Among his
voluminous body of work that includes numerous letters,
sermons and exegetical texts, he is most known for
his Confessiones (Confessions) 397401, De civitate dei (On the
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City of God) 413427, De trinitate (On the Trinity) 399422/6,
and De libero arbitrio (On Free Will), 386/8.
Except for approximately four years of his life, Augustine of
Hippo spent his life in northern Africa. He was the son of
Patricius, a pagan and Roman (either through ancestry, legal
citizenship or both) who was a member of the council, and
Monnica, a Christian and presumably of Berber origin. After his
initial studies in Greek and Latin in Thagaste, Augustine of Hippo
studied Latin and literature in Madaurus and eventually came
under the influence of Cicero. He would credit
Ciceros Hortensius (the entirety of which no longer remains) as
being the catalyst to his life-long relationship with, not just
philosophy, but psychology, human nature and religion
essentially wisdom in the ancient sense. Shortly thereafter,
around the age of seventeen, Augustine of Hippo would continue
his studies in Carthage with the generous support of a patron,
Romanianus. He focused on studies in rhetoric, which would lead
him to his first profession. While in Carthage, Augustine of Hippo
became greatly influenced by the Manichaean religion and,
essentially, a follower for roughly nine years. He lived large and
well in Carthage where he met a young woman who became his
lover for more than thirteen years and bore him a son,
Adeodatus in 372. She would later become known as The One
in his Confessions.
After a short return to Thagaste, Augustine of Hippo
returned to Carthage to teach rhetoric and remained there until
383 when he left for Rome in search of more engaging and
enlightened students. The Roman schools proved to be a
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disappoint for him and a year later he would find himself in Milan
having won the prestigious position as a professor of rhetoric for
the imperial court. Between the influences of Skepticism at the
New Academy in Rome to that of the Bishop of Milan, Ambrose,
Augustine of Hippo was moving fast away from Manichaean
beliefs and on the threshold of his great, and now infamous,
conversion. In particular, a reading on the life of St. Anthony of
the Desert yielded Augustine of Hippos final turn towards
embracing Christianity in total, giving up his pending future of an
arranged marriage (already a grave provision of conflict and pain
for him due to his lost lover), a burgeoning career in rhetoric and
a privileged life. His conversion was incited by a young childs
voice:
Take up and read; Take up and read. I arose;
interpreting it to be no other than a command from God to open
the book, and read the first chapter I should find. For I had heard
of Antony, that coming in during the reading of the Gospel, he
received the admonition, as if what was being read was spoken
to him: Go, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou
shalt have treasure in heaven, and come and follow me: and by
such oracle he was forthwith converted unto Thee. Eagerly then I
returned to the place where Alypius was sitting; for there had I
laid the volume of the Apostle when I arose thence. I seized,
opened, and in silence read that section on which my eyes first
fell: Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and
wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord
Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, in
concupiscence. No further would I read; nor needed I: for
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instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light as it were of
serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of doubt
vanished away.
Confessions, Book VIII, 28 & 29
The account, in many ways, accounts for one of the
untenable aspects Augustine of Hippo had with the Manichaean
belief, which was the always presence of darkness over
lightness, in which the latter could only strive to overshadow.
While Augustine of Hippo fully converted and embraced
Christianity, many scholars agree that the Manichaean influence
can be read in his writing if only in deference or as repudiation.
He, and his son, was baptized on the Easter Vigil in 387 by
Ambrose in Milan. Shortly thereafter they, along with Augustine
of Hippos mother who had accompanied him, embarked on their
return to Africa. Unfortunately, his mother never made the final
journey, dying in Ostia and his son died soon after their return.
After he returned home Augustine of Hippo would soon
adopt a monastic way of life, like that he had been told of by his
friend Pontitianus in Milan just prior to his conversion. He gave
away his luxuries and eventually sold his inheritance to pursue a
monastic foundation in Hippo Regius, where he was ordained as
a priest in 391 and made Bishop four years later. He was at first
quite reluctant to become priest and tried to avoid it, but obliged
out of the communitys appeals. Augustine of Hippos preaching,
orations and sermons became infamous and hundreds of his
sermons have remained persevered.
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The conversion of Augustine of Hippo was most clearly the
most significant event in his life and it marks his evolution as a
thinker. The Manichaean beliefs were influential in his youth and
in his conversion as he was unable to attend to their over-arching
and inexplicable cosmology. And while Ciceros text pointed him
in the direction of a more holistic way of study, in which he
became quite influenced by the New Academy in Rome as well as
Christian theology in Milan, it was perhaps the Platonists (or as
referred to today, Neo-Platonists) that he came to regard that
had even more of a considerable effect on his thinking and
practice as it is them he credits with enabling Christianity a
viable option for him.
Scholars argue as to which particular Platonic texts he was
exposed to, but most agree they were those of Plotinus and
Porphyry. The Platonic readings vivified his idealist manner,
which reified his will. More specifically, it aided him in his
disregard from the purely moral dualistic nature of good and evil
encouraged by his Manicheanist foundation. Such can be traced
in the Confessions, which is essentially a form of autobiography
(many call it the first), yet more importantly a rhetorical
exposition that employs his life in yielding a lesson of loss and
ascension. Thus, like Augustine of Hippo, one may find oneself
lost in the materiality of life and its illusions and desire though
one can find a way through scholarship (NeoPlatonism) and
triumph, through an awareness of unity, over ones sense of
isolation and come to a place with/in God.
An exemplary form of rhetoric, Augustine of Hippo begins
the Confessions with a discussion on language itself, which can
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aid one in connection with or to the world, and has the
propensity to transcend the world ascending to a higher realm
that while less intelligible is more unifyingthe material and the
immaterial. Essentially, this first dialogue prologues the journey
of the Confessions. Particularly noteworthy sections of the most
widely read text of medieval philosophy, are Book VIII, IX, and XI.
In the first, Augustine of Hippo deals with the issue of will and
how he attends to that in relation to his faith. An amazing
account of ascension is made in Book IX, often referred to as the
vision at Ostia, in which he and his mother ascend together
beyond the worldly senses. This particular account of ascension
is poignant in its acknowledged divergence from the Platonic
ascent of the individual soul, (again accounting for and
accommodating both).
In Book XI of the Confessions, Augustine of Hippo delves
into an innovative discussion of time through a dialogue on
creation via Genesis. Breaking withPlatonism (and the overall
Greek tradition) he accepts the notion that the world was created
from nothing, that God created substance, and that the world
was created when the world was created, neither before nor after
anything, as time was created when the world was created and
since God is eternal there is no before or after. His account of
time he realizes is not sufficient, but it is an illuminating account
that positions time as both relative and subjective. As God is only
present (presence), so too is time. There is no true past or
future timethere is a present of things past, a present of
things present, and a present of things future. Furthermore he
psychologizes his account such that one understands that the
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present of things past is memory; the present of things present is
sight; and the present of things future is expectation. In a very
extreme point he posits time not only as relative, but also as
subjective such that time is in concert with being, and that prior
to Creation time has no meaning.
For Augustine of Hippo, God is the eternal point of origin
and the unifying factor for all else. This is a perfect example of
merging sensibilities such that in thePlatonic tradition there is a
divide, for instance, body and soul, but it is in God that thus is
unified. Of course, it is not that simple, but for the sake of this
summary, Augustine of Hippo begins with an absolute unity in
God that as the hierarchy descends eventually becomes
fragmented at the most base material level. This is further
expounded upon in his text The City of God, in which Augustine
of Hippo accounts for original sin and the issue of evil, an issue
that he grappled with since his Manichean period. To begin with,
sin is of the soul and not of the flesh, as both the Manicheans
and Platonists had ascribed. He follows that the soul of Adam
was the only, and hence original, soul God created. Ones
individual soul is thus the soul of Adam, first and foremost, until
it is individualized in ones being. As such, original sin is thus
universally accounted for and justified such that a child who dies
and was not baptized can be automatically relegated to Hell
because it is essentially original sin. Gods grace will save some
from eternal death, which Adams sins originally ensured, but
not all.
In regards to evil, there is a similar type of hierarchical
structure that Augustine of Hippo puts forth to account for its
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presence. Against the Manichean notion that evil (and darkness)
are intrinsic and, to a certain extant, over-riding, Augustine of
Hippo employs Platonic form and Christian ideology that posits
evil as a product of the lower realm, but not as a thing itself.
Evil is the result of being misguided; it is the result of a
deficiency in ones will, taking up the mores of the inferior,
adhering to a lower realm of ascension as if it were of the
higher realm. True ascension is resting with the goodness of
God and it is mans responsibility to apply him/herself towards
this goodness. In this way, evil is a byproduct of a deficiency of
the human will and it is the responsibility of ones will to ascend
from ones lowly self obsession and to not fall again.
And, it is after the Fall that the world was divided into two
citiesthe city of God and the city of man. Clearly the latter is
less than, yet it is most populated, and is Gods way to
emphatically underscore the need for ascension. Only a few are
selected by his grace to occupy the city of Godand it is not
based on meritas this constant reminder of adjudication. This
masterful text, The City of God, was primarily written in refute to
the growing desire for a polytheistic resurgence in Rome. Another
ingenious work of moral rhetoric, it is the story of human history
as told through a tale of two cities in which it is utterly clear
which city one should strive to become a citizen. Through a
philosophical framework Augustine of Hippo psychologizes
history, providing God as the light at the end of the tunnel. The
text is innovative as well in its positioning of a separation
between church and state, with the latter needing to be
submissive to the former in order to attain a sense of unity.
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The work reveals his greater shift towards the morality of
his religion over the rationality of his philosophy, and is a much
bleaker view of mans destiny. His final views of mans fate,
though he will note his own misgivings on the soul in his late
writings, are much more severe than his early days and come up
against, and perhaps are strengthened by, his fighting against
the Pelagians. The latter gave much more freedom and
ability to the will of the individual over the predominance of
original sin, which Pelagius questioned. In brief, Pelagius
asserted that man essentially had a second chance in light of
the lesson learned from Adams sin. In this way, everyday man
could will his way to goodness, so-to-speak. If one lived a good
and virtuous life then one would be rewarded in passage to
heaven. This of course flattens the preordained hierarchies set
forth by God according to Augustine of Hippo and he was, of
course, vehemently opposed. It was only by Gods grace that a
few, the elect, would be saved from eternal damnation and this
salvation revealed Gods mercy, as eternal damnation reveals his
justice, and together his overall goodness as a just creator. Other
than maintaining a paramount belief in this fated authority and
hierarchy (which formally comes from a Platonic influence), the
only other motivation was in the possibility of ascension, albeit
temporary, as onethe majoritywill still be damned.
While he continued to maintain, commensurate with both
his philosophy and theology, that the everyday of mans life is
but a small percentage of reality, the reality of the everyday man
became quite bleak. The gravity of his thinking and late morality
had a long lasting effect on much of medieval philosophy and
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western Church doctrine. In particular he was an influential figure
for Boethius, Anselm of Cantebury, and Thomas Aquinas. Martin
Luther and John Calvin employed much of his late Christian
doctrine in defense of the Reformation. His earlier discussions of
the will were an influence on more modern figures such as Arthur
Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche and Hannah Arendt. The latter
wrote her dissertation on Augustines concept of love, Der
Liebesbegriff bei Augustin: Versuch einer philosophischen
Interpretation (1929). His notion of time was recognized by
Edmund Husserl and proved to be inspiring for Martin
Heideggers Sein und Zeit (1927). Augustine of Hippo was a
relentless and devout practitioner whose output, diversity, range
and form remains a hallmark today.
F. BENEDICT DE SPINOZA
Benedict de Spinoza was born

on November 24, 1632 in a Jewish
enclave in Amsterdam. When he
was 23, his ideas about God, man's
immortal soul, and free will (in
reaction to the writings of Ren
Descartes) caused his synagogue to
excommunicate him. He published
his masterpiece, Ethics, in 1677, making him a leader in
rationalist thought, and paving the
way to the Enlightenment period.
G. GOTTFRIED WILHELM VON
LEIBNIZ
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Gottfried Leibniz was born in 1646, the son of Friedrich
Leibniz, a professor of moral philosophy at Leipzig. His father
died when Leibniz was only six years old, and he was brought up
by his mother (who was his father's third wife). His early years
were informed by the moral and religious values of his mother
that would play a significant role in his life and philosophy. He
entered the Nicolai School in Leipzig at the age of seven, where
he was taught Latin, though he advanced his own studies in the
field, including some Greek, and becoming proficient by the age
of 12. His penchant for teaching himself from his father's library
led to studies in theology and metaphysics, embellishing his
formal schooling in the logical systems of Aristotle that he was
interested in improving. Due to his own scholastic drive, he
entered the University of Leipzig at the age of fourteen in 1661.
He studied philosophy, mathematics, rhetoric, Latin, Greek and
Hebrew and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1663 with a
thesis De Principio Individui (On the Principle of the Individual) in
which he introduced his notion of "monad". He spent the
following summer in Jena, where he met Erhard Weigel, a
philosopher and mathematician who believed that the number
was the fundamental concept of the universe. By October 1663
Leibniz was awarded his Master's Degree in philosophy for a
dissertation that combined aspects of philosophy and law,
studying relations in these subjects with mathematical ideas that
he had learnt from Weigel. Shortly after Leibniz presented his
dissertation, his mother died.
Leibniz set out to write his habilitation in philosophy that
was to be published in 1666 as Dissertatio de arte
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combinatoria (Dissertation on the combinatorial art). In this work
Leibniz aimed to reduce all reasoning and discovery to a
combination of basic elements such as numbers, letters, sounds
and colors. Unfortunately the paper failed to procure his
doctorate in law at Leipzig. He transferred to the University at
Altdorf and succeeded to receive his doctorate in law the
following year for his dissertation De Casibus Perplexis (On
Perplexing Cases). Leibniz declined the promise of a chair at
Altdorf because he had other aspirations. He served as secretary
to the Nuremberg alchemical society; he then met Baron Johann
Christian von Boineburg. By November 1667 Leibniz had moved
to Frankfurt, employed by Boineburg. During the next few years
Leibniz undertook a variety of different projects, scientific,
literary and political. Leibniz thus put his thoughts to the
possibilities of a peace within the Holy Roman (German) Empire
and with its neighbors, especially the French king Louis XIV a
peace based on a new Christian theology, which would allow
Catholics and Protestants to come together on a new theological
plane. He drafted a number of monographs on religious topics.
He also continued his law career taking up residence at the
courts of Mainz from 1667 to 1672. One of his ambitions,
undertaken for the Elector of Mainz, was to improve the Roman
civil law code for Mainz. He saw his work on Roman civil law as
part of one of his lifelong aims to collate all human knowledge.
One particular area of interest for Leibniz was motion,
beginning with abstract notions of motion, although he also had
in mind the problem of explaining the results of Wren and
Huygens on elastic collisions. In 1671 he completed and
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published Hypothesis Physica Nova (New Physical Hypothesis),
claiming that movement depends on the action of a spirit. He
communicated with Oldenburg, the secretary of the Royal
Society of London, and dedicated some of his scientific works to
The Royal Society and the Paris Academy.
In a war-torn Europe in which the Catholics and Protestants
and other monarchies such as in Germany, France, Spain vied for
power and control, Leibniz placed his faith in the system of clear
human reasoning to elevate beyond such violence and struggle.
Mathematics could structure theological and political thought so
as to bring the chaos of Europe into a fully reasoned existence.
Such a vision runs throughout his life. He sought to invent a
universal language based not on geometry but on calculus
perfected down to the level of logic that would provide a
common mathematical, philosophical, logical and scientific
foundation for all thought; in Leibniz's ideal system all such
disputes could be resolved reasonably by systems of rigorous
calculations.
For example, Leibniz formed a political plan to persuade
the French to drive the Turks out of Egypt, in a ploy to divert the
French from attacking German areas. He went to Paris in 1672,
on behalf of Boineburg, though his advice was not taken. He
remained in Paris for four years, where he met the "natural
philosophers" Huygens, Malbranche, and Arnauld. Hyugens
introduced him to his own theories on the nature of light that
were in opposition to Newton's. Leibniz' own theories contrasted
with Newton's, he in turn impressed upon Arnauld the workings
of his own metaphysical system. He also prided his ability to
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recite poetry, claiming to be able to recite the majority of Virgil's
"Aenid" by heart, earning him the friendship of the Royal
Librarian, Carcavi, in Paris.
Leibniz accepted the position of librarian and Court
Councilor by invitation of the Duke of Hanover. Leaving Paris in
1676, he took the opportunity to travel through London and
Holland, where he spent a month visiting Spinoza in Amsterdam.
He spent the rest of his life in Hanover, taking many
opportunities to travel and visit friends and colleagues. He also
took on diverse projects, including one that involved the draining
of water from the mines in the Harz mountains. He proposed to
use wind and water power to operate pumps. Though the project
failed, his time on the project led to important discoveries in the
field of geography, including the theory that the earth was once
molten. During these years he also developed a binary number
system, as well as a series of key components to a discipline of
symbolic logic. He also returned his focus on his own philosophy,
completing works on metaphysics and systematic philosophy
during the 1680's and 90's.
Leibniz was known for a wide range of ideas about
fundamental concepts and principles: on truth, necessary and
contingent truths, the principle of sufficient reason (nothing
occurs without a logical explanation), the principle of an a priori
harmony in the world (God's universe is such that corresponding
mental and physical events occur simultaneously) and the
principle of non-contradiction (a proposition cannot be said to be
true if a contradiction can be derived from it). Leibniz
published Meditationes de Cognitione, Veritate et
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Ideis (Reflections on Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas) which clarified
his theory of knowledge. In February 1686, Leibniz published
hisDiscours de mtaphysique (Discourse on Metaphysics).
Leibniz's key works are the Essais de Theodicee (1710;
Eng. trans., 1951), in which much of his central concepts are
found, and the Monadology (1714; trans. as The Monadology and
other Philosophical Writings, 1898), in which he conceives his
theory of the monad. Leibniz strongly disagreed with the
Newtonian cosmology of absolute matter, space and time.
Newton's theory of material substance, founded on the atom and
its placement and movements, was opposed by Leibniz' monads
as the foundation of all reality. Leibniz' monads had no
materiality in time and space, no velocity or direction of
movement. His monads functioned as what we currently would
define as potential energy each monad distinct in its
potentiality and a part of a larger "colony" of monads which,
through the directives of God, combined in distinct ways to form
the observable elements of our universe. Monads are not
Newtonian in the sense of each having specific and distinct role
within the functioning of a totality of the universe, but rather are
each tiny mirrorings of the entire universe. Each monad has the
capacity or potential to express the fullness of the universe
through the relationship of all the monads with each other. And
yet each monad represents only a single view or perspective
the view from where it sits in relationship to the whole of the
universe. God alone has the capacity to see the universe in its
entirety, from all perspectives simultaneously, and the capacity
to choose which of these views or mirrorings will be the one that
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comes into actual being, through an "unfolding" of the potential
of the multiplicity of monads into the harmonious actuality of
their behavior as designed by God.
In 1700 the Brandenburg Society (Berlin Academy of
Science) was founded at Leibniz's prompting. He worked on
founding an institutional framework for the sciences in central
Europe and Russia. He met with Peter the Great a number of
times, offering recommendations for educational reforms for
Russia, and he proposed what would eventually be the Saint
Petersburg Academy of Science. He lived privately during the last
years of his life, harassed by the controversy of whether it was
he or Isaac Newton who should claim the rights as the first
inventor of the calculus. Much of his work, like the studies on
symbolic logic, remained unknown during his lifetime, and was
only discovered in the twentieth century. He is an important
figure of German idealism and the Enlightenment. He died on
November 14, 1716.
H. GEORGE BERKELEY
Bishop George
Berkeley (1685 - 1753) was
an Irish philosopher of the Age
of Enlightenment, best known
for his theory of Immaterialism,
a type of Idealism (he is
sometimes considered
the father of modern Idealism).
Along with John Locke and David Hume, he is also a major figure
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in the British Empiricism movement, although his Empiricism is
of a much more radical kind, arising from his mantra "to be is to
be perceived".
He was a brilliant critic of his predecessors,
particularly Descartes, Malebranche, Locke and Hobbes, and
a talented metaphysician capable of defending the apparently
counter-intuitive theory of Immaterialism. He also had
some minor influence on the development
of mathematics (and calculus in particular).
George Berkeley was born on 12 March 1685 at his family
home, Dysart Castle, in County Kilkenny, southern Ireland. He
was the eldest son of William Berkeley, a member of the junior
branch of the noble English family of Berkeley. He was educated
at local Kilkenny College and then, in 1700, at Trinity College,
Dublin, where he completed his undergraduate degree in 1704,
went on to became a Junior Fellow in 1707. He was ordained in
the Anglican Church in 1710, but he remained associated with
Trinity College until 1724 (after completing his doctorate, he
became a Senior Fellow in 1717, and then became
a tutor and lecturer in Greek), although he was not continuously
in residence.
His most widely-read works ("A Treatise Concerning the
Principles of Human Knowledge" of 1710, and "Three Dialogues
between Hylas and Philonous" of 1713) were published at a
relatively early age, during his Trinity College years, and he spent
much of the rest of his life defending them. In 1713, he went to
London to arrange publication of the second of these, and there
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he befriended some of the intellectual lights of the time,
including Jonathan Swift (1667 - 1745), Joseph Addison (1672 1719), Richard Steele (1672 - 1729) and Alexander Pope (1688 1744). From 1714 to 1720, he interspersed his academic
endeavours with periods of extensive travel throughout Europe.
In 1721, he took Holy Orders in the Church of Ireland,
earned his doctorate in Divinity, and once again chose to remain
at Trinity College, Dublin, lecturing on Divinity and Hebrew. In
1724, he was made Dean of Derry and moved away from Trinity,
but in 1725 he gave up this position to pursue plans to found
a seminary for training missionaries in Bermuda. In 1728, he
married Anne Forster, daughter of the Lord Chief Justice of
Ireland, and together they moved to Rhode Island in America and
bought Whitehall Plantation, where he wrote the bulk
of "Alciphron" (his defence of Christianity against free-thinking).
But, when the money for his proposed missionary college did not
materialize, he moved back to London in 1732, where he was
one of the original governors of the Foundling Hospital, a home
for the city's abandoned children.
In 1734, he was appointed Bishop of Cloyne in Ireland,
an economically poor Anglican diocese in a predominantly
Roman Catholic country, where he remained for the next 18
years (and during which time he produced a work
on mathematics and calculus, and two popular books on the
medical benefits of pine tar). In 1752, he retired to Oxford to live
with his son, George, (one of his seven children, although only
three lived to adulthood). However, but he died soon afterwards
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(on 14 January 1753) and was buried in Christ Church Cathedral,
Oxford.
Berkeley's earliest published works were
on mathematics and on optics (the latter, dealing with matters of
visual distance, magnitude, position and problems of sight and
touch, was controversial at the time, but became an established
part of the theory of optics). But all the philosophical works for
which he has become famous were also written while he was still
a young man in in his 20s.
In 1710, still only 25 years old, his "Treatise concerning the
Principles of Human Knowledge" was published, his first
exposition of the then revolutionary theory that objects exist only
as perception and not as matter separate from perception,
summed up in his dictum "Esse est percipi" ("To be is to be
perceived"). The work is beautifully written and dense with
cogent arguments, no matter how counter-intuitive the system
may appear at first sight .
He called the theory Immaterialism (conceived as it was
in opposition to the prevailing Materialism of the time), although
it was later referred to by others as Subjective Idealism. The
theory propounds the view that reality consists exclusively
of minds and their ideas, and that individuals can only directly
know sensations and ideas, not the objects themselves. The
position that the mind is the only thing that can be known to
exist (and that knowledge of anything outside the mind
is unjustified) is known as Solipsism, and forms the root of the
later doctrine of Phenomenalism. It can also be seen as
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an extreme type of Empiricism, whereby any knowledge of the
empirical world is to be obtained only through direct perception.
Berkeley, recognizing the possible theological loopholes in
his theory, argued that if he or another person saw a table, for
example, then that table existed; however, if no one saw the
table, then it could only continue to exist if it was in an infinite
mind that perceives all, i.e. God. He further argued that it is God
who causes us to experience physical objects by directly willing
us to experience matter (thus avoiding the extra, unnecessary
step of creating that matter).
So, Berkeley's view of reality might be summed up as
follows: there exists an infinite spirit (God) and a multitude
of finite spirits (humans), and we are in communication with God
via our experience. Thus, what we take to be our whole
experience of the world is analogous to God's language, God's
way of talking to us, and all the laws of science and Nature we
see around us are analogous to the grammar of God's language.
There is, then, in this theory, no need to postulate the existence
of matter at all, as all reality is effectively mental.
Although usually counted among the British Empiricists,
Berkeley's Empiricism is of a much
more radical and tenuous kind than that of Locke or Hume.
Berkeley believed that, for an idea to exist, and for someone to
be aware of it, were essentially the same thing ("to be is to be
perceived"), and that it was only through experience that we can
know about these ideas. A Rationalist would suggest that it is
our intellect that enables us to penetrate beyond these surface
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experiences, and to grasp the underlying substance to which all
the various qualities adhere. Berkeley, however, declared
unequivocally "Pure Intellect I understand not", and maintained
that the sensible qualities of bodies and things are all that we
can know of them. In that respect, then, he was an Empiricist,
although he differed from Locke or Hume in believing that what
we were "experiencing" were only ideas (or perceptions or
qualities) sent from God and not the things themselves, and he
effectively chose to make knowledge of self and knowledge of
God specific exceptions from the Empiricist mantra that
experience is the source of all knowledge.
Although Berkeley insisted that his theory was
not skeptical in nature, and that he was not actually denying the
existence of anything, it was largely received with ridicule at the
time, and even those few who recognized the genius of the
arguments were unconvinced by them (Dr. Samuel Johnson is
reputed to have kicked a heavy stone and exclaimed, "I refute it
thus!"). His "Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous" of
1713 was published as a defence against the criticisms his first
work received. In it, the characters Philonous and Hylas
represent Berkeley himself and his contemporary .
In 1734, Berkeley published "The Analyst", a direct
attack on the logical foundations and principles of calculus and,
in particular, the notion of fluxion or infinitesimal
change which Sir Isaac Newton (1643 - 1727) and Gottfried
Leibniz had used to develop calculus. Berkeley saw this as part of
his broader campaign against the religious
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implications of Newtonian mechanics and against Deism. It was
arguably as a result of this controversy that the foundations of
calculus were rewritten in a much more formal and rigorous form,
using the concept of limits.
Interestingly, and perhaps ironically, the 20th century
philosopher Karl Popper (1902 - 1994) published a paper in 1953
called "A Note on Berkeley as a Presursor to Mach and
Einstein" in which he described 21 theses from Berkeley's work
and showed how they mirrored concepts in modern physics.
In political economy, Berkeley was a thorough pessimist,
perhaps explained by the miserable economic state of the
Ireland of his time. He argued for government and
Church intervention in creating the social climate for economic
development in Ireland, and the doctrine of John Law (1671 1729) that "easy money is the engine of trade" was central to his
policy arguments. His economics are perhaps best found in
his "Querist" of 1737.
I. IMMANUEL KANT
Immanuel Kant was born in
Knigsberg, East Prussia in 1724. He
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attended the Collegium Fridiricianum at the age of eight, a Latin
school that taught primarily classicism. After over eight years of
study there, he went into the University Of Knigsberg, where he
spent his academic career focusing on philosophy, mathematics
and physics. The death of his father had a strong effect on Kant,
he left the university and earned a living as a private tutor.
However, in 1755 he accepted the help of a friend and resumed
study, receiving his doctorate in 1756.
He taught at the university and remained there for 15
years, beginning his lectures on the sciences and mathematics,
though over time he covered most branches of philosophy. In
spite of his growing reputation as an original thinker, he did not
gain tenure at the university until 1770, receiving his
professorship of logic and metaphysics. He continued writing and
lecturing at Knigsberg for the next 27 years, drawing many
students there due to his rationalist and hence, unorthodox
approach to religious texts. This led to political pressure from the
government of Prussia, and in 1792, he was barred from teaching
or writing on religious subjects by the king, Fredrich William II.
Kant dutifully obeyed the injunction until the death of the king
five years later, returning to the writing and lecturing of his
ideas. The year following his retirement, he published a summary
of his views on religion. He died in 1804.
Kant devised a model, an individual epistemology, by
examining the basis of human knowledge and its limits. He
brought together the ideas of rationalism, influential thinkers
such as Leibniz and Wolff, with empiricism as proposed by David
Hume. Kant's critical philosophy is presented in the Critique of
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Pure Reason (1781); the idea of critique is to establish and
investigate the legitimate limits of human knowledge. Knowledge
of sensible objects must form itself in advance to the structures
of the human mind's ability to reason, and therefore all objects
conform themselves a priori in such a relation -legitimate
knowledge of objects is limited to how they appear for us.
Kant's logic creates a division and complex interplay of
judgments- a priori and a posteriori judgments and analytic or
synthetic judgments. A judgment is analytic if the subject of its
proposition is contained within its predicate, i.e. "Sound theories
are theories". To state the reverse would be a logical absurdity.
The judgment is considered analytic because the truth of the
proposition lies in the validity of the concept itself. All analytic
judgments are a priori and thus, as is the case for all a priori
judgments, they are independent of experience. However,
judgments about empirical knowledge can only be made upon
experience, are synthetic, a posteriori, and can be reversed
without such a contradiction, i.e. "The theory is sound".
Here unfolds three classes of judgments: a) analytic a
priori, b) synthetic a posteriori, and c) synthetic a priori. The
particular concern for Kant is the synthetic a priori, for the
sciences and mathematics are as such, existing independent of
experience and yet as syntheses of previous judgments
(knowledge). The question as to the origins of judgments
becomes necessary. Metaphysics describes a science concerned
with this inquiry, a solution to unsolvable problems set by pure
reason itself, namely the concepts of
God, freedom and immortality.
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Kant developed a system of ethics in Metaphysics of
Ethics (1797), in which he places reason as the fundamental
authority for morality. Any action born of a mere expediency or
servitude to law, politic or custom could be considered as moral,
a sense of duty must arise solely as prescribed by reason.
Reason dictates two imperatives: the hypothetical and the
categorical. In the case of the former, a course of action to
accomplish a specific task is presented, and in the latter a course
of action that presents itself as appropriate, and necessary. The
categorical is the basis for the ethical. This structure defends a
fundamental freedom of the individual; that each one be
responsible for their own ability, through reason, to obey
consciously the laws of the universe.
Kantian philosophy was to have an enormous impact on
modern philosophy as well as the fine arts and literature. Hegel
was to develop the dialectical method based on elements within
the Critique of Pure Reason, which in turn functioned as an
underlying structure in Marx's philosophy.
J. GEORG HEGEL
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel (often known as G. W. F.
Hegel or Georg Hegel) (1770 - 1831)
was a German philosopher of the
early Modern period. He was a leading
figure in the German
Idealism movement in the early 19th
Century, although his ideas went far
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beyond earlier Kantianism, and he founded his own school
of Hegelianism.
He has been called the "Aristotle of modern times", and he
used his system of dialectics to explain the whole of
the history of philosophy, science, art, politics and religion.
Despite charges of obscurantism and "pseudo-philosophy", Hegel
is often considered the summit of early 19th Century German
thought.
His influence has been immense, both within philosophy
and in the other sciences, and he came to have a profound
impact on many future philosophical schools (whether
they supported or opposed his ideas), not the least of which was
the Marxism of Karl Marx which was to have so profound an
effect on the political landscape of the 20th Century.
Hegel was born on 27 August 1770 in Stuttgart in southwestern Germany. His father, Georg Ludwig Hegel,
was secretary to the revenue office at the court of the Duke of
Wrttemberg; his mother, Maria Magdalena Louisa (ne Fromm),
was the well-to-do and well-educated daughter of a lawyer at the
High Court of Justice at the Wrttemberg court (she died when
Hegel was thirteen of a "bilious fever"). Hegel had a younger
sister, Christiane Luise (who was later committed to an asylum
and eventually drowned herself), and a younger brother, Georg
Ludwig (who was to die in Napoleon's Russian campaign of
1812).
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At the age of three, Hegel went to the "German School",
and entered the "Latin School" at age five, and then attended
Stuttgart's Gymnasium Illustre high school from 1784 to 1788.
He was a serious, hard-working and successful student, and
a voracious reader from a young age, including Shakespeare, the
ancient Greek philosophers, the Bible and German literature. In
addition to German and Latin, he
learned Greek, Hebrew, French and English.
At the age of eighteen, he entered the Tbinger Stift,
a Protestant seminary attached to the University of Tbingen,
where two fellow students were to become vital to his
development: the poet Friedrich Hlderlin (1770 - 1843), and the
younger brilliant philosopher-to-be Friedrich Schelling. The three
became close friends, sharing a dislike for the restrictive
environment of the seminary. Hlderlin and Friedrich
Schelling soon began to be interested in the theoretical debates
on Kantian philosophy, although Hegel's own critical engagement
with Kant did not occur until much later (around 1800).
Having graduated from the Tbingen Seminary in 1793,
Hegel became house tutor to an aristocratic family in Berne,
Switzerland, and then took a similar position in Frankfurt-amMain from 1797 to 1801. During this time he produced
some early works on Christianity, and his friend Hlderlin began
to exert an increasingly important influence on his thought.
In 1801, Hegel secured a position as an unsalaried
lecturer at the University of Jena (with the encouragement of his
old friend Schelling, who was Extraordinary Professor there).
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He lectured on Logic and Metaphysics and, with Schelling,
gave joint lectures on an "Introduction to the Idea and Limits of
True Philosophy" and held a "Philosophical Disputorium". In
1802,Schelling and Hegel founded a journal, the "Kritische
Journal der Philosophie" ("Critical Journal of Philosophy"), and he
produced his first real book on philosophy, "Differenz des
Fichteschen und Schellingschen Systems der Philosophie"("The
Difference between Fichte's and Schelling's Systems of
Philosophy") in 1801.
In 1805, the University promoted Hegel to the position
of Extraordinary Professor (although still unsalaried) and, under
some financial pressure, he brought out the book which
introduced his system of philosophy to the
world, "Phnomenologie des Geistes" ("Phenomenology of
Mind"), in 1807, just after Napoleon Bonaparte (whom Hegel
greatly admired) had entered the city of Jena and closed the
University. The same year, he had an illegitimate son, Georg
Ludwig Friedrich Fischer by his landlady, Christiana
Burkhardt (who had been abandoned by her husband). However,
unable to find more suitable employment, he was then forced to
move from Jena and to accept a position as editor of a
newspaper, the "Bamberger Zeitung", in Bamberg.
From 1808 until 1816, he was headmaster of a gymnasium
in Nuremberg, where he adapted his "Phenomenology of
Mind" for use in the classroom, and developed the idea of a
comprehensive encyclopedia of the philosophical sciences (later
published in 1817). In 1811, he married Marie Helena Susanna
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von Tucher, the eldest daughter of a Senator, and they had two
sons, Karl Friedrich Wilhelm in 1813 and Immanuel Thomas
Christian in 1814 (and, in 1817, his illegitimate son, Ludwig
Fischer, who was by then orphaned, joined the Hegel household).
This period saw the publication of his second major
work, "Wissenschaft der Logik" ("Science of Logic") in three
volumes in 1812, 1813 and 1816.
From 1816 to 1818, Hegel taught at the Univeristy of
Heidelberg, and then he took offer of the chair of philosophy at
the University of Berlin, where he remained until his death in
1831. He published his "Grundlinien der Philosophie des
Rechts"("Elements of the Philosophy of Right") in 1821. At the
height of his fame, his lectures attracted students from all over
Germany and beyond, and he was appointed Rector of the
University in 1830, and decorated by King Frederick William III of
Prussia for his service to the Prussian state in 1831.
Hegel died in Berlin on 14 November 1831 from a cholera
epidemic, and was buried in Berlin's Dorotheenstadt Cemetery,
next to fellow philosophers Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Karl
Wilhelm Ferdinand Solger (1780 - 1819).
Hegel published only four main books during his
life: "Phnomenologie des Geistes" ("Phenomenology of Mind") in
1807, his account of the evolution of consciousness from senseperception to absolute knowledge; the three volumes of
"Wissenschaft der Logik" ("Science of Logic") in 1811, 1812 and
1816, the logical and metaphysical core of his philosophy;
"Enzyklopdie der philosophischen
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Wissenschaften" ("Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences") in
1816, a summary of his entire philosophical system, intended as
a textbook for a university course; and "Grundlinien der
Philosophie des Rechts" ("Elements of the Philosophy of Right")
in 1821, his political philosophy and his thoughts on civil
society. A number of other works on the Philosophy of
History, Philosophy of Religion, Aesthetics, and the history of
philosophy were compiled from the lecture notes of his students
and published posthumously.
His works have a reputation for
their abstractness and difficulty (no less an academic
than Bertrand Russell claimed that Hegel was the single most
difficult philosopher to understand), and for the breadth of the
topics they attempt to cover. These difficulties are magnified for
those reading him in translation, since his philosophical language
and terminology in German often do not have direct analogues in
other languages (e.g. his essential term "Geist" is usually
translated as "mind" or "spirit", but these still do not cover the
full depth of meaning of the word).
Hegel's thought can be seen as part of a progression of
philosophers (going back
to Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Leibniz, Spinoza,Rousseau and Kant)
who can generally be described as Idealists, and who
regarded freedom or self-determination as real, and as having
important ontological implications for soul or mind or divinity.
He developed a new form of thinking and Logic, which he
called "speculative reason" (which includes the more famous
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concept of "dialectic") to try to overcome what he saw as
the limitations of both common sense and of traditional
philosophy at grasping philosophical problems and
the relation between thought and reality. His method was to
begin with ultra-basic concepts (like Being and Nothing), and to
develop these through a long sequence of elaborations towards
solutions that take the form of series of concepts. He employed
the tried-and-tested process of dialectic (which dates back
to Aristotle and involves resolving a thesis and its
opposing antithesis into a synthesis), but asserted that this
logical process was not just a matter of form as separate from
content, but had applications and repercussions in the real world.
He also took the concept of the dialectic one step further,
arguing that the new synthesis is not the final truth of the
matter, but rather became the new thesis with its corresponding
antithesis and synthesis. This process would continue
effectively ad infitum, until reaching the ultimate synthesis,
which is what Hegel called the Absolute Idea.
Hegel's main philosophical project, then, was to take
the contradictions and tensions he saw throughout modern
philosophy, culture and society, and interpret them as part of a
comprehensive, evolving, rational unity that, in different
contexts, he called "the absolute idea" or "absolute knowledge".
He believed that everything was interrelated and that the
separation of reality into discrete parts (as all philosophers
since Aristotle had done) was wrong. He advocated a kind of
historically-minded Absolute Idealism (developed out of
the Transcendental Idealism of Immanuel Kant), in which the
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universe would realize its spiritual potential through the
development of human society, and in which mind and nature
can be seen as two abstractions of one indivisible whole Spirit.
However, the traditional triadic dialectical interpretation of
Hegel's approach (thesis - antithesis - synthesis) is perhaps too
simplistic. From Hegel's point of view, analysis of any apparently
simple identity or unity reveals underlying inner contradictions,
and it is these contradictions that lead to the dissolution of the
thing or idea in the simple form in which it presented itself, and
its development into a higher-level, more complex thing or idea
that more adequately incorporates the contradictions.
Hegel was the first major philosopher to regard history and
the Philosophy of History as important. Hegel's Historicism is the
position that all human societies (and all human activities such
as science, art or philosophy) are defined by their history, and
that their essence can be sought only through understanding
that. According to Hegel, to understand why a person is the way
he is, you must put that person in a society; and to understand
that society, you must understand its history, and the forces that
shaped it. He is famously quoted as claiming that "Philosophy is
the history of philosophy".
His system for understanding history, and the world itself,
was developed from his famous dialectic teachings of thesis,
antithesis and synthesis. He saw history as as a progression,
always moving forward, never static, in which each successive
movement emerges as a solution to the contradictions inherent
in the preceding movement. He believed that every complex
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situation contains within itself conflicting elements, which work
to destabilize the situation, leading it to breakdown into a new
situation in which the conflicts are resolved. For example,
the French Revolution constituted the introduction of
real individual political freedom, but carried with it the seeds of
the brutal Reign of Terror which followed, and only then was
there the possibility of a constitutional state of free citizens,
embodying both the benevolent organizing power of rational
government and the revolutionary ideals
of freedom and equality.
Thus, the history of any human endeavour not only builds
upon, but also reacts against, what has gone before. This
process, though, is an ongoing one, because the resulting
synthesis has itself inherent contradictions which need to be
resolved (so that the synthesis becomes the new thesis
for another round of the dialectic). Crucially, however, Hegel
believed that this dialectical process was not just random, but
that it had a direction or a goal, and that goal was freedom (and
our consciousness and awareness of freedom) and of
the absolute knowledge of mind as the ultimate reality.
In political and social terms, Hegel saw the ultimate
destination of this historical process as a conflict-free and
totally rational society or state, although for Hegel this did not
mean a society of dogmatic and abstract pure reason such as the
French Revolution envisaged, but one which looks for what is
rational within what is real and already existent. Some have
argued that Hegel's vision of the state as an organic rational
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whole, leaves no room for individual dissent and choice, no room
for the very freedom he was advocating. However, it should be
noted that Hegel's idea of freedom was quite different from what
we thing of as the traditional Liberal conception of freedom
(which he would have seen as merely the ability to follow your
own caprice), and rather consists in the fulfillment of oneself as a
rational individual. He did not expound in any detail, though, on
his vision of theideal state, and how such a state might avoid
sinking into authoritarianism and Totalitarianism.
Hegel categorically rejected Kant's "thing-in-itself" and
his noumenal world, arguing against Kant's claim that something
that exists was unknowable as contradictory and inconsistent. On
the contrary, he claimed that whatever is must by definition be
knowable: "The real is rational, and the rational is real". He
asserted that what becomes the real is "Geist" (which, as we
have noted above, can be translated as mind, spirit or soul),
which he also sees as developing through history, with each
period having a "Zeitgeist" (spirit of the age). Thus, although
individuals and whole societies change as part of the dialectical
process, what is really changing is the underlying Geist. He also
held that each person's individual consciousness or mind is really
part of the Absolute Mind (even if the individual does not realize
this), and he argued that if we understood that we were part of a
greater consciousness we would not be so concerned with
our individual freedom, and we would agree with to act rationally
in a way that did not follow our individual caprice, thereby
achieving self-fulfilment.
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There has been much debate about whether Hegel's
philosophy should be consider ad religious or spiritual or not.
Most have interpreted his idea of an Absolute Mind as essentially
a kind of Monism, which may or may not involve
a monotheistic God of the traditional Christian kind. Some have
seen it as closer to a kind of Pantheism. However, most of his
philosophy also makes good sense when interpreted in a nonreligious way, concerned merely with human minds.
Hegel also discussed the concept of alienation in his work,
the idea of something that is part of us and within us and yet
seems in some way foreign or alien or hostile. He introduced the
figure of the "unhappy soul", who prays to a God whom he
believes to be all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good, and who
sees himself in contrast as powerless, ignorant and base. Hegel
submits that this is wrong because we are effectively part of
God (or Geist or Mind), and thus possessed of all good qualities
as well as bad.
Hegel's thought is often considered the summit of early
19th Century German Idealism. Despite the suppression (and
even banning at one point) of his philosophy by the Prussian
right-wing, and its firm rejection by the left-wing, Hegel's
influence has been immense, both within philosophy and in the
other sciences. It would come to have a profound impact on
many future philosophical schools (not least those
that opposed his ideas), such
as Existentialism, Marxism, Nationalism, Fascism, Historicism,
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British Idealism and Logical Positivism and the Analytic
Philosophy movement.
After his death, Hegel's followers split into two opposing
camps: the Protestant, conservative Right ("Old") Hegelians, and
the atheistic, revolutionary Left ("Young") Hegelians. Although
that distinction is perhaps now considered somewhat nave, it
can be seen as a tribute to the breadth of Hegel's vision. In the
latter half of the 20th Century, Hegel's philosophy has undergone
a major renaissance, partly due to the re-evaluation of Hegel as a
possible philosophical progenitor of Marxism, and partly due to a
resurgence of the historical perspective that he brought to
everything, and an increasing recognition of the importance of
his dialectical method.
III.
IDEALISM IN EDUCATION
A. EDUCATION AS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION
To idealism, the rationale for the existence of the school is
that education must exist as an institution of human society
because of spiritual necessity. The idealist movement of the
nineteenth century exalted human culture and human institution
as being expressions of spiritual reality. According to John Amos
Comensius, if man is to become a man, education must form
him. Left to himself, man will be formed by whatever culture
happens to surround him.
Many idealists believe that God somehow speaks through
the culture of man. The contention is that as the school inducts
the child into the richness of meaning implicit in being human, it
also provides him with bases for inferences concerning the
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nature of the Ultimate and Divine. If this contention is true, then
education is a human necessity in order for man to be made truly
man.
Another basis for the necessary existence of the
educational institution is in the social nature of man. Society
needs the school and the social self needs the school. However,
neither the needs of society nor the needs of the social self will
be met within this narrow concept or agency.
The intellectual role of the school is occasionally played up
by an idealist as the basis of its existence in a way that gives the
school prerogatives it does not have and reflects unfavorable
impressions on other institutions. The school should be uniquely
a thinking institution in the sense that it will give leadership and
guidance in thinking. It will encourage thinking and mind
functions in other institutions and not discourage such.
The third role of the school is that of a value-realizing
institution. Of all institutions, none stands balanced so delicately
between the present and the future as the school that is doing its
job.
B. THE LEARNER
The central principle to the idealist treatment of the learner
is that the learner is a self, a spiritual being. The idealist teacher
cannot look at learners as mere bodies without spirits. The
learner is a personality whose foundation is not a body alone but
a deep underlying spiritual reality.
Idealism dares to suggest that the learner is a finite
person, growing, when properly educated, into the image of an
infinite person, that his real origin is deity, that his nature is
freedom, and that his destiny is immortality.
C. THE LEARNER IS IN THE PROCESS OF BECOMING
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As compared to Jean Rousseauss contention that man is
good as he springs from the hands of Nature, idealists say that at
birth the learner is neither good nor bad; he is potential and can
become either good or bad, depending upon his environment,
including education, and his own will. Home says that bad
characters are not born, they are made. He finds an inborn basis
for conscience in children and stresses the great importance of
education as a process which feeds conscience, nurturing it in
one direction or the other. Idealists believe that what is held to
be right is matter of education and training and life-associations.
Conscience grows by what it feeds on.
D. THE OBJECTIVES OF EDUCATION
The Italian idealist, Giovanni Gentile, speaks of selfrealization as the ultimate aim of education, a process of spiritual
becoming. As regards the objectives of education for society,
Nikita Bogoslovsky said the brotherhood is the soul and essence
of real democracy. It should therefore be the social objective of
education in a democracy. Education must include culture,
knowledge, and development as aims for the individual. For
society, it must aim at efficiency, character, and citizenship.
Education is the eternal process of superior adjustment of a free,
conscious, human being to God.
E. THE EDUCATIVE PROCESS
An idealist-inspired education is ideal-centered. The
exponent of idealism says that the ultimately real is Spirit which
is absolutely good. Individual children of men as actually found in
the classroom may be from the goodness of God in moral
achievement and present society may fall far short in resembling
the coming City of God. Education must be conformed to the
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ultimate God, because man and society are uncertain and
changing. Education is centered on ideals which are the
ultimately real foundation of all things.
F. FACTORS IN THE IDEALIST-INSPIRED EDUCATION
The Teacher. He is central in the idealist pattern of
education. The teacher is the key to the educative process than
any other element comprising it. He is in the singular position of
determining what the students opportunities for learning and
growing shall be. He sets the character of the environment in
which the learning takes place. He organizes the subject matter
and is largely the mouthpiece through which it comes to the
learner.
The teacher in the idealist classroom should be:
1) The personification of reality for the child. For the
immature, the teacher is the universe made personal.
2) A specialist in the knowledge of learners.
3) An excellent technician. He must be professional in
every sense of the word, the master of professional
techniques.
4) The kind of person who commands the respect of the
learner by virtue of what he himself is.
5) A personal friend of the individual student.
6) A person who awakens in the learner the desire to learn.
True teaching makes learning so attractive and
compelling in interest that pupils want to learn.
7) A master of the art of living. The genuine teacher can
lead the learner in a spiritual process in which his own
creative activity provides the student with an example
that awakens initiative.
8) A co-worker with God in perfecting man, at times he
becomes the very father of the learners soul.
9) One who communicates his subject. He knows both his
students and the subject matter he teachers.
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10)
11)
One who appreciates the subject he teaches.

One who always learns at the same time that he
teaches.
12) An apostle of progress if he fulfills his entire role.
13) A maker of democracies.
14) A study in self-elimination. He is a vigorous person
who inspires, arouses, and awakens students by what
he is and the way he conducts himself.
Imitation. Through imitating others, the Learner becomes
aware of his own capacity for a wide variety of acts that he
otherwise would have believed were beyond his powers.
Interest, Effort, and Discipline. Interest is the totally
positive attraction of the student in the job at hand that he does
not need to exercise conscious or voluntary exertion. Effort is the
conscious and voluntary exertion of the student by which he
brings himself to do a job not engaging sufficient interest
spontaneously. Discipline is the extraneous action by the teacher
to carry the learner through to the completion of the task in
hand.
Effective use of interest involves recognition of the law of
appreciation, making connections. There are many things that
students already know and many things in which they are
already interested. Interest evokes effort, and interesting activity
is carried forward because the interest arouses enough effort to
move the task on its way to completion. Horne believes that
effort may give birth to interest. The teacher may urge the child
to a task that to him is not attractive, yet later the child may
discover that he is genuinely interested and needs to exert no
conscious effort in order to keep going.
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Self-Activity. According to the American educational
philosopher, Herman Harrell Horne, the educational process is
not so much the stimulus shaping the individual, as the
individual responding to the stimulus. All educative experiences
are personal in character. The mind is the source of its own
reactions on the world. Growth can come only through selfactivity. Self-activity means self-direction, the minds ability to
frame and follow self-appointed goals. The ultimate responsibility
for winning an education rests with the will of the learner.
G. THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY OF IDEALISM
The idealist notion of society gives the philosophy an
essentially social and moral leaning. According to idealism,
society is not a collection of individuals; it is an organism in
which individuals participate. Individual selfhood is not
something which can grow in isolation. It is given birth through
the social process and comes into actual self-realization only in
relation with society as its medium of nature and development.
For the majority of idealists, man individualizes his selfhood only
within society, at the same time that individual and society are
both ends. The individual progresses more and more in his own
self-realization, with society providing the necessary matrix for
this process. At the same time, society progresses more and
more in a process of realizing the ultimately good society.
REFERENCES:
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http://www.philosophybasics.com/philosophers_hegel.html
http://www.egs.edu/library/immanuel-kant/biography/
http://www.philosophybasics.com/philosophers_berkeley.html
http://www.egs.edu/library/gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz/biography/
http://www.biography.com/people/benedict-de-spinoza-40965
http://www.egs.edu/library/augustine-of-hippo/biography/
http://www.biography.com/people/ren-descartes-37613
http://www.biography.com/people/aristotle-9188415
http://www.biography.com/people/socrates-9488126
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Idealism+(philosophy)
http://www.egs.edu/library/plato/biography/
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MEANING AND NATURE OF IDEALISM

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ty, a force for good, or an absolute truth.

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Thagaste, (the modern day city of

November in 354. He died on the

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Benedict de Spinoza was born

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