Objective Idealism

Plato and the theory of Ideas

(Platonic allegory of the Line, describing all the major epistemological (left) and ontological (right) divisions between the sensible and the intelligible. )

Plato is, in the fourth century BC, the first European philosopher to explicitly assert both the existence of “Ideas” (είδη) or “essences” and the illusory character of individual sentient beings. The theory of Ideas that he develops, also called the theory of intelligible forms, and described by Hegel as “objective idealism”, is a doctrine that is based on the thesis that the concepts, notions, or ideas by which we know, understand or explain the world actually exist, are immutable and form the models (archetypes) of the things we perceive with our sensory organs. These intelligible forms are the true objects of all definition and all knowledge, as opposed to sensible images, objects of the senses and of opinion. Just as the Eleatics had claimed before him, Plato considers that the only world that truly exists is that of permanence, therefore the world of Ideas.

Platonism is a realism about ideas and concepts and an anti-realism about sensible appearances. It does not postulate the unreality of things, but only that of the sensible world as we perceive it. From this perspective, he envisages the sensible world as a fabric of deceptive appearances, sorts of “shadows” or “reflections” that the uninitiated man mistakenly takes for real objects. The true being of things are Ideas, perfect models whose sensible objects are only poor imitations, degraded productions. Plato’s idealism, the affirmation of an intelligible world made up of ideal beings, thus has as its counterpart the negation of the reality of the sensible world as such. It is in this sense “objective idealism”, a doctrine which, in this context, accords true reality only to ideas conceived by reason. One can thus classify Platonism as well among the realistic theories as among the idealist theories, although these denominations do not appear before the modern period.

Leibniz and “monadological” idealism

At the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, the philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz occupied a prominent place in philosophy as well as in the scientific field. His philosophy is a spiritualist and dynamic idealism, which seeks to reconcile idealist metaphysics with the science of movement, which he helps to found. In his Monadology, published in 1714, Leibniz gives an overview of his entire doctrine and introduces the notion of “monad”, the principle of metaphysical unity on which his entire system is based. Monads are the simple, unextended, spiritual and active substances which constitute the unique essence of the world. They range from the humblest, who have only perception and appetite, to those who have reason, and even to God, the supreme monad. The monads being closed to each other, the influence that things seem to exert on each other consists in a divine preordination (“pre-established harmony”) which regulates in advance all the movements of beings. The universe is thus envisioned as a spiritual world, a “divine city”, and thereby as a moral being, where the best happens little by little under the laws laid down by God.

In Leibniz’s monadological system, anything that is not a monad, or anything that is not unified by a unifying monad, does not really have being: it is an aggregate, a simple compound or “heap”. This compound is only a “being of reason” or “imagination”, which means that it only exists in our mind as a representation. Like the pile of sand, the aggregate is basically only a fiction that nevertheless allows us to organize our experience of the world for practical purposes. Between the perfectly one being, the monad, and the simple aggregate, are the organisms, provisional units of composition. The human body, whose matter is itself composed of monads, is one of these organisms. It has a unifying monad superior to that of plants or animals, the soul, which is capable of “apperception”, in other words, of consciousness. The soul, like all monads, is indestructible, since it is not composed, and it is in this sense immortal or eternal. Conversely, the aggregates are always temporary and changing, without their own consistency.

This metaphysical system makes it possible to posit a single ontological principle from which it is possible to explain nature while accounting for the two fundamental aspects of consciousness: “appetition” (or volition) and perception. Although the universe itself is not considered there as conscious, it is supposed to contain in each of its monads the seeds of consciousness, which are as many spiritual entities. It is in this sense that we can speak of objective idealism to qualify Leibniz’s monadology: as a spiritual entity, each really existing thing has an intelligible objective essence comparable to that of a conscious, or identifiable soul to it. This form of idealism would greatly influence 19th century German scientific psychology through the work of Hermann Lotze, philosophical heir to Leibniz, as well as French spiritualist philosophers following their reception of Lotze’s work. She is also at the origin of the dynamic paradigm in philosophy, which will develop especially in Germany of the 19th century, and where the supposed fundamental relationship between the spirit and the forces of nature will be put forward.

“Objective Idealism” in Hegel

(Hegel in 1828, professing his philosophy at the University of Berlin.)

We owe to Hegel the first explicit distinction between the three great tendencies objectivist, subjectivist and absolutist of idealism. In his Lessons on the History of Philosophy (posthumous work), Hegel establishes it for pedagogical purposes by using the expressions “objective idealism”, “subjective idealism” and “absolute idealism”, which will be taken up later. For Hegel, each of these idealisms provides an “explanatory principle” of reality. While the former relies on the naive and dogmatic principle of a “thing-idea” immediately present in reality, subjective idealism advances the principle of a “subject-idea” constitutive of reality. Absolute idealism, on the other hand, consists in demonstrating the unilateral and inadequate character of these two principles. The principle of the “absolute idea” on which rests this ultimate form of idealism, of which Hegel claims to be the initiator, must account both for the status of so-called “objective” reality and for the way in which the “subject” relates to it by knowledge.

Although it is criticized by Hegel and attributed by him to the philosophical tradition, in particular to Plato and his theory of Ideas, objective idealism today tends to designate Hegelian idealism itself, because of its intellectualistic and impersonal character. In this philosophy indeed, the “Spirit” is always part of a common reality, publicly manifest; it never depends on the activity or the capacities of the individual subject who, by introspection, could immediately grasp its reality in its supposed intimacy. Moreover, the “absolute idea” does not designate in Hegel a phenomenon of consciousness; on the contrary, it designates what determines the unconscious motives of our actions as well as the general unperceived meaning of history. Hegel’s idealism is therefore radically opposed to subjective idealism as it is usually presented. Nevertheless, insofar as Hegel rejects any reification of thought which would consist, as for Descartes and Leibniz, in making it a substance (in this case a “soul”) identifiable as such with an object, the qualifier of “objective” does not seem to correctly characterize Hegelian idealism.

(Includes texts from Wikipedia translated and adapted by Nicolae Sfetcu)