BEACON UNIVERSITY
ESSENTIALISTIC IDEALISM OF PLATO
VS.
ESSENTIALISTIC REALISM OF ARISTOTLE
SUBMITTED TO
DR. IAN A. H. BOND
INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY PHI 301
BY
TYRONE STEELE
HOLIDAY, FLORIDA
JUNE 12, 2006
IDEALISM OF PLATO
According to A Dictionary of Philosophy, Third Revised Edition by A.R. Lacey, the definition of Idealism is “A doctrine, or set of doctrines, to the effect that reality is in some way mental.”[1] Its immediate contrast is materialism and realism.
A notable proponent of idealism, Immanuel Kant, married the two concepts of realism and idealism into a morphed version of idealism where he postulated that “what we perceive is in general not illusory, but as real as perceptible things”[2] can be. He called himself a transcendental idealist but an empirical realist based on this position.
Plato conceived of the idea that things only exist in conceptual form, or an idea, and not in physical form except in the sense that they are perceived. The fact that they are perceived illustrates that “matter does not exist except in the form of ideas in the mind, or as a manifestation of mental activity.”[3] That mental activity could be one’s own mind, or Plato’s “Overmind,” in reference to an undefined manner of Creator.
Kant further replaced Plato’s “Overmind” with the concept of the “Absolute,” the only real thing that exists from which everything else exists. A few noteworthy
forms of idealism are subjective and objective idealism (or immaterialism), and Monism.
The source of idealism is the self, or the mind of the self, that which is all we’ve every really “known” and all we ever will really “know.” According to this philosophy, “truth is apprehensible by means of reason” and “there must be something that exists independently of the mind itself and that is capable of being known.”[4]
REALISM OF ARISTOTLE
Aristotle differed from his teacher, Plato, mainly in Plato’s interpretation of reality, which is fundamental to all philosophies that are subsequently developed. Aristotle believed that “the essence is real only when it is actualized in a phenomenal object knowable by sense experience.”[5] So, whereas, in idealism the object exists independent of being perceived, in realism the object is not at all extant until it is somehow experienced. The difference is in perceiving and experiencing. One can perceive a distant object, but is it necessarily experienced as well? The Lacey Dictionary of Philosophy describes “perception” as “the faculty of apprehending the world specifically through the senses.” But perception is susceptible to one’s own experience. Idealism and Realism are equally as different as the difference between Critical and Naïve Realism, in that experience is a two way process for the Critical
Realist and the Idealist since both the Overmind and the self are aware of the object. Experiencing an object is strictly subjective for the Critical Realist.
However, the Naïve Realist is passive in its knowing (experiencing) an object, reflecting the overall fundamental belief of realism that an object cannot be known without it first being objectively experienced, since “knowledge is an interpretive reconstruction of what is encountered.”[6] Thusly, its existence in the material world is dependant upon its being perceived. Most realists are Critical Realists.
According to the Dictionary of Philosophy by Lacey, the definition of realism is any view that “emphasizes the existence, reality or role, of some kind of thing or object.”[7]
In contrast to Idealism, which depends upon a higher source of reality in order for a perceived reality to exist, in Realism an object of discussion is unverifiable if the object is not tangibly accessible to our immediate knowledge – or “experienced.” Objects are interdependent with other objects to become reality in Realism. Whereas in Idealism, all things exist regardless of perception and are independent of the source of perception. Positivists and verificationists are “antirealists.”
[1] A.R. Lacey, A Dictionary of Philosophy, Third Revised Edition (New York: Barnes and Nobles, 1996), 137.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid., 138.
[4] Dr. Ronald E. Cottle, Introduction to Philosophy, A Christian Perspective, (Georgia: Christian Life, 1998), 49.
[5] Ibid., 51.
[6] Ibid., 66.
[7] A.R. Lacey, A Dictionary of Philosophy, Third Revised Edition (New York: Barnes and Nobles, 1996), 287.