PHILOSOPHICAL ERRORS, LECTURE 1 - IDEALISM

Idealism: ideas (meaning, knowledge) are prior to being (things, reality);

I. Why this course

a. Complement to study of St. Thomas’ philosophy (PHIL 602, God & Man)
b. These errors are prevalent in our society, influence our ideas
c. Help in evangelizing
d. Errors about knowledge, God, being & truth, man, ethics

II. Modern philosophy – characteristics of

a. Start over from scratch, reject the past, ignorant of the tradition
a. Science seems to replace metaphysics
b. Preoccupied with critique of knowledge instead of studying reality
a. Start with epistemology instead of metaphysics
c. Attend to re-define or re-make philosophy according to other sciences
a. Make it like math, science, empirical, pragmatic
b. Difference objects, therefore different natures & methods
d. Narrowly define knowledge (science) according to these models
a. Leaving out philosophy, theology, revelation, etc.
b. These not knowledge but opinion?
c. Leads to atheism
e. Little errors lead to big errors if don’t go back to correct

III. Plato’s idealism (statements in italics are MY comments/critiques)

a. True beings are the Forms/Ideas; they are “really real”
a. They are eternal, the same for everyone
b. Idea of horse has more being than a real horse
1. More real, more important
c. Plato speaks of “realm” of ideas as though they existed somewhere
b. Individual things (second-class beings) are “caused” by form/idea:
a. They reflect the form
b. They participate the form
c. They imitate the form
1. Forms or ideas cause things (to be the way they are)
2. Instead of things causing our knowledge of them
d. The myth of the cave illustrates this
1. Prisoners are like us, believing mere shadows are reality
2. Freed prisoner is the philosopher, comes to know truth (the really real)
3. This wise man should be king (philosopher king)
e. Real, individual things are mere shadows, imitations, of the forms/ideas
f. Art is further removed from being: an imitation of an imitation
c. Being = permanence, to be = to stay the same
a. Does this mean that changing beings are non-beings?
d. Plato on the problem of change
a. True beings, the “really real” forms/ideas, never change
b. The change of 2nd class “beings” is explained as the replacement of the forms that they
participate in, a mere switch of forms imitated
 c. He thinks this explains change, solves the problem of change
d. But what causes a thing to switch forms?
e. He emphasizes formal causality, and ignores efficient causality

IV. Dualistic man

a. The soul IS the man; man is essentially a soul
a. The body is a non-essential, temporary covering, like an overcoat
b. Soul existed among the forms/ideas before union with the body
1. It thus had all knowledge of the forms/ideas
2. Union with body causes the soul to forget this knowledge
c. “Learning” is recollection of this innate knowledge
1. We must free ourselves from the influence of the body to remember
2. Philosophers do this, like prisoner freed from the cave
3. Wise man seeks death (freedom from imprisoning body)
d. Knowledge about the forms/ideas,
a. Innate & not received through sensation
b. Another reason why the body is not part of man
c. Dualism & idealism go together
e. Transmigration (reincarnation) of soul
1. Soul can inhabit many bodies successively
2. Since body is not an essential part, just a covering
f. Plato’s ethics
1. Duty to overcome body’s influence to seek wisdom (anti-body)
2. “Virtue is knowledge”
a. We become good via wisdom, knowledge of the good
b. To be good, all men need is to know the good

V. More about idealism in general

a. Tendency to analyze essences/meaning instead of looking at reality
a. Ontological (apriori) argument for God’s existence are a good example of this
b. Try to prove He exists by analyzing his essence or definition (meaning)
b. Tendency to downplay or doubt sense evidence
a. maybe even to assent to a conclusion that seems reasonable but that is contradicted by
“the appearances” of reality
b. Why look at reality since meaning is already in our minds?
c. This tendency even stronger if they have a dualist notion of man
d. I (the mind) can’t trust the senses/body since they are separate, another being
e. Leads to skepticism about the world, mistrust of sense knowledge
c. Tendency towards essentialism (“essence is prior to existence”)
a. Avicenna: existence is just an accident, essence is prior.
1. Any essence can be thought three ways: in itself, in mind, in real
2. Absolute essence “in itself” is prior to essence existing in real or in mind
3. Since this existence seems to be added to the essence in itself
4. St. Thomas answers: yes, thought three ways, but how many ways can it BE?
a. In mind and in real
b. Absolute essence “in itself” IS the essence exiting in the mind!
b. Our minds tend towards essentialism
1. Since essences of material things are the proper object of human intellects
2. Must correct this over-intellectualism with judgments based on sense experience
VI. ON THE OTHER HAND, we have Aristotle’s realism
a. Realism: being is prior, knowledge & ideas are derived from being
a. What we know are beings; being causes our knowledge of it
b. We (the knowers) are also beings
c. Without being, there would be no knowledge
d. Knowledge is a type of (relational) being between beings.
e. Even when we invent, we give (mental) being to what we think up
b. Aristotle on FORM
a. True, form is important: form determines being & knowledge
b. BUT: forms are not separate beings
c. Form is internal, specifying, determining ACT
d. Forms make things be what they are
e. Forms make our knowledge the way it is (e.g., of this thing)
f. Forms do not exist separately from individual beings
c. A being is an individual substance
a. Only individual beings (substances) exist and they are real beings
b. Accidents are “beings” that modify substances
c. There are no universal beings or forms existing in the real
d. Ideas
a. Ideas exist only in minds, not in the real
b. The types or categories such as “man” in general only exist in the mind
c. Ideas & knowledge come from real, individual beings that we experience
d. We abstract this idea of “man” from individual men we experience
e. Intellectual knowledge involves abstraction of forms from things
e. Man
a. Man is an ensouled (animate) body
b. Both soul & body are essential parts of man
c. They are related as act & potency (soul is form, body is matter)
d. So together they make one substance
e. It’s the same being (me) who senses & thinks, so I cannot mistrust my senses
f. Change
a. Change is the actualization of a potency
b. Changeable things are composed of actual & potential principles
c. The subject of change is potential to various determinations or acts
d. The agent actualizes this potency
e. Change is the movement from potency to act in the patient
f. (Not a movement from absolute non-being to being)
g. This explanation includes the efficient cause of change, the agent
h. Two types of change
1. Substantial: “corruption and generation”
2. Accidental: “motion”
VII. Philosophical method of realists
a. Look at reality to discover the truth (instead of analyzing mental ideas)
1. Aristotle is the first scientist
b. Action follows upon being
1. Nature, essence (what it is) of being determines how it acts
2. So we look at how things act to know what they are
a. Philosophy & sciences both do this
 c. No mistrust of sensation
1. since senses (body) are part of ME
2. Not another being whom I mistrust because he/it may be lying
d. Tendency to use a posteriori arguments (to prove God’s existence)
1. From knowledge of effects we come to know the cause
2. From real existing effects we conclude to the existence of the cause

VIII. Idealism vs. realism

IDEALISM REALISM

View of reality: ideas beings, things

Man: soul or mind body/soul unit

Knowledge: innate from sense experience

Philosophical method: ignore sense evidence, recollect ideas look at reality

Prove God: a priori a posteriori

Leads to: skepticism/relativism science & truth