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Idealist Ethics
Idealist Ethics
W. J. Mander
1
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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
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© W. J. Mander 2016
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First Edition published in 2016
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For Samuel and Breesha

Preface
This is a book about ethics and idealism. It asks the question: If you were an idealist—if
you were to take the view that ideas are more real than things—what effect would that
have on your moral philosophy? I shall argue that there are two fundamental areas of
implication. In the first place idealism gives us a way to understand our own relation-
ship to value which avoids either excessive subjectivism or excessive objectivism. It
allows that values are nothing unless they connect with us, without at the same time
banishing them from the larger picture; without making them just a strange or indirect
fashion of talking about ourselves or our feelings. While from the other side, it offers us
a way to understand the unconditionally normative character of values which does not
simply attribute to them a mysterious or magical form of being completely unlike that
of everything else. The attraction of idealism in ethics lies in the fact that it is an orien-
tation which precisely rejects the distinction between ‘in-here’ and ‘out-there.’ In the
second place, idealism changes how we understand ourselves—it assures us that we are
more than just physical or biological creatures—and since ethical life is a form of
self-expression, that shift in self-conception inevitably affects the content of its guide-
lines. For instance, many idealist ethicists have argued that our identity is fundamen-
tally social. Others have stressed our continuity with the divine. And at the root of all
idealist ethics lies an intuition of the autonomous legitimacy of the ethical viewpoint.
There can be no acceptable world view not rooted in experience, but the appreciation
of value is a vital and pervasive aspect of our experience—as needful of recognition
and inclusion as any other—and no philosophy which turns its face from one half of
our being could ever hope to win more than one half of our conviction.
The book covers a great deal of ground both historically and thematically. It should
therefore be stressed that it does not aim to provide exhaustive coverage of any of the
figures or topics on which it touches. There exist many other detailed studies of the
ethical views of individual idealists. The study aims rather to take a broader perspec-
tive and, knitting together many different ideas, to bring out an underlying unity which
has hitherto been overlooked. It is an attempt to catch sight of a wood that has been
missed due to the brilliance of so many of its individually famous trees.
I have not attempted to disguise my allegiance to some form of Absolute Idealism—
and a fairly Hegelian one at that—but I have tried to avoid pushing too hard any one
specific line. Idealism is a broad church, and thus I have endeavoured throughout to
keep in view the full family of idealistic schemes, and to introduce the complete spec-
trum of possibilities for idealist ethics.
Contents
Part I
1. What is Idealism? 3
1.1 Definitions and the Idealist Family 4
1.2 Idealism and Ideas 6
1.3 Idealism and Minds 10
1.4 Varieties of Mind 11
1.5 The Primacy of Ideas 13
1.6 Immaterialism 14
2. The Notion of Idealist Ethics 15
2.1 The Tradition of Idealist Ethics 16
2.2 Rationale and Methodological Preliminaries 21
2.3 An Overview 23
Part II
3. Idealism and the Fact–Value Distinction (I) 29
3.1 Plato’s Ethical Ontology 29
3.2 The Humean and Kantian Distinctions 30
3.3 Idealism and the Fact–Value Distinction 32
3.4 Fichte’s Response to Kant’s Dualism 34
4. Idealism and the Fact–Value Distinction (II) 42
4.1 Hegel’s Response to Fichte and Kant 42
4.2 Hegel on Reason and Desire 44
4.3 Fact and Value in British Idealism 46
4.4 The Presence of Desire in Belief 48
4.5 The Presence of Belief in Desire 51
4.6 Metaphysical Foundations 53
Part III
5. The Argument from Value and Valuing 59
5.1 Ideal Love 62
5.2 Ideal Desire 64
5.3 Ideal Choice 68
5.4 Issues of Idealization 70
6. The Kantian Argument from Autonomy 75
6.1 Autonomy as an Argument Against Moral Realism 75
6.2 Kantian Moral Realism 78
x contents
6.3 Kantian Moral Constructivism 82

6.4 The Will that Wills Itself 83
7. The Axiarchic Argument 87
7.1 The Reality of Value 87
7.2 The Axiarchic Argument 89
7.3 Assessing the Axiarchic Argument 93
7.4 Idealism and the Axiarchic Argument 96
8. Teleology 100
8.1 Teleology and Idealism 100
8.2 Kantian Teleology 102
8.3 Hegelian Teleology 108
8.4 Lotze’s Teleology 112
9. The Heart of Idealist Metaethics 116
9.1 The Moral Self 117
9.2 Mind, World, and Value 121
9.3 Idealism and the Self-Reflexive Nature of Value 124
Part IV
10. Idealist Hedonism 133
10.1 Berkeley 134
10.2 Lotze 136
10.3 Sprigge 138
10.4 Objections to Idealistic Hedonism 140
11. Idealism and the Will 144
11.1 Kant and the Logic of Universalizability 145
11.2 Josiah Royce and the Logic of Loyalty 147
11.3 H. J. Paton and the Good Will 151
12. Idealism and Self-Realization 155
12.1 The Ideal of Self-Realization 156
12.2 The Social Self 158
12.3 The Cosmic or Divine Self 160
12.4 The Origin of Moral Obligation 161
Part V
13. The Ethics of Idealization 169
13.1 The Ethics of Idealization 170
13.2 Philosophical Idealism and the Ethics of the Ideal 171
13.3 Abstract Ideals 173
13.4 The Perfection of the Individual 175
13.5 Social Perfection 178
contents xi
14. The Ideal and the Real 182

14.1 The Knowability of Ideals 182
14.2 The Rationality of Ideals 184
14.3 The Worth of Ideals 186
14.4 The Hegelian Infinite 187
14.5 Idealization and Realization 190
Part VI
15. Idealism and Altruism 197
15.1 Royce and ‘the Moral Insight’ 197
15.2 Schopenhauer and Compassion 199
15.3 Bosanquet and Idealistic Universals 205
15.3.1 Bosanquet’s theory of value 206
15.3.2 Bosanquet’s theory of selfhood 207
15.3.3 Bosanquet’s ‘altruism’ 208
16. Idealism, Society, and Community 211
16.1 Doctrine of the Social Self and the Common Good 211
16.2 Marietta Kies: Idealism and Altruism 213
16.3 Personal Idealism and Community 216
16.4 Royce: The Beloved Community 218
16.5 McTaggart: The Metaphysics of Love 222
Part VII
17. Idealism and Free Will 227
17.1 The Denial of Materialism 227
17.2 Awareness of Agency 228
17.3 Atemporal Freedom 233
17.4 Freedom as Rationality 236
17.5 Freedom as Self-Expression 238
18. Idealism and Holism 240
18.1 The Holism and Contextualism of Value 240
18.2 Idealism and Relations 243
18.3 Relations and Value 247
19. The Idealistic View of the Universe 249
19.1 Pluralistic Personal Idealism 251
19.2 Panpsychism 254
19.3 Absolutism and Pantheism 256
Bibliography 259
Index 272
PA RT I
1
What is Idealism?
This book examines the nature of idealist ethics, that is to say, the form and content of
ethical belief most typically adopted by philosophical idealists. It is a topic at once
familiar and novel. While there exist many studies of the ethical views of individual
idealist philosophers—Plato, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Green, Bradley, and
Royce, to name the most famous—there is virtually no literature at all on the notion of
idealist ethics per se.1 Never is it asked: At which points, if any, do the ethical systems
of all these thinkers overlap, and what relation, if any, do such commonalities bear to
their authors’ idealism? To put the point more pressingly, never is the question posed:
Were you suddenly to become convinced of the truth of some form of philosophical
idealism, what revisions, if any, would that necessitate in your conception of the truth,
nature, and significance of ethical judgements?
The inquiry has two aims. The first is historical. From the record of past philosophy,
I shall demonstrate that there exists a discernible idealist approach to moral philoso-
phy, a tradition of ‘idealist ethics.’ I shall identify its characteristic marks and varieties,
as well as contrasting it with other ethical perspectives.
The second aim is apologetic. I shall argue that such idealist ethics offers us an
attractive way of looking at moral questions and that it has much to contribute to con-
temporary discussion. Ethical idealism, I shall maintain, offers a vital way of thinking
about value, with an untapped power to change and deepen our axiological point of
view. My formulation of this second aim is deliberately modest. I might have said that I
was going to ‘defend idealist ethics,’ but that would call for a full-length treatise
expounding one particular version of the position to the exclusion of any other; and
this I have not done.
In Chapter 2, I shall set out an opening case but, to begin, I want to say something
about my understanding of the two key terms here, ‘ethics’ and ‘idealism.’ The first is
easy enough. Ethics or moral philosophy is the theoretical study of how (in the broad-
est terms) we ought to live,2 the best actions to undertake, and the sort of people we
should strive to become. Dealing only with the kind of value which may be attributed
to a person, it is a slightly narrower topic than that of axiology or value theory as a
1
The only exception to this claim of which I am aware is Apala Chakravarti, The Idealist Theory of Value,
a long out-of-print monograph published in India.
2
Plato, Republic, 352d.
4 What is Idealism?
whole, which can also take in such fields as aesthetic value, cognitive value, or the
worth of life and the universe itself. But the question of how we should live cannot be
entirely disconnected from the question of what matters in the world more broadly,
and so in places my discussion has widened out beyond just ethics strictly defined.
The second key term presents greater obstacles. At the beginning of a book about
idealism, it is reasonable to request definition—or at least clarification—of the term.
This is all the more necessary in light of the very limited and one-sided understanding
of the subject which holds sway at the present time. But on closer inspection no simple
account is possible.
1.1 Definitions and the Idealist Family

Recent literature has reminded us that we must not make the mistake of supposing
that idealism is a homogeneous doctrine or tradition.3 It comprises, not a single
philosophical opinion, but a highly variegated collection of views. The notion is what
Wittgenstein called a family resemblance concept.4 There is no one doctrine held by all
and only idealists (or if there is, it is not so very important or illuminating). What we
find instead are many different points of identity held in common by many different
sets of thinkers, which taken all together create a knotwork of linkages overlapping
and crisscrossing with each other, a complex system of similarities in virtue of which a
particular set of beliefs stands out as densely interconnected, but only sparsely united
with others outside the fold. This is the kingdom of idealism, and in this chapter (as
an aid to our future navigations) I offer a broad outline map of this very large and
unfamiliar domain.
It might be objected that, without some doctrinal essence, the constellation of ideal-
ists is just too disparate a collection to be worth treating together as one whole. But,
while the group is undeniably diverse, lacking a precise or defining set of necessary and
sufficient conditions, so long as this fact is recognized, it need not be regarded as an
obstacle to fruitful philosophical reflection. Understood for what they are, broad and
loose conceptual groupings can be very useful in making sense of intellectual history,
helping us to discern a general pattern which might otherwise be lost amid all of the
specific details. To take a selection of examples: nominalists, rationalists, empiricists,
intuitionists, Platonists, theists, conservatives, and liberals are all similarly broad-
brush philosophical labels, taking up in their net many different positions, but
nonetheless able to do real classificatory and explanatory work. Similarly, it would be
misguided to deny that there exists an idealist tradition, for although it may not name a
monolithic position, the designation is one that picks out important commonalities
among its members.
3
Dunham, Grant, and Watson, Idealism, p.1.
4
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §§66–71.
What is Idealism? 5
There is a deeper point to be made here. In pulling together a connected group of

thinkers, we should feel under no pressure to discount or minimize the existence of
genuine difference of opinion within that group. Dogmatic creeds defining member-
ship of philosophical schools do nothing to advance understanding, and deep dis
agreement in itself is no reason not to group together otherwise similar ideas. In fact, as
with families and religions, disagreement among associates is the normal state with
philosophers; and antagonism within a school of thought is very often more important
or fruitful conceptually than differences between widely disparate paradigms, where
misunderstanding or incommensurability can render disputes more productive of
heat than light.
In a certain respect, determining philosophical allegiances is like determining reli-
gious affiliations. As there exists a strong tendency to identify Muslims, Christians,
Buddhists, or any other religious group, via some set of doctrines which they believe,
so it is tempting to suppose that there must be some principle or set of principles to
which all idealists subscribe. Arguably, however, it is tradition more than any other
factor that fixes our religion (or lack thereof). We are brought up in the faith of our
parents and community, assimilating by acculturation their rituals, feelings, practices,
stories, literature, aesthetics, and aspirations. More than simply the record of some act
of intellectual assent, the community of the faithful is a living tradition, membership of
which creates our very identity. Philosophy is learnt in the same way. It is assimilated
from the particular literature to which we are exposed, the examples of our own
instructors, and their criticisms of our first efforts. We are all of us brought up in philo-
sophical traditions which determine, for example, whether we turn most readily to
Frege and Russell, to Husserl and Heidegger, to Locke and Bacon, to Aquinas and
Augustine, or to Plato and Aristotle, as well as influencing the terminology and literary
form in which we naturally express ourselves. Since idealist philosophy is no exception
to this principle, it follows that idealists too are perhaps best identified by the tradition
with which they identify: by the questions they ask themselves, the peculiar idiom they
use, as well as the historical models to which they refer—either the figures with whom
they align themselves or those from whom they feel the need to distance themselves.5
It is precisely this being-situated within a specific intellectual tradition which, given
the contemporary ignorance of idealism, makes reading its literature for many mod-
ern philosophers a most bewildering engagement with an entirely new set of figures,
concepts, questions, and concerns. Of course, there is something circular in what is
5
Although pretending to a historical objectivity which cannot be defended, the twentieth-century
American idealist Wilbur Marshall Urban captures something of this idea in his talk of the ‘Great Tradition’
in philosophy (which, following Leibniz, he also terms ‘the perennial philosophy’)—the lineage of thought
from Plato to Hegel which finds beyond, behind, above, or within the sensible phenomenal world an ideal
or intelligible reality which grounds and explains it (The Intelligible World: Metaphysics and Value, 1929,
Preface, p.1). In calling on the phrase ‘perennial philosophy,’ Urban appeals to a term whose use is some-
what vague. For example, in Aldous Huxley’s celebrated book, The Perennial Philosophy, it designates
something rather more like mysticism than idealism. For Leibniz’s use of philosophia perennis, see his letter
to Nicolas Remond, 26 Aug. 1714 (in his Philosophischen Schriften, vol. 3, p.625).
6 What is Idealism?
being claimed here—idealists are those who refer to and define themselves by refer-
ence to other idealists—but the point should be acknowledged for its reality on the
ground. A definitional formula of idealism based on the intellectual assent to certain
given propositions runs the risk of creating a precise but artificial construction as
patently false as saying (for example) that Christians are all and only those who believe
in the Nicene Creed.
We should not allow ourselves to be confused by talk of an ‘idealist’ tradition, for the
term itself is in fact a relatively modern one.6 Moreover, from the first it was never a
neutral or indifferent concept, but rather a badge of honour to be claimed and worn
with pride or else a slur of absurd implausibility to be avoided at all costs. As such, it has
been subject to continuously evolving re-definition and re-classification. Taking these
two points together, we can say neither that all those who have been called or have
called themselves ‘idealists’ really are cognate thinkers, nor that all of the figures
we might think of as belonging to the ‘idealist tradition’ would in fact have recognized
the existence of such a tradition or themselves signed up to it.7 If we wish to under-
stand the history of philosophy we must understand the thoughts themselves, not just
their labels.
1.2 Idealism and Ideas

There can be no ‘correct’ or ‘official’ definition of idealism; different purposes will call
for different approaches. But in order that we have something before us, let me attempt
a general characterization: Idealism is a commitment to the primacy of ideas in any
understanding of the universe. Of course, this only invites the question, ‘What is an
idea?’, and that is an extremely complex problem, worthy of a book in its own right, but
it is possible to make a start with it by thinking about some of the range of ways in
which that term can and has been used.
The oldest use of the concept of an idea is that found in Plato’s dialogues picked out
by his ‘eidos’ (είδος) and, less often, ‘idea’ (ίδεα), the two words he uses to designate the
unitary, universal, eternal, and immutable intellectual essence of the particulars of any
given kind encountered in sensible experience: the idea of beauty, the idea of justice,
the idea of courage, and so forth. The world of sensible particulars is a manifestation or
expression of the underlying world of Ideas, although it must immediately be added
that the Ideas themselves are possessed of an existence independent of their being
instantiated, and that sensory manifestations are only ever an approximation to them.
6
Credit for first use of the term should probably be accorded to Leibniz, although it was his follower
Christian Wolff who first employed it in a systematic fashion (J. O. Urmson, ‘Idealism,’ p.111).
7
To just hint at the complexities of the matter, it is enough to note that Kant in one of the most famous
sections of his Critique of Pure Reason urges ‘the refutation of idealism,’ while Berkeley, who for many
Anglo-American philosophers is the paradigm idealist, in other quarters is held to be scarcely an idealist
at all. Edward Caird, for example, has nothing but contempt for “the so-called Idealism of Berkeley”
(‘Mr. Balfour on Transcendentalism,’ p.112).
What is Idealism? 7
The perceivable realm is always more or less illusory of the real world of Ideas behind
it. Subsequent developments in intellectual history affecting the meanings of words
have brought to the term ‘idea’ further unfortunate implications of subjectivity and of
a mode of being within the psychological history of the individual. This taint—together
with the fact that the term eidos (είδος) is used by Aristotle interchangeably with the
term morphe (μορφε) to characterize the first side of the distinction rendered in
English as that between ‘form’ and ‘matter’—have made it the norm in modern philos-
ophy to speak of Plato’s theory of forms rather than his theory of Ideas. Nonetheless,
‘Idea’ remains an accurate and useful translation of his key concept insofar as it picks
out something of universal stamp, graspable only in and through an act of the intellect.
What Plato intends are those things with which we have commerce when we think.
Although objective realities, ‘already there’ prior to our thinking about them, Plato’s
eidos are the objects of rational thought, and hence also things to be found by looking
within. It is true that in the Parmenides, Plato considers, and rejects, the suggestion that
“perhaps each of these forms (είδος) is a thought (νόημα) which cannot properly exist
anywhere but in a mind.”8 However, this dismissal needs to be considered carefully.
The hypothesis is rejected on the grounds that such thoughts would have to be the
thoughts of something which, if taken to be the common eidos itself, would generate an
unwelcome infinite sequence. But insofar as the idealist notion that ideas constitute
reality is precisely one that rejects the distinction between an idea itself and its
distinguishable object, it is clear that what the dialogue is dismissing here are private
psychological representations, universals as characterized by the modern thesis of
conceptualism. No reason is given thereby for denying that the eidos may be thought of
as ideas with respect to some more objective sense of thought or cognition.9 It is cur-
rently unfashionable to read Plato’s metaphysical system as ‘idealism,’ preferring
instead to regard it as a kind of dualism in which experienced reality is augmented by a
separate ‘logical realm.’ But if forms or universals or eidos may not be reduced to
merely psychological events, no more can they be separated wholly from the business
of understanding. From Malebranche’s theory that in knowing the character of the
world we become acquainted with ideas in the mind of God, through Hegel’s belief that
the reality underneath and manifesting itself in whatever we experience is something
fundamentally intelligible, right up to Karl Popper’s World Three which, although
objectively real, is wholly dependent for its creation on minds,10 the intuition is never
far away that the intelligibility of the order behind the world is not something brute
and external, but rather something which reflects a fundamental continuity between
its being and our own cognitive powers.
8
Parmenides, 132b.
9
For further discussion of this passage, see Christoph Helmig, ‘Plato’s Arguments against
Conceptualism: Parmenides 132B3–C11 Reconsidered.’
10
Malebranche, The Search After Truth, Elucidation X; Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Preface (Knox p.10);
Hegel’s Logic, §6; Popper, Objective Knowledge, ch.4.
8 What is Idealism?
A little history of philosophy takes us quickly to other ways of understanding the

notion of an idea. Via the tradition of Neo-Platonism and the Christian metaphysics of
Augustine the world-grounding Ideas or universals of Plato gradually came to be
understood as what we today would think of as concepts, where these may be under-
stood as abstract general rules of thinking or schemes of notional unification and divi-
sion. Linked first with just the divine mind, and subsequently with any mind possessed
of the divine gift of rationality, the eidos became refashioned as that which is grasped in
classifying, understanding, or valuing the world. Reconfigured as essentially rep-
resentational forms capturing the structural heart of reality, ideas passed from being
exclusively divine objects to becoming the currency of any spontaneous thinking
being. This development of what it means to be an idea first steps fully into the light of
explicit philosophical understanding in the thought of Kant. Kant’s claim that under-
standing itself supplies foundational concepts or ‘categories’ which necessarily struc-
ture all possible experience, turned idealism into the thesis that, since it is indivisible
from the thoughts by which we shape it, reality itself must be conceived of as the prod-
uct of rational thought or ‘understanding.’11 The being of the world can never be sepa-
rated from the conceptualization of it.
If the precise metaphysical status and location of both eidos and concept remain
somewhat unclear, the seventeenth century saw the emergence of another under-
standing which sought to answer these matters with much greater precision. According
to this view—whose origin we associate with Descartes but whose full development
took several more centuries—an idea is a discrete event in the psychological history of
some individual. Occurring both at a specific time and within the mind or soul of some
specific creature, an idea on this scheme is the immediate object of a person’s con-
sciousness, a psychological or mental representation, not so different from an image.
In this use the term referred first to perception (either external sense-datum or i nternal
feeling), but became extended to cover any mental event such as memory, imagina-
tion, or deliberative thought. By further extension its scope was even extended from
the conscious to the unconscious, the hidden depths of ‘petites perceptions’ first inaug
urated by Leibniz12 and now a commonplace of our mental self-conception. Idealism
informed by this understanding of ‘idea’ becomes the doctrine—most famously asso-
ciated with Berkeley—that reality is nothing more than a private show of mental
images. Objects are re-designated as modifications of our consciousness, while the
world itself becomes a wholly internal representation, distinguishable from, but not
fundamentally different in type from, a dream. Berkeleyanism is a doctrine which
enjoys a certain metaphysical clarity, and for many Anglo-American philosophers it
11
It is also worth noting that Kant does not utterly leave behind all links to the Platonic sense of ‘idea,’
for besides the ‘categories’ or ‘pure concepts of the understanding’ which structure all possible experience,
he also maintains that there are ‘ideas’ or ‘pure concepts of reason’ which refer to the ‘totality of experience,’
something which cannot itself be experienced. Of course, his conception of space and time as forms, not of
understanding but of sensibility, adds a rather different idealistic flavour to his overall position.
12
Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding, Preface (Akademie edition, pp.53–8).
What is Idealism? 9
has become the definitive form of idealism, but the price paid for its simplicity is high
as we move closer towards a sensationalism which tends to assimilate conception to
perception, and towards a subjectivism which continually threatens to fall off into
solipsism.
According to the psychological theory developed during the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, Ideas are things commonly expressed in language, and thought
of as that which gives words their meaning. That is to say, terms are held to acquire
their significance by standing for or articulating psychological ideas. I name what is
in my mind, and thereby conjure up in your mind a similar idea, communicating my
thoughts to you. In modern times such ‘ideational theories of meaning’ have fallen
out of fashion, as philosophers have realized that meaning must be understood as
internal to language itself. Language has meaning ‘built into it,’ for nothing itself with-
out meaning could give significance to our speech or writing. One way to express this
point would be to say that language itself becomes the locus of ideas. To study ideas is
precisely to study their use in actual language. Rising to prominence in the twentieth
century, this way of thinking has given birth to what has sometimes been called ‘lin-
guistic idealism’: the notion that any world in which we live can only be understood
as a function of our linguistic practices. If there can be no access to reality—no
thought of reality—except through a language which we fashion ourselves, the world
itself becomes a linguistic creation. Although in each case the attribution has also
been robustly rejected, this title has been accorded to Wittgenstein, Rorty, and
Derrida.13
A final sense of idea—every bit as important for understanding the varieties of
idealism—is very different. While the four accounts considered above were all in
some sense ‘cognitive,’ ideas may also be thought of as ‘practical,’ as the agents of
intelligible change or activity in the world. Although not necessarily purposive or
goal-directed, such species of impetus cannot be viewed as just blind force either
(like mechanical causation), but must rather be understood as intentional or mean-
ingful. At one extreme there is the Schopenhauerean Will that drives the universe
forward like a primal urge, while at the other extreme there is the Hegelian Absolute
which unfolds the world like one vastly complex inference but, either way, on this
interpretation of ‘idea,’ to think of reality as ‘ideal’ is to think of it as something
which is done and not simply something which happens. This sense of ‘idea’ and con-
sequent sense of ‘idealism’ should not be forgotten. It is particularly important inso-
far as such idealism stresses the creativity of ideas, insofar as it holds that ideas
produce the world.
13
That Wittgenstein was a linguistic idealist was argued by G. E. M. Anscombe, ‘The Question of
Linguistic Idealism.’ For the charge that Rorty was a linguistic idealist, see Michael Fisher, ‘Linguistic
Idealism.’ With respect to Derrida—famous for claiming that ‘There is nothing but text’ (‘Il n’y a pas de
hors-texte’)—see Iris Murdoch, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, p.197.
10 What is Idealism?
1.3 Idealism and Minds

In choosing to explicate idealism by reference to the central notion of an ‘idea,’ I am
departing from the more common methodology which takes as its key term ‘mind,’ and
understands idealism as the thesis that reality is somehow or other ‘mind-dependent’;
perhaps that the whole of reality lies within experience, or that everything which exists
is some way mental.
However, the approach which I have taken is not incompatible with this more famil-
iar way of thinking; for if ideas form the foundation of the world, but are modes of
being necessarily always grasped or understood, then it follows immediately that there
can be no reality ‘in itself ’ outside the compass of experience. And the claim that ideas
do indeed exist only insofar as they are entertained by some mind or other is certainly
a plausible one. The opposite view conceives of them as abstract forms or patterns
which, while they may be apprehended by mind and appealed to as that which accounts
for coherence or intelligibility, are known only accidentally and would be there the
same, whether grasped or not. But this picture is vacuous. Like Molière’s ‘dormative
virtue,’ such forms are just an empty ‘I know not what,’ identified only by the cognitive
effect they are alleged to elicit in us. Their postulation would be a bit like attributing to
foodstuffs an intrinsic ‘taste,’ understood only as that in the food which explains why it
tastes the way it does. The picture is also self-defeating. Such supposed forms are uni-
versals, but the very distinction between particular and universal, between a thing and
its nature, is one that exists only through an act of mental abstraction.14 The coherence
of the world is not a distinct part of it, but an aspect of its being separable only in
thought. If these points are accepted and it is agreed that there can be no ideas
‘unthought’ or ‘unowned’ by some species of mind, then we see that at the heart of all
idealism flows a strong current of anti-realism. That is to say, all idealists reject the
theory of the thing-in-itself, the notion of that which has an existence and a nature in
its own right, wholly separate from mind.15
But the two ways of thinking about idealism are not simply equivalent, however,
since the significance of this fact that there can be no ideas without minds varies greatly
according to whether we suppose ideas depend on minds, or minds depend on ideas.
We might think of minds as prior in the order of existence, such that either ideas exist
‘in’ minds (like different items you might place in a box) or they ‘qualify’ minds (like
different colours you might paint some object). But alternatively we might give priority
to the ideas themselves, such that minds are just sets of ideas, or just that through which,
or by which, ideas are manifested or expressed. Perhaps (like a story) a mind is nothing
over and above a more or less coherent unit of ideas. Perhaps it is not so much we who
14
On the unity of the ‘what’ and the ‘that,’ see Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p.143.
15
The glaringly obvious counter-example to raise at this point would be Kant. But the best response to
that objection is to argue that, while in his account of the reality of the experienced world Kant virtually
defines idealism, in his assertion of a noumenal reality utterly beyond cognition he falls back into a realism
that would be anathema to nearly all other idealists.
What is Idealism? 11
think the ideas as the ideas which ‘think us,’ and instead of saying that ideas only exist ‘in’
minds, we should say that minds only come to exist through or by the ideas which they
think. This second way of conceptualizing the matter is significant because, rather than
drawing ideas into our pre-existing sense of what mind could be, we find ourselves say-
ing instead that there must be as many different kinds of mind as there are sorts of idea.
Understood as stating or implying that nothing can exist outside of mind, there is no
denying that idealism is a theory with little initial plausibility. However, persuaded of
the cogency of its basic analysis, steps may be taken to develop its crudest and most
unbelievable formulation—to be is to be perceived—into something more sophisti-
cated and credible. (1) First of all, it must be allowed that reality includes not merely
what is perceived but also what has been or what will be perceived. (2) Secondly, no
plausible idealism will be content to render all reality inner or private. The world takes
in, not simply what is perceived by me, but what is perceived by us, the community of
sentient beings. How wide is that community? Beyond those creatures we know to be
sentient, idealists have been drawn to two further possibilities for demarcation: either
to some sort of God or Absolute Spirit who perceives everything, or else to some sort of
panpsychism by which a great many different things may be thought to have sentience
and to know themselves—in some rudimentary fashion at least—vastly enlarging the
community of the sentient. (3) In the third place it is highly implausible to reduce the
world we experience to the world we sense or feel, for we all live every bit as much in a
world that we interpret, infer, remember, or think. Hence any sophisticated idealism
will extend the realm of reality from the merely perceived to take in any sort of experi-
ence whatsoever. This may include the domain of what is thought, since the worlds we
think of can be as real in their way as those we perceive. (4) Fourthly, and most contro-
versially of all, is the extension to possible experience. The idealist may hold that reality
covers not just what is experienced, but what might or could be experienced. Some
idealists such as Berkeley seem to have allowed this extension, while others like Royce
have argued against all ‘bare possibility’ not grounded in the actual.16
1.4 Varieties of Mind

If denial of the possibility of being altogether outside the compass of mind still seems a
hard claim to swallow, we should also remember that, besides our own kind, there are
doubtless other sorts of mind with other ways of ‘having ideas.’
Like the eye that can see anything except itself, the idealist mind or subject of aware-
ness, however it be conceived, can never be thought of as just one of the possible objects
of perception. As the ground of the world, it is not itself a part of the world.17 But even
16
Berkeley, Principles, §3, §58; Philosophical Commentaries, §293a; Royce, Conception of God, p.37.
17
For the metaphor of the eye, see Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation, II:491. For a more
recent demonstration of the impossibility of explaining ‘mind-dependence’ without invoking transcendent
mind, see Gideon Rosen, ‘Objectivity and Modern Idealism: What is the Question?’
so, there are many different ways of understanding ‘mind,’ and such differences further
complicate any attempt to formulate a single definitive version of idealism. As was
done for the notion of ‘idea,’ it will be useful briefly to canvas the broad range of possi-
ble understandings on offer.
In purely historical terms when, under the influence of Neo-Platonism, Augustine
first referred the Archetypal Ideas of creation to some mind, it was the divine mind of
which he was thinking. And from this point onwards, one possible location for the
ideas that constitute the world has remained the mind of God. Few perhaps have
advanced clearly out from the shadow of metaphor to declare this in the broad daylight
of the literal, but both Malebranche’s doctrine of ‘vision in God’ and Newton’s doctrine
that space itself is the sensorium of God come close to making this assertion.18
At the other extreme from this, and according to what is probably the most common
understanding of idealism in Anglo-American circles, ideas are located in the individ-
ual mind. The finite individual making its own choices and directly aware only of its
own mental life—the self-revealing author of the Cartesian cogito—becomes the cen-
tral anchor or reality. With mind understood in this way, idealism construes the uni-
verse as a collection of mental or spiritual atoms or monads, in some form or fashion
co-ordinated, but each fundamentally separate from the other. This is commonly
described as pluralistic or Personal Idealism.
Throughout the world we experience, the idealist finds tell-tale indicators of the
work of mind. But the mind in question need not be understood in individual or per-
sonal terms. The traces need not be those of mine, or yours, or even God’s mind in
particular. Instead they may be the marks of mind in general: the forms, structures, and
developments characteristic of all possible experience. As in natural history it may be
best to explain what is going on with individual dolphins or daffodils by reference to
the species in general, so it may be argued that philosophical analysis of the world we
each individually experience tells us about mind in general. It is not easy to pin down as
impersonal a conception of mind as this, and hence it is no surprise that, considered as
the putative ground of everything there is, the abstractions of mind or rationality in
general have tended to become substantivized or treated as objects in their own right.
This tendency to reification is especially striking in Hegel’s theory of ‘Geist’ or ‘Spirit,’
the root locus of mindedness per se which individual finite minds more or less express
or instantiate.
Perhaps the most natural way to give concrete form to the thought that things
depend on mind in general but not the mind of any individual is to suppose that they
depend on that which is common to all minds. From here it is but a short conceptual
step to the collective thinking of a community—located in its practices, institutions,
literature, and history—which shapes and is shaped by the thinking of its members.
This we might regard as the social or group mind. As many distinct thoughts make up
18
For Newton’s claim that space is the sensorium of God, see his Opticks, Queries 28 (p.370) and 31
(p.403).
What is Idealism? 13
the mind of an individual, so it may be suggested that many thinking individuals make
up the mind of society. Taking ‘mind’ in this way yields a new species of idealism—
known in sociological circles as ‘social constructivism’—in which, not simply social
reality, but reality as a whole is understood as something created by groups of people.
A final sense of mind which must not be overlooked, for it runs like a vein through-
out the history of idealist thinking, is that of the Absolute Mind or World-Soul.
Stretching back to Plato’s Timaeus,19 and often conceived by analogy with the case of
human embodiment, this form of mind may, or may not, be identified with the mind of
God. To do so yields a form of idealism which is at the same time a form of pantheism.
1.5 The Primacy of Ideas

There were two components to the characterization of idealism offered in section 2:
ideas and primacy. Turning to the second of these it needs to be asked: What sort of
primacy do idealists attribute to ideas? And primacy over what? It is possible in this
regard to isolate three different lines of thought, of increasing strength.
The first and weakest is hardly a sense of ‘primacy’ at all. Corrective of the com-
mon notion that there could exist wholly mind-independent reality, it may be
argued that any attempt to understand the world must inevitably make reference to
ideas or to mind. This yields an idealism of the kind that Kant advanced for the
phenomenal world, in which there is no possibility of filtering out the ideas or
interpretations by which we shape our experience. We cannot ‘take the glasses off.’
There holds an essential co-relativity of subject and object, such that we cannot sub-
tract from reality our cognitive, affective, or volitional engagement with it, any
more than we can conceive of a knowing, feeling, or willing subject on its own and
not embedded within some world. Insofar as this stance rejects the unreflective
realism which characterizes both common sense and contemporary philosophy, it
is radical enough, but it is also relatively weak insofar as it advances no further the-
sis (beyond their mutual co-involvement) about the exact relation that holds
between subject and object.
A bolder line would be to argue that ideas come first in the ontological order of the
universe, that they in some sense ground or ‘give birth to’ the whole of experienced
reality. There are various ways one might attempt to flesh out such a species of primacy.
With Plato we might think of the particular things of this world as the more or less
inadequate manifestations of ideal types, with Fichte we might think of beings as the
necessary ‘posits’ of the primary creative activity which constitutes subject-hood, or
with Hegel we might think that the developing universe expresses an underlying logic
or ground-plan which forces us to recognize that ‘the real is the rational.’ But however
precisely we cash out the scheme, on this way of thinking, idealism becomes the thesis
19
“The world came into being, a living creature truly endowed with soul and intelligence” (Timaeus, 30c).
that experienced reality is a sort of vehicle, product, or reflection of a more primary

ideal realm.
In its strongest formulation, the primacy of ideas maintains that ideas are all that
exists, such that any reference to the apparently non-ideal must always be re-cast into
the ‘language of ideas.’ Probably the best-known example of such reductionism is
Berkeley’s proposed analysis of material objects as nothing more than collections of
actual or possible sensory ideas. It is this third formulation of primacy which renders
idealism most susceptible to the charge that it is some sort of ‘mentalism’ or ‘spiritual-
ism,’ but it is by no means the commonest form of the tradition.
1.6 Immaterialism
Insofar as terms gain meaning from their contrasts, dualism is easier to understand
than idealism, and when it is asserted that everything is ideal it becomes somewhat
unclear just what is being denied. Therefore, in concluding this chapter, it may be use-
ful to say just a few words about immaterialism. It is widely thought that idealists deny
the existence of the material world—that they regard it as some sort of ‘illusion’—but
in fact, scarcely any idealists do this.20 Instead they offer an interpretation of what its
reality amounts to.21 It is true that Berkeley called his own philosophy ‘immaterialism,’
but his intention in doing so was not to deny the existence of the everyday world of
tables, chairs, stars, and microbes, but simply to challenge a popular philosophical
theory or interpretation of its nature: specifically, the hypothesis that it consists in
mind-independent extension, or ‘matter.’
However, Berkeley’s immaterialist conception of idealism highlights for us one
important strand of thinking about idealism which might otherwise go unnoticed, a
strand of thinking which we could characterize as negative rather than positive. Instead
of arguing (positively) that material objects need to be understood by reference to
ideas, such schemes of thought argue (negatively) that they cannot be understood in
material or spatial terms. With a pedigree as old as Zeno, these arguments often con-
cern infinite divisibility and may be found, for example, in the philosophies of Leibniz
and McTaggart.22 It could legitimately be asked whether those who know only that the
world is not material ought really to be classified as idealists, but the cases should not
be ignored, and remind us of the fact that examination of the history of idealism often
reveals greater unanimity and clarity over what is being rejected than it does over what
is being affirmed.
20
The exception to this claim is Christian Science which notoriously holds that the material world,
including such physical evils as disease, is an illusion.
21
Josiah Royce joked that “the world and the heavens, and the stars are all real, but not so damned real”
(Letters of Josiah Royce, p.217).
22
Leibniz, Monadology, §§65–6; McTaggart, The Nature of Existence, ch.23.
2
The Notion of Idealist Ethics
I noted at the outset that there is no existing literature on the subject of ethics and
idealism. That there is no body of work on this question might be thought, not acci-
dental, but a sign that the inquiry itself is a misguided one. Perhaps the ethical views of
idealists have nothing more in common with each other than do the ethical views of
(say) people who weigh less than 80kg or people who like cats. Indeed the point can be
made more forcefully than that. Modern philosophy—and especially modern Anglo-
American philosophy—regards idealism as a metaphysical doctrine. And this is how
I treated it in Chapter 1. But in that understanding we find an objection to the very
project of this book—to outline the notion of idealist ethics—for it may be challenged
that so theoretical a world view is in its very nature silent on all questions to do with
value. To put the point another way, even were we able to generate a list of all those
philosophers who deserve to be called ‘idealists’ and then to look at their ethical theo-
ries, it is unclear (goes the objection) that we would find any point in common, or if we
did, that it would be any sort of consequence of their ‘idealism.’ This was the opinion
even of the great idealist commentator A. C. Ewing who, while acknowledging that
many idealists have been very interested in ethics, maintained that their idealism was
simply irrelevant to their ethical contentions.1
It is the claim of this book that that widespread view is wrong. As no one would
imagine that the adoption of naturalistic physicalism was a matter of complete
indifference to our understanding of the value and meaning of life, likewise the
suggestion that so fundamental a world view as idealism should float entirely free
from our system of values is one with little natural plausibility. How could a view
about the nature of all reality be without any implication for one part of that reality,
namely our experience of value?
A plausible case must rest on more than intuition, of course, and the thesis is one
which will be proven in detail in due course. But in this chapter I intend simply to open
my case and, with a brief appeal to history, to begin to explore the falsity of this
common prejudice. If we look to the record of past philosophy we will see that, while
for some figures idealism is principally a thesis in metaphysics, for many others it is
1
Idealism, pp.427–8. Twenty-three years later Ewing was more guarded in making this point. Still main-
taining that there is no special system of idealist ethics as such, he allowed that many idealists have regarded
“the valuational aspect of things” as “a very important partial clue to the nature of reality as such” (The
Idealist Tradition, p.25).
16 The Notion of Idealist Ethics
most forcefully a tradition in value philosophy—they themselves identify it as primar-

ily an ethical orientation—while further advocates see it as a perspective which tran-
scends or incorporates equally both the practical and the theoretical sides of life. These
views will be discussed in greater length in the chapters which follow, but even a brief
survey should be sufficient to convince us that it is necessary fundamentally to extend
the characterization of idealism which was given in Chapter 1.
2.1 The Tradition of Idealist Ethics

Although it plays several different philosophical roles, there can be no doubt that, for
Plato, the theory of Ideas or forms is first and foremost of significance as an ethical
doctrine. It is not idle theoretical curiosity, but practical purpose, which drives the
argument forward insofar as Plato holds that only if we know what courage, justice,
wisdom, temperance, piety, etc. are in themselves will we be able to acquire these vir-
tues or distinguish them from false rivals. The inquiry may also lead us to further non-
moral Ideas—sameness and difference, motion and rest, triangularity, circularity, the
shuttle, the bed, the table, the bee, and such like—but these remain secondary and
subordinate to the true prize. And, while an intellectual or cognitive accomplishment,
grasp of the Ideas is at the same time also a profoundly ethical state of being; nothing
less than a form of love. At its heart, the Platonic vision is one of a universe both reflect-
ing and governed by the Good, a universe fundamentally ethical in its base construc-
tion. Moreover, for Plato, the Idea of the Good is the source, not only of being, but of
knowledge and knowability itself, locating the proposed unity of value and existence
within a firmly idealist context.2
To assimilate Renaissance Platonism into the history of idealism, though by no
means impossible, is a task that would take more work than can be attempted here.
But it is important to take note of such figures as Nicholas of Cusa, Marsilio Ficino,
Giovanni Picco della Mirandola, and the Cambridge Platonists, insofar as they
continued that tradition whereby the eternal ideas which render the world intelli-
gible are understood to be every bit as much the supreme source of value as they
are the root of being. In the Neo-Platonic scheme, Love, as the first and final cause
of all things, unites together in one whole both the existence and the value of the
universe.
The ethical significance of idealism emerges more clearly into view during the
seventeenth century in the work of those philosophers for whom the thought that
the world is shaped by ideas is fundamentally of a piece with the thought that it is
shaped by God. For both Malebranche, and his English follower John Norris, the
intelligible world in which are found the essences of things is identified literally
with the set of divine ideas, and in consequence the proper goals of theoretical and
practical life—truth and goodness—are seen to coincide with each other within the
2
Republic, 504e—509c.
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Carolina convention, the same Iredell, after pointing out that the
American concept of the relation of citizen to all governments had
become basic American law, contrasts that fact with the fundamental
law of Great Britain where “Magna Charta itself is no constitution, but
a solemn instrument ascertaining certain rights of individuals, by the
legislature for the time being; and every article of which the
legislature may at any time alter.” (4 Ell. Deb. 148.)
In the Pennsylvania convention, on December I, 1787, one of the
most distinguished lawyers of that generation made a memorable
speech, expressing the universal knowledge that the American
concept had taken forever the place of the Tory concept in
fundamental American law. We commend a careful study of that
speech to those of our public leaders and “constitutional” lawyers,
who for five years have been acting on the assumption that the Tory
concept has again become our fundamental American law. We
average Americans, after living with those earlier Americans, are not
surprised to listen to the statements of Wilson. “The secret is now
disclosed, and it is discovered to be a dread, that the boasted state
sovereignties will, under this system, be disrobed of part of their
power.... Upon what principle is it contended that the sovereign
power resides in the state governments?... The proposed system
sets out with a declaration that its existence depends upon the
supreme authority of the people alone.... When the principle is once
settled that the people are the source of authority, the consequence
is, that they may take from the subordinate governments powers
which they have hitherto trusted them, and place those powers in the
general government, if it is thought that there they will be productive
of more good. They can distribute one portion of power to the more
contracted circle, called state governments; they can also furnish
another proportion to the government of the United States. Who will
undertake to say, as a state officer, that the people may not give to
the general government what powers, and for what purposes, they
please? How comes it, sir, that these state governments dictate to
their superiors—to the majesty of the people?” (2 Ell. Deb. 443.)
We average Americans, legally bound (as American citizens) by
no command (interfering with our human freedom) except from our
only legislature at Washington and then only in those matters in
which we ourselves, the citizens of America, have directly given it
power to command us, now intend insistently to ask all our
governments, the supreme one at Washington and the subordinate
ones in the states of which we are also citizens, exactly the same
question which Wilson asked.
Daniel Webster asked almost exactly the same question of Hayne
and history does not record any answer deemed satisfactory by the
American people. Webster believed implicitly in the concept of
American law stated by those who made our Constitution. Like them,
and unlike our “constitutional” lawyers, he knew that the Tory
concept of the relation of men to their government had disappeared
from American basic law.
“This leads us to inquire into the origin of this government, and the
source of its power. Whose agent is it? Is it the creature of the state
legislatures, or the creature of the people?... It is, sir, the people’s
constitution, the people’s government—made for the people, made
by the people, and answerable to the people. The people of the
United States have declared that this Constitution shall be the
supreme law. We must either admit the proposition, or dispute their
authority. The states are, unquestionably, sovereign, so far as their
sovereignty is not affected by this supreme law. But the state
legislatures, as political bodies, however sovereign, are yet not
sovereign over the people.... The national government possesses
those powers which it can be shown the people have conferred on it,
and no more.... We are here to administer a Constitution emanating
immediately from the people, and trusted by them to our
administration.... This government, sir, is the independent offspring
of the popular will. It is not the creature of state legislatures; nay,
more, if the whole truth must be told, the people brought it into
existence, established it, and have hitherto supported it, for the very
purpose, amongst others, of imposing certain salutary restraints on
state sovereignties.... The people, then, sir, erected this government.
They gave it a constitution, and in that constitution they have
enumerated the powers which they bestow upon it.... Sir, the very
chief end, the main design for which the whole constitution was
framed and adopted, was to establish a government that should not
be obliged to act through state agency, depend on state opinion and
state discretion.... If anything be found in the national constitution,
either by original provisions, or subsequent interpretation, which
ought not to be in it, the people know how to get rid of it. If any
construction be established, unacceptable to them, so as to become
practically a part of the constitution, they will amend it at their own
sovereign pleasure. But while the people choose to maintain it as it
is—while they are satisfied with it, and refuse to change it—who has
given, or who can give, to the state legislatures a right to alter it,
either by interference, construction, or otherwise?... Sir, the
people have not trusted their safety, in regard to the general
constitution, to these hands. They have required other security, and
taken other bonds.” (From Webster’s reply to Hayne, U. S. Senate,
January, 1830. 4 Ell. Deb. 498 et seq.)
We average Americans, now educated in the experience of the
average American from 1776 to the beginning of 1787, find much
merit and comfort in Webster’s understanding of basic American law.
He had a reasoned and firm conviction that Americans really are
citizens and not subjects. His conviction, in that respect, while
opposed to the convictions of our leaders and “constitutional”
lawyers, has seemed to us quite in accord with the convictions of
earlier leaders such as Iredell and Wilson and the others, and also
with the decisions of our Supreme Court.
Briefly stated, it has become quite clear to us that the American
people, from 1776 to 1787, were fixed in their determination to make
our basic American law what the conviction of Webster and the
leaders of every generation prior to our own knew it to be. Let us go
back, therefore, to the Americans in the Philadelphia convention of
1787, who worded the Constitution which is the supreme law of
America, and ascertain how their knowledge of fundamental
American law dictated the wording of their proposed Seventh Article.
CHAPTER VIII
PHILADELPHIA ANSWERS “CONVENTIONS, NOT
LEGISLATURES”
We recall how clearly the Americans at Philadelphia, in 1787,

knew that any grant of national power to interfere with the freedom of
individuals was the constitution of government. We recall the bitter
conflict of opinion, threatening the destruction of the assembly, over
the manner of choosing the members of the legislature to exercise
whatever powers of that kind the citizens of America might grant. We
recall the great opposition to the proposal of a grant of any power of
that kind and to the particular proposal of each of the enumerated
powers of that kind, all embodied in the First Article.
We have thus come to know with certainty that the minds of the
Americans at Philadelphia, during those strenuous four months,
were concentrated mainly upon a proposal to grant some national
power to interfere with the human freedom of all Americans. In other
words, we have their knowledge that their proposed First Article, by
reason of its grants of such power, would constitute a new nation
and government of men, if those grants were validly made by those
competent to make such grants.
Under which circumstances, we realize that it became necessary
for them to make a great legal decision, in the construction of basic
American law, and, before making that decision, which was
compelled to be the result of judgment and not of will, accurately to
ascertain one important legal fact. Indeed, their decision was to be
the actual conclusion reached in the effort to ascertain that legal fact.
This was the single question to which they must find the right
answer: “Under our basic American law, can legislatures ever give to
government any power to interfere with the human freedom of men,
or must every government in America obtain its only valid powers of
that kind by direct grant from its own citizens?”
It is easy for us to state that they should have known that the
answer to that question was expressly and authoritatively given in
the Statute of ’76. It was there plainly enacted that every just power
of any government must be derived from the direct grant of those to
be governed by its exercise. Yet our own leaders for the last five
years have not even asked the question, much less known the right
answer.
At Philadelphia, in 1787, they did know it. They had no doubt
whatever about it. We shall see that quickly in our brief review of the
record they made at Philadelphia in ascertaining and deciding, as a
legal necessity, to whom their First Article and its enumerated grants
of national power must be sent and, when we boast of how quickly
we knew the answer, we should admit that we did not know it until
after we had lived again with them through their experience of the
preceding ten or twelve years which had educated them, as it has
just educated us, to that knowledge. Furthermore, many of us
average Americans will be unable to explain, until later herein, why,
during the last five years, our own leaders have not known the right
answer. The Statute of ’76 has not been wholly unknown to them.
The record of the Philadelphia Convention and the ratifying
conventions has not been entirely a closed book to them. The
important and authentic statements of Webster and other leaders of
past generations have been read by many of them. If they did not
understand and know the correct answer, as we now realize they
have not known, let us not withhold from the Americans at
Philadelphia our just tribute of gratitude that they did accurately
know, when it was amazingly important to us that they should know.
When those Americans came to answer that question, there were
facts which might have misled them as other similar facts of lesser
importance have undoubtedly misled our leaders.
In 1776, from that same Philadelphia had gone a suggestion that a
constitution of government, with Articles granting power to
government, be made in each former colony. In 1787, there had
gone from that same Philadelphia a proposal that a constitution of a
general government for America be made, with Articles granting
power to that government. The proposal of 1776 had suggested that
the proposed Articles be made by the people themselves, assembled
in conventions. The proposal of 1777 had suggested that the
proposed Articles be made by the legislative governments of the
states. Both proposals, even as to the makers of the respective
Articles, had been acted upon. All the Articles, although some had
been made by the people themselves and others by legislatures, had
been generally recognized as valid law. Some of the men at
Philadelphia in 1787 had been members of the proposing Second
Continental Congress, when the respective proposals of 1776 and
1777 had gone from Philadelphia. When, in 1787, they were called
upon to find and state, as their legal decision, the correct answer to
their important question, it was necessary for them to ascertain, as
between state “legislatures” and the people themselves, in
“conventions,” which could validly make the Articles which had been
worded and were about to be proposed. It would not, therefore, have
been beyond the pale of our own experience if the earlier proposals
had misled them and they had made the wrong answer to the
question which confronted them. Furthermore, as we have already
noted, although we can little realize the influence of such a fact upon
men seeking the correct legal answer to an important question, their
whole proposal was a new adventure for men on an uncharted sea
of self-government. Under all of which circumstances, let us again
pay them their deserved tribute that they went unerringly to the only
correct answer.
We know that the essence of that answer is expressed in the
Seventh Article proposed from Philadelphia. Only one answer was
possible to Americans of that generation. They had been “subjects”
and had become “citizens.” They knew the vital distinctions between
the two relations to government.
The Convention which framed the Constitution was, indeed,
elected by the state legislatures. But the instrument, when it
came from their hands, was a mere proposal, without
obligation, or pretensions to it. It was reported to the then
existing Congress of the United States, with the request that it
might “be submitted to a convention of delegates, chosen in
each state by the people thereof, under the recommendation
of its legislature, for their assent and ratification.” This mode
of proceeding was adopted; and by the Convention, by
Congress, and by the state legislatures, the instrument was
submitted to the people. They acted upon it in the only
manner in which they can act safely, effectively, and wisely,
on such a subject, by assembling in convention. It is true, they
assembled in their several states; and where else should they
have assembled? No political dreamer was ever wild enough
to think of breaking down the lines which separate the states,
and of compounding the American people into one common
mass. Of consequence, when they [the American people] act,
they act in their states. But the measures they adopt do not,
on that account, cease to be the measures of the people
themselves, or become the measures of the state
governments. From these conventions the Constitution [the
First Article grants of power to interfere with individual
freedom] derives its whole authority. The government
proceeds directly from the people; is “ordained and
established” in the name of the people.... It required not the
affirmance, and could not be negatived, by the state
governments.... To the formation of a league, such as was the
Confederation, the state sovereignties were certainly
competent.
But, when a general government of America was to be given any
national power to interfere with the individual freedom of its citizens,
as in the First Article of 1787 and in the Eighteenth Amendment of
1917,
acting directly on the people, the necessity of referring it to
the people, and of deriving its powers directly from them, was
felt and acknowledged by all. The government of the Union,
then, (whatever may be the influence of this fact on the case,)
is, emphatically, and truly, a government of the people. In form
and in substance it emanates from them. Its powers are
granted by them, and are to be exercised directly on them,
and for their benefit. (Marshall in the Supreme Court,
M’Culloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316.)
Marshall was one of the Americans who had been at Valley Forge
in 1778, and at other places whose sacrifices made it the basic law
of America that all power over American citizens must be derived by
direct grant from themselves. Later, he was prominent in the Virginia
convention where all Americans in Virginia knew and acted upon this
basic law. These facts qualified him to testify, from the Bench of the
Supreme Court, that all Americans then knew and acknowledged the
binding command of that basic law.
Under such circumstances, it was impossible that the Americans
at Philadelphia should not have known and obeyed that law in the
drafting of their proposed Seventh and Fifth Articles. Both of these
Articles, the Seventh wholly, and the Fifth partly, deal with the then
future grant of national power over the people and its only legal gift
by direct grant from the people themselves, assembled in their
“conventions.” Both Articles name the people of America, by the one
word “conventions.”
That Philadelphia should not have strayed from the legal road
clearly marked by the Statute of ’76 was certain when we recall how
large a part Madison played at Philadelphia, and particularly how he
personally worded and introduced, in the closing hours at
Philadelphia, what we know as its Fifth Article. As to his personal
knowledge of this basic law, we recall his letter of April, 1787, where
he said, “To give the new system its proper energy, it will be
desirable to have it ratified by the authority of the people, and not
merely by that of the legislatures.” And we recall his later words,
when urging Americans to adopt the Constitution with its Fifth and
Seventh Articles, he said of the Seventh, “This Article speaks for
itself. The express authority of the people alone could give due
validity to the Constitution,” to its grants of power over the people in
its First Article. (Fed. No. 43.)
That we may fix firmly in our own minds the knowledge which all
Americans then had, which our leaders never acquired or have
entirely forgotten, let us briefly review what the earlier Americans did
at Philadelphia in obedience to that knowledge of basic American
law.
On May 28, Randolph of Virginia “opened the main business” of
the Convention. He proposed fifteen resolutions embodying the
suggestion of what should be in the different Articles. Resolution
Number 15 was that such Articles should be submitted to
“conventions,” “to be expressly chosen by the people, to consider
and decide thereon.” (5 Ell. Deb. 128.)
The first short debate on this Resolution took place on June 5. In it
Madison stated that he “thought this provision essential. The Articles
of Confederation themselves were defective in this respect, resting,
in many of the states, on the legislative sanction only.” The resolution
was then postponed for further consideration. On June 12, “The
question was taken on the 15th Resolution, to wit, referring the new
system to the people of the United States for ratification. It passed in
the affirmative.” (5 Ell. Deb. 183.) This was all in the Committee of
the Whole.
On June 13, that Committee made their full report, in which the
Randolph Resolution Number 15 was embodied in words as
Resolution Number 19 of the report. On June 16, while the
Convention was again sitting as a Committee of the Whole, the great
struggle was on between the conflicting opinions as to how and in
what proportion should be elected the future legislators who were to
exercise the granted powers over Americans. On that day, the
discussion centered on the relative merits of the Randolph national
proposals and a set of federal Articles amending the existing Federal
Constitution. In supporting Randolph, Wilson of Pennsylvania stated
that “he did not fear that the people would not follow us into a
national government; and it will be a further recommendation of Mr.
Randolph’s plan that it is to be submitted to them, and not to the
legislatures, for ratification.” (5 Ell. Deb. 196.)
On July 23, Resolution Number 19 came up for action.
Remembering how insistent many of the delegates were that the
general government should be kept a purely federal one, it is not
surprising to find Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut opening the short
debate with a motion that the Constitution “be referred to the
legislatures of the states for ratification.” But it will also be
remembered that the powers to be granted in the new Articles had
not yet been settled. The nationalists in the Convention, intent on
having some national Articles, knew that the proposed ratification
must be by the people themselves, “felt and acknowledged by all” to
be the only competent grantors of national powers.
Colonel Mason of Virginia “considered a reference of the plan to
the authority of the people as one of the most important and
essential of the resolutions. The legislatures have no power to ratify
it. They are the mere creatures of the state constitutions, and cannot
be greater than their creators.... Whither, then, must we resort? To
the people, with whom all power remains that has not been given up
in the constitutions derived from them. It was of great moment that
this doctrine should be cherished, as the basis of free government.”
(5 Ell. Deb. 352.)
Rufus King of Massachusetts, influenced undoubtedly by the error
of thinking that the Convention meant to act within the Articles of
Confederation, was inclined to agree with Ellsworth “that the
legislatures had a competent authority, the acquiescence of the
people of America in the Confederation being equivalent to a formal
ratification by the people.... At the same time, he preferred a
reference to the authority of the people, expressly delegated to
conventions, as the most certain means of obviating all disputes and
doubts concerning the legitimacy of the new Constitution.” (5 Ell.
Deb. 355.)
Madison “thought it clear that the legislatures were incompetent to
the proposed changes. These changes would make essential
inroads on the state constitutions; and it would be a novel and
dangerous doctrine, that a legislature could change the constitution
under which it held its existence.” (5 Ell. Deb. 355.)
Ellsworth’s motion to send to the state legislative governments,
and not to the people themselves, assembled in “conventions,” was
lost by a vote of seven to three. Resolution Number 19, that the new
Articles must be sent to the people themselves was adopted by a
vote of nine to one, Ellsworth and King both voting for it. (5 Ell. Deb.
356.)
This impressive discussion, now continued for over a month of
1787, with its display of accurate knowledge of the distinction
between sending Articles to legislatures and “referring” them to the
people, makes quite amusing what we shall hear later in 1917. It will
come from the counsel of the political organization which dictated
that governments should make the supposed Eighteenth
Amendment. After he kindly tells us that history has proven that
these Americans of 1787 “builded more wisely than they knew,”
meaning “than he knew,” he shall later impart to us the remarkable
information that “the framers in the Constitutional Convention knew
very little, if anything, about referendums.”
The Resolutions, which had now become twenty-three in number,
on July 26, were referred to the Committee of Detail to prepare
Articles in conformity therewith. On August 6, that Committee made
its report of twenty-three worded Articles. In Article XXII was
embodied the requirement that the Constitution should be submitted
“to a convention chosen in each state, under the recommendation of
its legislature, in order to receive the ratification of such convention.”
This provision, the Philadelphia answer and always the only legal
answer to the question as to who can validly grant power to interfere
with individual freedom, was later seen not properly to belong in the
Constitution itself. For which reason, it was taken out of the
Constitution and embodied in a separate Resolution which went with
the Constitution from Philadelphia.
In Article XXI, the first draft of our Article VII, it was provided: “The
ratification of the conventions of —— states shall be sufficient for
organizing this Constitution.” (5 Ell. Deb. 381.)
The month of August was passed in the great debates on the
proposed grants of national power and the other proposed Articles.
When the Convention was drawing to a close on August 30, Articles
XXI and XXII were reached.
Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania “moved to strike out of Article
XXI the words, ‘conventions of the,’ after ‘ratification,’ leaving the
states to pursue their own modes of ratification.” Rufus King “thought
that striking out ‘conventions,’ as the requisite mode, was equivalent
to giving up the business altogether.” Madison pointed out that, “The
people were, in fact, the fountain of all power.” The motion of Morris
was beaten. An attempt was made to fill the blank in Article XXI with
the word “thirteen.” “All the states were ‘No’ except Maryland.” The
blank was then filled by the word “nine” the vote being eight to three.
The two articles were then passed, the vote thereon being ten to
one. (5 Ell. Deb. 499-502.)
On September 10, the beginning of the last business week of the
Convention, Gerry of Massachusetts moved to reconsider these two
Articles. The short discussion was not in connection with any matter
in which we are now interested. His motion was lost. The entire set
of worded Articles was then referred to a committee for revising the
style and arrangement of the Articles agreed upon. (5 Ell. Deb. 535.)
On Wednesday, September 12, that Committee reported our
Constitution, with its seven Articles, as we know them except for
some slight changes made during the discussions of the last three or
four days of the Convention. In these seven Articles, the language of
the earlier Article XXII did not appear. As it really was the statement
of the correct legal conclusion of the Convention that its proposed
Articles, because they would grant power to interfere with individual
freedom, must necessarily be made by the people themselves, its
proper place was outside the Constitution itself and in a special
Resolution of the same nature as every Congress resolution
proposing an amendment to that Constitution. That was the view of
the Committee and, on Thursday, September 13, the Committee
reported such special Resolutions, in the very words of the former
Article XXII. “The proceedings on these Resolutions are not given by
Mr. Madison, nor in the Journal of the Federal Convention. In the
Journal of Congress, September 28, 1787, Volume 4, p. 781, they
are stated to have been presented to that body, as having passed in
the Convention on September 17 immediately after the signing of the
Constitution.” (5 Ell. Deb. 602.)
This is the Resolution:
“Resolved, That the preceding Constitution be laid before the
United States in Congress assembled; and that it is the opinion of
this Convention, that it should afterwards be submitted to a
convention of delegates chosen in each state by the people thereof,
under the recommendation of its legislature, for their assent and
ratification; and that each convention, assenting to and ratifying the
same, should give notice thereof to the United States in Congress
assembled.
“Resolved, That it is the opinion of this Convention, that, as soon
as the conventions of nine states shall have ratified this Constitution,
the United States in Congress assembled should fix a day, etc.” (5
Ell. Deb. 541.)
This Resolution is the most authoritative statement of the legal
conclusion reached by these leaders of a people then “better
acquainted with the science of government than any other people in
the world.” The conclusion itself was compelled by accurate
knowledge that the government of “citizens” can validly obtain only
from the citizens themselves, by their direct grant, any power to
interfere with their individual freedom. The expression of that
knowledge, in the Resolution, is, in many respects, one of the most
important recorded legal decisions ever made in America. We
average Americans, educated with those Americans at Philadelphia
through their experience of the years between 1775 and 1787,
cannot misunderstand the meaning and importance of that decision.
Instructed by our review of their actions and their reasoning at
Philadelphia in reaching that conclusion and making that legal
decision, we know, with an accurate certainty, that it was their
declaration to the world and to us that no proposal from Philadelphia
suggested that Americans again resume the relation of “subjects” to
any government or governments.
Our minds impressed with this accurate knowledge that such was
not their purpose, we now prepare to complete our education as
American citizens, not subjects, by reading the Philadelphia story
and language of their Fifth Article, their only other Article which even
partly concerned the future grant of new government power to
interfere with individual American freedom. By reason of our
education, we will then come to the reading of the language of this
Article, as the Americans read it and understood it when they made it
in their “conventions” that followed the proposing convention of
Philadelphia.
Being educated “citizens” and not “subjects,” we ourselves will no
longer, as our leaders have done for five years, mistake the only
correct and legal answer to the indignant outburst of Madison, who
wrote this Fifth Article at Philadelphia. “Was, then, the American
Revolution effected, was the American Confederacy formed, was the
precious blood of thousands spilt, and the hard-earned substance of
millions lavished, not that the people of America should enjoy peace,
liberty, and safety, but that the governments of the individual states,
that particular municipal establishments, might enjoy a certain extent
of power, and be arrayed with certain dignities and attributes of
sovereignty? We have heard of the impious doctrine in the Old
World, that the people were made for kings, not kings for the people.
Is the same doctrine to be revived in the New, in another shape—
that the solid happiness of the people is to be sacrificed to the views
of political institutions of a different form?” (Fed. No. 45.)
The American answer, from the people of America assembled in
the conventions that ratified that Fifth Article, was a clear and
emphatic “No.” The Tory answer of the last five years, from our
leaders and our governments, has been an insistent “Yes.”
No one, however, with any considerable degree of truthfulness,
can assert that there has come from the American people
themselves, during the last five years, any very audible “Yes.” To
whatever extent individual opinions may differ as to the wisdom or
legality of the new constitution of government of men, made entirely
by governments, no unbiased observer has failed to note one
striking fact. By a very extensive number of Americans otherwise
law-abiding, Americans in all classes of society, the new government
edict, the government command to “subjects,” has been greeted with
a respect and obedience strikingly similar to the respect and
obedience with which an earlier generation of Americans received
the Stamp Act and the other government edicts between 1765 and
1776.
When the Americans of that earlier generation were denounced by
the government which had issued those edicts to its “subjects,” one
of the latter, five years before Americans ceased to be “subjects” of
that government, stated: “Is it a time for us to sleep when our free
government is essentially changed, and a new one is forming upon a
quite different system—a government without the least dependence
upon the people?”
It may be but a coincidence that, while our American government
was announcing its recognition of the wide-spread American
disrespect for the new government edict, it is only a few days since
throughout America there resounded many eulogies of the Samuel
Adams, who made that statement in the Boston Gazette of October
7, 1771. In those eulogies, there was paid to him the tribute that he
largely helped to bring about the amazing result of American desire
for individual freedom which culminated in the assembling of the
Americans in the “conventions” which ratified the proposed
Constitution.
We have already sensed that the existence of the supposed
Eighteenth Amendment depends entirely upon an amazing modern
meaning put into the Fifth Article made in those conventions. Let us,
therefore, who are Americans now educated in the experience of the
Americans who assembled in those “conventions,” sit therein with
them and there read the story and the language of the Fifth Article as
they read it when they made it.
CHAPTER IX
THE FIFTH ARTICLE NAMES ONLY
“CONVENTIONS”
It has been the misfortune of our prominent Americans of this

generation that they read the Fifth Article with preconceived notions
of its meaning. To the error of that method of reading it, we average
Americans will not pay the tribute of imitation. We know that its
meaning to those who made it in the “conventions” of the earlier
century is the meaning which it must have as part of the supreme
law of the land. That we may read it as they read it and get its clear
and only possible meaning, as they got it, we shall briefly review the
story of its wording and its proposal at Philadelphia. That Convention
immediately preceded the assembling of the people in their own
“conventions.” In each of their “conventions,” among the people
assembled, were some who had been prominent at Philadelphia,
such as Madison and Randolph and Mason in Virginia, Hamilton in
New York, Wilson in Pennsylvania and the Pinckneys in South
Carolina. Moreover, between the Philadelphia proposal and the
assembling of these conventions, Madison and Hamilton, proposer
and seconder of the Fifth Article at Philadelphia, had been publishing
their famous essays, now collectively known as The Federalist, in
the New York newspapers to explain the Articles worded at
Philadelphia and to urge their adoption. Under which circumstances,
it is clear that, if we want to read and know the meaning of the Fifth
Article as it was understood in those conventions, the Fifth Article
which named those same “conventions,” we must complete our
education by an accurate and brief review of the story of that Article
at Philadelphia. Only in that way shall we average Americans of
today be in the position in which were the Americans who made that
Article.
When we read that story of Philadelphia, in relation to the Fifth
Article, one thing stands out with amazing clarity and importance.
We already know how that Convention, until its last days, was
concentrated upon the hotly debated question of its own proposed
grants of national powers in the First Article. In the light of which
continued concentration, it is not surprising to learn that, until almost
the very last days, the delegates forgot entirely to mention, in their
tentative Fifth Article, the existing and limited ability of state
legislatures to make federal or declaratory Articles, and mentioned
only “conventions” of the people, who alone could or can make
national Articles.
The first suggestion of what we now know as the Fifth Article was
on the second day, May 29, when the Randolph Resolution 13 read
“that provision ought to be made for the amendment of the Articles of
union whensoever it shall seem necessary.” This wording was the
exact language of Resolution 17 of the report of the Committee of
the Whole. It was adopted by the Convention on July 23. Three days
later, with the other Resolutions, it was referred to the Committee of
Detail “to prepare and report the Constitution.” On August 6, this
Committee, in the first draft of our Constitution, reported the
following: “Art. XIX. On the Application of the legislatures of two-
thirds of the states in the Union, for an amendment of this
Constitution, the legislature of the United States shall call a
convention for that purpose.”
We see clearly why the delegates, their minds concentrated on
their own proposed grants of national powers, mentioned only the
people themselves, the “conventions” of the “Seventh” and “Fifth”
Articles, who alone can make national Articles, and forgot to mention
legislatures, because the latter never can make national Articles.
That kind of Article was the only thing they were then thinking about.
Naturally, it then escaped their attention that, if they proposed a wise
and proper distribution of national power between the new American
government and the respective existing state governments, almost
every future Article, if not every one, would be of the federal kind,
which legislatures or governments could validly make, as they had
made all the Articles of the existing federation. Clearly for that
reason this Article XIX never even mentioned the existing and limited
ability of legislatures.
Between this report of August 6 and August 30, the Convention
was again entirely occupied with the grants of national power and
the election of the legislators to exercise it or, in other words, with
what is now the First Article. On August 30, Article XIX was adopted
without any debate.
We are now aware that the Convention was within two weeks of its
end and no one had mentioned, in what is now the Fifth Article, the
state governments or legislatures as possible makers of federal
Articles, if and when such Articles were to be made in the future.
It was not until September 10, Monday of the last Convention
week, that Article XIX again came up for action, when Gerry of
Massachusetts moved to reconsider it. His purpose, as he himself
stated it, was to object because it made it possible that, if the people
in two-thirds of the states called a convention, a majority of the
American people assembled in that convention “can bind the Union
with innovations that may subordinate the state constitutions
altogether.” Hamilton stated that he could see “no greater evil, in
subjecting the people in America to the major voice than the people
of any particular state.” He went on to say that he did think the Article
should be changed so as to provide a more desirable “mode for
introducing amendments,” namely, drafting and proposing them to
those who could make them. In this respect he said: “The mode
proposed was not adequate. The state legislatures will not apply for
alterations, but with a view to increase their own powers. The
national legislature will be the first to perceive, and will be most
sensible to, the necessity of amendments; and ought also to be
empowered, whenever two-thirds of each branch should concur, to
call a convention. There could be no danger in giving this power, as
the people would finally decide in the case.” (5 Ell. Deb. 531.)
Roger Sherman of Connecticut then tried to have the Article
provide that the national government might also propose
amendments to the several states, as such; such amendment to be
binding if consented to by the several states, namely, all the states.
For reasons that will appear in a moment, this clear attempt to
enable the states, mere political entities, and their legislatures,
always governments, to do what they might wish with the individual
freedom of the American citizen—thus making him their subject—
was never voted upon. It was, however, seconded by Gerry of
Massachusetts. Its probable appeal to Sherman, always a strong
opponent of the national government of individuals instead of the
federal government of states, was that it would make it difficult to
take away any power from Connecticut, unless Connecticut wished
to give it up. Its appeal to Gerry, consistently a Tory in his mental
attitude to the relation of government and human being, was
undoubtedly the fact that it would permit government or governments
to do what they might wish with individual freedom. It does not
escape the attention of the average American that our governments
and leaders, during the last five years, have not only displayed the
mental attitude of Gerry but have also acted as if the proposal, which
he urged, had been put into what is our Fifth Article. Only on that
theory can we average Americans, with our education, understand
why governments in America have undertaken to exercise and to
vest in our government a national power over us, which power
neither is enumerated in the First Article nor was ever granted by the
citizens of America to their only government; nor can we understand
why our leaders have assumed that governments in America, which
are not even the government of the American citizens, can do either
or both of these things. We know, if governments and leaders do not,
that neither thing can ever be possible in a land where men are
“citizens” and not “subjects.”
CHAPTER X
ABILITY OF LEGISLATURES REMEMBERED
Living through the days of that Convention, we have now seen

three months and ten days of its sincere and able effort to word a
Constitution which would “secure the Blessings of Liberty” to the
individual American. We have seen them spend most of their time in
the patriotic endeavor to adjust and settle how much, if any, national
power to interfere with individual freedom that Constitution shall give
to its only donee, the new and general government. In other words,
we have seen the mind and thought and will of that Convention
almost entirely concentrated, for those three months and ten days,
upon the Article which is the constitution of government, the First
Article, with its enumerated grants of general power to interfere with
the human rights of the American citizen.
Keeping in mind the object of that intense concentration, the First
Article grants of power of that kind, we average Americans note, with
determined intent never to forget, the effect of that concentration
upon the wording of our Fifth Article up to that tenth day of
September. We note, with determined intent never to forget, that,
from May 30 to September 10, the only maker of future changes
mentioned was the “people” of America, the most important reservee
of the Tenth Amendment, the “conventions” of the American people
named in both the Seventh and the Fifth Articles.
As this fact and its tremendous meaning have never been known
or mentioned in the sorry tale of the five years from 1917 to 1922, we
average Americans are determined to dwell upon it briefly so that we
cannot escape an accurate appreciation of the short remaining story
of the one week at Philadelphia, in 1787, in relation to our Fifth
Article.

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14. The Ideal and the Real 182

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There is a deeper point to be made here. In pulling together a connected group of

1.2 Idealism and Ideas

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1.3 Idealism and Minds

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16 The Notion of Idealist Ethics

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