Naturalism and idealism: philosophical foundations and contrasts

Idealism refers to the people who claim to be idealists in the popular sense are often convinced that the world is beautiful, everybody is good and you can adopt high ideas and adhere to them. It is also a theory that asserts that reality is ideas, though, mind or selves rather than material forces. There may be a single or absolute Mind or a plurality of minds. It also stresses the mental or spiritual aspects of experience. Naturalism on the other hand is the view of reality that nature alone is real. There is no supernatural source of nature. It implies that man's values and ideas are the product of evolution and therefore, only an expression of the needs of the human species in the world of here and now.

The contrast between naturalism and idealism and also the meaning of this words cause many a misunderstanding and only through laziness do we put up with such catchwords. But their inadequacy cannot hide the great contrast which lies behind them and which sharply divides men. This contrast concerns our attitude to the whole of reality and the resulting task that dominates our life. The question whether man is entirely determined by nature or whether, he can somehow or indeed essentially rise above it.

We are all agreed on the very close ties between man and nature, which he should not abandon. But it has been argued and is still being argued strongly whether his whole being, his actions and sufferings, are determined by these ties or whether he possesses life of another kind, which introduces a new stage of reality. The one attitude characterizes naturalism, the other idealism, and these two creeds differ fundamentally both in their goals and in their pursuits of them. If the additional life of man exists only in his imagination, we should eradicate all traces of it from human opinions and institutions. Instead, we should aim at the closest ties with nature and develop to a pure state the natural character of human life; for thus life would restore the ties with its true origins, which it severed unjustly and to its lasting damage. But if one recognizes in man a new element beyond nature, the task will consist in giving it the strongest possible support and contrasting it clearly with nature. In this case life will take up its main position in the new element and look at nature from that point-of-view. This contrast in attitudes emerges nowhere as clearly as in the place of the soul in the two systems.

Nature has its share in the life of the soul and in numerous manifestations deeply influences human life. But this natural life of the soul is peripheral, mere appendix to the material phenomena of nature. Its only purpose is the preservation of physical life, for men higher psychological development, his cleverness and resourcefulness, compensate for the brute strength, swiftness of movement, or sharpness of the senses in which animals excel. But even in its extreme form this life has neither purpose nor content in itself; it remains a conglomeration of disparate points. It does not unite in an inner community of life, nor does it constitute an inner world peculiar to itself. Thus action is never directed toward an inner purpose but toward the utilitarian purpose of preserving life. Naturalism, if it remains true to its purpose, reduces human life to that norm. Idealism, on the other hand, maintains the liberation of inwardness. According to it the disparate phenomena of life unite in an all, embracing inner world. At the same time, idealism demands that human life should be governed by its peculiar values and goals, the true, the good, and the beautiful. In its view the subordination of all human aspiration to the goal of usefulness appears an impossible humiliation and a complete betrayal of the greatness and dignity of man. Such different and even contradictory attitudes seem to be irreconcilable; we have to choose between harsh alternatives.

With regard to this choice the present time is undeniably divided against itself, particularly since profound changes in the setup of life have brought new aspects of the problem to light. Centuries of tradition had accustomed us to striving primarily for an invisible world and to valuing the visible world only to the degree of its relation to the invisible world. To the medieval mind man's home is a transcendental world; in this world we are merely travelers abroad. We cannot penetrate it, nor does it give us any scope for achievements or hold us by any roots. In such a conception nature easily appears as a lower sphere which one approaches at one's own danger.

Technological progress becomes even more exciting when it enters into the service of the social idea, which demands not only a small elite but also humanity at large should profit by it. This demand creates an entirely new challenge, requiring tremendous energy but also giving rise to new complications and harsh contrasts which, in turn, intensify the passion of man's work in this world and enrich its meaning. The transformation of environment has become the purpose of human life; life seems real only insofar as it deals with things. Man no longer needs to escape to an invisible world in order to find and realize exalted goals. These facts are indisputable. Our material environment and our relation to it have assumed tremendous importance. Any philosophy and any course of action based on it must think with this fact. But naturalism goes beyond this fact, for it maintains that man is completely defined by his relationship with the world, that he is only a piece of the natural process. That is a different contention, which requires careful examination. For history has taught us that our judgment is easily confused and exaggerated when revolutionary changes upset the old balance of things. Man, who is helpless against error and passion, confuses facts and opinions. At such a time, it becomes an urgent task to separate the facts from the interpretations given to them. Naturalism, too, is subject to such scrutiny when it turns a fact into a principle, sees the totality of human life determined by man's closer relation to nature, and adjusts all values accordingly.

The chief argument against such a limitation of human life is the result not of subjective reflection but of an analysis of the modern movement itself. The emergence and the progress of that movement reveal an intellectual capacity which, whether it manifests itself as intellectual and technical mastery of nature or as practical social work, proves the existence of a way of life that cannot be accounted for, if man is understood as a mere natural being. For in coming closer to nature man shows himself superior to it. As a mere part of nature, man's existence would be a series of isolated phenomena. All life would proceed from and depend on contact with the outside world. There would be no way of transcending the limitation of the senses. There would be no place at all for any activity governed by a totality or superior unity, nor for any inner coherence of life. All values and goals would disappear and reality would be reduced to mere actuality. But the experience of human work shows a very different picture.

Modern science has not been the result of a gradual accumulation of sensual perceptions but a deliberate break with the entire stock of traditional knowledge. Such a break was deemed necessary because the old concepts had been too anthropomorphic, whereas a scientific understanding of nature presupposed an acknowledgment of its complete independence from man. But our concepts could not have formulated the independence of nature unless thought had emancipated itself from sensual impressions, and through analysis and new synthesis created a new view of nature. This re-creation was caused by the search for truth and the desire to identify with things as they are and thus to bring about an inner expansion of life. But how could nature be conceived in such a manner without the element of chance and distortion, inherent in the perspective of the individual, unless thought could operate independently of sensual perception? Logical thought, striving for a unified conception of the universe, transformed the immediate sensual perception; it provided the sensual existence with the foundation of a world of thought.

Man's tremendous intellectual achievement of a conception of nature in its totality proves his superiority over the natural world and the existence of another level of reality. Thus we may say that naturalism with its emphasis on nature is refuted nowhere with more cogency than in modern science as it transformed nature into an intellectual conception. The more we recognize the intellectual achievement and inner structure of modern science; the clearer becomes the distance from naturalism.

The social movement, too, reveals man as not entirely limited by a given order, but as a being that perceives and judges a given situation and is confident that it can change it essentially by its own efforts. We have come to set greater store by material things, but we value them not because of their sensual characteristics but because they serve us to enhance life and to dominate the world completely. We do not aim at an increase in sensual pleasures but at a situation in which any man and all men together can develop their full strength. The mere mention of a social idea implies common interests beyond the egotism of the individual, and this idea would never have reached the power it has had it not been conceived of both as a duty and as a privilege. The ethical element inherent in it gave it the power to win over minds, to attract enthusiastic disciples, and to prevail even over reluctance. But there is no place at all for such an ethical element in the realm of mere nature; thus the mere existence of a social movement refutes naturalism. These considerations lead to the conclusion that naturalism is by no means an adequate expression of the modern way of life. On the contrary, that way of life has outgrown its origins and has revealed far greater spiritual independence than naturalism could acknowledge. Life itself has contradicted that interpretation of life. The fact that environment means more to us does not mean that we are a mere part of it. Naturalism makes the mistake of ascribing to nature itself the changes the mind effected in it. The mistake resulted from concentrating on the effects and ignoring the power, which alone could produce them.

Still the fact remains that mind needs environment as an object to work on, and to that extent it is dependent on it. But does not such a situation confront life with an intolerable conflict? The transformation of the environment has released vast intellectual energies, which fortify the claim of life for happiness and satisfaction. Will life not feel intolerably confined if man must deal only with the outside world, if he may never return to himself and use the results of his stupendous labors for his own welfare? The achievement itself is limited narrowly if its object is invariably outside ourselves and can never be taken into our own life. Scientific research in an external object can never lead to true, complete, and inner knowledge. As long as we regard man simply as a being next to us, there can be no inner community of mutual love. Energy that is not dominated by, and does not return to, a center will never constitute the content of life; it leaves us empty in the midst of bustling excitement. This is a common and painful modern experience. But is not such a sensation of emptiness itself proof that there are more profound depths within us, which demand satisfaction? Thus we are faced with the question whether life does not somehow go beyond the position reached so far, whether it could not return from an occupation with outside objects to an occupation with itself and to the experience and shaping of itself. Only life's own movement can give such an answer; let us see whether it is in the affirmative.

I think we can say confidently that it is. We need only regard clear and indisputable individual phenomena as a whole and appreciate that whole in its full significance in order to recognize that there is indeed a great movement within us which generates an essentially new way of life. We had seen life as something between subject and object, between man and world, between energy and thing. However, the thing was touched only from the outside; it remained inwardly foreign to us. But now intellectual activity takes a turn to the effect that the object is taken into the process of life, is incorporated into the soul and excites and moves us, as part of our own life. The artist's creative activity, for instance in Goethe, is an example of this. We call such creativity objective, but that is not to say that the outside world is pictured in its sensual being without any addition of the soul; rather, the external object becomes part of the soul. There is a fruitful relation of energy and object; they combine, enhance one another, and create a new complete living entity. In such life a soul is breathed into the object, or the soul that is in it is made to sound, and in effecting the object, energy loses its initial indeterminate character and assumes full definition. The poet appears as a magician who gives to things a language in which they proclaim their own being, but they come alive only in the soul of the poet, only in an inner world. Something similar to this artistic process occurs in practical life, in the relationship of men as it finds its expression in law and morality. The other man who at first seems a complete outsider is taken into the circle of our own life when we become capable of identifying ourselves with him. Nowhere is the process of making the seemingly strange your own as marked as in love, the highest relationship of two individuals. For here the gap between oneself and the other is completely bridged; what was strange becomes an integral part of one's own life. Nor can we love our people, our country, or the whole of mankind unless we find in them our own life and being. In another direction the search for truth leads to a broadening of our inner life. For how could we desire so powerfully to recognize the object unless it did not somehow exist within our own life, unless the toil spent on it did not contribute to the perfection of our own being?

Thus the beautiful, the good, and the true agree in that the object becomes part of the inner process of life, but this cannot possibly happen without deep changes in the structure and meaning of that process. For now life is dealing primarily with it energy and object meet in it and demand a balance. However, there can be no balance unless both are comprehended in one whole, which finds its life and perfection in them. Thus life enters into a relationship with itself; it is structured in itself in different degrees and begets within itself a new depth, a comprehensive and persistent energy. If this happens, the whole can be present and effective in each detail. It is only in this way that convictions and attitudes are possible, and character and personality can manifest themselves in their manifold activities. The integration into the process of life gives to the object a new and higher form, and so life is not merely the representation or appropriation of a given reality; it enhances and creates; it does not find a world, but must make a world for itself.