Does Idealism Make Sense? Russell, Plato, and Reality

Introduction to Philosophical Idealism

In philosophy, idealism is a grouping of ideas asserting that what we know about our universe — that is, reality — is mentally constructed. For centuries, humans have been concerned with knowing: what we know, how we know it, and whether we can prove it. Idealism is central to many other philosophical "-isms" in that it emphasizes the mental character of all things. One way to understand the 20th-century mindset of idealism is through British scientist Sir James Jeans' observation: "The Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine" (Haisch, 2007).

Bertrand Russell and the Role of Contemplation

One of the finest minds of the late 19th and 20th centuries, Nobel Laureate Bertrand Russell — who is sometimes vilified in the modern world because of his views on atheism and agnosticism — wrote extensively on logic and analytical philosophy. Like Stephen Hawking, Russell found ways of integrating his philosophical ideas into most disciplines, often perceiving an elusive "commonality" between all human thought, action, and science. Russell argued that we must be grounded in the three major branches of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. There are, of course, other ways to study and address these problems, but the philosophical approach is self-critical and based on a series of rational arguments (Monk, 2004).

Rather than arguing from a specific point of view, as most philosophers do, the seminal importance for Russell is that it is the act of contemplation itself that drives the ability to actualize and move forward on a topic — not the viewpoint or epistemology:

One way of escape is by philosophic contemplation. Philosophic contemplation does not, in its widest survey, divide the universe into two hostile camps — friends and foes, helpful and hostile, good and bad — it views the whole impartially. Philosophic contemplation, when it is unalloyed, does not aim at proving that the rest of the universe is akin to man. All acquisition of knowledge is an enlargement of the Self, but this enlargement is best attained when it is not directly sought. It is obtained when the desire for knowledge is alone operative… (Russell, 2004).

Plato's Allegory of the Cave

If we think of idealism as what the mind perceives as being real, we can turn to Plato for an explanation of how this might remain relevant for the 21st century. In The Republic, Book VII, Plato presents a scenario known as the Allegory of the Cave. This is Plato's illustration of reality versus belief — or idealism — and the way humans must evolve through a process to become fully actualized.

The allegory presents a dark cave in which prisoners have been chained since birth, able to look only forward. Behind them is a fire, the only light in their universe. Behind the fire, people manipulate puppets so that shadows are cast on the walls. The only "reality" the prisoners know is derived from these shadows — their version of idealism. If a prisoner is suddenly freed, he notices that the shadows are not real, but that the puppets are. If this same prisoner is then forced out of the cave and into the light, the pain of brightness eventually gives way to a discovery: the most real things, the ideal, are those physical objects that exist outside the cave (Huard, 2006).

References

Haisch, B. (2007). Preface to the God Theory. TheGodTheory.com. Retrieved from http://www.thegodtheory.com/preface.htm

Huard, R. L. (2006). Plato's Political Philosophy: The Cave. New York: Penguin.

Monk, R. (2004, March). Bertrand Russell. Retrieved from Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:

Russell, B. (2004, March). The Problems of Philosophy. Retrieved December 2011, from Skepdic.com: http://www.skepdic.com/russell.html