Idealism and Education

Idealism and Education

Idealism in simplest definition is the attitude of a person who

believes that it is possible to live according to very high standards
of behavior and honesty. (Merriam-Webster Learners Dictionary)
a (1) : a theory that ultimate reality lies in a realm transcending
phenomena (2) : a theory that the essential nature of reality lies
in consciousness or reason b (1) : a theory that only the
perceptible is real (2) : a theory that only mental states or
entities are knowable. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
Idealism is any of various systems of thought in which the objects
of knowledge are held to be in some way dependent on the
activity of mind.
Idealism and Education

Idealism is perhaps the oldest systematic philosophy in Western culture,

dating back at least to Plato in ancient Greece. Although, philosophy and
philosophers existed before Plato, but Plato developed one of the most
historically influential philosophies of education we have.
Generally, idealists believe that ideas are the only true reality. It is not
that all idealists reject matter (the material world); rather, they hold
that the material world is characterized by change, instability, and
uncertainty, whereas some ideas are enduring; thus, idea-ism might be a
more correct descriptive term for this philosophy.
To achieve an adequate understanding of idealism, it is necessary to
examine the works of selected outstanding philosophers usually
associated with this philosophy.
Development of Idealism
Development of Idealism

Socrates
who challenged the material concerns of his
contemporaries.
went about Athens questioning its citizens, particularly
the Sophists, about their unexamined way of life.
He was later brought to trial in Athens and was executed
for his beliefs.
Although Socrates ideas were only transmitted orally
through a dialectical question-and-answer approach, Plato
wrote them down and detailed both the Socratic method
and Socrates thinking.
Platonic Idealism

Plato (427-347 BC) He was the student of Socrates

and the teacher of Aristotle,
and he wrote in the middle of
the fourth century B.C.E. in
ancient Greece.
a Greek philosopher who
started as a disciple of
Socrates and remained an
ardent admirer of him
throughout his life.
Platonic Idealism

According to Plato, people should concern themselves primarily with the

search for truth. Because truth is perfect and eternal, it cannot be found
in the world of matter, which is imperfect and constantly changing.
Plato believed that we must search for other universal truths in such
areas as politics, society, and education; hence, the search for absolute
truth should be the quest of the true philosopher.
In The Republic, Plato wrote about the separation of the world of ideas
from the world of matter. The world of ideas (or forms) has the Good as
its highest pointthe source of all true knowledge. The world of matter,
the ever-changing world of sensory data, is not to be trusted.
Platonic Idealism

People need, as much as possible, to free themselves from a

concern with matter so that they can advance toward the Good.
This can be done by transcending matter through the use of the
dialectic (or critical discussion), in which one moves from mere
opinion to true knowledge.
Platonic Idealism
Allegory of the Cave, Plato depicted prisoners chained in a
world of darkness, seeing only shadows on a far cave wall that
they take for reality. Imagine one of these prisoners freed from
his chains, advancing up a steep slope and into the sunlight,
eventually able to see the Sun and realizing it as the true
source of heat and light. He would be happy in his true
knowledge and wish to contemplate it even more. Yet,
remembering his friends in the cave, when he returns to tell
them of the real world outside, they choose not to listen to
someone who cannot now compete with them in their
knowledge of shadows. If he insists on freeing them, they
might even kill him.
 Platonic Idealism
The meaning of the allegory is this: We ourselves are living in a cave of
shadows and illusions, chained by our ignorance and apathy. When we
begin to loosen ourselves from our chains, it is the beginning of our
educationthe steep ascent represents the dialectic that will carry us
from the world of matter to the world of ideaseven to a
contemplation of the Good as represented by the Sun.
Platos admonition that the person, now a philosopher, who has
advanced into the realm of true knowledge must return to the cave to
bring enlightenment to others. This points to Platos strong belief that
not only should philosophizing be an intellectual affair, but also that the
philosopher has a duty to share his learning with others, doing this even
in the face of adversity or death.
 Platonic Idealism

In The Republic, Plato proposed the kind of education that would help
bring about a world in which individuals and society are moved as far
as they are capable of moving toward the Good. He understood fully
that most people do believe in matter as an objective reality, that
individual differences exist, and that injustice and inhumanity are
ways of life. However, he wished to create a world in which
outstanding people, such as Socrates, could serve as models and would
be rewarded instead of punished. Plato suggested that the state must
take an active role in educational concerns and offer a curriculum that
leads intelligent students from concrete data toward abstract thinking.
 Platonic Idealism

Platos idea was that the philosopher-king must be not only a thinker but also a
doer.
Platos philosopher-king would be not only a person of wisdom, but also a good
person because Plato believed that evil stems more from ignorance than from
anything else.
It is widely believed that philosophizing about the arts in Western culture
began with Plato. Plato discussed painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry,
dance, and music. Although he saw art as imitation (even imitation of
imitation) and not true knowledge, Plato strongly believed that art (including
literature) needed to be taught, though regulated and even censored so that it
portrayed things in a more virtuous light. In this way, then, art could become a
useful part of the educational process.
Platonic Idealism

According to Platonic Idealism, there exists a perfect

realm of Form and Ideas and our world merely contains
shadows of that realm. This is often called "Platonic
Realism" because Plato seems to have attributed to these
Forms an existence independent of any minds.
Religious Idealism

Idealism has exerted considerable influence on religion. For

example, Judaism and Christianity include many beliefs that fit
into idealist thinking.
In Judaism and Christianity, the idea of one God as pure Spirit and
the Universal Good can be readily recognized as compatible with
this philosophy.
Religious Idealism

Augustine (354-430 AD) Also known as Saint Augustine, or

Augustine of Hippo.
Augustine was born into, and
reared under, the influence of
Hellenistic culture.
In the Confessions, he described
his early life of paganism and the
debauchery of his youth until his
conversion to Christianity in 386.
He became a priest in 391, and in
395 he was appointed Bishop of
Hippo.
Religious Idealism - Augustine (354-430 AD)

Augustine connected the philosophy of Platonists and Neoplatonists, like

Plotinus, with Christian beliefs.
In The City of God, he described the City of God and the City of Man as
divisions of the universe parallel to Platos schemata of the World of
Ideas and the World of Matter.
Like Plato, Augustine believed that the senses were unreliable and that
belief in God rests ultimately on faith. We must first believe, he
wrote, in order that we may know.
In Platos philosophy, the soul has knowledge that is obscured by being
imprisoned in the body. In Augustines interpretation, the soul is
blackened by Adams fall from grace, which results in human doubt and
uncertainty
Religious Idealism - Augustine (354-430 AD)

Augustine was greatly concerned with the concept of evil and

believed that because man inherited the sin of Adam, he was
engaged in a continuous struggle to regain the kind of purity he
had before the Fall. This idea is akin to Platos myth about the
star: Souls that lived near the Good were exiled to the world of
matter to suffer pain and death and must struggle to return to the
spiritual existence they once had.
Augustine readily accepted Platos notion of the divided line
between ideas and matter, but he referred to the two worlds as
the World of God and the World of Man.
Religious Idealism - Augustine (354-430 AD)

Augustine, like Plato, believed that people do not create

knowledge: God already has created it, and people can discover it
through trying to find God. Because the soul is the closest thing
people have to divinity, Augustine believed that we should look
within our souls for the true knowledge that exists there.
He thus promoted an intuitive approach to education and agreed
with Plato that concentration on physical phenomena could lead
us astray from the path of true knowledge.
Religious Idealism - Augustine (354-430 AD)

Augustine patterned his educational philosophy after the Platonic

tradition. He believed that worldly knowledge gained through the
senses was full of error but that reason could lead toward
understanding, and he held that, ultimately, it was necessary to
transcend reason through faith. Only through reason
supplemented by faith could one enter the realm of true ideas.
One question that Augustine pondered in De Magistro was Can
one man teach another? He believed that one cannot teach
another in the traditional sense, but can direct the learner with
words or other symbols or signs.
Religious Idealism - Augustine (354-430 AD)

Learning must come from within, and all true knowledge ultimately
comes from God.
Augustine was the greatest of the Christian Platonists, and his stress on
the role of the learners spontaneous and God-directed intelligence had
great implications for Christian education for many centuries.
It is not surprising that idealism and religion have been closely
intertwined. Christianity, in particular, promotes the idea of God as
transcendent and pure Spirit or Idea.
In addition, Christians hold that God created the world out of Himself or
out of Spirit or Idea. This resembles the Platonic concept that true
reality is, after all, basically a nonmaterial thing, that is, Idea.
Religious Idealism - Augustine (354-430 AD)

To Plato, ultimate reality is Idea and our bridge to it is the

mind. To those who follow in the Judeo-Christian tradition,
ultimate reality is God and our bridge to it is the soul. It seemed
a logical step to connect Idea and God on the one hand, and mind
and soul on the other. Thus, humanitys contact with ultimate
reality is by means of mind and soul (or their congeners: self,
consciousness, and subjectivity).
Development of Modern Idealism
 Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

Born in the small town of La Haze, France.

Was educated by the Jesuits.
The significant works of Descartes to be considered are his
celebrate Discourse on Method and Meditations on First
Philosophy.
Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

Principally in Discourse, Descartes explored his methodical

doubt, whereby he sought to doubt all things, including his own
existence. He was searching for ideas that are indubitable, and he
thought that if he could discover ideas that are clear and
distinct, then he would have a solid foundation upon which to
build other true ideas. He found that he could throw all things
into doubt except onethat he himself was doubting or thinking.
Although he could doubt that he was doubting, Descartes still
could not doubt that he was thinking. In this manner, he arrived at
the famous Cartesian first principle: Cogito, ergo sum, I think,
therefore I am.
Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

Descartes realized that even though the cogito was indubitable,

he could not move easily from that stage to other indubitables.
Objects outside the cogito are grasped by the senses, and the
senses are notoriously subject to error.
Furthermore, any particular idea or thought depends on other
ideas.
Thus, Descartes encountered the necessity of one idea referring to
another. He wanted to arrive at the idea at which further
reference stopped. He found it impossible to arrive at any idea
even the indubitable cogitothat did not refer to something other
than itself, except for the idea of Perfect Being.
Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

Descartes thought that he had, by arriving at Perfect Being,

encountered God, the infinite and timeless Creator, the source of
all things. However, some critics have pointed out that proving
that one is thinking does not in any way prove the ideas one is
thinking about.
Descartes arrived at the two principles on which he based his
system: the cogito and the Deity. He had the indubitability of
human thought in the cogito and the foundation for all the objects
of thought in the Deity.
Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

From these principles, he proceeded to build a philosophy that

has, in one way or another, influenced all philosophy since. That
some of these principles are within the tradition of idealism can
be readily seen: Finite mind contemplates objects of thought
founded in God (in Platonic terms, human mind contemplates the
ultimate reality of ideas).
George Berkeley (16851753)

was born and educated in Ireland and spent most of his

professional life as a minister in the Episcopal Church there.
Berkeley contended that all existence depends on some mind to
know it; if no minds exist, then for all intents and purposes
nothing exists unless it is perceived by the mind of God.
Berkeley was attacking a central tenet of philosophical realism
that a material world exists independent of mind.
 George Berkeley (16851753)

Berkeley held that no one has experienced such matter firsthand

and, further, that such a theory is a conception of mind. Berkeley
thought that people made a common error in assuming that such
objects as trees, houses, and dogs exist where there is no mind to
perceive them. Instead, to say that a thing exists means that it is
perceived by some mindesse est percipi (to be is to be perceived).
Berkeleys philosophical views were strongly conditioned by his
religious views. He held that immaterial substance (ideas or spirit)
has been profaned by science and that science has brought on the
monstrous systems of atheists.
 George Berkeley (16851753)

What exists or has being is not matter: It is Spirit, Idea, or God.

Berkeley refuted matter by showing that matter cannot exist except
as a form of mind. We can know things only as we consciously
conceive them, and when we think of the universe existing before
finite minds can conceive it, we are led to assume the existence of
an Omnipresent Mind lasting through all time and eternity.
Thus, we might say that although people may not be conscious of
trees falling throughout eternity, God is.
David Hume (1711-1776)

The Scottish-born philosopher David Hume proved to be the

greatest antagonist to the ideas of Berkeley.
Although Hume began with an acceptance of the Berkeleian
principle esse est percipi, he concluded that if all we can know
are our own impressions and ideas, then we have no genuine basis
for asserting the reality of either material or spiritual substances.
To connect one occurrence with another, Hume pointed out, is
merely the habit of expecting one event to follow another on the
basis of an indefinite series of such happenings.
David Hume (1711-1776)

Whereas Berkeley believed that his philosophy had dealt

adequately with atheism, Hume believed that no more
justification could be found for the existence of a deity than for
the existence of matter. Thus, just as Berkeley thought that he
had destroyed atheism and materialism, so Hume believed that he
also had destroyed the concept of mind and God.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

German philosopher
most famous professor the University of Knigsberg
Kants work was a critique of past systems in which he sought to pull off a
Copernican revolution in the field of philosophy.
2 of his works Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Practical Reason.
Rationalists sought universal truths or ideas by which a coherent system and
structure of knowledge could be deduced.
The empiricists, in contrast, held to the immediate perceptions of experience
because these are practical and connected with everyday life.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Kants idealism comes from his concentration on human thought

processes. The rationalist, he held, thinks analytically, whereas the
empiricist thinks synthetically. He worked out a system based on a
posteriori (synthetic) and a priori (analytic) logical judgments that he
called synthetic a priori judgments in order to reach a rapprochement
with science and philosophy.
In short, we would have the best of rationalist and empiricist insights
gathered together in a unified system.
Kant understood that science needed an empirical approach in order to
discover universal laws of nature. However, he also recognized the
importance of the human self or mind and its thought processes as a
prime organizing agent in accomplishing this goal
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

The two Critiques illustrate this conflict because one speaks to

the logic of thought and the other to its practical applications.
In Critique of Pure Reason, the result ends up close to Humes
skepticism because Kant found it impossible to make absolutely
universal and necessary judgments about human experience purely
on rational and scientific grounds.
In his Critique of Practical Reason, Kant switched gears and went
to the practical sideto moral and ethical dimensionswhere he
thought universal judgments could and should be made.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Thus, his moral or practical philosophy consists of moral laws that he

held to be universally validlaws that he called categorical
imperativessuch as Act always so that you can will the maxim or the
determining principle of your action to become a universal law.
To Kant, the essence of education should not be simply training; the
important thing was enlightenment, or teaching a child to think
according to principles as opposed to mere random behavior.
Kant thought that an important part of a childs education was the
performance of duties toward oneself and others
Kants idealism in his concentration on thought processes and the nature
of the relationship between mind and its objects on the one hand and
universal moral ideals on the other.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)

He was born in Stuttgart, Germany.

Georg Hegels thought is perhaps the capstone of idealistic
philosophy in the modern era.
In examining Hegel, one must look at three major aspects of his
system: logic, nature, and spirit. Three of his important books are
Phenomenology of Mind, Logic, and Philosophy of Right.
One striking characteristic of Hegels philosophy is his logic.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)

Hegel maintained that his logical system, if applied rigorously and

accurately, would arrive at Absolute Idea.
This is similar to Platos notion of unchanging ideas. The
difference is that Hegel was sensitive to change. Change,
development, and movement are all central and necessary in
Hegels logic. Even Absolute Idea is the final stage only as it
concerns thought process because Absolute Ideas have their own
antithesisNature.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)

To Hegel, Nature is the otherness of Ideaits opposite. He did not

view Idea and Nature as absolutely separate, a dualism at which
Descartes arrived, because to Hegel, dualisms are intolerable as a final
stage.
The final stage or synthesis of Idea and Nature is Spirit, and this is where
the final Absolute is encountered. Absolute Spirit is manifested by the
historical development of a people and by the finest works of art,
religion, and philosophy. Yet, these manifestations are not Absolute
Spirit; they are only its manifestations.
Hegels idealism is most apparentthe search for final Absolute Spirit.
Josiah Royce (1855-1916)

One of the most influential American exponents of Hegelian idealism at

the beginning of the twentieth.
Royce maintained that the external meaning of a thing depends entirely
on its internal meaningthat is, its embodiment of purpose.
He argued that embodiment of purpose is the criterion of mentality
and that the internal essence of anything is mental.
Royce, like most idealists, believed his philosophical views corresponded
closely with religious teachings (the Christian religion in his case), and
he spent much effort demonstrating their compatibility.
Josiah Royce (1855-1916)

Royce believed that ideas are essentially purposes or plans of

action and that the fulfillment of ideas is found when they are put
into action. Thus, purposes are incomplete without an external
world in which they are realized, and the external world is
meaningless unless it is the fulfillment of such purposes.
The influence of this kind of thinking is evidentin the educational
enterprise in terms of teaching people not only about the purposes
of life but also about how they can become active participants in
such purposes.
Reference

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