What is epistemology? What is metaphysics? These two questions can be simplified by asking, What is truth? and What is real (reality)? Knowing is a complex process of experiencing, understanding, and judging through which we attain truth. Through our knowing we attain the known, i.e., being (= reality). (It is more proper to say that we know by what we are.) But what is the nature of being that is known? There are many theories of reality that answer this question, we shall deal with a few of them.
(a) Monism, Dualism, and Pluralism
Monism
Monism comes from the Greek term
monos meaning one, oneness, single, or without division. It is the metaphysical or theological view that all is one, that there are no fundamental divisions, and a unified set of laws underlie all of nature. That is, the universe at the deepest level of analysis is one or composed of one fundamental kind of stuff. Monism is against the views of dualism (that reality is two) and pluralism (that reality is many).
Monism is also based on the concept of
monad, derived from monos. The pre-Socratic philosophers describe reality as monistic, i.e., consisting of a monad, or one substance. For Thales reality is made of water; for Anaximander reality is made of
apeiron (the undefined infinite); for Anaximenes reality is composed of air; for Heraclitus fire; and for Parmenides the reality consists of One (an unmoving perfect sphere, unchanging and undivided).
There are many types of monism. One way to divide monism is into (1) abstract monism and (2) concrete monism. Another way to divide is into (1) substantial monism [one thing], (2) attributive monism [one category], and (3) absolute monism [one being]. Yet another way to classify monism is into (1) idealistic monism or mentalistic monism [mind is all that exists], (2) materialistic monism [one reality is matter], (3) neutral monism [one primal substance is neither mental nor physical], and (4) reflexive monism [one basic stuff manifests both physically and as conscious experience].
Abstract Monism
Benedict (or Baruch) Spinoza (1632-1677) is a typical exponent of abstract monism. For him the One Substance is God. In other words, God is the only reality according to Spinoza. Spinoza accepts Descartes’ definition of substance “as that which exists in itself and is conceived by itself.” God is the only being that exists in Himself and is conceived by Himself. Therefore, God is the only substance.
Though Spinoza accepts Descartes’ definition of substance, he does not recognise matter and mind as substances, because they do not exist in themselves.
God or substance is an absolute indeterminate being. Determination implies negation and limitation. To ascribe some some qualities is to deny other qualities of it. God is infinite, absolute, unqualified, attributeless. He is both unqualified substance, and also infinitely qualified substance. (This is how the human intellect understands this, as having an infinite number of attributes.)
God, according to Spinoza, has infinite thought and infinite extension. In Him modes are infinite: motion, intellect, and will are without beginning or end. Moreover, God is the causal chain or process, the law and structure of the world, the underlying condition of all things. He is the immanent cause of all things, not extraneous. “All is God; all lives and moves in God.”
In our evaluation, Spinoza lands into pantheism which in turn leads to acosmism and illusionism. Such a thought denies human freedom and saps the very foundation of morality. Furthermore, religion thus becomes a myth because God is just Substance without knowledge or will or purpose, or love or grace.
Spinoza’s monism is right insofar as it recognises the reality of one substance or God. It is wrong insofar as it denies the reality of many objects and minds.
Concrete Monism
G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) is a typical exponent of concrete monism, which regards both One and many as real. He identifies God with the Absolute Mind. God is an identity-in-difference, unity-in-diversity, one-in-many.
Hegel considers Nature, Finite minds, and God to be all real. According to him, Nature or the world is the externalization of the Absolute Mind. There is no world without God, and no God without the world. God is both immanent in and transcendent of the world.
Secondly, Finite minds are the finite reproduction of the Absoulte Mind through the medium of human organisms. They share in the thought and freedom of the Absolute Mind; they have relative and limited freedom but genuine. This entails spontaneity and creativity. The human person, moreover, can have communion with God. So prayer and worship become possible.
Thirdly, God is the Supreme Person. He is not an impersonal force. He is the Absolute Spirit, the source and goal of finite minds and nature. He is not an abstract One, but a concrete unity which is expressed in different objects and minds.
According to Hegel, matter is the lowest degree of God’s manifestation. We can see an increase in gradation with regard to the manifestation of the Absolute Spirit. If matter forms the lowest rung of such an evolutionary stage, life, animal mind and human mind form the successive stages.
Individual mind is the subjective mind; society is the objective mind; God is the absolute mind.
Hegel, in our evaluation, is right when he considers God as real, and also many as real. Finite minds and nature (as many) are real. We need to appreciate Hegel in explaining the relative freedom of the finite minds, their morality and religion. Other positive points are evolution, teleology of nature, transcendence and immanence of God in relation to the universe and finite minds.
However, an overemphasis of the immanence of God in nature and history minimizes the relative freedom of finite spirits and seems to regard them merely as His puppets in the world drama.
The elements of chance, contingency, freedom, creativity, disorder, evil, change, progress, and values all need to be explained better in Hegel’s thought.
Dualism
Now, let us move on to our second topic: dualism. Dualism implies there are two fundamental kinds or categories of things or principles. If monism talks of “one,” dualism talks of “two.”
Plato advocated dualism and believed in two fundamental realities, viz., God and matter (
hyle). The Creator, or God, creates the world according to the Idea as the pattern which He follows. The God of Plato is the Idea of the Good, the highest in the hierarchy of Ideas. The Idea of the Good is the absolute Idea, the One, the Lord of the spiritual world, as the sun is the lord of the visible world. So it is identical with God. He is the most real, because the Idea is supremely real. God, or the Idea of the Good, is the absolute Idea, pure reason free from matter and evil. He is supreme wisdom beyond human understanding. He is eternal source of truth, good, and beauty. He is the supreme good. God therefore cannot create evil; He is the highest law, supreme law-giver, supreme justice. Thus the Idea becomes the formative principle, a creative being.
Matter or
hyle, in comparison to the Idea, is non-being. In fact, out of the matter the Idea forms the sensible, material world. Matter is the primal, original matter but it is not corporeal. It is capable of becoming corporeal through the action of the Idea. It is indeterminate, unlimited, qualified. It is indefinable, formless, imperceptible matrix of sensible objects through the plastic action of the Idea of the Good or God, the Creator.
Critical Evaluation of Dualism
If there are two co-eternal realities of equal strength, conflicting with each other, one will ultimately overpower the other and rule over the universe. If God overpowers matter, then evil and imperfection will be eliminated, and good will prevail. If, on the other hand, matter overpowers God, then good, truth, and beauty will be eliminated; and moral evil, error, and ugliness will prevail. But both these contingencies appear to be improbable. Therefore, we cannot accept dualism as a theory of reality. Dualism, ditheism, or dualistic theism is an unsatisfactory metaphysical position.
Pluralism
Pluralism is the anti-thesis of monism. It is a theory that states reality is manifold, plural, many. Monism starts with One, and derives many from it. But pluralism starts with many, and derives unity from them. In other words, monism derives plurality from unity, whereas pluralism derives unity from plurality. Pluralism, therefore, stresses on the individuals and their functions in the organisation of the world. It stresses its manifoldness and variety, its infinite diversities and novelties. Pluralism formerly took two forms: materialistic and spiritualistic. Materialistic pluralism regards the individual entities as material; spiritualistic pluralism regards them as spiritualism. Atomism is materialistic pluralism; monadism is spiritualistic pluralism.
Greek Atomism
Democritus, an ancient Greek philosopher and disciple of Leucippus, propounds the theory that the world is composed of material atoms. These atoms are endowed with perpetual motion; motion is their essence. They do not receive motion from any external agent; they move about, combine with others, and form physical objects as a result of the combination. They have no design or purpose. Democritus also states that the atoms are eternal. The world was not created by God. Rather, the atoms combined to form the world. Mind and soul are made of finest, smoothest, nimblest atoms. Brain is the seat of thought; liver is the seat of desires; and heart is the seat of feelings and emotions.
Another exponent of atomism is Epicurus. According to him, the world is neither created nor destroyed; it is composed of atoms moving in empty space, which have weight. Mechanical causes explain the world. Final causes are not necessary to account for its unity. The soul is material and composed of exceedingly fine matter. It is destroyed with the body.
Monadism
Leibnitz is the father of spiritualistic pluralism which assumes the form of monadism. According to him, the ultimate units of the reality are are spiritual atoms or forces called "monads." Monads are unextended, immaterial substances, spiritual atoms, which are essentially self-active in nature: they are metaphysical points as opposed to physical and mathematical points. Monads are self-active and develop from within. They are self-existent and self-centred entities. They are "windowless": no influence can come into them and no influence can pass out of them. They were created by God, the Monad of monads, and pre-adjusted to one another. This pre-established harmony accounts for correspondence among them and correspondence between body and mind.
(b) Realism and Idealism
There are various types of realism that answer the questions: What do we know? What is the nature of the being that is known? Do we know external objects or subjective ideas? Let us now discuss a few types of realism and idealism.
Realism
Realism is the doctrine which recognizes the reality of the external world independent of minds. We shall here discuss two types of realism: naive or popular realism and scientific or critical realism.
Naive or Popular Realism
According to naive realism, our ideas are exact copies of the external real things and their qualities. All the qualities of matter are real and objective existences in nature; they exist in things themselves. Thus colour, taste, smell, heat and cold are as much absolute and objective qualities of things as extension, impenetrability, motion, rest, solidity and the like are. Extension, solidity, etc., are called primary qualities, while colour, taste, etc., are called secondary qualities.
Primary qualities are thought to be properties of objects that are independent of any observer, such as solidity, extension, motion, number and figure. These characteristics convey facts. They exist in the thing itself, can be determined with certainty, and do not rely on subjective judgments. For example, if a ball is spherical, no one can reasonably argue that it is triangular.
Secondary qualities are thought to be properties that produce sensations in observers, such as color, taste, smell, and sound. They can be described as the effect things have on certain people. Knowledge that comes from secondary qualities does not provide objective facts about things.
Primary qualities are measurable aspects of physical reality. Secondary qualities are subjective.
Scientific or Critical Realism
John Locke advocates scientific or critical realism, which draws a distinction between primary qualities and secondary qualities of matter. He regards the former as real and objective qualities of matter, whereas he regards the latter as only subjective states or ideas of our mind. For example, what is sweet to one is bitter to another. Heat and cold are very subjective. Therefore, secondary qualities are not objective qualities, rather they are subjective modes of our sensibility. Colours, sound, odours, tastes, temperatures, etc., cannot exist apart from our sensibility. They are sensations. They do not belong to the objects themselves. But, on the other hand, primary qualities of motion, solidity, etc., belong to the physical objects themselves. They are universal and permanent. Therefore, according to scientific realism (also called empiricism by some) our ideas are representations of actual realities only in respect to secondary qualities of matter.
Idealism
According to idealism, the ideal is the real and the real is the ideal. Idealism denies the reality of external objects independent of the knowing minds. The mind is the primary reality. According to idealism, reality is the projection of our ideas / our mind.
Subjective Idealism
George Berkeley is the advocate of subjective idealism (also considered by some a type of empiricism). According to him,
esse est percipi (Existence is perception). Berkeley states matter is a cluster of qualities (primary and secondary). Both primary and secondary qualities, for him, are subjective ideas of the mind. Thus the world is just a projection of our ideas or perceptions. Now, according to Berkeley, these ideas or perceptions are not created by ourselves, but are communicated to us by God. God is the cause of our sensations. Berkeley, moreover, denies the existence of the external world. But is he a solipsist? (Solipsism means: I don't know anything beyond myself and my ideas. Each person is shut up to herself alone,
souls ipse.) Since Berkeley at least maintains that it is God who creates the sensations in us, we can say that he does not deny the possibility of objects or being outside one's own mind. Thus Berkeley is not to be considered a solipsist.
Critical Idealism
Here we shall discuss the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. He divides reality into
phenomena (things-as-perceived) and
noumena (things-in-themselves). According to him, we can only know phenomena. Though noumena exist outside and are independent of the mind, they are unknown, they cannot be known. We know only phenomena or appearances, through pure reason or theoretical reason.
According to Kant's critical idealism (also called transcendental idealism), our mind has categories of understanding. Category for him does not mean a classificatory division, but a pure concept of understanding, it is a condition of possibility of objects (knowing them). Therefore our mind is not a
tabula rasa (blank slate). It has categories like substance, causality, number, reality, sensation, etc., within a framework of space and time. Hence we can only know impressions and sensations (phenomena), not reality in itself.
Moreover, it also implies that there is no mind-independent world. The order we see, the world we experience are all dependent on our mind. There is not order out there, but it is I who give order. For example, if I talk of planetary "system," such an order or system is imposed by my mind onto reality. Co-existence, succession, substance, quality, cause, effect, unity, plurality: all these do not exist in things themselves, they are contributions of the mind. (Two people meet with an accident in the same place and at the same time. One becomes bitter about that experience, the other becomes better, positive, etc., as a result of the same accident which has made the first one bitter. How is this possible?)
Idealism of Absolute Identity
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775–1854) is, along with J.G. Fichte and G.W.F. Hegel, one of the three most influential thinkers in the tradition of ‘German Idealism’. Schelling was born in Leonberg near Stuttgart on 27 January 1775. He attended a Protestant seminary in Tübingen from 1790 to 1795. For some time, he was a close friend of Hegel. He changed his thinking so often, that it is difficult to attribute one specific philosophic conception to him.
Though influenced by Fichte, Schelling was more interested in Nature than Fichte himself. Schelling therefore propounded a theory of Absolute Identity of Subject and Object (Nature). On the one hand, the Absolute as Subject gives rise to finite subjects with human consciousness. On the other hand, the Absolute as Object gives rise to finite objects which in human consciousness move towards the Spirit.
Schelling’s standpoint is more pantheistic than Fichte’s, since he upheld the ultimate Identity of subjects in a Subject, of objects in an Object, and of Subject and Object in an Absolute Identity. And more importantly, he landed into an eclecticism: he tried too many disparate views, that not even the mysticism of St. John could provide him with the platform to realise his eclectic dream. Hegel’s criticism is that Schelling’s Absolute is like a dark night in which all the cows look black. Hegel in his turn will try to show clearly all the distinctions within the Absolute.
Objective or Absolute Idealism
The thought of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) can be termed as objective idealism or absolute idealism. Hegel can be considered as “The German Philosopher.” The greatest German philosopher since Kant. The most systematic of the post-Kantian idealists, Hegel attempted, throughout his published writings as well as in his lectures, to elaborate a comprehensive and systematic ontology from a “logical” starting point. He is perhaps most well-known for his teleological account of history, an account which was later taken over by Marx and “inverted” into a materialist theory of an historical development culminating in communism.
Born in 1770 in Stuttgart, Hegel spent the years 1788–1793 as a theology student in nearby Tübingen, forming friendships there with fellow students, the future great romantic poet Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843) and Friedrich von Schelling (1775–1854), who, like Hegel, would become one of the major figures of the German philosophical scene in the first half of the nineteenth century. First, he was a journalist, then a principal of High School, finally a Professor of Philosophy and Rector of the University of Berlin. Some of his works are: The Phenomenology of the Mind (1807), The Science of Logic (1812-1816), The Philosophy of Right (1821), The Philosophy of History (posthumous).
His Triadic Division of Philosophy
Hegel divides philosophy into: Logic, the Philosophy of Spirit and the Philosophy of Nature. His vision of reality envisages an Absolute (Logos or Idea) which manifests itself in a triadic process of dialectic: Nature (the World) and the Finite mind or spirit (in effect, the human spirit) are the fields in which this Absolute unfolds or realises itself. We need to realise that all these divisions are for unity and unification. “Philosophy is concerned with the whole and the true is the whole.”
Consequently, Hegel criticises Kant for having encouraged too many divisions in philosophy: phenomenon and noumenon, sensibility and understanding, and so on. Moreover, Hegel envisaged the Absolute not as the vanishing-point of all differences, not even an impenetrable something existing above and beyond all differences but something constructed out of the reconciliation of them all: identity-in-difference.
His Philosophy of God
Hegel does not hesitate to speak of the Absolute as God. The Absolute, according to him, is “self-thinking thought.” These are the words of Aristotle for God. This Absolute is dynamic: it is being (thesis), non-being (antithesis), and also becoming (synthesis). That is, it is in a process of self-development. “The real is the rational, and the rational is the real.” Reality is dynamic. If Absolute is God, then Nature is Creation.
For Hegel, Christianity is the highest level of religious awakening. The first stage of religious awakening is the moment of “natural” religion, where the divine is seen in the sensible things of nature - in plants, trees, stones, and animals. In the second stage, the divine is seen in anthropomorphic statues, as in Greek religion. Finally, in Christianity, the “absolute religion,” the Absolute Spirit is seen and recognised as the pure Spirit. Religion, even Christianity, is in the second stage. Christianity must shed its pictorial language and be elevated into the still higher sphere of philosophy.
The Absolute is Spirit. Hegel states this is the highest definition of the Absolute. All religion and science have striven to reach this point. Now, Nature in itself is divine but its being does not correspond with its concept. It is self-alienated spirit, or God in his otherness.
Hegel often writes of the State in the most exalted terms. More than once he explicitly hails it as God. It is the highest manifestation of the objective spirit, also expressed in the two inferior movements of the family and civil society. But this is the State in its ideal essence and is in no way ever immune from error. At the same time, private freedom was important for Hegel.
His Philosophy of the World
Though there are texts in Hegel to suggest that Nature is the free creation of a personal God, we must claim that according to Hegel the Absolute manifests itself in Nature necessarily, not freely. There are three stages of Nature, of which one proceeds necessarily from the other. They are: Mathematics/Mechanics, Physics, and Organics (Organic Physics). As we move from mathematics through physics to organics, we move from space to organism. In animal organisms, the subjectivity is not yet self-consciousness.
His Philosophy of the Human Person
Hegel makes a distinction between the following: subjective spirit, objective spirit, and absolute spirit. The first two are finite, the last is the Absolute Spirit. (“Geist” can be translated as either “mind” or “spirit.”)
The emergence of freedom is of key importance for the philosophy of Hegel. In fact, the basic difference between Nature and Spirit is that while necessity reigns over the former, Spirit is the sphere of freedom. As the Absolute Spirit objectifies or expresses itself in Nature, so also the human spirit expresses itself in the world--again, in three stages. First, there emerges the notion of right, whereby the individual expresses her awareness of freedom with regard to material things. Second, is the notion of contract, whereby an individual can enter into an agreement with others to buy or sell property. Third, there emerges the notion of wrong (or crime), for free beings can dishonour or break contracts that they have made.
Next, Hegel makes a distinction between morality and ethics. He looks into the interior of the human person and asks which actions of hers are to be considered morally imputable to her. There are three aspects here again: past purpose and intention and conscience. This last stage leads us to ethics. And ethical substance is made up of three concrete moments: family, civil society, and the state.
With regard to Hegel’s political thought, we can reiterate again his deification (divinisation) of the State, which is the highest expression of objective spirit. But even this must be interpreted within the context of his metaphysics. Moreover, the State is the objectification of a people’s culture and values--in short, its spirit. Hegel also saw war as a justifiable and necessary means, when treaties (contracts) between states have been broken. War, for Hegel, was also an inevitable moment in the dialectic of history: a necessary means to rejuvenate the spirit of a people and to remove dead systems.
Another important point here is Hegel’s conception of history. Perhaps no contemporary thinker has done so much to advance the cause of the philosophy of history as Hegel. He recognises three basic ways of writing history: original history (first-hand account of events), reflective history (presentation of events outside historian’s experience), and philosophical history (thoughtful consideration of history). Hegel’s philosophy of history, in sum, bears out the truth that world-history is but the self-unfolding of Spirit.
The divine Spirit is manifested in history as World-Spirit (Weltgeist). And the encounter with the World-Spirit must be sought through an examination of the spirt of a people (Volkgeist). Hegel’s philosophy of art is part of the last stage in the dialectic of the spirit.
