The Fundamental Opposing Worldviews
Before I’m going to explain further what an objective ontological idealism actually entails, as introduced in my last article, it’s worth giving a brief overview of the basic worldviews that have evolved historically.
For a comprehensive understanding, it is important to understand how the multitude of philosophical currents of thought with their epistemological worldviews came into the world.
They can be distinguished primarily by the fact that they are located ontologically, i.e. ‘in terms of being’, on two different levels.
This refers to the two fundamentally opposing views of ‘realism’ and ‘idealism’, as well as their respective more extreme, one-sided positions in the form of ‘materialism’¹ and ‘spiritualism’.
Realism, for example, generally assumes that immediate experience represents absolute objective reality.
According to this view, the world presents itself to man in its entirety and is merely reproduced by his senses.
Materialism goes one step further, in that it regards all phenomena beyond matter as derived epiphenomena, i.e. as accompanying phenomena of the correspondingly organised matter, which could not exist without its material basis.
From an ontological point of view, then, material substance is the only real basis of the world.
Idealism takes the opposite view.
It sees actual reality as based on ideal principles, and the material world and its sensory phenomena as secondary, derived phenomena.
According to this view, material phenomena and real life have no real meaning unless they are imbued with the ideal, which is based on reason and human consciousness.
Spiritualism, which sees the true foundation of the world in the spiritual alone, goes beyond this.
The material is only the revelation, the manifestation of the underlying spiritual.
The advocates of these different world views may be right in their own field, but they inevitably remain one-sided, which prevents a holistic view of the world.
Only the objective, ontological idealism mentioned above can overcome this.
This is because it unites all worldviews at the points where they are justified.
Often, however, the basic worldviews that still exist today, in their more or less strong manifestations, see their justification and confirmation in the refutation of the other.
But just because one rightly sees contradictions and inconsistencies in the other does not automatically make one’s own convictions less unrealistic or one-sided.
After all, both the sole belief in a material world and the existence of a realm of ideas beyond thinking consciousness are based on the same unreflected way of thinking.
For example, the representatives of naive realism do not understand that the ‘objective’ is the idea and the representatives of critical idealism do not understand that the ‘idea’ is objective.
This is because, as already discussed in detail in “The Fallacy of Kant’s Theory of Knowledge”, so-called ‘transcendental’- or ‘critical idealism’ holds that the content of a person’s consciousness resulting from experience is only his own idea, since it is produced by the transforming activity of the sense organs.
It thus vehemently opposes naive realism, which is convinced or takes for granted that the immediate experience of things represents absolute or objective reality.
However, this leads to a paradox, in that the conclusions of critical idealism to refute naive realism are only justified in so far as critical idealism operates with the same uncritical approach to naive realism that it criticises in naive realism and considers its own justification.
For in its assumptions, critical idealism makes unreflective knowledge judgments in the same way as naive realism, since both have failed to treat the path of the process of knowledge in and of itself in an unbiased way.
Critical idealism could therefore be described as ‘naive’ rationalism, because it assumes, without examination, that all scientifically recognised knowledge can be gained solely independently of experience through logical conclusions of thought, without having examined the path of knowledge itself or thinking.
In other words, in contrast to realism, the existence of thought or one’s own world of imagination — instead of experience — is regarded as the only ‘real’ thing, without, however, attributing any objective value to the ideas or concepts that appear in thought and are stimulated by experience.
The representatives of critical idealism were therefore right to recognise a shortcoming in naive realism, but were unable to identify it in principle without at the same time succumbing to the same fallibility.
For the shortcoming of naive realism does not lie in the fact that, according to it, the directly given sensual world is perceived by man without distortion, but only in its interpretation that all objectivity lies in it.
The former is clearly supported by the fact that the phenomena of the sensory world can only be perceived because the corresponding human sense organ is built according to the properties or qualities required for this.
As Goethe’s saying “If the eye were not sun-like, it could never see the sun” clearly expresses.
There can be no question of mechanical modification or processing by the sensory organs which would result in their products no longer bearing any resemblance to the actual appearance.
Just as there can be no question of the content of the spoken word being lost at the other end of the line due to the technical conversion and reconversion of the spoken word during a telephone call.
Naive realism, therefore, loses its justification only when it advocates the belief that the sensually perceived appearance (form) also provides information about its inner lawful nature (content).
For the underlying idea behind the sensory appearance cannot possibly be given from the outside, since pure sensory experiences only resembles an incoherent chaos as long as it is not penetrated in thinking contemplation.
This means that thinking functions in a certain way as an inner organ of experience that brings the lawful concepts to light.²
It is therefore the task of epistemology to begin at this point, but without remaining naive at any other point, as in critical idealism.
For it is only when critical prudence, i.e. action that is aware of its own laws, takes hold that the demands of epistemology can be met.
This provides the basis for exploring the laws of the process of knowledge in the individual thought process, or in other words, ‘thinking about thinking’.
As soon as it is recognised that the lawful world of ideas is the objective basis of reality and thus has a real value (‘universal realism’), the opposites of these opposing world views dissolve into thin air.³
Realisation takes place through the fact that the essence of the world is conveyed in thought alone.
And thus the lawful connection between the individual phenomena of the world can be found through nothing other than thinking.
Even if materialistic scientists are not aware of it or simply do not want to admit it, they too derive reality from ideas or concepts as the only means of explaining the world.
Thinking therefore urges us to explain reality from the idea, but the materialist believes or is under the illusion that he is deriving it from another reality.
In the same way, we must contradict those who hold to various idealistic views of the world, who believe that because we cannot go beyond the idea, and therefore beyond our own consciousness, we are condemned to live in a subjective world of imagination or dreams.
The concepts and ideas present in consciousness would therefore have no objective or universal claim, but would merely correspond to a dream that one’s own consciousness is dreaming.
In this way one neglects everything that has been explained in the previous articles, in so far as one fails to recognise that, although one cannot go beyond the idea, the objective or universal law is nevertheless present in the idea, which is founded in itself and not in the individual (subject).
It is only because people are often unable to grasp that the world of ideas represents a far higher and more comprehensive being than perceived reality that they still like to search for a further or alternative reality.
In the sense that the existence of an idea often appears to people as something chimerical, i.e. a mirage or a fantasy, and therefore naturally brings with it the dissatisfaction that it is something alien to reality.
The actual fullness, inner perfection and solidity of the world of ideas is rarely penetrated, which is why ideas or concepts are usually dismissed as something abstract.
This is reinforced above all by an education system that tries to impose a multitude of prefabricated definitions on people with empty phrases that have nothing to do with reality.
First and foremost, this only encourages memorising and regurgitating empty, dead words, without any insight into the nature of things, due to the lack of independent thinking penetration and the resulting formation of concepts or ideas.
[1] Today’s dominant materialist worldviews, which emerged and grew in popularity during the 20th century, are best known as ‘positivism’ or ‘constructivism’.
[2] Read more about it here: “Thinking About Thinking”
[3] Read more about it here: “From Kant’s ‘Critical Idealism’ to ‘Objective Ontological Idealism’ (Part 2)”
Note: This text was originally written in German and translated into English using Deepl, because I am a native German speaker.
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