Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a neurosurgical procedure involving the placement of a medical device called a neurostimulator (sometimes referred to as a "brain pacemaker"), which sends electrical impulses, through implanted electrodes, to specific targets in the brain (brain nuclei) for the treatment of movement disorders, including Parkinson's disease, essential tremor, and dystonia.
While its underlying principles and mechanisms are not fully
understood, DBS directly changes brain activity in a controlled manner.
DBS is used to manage some of the symptoms of Parkinson's disease that cannot be adequately controlled with medications.
It is recommended for people who have PD with motor fluctuations and
tremor inadequately controlled by medication, or to those who are
intolerant to medication, as long as they do not have severe neuropsychiatric problems. Four areas of the brain have been treated with neural stimulators in PD. These are the globus pallidus internus, thalamus, subthalamic nucleus and the pedunculopontine nucleus. However, most DBS surgeries in routine practice target either the globus pallidus internus, or the Subthalamic nucleus.
DBS of the globus pallidus internus reduces uncontrollable shaking movements called dyskinesias.
This enables a patient to take adequate quantities of medications
(especially levodopa), thus leading to better control of symptoms.
DBS of the subthalamic nucleus directly reduces symptoms of
Parkinson's. This enables a decrease in the dose of anti-parkinonian
medications.
DBS of the PPN may help with freezing of gait, while DBS of the
thalamus may help with tremor. These targets are not routinely utilized.
Selection of the correct DBS target is a complicated process.
Multiple clinical characteristics are used to select the target
including – identifying the most troublesome symptoms, the dose of
levodopa that the patient is currently taking, the effects and
side-effects of current medications and concurrent problems. For
example, subthalamic nucleus DBS may worsen depression and hence is not
preferred in patients with uncontrolled depression.
Generally DBS is associated with 30–60% improvement in motor score evaluations.
Tourette syndrome
DBS has been used experimentally in treating adults with severe Tourette syndrome that does not respond to conventional treatment. Despite widely publicized early successes, DBS remains a highly experimental procedure for the treatment of Tourette's, and more study is needed to determine whether long-term benefits outweigh the risks.
The procedure is well tolerated, but complications include "short
battery life, abrupt symptom worsening upon cessation of stimulation,
hypomanic or manic conversion, and the significant time and effort
involved in optimizing stimulation parameters".
As of 2006, five people with TS had been reported on; all experienced
reduction in tics and the disappearance of obsessive-compulsive
behaviors.
The procedure is invasive and expensive, and requires long-term
expert care. Benefits for severe Tourette's are not conclusive,
considering less robust effects of this surgery seen in the Netherlands. Tourette's is more common in pediatric
populations, tending to remit in adulthood, so in general this would
not be a recommended procedure for use on children. Because diagnosis of
Tourette's is made based on a history of symptoms rather than analysis
of neurological activity, it may not always be clear how to apply DBS
for a particular person. Due to concern over the use of DBS in Tourette syndrome treatment, the Tourette Association of America convened a group of experts to develop recommendations guiding the use and potential clinical trials of DBS for TS.
Robertson reported that DBS had been used on 55 adults by 2011,
remained an experimental treatment at that time, and recommended that
the procedure "should only be conducted by experienced functional
neurosurgeons operating in centres which also have a dedicated Tourette
syndrome clinic". According to Malone et al.
(2006), "Only patients with severe, debilitating, and
treatment-refractory illness should be considered; while those with
severe personality disorders and substance-abuse problems should be
excluded." Du et al. (2010) say, "As an invasive therapy, DBS is currently only advisable for severely affected, treatment-refractory TS adults".
Singer (2011) says, "pending determination of patient selection
criteria and the outcome of carefully controlled clinical trials, a
cautious approach is recommended". Viswanathan et al. (2012) say DBS should be used for people with "severe functional impairment that cannot be managed medically".
Adverse effects
Arteriogram of the arterial supply that can hemorrhage during DBS implantation.
DBS carries the risks of major surgery, with a complication rate
related to the experience of the surgical team. The major complications
include hemorrhage (1–2%) and infection (3–5%).
Because the brain can shift slightly during surgery, the
electrodes can become displaced or dislodged from the specific location.
This may cause more profound complications such as personality changes,
but electrode misplacement is relatively easy to identify using CT scan.
Also, complications of surgery may occur, such as bleeding within the
brain. After surgery, swelling of the brain tissue, mild disorientation,
and sleepiness are normal. After 2–4 weeks, a follow-up visit is used
to remove sutures, turn on the neurostimulator, and program it.
Impaired swimming skills surfaced as an unexpected risk of the
procedure; several Parkinson's disease patients lost their ability to
swim after receiving deep brain stimulation.
Mechanisms
The exact mechanism of action of DBS is not known. A variety of hypotheses try to explain the mechanisms of DBS:
Depolarization blockade: Electrical currents block the neuronal output at or near the electrode site.
Synaptic inhibition: This causes an indirect regulation of the
neuronal output by activating axon terminals with synaptic connections
to neurons near the stimulating electrode.
Desynchronization of abnormal oscillatory activity of neurons
Antidromic activation either activating/blockading distant neurons or blockading slow axons
DBS represents an advance on previous treatments which involved pallidotomy (i.e., surgical ablation of the globus pallidus) or thalamotomy (i.e., surgical ablation of the thalamus). Instead, a thin lead with multiple electrodes is implanted in the globus pallidus, nucleus ventralis intermedius thalami, or subthalamic nucleus, and electric pulses are used therapeutically. The lead from the implant is extended to the neurostimulator under the skin in the chest area.
Its direct effect on the physiology of brain cells and neurotransmitters
is currently debated, but by sending high-frequency electrical impulses
into specific areas of the brain, it can mitigate symptoms and directly
diminish the side effects induced by PD medications, allowing a
decrease in medications, or making a medication regimen more tolerable.
Components and placement
The DBS system consists of three components: the implanted pulse generator (IPG), the lead, and an extension. The IPG is a battery-powered neurostimulator encased in a titanium housing, which sends electrical pulses to the brain that interfere with neuralactivity at the target site. The lead is a coiled wire insulated in polyurethane with four platinum-iridium
electrodes and is placed in one or two different nuclei of the brain.
The lead is connected to the IPG by an extension, an insulated wire that
runs below the skin, from the head, down the side of the neck, behind
the ear, to the IPG, which is placed subcutaneously below the clavicle, or in some cases, the abdomen. The IPG can be calibrated by a neurologist, nurse, or trained technician to optimize symptom suppression and control side effects.
All three components are surgically implanted inside the body.
Lead implantation may take place under local anesthesia or under general
anesthesia ("asleep DBS") such as for dystonia. A hole about 14 mm in
diameter is drilled in the skull and the probe electrode is inserted stereotactically,
using either frame-based or frameless stereotaxis.
During the awake procedure with local anesthesia, feedback from the
person is used to determine the optimal placement of the permanent
electrode. During the asleep procedure, intraoperative MRI guidance is
used for direct visualization of brain tissue and device. The
installation of the IPG and extension leads occurs under general
anesthesia. The right side of the brain is stimulated to address
symptoms on the left side of the body and vice versa.
Major depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder
Lateral X-ray of the head: Deep brain stimulation in obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). 42 year old man, surgery in 2013.
DBS has been used in a small number of clinical trials to treat people with severe treatment-resistant depression (TRD).
A number of neuroanatomical targets have been used for DBS for TRD
including the subgenual cingulate gyrus, posterior gyrus rectus, nucleus accumbens,
ventral capsule/ventral striatum, inferior thalamic peduncle, and the
lateral habenula. A recently proposed target of DBS intervention in
depression is the superolateral branch of the medial forebrain bundle; its stimulation lead to surprisingly rapid antidepressant effects.
The small numbers in the early trials of DBS for TRD currently
limit the selection of an optimal neuroanatomical target. Evidence is
insufficient to support DBS as a therapeutic modality for depression;
however, the procedure may be an effective treatment modality in the future.
In fact, beneficial results have been documented in the neurosurgical
literature, including a few instances in which people who were deeply
depressed were provided with portable stimulators for self treatment.
A systematic review of DBS for TRD and OCD identified 23 cases,
nine for OCD, seven for TRD, and one for both. "[A]bout half the
patients did show dramatic improvement" and adverse events were
"generally trivial" given the younger age of the psychiatric population
relative to the age of people with movement disorders.
The first randomized, controlled study of DBS for the treatment of TRD
targeting the ventral capsule/ventral striatum area did not demonstrate a
significant difference in response rates between the active and sham
groups at the end of a 16-week study.
However, a second randomized controlled study of ventral capsule DBS
for TRD did demonstrate a significant difference in response rates
between active DBS (44% responders) and sham DBS (0% responders).
Efficacy of DBS is established for OCD, with on average 60% responders
in severely ill and treatment-resistant patients.
Based on these results the FDA has approved DBS for treatment-resistant
OCD under a Humanitarian Device Exemption (HDE), requiring that the
procedure be performed only in a hospital with specialist qualifications
to do so.
DBS for TRD can be as effective as antidepressants and can have
good response and remission rates, but adverse effects and safety must
be more fully evaluated. Common side effects include "wound infection,
perioperative headache, and worsening/irritable mood [and] increased
suicidality".
Other clinical applications
Results
of DBS in people with dystonia, where positive effects often appear
gradually over a period of weeks to months, indicate a role of
functional reorganization in at least some cases. The procedure has been tested for effectiveness in people with epilepsy that is resistant to medication. DBS may reduce or eliminate epileptic seizures with programmed or responsive stimulation.
DBS of the septal areas of persons with schizophrenia have resulted in enhanced alertness, cooperation, and euphoria. Persons with narcolepsy and complex-partial seizures also reported euphoria and sexual thoughts from self-elicited DBS of the septal nuclei.
Orgasmic ecstasy was reported with the electrical stimulation of the brain with depth electrodes in the left hippocampus at 3mA, and the right hippocampus at 1 mA.
In 2015, a group of Brazilian researchers led by neurosurgeon Erich Fonoff [pt]
described a new technique that allows for simultaneous implants of
electrodes called bilateral stereotactic procedure for DBS. The main
benefits are less time spent on the procedure and greater accuracy.
In 2016, DBS was found to improve learning and memory in a mouse model of Rett syndrome.
More recent (2018) work showed, that forniceal DBS upregulates genes
involved in synaptic function, cell survival, and neurogenesis, making
some first steps at explaining the restoration of hippocampal circuit
function.
Dialectic or dialectics (Greek: διαλεκτική, dialektikḗ; related to dialogue; German: Dialektik), also known as the dialectical method, is at base a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to establish the truth through reasoned methods of argumentation. Dialectic resembles debate, but the concept excludes subjective elements such as emotional appeal and the modern pejorative sense of rhetoric. Dialectic may thus be contrasted with both the eristic, which refers to argument that aims to successfully dispute another's argument (rather than searching for truth), and the didactic method, wherein one side of the conversation teaches the other. Dialectic is alternatively known as minor logic, as opposed to major logic or critique.
Within Hegelianism, the word dialectic has the specialised meaning of a contradiction between ideas that serves as the determining factor in their relationship. Dialectical materialism, a theory or set of theories produced mainly by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, adapted the Hegelian dialectic into arguments regarding traditional materialism. The dialectics of Hegel and Marx were criticized in the twentieth century by the philosophers Karl Popper and Mario Bunge.
Dialectic tends to imply a process of evolution and so does not naturally fit within classical logics, but was given some formalism in the twentieth century. The emphasis on process is particularly marked in Hegelian dialectic, and even more so in Marxist dialectical logic, which tried to account for the evolution of ideas over longer time periods in the real world.
Western dialectical forms
There is a variety of meanings of dialectic or dialectics within Western philosophy.
Classical philosophy
In classicalphilosophy, dialectic (διαλεκτική) is a form of reasoning based upon dialogue of arguments and counter-arguments, advocating propositions (theses) and counter-propositions (antitheses).
The outcome of such a dialectic might be the refutation of a relevant
proposition, or of a synthesis, or a combination of the opposing
assertions, or a qualitative improvement of the dialogue.
Moreover, the term "dialectic" owes much of its prestige to its role in the philosophies of Socrates and Plato, in the Greek Classical period (5th to 4th centuries BC). Aristotle said that it was the pre-Socratic philosopher Zeno of Citium who invented dialectic, of which the dialogues of Plato are the examples of the Socratic dialectical method.
According to Kant,
however, the ancient Greeks used the word "dialectic" to signify the
logic of false appearance or semblance. To the Ancients, "it was nothing
but the logic of illusion. It was a sophistic art of giving to one's
ignorance, indeed even to one's intentional tricks, the outward
appearance of truth, by imitating the thorough, accurate method which
logic always requires, and by using its topic as a cloak for every empty
assertion."
Socratic method
The Socratic dialogues are a particular form of dialectic known as the method of elenchus (literally, "refutation, scrutiny")
whereby a series of questions clarifies a more precise statement of a
vague belief, logical consequences of that statement are explored, and a
contradiction is discovered. The method is largely destructive, in that
false belief is exposed
and only constructive in that this exposure may lead to further search
for truth. The detection of error does not amount to a proof of the
antithesis; for example, a contradiction in the consequences of a
definition of piety does not provide a correct definition. The
principal aim of Socratic activity may be to improve the soul of the
interlocutors, by freeing them from unrecognized errors; or indeed, by
teaching them the spirit of inquiry.
In common cases, Socrates used enthymemes as the foundation of his argument.
For example, in the Euthyphro, Socrates asks Euthyphro
to provide a definition of piety. Euthyphro replies that the pious is
that which is loved by the gods. But, Socrates also has Euthyphro
agreeing that the gods are quarrelsome and their quarrels, like human
quarrels, concern objects of love or hatred. Therefore, Socrates
reasons, at least one thing exists that certain gods love but other gods
hate. Again, Euthyphro agrees. Socrates concludes that if Euthyphro's
definition of piety is acceptable, then there must exist at least one
thing that is both pious and impious (as it is both loved and hated by
the gods)—which Euthyphro admits is absurd. Thus, Euthyphro is brought
to a realization by this dialectical method that his definition of piety
is not sufficiently meaningful.
For example, in Plato's Gorgias, dialectic occurs between
Socrates, the Sophist Gorgias, and two men, Polus and Callicles. Because
Socrates' ultimate goal was to reach true knowledge, he was even
willing to change his own views in order to arrive at the truth. The
fundamental goal of dialectic, in this instance, was to establish a
precise definition of the subject (in this case, rhetoric) and with the
use of argumentation and questioning, make the subject even more
precise. In the Gorgias, Socrates reaches the truth by asking a series
of questions and in return, receiving short, clear answers.
Plato
There is another interpretation of dialectic, suggested in The Republic, as a procedure that is both discursive and intuitive.
In Platonism and Neoplatonism, dialectic assumes an ontological and
metaphysical role in that it becomes the process whereby the intellect
passes from sensibles to intelligibles, rising from Idea to Idea until
it finally grasps the supreme Idea, the First Principle which is the
origin of all. The philosopher is consequently a "dialectician". In this sense, dialectic is a process of enquiry that does away with hypotheses up to the First Principle (Republic,
VII, 533 c-d). It slowly embraces the multiplicity in unity. Simon
Blackburn writes that the dialectic in this sense is used to understand
"the total process of enlightenment, whereby the philosopher is educated
so as to achieve knowledge of the supreme good, the Form of the Good".
Aristotle
Aristotle
stresses that rhetoric is closely related to dialectic. He offers
several formulas to describe this affinity between the two disciplines:
first of all, rhetoric is said to be a "counterpart" (antistrophos) to
dialectic (Rhet. I.1, 1354a1); (ii) it is also called an "outgrowth"
(paraphues ti) of dialectic and the study of character (Rhet. I.2,
1356a25f.); finally, Aristotle says that rhetoric is part of dialectic
and resembles it (Rhet. I.2, 1356a30f.). In saying that rhetoric is a
counterpart to dialectic, Aristotle obviously alludes to Plato's Gorgias
(464bff.), where rhetoric is ironically defined as a counterpart to
cookery in the soul. Since, in this passage, Plato uses the word
'antistrophos' to designate an analogy, it is likely that Aristotle
wants to express a kind of analogy too: what dialectic is for the
(private or academic) practice of attacking and maintaining an argument,
rhetoric is for the (public) practice of defending oneself or accusing
an opponent. The analogy to dialectic has important implications for the
status of rhetoric. Plato argued in his Gorgias that rhetoric cannot be
an art (technê), since it is not related to a definite subject, while
real arts are defined by their specific subjects, as e.g. medicine or
shoemaking are defined by their products, i.e., health and shoes.
Medieval philosophy
Logic, which could be considered to include dialectic, was one of the three liberal arts taught in medieval universities as part of the trivium; the other elements were rhetoric and grammar.
This dialectic (a quaestio disputata) was formed as follows:
The question to be determined ("It is asked whether...");
A provisory answer to the question ("And it seems that...");
The principal arguments in favor of the provisory answer;
An argument against the provisory answer, traditionally a single argument from authority ("On the contrary...");
The determination of the question after weighing the evidence ("I answer that...");
The replies to each of the initial objections. ("To the first, to the second etc., I answer that...")
Modern philosophy
The concept of dialectics was given new life at the start of the 19th century by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (following Johann Gottlieb Fichte),
whose dialectical model of nature and of history made dialectic a
fundamental aspect of the nature of reality (instead of regarding the
contradictions into which dialectics leads as a sign of the sterility of
the dialectical method, as the 18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant tended to do in his Critique of Pure Reason).
In the mid-19th century, the concept of dialectics was appropriated by Karl Marx (see, for example, Das Kapital, published in 1867) and Friedrich Engels
and retooled in what they considered to be a nonidealistic manner. It
would also become a crucial part of later representations of Marxism as a
philosophy of dialectical materialism. These representations often contrasted dramatically
and led to vigorous debate among different Marxist groupings, leading
some prominent Marxists to give up on the idea of dialectics completely.
Hegelian dialectic
Hegelian dialectic, usually presented in a threefold manner, was stated by Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus
as comprising three dialectical stages of development: a thesis, giving
rise to its reaction; an antithesis, which contradicts or negates the
thesis; and the tension between the two being resolved by means of a
synthesis. In more simplistic terms, one can consider it thus: problem →
reaction → solution.
Although this model is often named after Hegel, he never used that
specific formulation. Hegel ascribed that terminology to Kant. Carrying on Kant's work, Fichte greatly elaborated on the synthesis model and popularized it.
On the other hand, Hegel did use a three-valued logical model
that is very similar to the antithesis model, but Hegel's most usual
terms were: Abstract-Negative-Concrete. Hegel used this writing model as
a backbone to accompany his points in many of his works.
The formula, thesis-antithesis-synthesis, does not explain why
the thesis requires an antithesis. However, the formula,
abstract-negative-concrete, suggests a flaw, or perhaps an
incompleteness, in any initial thesis—it is too abstract and lacks the
negative of trial, error, and experience. For Hegel, the concrete, the
synthesis, the absolute, must always pass through the phase of the
negative, in the journey to completion, that is, mediation. This is the
essence of what is popularly called Hegelian dialectics.
Fichte
introduced into German philosophy the three-step of thesis, antithesis,
and synthesis, using these three terms. Schelling took up this
terminology. Hegel did not. He never once used these three terms
together to designate three stages in an argument or account in any of
his books. And they do not help us understand his Phenomenology, his Logic,
or his philosophy of history; they impede any open-minded comprehension
of what he does by forcing it into a scheme which was available to him
and which he deliberately spurned [...] The mechanical formalism [...]
Hegel derides expressly and at some length in the preface to the Phenomenology.
Kaufmann also cites Hegel's criticism of the triad model commonly
misattributed to him, adding that "the only place where Hegel uses the
three terms together occurs in his lectures on the history of
philosophy, on the last page but one of the sections on Kant—where Hegel
roundly reproaches Kant for having 'everywhere posited thesis,
antithesis, synthesis'".
To describe the activity of overcoming the negative, Hegel also often used the term Aufhebung,
variously translated into English as "sublation" or "overcoming", to
conceive of the working of the dialectic. Roughly, the term indicates
preserving the useful portion of an idea, thing, society, etc., while
moving beyond its limitations. (Jacques Derrida's preferred French translation of the term was relever.)
In the Logic, for instance, Hegel describes a dialectic of existence: first, existence must be posited as pure Being (Sein); but pure Being, upon examination, is found to be indistinguishable from Nothing (Nichts).
When it is realized that what is coming into being is, at the same
time, also returning to nothing (in life, for example, one's living is
also a dying), both Being and Nothing are united as Becoming.
As in the Socratic dialectic, Hegel claimed to proceed by making
implicit contradictions explicit: each stage of the process is the
product of contradictions inherent or implicit in the preceding stage.
For Hegel, the whole of history is one tremendous dialectic, major
stages of which chart a progression from self-alienation as slavery to self-unification and realization as the rationalconstitutional state
of free and equal citizens. The Hegelian dialectic cannot be
mechanically applied for any chosen thesis. Critics argue that the
selection of any antithesis, other than the logical negation of the
thesis, is subjective. Then, if the logical negation is used as the
antithesis, there is no rigorous way to derive a synthesis. In practice,
when an antithesis is selected to suit the user's subjective purpose,
the resulting "contradictions" are rhetorical,
not logical, and the resulting synthesis is not rigorously defensible
against a multitude of other possible syntheses. The problem with the
Fichtean "thesis–antithesis–synthesis" model is that it implies that
contradictions or negations come from outside of things. Hegel's point
is that they are inherent in and internal to things. This conception of
dialectics derives ultimately from Heraclitus.
Hegel stated that the purpose of dialectics is "to study things
in their own being and movement and thus to demonstrate the finitude of
the partial categories of understanding."
One important dialectical principle for Hegel is the transition from
quantity to quality, which he terms the Measure. The measure is the
qualitative quantum, the quantum is the existence of quantity.
The
identity between quantity and quality, which is found in Measure, is at
first only implicit, and not yet explicitly realised. In other words,
these two categories, which unite in Measure, each claim an independent
authority. On the one hand, the quantitative features of existence may
be altered, without affecting its quality. On the other hand, this
increase and diminution, immaterial though it be, has its limit, by
exceeding which the quality suffers change. [...] But if the quantity
present in measure exceeds a certain limit, the quality corresponding to
it is also put in abeyance. This however is not a negation of quality
altogether, but only of this definite quality, the place of which is at
once occupied by another. This process of measure, which appears
alternately as a mere change in quantity, and then as a sudden revulsion
of quantity into quality, may be envisaged under the figure of a nodal
(knotted) line.
As an example, Hegel mentions the states of aggregation of water:
"Thus the temperature of water is, in the first place, a point of no
consequence in respect of its liquidity: still with the increase or
diminution of the temperature of the liquid water, there comes a point
where this state of cohesion suffers a qualitative change, and the water
is converted into steam or ice".
As other examples Hegel mentions the reaching of a point where a single
additional grain makes a heap of wheat; or where the bald tail is
produced, if we continue plucking out single hairs.
Another important principle for Hegel is the negation of the negation, which he also terms Aufhebung
(sublation): Something is only what it is in its relation to another,
but by the negation of the negation this something incorporates the
other into itself. The dialectical movement involves two moments that
negate each other, something and its other. As a result of the negation
of the negation, "something becomes its other; this other is itself
something; therefore it likewise becomes an other, and so on ad
infinitum". Something in its passage into other only joins with itself, it is self-related. In becoming there are two moments:
coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be: by sublation, i.e., negation of the
negation, being passes over into nothing, it ceases to be, but something
new shows up, is coming to be. What is sublated (aufgehoben) on the one hand ceases to be and is put to an end, but on the other hand it is preserved and maintained. In dialectics, a totality transforms itself; it is self-related, then self-forgetful, relieving the original tension.
Marxist dialectic
Marxist dialectic is a form of Hegelian dialectic which applies to the study of historical materialism.
It purports to be a reflection of the real world created by man.
Dialectic would thus be a robust method under which one could examine
personal, social, and economic behaviors. Marxist dialectic is the core
foundation of the philosophy of dialectical materialism, which forms the basis of the ideas behind historical materialism.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, writing several decades after Hegel's death, proposed that Hegel's dialectic is too abstract:
The
mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel's hands, by no means
prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working
in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its
head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the
rational kernel within the mystical shell.
In contradiction to Hegelian idealism, Marx presented his own dialectic
method, which he claims to be "direct opposite" of Hegel's method:
My
dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its
direct opposite. To Hegel, the life-process of the human brain, i.e. the
process of thinking, which, under the name of 'the Idea', he even
transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos
of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal
form of 'the Idea'. With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else
than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into
forms of thought.
In Marxism, the dialectical method of historical study became intertwined with historical materialism, the school of thought exemplified by the works of Marx, Engels, and Vladimir Lenin. In the USSR, under Joseph Stalin,
Marxist dialectics became "diamat" (short for dialectical materialism),
a theory emphasizing the primacy of the material way of life; social
"praxis" over all forms of social consciousness; and the secondary,
dependent character of the "ideal".
The term "dialectical materialism" was coined by the 19th-century social theorist Joseph Dietzgen who used the theory to explain the nature of socialism and social development. The original populariser of Marxism in Russia, Georgi Plekhanov
used the terms "dialectical materialism" and "historical materialism"
interchangeably. For Lenin, the primary feature of Marx's "dialectical
materialism" (Lenin's term) was its application of materialist
philosophy to history and social sciences. Lenin's main input in the
philosophy of dialectical materialism was his theory of reflection,
which presented human consciousness as a dynamic reflection of the
objective material world that fully shapes its contents and structure.
Later, Stalin's works on the subject established a rigid and
formalistic division of Marxist–Leninist theory in the dialectical
materialism and historical materialism parts. While the first was
supposed to be the key method and theory of the philosophy of nature,
the second was the Soviet version of the philosophy of history.
Friedrich Engels proposed that Nature is dialectical, thus, in Anti-Dühring he said that the negation of negation is:
A
very simple process, which is taking place everywhere and every day,
which any child can understand as soon as it is stripped of the veil of
mystery in which it was enveloped by the old idealist philosophy.
Probably the same gentlemen who up to now have decried the transformation of quantity into quality as mysticism and incomprehensible transcendentalism
will now declare that it is indeed something quite self-evident,
trivial, and commonplace, which they have long employed, and so they
have been taught nothing new. But to have formulated for the first time
in its universally valid form a general law of development of Nature,
society, and thought, will always remain an act of historic importance.
Marxist dialectics is exemplified in Das Kapital
(Capital), which outlines two central theories: (i) surplus value and
(ii) the materialist conception of history; Marx explains dialectical
materialism:
In its rational form, it is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom
and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its
comprehension an affirmative recognition of the existing state of
things, at the same time, also, the recognition of the negation of that
state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every
historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore
takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary
existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence
critical and revolutionary.
Class struggle
is the primary contradiction to be resolved by Marxist dialectics,
because of its central role in the social and political lives of a
society. Nonetheless, Marx and Marxists developed the concept of class
struggle to comprehend the dialectical contradictions between mental and
manual labor, and between town and country. Hence, philosophic
contradiction is central to the development of dialectics – the
progress from quantity to quality, the acceleration of gradual social
change; the negation of the initial development of the status quo; the negation of that negation; and the high-level recurrence of features of the original status quo.
In the USSR, Progress Publishers issued anthologies of dialectical
materialism by Lenin, wherein he also quotes Marx and Engels:
As
the most comprehensive and profound doctrine of development, and the
richest in content, Hegelian dialectics was considered by Marx and
Engels the greatest achievement of classical German philosophy.... "The
great basic thought", Engels writes, "that the world is not to be
comprehended as a complex of ready-made things, but as a complex of
processes, in which the things, apparently stable no less than their
mind images in our heads, the concepts, go through an uninterrupted
change of coming into being and passing away... this great fundamental
thought has, especially since the time of Hegel, so thoroughly permeated
ordinary consciousness that, in its generality, it is now scarcely ever
contradicted.
But, to acknowledge this fundamental thought in words, and to apply it
in reality in detail to each domain of investigation, are two different
things.... For dialectical philosophy nothing is final, absolute,
sacred. It reveals the transitory character of everything and in
everything; nothing can endure before it, except the uninterrupted
process of becoming and of passing away, of endless ascendancy from the
lower to the higher. And dialectical philosophy, itself, is nothing more
than the mere reflection of this process in the thinking brain." Thus,
according to Marx, dialectics is "the science of the general laws of
motion both of the external world and of human thought".
Lenin describes his dialectical understanding of the concept of development:
A
development that repeats, as it were, stages that have already been
passed, but repeats them in a different way, on a higher basis ("the
negation of the negation"), a development, so to speak, that proceeds in
spirals, not in a straight line; a development by leaps, catastrophes,
and revolutions; "breaks in continuity"; the transformation of quantity
into quality; inner impulses towards development, imparted by the
contradiction and conflict of the various forces and tendencies acting
on a given body, or within a given phenomenon, or within a given
society; the interdependence and the closest and indissoluble connection
between all aspects of any phenomenon (history constantly revealing
ever new aspects), a connection that provides a uniform, and universal
process of motion, one that follows definite laws – these are some of
the features of dialectics as a doctrine of development that is richer
than the conventional one.
Existentialism, like Marxism,
addresses itself to experience in order to discover there concrete
syntheses. It can conceive of these syntheses only within a moving,
dialectical totalisation, which is nothing else but history or—from the
strictly cultural point of view adopted here—'philosophy-becoming-the
world'.
Dialectical naturalism
Dialectical naturalism is a term coined by American philosopher Murray Bookchin to describe the philosophical underpinnings of the political program of social ecology.
Dialectical naturalism explores the complex interrelationship between
social problems, and the direct consequences they have on the ecological
impact of human society. Bookchin offered dialectical naturalism as a
contrast to what he saw as the "empyrean, basically antinaturalistic
dialectical idealism" of Hegel, and "the wooden, often scientistic
dialectical materialism of orthodox Marxists".
Theological dialectical forms
Baháʼí dialectics — dialectical science and religion
Baháʼí Faith
doctrine advocates a form of dialectical science and religion. A
dialectical relationship of harmony between religion and science is
presented, wherein science and religion are described as complementary,
mutually dependent, and indispensable knowledge systems. Baháʼí scripture asserts that true science and true religion can never be in conflict. 'Abdu'l-Bahá,
the son of the founder of the religion, stated that religion without
science is superstition and that science without religion is
materialism. He also admonished that true religion must conform to the
conclusions of science.
As a modern, globalist religion, the Baháʼí Faith defies simple
categorisation into any of Western, Eastern, Northern, Southern, or
other philosophical forms. Nevertheless the principled dialectical
approach to harmony between science and religion is not unlike social ecology's implementation of dialectical naturalism to moderate the extremes of scientifically unverified idealisms with scientific insight.
Dialectical theology
Neo-orthodoxy, in Europe also known as theology of crisis and dialectical theology, is an approach to theology in Protestantism that was developed in the aftermath of the First World War (1914–1918). It is characterized as a reaction against doctrines of 19th-centuryliberal theology and a more positive reevaluation of the teachings of the Reformation, much of which had been in decline (especially in western Europe) since the late 18th century. It is primarily associated with two Swiss professors and pastors, Karl Barth (1886–1968) and Emil Brunner (1899–1966), even though Barth himself expressed his unease in the use of the term.
In dialectical theology the difference and opposition between God
and human beings is stressed in such a way that all human attempts at
overcoming this opposition through moral, religious or philosophical
idealism must be characterized as 'sin'. In the death of Christ humanity
is negated and overcome, but this judgment also points forwards to the
resurrection in which humanity is reestablished in Christ. For Barth
this meant that only through God's 'no' to everything human can his
'yes' be perceived. Applied to traditional themes of Protestant
theology, such as double predestination,
this means that election and reprobation cannot be viewed as a
quantitative limitation of God's action. Rather it must be seen as its
"qualitative definition".
As Christ bore the rejection as well as the election of God for all
humanity, every person is subject to both aspects of God's double
predestination.
Dialectic prominently figured in Bernard Lonergan's philosophy, in his books Insight and Method in Theology. Michael Shute wrote about Longergan's use of dialectic in The Origins of Lonergan's Notion of the Dialectic of History.
For Lonergan, dialectic is both individual and operative in community.
Simply described, it is a dynamic process that results in something new:
For the sake of greater precision,
let us say that a dialectic is a concrete unfolding of linked but
opposed principles of change. Thus there will be a dialectic if (1)
there is an aggregate of events of a determinate character, (2) the
events may be traced to either or both of two principles, (3) the
principles are opposed yet bound together, and (4) they are modified by
the changes that successively result from them.
Dialectic is one of the eight functional specialties Lonergan
envisaged for theology to bring this discipline into the modern world.
Lonergan believed that the lack of an agreed method among scholars had
inhibited substantive agreement from being reached and progress from
being made compared to the natural sciences. Karl Rahner,
S.J., however, criticized Lonergan's theological method in a short
article entitled "Some Critical Thoughts on 'Functional Specialties in
Theology'" where he stated: "Lonergan's theological methodology seems to
me to be so generic that it really fits every science, and hence is not the methodology of theology as such, but only a very general methodology of science."
Criticisms
Karl Popper
has attacked the dialectic repeatedly. In 1937, he wrote and delivered a
paper entitled "What Is Dialectic?" in which he attacked the
dialectical method for its willingness "to put up with contradictions".
Popper concluded the essay with these words: "The whole development of
dialectic should be a warning against the dangers inherent in
philosophical system-building. It should remind us that philosophy
should not be made a basis for any sort of scientific system and that
philosophers should be much more modest in their claims. One task which
they can fulfill quite usefully is the study of the critical methods of science" (Ibid., p. 335).
In chapter 12 of volume 2 of The Open Society and Its Enemies
(1944; 5th rev. ed., 1966), Popper unleashed a famous attack on
Hegelian dialectics in which he held that Hegel's thought (unjustly in
the view of some philosophers, such as Walter Kaufmann) was to some degree responsible for facilitating the rise of fascism in Europe by encouraging and justifying irrationalism. In section 17 of his 1961 "addenda" to The Open Society,
entitled "Facts, Standards and Truth: A Further Criticism of
Relativism", Popper refused to moderate his criticism of the Hegelian
dialectic, arguing that it "played a major role in the downfall of the liberal movement in Germany [...] by contributing to historicism and to an identification of might and right, encouraged totalitarian
modes of thought. [...] [And] undermined and eventually lowered the
traditional standards of intellectual responsibility and honesty".
The philosopher of science and physicist Mario Bunge repeatedly criticized Hegelian and Marxian dialectics, calling them "fuzzy and remote from science" and a "disastrous legacy".
He concluded: "The so-called laws of dialectics, such as formulated by
Engels (1940, 1954) and Lenin (1947, 1981), are false insofar as they
are intelligible."
Formalism
Since the late 20th century, European and American logicians have attempted to provide mathematical foundations for dialectic through formalisation, although logic has been related to dialectic since ancient times. There have been pre-formal and partially-formal treatises on argument and dialectic, from authors such as Stephen Toulmin (The Uses of Argument, 1958),Nicholas Rescher (Dialectics: A Controversy-Oriented Approach to the Theory of Knowledge, 1977), and Frans H. van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst (pragma-dialectics, 1980s). One can include works of the communities of informal logic and paraconsistent logic.
Defeasibility
Building on theories of defeasible reasoning (see John L. Pollock),
systems have been built that define well-formedness of arguments, rules
governing the process of introducing arguments based on fixed
assumptions, and rules for shifting burden. Many of these logics appear in the special area of artificial intelligence and law, though the computer scientists' interest in formalizing dialectic originates in a desire to build decision support and computer-supported collaborative work systems.
Dialog games
Dialectic itself can be formalised as moves in a game, where an advocate for the truth of a proposition and an opponent argue. Such games can provide a semantics of logic, one that is very general in applicability.
The period of German idealism after Kant is also known as post-Kantian idealism, post-Kantian philosophy, or simply post-Kantianism.
Fichte's philosophical work has controversially been interpreted as a stepping stone in the emergence of German speculative idealism, the thesis that we only ever have access to the correlation between thought and being. Another scheme divides German idealists into transcendental idealists, associated with Kant and Fichte, and absolute idealists, associated with Schelling and Hegel.
Meaning of idealism
The word "idealism"
has multiple meanings. The philosophical meaning of idealism are those
properties we discover in objects that are dependent on the way that
those objects appear to us, as perceived subjects. These properties only
belong to the perceived appearance of the objects, and not something
they possess "in themselves". The term "idea-ism" is closer to this
intended meaning than the common notion of idealism. The question of
what properties a thing might have "independently of the mind" is thus unknowable and a moot point, within the idealist tradition.
History
Immanuel Kant's work purported to bridge the two dominant philosophical schools in the 18th century: 1) rationalism, which held that knowledge could be attained by reason alone a priori (prior to experience), and 2) empiricism, which held that knowledge could be arrived at only through the senses a posteriori (after experience), as expressed by philosopher David Hume, whom Kant sought to rebut.
Kant's solution was to propose that, while we depend on objects of
experience to know anything about the world, we can investigate a priori
the form that our thoughts can take, determining the boundaries of
possible experience. Kant called his mode of philosophising "critical philosophy",
in that it was supposedly less concerned with setting out positive
doctrine than with critiquing the limits to the theories we can set out. The conclusion he presented, as above, he called "transcendental idealism". This distinguished it from classical idealism and subjective idealism such as George Berkeley's,
which held that external objects have actual being or real existence
only when they are perceived by an observer. Kant said that there are things-in-themselves (noumena, that is), things that exist other than being merely sensations and ideas in our minds. Kant held in the Critique of Pure Reason
(1781) that the world of appearances (phenomena) is empirically real
and transcendentally ideal. The mind plays a central role in
influencing the way that the world is experienced: we perceive phenomena
through time, space and the categories of the understanding. It is this notion that was taken to heart by Kant's philosophical successors.
The best-known German idealist thinkers, besides Kant, were Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The Young Hegelians, a number of philosophers who developed Hegel's work in various directions, were in some cases idealists. On the other hand, Karl Marx, who was numbered among them, had professed himself to be a materialist, in opposition to idealism. Another member of the Young Hegelians, Ludwig Feuerbach, advocated for materialism, and his thought was influential in the development of historical materialism, where he is often recognized as a bridge between Hegel and Marx.
Theorists
Kant
Immanuel Kant's
transcendental idealism consisted of taking a point of view outside and
above oneself (transcendentally) and understanding that the mind
directly knows only phenomena or ideas. Whatever exists other than
mental phenomena, or ideas that appear to the mind, is a thing-in-itself and cannot be directly and immediately known.
Kant criticized pure reason. He wanted to restrict reasoning,
judging, and speaking only to objects of possible experience. The main
German Idealists, who had been theology students, reacted against Kant's stringent limits.
"It was Kant’s criticism of all attempts to prove the existence of God
which led to the romantic reaction of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel." "Kant sets out to smash not only the proofs of God but the very foundations of Christianmetaphysics, then turns around and 'postulates' God and the immortality of the soul, preparing the way for Fichte and idealism."
Jacobi
In 1787, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi addressed, in his book On Faith, or Idealism and Realism,
Kant's concept of "thing-in-itself". Jacobi agreed that the objective
thing-in-itself cannot be directly known. However, he stated, it must be
taken on belief. A subject must believe that there is a real object in
the external world that is related to the representation or mental idea
that is directly known. This belief is a result of revelation or
immediately known, but logically unproved, truth. The real existence of a
thing-in-itself is revealed or disclosed to the observing subject. In
this way, the subject directly knows the ideal, subjective
representations that appear in the mind, and strongly believes in the
real, objective thing-in-itself that exists outside the mind. By
presenting the external world as an object of belief, Jacobi legitimized
belief. "…[B]y reducing the external world to a matter of faith, he
wanted merely to open a little door for faith in general..."
Reinhold
Karl Leonhard Reinhold published two volumes of Letters Concerning the Kantian Philosophy
in 1790 and 1792. They provided a clear explication of Kant's thoughts,
which were previously inaccessible due to Kant's use of complex or
technical language.
Reinhold also tried to prove Kant's assertion that humans and
other animals can know only images that appear in their minds, never
"things-in-themselves" (things that are not mere appearances in a mind).
In order to establish his proof, Reinhold stated an axiom that could not possibly be doubted. From this axiom, all knowledge of consciousness
could be deduced. His axiom was: "Representation is distinguished in
consciousness by the subject from the subject and object, and is
referred to both."
He thereby started, not from definitions, but, from a principle
that referred to mental images or representations in a conscious mind.
In this way, he analyzed knowledge into (1) the knowing subject, or
observer, (2) the known object, and (3) the image or representation in
the subject's mind. In order to understand transcendental idealism, it
is necessary to reflect deeply enough to distinguish experience as
consisting of these three components: subject, subject's representation
of object, and object.
Schulze
Kant
noted that a mental idea or representation must be a representation of
something, and deduced that it is of something external to the mind. He
gave the name of Ding an sich, or thing-in-itself to that which is represented. However, Gottlob Ernst Schulze
wrote, anonymously, that the law of cause and effect only applies to
the phenomena within the mind, not between those phenomena and any
things-in-themselves outside the mind. That is, a thing-in-itself cannot
be the cause of an idea or image of a thing in the mind. In this way,
he discredited Kant's philosophy by using Kant's own reasoning to
disprove the existence of a thing-in-itself.
Fichte
After Schulze had seriously criticized the notion of a thing-in-itself, Johann Gottlieb Fichte
produced a philosophy similar to Kant's, but without a thing-in-itself.
Fichte asserted that our representations, ideas, or mental images are
merely the productions of our ego, or knowing subject. For him, there is
no external thing-in-itself that produces the ideas. On the contrary,
the knowing subject, or ego, is the cause of the external thing, object,
or non-ego.
Fichte's style was a challenging exaggeration of Kant's already
difficult writing. Also, Fichte claimed that his truths were apparent to
intellectual, non-perceptual, intuition. That is, the truth can be
immediately seen by the use of reason.
Schopenhauer, a student of Fichte's, wrote of him:
...Fichte who, because the
thing-in-itself had just been discredited, at once prepared a system
without any thing-in-itself. Consequently, he rejected the assumption of
anything that was not through and through merely our representation, and therefore let the knowing subject
be all in all or at any rate produce everything from its own resources.
For this purpose, he at once did away with the essential and most
meritorious part of the Kantian doctrine, the distinction between a priori and a posteriori and thus that between the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself. For he declared everything to be a priori,
naturally without any proofs for such a monstrous assertion; instead of
these, he gave sophisms and even crazy sham demonstrations whose
absurdity was concealed under the mask of profundity and of the
incomprehensibility ostensibly arising therefrom. Moreover, he appealed
boldly and openly to intellectual intuition, that is, really to inspiration.
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
attempted to rescue theism from Kant's refutation of the proofs for
God's existence. "Now the philosophy of Schelling from the first
admitted the possibility of a knowledge of God, although it likewise
started from the philosophy of Kant, which denies such knowledge."
With regard to the experience of objects, Friedrich Wilhelm
Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) claimed that the Fichte's "I" needs the
Not-I, because there is no subject without object, and vice versa. So
the ideas or mental images in the mind are identical to the extended
objects which are external to the mind. According to Schelling's
"absolute identity" or "indifferentism", there is no difference between
the subjective and the objective, that is, the ideal and the real.
In 1851, Arthur Schopenhauer
criticized Schelling's absolute identity of the subjective and the
objective, or of the ideal and the real. "...[E]verything that rare
minds like Locke and Kant had separated after an incredible amount of
reflection and judgment, was to be again poured into the pap of that
absolute identity. For the teaching of those two thinkers [Locke and
Kant] may be very appropriately described as the doctrine of the absolute diversity of the ideal and the real, or of the subjective and the objective."
Schleiermacher
Friedrich Schleiermacher
was a theologian who asserted that the ideal and the real are united in
God. He understood the ideal as the subjective mental activities of
thought, intellect, and reason. The real was, for him, the objective
area of nature and physical being. Schleiermacher declared that the
unity of the ideal and the real is manifested in God. The two divisions
do not have a productive or causal effect on each other. Rather, they
are both equally existent in the absolute transcendental entity which is
God.
Maimon
Salomon Maimon
influenced German idealism by criticizing Kant's dichotomies, claiming
that Kant did not explain how opposites such as sensibility and
understanding could relate to each other.
Maimon claimed that the dualism between these faculties
was analogous to the old Cartesian dualism between the mind and body,
and that all the problems of the older dualism should hold mutatis mutandis
for the new one. Such was the heterogeneity between understanding and
sensibility, Maimon further argued, that there could be no criterion to
determine how the concepts of the understanding apply to the intuitions
of sensibility. By thus pointing out these problematic dualisms,
Maimon and the neo-Humean
critics left a foothold open for skepticism within the framework of
Kant’s own philosophy. For now the question arose how two such
heterogeneous realms as the intellectual and the sensible could be known
to correspond with one another. The problem was no longer how we know
that our representations correspond with things in themselves but how we
know that a priori concepts apply to a posteriori intuitions.
Schelling and Hegel, however, tried to solve this problem by claiming that opposites are absolutely identical.
Maimon's concept of an infinite mind as the basis of all opposites was
similar to the German idealistic attempt to rescue theism by positing an
Absolute Mind or Spirit.
Maimon's metaphysical concept of "infinite mind" was similar to
Fichte's "Ich" and Hegel's "Geist." Maimon ignored the results of Kant's
criticism and returned to pre-Kantian transcendent speculation.
What characterizes Fichte’s, Schelling’s, and Hegel’s speculative idealism in contrast to Kant's critical idealism
is the recurrence of metaphysical ideas from the rationalist tradition.
What Kant forbade as a violation of the limits of human knowledge,
Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel saw as a necessity of the critical
philosophy itself. Now Maimon was the crucial figure behind this
transformation. By reviving metaphysical ideas from within the
problematic of the critical philosophy, he gave them a new legitimacy
and opened up the possibility for a critical resurrection of
metaphysics.
Maimon is said to have Influenced Hegel's writing on Spinoza.
"[T]here seems to be a striking similarity between Maimon’s discussion
of Spinoza in the Lebensgeschichte (Maimon's autobiography) and Hegel’s discussion of Spinoza in the Lectures in the History of Philosophy."
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a Germanphilosopher born in Stuttgart, Württemberg,
in present-day southwest Germany. Hegel responded to Kant's philosophy
by suggesting that the unsolvable contradictions given by Kant in his Antinomies of Pure Reason
applied not only to the four areas Kant gave (world as infinite vs.
finite, material as composite vs. atomic, etc.) but in all objects and
conceptions, notions and ideas. To know this he suggested makes a "vital
part in a philosophical theory."
Given that abstract thought is thus limited, he went on to consider how
historical formations give rise to different philosophies and ways of
thinking. For Hegel, thought fails when it is only given as an
abstraction and is not united with considerations of historical reality.
In his major work The Phenomenology of Spirit he went on to trace the formation of self-consciousness through history and the importance of other people in the awakening of self-consciousness (see master-slave dialectic). Thus Hegel introduces two important ideas to metaphysics and philosophy: the integral importance of history and of the Other person. His work is theological in that it replaces the traditional concept of God with that of an Absolute Spirit.
Spinoza, who changed the anthropomorphic concept of God into that of an
abstract, vague, underlying Substance, was praised by Hegel whose
concept of Absolute fulfilled a similar function. Hegel claimed that
"You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all". Reality results from God's thinking, according to Hegel. Objects that appear to a spectator originate in God's mind.
Responses
Neo-Kantianism
Neo-Kantianism refers broadly to a revived type of philosophy along
the lines of that laid down by Immanuel Kant in the 18th century, or
more specifically by Schopenhauer's criticism of the Kantian philosophy
in his work The World as Will and Representation (1818), as well
as by other post-Kantian philosophers such as Jakob Friedrich Fries and
Johann Friedrich Herbart. It has some more specific reference in later
German philosophy.
Hegelianism
Hegel was hugely influential throughout the nineteenth century; by its end, according to Bertrand Russell, "the leading academic philosophers, both in America and Britain, were largely Hegelian". His influence has continued in contemporary philosophy but mainly in Continental philosophy.
Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer contended that Spinoza had a great influence on post-Kantian German idealists. Schopenhauer wrote: "In consequence of Kant's criticism of all speculative theology, almost all the philosophizers in Germany
cast themselves back on to Spinoza, so that the whole series of
unsuccessful attempts known by the name of post-Kantian philosophy is
simply Spinozism tastelessly got up, veiled in all kinds of
unintelligible language, and otherwise twisted and distorted."
According to Schopenhauer, Kant's original philosophy, with its refutation of all speculative theology,
had been transformed by the German Idealists. Through the use of his
technical terms, such as "transcendental," "transcendent," "reason,"
"intelligibility," and "thing-in-itself" they attempted to speak of what
exists beyond experience and, in this way, to revive the notions of
God, free will, and immortality of soul. Kant had effectively relegated these ineffable notions to faith and belief.
Nietzsche
In his notebook, Nietzsche expressed his opinion of German Idealism’s enterprise: "The significance of German philosophy (Hegel): to devise a pantheism through which evil, error, and suffering are not felt as arguments against divinity. This grandiose initiative has been misused by the existing powers (state, etc.), as if it sanctioned the rationality of whoever happened to be ruling." He understood German Idealism to be a government-sponsored theodicy.
British idealism
In England, during the nineteenth century, philosopher Thomas Hill Green embraced German Idealism in order to salvage Christian monotheism as a basis for morality. His philosophy attempted to account for an eternal consciousness or mind that was similar to Berkeley's concept of God and Hegel's Absolute.
John Rodman, in the introduction to his book on Thomas Hill Green's
political theory, wrote: "Green is best seen as an exponent of German
idealism as an answer to the dilemma posed by the discrediting of
Christianity…."
United States
"German idealism was initially introduced to the broader community of American literati through a Vermont intellectual, James Marsh. Studying theology with Moses Stuart at Andover Seminary in the early 1820s, Marsh sought a Christian theology that would 'keep alive the heart in the head.' " Some American theologians and churchmen found value in German Idealism's theological concept of the infinite Absolute Ideal or Geist [Spirit]. It provided a religious alternative to the traditional Christian concept of the Deity. "…[P]ost–Kantian idealism can certainly be viewed as a religious school of thought…." The Absolute Ideal Weltgeist
[World Spirit] was invoked by American ministers as they "turned to
German idealism in the hope of finding comfort against English
positivism and empiricism."
German idealism was a substitute for religion after the Civil War when
"Americans were drawn to German idealism because of a 'loss of faith in
traditional cosmic explanations.' " "By the early 1870s, the infiltration of German idealism was so pronounced that Walt Whitman declared in his personal notes that 'Only Hegel is fit for America — is large enough and free enough.' "
Ortega y Gasset
According to José Ortega y Gasset,
with Post-Kantian German Idealism, "…never before has a lack of
truthfulness played such a large and important role in philosophy."
"They did whatever they felt like doing with concepts. As if by magic
they changed anything into any other thing." According to Ortega y
Gasset, "…the basic force behind their work was not strictly and
exclusively the desire for truth…." Ortega y Gasset quoted Schopenhauer's Parerga and Paralipomena,
Volume II, in which Schopenhauer wrote that Fichte, Schelling, and
Hegel forgot "the fact that one can feel an authentic and bitter
seriousness" for philosophy. Schopenhauer, in Ortega y Gasset's quote,
hoped that philosophers like those three men could learn "true and
fruitful seriousness, such that the problem of existence would capture
the thinker and bestir his innermost being."
George Santayana
George Santayana had strongly-held opinions regarding this attempt to overcome the effects of Kant's transcendental idealism.
German Idealism, when we study it as a product of its own age and country, is a most engaging phenomenon; it is full of afflatus,
sweep, and deep searchings of the heart; but it is essentially romantic
and egoistical, and all in it that is not soliloquy is mere
system-making and sophistry. Therefore when it is taught by unromantic
people ex cathedra, in stentorian tones, and represented as the
rational foundation of science and religion, with neither of which it
has any honest sympathy, it becomes positively odious – one of the worst
impostures and blights to which a youthful imagination could be
subjected.
In the first sentence of his The Refutation of Idealism, G. E. Moore
wrote: "Modern Idealism, if it asserts any general conclusion about the
universe at all, asserts that it is spiritual," by which he means "that
the whole universe possesses all the qualities the possession of which
is held to make us so superior to things which seem to be inanimate." He
does not directly confront this conclusion, and instead focuses on what
he considers the distinctively Idealist premise that "esse is
percipere" or that to be is to be perceived. He analyzes this idea and
considers it to conflate ideas or be contradictory.
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
sees German idealism as the pinnacle of modern philosophy, and as a
tradition that contemporary philosophy must recapture: "[T]here is a
unique philosophical moment in which philosophy appears 'as such' and
which serves as a key—as the only key—to reading the entire preceding
and following tradition as philosophy... This moment is the moment of
German Idealism..."
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt stated that Immanuel Kant distinguished between Vernunft ("reason") and Verstand
("intellect"): these two categories are equivalents of "the urgent need
of" reason, and the "mere quest and desire for knowledge".
Differentiating between reason and intellect, or the need to reason and
the quest for knowledge, as Kant has done, according to Arendt
"coincides with a distinction between two altogether different mental
activities, thinking and knowing, and two altogether different concerns,
meaning, in the first category, and cognition, in the second". These ideas were also developed by Kantian philosopher, Wilhelm Windelband, in his discussion of the approaches to knowledge named "nomothetic" and "idiographic".
Kant's insight to start differentiating between approaches to
knowledge that attempt to understand meaning (derived from reason), on
the one hand, and to derive laws (on which knowledge is based), on the
other, started to make room for "speculative thought" (which in this
case, is not seen as a negative aspect, but rather an indication that
knowledge and the effort to derive laws to explain objective phenomena
has been separated from thinking). This new-found room for "speculative thought" (reason, or thinking) touched-off the rise of German idealism.
However, the new-found "speculative thought", reason or thinking of
German idealism "again became a field for a new brand of specialists
committed to the notion that philosophy's 'subject proper' is 'the
actual knowledge of what truly is'. Liberated by Kant from the old
school of dogmatism and its sterile exercises, they erected not only new
systems but a new 'science' - the original title of the greatest of
their works, Hegel's Phenomenology of the mind, was Science of the experience of consciousness
- eagerly blurring Kant's distinction between reason's concern with the
unknowable and the intellect's concern with cognition. Pursuing the
Cartesian ideal of certainty as though Kant had never existed, they
believed in all earnest that the results of their speculations possessed
the same kind of validity as the results of cognitive processes".
