Idea

The term idea (from the Greek ἰδέα idéa "shape", "appearance", "look ", " archetype " ) has in general and in philosophical parlance different meanings. General Linguistically understood as including a thought, after which one can act, or a mission statement, where one is based. The philosophical importance was first coined in ancient times of Plato and Platonism. In the Platonic theory of Ideas Ideas are immutable, only mentally detectable archetypes that are the perceptible phenomena based. This idea of ​​understanding seemed to modern times after application, but got the term "idea" in different philosophical directions different content.

  • 2.1 antiquity
  • 2.2 Middle Ages
  • 2.3 Early Modern Times
  • 2.4 Modern

Conceptual history

Antiquity and Middle Ages

In ancient Greek the noun idea originally referred to the appearance of something that is seen and it makes a certain impression. It's " Behold" as Verbalabstraktum of idein to "recognize " ( aorist horan to "see" ) is derived. While in literary literature the use of this word until relatively late - in Pindar and in the corpus Theognideum - uses the older noun comes eidos to describe visual impressions already in the Iliad frequently. The two words are usually used interchangeably. In common parlance, they denote the appearance, shape or form, an external appearance that is described, for example as beautiful or ugly. It is a phenomenon that can fool even the mere appearance; the appearance arouses expectations that are sometimes disappointed. Not only single individuals but also groups and volumes have a certain eidos, after which one can distinguish them: There is a royal and a slave exemplary eidos eidos and ethnic groups.

The words eidos and idea denote not only an appearance, but in a secondary sense, its carrier. What is meant is then a species or type of something: a class of persons, things or phenomena caused by certain - is characterized features - not just visual. For example, an eidos in medicine, a certain type of patient. When the term used to describe a type or a kind of something, it can involve non-intuitive realities also, as when of different approaches, ways of life, forms of government, or of species of wickedness or of war is the speech. This is about classification using the nature or quality that is common to all members of a group or type together and shows, for example in the form of a thing or in the manner of a law enforcement action.

Plato coined the term philosophical idea. He led no rigid terminology, but instead used for the later so-called " Platonic ideas " next idea, other expressions, especially eidos, and descriptions. While the idea original meaning according to the visual appearance of something relates, in contrast, is the Platonic idea that does not senses, one which is based on the visible manifestations. But she is mentally detectable and for Plato in a figurative sense "visible"; this explains the transfer of the concept idea from the field of sensory perception in a purely spiritual perception. The spiritual "seeing" that the philosopher possible "vision" of the ideas in Platonism plays a central role.

Even the materialistic thinker Democritus used the term idea, but in a very different sense than Plato. He called the atoms of different shapes, from which everything is made according to his teachings, as ideai ( forms).

Common Cicero, the Platonic ideas in the Latin -speaking world contributed to that idea also in Latin literature was a philosophical technical term. He wrote the word yet as a foreign word in Greek characters, by later authors, it appears mostly in the Latin alphabet. In Latin was what Greek thinkers understood under eidos or idea, even with expressions like format ( "form" ), figura ( "form" ), copy ( " pattern " ), exemplum ( " pattern ", "model" ) and species ( " shape ", " pattern ", " type " ) reproduced. Seneca spoke of " Platonic ideas " ( ideae Platonicae ). The late antique translator and commentator of Plato's dialogue Timaeus, Calcidius, also used expressions such as archetype, archetypum copy or species archetypa ( " Royal archetypal pattern ").

The church father Augustine said that the term " ideas " have indeed introduced only Plato, the content of this term would have been known but long before him. Into Latin was " idea" with size or species to translate; the translation ratio is acceptable, though not exactly as ratio actually corresponds to the Greek word logos.

Medieval philosophers and theologians took over the ancient Latin terminology of the theory of ideas which convey them, especially Augustine, and Boethius Calcidius. To denote the Platonic ideas they used in addition to the Latinized Greek word idea also common in ancient times purely Latin phrases, formatted especially.

Modern Times

In the Christian school philosophy of the early modern period, even with the Jesuits, was understood as ideas primarily the archetypes in the mind of God by which He created the world, but also - in analogy - designs in the human spirit, the realization of works precede. In a broader sense it referred to in the 17th century as the ideas of the principles in the human mind by which it identifies objects of knowledge and assigns, and generally brought forth from the imagination of mental content ( phantasms ), including memory contents. René Descartes defined " idea" in the broadest sense as the content of consciousness of any kind on this broad interpretation is oriented to the general parlance. The idea derived from French word idée served generally to refer to ideas and thoughts. In German, but the idea was Latin in the 17th century still often used as a foreign word for "imagination" and "thought", besides also the French idée, which was then Germanized as " idea," and in this form eventually prevailed.

In today's general, not philosophical parlance called "idea" of a thought, after which one can act, an idea or opinion. Often there is an idea, a new, original, sometimes witty or funny ideas that can be put into action. In this sense, the word can get the meaning of "plan" and "intent". As an idea, also referred to the conceptual design for an invention, a work of art or literary creation; in this sense Goethe spoke of his ideas. Sometimes a principle is meant a mission statement or a basic idea which determined the thinking and actions of a person, such as " the idea of ​​freedom " or " European idea". The music is a core subject or theme of a multi -part work, the term " idea" before.

Colloquially, an idea, a small amount (for example: you add after stirring the dough still an idea sugar added ) or something that is only a slight difference (for example: an idea louder).

Philosophy

Antiquity

Plato

The philosophical idea conception goes back to Plato. Therefore, one speaks of " Platonic Ideas" and of Plato's theory of ideas. The introduction of the doctrine of ideas that are not yet present in Plato's early works, is often referred to as the dividing line between the mitgeprägten of Plato's teacher Socrates thought the start time and a fully self- Platonic philosophy seen. However, Plato is preparing its comments on the ideas are not systematically, he presents nowhere a coherent doctrine. Therefore, the common term " theory of ideas ", which does not come from Plato, somewhat problematic. In addition, Plato himself points to weaknesses of the idea concept.

Plato assumes that the area of the sensible is a real and independently existing realm of ideas that can be detected only on the spiritual path downstream. Ideas, for example, " the beauty in itself," " the righteous in itself," "the circle in itself" or " the man himself ". The ideas, not the objects of sense experience make that true reality is only intended them to come true being. In contrast to the sense objects, the ideas are perfect and unchangeable; they are not subject to the emergence, the change and the offense. The mode of existence of sensible objects, however, is characterized by defective. For example, a single thing ever on a limited, relative beauty; it can be surpassed by something more beautiful. Also, a nice sense object lose its beauty over time. The idea of beauty, however, is such a more or less withdrawn, because the beauty as an idea is absolutely beautiful (without gradation or restriction).

Since ideas to a greater extent than the really sensible individual objects, they come ontologically ( in the doctrine of the hierarchy of existing things ) a higher rank than to the sense objects. The ideas are not only superior to the sense objects because of their perfection and superior in the hierarchy of being, but they are also the cause of their existence. They are the archetypes, the sense objects are their images. Each sense object owes its existence to the objective being the underlying idea, for example, a horse is the idea of the horse. His particular special nature it receives from the various ideas that are involved in its design, giving it all of its characteristics (size, color, etc.). Every phenomenon of the physical world has " share" of those ideas, the action of which it is subject. The particular nature of this " participation" ( Methexis ) determines the extent to which something has the special property that it receives from a particular idea: How fair is a man arises from the nature of his participation in the idea of the just. Thus causing the ideas that the individual objects of sense are the way they are. Any idea on who has a share object is present in this.

The thinking of the philosopher is to be based on the ideas. Because of the universality and immutability of their nature, they are those objects from which one can attain true knowledge, because all knowledge is based on insight into something universally valid regardless of time and truth, not on observation of the accidental and sporadic. The special, individual can only be understood by the general ago and filed properly. Thus corresponds to the ontological ( ontological ) of higher rank ideas a cognitive ( epistemic ). Knowledge of ideas you can obtain by abstracting from minor peculiarities of the individual phenomenon and focuses its attention on the universal, which is a number of particulars based and is common.

The idea conception Plato considers thus opposite, that the individual things which constituted the whole of reality and the general concepts behind nothing stands as a human need to construct order categories for classifying the phenomena.

Aristotle

During the Platonists held on to the idea of ​​Plato's conception, she found in the other ancient schools of philosophy are offensive. Aristotle dealt intensively with her apart and tried to refute them. In particular, he argued that the adoption of an ontological gap between the world of ideas and physical world with the claim that the physical world is a product of the world of ideas is incompatible, because there is nothing that such a gap to bridge, thus enabling the action of the ideas to the physical world could ( " chorismos " argument ). Also held that the seemingly "general" ideas, if they existed separately, not universal but only a special kind of separate, individual things. Hence the idea of ​​teaching can not be reduced to the Special General. Since it provides no explanation for the existence of the objects of sense, they did not fulfill the purpose for which it was introduced. The idea of ​​separate ideas in addition to the sense objects leads only to a hypothetical doubling of the world, which contributes to the understanding of reality nothing and is therefore unnecessary. Also, are ideas if they existed as individual things separately and therefore individually and are not general, indefinable, because only the General could be defined. Consequently, such ideas are also unknowable. Although ideas and individual things are similar, it does not follow that the ideas must be the inverse images of individual things and these are reproduced them. The notion of participation was not thought through; if it were not a philosophical explanation, but only an empty word, a poetic metaphor.

Central and Neoplatonism

The Mittelplatoniker linked the idea of ​​conception with their ideas of the divine workings of the cosmos. They distinguished between the highest, absolutely transcendent deity who has no direct relationship to the sensible world, and the subordinate creator god, the Demiurge. The Creator God was considered as the efficient cause of the sense-objects, in the ideas you saw the paradigmatic ( archetypal ) cause, in matter the substance cause. This is in research as the medium Platonic "three principles doctrine " means. Usually the Mittelplatoniker considered the idea as a thought of the transcendent God or the Creator God. They were under the influence of the theology of Aristotle, according to which God thinks himself and this is his only activity. There was also the view that the ideas have an inherently independent existence independent of the divine intellect. The Middle Platonist model joined the strongly influenced by Platonism Jewish thinker Philo of Alexandria. He identified the "Idea Space", which is the first image of God, with God's reason, the divine Logos. The Logos is the imaginary world, according to their "most godlike " model God had created the visible world. Thus, the ideas get the role of the mediating authority between the transcendent God and the created world in Philo.

The Neoplatonists took a three-part basic structure of the spiritual world with three hierarchical principles: first is given the absolutely transcendent " A ," including via the individual mind or intellect ( nous ), followed by emotional range. In the nous teaching the Neoplatonists of considerations of Aristotle went out of but not between the One and the Nous had distinguished. According to the Neo-Platonic doctrine of the perfect Nous is the world of pure thought. His thinking can only depend on something he is not inferior to perfection, because if he was thinking something subordinate to him, which is not as perfect as he is, this would affect his perfection. The one he can not think, because it is the thinking principle withdrawn because of its transcendence. Thus he can think of nothing other than itself, that is: what is in it. Therefore, the objects of pure thought are solely those of the Nous own content in its entirety. It follows from the Neo-Platonic view that the Nous of nothing more than the totality of the Platonic ideas there and that he is the only ontological place of ideas. This position formulated Plotinus, the founder of Neo-Platonism, in his famous theorem: The ideas exist only within the Nous. Thus it marks a significant difference between the middle and Neoplatonism. The prevailing view in Mittelplatonismus was that ideas are some of the Nous Produced and thus subordinate to him. Therefore, we situate the ideas in a separate area outside the Nous. Although it was before Plotinus approaches to a theory of immanence of the ideas in the mind, but he was the first to the concept of the identity of the ideas with the Nous conducted and based on what was considered a novelty among his contemporaries consistently.

Augustine

The church father Augustine took over the main features of the Platonic doctrine of ideas, including the participation concept. He noted that ideas are uncreated and imperishable. You were the reasons ( rationes ) of things; Emergent and passing everything was designed according to their patterns and get from them the entirety of its features. Your place is the divine reason ( divina intelligentia ). This localization of the ideas Augustine took over a medium- Platonic model, which he reinterpreted Christian, by joining it with the doctrine of the Trinity. The divine reason in which the ideas were contained, he identified as the incarnate Word of God, Jesus Christ. The word of God is not the molded shape shaped single of all things. At the same time it is also a testimony of God himself in his word - and thus also in the ideas - recognize God himself also human knowledge Augustine summarized as knowledge of ideas. On the idea of knowledge based knowledge, without them you can not obtain wisdom. Was possible human idea insight through participation ( participatio ) the Word of God. The immutable truths to which the human being thereby gain access were created in himself and not derived from sense perception. The sensory perception as him back only to the already latent in him knowledge so that he whose will uphold.

Middle Ages

Until about the middle of the 12th century only the Timaeus was known in the Latin -speaking scholarly world of Western and Central Europe of the works of Plato, who was only accessible in the incomplete Latin translations of Calcidius and Cicero also. The reception of the doctrine of ideas was mainly about late antique writers who conveyed the concept of the Middle Ages in Central and Neoplatonic embossed shape. Very influential transmitter of the platonic body of thought were beside Augustine and Calcidius, who had also written a highly acclaimed commentary on the Timaeus, the Neoplatonic oriented theologian Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and Boethius, Macrobius and Martianus Capella. A lasting effect achieved mainly the determination of ideas as timeless archetypes ( " forms " ) that are present in the mind of God, and whose patterns he creates the sense objects. The images of the ideas in created things called " development ideas " ( formae nativae ). Of the ideas as prototypes were distinguished the ideas that individual things are common and are recorded with the concepts of genus and species ( formae communes, ideae communes).

The criticism of Aristotle on the Platonic doctrine of ideas was already known in the 12th century, the scholars of the school of Chartres. His view was shared by so far the high and late medieval theologians and philosophers, when they awarded the ideas no independent reality, but they are rooted in the divine intellect. Although Thomas Aquinas († 1274) took ideas as principles of creation in the mind of the Creator God, but moved its own causality of the ideas in the creation process is not considered. He said they were only form causes, the efficient cause is the will of God. Thomas criticized Plato's doctrine of " separate, subsisting by itself Ideas ", where he appealed to Aristotle.

An even greater distancing from the Platonic doctrine of ideas brought the late medieval nominalism or conceptualism semiotic. The representatives of this trend were fighting in the " universals " the traditionally conceptual realism ( about universals, also called " realism "). It was about the question of the reality of universals reference ( general concepts ) and thus the existence of Platonic ideas. Term realists were the representatives of the traditional Platonic- Aristotelian or Augustinian doctrines. They said that the general terms denote something objectively real existent. This assumption is the basis of all medieval idea concepts that are based on the traditional Platonic- Augustinian doctrine. It is also the precondition of the Aristotelian notion of forms which, although not like the Platonic ideas exist independently, but at least in the sense objects really exist as objective realities. In the opinion of the nominalist, however, the general concepts are just "names" ( nominal ), that is, characters that needed by the human mind for its activities. Accordingly, the General has a subjective, purely mental reality in thought and only there. An ontological relevance it is not. William of Ockham, the spokesman of the semiotic nominalism in the 14th century, speaks to the ideas in the spirit of God is a reality of its own from. For him, the term " idea " just a knowledge object, insofar as it is recognized; he only says that something is detected, ie does not refer to the object as such, but on the fact of his Detected one.

Early Modern Times

A sharp break with the Platonic tradition took René Descartes. He rejected the idea that there is a spirit in the divine realm of ideas that serve as a model of the created objects of sense. A Mind of God, preceding the creation, Descartes held to be impossible, since God is absolutely simple and knowing is identical to his will. Therefore, he used the term " ideas" are not in the Platonic sense, but only to describe human consciousness content. He cited alongside the perceptual contents and the fantasy products produced by consciousness, the " innate ideas " ( ideae innatae ), which are potentially present in the consciousness and would be required for philosophical knowledge. Descartes thought that the innate ideas could be transferred from the power in the act and then allowed an a priori knowledge. Against the notion of innate ideas, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke turned. The substantiated by Locke sensualistic consciousness doctrine that evolved George Berkeley and David Hume in different ways, denies the existence of consciousness Content that is not reducible to perception.

Immanuel Kant is one of the ideas to the class of pure concepts and distinguishes it from a necessary concepts of reason ( " transcendental ideas " ) from mere conceptions of the understanding. An idea can arise only in his understanding of reason, which of their nature demands according to the existence of ideas. Ideas are a priori concepts. Their characteristic feature is that they refer to the unconditioned, which exceeds the required range of all possible experience. Therefore, an idea in theoretical terms, as an idea of speculative reason, never attain a demonstrable objective reality outside of itself; as the key to possible experiences they can not be considered, in the area of ​​sensory perception corresponds to it nothing. An ontological significance of the ideas of Kant, but a regulatory function for the cognition and action. He has objective reality to them only in the area of the Practical to where he explicitly ties in Plato. It refers to the moral ideas as archetypes of practical reason, which serve as a guide moral conduct. He also takes " aesthetic ideas " as a special Ideenart to.

Modern

Hegel

Hegel deals with the idea of Plato and to the pioneering role of the ancient philosophers. In Hegel's philosophical system, especially in its logic, the term idea plays a central role. He receives here a meaning which differs from any previous philosophical parlance. Hegel defined the idea as truth of subjectivity and objectivity, and as the truth and of itself, which he distinguishes from the teachings in which they appear as something subjective as a mere idea and as unreal. With truth he means the conformity of reality with its concept that originates it. In the idea Hegel sees the notion that brings the reality that he produces in accordance with it. He refers to it as " the unity of concept and objectivity." The idea is transcendent for him, as for Kant as a concept of reason, it is the unconditioned, of the " no him adequate empirical use to be made" can. Unlike Kant, Hegel concludes not that the idea is ontologically meaningless. Rather, he attributes the fact that the idea can be " no corresponding object in the sensible world are given " to a lack of the sense objects, not the idea. Every single thing created from the idea, and his existence is to express them as best as possible.

In contrast to the Platonic tradition, Hegel does not write the idea of ​​absolute rest in the sense of immobility to, but a movement with which she puts a world of finite things, which is something different than them, something for her external and so far its opposite. In order to set her opposite, they must include it in themselves, they must have also in difference and division. Thus it includes what they denied their own opposite.

The philosophical effort is aimed at the "absolute idea". This is for Hegel " the reasonable term that comes together in reality its only with yourself " and " others in his his own objectivity for its object has ." " Everything else is error, turbidity, opinion, pursuit, arbitrariness and impermanence; the absolute Idea alone is being, imperishable life, self-knowing truth, and all truth. It is the only subject matter and content of philosophy. " The task of philosophy is to recognize the absolute idea in its various configurations.

Recent Developments

Since the end of the era of German Idealism have a number of philosophers - in particular representatives of neo-idealism, neo-Hegelianism, neo-Kantian and neo-Thomism - assigned to the ideas of an essential function in the context of their ontological, epistemological or ethical concepts, where they went out of various provisions of the concept idea. Such flows exist to the present day. Against the idea of metaphysical concepts theories, however, arose in the 19th century a violent contradiction of the positivists, Left Hegelians and Marxists in the context of their fundamental critique of metaphysics. A staunch opponent of the Platonic doctrine of ideas was also Nietzsche, who fought as part of his polemic against the Platonism also this doctrine. He wrote in his Twilight of the Idols, the history of the doctrine of ideas is the history of an error, the alleged " real world" of ideas have proved to be a fable; she was " a useless, an idea which has become superfluous, consequently a refuted idea".

In the philosophy of the 20th and 21st centuries dominated the assessment of those thinkers who deny the concept idea any philosophical relevance. These critics assert that one can explain anything with " ideas ", but create an illusion of explanation. Even the question of a fixed, context- independent meaning of " idea" is a mistake. If it were at ideas are purely subjective constructs for which no verifiable statements are possible. Therefore, any employment is useless with them. In this sense, expressed, inter alia, Wittgenstein and Quine. However, remain unclear, the problems that have led to the concept idea was introduced in the philosophical terminology and retained from ancient times to the modern day. These include the still open questions, such as the universality of scientific knowledge is to be understood and how the unity of concept and object can be explained.

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