3
Idealism
An essential component of the particular argument I am making regarding the extension of ethnophilosophy concerns the precise nature of the philosophy I seek to include. My claim in this paper extends only as far as seeking to identify‘ idealist’ philosophy in the work of certain women from the past, who despite in some cases being well known historical figures, have not been recognised as philosophers.
Idealist philosophy involves a mode of thought quite alien to many people in secular twenty-first century societies, in that it asserts that external reality, if it exists at all, fundamentally consists not of physical objects existing in time, occupying space and obeying the laws of physics, but instead is solely a metaphysical or spiritual reality, consisting of entities such as souls and love. 8 Admittedly, this is quite an extreme form of idealism( which comes in many types), but it is nevertheless illustrative of how different some academic philosophy can be to what might be termed‘ conventional thought’.
Berkeley
The reintroduction of idealism into academic discourse began in 1710, when George Berkeley, later Bishop of Cloyne, published A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. 9 In this work Berkeley set forth an ingenious and lengthy argument regarding the fundamental nature of reality, the essence of which is that what we think of as material objects only exist when they are perceived, and, as they do not vanish when we do not perceive them, must continued to be perceived by an omnipresent consciousness; to Berkeley, this proved God’ s existence.
Berkeley redefined what we think of as material objects in an important but often misrepresented way. He was not suggesting that a person kicking a brick and suffering pain as a result was mistaken regarding the existence of her or his foot, the brick or the pain, but instead he argued that these entities are real, but do not exist outside the mind.
8
Hilary Putnam,‘ How to be a Sophisticated Naïve Realist’ in Philosophy in an Age of Science( Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012), 252.; John M. E. McTaggart, The Nature of Existence, Vol. 1 & Vol. 2( London: Cambridge University Press, 1920, 1927)
9
George Berkeley,([ 1710 ] 1948 – 1957). The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne. A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop( eds.). London: Thomas Nelson and Sons. 9 vols. Of the Principles of Human Knowledge: Part 1, Works 2, 41-113.