Category: Idealism

Det är viktigt att förstå att den “moderna” idealismen inte bara var ett tyskt fenomen, utan att den var utbredd och tidvis dominerande i hela Europa.

De olika franska idealistiska riktningarna, genom hela 1800-talet och in på 1900-talet, har länge varit förbisedda och väntar såvitt jag förstår på mer allmän filosofihistorisk återupptäckt och återupprättelse. I Italien är kontinuiteten bättre: där var intresset för de transalpinska idealistiska impulserna alltifrån början oerhört. Man utmärkte sig inte minst genom den rika sekundärlitteraturen, men ledande tänkare var också idealister, och de tre stora italienska 1900-talstänkarna, Croce, Gentile och Evola, var alla på avgörande sätt, om än i olika avseenden, formade av idealismen. Den svenska idealismen behöver jag inte nämna här, utan bara påminna om att idealismen också var rikt representerad i övriga Norden.

Det viktigaste och mest signifikativa som behöver framhållas och betonas är emellertid den mycket betydande brittiska idealistiska strömningen, tidigare ofta ensidigt benämnd “anglo-hegelianismen”. Ansatser till den hade funnits alltsedan Coleridge och den tidiga introduktionen av Kant och Hegel, men den blev dominerande när den genom T. H. Green fick fäste i Oxford. Det kan ha haft viss betydelse att Oxford ligger på maximalt avstånd från alla kuster: de gamla, mer typiska, thalassiska brittiska tankeströmningarna kunde där under en längre tid ersättas av den naturligt kontinentalanknytande idealismen.

Balliol College blev under andra hälften av 1800-talet ett centrum för idealismen, som genom de där utbildade imperieadministratörerna spred sig i alla kolonierna, där den i flera fall erhöll en självständig utgestaltning. Inte minst viktigt är att den ömsesidiga påverkan som i Indien ägde rum med den Vedantistiska traditionen, och därigenom senare även i Storbritannien och inte minst Oxford, där resultaten av den i imperiets hägn räddade, återupprättade och utforskade traditionen från 1886 kom att samlas av Indian Institute och dess bibliotek. Medvetenheten om dessa sammanhang har förhoppningsvis överförts också till det nya Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, som tillkom under min tid vid universitetet; i dess hittills blygsamma bibliotek finns redan verk från tidigt 1900-tal om indiskt tänkande av åtminstone en brittisk, i Indien verksam filosof.

Den idealistiska traditionen i Oxford fortsattes av Edward Caird, Bernard Bosanquet och Francis Herbert Bradley. Den distinkt personalistiska varianten av idealismen kom i Storbritannien att representeras främst av Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison. Många andra betydande namn i den brittiska idealismen kunde nämnas, och alla behandlas i William Manders utmärkta British Idealism: A History. Detta verk är ett av många resultat av den renässans för forskningen om den brittiska idealismen som ägt rum under de senaste årtiondena, och som utöver det rent filosofihistoriska intresset i allt större utsträckning också präglats av ett aktuellt filosofiskt intresse, d.v.s. av det korrekta urskiljandet av idealismens bestående relevans.

Inte minst är det den brittiska idealismens etik och sociala och politiska filosofi, motsvarigheten till den för dagens socialkonservatism relevanta tyska idealistiska och historicistiska socialfilosofiska och nationalekonomiska skolan, som stått i centrum för denna förnyade forskning. Alltifrån Green stod naturligt nog kritiken av den inhemska thalassiska dominansen i centrum, den klassiska liberalismen, utilitarismen o.s.v., men de logiska, epistemologiska, metafysiska och estetiska frågorna förbisågs för den skull ingalunda, och så sker inte heller hos dagens forskare.

Även den amerikanska idealismen uppmärksammas ofta av samma krets av forskare. Josiah Royce var väl den som kom närmast den europeiska idealismen, och Borden Parker Bowne fortsätter direkt den europeiska personalistisk-idealistiska riktningen. En tidig hegeliansk skola fanns i St Louis. Fastän de idealistiska filosoferna senare oftast förblir i Boston, eller vid Harvard, hotar den amerikanska idealismen nästan redan från början att flyta ut i den för Amerika mer karaktäristiska pragmatismens utmarker, bort från det europeiska ursprunget och det europeiska centrum. Men det är signifikativt för förståelsen av vad Amerika djupast sett är att denna filosofi dock fått fotfäste även där, och att intresset för den är bestående; även den historiska forskningen om den europeiska idealismen, och inte bara den tyska utan även den brittiska, är ofta framstående.

Vad som är viktigt att förstå här är att vi har att göra med en i hög grad åskådningsmässigt sammanhängande, allsidig, filosofiskt väl elaborerad tankeströmning, en karaktäristisk, central produkt av den europeiska kulturen, med utbredning i hela den i vid mening europeiska världen, som också representerar en oavslutad kulturell ansats och utveckling av avgörande betydelse för dagens såväl kulturella som politiska utmaningar. Den förnyade forskningens resultat måste därför i större utsträckning börja översättas till och operationaliseras i dagens debatt.

Av stor pedagogisk betydelse är därvid utan tvekan också de kopplingar, utöver den ursprungligen i stor utsträckning tyska idealismen, som kan och måste göras till de partiellt motsvarande och alltid relevanta, gemensamma, all-europeiska strömningarna av idealism alltifrån antiken. Deras mobilisering bidrar också till att möjliggöra den kritiska urskillning som de av modernitetens specifika rationalistiska och romantiska dynamik genererade problemen kräver, även och inte minst när det gäller den moderna idealismen. Såväl en “klassicistisk”, etisk uppstramning som en inordning och partiell omtolkning inom ramen för en större, andligt-traditionalistisk förståelse är, som jag ser det, oundgänglig för ett framgångsrikt vidareförande och fullbordande av den stora, kvintessentiellt europeiska ansats som den idealistiska filosofin representerar.

The first and most basic comment that needs to be made about Lawrence Heap Åberg’s Den Boströmska världsåskådningen (The Boströmian Worldview), or, through it, on Boström’s philosophy as such, concerns the nature of Boström’s idealism in general. In my first separate post with comments, Comments on Boström, I made very big, broad and sweeping claims for this idealism, suggesting, in fact, that it was superior, in general and with regard to its central positions, to all subsequent non-idealist currents of Western philosophy that have been dominant throughout the 20th century, and in some respects even to other versions of 19th-century idealism. This will certainly have seemed quite remarkable to most readers, and the first thing that has now to be added by way of further commentary is more support for those claims. But first of all, I want to say something more about my understanding of the role and meaning of idealism today.

The defence of idealism, including some of the forms of idealism that first developed in 19th-century Europe, has for me a broader significance than its metaphysical, ethical and other positions. It is part of a whole cultural dynamic, a natural development of the European spirit in the 19th century that, contrary to how it has been perceived by 20th-century historians of philosophy, in reality points ahead to the specific needs of the 20th century, including those of its cultural, social and political life. Broadly speaking, idealism represented a decisive advance in relation to the empiricist, lower rationalist, utilitarian and materialist legacy of the Enlightenment, which was also intrinsic to the liberal and capitalist social and political order (or disorder). Clearly distinct from the Marxist reaction to this order, as it remained tied to these obsolete philosophical currents even in its mobilization of its distorted reinterpretation of a selective Hegelianism, idealism in a broad sense was the 19th century’s own important alternative contribution, answering the questions raised and the problems caused by both of these historical forces, carrying forward and bringing to fruition the inner impulses, needs and exigencies of the development not only of philosophy but of culture in general at this point in the history of Europe.

Thus idealists not only in Germany but also in other European countries also characteristically offered, in outline, a social and political philosophy of their own, which sought to synthesize a historical legacy of values and insights that was in many respects threatened by the forces of radical modernism, with its own ways of meeting the undeniable social requirements of the new historical circumstances produced by modernity’s vast transformations. Boström himself, admittedly, did not yet perceive fully the necessity of developing this side of idealist thought, but some of his disciples and later followers, belonging to generations of European thinkers where these new issues were central to the social thought of idealism, understood the need to revise and develop further their positions in this regard – and, significantly, they found it possible to do so while preserving some of the distinct principles of Boström’s theory of the state.

Idealism, in its full and comprehensive meaning, thus constitutes the central, decisive advancement of the 19th century in relation to the Enlightenment and its lingering, typical philosophies, at its most developed a comprehensive cultural paradigm not only answering the needs of its day but pointing ahead to the situation of world-historical challenges that Europe would have to face in the 20th century. And since, as can be understood, for instance, from the list of philosophical schools which I provided, suggesting they were all inferior to and represented distinct forms of retrogression in relation to idealism, Europe did not, to put it mildly, successfully meet the challenges in the 20th century, it still stands before these challenges, now vastly aggravated. And hence the general idealist paradigm is in fact more relevant than ever.

Already in the title of his introduction to Boström or Boströmianism, Heap Åberg correctly emphasizes that what we are dealing with is a worldview, and thus the importance of the kind of comprehensiveness and coherence that a worldview implies. On a general level, the principles and the general orientation to which also specifically 19th-century expressions of idealism contributed, and which, as I briefly indicated, comprise distinctive social and political dimensions, remain not just relevant but, in a sense, necessary for the spiritual, cultural, moral and political defence and renewal of Europe. At the same time, it offers a far superior point of departure for authentic, historically based intercultural exchange with the rest of the world of the kind that is of course inevitable. Both through its philosophical penetration and its practical applications, it facilitates the search for, brings us closer to, the “common human ground”, the unity of universality and particularity in a multicultural world, that Claes Ryn speaks of, while at the same time representing the distinctly European manifestation of this synthesis that is needed for Europe’s own present purposes. It was always obvious that there is a natural limit to and an inevitable reaction against romantic, liberal-democratic and postmodern fragmentation, relativization, dispersion.

Idealism in the broad sense here indicated, in a general sense alone adequate to the challenges of modernity and even, in my view, in a sense inevitable for a European future, can of course, as a more general movement of cultural, social and political renewal, be assimilated in different aspects and on many levels for the various needs in all the fields of theory and practice. But for the purpose of its deeper understanding, the more difficult and exclusively philosophical issues of metaphysics, epistemology etc. must also be revisited and taught at least to a sufficient extent. In his Introduction to The Boströmian Worldview, Heap Åberg discusses the reasons why it is so much more difficult to explain the idealist position to the general reader than the widespread philosophical positions based on “common sense”. And he immediately proceeds to use a formulation that can be said to exemplify not only the difficulties in this regard with 19th century idealism more generally, but the specific difficulties with Boströmianism, with that aspect of it, or one of the aspects of it, which sets it apart from or goes beyond the dominant, originally German current of modern idealism.

This concerns the most basic, general position of Boström, reminiscent of and indeed developed with reference to Berkeley, but also bringing Boström closer than other forms of contemporary idealism to one aspect of Neoplatonism and, in substance, to aspects of Vedanta and some Buddhist schools in a way that clearly goes beyond Berkeley and his specifically modern empiricist concerns: what we experience as the external, material, corporeal world is in reality “a whole”, a totality, “of our own perceptions” (“ett helt av våra förnimmelser”). Formulations like this immediately produce a number of familiar misconceptions whose familiarity has never made them any less difficult to clear up or even reduce. They are almost always taken to mean that the phenomenal world is less real according to this kind of idealism than according to the common-sense view or philosophical materialism or physicalism, that it is a subjective experience only, perhaps just an illusion.

In reality the meaning of the position thus expressed is precisely the opposite. Although it does of course emphasize that this totality of perceptions, being our perceptions as finite beings, is limited, imperfect, relative etc., it also strongly emphasizes, in contradistinction precisely to common-sense realism, materialism, and physicalism, that within such general limitation caused by our own finitude, the world is really as we perceive it. The qualities of things, of the whole space-time world, are really there, are real and objective, not just secondary qualities incomprehensibly produced by our own sensual apparatus out of the inexplicable stimuli of merely primary-quality “matter”, unknowable in itself and somehow floating about out there (and in the course of the 20th century increasingly reduced to mere mathematical models). In a different sense, this idealist position could be said to be “realist”, whereas materialism turns out to be a bizarre speculative concoction of never ascertainable postulates. There is no “nothing but” about the world as a whole of our perceptions.

Now, I will not further elaborate this argument here. I have prepared these comments by posting in the References category a number of books by Bernardo Kastrup, in which can be found the most extensive and complete non-technical formulation, explanation and defense of this idealist position that I have ever seen. For the full comprehension of the most central and essential and at the same time most difficult and controversial idealist position in Boström’s system I therefore simply refer to Kastrup, and especially his book Why Materialism Is Baloney from 2014, but see also his other books under Philosophy on the References page; I have also posted a video where he gives a brief account of some aspects of his argument in this blog’s Idealism category.

Kastrup’s “popular” yet sophisticated statement of the argument is not only extensive, careful, and detailed, but also highly creative, innovative, and original. There is no reason for my purposes to add to it or even further comment on it here. This is the basic idealist position that people find to be the hardest to understand, the one that has always been the greatest challenge in all Boströmian idealist pedagogy. Once it has been understood – and I hope Kastrup will strongly and, for many, even decisively contribute to this – the most important task, the explanation of this most difficult yet decisive tenet of this form of idealism, will have been accomplished.

Further comment is needed only with regard to the positions where, within the general idealist framework thus established, Boström differs from Kastrup, namely in the distinctly “personalist” aspects of the former’s philosophy – a differentiation within idealism to which counterparts can also, as I have often emphasized, be found in the broader and older traditions referred to above. It could be argued that Kastrup’s articulation of this general idealist position as such implies precisely the distinctively “impersonalist” version or interpretation that Kastrup espouses, and that it does so to the extent that the position as formulated by him is not in reality a common position, shared by Boströmianism.

There are deep issues involved here having to do with the nature of the finitude of our perception of the world, and, as related to this, the nature of our existence as finite beings. But the fact that, at the present stage of the development of his thought at least, Kastrup differs in his conclusions regarding these things does not, in my view, invalidate or in any significant way minimize the relevance of the general argument from the “personal idealist” standpoint. I.e., the argument and the general idealist position it establishes are indeed, at least to a sufficient extent, common ones, they do provide a shared idealist framework within which, at a later point of more specific analysis, the differentiation of positions with regard to “finite centres” etc. emerges and can be contained. In this respect, the situation is similar to the relation – as discussed by me in The Worldview of Personalism and elsewhere – between what can for some purposes be called idealism in general, as affirmed also by forms of 19th-century impersonal absolutism, on the one hand, and at least some central versions of personal idealism.

Kastrup’s analysis of the world as a whole of perceptions can thus be affirmed even as his specific position regarding the nature of such centres and their relation to the absolute is bracketed, as it were, and identified as susceptible to certain modifications not unknown in the history of idealism – although clearly, for the purpose of relating them to Kastrup’s specific renewal of the idealistic argument and explaining them in terms of a modification precisely of his articulation, they stand in need in some respects of a correspondingly innovative reformulation. Needless to say, the resulting analytical and argumentative presentation would then also have to be related to and coordinated with the partly – certainly not entirely – different terminology of the earlier idealists.

If this position and its various implications are understood and accepted, it makes about as dramatic a difference as philosophical argument and theoretical insight can ever make. Given human nature, even that difference is not always sufficient to effect concrete changes in life and action, or even permanent insight. In most cases, it must be consolidated and supplemented by several other factors, having to do not least with the moral life, character, and faith, as also quite extensively discussed by Heap Åberg in Boströmian terms. Yet it can be concluded that, to the extent that such a thing is at all possible, the problematic legacy of the radical Enlightenment in philosophy that the idealists confronted (primarily in its 19th-century manifestations), with all of its moral, social and cultural ramifications, has been refuted.

The real consequences, once fully discovered, and by whichever supplementary means the discovery comes about, are vast, and often beautifully explained and illustrated by Kastrup in his other books, as affecting our lives and the way we live them. The implied necessary preconditions of the reality of the world being as explained by this idealistic analysis and argument of course involve several further positions, not least with regard to consciousness and spirituality. And these, in turn, are such as to make it easier to understand what I meant by my sweeping claims about this form of idealism in relation to twentieth-century philosophy. One important part of the metaphysics of idealism has in this way been established, in the sense and to the extent that things can be established in the specific Western institution of philosophy. There is more to the metaphysics of idealism than this. But without the core of insights reached and established in this and other ways, the further developments and applications of the idealistic worldview in the various fields of theory and practice cannot be correctly made, and the historic role of this worldview in the life of Europe and of European culture cannot be properly fulfilled.

Diving Into Mind to Uncover the Astonishing Hidden Tale of Nature

Iff Books, 2011

Back Cover:

A strong and growing intuition in society today is the idea that our thoughts create our own reality. Yet it seems obvious that, try as we might, our lives are not quite what we fantasize. Is the intuition thus wrong? Through a rational, methodic interpretation of meditative insights, the validity of which is substantiated with a compelling scientific literature review, the author constructs hypotheses that reconcile facts with intuition. Mesmerizing narratives of his expeditions into the unconscious suggest an amazing possibility: just as dreams are seemingly autonomous manifestations of our psyche, reality may be an externalized combination of the subconscious dreams of us all, mixed as they are projected onto the fabric of space-time. Perhaps the laws of physics are an emergent by-product of such synchronization of thoughts. Through computer simulations, the author explores the implications of these hypotheses, with conclusions uncannily reminiscent of observed phenomena.

About the Author:

Bernardo Kastrup has a Ph.D. in computer engineering and has been a scientist in some of the world’s foremost scientific laboratories. He researches and writes about metaphysics and philosophy of mind.

Kristian Teodor C., filosof, f. 7 juli 1827 i Stockholm, blev student i Uppsala 1847, filos. doktor 1857 och docent i praktisk filosofi vid Uppsala universitet s. å. Strax efter det han nästan enhälligt fått främsta rummet på förslaget till den ena av de 1857 inrättade rörliga adjunkturerna vid nämnda universitet, avled han i Uppsala 21 nov. 1859.

C. ägde en ovanligt stor spekulativ begåvning och hade tidigt förvärvat en mångsidig lärdom. I sina filosofiska åsikter rönte han först inflytande av Hegel, men blev sedan en avgjord anhängare av sin lärare Boströms filosofi. Särskilt ägnade han sina bemödanden åt att fylla den lucka  i det boströmska systemet, som bestod däri att Boström väl upptagit den filosofiska etnologin såsom en av den teoretiska filosofins tre huvuddelar, men själv icke lämnat något bidrag till denna disciplins utveckling. Till detta ämne hör båda de större filosofiska avhandlingar, som C. under sitt korta liv hann fullborda, nämligen Om möjligheten af en filosofisk rättslära (akad. avh. 1857) och Om språkets ursprung och väsende (Nord. univ. tidskr. 1858). I båda dessa skrifter börjar han med en omsorgsfull granskning av de åsikter, som förut i vetenskapens historia framträtt rörande problemet i fråga, och söker uppvisa såväl rättens som språkets karaktär av att vara individuella, förnuftiga bestämningar hos nationens väsen. I flera uppsatser behandlade han frågor på språkundervisningens område, såväl den klassiska som den svenska, liksom han också skrev värdefulla essayer om Goethes “Faust”, Byrons “Don Juan” m.m. Mot slutet av hans liv var det särskilt religiösa och moraliska frågor, som upptog hans intresse. Hans religiösa ståndpunkt var frisinnat kristen. Liksom filosofin är människans högsta teoretiska angelägenhet, ansåg han religionen vara hennes högsta praktiska; och då enligt hans åsikt viljan är människans livs centrum, så anser han religionen såsom viljans högsta livsform vara människans högsta uppgift, den där griper vida kraftigare in i det mänskliga väsendet både till omfattning och djup, än någon vetenskap enligt själva sin uppgift förmår det. Med sina mångsidiga intressen för vad som djupast rörde sig i tiden förenade C. såsom skriftställare stor klarhet och åskådlighet i framställningen, och hans skrifter var därför väl ägnade att göra vetenskapens resultat fruktbringande för den allmänna bildningen. Vid hans död yttrade en kompetent bedömare, att vårt land i honom “förlorat en av våra rikast begåvade och mest levande vetenskapsmän”. C:s samlade Skrifter utgåvos året efter hans död (2 bd, 1860) av hans broder Gustaf C., med en av denne författad levnadsteckning samt en av C. Y. Sahlin lämnad filosofisk karakteristik.

Frans von Schéele i Ugglan (lätt språklig modernisering)

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En lärjunge som Boström fäste de största förhoppningar vid var Kristian Claëson (1827-1859). Det blev därför ett svårt slag för Boström när denne dog endast 32 år gammal. Som ofta är fallet med unga döda fick Claëson ett rykte om sig att ha ryckts bort från en stor framtid. Han vore den, som framom andra varit skickad att föra boströmianismens färger till nya triumfer. Säkert är att Claëson är en utmärkt, ställvis intagande skriftställare, som visar prov på både skarpsinne och bred allmän kultur.

Kristian Claëson skildras i en av hans bror Gustaf författad levnadsteckning som en brådmogen yngling, vilken tidigt vigde sitt liv åt studierna. Han kom från en borgerlig Stockholmsfamilj, fadern var assessor. 1847 blev han efter skolgång i Stockholm student vid Uppsala universitet…Till en början anslöt han sig till Hegels läror…Med tiden drogs Claëson emellertid alltmera in under Boströms inflytande. 1857 promoverades han till magister och kallades därefter omgående till docent i praktisk filosofi. Claëson kom att stå Boström personligt nära. Som tidigare nämnts hjälpte han denne med utgivningen av flera skrifter. Han tog dessutom på sig uppgiften att försvara dessa mot sådana offentliga angrepp som de gav upphov till…Boström hade också höga tankar om Claësons begåvning. I ett samtal strax efter Kristians död, som Gustaf Claëson refererar i sin dagbok, skall Boström ha sagt att han nu vore “vingskjuten”, att Kristian visat sig förstå statsläran “fullt ut lika bra som jag själf”, och att nu ingen funnes av de yngre som kunde “föra filosofien framåt hos oss”.

I sin minnesteckning antyder brodern emellertid också att Kristian på en och annan inte oväsentlig punkt avvek från Boströms åsikter, visserligen tills vidare på ett föga deciderat sätt: “Att emellertid ett oafbrutet tankearbete fortgick inom honom, och att hans inre lif under tiden närmast före hans bortgång var stadt  uti en betydelsefull kris, uppenbarade sig omisskännligt på flera sätt. Huruvida resultatet af denna utveckling, om hon fårt ostördt fortgå, hade blifvit ett fullständigt anslutande till Professor Boströms åsigt eller ett bestemt afvikande derifrån, är nu omöjlit att afgöra.”

Mot detta har [den senare boströmianen Efraim] Liljeqvist invänt: “Så riktigt detta än är, bör å andra sidan framhållas, att ingenting i C:s föreliggande produktion tyder på någon sådan begynnande divergens i det principiella från mästarens åskådning”.

Detta är riktigt. Vill man finna uttryck för en divergens i Claësons skrifter får man söka den i ton snarare än bokstav. Men tonen är inte oväsentlig och ingen tvekan råder om att det hos Claëson finns ett betydeande mått av självständighet…

Claëson hade…framhållit Aftonbladets missuppfattningar som ett exempel på hur svårt det kan vara att med sunda förnuftets hjälp fatta innebörden i en filosofisk lära…Claëson hade anfört att: “Det är mer än en gång fallet, att satser ur vetenskapen förefalla orimliga för sens commun. Det kan nu icke undvikas.”…Uppsalaidealismen var alltid angelägen att framhäva hur liten domsrätt profanum vulgus och sunda förnuftet besatt i filosofiska spörsmål. Filosofin var en sak för de lärde, den krävde specialiserad intellektuell träning och dess resultat kunde ofta te sig förvånande för vardagsförnuftet. Om detta kunde Schellings, Hegels och Boströms anhängare vara ense, det låg inbyggt i filosofin, men var också ett utslag av lärdomsstolthet. Gentemot detta artikulerade Aftonbladet och dess liberala kolleger ett upplysningsfilosofiskt förakt för abstrakt konstruktion och lärd självöverskattning…

Claëson hade i en recension av ett teologiskt arbete urskiljt två riktningar inom modern teologi, en hegeliansk, vilken alltför mycket framhävde det objektiva, kyrkan såsom institution etc., och en kierkegaardsk, som innebar en irrationell subjektivism. Båda dessa felaktigheter borde kunna övervinnas, menade Claëson, men därvid måste teologin hämta hjälp från filosofin: “Det är m.a.o. en filosofisk reformation som behöfves, innan någon utsigt finnes för en theologisk.”

Mot sådana filosofiska överhöghetsanspråk vände sig [den ortodoxe teologen O. F.] Myrberg. Teologin vore inte filosofins tjänarinna, förnuftet var inte den enda kunskapskällan…Striden äger intresse främst som det tidigaste tillfälle där åsiktsskillnaden mellan boströmianism och teologisk ortodoxi ventileras i hela sin vidd.

[Claësons artikel] ‘Äro anklagelserna mot tidehvarfet för materialism ogrundade eller icke?’…ingick som led i den kamp som boströmianismen ständigt förde mot materialistiska åsikter. I Tyskland hade vid århundradets mitt en materialistisk strömning gjort sig gällande. Dess mest representativa verk blev Ludwig Büchners Kraft und Stoff (1855), som också i Sverige blev mycket omdiskuterad och bl.a. gjordes till föremål för en rad vederläggningar av boströmianska pennor.

Också Claëson tar upp en polemik mot Büchner. Men originellt i hans uppsats är hans sätt att avgränsa filosofins uppgifter från naturvetenskapernas. Claësons artikel är en recension av en skrift med samma namn av den liberale tidningsmannen Johan Johansson. Denne hade gjort gällande att det vore naturvetenskapens uppgift att vederlägga materialismen. Claëson ser detta som orimligt – materialismen är en filosofisk ståndpunkt och kan vederläggas endast på filosofisk väg. Men härav följer också att mellan filosofi och naturvetenskap inget gräl kan finnas. Büchners och hans likars fel är “att af fysik och kemi göra filosofi eller att tillägga ontologisk och metafysisk betydelse åt vissa naturvetenskapliga hypoteser eller, rättare sagdt, vissa för kalkylens skuld inom naturvetenskapen sedan länge införda fiktioner.”

De största naturvetenskapsmännen, en Berzelius t.ex., har också insett denna skillnad mellan naturvetenskapens och filosofins jurisdiktion…Instrumentalistiska lösningar av den typ  Claëson förerädde skulle…framemot sekelskiftet vinna åtskillig popularitet, inte minst bland idealister. I Sverige skulle de odlas främst av Vitalis Norström.

Ur Svante Nordins Den Boströmska skolan och den svenska idealismens fall (1981)

In my introduction to Lawrence Heap Åberg’s Den Boströmska världsåskådningen (The Boströmian Worldview) from 1882, which I published as a long series here, I mentioned that I would come back with a few comments of my own, and I think that in a discussion with a reader who commented on one of the early parts in the series this was developed into a promise. I will now therefore start a new series of posts with some comments on Heap Åberg’s introduction, in which selected passages will be translated into English.

Readers of my book The Worldview of Personalism (2006) will be familiar with some of the positions of Christopher Jacob Boström, the leading Swedish 19th-century philosopher. A general introduction is found in Robert N. Beck’s long essay published together with the translation of Boström’s Philosophy of Religion by Yale UP in 1962. The character of Boström’s own writings, however, is such that it is almost inevitable, if something of the substance of his worldview is to be successfully communicated to the philosophically interested reader of today, to take as the point of departure one of the many available introductions to his work. Moreover, my purpose is merely to present in broad outline and to make comprehensible some of Boströms basic and essential idealistic positions.

Much attention has been given by Swedish historians of philosophy to the special, detailed positions of Boström’s theory of the state (his statslära) as related to his idealist metaphysics, positions which are of no significance and have often obscured the meaning of his more general idealist positions. They can, however, easily be ignored in the study of his philosophy, and that is also what Heap Åberg does: all such things are simply left out – the author clearly saw the need for this already at the time of writing his introduction, i.e. in the early 1880s.

It is only with reference to the general, central positions of Boström that I claim that his philosophy, or rather, perhaps, that of his school, in which many of his positions were improved upon, remains not just important and relevant, but in some respects superior to all later philosophy that has not, by different means, reached the same insights. And very few professional philosophers have reached such insights. Those who have done so have done it through the traditions by means of which I too seek to supplement and modify Swedish idealism, and also, for that matter, to supplement the elements of other 19th- and early 20th-century forms of idealism that I also try to assimilate. I.e., primarily through aspects of the broad and deep current of Platonism, or, more precisely, Neoplatonism, and also through Vedanta and some Buddhist schools.

Such supplementation and modification is necessary: the Boströmian school, and the broader Swedish idealist tradition to which it belongs, is of course imperfect and displays weaknesses, as do all modern systems. But its basic orientation is correct, it is on the right path, its essential intuition is a true one. The philosophical way ahead – and this is one of my modest main theses – is not via any break with its idealist assumptions, in any of the forms that came to dominate in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of th 20th (neokantian, pragmatic, Hägerströmian, positivist, phenomenological, historicist, materialist, analytical, Marxist, hermeneutic, vitalist, psychological), but only through partial correction, general deepening, and further development.

As many scholars are now realizing, the rupture with idealism involved gross misunderstandings of idealism on all levels, as well as of philosophy in general and not least its relation to the sciences. It meant an obvious step back in the understanding of reality and hence in the general level of culture; indeed, not seldom deep illusion, confusion and decadence.

In comparison with the main positions of idealism as we find them in the main Swedish current, later modern philosophy has merely, at its best, provided minor, relatively marginal truths and formal instruments of thought. And for their value to be properly assessed and rightly understood, they must be connected to and seen in the light of the lost idealist perspective – i.e., the later must be reconstructed or rediscovered.

Now, it is of course possible to reach the basic truths of the worldview to which I seek to draw the reader’s attention through the other schools and traditions I mentioned, and, again, I draw on them myself. But there is no reason, in Sweden, to keep exclusively to them and not to connect to the history of our own philosophy and to our own leading thinkers. German idealism never died; British idealism has been revived. Now Swedish idealism needs to be rediscovered and renewed.

Not least German idealism is of course more richly developed in many respects than Swedish idealism. But it is also quite different, as not least the Boströmians kept insisting. While Swedish idealism is certainly not as fully elaborated in all of the special branches of philosophy, it at least has a certain strict continuity in its development and a considerable sharpness of profile in most of them. And, not least, it is more completely and consistently idealistic, in a way that brings it closer to the great, earlier traditions than most other forms of “modern” idealism in the west.

It is, I submit, not least in this that we find its strength, and that which makes it quite as relevant and important as anything else that is currently being rediscovered by philosophers and historians of philosophy in the rich but forgotten currents of idealism. At least those with a sufficiently broad overview of the history of human thought will, I hope, quickly see that there is in fact nothing strange about this claim. The exclusive dominance of the characteristic 20th-century schools was spatio-temporal provincialism.

2014

How True Skeptics Know There Is No Death and Fathom Answers to Life, the Universe, and Everything

Iff Books, 2014

Publisher’s Description:

The present framing of the cultural debate in terms of materialism versus religion has allowed materialism to go unchallenged as the only rationally-viable metaphysics. This book seeks to change this. It uncovers the absurd implications of materialism and then, uniquely, presents a hard-nosed non-materialist metaphysics substantiated by skepticism, hard empirical evidence, and clear logical argumentation. It lays out a coherent framework upon which one can interpret and make sense of every natural phenomenon and physical law, as well as the modalities of human consciousness, without materialist assumptions. According to this framework, the brain is merely the image of a self-localization process of mind, analogously to how a whirlpool is the image of a self-localization process of water. The brain doesn’t generate mind in the same way that a whirlpool doesn’t generate water. It is the brain that is in mind, not mind in the brain. Physical death is merely a de-clenching of awareness. The book closes with a series of educated speculations regarding the afterlife, psychic phenomena, and other related subjects.

About the Author:

Bernardo Kastrup has a Ph.D. in computer engineering with specializations in artificial intelligence and reconfigurable computing. He has worked as a scientist in some of the world’s foremost research laboratories, including the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Philips Research Laboratories (where the “Casimir Effect” of Quantum Field Theory was discovered). Bernardo has authored many scientific papers and philosophy books. His three most recent books are: More Than Allegory, Brief Peeks Beyond and Why Materialism Is Baloney. He has also been an entrepreneur and founder of a successful high-tech start-up. Next to a managerial position in the high-tech industry, Bernardo maintains a philosophy blog, a video interview series, and continues to develop his ideas about the nature of reality. He has lived and worked in four different countries across continents, currently residing in the Netherlands.

Uppsala gamla kyrkogård

2015

Critical Essays on Metaphysics, Neuroscience, Free Will, Skepticism and Culture

Iff Books, 2015

Publisher’s Description:

This book is a multi-faceted exploration and critique of the human condition as it is presently manifested. It addresses science and philosophy, explores the underlying nature of reality, the state of our society and culture, the influence of the mainstream media, the nature of free will and a number of other topics. Each of these examinations contributes an angle to an emerging idea gestalt that challenges present mainstream views and behaviors and offers a sane alternative. The book is organized as a series of short and self-contained essays, most of which can be read in under one hour.

About the Author:

Bernardo Kastrup has a Ph.D. in computer engineering with specializations in artificial intelligence and reconfigurable computing. He has worked as a scientist in some of the world’s foremost research laboratories, including the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Philips Research Laboratories (where the “Casimir Effect” of Quantum Field Theory was discovered). Bernardo has authored many scientific papers and philosophy books. His three most recent books are: More Than Allegory, Brief Peeks Beyond and Why Materialism Is Baloney. He has also been an entrepreneur and founder of a successful high-tech start-up. Next to a managerial position in the high-tech industry, Bernardo maintains a philosophy blog, a video interview series, and continues to develop his ideas about the nature of reality. He has lived and worked in four different countries across continents, currently residing in the Netherlands.