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11Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 1 (2012 5) 13-27
УДК 141.13
Ideale and Ideelle
Daniil V. Pivovarov*
Ural Federal University 51 Lenina st.,Ekaterinburg, 620083 Russia 1
Received 4.11.2012, received in revised form 11.11.2012, accepted 16.12.2012
This paper is devoted to such an important philosophical question as the problem of ideal. The author distinguishes two senses of "ideal" and designates these meanings with German words "Ideelle" and "Ideale". The etymology of the terms Ideelle and Ideale is revealed, and the history of the given concepts is described. The three most authoritative conceptions of Ideelle and Ideale in Russia, the conceptions by D.I. Dubrovsky, E.V. Ilyenkov and M.A. Lifshitz, are analyzed and compared. The present research is an attempt to dialectically generalize these alternative approaches within the limits of "the synthetic conception of Ideelle and Ideale". Ideale is regarded as the substratum of any culture. The issue of the creator of the basic cultural Ideale is discussed.
Keywords: idea, eidos, eidolon, sample, representative, action scheme, extrapolation, synthetic conception of the ideal.
1. History of terms Ideale and Ideelle
It is more convenient for Russian and English philosophers to translate the French word "ideal" (in Russian - "идеал", in English - "ideal") by means of the German term "Ideale", while the German term "Ideelle" designates the Russian word "идеальное" and the English word "ideal" in a more precise way. In the present article we shall follow this convention.
The notion "Ideale" was generated rather recently (probably, in the Middle Ages); the notion "Ideelle" originated in the extreme antiquity, in animism and totemism, according to which, firstly, everything has its unique soul, and the soul of a thing is capable to move in space and to get into other things and people; secondly, each class of things or people is
obliged to its ancestor totem by its origin and the main attributes.
Probably, in the term "eidos" (in Greek -sidog, in Latin - forma, species, in Russian -вид) ancient Greek philosophers fixed one of the aspects of animistic sight at the soul of a subject as the specific reason of life and thoughts in the living being it animates. Some aspects of totemistic views on the anima (soul) of an object, people and the world soul were also fixed in the term "idea" (in Greek - idea).
In the days of Homer and pre-Socratics, "eidos" was understood as appearance, exterior, visible (something that is visible), but with the 5th century BC its value began to change: according to Empedocles, eidos is an image; to Democritus, eidolon is a figure of atom; to Parmenides, it is a visible essence. Sophists added the sense of
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"a specific concept, a version of essence" to the concept of eidos. Gradually, "eidos" got matching more and more with something internal, hidden (Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus), till at the present time (for example, in Husserlian phenomenology) "eidos" turned into the pure essence, object of intellectual intuition.
Having investigated the history of the term "eidos", A.F. Losev allocates the following aspects of this concept: simple, solid, whole, constant, individual generality, self-transparency, sense, the shown face; eidos is seen by the thought and is perceived by the mind, beheld intellectually (Losev, 1993, p. 346-458).
Losev opposes the terms "eidos" and "idea", regarding the nature of eidos as differential, and the nature of idea as integrated. Any eidos evidently means, each idea evidently expresses (Losev, 1993a, p.141-229).
The antique concept of idea designated integrity of some sort, patrimonial essence of things. Eidos is the soul of a body and the beginning of differentiation of the world into separate things. Idea is the spirit of a sort, something common between phenomena. Plato understood "idea" as pure general, incorporeal and objective essence outside some certain phenomena, living in its special (unearthly) world. On the contrary, Aristotle believed, that "idea" is the necessary internal form of a thing; idea is not a certain perfect, constant and quiet sample existing separately from things. It represents an active form merged with things, a target principle of a life. Idea cannot be torn off from things, it is imminent to phenomena, is a subject to changes and is interfaced with separate, not with general. It does not live the quiet life of Platonic prototype. Plato and Aristotle mixed internal and external values of eidos concept, and also pulled together the contents of eidos and idea concepts.
The subsequent thinkers preferred to be limited to the term "idea" when describing
immaterial aspects of the world, and they began to speak about "eidetism", more likely, with the reference to the pictorial character of human memory and visual impressions. Owing to Plato and Aristotle, in philosophy of that time there was a problem of universals: do ideas precede things, are they dissolved in things or do they exist only in the form of human concepts?
The withdrawal from pagan archetypes with their precise distinction of notions of soul (eidos) and spirit (idea) strengthened relativism in understanding the distinction between specific and patrimonial essences, laws of the general and private order. Or is it necessary to return back, by means of negation of negation, to former pre-Socratic concepts of eidos and idea?
As it is known, ancient Greek culture was guided by external forms of knowledge; eidos and idea were allocated with properties of external perceptibility and live sensuality. This is where the preservation of the evident aspect in the modern concept of idea originates from. On the contrary, medieval thinkers shifted the accent to the thesis about internal reality of ideas (as divine logos) in relation to the thinking of a person. That is why ideas have logic properties. In XVII-XVIII centuries the epistemological aspect of the concept of idea was put forward on the foreground. Philosophy of empiricism connected ideas with sensations and perceptions of people, and philosophy of rationalism connected them with spontaneous activity of thinking.
In the beginning of the XVIII century there was a term "idealism" (in French - "idealisme") which began to designate a philosophical doctrine about primacy of the world of ideas. At the same time the French managed to find a category which would connect "eidos" and "idea", namely in German - "Ideale" (in French, I shall repeat, it is ideal). Ideale is a sample, something accomplished, the prime target of aspiration, sometimes unattainable. Ideales are models of
moral or nonmoral excellence. In the New time philosophers began to apply the Greek term idea ("primary-image") and the Latin term idee (idea), first of all, for describing images "in general" (no matter if they are images as creators or copies of things), and the French term "ideal" found the meaning of something exemplary.
In "Ideale"" internal and external aspects of "idea"" are counterbalanced. The sensual and corporal side of Ideale is not estimated less than its ideological (super-sensual) value. Some people are involved more with the corporal party of some Ideale and can transform it into an idol. Other people understand Ideale as a "window" in essence and perceive it mainly spiritually.
The support of traditional Ideales is especially important speaking of political being of a person, which means such public things as justice, legality and declaration of war or selecting the political system, constructing of a temple or an opportunity to arrange a theatrical representation. In such situations the estimation of virtues or deeds of persons becomes problematic.
Again I shall repeat that German language seizes the distinction between the way of existence of some idea and the character of existence of Ideale as an especially valuable idea and a representative of some things, by designating "идеальное"" with the term "Ideelle"", and "идеал"" - with the term "Ideale"".
So, under "Ideelle"" Hegel understood: 1) any removed being, remaining of the things inside a hidden essence in the form of opportunities; 2) positiveness, representation of other-being inside self-being; 3) recognition of supersensual properties with which our consciousness allocates some being. Under "Ideale"" the German thinker meant perfect display of essence in some phenomenon seldom met in the external world that has the character of an aesthetic object (the visible or heard essence, the sensual phenomenon of idea).
After Hegel, "Ideelle"" is a special being, namely the "recognized being"" (Anerkanntsein). In "Yen Real Philosophy" he writes that the thing receives its second life in work; it accepts the "I" (the self) of the person, so it is "spiritualized". The recognized being belongs only "to a thing in its relation to mind" (Hegel, 1970, p. 298), and its borders are defined by consciousness.
There are no special terms in Russian that would provide clear distinction between "Ideelle" and "Ideale"". Both of them are usually translated as "идеальное", but in my opinion it is more precise to translate them as follows: "Ideelle"" -"идейное"" (in English, "connected with idea") and "Ideale"" - "образцовое"" (in English, "connected with standard"). Wrong translation of the terms "eidos"", "idea"", "Ideale"" and "idol"" with the comprehensive word "образ"" (in English, "image") leads to mess quite often. The term "образ"" is closer to the Latin word "imago"" (in English - image). At the same time, the Russian word "образ" is pulled together with the notions "idea"", "Ideale"" and "idol"" with an initial part of these words, "Id" meaning "same"", "similarity"" (compare: iden - the same, identical).
2. Three conceptions of Ideelle and Ideale
The reproduction of the three basic treatments of "Ideale"" and "Ideelle"" in the modern philosophical literature proceeds as follows:
a) in spirit of Platonism and realism (Ideelle and Ideale are the general in its pure state, that objectively existed before the occurrence of separate sorts of things and generated them);
b) in spirit of supporters of Aristotle and moderate realism (Ideelle and Ideale are the general in the inner form of things that is merged with things, and manifests itself in the process of interaction between things or at their comparison with each other as some law or a scheme of interaction);
c) in spirit of medieval nominalism (Ideelle and Ideale exist exclusively inside the subjectively real life, in the consciousness of people; they are images of consciousness, notions or simply names of things).
The same approaches are widespread in modern Russian literature that until recent time was considered Marxist, though in essence it had never been (because under the title of Marxism Platonism, Aristotle's doctrine and nominalism were discreetly combined).
In fact, there are three basic points of view on the nature of Ideelle and Ideale in our domestic philosophy:
1) Ideelle and Ideale are born and exist exclusively as specific subjective images of the objective world; being brain functions, they are "prisoners" of a human brain from birth to death (Dubrovsky, 2002).
2) at first, Ideale arises in the form of scheme of mass practical action of people, and then it interiorizes (curtails inwards) from external human activity into a specific general nonmaterial image of individuals' consciousness (Ilyenkov, 1962);
3) Ideale is some perfect object of nature existing irrespective of practical activity and consciousness of people, which is formed by elements of being; people find out perfect things (Ideales) in nature and copy them in the form of images of axiological consciousness (Lifshitz, 1984).
What was the historical and philosophical archetype of these three modern concepts, and is it possible now to return dialectically to the hypothetical archetype by means of theoretical synthesis of the named conceptions of Dubrovsky, Ilyenkov and Lifshitz?
I believe that Democritus was the one to formulate the initial monistic (materialistic) doctrine of Ideelle, according to which each person learns the world by means of eidolons. All
things release their copy seeds ("eidolons", "idols", "vidiki", "ideas") into the space. An eidolon is a special part of a thing that can be separated from it and bear the essence of the characteristic features of that thing as a whole. That is why an eidolon can be a "representative" of something as a whole in relation to the person learning it. Eidolons soaring in the air enter people's heads and stay there in the form of knowledge about things. Let us allocate three basic aspects of every eidolon:
1. As a separable part of a thing, eidolon embodies the complete characteristics of this thing; eidolon is a material copy of the certain sort of things and can become a direct object of some separate knowledge.
2. Transferring true information about separate things or their sorts from the external world into the inside of a person, eidolon plays the role of a vehicle, a material representative of some cognizable sphere of things in correlation to the learning individual.
3. Appearing inside of an individual, eidolon becomes nothing else but a material image of consciousness, a building component of complex knowledge of the world as a whole.
The antique paradigm of understanding Ideelle is reduced to the principle of representativeness of the whole, independent from a person or the general by means of its special part or singularity. In the conception by Democritus, all three specified aspects of an eidolon are closely interconnected, and Ideelle is understood as representative adequacy (resemblance, similarity, copy).
Down to the XVII century the materialistic theory of knowledge gravitated to Democritus' position. However, in the process of experimental natural sciences development it became necessary to reject this theory: emission of eidolons (eidoses) was not found by any microscopes or telescopes; the searches of duplicates of external things inside the human body and brain were
not successful as well. The materialism of the New time was compelled to refuse the first two aspects of eidolon - a) understanding it as a perfect copy part of the original; b) considering eidolon as an information carrier from the thing as a whole, directly inaccessible, to the person, to the individual cognizing this whole.
By means of L.A. Feuerbach's philosophy, Marxist theory of knowledge included understanding Ideelle only as a subjective image of the objective world (third aspect of eidolon). The impossibility of experimental finding the two aspects of Democritus' eidolon was registered in the judgement on nonmateriality of Ideelle image: such image does not contain any substance or corresponding characteristics of neither reflected object (the original), nor neurophysiological substratum of the image.
For many years the explanation of Ideelle nature within the framework of dialectical materialism has been rotating within the limits of the naturalism dilemma (Ideelle as a brain function) and maskable mysticism (Ideelle as a nonmaterial epiphenomenon). There were some alternative conceptions developed in the 60-80s of the XX century by D.I. Dubrovsky, E.V. Ilyenkov and M.A. Lifshitz, which if considered together, create a basis for restoration Democritus' tripartite doctrine of Ideelle on the new theoretical foundation. We shall name these conceptions in the logical order which is opposite to their historical occurrence.
Let us ask ourselves a question: why does a practical or intellectual action performed towards one thing sometimes at once turn into a general concept or apprehension of a class of similar things? Answering this question, M.A. Lifshitz assumed that in the objective world alongside with imperfect things, some perfect things really do exist; both these and those can concern the same set (sort, or a way of being). Any element of the set objectively incorporates the active
characteristics of this set in a greater degree than the other elements. That is why the "perfect" element can serve as a good representative of a sort (whole, general) in relation to us. Operating only with it, a person is as though reflecting on the whole class of things standing behind the given standard.
These are the standards the person is looking for, transforming them into instruments of work, measuring tools, aesthetic subjects. The thinking of the person could not be generated without discovering the perfect things. Being involved into the activity process, the reference standard determines some practice scheme which, in its turn, becomes an image of a sort or a class of things (Lifshitz, 1984).
In A.F. Losev's opinion, only especially talented people are capable of discovering perfect subjects. "Though perfection in things is also inherently present, fine things are seldom found in the nature", A.F. Losev wrote. - And still, studying and observing the nature, the artist finds it worth imitations" (Losev, 1978, p. 277).
So, M.A. Lifshitz and A.F. Losev found the real equivalent for the first aspect of Democritus' eidolon: a thing does not double itself in the released duplicate, but a material copy of investigated object is its special and perfect part, able to be the objective potential representative in its relation to the acting subject.
The second discovery is connected with the issue of the bearer carrying information about the real general and the universal from the object to the subject. Ilyenkov assumed that practice scheme (algorithm, operation, stereotype) is the carrier of information about the patrimonial properties of things in the space between the object and the subject. "Ideelle is the scheme of real activity of the person, which is coordinated with the form outside the head, outside the brain. <...> Consciousness and will are not 'the reasons' of occurrence of this new plan of attitudes of
the individual to the external world but only its mental forms of expressions, otherwise, its consequence", Ilyenkov wrote (Ilyenkov, 1979, p. 136, 155, 156).
Ilyenkov gave a modern explanation of the second aspect of Democritus' eidolon, confirmed by the theory of interiorization: it is not the substance of a reflected thing that is transferred in the subjective world of a person, but it is the practice scheme (or in general case, the activity scheme) that removes information about the general (essential) from the thing and transports it into the subjective world of the person.
On Ilyenkov, Ideelle as a practice scheme that spontaneously arises during material activity of social groups and broad masses; it has primary social and material determination. From here, Ideale has a social class origin. The people spontaneously forms and recognizes Ideales, and ideologists, intellectuals give shine and purity to the national Ideales.
According to Ilyenkov, at the level of practical activities Ideelle has two poles, which are material and nonmaterial. When the external action scheme interiorizes inside a person into a subjective image of the external world, it becomes an image of consciousness reduced and transformed by means of the person's brain. Consciousness, in its turn, is capable of coming back into practice and being materialized inside it due to its being derived from practical action schemes. Ideelle is such immaterialness which has material and nonmaterial sides that interpenetrate due to their substantial identity.
At last, the third discovery is connected with the question, why and how the knowledge of a separate standard representative, generated under direct influence of a practice scheme, is subjectively experienced by a person as an image of the whole class of things that stands for the standard. According to the "informational approach" put forward by Dubrovsky, by really
interacting with any fragment of a separate thing, a person does not only build a nonmaterial image of this thing as a whole by means of his brain, but also transfers the intellectual vision on all the things of the same class.
The intellectual action scheme is ontologized and transferred into the external space, into boundless objective reality. "Ideelle is the information staticized for the person; it is an ability of the person to have the information in its pure state and to operate with it. <...> Ideelle is a special personal phenomenon actualized by brain neurophysiological processes of a certain type (at the present moment, poorly investigated)", writes D.I. Dubrovsky (Dubrovsky, 1971, P. 187, 189).
On Dubrovsky, Ideelle is nonmaterial in all the senses:
1) The complete image of the substance of the external object's fragment experienced by the subject is not included;
2) The matter of intracorporal physiological processes is not included into it; it is eliminated from the image content, and due to this the person realizes that the image informs him about the external world, not about the activity of his own kidneys, heart, brain and other internal organs;
3) Ideelle image is located "on the other side" of the physical world; its form of being is essentially subjective; it cannot be "shifted" from the brain into the external activity of hands, legs, etc.; it is placed into the internal prison of brain from birth to death;
4) The brain extrapolates knowledge about a fragment of a thing on the whole thing or even wider, on a series or a class of objectively one-serial things which, as a matter of fact, is an illusion, not a real action of shifting or materialization.
So, D.I. Dubrovsky specified the third aspect of Democritus' eidolon doctrine in his own way. If Ideale as a product of Ideelle process that has the individual brain origin, then the responsibility
for it lays on some certain persons, not on all the people. To admit or not to admit any product of Ideelle process as the Ideale is a problem of personal creativity, recognition and decision, it is not something objectively necessary. The roots of Ideale are personal, subjective and dependent on consciousness of people; these roots are the individual head's ability to extrapolate. To rise from the knees in front of the great ones of the earth, not to recognize their ideological designs as unique, lawful, and obligatory, to live according to your own and personally created ideals are appeals set forward by D.I. Dubrovsky when he publicly addressed to the numerous listeners in the 90-s of the XX century.
I shall repeat that the discoveries described by M.A. Lifshitz, E.V. Ilyenkov and D.I. Dubrovsky historically followed in the reverse order. In the beginning, Dubrovsky searched Ideelle "close to the subject", opposing Ideelle as a pure subjective reality to materiality of practice and the world of objects. Later, Ilyenkov expanded the notion of Ideelle; he included some forms of material, practical, and sociocultural representation into it and concentrated on studying Ideelle "from the point of view of practice". At last, Lifshitz analyzed the problem from the objective point of "subject-object" correlation, expanding the notion of Ideelle even more. Thus, all real sides of 'subject-object' correlation have been investigated by materialistic philosophers, and the patrimonial property of Ideelle that is not to comprise any substance of the reflected thing, turned out to be inherent in all the sides of this "subject-object" correlation.
Really, the image of consciousness is not material; the practice scheme only models some object, but does not transfer the substance of the object into the subjective world of the person; the perfect thing (standard) embodies the system properties of the whole class of things, not the substance of this class, in a concentrated way.
Therefore, it is rational to assume that Ideelle is not simply either the subjective reality or the practice scheme, or an objective standard; it is a system property of the complete correlation between the subject and the object.
The development history of the psychological interiorization theory is a serious plausibility acknowledgement of the logic of the discussion about Ideelle described above. J. Piaget proved an enormous role of the objective standard (a children's toy) in the formation of operational scheme of thinking. The school of L.S. Vigotsky concentrated on studying the stages of interiorization of a subject's action schemes. The school of J. Brunner appeared original in finding the mechanisms of exarticulation of a complete mental image from a system of interiorized operations. In essence, the development psychologists' ideas have the same logic as the philosophical discussion on the Ideelle problem.
In the first case any individual person appears to be the creator of some Ideale (basically); in the second case, Ideale appears to be the product of collective invention; in the third case Ideale is understood as a wreath of objective evolution of this or that class of natural bodies and processes. However, both D.I. Dubrovsky and E.V. Ilyenkov did not refer to traditions of nominalism or Aristotle. M.A. Lifshitz proved his point of view with references to Plato and Hegel that openly showed his personal positive attitude to the philosophical tradition.
If Ideale is only a subjective image of some external objects or their copy, how can we theoretically distinguish it from the illusions of consciousness and other functions of a reflective brain? N.O. Lossky put forward the following argument against this point of view: having recognized that any Ideale is forever concluded in the internal cranium flesh and is never taken out into the daylight from the darkness of neurons, we deprive ourselves from the logical opportunity
to establish similarity between this Ideale and its external original; so then we hardly have the right to name it a "copy" of something external.
To name something a "copy", at first it is necessary to see the original directly in the front of one's eyes! If the original is not directly accessible, how do we know that Ideale (as well as any image of consciousness) is a copy of a certain objective essence or a thing? The sight at Ideale as at a form or scheme of practical contact between the subject and the object to some extent aids overcoming the logical deadlock of nominalism and solving the problem, whether we know the external world directly or only in the form of its copy images, in favour of recognizing the intersubjectivity of Ideale.
At the same time, the riddle is the origin of collective practice schemes: is our scheme of action with a given object similar to the object itself? For example, is the operation of weighing of a body on spring scales similar to the very essence of gravitation itself? It is impossible to answer this question only by studying the scheme of action, not having the direct knowledge of the object we operate. In this case the only thing that is necessary is to admit that Ideales are human inventions, they are developed as rules for actions. Ideale does not represent anything that is true or false, any illusion of individual consciousness; it is an intersubjective norm, tradition, and in such quality it has only one property, which is correctness or abnormality.
At last, regarding Ideale as on the accomplished sample of the most protogenic nature is concentrated in the intuitive reality and unconditional authenticity of Ideale. In this sense, any Ideale is understood not as a subjective copy of the perfect reality and not as a norm of activity adequate for this reality and behaviour of people, but namely as the reality that existed in the past and exists nowadays, despite of terrestrial human's occurrence. The validity of Ideale is thus thought
not in Stagirit's spirit of the truth concept (that is the doctrine about conformity of our knowledge to the objective world), and in sense of Russian word "ecTHHa" (that is "being"). From this point of view, Ideale cannot be invented, created by means of imagination; it is the same and eternal for all people; it can only be discovered in the nature. True Ideales should be distinguished from false inventions and the substitutes invented by stray people, blind people and deceivers.
Depending on what theory of Ideale we prefer, the concept of culture as Ideale-containing side of people's life will be understood exclusively as:
a) A subjective and spiritual phenomenon (there is only spiritual culture which is hidden; material means accompanying it are attributes of the cultural environment, but not of the culture itself);
b) Schemes, norms and rules of transformation of the physical world performed by people (culture is materialization, realization of intrinsic forces of human);
c) People's direct possession of the eternal, true, unconditional values which are not subject to the influence exerted by human activity history.
Being alternative, conceptions by Dubrovsky, Ilyenkov, and Lifshitz exclude each other in their final conclusions:
a) Ideelle is exclusively subjective experience;
b) Ideelle begins as a material action scheme and comes to the end as an image of consciousness;
c) at the starting point Ideelle is not dependent either on practice of a person, or on human consciousness.
Nevertheless, these conceptions have full rights to exist in science as stages of development of the problem of Ideelle, though they separately and in a new way reproduce only those different aspects of Ideelle reflection, which are closely
connected with each other within Democritus' eidolon doctrine. Nowadays this problem concerns more detailed coordination of these aspects with one another, in describing the existing alternatives in their real spheres of application and restricting their claims to be universal.
3. Synthetic theory of Ideelle and Ideale
The science of dialectics objects to external and forced connection of the specified opposite conceptions, demands their internal logical synthesis. In a way, our synthetic theory of Ideelle and Ideale constructed with the conscious consideration of the old tradition of combining properties of "eidos" (the "kind", sensually given concreteness, separateness) and "idea"" ("the general" of the things, inherent in their sorts and processes) corresponds to this task, therefore "Ideale" is understood as something "certain and general" (Pivovarov, 1986).
In the view of the given concept, the Ideale formation process can be explained as a process of mutual reflection of the subject and the object, the necessary components of which are the following:
a) Allocating in some sensually perceived environment an individual object that is admitted by a subject as accomplished, reference and representative;
b) Positioning this standard ("a sign on the hidden essence") in the subjective world of an individual by means of interiorization of the invented action scheme with the sample;
c) Extrapolation of empirical knowledge of certain properties of the standard on wider reality more often inaccessible in direct experience, i. e. oversensual.
In arising Ideale the singular towers up to the general (or universal general), it is organically combined and united with the general, and the contrast between them is dialectically removed.
Extrapolation of a sensually given to us part of the whole on the super sensual whole is provided with a variety of intellectual methods (analogy, induction, deduction, etc.) and has a neurophysiological basis. Selection and recognition of the standard and the invention of operations with it can be determined mainly either by the individual factor or by social forces.
Clearly illustrate it in a clearer way, I suggest thinking over the two simple examples:
1. In the past people imagined the Earth as a plane, because the way of a road down to the horizon was accepted as the standard of our planet; the practice of travelling by sea aided specification of Ideelle image of the Earth, first up to a hemisphere, and then, up to a sphere.
2. It is possible to imagine the features of inhabitants of a country where we have never been, owing to meeting, say, the ambassador of this country: we distribute the empirical knowledge of him to all the inhabitants of his country.
The constructed Ideelle images canbe inexact and even false but this is the way we compensate the lack of information about patrimonial through the knowledge of specific, and about the whole, through the knowledge of its part.
So, the knowledge of Ideale is provided with the merger of two cognitive abilities of the person, which are external perception of corporal properties of the representative (the standard, a sign, a symbol) and rational search of super sensual (transcendental) values of the standard. This search comes to an end with the subjective outwards projection of Ideelle image on the integrity of separate classes absent in the empirical experience and sorts of things or on the world as a whole. In formation of Ideale a huge role is played by imagination (Y.E. Golosovker called imagination "the basic instinct of culture"). People understand the world through Ideal subjects (for example, through gold as a
banknote) in which Marx saw "crystals of public attitudes".
Ideelle images of the same subjects in various cultures can be different from each other. E.G. Klassen notes:"Each epoch and each society puts forward its dominating forms: the Bible and the crucifix, a sword and a uniform, a bureaucratic instruction and an official armchair for expressing attitudes. In all the cases it is important for the subject to be recognized (truly or wrongly, voluntarily or violently, it is not essential) as a carrier of attitudes. When a thing is recognized as a public (or even divine) force, for the public mind it looks illuminated by the public mind, spiritualized by the public practice" (Klassen, 1905, p. 107).
The issue of Ideale validity is the following:
a) Establishing its representativity and perfection in correlation with the standard, with a related class of things and processes;
b) Determining the limits of knowledge extrapolation of this standard on the widest and the most infinite areas of any being.
Intuitive mystical (direct, therefore super cultural) comprehension of super sensual integrity is opposite to the Ideelle way of world development. Basically, some especially gifted people can go to the formation of Ideale in the reverse way: in the beginning their mystical inspiration comprehends the limited integrity (of people, society, nature, or God), and then they express the silent vision in public language, embody it in sensually perceivable signs and symbols.
Hence, Ideale can be formed in an internal cultural way (when we go back from empirical to transcendental representations) or in external cultural (prophetical) way. It was specified by Plato when he described the two ways of heavenly ideas comprehension. According to the points expressed above, any Ideale has its material and
spiritual sides, but does not happen to be either exclusively material, or pure spiritual.
As any other sign, Ideale has corporal flesh and supersensual value. That it shy it is wrong to subdivide culture (as the Ideale containing side of people's life) into certain material and spiritual cultures that is done pretty often by culturologists. Unlike a usual sign, Ideale is very important not only due to its value, but also owing to its corporal embodiment.
When, for example, we are reading a book, it is not the graphics of the letters and words that is important to us, but its super sensual content that is out of the physical space of the book; the values of the words are "on the other side" of the book's space. There is a special philosophical problem: in what space, real or illusory, does our consciousness project Ideelle images arising at the act of reading? In case of operating Ideale, our attention simultaneously forks: on one hand, it concentrates on the sensually given body of the representative as the centre of speculative transcendental integrity, and on the other hand, it aspires to this integrity itself, trying to seize the whole of its escaping content.
Because of such ambivalence of the attitude of a person towards Ideale, culture is and is not a sensual reality at the same time; that is why it is eternally mysterious for an extraneous observer and researcher. Only its native carrier is more or less capable of comprehending and experiencing it, as he is able to switch from admiring corporal flesh of Ideale to perceiving its super sensual spiritual value. To a foreign person shipped in alternative culture, the alien culture mainly appears in frozen, "sleeping" material forms, as certain symbolical flesh, system of idols.
But concerning a member of a cultural community (as a culture carrier), Ideale also behaves doubly. In one case, Ideale forces us to take interest in its flesh, concreteness, perfection, uniqueness. Then culture turns to its carrier
with its material side, becomes cultivation of material assets, and turns into idolatry. That is what happens, for example, to religion, art, or science when the spiritual content of their Ideales becomes less significant than their material side, and the primary thing that is cultivated is the flesh of cultural symbols i.e. the external and ceremonial sides of the culture.
In another case the accent in the attitude towards Ideale can shift on the super sensual content of a cultural symbol, when the person is drawn to the objective integrity which is hidden behind a symbol. Then culture shows its spiritual side, turns into cultivation of the raised and extending spirit and ceases to be idolatry even if we are speaking about pagans.
Ideale is an ingenious idea, "ancestor idea" which does not demand any fundamental ideas for its substantiation. Basically, any ordinary object can turn into a short-living Ideale if the individual recognizes it as one, or if ideologists manage to convince the masses of people that this object is perfect and demands the most respectful attitude. The force of a social Ideale is its common recognition. If it is found out that the selected object is imperfect and it has lost its representativeness, it is gradually discredited, the belief in it weakens, and the culture based on the sum of such Ideales passes and disappears. And still, ideology is already justified by the fact that even an objectively false Ideale sometimes becomes a constructive beginning of public life, conducts to success, yet short-living.
4. Models of cultural Ideales' genesis
Who forms or opens the basic cultural Ideales? Within the framework of philosophy of culture the given problem is known as the "hero and crowd" problem. Among its solutions, three traditions, or three models can be pointed out.
The first model can be called the "elite model": the true hero (a prophet, an outstanding
figure, a genius in the certain area of life and knowledge) opens or invents a new Ideale; other people gradually recognize this invention and start to cultivate the innovation. The hero knows that in the beginning people will turn away from the prophet, will mock at him and will hardly apprehend his doctrine. Nevertheless, the hero is convinced that the perfection opened or invented by him sooner or later will be recognized by everyone and will become the general Ideale. This can happen even after the hero is dead. In the given model the Ideale formation is characterized by optimistic tragedy. This way, by a "true hero" Narodniks (Russian populists) meant a prophet whom the people cannot understand at the present, but who is definitely not a false idol of the crowd. V.I. Surikov has embodied the Narodniks' Ideale in his artworks "Boyarynya Morozova" and "Stepan Razin".
The second model we shall name the "sobornaya (collective) model": socially and professionally divided people aspire to overcome their lack of personality by completing their intrinsic forces with the search of the universal intermediary that would be a general Ideale. On the basis of mutual agreement they arrive at the collective decision, put forward the selected person on a pedestal, establish laws of behaviour and state life, and define rules and norms of activity. Cultivation of the accepted samples turns into tradition. Generality of Ideale can be explained by the fact that at its development the opinions of all participants of the primary community were considered. For example, some supporters of Slavophilism developed the communal model of fundamental Ideales of Russian life.
The third model is the "model of individual evolution": each individual is basically capable of becoming a miscellaneous developed personality by means of gradual evolution, and of being independent of everyone in his search and selection of Ideales; sooner or later, everyone will
grow up to become the creator of his own Ideales. This point of view goes back to H. Spenser's positivism, expressing hopes and expectations of free entrepreneurs' class. Supporters of the given model reflect upon individual and public Ideales in the spirit of relativism. F. Nietzsche's "overman" can also be considered to a certain extent as the sample of comprehensively developed person of the future individual creating Ideales necessary for him. The back of this model and its logical end are expressed in the slogans "God is dead!" and "Everything is allowed!"
Each of these three models can be revealing this or that real moment of the process of Ideale formation in its own way. The synthetic theory of Ideale considers and explains elite, collective and individual evolutionary aspects of Ideale recognition. The sacral Ideales in the base of any powerful culture have elite origin, they are introduced into the society by prophets, and are dictated by God. Unlike the Scriptus which embodied the initial culture Ideales, Tradition changes these Ideales in a collective way and transforms worshiping them into steady traditions. Every member of the cultural community in his own way refracts authoritative Ideales in his world outlook, growing up to deeper understanding or, on the contrary, overgrowing and then refusing them. Ideales of lower order (super structural ideals) can be of simpler origin, i.e. can be created by usual people, individually or collectively, or can appear by sudden inspiration or by means of intensive brain storm.
All members of cultural community anyhow, let differently, participate in manufacturing and reproducing the ideals system of a certain culture, and owing to that the culture becomes integral, inseparable. The opinion on two contradictory cultures inside some national culture that was widespread until recent times in Soviet literature, is, most likely, ideological fiction. Antisystematic tendency inside any
separate culture that exists in the form of negative potential is a different issue.
An important role in generating a future valid Ideale is played by religion, philosophy, fiction literature and other way of forming public consciousness. They do not display the already existing life of the society so much, as they try to create samples of the future person. In any culture there is a constant struggle between hostile ideals, one of which is aimed at stabilization of the developed culture, and others are aimed at its transformation or destruction. The knowledge of the properties and laws of the Ideale forming process enables us to explain the birth, blossoming and destruction of individual, national and world cultures in a theoretical way, to understand the reasons of attraction and repelling between coexisting cultures, to trace the interaction between the sacral basis and the secular superstructure in the cultural system.
5. Ideale and Culture
In different epochs, different prototype Ideales existed in the European cultures: space (Antiquity), God (Middle Ages), human (Renaissance), state (New time), nature (the first half of the XIX - the first half of the XX centuries), text (the postmodern of the second half of the XX century), Internet (the end of the XX - the beginning of the XXI centuries). Some people prefer living with the highest ideals of their culture and do not like prosaic values. Others, on the contrary, are guided by utilitarian values and are deaf to sacral senses. The third manage to somehow harmonize the sacred and the secular in their attitude towards life.
The Ideale forming process breaks off the direct communication between the person, nature and other people. It fits in between the subject and the object, changing both of them. The individual becomes the subject in those forms that he chooses from the Ideales
of personal and social culture. Adjustment for behaviour in accordance with the recognized Ideale, belief in this Ideale, rational reflection on it and its immersing into the sphere of personal conscience; all these processes are responsible for the activation and the general education of the person, the main orientation of his activity, the style of the individual as a subject. The integral progress criterion, objective for all the civilizations, can hardly be found.
It is logical to measure progress of any certain culture with a degree of its major Ideales' realization (for example, one society aspires to monarchy as Ideale, while another aspires to republic). The disappointment in the basic social Ideales entails the society's losing its belief in progress. As the basic Ideales noticeably differ in coexisting cultures or in the cultures replacing each other, the main progress criteria are essentially incommensurable for them.
The object of practice and knowledge considered by the subject through the prism of his Ideales, is subjectively loaded with properties of the standard; the external world is perceived by the subject as something filled with sense, as the Book of nature. Remaining an original and culturally neutral fragment of the protogenic or social world in its flesh, the object of our activity is at the same time involuntarily allocated with cultural attributes and eidetic properties; in its relation to the subject it represents objective essences and laws.
Hidden imprinting of Ideale into the flesh of a definite object is caused not only by "projecting" the character of subjective human reality, but also by real integrity of the external world; therefore, it would not be right to reduce giving cultural senses to an object to empty illusions of consciousness. The slogan "back from culture to nature" proclaimed from time to time by pessimistic thinkers is naive and practically unattainable.
So, culture differs from nature ("not-culture") in the way that a culture carrier obligatorily corresponds with any object (alive or inert, natural or artificial) only by means of Ideale. As a constituent of culture, Ideale acts as an intermediary between people and things, an intermediary between people, a bridge between consciousness and self-consciousness of the individual, a mid-tier between a believer and his sacred object. Even the condition of absolute loneliness hardly plunges the individual into true wildness and life outside the culture.
A person does not simply eat, drink and reproduce, like animals do. The stages of historical development of Homo sapiens are defined by how and in what ways people mediate their biological functions with their personal and social Ideales. A spoon, a fork, a cloth, saying a prayer before meals and other apparently neutral things and actions mediate the process of eating, they make human physiology more cultural. If it is true that a human being is what it eats, then the primary sacral sense of this expression becomes quite clear: the primary sacral sense put into the concepts of farming culture, culture of wheat, culture of animal industries.
Craft samples, handicraft and art techniques, methods of society management and other Ideales that make industrial and public work steady, have been carefully passed on from generation to generation, turning into the "canvas" of traditions. They have been accompanied by mysteries, divine services, oaths, and infringers of the oaths were given to prosecution.
It does not matter in what measure the sacred and the secular are combined in the processes of cooking and eating, in scientific and technical methods, in measurement methods, in art traditions, rules and norms of daily behaviour, etc., all these samples remain inherent Ideales. We have got used to see something necessarily exciting, sacred, high,
leaving for sphere of a common life in Ideale; such Ideales that grow from the ground of cultures are consecrated by religion. However, no culture is reduced to its base only and no culture is identical to religion.
From the image of culture as of a system consisting of a "firm kernel" and a "protective belt", the derivative model of culture in the form of a pyramid follows: its basis consists of religious Ideales, the top is made of such Ideales as the standard metre bar kept in Paris, masterpieces of culinary art, norms of currency rate conversion etc. In this sense it is possible to say that culture has a temple nature if we define a temple as a ritually organized space with a relic in the centre. The subordination and coordination of communications between the base (sacral) and secular Ideales is very complex; the basis and its superstructure are mediated by an abundance of transitive forms; all this variety of communications alloyed in the culture's boiling pot generates the total property of the culture, its inseparable integrity.
If it is so, then it is wrong to reduce the integrity of culture in the unity of its essence and existence to its religious archetype or to
secular attributes. In this sense culture does not happen to be purely religious or secular, but to some extent inside itself it contains both religious and secular components. Ideale is a result of the accomplished process of any object (thing, idea, person, etc.) recognition, concentrating the essence of ordinary objects of the same kind or sort in itself. The thing taken for an Ideale can appear truly and originally perfect and express either the genotype of the whole class of similar things, or the top of phenotypic development of the same class.
But sometimes, the opposite occurs: Ideales are substituted by idols, and people can mistakenly recognize something absolutely casual and defective for realized perfection. The image of saviour Jesus Christ has been serving as an example of the first case for two thousand years; the Ideale of Pavlik Morozov, the traitor of his relatives, overthrown in our country in the 90s of the XX century is an example of the second one. Anyway, the validity or falsity of Ideale is established retroactively; they are caused by the terms of existence of a "firm kernel" of culture and durability of its "protective belt" and by long practice.
References (all in Russian)
D.I. Dubrovsky, The Problem Of Ideelle (Moscow, 2002).
D.I. Dubrovsky, Psychic Phenomena And The Brain (Moscow, 1971), 187, 189). G. Hegel, Works Of Different Years (Moscow, 1970, vol. I), 298.
E.V. Ilyenkov, "The Problem Of Ideelle", Questions of Philosophy, 6 (1979), 136, 155, 156. E.V. Ilyenkov, "Ideelle", Philosophical Encyclopaedia (Moscow, 1962. Vol. 2), 219-227. E.G. Klassen, "The Recognized And The Realized", Philosophical Sciences, 5 (1990), 107. M.A. Lifshitz, "About Ideelle And Real", Questions of Philosophy, 10 (1984), 120-145. A.F. Losev, Being. Name. Cosmos (Moscow, 1993), 346-458.
A.F. Losev, Sketches Of Antique Symbolism And Mythology (Moscow, 1993a, vol. 1), 135-281.
A.F. Losev, Aesthetics Of The Renaissance (Moscow, 1978), 277.
D.V. Pivovarov, The Problem Of The carrier Of An Ideelle Image (Sverdlovsk, 1986).
Идеальное и идеал
Д. В. Пивоваров
Уральский федеральный университет Россия 620083, Екатеринбург, Ленина, Россия, 51
Эта статья посвящена такому важному философскому вопросу, как проблема идеального. Автор различает два смысла «идеального», обозначая эти значения немецкими словами «Ideelle» и «Ideale». Выявлена этимология «Ideelle» и «Ideale», описана история данных понятий. Проанализированы и сопоставлены три наиболее авторитетные в России концепции идеального и идеала - концепции Д.И. Дубровского, Э.В.Ильенкова и М.А. Лифшица. Предпринята попытка диалектически обобщить эти альтернативные концепции в рамках «синтетической концепции идеального». Идеал рассматривается как субстрат всякой культуры. Обсуждается тема автора базового идеала культуры.
Ключевые слова: идея, эйдос, эйдолон, образец, репрезентант, схема действия, экстраполяция, синтетическая концепция идеального.
