What is Impersonal Idealism?
Not All Gods are Personal or Persons
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
In the philosophy of Impersonal Idealism, universal ideals are equated with the concept of a god. One of this philosophy's spokesmen, Edward Gleason Spaulding, put it thus: "God is the totality of values, both existent and subsistent and of those agencies and efficiencies with which these values are identical."
In this fashion, "God" is conceived of as being an impersonal system of values worthy of veneration and worship - the eternal Platonic values like justice, beauty, truth and goodness would be fitting examples here. Because those Platonic Forms are regarded as eternally valid ideals or principles, such a god cannot be a person or conscious mind. Impersonal Idealism can be contrasted with traditional forms of theism which purport to worship a source of such values rather than the values themselves.
Impersonal Idealism can also be contrasted with the sort of monotheism where people worship a personal god. The gods of different types of Impersonal Idealism are nothing like those of traditional, orthodox Christianity and Judaism - in the latter, the gods have at the very least personal qualities like intention, desire, and goals which a "totality of values" cannot. Even Allah in Islam is very different, despite the fact that anthropomorphism is considered blasphemous for Muslims and ideally, Allah is denied to have any qualities in common with humans.
Despite these differences, Idealism itself has played an important role in the development of the theologies of many religious belief systems, and it has also been very influential in the philosophy of religion through much of the 18th century. For example, idealism has argued that the ultimate reality is actually spirit or mind; as a consequence, many religions have developed over time an anti-materialist stance by adopting the position, for example, that our true natures are spirit rather than matter.
The influence of idealism on the philosophy of religion is due primarily to the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a German philosopher who saw the progress of human history as a progress of spirit, with objective spirit (law, ethics) overcoming subjective spirit (individual psychology) and objective spirit being overcome by absolute spirit (the union of God and man).
-->