Idealism: The Primacy of the Good

IDEALISM: THE PRIMACY OF THE GOOD W HEN Kant concludes that the nature of mind is necessarily dialectical in regard to its highest objects , and that therefore it can never make any assertion about these objects without at the same time being aware that it may with equal validity make the contradictory assertion, we may take issue with him for having done what he says could not be done, viz, for having made a conclusion about the noumenon. If, however, he would restrict his statement to saying that the history of mind reveals it taking dialectically opposed positions, we could go along with him. For, as a matter of fact, the history of the mind's odyssey does reveal that it has set out to search identical objectives, but has beached upon the most diverse shores, confident that there it has found its goal. In this paper we are interested in attempting to understand why one of the traditional courses pursued by the mind is what has come to be called " Idealism," and in attempting to come to some conclusion about the validity of such a course. In general, all in the tradition agree that the function of mind is specifically thought. But it is inaccurate merely to say that thought is the function of mind, for thought presupposes a factor other than mind. Thought, it is true, is the function of the mind, but being thought is the function of the object as intelligible; and since there is never a thinking without a being thought upon, thought, consisting of these two elements, supposes a thinking subject and ·an object that is thought about. Thought, therefore, is a bipolar phenomenon, a relation. Like all relations, the continuance in being of thought depends upo:Q. the stability or transitoriness of the terms constituting the relation. But since the kind and act of existence in thought is formally conditioned by mind, which like all formal principles 16 IDEALISM: THE PRIMACY OF THE GOOD 17 comes to be fully only by determining an act of existence, an unstable relation means that the mind does not fully realize itself, while a stable relation gives the mind the possibility of existing fully. But if it is the mind that accounts for the formal perfection of this relation of thought, and if in the existence of thought mind finds its perfection, we cannot account for the instability of this relation by attributing it to mind. For that would mean that the same formal principle was responsible for both the perfection and lack of perfection of thought. Therefore , limitation in the perfection of thought must be from the part of the object thought about, since it is the only other conditioning principle in the existence of thought. From this we can further deduce that since the mind's coming to be in thought is someh~w dependent upon something extrinsic to mind and to the mind's act of existence----viz., the object-the mind will be related to the object as to a contrary, as knower to known. There are, however, two possible ways in which contraries can act upon each other: " (a) the extinction of one of two contraries by the other, or (b) the maintenance of what is potential by the agency of what is actual and already like what is acted upon, with such likeness as is compatible with one's being actual and the other potentiaL" 1 Now, since we have already seen that the mind's functioning, which is its actuality, includes as essential aspects 1 itself and the object, obviously the kind of interaction exercised by the object upon the mind, as that of one contrary on another, will fall under type (b). Therefore, as an essential condition for the mind's full existence , we can posit that an agent-patient relationship must exist between mind and object, and the object must be actually what the mind becomes materially, or contentually, in an act of knowledge. This seems to demand that the object be as intelligible material prior to its actually being known by the mind, i. e., before it comes to exist as fully known by the same act...