Being is the sphere or subject-matter of knowledge, and knowledge is to know the nature of Being.

—Plato, The Republic

I will soon post a short series on the metaphysical idealism of Georg Hegel. What follows is a prolegomena which seeks to lay the foundation of what will come and provide some helpful interpretation of the concepts discussed. I am critical of idealism—the notion that the mind determines reality or that all reality is ultimately reducible to mind. Dr. Mortimer Adler once called idealism “the greatest of all modern philosophical mistakes.”¹ So we will begin this introduction by discussing the concepts of “idea” and “reality” in order to see why idealism is such a significant error, and more specifically for this series, Hegelian idealism. Finally, we will discover that reality is not monistic (reducible to only one thing) but pluralistic due to the three modes of existence (real being, mental being, and intentional being). Monistic Hegelian idealism is an over simplification of reality.

To begin, we will start with Being or reality. In philosophy, the term ‘being’ most simply refers to the fact that something exists. It can be further analyzed into abstract being (such as ideas, mathematical entities, fictional characters, etc. that exist mentally) and concrete being (people, furniture, and things that can be experienced with the senses). Aristotle taught that the study of being as being is the primary concern for the metaphysician. In the realist tradition, the fact of being and theories about it are two distinctly separate ontological and epistemological questions (because one’s epistemological theories about reality might turn out to be wrong). Being, therefore, is another term for reality or that which is or exists in some way.² Philosopher John Macquarrie provides this helpful etymology,

“To ‘exist’ or ‘ex-sist’ (Latin: ex-sistere) meant originally to ‘stand out’ or ‘emerge’. Thus the verb probably had a more active feel about it than it does now. To exist was to emerge or stand out from the background as something really there. Putting it more philosophically, to exist is to stand out from nothing”. ³

To exist, or to stand out from nothing applies to individual things and the universe as whole. It is important to keep in mind, however, that Being is not the study of one thing among the already existing things which exist; it is the study of why and how the universe is the way it is and explores the fundamental principles of its existence. When looking at the universe as whole, Being is not a genus. This will be helpful when it comes to understanding Hegel’s metaphysical understanding of the world. For Hegel, the fundamental principle of the universe is what he calls “world-spirit” or mind.

The series will explore the three modes of being—real being, mental being, and intentional being. These modes of being help us to understand that ideas are always about something. Ideas themselves do not create reality or have productive power. Aristotle is a helpful guide here. In his Metaphysics, he states, “It is not because we think truly that you are pale, that you are pale, but because you are pale we who say this have the truth.”⁴ Aristotle is saying three important things. First, the being of the mind is different from being in complete reality.⁵ Second, just because we ‘think’ something is the case, does not make it so. Mental being, although real being (because the individual mind exists in reality), is not the same thing as external or actual real being (complete reality in Aristotelian terms). Third, there is a primacy in Aristotelian metaphysics of that which is in ‘act’ or physical existence. There is a primacy to external reality in classical metaphysics. The reason for this emphasis is that it is impossible to deny that being is. Mental being is different in kind, from physical reality. As we will see, intentional being, demonstrates that ideas are always of something else, and are grounded in both external reality and mental being.

What will be developed in future posts are what classical philosophers call the three modes of being—real being, mental being and intentional being. Real being, is physical reality—that which exists apart from the mind and independent of it. Real being exists exist whether or not the mind perceives it and is completely independent of the mind. Mental being includes subjective and objective acts of the mind. Mental being includes the subjective feelings that would not exist apart from the individual and the objective acts of memory and fictional characters. Antigone is a mental character but objective, a real character of literary fiction. The same is true regarding historical figures. Joseph Stalin once lived in reality but now is an objective figure of memory and history. Not all mental being is strictly subjective. Intentional being can only exist when there are two or more minds that can communicate about an object. The object could be an act of the mind or something in physical reality. In a sense, intentional being, is a via media, or middle way, between real being and mental being. Intentional being points to the ability of the individual mind to be “about,” bent towards, stretched out to, or focused on something. It is an act of cognition and includes the immaterial or universal nature of being because the mind is immaterial. The mind itself understands through a mode of immaterial existence. Through perception, the intellect receives the universal or essence of the object. This is possible, because the human mind can make abstractions about physical reality. What must be remembered, however, is that intentional being completely relies on both real and mental being. As we will see, all of this is collapsed in Hegelian idealism. To be an idealist one must deny real being.

Intentional being points us to at least two important concepts. The first is classical realism and how universals are to be understood and, secondly, that ideas are always of something (the primacy of real being). Daniel Sullivan provides a very helpful understanding of classical or moderate realism:

The view of philosophers in the tradition of Aristotle and St. Thomas is that what is known exists as universal in the intellect, but as individual outside the mind. This position is called Moderate Realism. It is called realism because the universals really do exist in the intellect; moderate, because their existence stops there. Since the form universalized in the intellect is identical with the form individuated in the thing, we can say, following the traditional formula, that our ideas are universal in the intellect only, but have a foundation in things. Implied in this view of the nature of the idea is the spirituality of the intellect (otherwise the universal could not exist there) and the matter and form composition of all corporeal substances, including man.⁶

When it comes to understand Hegel, is important to realize that he was correct about the immateriality of the mind. What Hegel failed to understand is that Being is composed of both the material and immaterial. Mathematicians know that this is intuitively correct. Even Max Planck, the father of quantum physics, understood this, “As there is a material object behind every sensation, so there is a metaphysical reality behind everything that human experience shows to be real.”⁷ Part of real being is that it demonstrates mathematical and immaterial qualities. But Hegel mistakenly makes all reality part of an immaterial world-spirit. In this sense, Hegelian idealism (and idealism in general) is Gnostic—the theological error which denies or denigrates the existence of real being.

The second point, that ideas refer to something else is best illustrated by Dr. Mortimer Adler:

In view of the fact that ideas are natural signs which signify, refer to, or intend objects as their natural referents or significates, it would seem appropriate to speak of the mode of existence possed by objects as intentional existence… ideas are intentions of the mind. Their intentionality consists in their having significates or objects. Objects, as intended or signified, have intententional existence.⁸

In other words, ideas are the signs which signify reality. They are descriptive of the world around us, but not the world itself. Before Kant and Hegel, no philosopher in the Western intellectual tradition confused or conflated the concept of idea with reality.

After Aristotle, Augustine was among the first to point to intentional existence and the ability of the human mind to discern it. Regarding immaterial principles of reality such as mathematics and the laws of logic (noncontradiction, identity, excluded middle), Augustine explains, “I have heard the sounds of the words by which their meaning is expressed when they are discussed, but the words are one thing and the principles another. The words may sometimes be spoken in Latin and at other times in Greek, but the principles are neither Greek nor Latin.”⁹ Intentional being is possible because the mind can hold the principle as an object of thought and discuss it regardless of the language used. The idea points to the thing signified (object of mental being or object of real being). Intentional being is not the thought itself. Augustine further explicates this idea in his book On Christian Doctrine. The mind holds a middle way between the immaterial (the mind, mathematics, logic, moral truths, aesthetics, questions of value and meaning, etc.) and the empirical material worlds. Human existence lives between these two worlds. Regarding the mind, Augustine reminds us, “… it holds a middle place between the unchangeable truth above it and the changeable things beneath it…”¹⁰ In classical terms, the mind holds a middle place between real being and mental being. Intentional being brings these worlds together and helps us to make sense out of reality.

The next few posts will explore the nature of being, reality and idea as they are to be correctly understood. We’ll discover why Hegelian idealism is not a helpful view of reality. Why should we put this emphasis on reality and defend the classical view of moderate realism? The reason is that we want to be rightly and correctly related to reality as it actually is. When one is correctly aligned with reality, intellectual integrity and wholeness is brought about. An integrated philosophical perspective will help us to understand and live in reality as it is.

Works Cited

Adler, Mortimer. Adler’s Philosophical Dictionary: 125 Key Terms for the Philosopher’s Lexicon. New York, NY: Scribner, 1995.

———. The Four Dimensions of Philosophy: Metaphysical, Moral, Objective, Categorical. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1993.

Aristotle. Metaphysics. Vol. 7. Great Books of The Western World. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1996.

Augustine. On Christian Doctrine. Vol. 16. Great Books of The Western World. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., n.d.

———. The Confessions. Vol. 16. Great Books of the Western World. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1993.

Macquarrie, John. Existentialism: An Introduction, Guide, and Assessment. New York: Penguin Books, 1973.

Planck, Max. Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers. Translated by Frank Gaynor. Vol. 56. Great Books of The Western World. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1993.

Sullivan, Daniel. An Introduction to Philosophy: Perennial Principles of the Classical Realist Tradition. Charlotte, North Carolina: TAN Books, 2009.

1Mortimer Adler, Adler’s Philosophical Dictionary: 125 Key Terms for the Philosopher’s Lexicon (New York, NY: Scribner, 1995).

2As we will discover, things can be said to exist in different ways, depending on their mode of being.

3John Macquarrie, Existentialism: An Introduction, Guide, and Assessment (New York: Penguin Books, 1973)., 62.

4Aristotle, Metaphysics, vol. 7, Great Books of The Western World (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1996), 577.

5In book IX, chapter 3 of his Metaphysics, Aristotle connects ‘act’ with ‘complete reality’.

6Daniel Sullivan, An Introduction to Philosophy: Perennial Principles of the Classical Realist Tradition (Charlotte, North Carolina: TAN Books, 2009), 72.

7Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers, trans. Frank Gaynor, vol. 56, Great Books of The Western World (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1993), 97.

8Mortimer Adler, The Four Dimensions of Philosophy: Metaphysical, Moral, Objective, Categorical (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1993), 113.

9Augustine, The Confessions, vol. 16, Great Books of the Western World (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1996), 95.

10Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, vol. 16, Great Books of The Western World (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1996), 736.