An Idealist View of Life

Radhakrishnan's Idealist/Religious Philosophy

Philosophical idealism has been a distinctly minority position since early in the 20th Century and more than once has almost been given up for dead in some quarters. I have been following-up an interest in the American idealist philosopher Josiah Royce (1855 -- 1916) by studying some of the various attempts to restate an idealist philosophy since Royce's day. There is more than might be supposed. Although it has faded in importance, idealism has always had strong, articulate defenders and they continue to the present day.

I hadn't known this book "An Idealist View of Life" by the Indian philosopher Sarvepali Radhakrishnan (1888 -- 1975 and was drawn to it by an unlikely source. I had been reading a volume called "The Philosophy Book" (2016) by Gregory Bassham which presents, for the general reader, "250 Milestones in the History of Philosophy from the Vedas to the New Atheists". Each "milestone" gets a page of text with a picture on the facing page. "An Idealist View of Life" is, surprisingly enough, one of the "milestones" in this book. After reading Bassham's brief discussion, I concluded it was a book I needed to seek out and read.

Radhakrishnan had a long career as a philosopher and taught at Oxford. He is known for his work in making Indian philosophy and Indian texts accessible in the West. In 1929, Radharkishnan delivered the lectures which became this book as the Hibbert Lectures at Manchester. Many famous philosophers before and after, including William James and Josiah Royce, have delivered the Hibbert Lectures, an annual, non-sectarian series of lectures on religious issues.

I found it interesting that Radhakrishnan would devote his lectures to philosophical idealism. There are other approaches to religious philosophy in addition to an idealism some would find outmoded. Conversely, idealism often is linked to a religious philosophy; but this is not always the case.

"Idealism" itself is an ambiguous term, and this book points to several different understandings in metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Rahdakrishnan takes a broad non-technical view of idealism equating its focus on mind and consciousness with the concerns of religion. He writes early in his study addressing the nature of idealism:

"An idealist view finds that the universe has meaning, has value. Ideal values are the dynamic forces, the driving power of the universe. The world is intelligible only as a system of ends. Such a view has little to do with the view with whether a thing is only a particular image or a general relation. The question of the independence of the knower and the known is hardly relevant to it."

A few paragraphs later, Rahdakrishnan continues:

"An idealist view of life is not expressed in any one pattern. It is many-coloured and its forms are varied; yet underneath all the variations and oppositions, there are certain common fundamental assumptions that show them all to be products of the same spirit. .... The absolute is reality, consciousness, and freedom ... the idealist outlook of an ultimate connection of value and reality is maintained. For Plato, the meaning of the universe is the realization of the Good. The universe exists for that purpose.

The burden of this book is to explain the idealistic understanding of reality in the form of an all-encompassing spirit which for Radhakrishnan includes God in a more traditional Western theistic sense. The book argues strongly for an intuitionist view of knowledge of ultimate reality as opposed to the discursive knowledge of science. Radhakrishnan argues that the various philosophical movements which have displaced idealism, such as pragmatism or naturalism, do not provide adequately for the human search for meaning in life. Sometimes this claimed "inadequacy" appears to be logical in character, but I think Radhakrishnan more often speaks in a looser, less-technical way to suggest that human meaning in this life requires, logically or not, a commitment to an all-encompassing absolute.

The book consists of eight chapters and it is sometimes difficult to follow their thread. The author explains the course of the book in a brief Preface. He begins by showing the challenges to religion in modern life in terms of science, social studies, and politics. These challenges continue today. Then the author examines briefly various proposed alternatives to his religious idealism, including, among other things, atheism, agnosticism, humanism, and pragmatism. The third chapter of the book begins to draw on human experience and on felt human needs to explore the nature of the religious consciousness. Radhakrishnan then argues that their is a broader scope to human knowledge than that provided by science. (He says there are other types of "certainty" besides scientific "certainty". I am rephrasing the point in a way I think helps him out.) In the fifth chapter, pivotal to the book, Radhakrishnan argues for immediacy and intuition as a driving part of human knowledge in the arts, sciences, and religion. The sixth and seventh chapters explore the sciences, physical and biological, as they were in Radhakrishnan's day. He seems to argue that an idealistic theory of consciousness is required to make sense even of, for example, evolutionary theory. These are probably the least persuasive sections of the book and I doubt they are critical to Radhakrishnan's broader position. In the final chapter, Radharishnan discusses his absolute idealism and its view of the nature of reality and ties it in with traditional religious questions.

The book is non-sectarian in character. The author takes pains to separate his idealistic view of the nature of religion and reality from the symbols that are adopted in various ways by particular religions to point to ultimate truth.

Much of this book, particularly the discussion of intuitive knowledge and the discussion of the broad basis for absolute idealism is beautifully and passionately written. The author shows great erudition in exploring the history of Western idealism from Plato through Kant, Hegel, Whitehead, and much more. His heart and his main philosophical influence still lies with Hindu Scriptures and philosophical texts beginning with the Vedas. These texts were used by earlier Western idealist thinkers as well and have become increasingly better known. But Radhakrishnan shows a great gift for presenting Hindu and Buddhist teachings and relating them in to Western thought.

There is much that is inspiring and much to be learned from this "An Idealist View of Life". I was fortunate to get to know it. Readers with a serious interest in idealism or the history of idealism in the Twentieth Century or in religious philosophy will benefit from this book.

Robin Friedman