The Standpoint of My Idealism

I am an Idealist. My own species of Idealism, as yet unsystematized, is a variation on an Absolutistic theme. The direction, style, and substance of my thought has been heavily shaped by the profound and fruitful insights of the late-19th and early-20th century British and American Idealists (e.g., F.H. Bradley, Bernard Bosanquet, R.B. Haldane, J.M.E. McTaggart, G.F. Stout, J.B. Baillie, T.H. Green, J.F. Ferrier, etc.; and Josiah Royce, Mary Whiton Calkins, Brand Blanshard, G.W. Cunningham, Edmund Hollands, etc.). I am also greatly indebted to the genius of Arthur Schopenhauer for introducing me to the standpoint of Idealism. In keeping with heritage of Idealism, I strive to maintain a holistic conception of metaphysics and a synoptic philosophical methodology—a manner of inquiry that is vehemently anti-reductionist in its approach, perspective, and reasoning.

The prominent features of my metaphysic which give it an Absolutistic flare are the following: Reality is neither a thing among things (e.g., the set of all sets); nor is it a collection or aggregatum of things. Likewise, Reality is neither a laundry list of “facts,” nor is it an abstraction arrived at through the summation of isolated and disjointed elements, in seriatim. On the contrary, Reality is not an “abstract idea,” rather it is a concrete universal; a self-specifying, self-determining, self-maintaining, and internally-differentiated system. Reality is the One coherent, comprehensive, and intelligible Individual. Reality is an Absolute.

Now, as stated above, my metaphysic is thoroughly Idealistic in substance and form. It is Idealistic not only in the sense that Experience brings us into communion with the Absolute, but also in the sense that Experience is continuous with the Absolute. Indeed, I hold that Absolute is genuinely conceivable or thinkable only in terms of “Experience” (or “Spirit”). The Absolute is one with my own center of Experience and other centers of Experience as that concrete and actual system of meanings which rational, purposive agents (as well as non-rational agents) possessive of those centers of Experience, must acknowledge and take into consideration (or conform to) in the pursuit and fulfillment of their respective subjective interests, goals, plans, desires, and fundamental needs.