Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

Leibniz’s ‘monadology’. (Confusingly, idealism is a term also sometimes used to mean philosophies that point towards the perfectibility of the human species or nature in general, such as in Hegel. Even more confusingly, transcendental philosophy is a term sometimes used to refer to this latter meaning of idealism.)

Idealism is often used in opposition to ‘naturalism’. Naturalism is more or less the common-sense view of the world — that what is seen out there in the real world can just be accepted and can be explored and explained by empirical methods. Naturalism is more or less the view described in earlier chapters as naïve realism.

Another meta-narrative of sorts is ‘immaterialism’. This is not quite solipsism (the view that there is nothing except thoughts in my head) but it denies any kind of external reality of a material nature. If it is not idealism then it is difficult to see what immaterialism really amounts to. But one idea is that the universe is all about energy and forces — all about ‘relations’ — so therefore more or less the current view of physics — although one that physics is surely intent on overturning!

Transcendental idealism is the name given to a particular type of metaphysics — especially ideas put forward by Plato, Kant and Schopenhauer. (But please note again, the distinction mentioned above. The type of philosophy described here is not pointing towards the perfectibility of either nature or the human species.) Here, there is a transcendental other world of some kind, which provides the

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