Talk:Actual idealism

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Um, this has potential to be a great article, but a lot of the wording is truly alienating. Is it at all possible to generalize into a more immediately appreciable form, for the philosophically inept? (ahem!) If I knew ANYTHING about this, I would try myself, but, alas... Zanturaeon 06:32, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

This article makes no sense. But then, 90% of Hegel makes no sense either. Mjk2357 06:05, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, please, translate it for us mere mortals. Visarga

Academics write hieratic prose that is not meant for demotic readers. A social class of priests and professors are needed to interpret the cryptic words for the common reader. This Wiki article of Actual Idealism could be considered to be a classic example of the academic manner. Analytic Philosophy, with its purpose of clarification, came into being in response to such uncommunicative writing.Lestrade (talk) 19:58, 12 April 2008 (UTC)Lestrade

Sentences: poor & obscure

In the Postulate section, the following passage seems to contain a sentence fragment:

If truth is what surpasses the conditions of every proposition, taking a known postulate as truth removes its criteria from having that capability in thinking. Objectifying actuality.

Because of the seemingly intentional Hegelian obscurity of the article, however, it is difficult to know if this is an error. Is this article trying to communicate concepts or is it trying to astonish readers with its academic verbal jugglery?Lestrade 22:46, 4 October 2007 (UTC)Lestrade

See below in my responses to the 'plagiarism' section.

"truth" is the now. It "surpasses the condition of every proposition" because any thought one refers to is by definition an object of the past. Not there, unreal, and capable of being dissected by analysis.

Any such mental object is subject to essential falsification which is the process of (albeit useful) analysis. Analysis is the portion of the dialectic resolving subjectivity into its component objects. e.g. There are many *thoughts* that comprise these objects, that they are drawn from the past marks them all as unalive (without vitality and unable to breathe life to any amount of truth).

The static "previousness" by being objects to be thought on by thinking falsifies them. There is only one *thinking" and it is living synthesis (or the synthetic moment of the dialectic) which can be the only truth among many 'posited' "truths" ("thoughts", thought of as truer than thinking, are what I above mean by any 'postulates' taken to have truth, but by their very nature cannot keep truth, which is an intrinsic thing and not extrinsic; as it is in them.)

This is what's meant by 'its own criteria removes it's capability' of even being possible as what's sought in it, namely truth.

What it's (i.e. "thoughts") manner of being *subject* to (i.e. availed to by) a *Subject* (i.e. an observer in process of the act of carrying out the projection of that thought: something that can be 'subject to') invalidates it, as living is what acts; or that which acts. Thoughts do not (being they are facts) but thinking does (act).

The other way around (saying some 'mere idea', a figured-out 'thought') could be truth, or even an aspect of a true thing, would be trying to make an object, effectively a past tense, out of it. An impossibility. All that is true is so in its (note: not relativistic, but immanent) subjectivity

Therefore; act comes before fact, and the mind as active thinking is its own generative prime mover. An active thinking alive prime mover of thoughts, which are, however in line they are with other established thoughts are not a measure of what's true or *actual*, but solely it's passing, transitory building blocks.

Building blocks, comprising as they do 'thought-principles' past tense, made inflexibly so by the likes of realists ascribing material's primacy a "reality" that the actual idealist counters as untrue. Nagelfar (talk) 02:13, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Fascism template.

Though I've removed it, the Fascism template (a political template) has been re-added. Though the philosophy, in the eyes of it's originator, accepted Fascism, Fascism did not accept Actual Idealism. Regardless of what either did for the other. It should have a philosophy, or Philosophical idealism, navigational template. Not a Fascism one. Any discussion about this should be added here. Nagelfar (talk) 09:19, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean fascism didn't accept actual idealism? I'm pretty sure it was considered the official philosophy of fascism MaitreyaVaruna (talk) 19:33, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Plagiarism

It is possible that parts of this article have been derived from the lectures of Professor Irwin Corey at Princeton University in August, 1997.Lestrade (talk) 23:38, 5 September 2009 (UTC)Lestrade

As the author of the article in its nigh entirety, I must state that any similarity is a complete coincidence and in no way intentional. It is my own careful explanation of G. Gentile's philosophy in as close to a non-verbatim and expository fashion that I, at the time or writing, deemed possible. (it is indeed a highly counter-intuitive philosophy and use of terminology, even all the while though it is inherited from much basic Greek, Kantian & Hegelian word usage and philosophy) Though I do agree it requires much more work, I fear for want of input, as to not confuse its meaning any more, until the areas found to be difficult are specifically accounted in this talk portion of the subject of this article by at least one reader. Nagelfar (talk) 02:01, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

This is fine work by Nagelfar, and I am sure the entire Wikipedia community must stand in awe of his erudition. He may not be aware, however, that Professor Irwin Corey often operates on the Astral Plane as a guest lecturer in his various specialties. When doing so, he often mesmerizes mere mortals, and I assume that this explains the following sentence of good Nagelfar's prose: "Therefore, one idea, or another, can only be a formulation of particulars within the bounds of a known totality, in which one idea is not on any side of those particulars." There may be one, or two, or three, commas out of place in this transcription, a frequent problem in work with The Plane. I would have been happy to correct the error, but I don't know which one or two I should work on. Or three.

David Lloyd-Jones (talk) 03:27, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Sarcasm aside, the concise style is very difficult to convey without quoting verbatim. The tone of the first post above added to my confusion because in good faith, taking it in earnest, that was an honest worry of mine when writing that I would be on the path of quoting too close to the original. Rather than hopefully conveying the sense, which in the translations can be almost as terse, but apparently more intelligible than mine; for all intents and purposes.

That I apologise for and is a fault in it that I have just never got around to fixing. Seeing that I fear convoluting it more. This, all because it was my hope to show a reformulation in ways of speaking to the generality with regard to how I could parallel taking words like "idea", "thought" & "thinking" without making my own set of definitional keys not used by Gentile himself that might clarify it in an alternate plainer (if denser) English way of explaining it.

That I think would leave a fallacy whereby I'd risk adding terminology of my own creation like 'unrelativistic subject' where capital 'S' Subject is likened to solipsistic observer without objectifying the "self" concept inherent in solipsism per se. Placing differences between existential "concrete object" with complementary "abstract subject" in metaphysical realism's view as against some essentialist "concrete subject" & "abstract object" which Gentile's idealism seems to me to allude to.

That's because these words are never used and it would border on original research or worse putting my philosophic ideas inspired by it, into it; which I seriously purport to understand to a majority degree (quite a bit more than I could glean of, say, Heidegger, by comparison) trying to distance myself from the manner in which he describes it in his works which are available.

Perhaps too many definitions of terms by his philosophic meaning of them are run out full force in the first several lines without context to a more exacting meaning. For which I admit to failure on re-reading the context: any clarity hoped for comes to odds with what is there now an apparency likened to juggling verbiage and sophistry. All gross errors are here my own.

Quoting myself "one idea or another" means any thought object, which to Gentile is a dead thing come after the pure act 'of thinking' it; 'thinking' that is always on the plane of the present tense, not the past tense, as "any idea (or thought)" always is.

-

Contrast *thinking*, which to Gentile is 'whole' and creative of every moment, making the actual lived entire universe, the one that is acted on in the now, by our very ideation of it; as it is opposed to the divisive "thought", this clunky, obstructive, already formed 'dead' thing always pre-formulated by thinking and in it's past. 'thought' is in "thinking's" past, defining it but always making it untrue because the present always overwrites the past.

-

This present is the "known totality", and the idea "not on any side of those particulars" is thinking in it's "now" state formulating the at present thinking-thought in it's becoming a by-product that afterward is only thought, which thereby becomes untrue and therefore not reality. A "thought" which is a something that is prone to opposition, duality, derision; namely the analytic dialectic that is 'a posteriori' *thought* from the 'a priori' synthetic dialectic that is that *thinking* which is always in the *now* until it outruns its own precepts and is able to be reflected upon as merely a "thought". Making the groundwork by which we live upon, all reality made of former thoughts in the framework of an ever present thinking that is intrinsic to every spark of sentient, sapient, existence. All thoughts being false (but useful), all thinking being true (but always unattainable when attempted to be laid down as thoughts and not just lived.)

Does this help?

It was so fleeting and airy in my preliminary construction because it was my yearned for wish that one more professional in background than myself would deign to here attempt a more comprehensible style which so far has remained a prospect in vacancy. Nagelfar (talk) 00:51, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Also misleading is the amount of instances I explain his logical system as pertaining to 'present' and 'past'. He does go into some detail about the dialectic of time in the unity of direct experience, I just find it difficult to use other means to convey it as eloquently as he does with other means.

Namely I recall his assertion that the 'future' is technically identical to the past in our manner of cognition; that we frame current known factors elaborately with our expectations of causal phenomena and this equates them as the same manner of thought differing not at all from past recall. I'd go further to say memories are always the most recent thinking of a memory. A new memory of the last memory. He speaks much more of the unity of the spirit in a dialectic process. Nagelfar (talk) 21:09, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Actuality

Since Gentile was a Hegelian, and his philosophy was called "actual idealism," I wonder if there is any relation to Hegel's definition of "actual"? Hegel used the word "actual" to designate his own concept. In a typically Pickwickian [idiosyncratic] manner, he employed the word "actual" to mean "the union of the universal with the particular." (In common non–Hegelian language, "actual" means "existing as a genuine, present fact.") For Hegel, any particular that is the same as a universal is actual. For example, if the particular keyboard that is now in front of you is not united with the universal keyboard, then your keyboard is not actual. Is Gentile's actual idealism somehow related to the union of universals and particulars?Lestrade (talk) 12:54, 14 September 2009 (UTC)Lestrade

Very likely, and that meaning has older origins I'm guessing. Gentile spoke of Actual Idealism in his works such as the 'Theory of mind as Pure Act' which relates to the Thomist/Catholic Actus purus, which is very likely of import to this. Nagelfar (talk) 13:56, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Outside the philosophic historicity of the two terms (actual idealism) so qualified in tandem, a colloquial rendering more suited to the anglophone discriminations might be found as "actuated ideation". That however would not connote the persistence of act through immanence to the reification that the word "actual" does as in 'actuality', since it has the ability (when in the tense of 'actuate') to be construed as like articulation would be. Ideation, as a plane of immanence for the activity of idealism as self-generation, shows promise in making such distinctions, is my current inclination, though, as to what poses useful cogency of explanation. Nagelfar (talk) 04:47, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

It is possible that "actual" here means "active." Actual idealism would then be the opposite of a passive idealism in which the mind passively receives mental images of the external world. With actual idealism, the mind would act and create the images from sense data, as it does similarly during the process of dreaming. (During dreaming, however, the images need not result from sensations. They could be triggered by memories.) Gentile might have wanted to emphasize the fact that the mind actively constructs its image of the world. This would be in contrast to a purely receptive idealism. As a man who craved political power, vigorous and aggressive actuality or activity would correspond to his way of life. Lestrade (talk) 10:20, 10 September 2010 (UTC)Lestrade

The English translator of Gentile's 'Theory of mind...' had this to say about it: He names it "actual" idealism, and by this term he would distinguish two distinctive marks... ..."actual" means...that it is the idealistic concept of the present, the concept of an eternal present, which is not an exclusion of times past and times future, but a comprehension of all history as present act determined by past fact, eternal becoming. It is therefore in one sense the most familiar concept of our common experience, the concept of our conscious life in its immediacy... ...would avoid the Scylla of intellectualism (under which are included both materialistic naturalism and idealistic Platonism) on one hand, and the Charybdis of mysticism on the other... Nagelfar (talk) 23:14, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Removing 'wikipedia synthesis' from article.

This was removed:

According to Dr. William S. Sadler in a glossary companion he compiled for the Urantia Book, From the time viewpoint, the Actual is that which was and is: the Potential is that which is becoming and will be: the Original is that which is. From the eternity viewpoint, the differences between the Original, the Actual, and the Potential are not thus apparent. These triune qualities are not so distinguished on Paradise-eternity levels. In eternity all is—only has all not yet been revealed in time and space. From a creature’s viewpoint, actuality is substance, potentiality is capacity. Actuality exists centermost and expands therefrom into peripheral infinity; (1262.8) 115:3.11

Besides that it is an unrelated synthesis, it views the absolute as an object here, it being a "was" as well as an "is" would make it thus abstract and therefore the 'indeterminate absolute' which Gentile rejects in his Actualism. It appears to be taking the absolute in the Aristotlean sense (as Gentile would call it) reversing the concrete by making the 'actual' an objectification and making potential a 'becoming', whereas Gentile follows the Scholastics by making the act a becoming and anything in the 'potency' of another its fact not its act. Potentiality is an abstract concept of future, as is the empirical present is properly a past in the act of the eternal present act of thinking. Nagelfar (talk) 10:32, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Im sure you are right. however, since you are not yourself the established author of a treatise on Actual Idealism, Idealism, aristotle, the scholastics, etc, i think its safe to say that all this talk is still original research and synthesis from the WP perspective. who the hell cares what mr sadler says, and who cares if his interpretation is opposed to what gentile rejects in his actualism. who says he rejects it? really, who besides you says that? what this article needs is to be stripped down to 1 or 2 sentences using commonly understood terms, with additional sentences added with inline citations from books both critical and simply summarizing of his ideas. This article is an example of why WP is considered a joke to so many. ps, we might like to add comments about how fascist philosophies were, well, controversial at certain times. at least i heard they were, its not clear from the history books, which are so fence sitting on fascism. was it good or bad? I guess we'll never know...Mercurywoodrose (talk) 06:52, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Improving this article

This article is well within need of improvements. It is incomplete and hard to understand. I don't believe it is possible for a user to get the idea of what actual idealism is from this article MaitreyaVaruna (talk) 19:49, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

I am working on translating Draft:Actual Idealism from French Wikipedia. Although I studied French in school I am not at a university level in it so this might be difficult. But it has a lot of content that is worth inclusion in this article MaitreyaVaruna (talk) 16:45, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Hello MaitreyaVaruna,

I saw that you improved this article from the French version. I just want to inform you that it was me who created the article in French, and that I did it by translating the Italian article. So if you translated my version, you made a translation of a translation. I tried to translate the best I could, but maybe on your side it could be relevant to reread or have reread the English article from the Italian version. Sincerely, --Tom10tom (talk) 00:45, 27 March 2022 (UTC).

Thank you. I did that already with the Art religion and philosophy section. MaitreyaVaruna (talk) 07:07, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

I want your input on translating autoctisi. Do you think I should keep it as is or translate it? While I have some knowledge of French I'm not a native speaker so I don't know whether it sounded like a native word in French or was an obscure native word MaitreyaVaruna (talk) 06:45, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

@Tom10tom do you have input on the translation of autoctisi? MaitreyaVaruna (changing name to Immanuelle) please tag me (talk) 15:55, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Hello MaitreyaVaruna,

I translated autoctisi by autoctise, as I saw that this term was used in the French language. As far as English is concerned, I see on the Wiktionary that autoctisis exists. It seems therefore a good solution. Tom10tom (talk) 19:08, 11 April 2022 (UTC).

I just implemented that. Thank you MaitreyaVaruna (changing name to Immanuelle) please tag me (talk) 18:08, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

clarification needed

I put the template across this article on every sentence that I thought might be worth looking at the original italian and haven't reviewed myself, due to double translation from Italian -> French -> English Immanuelle please tag me (talk) 18:56, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Specific phrases to translate consistently and clearly

«pensiero che pensa» «pensare in atto» «logica del pensare» «logica del pensato» «logica del pensiero pensante» «logica del pensiero pensato» «presupposto del pensiero» «pensiero pensante» «pensiero pensato» «logica del fatto»