Idealism

Once the Alliance broken, once God is driven back, man remains with the autistic fold on himself. Something like a schizophrenia. The spirit cut, the spirit divided, the spirit broken. We do not need you any more! The human possibility expels the grace and gets itself delivered to the capital sins,that is the sources of sins. And initially, pride. Can the things from now on turn differently than after the original rupture? You will be like gods. The seduction of the tempter became irresistible. Then… They realized they were naked. There remains shame or exhibitionism. Our modernity chooses the second term of the alternative.

God is not any more the ultimate including reality. He is himself included in something larger than he is. He depends from now on only from the human capacity. And this possibilities will relegate him more and more in the domain of the impossibilities. In the best assumption a chance is left to him at the limits. Thus for Kant, beyond the 'theoretical' possibilities of the reason, a categorical imperative is necessary. A pure 'practical' requirement. And this one has to postulate outside of the sphere of the human possibility a something which takes the name of God, and freedom, and immortality. Not a certainty, just a postulate.

From now on the force of the obviousness must come from the subjectivity which does not need another guarantor than itself. Subjectivity becomes founder of the thinkable totality. Also is achieved the 'Copernician' inversion from being to thinking. A new curve of the mental space. A new gravitation of the being.

Reality in itself, professes the idealism, is out of our reach. Remains the reality for me, that is the virtual one. Here the Idea establishes its absolute reign and proliferates under the species of ideology. The autonomy of the knowing subject is the starting point of all 'idealism'. Thus a beyond of knowing is unknowable. A beyond of thinking is unthinkable. A beyond of the idea is impossible. Exit the 'transcendence'. Remains the 'transcendental design'.

From now on the truth of every thing has its origin only starting from the human thought. It is that which is the basic immediacy. It is that which founds the bases of knowledge. God himself, still guarantor of my obviousnesses, can he get obvious in an other way than through the clear and distinct idea of my thought? I think God who guarantees the truth of my thought! A vicious circle? Descartes, however, did not yet go so far! We can think the imperfect and finished one only on bottom of perfection and infinity. We have thus in us the clear and distinct idea of an absolutely perfect being. Which is the chance of existence of this perfect being? But isn't existence necessarily inherent - ontological argument - with the idea? This idea which can come neither from nothing nor radically from myself. It is mine, certainly, but at the same time it returns also elsewhere. 'Still' for how long? Even without being a creator of the clear and distinct idea ex nihilo, it is nevertheless in my possibility that it becomes aware of itself. And in the hearth of this possibility lies the doubt. Is there God? And if he were misleading?

The copernician inversion of our modernity gets absolute. It is no longer methodological but metaphysical. By burning at the same time the bridges to metaphysics. The human capacity resuming itself in anthropocentric rationality had to try out, in the even movement of enclosure of immanence, the opening of the transcendence congenital to the reason. So it happens that the rationalist systems of the XVIIe century remain more in continuity than in rupture with the large currents of traditional metaphysics.

More specifically 'modern' will be the empiricist rupture. Started at the XVII century, it will dominate the next century inspire largely the other ones. 1690: 'Essay concerning Human Understanding' by John Locke. - 1710: 'Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge’ by George Berkeley. - 1739: 'Treatise of Human Nature' by David Hume. - 1748: 'Philosophical Essay concerning Human Understanding' by David Hume - 1754: 'Traité des Sensations' by Etienne Condillac. In themselves, these some titles say a whole program. Critical approach of the understanding. Priority given to the sensations. The human possibility in strict immanence. All 'metaphysical', being is expelled. Being and knowledge are brought back within the strict limits of 'physics'. There, within the limits of the immanence, reigns only one materialistic monism. The superior is reduced to the inferior. The whole is reduced to the part. The inferior explains the superior. The part explains the whole.

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