in defense of idealism
2009/05/23
idealism:
2. philosophical process of representing things in an ideal form, or as they might or should be rather than as they are, with emphasis on values.
i get told all the time when i’m talking to my friends about politics or economics that “that will never happen” or “that’s not how things are” because i am such a staunch idealist. i think because i am also an optimist that they mistake the two.
not all optimists are idealists, and not all idealists are optimists. there is a big difference between optimism and idealism, primarily that optimism is a passive personality trait, while idealism is a philosophical stance that an individual takes based on a value judgement.
my experience is that most other intellectuals consider my ideals unrealistic, quaint, and definitely not pragmatic. they don’t understand how it is possible to take a philosophical stance that is impossible at worst, and extremely unlikely at best.
my response to that is a method that i learned in graphic design classes. when designing for a client, it is necessary to push an idea as far out as possible, because it is inevitable that you will have to compromise and bring it back closer to the middle.
pushing ideals is no different. the idealist knows that the ideas are unattainable, but in the knowledge that compromise is necessary, we push that much harder in hopes that the compromise will be as close to our ideals as possible.
like all other intellectual positions, idealist positions are a necessary part of the argument. without them, the inevitable compromise is a little more empty than it would have been before.
