Function Of Idealism In The Development Of Human Knowledge

The traditional understanding about idealism is that the idealism is only thought consciousness is a primary principal for the purposes of nature in Ontology, philosophers had not realized that the questions about idealism on the level of Epistemology. They thought that the idealism is a wrong idea and should be criticized. The traditional understanding of the idealism can not understand the positive role in the human knowledge development, so we should go deeply into the history of philosophy to understand its role in human understanding.This article accords to Professor Gao Qinghai's idea about the history of human knowledge can be divided into: an intuitive understanding stage, the reflectional understanding stage and the self-conscious understanding. The history of philosophy can also be divided into three periods according to this idea. Through this division, we can understand the positive role of the idealism in the human understanding.In the intuitive understanding stage, people did not examine their own ability of human understanding to search the answer for the origin of everything. At first, they thought the origin of everything is like some specific thing. With the development of human understanding, human's abstract thinking is developing. From Socrates, people think the origin of everything is the abstract nature. People think the abstract nature is the spiritual things, thus then, idealism appeared. Through the development of ancient philosophy, people always discussed the relationship between general and specific, it played a positive role of human understanding.In the reflectional understanding stage, people began to study their understanding ability before searching the answer for the origin of everything. Materialism thought the human ability of understanding is only a simple reflection about things. The controversy between Rationalism and Empiricism promoted the development of human understanding. In the self-conscious understanding,people began to use their subjective activity of understanding. Kant said people had the transcendental subjective forms, and the forms can help people to understand things. But Kant thought people only understand phenomena of things , we can't understand the true nature of things. Hegel's way to solve the problem of human knowledge is Absolute Spirit. He believed that human knowledge is a developing process ,and the coincidence between human subjective forms and objective things is also a developing process. Hegel's greatest contribution to human knowledge is that he recognized human knowledge as a developing process, but the process is based on idealism.Throughout the development of idealism, idealism had significant theoretical roots. In the General Theory of Philosophy, Professor Sun Zhengyu explained that idealism exaggerated Logical Priority. Hegel's theory helped Marx to recognize human knowledge as a developing process. We need to confess the positive role of idealism in human knowledge, but we need to understand that human knowledge is based on the materialism principle.