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History of the term "Idea"

The word "Idea" originated from Greek and was carried into Latin without change.  "Idea" meant at first a form, shape, or appearance but later transitioned with the connotation of nature and kind. However in classical Greek it never lost the meaning of "visual aspect".

Idea is the feminine form of εἶδος (Greek eidos: something seen; form, shape; related to idein "to see," eidenai "to know" [3]); Stoics' adoption of idea secured its ultimate triumph over eidos and Plato won its prominent and retained for centuries position in the history of philosophy. Plato used the term eidos to describe the unchanging entities in the World of Forms.

Idea, within Plato's philosophy, as contrary to modern acceptance, meant something outside of the mind, i.e. primarily and emphatically objective. It was the universal archetypal essence in which all individuals coming under a universal concept participate. According to Plato, by sensuous perception we obtain an imperfect knowledge of individual objects and by notions we reach a higher knowledge of the idea of these objects. In Plato's view, the universal notions (concepts) constitute science (general knowledge) as it is in our mind, there correspond ideas, standing outside of our mind. Ideas are seen as truly universal. Each universal idea has its own separate, independent existence, which determines the nature of an object related to it. Ideas dwell in a sort of celestial universe. In contrast with the individual objects of sense experience, which undergo constant change and flux, the ideas are perfect, eternal, and immutable.

Plato felt that there must be some sort of community between the individual object and the corresponding idea. This community consists in "participation". The concrete individual participates, or shares, within the universal idea, and this participation constitutes an individual of a certain kind or nature. The participation seems to consist in imitation. The idea, that is models and prototypes, while sensible objects are copies, very imperfect, of these models. Ideas are reflected in a feeble and obscure way in them. The idea is the archetype (original model of a given thing) and individual objects are merely images. Such ratiocinations posses the questions:

• What precisely is the celestial universe in which ideas have eternally existed? (Aristotle and Plato had contrary viewpoints as to a doctrine of independent ideas.)
• What is their relationship to the Idea of the Good? (Here Saint Augustine allots a unique position in the transcendental region of Plato's ideas to that relating to a God.)

Where ideas come from

Here is given the briefest outline of the doctrine usually taught in the Catholic schools of philosophy. Much criticism of the various theories on the question can be found in Catholic textbooks on psychology.

Given the fact that the human mind in mature life is in possession of such universal ideas, or concepts, the question arises: How have they been attained? Empiricists and Materialists have endeavoured to explain all our intellectual ideas as refined products of our sensuous faculties. Plato conceives them to be an inheritance through reminiscence from a previous state of existence. Sundry Christian philosophers of ultra-spiritualist tendencies have described them as innate, planted in the soul at its creation by a Deity.

Man has a double set of cognitive faculties - sensuous and intellectual. Aisthesis, the "sense", as a faculty, apprehends changing phenomena, and nous, "thought", "reason", "intellect", is presenting to humans the permanent, abiding being. All knowledge starts from sensuous experience with no innate ideas : external objects stimulate the senses and effect a modification of the sensuous faculties which results in a sensuous percipient act, a sensation or perception by which the mind becomes cognizant of the concrete individual object, e.g., some sensible quality of the thing acting on the sense. Because sense and intellect are powers of the same soul, the latter is now wakened, as it were, into activity, and lays hold of its own proper object in the sensuous presentation. The object is the essence, or nature of the thing, omitting its individualizing conditions. The act by which the intellect thus apprehends the abstract essence, when viewed as a modification of the intellect, was called by the Schoolmen species intelligibilis; when viewed as the realization or utterance of the thought of the object to itself by the intellect, they termed it the verbum mentale. In this first stage it prescinds alike from universality and individuality. But the intellect does not stop there. It recognizes its object as capable of indefinite multiplication. In other words it generalizes the abstract essence and thereby constitutes it a reflex or formally universal concept, or idea. By comparison, reflection, and generalization, the elaboration of the idea is continued until we attain to the distinct and precise concepts, or ideas, which accurate science demands.

It is important to note that in the "Scholastic theory" the immediate object of the intellectual act of perception is not the idea or concept. It is the external reality, the nature or essence of the thing apprehended. The idea, when considered as part of the process of direct perception, is itself the subjective act of cognition, not the thing cognized. It is a vital, immanent operation by which the mind is modified and determined directly to know the object perceived. The psychologist may subsequently reflect upon this intellectual idea and make it the subject of his consideration, or the ordinary man may recall it by memory for purposes of comparison, but in the original act of apprehension it is the means by which the mind knows, not the object which it knows — est id quo res cognoscitur non id quod cognoscitur. This constitutes a fundamental point of difference between the Scholastic doctrine of perception and that held by Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and a very large proportion of modern philosophers. For Locke and Berkeley the object immediately perceived is the idea. The existence of material objects, if we believe in them, can, in their view, only be justified as an inference from effect to cause. Berkeley and idealists generally deny the validity of that inference; and if the theory of immediate perception be altogether abandoned, it seems difficult to warrant the claim of the human mind to a genuine knowledge of external reality. In the Scholastic view, knowledge is essentially of reality, and this reality is not dependent on the (finite) mind which knows it. The knower is something apart from his actualized knowing, and the known object is something apart from its being actually known. The thing must be before it can be known; the act of knowledge does not set up but presupposes the object. It is of the object that we are directly conscious, not of the idea. In popular language we sometimes call the object "an idea", but in such cases it is in a totally different sense, and we recognize the term as signifying a purely mental creation.