MATTER and SPIRIT IN NURETTIN TOPCU'S IDEALISM

Abstract

Idealism, material and soul are three concepts on the focus of discussions in the history of thought. It is difficult to maintain a discussion in the history of philosophy by leaving out either the material or the soul in particular. When we talk about philosophers, we categorize them as materialists or spiritualists from time to time. This categorization contains a reference to the philosopher's ontology and epistemology. Idealism in its general sense is the attitude of holding the mind's design, ideas and ideals right against the material, coarse reality and of attributing them a major role and position within the spectrum of human values. Philosophically, it is a doctrine which is right opposite to skepticism, positivism and atheism, which prioritizes human reality or spirituality, which claims that the world or reality essentially exists as a spirit, and that abstraction and laws are more fundamental realities than sensory things and which is against materialism more than realism. Sent abroad as a researcher in the first years of the republic, Nurettin Topcu wrote a dissertation titled Conformisme et Revolte (Conformity and Revolt) as part of his doctorate studies in the field of philosophy in Sorbonne. This was translated into Turkish titled Ethics of Revolt. He grasped the notion of revolt in a paradoxical way throughout his forty-five-year literary life from this book, which was his first work, until the last line of his last writing. Revolt is one of the basic concepts of his philosophy; since he also possessed a philosophy of will peculiar to himself, the will that he had was "a will of revolt". In his thoughts, Nurettin Topcu also allocated a special place for the concept of motion which cannot be considered independently of revolt and defined his philosophy as "a philosophy of motion". Topcu is a proponent of motion, with his background capitalizing on M. Blondel's sentence: "Motion is a combination of God and human." This sentence underlies the comprehension of Ethics of Revolt. Nurettin Topcu is an idealist thinker with his thoughts and actions. According to Topcu, idealism always attains victory at the hands of a real idealist and the thing that is most abhorred by idealism is economy; a great idealist is the one that has turned sacrifice into ecstasy and worship. In his opinion, an ideal is a motion of soul and requires soul energy which will become love in the end; the opposite of this idea, on the other hand, is enmity against all values revealed by the soul, which is enmity against ideals. According to Topcu, idealism is not sufficing with a reality that is in contact with finite and limited existence but it is aiming at eternity after extending to many realities within the framework of plans put on top of each other. According to Topcu, although religion is entirely such an ideal system, so-called man of religion reduced it to a narrowest and sterile realism and this deficient realism is struggling with contradictions. Indeed, the feeling of reality is cooperation of our intellect with our capabilities of vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. We see such an example of realism in Antique Greek for the first time; born of the love for nature, attaining the secrets of natural forces, juxtaposing the human's capabilities and forces with the nature, the Greek civilization eventually raised humanity up to the final step of progress in the world of spiritual values and to metaphysics and morality. Having its inception largely in realism, the Greek philosophy was given by Christianity a soul-oriented idealism in the following stage. The western thought was shaped by this idealism until the eighteenth century. Topcu thinks that the idealism in Islam developed within the meaning of verses descending during the years when the Prophet Muhammad lived in Mecca prior to the hegira (emigration), that a thriving realism born with a desire to become a perfect man of the earth in line with the practical requirements of life stopped the spirit of life from motion in later centuries and subjected it to interests and accomplishments and that the demise of the Islamic world within itself occurred as a result of this realism. Thus, the love felt towards the human was gradually replaced by the love for things. In Topcu's opinion, such admiration for things coarsens the human and the human being a slave to things causes a situation that is even more coarse and primitive than a human being a slave to another human. Being a slave to a human reveals an oppressed and suffering but a tender human soul and life of morality. It is necessary to correctly understand what Topcu understands from material and soul in order to accurately analyze the idea of Anatolianism in Topcu, his conceptualization of a nation and nationality, his terminology of politics that we will incorporate into the notions of socialism and authoritarian administration, his interpretation/criticism of religiousness and educational system. Topcu is against all reflections of materialism in all areas of life. In particular, he vehemently criticized conceptualization of religion in separation from the soul and as a form of belief consisting only of formality and saw this as a positivist approach. It is necessary to repeatedly think about this interpretation of Topcu today, as well. Indeed, religiousness and positivism are not concepts that can coexist. However, as pointed out by Topcu, if it is attempted to understand religion only with rituals and formality, this will not go beyond a positivist approach since it will eventually be positivistic to move from the objective and factual reality of worship. His emphasis on the unity of material and soul in spite of his view of the soul before the matter reveals that he categorically has a dualist understanding. Objecting to materialism in his system of thoughts in general, Topcu is not an immaterialist in the sense of a Berkeleyist. We think that this understanding appears to have formed the general framework of Topcu's ideas. Having reflected his ideas onto all areas of his life, Topcu is a person who should be repeatedly dealt with as an actionist thinker, a philosopher of ethics full of a will of revolt, a defender of an educational system that focuses on the soul.