ideas
The term ‘idea’ traverses the depth-psychology corpus along several distinct axes, each carrying its own epistemic weight. Jung, in Psychological Types, offers the most technically precise definition: the idea is the abstracted meaning of a primordial image—collective yet lacking mythological visual quality, a product of thought derived from the image rather than identical with it. This situates the idea as a conceptual precipitate of the archetype, downstream from image and upstream from pure abstraction. Hillman radically revalues this inheritance: for him, ideas are not merely cognitive events but ontological modes through which soul enacts and envisions life. The soul requires its own ideas, and soul-making proceeds as much through ideation as through feeling or relationship. Against the pragmatist reduction—where an idea’s worth is measured by its immediate applicability—Hillman insists that the conversion of an idea into practice kills its generative force, its logos spermatikos. Aurobindo offers yet another pole: in Supermind, the idea is not an abstraction from being but luminous power indistinguishable from being itself, a Real-Idea in which knowing, willing, and existing remain undivided. Descartes and Plato provide the classical philosophical backdrop against which all these positions maneuver. Von Franz and Giegerich extend the Jungian position: every fruitful scientific theory rests on an archetypal idea, and soul at its deepest is logical life, Notion—with ideas as the hidden content within symptom, emotion, and image alike. The central tension across the corpus is between idea as abstraction (cognitive, derived, secondary) and idea as psychic-ontological reality (generative, soul-constitutive, even divine).
I use the term idea to express the meaning of a primordial image, a meaning that has been abstracted from the concretism of the image. In so far as an idea is an abstraction, it has the appearance of something derived, or developed, from elementary factors
Jung’s canonical definition distinguishes idea from image by treating it as the abstracted collective meaning of a primordial image, stripped of visual mythological quality.
, Psychological Types, 1921thesis
the soul reveals itself in its ideas, which are not ‘just ideas’ or ‘just up in the head,’ and may not be ‘pooh-poohed’ away, since they are the very modes through which we are envisioning and enacting our lives.
Hillman argues that ideas are not mere cognitive abstractions but ontological modes of soul, inseparable from how persons see and enact their existence.
, Re-Visioning Psychology, 1975thesis
We use them up too quickly. We get rid of them by immediately putting them into practice… The idea dies right there in the conversion. It loses its life-generating force. The Greek Stoics spoke of a logos spermatikos, the generating word or seminal thought.
Hillman contends that the pragmatic conversion of ideas into practice destroys their generative power, invoking the Stoic logos spermatikos to restore ideas’ status as seed-forces.
, Kinds of Power: A Guide to Its Intelligent Uses, 1995thesis
soul-making takes place as much through ideation as in personal relationships or meditation. One aim of this book is the resuscitation of ideas at a time in psychology when they have fallen into decline
Hillman positions ideation as a primary mode of soul-making, and calls for a renewal of psychological ideas against their displacement by technique and methodology.
, A Blue Fire: The Essential James Hillman, 1989thesis
An idea turns into an ideology owing to the conviction it receives, the passion with which a soul lost to itself invests it. Not only does the psyche without ideas turn to alien fields and to ideologies.
Hillman distinguishes idea from ideology by locating the pathological transformation in a soul that, lacking genuine psychological perspective, inflates a borrowed idea with uncritical conviction.
, Re-Visioning Psychology, 1975thesis
In Supermind knowledge in the Idea is not divorced from will in the Idea, but one with it — just as it is not different from being or substance, but is one with the being, luminous power of the substance.
Aurobindo posits the supramental Idea as a unity of knowledge, will, and being—unlike mental ideas, which are abstractions alienated from substance and from the self.
, The Life Divine, 1939thesis
there is not a single important idea or view that does not possess historical antecedents. Ultimately they are all founded on primordial archetypal forms whose concreteness dates from a time when consciousness did not think, but only perceived.
Jung grounds all significant ideas in archetypal precursors, tracing the word ‘idea’ itself to Plato’s eidos and arguing that ideas are ultimately rooted in pre-reflective, perceptual archetypal forms.
, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959supporting
no new theory, or new fruitful invention in the field of science, has ever been put forth without the working of an archetypal idea… the idea of the four functions is an archetypal model for looking at things
Von Franz extends the Jungian position by arguing, with Pauli, that all generative scientific theories are activated by an underlying archetypal idea, subject to both fertility and self-limitation.
, Psychotherapy, 1993supporting
each of those phenomena contains an image or idea hidden within itself or is one guise in which an image or idea may first appear when it is deeply immersed in (psychological or alchemical) matter.
Giegerich argues that symptom, emotion, and image are all disguised forms of an underlying idea or notion, with soul in its deepest register being logical life—Notion itself.
, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020supporting
ideas need liberation; they need to be born again else they become not merely defunct but delusional… For ideas to be born and stay alive through their precarious infancy they must be welcomed warmly so that their native power can come fully to mind.
Hillman argues that ideas must be nurtured rather than immediately applied, warning that unregenerated ideas rigidify into delusional frameworks.
, Kinds of Power: A Guide to Its Intelligent Uses, 1995supporting
leaders are the embodiment of ideas… What ultimately gives one the power of leadership is a capacity to embody visionary ideas, to be unafraid of ideals.
Hillman extends his theory of ideas into the domain of power, arguing that genuine leadership is grounded not in personality traits but in the capacity to embody and transmit visionary ideas.
, Kinds of Power: A Guide to Its Intelligent Uses, 1995supporting
the ideas themselves will be divisible, and things which participate in them will have a part of them only and not the whole idea existing in each of them
Plato’s Parmenides subjects the theory of Ideas to dialectical critique, exploring the paradox of whether a single Idea can be wholly present in multiple particulars simultaneously.
, Parmenides, -370supporting
‘The idea as a process runs through three stages in its development’… ‘The first form of the idea is life… The second form is that of mediation or differentiation… the third form of the idea, the absolute idea’
McGilchrist invokes Hegel’s dialectical tripartite development of the Idea—from immediate life through differentiated knowledge to the absolute—as resonant with the hemisphere hypothesis and panentheist theology.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
‘The idea as a process runs through three stages in its development’… ‘unity enriched by difference … the third form of the idea, the absolute idea’
A near-duplicate passage repeating McGilchrist’s citation of Hegel’s developmental account of the Idea in a panentheist context.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021aside
the idea is innate within me, in the same way as the idea of myself is innate within me
Descartes advances the doctrine of innate ideas—specifically the idea of God—as a foundational claim for the existence of an objective representational content that exceeds empirical derivation.
, Meditations on First Philosophy, 2008supporting
it certainly needs a cause in order for it to be conceived, and this alone is what we are talking about. For instance, if someone has in their intellect the idea of some machine devised with extraordinary complexity, we are certainly quite justified in asking what is the cause of this idea.
Descartes argues that even ideas that exist only in the intellect require a causal explanation for their conception, establishing the principle of objective reality as a measure of ideational content.
, Meditations on First Philosophy, 2008supporting
although M. Descartes has asserted that falsity, strictly speaking, can be found only in judgements, he nonetheless shortly afterwards admits that ideas can be false, not formally, but materially
An objector identifies a tension in Descartes’s account: whether falsity can attach to ideas themselves (materially) or only to judgments, raising questions about the epistemic status of ideas as representations.
, Meditations on First Philosophy, 2008aside
when I have various thoughts of which I know the number, I acquire the ideas of duration and number, which then I can transfer to other things, of whatever kind they are
Descartes illustrates the derivation of abstract ideas such as duration and number from the thinking substance’s self-awareness, exemplifying his account of idea-formation.
, Meditations on First Philosophy, 2008aside
neither Saxon nor Roman have availed to add any idea to his categories… Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated among men of thought.
Edinger cites Emerson’s formulation that Platonic ideas remain the inexhaustible source for all subsequent philosophical thought, underscoring their foundational status in the Western tradition.
, The Psyche in Antiquity, Book One: Early Greek Philosophy From Thales to Plotinus, 1999aside