Idealism (philosophy)

In philosophy, the term idealism identifies and describes metaphysical perspectives which assert that reality is indistinguishable and inseparable from perception and understanding; that reality is a mental construct closely connected to ideas. Idealist perspectives are in two categories: subjective idealism, which proposes that a material object exists only to the extent that a human being perceives the object; and objective idealism, which proposes the existence of an ''objective'' consciousness that exists prior to and independently of human consciousness, thus the existence of the object is independent of human perception.

The philosopher George Berkeley said that the essence of an object is to be perceived. By contrast, Immanuel Kant said that idealism "does not concern the existence of things", but that "our modes of representation" of things such as ''space'' and ''time'' are not "determinations that belong to things in themselves", but are essential features of the human mind. In the philosophy of "transcendental idealism" Kant proposes that the objects of experience relied upon their existence in the human mind that perceives the objects, and that the nature of the thing-in-itself is external to human experience, and cannot be conceived without the application of categories, which give structure to the human experience of reality.

Epistemologically, idealism is accompanied by philosophical skepticism about the possibility of knowing the existence of any ''thing'' that is independent of the human mind. Ontologically, idealism asserts that the existence of things depends upon the human mind; thus, ontological idealism rejects the perspectives of physicalism and dualism, because neither perspective gives ontological priority to the human mind. In contrast to materialism, idealism asserts the ''primacy'' of consciousness as the origin and prerequisite of phenomena. Idealism holds that consciousness (the mind) is the origin of the material world.

Indian and Greek philosophers proposed the earliest arguments that the world of experience is grounded in the mind's perception of the physical world. Hindu idealism and Greek neoplatonism gave panentheistic arguments for the existence of an all-pervading consciousness as the true nature, as the true grounding of reality. In contrast, the Yogācāra school, which arose within Mahayana Buddhism in India in the 4th century AD, based its "mind-only" idealism to a greater extent on phenomenological analyses of personal experience. This turn toward the subjective anticipated empiricists such as George Berkeley, who revived idealism in 18th-century Europe by employing skeptical arguments against materialism. Beginning with Kant, German idealists such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, and Arthur Schopenhauer dominated 19th-century philosophy. This tradition, which emphasized the mental or "ideal" character of all phenomena, gave birth to idealistic and subjectivist schools ranging from British idealism to phenomenalism to existentialism.

Idealism as a philosophy came under heavy attack in the West at the turn of the 20th century. The most influential critics of both epistemological and ontological idealism were G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, but its critics also included the new realists. According to ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'', the attacks by Moore and Russell were so influential that even more than 100 years later "any acknowledgment of idealistic tendencies is viewed in the English-speaking world with reservation". However, many aspects and paradigms of idealism did still have a large influence on subsequent philosophy. Phenomenology, an influential strain of philosophy since the beginning of the 20th century, also draws on the lessons of idealism. In his ''Being and Time'', Martin Heidegger famously states:

Definitions

''Idealism'' is a term with several related meanings. It comes via Latin ''idea'' from the Ancient Greek ''idea'' (ἰδέα) from ''idein'' (ἰδεῖν), meaning 'to see'. The term entered the English language by 1743. It was first used in the abstract metaphysical sense "belief that reality is made up only of ideas" by Christian Wolff in 1747. The term re-entered the English language in this abstract sense by 1796.

In ordinary language, as when speaking of Woodrow Wilson's political idealism, it generally suggests the priority of ideals, principles, values, and goals over concrete realities. Idealists are understood to represent the world as it might or should be, unlike pragmatists, who focus on the world as it presently is. In the arts, similarly, idealism affirms imagination and attempts to realize a mental conception of beauty, a standard of perfection, juxtaposed to aesthetic naturalism and realism. The term ''idealism'' is also sometimes used in a sociological sense, which emphasizes how human ideas—especially beliefs and values—shape society.

Any philosophy that assigns crucial importance to the ideal or spiritual realm in its account of human existence may be termed "idealist". Metaphysical idealism is an ontological doctrine that holds that reality itself is incorporeal or experiential at its core. Beyond this, idealists disagree on which aspects of the mental are more basic. Platonic idealism affirms that abstractions are more basic to reality than the things we perceive, while subjective idealists and phenomenalists tend to privilege sensory experience over abstract reasoning. Epistemological idealism is the view that reality can only be known through ideas, that only psychological experience can be apprehended by the mind.Daniel Sommer Robinson
"Idealism"
''Encyclopædia Britannica''

Subjective idealists like George Berkeley are anti-realists in terms of a mind-independent world. However, not all idealists restrict the real or the knowable to our immediate subjective experience. Objective idealists make claims about a transempirical world, but simply deny that this world is essentially divorced from or ontologically prior to the mental. Thus, Plato and Gottfried Leibniz affirm an objective and knowable reality transcending our subjective awareness—a rejection of epistemological idealism—but propose that this reality is grounded in ideal entities, a form of metaphysical idealism. Nor do all metaphysical idealists agree on the nature of the ideal; for Plato, the fundamental entities were non-mental abstract forms, while for Leibniz they were proto-mental and concrete monads.Mark Kulstad and Laurence Carlin, "Leibniz's Philosophy of Mind", ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'', http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz-mind/

As a rule, transcendental idealists like Kant affirm idealism's epistemic side without committing themselves to whether reality is ''ultimately'' mental; objective idealists like Plato affirm reality's metaphysical basis in the mental or abstract without restricting their epistemology to ordinary experience; and subjective idealists like Berkeley affirm both metaphysical and epistemological idealism.

Classical idealism

Pre-Socratic philosophy

Idealism as a form of metaphysical monism holds that consciousness, not matter, is the ground of all being. It is monist because it holds that there is only one type of thing in the universe and idealist because it holds that one thing to be consciousness.

Anaxagoras (480 BC) taught that "all things" were created by ''Nous'' ("Mind"). He held that Mind held the cosmos together and gave human beings a connection to the cosmos or a pathway to the divine.

Platonism and neoplatonism

Plato's theory of forms or "ideas" describes ideal forms (for example the platonic solids in geometry or abstracts like Goodness and Justice), as universals existing independently of any particular instance. Arne Grøn calls this doctrine "the classic example of a metaphysical idealism as a ''transcendent'' idealism", while Simone Klein calls Plato "the earliest representative of metaphysical objective idealism". Nevertheless, Plato holds that matter is real, though transitory and imperfect, and is perceived by our body and its senses and given existence by the eternal ideas that are perceived directly by our rational soul. Plato was therefore a metaphysical and epistemological dualist, an outlook that modern idealism has striven to avoid: Plato's thought cannot therefore be counted as idealist in the modern sense.

With the neoplatonist Plotinus, wrote Nathaniel Alfred Boll "there even appears, probably for the first time in Western philosophy, ''idealism'' that had long been current in the East even at that time, for it taught... that the soul has made the world by stepping from eternity into time...". Similarly, in regard to passages from the Enneads, "The only space or place of the world is the soul" and "Time must not be assumed to exist outside the soul". Ludwig Noiré wrote: "For the first time in Western philosophy we find idealism proper in Plotinus".Ludwig Noiré, ''Historical Introduction to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason'' However, Plotinus does not address whether we know external objects, unlike Schopenhauer and other modern philosophers.

Christian philosophy

Christian theologians have held idealist views, often based on neoplatonism, despite the influence of Aristotelian scholasticism from the 12th century onward. However, there is certainly a sense in which the scholastics retained the idealism that came via St. Augustine right back to Plato.

Later western theistic idealism such as that of Hermann Lotze offers a theory of the "world ground" in which all things find their unity: it has been widely accepted by Protestant theologians. Several modern religious movements, for example the organizations within the New Thought Movement and the Unity Church, may be said to have a particularly idealist orientation. The theology of Christian Science includes a form of idealism: it teaches that all that truly exists is God and God's ideas; that the world as it appears to the senses is a distortion of the underlying spiritual reality, a distortion that may be corrected (both conceptually and in terms of human experience) through a reorientation (spiritualization) of thought.

Chinese philosophy

Wang Yangming, a Ming Chinese neo-Confucian philosopher, official, educationist, calligraphist and general, held that objects do not exist entirely apart from the mind because the mind shapes them. It is not the world that shapes the mind but the mind that gives reason to the world, so the mind alone is the source of all reason, having an inner light, an innate moral goodness and understanding of what is good.

Idealism in Vedic and Buddhist thought

There are currents of idealism throughout Indian philosophy, ancient and modern. Hindu idealism often takes the form of monism or non-dualism, espousing the view that a unitary consciousness is the essence or meaning of the phenomenal reality and plurality.

Buddhist idealism on the other hand is more epistemic and is not a metaphysical monism, which Buddhists consider eternalistic and hence not the Middle Way between extremes espoused by the Buddha.

The oldest reference to Idealism in Vedic texts is in Purusha Sukta of the Rig Veda. This Sukta espouses panentheism by presenting cosmic being Purusha as both pervading all universe and yet being transcendent to it. Absolute idealism can be seen in Chāndogya Upaniṣad, where things of the objective world like the five elements and the subjective world such as will, hope, memory etc. are seen to be emanations from the Self.

Indian philosophy

Idealist notions have been propounded by the Vedanta schools of thought, which use the Vedas, especially the Upanishads as their key texts. Idealism was opposed by dualists Samkhya, the atomists Vaisheshika, the logicians Nyaya

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