Concept

Absolute idealism

Overview

Absolute idealism is a form of idealism chiefly associated with F. W. J. Schelling and G. W. F. Hegel, both of whom were German idealist philosophers in the 19th century. The label has also been attached to others such as Josiah Royce, an American philosopher who was greatly influenced by Hegel's work, the British idealists (often referred to as the neo-Hegelians), and the Italian idealists, particularly the actual idealism of Giovanni Gentile.

According to Hegel, being is ultimately comprehensible only as an all-inclusive whole (das Absolute). Hegel asserted that in order for the thinking subject (human reason or consciousness) to be able to know its object (the world) at all, there must be in some sense an identity of thought and being. Otherwise, the subject would never have access to the object and we would have no certainty about any of our knowledge of the world.

The absolute idealist position dominated philosophy in nineteenth-century Britain and Germany, while exerting significantly less influence in the United States. The absolute idealist position should be distinguished from the subjective idealism of Berkeley, the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant, or the post-Kantian critical idealism (or post-Kantian transcendental idealism) of J. G. Fichte.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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For it is only posited as bare objectivity without securing the presence of its notion, as the unity and universality of the conscious subject, within such objectivity. It still remains outside it. Every object thus placed external to the notion merely exists as particularity, which comes back to us in external guise together with its manifold, and is, in all the unlimited scope of its relations, through its contact…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1
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Thus in its self-identity it has original and complete determinateness. The position taken up by the notion is that of absolute idealism. Philosophy is a knowledge through notions because it sees that what on other grades of consciousness is taken to have Being, and to be naturally or immediately independent, is but a constituent stage in the Idea.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Logic of Hegel
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For Absolute Idealism, the infinite Thought and its objects are one. The Objects are, through being thought; the eternal Mind is, through thinking them. Were a human thought alone in the world there would be no reason for any other assumption regarding it.
William James, The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1
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Philosophers who discussed Absolute idealism

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Transcendental idealism

Place in the tradition

Part of Acosmism.

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