Tradition

Idealism

Overview

Idealism in philosophy, also known as philosophical idealism or metaphysical idealism, is the set of metaphysical perspectives asserting that, most fundamentally, reality is equivalent to mind, spirit, or consciousness; that reality or truth is entirely a mental construct; or that ideas are the highest type of reality or have the greatest claim to being considered "real". Because there are different types of idealism, it is difficult to define the term uniformly.

Indian philosophy contains some of the first defenses of idealism, such as in Vedanta and in Shaiva Pratyabhijña thought. These systems of thought argue for an all-pervading consciousness as the true nature and ground of reality. Idealism is also found in some streams of Mahayana Buddhism, such as in the Yogācāra school, which argued for a "mind-only" (cittamatra) philosophy on an analysis of subjective experience. In the West, idealism traces its roots back to Plato in ancient Greece, who proposed that absolute, unchanging, timeless ideas constitute the highest form of reality: Platonic idealism. This was revived and transformed in the early modern period by Immanuel Kant's arguments that our knowledge of reality is completely based on mental structures: transcendental idealism.

Epistemologically, idealism is accompanied by a rejection of the possibility of knowing the existence of any thing independent of mind. Ontologically, idealism asserts that the existence of all things depends upon the mind; thus, ontological idealism rejects the perspectives of physicalism and dualism. In contrast to materialism, idealism asserts the primacy of consciousness as the origin and prerequisite of all phenomena.

In some contexts, idealism is contrasted with realism. Idealism came under attack from proponents of analytic philosophy, such as G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, but its critics also included the new realists and Marxists. However, many aspects and paradigms of idealism still have a large influence on subsequent philosophy.

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

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Idealism is discussed.

The dogmatical theory of idealism is unavoidable, if we regard space as a property of things in themselves; for in that case it is, with all to which it serves as condition, a nonentity. But the foundation for this kind of idealism we have already destroyed in the transcendental æsthetic. Problematical idealism, which makes no such assertion, but only alleges our incapacity to prove the existence of anything besides…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
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We think of matter as having existed long before there were any minds, and it is hard to think of it as a mere product of mental activity. But whether true or false, idealism is not to be dismissed as obviously absurd. We have seen that, even if physical objects do have an independent existence, they must differ very widely from sense-data, and can only have a _correspondence_ with sense-data, in the same sort of…
Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
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Almost more important than their writings is the fact that they have occupied philosophical chairs in almost every university in the kingdom. Even the professional critics of idealism are for the most part idealists--after a fashion. And when they are not, they are as a rule more occupied with the refutation of idealism than with the construction of a better theory.
William James, A Pluralistic Universe
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But further I think it may be seen that if the object of an Idealist's sensation were, as he supposes, _not_ the object but merely the content of that sensation, if, that is to say, it really were an inseparable aspect of his experience, each Idealist could never be aware either of himself or of any other real thing. For the relation of a sensation to its object is certainly the same as that of any other instance of…
G. E. Moore, Philosophical Studies
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The consequence is, that while they should fix their eye on what is present (das Gegenwärtige), every effort of their mind is called out to get hold of an object which is not in question through the whole inquiry.' ... 'The aim of the sublimest science can only be to show the actuality,--in the strictest sense the actuality, the presence, the vital existence (Daseyn)--of a God in the whole of things and in each…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Logic of Hegel
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