Idealism
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 is entirely a mental construct; or that there is some higher "ideal form" of reality. Because there are numerous forms of idealism, it is difficult to define the term.
This article is about the metaphysical perspective in philosophy. For the psychological attitude, see optimism. For the concept in ethics, see Ideal (ethics).
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, and it was revived and transformed in the early modern period by Immanuel Kant's arguments for 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.
Idealism came under heavy attack in the West at the turn of the 20th century. The most influential critics were G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, but its critics also included the new realists and Marxists. 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.
Classical Greek idealism[edit]
Pre-Socratic philosophy[edit]
There some precursors of idealism in Ancient Greek Philosophy, though scholars disagree on whether any of these thinkers could be properly labeled "idealist" in the modern sense.[16] One example is Anaxagoras (480 BC) who taught that all things in the universe (apeiron) were set in motion by nous ("mind"). In the Phaedo, Plato quotes him as saying, "it is intelligence [nous] that arranges and causes all things".[16] Similarly, Parmenides famously stated that "thinking and being are the same".[16] This has led some scholars, such as Hegel and E. D. Phillips, to label Parmenides an idealist.[17]
Judeo-Christian idealism[edit]
Some Christian theologians have held idealist views,[29] often based on neoplatonism. Christian neoplatonism included figures like Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and influenced numerous Christian thinkers, including the Cappadocian Fathers and Augustine.[30] Despite the influence of Aristotelian scholasticism from the 12th century onward, there is certainly a sense in which some medieval scholastic philosophers retained influences from the Platonic idealism that came via Augustine.[31] For example, the work of John Scottus Eriugena (c. 800 – c. 877) has been interpreted as an idealistic philosophy by Dermot Moran who writes that for Scottus "all spatiotemporal reality is understood as immaterial, mind dependent, and lacking in independent existence".[32] Scottus thus wrote: "the intellection of all things...is the being of all things".[33]
Idealism was also defended in medieval Jewish philosophy. According to Samuel Lebens, early Hassidic rabbis like Yitzchak Luria (1534–72) defended a form of Kabbalistic idealism in which the world was God's dream or a fictional tale told by God.[34]
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.[35]
Several modern religious movements such as, 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.[36]