Idealism
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This article is about the metaphysical view in philosophy. For the psychological
attitude, see optimism. For the concept in ethics, see Ideal (ethics). For other uses,
see Idealism (disambiguation).
"Theory of ideas" redirects here. For Plato's theory, see Theory of forms.
Plato in The School of Athens, by Raphael
In philosophy, idealism is a diverse group of metaphysical views which all assert that
"reality" is in some way indistinguishable or inseparable from
human perception and/or understanding, that it is in some sense mentally constituted,
or that it is otherwise closely connected to ideas. [1] In contemporary scholarship,
traditional idealist views are generally divided into two groups. Subjective
idealism takes as its starting point that objects only exist to the extent that they are
perceived by someone. Objective idealism posits the existence of
an objective consciousness which exists before and, in some sense, independently of
human consciousness, thereby bringing about the existence of objects independently
of human minds. In the early modern period, George Berkeley was often considered
the paradigmatic idealist, as he asserted that the essence of objects is to be perceived.
By contrast, Immanuel Kant, a pioneer of modern idealist thought, held that his
version of idealism does “not concern the existence of things”, but asserts only that
our “modes of representation” of them, above all space and time, are not
“determinations that belong to things in themselves” but essential features of our own
minds.[2] Kant called this position “transcendental idealism” (or sometimes “critical
idealism"), holding that the objects of experience relied for their existence on the
mind, and that the way that things in themselves are outside of our experience cannot
be thought without applying the categories which structure all of our experiences.
However, since Kant's view affirms the existence of some things independently of
experience (namely, "things in themselves"), it is very different from the more
traditional idealism of Berkeley.
Epistemologically, idealism is accompanied by skepticism about the possibility of
knowing any mind-independent thing. In its ontological commitments, idealism goes
further, asserting that all entities rely for their existence on the mind. [3] Ontological
idealism thus rejects both physicalist and dualist views as failing to ascribe
ontological priority to the mind. In contrast to materialism, idealism asserts
the primacy of consciousness as the origin and prerequisite of phenomena. Idealism
holds consciousness or mind to be the "origin" of the material world – in the sense
that it is a necessary condition for our positing of a material world – and it aims to
explain the existing world according to these principles. [4] The earliest extant
arguments that the world of experience is grounded in the mental derive from India
and Greece. The Hindu idealists in India and the
Greek neoplatonists gave panentheistic arguments for an all-pervading consciousness
as the ground or true nature of reality. [5] In contrast, the Yogācāra school, which arose
within Mahayana Buddhism in India in the 4th century CE,[6] 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 Immanuel 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.
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: "If the term idealism amounts to the recognition that being
can never be explained through beings, but, on the contrary, always is the
transcendental in its relation to any beings, then the only right possibility of
philosophical problematics lies with idealism. In that case, Aristotle was no less an
idealist than Kant. If idealism means a reduction of all beings to a subject or a
consciousness, distinguished by staying undetermined in its own being, and ultimately
is characterised negatively as 'non-thingly', then this idealism is no less methodically
naive than the most coarse-grained realism." [7] 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,[8] 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.[9]
REFERENCE : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism
