Idealism  

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-[[Image:Don Quixote and Sancho Pansa by Honoré Daumier.jpg|thumb|200px|right|''[[Don Quixote (Honoré Daumier, Neue Pinakothek)|Don Quixote]]'' (c. 1868) by [[Honoré Daumier]]]]+{| class="toccolours" style="float: left; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 2em; font-size: 85%; background:#c6dbf7; color:black; width:30em; max-width: 40%;" cellspacing="5"
-[[Image:Vitruvian Man by Da Vinci.jpg|thumb|right|200px|''[[Vitruvian Man]]'' by [[Leonardo da Vinci]], see [[man is the measure of all things]]]]+| style="text-align: left;" |
 +[T]rue philosophy must at all costs be ''[[idealism|idealistic]]''; indeed, it must be so merely to be honest. For nothing is more certain than that no one ever came out of himself in order to identify himself immediately with things different from him; but everything of which he has certain, sure, and therefore immediate knowledge, lies within his [[consciousness]]. Beyond this consciousness, therefore, there can be no ''immediate'' certainty ... There can never be an existence that is objective absolutely and in itself; such an existence, indeed, is positively inconceivable. For the objective, as such, always and essentially has its existence in the consciousness of a subject; it is therefore the subject's representation, and consequently is conditioned by the subject, and moreover by the subject's forms of representation, which belong to the subject and not to the object. --''[[The World as Will and Representation]]'', Vol. II, Ch. 1
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 +|}
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 +[[Image:Don Quixote and Sancho Pansa by Honoré Daumier.jpg|thumb|200px|right|[[Don Quixote]], hopeless romantic and idealist, hence the word [[quixotic]].
 +<br>
 +Illustration: ''[[Don Quixote (Honoré Daumier, Neue Pinakothek)|Don Quixote]]'' (c. 1868) by [[Honoré Daumier]]]]
{{Template}} {{Template}}
-'''Idealism''' is the philosophical theory which maintains that [[experience]] is [[The Ultimate|ultimately]] based on mental activity. In the [[philosophy of perception]], idealism is contrasted with [[Philosophical realism|realism]], in which the external world is said to have an apparent [[absolute]] [[existence]]. [[Epistemology|Epistemological]] idealists (such as [[Kant]]) claim that the only things which can be directly ''known for certain'' are just ideas ([[abstraction]]). In literature, idealism refers to the thoughts or the ideas of the writer.+In [[philosophy]], '''idealism''' is the group of philosophies which assert that [[reality]], or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally [[mental]], [[mentally constructed]], or otherwise [[immaterial]]. [[Epistemology|Epistemologically]], idealism manifests as a [[skepticism]] about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing. In a sociological sense, idealism emphasizes how human ideas—especially beliefs and values—shape society. As an [[ontology|ontological]] doctrine, idealism goes further, asserting that all entities are composed of mind or spirit. Idealism thus rejects [[physicalism|physicalist]] and [[dualism (philosophy of mind)|dualist]] theories that fail to ascribe priority to the mind.
-In the [[philosophy of mind]], idealism is the opposite of [[materialism]], in which the ultimate nature of reality is based on physical substances. Materialism is a theory of [[monism]] as opposed to [[dualism (philosophy of mind)|dualism]] and [[pluralism (metaphysics)|pluralism]], while idealism might or might not be monistic. Hence, idealism can take dualistic form and often does, since the subject-object division is dualistic by definition. Idealism sometimes refers to a tradition in thought that represents things of a perfect form, as in the fields of ethics, morality, aesthetics, and value. In this way, it represents a human perfect being or circumstance.+The earliest extant arguments that the world of experience is grounded in the mental derive from India and Greece. The [[Hindu idealism|Hindu idealists]] in India and the Greek [[Neoplatonism|Neoplatonists]] gave [[panentheism|panentheistic]] arguments for an all-pervading consciousness as the ground or true nature of reality. In contrast, the [[Yogacara|Yogācāra]] school, which arose within [[Mahayana]] Buddhism in India in the 4th century CE, based its "mind-only" idealism to a greater extent on [[Phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenological]] analyses of personal experience. This turn toward the [[subjective idealism|subjective]] anticipated [[empiricism|empiricists]] such as [[George Berkeley]], who revived idealism in 18th-century Europe by employing skeptical arguments against [[materialism]].
-Idealism is a philosophical movement in Western thought, but is not entirely limited to the West, and names a number of philosophical positions with sometimes quite different tendencies and implications in politics and ethics; for instance, at least in popular culture, philosophical idealism is associated with Plato and the school of platonism.+Beginning with [[Immanuel Kant]], [[German idealism|German idealists]] such as [[G. W. F. 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, birthed idealistic and [[subjectivism|subjectivist]] schools ranging from [[British idealism]] to [[phenomenalism]] to [[existentialism]]. The historical influence of this branch of idealism remains central even to the schools that rejected its [[metaphysics|metaphysical]] assumptions, such as [[Marxism]], [[pragmatism]] and [[positivism]].
==Other uses==<!-- This section is linked from [[Old Harry's Game]] --> ==Other uses==<!-- This section is linked from [[Old Harry's Game]] -->
-In general parlance, "idealism" or "idealist" is also used to describe a person having high [[ideal (ethics)|ideals]], sometimes with the connotation that those ideals are unrealisable or at odds with "practical" life, or naively at variance with empirical observations of the real world.+In general parlance, "idealism" or "idealist" is also used to describe a person having high [[ideal (ethics)|ideals]], sometimes with the connotation that those ideals are unrealisable or at odds with "[[practical]]" life, or naively at variance with empirical observations of the real world. In this sense, its antonym is [[realism]].
 + 
 +==Definitions==
 +''Idealism'' is a term with several related meanings. It comes via ''[[idea]]'' from the Greek ''idein'' (ἰδεῖν), meaning "to see". The term entered the English language by 1743. In ordinary use, as when speaking of Woodrow Wilson's [[idealism (international relations)|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 [[pragmatism|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 (philosophy)|naturalism]] and [[Philosophical realism|realism]].
 + 
 +Any philosophy that assigns crucial importance to the ideal or spiritual realm in its account of human existence may be termed "idealist". [[Metaphysics|Metaphysical]] idealism is an [[ontology|ontological]] doctrine that holds that reality itself is [[incorporeality|incorporeal]] or experiential at its core. Beyond this, idealists disagree on which aspects of the mental are more basic. [[Platonic idealism]] affirms that [[abstract object|abstractions]] are more basic to reality than the things we perceive, while [[subjective idealism|subjective idealists]] and [[phenomenalism|phenomenalists]] tend to privilege sensory experience over abstract reasoning. [[Epistemology|Epistemological]] idealism is the view that reality can only be known through ideas, that only psychological experience can be apprehended by the mind.
 + 
 +Subjective idealists like [[George Berkeley]] are [[anti-realism|anti-realists]] in terms of a mind-independent world, whereas [[transcendental idealism|transcendental idealists]] like [[Immanuel Kant]] are strong [[skepticism|skeptics]] of such a world, affirming epistemological and not metaphysical idealism. Thus Kant defines ''idealism'' as "the assertion that we can never be certain whether all of our putative outer experience is not mere imagining". He claimed that, according to ''idealism'', "the reality of external objects does not admit of strict proof. On the contrary, however, the reality of the object of our internal sense (of myself and state) is clear immediately through consciousness." However, not all idealists restrict the real or the knowable to our immediate subjective experience. [[Objective idealism|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 [[Platonic idealism|forms]], while for Leibniz they were proto-mental and concrete [[monadology|monads]].
-The word "ideal" is commonly used as an adjective to designate qualities of perfection, desirability, and excellence. This is foreign to the epistemological use of the word "idealism" which pertains to internal [[mind|mental]] [[representations]]. These internal ideas represent objects that are assumed to exist outside of the 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.
-== Le Palais idéal == 
-*See [[Ferdinand Cheval]] 
==See also== ==See also==
 +*[[Idea]]
 +*[[Ideal]]
 +*[[Mental picture]]
 +*[[Platonic idealism]]
 +*[[Palais idéal]] by facteur Cheval
*[[Perfection]] *[[Perfection]]
 +*[[Socrates's metaphor of the three beds]]
 +*[[Transcendental idealism]]
 +*[[Combat des écoles. - L'Idéalisme et le Réalisme ]][http://bir.brandeis.edu/bitstream/handle/10192/3033/LD2629.jpg?sequence=1], a lithograph by Honoré Daumier.
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[T]rue philosophy must at all costs be idealistic; indeed, it must be so merely to be honest. For nothing is more certain than that no one ever came out of himself in order to identify himself immediately with things different from him; but everything of which he has certain, sure, and therefore immediate knowledge, lies within his consciousness. Beyond this consciousness, therefore, there can be no immediate certainty ... There can never be an existence that is objective absolutely and in itself; such an existence, indeed, is positively inconceivable. For the objective, as such, always and essentially has its existence in the consciousness of a subject; it is therefore the subject's representation, and consequently is conditioned by the subject, and moreover by the subject's forms of representation, which belong to the subject and not to the object. --The World as Will and Representation, Vol. II, Ch. 1

Don Quixote, hopeless romantic and idealist, hence the word quixotic.  Illustration: Don Quixote (c. 1868) by Honoré Daumier
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Don Quixote, hopeless romantic and idealist, hence the word quixotic.
Illustration: Don Quixote (c. 1868) by Honoré Daumier

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In philosophy, idealism is the group of philosophies which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing. In a sociological sense, idealism emphasizes how human ideas—especially beliefs and values—shape society. As an ontological doctrine, idealism goes further, asserting that all entities are composed of mind or spirit. Idealism thus rejects physicalist and dualist theories that fail to ascribe priority to the mind.

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. In contrast, the Yogācāra school, which arose within Mahayana Buddhism in India in the 4th century CE, 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 G. W. F. 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, birthed idealistic and subjectivist schools ranging from British idealism to phenomenalism to existentialism. The historical influence of this branch of idealism remains central even to the schools that rejected its metaphysical assumptions, such as Marxism, pragmatism and positivism.

Other uses

In general parlance, "idealism" or "idealist" is also used to describe a person having high ideals, sometimes with the connotation that those ideals are unrealisable or at odds with "practical" life, or naively at variance with empirical observations of the real world. In this sense, its antonym is realism.

Definitions

Idealism is a term with several related meanings. It comes via idea from the Greek idein (ἰδεῖν), meaning "to see". The term entered the English language by 1743. In ordinary use, 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.

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.

Subjective idealists like George Berkeley are anti-realists in terms of a mind-independent world, whereas transcendental idealists like Immanuel Kant are strong skeptics of such a world, affirming epistemological and not metaphysical idealism. Thus Kant defines idealism as "the assertion that we can never be certain whether all of our putative outer experience is not mere imagining". He claimed that, according to idealism, "the reality of external objects does not admit of strict proof. On the contrary, however, the reality of the object of our internal sense (of myself and state) is clear immediately through consciousness." 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.

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.

See also




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