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 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. The term itself derives from the Ancient Greek word for "to see" and entered English by the 18th century, with Christian Wolff first using it in its abstract metaphysical sense. A. C. Ewing influentially defined it as the view that no physical objects can exist apart from some experience, including absolute or divine experience. More recently, Willem deVries described it as theories granting ontological priority to the mental over the non-mental. Idealism thus rejects both materialism and dualism. Two main metaphysical concepts distinguish its positions: ontological idealism, which holds that all reality is fundamentally mental (a form of monism exemplified by Berkeley's immaterialism, Hegel, and Bradley), and epistemological idealism, which argues that all knowledge is based on mental structures, not on things in themselves, as in Kant's transcendental idealism. These arguments can be combined, as by Berkeley, or defended independently, as by F. H. Bradley and McTaggart on the metaphysical side, and Josiah Royce and Brand Blanshard on the epistemological side. Some thinkers, including Kant, use epistemic arguments while remaining neutral about the metaphysical nature of things in themselves. Idealism has been defended in Indian philosophy, such as in Vedanta and Shaiva Pratyabhijña thought, which argue for an all-pervading consciousness as the ground of reality, and in Mahayana Buddhism's Yogācāra school, which advocated a "mind-only" philosophy. In the West, its roots trace back to Plato's theory of unchanging ideas, and it was revived by Immanuel Kant's transcendental idealism. Epistemologically, idealism rejects knowing anything independent of mind; ontologically, it asserts that all existence depends on mind. It contrasts with realism and faced attacks from analytic philosophers like G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, as well as new realists and Marxists, yet its paradigms continue to influence