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Idealism

Idealism is the doctrine which holds that ideas and ideals, as products of mind, must represent either the only true reality or participate in the apprehension of the exterior world by defining a reality to which sensory impressions must conform (or risk aberration).

Plato's concept of idealized forms would qualify his philosophy as a kind of idealism, but because it does not consider the forms to be held in any mind, the term is usually reserved to later philosophers such as Plotinus, Descartes, Leibniz and George Berkeley. Immanuel Kant developed a critical idealism in which the phenomenal world is constituted by human understanding, in opposition to a world of tings-in-themselves.

German idealism culminated in the "objective idealism" of Hegel, which treats all reality as a creation of mind or spirit. Most religious traditions could be considered expansions of idealism, though Christian theology tends more toward the direction of substance duality.

Web Resources On Idealism

Idealism in the Columbia Encyclopedia
Idealism in Wikipedia
Idealism in the Catholic Encyclopedia

Book Resources On Idealism

Hegel's Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness by Robert B. Pippin
George Berkeley: Idealism and the Man by David Berman
German Philosophy 1760-1860: The Legacy of Idealism by Terry Pinkard

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