idealism

idealism
Any doctrine holding that reality is fundamentally mental in nature. The boundaries of such a doctrine are not firmly drawn: for example, the traditional Christian view that God is a sustaining cause, possessing greater reality than his creation, might just be classified as a form of idealism. Leibniz's doctrine that the simple substances out of which all else is made are themselves perceiving and appetitive beings ( monads ), and that space and time are relations among these things, is another early version. Major forms of idealism include subjective idealism, or the position better called immaterialism and associated with Berkeley, according to which to exist is to be perceived, transcendental idealism, and absolute idealism . Idealism is opposed to the naturalistic belief that mind is itself to be exhaustively understood as a product of natural processes. The most common modern manifestation of idealism is the view called linguistic idealism, that we ‘create’ the world we inhabit by employing mind-dependent linguistic and social categories. The difficulty is to give a literal form to this view that does not conflict with the obvious fact that we do not create worlds, but find ourselves in one.

Philosophy dictionary. . 2011.

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  • Idealism — • The characteristic of those who regard the ideas of truth and right, goodness and beauty, as standards and directive forces Catholic Encyclopedia. Kevin Knight. 2006. Idealism     Idealism …   Catholic encyclopedia

  • idealism — IDEALÍSM s.n. 1. Orientare în filozofie, opusă materialismului, care consideră spiritul, conştiinţa, gândirea ca factor primordial, iar materia, natura, existenţa ca factor secund, derivat. ♢ Idealism obiectiv = idealism care concepe factorul… …   Dicționar Român

  • Idealism — Idealism …   Википедия

  • idealism —    Idealism about something in philosophy is the doctrine that it is ideal , that is, mind dependent. There are three main forms of idealism: (1) subjective idealism, which holds that what we think of as physical things exist only because they… …   Christian Philosophy

  • Idealism — Album par Digitalism Sortie Le 11 juin 2007 Durée 51:44 Genre Électronique Label Kitsuné Music Idealism est le premier al …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Idealism — I*de al*ism, n. [Cf. F. id[ e]alisme.] 1. The quality or state of being ideal. [1913 Webster] 2. Conception of the ideal; imagery. [1913 Webster] 3. (Philos.) The system or theory that denies the existence of material bodies, and teaches that we… …   The Collaborative International Dictionary of English

  • idealism — index casuistry Burton s Legal Thesaurus. William C. Burton. 2006 …   Law dictionary

  • idealism — (n.) 1796, in the abstract sense, originally belief that reality is made up only of ideas, from IDEAL (Cf. ideal) (adj.) + ISM (Cf. ism); on model of Fr. idéalisme. Meaning representing things in an ideal form is from 1829 …   Etymology dictionary

  • idealism — ► NOUN 1) the practice of forming or pursuing ideals, especially unrealistically. 2) (in art or literature) the representation of things in ideal form. DERIVATIVES idealist noun idealistic adjective idealistically adverb …   English terms dictionary

  • idealism — [ī dē′əl iz΄əm] n. [Fr idéalisme or Ger idealismus] 1. behavior or thought based on a conception of things as they should be or as one would wish them to be; idealization 2. a striving to achieve one s ideals 3. imaginative treatment in art that… …   English World dictionary

  • Idealism — The 20th century British scientist Sir James Jeans wrote that the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine This article is about the philosophical notion of idealism. For other uses, see Idealism… …   Wikipedia

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