IDEALISM

in philosophy, any view that stresses the central role of the ideal or the spiritual in the interpretation of experience. It may hold that the world or reality exists essentially as spirit or consciousness, that abstractions and laws are more fundamental in reality than sensory things, or, at least, that whatever exists is known in dimensions that are chiefly mentalthrough and as ideas. Thus the two basic forms of Idealism are metaphysical Idealism, which asserts the ideality of reality, and epistemological Idealism, which holds that in the knowledge process the mind can grasp only the psychic or that its objects are conditioned by their perceptibility. In its metaphysics, Idealism is thus directly opposed to Materialism, the view that the basic substance of the world is matter and that it is known primarily through and as material forms and processes; and in its epistemology, it is opposed to Realism, which holds that in human knowledge objects are grasped and seen as they really arein their existence outside and independently of the mind. As a philosophy often expressed in bold and expansive syntheses, Idealism is also opposed to various restrictive forms of thought: to Skepticism, with occasional exceptions as in the British Hegelian F.H. Bradley (18461924); to Positivism, which stresses observable facts and relations as opposed to ultimates and therefore spurns the speculative pretensions of every metaphysic; and often to atheism, since the Idealist commonly extrapolates the concept of mind to embrace an infinite Mind. The essential orientation of Idealism can be sensed through some of its typical tenets: Truth is the whole, or the Absolute; to be is to be perceived; reality reveals its ultimate nature more faithfully in its highest qualities (mental) than in its lowest (material); the Ego is both subject and object. Additional reading The two best books on Idealism in English are A.C. Ewing, Idealism: A Critical Survey (1933); and R.F.A. Hoernle, Idealism as a Philosophy (1927). A.C. Ewing (ed.), The Idealist Tradition from Berkeley to Blanshard (1957), is a useful volume containing selections from the texts of the major Idealists and selected criticisms of Idealism. Other important collections are C. Barrett (ed.), Contemporary Idealism in America (1932); J.H. Muirhead (ed.), Contemporary British Philosophy: Personal Statements, FirstSecond Series, 2 vol. each (1924); and G.P. Adams and W.P. Montague (eds.), Contemporary American Philosophy, 2 vol. (1930). Works on the history and theory of the subject include: B. Blanshard, Reason and Analysis (1962), a careful critical examination of schools of philosophy opposed to Idealism; G.W. Cunningham, The Idealistic Argument in Recent British and American Philosophy (1933), a thorough and dependable treatise; S.N. Dasgupta, Indian Idealism (1933); Nicolai Hartmann, Die Philosophie des Deutsches Idealismus, vol. 1, Fichte, Schelling, und die Romantik (1923), vol. 2, Hegel (1929), 2nd ed. (1 vol., 1960); A.J.M. Milne, The Social Philosophy of English Idealism (1962); J.H. Muirhead, The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Philosophy: Studies in the History of Idealism in England and America (1931); P.T. Raju, Idealistic Thought of India (1953); L.S. Rouner (ed.), Philosophy, Religion, and the Coming World Civilization: Essays in Honor of William Ernest Hocking (1966); and A. Stern, Philosophy of History and the Problem of Values (1962), a good secondary source.On the classical systems of Indian philosophy, see S. Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, 2 vol. (192327), an authoritative exposition; S.N. Dasgupta, A History of Indian Philosophy, 5 vol. (192255), an erudite examination of the Sanskrit and Pali texts; Indian Idealism (1933); Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine (1949), a reinterpretation of the heritage; and Swami Vivekananda, The Yogas and Other Works (1953), a collection with biography. In Pragmatism (1907) and in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), William James quoted Vivekananda at length as a typical representative of spiritual monism. In the Sacred Books of the East, 50 vol., ed. by F. Max Muller (18791910), see especially vol. 1 and 15, The Upanishads and vol. 8, The Bhagavadgt. In the Harvard Oriental Series, 47 vol., ed. by Charles Rockwell Lanman (18901968), see especially vol. 3, Buddhism in Translations, and vol. 17, The Yoga-System of Patajali.Writings of Idealists are listed in their biographies. P.A. Schilpp, editor of The Library of Living Philosophers Series, has issued several important volumes on Idealists: The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, 2nd ed. (1951); The Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer (1949); The Philosophy of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1962); The Philosophy of Martin Buber (1967); and The Philosophy of Brand Blanshard (1980). Other works on Idealists include: J.H. Cotton, Royce on the Human Self (1954), one of the best books on Royce; D.S. Robinson, Royce and Hocking: American Idealists (1968); and Gabriel Marcel, La Mtaphysique de Royce (1945; Eng. trans., 1956), which shows the relation of Marcel to Royce and Hocking. H.T. Kim, Nishida and Royce, Philosophy East and West, 1:1829 (1952), and The Logic of the Illogical: Zen and Hegel, ibid., 5:1929 (1955), are informative accounts of Nishida's contributions to Idealism. The following volumes of the Revue Internationale de Philosophie contain valuable bibliographies: Henri Bergson, vol. 3 (1948); Lon Brunschvicg, vol. 5 (1951); Hegel, vol. 6 (1952); George Berkeley, vol. 7 (1953); Benedetto Croce, vol. 7 (1953); Kant, vol. 8 (1954); Whitehead, vol. 15 (1961); Leibniz, vol. 20 (1966); and Josiah Royce, vol. 21 (1967). Godfrey Vesey (ed.), Idealism Past and Present (1982), includes historical essays on idealistic thought of the past 2,500 years.