Idealism

Few philosophical traditions traverse the history of Western thought as persistently as idealism. From Plato’s Theory of Forms to Hegel’s absolute system, passing through Berkeley’s immaterialism and Kant’s critical philosophy, the claim that reality is ultimately constituted or conditioned by thought, mind, or spirit resurfaces in radically diverse guises. This article examines the major strands of philosophical idealism — their premises, arguments, and internal differences — and the decisive critiques levelled against them by Marx, Russell, and Moore. ...

What is the structure of reality? What truly exists — and what is illusion, appearance, or a construction of our minds? This is the oldest, most persistent, and most vertiginous question in all of philosophy. From Thales of Miletus, who in the sixth century BC declared that everything is water, to quantum physicists who now debate whether the universe is made of vibrating strings in eleven dimensions, humanity has never stopped asking: what is this thing we call reality? ...

George Berkeley An Irish philosopher born in 1685 and later the Anglican Bishop of Cloyne, George Berkeley produced his most important philosophical works while still very young, before the age of thirty. A man of faith and action, he even crossed the Atlantic with a project to found a college in Bermuda for the American colonies. He is remembered as the second great name of British empiricism, between Locke and Hume — and the most surprising of the three, for pushing empiricism to a radical conclusion: that matter does not exist. ...

Vladímir Soloviov Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov (28 January 1853, Moscow — 13 August 1900, the Uzkoye estate near Moscow) was a philosopher, theologian, poet, and critic — the first Russian thinker to build a comprehensive metaphysical system and the founder of the tradition of Russian religious philosophy. The son of the great historian Sergei Solovyov, he was a friend of Dostoevsky and a central figure in the intellectual life of his time. His work cast its shadow over the entire following generation — from Berdyaev and Bulgakov to Russian poetic Symbolism. ...