Idealist philosophy

In philosophy, idealism is the group of philosophies which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing.

In contrast to materialism, idealism concedes the primary of consciousness, which means consciousness exists before material, consciousness creates and determines material, not vice versa. Idealism theories believe consciousness is the origin of the world and aim to explain the existing world by mental causes.

Idealism theories are mainly divided into two groups. Subjective idealism concedes the primary of human consciousness and believes that the existing world are a combination of sensation. Objective idealism concedes the primary of an objective consciousness which exists before and independent of human ones.

In a sociological sense, idealism emphasizes how human ideas—especially beliefs and values—shape society. As an ontological doctrine, idealism goes further, asserting that all entities are composed of mind or spirit. Idealism thus rejects physicalist and dualist theories that fail to ascribe priority to the mind.

The earliest extant arguments that the world of experience is grounded in the mental derive from India and Greece. The Hindu idealists in India and the Greek Neoplatonists gave panentheistic arguments for an all-pervading consciousness as the ground or true nature of reality. In contrast, the Yogācāra school, which arose within Mahayana Buddhism in India in the 4th century CE, based its "mind-only" idealism to a greater extent on phenomenological analyses of personal experience. This turn toward the subjective anticipated empiricists such as George Berkeley, who revived idealism in 18th-century Europe by employing skeptical arguments against materialism.

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