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Definition: idealism from Philip's Encyclopedia

Philosophical doctrine that assigns metaphysical priority to the mental over the material. It denies the claim within realism that material things exist independently of the mind. Idealism in the West dates from the teachings of Plato. The term is also applied to artistic pursuits to denote a rendering of something 'as it ought to be' rather than as it actually is.

idealism

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
the attitude that places special value on ideas and ideals as products of the mind, in comparison with the world as perceived through the senses. In art idealism is the tendency to represent things as aesthetic sensibility would have them rather than as they are. In ethics it implies a view of life in which the predominant forces are spiritual and the aim is perfection. In philosophy the term refers to efforts to account for all objects in nature and experience as representations of the mind and sometimes to assign to such representations a higher order of existence. It is opposed to materialism. Plato conceived a world in which eternal ideas constituted reality, of which the ordinary world of experience is a shadow. In modern times idealism has largely come to refer the source of ideas to man's consciousness, whereas in the earlier period ideas were assigned a reality outside and independent of man's existence. Nevertheless, modern idealism generally proposes suprahuman mental…
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Full text Article Idealism

From World of Sociology, Gale
Idealism refers to a metaphysical theory that considers the world, as perceived by human beings, to consists only of ideas. Idealism contrasts with empiricism, a world view claiming that the world is separate from the sense impressions upon the mind. Plato is often considered a proponent of…
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Full text Article idealism

From Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology
A view of the world that sees reality as ultimately composed of ideas rather than a realm existing outside human consciousness, idealism reaches this conclusion on the grounds that, without ideas, humans could not function. Because human activity is conscious activity, the world itself is ultimately…
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Full text Article idealism

From The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology
In philosophy, this is the position that the external material world is either constructed by or dependent upon the mind. In sociology, subjectivist idealism is occasionally employed to describe such positions as SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM, in which the external social reality cannot exist…
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Full text Article idealism

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
the attitude that places special value on ideas and ideals as products of the mind, in comparison with the world as perceived through the senses. In art idealism is the tendency to represent things as aesthetic sensibility would have them rather than as they are. In ethics it implies a view of life…
| 385 words
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Full text Article idealism

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
In metaphysics , the view that stresses the central role of the ideal or the spiritual in the constitution of the world and in mankind’s interpretation of experience. Idealism may hold that the world or reality exists essentially as spirit or consciousness, that abstractions and laws are more…
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Full text Article IDEALISM

From Dictionary of Visual Discourse: A Dialectical Lexicon of Terms
From the Greek idein , to see or perceive. The doctrine that only minds and their perceptions and ideas ultimately exist (hence only mind and/or mind-like phenomena are real). In its extreme form: ‘the doctrine that whatever exists, or at any rate whatever can be known to exist, must be in some…
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Full text Article Idealism

From The Oxford Companion to International Relations
In the context of international relations, “idealism” refers to the body of thought that regards fundamental reform of the system of international relations to be both essential and possible. Idealists treat the sovereign independence of states as a basic cause of war and its attendant misery. Over…
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Full text Article idealism

From Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Political Thought
1 . Metaphysical. The only things that exist (or which ‘ultimately’ exist) are ideas or mental entities, so that the whole structure of reality is to be understood in terms of consciousness. Thus, in Berkeley’s philosophy, the world is held to consist of the infinite mind of God, the finite minds of…
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Full text Article Idealism

From The Social Science Jargon-Buster
Core definition Philosophical positionings in which the external world can only be experienced through the mind. What is ‘real’ is either constructed by the mind or is only given meaning through the mind. Longer explanation Have you seen The Matrix ? In it, the notion of reality is turned on its…
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Full text Article idealism

From Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
the philosophical doctrine that reality is somehow mind-correlative or mind-coordinated – that the real objects constituting the “external world” are not independent of cognizing minds, but exist only as in some way correlative to mental operations. The doctrine centers on the conception that…
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