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In philosophy, Idealism is any theory positing the primacy of spirit, mind, or language over matter. It includes claiming that thought has some crucial role in making the world the way it is--that thought and the world are made for one another, or that they make one another. (For example, Immanuel Kant held that the mind forces the world we perceive to take the shape of space-and-time; Georg Hegel thought that history must be rational in something significantly like the way science is.) Finally, "idealism" can denote the belief that abstract or mental entities have some sort of reality "independent" of the world. (Some philosophers think of numbers this way; Plato thought that all properties and objects we could think of must have some such independent existence. Confusingly, this kind of idealism was once termed " Realism".) Surrealism began as vaguely idealist before tending more towards materialism.
1 Idealism in religious thought
Not all religion and belief in the supernatural is, strictly speaking, anti-materialist in nature. While many types of religious belief are indeed specifically idealist, for example, Hindu beliefs about the nature of the Brahman, ZenZen is the Japanese name of a well known branch of Mahyna Buddhism, practiced especially in China, Japan, Vietnam and Korea. It stresses the role of meditation in pursuing enlightenment. Because Zen is the common name for this branch in Japanese as well a Buddhism stands in the middle way of dialectics between idealism and materialism, and mainstream ChristianChristian cross and its many variations are widely recognized as an ancient Christian symbol. Christianity is an Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as described in the New Testament. Although Christians generally chara doctrine affirms the importance of the materiality of Christ's human body and the goodness of the material world.
Several modern religious movements and texts, for example the organizations within the New Thought MovementThe New Thought Movement describes a set of religious developments that occurred in the United States during the late 19th century, originating with Phineas Quimby. From this movement emerged several religious denominations that remain active today, inclu and the book, A Course in Miracles, may be said to have a particularly idealist orientation. The theologyTheology is literally rational discourse concerning God ( Greek θεος, theos "God", + λογος, logos "rational discourse"). By extension, it also refers to the study of other religious topics. of Christian ScienceThe Church of Christ, Scientist often known as The Christian Science Church is a nontrinitarian Protestant Christian denomination, founded by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879. The Bible and Eddy's book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures are together the is explicitly idealist.
More accurately Idealism is based on the root word Ideal meaning a perfect form of and is most accurately described as a belief in perfect forms of virtue, truth, and the absolute. Idea-ism would be a more appropriate term for the definitions listed above. There is a clear distinction between an idea and an ideal. i.e. Websters Dictionary says "conforming exactly to an ideal, law, or standard: perfect.
2 Other uses
In general parlance, "idealism" or "idealist" is also used to describe a person having high ideals, sometimes with the connotation that those ideals are unrealizable or at odds with "practical" life.
3 See also
Epistemology
