Idealism is the system or theory of philosophy that denies the existence of material bodies, and teaches that we have no rational grounds to believe in the reality of anything but ideas and their relations. Idealism is in contradistinction to realism, In relatively modern times idealism has been maintained by Descartes, Berkeley, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. Some of these, as Descartes and Kant, are not, however, pure idealists, inasmuch as they allow at least a problematical existence to sensible things independent of the thinking subject.
Berkeley is perhaps one of the most thorough-going idealists, holding that what is called matter consists merely of ideas, that is, appearances produced in the mind by the direct influence of the Deity. This dogmatic idealism of Berkeley differs from the critical or transcendental idealism of Kant. This consists in the doctrine that all the material of experience is given in sensation, but on the other hand the forms of the experience (space, time, and the categories of the understanding) arise in ourselves a priori, and that accordingly sensible objects are known only as they appear to us and not as they are in themselves.
Pichte, on the other hand, rejected the notion of things in themselves as untenable and self-contradictory, and created the system of so-called subjective idealism, according to which the I or thinking subject produces the appearance of a sensible world by a mode of activity grounded upon its essential nature. The theories of Schelliug and Hegel are developments of the Pichtean doctrine. Research Idealism
Samuuel Clarke was an English theological and philosophical writer. He was born in 1675 at Norwich and died in 1729. Educated at Caius College, Cambridge, he became chaplain to Dr. More, bishop of Norwich, and between 1699 and 1701 published Essays on Baptism, Confirmation, and Repentance, replied to Toland's Amyntor, and issued a paraphrase of the Gospels. He was then presented with two livings, and in 1704 and 1705 twice delivered the Boyle lectures at Oxford on The Being and Attributes of God, and on The Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion.
In 1706 he published a letter to Mr. Dodwell on the Immortality of the Soul, and a Latin version of Newton's Optics. He was then appointed rector of St Bennet's, London, and shortly afterwards rector of St James's and chaplain to Queen Anne. In 1712 he edited Caesar's Commentaries, and published his Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, which became a subject of much controversy and of complaint in the Lower House of Convocation. His chief subsequent productions were his discussions with Leibnitz and Collins on the Freedom of the Will, his Latin version of part of the Iliad, and a considerable number of sermons. His philosophic fame rests on his a priori argument for the existence of God, his theory of the nature and obligation of virtue as conformity to certain relations involved in the eternal fitness of things, and his opposition to Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibnitz, and others. Research Samuel Clarke
Abbreviations
Research Idealism
