Idealism
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Idealism in philosophy, also known as philosophical idealism or metaphysical idealism, is the set of metaphysical perspectives asserting that, most fundamentally, reality is equivalent to mind, spirit
The Upanishadic sage Yājñavalkya (c. possibly 8th century BCE) is one of the earliest exponents of idealism, and is a major figure in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad.
Śaṅkara, by Raja Ravi Varma
Statue of Vasubandhu (jp. Seshin), Kōfuku-ji, Nara, Japan
Wang Yangming, a leading Neo-Confucian scholar during the Ming and a founder of the "school of mind"
Philosophical realism
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Philosophical realism—usually not treated as a position of its own but as a stance towards other subject matters—is the view that a certain kind of thing has mind-independent existence, i.e. that it e
Idealism
…materialism, idealism asserts the primacy of consciousness as the origin and prerequisite of all phenomena. In some contexts, idealism is contrasted with realism. Idealism came under attack from proponents of analytic philosophy, such as G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, but its critics also included the new…
Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael. In Plato's metaphysics, ever-unchanging Forms, or Ideas, exist apart from particular physical things, and are related to them as their prototype or exemplar. Aristotle's philosophy of reality also aims at the universal. Aristotle finds the universal, which he calls essence, in the commonalities of particular things.