Idealism

Idealism, the philosophical view that the mind or spirit constitutes the fundamental reality, has taken several distinct but related forms. Objective idealism accepts common sense Realism (the view that material objects exist) but rejects Naturalism (according to which the mind and spiritual values have emerged from material things), whereas subjective idealism denies that material objects exist independently of human perception and thus stands opposed to both realism and naturalism. Plato is often considered the first …

…all knowledge. Fichte's theory was elaborated in G. W. F. Hegel's absolute idealism. For Hegel reality is absolute Spirit or Reason, which manifests its development toward total self-consciousness in every aspect of experience from nature to human history. The English Hegelian F. H. Bradley argued that ordinary experience is fragmentary and contradictory and therefore appearance; reality, the Absolute, is a unified totality, which can be known only through a unique and absolute, perhaps mystical, experience.