Idealism

By Sprigge, T.L.S.

Idealism is now usually understood in philosophy as the view that mind is the most basic reality and that the physical world exists only as an appearance to ...

Idealizations

By Laymon, Ronald

Scientific analyses of particular phenomena are invariably simplified or idealized. The universe does not contain only two bodies as assumed in Newton’s derivation of Kepler’s laws, or only ...

Ideals

By Rosati, Connie S.

Ideals are models of excellence. They can be moral or nonmoral, and either ‘substantive’ or ‘deliberative’. Substantive ideals present models of excellence against which things in a relevant ...

Idealism, German

see German idealism.

German idealism

By Franks, Paul

From the late eighteenth century until the middle of the nineteenth, German philosophy was dominated by the movement known as German idealism, which began as an attempt to ...

Legal idealism

By Attwooll, Elspeth

The term ‘legal idealism’ has various meanings. These include: the notion that laws, and the rights and duties they confer, genuinely exist, in which legal idealism is opposed ...

Idealism in Indian philosophy

see Buddhism, Yogācāra school of.

Nineteenth-century philosophy

By Stern, Robert

In the first part of the nineteenth century, the reigning philosophical outlook was idealist in one form or another, as the attempt was made to complete the intellectual ...

Russian philosophy

By Kelly, Aileen

Russian thought is best approached without fixed preconceptions about the nature and proper boundaries of philosophy. Conditions of extreme political oppression and economic backwardness are not conducive to ...

Buddhist philosophy, Japanese

By Maraldo, John C.

Buddhism transformed Japanese culture and in turn was transformed in Japan. Mahāyāna Buddhist thought entered Japan from the East Asian continent as part of a cultural complex that ...

Medieval philosophy

By MacDonald, Scott; Kretzmann, Norman

Medieval philosophy is the philosophy of Western Europe from about ad 400–1400, roughly the period between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance. Medieval philosophers are the ...

Political philosophy

By Miller, David

Political philosophy can be defined as philosophical reflection on how best to arrange our collective life - our political institutions and our social practices, such as our economic ...

Jaina philosophy

By Soni, Jayandra

The issues in Jaina philosophy developed concurrently with those that emerged in Buddhist and Hindu philosophy. The period from the second century bc to about the tenth ...

Japanese philosophy

By Kasulis, Thomas P.

The most distinctive characteristic of Japanese philosophy is how it has assimilated and adapted foreign philosophies to its native worldview. As an isolated island nation, Japan successfully resisted ...

Global Justice

By Tan, Kok-Chor

For introductions to the current debate on global justice, the obvious entries to start with are Simon Caney’s Global Justice, recent work on and Charles Beitz’s International Relations, ...

Perception

By Logue, Heather

If you want to get to grips with philosophy of perception, the best place to start is M.G.F. Martin’s entry on (you guessed it) perception! ...

Buddhism, Yogācāra school of

By Lusthaus, Dan

Yogācāra is one of the two schools of Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism. Its founding is ascribed to two brothers, Asaṅga and Vasubandhu, but its basic tenets and doctrines were ...

Models in physics

By Frigg, Roman

In its most common use, the term ‘model’ refers to a simplified and stylised version of the so-called target system, the part or aspect of the world that ...

Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844–1900)

By Clark, Maudemarie

Appointed professor of classical philology at the University of Basel when he was just 24 years old, Nietzsche was expected to secure his reputation as a brilliant young ...

Equality of opportunity

By Navin, Mark

Equality of opportunity is a political ideal according to which participants in some cooperative systems should possess equal access to some advantages at some point in time. According ...

Plato (427–347 BC)

By Schofield, Malcolm

Plato was an Athenian Greek of aristocratic family, active as a philosopher in the first half of the fourth century bc. He was a devoted follower of ...

Moore, George Edward (1873–1958)

By Baldwin, Thomas

G.E. Moore was one of the most influential British philosophers of the twentieth century. His early writings are renowned for his rejection of idealist metaphysics and his insistence ...

Signposts Movement

By Kelly, Aileen

The symposium Signposts (Vekhi, sometimes translated Landmarks), published in 1909, was a succès de scandale which provoked a long debate of extraordinary intensity and scope on ...

Royce, Josiah (1855–1916)

By Burch, Robert W.

Josiah Royce rose from a humble background in the California of the Gold Rush period to become Professor of the History of Philosophy at Harvard University and one ...

Aesthetics, Japanese

By Viswanathan, Meera

While the terms ‘aesthetics’ and ‘philosophy’ were only introduced into Japan during the Meiji Period (post 1868), Japanese culture has nevertheless witnessed the proliferation of various arts and ...