Objective Idealism - Difference To Other Idealisms

Difference To Other Idealisms

Idealism, in terms of metaphysics, is the philosophical view that the mind or spirit constitutes the fundamental reality. It has taken several distinct but related forms. Among them are Objective and Subjective idealism. 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.

If subjective idealism locks itself within the sphere of the cognizing individual and the sensuous form of his cognition, objective idealism, on the contrary, lifts the result of human thought, of man's entire culture, to an absolute, ascribing to it absolutely independent suprapersonal being and active power. // Alexander Spirkin. Fundamentals of Philosophy. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1990. P. 30.

Schelling and Hegel had forms of objective idealism. But it is first associated with Plato.

The philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) stated his own version of objective idealism in the following manner:

The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws (Peirce, CP 6.25).