Philosophy & ThoughtGreek → English
Idealism
/aɪˈdiːəlɪzəm/noun
The philosophical position that reality is mental or mind-dependent, and loosely, the habit of holding to high principles.
The Greek roots
ἰδέα
idéa
form, appearance
Literally: “the look of a thing”
Follow a root:ἰδέα5 words
The story of the word
Plato's ἰδέα is built on the verb for seeing, so his eternal Forms are named for how a thing looks. The -ism was fastened onto Berkeley and then Kant in the 1790s to name the claim that what exists depends on mind. The everyday sense of impractical high-mindedness came later and has almost nothing to do with the doctrine; a philosophical idealist is describing the furniture of the universe, not their own good intentions.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → German → English
- First recorded
- 1796
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
ideaideologyidealeidetic
In a sentence
Berkeley's idealism denies that matter exists at all outside perception.