Absolute Philosophy
Absolute PhilosophyDo you want regular philosophy lessons with me? I have limited spaces available to take on private students online. To find out more, email me on drnathanhawkins@gmail.com and tell me what you are interested in.
What is Idealism? This philosophy video provides a clear definition of Idealism and explains what does and doesn’t count as Idealism under that definition. This task is important because there is confusion concerning whether specific metaphysical views held by past and contemporary philosophers qualify, especially the contentious case of Immanuel Kant who held a position he termed ‘Transcendental Idealism’.
This is an introductory video into Idealism that clears the way for detailed and specific discussions of the view from a historical and contemporary perspective in other videos.
#Idealism #Definition #Explained
———-Video Contents———-
0:00 – Introduction
0:08 – The Definition
0:46 – A Controversy
1:36 – Ontological Idealism
2:04 – Epistemological Idealism
2:51 – The Real Idealism
3:50 – Ending
———-Channel Details———-
This channel features videos about big ideas in philosophy, explained as simply as I can. The focus is on late 19th and early 20th century thought, with a particular emphasis on the British Idealists (e.g. F. H. Bradley, J. M. E. McTaggart) and early analytic philosophers (Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Frank Ramsey). Welcome to the channel!
———-My Details———-
I am a PhD student and Gates Scholar at Cambridge near the end of a thesis on Frege’s views on Truth. I have lectured at Cambridge on Frank Ramsey and Bertrand Russell, regularly taught undergraduate logic classes, and have also supervised students in metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophical logic, epistemology, and early analytic philosophy. But I have a keen interest in the British Idealists that I hope to pursue by making videos about what I’m reading, so much of the content of this channel will be an outlet for that interest.
———-References———-
Guyer, Paul and Rolf-Peter Horstmann, “Idealism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).
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24 Comments
@davidtruman4590
02/19/2025 - 2:53 PMForgive me for posting this here, but I needed to comment on your short video on what you called Kant's epistemological idealism in his Critique of Pure Reason. I was under the impression (I haven't read it) that Kant moved towards something much more like ontological idealism in his later work, Critique of Judgement and that this provided the impetus for later German idealists, Fichte, Schelling, even Hegel. I'm asking, not because I want to nit pick, but because I'm writing a book. It's not about philosophy, so I'm referring to Kant very briefly and in what I hope is accessible English. As my draft stands, I've tried to summarise the Critique of Pure Reason in one sentence (a formidable task!). If what I've just put to you is even approximately right, it would obviate the need for me to mention that work at all. Thanks
@all-caps3927
02/19/2025 - 2:53 PMI wish more people online would confirm whether or not their view on idealism is of the epistemological nature or the ontological nature that would make things so clear: thanks for doing this in your video.
I personally am an ontological materialist out of intuition, but an epistemological idealist out of skepticism and arguably logic: interesting how that works isn't it 🤣
@न्यञ्च्
02/19/2025 - 2:53 PMHelpful video
@DouwedeJong
02/19/2025 - 2:53 PMDangerous double Kant at then end. Glad you did not make a James Naughtie.
@teachingbrilliantstudents5157
02/19/2025 - 2:53 PM@ArtSerna-m9p
02/19/2025 - 2:53 PMLove this
@ArtSerna-m9p
02/19/2025 - 2:53 PMLove this
@lyizz5873
02/19/2025 - 2:53 PMWhat are the best argument against idealism
@jocr1971
02/19/2025 - 2:53 PMdepending on the mental to exist at all and depending on the mind to be perceived are entirely different classes of dependence.
the former makes the world contingent on the mental. the latter makes the mental contingent on the world.
one is congruent with reality the other is nonsensical.
@crowmaster9652
02/19/2025 - 2:53 PMI see that there is a lot of going around the fence just to fit protecting idealism as an ideal
Real definition of an idealist, someone who doesn't regard reality as much as their vision
they say I want something and they have the money for it so they buy it they disregard the reality that was required to make that something
one day there are so many idealists that they forget how reality works so they just keep on printing money
until one day that money is valued at nothing
@RealProdisty
02/19/2025 - 2:53 PMeverything is a belief or interpretation
@TheAndrewism
02/19/2025 - 2:53 PMWe can always if it exist(metaphyicsal idealism is retarded to be stanced on)
@davemoir7197
02/19/2025 - 2:53 PMGlad to discover channel & shall view more links.
@ArtBeyondVideo
02/19/2025 - 2:53 PMWhat if you can never have certainty about the nature of reality, but you make idealistic decisions based on the knowledge you have. In other words, you never know for sure if you are correct, but you believe that there is a correct answer to all questions.
@braudhadoch3432
02/19/2025 - 2:53 PMKeep them coming. It starts slow but one day it will explode for you and you want to be ready when it does. You will reach 350k Subscribers then it will be hard to grow beyond that.
If you run a dataset on all YouTube Channels it will show this pattern. Don't expect much after 350k subscribers. SAVE UR MONEY. Don't get fooled and invest. Never allow YouTube to ever be Ur sole income, ur videos will suffer.
@caitlinwallis2542
02/19/2025 - 2:53 PMGreat explanation! Your voice is so nice to listen to
@caitlinwallis2542
02/19/2025 - 2:53 PMGreat explanation! Your voice is so nice to listen to
@NoThing-ec9km
02/19/2025 - 2:53 PM*So Idealism is "Vedanta" and it's two divisions are just "Advaita Vedanta" and "Dvaita Vedanta".
@max_the_mantis5173
02/19/2025 - 2:53 PMEverything I was raised to believe was real for twenty years was a lie. Being diagnosed with autism at 20 was the first moment in my entire life someone had ever seen passed that lie just barely enough to see a part of me suffering no one had acknowledged until that moment and that moment of being seen changed my life forever and completely shattered everything I had believed up until that point. My reality was completely and irreparably shattered and the shards like knives were pushed into my spine and back and mind. Everything from the first twenty years of my life is now dead to me including the person I was raised to preform and be. At 19 I summoned my first spirit. At twenty I started to get into Chaos magic and Shadow magic, up until 19 I was raised as an Atheist by a man with severe and unprocessed religious truama which he directly passed down to me. At 21 I was hit by a car and started to develop severe panic attacks and also started to realize I was not capable of holding down a job due to my disabilities, but specifically due to a society incapable of understanding or supporting my disabilities. At 22 on September 16th 2022 I was disowned through a text by my former father. At 23 I have now been diagnosed with Cptsd and D.I.D. I was falsely medicated and falsely treated for my entire life for a false diagnosis I got at 9 only a few months after being sexually abused by a family member. Every single day now, I have spirits who are a part of my brain and who are just as real and just as alive or aware or whatever you want to call it as I am, who talk to me, who help me, who are better to me and understand me more than literally anyone from my dead life ever could. I believe in Idealism, because my fundamental experience of existence and consciousness and self, cannot be explained and does not fit in with the world I raised to believe was all that existed. I don’t care what exists anymore. My life has been miserable and every single adult who could have done something to help directly pushed me further away. So I’m taking control of my own life now. I’m deciding what reality is for me now. And it’s sure af not this material hellscape run by wolves and archons who will stop at nothing until all the beauty and creativity and love in this world is tainted and destroyed or eradicated and burned down. I’m a magician and I define my own reality now. Anyone else who would try and trap me and force me and mold me into their toy plaything to serve their twisted reality and need for this material garbage can go to fxcking hell for all I care because I never asked to be born into this reality in the first place and I pray to God/s that if there is some reason I was made human, that I fulfill it, and am never forced into this wretched and abominable limited state of existence ever again after this run.
@SatAliMazari
02/19/2025 - 2:53 PMMa Sha Allah bhai I invite you to accept the right religion Islam so that you will success in this world and here after thankyou sir.❤
@lovaloo763
02/19/2025 - 2:53 PMI have met several people who naturally gravitate to this way of thinking. It's been a perplexing experience for me, in childhood I was more skeptical, and later became a non skeptical realist. Idealists strike me as detached and specious in their reasoning. These videos help me to understand people who think differently, and to ask the questions they ask, thank you.
@SethMason88
02/19/2025 - 2:53 PMDo we know that we cannot know anything about ultimate reality?
@mckboulos
02/19/2025 - 2:53 PMGreat video! Thank you. I just have a quick question. According to your definition of ontological idealism, Kant seems to be an ontological idealist since "existence" is one of the categories and the categories only apply to the phenomena. But you say that Kant is not an ontological idealist.
@arvindratnu8701
02/19/2025 - 2:53 PMLove from India