Biographical Encyclopedia of British Idealism Available to Purchase

Idealism (in one sense at least) sees the world through mind and spirit (i.e. they shape our understanding and experience of material things). It offers an alternative to the realistic view that material things exist independently of being perceived. Berkeley argued that things are mind‐dependent, and later Kant and Fichte and Hegel engaged with this view, the last of these interested in how the mind works in human society. T.H. Green suggested that there was no given human experience, and that all experience implies intelligence. In this (simplistic here) way (leaving aside Plato, of course) we reach the idealism covered...