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Absolute idealism

Absolute idealism is an objective monistic philosophy, chiefly associated with the German thinker G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831), positing that ultimate reality consists in a singular, self-developing absolute spirit or mind, of which finite entities, nature, and history represent dialectical stages toward complete self-knowledge.^[1] This view rejects dualistic separations between mind and matter, asserting instead that all existence is rationally intelligible as the Absolute's own conceptual unfolding, knowable through dialectical logic rather than empirical observation alone.^[2] Central to absolute idealism is Hegel's dialectical method, wherein reality progresses via thesis-antithesis-synthesis, resolving contradictions inherent in partial truths to advance toward the Absolute's totality, as elaborated in works like the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) and Science of Logic (1812–1816).^[3] Proponents such as Friedrich Schelling contributed early formulations, while British idealists including F. H. Bradley extended it by emphasizing reality as a coherent whole without internal relations of mere appearance and essence.^[4] The theory influenced subsequent thought, including aspects of Marxism via Hegel's historicism, though it diverged sharply into materialism.^[3] Despite its systematic ambition to reconcile subjectivity and objectivity, absolute idealism faced substantial critique for its esoteric prose, which obscured arguments, and for subordinating empirical particulars to speculative necessity, thereby challenging causal accounts grounded in observable regularities independent of mind.^[5] Thinkers like Arthur Schopenhauer and later analytic philosophers, including Bertrand Russell, rejected it as unverifiable metaphysics that conflates logical structure with ontological priority, contributing to its decline in favor of positivism and realism by the early 20th century.^[6]

Definition and Core Principles

The Absolute as Ultimate Reality

In absolute idealism, the Absolute denotes the ultimate reality as an infinite, self-differentiating totality of spirit or reason that integrates all apparent dualities and finite manifestations into a coherent whole. This conception posits the Absolute not as a transcendent beyond but as the immanent ground of existence, where subject and object, thought and being, achieve unity in self-mediation. Unlike fragmented empirical realities, the Absolute represents completeness, encompassing the entire scope of rational development without external dependencies.^[7]^[3] Hegel's formulation emphasizes the Absolute's contrast with finite individual consciousness, which remains trapped in partiality and self-alienation, perceiving oppositions as irreconcilable rather than moments within a larger synthesis. The infinite nature of the Absolute allows it to posit its own distinctions internally, maintaining self-identity amid differentiation, thereby serving as the substantive reality underlying all phenomena. This holistic structure underscores that true reality is rational and self-knowing, transcending the limitations of sensory or subjective awareness.^[7] In his Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Hegel portrays the Absolute as attaining self-knowledge through the historical and logical unfolding of consciousness, culminating in absolute knowing where spirit recognizes itself in its objective forms. This process reveals the Absolute as the telos of human and cosmic development, not merely an abstract principle but the realized unity of the rational with the actual.^[7] Absolute idealism distinguishes its objective framework from subjective idealism, as in George Berkeley's empiricist view where existence depends on perception by finite minds or a divine perceiver, lacking the self-grounding dynamism of the Absolute. Hegel's Absolute, by contrast, constitutes an autonomous, comprehensive rationality that does not rely on individual or external observers but embodies the objective coherence of reality itself.^[8]^[9]

Dialectical Process and Historical Unfolding

The dialectical process constitutes the core mechanism in absolute idealism for the Absolute's self-realization, wherein conceptual determinations evolve through inherent contradictions toward comprehensive unity. Initial affirmative moments, akin to abstract theses, generate their own negations as opposing forces emerge immanently from their limitations, culminating in sublation (Aufhebung), a resolution that negates while preserving and elevating the antagonists into a speculative synthesis. This triadic progression—abstract understanding, dialectical negation, and positive reconciliation—transforms Kantian antinomies, which exposed reason's self-contradictions as mere illusions, into a productive pathway to truth, as outlined in Hegel's Science of Logic (Volume I published 1812, Volume II 1816).^[10] Unlike static categories, the dialectic reveals reality's dynamic rationality, where negation drives development without external imposition, ensuring the process's internal necessity.^[10] This method extends beyond pure logic to the concrete domains of nature and history, manifesting Geist (spirit) as the Absolute's progressive actualization. In nature, as detailed in the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (first edition 1817, revised 1827 and 1830), dialectical transitions occur through mechanical, physical, and organic stages, though nature remains the Idea externalized in otherness, subordinate to spirit's fuller self-expression.^[7] Historically, the dialectic unfolds as Geist's self-consciousness through human institutions and conflicts, linking logical necessity to empirical events without transcendent purpose. Reason permeates history immanently, as the "cunning of reason" orchestrates particular interests—such as ambition or strife—to fulfill universal ends, evident in transitions from pre-modern forms to rational states.^[11] Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of History (delivered approximately 1822–1831, edited and published 1837) exemplify this unfolding in world-historical stages: the Eastern realm, embodying despotism where freedom accrues solely to one (the ruler), yields to Greco-Roman antiquity, where it pertains to some (free citizens amid slavery); this in turn sublates into the modern Germanic-Christian era, realizing freedom for all via constitutional monarchy, civil society, and rational law.^[11] Each phase negates the prior's inadequacy—e.g., abstract unity in the East confronts particularity in Greece, resolving in the modern synthesis of universal individuality—culminating in the self-aware state as Geist's objective manifestation.^[11] This historical dialectic thus concretizes the logical process, affirming that the Absolute comprehends itself not statically but through time's rational progression, free from arbitrary design.^[7]

Monism of Mind and Reality

Absolute idealism rejects mind-matter dualism, positing reality as a unified manifestation of a single rational principle, the Absolute, conceived as spirit or comprehensive reason. This monism views apparent material independence as derivative, with nature emerging as the externalization of the Idea itself. In Hegel's system, mind and reality integrate within Absolute Spirit, overcoming Cartesian separations where soul informs body as its essential form.^[7] Finite things lack autonomous existence under this ontology, functioning instead as transient "moments" or determinations within the Absolute's self-differentiating coherence, sublated through dialectical negation and preservation. Hegel's Science of Logic (1812–1816) delineates how these finite aspects inherently undermine their own independence, revealing their dependence on the encompassing whole. This rejects atomistic materialism, which presumes self-subsistent particles, in favor of a holistic structure where particulars derive identity from systemic relations.^[7] Central to this monism is the doctrine of internal relations, whereby entities' properties and connections are intrinsically defined by the total reality, not extrinsic additions. F. H. Bradley, in Appearance and Reality (1893), argues that relations mutually constitute their terms, rendering external relations illusory and atomistic pluralism incoherent, as all appearances harmonize within the single experiential Absolute. This relational holism ensures no isolated facts or substances persist independently, reinforcing the unity of mind and reality.^[12] Epistemologically, absolute idealism's monism resolves the subject-object antithesis through the Absolute's self-knowledge, where finite cognition advances to reconcile knower and known. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) traces this progression dialectically, culminating in absolute knowing as the unity of conceptual form and concrete content. Knowledge thus becomes participatory comprehension of the rational whole, rather than mere representation of external matter.^[7]

Historical Origins

Precursors in Kant and Fichte

Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, first published in 1781 and revised in 1787, established transcendental idealism by arguing that human cognition actively structures sensory data through innate categories of understanding and forms of intuition like space and time, rendering objects as they appear (phenomena) rather than as they are in themselves (noumena).^[13] This framework confined theoretical reason to the realm of possible experience, positing the "thing-in-itself" as an unknowable limit that ensures the independence of objects from subjective constitution, thereby preserving a dualism between mind-dependent appearances and mind-independent reality.^[14] The noumenal realm, however, introduced an explanatory gap, as it invoked an entity whose existence reason could neither affirm nor deny without contradiction, prompting critics to question its coherence within Kant's own critical limits on metaphysics.^[15] Johann Gottlieb Fichte, building directly on Kant, addressed this dualism in his Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge (Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre), published in two parts in 1794 and 1795. Fichte rejected the thing-in-itself as self-contradictory, arguing that any positing of a reality independent of the knowing subject undermines the primacy of self-consciousness; instead, he derived the entire structure of reality from the absolute ego's primordial act of self-positing (Tathandlung), whereby the I spontaneously generates both itself and its antithesis, the non-ego, in a dynamic synthesis.^[16] This foundational activity eliminates Kantian noumena by making subjective productivity not merely regulative of experience but ontologically generative, with the ego's striving (Streben) bridging theoretical and practical reason in an infinite progression toward absolute self-awareness.^[13] Fichte's system thus marked a transition from Kant's epistemically bounded transcendental idealism to a more objective, systematic form that critiqued the former's confinement of reason to finitude, insisting instead on reason's capacity to construct reality through dialectical opposition and reconciliation.^[14] By emphasizing the ethical dimension of the ego's activity—where practical reason demands an infinite moral duty realized through individual and communal striving—Fichte provided a precursor to absolute idealism's monistic integration of mind and world, influencing subsequent developments in which subjective self-positing evolves into an intersubjective, historically unfolding spirit.^[17]

Schelling's Formulation of the Absolute

In his System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), Schelling conceived the Absolute as the absolute identity or point of indifference uniting subject and object, where the real and ideal coincide without opposition, grounding all knowledge in their productive synthesis.^[18] This formulation posits that finite oppositions arise from the Absolute's self-differentiation, with intellectual intuition apprehending the unity prior to reflection, transcending Fichtean subjectivism by incorporating objective nature as co-original.^[19] Schelling argued that philosophy culminates in art, where the unconscious productivity of nature becomes consciously symbolized, revealing the Absolute's self-intuition in aesthetic form.^[20] Schelling's Naturphilosophie, developed concurrently in works like Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature (1797), extended this by identifying intellect with nature as polar forces in dynamic equilibrium, positing nature not as dead mechanism but as a self-potentiating organism mirroring mental activity.^[21] This bridged Fichte's ego-derived idealism—limited to subjective positing—with empirical intuitions of natural forces (e.g., magnetism, electricity as primal polarities), construing the Absolute as immanent in nature's ascending potencies toward self-consciousness. By the 1820s–1840s, Schelling shifted toward "positive philosophy," distinguishing it from purely rational "negative philosophy" by emphasizing the Absolute's existential, pre-rational ground—accessible via revelation and historical facticity—over deductive construction from concepts alone.^[22] This evolution critiqued abstract rationalism's tendency to subordinate existence to thought, insisting the Absolute's freedom exceeds logical necessity, as evident in his Berlin lectures (1841–1846) where he prioritized mythology and religion as paths to the positive divine.^[23]

Hegel's Systematic Development

Hegel's absolute idealism reaches its systematic culmination in a tripartite architecture that encompasses the entire scope of reality as the self-determining Absolute Idea. This framework, detailed in the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline first published in 1817 and revised in subsequent editions up to 1830, divides philosophy into the Science of Logic, the Philosophy of Nature, and the Philosophy of Spirit.^[24] The Logic constitutes the eternal, self-subsistent Idea in its conceptual purity, serving as the ontological ground from which the system derives; Nature appears as the Idea's alienated externality, where necessity yields to contingency in mechanical, physical, and organic forms; and Spirit marks the Idea's reconciliation with itself through subjective self-consciousness, objective institutions, and absolute knowledge.^[24] This progression embodies the Absolute's dialectical self-externalization and return, resolving apparent dualisms into an immanent unity without recourse to transcendent postulates. Central to this edifice is the Science of Logic (Wissenschaft der Logik), issued in two volumes comprising the Objective Logic (Doctrine of Being in 1812 and Doctrine of Essence in 1813) and the Subjective Logic (Doctrine of the Concept) in a revised edition of 1816.^[25] Hegel presents it not as formal rules of thought but as the speculative ontology of the Absolute's categories in their necessary self-movement, commencing with indeterminate being and advancing through negation and sublation to the Absolute Idea as the totality of conceptual content.^[25] Categories such as quantity, measure, and teleology emerge immanently, demonstrating how thought determines its own content without external assumptions, thereby grounding the subsequent philosophies of Nature and Spirit as concrete manifestations of logical structures. The systematic integration extends to practical domains in the Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts), published in 1821. Here, Hegel applies the dialectical method to the realization of freedom, progressing from abstract right (property and contract) through morality (individual conscience) to ethical life (Sittlichkeit), where family, civil society, and the state interpenetrate as stages of rational actualization.^[26] The state emerges as the highest embodiment of the ethical Idea, not as arbitrary power but as the rational substance in which subjective will aligns with objective universality, ensuring freedom's concrete expression amid historical development.^[27] This culminates the system by showing how the Absolute Idea objectifies itself in institutional forms, bridging metaphysical logic with concrete ethical and political reality.

British Variant

Bradley's Internal Relations and Coherence

F.H. Bradley developed absolute idealism through his doctrine of internal relations, positing that all genuine relations qualify and modify their terms intrinsically, forming an interconnected whole rather than juxtaposed elements. In his 1893 work Appearance and Reality, Bradley contends that everyday phenomena constitute mere "appearance," riddled with contradictions, while ultimate reality is the Absolute—a timeless, harmonious totality that transcends relational fragmentation.^[28] This Absolute integrates all content and existence into a single, coherent experience, where diversity and relations are absorbed without remainder.^[28] Bradley rejects external relations—those purportedly adding no difference to the related terms—as unintelligible and generative of vicious regress. He argues that to relate terms A and B via an external R requires a further relation to bind A, B, and R, ad infinitum, rendering the initial relation impossible without presupposing an underlying unity.^[28] Such relations, if truly external, fail to qualify their terms, yet any actual connection demands such qualification, exposing a self-contradiction.^[28] Pluralism, which assumes multiple independent reals linked externally, fares no better: it implies a superior encompassing unity that undermines the posited plurality, as relations cannot subsist without altering and thus internally binding their elements.^[28] Central to Bradley's coherence is the holistic interdependence of reality's aspects, where no element exists in isolation but contributes to and is defined by the whole. Truth and reality admit degrees, gauged by the extent of internal harmony and inclusiveness; finite judgments possess partial validity insofar as they approximate this totality, but devolve into error when abstracted from it.^[28] Immediate experience, such as undifferentiated feeling, approaches this coherence most closely by presenting a non-exclusive, positive unity that hints at the Absolute's undivided sentience, though it too self-transcends toward relational development within the larger system.^[28] Discordances like error or evil, far from disproving coherence, enrich the Absolute by being overruled into higher synthesis, affirming its positive, all-embracing character.^[28]

Bosanquet and the Logical Idea

Bernard Bosanquet developed the logical dimension of absolute idealism in his Logic, or the Morphology of Knowledge (1888), presenting the Absolute as the "Logical Idea"—a dynamic, self-articulating totality that differentiates into particulars while maintaining their unity through internal relations of implication. Central to this framework is the concept of the concrete universal, which Bosanquet contrasted with the abstract, isolating categories of empiricist logic; the concrete universal actively encompasses and realizes its instances, ensuring that particulars derive their meaning and reality from participation in the whole rather than standing as independent atoms.^[29] This approach posits knowledge as a progressive coalescence toward the Absolute's comprehensive structure, where judgments gain truth degrees based on their systemic coherence rather than isolated correspondence. Bosanquet viewed finite centers—such as individual consciousnesses or viewpoints—as incomplete articulations of this infinite Logical Idea, functioning as transient foci within the overarching totality rather than self-subsistent units.^[30] These centers provide partial insights, distorted by their limited scope, but contribute to the Absolute's self-realization through mutual implication; disharmony arises from their abstract separation, while value and goodness emerge as the fulfillment of content in harmonious integration with the whole.^[31] Thus, ethical and aesthetic worth, for Bosanquet, inheres in the concrete realization of potentialities within the Logical Idea's differentiated unity, opposing reductive analyses that sever parts from their systemic context.^[29] Addressing realist challenges, particularly the "new realism" of early 20th-century critics like G.F. Stout, Bosanquet defended mind's constitutive function in construing reality without descending into solipsism; individual cognitions shape experience by selectively articulating the Absolute's implications, yet remain valid only through subordination to the inclusive logical whole, which transcends any finite perspective.^[32] In works like Implication and Linear Inference (1920), he critiqued realist atomism for severing mind from its object-constituting role, arguing instead for a holistic inference where reality's structure is immanent in thought's progressive self-completion. This preserved idealism's monism by framing differentiation as logical necessity, not arbitrary mental imposition.^[32]

Decline Amid Emerging Realism

The internal logic of absolute idealism faced scrutiny for paradoxes inherent in its relational monism, particularly Bradley's doctrine of internal relations, which posited that qualities and relations are inseparable aspects of an organic whole but required an infinite regress of binding relations to avoid vicious circularity. This regress implied that no finite judgment or experience could cohere without invoking further undefined relations, eroding the system's claim to ultimate unity. T.S. Eliot, engaging Bradley in his 1916 Harvard dissertation Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley, argued that such fragmentation reduced reality to ineffable "immediate experience" incapable of synthesis, a problem that prompted his shift toward a more pragmatic, religiously inflected critique of pure idealism.^[33] Externally, G.E. Moore's A Refutation of Idealism (1903) targeted the epistemological foundation of idealism by rejecting Berkeley's esse est percipi as misidentifying the "to be" of sense-data with their being perceived; Moore contended that the content of a sensation (e.g., the blueness of a patch) exists independently of any conscious act, preserving a realist distinction between object and awareness. Published in Mind, this essay dismantled the idealist conflation of mind and reality, influencing contemporaries to prioritize "common sense" propositions over holistic metaphysics. Bertrand Russell, initially sympathetic to idealism, echoed Moore's turn in works like The Principles of Mathematics (1903), critiquing Bradley's regress as logically untenable and advocating external relations grounded in logical atomism.^[34] By the 1910s, these critiques converged with the ascent of analytic philosophy, which redirected British thought toward precise logical analysis, linguistic clarification, and empirical verification rather than speculative dialectics. Moore and Russell's advocacy for sense-data realism and propositional logic, formalized in Russell's Principia Mathematica (1910–1913) with Alfred North Whitehead, marginalized idealism's emphasis on the ineffable Absolute as unverifiable and dialectically obscure. Academic appointments and curricula increasingly favored this new paradigm; for instance, Cambridge's Moral Sciences Club, under Moore's influence, hosted discussions that dismissed idealist monism, accelerating idealism's eclipse in British universities by the interwar period.^[35]

Major Criticisms

Challenges from Empiricism and Sensory Knowledge

Empiricists, building on David Hume's assertion that all simple ideas originate from sensory impressions and that complex ideas are combinations thereof, contended that absolute idealism unduly subordinates direct empirical data to abstract rational synthesis.^[36] Hume's framework, emphasizing the derivation of knowledge solely from vivid impressions rather than innate or a priori concepts, posed an implicit challenge to idealist systems that privilege dialectical reason as the medium for grasping reality's totality, viewing sensory immediacy as mere appearance requiring conceptual mediation. Hegel's response in the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) characterized pure sense-certainty as the most abstract and barren form of consciousness, arguing it fails to capture the universal essence of objects, which demands dialectical progression to concrete universality. Yet empiricists like John Stuart Mill criticized such approaches as metaphysical overreach, insisting that genuine knowledge of contingent facts relies on inductive accumulation from sensory observations rather than speculative deduction from the Absolute Idea, which Mill saw as obscuring empirical verifiability in favor of logical coherence.^[37] British empiricists further viewed the idealist dialectic—exemplified in F.H. Bradley's doctrine of internal relations, where all terms mutually imply one another within a coherent whole—as a form of rationalist speculation that bypasses the discrete, probabilistic nature of sensory evidence and inductive science.^[12] This critique highlighted idealism's tendency to retroactively harmonize experiences into a monistic system, disregarding the irreducibly particular and contingent character of impressions that resist total rational enclosure. William James amplified these concerns in A Pluralistic Universe (1909), arguing that absolute idealism's monistic closure intellectually preempts genuine novelty and finitude in experience, forcing a "block universe" where all relations are eternally fixed and sensory flux is illusory.^[38] James, advocating radical empiricism, maintained that knowledge emerges from conjunctive and disjunctive relations in concrete sensory particulars, not from an overarching rational Absolute that stifles pluralism and the open-endedness of reality's parts.^[39] This empiricist insistence on sensory immediacy as epistemically primary underscored absolute idealism's vulnerability to charges of deriving contingent truths from non-empirical premises, rendering its claims unverifiable against the deliverances of experience.

Realist and Materialist Objections to Mental Monism

Realists contend that absolute idealism erroneously conflates epistemological limits—our knowledge deriving from mental processes—with ontological claims about reality's composition, thereby denying the existence of a mind-independent world. G.E. Moore, in his 1903 essay "The Refutation of Idealism," targeted this error by dissecting the idealist dictum "esse est percipi" (to be is to be perceived), arguing that the content of perception, such as the intrinsic quality of blueness in a visual sensation, cannot be reduced to the act of awareness itself, as the two possess distinct properties: the object endures independently while the sensation is transient. Moore's analysis posits that idealists commit a category mistake by identifying the perceived with the perceiver's state, presupposing rather than demonstrating mental monism. Bertrand Russell extended this realist critique in his 1911 paper "Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description," distinguishing direct, non-inferential acquaintance with particulars (like sense-data or universals) from descriptive knowledge mediated by propositions. This framework opposes absolute idealism's relational holism, where entities derive meaning solely from their place within a total mental system, insisting instead on immediate epistemic access to reality's constituents that exist extramentally and resist subsumption into a dialectical whole.^[40] Russell viewed idealist reductions as inverting the proper order, subordinating ontology to epistemic constructs rather than grounding knowledge in independent objects.^[40] Materialist objections recast absolute idealism as an inverted mystification of concrete processes, prioritizing thought over matter. Karl Marx, in his 1845 "Theses on Feuerbach," critiqued Hegelian idealism for abstracting human essence into an absolute spirit, urging a "ruthless criticism of all that exists" to reveal material relations as primary: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it." Marx inverted Hegel's dialectic, transforming it into dialectical materialism where ideas reflect socioeconomic bases rather than constituting reality, dismissing mental monism as ideological obfuscation that alienates agents from their productive activity.^[41] Karl Popper further impugned absolute idealism's monistic totality as unfalsifiable metaphysics, incompatible with critical rationalism. In works like "The Logic of Scientific Discovery" (1934), Popper delineated demarcation criteria emphasizing empirical testability, portraying Hegelian systems—encompassing all reality in an exhaustive, self-justifying Geist—as immune to disconfirmation due to their tautological absorption of contradictions, rendering them pseudoscientific rather than ontologically robust. Popper attributed this closure to idealism's ontological overreach, which evades realist demands for independent verification against a non-mental substrate.^[42]

Incompatibility with Scientific Causality and Empirical Verification

Absolute idealism's emphasis on the dialectical, teleological unfolding of the Absolute as spirit conflicts with scientific accounts grounded in mechanistic laws and probabilistic contingency. Hegel's Philosophy of Nature (1830) portrays natural processes as rational progressions toward self-realization, inherently purposeful and integrated into the Absolute's logic. In contrast, Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) demonstrates that biological complexity arises from non-teleological mechanisms—random genetic variations filtered by natural selection—without predetermined direction or dialectical necessity. This Darwinian framework, supported by fossil records showing abrupt extinctions and adaptive radiations (e.g., the Cambrian explosion around 541 million years ago yielding diverse phyla via opportunistic survival rather than rational ascent), renders idealistic teleology explanatorily otiose, as empirical evidence favors contingency over inherent purpose.^[43] Quantum mechanics and relativity further exacerbate this tension, as their predictive successes rely on mathematical formalisms independent of mind-dependent reality or verifiable reduction to spirit. Quantum field theory, formalized in the 1940s and validated by experiments like the Lamb shift (1947, precise to parts per million), operates via operator algebras and symmetries without invoking an Absolute; observer effects in measurement (e.g., wave function collapse) are accounted for by decoherence in environmental interactions, not consciousness or dialectical spirit. Similarly, Einstein's general relativity (1915), confirmed by gravitational wave detections (e.g., LIGO's 2015 observation of binary black hole merger GW150914), describes spacetime curvature mechanistically, challenging any holistic idealistic reduction where physical laws manifest spirit, as no empirical test links these phenomena to non-physical telos. Karl Popper's critique reinforces this: Hegelian historicism and dialectics evade falsification, lacking the testable predictions central to scientific causality, unlike relativity's eclipse verification (1919 Eddington expedition). The causal closure of the physical realm—positing that all events with physical effects have sufficient physical causes—marginalizes absolute idealism's explanatory role. Formulated in modern philosophy of science (e.g., Jaegwon Kim's exclusion arguments, 1989 onward), this principle holds that neuroscience and physics fully trace causal chains (e.g., neural firings preceding actions, as in Libet's 1983 experiments showing brain activity precedes conscious intent by 350 milliseconds), obviating supernatural or spiritual interventions.^[44] For idealism, where phenomena are appearances of the Absolute, this closure implies superfluousness: scientific models predict outcomes (e.g., planetary orbits via Newtonian mechanics refined by relativity, accurate to 10^{-10} in GPS corrections) without dialectical spirit, privileging empirical verifiability over holistic reason. Bertrand Russell, in analyzing such monisms, contended that idealist systems fail scientific scrutiny by subordinating evidence to a priori logic, yielding no novel predictions.^[45] Thus, absolute idealism remains incompatible with causality's bottom-up, verifiable structure.

Influence and Contemporary Relevance

Impacts on Theology and Political Philosophy

Absolute idealism's conception of the Absolute as an all-encompassing rational totality has profoundly shaped theological discourse by framing God as the self-revealing Spirit whose essence unfolds dialectically through the world, history, and human cognition, rather than remaining a transcendent, static entity separate from creation. In Hegel's system, this manifests as the Absolute Spirit achieving self-consciousness in revealed religion, where divine truth becomes explicit in the incarnation and communal worship, bridging finite human experience with infinite reality. This perspective fosters panentheistic interpretations, positing the world as contained within yet not exhaustive of the divine, which has informed modern theological engagements between philosophy and science, including elements of process theology that emphasize God's dynamic involvement in temporal processes.^[7]^[46] In political philosophy, Hegel's absolute idealism elevates the state to the concrete realization of the ethical Idea—the divine rationality incarnate in institutional form—wherein individual freedoms find their substantive meaning only within the organic unity of ethical life, countering liberal individualism's emphasis on abstract rights that, in Hegel's view, engender alienation and social discord by severing persons from communal bonds. The state, as the actualization of freedom through rational necessity, integrates family, civil society, and sovereignty into a hierarchical whole, prioritizing concrete duties and historical development over contractual atomism. British absolute idealists like Bernard Bosanquet extended this to defend an organic social order against utilitarian fragmentation, appealing to conservatives who see society as a living entity sustained by tradition, interdependence, and moral cohesion rather than mechanistic individualism.^[27]^[47] Yet this absolutist framework, by vesting ultimate rationality in the state as the march of the World Spirit, has elicited critiques for potentially enabling authoritarian overreach, as the subordination of particulars to the rational whole could rationalize the suppression of dissent under the guise of historical inevitability, a concern voiced by interpreters linking Hegelian dialectics to modern totalitarianism despite Hegel's own constitutional monarchism. Such risks arise from the theory's holistic causality, where apparent contradictions resolve into higher syntheses, potentially excusing coercive unification as progress toward the Absolute.^[47]^[48]

Legacy in Dialectical Thinking and Marxism

Marx and Engels retained Hegel's dialectical method of resolving contradictions through thesis, antithesis, and synthesis while rejecting its idealistic ontology, which posited reality as the unfolding of an absolute spirit; instead, they "inverted" it to ground historical development in material conditions and class conflict. This methodological appropriation enabled The Communist Manifesto (1848) to frame bourgeois-proletarian antagonism as the dynamic force propelling societal transformation toward communism. Engels' Dialectics of Nature, drafted between 1873 and 1883, extended this logic beyond human history to natural phenomena, positing dialectical contradictions—such as quantity-to-quality transitions in physics and biology—as inherent to matter's evolution, thereby secularizing Hegel's framework for a universal materialist dialectic unbound by teleological idealism.^[49] Despite this ontological inversion, Hegel's dialectical structure persisted in Marxist theory as a tool for analyzing systemic contradictions, influencing Leninist applications to imperialism and state monopoly capitalism in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), where contradictions between productive forces and relations were dialectically resolved through revolutionary praxis. The method's emphasis on negation and sublation transcended strict leftism, informing right-Hegelian defenses of Prussian state evolution as rational progress, though Marxists emphasized its radical potential for emancipation from alienation.^[10] Later adaptations further diluted absolute monism while preserving dialectical tension. Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960, Vol. 1) fused Hegelian mediation with existential freedom, portraying history as serialized individuals coalescing into dialectical totalizations via praxis, rejecting Hegel's Geist in favor of contingent human projects amid scarcity.^[50] Adorno, in Negative Dialectics (1966), inverted Hegel's affirmative reconciliation into a "negative" dialectic that halts at unresolved non-identity, critiquing identity-thinking's totalizing impulse as complicit in Auschwitz-era domination, thus wielding Hegelian contradiction against systemic closure without affirming an absolute whole.^[51]^[52] These variants underscore the dialectic's endurance as a heuristic for conflict and change, detached from idealism's metaphysical commitments.

Modern Critiques and Limited Revivals

In the early 20th century, G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell's critiques decisively shifted Anglo-American philosophy away from absolute idealism toward analytic realism, arguing that idealist claims conflated the analysis of concepts with ontological assertions about reality's dependence on mind.^[53] This rejection persisted into the late 20th and 21st centuries, with analytic philosophers viewing absolute idealism as incompatible with empirical verification and logical atomism, rendering it marginal in mainstream discourse by the 2020s.^[54] Surveys of professional philosophers in 2020 indicated that idealism, including absolute variants, represents a minority position, with over 70% endorsing non-skeptical realism.^[55] Advances in neuroscience have intensified critiques by demonstrating tight correlations between specific brain states and conscious experiences, such as the disruption of qualia via targeted lesions or pharmacological interventions, which challenge absolute idealism's denial of independent material substrates.^[56] For instance, functional MRI studies since the 1990s have mapped decision-making and perception to neural circuits, supporting causal models where physical processes precede and generate mental phenomena, undermining idealism's anti-reductionist stance that reality is exhaustively mental.^[57] Materialist frameworks, bolstered by these findings, posit consciousness as emergent from complex physical systems, a view dominant in cognitive science by 2025 despite idealistic counterarguments from figures like Bernardo Kastrup, whose analytic idealism remains non-absolute and empirically contested.^[58] Limited revivals of Hegelian themes have occurred outside strict absolute idealism, notably in Robert Brandom's inferentialist semantics, which interprets Hegel's logic as a normative framework for justifying beliefs through social practices rather than a metaphysical absolute.^[59] Brandom's 2019 work A Spirit of Trust recasts Hegel's phenomenology in pragmatic terms, influencing analytic philosophy but eschewing the monistic ontology of absolute spirit in favor of defeasible rational norms.^[7] Similarly, speculative realism movements since the 2000s, such as object-oriented ontology, echo idealist critiques of anthropocentrism but reject absolute idealism's mind-monism for flat ontologies where objects exist independently of thought, showing no mainstream endorsement of absolute forms by 2025.^[60] Timothy Sprigge's 1983 defense of absolute idealism as panpsychist pluralism garnered niche interest but failed to counter the empirical hegemony of realism.^[61]

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Hegel's development of Absolute Idealism out of this criticism is then the antithesis of this original thesis. The oppositional character of the two can be ...
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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Feb 13, 1997 · Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) belongs to the period of German idealism in the decades following Kant.Hegel's Philosophy · Hegel's Published Works · Hegel's Encyclopaedic System...
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Idealism - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Aug 30, 2015 · Within these idealisms one can find further distinctions, such as those between subjective, objective and absolute idealism, and even more ...German Idealism · British and American Idealism · The Fate of Idealism in the...
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What is the difference between subjective idealism (e.g. Berkeley ...
Aug 27, 2019 · Berkeley's idealism is "representational", subjectivist, empiricist, epistemological, whereas Hegel's idealism is more like ontological realism.
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Hegel's Dialectics - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Jun 3, 2016 · The dialectical process thus constitutes Hegel's method for arguing against the earlier, less sophisticated definitions or views and for the ...Hegel's description of his... · Is Hegel's dialectical method... · Bibliography
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Hegel's Understanding of History | Issue 140 - Philosophy Now
For Hegel, history unfolds as the self-actualisation of Spirit ... So Hegel uses a 'dialectical' approach to examine the course of human history.
[12]
Francis Herbert Bradley - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
May 9, 1996 · A similar attempt at reconciling Absolute Idealism and monadism had been made by Lotze, and in both cases it remains an open question whether ...
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[PDF] The Transformation of Kant's Transcendental Idealism: Fichte's ...
This dissertation will argue that in his early Jena period, Fichte invokes the notion of the Wissenschaftslehre to develop an idealistic theory of knowledge in ...
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[PDF] fichte1 s modification of kant's transcendental - Journals@KU
The second major Kantian objection to Fichte's mod- ifications is that Kant's system requires a "thing in itself." Sensations must be initiated by the "thing ...
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Johann Fichte: The Subject as Activity - Ethical Politics
Kant's concept of a thing-in-itself beyond experience he held to be self-contradictory; how can we talk of “a thing” which is in principle beyond experience.
[16]
Fichte's Idealism - jstor
6 Fichte devotes considerable effort and ingenuity to the attempt to show that Kant held no such view. 6 First Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre, Science, ...
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(PDF) Fichte's Role in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, Chapter 4
Fichte had introduced the notion of recognition in his Foundations of Natural Right, to “deduce” the social existence of humans within relations of mutual ...Missing: influence | Show results with:influence
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[PDF] Introduction to <em>System of Transcendental Idealism (1800)</em>
Schelling's predecessors had enunciated the principle that the togetherness of subject and object, of presenta tion and thing, can be founded only in self- ...
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Friedrich Schelling's System of Transcendental Philosophy
1. All knowledge is founded upon the coincidence of an objective with a subjective. - For we know only what is true; but truth is generally taken to consist in ...
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[PDF] Schelling's Aesthetic Turn in the System of Transcendental Idealism
2 F.W.J. Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), trans. ... Schelling here argues that any harmony between the subject and object is possible.
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[PDF] Schellingâ•Žs Naturphilosophie in the Early System of Identity
Jan 1, 2013 · For the latter, see Schelling‟s attempt to begin Naturphilosophie with organic systems rather than inorganic matter in the 1799 First Outline of ...
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[PDF] Schelling's Absolute Idealism - PHIL 4/880
The second formulation places reason within nature itself rather than the ego, corresponding to. Schelling's claim that the principle of subject–object identity ...<|separator|>
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Hegel's vanity. Schelling's early critique of absolute idealism
Mar 16, 2023 · In this article, we present for the first time Schelling's early critique of absolute idealism within his middle metaphysics (1804–1820).
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The Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences
The Encyclopedia is made up of three Parts: the Science of Logic, the Philosophy of Nature and the Philosophy of Spirit.
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The Science of Logic - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
$$180.00Jun 5, 2011 · The first volume, containing the “Objective Logic,” was published in two parts, the first in 1812, and the second with the subtitle “The ...
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[PDF] Hegel's Philosophy of Right
Further, as to rights, ethical life, and the state, the truth is as old as that in which it is openly displayed and recognised, namely, the law, morality, and ...
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Hegel's Philosophy of Right: The State
The state is the actuality of the ethical Idea. It is ethical mind qua the substantial will manifest and revealed to itself, knowing and thinking itself.
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[PDF] Appearance and Reality by FH Bradley - HolyBooks.com
An immediate experience, viewed as positive, is so far not exclusive. It is, so far, what it is, and it does not repel anything. But the “ this” certainly ...
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20th WCP: Bosanquet, Culture, and the Influence of Idealist Logic
what Bosanquet calls a 'concrete universal.' Furthermore, just as, in logic, there is no absolute error, so there is no genuine ugliness in art ...
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Idealist Political Philosophy: Pluralism and Conflict in the Absolute ...
May 13, 2007 · ... Bernard Bosanquet (1848-1923), with an additional brief discussion ... According to Tyler, however, what Bosanquet calls finite centres ...
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Rethinking Constant's ancient liberty: Bosanquet's modern ...
Mar 28, 2022 · The finite person and the infinite Absolute were bound together by the 'great achievement' or 'prime', that gave value to the society. This ...Missing: centers | Show results with:centers
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Bernard Bosanquet - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Jun 15, 1997 · Bosanquet produced a second edition of his Logic in 1911, adding a number of notes and three chapters dealing specifically with pragmatist and ...
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[PDF] TS Eliot's Social Criticism and Absolute Idealism
This thesis attempts to show that TS Eliot's social criticism between the years. 1916 and 1939 was influenced by Absolute Idealism, especially that of GWF ...Missing: regress | Show results with:regress
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8 The Rejection of British Idealism - Oxford Academic
This chapter focuses on the attack on idealism, especially Bradley's absolute idealism, by G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell in the earliest phases of their long ...Missing: Refutation | Show results with:Refutation
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15 15 The After-Life of Idealism - Oxford Academic
Particular note is taken of the rise of Analytic Philosophy, of the Idealists' general lack of interest in science, and of the aftermath of the First World War.
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David Hume (1711—1776) - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Against the common belief of the time that God's existence could be proven through a design or causal argument, Hume offered compelling criticisms of standard ...
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Hegel and Mill - To Dwell With God
Mar 20, 2025 · John Stuart Mill and Georg Hegel were both to answer the question “What makes a good society?”, which one in your view would give the best reply?
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A pluralistic universe; : James, William, 1842-1910 - Internet Archive
Jun 27, 2008 · I. The types of philosophic thinking.--II. Monistic idealism.--III. Hegel and his method.--IV. Concerning Fechner.
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10 James's Critique of Absolute Idealism in A Pluralistic Universe
This chapter examines James's objections to monistic idealism in A Pluralistic Universe, and situates the larger philosophical issues at stake within their ...
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[PDF] 51 RUSSELL ON KNOWLEDGE BY ACQUAINTANCE AND ...
Oct 30, 2023 · Russell, Bertrand, "Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description", Proceedings of the. Aristotelian Society (New Series), Vol. XI, ( ...
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Theses On Feuerbach by Karl Marx - Marxists Internet Archive
but only abstractly, since, of course, idealism does not know ...
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Karl Popper's Critique of Idealism. - Ismail Kurun - PhilArchive
Karl Popper's critique of idealism manifests itself with the application of his method, falsificationism, to metaphysics, epistemology, and social and ...
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[PDF] Darwin Rocks Hegel: Does Nature Have a History? David Kolb
II. Darwin offers a mechanism that generates teleology out of non-teleology. Teleologically unified species emerge, but their emergence is not a teleological ...
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[PDF] Causal Closure of the Physical - PhilArchive
The argument is extremely important because, if successful, it virtually eliminates the possibility of irreducible mental causation. CCP is the main reason for ...Missing: absolute | Show results with:absolute
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The Return of Idealism: Rusell vs Hegel | Paul Redding - IAI TV
Mar 4, 2022 · Russell often portrayed Hegel's philosophy as exemplifying the way a metaphysical house of cards could be constructed upon a faulty logical ...
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(PDF) Hegel and Whitehead: In Search for Sources of Contemporary ...
Aug 6, 2025 · Panentheism has recently become a widely accepted and appreciated concept among scholars in the science-theology dialogue, and its theological ...<|separator|>
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Hegel's Social and Political Philosophy
Jun 3, 2021 · The State. Hegel's final section of “Ethical Life” is the state. The love for others based on feeling in the family and then on the ...
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The Case of British and American Absolute Idealism, 1860-1900 - jstor
rapidly expanding society determined a conservative defense of the values of individualism and self-help. For Green, Bosanquet, and a large section of their ...
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Dialectics, nature and the dialectics of nature - International Socialism
Jan 9, 2014 · In 1873 Karl Marx's collaborator Frederick Engels started work on an ambitious volume entitled Dialectics of Nature.
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Sartre's Political Philosophy
Sartre's dialectical theory of society, written in the spirit of Hegel and Marx, holds that group struggle is the animating principle of human history. Pace ...
[51]
“Many thanks to Teddie Adorno”: Negative Dialectics at Fifty - JHI Blog
Dec 21, 2016 · Negative Dialectics attempted to develop a mode of dialectical thought that harnessed Hegel's negativity to counter his triumphalist ...
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[PDF] Adorno, Hegel, and Dialectic - PhilArchive
Oct 7, 2014 · 6 Adorno regards Hegel's dialectic as having positive and negative aspects, and he endeavours to extricate the positive aspects and forge his ...Missing: legacy | Show results with:legacy
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Analytic Philosophy
When Moore and Russell articulated their alternative to Idealism, they used a linguistic idiom, frequently basing their arguments on the “meanings” of terms and ...The Revolution of Moore and... · Russell and the Early...
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Moore's rejection of idealism (Chapter 15) - Philosophy in History
Dec 3, 2009 · One of the founding myths of analytic philosophy is that Moore and Russell refuted their idealist predecessors by deploying robust common sense and a new logic.
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Why is idealism largely rejected in contemporary philosophy in favor ...
Jun 9, 2025 · I find it convincing enough to say that idealists are a minority among philosophers, non-skeptical realism is very popular, especially as opposed to idealism.What led to the decline of Idealism (and the subsequent rise ... - RedditAre there any contemporary authors who try to "update" Absolute ...More results from www.reddit.com
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How do Idealists deal with neuroscience showing correlations of the ...
Feb 27, 2021 · An idealist (mind is all there is) can explain how neurosurgeons can change peoples mental states and bodily functions through procedures of the brain.
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Can neuroscience solve the mystery of consciousness?
Sep 16, 2025 · Certain theories pose ethical problems, such as confinement to a materialism that neglects other possible dimensions of consciousness. In ...Missing: critiques | Show results with:critiques
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The materialist "theory" of consciousness
I agree with David Bailey that the biggest challenge for materialists is the demonstrated non-local properties of consciousness, or mind. With over 50 years of ...
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[PDF] Hegel's Revival in Analytic Philosophy - UNH Scholars Repository
Brandom sees Hegel as modifying several central themes in Kant's transcendental idealism. The first of these Kantian themes is the realization that ...
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Full article: Absolute Idealist Powers - Taylor & Francis Online
Jun 2, 2021 · This paper aims to characterize and motivate an absolute idealist conception of powers. I compare realist and idealist powers metaphysics in their respective ...
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Timothy Sprigge: The Vindication of Absolute Idealism
Feb 26, 2012 · ... Idealism fell with the critiques of Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore at the beginning of the 20th century. Sprigge, however, saw himself as ...Missing: modern 21st