A History of ‘Ideas’

Abstract

Idealism in its philosophical sense is idea-lisra. The root word is 'idea'. The word 'idea' has been used by philosophers in very different ways over the centuries. Properly to understand philosophical idealism one has to have followed the fortunes of the word. The changes in its use go along with fundamental changes in views about the objects of perception and knowledge, and how they are related; about mathematics; about space; about God and man; about thought, language and reality; in fact, about most of the central topics in philosophy. Much of the history of Western philosophy could be rewritten as a history of philosophers' use of the word 'idea'.