Talk: Idealism
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To describe this page as grossly inadequate would be an understatement. --Daniel C. Boyer
Change Platonism from "see also" list to mention in body? --Daniel C. Boyer
I take issue with the following statement from the article:
- Religion is, strictly speaking, idealist in nature, as would be any belief in the supernatural.
Belief in religion or the supernatural does not necessarily entail belief that the material world is somehow less real or less important. Within the history of Christianity, that view was put forth by some or all gnostics and was specifically rejected by mainstream Christianity. Orthodox Christianity specifically affirms the reality and goodness of the material world, especially in the Feast of the Nativity when Christ took on human flesh and a human nature, and the Feast of Theophany, when Christ blessed the physical water at his baptism. Orthodox Christianity affirms that Christ rose bodily from the dead, that Christ's human flesh remains part of him and therefore part of the Holy Trinity, and that we can all look forward to physical resurrection as well.
In short, if the current definition of idealism is correct, then the statement about religion needs to be narrowed so that it only covers those religions about which it is true. Wesley
- Corrected this to some extent. I would appreciate it if you would do any further work you think is required. --Daniel C. Boyer
- Thank you Daniel, you summarized my comments very well in the article. I made a small adjustment to steer further away from docetism, but it seems reasonably accurate now in that respect.
Sorry, but this sentence still strikes me as funny:
- All religion and belief in the supernatural is not, strictly speaking, materialist in nature
And I suspect that the problem is introducing religion at all in the argument. Maybe trying to characterize religion in terms of idealism versus materialism is like mixing metaphors. Maybe religion and philosophy are for the most part trying to answer different questions through different means?
I always thought Greek philosophy (whence we derive this opposition between idealism and materialism) started as an alternative to mythology and what we today call religion. I realize that much of theology is based on attempts to bring philosophy into religion -- thus there are neoplatonists like Philo and aristotleians like Maimonides; one could thus talk of idealist and materialist influences on theology. But even theology is not quite the same thing as religion. If I am wrong, I would expect there to be considerable scholarhip in the history of philosophy and the history of religion that addresses these issues. Since this is to be an encyclopedia article, I suggest cutting these broad general claims and using the space to inform the public of these debates among scholars. Whoever put in the stuff on religion -- couldn't you instead review the extant literature on the intersection between theology and philosophy and the influence of materialists and idealists on theology? Slrubenstein
- Idealism clearly had a strong influence on at least two heresies I can think of: gnosticism and docetism. Many of the Church Fathers in the East were well educated, and were probably influenced more by Plato than by Aristotle. I honestly don't know how accurate it would be to call them neoplatonists though, especially since I'm not sufficiently familiar with platonism to know how much of it they accepted.
- Now, I don't know how much of this needs to be in the article, or if any of it does. But replacing the generalities with more detailed specifics would almost certainly lead to a better article. Wesley
- yes, this detail is very interest -- and it shows that at the very least Christianity has had a complex relationship with "idealism." I am glad you bring it up -- nevertheless, I think it is too tangential for this particular article.
- I think it would be best to excise all or almost all reference to religion in this article, but to have a link to theology, and have a section in that article discussing the relationship between religion and philosophy in general, and debates over idealism and materialism within religion in particular. Slrubenstein
International Relations
This article leaves much to be desired. No reference is made to the term's use in the field of international relations. In this sense,"Idealism" is used interchangeably with the more common term "liberalism" -- one of the two main schools of theory in this field. Maybe a new section and a link is in order? I don't know how, or I'd do it myself. --TheBlindProphet 12:33, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- If you just type in the raw text, BP, we'll fix it up nice and format it as a section with links and such. --Gary D 20:33, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)
