Idealism Vindicated

Abstract

Abstract What I want to present in this paper is a case, or rationale, for a sort of idealism. Modern metaphysical idealism enjoyed a distinguished history, and a flourishing and sometimes dominant position, in European philosophy from the early part of the eighteenth century to the early part of the twentieth century. Since then it has fallen on hard times. Not that it has been refuted. Its appeal in modern thought has rested, as I will try to explain, on certain deep problems about supposed soulless substances; and those problems have neither gone away nor been solved in a non-idealist way, so far as I can see. But other intellectual motives have led philosophical interest away in other directions.