more from this thinker     |     more from this text


Single Idea 7898

[filed under theme 11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 3. Idealism / a. Idealism ]

Full Idea

When a man considers this world as a bubble of froth, and as the illusion of an appearance, then the king of death has no power over him.

Gist of Idea

The world is just the illusion of an appearance

Source

Anon (Dham) (The DhammaPada [c.250 BCE], §13.170)

Book Ref

'The DhammaPada', ed/tr. Mascaro,Juan [Penguin 1973], p.60


A Reaction

Strictly, of course, this says you can 'consider' things this way. Perhaps we could substitute 'pretends', but the world's great religions don't go in for that sort of thing. Berkeley would be shocked to learn he was approaching Buddhism.


The 19 ideas with the same theme [general thoughs about reality as ideas]:

The world is just the illusion of an appearance [Anon (Dham)]
The sun is always bright; it doesn't become bright when it emerges [Plutarch]
A whole is just its parts, but there are no smallest parts, so only minds and perceptions exist [Leibniz]
Leibniz said dualism of mind and body is illusion, and there is only mind [Leibniz, by Martin/Barresi]
Leibniz is an idealist insofar as the basic components of his universe are all mental [Leibniz, by Jolley]
We have no sensual experience of time and space, so they must be 'ideal' [Kant, by Pinkard]
Objects having to be experiencable is not the same as full idealism [Gardner on Kant]
If we disappeared, then all relations of objects, and time and space themselves, disappear too [Kant]
Mental presentation are not empirical, but concern the strivings of the self [Fichte]
For Schopenhauer, material things would not exist without the mind [Schopenhauer, by Janaway]
Schopenhauer can't use force/energy instead of 'will', because he is not a materialist [Lewis,PB on Schopenhauer]
The world only exists in relation to something else, as an idea of the one who conceives it [Schopenhauer]
We know reality because we know our own bodies and actions [Schopenhauer]
'Idealism' says that everything which exists is in some sense mental [Russell]
Eliminative idealists say there are no objects; reductive idealists say objects exist as complex experiences [Dancy,J]
Idealism explains appearances by identifying appearances with reality [Heil]
While space may just be appearance, time and change can't be, because the appearances change [Lowe]
Idealism is the link between reason and freedom [Pinkard]
Strong idealism is the sort of mess produced by a Cartesian separation of mind and world [Rowlands]