School #2
Idealism
Berkeley, Hegel, Fichte
Idealism holds that reality is fundamentally mental or spiritual rather than material. George Berkeley's 'Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous' (1713) and 'A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge' (1710) advanced the thesis esse est percipi — to be is to be perceived — arguing that material objects exist only as ideas in the minds of perceivers, sustained ultimately by God's infinite perception. Johann Gottlieb Fichte's 'Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge' (1794) radicalized this into the claim that the self posits both itself and the non-self through pure activity. G. W. F. Hegel's 'Phenomenology of Spirit' (1807) cast all of reality as the self-unfolding of Absolute Spirit through dialectical stages of consciousness, history, and logic — arriving at total self-knowledge only at the end of its developmental journey.
Worldview
The idealist lives in a world that is, at bottom, thought thinking itself. Material objects are real enough in daily experience, but they are ultimately ideas held in consciousness — patterns sustained by mind rather than brute stuff existing on its own. This orientation produces a characteristic sense that the inner life is more fundamental than the outer world: meditation, contemplation, and intellectual inquiry feel like journeys toward the ground of reality, not retreats from it. The idealist experiences moments of deep recognition — in art, philosophy, or spiritual practice — as encounters with what is most real, while the supposedly "hard" facts of physics are understood as surface descriptions of a deeper mental order. The framework classifies this as Cosmic-ordering metaphysical agency: an impersonal structural principle (Absolute Mind, Spirit) orders reality through its dialectical self-unfolding, not by acting case-by-case as a personal deity. The framework reads this as Reason-grounded moral authority: rational insight into the dialectical structure of Spirit (the unfolding logic of mind) is the ultimate source from which right conduct is read, not revealed text, ecclesial tradition, or charismatic experience.
Moral Implications
If reality is fundamentally mental or spiritual, then consciousness has intrinsic dignity, and the moral life centers on the cultivation and protection of minds. Hegel's dialectic implies a progressive moral vision: Spirit unfolds toward ever-greater freedom and self-knowledge, and actions that advance this unfolding are good while those that obstruct it are not. The idealist tends to locate moral authority in rational insight rather than in custom, appetite, or force. Cruelty is wrong because it violates the essential unity of minds; education and spiritual development are moral imperatives because they bring consciousness closer to its own fullest expression.
Practical Implications
Idealism elevates education, art, and intellectual culture as the highest practical priorities — if mind is the ground of reality, then cultivating minds is the most important work a society can do. It tends to favor institutions that nurture inner development over those that merely accumulate material wealth. Technologically, the idealist may be cautious about innovations that treat consciousness as epiphenomenal or reduce persons to data points. Environmentally, idealism can support conservation on the grounds that the natural world is a meaningful expression of spirit, not mere raw material for exploitation.
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I. Time
Time is emergent from consciousness — it does not exist independently of the mind that perceives it. The idealist sees temporal flow as a feature of mental experience rather than an objective container. Time's extent is both finite and infinite depending on the level of mind: individual experience is finite, but Absolute Mind or Spirit may be eternal. Direction is multi-directional because the mind can revisit the past and anticipate the future freely.
Attributes
Extent: Both
Ontological Status: Emergent
Grain: Continuous
Freedom: Non-Deterministic
Traversability: Linear
Dimensionality: N
Direction: Multi-directional
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II. Space
Space is emergent and mind-dependent — it exists only as a structure of perception, not as an independent container. Its curvature is undefined because the idealist does not grant space an objective geometric character. It is non-local: the mind transcends spatial limitation and can apprehend realities beyond any particular place.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Emergent
Curvature: Undefined
Dimensionality: N
Locality: Non-local
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III. Matter
Matter is emergent and ontologically dependent on mind — it exists only as a content of perception. For Berkeley, "to be is to be perceived"; what we call matter is nothing but a stable pattern in the experience of minds. Matter is conserved only in the sense that the divine mind sustains the regularity of the world, and it is non-local because mind-dependent phenomena are not confined to particular spatial regions.
Attributes
Extent: Finite
Ontological Status: Emergent
Conservation: Conserved
Dimensionality: Three
Locality: Non-local
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IV. Observer
The observer is not confined to a single moment or location — consciousness, being the ground of all reality, transcends ordinary spatial and temporal limits. The mind can access eternal forms, revisit the past, and apprehend truths beyond any particular place. Knowledge is potentially total: through reason or spiritual intuition, the observer can grasp the ideal structures underlying all appearances, and once apprehended, such knowledge is permanently retained. The observer is fundamentally disembodied — not a physical body peering out at matter, but a mind or spirit for which matter is a dependent content. Observation is an active, constitutive act: reality does not exist independently of the mind that perceives it. At the deepest level, there is ultimately one observer — Absolute Mind or Spirit — of which individual perspectives are partial expressions.
Attributes
Time Instance: Multiple
Space Instance: Multiple
Extent of Knowledge: Total
Retainment of Knowledge: Total
Physicality: Disembodied
Agency: Active
Number: Singular
Metaphysical Agency: Cosmic-ordering
Moral Authority: Reason
Theological Method: N/A
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V. Energy
Energy is emergent and mind-dependent — it has no independent existence outside consciousness. Conservation is variable because the regularity of energetic processes is sustained by mind, not by autonomous physical law. Dispersibility is irreversible within the phenomenal order of perception, but ultimately energy is as impermanent as any other mental content.
Attributes
Extent: Finite
Ontological Status: Emergent
Conservation: Variable
Dispersibility: Irreversible
⧉
VI. Information
Information is mind-dependent — it exists only as a content of consciousness. Without a perceiving mind, there is no information. Information is emergent from mental activity, not a pre-existing feature of a mind-independent world. It is non-conserved because mental contents arise and pass away; forgetting is real. The framework distinguishes scales: at the cosmic scale information is non-conserved because mental contents arise and pass away within the unfolding of Spirit, but at the personal-identity scale the pattern of mind persists — individual consciousness is a moment of Absolute Mind that is not finally lost.
Attributes
Ontological Status: Emergent
Cosmic Conservation: Non-conserved
Personal Conservation: Conserved
Granularity: Continuous
Experiments This School Responds To (5)
The Double-Slit Experiment
Some idealists (and the von Neumann–Wigner reading) take the experiment to suggest consciousness as the collapse trigger — the physical record is incomplete without an …
Schrödinger's Cat
A natural place for the von Neumann–Wigner reading: consciousness collapses the wave function, so the cat is in superposition only until a *mind* enters the …
Wigner's Friend
Some idealist readings welcome the asymmetry: the friend's conscious observation collapses the wave function for them, but Wigner has performed no collapse. Consciousness is the …
Brain in a Vat
The scenario presupposes a contrast between "real" and "simulated" experience that idealism rejects. If esse is percipi, there is no further fact about whether percepts …
Twin Earth
Reject the framing: if reality is mind-constituted, there is no environment "out there" doing the meaning-fixing the case relies on. The duplicates inhabit different intentional …
Films Reading Through This School (9)
Wings of Desire
Cassiel's remaining-an-angel position is a kind of idealism: that the inner monologue of a city — its overheard thoughts, prayers, fragments — is the real …
Synecdoche, New York
The film is open to an idealist reading: the world is Caden's, in something like a Berkeleyan sense, and what we are watching is a …
Perfect Blue
The film commits to a working idealism: what exists for Mima is what consciousness admits, and the film does not guarantee any backstop. Kon's match-cuts …
Paprika
The film commits to a working idealism: the world Tokyo becomes is the world consciousness has been producing all along, now visible. The chairman's appropriation …
Wittgenstein
The film foregrounds the Tractatus' idealism — "the world is my world; the limits of my language mean the limits of my world" — and …
What the Bleep Do We Know!?
The film argues a strong idealism: consciousness is the substrate, matter is the appearance, and the experienced world is the artefact of the observer's constitutive …
The Matrix
A Berkeleyan idealist reading: the matrix shows that material reality is mind-dependent — though the dependence is on a machine-mind, not a divine one. The …
Solaris
A version of idealism: the world we encounter is partly the world we project. The Solaris ocean externalises this — making it not a metaphor …
The Mirror
The film commits to a working idealism: the world we see is the world as it appears in consciousness, and Tarkovsky refuses to guarantee anything …
Debates Where This School Is Allied (10)
Berkeley vs Locke on Material Substance
Idealist; immaterialist
Hegel and Schopenhauer
Absolute idealist; theorist of Spirit
Nietzsche vs Wagner
Composer; theorist of total artwork
Aristotle vs Plato on the Forms
Theorist of separate Forms
Śaṅkara vs Maṇḍana Miśra
Advaita Vedāntin
Kierkegaard vs Hegel
Absolute idealist; theorist of Spirit
Heraclitus vs Parmenides
Philosopher of Being; founder of ontology
Plato vs Diogenes
Founder of the Academy; metaphysician of the Forms
Plotinus vs the Gnostics
Founder of Neoplatonism
Plotinus vs the Gnostics
Dualist religious-philosophical movement
Works that name Idealism in their embodiments
Foundational texts that draw on this school, with each work's declared weight.
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Phenomenology of Spirit (Early)
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1806–07 (finished as Napoleon entered Jena)
A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (Early)
George Berkeley · 1710 (Dublin, age 25)
System of Transcendental Idealism (Early)
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling · 1800
Science of Logic (Mid (the central work of the mature Hegelian system))
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1812 (Book I, Being); 1813 (Book II, Essence); 1816 (Book III, Concept); 1832 (Hegel's revised Book I, posthumous)
Lectures on Aesthetics (Late (Berlin lectures))
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1820s (delivered as lectures); 1835-38 (compiled and published posthumously by H. G. Hotho)
Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (Mature (the most comprehensive single-text statement of the system))
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1817 (1st edition); 1827 (2nd edition); 1830 (3rd and definitive edition, in three volumes)
Foundations of the Science of Knowledge (Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre) (Early)
Johann Gottlieb Fichte · 1794-95
Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Late (the mature systematic philosophy))
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1820 (published 1821 with the famous controversial Preface)
Lectures on the Philosophy of History (Late (Berlin lectures of the 1820s, his mature mature))
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1822-31 (delivered as lectures); 1837 (compiled and published posthumously by Eduard Gans)
Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (Late (Berlin lectures))
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1821-31 (delivered as lectures); 1832 (compiled and published posthumously)
Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (Early)
George Berkeley · 1713
The Philosophy of Loyalty (Late)
Josiah Royce · 1908
The World and the Individual (Mid)
Josiah Royce · 1899-1901 (Gifford Lectures at Aberdeen)
Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic (Early)
J. M. E. McTaggart · 1896
The Nature of Existence (Late)
J. M. E. McTaggart · 1921 (vol. 1); 1927 (vol. 2, posthumous, ed. C. D. Broad)
On the Aesthetic Education of Man (Mid)
Friedrich Schiller · 1795 (in Die Horen)
The Unreality of Time (Late)
J. M. E. McTaggart · 1908
An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision (Early)
George Berkeley · 1709
Instructions for Practical Living
Wang Yangming (Wang Shouren) · c. 1518 (compiled by students; expanded editions to 1572)
Some Dogmas of Religion (Middle)
J. M. E. McTaggart · 1906
Monadology (Late)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1714 (written in French for Prince Eugene of Savoy); published 1720 in German
Critique of Judgment (Late)
Immanuel Kant · 1790
Biographia Literaria (Mid)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge · 1817
Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism (Late)
Hermann Cohen · 1918 (completed); 1919 (posthumous); 1929 (2nd ed.)
The Struggle for Recognition (Mid)
Axel Honneth · 1992 (German); 1995 (English)
Soliloquies (Early)
Friedrich Schleiermacher · 1800 (Monologen, Berlin)
Faust II (Last)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1825-31 (completed shortly before Goethe's 1832 death; published posthumously 1832)
New System (Mature)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1695
De Motu (Mid)
George Berkeley · 1721
Siris (Late)
George Berkeley · 1744
The Artwork of the Future (Early)
Richard Wagner · 1849
On the Will in Nature (Middle)
Arthur Schopenhauer · 1836 (2nd ed. 1854)
Opera and Drama (Early-to-Middle)
Richard Wagner · 1851
Der Ring des Nibelungen (Middle-to-late (career-spanning))
Richard Wagner · 1848–1874 (poem 1848–52; music 1853–74; complete premiere Bayreuth 1876)
The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics (Late)
Arthur Schopenhauer · 1841
Intuition and Reflection in Self-Consciousness (Middle)
Nishida Kitarō · 1917
Viṃśatikā (Mature (post-conversion to Mahāyāna))
Vasubandhu · c. 4th-5th century
Triṃśikā (Mature)
Vasubandhu · c. 4th-5th century
The Upanishads
Anonymous / composite (multiple ṛṣis over four centuries) · c. 800–200 BC
The Republic
Plato · c. 380–375 BC
Phaedo
Plato · c. 380 BC (middle dialogue)
Proslogion
Anselm of Canterbury · 1077–78 (Abbey of Bec)
The World as Will and Representation
Arthur Schopenhauer · 1818 (first ed.); 1844 (expanded with second volume); 1859 (final third edition)
Symposium
Plato · c. 385–380 BC (middle dialogue)
Phaedrus (Late)
Plato · c. 370 BC (late-middle dialogue)
Critique of Practical Reason (Late)
Immanuel Kant · 1788
Discourse on Metaphysics (Mid (Leibniz's breakthrough philosophical statement))
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1686 (sent to Antoine Arnauld; not published in Leibniz's lifetime)
New Essays on Human Understanding (Late)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1704 (completed; Leibniz suppressed publication after Locke's 1704 death); 1765 (posthumous publication)
Faust, Part I (Mid (composed across Goethe's career; Part I the major mid-career work))
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1772-1808 (composed across decades; Part I published 1808; Part II completed 1832, posthumous)
On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (Early)
Arthur Schopenhauer · 1813 (doctoral dissertation); 1847 (revised 2nd edition)
It from Bit / Information, Physics, Quantum (Late)
John Archibald Wheeler · 1989-90 (the "It from Bit" thesis articulated in conference papers and essays)
Principles of Nature and Grace (Late)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1714
Negative Dialectics (Late)
Theodor W. Adorno · 1966 (German; English 1973)
Eclipse of Reason (Mid)
Max Horkheimer · 1947 (English original; German edition 1967)
The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Mid)
Jürgen Habermas · 1985 (German; English 1987)
The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (Mid)
Ernst Cassirer · 1923-29 (Vol I 1923, II 1925, III 1929)
Making It Explicit (Mid)
Robert Brandom · 1994
Mahāyānasaṃgraha (Mid)
Asaṅga · c. 4th-5th century CE
Inquiry on the Great Learning (Daxue Wen) (Late)
Wang Yangming · 1527
On Nature (Fragments) (Early)
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae · c. 460 BCE
The Bride of the Lamb (Late)
Sergei Bulgakov · composed 1939-42; published 1945 posthumously
New Science (Late)
Giambattista Vico · 1725 (1st edn); 1730 (2nd); 1744 (3rd, definitive)
Faust, Part Two (Faust: Der Tragödie zweiter Teil) (Late)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1832 (composed 1825-31; published posthumously)
The End of History and the Last Man (Mid)
Francis Fukuyama · 1992
The Justification of the Good (Opravdanie dobra) (Late)
Vladimir Solovyov · 1897
Collected Poems (Late)
Wallace Stevens · 1954 (collection of poems 1923-54)
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (Mid)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1795-96
History and Class Consciousness (Mid)
György Lukács · 1923
Studies in Iconology (Late)
Erwin Panofsky · 1939
Nature (Early)
Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1836
The Logic of the Place of Nothingness and the Religious Worldview (Late (Nishida's final completed essay, written months before his death))
Nishida Kitarō · 1945 (composed Feb-April 1945; published posthumously)
On Learned Ignorance (Mature (the founding work of Cusa's philosophical career, composed at age 39))
Nicholas of Cusa (Nicolaus Cusanus) · 1440 (composed on the return voyage from the failed Council of Florence union with the Greeks)
The Waves (Mature)
Virginia Woolf · 1931 (Hogarth Press)
Divinity School Address (Mature)
Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1838 (delivered July 15, 1838, at Harvard Divinity School; published as An Address Delivered before the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge, 1838)
Essays: First Series (Mature)
Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1841 (James Munroe & Co., Boston)
Representative Men (Mature)
Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1850 (Phillips, Sampson & Co., Boston; based on lectures delivered 1845-46)
Faust I (Mature)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1772-1806 (composed over 35 years; published 1808)
Discourse on Metaphysics (Mature)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1686 (composed February 1686; first published 1846)
The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (Last)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1715-16 (5 letters from Leibniz, 5 replies from Clarke); published 1717
The Meaning of the Creative Act (Early-mature)
Nikolai Berdyaev · 1916 (Smysl tvorchestva)
Quantum: The Search for Links (Late)
John Archibald Wheeler · 1989
Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher (Mid)
George Berkeley · 1732
The Crisis of Western Philosophy (Early)
Vladimir Solovyov · 1874
Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom (Late)
Roy Bhaskar · 1993
Tristan und Isolde (Middle (post-Schopenhauer))
Richard Wagner · 1857–1859 (premiered Munich, 1865)
Paradoxes (fragments)
Zeno of Elea · c. 460 BCE
Vakyapadiya (On Words and Sentences) (Early)
Bhartrhari · c. 5th century
Great Hymn to the Aten
Akhenaten · c. 1340 BCE
The Analyst (Late)
George Berkeley · 1734
Meditations on First Philosophy
René Descartes · 1641 (Latin); French translation by Duc de Luynes 1647
Critique of Pure Reason
Immanuel Kant · 1781 (A edition); 1787 (B edition, substantially revised)
Cartesian Meditations (Late)
Edmund Husserl · 1929 (Sorbonne lectures); 1931 (French publication); 1950 (German publication)
Brahma Sutra Bhāṣya
Ādi Śaṅkara (Śaṅkarācārya) · c. 700–750 AD
The German Sermons (Late)
Meister Eckhart (Eckhart von Hochheim) · c. 1295–1327 (preached in Strasbourg, Cologne, and elsewhere)
Meno (Early)
Plato · c. 386–380 BC (transitional dialogue)
On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (Early)
Friedrich Schleiermacher · 1799 (anonymous first ed.); 1806, 1821, 1831 (revised eds with explanations)
The Birth of Tragedy (Early)
Friedrich Nietzsche · 1872 (with "Attempt at a Self-Criticism" preface added 1886)
Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology (Mid (the transcendental turn))
Edmund Husserl · 1913
Essays: First Series (Mid (Emerson at the peak of his powers))
Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1841 (twelve essays collected from earlier lectures and journal entries)
Adventures of Ideas (Late (Whitehead's last major book))
Alfred North Whitehead · 1933
The Social Contract (Late (after the two Discourses; the political conclusion of Rousseau's mature thought))
Jean-Jacques Rousseau · 1762
Science and the Modern World (Mid (the major statement of philosophical-cultural critique, preceding the technical metaphysics of Process and Reality))
Alfred North Whitehead · 1925 (the Lowell Lectures, Harvard; the proximate prelude to Process and Reality, 1929)
On Nature (Fragments)
Heraclitus of Ephesus · c. 500 BC (the fragments preserved through later authors' quotations)
Parisian Questions (Mid-late)
Meister Eckhart (Eckhart von Hochheim) · c. 1300-1326 (the scholastic-Latin works composed across Eckhart's academic career)
Psychological Types (Mid (the major systematic work after his 1912-13 break with Freud))
Carl Gustav Jung · 1921
Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism (Early (Suzuki's first major book; preceding the Essays in Zen Buddhism by twenty years))
Daisetsu Teitarō Suzuki · 1907 (Suzuki's first major book in English, written during his work with Paul Carus at the Open Court Press)
Tradition and the Individual Talent (Early (Eliot's major early critical statement))
Thomas Stearns Eliot · 1919 (first published in The Egoist, September-December 1919)
The Sorrows of Young Werther (Early (the 25-year-old Goethe's breakthrough work))
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1774
Parerga and Paralipomena (Late)
Arthur Schopenhauer · 1851
Parmenides
Plato · c. 370 BC
Sophist
Plato · c. 360 BC
Systematic Theology (Mid)
Paul Tillich · 1951-63 (Vol I 1951, Vol II 1957, Vol III 1963)
Dialectic of Enlightenment (Mid)
Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer · 1944 (private circulation); 1947 (Amsterdam edition)
One-Dimensional Man (Late)
Herbert Marcuse · 1964
Eros and Civilization (Mid)
Herbert Marcuse · 1955
Truth and Method (Mid)
Hans-Georg Gadamer · 1960 (German; English 1975, 2nd rev. ed. 1989)
Systematic Theology (Late)
Wolfhart Pannenberg · 1988-93 (3 vols; English 1991-98)
The Essence of Manifestation (Early)
Michel Henry · 1963 (French; English 1973)
Philosophy (Mid)
Karl Jaspers · 1932 (3 vols; English 1969-71)
Mind and World (Late)
John McDowell · 1994 (1991 John Locke Lectures at Oxford)
Truth and Other Enigmas (Mid)
Michael Dummett · 1978 (essays 1954-77)
Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Early)
Michael J. Sandel · 1982 (2nd edn 1998)
Sources of the Self (Mid)
Charles Taylor · 1989
The Hedgehog and the Fox (Mid)
Isaiah Berlin · 1953
Zhuzi Yulei (Conversations of Master Zhu, Arranged Topically) (Late)
Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi); compiled by Li Jingde · Conversations 1170-1200; compiled 1270
The Life Divine (Late)
Sri Aurobindo (Aurobindo Ghose) · 1914-19 (Arya magazine); 1939-40 (book)
Periphyseon (On the Division of Nature) (Mid)
John Scotus Eriugena · c. 867
On Nature (Peri Physeos) (Early)
Parmenides of Elea · c. 475 BCE
The Pillar and Ground of the Truth (Mid)
Pavel Florensky · 1914
Time and Free Will (Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience) (Early)
Henri Bergson · 1889 (doctoral thesis)
Matter and Memory (Matière et Mémoire) (Mid)
Henri Bergson · 1896
The Christian Faith (Der christliche Glaube) (Late)
Friedrich Schleiermacher · 1821-22 (rev. 1830-31)
Preface to Lyrical Ballads (Early)
William Wordsworth · 1800 (1st version); 1802 (expanded)
Écrits (Mid)
Jacques Lacan · 1966 (essays 1936-66)
The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (Late)
Jacques Lacan · 1964 (seminar); 1973 (book)
An Inquiry into the Good (Zen no Kenkyū) (Early)
Nishida Kitarō · 1911
The Destiny of Man (O naznachenii cheloveka) (Mid)
Nikolai Berdyaev · 1931
The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Late)
Muhammad Iqbal · 1930-34
Freedom of the Will (Late)
Jonathan Edwards · 1754
An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (Mid)
John Henry Newman · 1845 (rev. 1878)
Intellectual Intuition and Chinese Philosophy (Zhi de zhijue yu Zhongguo zhexue) (Late)
Mou Zongsan · 1971
The Hindu View of Life (Mid)
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan · 1926 (Upton Lectures at Oxford, 1926)
Ficciones (Mid)
Jorge Luis Borges · 1944
A Vision (Late)
W.B. Yeats · 1925 (1st edn); 1937 (rev. 2nd edn)
The Sublime Object of Ideology (Mid)
Slavoj Žižek · 1989
The Philosophy of Money (Mid)
Georg Simmel · 1900 (2nd ed. 1907)
The Star of Redemption (Mid)
Franz Rosenzweig · 1918-19 (composed in trenches); 1921 (published)
What Is Life? (Late)
Erwin Schrödinger · 1943 (lectures); 1944 (book)
The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (Mid)
Jacob Burckhardt · 1860
Quantum Healing (Mid)
Deepak Chopra · 1989
Ageless Body, Timeless Mind (Late)
Deepak Chopra · 1993
Duration and Simultaneity (Mature (the disastrous engagement with Einstein that damaged Bergson's standing among physicists))
Henri Bergson · 1922 (Durée et Simultanéité: à propos de la théorie d'Einstein, Paris: Alcan; revised 2nd edn 1923)
Aion (Late (one of Jung's last and most ambitious works, written in his mid-seventies))
Carl Gustav Jung · 1951 (Aion: Untersuchungen zur Symbolgeschichte, Rascher, Zurich; English trans. R.F.C. Hull, Collected Works vol. 9, pt II, 1959)
The Red Book (Middle (the personal experimental record from which all of Jung's later theoretical work emerged))
Carl Gustav Jung · 1914-30 (composed in calligraphic script with painted illuminations; published 2009 by W. W. Norton, ed. Sonu Shamdasani)
The Undiscovered Self (Late (one of Jung's last short works, written at 82))
Carl Gustav Jung · 1957 (Schweizer Monatshefte; book edition Rascher, Zurich; English trans. R.F.C. Hull, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1958)
The Vision of God (Mature (one of Cusa's most condensed and beautiful late works))
Nicholas of Cusa (Nicolaus Cusanus) · 1453 (composed for the Benedictine monks of Tegernsee, sent with an icon of an all-seeing face)
On Conjectures (Mature (the systematic epistemological development of the docta-ignorantia framework))
Nicholas of Cusa (Nicolaus Cusanus) · c. 1442-43 (composed shortly after De Docta Ignorantia, dedicated to Cardinal Cesarini)
Opus Tripartitum (Late (Eckhart's most ambitious Latin project, undertaken in the years before the 1326 trial))
Meister Eckhart (Eckhart von Hochheim) · c. 1311-26 (planned during Eckhart's second Paris regency, never completed; only fragments survive)
Vom Edlen Menschen (Mature (probably from the Strasbourg years before the trial))
Meister Eckhart (Eckhart von Hochheim) · c. 1308-13 (Strasbourg or Paris period)
The Tempest (Last (probably Shakespeare's last sole-authored play))
William Shakespeare · c. 1610-11 (first performed Whitehall, 1 November 1611)
The American Scholar (Mature)
Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1837 (delivered August 31, 1837, at the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard; first published as An Oration Delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, 1837)
Essays: Second Series (Mature)
Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1844 (James Munroe & Co., Boston)
Translation of Plato's dialogues (Mature)
Friedrich Schleiermacher · 1804-28 (multi-volume translation with extensive prefaces and notes)
The Christian Faith (Mature)
Friedrich Schleiermacher · 1821-22 (first edition); substantially revised 1830-31 (second edition, the standard form)
The Allegory of Love (Mature)
C. S. Lewis · 1936 (Oxford UP); Hawthornden Prize 1936
The Discarded Image (Last)
C. S. Lewis · Lectures delivered Oxford 1950s; published posthumously 1964 (Cambridge UP)
The Immeasurable Equation (Posthumous)
Sun Ra (Herman Poole Blount) · 1950s-1993; collected 2005
Theory of Colors (Mature)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1810 (J.G. Cotta, Tübingen)
Italian Journey (Late-mature retrospective)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1816 (parts I-II) and 1829 (part III); recounting 1786-88 journey
Patriotism (Mid-mature)
Yukio Mishima · 1961 ("Yūkoku")
Quantum Theory and Measurement (Mid)
John Archibald Wheeler · 1983
An Introduction to Zen Buddhism (Mid)
Daisetsu Teitarō Suzuki · 1934 (Japanese-published English ed.); 1949 (Rider ed. with Jung foreword)
Correspondence with Arnauld (Mature)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1686-1690
Quantum Theory (Early)
David Bohm · 1951
The Synthesis of Yoga (Mature)
Sri Aurobindo · 1914-21 (serial), revisions through 1940s
Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol (Late)
Sri Aurobindo · c. 1916-1950 (composed across decades; final revisions until weeks before Aurobindo's 1950 death)
Essays on the Gita (Mature)
Sri Aurobindo · 1916-20 (serial in Arya); revised book form 1922 (First Series), 1928 (Second Series)
The End for Which God Created the World (Late)
Jonathan Edwards · c. 1755 (composed); 1765 (posthumous publication)
Lectures on Divine Humanity (Mid)
Vladimir Solovyov · 1878-81 (lectures), 1881-84 (published)
Vom Abgeschiedenheit (On Detachment) (Mature)
Meister Eckhart (Eckhart von Hochheim) · c. 1300 (German treatise)
Commentary on John (Mature)
Meister Eckhart (Eckhart von Hochheim) · c. 1313-26 (Paris and Cologne periods)
Commentary on Genesis (Mature)
Meister Eckhart (Eckhart von Hochheim) · c. 1305-25 (mature period)
The Lankavatara Sutra (Mid)
Daisetsu Teitarō Suzuki · 1932
Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism (Early)
Daisetsu Teitarō Suzuki · 1907
Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (Early-to-middle)
Martin Heidegger · 1929
Dialogues in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
Anonymous (attributed to Yajnavalkya) · c. 8th–7th century BCE
From the Acting to the Seeing (Middle-to-late)
Nishida Kitarō · 1927
The Enneads
Plotinus (edited by Porphyry c. 301) · Composed c. 254–270 AD; edited by Porphyry c. 301
Mathnawi (Late)
Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī · c. 1258–1273 (Konya, dictated in Persian over fifteen years)
The Zohar
Traditionally Shimon bar Yochai (2nd c. AD); modern scholarship attributes to Moses de León c. 1280 · c. 1280 (Castile, Spain); first published in print 1558
The Foundations of Arithmetic
Gottlob Frege · 1884
Physics and Philosophy
Werner Heisenberg · 1958 (Gifford Lectures, St Andrews, 1955–56)
Principia Mathematica (Early (both authors))
Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell · 1910 (vol. 1), 1912 (vol. 2), 1913 (vol. 3); 2nd edition 1925-27
Theodicy (Late)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · 1710 (the only philosophical book Leibniz published in his lifetime)
The Origin of German Tragic Drama (Early (the most ambitious early work, before the Arcades Project))
Walter Benjamin · 1925 (submitted as habilitation thesis, rejected by the University of Frankfurt); 1928 (published commercially)
The Great Learning and Doctrine of the Mean
Confucius (Kongzi) · Originally chapters of the Book of Rites (Li Ji, c. 1st c. BC); elevated to the Four Books by Zhu Xi (1130-1200) in the Song dynasty
The Concept of Nature (Early-mid (preceding Science and the Modern World, 1925))
Alfred North Whitehead · 1920 (the Tarner Lectures, Trinity College Cambridge)
The Imaginary (Early (preceding Being and Nothingness))
Jean-Paul Sartre · 1940
Modern Man in Search of a Soul (Mid-late (mature systematic statement))
Carl Gustav Jung · 1933 (essay collection, English translation by Cary F. Baynes)
The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Late (the mature systematic statement of archetypal psychology))
Carl Gustav Jung · 1934-55 (essays composed across two decades); 1959 (compiled as Volume 9, Part 1 of the Collected Works)
Vom Abgeschiedenheit (On Detachment) / Counsels on Discernment (Early)
Meister Eckhart (Eckhart von Hochheim) · c. 1295-98 (Eckhart's early German-vernacular work, written for the religious community at Erfurt)
Gravitation (Mid-late)
John Archibald Wheeler · 1973
Psychology and Alchemy (Late)
Carl Gustav Jung · 1944
Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Late (the major autobiographical work))
Carl Gustav Jung · 1957-61 (recorded conversations with Aniela Jaffé); published 1962
Writing and Difference (Early)
Jacques Derrida · 1967 (French; English 1978)
Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life (Mid)
Theodor W. Adorno · 1944-47 (composed); 1951 (published)
Theses on the Philosophy of History (Late)
Walter Benjamin · 1940 (German; English 1968)
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Late)
Walter Benjamin · 1935-36 (multiple versions); first published 1936 in French
Knowledge and Human Interests (Early)
Jürgen Habermas · 1968 (German; English 1971)
Between Facts and Norms (Late)
Jürgen Habermas · 1992 (German; English 1996)
Democracy and Education (Mid)
John Dewey · 1916
Art as Experience (Late)
John Dewey · 1934 (William James Lectures at Harvard, 1931)
The Quest for Certainty (Late)
John Dewey · 1929 (Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh, 1928-29)
Modes of Thought (Late)
Alfred North Whitehead · 1938 (Wellesley & University of Chicago lectures, 1937-38)
Church Dogmatics (Mid)
Karl Barth · 1932-67 (14 volumes, unfinished)
Foundations of Christian Faith (Late)
Karl Rahner · 1976 (German; English 1978)
The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics (Late)
Hans Urs von Balthasar · 1961-69 (Vol I-VII; English 1982-91)
Jesus Christ and Mythology (Late)
Rudolf Bultmann · 1958 (Shaffer Lectures at Yale)
Theology of the New Testament (Late)
Rudolf Bultmann · 1948-53 (Vol I 1948, Vol II 1953; English 1951-55)
The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes (Late)
Imre Lakatos · 1978 (posthumous; key essays from 1968-71)
Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Late)
Michael Polanyi · 1958 (Gifford Lectures 1951-52 at Aberdeen)
The Visible and the Invisible (Late)
Maurice Merleau-Ponty · 1964 (posthumous; composed 1959-61)
Being Given (Late)
Jean-Luc Marion · 1997 (French; English 2002)
Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History (Late)
Jan Patočka · 1975 (Czech samizdat; revised; English 1996)
Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values (Mid)
Max Scheler · 1913-16 (Yearbook for Philosophy and Phenomenological Research)
Philosophy of Existence (Late)
Karl Jaspers · 1938 (German; English 1971)
Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (Early)
P.F. Strawson · 1959
A Secular Age (Late)
Charles Taylor · 2007 (Gifford Lectures 1998-99 at Edinburgh, extensively expanded)
The Concept of the Political (Mid)
Carl Schmitt · 1932 (revised from 1927 essay; English 1976)
Kitāb al-Najāt (Book of Salvation) (Mid)
Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) · c. 1024-27
Kitāb al-Ishārāt wa-l-Tanbīhāt (Remarks and Admonitions) (Late)
Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) · c. 1030
Long Commentary on De Anima (Late)
Averroes (Ibn Rushd) · c. 1190
al-Ḥikma al-Mutaʿāliya fī l-Asfār al-ʿAqliyya al-Arbaʿa (Transcendent Wisdom in the Four Intellectual Journeys) (Late)
Mullā Ṣadrā (Ṣadr al-Dīn Muḥammad Shīrāzī) · c. 1628
Ḥikmat al-Ishrāq (The Philosophy of Illumination) (Mid)
Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī · c. 1186
Mabādiʾ Ārāʾ Ahl al-Madīna al-Fāḍila (Principles of the Opinions of the Inhabitants of the Virtuous City) (Mid)
al-Fārābī (Abū Naṣr) · c. 942
Itinerarium Mentis in Deum (The Mind's Road to God) (Mid)
St. Bonaventure (Giovanni di Fidanza) · 1259
De Docta Ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance) (Late)
Nicholas of Cusa (Nikolaus von Kues) · 1440
The Divine Names (De Divinis Nominibus) (Late)
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite · late 5th or early 6th century
The Life of Moses (De Vita Moysis) (Late)
St. Gregory of Nyssa · c. 390
Moralia (Ēthika) (Late)
Plutarch of Chaeronea · c. 100 CE
Isagoge (Introduction to Aristotle's Categories) (Late)
Porphyry of Tyre · c. 270
On First Principles (Peri Archōn / De Principiis) (Early)
Origen of Alexandria · c. 230
Theological Orations (Orations 27-31) (Mid)
St. Gregory of Nazianzus (the Theologian) · 380
Ambigua to John (Ambigua ad Iohannem) (Late)
St. Maximus the Confessor · c. 628-30
Oration on the Dignity of Man (Oratio de hominis dignitate) (Mid)
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola · 1486
On the Infinite Universe and Worlds (De l'Infinito Universo e Mondi) (Late)
Giordano Bruno · 1584
The Passions of the Soul (Les Passions de l'âme) (Late)
René Descartes · 1649
Creative Evolution (L'évolution créatrice) (Late)
Henri Bergson · 1907
Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt) (Early)
Franz Brentano · 1874
The View from Nowhere (Mid)
Thomas Nagel · 1986
Difference and Repetition (Différence et Répétition) (Mid)
Gilles Deleuze · 1968
Speculum of the Other Woman (Speculum, de l'autre femme) (Mid)
Luce Irigaray · 1974
Philosophy as Metanoetics (Zangedō to shite no tetsugaku) (Late)
Tanabe Hajime · 1946
After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency (Après la finitude) (Late)
Quentin Meillassoux · 2006
The Souls of Black Folk (Mid)
W.E.B. Du Bois · 1903
Mind, Self, and Society (Late)
George Herbert Mead · 1934 (posthumous; lectures 1928-30)
The Education of Henry Adams (Late)
Henry Adams · 1907 (private printing); 1918 (public)
A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (Mid)
Fung Yu-lan (Feng Youlan) · 1948
Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies (Dongxi wenhua ji qi zhexue) (Early)
Liang Shuming · 1921
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (Late)
Shunryu Suzuki (Suzuki-rōshi) · 1970
Religion and Nothingness (Shūkyō to wa nani ka) (Mid)
Nishitani Keiji · 1961
Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation (Late)
Tu Weiming · 1985
Paradise Lost (Late)
John Milton · 1667 (1st edn, 10 books); 1674 (2nd edn, 12 books)
On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems (Early)
Kurt Gödel · 1931
Foundations of a General Theory of Manifolds (Grundlagen einer allgemeinen Mannigfaltigkeitslehre) (Mid)
Georg Cantor · 1883
Relativity: The Special and General Theory (Mid)
Albert Einstein · 1916 (German); 1920 (English)
Swann's Way (Du côté de chez Swann) (Mid)
Marcel Proust · 1913
The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg) (Late)
Thomas Mann · 1912-24 (composed); 1924 (published)
Raja Yoga: Conquering the Internal Nature (Late)
Swami Vivekananda · 1896
Syntactic Structures (Early)
Noam Chomsky · 1957
Principia Ethica (Early)
G.E. Moore · 1903
On Sense and Reference (Mid)
Gottlob Frege · 1892
The Oresteia (Early)
Aeschylus · 458 BCE (first performed at the Dionysia)
Prison Notebooks (Late)
Antonio Gramsci · 1929-35 (composed in fascist prison); 1948-51 (posthumous Italian publication)
The State and Revolution (Late)
Vladimir Lenin · 1917 (composed in Finland, on the eve of the October Revolution)
The German Ideology (Early)
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels · 1845-46 (composed in Brussels; published 1932 by Soviet Union)
The Poetics of Space (Late)
Gaston Bachelard · 1958 (French); 1964 (English)
Scientific Thought (Mid)
C. D. Broad · 1923
Self-Reliance (Mid)
Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1841 (in Essays: First Series)
Anti-Duhring (Late)
Friedrich Engels · 1877-78
Capital (Late)
Karl Marx · 1867 (vol. I); 1885 (vol. II posthumous); 1894 (vol. III posthumous, edited by Engels)
The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Late (Husserl's last work, written in Freiburg under Nazi proscription))
Edmund Husserl · 1934-37 (parts I & II in Philosophia 1936; full edition Husserliana VI, 1954)
Laughter (Early-mature (between Matter and Memory and Creative Evolution))
Henri Bergson · 1900 (Le Rire: Essai sur la signification du comique, Revue de Paris; book edition 1900; revised many times through 1924)
The Sea of Fertility (Last)
Yukio Mishima · 1965-71 (four-volume tetralogy)
Examination of McTaggart's Philosophy (Mature)
C. D. Broad · 1933 (vol. 1), 1938 (vol. 2)
Commentary on Wisdom (Mature)
Meister Eckhart (Eckhart von Hochheim) · c. 1305-25 (mature period)
Personas with Idealism as a declared influence
60% Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
50% George Berkeley
30% Richard Wagner
25% Ralph Waldo Emerson
25% Carl Gustav Jung
25% Jonathan Edwards
25% J. M. E. McTaggart
25% Wang Yangming
20% Vasubandhu
20% Adi Śaṅkara
15% Friedrich Schleiermacher
15% Parmenides of Elea
15% Arthur Schopenhauer
15% Nishida Kitarō
15% Anaxagoras of Clazomenae
15% Bhartrhari
15% Akhenaten
10% Karl Marx
10% John Scotus Eriugena (Iohannes Scottus Eriugena)
10% Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
10% Zeno of Elea
10% Yajnavalkya
-20% Gottlob Frege
How Idealism resolves each dilemma
56 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 33 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 1 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas, all mainstream
Do you really choose?
The future is open and you are a genuine origin of it.
69%
Are addicts responsible for their addiction?
The addict could have chosen otherwise — that's why recovery is real.
69%
Should we hold AI systems responsible for what they do?
An AI without a free will is not the kind of thing that can be responsible.
69%
How much weight do future people deserve?
Time arises from events or from a deeper substrate — the future is not yet.
31%
Is regret rational?
The past is not a thing now; regret is the present holding what is no longer.
31%
Do we owe extinct species something we cannot give them?
Past species no longer exist; what we owe is to the present and the future.
31%
Is the universe running out of usable energy?
Time both has and lacks bounds depending on the level you ask at; finitude is conventional.
26%
Are natural resources fundamentally finite, or only practically so?
The finitude question is level-dependent; resource ethics happens at the level that constrains us.
26%
Could we owe future generations more than is materially possible to provide?
The owing-and-possibility question is level-dependent; we owe what is appropriate at the level we act on.
26%
Matter · 7 dilemmas · 5 distinctive
What stuff is — fundamental, relational, or appearance.
Distinctive · only 7% of schools agree
(15/208)
What is money?
The question of what money is — a measured store of real value, an agreed-on practice, a relational ledger of debts, or just a name we apply to many different things — sits behind every argument about inflation, cryptocurrency, debt, and the state.
Money's apparent diversity is convention over a single underlying value.
On non-dual views, the diverse forms money takes are perspectival distinctions within a single underlying value — labor, energy, attention, or simply the One from which all value derives. The metaphysical question is mostly malformed at the conventional level where monetary policy lives, but the …
Roads not taken
Money is a real institution with intrinsic features. (55%) ·
Money is a social practice — its content is what we make it. (16%) ·
Money is the ledger of obligations among real people. (14%)
Distinctive · only 7% of schools agree
(15/208)
What is a nation?
Whether a nation is a real moral community with intrinsic character, a constructed legal-political artifact, a web of kinship and shared history, an imagined community, or a conventional partition of a deeper unity — these are real ontological positions with sharply different political downstream.
Nations are conventional partitions of a single humanity.
On non-dual views, the distinctness of nations is a perspectival distinction within a deeper unity — one humanity, one consciousness, one underlying reality. Nations matter at the conventional level where ordinary politics lives, but the metaphysical weight they sometimes claim is unsupported.
Roads not taken
A nation is a real moral community with intrinsic character. (55%) ·
A nation is a constructed polity — a project, not a discovery. (16%) ·
A nation is the web of kinship, ancestry, and shared land that hosts a people. (14%)
Distinctive · only 7% of schools agree
(15/208)
What makes someone male or female?
Whether sex is a real biological kind, a constructed social category, a relational identity, a label applied to varied phenomena, or a conventional distinction within a deeper unity is the ontological question the contemporary dispute about gender is mostly about.
The distinction is conventional within a deeper non-dual reality.
On non-dual views, the distinctness of male and female — like every binary distinction between apparent selves — is a perspectival distinction within a deeper unity. Particular sex and gender designations operate at the conventional level where most of life is lived; at the ultimate …
Roads not taken
Sex is a real biological kind with given content. (55%) ·
Gender is constructed; what counts as male or female reflects practice. (16%) ·
Sex and gender are constituted by relations of recognition. (14%)
Distinctive · only 7% of schools agree
(15/208)
Should we edit the human germline?
Whether human nature is a given biological kind, a constructed category, a relational achievement, a family-resemblance cluster, or a conventional distinction within deeper unity is the ontological question the policy debate over heritable gene editing is mostly about.
The distinction between edited and unedited is conventional within a deeper non-dual reality.
On non-dual views, the contrast between an 'edited' and an 'unedited' human — like every binary distinction between apparent selves — is a perspectival distinction within a deeper unity. The practical questions of safety, consent, and justice operate at the conventional level where most of …
Roads not taken
Human nature is a real biological kind given by reproductive biology or by creation; editing the germline transgresses what is given. (55%) ·
The categories we count as 'human' are emergent from practice; germline editing is a practice-revision like any other. (16%) ·
Personhood is constituted by relations of descent and kinship; germline editing reshapes the relational fabric. (14%)
Distinctive · only 23% of schools agree
(47/208)
Is the world created from nothing?
Creatio ex nihilo is one of the most distinctive Western-theological claims. Whether matter was created from nothing, eternally exists, or is sustained moment-by-moment turns on what kind of thing matter is.
Matter is real but emerges from something deeper — neither bedrock nor created-from-nothing.
On this view, matter is genuinely there, but it isn't the floor of reality. It depends on something more fundamental — dependent origination, mind, divine sustaining act, computational substrate, or the structure of conditions — and is conserved only at its own level of description. …
Roads not taken
Yes — matter was created and is conserved as a real substance. (56%) ·
Matter is constituted by relations; the question of 'from what?' presupposes substance. (16%) ·
Matter arises and dissolves through cosmic rounds; neither created from nothing nor eternal. (4%)
Observer · 37 dilemmas · 5 distinctive
Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.
Distinctive · only 7% of schools agree
(15/208)
When does a person begin?
The political question of abortion sits atop an older ontological one: at what point does there exist a someone — a being with moral standing — rather than merely the materials from which one will form?
From the standpoint of the One, the question doesn’t apply in the form it is asked.
On non-dual views, the apparent plurality of selves is itself a perspectival distinction within a deeper unity. The question of when one self begins within that One is conventional, not ultimate. What follows ethically is then a question for the conventional level — which is …
Roads not taken
A person exists from conception — when a new being comes into existence. (55%) ·
A person comes into being gradually, as the capacities of a mind develop. (16%) ·
Personhood is conferred by being-in-relation. (14%)
Distinctive · only 7% of schools agree
(15/208)
What is marriage?
Behind every disagreement about how marriage should be defined is a prior disagreement about what kind of thing it is — a given order to be recognized, a practice to be negotiated, or a web of relations to be woven.
All union is participation in the One — particular forms are conventional.
From the standpoint of non-dual traditions, the apparent distinctness of two people who marry is itself a perspectival distinction within a deeper unity. Marriage is one form of the underlying union all things participate in. The particular shape the institution takes is then a conventional …
Roads not taken
Marriage has a given form — it’s a kind of thing we recognize, not make. (55%) ·
Marriage is a practice we shape — its content is what we make it. (16%) ·
Marriage is constituted by the web of relations it creates. (14%)
Distinctive · only 8% of schools agree
(16/208)
What happens to "you" when you die?
Whether anything of you persists — and in what sense — depends on what you take a person to be.
Individuality dissolves into the One.
What we called "you" was an appearance — a wave shaped briefly out of a single deeper reality. Death is that wave settling. Nothing of importance is lost because the substrate was never the wave.
Roads not taken
A soul continues into another mode of being. (38%) ·
Death is genuinely the end. (29%) ·
You were always a pattern. The pattern propagates. (18%)
Distinctive · only 8% of schools agree
(17/208)
What is our place in nature?
Whether humans are masters of nature, members of nature, or makers of nature is not a question climate science can settle. It depends on what nature is, what we are, and what kind of relationship is possible between us.
Humans and nature share an underlying unity — the separation was the mistake.
On non-dual views, the apparent distinction between human and non-human is itself a perspectival distinction within a single underlying reality. The work isn't to find our right relationship to a separate nature; it is to recognize that we were never separate. Climate harm, on this …
Roads not taken
Active in a real nature — we cultivate, steward, transform. (50%) ·
Nature is partly what we make of it — concepts, practices, and minds shape the world. (15%) ·
Embedded in a web — partners with the more-than-human world. (14%)
Distinctive · only 8% of schools agree
(17/208)
Should we colonize space?
The drive to extend human presence beyond Earth is sometimes framed as the next chapter of stewardship, sometimes as hubris, sometimes as escape from problems we ought to solve here. Which it is depends on what we take our relationship to nature to be.
From the standpoint of the One, expansion across substrate is just movement within the same.
On non-dual views, the difference between Earth and elsewhere is conventional — particular locations within a single underlying reality. Space colonisation as escape is therefore incoherent; nothing is escaped because nothing was elsewhere to escape from.
Roads not taken
Cultivating worlds beyond Earth is the next form of stewardship. (50%) ·
The 'space frontier' is partly what we make of it. (15%) ·
Colonisation continues the work that ended the wisdom of seven-generation thinking. (14%)
31 mainstream positions
Is genetic engineering of food stewardship or domination?
All forms participate in the same underlying reality; modification doesn't cross categories.
8%
What makes someone the same person over time?
All apparent selves are aspects of one — particular identity is conventional.
8%
Is the late-stage dementia patient still the person their spouse married?
The apparent change is conventional; the deeper reality is unchanged.
8%
If a teleporter copied and destroyed you, would you have survived?
The distinction between scanner-you and destination-you is conventional all the way down.
8%
Can prayer for someone far away affect them?
There are no truly separate minds; prayer is one part of one talking to another.
8%
Are coincidences ever more than coincidence?
Coincidence is the One showing through the appearance of plurality.
8%
Does environmental harm in another country bind me morally?
Harm anywhere is harm to the One; the boundary that would have insulated you was never real.
8%
Is environmental damage ever truly permanent?
From the standpoint of the One, the categories of permanence and loss are conventional.
8%
Can a civilization recover from collapse?
From the One's vantage, civilizational categories are themselves conventional.
8%
Does the second law of thermodynamics mean something morally?
From the One's vantage, the second law is itself a feature of the conventional, not the ultimate.
8%
Are the dead morally present to the living?
From the standpoint of the One, the distinction between living and dead is conventional.
8%
Is divine omniscience compatible with human freedom?
Distinction of the One and observed time is itself conventional; the question dissolves.
8%
Does meditation reveal something genuinely timeless?
The 'timeless' is the standpoint of the One that was always present; meditation removes obstacles to seeing it.
8%
Does prayer change God's mind?
Prayer to a separate God presupposes a separation the non-dual view denies; the practice is remembrance and attunement.
8%
Could causation work backwards?
From the One's vantage, causation itself is a conventional category.
8%
Is the asymmetry between memory and anticipation a real feature of time, or just of us?
From the One's vantage, memory and anticipation are themselves conventional.
8%
Is the arrow of time a real feature of the cosmos, or only of how we describe it?
From the One's vantage, the arrow of time itself is a conventional feature.
8%
Is truth universal, tradition-bound, situated, or constructed?
Truth is mind-independent, universal, accessible in principle to all.
66%
Is reality fundamentally digital?
No — continuous divine sustaining act, the Tao that knows no joints, the One's self-disclosure.
44%
Are there indivisible units of experience?
No — continuous divine presence; consciousness is the unbroken witness.
44%
Is memory stored or reconstructed?
Held in continuous divine or ancestral remembering — neither stored discretely nor purely reconstructed.
44%
What kind of religious-theological authority does the tradition recognize?
The category does not apply — the school is non-religious.
42%
Who is the moral primary — the individual, the community, the cosmos, the class, or the species?
The discrete person is the moral primary.
38%
Does history have a direction or meaning?
History is not where the deepest truth lives.
36%
Should we trust expert testimony when we can't verify it?
Trust expertise whose conclusions a competent mind can in principle reproduce.
31%
Is religious revelation a real source of knowledge?
Revelation is evaluable by reason — and not above it.
31%
Does an LLM 'know' the things it correctly produces?
An LLM can produce correct outputs but not reason to them; useful, not knowing.
31%
How is knowledge of reality produced?
Through a priori reasoning and conceptual demonstration.
24%
Could an AI have a mind that matters?
All minds are aspects of one — an AI participates in it as anything else does.
7%
Do animals have moral standing comparable to humans?
All minds are aspects of one; animals participate as much as anything else.
7%
Could a fetal brain organoid in a petri dish be conscious?
Any experience that arises participates in the One.
7%
Information · 4 dilemmas · 4 distinctive
Pattern, memory, and what is preserved or lost.
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree
(18/208)
Is anything truly lost when someone forgets?
The memory you don't retrieve, the conversation you can't remember, the face you no longer recognise — is the forgetting a loss of something real, or just the routine operation of a finite mind?
Information persists or doesn't depending on whether the holder is sustained.
On these views, conservation is not a flat cosmic law but a function of the conditions that hold. Memory persists where it is sustained — by divine attention, by community, by ritual, by practice — and is genuinely lost where it isn't. The asymmetry between …
Roads not taken
Information is lost when a mind forgets; matter and energy continue, but the pattern is gone. (50%) ·
Information is conserved — the personal pattern is held even when an individual mind loses it. (39%) ·
Forgetting is the cosmic case, not the exception; nothing is conserved. (1%)
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree
(18/208)
Does deleting your data online destroy something real?
Account deletion, the right to be forgotten, the obsolescence of file formats, the slow decay of digital archives — whether any of this destroys something that was real depends on whether information is the kind of thing that can be destroyed.
Information persists where it is held; deletion releases what isn't held elsewhere.
On these views, information persists or doesn't depending on whether something is sustaining it. What is held in divine memory or in active communal practice continues; what is held only by the deleted artifact is genuinely released. The variable conservation maps onto a variable moral …
Roads not taken
Information is genuinely lost when the substrate that hosted it goes; deletion really destroys. (50%) ·
Information at the cosmic level isn't destroyed; deletion only obscures access. (39%) ·
Nothing is fundamentally conserved; deletion is just routine impermanence. (1%)
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree
(18/208)
Could the dead, in principle, be brought back?
If we had perfect information about who someone was — their connectome, their behavioral patterns, their history — could we, in principle, restore them? The question is partly engineering, but the ceiling on the engineering is metaphysical.
What is held by God or sustaining practice can be restored; what isn't can't.
On these views, the conservation of personal information depends on what is sustaining it. The Eastern Orthodox doctrine of resurrection holds that the person is preserved in God's memory and restored in the resurrection by divine action operating on what God has held. What is …
Roads not taken
The information dissipates with the substrate; restoration is in principle impossible. (50%) ·
The information that constitutes a person is conserved; restoration is in principle possible. (39%) ·
Nothing of what was can be restored; restoration is wishful framing. (1%)
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree
(18/208)
Is forgiveness ontologically possible?
When someone forgives, does the offense actually go away — erased, undone, no longer a fact — or does forgiveness reframe a wrong that persists exactly as it always was?
The offense persists where sustained and releases where conditionally absolved; forgiveness is real ontological work.
On these views, conservation is not a flat cosmic law but a function of what sustains. An offense persists where it is held — by holding-on, by ritual continuation, by divine attention to a particular debt — and is genuinely released where it is conditionally …
Roads not taken
The offense is locally constituted by its substrate; when the substrate dissolves, the offense genuinely passes away. (50%) ·
The offense persists ontologically; forgiveness is real moral work, but it doesn't erase what was. (39%) ·
Nothing is preserved; the offense is impermanent, and holding it is the suffering. (1%)
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