Idealism
Modern philosophy

It is only in the modern era that idealism became a central topic of argumentation among Western philosophers. This was also when the term "idealism" coined by Christian Wolff (1679–1754), though previous thinkers like Berkeley had argued for it under different names.

Idealistic tendencies can be found in the work of some rationalist philosophers, like Leibniz and Nicolas Malebranche (though they did not use the term). Malebranche argued that Platonic ideas (which exist only in the mind of God) are the ultimate ground of our experiences and of the physical world, a view that prefigures later idealist positions. Some scholars also see Leibniz' philosophy as approaching idealism. Guyer et al. write that "his view that the states of monads can be only perceptions and appetitions (desires) suggests a metaphysical argument for idealism, while his famous thesis that each monad represents the entire universe from its own point of view might be taken to be an epistemological ground for idealism, even if he does not say as much." However, there is still much debate in the contemporary scholarly literature on whether Leibniz can be considered an idealist.
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