What is Plato’s Idealism and how is it different from commonsensical view of reality?
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“Idealism,” like all words, has more than one meaning. In ordinary English, it means something like “Optimism.” As philosophers use the term, though, it means something more like _Idea_-ism. It’s the belief that ideas, rather than matter, are the fundemental building blocks of reality.
Okay, but whose ideas? Different philosophers have different versions. Berkely, for instance, put the ideas in the mind of God. (So, on his account, “Real,” means something like “God believes it.”) For Plato, the ideas — usually called “Forms,” — are in no one’s heads in particular. They exist outside of any particular minds. So there’s this _idea_ of a horse. The idea is independent of any actual horse. The idea has always existed and will always exist. The animals, horses, the ones we see and ride and stuff, are _bad copies_ (made of meat) of the _real_, ideal, horses.
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