Editing Idealism (section)

==== Advaita ====
[[file:Raja Ravi Varma - Sankaracharya.jpg|thumb|Śaṅkara, by [[Raja Ravi Varma]]]]
The most influential Advaita philosopher was [[Adi Shankara|Ādi Śaṅkara]] (788–820). In his philosophy, brahman is the single [[Nondualism|non-dual]] foundation (''adhiṣṭhana'') for all existence. This reality is independent, self-established, irreducible, immutable, and free of space, time, and causation.<ref name=":30">Dalal, Neil, "[https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2021/entries/shankara/ Śaṅkara]", ''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy''  (Winter 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).</ref> In comparison to this reality, the world of plurality and appearances is illusory ([[Maya (religion)|maya]]), an unreal cognitive error (mithya). This includes all individual souls or selves, which are actually unreal and numerically identical to the one brahman.<ref name=":30" />

Śaṅkara did not believe it was possible to prove the view that reality is "one only, without a second" (''[[Chandogya Upanishad|Chandogya]]'' 6.2.1) through independent philosophical reasoning. Instead, he accepts non-duality based on the authority of the Upaniṣads. As such, most of his extant works are scriptural commentaries.<ref name=":30" />

Nevertheless, he did provide various new arguments to defend his theories. A major metaphysical distinction for Śaṅkara is between what changes and may thus be negated (the unreal) and what does not (which is what is truly real).<ref name=":30" /> He compares the real to clay (the substantial cause, analogous to brahman) and the unreal to a pot which depends on the clay for its being (analogous to all impermanent things in the universe).<ref name=":30" /> By relying on dependence relations and on the reality of persistence, Śaṅkara concludes that metaphysical foundations are more real than their impermanent effects, and that effects are fully reducible and indeed identical to their metaphysical foundation.<ref name=":30" /> Through this argument from dependence, Śaṅkara concludes that since all things in the universe undergoes change, they must depend on some really existent cause for their being, and this is the one primordial undifferentiated existence (''Chandogya Bhāṣya,'' 6.2.1–2).<ref name=":30" /> This one reality is the single cause that is in every object, and every thing is not different from this brahman since all things borrow their existence from it. Śaṅkara also provides a [[cosmogony]] in which the world arises from an unmanifest state which is like deep dreamless sleep into a state in which [[Ishvara|īśvara]] (God) dreams the world into existence. As such, the world is not separate from God's mind.<ref name=":30" />

Śaṅkara's philosophy, along with that of his contemporary [[Maṇḍana Miśra]] (c. 8th century CE), is at the foundation of Advaita school. The opponents of this school however, labeled him a māyāvādin (illusionist) for negating the reality of the world.<ref name=":30" /> They also criticized what they saw as a problematic explanation for how the world arises from māyā as an error. For them, if māyā is in brahman, then brahman has ignorance, but if it is not in brahman, then this collapses into a dualism of brahman and māyā.<ref name=":31">{{Cite web |last=Ranganathan |first=Shyam |title=Ramanuja {{!}} Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |url=https://iep.utm.edu/ramanuja/ |access-date=2024-02-05 |website=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |language=en-US}}</ref>