NEW IDEALISM, THE. The religious philosophy known as " The New Idealism " is associated with the name of Rudolf Eucken, Professor of Philosophy in Jena. His philosophy has also been described as a " Religious " or " Spiritual " Idealism. Its central theme " is The Struggle for Spiritual Existence', and its central per suasion is this, that nothing short of an Independent Spiritual Life in intimate communion with our own can give to the struggle a meaning and a value. The con ceptions of immanence ' and independence ' are not easy to define, but it should be noted that, from Eucken's standpoint, the immanence of the Spiritual Life within us implies at once its transcendence over us and its independence of us. By the very intimacy of its in dwelling, the Spiritual Life awakens our reverence for its own distinctive standards, values, and obligations; and at the same time convinces us that its authority, which is spiritual only in relation to our freedom, is yet not of our own making, and exists in its own right."
The New Idealism " is mystical in the stress is lays on the reality and immediacy of the Spiritual Life, and on the intimacy of personal union between the human and the divine: it is activistic in its insistence that all spiritual communion is a challenge to our moral nature. and can be mantained as an inspiration only through the earnestness with which we adopt its values as authorita tive over our action; it is profoundly humanistic in the breadth and depth of its historical insight, and in its close identification of the welfare of our race with the dominance of these spiritual values " (L. J. Gibson and W. R. Boyce Gibson in " Preface " to The Meaning and Value of Life, 1909). See W. R. Boyce Gibson, Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy of Life (2), 1907; Rudolf Eucken; The Meaning and Value of Life, 1909; Christianity and the New Idealism, 1909; The Life of the Spirit (2), 1909.