acosmism

acosmism, in philosophy, the view that God is the sole and ultimate reality and that finite objects and events have no independent existence. Acosmism has been equated with pantheism, the belief that everything is God. G.W.F. Hegel coined the word to defend Benedict de Spinoza, who was accused of atheism for rejecting the traditional view of a created world existing outside God. Hegel argued that Spinoza could not be an atheist because pantheists hold that everything is God, whereas atheists exclude God altogether and make a godless world the sole reality. Furthermore, because Spinoza’s cosmos is part of God, it is not what it seems to be. He is acosmistic insofar as “noncosmic” seems to deny the cosmos—a position, however, very alien to Spinoza’s thought.

Acosmism has also been used to describe the philosophies of Hindu Vedānta, Buddhism, and Arthur Schopenhauer; and Johann Gottlieb Fichte used the term to defend himself against accusations similar to those leveled against Spinoza.