Abstract

This chapter illustrates realism vs. idealism. For a start, one can be an idealist or a realist about many different kinds of things: abstract objects, the future, and social dynamics. The debate between idealists and realists about the world is well known in the Asian philosophical traditions. The one that will concern us here is the Indian Buddhist tradition. In this, there were realists and idealists; but there was also one very important and influential school of Buddhists ‐ Madhyamaka ‐ which was neither realist nor idealist, but which went between the horns of the two positions. There are two realities, an ultimate reality and a conventional reality.