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kāśaka), presentative (nırākāra) but judgemental (vyavasāyātmaka)
Realism and Idealism
In defending their realistic position, the Jainas as well as other realistic schools had to contend with the Buddhists Realism is, in a sense, a common sense position In experience we seem to know a real world of objects, not phantoms of our own creation This world of real objects, unlike the world of imaginary objects, has a force and effectiveness which we can feel even to our dismay and which we cannot alter Again, unlike illusion and hallucination, this is a world which is common to different observers at the same time and place as well as at different times and places Unlike the world of dreams it is a world which follows definite laws and its objects have their own constant nature which we neither make nor can alter We can only hope to discover the order of nature as its observant pupils Realism is thus grounded on the fact that knowledge 'finds' objects as already 'given to it so that the character or content of knowledge is determined by the object The commonness of objects to different percipients and the fact that they exhibit a natural order support the realistic position since otherwise we would only be shut in a subjective and chaotic world as of dreams and illusions
While realism arises from stressing certain obvious features of common experience, idealism arises from a consideration of the inevitable difficulties which we encounter in trying to give a coherent philosophical account of the knowledge situation in terms of a realistic hypothesis As Bosanquet has remarked, to appreciate the strength of idealism one must first realize the force of scepticism and the impasse to which naive realism leads 4 The Buddhists were led to an idealistic position gradually by the inexorable force of an uncompromising, dichotomizing logic which remains unimpressed by the naive claims of uncritical experience Buddhist thought began by observing that the objects of experience are all unstable and that a scientific belief in their reality is warranted not by the mere fact of their appearance, but by a comprehension of their rationale or necessity in terms of underlying
