Realist Vs Idealist, Which One is The Better One?
Since I feel like I was making myself as an idealist person looks bad on my last story, I think I have to make up for it a little bit. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the ‘idealist’ term or that there’s a categorization of a person based on this idealist and the ‘realist’ (as the opposition) terms. There are so many explanations out there, including an explanation by an expert, but here’s what I think on both of them. I also put some links, so hopefully you can get more extensive explanation from those links.
How Do We Know If We’re An Idealist or A Realist?
For me, it’s simple, are you seeing thing as it is or as what you think it should be? If you’re the first one, you’re a realist and if you’re the second one, you’re an idealist. For example, if I don’t want to write something I’m not capable of because I don’t think that’s the right thing to do, I’m an idealist. But, if I’m okay in writing something even if I’m not capable of because it’s actually the more realistic thing to do since it’s the ‘hot product in the market’, I’m a realist. I’m being realistic. That’s the simple explanation of how I understand both terms, but I also tried to do a little research for the theoretical explanation and here’s what I got:
First of all, Idealist and Realist are the terms to describe the person, but the theories themselves called Idealism and Realism. These are philosophical theories and therefore I have to be honest it’s kinda hard for me to explain, but I’ll try to make it as simple as I understand them based on the theories.
Idealism
I think, therefore I am. — René Descartes
I finally found some writings that explain about this idealism concept in the way that enable me to understand after looking for quite some time. The first writing was written by Philip A. Pecorino. He stated in his writing that idealism concept philosophically came from Plato, a philosopher in ancient Greece (428–347 B.C.), who believed that the only ‘real’ thing is the idea within minds and physical world around us is not real. This because, according to Plato, we are using our mind to conceive something in the ideal world.
This can be seen, for example, by our perception of a morality perfect person. Since people around us are not morality perfect, where’s this idea came from? The answer is from an ideal world, which is a world of ideas that’s unchanging and holds the absolute truth. ‘This world’ is not the world around us since it’s keep changing all the time. It’s the world we built by our perception.
Even though Plato might be the one who proposed the fundamental concept of idealism, the ‘Father of Idealism’ who, according to the second writing I found on Philosophy Basic website, proposed the purest form of idealism in 18th century is Bishop George Berkeley. It’s explained on the writing that Berkeley argued that our knowledge must be based on our perception, therefore what was ‘real’ was the perception itself. So, since we couldn’t know for sure if the external world consisting of real objects, “I think, therefore I am,” as said by René Descartes, is the only undoubtedly assertion.
Realism
Realism means a belief or theory which looks upon the world as it seems to us to be a mere phenomenon. — Swami Ram Tirth
After reading many writings about realism out there, I have to say that if I thought understanding the basic philosophical theory of idealism is kinda complicated, realism is even more. Just like idealism, realism basically also have so many theories and since I couldn’t process all of that in my mind, I only took the common-sense realism (also known as naive-realism) to be explained here.
According to the explanation by Dallas M. Roark in his writing, common-sense realism is as simple as: 1) we experience directly, like when we touch a door, we really touch and see the door; 2) when we experience an object, we perceiving it independently of ourselves, not just an image in our mind; 3) when we experience an object, for example a door, it possesses the qualities which it appears to us to have.
(These have many critics, but I won’t explain those in here since I just want to give you the picture of this concept, so you can read about that on the link if you want to know find out more.)
The common-sense realism are showing that there is a claim about existence as explained by Alexander Miller on his writing. Not only existence, there is also concern about independence. For example, what we think about moon (the shape, etc.) won’t impact the fact about the moon itself. So, there is no further sense of objects and properties can be said to be dependent on anyone’s conceptual schemes or whatever. This independence concept was explained by Aristotle, also known as the “Father of Realism” (I feel like I have to state this since I state the father of idealism as well, and for the fun fact matter he was the student of Plato), who claims that “sensible qualities are mind-independent qualities of objects: they are features of bodies like shape of size, present whether we perceive them or not.”
Those, more or less, are some explanations of idealism and realism in the philosophical theory. I chose not to go any further with this theoretical explanation because I think it’s already enough to get the fundamental picture of these concepts. So, please check out the links I provided to get more explanation.
Which One is Better?
The explanations above seem like really complicated because those are talking about the two perceptions regarding what is ‘real’ and whether the objects in this world are real or not real. But, if we put aside those debate about the real and unreal things, we can highlight that idealism has this perception about ideal world and realism believe that no matter what we think about things, things are the way they are.
I’m not an expertise in this field, so I literally learnt this subject by writing this and after I read several writings about the philosophical theories, maybe the common perception of being an idealist and realist person doesn’t literally have something to do with the philosophical theories itself. But, it gave the sense that since idealism has a perception of how things ideally should be, we tend to call people who do something as how they think they ideally should do as an ‘idealist person’. On the other hand, since realism sees something as how it is, we tend to call people who perceive and do things only based on the reality around them as a ‘realist person’.
By seeing this, we probably get the sense of how optimist the idealist is and how pessimist the realist is. But, the thing is, I don’t think there’s anyone who is 100% idealist or 100% realist. The idealist or realist title is most likely to be given for what seems to be the dominant character of the person, not the entire character. We couldn’t ignore that there is a certain standard of many things which is perceived by the ‘ideal manner’, so that we do have to act in a certain way to some extent. But we also couldn’t forget that idealism is an idea of the ideal situation, so we also have to admit that the reality (which unfortunately the exact place where we live) can be so much different with the ideal situation and therefore adjusting with the situation is also important to some extent.
So, which one is better? None.
The question is not about which character or theory is better than the other. The real question is what is the best practice in implementing both in our life. In what kind of situation or what kind of circumstance we should become the idealist or the realist? That’s the question.
Moreover, in my opinion, by being a realist we tend to be more careful and put a reasonable expectation on things. On the other hand, by being an idealist we tend to do something to achieve a certain standard (the ideal standard), which it may lead to a ‘perfectionist way’ in doing something. So, both characters are matters in their own way.
Note:
I don’t know if this has anything to do with those perception, but even there are so many theories and proponents of idealism, it still has a clear fundamental stand. But, in realist case, those many theories seem like this perception is ‘for this case’ and that perception is ‘for that case’. So, it’s really vary for many things and giving this sense of ‘it depends’. What Aristotle said is probably the fundamental stand, but there are still many branches that depend on the object matters. Maybe it does have something to do with being an idealist and a realist person itself. Is that makes sense? I don’t know if you understand what I’m saying, but maybe if you read the links I used for this writing or read other writings to get a better explanation, you can imagine what I’m saying. If you do or maybe you have a different insight, let me know on the comment.
Thank you for reading.
