Problems Bared, Essays on Buddhism

Existence II: Of
Personality
There have been schools of philosophy, from the time of the ancient
Greeks onward who confused the possibility of reality with the reality
of possibility. On such confused thinking were based dogmas
in an attempt to prove their validity a priori, i.e., not from factual
conclusions, but from presumptive deductions. Plato, St. Anselm,
Descartes, Leibnitz, Kierkegaard and Heidegger have in their respective
centuries based their conclusions on the reality of the possible.
Buddhist philosophy has always refused to be drawn into such
vain speculations, and even maintains that a distinction should be
drawn not only between the possible and the real, but also between
the actual and the real. And as existence may be possible, or actual,
or real, it will be necessary to enlarge on this point. An event or
a thing is possible if its existence is ideal or conceptual, i.e., if it
can be thought of; and as long as there is in its concept nothing
incongruous, nothing contradictory, even if its existence is not a
fact, it could be a fact and thus it is possible. E.g., a mermaid, or
a kinnara, which is thought to be a female, half human and half
fish or bird, respectively, is quite possible, although nobody has
actually come across such a species. When existence is a fact, it is
either actual or real, which is distinction frequently overlooked, and
perhaps referred to as subjective and objective.
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