Reclaiming Reality (Bhaskar, 1989, 2011)

Reclaiming Reality (Bhaskar, 1989, 2011)

A Critical Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy

Originally published in 1989, Reclaiming Reality still provides the most accessible introduction to the increasingly influential multi-disciplinary and international body of thought, known as critical realism. It is designed to "underlabour" both for the sciences, especially the human sciences, and for the projects of human emancipation which such sciences may come to inform; and provides an enlightening intervention in current debates about realism and relativism, positivism and poststucturalism, modernism and postmodernism, etc.

Elaborating his critical realist perspective on society, nature, science and philosophy itself, Roy Bhaskar shows how this perspective can be used to undermine currently fashionable ideologies of the Right, and at the same time, to clear the ground for a reinvigorated Left. Reclaiming Reality contains powerful critiques of some of the most important schools of thought and thinkers of recent years—from Bachelard and Feyerabend to Rorty and Habermas; and it advances novel and convincing resolutions of many traditional philosophical problems.

Now with a new introduction from Mervyn Hartwig, this book continues to provide a straightforward and stimulating introduction to current debates in philosophy and social theory for the interested lay reader and student alike. Reclaiming Reality will be of particular value not only for critical realists but for all those concerned with the revitalization of the socialist emancipatory project and the renaissance of the Marxist theoretical tradition.

p.3 Realism is not, nor does it license, either a set of substantive analyses or a set of practical policies. Rather, it provides a set of perspectives on society (and nature) and on how to understand them. It is not a substitute for, but rather helps to guide, empirically controlled investigations into the structures generating social phenomena.

p.3-4 Realists argue for an understanding of the relationship between social structures and human agency that is based on a transformational conception of social activity... they advance an understanding of the social as essentially consisting in or depending upon relations... the existence of social structure is a necessary condition for any human activity. Society provides the means, media, rules and resources for everything we do...the existence of society is a transcendentally necessary condition for any intentional act at all... The social world is reproduced or transformed in daily life.

p.4 All social structures... depend upon or presuppose social relations... The relations into which people enter... are themselves structures. And it is to these structures of social relations that realism directs our attention - both as the explanatory key to understanding social events and trends and as the focus of social activity aimed at the [transformation of events].

p.4 Society then is the ensemble of positioned practices and networked interrelationships which individuals never create but in their practical activity always presuppose, and in doing so everywhere reproduce or transform... for critical realism the social world, being itself a social product, is seen as essentially subject to the possibility of transformation. Hence it is intrinsically dynamic

p.5 The world cannot be rationally changed unless it is adequately interpreted.

p.6 The structures which agents reproduce or transform in their activity are also structures of power which may involve alienation, domination and oppression

p.10 realism is not a theory of knowledge or of truth, but of being

p.13 realism is not a theory of knowledge or of truth, but of being... Accordingly, a realist position in the philosophy of science will be a theory about the nature of the being, not the knowledge, of the objects investigated by science... the epistemic fallacy... that statements about being can always be analysed in terms of statements about our knowledge (of being), that it is sufficient for philosophy to 'treat only the network, and not what the network describes'.

p.41-42 Scientific work requires a break from reverie, the dreamlike character of everyday experience that forms the stuff of art and poetry. Science is the domain of reason; art that of imagination... art and science have a common origin... in the projective or creative activity of mind... Reason and imagination constitute, then, the two aspects of mind.

p.67 esse est percipi [to be is to be perceived]

p.67 it is the nature of the object that determines the form of its science.

p.82 Society... can only be known, not shown, to exist... society not only cannot be empirically identified independently of its effects, but it does not exist independently of them either.

p.126 [Marx] 'All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.'

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