The Formation of Critical Realism
Mervyn Hartwig interviews Roy Bhaskar
Price: $45.95
Add to Cart- ISBN: 978-0-415-45503-9
- Binding: Paperback (also available in Hardback)
- Published by: Routledge
- Publication Date: 10th February 2009 (Available for Pre-order)
- Pages: 224
About the Book
This series of interviews, conducted in the form of exchanges between Roy Bhaskar, the originator of critical realism (and the later philosophy of meta-reality) and Mervyn Hartwig, a leading commentator on critical realism (and the editor of and principal contributor to the recently published Dictionary of Critical Realism), tells a riveting story of the formation and development of critical realism.
Three intersecting and interweaving narratives unfold in the course of this unfinished story: the personal narrative of Roy Bhaskar, born of an Indian father and English mother, a child of post-war Britain and Indian partition and independence, and his struggle to be his own person; the intellectual narrative of the emergence and growth of critical realism—a story which is itself duplex, consisting in an internal or endogenous story of intellectual development by successive auto-critique in an exogenous context of objective lacunae in the changing landscapes of intellectual fashion and the dominant systems of thought; set against the dramatic background of a world-historical narrative unfolding in the second-half of the twentieth century and the first years of the new millennium, a world-historical story itself theorized by critical realism in its discussion of the development of modernity.
This book gives an invaluable account of the development of critical realism, and its consolidation as a leading philosophy of our times. It takes us through the major moments of its formation, the principal objections to and controversies within critical realism, the establishment of its institutions, and considers its limits and future development. Special features of the book include discussion of the genesis of critical realism, and the origins and nature of the so-called dialectical and spiritual turns.
Roy Bhaskar and the Formation of Critical Realism shows how he fought against the dominance of epistemology and sought to revindicate the then discredited subject of ontology in the context of the student rebellions of the late 1960s. It tells of his struggle to find absence, the clue to the much-contested "dialectical method", in the years of Thatcherism and the crisis of the aspirations of the baby-boomer generation, and his search for an adequate response to the failures of the Left and the collapse of "actually existing socialism".
The informal dialogical style of the book makes it compelling reading and an invaluable source for students of critical realism as well as all those interested in the intellectual story of our times.
About the Author(s)
Roy Bhaskar is the originator of the philosophy of critical realism, and the author of many acclaimed and influential works including A Realist Theory of Science, The Possibility of Naturalism, Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation, Reclaiming Reality and Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom. He is an editor of the recently published Critical Realism: Essential Readings and is currently chair of the Centre for Critical Realism.
Mervyn Hartwig is a leading commentator on critical realism, and the editor of and principal contributor to the recently published Dictionary of Critical Realism.