Realism and anti-realism in Ethics and Religion

Realism and Anti-realism in Ethics and Religion

a symposium sponsored by the Canadian Jacques Maritain Association
un colloque international co-parainé par l'association canadienne Jacques Maritain

May 30-31, 2015 / les 30-31 mai, 2015

Universite d'Ottawa | University of Ottawa


 Realism is the metaphysical position that reality – the world, the objects that we find in it, and all of their characteristics – exists independently of human consciousness, and this view has had a long history. It can be found in the pre-Socratics and Plato, through the middle ages, up to the present day. We find a robust and sustained defense of realism in a number of philosophers of the middle ages, particularly St Thomas.  This is also the realism of Jacques Maritain, a realism that was at the root of not only his metaphysics and epistemology, but also his ethics, aesthetics, and political philosophy.

            Yet realism has had many critics and opponents. In the late classical period, one finds various kinds of neo-Platonic idealism that held that the basis of reality lay in mind or consciousness. In Asia, we find idealist doctrines in some schools of Mahayana Buddhism and Neo-Confucianianism. In Europe, in the 18th and 19th centuries figures such as Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, Bosanquet, and Bradley proposed a range of idealisms in response to dominant realist views. And in the 20th century, in place of realism, one finds subjectivism, social constructivism, anti-realism, and non-objectivist ‘internal realism.’
            In recent years there has been a rebirth of realism, from Putnam’s “natural realism” to the critical realism of Roy Bhaskar, to the “new realism” of the Italian philosopher Maurizio Ferraris, and the return to realism in the American semiotician John Deely. Many of theseauthors remind us how important realism is for there to be coherent accounts of experience, truth, knowledge, and love, but also for there to be ethical claims, such as the call to solidarity with others and the critique of
injustice, as well as progress in philosophy.
            These latter questions seem particularly appropriate today, as we consider how our ideas of reality impact our understanding of humanity and moral behaviour.


Prof. William Sweet,
Professor of Philosophy
St Francis Xavier University
2329 Notre Dame Avenue
Antigonish, NS  B2G 2W5  Canada
e-mail: [email protected]
tel: 1-902-867-2341; fax 1-902-867-3243