Ideology Critique without Moralism: A Radical Realist Approach

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ugur Aytac ◽  
Enzo Rossi
Author(s):  
Kate Kirkpatrick

Chapter 9 offers two concluding ‘provocations’: one on wretchedness without God, the other on wretchedness with God. The first brings Sartre into dialogue with Marilyn McCord Adams’s work ‘God because of Evil’, arguing that Sartre’s account lends credence to her view that optimism is not warranted if one takes a robust realist approach to evil. Read as a phenomenologist of fallenness, Sartre may serve the apologetic purpose of making options ‘live’, in William James’s language; or, to use the phrase of Stephen Mulhall, to ‘hold open the possibility of taking religious points of view seriously’. The second provocation—on the question of wretchedness with God—suggests that Sartre can be read ‘for edification’ to help us see our failures in love. The book concludes that reading Sartre in this light can help redress ‘damaging cultural amnesia’ about religious commitment, offering an account of sin that cultivates humility, love, and mercy.


Author(s):  
Krzysztof Poslajko

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to propose a new conceptualization of the distinction between realism and anti-realism about beliefs that is based on the division between natural and non-natural properties, as defined by Lewis. It will be argued that although the traditional form of anti-realism about beliefs, namely eliminative materialism, has failed (as it led to unacceptable consequences), there is a possibility to reformulate the division in question. The background assumption of the proposal is the framework of deflationism about truth and existence: it will be assumed that beliefs can be said to exist and their attributions can said to be true. The aim is to show that even when we buy into such assumptions we can meaningfully distinguish between the realist and anti-realist approach to belief. According to the proposal, the paradigmatic anti-realist view on beliefs should be seen as a conjunction of three claims: that belief attributions do not track objective similarities, that beliefs are not causally active, and that there is no viable way of naturalizing content. It will be shown that seeing the debate in the proposed way has important advantages as it allows the issue of belief realism to be made non-trivial and tractable, and it introduces theoretical unity into contemporary metaphysics of beliefs.


2002 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 697-717 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Goldfischer

Realist international relations scholars have approached the connection between economics and security in two ways. Cold War-era realists derived the national interest from the international balance of power, and assessed the utility of both military and economic instruments of statecraft. A second realist approach, advanced by E. H. Carr in his 1939 The Twenty Years' Crisis, places interstate competition in the context of another struggle over wealth and power in which no-one's primary concern is the national interest. That is the realm of capitalism (and resistance to capitalism). That deeper set of connections between economics and security was overlooked in Cold War IR literature, at considerable cost to our understanding of world politics. Understanding why Carr's ‘historical realism’ was bypassed can help pave the way for a more fruitful realist approach to comprehending a new era in world politics.


2016 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Nürnberger

Following Paul’s injunction in 1 Corinthians 9:19–23 we have to ‘become scientists’ to a scientifically informed audience. While theology cannot agree with the naturalist denial of transcendence, it can adopt the experiential-realist approach typical for the sciences in its description of the Christian faith as an immanent part of cosmic evolution, albeit at a higher level of emergence. The article begins with my understanding of evolutionary theory (big bang cosmology, entropy, emergence, neural networks as infrastructure of consciousness, evolution and differentiation, sequences of past, present and future, contingency etc.) It then describes God consciousness as the intuition, perception or conceptualisation of the transcendent Source and Destiny of experienced reality and locates God consciousness in the evolutionary process. Biblical God consciousness displays two distinct characteristics: God’s creative power is experienced in reality, while God’s benevolent intentionality is proclaimed on the basis of a religious tradition. The evolutionary trajectory of biblical God consciousness, culminating in the Christ-event, is sketched and the God consciousness of Jesus is deduced from its religious embeddedness, its social-environmental relationships and its religious impact. Implications of an experiential-realist approach are (1) a dynamic, rather than ontological Christology and (2) the cosmic significance of the sacrifice of God in Christ. On this basis revelation is described first in experiential-realist and then in theological terms. The tension between the experience of God’s creative power and the proclamation of God’s benevolence leads to a dynamic, rather than ontological rendering of the Trinity. Finally, traditional eschatological assumptions are reconceptualised as God’s dynamic vision of comprehensive well-being operating like a horizon that moves on as we approach it and displays ever new vistas, challenges and opportunities.


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