Realism

REALISM. - A philosophical orientation that affirms the priority of being over knowing, in the sense that being is independent of the act by which it is known. Therefore every philosophy that admits the existence and knowability of a reality in itself (whether cosmic or human or divine) must be qualified as r. In a more proper sense, by r. is usually meant the philosophy that admits a true knowledge of the human world and, further, of God.

In contemporary thought r. presents itself as a reaction to all those forms of idealistic subjectivism which, on the basis of the principle of the priority of knowing over being, resolve reality into a determination of thought, in the sense that « reality is not thinkable except in function of the thinking activity by which it is thinkable » (G. Gentile, Teoria generale dello spirito come atto puro, ch. 1, n. 1). This integral affirmation of the « ideality of the real » (ibid.) had its preparation in Western thought in the conceptualism of William of Ockham (v.), in the mediated realism of Descartes (v.), in the acosmism of Berkeley (v.), and developed in dependence on the transcendentalist Kantian conception and the consequent Fichtean suppression of the « thing in itself ». Just as, therefore, modern idealism was virtually prepared from the time when « les scholastiques de la décadence, et Descartes à leur suite, ont séparé l'objet de la chose » (J. Maritain, Les degrés du savoir, 3rd ed., Paris 1939, ch. 3, p. 177), so it may be said that the recent anti-idealistic reaction prepared, sometimes even unconsciously, a critical return to the classical conception of knowing as intentionality open to being.

The modern meaning of the word r. is therefore above all gnoseological, that is, critical-metaphysical. It must nevertheless be borne in mind that the introduction of the term into philosophical language is connected with the medieval dispute over universals. While the « nominales » or « terminists » tended to reduce the universal to a pure name (fatus sociis, v. ROSCELLINUS), the « reales » or « realists », with the aim of saving the objectivity of the universal concept, affirmed the existence of a nature « indifferens » with regard to its singularity (v. WILLIAM OF CHAMPEAUX). Abelard (v.) with his controversies began the mediation between these extreme positions, thus preparing that moderate r. which St. Thomas then admirably determined from his first opuscule De ente et essentia. Today moderate r. is distinguished both from nominalism (v.) in its various forms, and from exaggerated metaphysical r., whether Platonic (which separated the εἶδος or universal « form » from singulars) or medieval (which did not identify the universal nature with singularity) or more recent (which is founded on intuition while neglecting abstraction). This Neo-Scholastic acceptation of the term r. does not therefore oppose the gnoseological sense today more in use; it indicates the deepening of the problem under the aspect of the one and the many (v. UNIVERSAL).

Since the conception of knowledge as open to being is in accord with common persuasion, it may be said that today r. tends to harmonize the fundamental exigencies of spontaneous knowledge (spontaneous r.) with the ever more precise determinations of reflective cognition (critical r.). The point of departure is the primary fact of originating and reflecting human consciousness: insofar as it is human, it reveals what is genuine in man (natural certainty); insofar as it is reflecting, it reveals what most interests the philosopher (scientific certainty). The two certainties are complementary precisely because they are founded in the concreteness of consciousness. By bringing out the inalienability of this concreteness, r. recognizes that the givenness of consciousness coincides with the givenness of the certainty of some truth, and that therefore a universal doubt concerning truth can only be illusory. A critical inquiry that prescinded from its data of fact would be humanly impossible; a critical inquiry that stopped at the data alone would render the development of philosophy impossible. R. finds in original and reflecting consciousness the simultaneous starting point for the ascertainment of the data of fact and for the deepening of the ascertained facts, and therefore the initial justification of the phenomenological method understood as the foundation of the reflective and dialectical method.

The problematic of r. is multiform, but it is clear that every further development is founded on the initial problem: the possibility of a truth founded in real being. Such a problem has not only a logical priority over every other inquiry, but is also historically justified by the various philosophical positions. Skepticism (v.) in fact professes universal uncertainty with regard to real being; phenomenalistic relativism recognizes no absolute truth and restricts knowledge within the limits of subjectivity; idealism (v.) affirms absolute truth, but considers the object as an immanent product of cognitive activity; and recent anti-intellectualism, while not denying to the object a consistency in itself, in its violent reaction to Hegelian rationalism tends to devalue the logical truth of thought, insisting on the more or less revelatory contact of a predominantly alogical, emotive, volitional intentionality. R. therefore begins its problematic with the fundamental question whether the truth possible for man is or is not the adequation of thought to real being. By real being is here to be understood the object whose being is not a pure product of the actually knowing activity, but is a reality in itself to which judging thought must conform.

Given the priority of phenomenological analysis over every further reflection, the answer to the problem must indeed be founded on phenomenology (v.). Modern phenomenologies are diverse. Husserl demanded the « reduction », that is, the prescinding from the real being of objective and subjective data (cf. Ideen, 3rd ed., Halle 1928, pp. 94-95). Heidegger, on the other hand, insists on the revelation of founding being (cf. Sein und Zeit, Halle 1927, pp. 35-36 and 38, n. 1), but supposes that this being cannot be that of classical metaphysics (cf. Holzwege, Frankfurt a. M., pp. 247 and 336). Realists assign to phenomenology the task of describing what is given, in the specific sense in which it is given. Therefore, moving from the primary fact of concrete consciousness, the realist orientation brings out: a) that consciousness, as it is concretely given, is simultaneously consciousness of subjective existence and of an objective reality; b) that the existent, while always being self-conscious of its own acts and of itself, manifests in its manifold attitudes its direct intentional reference to the object in itself, contained in an inexhaustibly progressive knowing; c) that this intentionality is not purely rational, as idealism would have it, but also volitional and practical; in such a way, however, d) that volition and action always relate to the object as it is presented by thought. Our inalienable consciousness is therefore not closed within pure thought, but is revelatory of our real existence, which in turn is in relation to and inserts itself into the worldly and human multiplicity; since not only in our inner experience is everything concrete and individual, and nothing is idealistically transcendental; but above all the object, which idealism claims to be a pure determination of thought, presents itself as pre-constituted in itself, and as such imposes itself on thought and will, on action and life. If, as has been indicated, by real being is to be understood that term of experience which has a being of its own and independent of the consciousness that reveals and judges it, the human and irreplaceable truth of realistic philosophy cannot be denied.

If human truth can only be realistic truth, it will always be possible to confirm the results of realistic phenomenology by showing the factual impossibility of non-realistic theories. Just as the skeptic's universal doubt and the relativist's universal phenomenism are in fact illusory positions, which overcome themselves at the very moment they are posited, so analogously idealistic subjectivism can posit itself as a philosophy only because it arises and develops within the realistic presupposition. The idealist indeed admits that philosophical reflection is preceded by the primary moment of spontaneous knowledge through which empirical reality is given, and he assigns to philosophical reflection the task of bringing out its genuine and profound aspect. The transition, in idealism, to a transcendental consciousness and to a transcendental activity which, from being unconscious, becomes conscious through philosophical reflection, presupposes in turn that philosophy is revelatory of existing reality, and that therefore the philosopher's truth can be nothing other than the adequation of thought to being. Similar observations hold with regard to anti-intellectualist positions. Correct and moderate intellectualism proceeds by essential concepts derived from experience, brings out the principles in which our judgments are clarified and justified; it draws conclusions from them and coordinates them into a system: and this, at bottom, is the process of every philosophy.

Realism is further determined in the particular problems of human knowledge (v. CONOSCENZA INTENZIONALITÀ; VERITÀ, etc.). In the problems that refer to sensible reality (v. PERCEZIONISMO; SENSAZIONE; SPAZIO; TEMPO, etc.), realism can be understood in a mediate or immediate sense. For mediatism, in knowledge what is immediately given is the internal representation, and only by reasoning is the existence of the real in itself inferred; for immediatism, the term of knowing is the real in itself, inasmuch as the so-called representation is not the object but a "form" (medium quo, in quo) in which the object is apprehended. In neo-Scholastic thought it is generally admitted that mediate realism contains subjectivism virtually (v.) and does not arrive with sure certainty at determinate being in itself. Despite the value of certain mediatist epistemologies, modern realism detaches itself from the conceptions of neorealism (v.), orienting itself predominantly toward the immediacy of the intentional relation.

Finally, parallel acceptances of the term should be noted. In aesthetics (v.) realism indicates the tendency that understands art (v.) not as pure spiritual intuition, but at the same time as an expression of the forms and values of natural reality. In artistic practice the term sometimes takes on a pejorative sense, as a tendency to reproduce in art, with immediacy and absolute fidelity, even the most debased aspects of reality. As a psychological tendency, realism indicates the habit of objectively evaluating facts and things, and the adherence of conduct to the demands of reality, of the environment and, in general, of the concrete conditions of practice.

humaine, Paris 1943; P. Hoenen, La théorie du jugement d'après et Thomas d'Aquin, Rome 1946; G. van Riet, L'épistémologie thom., Louvain 1946; S. Massion, Le jugement d'existence chez Aristote, ibid. 1946; F. van Steenberghen, Epistémologie, 2nd ed., ibid. 1947; A. Brunner, La personne incarnée, Paris 1947; C. Ottaviano, Critica dell'idealismo, 2nd ed., Padua 1948; J. Maréchal, Le point de départ de la métaphysique, V, 2nd ed., Brussels 1949; F. Morandini, Logica maior, part 1, 2nd ed., Rome 1951; A. Dondayne, Foi chrétienne et pensée contemporaine, Louvain 1951.

Francesco Morandini