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. Every philosophy that admits the existence and knowability of a reality in itself (whether cosmic, human, or divine) must therefore be qualified as r. In a more proper sense, r. generally means the philosophy that admits true knowledge of the human world and, further, of God.
R. appears in contemporary thought as a reaction against 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 cannot be thought except as a function of the thinking activity by which it is thinkable” (G. Gentile, Teoria generale dello spirito come atto puro, chap. 1, no. 1). This complete affirmation of the “ideality of the real” (ibid.) was prepared in Western thought by Guglielmo di Occam (v.), Descartes (v.), and Berkeley’acosmism (v.), and developed in dependence on the Kantian transcendentalist conception and Fichte’s consequent suppression of the “thing in itself.” Just as 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, chap. 3, p. 177), so it may be said that the recent anti-idealistic reaction prepared, at times still unconsciously, a critical return to the classical conception of knowing as an intentionality open to being.
The modern meaning of the word r. is therefore above all epistemological, 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. Whereas the “nominales” or “terminists” tended to reduce the universal to a mere name (fatus sociis, V. ROSCELLINO), the “reales” or “realistas,” with the intention of safeguarding the objectivity of the universal concept, affirmed the existence of a nature “indifferens” with regard to its singularity (v. GUGLIELMO DI CHAMPRAUS). Abelardo (v.), through his controversies, initiated mediation between these extreme positions, thus preparing that moderate r. which s. Tommaso subsequently defined so admirably from his first opuscle, De ente et eentia. Today moderate r. nominalism (v.) in its various forms and from exaggerated metaphysical r., whether Platonic (which separated the εἴδος or universal “form” from singular things), medieval (which did not identify universal nature with singularity), or more recent (which rests on intuition while neglecting abstraction). This neo-Scholastic meaning of the term r. is therefore not opposed to the epistemological sense more commonly used today; it indicates the deepening of the problem from the standpoint of the one and the many (v. UNIVERSALISTI).
Since the conception of knowledge as open to being accords with common conviction, it may be said that today r. tends to harmonize the fundamental requirements of spontaneous knowledge (spontaneous r.) with the increasingly precise determinations of reflective cognition (critical r.). Its point of departure is the primary fact of originating and reflecting human consciousness: insofar as it is human, consciousness reveals what is genuine in man (natural certainty); insofar as it is reflective, 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 emphasizing the inalienability of this concreteness, r. recognizes that the givenness of consciousness coincides with the givenness of certainty concerning some truth, and that therefore universal doubt regarding truth can only be illusory. A critical inquiry that set aside its factual data would be humanly impossible; a critical inquiry that stopped at the data alone would make the development of philosophy impossible. R. finds in original and reflective consciousness the simultaneous beginning of the ascertainment of facts and the deepening of the facts ascertained, and thus the initial justification of the phenomenological method understood as the foundation of the reflective and dialectical method.
The problematic of r. is multifaceted, but it is clear that every further development rests on the initial problem: the possibility of a truth founded in the real entity. This 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 the real entity; phenomenalistic relativism recognizes no absolute truth and restricts knowledge within the limits of subjectivity; idealism (v.) affirms absolute truth, but considers the object an immanent product of cognitive activity; and recent anti-intellectualism, while not denying the object a consistency in itself, in its violent reaction against Hegelian rationalism tends to devalue the logical truth of thought, insisting on the more or less revelatory contact of a predominantly alogical, emotional, and volitional intentionality. R. therefore begins its problematic with the fundamental question of whether the truth possible for man is or is not the adequation of thought to the real entity. By real entity is meant here the object whose being is not the pure product of the activity of the knower at a given moment, 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 phenomenology (v.). Modern phenomenologies are diverse. Husserl proposed “reduction,” that is, abstraction 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 the grounding being (cf. Sein und Zeit, Halle 1927, pp. 35–36 and 38, n. 1), but assumes that this being cannot be that of classical metaphysics (cf. Holzwege, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 247 and 336). Realists assign phenomenology the task of describing what is given, in the specific sense in which it is given. Thus, proceeding from the primary fact of concrete consciousness, the realist orientation emphasizes: 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 self-conscious of its acts and of itself, manifests in its multiple attitudes its direct intentional reference to the object in itself, contained within an inexhaustibly progressive knowing; c) that this intentionality is not purely rational, as idealism maintains, but also volitional and practical; yet d) in such a way that volition and action always relate to the object as it is presented by thought. Our inalienable consciousness is therefore not enclosed within pure thought, but is revelatory of our real existence, which in turn is related to and inserted into the multiplicity of the worldly and human realms; for not only is everything concrete and individual in our inner experience, with nothing idealistically transcendental; 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 upon thought and will, action and life. If, as has been indicated, the real entity is to be understood as that term of experience which possesses its own being, independent of the consciousness that reveals and judges it, the human and irreplaceable truth of realistic philosophy cannot be denied.
If human truth can be none other than realistic truth, it will always be possible to confirm the results of realistic phenomenology by demonstrating the factual impossibility of non-realistic theories. Just as the skeptic’s universal doubt and the relativist’s universal phenomenalism are in fact illusory positions, overcome at the very moment they are posited, so likewise idealistic subjectivism can present itself as a philosophy only because it arises and develops upon a realistic presupposition. The idealist in fact admits that philosophical reflection is preceded by the initial moment of spontaneous knowledge, through which empirical reality is given, and assigns to philosophical reflection the task of revealing its genuine and profound aspect. The transition, in idealism, to a transcendental consciousness and to a transcendental activity that, from being unconscious, becomes conscious through philosophical reflection, in turn presupposes that philosophy reveals existing reality, and that therefore the philosopher’s truth can be nothing other than the adequation of thought to being. Analogous observations apply to anti-intellectualist positions. Correct, moderate intellectualism proceeds by essential concepts derived from experience; it identifies the principles in which our judgments are clarified and justified; it draws conclusions from them and coordinates them into a system: and this, ultimately, is the process of every philosophy.
Realism is further determined in the particular problems of human knowledge (v. INTENZIONALITÀ; VERITÀ, etc). In problems relating to sensible reality (v. PERCEZIONISMO; SENSAZIONE; SPAZIO; TEMPO, etc), realism can be understood in a mediated or immediate sense. For mediatism, what is immediately given in knowledge is the internal representation, and only through reasoning is the existence of the real in itself inferred; for immediatism, the term of knowing is the real in itself, insofar as the so-called representation is not the object but the « form » (medium quo, in quo) in which the object is apprehended. Neoscholastic thought generally holds subjectivism (v.) and does not arrive, with certain assurance, at determinate being in itself. Notwithstanding the value of certain mediatist theories of knowledge, modern realism departs from the conceptions of neorealism (v.), tending predominantly toward the immediacy of the intentional relation.
Finally, parallel meanings of the term should be noted. aesthetics (v.), realism art (v.) not as pure spiritual intuition, but also 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 degraded aspects of reality. As a psychological tendency, realism denotes the habit of objectively evaluating facts and things, and the conformity of conduct to the demands of reality, of the environment and, in general, of the concrete conditions of praxis.
REBECCA – R. waters Isaac’s camels and departs with Isaac. Mosaic of the 11th century: – Palermo, Palazzo reale, Cappella Palatina.
humaine, Parigi 1943; P. Hoenen, La théorie du jugement d'après et Thomas d'Aquin, Roma 1946; G. van Riet, L'épistémologie thom., Lovanio 1946; S. Massion, Le jugement d'existence chez Aristote, there 1946; F. van Steenberghen, Epistémologie, 2e ed., there 1947; A. Brunner, La personne incarnée, Parigi 1947; C. Ottaviano, Critica dell'idealismo, 2e ed., Padova 1948; J. Maréchal, Le point de départ de la métaphysique, V, 2e ed., Bruxelles 1949; F. Morandini, Logica maior, part 1e, 2e ed., Roma 1951; A. Dondayne, Foi chrétienne et pensée contemporaine, Lovanio 1951. Francesco Morandini