REALISM. – A philosophical trend that affirms the priority of being over knowing, in the sense that being is independent of the act by which it is known. Thus, every philosophy that admits the existence and knowability of a reality in itself—whether cosmic, human, or divine—must be qualified as realism. More properly, realism is understood as the philosophy that admits true knowledge of the human world and, further, of God.
In contemporary thought, realism appears as a reaction against all forms of idealistic subjectivism, which, based on the principle of the priority of knowing over being, reduce reality to a determination of thought, in the sense that reality is unthinkable except in function of the thinking activity by which it is thought (G. Gentile, *Teoria generale dello spirito come atto puro*, ch. 1, no. 1). This integral affirmation of the “ideality of the real” (ibid.) was prepared in Western thought by the conceptualism of William of Ockham (v.), Descartes (v.), BERGER, ELIE (v.), and developed in dependence on the transcendental conception of Kant and the consequent Fichtean 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. Mairat, *Les degrés du savoir*, 3rd ed., Paris 1939, ch. 3, p. 177), so it can be said that the recent anti-idealistic reaction, sometimes even unconsciously, prepared a critical return to the classical conception of knowing as intentionality open to being.
The modern meaning of the word realism is therefore primarily epistemological, that is, critical-metaphysical. It must be borne in mind, however, 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 mere name (flatus vocis; V. ROSELLINO), the “reales” or “realists,” in order to safeguard the objectivity of the universal concept, affirmed the existence of a nature “indifferens” with respect to its singularity (v. GUGLIELMO DI CHAMPEAUX). Abelard (v.), with his controversies, initiated the mediation between these extreme positions, thus preparing that moderate realism which St. Thomas later defined admirably in his first opuscule, *De ente et essentia*. Today, moderate realism is distinguished from nominalism (v.) in its various forms, as well as from exaggerated metaphysical realism, whether Platonic (which separated the εἶδος or universal form from the singulars), medieval (which did not identify the universal nature with singularity), or more recent (which is based on intuition to the neglect of abstraction). This neoscholastic sense of the term realism is not opposed, therefore, to the epistemological sense now more commonly in use; it indicates a 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 can be said that today realism tends to harmonize the fundamental exigencies of spontaneous knowledge (spontaneous realism) with the ever more precise determinations of reflective cognition (critical realism). The starting point is the primary fact of human consciousness, both originating and reflecting: as human, it reveals what is genuine in man (natural certainty); as reflecting, it reveals what most interests the philosopher (scientific certainty). The two certainties are complementary precisely because they are grounded in the concreteness of consciousness. By recognizing the unalterability of this concreteness, realism acknowledges that the givenness of consciousness coincides with the givenness of the certainty of some truth, and that therefore a universal doubt about truth can only be illusory. A critical inquiry that ignored its factual data would be humanly impossible; a critical inquiry that stopped at the data alone would render the development of philosophy impossible. Realism finds in originating and reflecting consciousness the simultaneous impulse toward the recognition of factual data and the deepening of the facts recognized, and thus the initial justification of the phenomenological method understood as the foundation of the dialectical reflective method.
The problematic of realism is manifold, but it is clear that every further development is based on the initial problem: the possibility of a truth grounded in real being. This problem not only has logical priority over every other inquiry but is also historically justified by the various philosophical positions. Skepticism (v.), for instance, professes universal uncertainty regarding real being; phenomenistic relativism recognizes no absolute truth and restricts knowledge within the limits of subjectivity; idealism (v.) affirms absolute truth but regards the object as a permanent product of cognitive activity; and recent anti-intellectualism, while not denying the object an independent consistency, in its violent reaction against Hegelian rationalism, tends to emphasize the logical truth of thought, insisting on a more or less revelatory intentionality that is predominantly alogical, emotional, and volitional. Realism therefore begins its problematic with the fundamental question of whether the truth possible for man is or is not the adequation of thought to real being. To enter into truth here means to understand the object whose being is not merely a product of the currently 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 be grounded precisely in phenomenology (v.). Modern phenomenologies differ. Husserl proposed the “reduction,” that is, the bracketing of real being from objective and subjective data (cf. *Ideen*, 3rd ed., Halle 1928, pp. 94–95). Heidegger, on the other hand, insists on the revelation of foundational being (cf. *Sein und Zeit*, Halle 1927, pp. 35–36 and 38, n. 1), though he 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. Starting from the primary fact of concrete consciousness, the realistic trend emphasizes: a) that consciousness, as concretely given, is simultaneously consciousness of subjective existence and of an objective reality; b) that existence, while always being self-knowledge of its own acts, manifests in its manifold attitudes its direct intentional reference to the object in itself, containing a knowledge that is inexhaustibly progressive; c) that this intentionality is not purely rational, as idealism maintains, but also volitional and practical; yet d) that volition and action always relate to the object as 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 and inserted into the multiplicity of the world and of humanity; for not only in our inner experience is everything concrete and individual, and nothing is transcendental in the idealistic sense, but above all the object, which idealism claims to be a mere 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, to enter into real being means to understand that term of experience which has its own being and is 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 universal doubt of the sceptic and the universal phenomenism of relativism are in fact illusory positions that are overcome the moment they are posited, so too idealistic subjectivism can only be posited as a philosophy because it presupposes realistic thought. Indeed, idealism admits that philosophical reflection is preceded by the first moment of spontaneous knowledge through which empirical reality is given, and it assigns to philosophical reflection the task of revealing the genuine and profound aspect. The transition, in idealism, from a transcendent consciousness and a transcendental activity that has known, through philosophical reflection, a different consciousness, in turn presupposes that philosophy reveals existing reality, and that therefore the truth of the philosopher can only be the adequation of thought to being. Similar observations apply to anti-intellectualist positions. Correct and moderate intellectualism proceeds by essential concepts derived from experience, reveals the principles in which our judgments are clarified and justified; it draws conclusions from them and coordinates them into a system: and this, in the end, is the process of every philosophy.
Realism is further determined in the particular problems of human knowledge (cf. KNOWLEDGE; INTENTIONALITY; TRUTH, etc.). In the problems that refer to sensible reality (cf. PERCEPTIONISM; SENSATION; SPACE; TIME, etc.), realism can be understood in a mediate or immediate sense. For mediate realism, in knowledge the internal representation is given immediately and only by reasoning is the existence of reality in itself inferred; for immediate realism, the term of knowing is reality itself inasmuch as the so-called representation is not an 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 virtually contains subjectivism and does not attain with certain knowledge to the determinate being in itself. Despite the value of some mediate epistemologies, modern realism distances itself from the conceptions of Neo-Realism, tending predominantly toward the immediacy of the intentional relation.
Finally, parallel meanings of the term should be noted. In aesthetics (cf.), realism indicates the trend that understands art not as pure spiritual intuition, but as the 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 immediate and absolute fidelity, even the most debased aspects of reality. As a psychological tendency, realism indicates the habit of objective evaluation of facts and things, and the adherence of conduct to the exigencies of reality, of the environment, and, in general, of the concrete conditions of practice.