Roy Bhaskar - Enlightened Common Sense: The Philosophy of Critical Realism

Since the 1970s critical realism has grown to address a range of subjects, including economics, philosophy, science, and religion. It has become a complex and mature philosophy.

Enlightened Common Sense: The Philosophy of Critical Realism looks back over this development in one concise and accessible volume. The late Roy Bhaskar was critical realisms philosophical originator and chief exponent. He draws on a lifetimes experience to give a definitive, systematic account of this increasingly influential, international and multidisciplinary approach.

Critical realisms key element has always been its vindication and deepening of our understanding of ontology. Arguing that realist ontology is inexorable in knowledge and action, Bhaskar sees this as the key to a new enlightened common sense.

From the definition of critical realism and its applicability in the social sciences, to explanation of dialectical critical realism and the philosophy of metaReality, this is the essential introduction for students of critical realism.

Roy Bhaskar (19442014) was the originator of the philosophy of critical realism and the author of many acclaimed and influential works, including: A Realist Theory of Science; The Possibility of Naturalism; Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation; Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom; Plato Etc.; Reflections on MetaReality; From Science to Emancipation; and (with Mervyn Hartwig) The Formation of Critical Realism. He was an author of: Critical Realism: Essential Readings; Interdisciplinarity and Climate Change; Ecophilosophy in a World of Crisis; and was the founding chair of the Centre for Critical Realism. He was also a World Scholar and Director of the International Centre of Critical Realism at the University of London Institute of Education.

Mervyn Hartwig is the founding editor of Journal of Critical Realism and editor and principal author of Dictionary of Critical Realism.

Ontological Explorations

Other titles in this series:

Post-Secularism, Realism and Utopia
Transcendence and immanence from Hegel to Bloch
Jolyon Agar

Critical Realism, Somalia and the Diaspora Community
Abdullahi Haji-Abdi

Reality and Self-Realization
Bhaskars metaphilosophical journey toward non-dual emancipation
MinGyu Seo

The Contradictions of Love
Towards a feminist-realist ontology of sociosexuality
Lena Gunnarsson

Capitalism, Citizenship and the Arts of Thinking
A MarxianAristotelian linguistic account
Kathryn Dean

Understanding Mental Health
A critical realist exploration
David Pilgrim

Indigenist Critical Realism
Human rights and first Australians wellbeing
Gracelyn Smallwood

The Denial of Nature
Environmental philosophy in the era of global capitalism
Arne Johan Vetlesen

The Politics of Childhoods Real and Imagined
Volume 2: Practical application of critical realism and childhood studies
Priscilla Alderson

Critical Realism, Environmental Learning and Social-Ecological Change
Edited by Leigh Price and Heila Lotz-Sisitka

Metatheory for the 21st Century
Critical realism and integral theory in dialogue
Edited by Roy Bhaskar, Sean Esbjrn-Hargens, Nicholas Hedlund and Mervyn Hartwig

The Post-Mobile Society
From the smart/mobile to second offline
Edited by Hidenori Tomita

Enlightened Common Sense
The philosophy of critical realism
Roy Bhaskar

ENLIGHTENED COMMON SENSE

The philosophy of critical realism

Roy Bhaskar
Edited with a preface by Mervyn Hartwig

Editors note. Abbreviations explained immediately below the titles of figures and tables or confined to one location in the text have not been included. Those for the various phases of development of the philosophy of critical realism (TR, CN, EC, DCR, TDCR and PMR) are used, as a rule, only in the tables.