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Este artículo analiza el realismo mínimo de Maurizio Ferraris con el objetivo de mostrar que sus críticas al correlacionismo y al constructivismo no son convincentes. Ferraris conserva tanto una visión sustantivista de los objetos de conocimiento como una diferencia substancial entre cosas sensibles y conceptos. Estas dos cuestiones impiden que su Manifiesto del nuevo realismo pueda ser considerado como el momento fundacional del “nuevo realismo”. El artículo concluye con una reflexión sobre aquellos aspectos que deberían considerarse y evitarse al momento de proponer un realismo filosófico.

New Realism is not new. Instead of a new response to a novel philosophical problem, New Realism is an unacknowledged resurrection of Jacobi’s criticism of philosophical rationality that ignited what is now known as the “pantheism controversy.” Both Jacobi and Ferraris argue that the antirealist epistemologies of their contemporaries displace our relation to the world to which thought is supposed to be beholden. Further, both Jacobi and Ferraris claim that the antidote to these delusional philosophical ideations is realism. Finally, both take a reactionary stance toward the renegotiation of authority that stands at the core of the Enlightenment project. If this is indeed the case, then New Realism is a repetition and not an advance. More significantly, despite its own aspirations, New Realism is a reactionary, anti- Enlightenment philosophical proposal. In short, Ferraris says “Goodbye Kant!” too quickly and for old reasons.

In this essay I argue that Irele’s critical discourse is a construct of double entendre, the introvert and the extrovert, crystallized in his concept of the African Imagination. I critically chroni...

Este artículo explora la crítica de Bruno Latour a la teoría crítica contemporánea. Según Latour, las concepciones posestructuralistas de la investigación crítica son cada vez más obsoletas. En nuestra era “postfactual”, intentar exponer los hechos como el resultado de procesos de construcción social cargados de poder acaba haciendo el juego de los oscurantistas anti-científicos. Sin embargo, esto no quiere decir que uno deba optar por una noción reduccionista de objetividad. En cambio, Latour propone una nueva forma de realismo crítico. Si bien estamos de acuerdo con Latour sobre la necesidad de ampliar nuestro paradigma epistemológico, consideramos que su crítica al posestructuralismo es injusta y exagerada. Además, sostenemos que ella no tiene en cuenta la relación entre epistemología, poder y subjetividad. Dado que Foucault, por otro lado, tiene éxito donde Latour se queda corto e investiga esta relación, la suya es una forma de crítica que sigue siendo crucial para abordar la crisis actual de la verdad. This paper, first published in German in Le Foucaldien 4(1) 2018 and in English in Le Foucaldien 6(1) 2020, explores Bruno Latour’s critique of contemporary critical theory. According to Latour, poststructuralist conceptions of critical inquiry are becoming increasingly outdated. In our “post-factual” era, attempting to expose facts as results of power-laden processes of social construction plays into the hands of anti-scientific obscurantists. This is not to say, however, that one ought to opt for some reductionist notion of objectivity. Instead, Latour proposes a new form of critical realism. While we agree with Latour about the necessity of widening our epistemological paradigm, we deem his critique of poststructuralism unfair and exaggerated. Moreover, we argue that he fails to account for the relationship between epistemology, power, and subjectivity. Since Foucault, on the other hand, succeeds where Latour falls short and probes into this very relationship, his is a form of critique that remains crucial to tackling the current crisis of truth.

After the collapse of the Qing dynasty, some scholars such as Xiong Shili 熊十力 and Feng Youlan 馮友蘭 adopted methods from Buddhism or Western philosophy to deal with Confucian ideas. The former approach has been recognized as xin xinxue 新心學 (new learning of heart/mind) which follows Lu Xiangshan 陸象山 and Wang Yangming’s 王陽明 line of thinking. On the other hand, the latter approach has been regarded as xin lixue 新理學 (new learning of reason/principle). Xiong and his students such as Mou Zongsan 牟宗三 and Tang Junyi 唐君毅 claim that their method in theoretical study is transcendental and in practical learning is intuitionistic. From their transcendental viewpoint, Confucian philosophy can be understood as a kind of transcendental philosophy and a learning of life which can only be grasped by moral practice and ascertained by a special kind of inner and transcendental experience. So, using an analytic or historical method would explain away the wisdom which can be entertained by moral practice. In contrast, Fung borrows from Platonic realism and New Realism in dealing with problems in Confucian studies and stresses that his method is basically of the kind of logical analysis. In this paper, I will introduce the two types of methods and approaches mentioned above and try to evaluate the merits and difficulties of their methods and approaches in the studies of Confucian philosophy.

Three conceptions of truth: hypertruth, hypotruth, and mesotruth. The result of this differentiation allows the rehabilitation of hermeneutics by providing a realistic version of it, which on the one hand is distinct from the postmodernist one in that it recognizes the fundamental role of ontology and on the other avoids the risk taken by a large part of analytical philosophers of misunderstanding historical differences at an epistemological level.

This article is a comment on Karl Mittermaier’s article The Invisible Hand and Some Thoughts on the Non-Existent in What We Study, written in the early 1990s, but published only now. In this article, Mittermaier attempts to make two contributions. First, he provides a novel interpretation of Adam Smith’s well-known expression of the invisible hand, thereby highlighting a rather neglected method in Smith’s works. He uses this interpretation to introduce a methodological argument that “fictions may play a vital, or even essential, role in economic analysis”, touching on Roy Bhaskar’s New Realism, or Critical Realism, as it would be described today, as well as on Austrian Economics. This is his second contribution. We discuss both contributions, especially in the light of newer scholarship on Adam Smith and in the Philosophy of Economics.

Literary Studies of contemporary works of literature, in the absence of a canon, are largely directed by order-making umbrella terms. Using the umbrella term ‘new realism’ as an example this study examines (1) its relationship with poetological discourses and discourses of a diagnosis of the present, (2) how the umbrella term’s attractiveness corresponds to its conceptual underdetermination, and (3) which different forms text analytical concepts of ‘new realism’ can take.

Se presenta una lectura crítica de Zubiri, imprescindible para comprender la actualidad de su pensamiento, porque pone a prueba sus potenciales aportaciones y propone correcciones y prolongaciones creativas en el horizonte contemporáneo de la filosofía, en relación con la fenomenología, la hermenéutica, las neurociencias y el emergentismo. El libro se centra principalmente en la evolución de la filosofía de Zubiri, su metafísica, noología, antropología y la relación entre ciencia y filosofía, pero también en sus graves crisis. Y cabe contextualizarlo relacionándolo con las propuestas actuales de un nuevo realismo, que están ligadas a nuevas formas tanto de ontología como de hermenéutica.

The ethics of the Moderns has put moral value into the ideas we profess; exemplarity, on the contrary, puts moral value into the actions we perform, thus providing a reason to rethink the ethics of the Ancients.

The late Marshall McLuhan’s substitution of the term “global theater” for the more celebrated but arguably less effective “global village,” with its relational/holistic underpinnings, signals a turn in his media philosophy: from an ontology of identity supporting an organicist theory of mediated interplay (world–self relations) to an ontology of difference, sense, and multiplicities prioritizing the existence of individual objects. The performative concept of “global theater” has been overlooked by media ecology commentators, who tend to interpret it as a colorful detail—a loose element in McLuhan’s overall system—often associating it with a shift from detached contemplation to involved production. This essay argues that a mere shift from theory to praxis is not enough to fully comprehend this enigmatic concept, which holds one of the keys for understanding the late McLuhan’s transition from an extended configuration, anchored in the constitutive subject, to a postfinite philosophy of difference, ...

The emergence of New Realism in philosophy and the Ontological Turn in anthropology testify to the increasing attention paid in the human sciences to the topic of ‘reality’. The aim of this essay is to reread and translate Greimas’ proposal of a semiotic of the natural world, so as to suggest how his concepts might contribute to the contemporary intellectual debate. From a discussion of Greimas’ attempt to solve the problem of the relation between ‘language’ and ‘world’ in nonreferentialist terms, the essay will then move to identify the four forms of correlation that constitute natures and worlds, objects and subjects. In bringing his argument to the extreme consequences, I will call for a reevaluation of structuralism, and propose to distinguish ‘reality’ from ‘the real’. Both hypotheses rest on the idea that relations are the matter we are made of.

This manuscript, divided into two parts, provides a contextual and historiographical analysis of Edwin Arthur Burtt's classic The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science. My discussion corroborates the sparse technical literature on Burtt (Moriarty, 1994; Villemaire & Burtt, 2002), positioning his work in the aftermath of American idealism and the rise of realist, pragmatist and naturalist alternatives. However, I depart from the existing interpretations both in content and focus. Disagreeing with Moriarty, I maintain that Burtt's Metaphysical Foundations is not an idealist work. Moreover, I provide an alternative to Villemaire's mainly Deweyite/pragmatist reading, emphasizing the import of new realism and naturalism. Burtt's historical thesis should not be viewed as outlining a systematic philosophical position, but rather as a (coherent) culmination of numerous philosophical problematics. To support my conclusion, I provide a substantial summary of Burtt's text alongside a contextual analysis of the philosophical issues that preoccupied his teachers and peers in Columbia's philosophy department. I conclude with a historiographical section, rendering explicit the connections between Burtt's understanding of the scientific revolution, and his distinctive early 20th century American intellectual context.

Este artículo plantea la tesis de que la filosofía fenomenológica de la percepción de Merleau-Ponty, en la medida en que es crítica tanto del empirismo como del idealismo, apunta hacia una forma de realismo (realismo perceptual). Para argumentar en favor de esta idea y mostrar la vigencia del pensador francés, se contrastan los planteamientos de éste con posturas del “realismo especulativo” de Meillassoux, del “nuevo realismo” de Gabriel y del “realismo plural” de Taylor y Dreyfus. Se propone el concepto de “realismo ontológico” para apuntalar la postura de Merleau-Ponty y a los planteamientos de este ensayo.

The tradition of political realism denies the relevance of morality to politics and asserts the value of prudence. The new realists in political theory repeat these claims in the context of critici...

Some contemporary philosophers have called for a “new realism” in philosophical ontology. Hartmann’s works provide some of the richest resources upon which recent realists might draw for both inspiration and argument. In this brief exploration I touch on some key concepts and arguments from a few of the players in this “ontological turn,” including Meillassoux, Brassier, and Ferraris, and show how many of them were already clearly articulated in Hartmann’s works. I’ll also describe and comment on Hartmann’s arguments concerning the “thing in itself,” which he considers a key “critical” concept of his new ontology. His treatment of this issue demonstrates the sophistication—and, perhaps, superiority—of Hartmann’s approach.

Several recent philosophical projects, notably Bruno Latour's empirical meta-physics, Tristan Garcia's formal ontology, Graham Harman's object-oriented philosophy, and Markus Gabriel's new realism, have insisted there is a need for an “egalitarian” or “flat” ontology that would grant an equal ontological status to entities of every kind, whether actual, abstract, material, or fictional. This article groups all of these projects under the heading of “ontological liberalism” and argues that they are inherently problematic, as they sacrifice conceptual coherence and explanatory usefulness in the name of indefinite inclusion. Focusing on Gabriel's recent books Why the World Does Not Exist and Fields of Sense, and with continual reference to Peter Wolfendale's work on the topic, this essay offers a broad but detailed critique of ontological liberalism, with an eye to alternatives emerging from the discipline of anthropology.

It is admittedly difficult to imagine that there is something one can learn from the Marxist philosopher Georg Lukacs in a postmetaphysical and nominalistic age. At the centre of this essay is the following question: How to resuscitate a metaphysical thinker in postmetaphysical times? The essay shows that Lukacs can play a crucial role in the attempt to theorise what Fredric Jameson has termed a ‘new realism’. Elucidating the Lukacsian understanding of the dialectics of form and totality, it is argued that precisely because of his redemptive notion of form and his metaphysical framework, Lukacs might eventually turn out to be useful for the endeavour to artistically represent and conceptually grasp our present.

This paper scrutinizes Bruno Latour's critique of contemporary critical theory. According to Latour, poststructuralist conceptions of critical inquiry are increasingly behind the times: in our "post-factual" era, attempts to expose facts as results of power-laden processes of social construction play in the hands of obscurantist anti-scientific positions. Arguing at the same time against reductionist notions of objectivity, Latour proposes a new form of critical realism. While Latour plausibly advocates the necessity of widening our epistemological paradigm, we aim to show that his critique of poststructuralism is unjust and hyperbolic. Moreover, his own conception misses out on explicating the relationship between epistemology, power, and subjectivity. Therefore, we argue that a Foucauldian form of critique, as it allows to account for this relationship, is all but outdated. Rather, it remains a necessary critical device in the context of the present truth-crisis.

In this paper I try to sketch a brief history of new realism. Starting from nineteenth century idealism, I then move on to discuss twentieth century postmodernism, which, I argue, is the heir of idealism and the theoretical enemy of new realism. Finally, I offer a reconstruction of how and why contemporary new realism came into being and propose a few remarks on its future perspectives. U ovom tek stu po ku šao sam da ski ci ram krat ku isto ri ju no vog re a li zma. Čla nak sam za po čeo raz ma tra njem ide a li zma u de vet na e stom ve ku, da bi se pre ba cio na ras pra vlja nje o post mo der ni zmu u dva de se tom ve ku ko ji je, ka ko tvr dim, nasled nik ide a li zma i te o rij ski ne pri ja telj no vog re a li zma. Na kra ju sam po ku šao da re kon stru i šem pro blem ka ko i za što je na stao sa vre me ni no vi re a li zam i dao neko li ko na po me na o nje go voj bu du ćoj per spek ti vi.

The paper set up a small “philosophical lab” for thought experiments using Digital Universes as its main tool. Digital Universes allow us to examine how mereology affects the debate on New Realism of Ferraris (2012) and shed new light on the whole notion of Realism. The semi-formal framework provides a convenient way to model the varieties of realism that are important for the program of New Realism: we then draw the natural consequences of this approach into the ontology of our world (may it be digital or not), arguing that the same considerations that apply to Digital Universe would hold for chess, institutions and social objects as well. Once a particular version of mereology is chosen, there are unavoidable consequences that the very underlying structure of social (and non-social) ontology. We then propose a new New Realism to tackle social objects: social objects turn out to be nothing more than mereological sums, picked up by some (possibly intentional) description.

The author addresses the present-day challenge to theology involving a philosophical turn to Realism and its critique of Constructivism and Postmodernism. The author welcomes this critique. He also points out the benefits of radical Constructivism which have been directed toward theology but have not yet been fully utilized. He presents two successful (in his opinion) German attempts to apply Constructivism to theology. The author believes that a Constructivism free of erroneous ideological assumptions is permanently suitable as a methodology for the study of the obviously designed social phenomena. This reasoning is supported in the author's exploration of the theology of tradition. In the final section, the author makes mention of the main initiatives that New Realism offers for theology, for example in the area of a dialogue between theology and science, the restoration of metaphysics and ontology, and the theological concept of truth, which could include perspectivity and contextuality of cognition into a realistic position.

The movement of New Realism, which in Italy has been launched by Maurizio Ferraris, is conceived explicitly in opposition to Kant. In his defense of the distinction between ontology and epistemology, Ferraris starts from the presupposition that it is Kant himself who is responsible for their confusion because of his transcendental philosophy and its consequent constructionism. In this paper I will defend Kant’s perspective, explaining his reasons (or his concept of reason), even against Meillasoux’s “speculative realism.” The basic idea is that Kant’s transcendental philosophy requires a new philosophical attitude, which implies a shift from reality to possibility as the fundamental philosophical category, since only possibility enables a critical perspective on reality.

Sandra Lehmann continues on the previous discussion of the ontological grounding of truth by comparing Desmond’s metaxology to the revival of metaphysics in the New Realism of Quentin Meillassoux. While noting the superficial similarities between these philosophical projects, Lehmann clarifies that metaxology provides a more robust alternative to the anti-metaphysical philosophies of finitude of the twentieth century. Particularly prominent in her argument is that Meillassoux’s discussion of the ground of being does not allow him to escape the shadow of Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics, which is something more ably accomplished by metaxology.

After a long period of unpopularity, philosophical realism is enjoying a revival. According to some of its contemporary versions, the world consists in just what the ordinary view of the world assumes, while the unobservable entities postulated by scientific theories are nothing more than fictions. Some other versions, in contrast, accept only the ontology of the best scientific theories and assume a reductionist or eliminationist stance towards the entities postulated by common sense. In this article, it is argued that, because of their respective unilateralism, both these versions of realism are unsatisfying and that an acceptable new realism should adopt, in a liberal naturalist spirit, a realist attitude regarding both the common sense and the scientific views of the world.

Hilary Putnam famously pronounced an obituary for Ontology with a capital 'O' (Putnam 2004, 84-85). Without trying to enumerate ways in which I do and do not agree with Putnam,1 I want to consider ontology (without a capital 'O') as a more pedestrian enterprise than Putnam's capital-'O' Ontology. Ontology, as I see it, just tells us what entities and properties there are in irreducible reality. As such, ontology yields a form of realism. The task of ontology, I believe, is to bring to light what is required for a doubtlessly partial, but nonredundant, account of reality.2By 'reality,' as we shall see, I do not mean some artificial domain buttressed by a priori constraints. I mean full-throttle reality that includes everything-all entities, properties, and kinds-required to make intelligible what we perceive and interact with and what survives our inquiries.3 The only appropriate constraint on ontology is that what it includes is genuinely real, where genuine reality is understood in terms of what cannot be reduced to more basic items and what cannot be eliminated without loss.Many contemporary philosophers, however, put further constraints on ontology. I shall consider three of these constraints, and argue that each constraint gratuitously circumscribes reality to fit some a priori conception.4 The three constraints that I shall consider are, first, that ontology is limited to what is mind-independent; second, that ontology includes only what is deducible from physics; and third, that ontology must be expressible in a regimented "Tarskian" language.Each of these constraints-meta-ontological add-ons, really-is tantamount to a closure principle on reality. Each constraint, I shall argue, severely truncates reality, by excising (a priori) some important part of reality, and hence hobbles our efforts to formulate an adequate ontology. So, an ontology that is governed by any of these three constraints is ipso facto inadequate. Or so I shall argue.After arguing against the three constraints, I shall briefly sketch out my own view, which I call "Practical Realism" (Baker 2007). Practical Realism has room for normative phenomena that are embedded both in everyday practices and in scientific practices. And, while respecting the deliverances of science, Practical Realism does not take a scientific account of reality to be exhaustive. I offer Practical Realism as a new realism that takes genuine reality to include everything required for an exhaustive description of what we perceive, interact with, and the things that survive our investigations.FIRST CONSTRAINT: MIND INDEPENDENCEThe first constraint, which is almost universally held, is that ontology deals only with mind-independent items. Something is mind-independent if it could exist or be exemplified in a world without minds. Roughly, mind-independence restricts genuine reality to what would exist if higher animals had never evolved.Ted Sider mentions robust realism as a view "ubiquitous among analytic philosophers, according to which the world is the way it is independent of human conceptualization" (Sider 2009, 387). But consider: Great swaths of reality are ontologically dependent on human conceptualization. Credit default swaps-and other financial practices-could not exist without human conceptualization. The view mentioned by Sider may be ubiquitous, but it is surely arbitrary: We conceptualizing persons do exist and make significant contributions to what there is.Ernest Sosa has said, "What the metaphysical realist is committed to holding is that there is an in-itself reality independent of our minds and even of our existence" (Sosa 1993, 609). Yes, I agree, there is an in-itself reality independent of our minds, but that reality is far from exhaustive of genuine reality. Indeed, taking mindindependence as a constraint on genuine reality arbitrarily strips reality of most of what is important today. (Just try to describe current events in mind-independent terms. …

This volume brings to the attention of contemporary readers a tradition of psychological thought that has received little attention over the last century. Psychology's history has been unimaginatively presented as a fight between behaviorists and mentalists. A third alternative, the New Realism, which cuts through that dichotomy, has been lost. "The New Realism" was indeed once new. This volume provides a glimpse of how this school of thought attempted to redefine the notion of mental processes, including consciousness, in psychological theorizing. Holt's rejected the nativity of iconoclastic Watsonian behaviorists, and thus the New Realism was thoughtful in ways that behaviorist social engineering was not. The implications of these innovations in psychological theorizing are traced from the beginning of the twentieth century to the contemporary period. The contributors provide these intellectual links, along with efforts to look at the relatedness of the human organism and its world. At their beginning, these ideas are embedded in a reverence for William James's work, particularly his later Radical Empiricism. In contemporary psychology, this legacy has given us the framework of ecological psychology as we know it today, and provides the basis for several modern critiques of cognitive psychology. The present volume opens the door for future historical inquiries. This is an exemplary addition to the series on the History of Psychological Ideas.

The New Realism Manifesto by Maurizio Ferraris criticises hermeneutics and postmodernism for their passive and conservative positions, claiming that they are responsible for having delegitimised all philosophical reflection on reality and ontology and favoured the affirmation of a “show-biz” society and a proprietary personalisation of politics. Gianni Vattimo answers this thesis, accusing realism of colluding both with the hierarchy of the powers-that-be and with technocracy and claiming the left-wing orientation of hermeneutics. But to be fair, Vattimo has noticeably changed his own position with respect to the years of “weak Thought”, when every hypothesis of political intervention on reality and every project of transformation were excluded. Hermeneutics today merits being considered a sort of new and revolutionary “philosophy of praxis” in which a weakened Marxism joins up (improbably) with Nietzsche and Heidegger’s thought. Although bitter, the conflict between these positions, which openly claim an emancipationist orientation, is an indication of a process of radicalization of Italian philosophy that is also confirmed by the recent theses of other authors. However, in the absence of a rediscovery of that reality which more than any other has been obscured by postmodernism – the reality of work and the material processes of production and social reproduction – and in the absence of a real subject interested in an overall transformation of the contemporary world, the risk is that such radicalisation of the intellectual classes will stay incomplete and remain within a theoretical debate that is incapable of changing the imbalances and relations of subordination and dominion present in society.

This paper shows a new philosophical turn towards a new realism emerging today. And its originality lies on Maurizio Ferraris, who has recently published his Manifiesto del nuevo realismo**, which has been followed by personalities such as Umberto Eco and John Searle. On this basis, Mexican philosopher Mauricio Beuchot and me have written our Manifiesto del nuevo realismo analógico***, which had had a great acceptance by Maurizio Ferraris himself. He translated our manifest and introduced it into Italy. I will take this article as a chance to thank him for reading and considering our manifest. To sum up, what I will show is article is a picture of new realism from analogical hermeneutics point of view and the reason why we choose the analogical focus on it to be accurate.

The Novelty of New Realism In the Italian public cultural discussion it has often been argued that philosophical realism is an obsolete and irrelevant conception and that no attention should be given to its new versions. In this article, it is argued that this thesis is flawed because the issue of realism is philosophically inescapable. This will be argued by discussing two examples that come from science. The first example concerns the concept of species, which is hotly debated today both in biology and in the philosophy of biology. What is relevant here is that none of the available definitions of species cover all the cases biologists would like to cover – so that several scholars have taken the antirealist attitude by denying the objective reality of species. The other example concerns the birth of modern science, which (against some contemporary interpretations) cannot be understood without appreciating its deep commitments toward a realistic interpretation of scientific theories. Some objections will also be dealt with that have been raised by the antirealists, such as the one centered on the alleged connection of new realism with political realism and another that concerns the status of conventions in our practices.

Il nuovo realismo ha evidenziato i limiti del costruttivismo sociale e del cosiddetto «pensiero debole», che rischia di sfociare nel nichilismo. Sono stati recentemente rimossi dei pregiudizi che impedivano di cogliere la realtà dei fatti educativi nella sua concreta evidenza. Tuttavia un’apertura alla prospettiva metafisica offrirebbe al nuovo realismo ulteriori spazi epistemologici. In tale senso il contributo del realismo critico potrebbe aiutare a superare l’artificiosa antinomia tra il ruolo attivo del soggetto conoscente e la rilevazione oggettiva dei fatti educativi. Se si realizzasse questa apertura la conoscenza scientifica e la conoscenza corrente non sarebbero più viste come antinomiche perché la seconda costituirebbe un approfondimento della prima, in una linea di continuità. I metodi sperimentali di ricerca in campo educativo si sono recentemente avvalsi delle riflessioni filosofiche dei realisti per integrare l’approccio qualitativo e quello quantitativo allo studio della realtà dell’educazione. Anche i nuovi disegni di ricerca che intendono seguire e rilevare, senza ingabbiarli, i processi educativi sono per lo più misti. «New Realism» has highlighted the limits of social constructivism and of so-called «weak thought» that risks producing nihilism. Some prejudices have recently been removed that prevented researchers and theorists from grasping the real core of educational facts in their concrete evidence. However, an opening to a metaphysical view would offer «new realism» further epistemological perspectives. In this sense, the contribution of critical realism might help to overcome the artificial antinomy between the active role of the knowing subject and the objective measurement of educational facts. With this «opening», scientific knowledge and current knowledge would no longer be seen as opposites because the latter would be considered as a deepening of the former, in a line of continuity. The experimental methods of research in the education field have recently made use of the philosophical reflections of realists to integrate the quantitative and qualitative approach to the study of education. New research designs, aimed at monitoring and observing educational processes, without «encaging» them, are mainly of a «mixed» kind.

What is New Realism? This contribution presents new realism as a reaction to constructivism, which represents the mainstream of modern philosophy. It maintains that our conceptual schemes and perceptual apparatus play a constitutive role with regard to reality. New realism is presented in four steps. The first concerns the distinction between ontology (what actually exists) and epistemology (what we think we know). The second is the empirical finding that the fundamental feature of ontology is its predominance over epistemology because that which exists, which is real, does not allow itself to be corrected by our conceptual schemes. The third is the observation that the real is not solely seen as resistance and negativity: in any negation there is a determination and a possibility. The fourth concerns realism with regard to social objects, which depend on the mind, but are independent of knowledge because they are essentially recorded acts, that is, documents.

Unity and Plurality of the Social Sciences The author supports the view that New Realism is a positive reaction to the worst aspects of Post-modernism. The call to reality and realism is also a recurrent theme in the scientific debate, both when new sciences are founded and also in periods of paradigm change. This view is demonstrated through two cases – Thucydides criticism of Herodotus at the time of the foundation of history as a science, and Durkheim’s call to reality in the Rules of the Sociological Method. However, the author maintains that this call to reality is accompanied by a new vision of the social world, and this is seen better in the methodological works of M. Weber. By analyzing these cases, the author presents the main thesis that sciences – all empirical sciences and not just the social sciences – are such if, and only if, their logical structure is based on three principles: a) theoretical (internal) coherence, b) correspondence of the theory with the empirical world, and c) liberty, autonomy, and responsibility of the scientists. All sciences, and not just the empirical ones, are instead differentiated from one another by their object and/or by the way they view their object. This general view is illustrated through a case study of the social sciences and particularly by analyzing the epistemological structure of sociology.