The Philosophy of Realism

Description

This first issue of Reality— *The Philosophy of Realism* —like most publications and especially those of a collaborative effort, signifies innumerable hours of effort. The goal of our journal is simple: to reinvigorate an intelligent discussion about realism as a philosophical approach. By a realist approach, we mean not simply as pertains to theories of knowledge, but rather a kind of thinking that perfuses itself throughout all philosophical inquiries: all questions of truth, of meaning and purpose, of good, of human action, the political, the physical and the metaphysical, of thought and thing, and anything else about which one might ask, “What does this *mean*?” To clarify this pursuit of reality, and expound on its importance, our first issue asks the question: what *is* realism? It is an important question, not simply for our purposes here, but for philosophy as a whole, and thus an important question for all human beings. Without maintenance of a sound answer—which must be sustained dialogically—philosophy wilts into one or another sophistical theory that begins by denying some aspect of the real; and a small error in the beginning becomes great in the end.To safeguard against such slippery slopes, we take a cue from the first philosopher of the Western tradition, Socrates, and seek to define our terms: “what is reality?”